Things Smackie Thinks You Need to Know...

i dont think any company ever has turned me off so much as air tran did the last time i flew

Originally posted by god's shoeshine:
i dont think any company ever has turned me off so much as air tran did the last time i flew

I flew AirTran two weekends ago without incident. What was your gripe?

I'm thinking of invoking a new rule:

I only fly where Virgin America will take me.

LA
NY
DC
Vegas
SD
SEA
SF

They really need to add Austin to their arsenal. And arguably Chicago, and then I'd be fine Domestically.

it was one thing to have my flight cancelled, and get home 28 hours late, but its another to take 2 hours for the baggage claim guys (of all people) to pass out hotel vouchers. not only were we stuck in vermont for a night and missed work the next day, but we were in a smoking hotel room because it took so long to get there

hey forumdome masterblaster, i am looking for a pair of headless earphones . . . i mean wireless headphones for my pc. so i can work around in my office and not be tied up. the only one i see are those earmuff, straight out of the seventy looking things. i grew up in a world of earbud, small headphones. is there such a thing?

and good lord, subways kick rock ass.

Which reminds me…

Meade.

That's the brand of telescope you want.

Originally posted by walkonby:
hey forumdome masterblaster, i am looking for a pair of headless earphones . . . i mean wireless headphones for my pc. so i can work around in my office and not be tied up. the only one i see are those earmuff, straight out of the seventy looking things. i grew up in a world of earbud, small headphones. is there such a thing?

The problem is powering them. Everybody agrees that wireless ear buds would be bitchen, but how do you power them for longer than 2 hours?

Motorola makes a bluetooth pair of earbuds that still have a thin bar to each bud with small battery pack that rests on the back of your neck. That's the smallest I've seen and because it's bluetooth, I'm not certain of the range.

Why hasn't somebody made a wireless reciever/battery pack the size of the iPod shuffle with wired earbuds that clips on a shirt or something? People want wireless to not be attached to their desk - this would do that same thing. Something like this, only not bluetooth and with a smaller controller.

Originally posted by vansmack:
Which reminds me…

Meade.

That's the brand of telescope you want.

thank you, mighty master. i will seek it out.

Originally posted by walkonby:

Originally posted by vansmack:
Which reminds me…

Meade.

That's the brand of telescope you want.

thank you, mighty master. i will seek it out.

He said that you can spend as little as $100 and as much as $10,000 with Meade and either way you'd get a great product. Then we did some shots of tequila to celebrate his team finding water on Mars and that's all I remember.

He also said something about Jupiter being so close that you could use a good pair of binoculars and see it, but that a telescope allows you to set it, walk away and Jupiter might still be there when you get back.

The Snozzberries taste like Snozzberries

<img src="http://i190.photobucket.com/albums/z167/badrobot96/super-troopers-snozzberries.jpg" alt=" - " />

And I don't remember if I brought this up or not…

Mother of God!

<img src="http://www.myconfinedspace.com/watermark.php?src=wp-content/uploads/2007/04/mother-of-god-super-troopers.jpg" alt=" - " />

in this age of every film being from a book or a sequel or a remake, this shocks you. i wait for gremlins three, ghostbusters three, monty python and the holy grail two, the shining two (even shinier).

Originally posted by vansmack:
#1 - 2008 will be the year that internet access at your seat will finally be available on airplanes, starting with longer flights and working its way to the commuter flights (which is backwards, but at least its coming).

American Airlines and Virgin already did it, and Jetblue has been beta testing it for months now, but lets throw Delta in the ring:

Delta Adds Wi-Fi to Entire Domestic Airline Fleet

Originally posted by vansmack:
Tech Prediction #2:

2008 will not be the year that the HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray Debate gets solved, however, HD-DVD will take a substantial lead because it's way below Blu-ray in cost to consumer. Will it be insurmountable? Not as long as the Playstation 3 is going to continue to reduce its price.

I'm waiting for one/two triggers to happen to get me to buy an HD-DVD player:

(1) If Blockbuster waivers from it's Blu-Ray in stores only policy, I'm all over an HD-DVD player (you can already get HD-DVD from thier online stores).

(2) If any of the "Blu-Ray only" movie studios switch to the "we'll offer both" formats camp. Right now, Warner's switch has kept Blu-Ray solidly in the mix.

And one trigger point that would make me wait on both for a while - if Blu-Ray decides to lower the hardware costs to that of HD-DVD, then all bets are off, but waiting until after the holidays to do this I think might be the start of HD-DVD dominance.

I decided to go back and do a mid-year look at the rest of my predictions.

I completely missed this one. Couldn't be more wrong about how quickly this ended.

Originally posted by vansmack:
With that, I will reveal my Tech Prediction #3:

This is the year that a broadcast network will run a TV program on the internet at the same time as an Over-the-Air broadcast - and just maybe one genius network will run an episode on-line before it airs over-the-air. And a really smart network would run an HD episode (sponsored by some HD TV maker) because most people can see HD quality on their computer monitors - just not on their TVs.

So yes Hoya, IP TV is the future - but how far in the future is up to the IP industry, and they've throttled every attempt to expand for the past 10 years.

This hasn't happened yet, but this fall there's a good chance. You can already see NBC doing this with their Olympic coverage.

Originally posted by vansmack:
Which brings me to Tech Prediction #4:

2008 will be the long anticipated year of REAL HD Revolution

….

When Comedy Central goes HD in 2008, you'll know I was on to something here.

This one has been interesting because Comedy Central is filming in HD (you can download the HD versions on Xbox Live for example or watch them online), but they're not broadcasting in HD (and no, I'm not counting this for prediction #3).

Another anamoly is VH1 and MTV. They've had HD signals for months now, record in HD, but have yet to broadcast a single HD show. Take Vh1 Rock Honors: The Who. I was bummed that wasn't in HD when I recorded it from VH1, but then I recorded it on MHD, and it was in HD. Not sure what Viacom's doing here.

Regardless, I think we've seen a huge increase in the HD content so far this year.

Originally posted by vansmack:
Tech Prediction #5:

2008 will really be the year of the Death of the Desktop

(1) Home Servers will take off.
(2) Wireless streaming to entertainment devices.
(3) And this last one is the most important - with the massive advance in the market of Mobile Internet Devices (or ultra mobile PCs) with WiFi capability, like the iPhone, the iTouch, Samsungs Q1, mini-tablets and the "smaller than laptops but much better battery life" devices coming between $400 and $700 - very few people are going to fork out the cash for a oversized desktop at that price when they can have something sleek and portable that does 95% of what most folks use their desktop for today.

Sweetcell might still disagree, but I think I nailed this one.

Sure Microsoft released a shitty version of the Home Server software that cost them 6 months of market penetration, but it's just a matter of time. NAS devices are hot as well.

Apple updated Apple TV, Xbox is going to update the 360, PS3 now streams, D-link, HP, and and every other network now has a media extender…

And the netbook is taking over the laptop market at exactly the price I guessed (maybe even cheaper). And do you know what the next hot Laptop type is? The gaming laptop - they're all over the place. The desktop is dead at home (although I really like my new Dell Studio Hybrid at the office).

after the trips ive taken this year, i really have been thinking about an itouch. even the crappy b&b we stayed at in vermont had wifi

Originally posted by god's shoeshine:
after the trips ive taken this year, i really have been thinking about an itouch. even the crappy b&amp;b we stayed at in vermont had wifi

Well, clearly you should wait because Sept is about the right time for a new iTouch.

But I've got to ask….for $300 starting price, why not get a Netbook? The 8.9 inch version will fit in a pocket of your cargo pants.