201–210 of 355 posts
Roaming cell fees - when traveling abroad (there are some ways around but very cumbersome)
Advertisements! They're obnoxious, obviously biased, and interfere with whatever it was you were doing (watching a show, visiting a website, reading a newspaper, whatever). It's just wrong. And we all know this, yet we just accept it like it's some fact of life. In addition, it doesn't just affect customers, but all newspapers/magazines/sites that rely on "advertisement income" to make a buck. One thing that puzzles…
It is sort of crazy. Consider two products A and B. They are identical, except that A is more expensive and has advertising. B is cheaper, but has no advertising. Which one wins? A because nobody knows that B even exists. However, everybody is worse off. Consumers got advertising displayed to them that they didn't want to see and they got to pay more for the privilege. The manufacturer of B lost totally. Even the man…
So it's not completely inefficient. How much would you pay to not have to look around who knows where for things that you want?
Things to do - I find it really hard to find things to go out and do in my spare time, events listings never seem to have something that interests me, same with tourist guides although they can be better. Asking friends is always an order of magnitude better.
I've long thought there is a serious opportunity in connecting organizations who provide fun things to do with people looking for fun things to do. I had an (unpursued) idea a while back to create a single-serving site called, "What should I do this weekend?" Another idea was a subscription-based service that organizes adult "field trips" every weekend.
Death annoys me. People who can afford $300/year for a cheap cryonics membership and life insurance, and who don't sign up, annoy me. A lot of them are probably being held off by the trivial inconvenience of signing a few papers without a paid salesman to hold their hand. It therefore annoys me that cryonics is poorly marketed and that there are no paid salespeople - that no one gets a commission when you sign up for…
Links to good/cheap cryo? I will sign up today.
You'll also need at least $50K of life insurance with them as beneficiary. I pay around $170/year for $250K, and went through Rudi Hoffman who does cryo-compatible life insurance.
Food. I miss the healthy, affordable, sociable dining halls from university. There are people who cook better than I do, and who should be able to make great food at a reasonable price by buying fresh ingredients in bulk. My options for eating are * Cook it myself [1]. Cheap but takes time and effort to make good food. * Restaurant. Good food but expensive and takes time. I don't always want table service and small p…
I recall a cafe in Brussels I saw on some PBS travel show, where all the seating was long wooden benches. This is much more sociable than what I see in most US eateries. I find that one of the Whole Foods in Houston is a good option, so long as I don't want to pig out. (The one off Wesleyan - 4004 Bellaire.) They have a couple of long tables, but not enough volume of people interested in talking. The food is top-notc…
Death annoys me. People who can afford $300/year for a cheap cryonics membership and life insurance, and who don't sign up, annoy me. A lot of them are probably being held off by the trivial inconvenience of signing a few papers without a paid salesman to hold their hand. It therefore annoys me that cryonics is poorly marketed and that there are no paid salespeople - that no one gets a commission when you sign up for…
Does cryonics work? When one with a cryonics membership dies, is his life insurance benefit still paid out? Assuming he can be revived via the cryonics process. Cryonics and life insurance seem incompatible.
Yes, as many people pay for their suspension by taking out a life insurance policy that names the cryonics organization as a beneficiary.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is sort of crazy. Consider two products A and B. They are identical, except that A is more expensive and has advertising. B is cheaper, but has no advertising. Which one wins? A because nobody knows that B even exists. However, everybody is worse off. Consumers got advertising displayed to them that they didn't want to see and they got to pay more for the privilege. The manufacturer of B lost totally. Even the man…
Consider if there were no advertising; the result would likely be that A and B would both lose because nobody would know they exist. So it's not completely inefficient. How much would you pay to not have to look around who knows where for things that you want?
This may have been true in the past, but this is 2010... I constantly find out about products (and other things, and people, etc) that I didn't know existed, through other means than advertisements. Without paying for it, in fact; people put reviews about ANYTHING online nowadays.
1. Technologically possible things that have been castrated/restricted by business people (or that need to be hacked, i.e. can't be done by your mother, in order to get them to work properly). Examples: phone tethering, ring tones, lack of power outlets in economy class on airplanes, VOIP over 3G, media licensing (aka dvd zoning), inability to stream Netflix from different countries, inability to watch streams on ESP…
Actually, it's 160 7-bit bytes, so that's $0.25 per 140 bytes.
(25 U.S. cents) / (140 bytes) = 0.18 U.S. cents / byte
(25 U.S. cents) / (140 bytes) = 1,872 U.S. dollars / megabyte
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Links to good/cheap cryo? I will sign up today.
Cryonics Institute: http://www.cryonics.org/ Membership is $120/year. You'll also need at least $50K of life insurance with them as beneficiary. I pay around $170/year for $250K, and went through Rudi Hoffman who does cryo-compatible life insurance.