Posts by Matt_Lohr

Anti-gay Indiana starts backtracking on hated law after tech pressure

How does this boycott thing work again?

I endorse the Indiana legislation, for which the author calls me a bigot. If The Register does not apologize for the author's slander, or fire the author, I will remove The Register from my RSS after years of faithful readership.

Tesla loses $100 million after Chinese problems

Re: Give it up as a bad job Elon.

Except it's not his money; it's mine. Tesla benefits from loans, subsidies, and tax credits in the United States. Pick your politically-biased news source:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/10/tesla-motors-free-ride-elon-musk-government-subsidies

http://www.nationalreview.com/agenda/388127/tesla-and-interstate-subsidy-chase-reihan-salam

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/economic-intelligence/2013/06/03/teslas-success-is-the-result-of-political-favoritism

Or get it from the source:

http://my.teslamotors.com/incentives/US

FCC MUST protect net neutrality to preserve AMERICA, say Google et al

Re: Problem is monopoly bound setups

The only problem here is that local governments have created monopolies. Destroy those monopolies, and competition will sort all problems in short order. Adding layers of government intervention will only make things worse.

FCC will have to drop a bombshell to solve net-neutrality conundrum

Re: Phil said it would be a long winter

No kind or degree of government regulation will solve this problem; rather, further government intervention will only extend this winter. The only solution is to remove all government-granted, geographical monopolies, after which the market will bring the greatest good to the greatest number of consumers. Spring will arrive, if we give it a chance.

Email is so last century

But I really want to believe Web 2.0 is all in all

Figure 2 in the article does not include the presumed 99% dependence on email by technical and engineering organizations.

(Pardon the gratuitous use of the phrase "Web 2.0". It's just been a while since I saw it, and I thought maybe it was feeling neglected.)

Sony BDP-S185 Blu-ray player

fatal flaw: no long-term pause

My PS3, which I primarily use for BD playback, started blinking red after four years, so I bought the BDP-S185 as a replacement. I generally approve of this unit, but it has a fatal flaw: After 30 minutes on pause, the unit automatically shuts down. This setting cannot be changed.

As we know, most Blu-rays are deliberately mastered to force viewers to watch or skip through minutes of junk to get to the feature. Because of this, and generally long disc load times, I want a player that I can pause and walk away from indefinitely (perhaps this is why my PS3 died).

Rather than buy another standalone BD player with long-term pause, I will pay Sony $99 to repair/replace my PS3. (Plus, this will let me play Uncharted 11: Drake's Arthritis in a few years.)