That's not the firmware version, it's the "version number" of the motherboard given by the scene/community to differentiate between the different boards as they were revised/changed/made cheaper over time. It's not official Microsoft version numbering. Also, no matter which board you end up with, there are mod chips available. Divineo still sells them, whether you're in Canada, US or Europe. I'm sure you could find some on Ebay/Kijiji/Craigslist or even at a game shop in your area.
I bought mine in 2002. It's a 1.0 board. I started with XBMP and kept up with XBMC development over the years.
If you were planning on running Linux, I'd have to ask why? It's no problem with a mod chip, but keep in mind that XBMC runs _natively_ on a modded bios (Xecuter, Evox, etc). Running GentooX, or whatever Linux distro on a free/open bios, and XBMC for Linux on top is 100% redundantly redundant. Just make XBMC your default dashboard and forget about the rest of that garbage.
My province, Manitoba, has just come up with these ID cards that will let you cross US land & sea borders. They're apparently credit card sized, but a bit thicker, and work on RFID. Supposedly the RFID chip only contains a unique identifier. If that's the case, an attacker would have to have physical access to your card to clone it, because the unique identifier would do nothing.
The province includes a protective sleeve which must be removed to be read by RFID readers at the border crossings. Even the envelope they mail it to you in has RFID protection. Obviously their consultations yielded a bunch of people who were concerned about this, not to mention the Privacy act and other considerations.
These are only for people without passports, and are not valid for air travel, or entry into any country other than the US.
Exactly, and the best part is that you can find problems before they become real big day ruining problems.
Also, knowing exactly what the problem is, even if you don't want to do it yourself, will save you big time when you do take it in to the shop. One of the neatest gadgets I've bought is a knockoff VAG-COM dongle for my laptop for $20. Plugs into the OBD2 connector and can do diagnostics on pretty much any VW Group vehicle. Saves so much time, especially when VW charges $110/hr for shop time.
I've discovered a number of small leaks and other problems on my car while just changing the oil or doing something mundane.
I also have never regretting buying tools. I have acquired a decent collection over the past couple years, but I know guys with 2 garages full and then some. Princess Auto is my version of heaven. Call their tools cheap all you want, but almost everything has a lifetime warranty.
Nothing beats preventative maintenance. Definitely beats waiting for the tow, especially here when it's -40 and there's an 8-10 hour wait for CAA;)
All grass is green, but not all that is green is grass.
One of my favourite hobbies is fixing cars. I try my best to maintain my family's fleet. It definitely saves everyone a lot of money. My labour is (mostly) free because I enjoy doing the work, and it's for family. I get paid with the odd specialty tool I need for a specific job, or food, or an offer to help with something else. I'd say most families work like that... I'll fix your car if you help move/build a shed/paint the fence/bake me cookies/buy me beer, etc. I'd go so far as to say that it's a fairly productive hobby.
Many people have quite productive hobbies like wood/metalworking, home renovations, gardening (fruit & vegetables), knitting, sewing, writing FOSS software... the list goes on.
I fully agree that all hobbies don't have to be productive. Whatever you enjoy is what you should pursue, whether it's bird watching, baking, fixing cars or playing video games. If it makes you happy, then go for it.
My best guess is that it's a fire code issue, or possibly even an eye-sore issue, but I'm not sure. It's odd that the cops would know some random little regulation like that just off the tops of their heads. It's the only time that I've ever heard of something like that happening.
Their property is quite small and to be honest, the garage isn't too much smaller than the house. He built a 3 car garage with a double door for his workshop and the other garage is a single.
My ex gf's dad built a garage in the middle of winter one year, and in order for the concrete to set properly, he had to run two big electric heaters day and night to keep it warm. The police came with a warrant to search the property for a grow op (alerted by the electricity company for abnormally high power usage), but found a new garage instead. They were a bit embarrassed, but turned their attention towards the fact that he now had 2 garages and too much of his property covered by outbuildings. He said he would knock down the old garage when the new one was all finished, but he lied, it's still there.
As for grow ops, people get busted here all the time, at least weekly, often more frequently. They've moved into affluent neighbourhoods too, and now the law says home sellers have to disclose whether or not a home was used for a grow op (only within the past year though IIRC), because of all the mold and other problems that come from grow ops. The address list is also published on the police website.
Yeah, it's SO easy to confuse a water displacing lubricant with a hard drive. It happens to me all the time!
But seriously, for the makers of WD40 to sue based on a trademark violation like that, I'm pretty sure it has to be in the same ball park... i.e. no reasonable person is going to confuse WD40 with a hard drive. If Western Digital started manufacturing a lubricant called WD40 or even something close like WD50 or WD20, the makers of the real WD40 would have something to complain about.
Police don't convict people, judges do. Of course judges (usually) regard the testimony of a law enforcement officer very highly. However, in a kiddie porn case, with a massive investigation and piles of evidence (or not), the officers' testimonies wouldn't really count for much, if anything, since the evidence (or lack thereof) would be speaking the loudest.
I know there are and were some dirty cops out there who have deemed themselves judge, jury and executioner. In a case like this, they are probably disgusted by the guy, with or without hard evidence, and want him to be scrutinized and demonized by the media. They probably want to see his life ruined. The best way to do that is through arrest, press conferences, releasing of names, photographs, charges laid, and getting the media rallied against the accused... guilty until proven innocent. The other way would be to off them in a back alley somewhere and dump the body in the river.
I think it's absolutely deplorable how society in general instantly jumps to the conclusion that people accused of being involved with or possessing kiddie porn are guilty. "Innocent until proven guilty" loses its meaning when it comes to "think of the children." Like the GGP's story about his friend's dad. That's simply appalling.
Let's entertain the idea that the police somehow gather enough "evidence" to convict truly innocent people. Those people will appeal forever. They've got nothing but time. Eventually they will get heard, and if they are innocent, they will be freed. We've had a couple wrongfully convicted people (i.e. David Milgaard & James Driskell) released here in the past 10-12 years, apologies and financial compensation were awarded. Sure, you can't give someone back 20+ years of their life that you wrongfully took away, but a couple million bucks ought to help a bit. Extrapolate that over a couple hundred more wrongfully convicted people, and it suddenly becomes a very costly and embarrassing endeavour for the government.
Uhh, you know that when you cross the non-Schengen borders, your ID card/passport gets scanned and all that information is stored and checked against various databases/watch lists don't you? It's not like they don't know where you've been and where you're going.
I HIGHLY doubt they delete the information immediately. Ever stay at a hotel in Europe? You will have to fill in your name, passport/ID card number, home address, etc on the registration card. That way if you're wanted by the cops, they know where you're sleeping. I suppose you could fill in bogus information, but your name would have to be the same as the one you booked under.
Depending on which EU country you live in, the next passport you get will be a biometric one (Germany already has them, possibly others as well) so the US and any other suitably equipped countries will be able to acquire a digital photograph of you from the passport to compare against the printed one, and presumably you standing in front of them. Also I believe a digital copy of your finger prints are stored, and are possibly compared on site to yours via a finger print scan. Sorry if that's how how it's done, but that's my best guess of how it would be carried out. However, in light of your comments, I think you'd forgo the option to get such a passport.
The USA has my girlfriend's fingerprints and photograph (she's British) since we've transferred flights through Chicago, but until they start taking them from Canadians, they will never have mine. I don't even think my own country or province has them. I don't remember giving them. Personally, I'm not overly bothered about visiting the US anyway, despite it being only an hour's drive to the south. Anything interesting is much further away though... my apologies to North Dakota and Minnesota. The only places I would probably regret not visiting at some point are San Francisco, Boston, Texas, Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon, so maybe I should get down there before they start all this crap on us Canucks.
I just flew recently and I was amused at the wording on the signs posted as you walk into security. They said I wasn't allowed anything through security which might be construed as a weapon to be used against others or the aircraft.
I thought to myself, "Shit. I can't take a pen, pencil or keys, I could stab someone with them. I can't take a book, I could use the pages to paper cut someone to death. I can't take my shirt, pants, boxers, socks, jacket, backpack, or charging cables for my laptop and MP3 player, I could strangle someone with them. I can't take my shoes, laptop or anything hard because I could beat someone to death. I can't take a plastic bag, I could suffocate someone with it. Hell I'd probably have to cut off my arms, legs and head too because I could beat, kick or headbutt someone to death, or open the emergency hatch during the flight, potentially sucking people out the door. What CAN I bring on a plane?" Luckily, the security folk don't think like me, or the things in a plane would be the buck naked, headless torsos of quadruple amputees.
The point is, ANYTHING can be used as a weapon. All tools are deadly, but some are specifically made for the purpose of killing, like guns. A screwdriver is made with the purpose of being able to turn screws. A hammer is made with the purpose of being able to drive and pull nails. A shovel is made with the purpose of being able to dig and throw dirt, gravel, sand, snow etc. You can kill someone with any of them, but that isn't their intended purpose.
No kidding! In Canada, if you order a "pint" of beer, you typically get a girly 16oz American pint. We used to use the British system till we switched to metric some time in the 70's, but apparently no one from my generation cares about that anymore. I want a proper pint dammit!
Also very confusing is miles per gallon on Canadian car ads. Whose gallons? They can make cars appear to get a 20% increase in fuel mileage if they use the imperial gallon (4.55L) vs. the American gallon (3.78L). We get American car ads on American channels, so it makes it doubly confusing. Personally, I would prefer if they stuck to L/100km as it's not ambiguous whatsoever, and if they had to use mpg they should CLEARLY specify whether they're using Imperial or American gallons. Otherwise it's misleading advertising.
We love to compare how poorly our schools do against schools in Japan or Europe, yet they DO NOT TEACH dirtbags when we "mainstream" them due to political pressure.
I was a language assistant in a vocational high school in Germany. I had no idea what to expect, but I soon found out that during English lessons, the kids there are no better or worse than kids when I was in school in Canada. They were mostly 16-19 years old and just as disruptive, always a few who didn't want to participate, only half ever did their homework, they took advantage of weaker teachers... par for the course if you ask me. I can only speak for English lessons as I didn't attend any others. Many had no desire to learn or improve their English because they couldn't see it being of any benefit in their lives or future careers.
Believe me when I say it, they DO teach and put up with dirtbags, but the way the school system is set up, the smarter, university-candidate kids get to go to Gymnasium (high school), whereas the rest tend to go Berufsschule (vocational school). There are now some mixed environment schools, but they are considered experimental. Because of this split, the disruptive ones tend to be in the Berufsschule system.
Never mind the fact that there have been numerous school shootings in Europe, just like in the US & Canada. There was one in Emsdetten while I was working (I worked in a different city). Violence and bullying is just as much a part of German schools as it is any American or Canadian one. Try as I might, the only noticeable in-the-classroom difference I could see between Canadian and German schools was language.
Just look at most, if not all jurisdictions in Canada. We here in Manitoba haven't been allowed to smile for driver's licenses for about a year or two. No glasses, hats, etc either. This strikes me as odd, considering I need glasses to legally drive a car, yet I'm not allowed to wear them for my driver's license picture. I don't recall ever hearing anything about facial recognition software being the reason. I believe it was more to do with international standards or something. Then again, I wasn't living here when they changed our licenses over to the new design. At least they're much better than the old ones, which were the laughing stock of Canada, but we still have to renew them every year. Damn money grab...
As for passports, we haven't been allowed to smile since at least 2003, which was when I got my first one, but I'm almost positive it was before then.
That's funny, I read that exact same thing last night while I was fixing the stupid dead radio problem in my mom's 2002 Jetta. I found it quite absurd actually. If something so sensitive to EM was so crucial to the safety of the car and its passengers, wouldn't it be properly shielded? Wouldn't simply driving past a cell tower, or listening to an AM or FM radio station do the trick? I doubt a cell phone is pushing out megawatts of power like a broadcast radio station...
The US isn't the only place. I was a Foreign Language Assistant at a vocational high school in Germany. The staff there had to pay for photocopies out of their own pockets if they exceeded their ridiculously low monthly quotas. It's not much per page, but still, it's the principle (no pun intended). Why should a teacher, whose job it is to educate YOUR kids, have to pay their own hard-earned cash for the privilege? Most teachers had a photocopy fund. Each student would donate €1 for photocopies for that year. Most kids understood the rationale and paid up, but a couple balked at the idea. Peer pressure eventually forced them to give up the money though. The fact remains that this should not have to happen.
You're trying to justify to yourself and everyone else that dangerous driving is ok. It's not. No matter what reasons you come up with. Your needs trump anyone else's and fuck the world, right?
How many accidents and deaths does it take to show people that speeding and driving dangerously on public roadways is deadly? Either to themselves or others? If you want to speed, please do it on a track or drag strip. They are equipped with impact absorbing crash barriers, trained emergency personnel are on standby and they are the perfect environment for taking you and your car to the limit. A good reason for that is tunnel vision. The faster you go, the more tunnel vision you get, so you'll be less likely to notice things on your periphery. That big, long, open stretch of highway looks like lots of fun until that deer you didn't see in the ditch decides to commit suicide by car. Deer vs. 100mph car... there is no winner. You both lose. If you actually get through it intact, have fun explaining to your insurance company and the cops what happened. Don't lie, they've seen it all before. They'll catch you and not only will you be out a car, but you'll be facing an insurance fraud charge.
Life's too short... especially the very last moment before you wrap your fancy sports car around a telephone pole because you were driving like a dumbass, becoming yet another sad statistic and an obituary in the paper explaining that you were "suddenly taken" from your loved ones. Or you could become paralyzed. What would you say to your family and friends then? I hope your health and/or car insurance covers all the costs, and your family doesn't have to make any time or monetary sacrifices to care for you. What was that about not putting anyone else's needs ahead of yours?
I'd have to disagree there chief. Say you're speeding through a school zone, or residential zone, and some kids suddenly appear in front of you. You're telling me that your sports car at, say, 40mph can stop faster than my regular run-of-the-mill car at 30mph? People seem to think 10 over is perfectly fine and safe, but it's not. You can change the kind of car you drive, but you can not change your reaction time. The faster you go, the less time you have to react. It's an extremely simple concept to understand. The parents of the kids you didn't run over because you were being Mr. Cool will thank you.
You might think you're a perfectly safe driver who can speed when and where ever you please and no harm will come of it because you're driving a fancy sports car. Sorry to take you down a couple of notches, but you've got some growing up to do. Want to speed and race around? Hit the track. Want to use the public roads? Drive by the rules. They are in place because people whose job it is to know and study these kinds of things, like civil/traffic engineers, police, insurance companies, accident reconstruction specialists, etc, are trying to make things as safe as possible for all road users. That includes motorists, pedestrians, cyclists, owners of adjacent property, etc... not just you. They have to take all that into consideration while, at the same time, not causing huge congestion problems and other issues in the process.
Try living in a jurisdiction where detectors are illegal (or just shut yours off) and see how long you go without incident. Hell with laser, once your detector goes off it's already too late, so what's the point? You've been lucky with the help of your detector if you haven't gotten any tickets or been in any avoidable accidents, but your time will come.
The rules of the road are designed for the lowest common denominator... an uncoordinated person driving a crappy car. The average car on the road is probably an older model with fairly worn out parts. No public road is designed for the exclusive use of a brand new Ferrari with a professional driver with perfect reaction time behind the wheel.
I'm no public safety zealot, but when someone claims they're a safe driver but they speed everywhere, I just can't take them seriously. I used to think the road was a big playground for speeding and doing stupid reckless things... until I grew up. There have been enough deaths of drivers, passengers, innocent bystanders and other motorists due to street racing and speeding in my city alone, let's not add more to that number.
Math is an *OPTION* for grades 11 and 12?!? I am honestly shocked by that! I finished school in 2001. Our math teacher used to REPEATEDLY scream up and down that we would not receive a diploma without passing a grade 12 math class (pre-calculus, applied or consumer). Stopping at grade 10 sounds like a very stupid plan. My school cut back on things that weren't in the core curriculum, like wood shop, graphic arts, home ec, not math class.
Then again, I went to a halfway decent public French-immersion school in Canada. At the time I left, versus the national average, more of its graduates entered higher education and had higher paying jobs, so YMMV.
I, despite not being American (but I do live nearby), nominate Ray Beckerman (NewYorkCountryLawyer). He seems to have lots of relevant experience in this field.
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That's not the firmware version, it's the "version number" of the motherboard given by the scene/community to differentiate between the different boards as they were revised/changed/made cheaper over time. It's not official Microsoft version numbering. Also, no matter which board you end up with, there are mod chips available. Divineo still sells them, whether you're in Canada, US or Europe. I'm sure you could find some on Ebay/Kijiji/Craigslist or even at a game shop in your area.
I bought mine in 2002. It's a 1.0 board. I started with XBMP and kept up with XBMC development over the years.
If you were planning on running Linux, I'd have to ask why? It's no problem with a mod chip, but keep in mind that XBMC runs _natively_ on a modded bios (Xecuter, Evox, etc). Running GentooX, or whatever Linux distro on a free/open bios, and XBMC for Linux on top is 100% redundantly redundant. Just make XBMC your default dashboard and forget about the rest of that garbage.
Seems that you aren't ghetto enough.
It's Eminem, not M&M. That said, I'm not a fan of that clown either. No offense to clowns...
My province, Manitoba, has just come up with these ID cards that will let you cross US land & sea borders. They're apparently credit card sized, but a bit thicker, and work on RFID. Supposedly the RFID chip only contains a unique identifier. If that's the case, an attacker would have to have physical access to your card to clone it, because the unique identifier would do nothing.
The province includes a protective sleeve which must be removed to be read by RFID readers at the border crossings. Even the envelope they mail it to you in has RFID protection. Obviously their consultations yielded a bunch of people who were concerned about this, not to mention the Privacy act and other considerations.
These are only for people without passports, and are not valid for air travel, or entry into any country other than the US.
Exactly, and the best part is that you can find problems before they become real big day ruining problems.
Also, knowing exactly what the problem is, even if you don't want to do it yourself, will save you big time when you do take it in to the shop. One of the neatest gadgets I've bought is a knockoff VAG-COM dongle for my laptop for $20. Plugs into the OBD2 connector and can do diagnostics on pretty much any VW Group vehicle. Saves so much time, especially when VW charges $110/hr for shop time.
I've discovered a number of small leaks and other problems on my car while just changing the oil or doing something mundane.
I also have never regretting buying tools. I have acquired a decent collection over the past couple years, but I know guys with 2 garages full and then some. Princess Auto is my version of heaven. Call their tools cheap all you want, but almost everything has a lifetime warranty.
Nothing beats preventative maintenance. Definitely beats waiting for the tow, especially here when it's -40 and there's an 8-10 hour wait for CAA ;)
All grass is green, but not all that is green is grass.
One of my favourite hobbies is fixing cars. I try my best to maintain my family's fleet. It definitely saves everyone a lot of money. My labour is (mostly) free because I enjoy doing the work, and it's for family. I get paid with the odd specialty tool I need for a specific job, or food, or an offer to help with something else. I'd say most families work like that... I'll fix your car if you help move/build a shed/paint the fence/bake me cookies/buy me beer, etc. I'd go so far as to say that it's a fairly productive hobby.
Many people have quite productive hobbies like wood/metalworking, home renovations, gardening (fruit & vegetables), knitting, sewing, writing FOSS software... the list goes on.
I fully agree that all hobbies don't have to be productive. Whatever you enjoy is what you should pursue, whether it's bird watching, baking, fixing cars or playing video games. If it makes you happy, then go for it.
My best guess is that it's a fire code issue, or possibly even an eye-sore issue, but I'm not sure. It's odd that the cops would know some random little regulation like that just off the tops of their heads. It's the only time that I've ever heard of something like that happening.
Their property is quite small and to be honest, the garage isn't too much smaller than the house. He built a 3 car garage with a double door for his workshop and the other garage is a single.
My ex gf's dad built a garage in the middle of winter one year, and in order for the concrete to set properly, he had to run two big electric heaters day and night to keep it warm. The police came with a warrant to search the property for a grow op (alerted by the electricity company for abnormally high power usage), but found a new garage instead. They were a bit embarrassed, but turned their attention towards the fact that he now had 2 garages and too much of his property covered by outbuildings. He said he would knock down the old garage when the new one was all finished, but he lied, it's still there.
As for grow ops, people get busted here all the time, at least weekly, often more frequently. They've moved into affluent neighbourhoods too, and now the law says home sellers have to disclose whether or not a home was used for a grow op (only within the past year though IIRC), because of all the mold and other problems that come from grow ops. The address list is also published on the police website.
Maybe he meant to say that after a few pijius the pigus look better.
Yeah, it's SO easy to confuse a water displacing lubricant with a hard drive. It happens to me all the time!
But seriously, for the makers of WD40 to sue based on a trademark violation like that, I'm pretty sure it has to be in the same ball park... i.e. no reasonable person is going to confuse WD40 with a hard drive. If Western Digital started manufacturing a lubricant called WD40 or even something close like WD50 or WD20, the makers of the real WD40 would have something to complain about.
Police don't convict people, judges do. Of course judges (usually) regard the testimony of a law enforcement officer very highly. However, in a kiddie porn case, with a massive investigation and piles of evidence (or not), the officers' testimonies wouldn't really count for much, if anything, since the evidence (or lack thereof) would be speaking the loudest.
I know there are and were some dirty cops out there who have deemed themselves judge, jury and executioner. In a case like this, they are probably disgusted by the guy, with or without hard evidence, and want him to be scrutinized and demonized by the media. They probably want to see his life ruined. The best way to do that is through arrest, press conferences, releasing of names, photographs, charges laid, and getting the media rallied against the accused... guilty until proven innocent. The other way would be to off them in a back alley somewhere and dump the body in the river.
I think it's absolutely deplorable how society in general instantly jumps to the conclusion that people accused of being involved with or possessing kiddie porn are guilty. "Innocent until proven guilty" loses its meaning when it comes to "think of the children." Like the GGP's story about his friend's dad. That's simply appalling.
Let's entertain the idea that the police somehow gather enough "evidence" to convict truly innocent people. Those people will appeal forever. They've got nothing but time. Eventually they will get heard, and if they are innocent, they will be freed. We've had a couple wrongfully convicted people (i.e. David Milgaard & James Driskell) released here in the past 10-12 years, apologies and financial compensation were awarded. Sure, you can't give someone back 20+ years of their life that you wrongfully took away, but a couple million bucks ought to help a bit. Extrapolate that over a couple hundred more wrongfully convicted people, and it suddenly becomes a very costly and embarrassing endeavour for the government.
Am I the only one that read through that post and saw every instance of Plaidlandia as Philadelphia the first time round?
I got to the end and thought, wow this guy sure has it in for Philly...
Uhh, you know that when you cross the non-Schengen borders, your ID card/passport gets scanned and all that information is stored and checked against various databases/watch lists don't you? It's not like they don't know where you've been and where you're going.
I HIGHLY doubt they delete the information immediately. Ever stay at a hotel in Europe? You will have to fill in your name, passport/ID card number, home address, etc on the registration card. That way if you're wanted by the cops, they know where you're sleeping. I suppose you could fill in bogus information, but your name would have to be the same as the one you booked under.
Depending on which EU country you live in, the next passport you get will be a biometric one (Germany already has them, possibly others as well) so the US and any other suitably equipped countries will be able to acquire a digital photograph of you from the passport to compare against the printed one, and presumably you standing in front of them. Also I believe a digital copy of your finger prints are stored, and are possibly compared on site to yours via a finger print scan. Sorry if that's how how it's done, but that's my best guess of how it would be carried out. However, in light of your comments, I think you'd forgo the option to get such a passport.
The USA has my girlfriend's fingerprints and photograph (she's British) since we've transferred flights through Chicago, but until they start taking them from Canadians, they will never have mine. I don't even think my own country or province has them. I don't remember giving them. Personally, I'm not overly bothered about visiting the US anyway, despite it being only an hour's drive to the south. Anything interesting is much further away though... my apologies to North Dakota and Minnesota. The only places I would probably regret not visiting at some point are San Francisco, Boston, Texas, Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon, so maybe I should get down there before they start all this crap on us Canucks.
I just flew recently and I was amused at the wording on the signs posted as you walk into security. They said I wasn't allowed anything through security which might be construed as a weapon to be used against others or the aircraft.
I thought to myself, "Shit. I can't take a pen, pencil or keys, I could stab someone with them. I can't take a book, I could use the pages to paper cut someone to death. I can't take my shirt, pants, boxers, socks, jacket, backpack, or charging cables for my laptop and MP3 player, I could strangle someone with them. I can't take my shoes, laptop or anything hard because I could beat someone to death. I can't take a plastic bag, I could suffocate someone with it. Hell I'd probably have to cut off my arms, legs and head too because I could beat, kick or headbutt someone to death, or open the emergency hatch during the flight, potentially sucking people out the door. What CAN I bring on a plane?" Luckily, the security folk don't think like me, or the things in a plane would be the buck naked, headless torsos of quadruple amputees.
The point is, ANYTHING can be used as a weapon. All tools are deadly, but some are specifically made for the purpose of killing, like guns. A screwdriver is made with the purpose of being able to turn screws. A hammer is made with the purpose of being able to drive and pull nails. A shovel is made with the purpose of being able to dig and throw dirt, gravel, sand, snow etc. You can kill someone with any of them, but that isn't their intended purpose.
As an AppleTV I must say I really admire Roku.
Wow I didn't know AppleTV automatically connected to Slashdot and replied to threads about its favourite software. I want one!
No kidding! In Canada, if you order a "pint" of beer, you typically get a girly 16oz American pint. We used to use the British system till we switched to metric some time in the 70's, but apparently no one from my generation cares about that anymore. I want a proper pint dammit!
Also very confusing is miles per gallon on Canadian car ads. Whose gallons? They can make cars appear to get a 20% increase in fuel mileage if they use the imperial gallon (4.55L) vs. the American gallon (3.78L). We get American car ads on American channels, so it makes it doubly confusing. Personally, I would prefer if they stuck to L/100km as it's not ambiguous whatsoever, and if they had to use mpg they should CLEARLY specify whether they're using Imperial or American gallons. Otherwise it's misleading advertising.
You forgot
6) ...
7) Profit!
We love to compare how poorly our schools do against schools in Japan or Europe, yet they DO NOT TEACH dirtbags when we "mainstream" them due to political pressure.
I was a language assistant in a vocational high school in Germany. I had no idea what to expect, but I soon found out that during English lessons, the kids there are no better or worse than kids when I was in school in Canada. They were mostly 16-19 years old and just as disruptive, always a few who didn't want to participate, only half ever did their homework, they took advantage of weaker teachers... par for the course if you ask me. I can only speak for English lessons as I didn't attend any others. Many had no desire to learn or improve their English because they couldn't see it being of any benefit in their lives or future careers.
Believe me when I say it, they DO teach and put up with dirtbags, but the way the school system is set up, the smarter, university-candidate kids get to go to Gymnasium (high school), whereas the rest tend to go Berufsschule (vocational school). There are now some mixed environment schools, but they are considered experimental. Because of this split, the disruptive ones tend to be in the Berufsschule system.
Never mind the fact that there have been numerous school shootings in Europe, just like in the US & Canada. There was one in Emsdetten while I was working (I worked in a different city). Violence and bullying is just as much a part of German schools as it is any American or Canadian one. Try as I might, the only noticeable in-the-classroom difference I could see between Canadian and German schools was language.
Just look at most, if not all jurisdictions in Canada. We here in Manitoba haven't been allowed to smile for driver's licenses for about a year or two. No glasses, hats, etc either. This strikes me as odd, considering I need glasses to legally drive a car, yet I'm not allowed to wear them for my driver's license picture. I don't recall ever hearing anything about facial recognition software being the reason. I believe it was more to do with international standards or something. Then again, I wasn't living here when they changed our licenses over to the new design. At least they're much better than the old ones, which were the laughing stock of Canada, but we still have to renew them every year. Damn money grab...
As for passports, we haven't been allowed to smile since at least 2003, which was when I got my first one, but I'm almost positive it was before then.
That's funny, I read that exact same thing last night while I was fixing the stupid dead radio problem in my mom's 2002 Jetta. I found it quite absurd actually. If something so sensitive to EM was so crucial to the safety of the car and its passengers, wouldn't it be properly shielded? Wouldn't simply driving past a cell tower, or listening to an AM or FM radio station do the trick? I doubt a cell phone is pushing out megawatts of power like a broadcast radio station...
The US isn't the only place. I was a Foreign Language Assistant at a vocational high school in Germany. The staff there had to pay for photocopies out of their own pockets if they exceeded their ridiculously low monthly quotas. It's not much per page, but still, it's the principle (no pun intended). Why should a teacher, whose job it is to educate YOUR kids, have to pay their own hard-earned cash for the privilege? Most teachers had a photocopy fund. Each student would donate €1 for photocopies for that year. Most kids understood the rationale and paid up, but a couple balked at the idea. Peer pressure eventually forced them to give up the money though. The fact remains that this should not have to happen.
You're trying to justify to yourself and everyone else that dangerous driving is ok. It's not. No matter what reasons you come up with. Your needs trump anyone else's and fuck the world, right?
How many accidents and deaths does it take to show people that speeding and driving dangerously on public roadways is deadly? Either to themselves or others? If you want to speed, please do it on a track or drag strip. They are equipped with impact absorbing crash barriers, trained emergency personnel are on standby and they are the perfect environment for taking you and your car to the limit. A good reason for that is tunnel vision. The faster you go, the more tunnel vision you get, so you'll be less likely to notice things on your periphery. That big, long, open stretch of highway looks like lots of fun until that deer you didn't see in the ditch decides to commit suicide by car. Deer vs. 100mph car... there is no winner. You both lose. If you actually get through it intact, have fun explaining to your insurance company and the cops what happened. Don't lie, they've seen it all before. They'll catch you and not only will you be out a car, but you'll be facing an insurance fraud charge.
Life's too short... especially the very last moment before you wrap your fancy sports car around a telephone pole because you were driving like a dumbass, becoming yet another sad statistic and an obituary in the paper explaining that you were "suddenly taken" from your loved ones. Or you could become paralyzed. What would you say to your family and friends then? I hope your health and/or car insurance covers all the costs, and your family doesn't have to make any time or monetary sacrifices to care for you. What was that about not putting anyone else's needs ahead of yours?
I'd have to disagree there chief. Say you're speeding through a school zone, or residential zone, and some kids suddenly appear in front of you. You're telling me that your sports car at, say, 40mph can stop faster than my regular run-of-the-mill car at 30mph? People seem to think 10 over is perfectly fine and safe, but it's not. You can change the kind of car you drive, but you can not change your reaction time. The faster you go, the less time you have to react. It's an extremely simple concept to understand. The parents of the kids you didn't run over because you were being Mr. Cool will thank you.
You might think you're a perfectly safe driver who can speed when and where ever you please and no harm will come of it because you're driving a fancy sports car. Sorry to take you down a couple of notches, but you've got some growing up to do. Want to speed and race around? Hit the track. Want to use the public roads? Drive by the rules. They are in place because people whose job it is to know and study these kinds of things, like civil/traffic engineers, police, insurance companies, accident reconstruction specialists, etc, are trying to make things as safe as possible for all road users. That includes motorists, pedestrians, cyclists, owners of adjacent property, etc... not just you. They have to take all that into consideration while, at the same time, not causing huge congestion problems and other issues in the process.
Try living in a jurisdiction where detectors are illegal (or just shut yours off) and see how long you go without incident. Hell with laser, once your detector goes off it's already too late, so what's the point? You've been lucky with the help of your detector if you haven't gotten any tickets or been in any avoidable accidents, but your time will come.
The rules of the road are designed for the lowest common denominator... an uncoordinated person driving a crappy car. The average car on the road is probably an older model with fairly worn out parts. No public road is designed for the exclusive use of a brand new Ferrari with a professional driver with perfect reaction time behind the wheel.
I'm no public safety zealot, but when someone claims they're a safe driver but they speed everywhere, I just can't take them seriously. I used to think the road was a big playground for speeding and doing stupid reckless things... until I grew up. There have been enough deaths of drivers, passengers, innocent bystanders and other motorists due to street racing and speeding in my city alone, let's not add more to that number.
Math is an *OPTION* for grades 11 and 12?!? I am honestly shocked by that! I finished school in 2001. Our math teacher used to REPEATEDLY scream up and down that we would not receive a diploma without passing a grade 12 math class (pre-calculus, applied or consumer). Stopping at grade 10 sounds like a very stupid plan. My school cut back on things that weren't in the core curriculum, like wood shop, graphic arts, home ec, not math class.
Then again, I went to a halfway decent public French-immersion school in Canada. At the time I left, versus the national average, more of its graduates entered higher education and had higher paying jobs, so YMMV.
I, despite not being American (but I do live nearby), nominate Ray Beckerman (NewYorkCountryLawyer). He seems to have lots of relevant experience in this field.
Any seconds?