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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........
Old 05-31-2006, 10:43 AM   #61
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........

I looked at the MCE and really liked it. The problem that I ran into was the high hardware costs up front and individual maintenance. If you're going to be buying a new computer anyhow, much of the cost can be incorporated into that decision.

You do need to leave the computer running all the time and MCE machines tend to consume a fair bit more electricity than a tivo. Heat can be a problem if you dont air condition in the summer and you live in a high heat area...for example, someone in arizona in august cant go away for a week and turn off the a/c. The usual vagaries of Windows based machines apply, which are much better with XP than ever before and pretty decent...still you'll get an occasional glitch, crash or other miscellaneous problem.

With an open pallette of products to pick from - keep my old series 1 tivos, go with comcast dvr's, go with dish networks, directv's new model, the old directivo or MCE I decided to go with directivos. New hardware, low out of pocket cost, an interface I was familiar with, and a couple of years to see what direction MCE goes in and how directv and comcast evolve their product, as I felt neither was fully up to the tivo standard.

If in a few years i see more of an "MCE appliance" with a cablecard or directv tuner built in rather than a PC with a remote control on it...might be a winner for me.
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........
Old 05-31-2006, 10:47 AM   #62
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........

Quote:
Originally Posted by Cute Fuzzy Bunny
If in a few years i see more of an "MCE appliance" with a cablecard or directv tuner built in rather than a PC with a remote control on it...might be a winner for me.
Hey hey hey, put down the business plan and back away slowly with your hands in the air...

http://www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/lazyentrepreneur/

Hmmm-- let's try the link www.unitedmedia.com/comics/dilbert/lazyentrepreneur/+%22Lazy+Entrepreneur%22&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=1]from Google's cache[/url].
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........
Old 05-31-2006, 11:06 AM   #63
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........

Yeah, I know...I know...I cant tell you how occasionally annoying it is to think up something good and then see the product show up 2 years later.

Its still "in" me, but it aint getting out.

Your link goes to a "sorry, that page no longer exists".
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........
Old 06-01-2006, 12:03 PM   #64
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........

Long distance phoning

Home stereos... some pretty solid 5.1 home stereo in a box deals for <$300

DVD player can be had for $40, compare to VCR cost from back in the day

A countertop microwave is pretty cheap, I was too young to know the price 25 years ago but I remember it being a big deal owning one

cheapo mp3 player that holds 100 songs, runs 12 hours off a AAA, and is the size of a lighter compared to older portable music options like Sony Walkmans?

(hey would that be walkmen?)
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........
Old 06-01-2006, 12:35 PM   #65
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........

http://intelligentspeculation.blogsp...ugal-ways.html
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........
Old 06-02-2006, 02:52 PM   #66
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........

Actually - RPN is Reverse Polar Notation - Polish is a derogatory term connoting backwardness to the keying.

Here's the best part of keying that way - whenever you are doing a math problem, you are supposed to start from the inside and move out - that's the way you key the calculator - efficiency in keying and cognitive reminder on how to solve math problems :-)

Yes, I did learn how to use a slide rule and yes, the geeks bragged about their "stacks." As for the Gen X and Y'ers - so sad for them, although I'm sure my parents said the same, although I got to do a lot of things by hand early on - I really appreciate spreadsheets and financial calculations like NPV and PV, etc - those were a PITA to calculate in my engineering economics class - needed all those charts and the notation - yuck!

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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........
Old 06-02-2006, 03:27 PM   #67
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........

Quote:
Originally Posted by deserat
Actually - RPN is Reverse Polar Notation - Polish is a derogatory term connoting backwardness to the keying.
Nope. Last time I looked there were no Polar bears in Poland, except in a zoo.
It's supossed to be called "Zciweisakul notation", but RPN was waay easier, see here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Polish_notation
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........
Old 06-02-2006, 03:48 PM   #68
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........

Quote:
RPN is Reverse Polar Notation - Polish is a derogatory term connoting backwardness to the keying
to the contrary, it is clearly complimentary: "But calculator designers at Hewlett-Packard realized that a radically different method of defining the arithmetic, invented in the 1920's by Polish mathematician Jan Lukasiewicz (1878-1956) for symbolic logic, could be used to simplify the electronics at the expense of a little learning by the user. In the 1960's that would be regarded as a reasonable trade-off. For most calculator users of the time, the alternative was the error prone practice of writing down intermediate results. The Hewlett-Packard engineers called their calculator logic Reverse Polish Notation (or RPN) in recognition of its inventor."
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........
Old 06-02-2006, 05:48 PM   #69
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........

Quote:
Originally Posted by d
to the contrary, it is clearly complimentary: "But calculator designers at Hewlett-Packard realized that a radically different method of defining the arithmetic, invented in the 1920's by Polish mathematician Jan Lukasiewicz (1878-1956) for symbolic logic, could be used to simplify the electronics at the expense of a little learning by the user. In the 1960's that would be regarded as a reasonable trade-off. For most calculator users of the time, the alternative was the error prone practice of writing down intermediate results. The Hewlett-Packard engineers called their calculator logic Reverse Polish Notation (or RPN) in recognition of its inventor."
there was a time when no engineer would be caught dead with anything other than an RPN calculator. Lately I've been seeing young punks with TIs. My theory is that this is because they do most of their work on spreadsheets.

The plain fact is that once you are used to RPN, it is much superior to other systems. If you actually count the number of keystrokes, it requires fewer than an algebraic entry system using parenthesis. With a little practice, it is a very addictive system. Every now and then HP announces they will stop manufacturing calculators. There is usually a huge cry, and they relent. Just to make sure, I have stockpiled 5 or 6 (a 12C, a 41, and several 48s).

There is also the fact that back in the heyday of scientific calculators, HPs were much more durable, and had a much nicer "feel" when you pressed the key.

let's face it--calculators are far more irrelevant now than they used to be. Not as bad as slide rules, but getting there.
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........
Old 06-02-2006, 06:19 PM   #70
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........

Quote:
The plain fact is that once you are used to RPN, it is much superior to other systems.
more pertinent, at least in my case, is that after one becomes familiar/accomplished with RPN, it's extremely difficult to use any other.
Quote:
HPs ...* had a much nicer "feel" when you pressed the key
agreed
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let's face it--calculators are far more irrelevant now than they used to be.* Not as bad as slide rules, but getting there.
sadly ... and what does this mean for those still using them?
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........
Old 06-02-2006, 07:17 PM   #71
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........

I kept misplacing my HPs and had to get by with Microsoft's primitive calculator in 'accessories' on my PC.

A friend directed me to XCalc (now XCalc 2.7), a free RPN calculator for your PC with a visible stack.

http://www.tordivel.no/xcalc/

I love it! I have it on every machine I own (and ones at the office, when they aren't locked down to foreign software).

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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........
Old 06-02-2006, 10:58 PM   #72
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ed_The_Gypsy
I kept misplacing my HPs and had to get by with Microsoft's primitive calculator in 'accessories' on my PC.

A friend directed me to XCalc (now XCalc 2.7), a free RPN calculator for your PC with a visible stack.

http://www.tordivel.no/xcalc/

I love it! I have it on every machine I own (and ones at the office, when they aren't locked down to foreign software).

Gypsy
another engineer heard from!! thanks for the link, Ed!
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........
Old 06-03-2006, 05:47 AM   #73
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ed_The_Gypsy
A friend directed me to XCalc (now XCalc 2.7), a free RPN calculator for your PC with a visible stack.
I don't know if its RPN, but graphcalc is a nice open source Windows calculator:

http://www.graphcalc.com/download.shtml
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........
Old 06-03-2006, 06:49 AM   #74
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........

donheff,

VER-eee nice calculator! Thank you for the link.

Ed
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........
Old 06-04-2006, 12:37 PM   #75
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........

Anyone programmed in Forth? It's still got a cult following for some reason with rabidly loyal user groups that don't take attractive group pictures... Forth breathes RPN.
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........
Old 06-08-2006, 06:09 AM   #76
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........

WRBT,

Yeah, me!

I love Forth, but am not sharp any more. Have a few as-yet not completed personal projects in Forth hanging out there. Needed a good double-precision floating point package for scientific work.

Someday. :P

Ed
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........
Old 06-16-2006, 01:02 PM   #77
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........

I stand corrected on the P in RPN - thanks also for the .exe rpn calculator - that will now be my default :-)

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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........
Old 06-16-2006, 02:29 PM   #78
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........

I worked in Forth for a few years, back in about 1982. Even had the bumper sticker:

Forth [heart] if honk then
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........
Old 06-17-2006, 09:53 AM   #79
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........

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Even had the bumper sticker:

Forth [heart] if honk then
Far out, Indexter! Thanks!
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........
Old 06-17-2006, 07:22 PM   #80
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Re: List of items that have a 'Negative Inflation' over the past year...........

I feel outta the loop referring back to the original post .
If you shop at the tires plus site they have coupons on their website.
http://www.tiresplus.com/specials_home.jsp
The same with the other guys tire kingdom.
http://www.tirekingdom.com/specialOffers.do
I think its pretty cool that I can google most items and find them cheaper online then looking in the stores. Plus many sites have coupons available.
Then theres the entertainment book .

As long as you dont want the cutting edge in computers or tv/stereo there are some great deals.
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