I no longer take them seriously, or even bother to send them in. If it worked once in a while, I might bother, but it’s gotten to the point that it’s not worth the time and hassle on an expected-value basis, even when it’s fifty bucks or so. If the price is worth it without the rebate, I buy it, if not, then I don’t. But I never factor in the rebate any more in the purchase decision, unless it’s instant in the store. I wish that they’d stop this fraud.
“We have demonstrated the controlled synthesis of nanostructures at levels of complexity significantly beyond any work yet reported. What we have done is the most challenging synthetic problem in these structures, and one with huge potential payoffs from both the standpoint of fundamental scientific impact and producing novel de-vices and applications.”
Alan Boyle has a useful wrapup. It would have been hard to top 2004 for an exciting year for private space, but things are moving slowly but steadily toward the day that we open up the frontier, with or without government help.
I’m looking at this television, which is on sale at Costco for less than a grand.
It looks good, but I found this one review that’s giving me a little heartburn, because we have DirecTV, and planned to upgrade to a triple LNB dish and new HD TIVO receiver.
It is an excellent set for HD OTA and regular definition satellite receiver. But I recently upgraded to an HD receiver for DirecTV and found out it doesn’t have the capability to keep up with the HD satellite receiver. There is a phenomena called macroblocking that occurs since the digital picture cannot be translated properly. Defined – it is an awful picture on the 480i channels, which means about 95 of my programs looked awful.
I searched all over the web, and couldn’t find any other reference to this problem. Is it a real one, or is this an isolated problem for this one reviewer, either because (s)he didn’t understand how to set it up, or there was something defective about that unit?
Is there any reason that we shouldn’t simply declare war on both of them? We don’t necessarily have to do anything about it immediately, but it would certainly bring diplomacy in synch with reality, and open up a lot more options in dealing with them.
Maybe last year? All I know is that, historically, it’s unusual for Congress to pass a NASA authorization bill. Usually the thing dies, in committee or because it never makes it through conference, and NASA ends up just working off the appropriation. Traditionally, there has never been much pressure to pass one, because it’s largely viewed as symbolic anyway, and the appropriations bill (which actually funds the programs) is the only one that really counts. But with the new authorization for larger prizes, it’s a great symbol this year.