Adventures on the Journey
Before buying HDMI or other cables locally, check the price on them at monoprice.com or Amazon.com. Both will have low prices. I buy almost exclusively at monoprice because of their cheap USPS shipping. For example, a 6′ HDMI cable is $4. A toslink female to mini male adapter is $0.66 (use this to connect a Mac to your receiver via optical).
Have you had the chance to play with a Blackberry Storm? Or a Palm Pre? Did you get the feeling that the touch screen, the primary input device, just didn’t feel as good as the iPhone? I’m not talking about the ignored taps that the Google Android suffers from, but that, “darn, I’m sure I tapped the right spot, but I sure didn’t get what I wanted” feeling. It turns out there’s a quantifiable reason the iPhone touch screen seems to work better.
TV doesn’t just make you stupid and fat, it also makes you obedient:
…the manipulative power of television further increases people’s willingness to obey. – Fake TV Game Show ‘Tortures’ Man
Even the Iranian regime is willing to play Hollywood movies to entice its citizens to stay home and watch TV.
It makes me wonder what we’ll be discovering and saying about the internet in the next couple decades.
Playing a HD movie against the snow white ceiling of a snow cave is unreasonably appealing. Thankfully, the 3M MPro120
It’s Banks vs. Families, Who Will Come Out on Top?
The short version is that I studied the economics of the middle class and I began to see that credit products were becoming increasingly dangerous. Families didn’t know how much they were spending on credit and comparison among the products was practically impossible…
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The idea behind the current model is, “I will hold something shiny in front of your eye, 3.9% financing, and the way I’m going to make money is on tricks and traps that I’ve buried in the fine print: $29 there, $49 there, triple interest rate, double cycle billing, over and over and over … .”…one of the issuers took me aside and said, “We get that our business model is unsustainable over the long haul, but no one of us can jump first.” On the plane home from the meeting with the issuer I realized how broken the market is….
The new Mustang ships with 305 ponies and gets 31mpg. The article doesn’t mention if the back seat has room for two child seats.
I think Christine Gregoire’s sin tax is a mediocre approach to an excellent idea. In addition to taxing poor consumption, the tax plan should also create incentives for healthy foods. With that in mind, I present the Washington State Health Improvement Tax.
Rather than a flat tax on products that are ‘sin’ items, tax products based on the level of Bad Things[*] in them. For example, candy and gum would be taxed on the grams of sugar included per serving. Cigarettes would be taxed on the levels of tar and nicotine. The tax would discourage ‘more sinful’ items because of increased cost, and it creates a market incentive for manufacturers to create healthier products.
It’s illogical to tax sugar-free gums that prevent tooth decay (a health benefit) the same as sugar rich ones that contribute to decay and diabetes. Low sugar gums should be taxed less, giving them an market advantage. Cigarettes with lower levels of tar and nicotine would be taxed less, encouraging smokers towards cigarettes that are less addictive and toxic. Fat, juicy premium steaks would be taxed more than lean cuts. Milk with growth hormones would cost more, making organic milk more cost competitive.
* Bad Things is defined as FDA regulated (food) items consumed by humans that cause poor health. The list should include, but not be limited to: Nicotine, saturated fats, trans fats, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, BGH, high levels of sodium, e coli, etc.
The tax scale should be progressive, so that the most unhealthy products are taxed the most. Dieticians and nutritionists should determine the level of ill health each ingredient causes and the tax implemented based on that.
For example, every gram of sugar above 10 per serving is taxed at the rate of $0.01 per gram. Every gram of saturated fat above 1 is taxed at the rate of $0.10 per gram. Each mg of sodium above 250 per serving would cost $0.01. Under this scale, a 2 oz. Snickers bar with 28g of sugar ($0.18) and 4g of saturated fat ($0.30) would cost an extra $0.48. A slice of Costco chocolate cake would cost an extra $0.20. A bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos would cost $0.80 more.
To make compliance easier, charge the tax at the wholesale level for prepackaged foods. Prepared foods would have to be taxed at retail.
An optional nicety would be providing incentives to encourage merchants to include nutrition summaries on checkout receipts, as well as how much they contributed to the WS-HIT by making unhealthy choices.
Piggyback the WS-HIT tax with an excess packaging tax that taxes products with high levels of waste packaging. Rather than a $0.01 per ounce tax on bottled water, make the tax progressive so that it encourages consumers to purchase products with less packaging. Christine’s tax does not encourage someone to purchase a gallon jug of water versus 8-8oz bottles. The 8-pack has significantly more packing waste and should be taxed more. The large bottles that the Culligan man delivers are reused and should not be taxed at all.
That’s a tax proposal I’d vote for. Would you?
head circumference is 22 1/4″
When the first iPhone was released, it was expensive, limited to 2G (EDGE), and didn’t offer tethering. I was out of contract but I was in graduate school and tethering was my killer app. So I waited. Nine months later the price dropped, the first jailbreak was released, tethering was possible, and I ordered one.
It wasn’t long before I petitioned Steve for a ‘toy mode’, so we could let our kids play with the iPhone without direct supervision. This is an update for that request. I want user profiles, just like my Mac has.
I want to flick the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad off and set it down on the couch or coffee table. When my wife or child grabs it, they must enter their security code to use it. After they do, the device unlocks and all their apps and settings are presented. Email, calendars, saved Safari passwords, applications, etc.
Parental controls would be nice. Specifically, I’d like to prevent the kids from doing anything on my iPhone that costs money (make calls, send SMS, etc). Selecting the apps they are allowed to see/run would accomplish this nicely.
Without profiles, I won’t be able to use the mail, calendaring, password saving, or other features on the iPad. If I did, I’d risk the kids moving my appointments around, or deleting email messages. With profile support, the iPad immediately becomes fully usable by everyone in the family. It would get a lot of use. I’d buy one. If the competition for it became fierce, I might buy another.
The iPad size is excellent. It’s just right for toting around the house. The dock is a great feature, I’d buy one for the kitchen counter and another for my nightstand. I would not buy the keyboard dock. I’d buy the bluetooth keyboard instead, since it can be used with a Mac and the iPad.
There are some great games that are very playable on the iPhone 3GS. They would be even more fun on the iPad. Hands down, this is a far better gaming/education device than the iPhone or iPod Touch. There’s no doubt it’s better for reading books, browsing web pages, and managing email.
But is it really ‘better’ at music than an iPhone or a Mac? It can’t hold my entire music library, making it less ‘good’ than a Mac. It’s worth putting up with the iPhone storage limits because it fits in my pocket. The iPad has neither ‘best feature.’
It appears the iPad is better at displaying photos, but it can’t take any. Where’s the camera? This device should be able to take pictures and support video conferencing in the same way as iChat on a Mac. The lack of this feature is a compelling reason to wait for iPad 2.0.
The iPhone and iTouch are personal devices. Laptops are shared devices with user profiles. I would leave the iPad laying around the house as other family members would surely enjoy using it. The iPhone OS is designed around use by one person. The restrictions offered are all or nothing, making them far less useful for multiple users. The iPad needs profiles so we can all use it and have exclusive access to our personal data (email, calendars, saved passwords in Safari, etc).
I’ve used my iPhone as an in-car video player. I play the audio through my car stereo via bluetooth and hang it between the seats so the kids can watch a movie. The iPad could be far better, with the larger IPS display and longer battery life.
Perhaps, instead of leaving it sitting around the house, I need to customize my dash to fit an iPad. The next version of Motion-X GPS Drive for the iPad will take mobile navigation to the next level. That idea has some serious potential.