boltsfan17

wood1208 said:

If T-mobile offer a streaming service where the customer selects his/her favorite channels from a large list of channels(and price for each channel) than that will be recession proof online streaming service and the last nail to cable's fat bundle coffin. Moreover, within such service the price get adjusted up/down based on the number of channels you add to your package. More channels you add, some package discount kicks in. 

What people don't get is a true a la carte option won't be any cheaper than a cable subscription. I know cord cutters have been crying for years to have that, but the reality is, it's not cheaper. I'm seeing other people saying prices are going to be $5-8 per channel. If I take those rates and apply to the channels I watch, that's more than what I pay now. 

lkrupp said:

I’m still very skeptical about the prospects of autonomous vehicles becoming widespread any time soon. I’ve been reading a lot on the subject and the biggest hurdle is acceptance by the public. Reports by Waymo show intense resistance to the concept. There have been numerous reports of road rage against self-driving vehicles because of their overly cautious programming. There have been incidents of human drivers intentionally trying to force these vehicles off the road or to cause them to crash. Much like the negative reaction to the Google Glass project the public appears to be of the same mentality when it comes to self-driving cars. While I can see these vehicles in use in industrial parks and corporate campuses (like Apple Park) as employee transportation and supply delivery agents I personally think we won’t see these vehicles on public roads en mass for the foreseeable future.

I agree. While I think the technology is cool, there are still too many hurdles. I think the biggest one is how autonomous vehicles deal with road hazards such as pedestrians. With the movement of pedestrians being so erratic, it's a huge roadblock. Take for example, I was driving through a neighborhood and saw little kids playing near the road. One wasn't paying attention and I started slowing down just in case the little girl ran out. Sure enough she did, but I stopped well in advance. Had I not done that, I for sure would have hit the girl. She darted out so fast, even slamming on the brakes wouldn't have mattered. Situations like that pose a huge problem for autonomous vehicles. They aren't as smart as humans currently. In many situations, autonomous vehicles will perform worse than humans. Another huge issue is public acceptance. Autonomous vehicles essentially have to be perfect in the public eye before they are widely accepted.

Looks like Samsung went for the glory hole design. 

StrangeDays said:

daven said:

StrangeDays said:

Little confused about the 4k upgrade. Are you saying that if you buy any old random 4k title on iTunes (unrelated to your Vudu scanning), that Apple will then upgrade all of your eligible purchase history items to 4k?

I think what he is saying, and I have done this, is Vudu (or is it Movies Anywhere) lets you scan the DVD cover and for $2 you get a digital version. Then if you link your Vudu/Movies Anywhere accounts to iTunes, iTunes gives you a 4k upgrade for movies that support it. 

Yeah we'll see. I scanned a bunch and many of them made it thru to iTunes, but none of them have the "4K" or even "HD" tag in my iTunes Library (accessed via Apple TV iTunes). A while back I did purchase a movie that came in 4k and it does have the "4K" icon, and another recent movie purchase has the "HD" tag...but the Vudu scans only come over as SD. I'm guessing you have to pay for Vudu's $5 HD scan for it to be sent to iTunes with the HD-version flag. I haven't tried it yet tho.

But for $2, they're as good as the DVD I suppose. (Tho many DVD players up-sample SD discs somehow)

I've scanned a bunch of movies through the Vudu app. In order to get an HD copy, you need to scan blu ray discs. Most of the ones I scanned were blu ray discs before they started coming with digital copies. It's $2 for HD copy from blu ray. If you are scanning DVD's, you have to pay $5 if you want an HD digital copy. 

GeorgeBMac said:

boltsfan17 said:

mobird said:

This isn't just a Apple problem, this is a USA problem...

This is a huge problem in the western world. The Chinese are stealing from companies and universities. The only solution is to stop giving visas to Chinese nationals but that will unlikely never happen. 

Yeh, yeh, yeh....   That's what we said 40 years ago when the Japanese were supposedly copying our stuff and selling it back to us.   It turned out, they were just better than us.

Today there was an article about former American intelligence agents pulling in $200-$400K salaries for spying on America for the UAE using American spy techinques.

But, yeh, let's blame the Chinese!  It's the politically correct thing to do.   It distracts from Russia

Those examples are completely irrelevant to what the Chinese are doing. Do you really think China would be where they are today without stealing all this technology? It's happening all over the place. Chinese nationals getting caught stealing from companies and universities. It's a huge problem. Not sure what Russia has to do with any of this. Maybe you should read some of these articles:

https://www.newsweek.com/china-military-sends-undercover-students-american-universities-steal-1197652

https://www.foxnews.com/science/chinese-stealing-biomedical-research-from-u-s-labs-and-universities

https://www.wral.com/student-accused-of-stealing-research-from-duke-professor-under-chinese-government-order/17722099/