Yes, but how much RESEARCH does it take to figure out that "It Costs $450 In Marketing To Make Someone Buy a $49 Nokia Lumia" ??? That is the real question!
Here's a wild guess;)
Marketing budget / sales = $450 $49 cost from an advertisement
my niece would always go to sleep after about 20 minutes
Carcolepsy: best sleep condition ever!
Until she starts to drive and has trouble staying awake on the highway... meaning her husband has to do ALL the driving more than 1/2hr away. My in-laws used to put my wife to sleep with the "drive around until she's asleep" method. I'm convinced that's why she gets really drowsy on the highway. On the plus side at least she isn't critiquing my driving all the time..
Very true, but I hope that I can instill in my daughter enough self-confidence and common sense that she'll be able to brush this type of stuff off as the worthless ramblings/rants of people who are lashing out because they are subconsciously aware that they are "peaking" in HS... and life is all downhill for them.
Everyone had to deal with this type of stuff growing up in one way or another. How one dealt with it says quite a lot about their character or lack there of. Dealing with assholes is a fact of life that will never go away and a life skill that we all sadly must learn. Thankfully my daughter is only 3 and I've got a while before I need to deal with this type stuff.
I very much agree that there is currently a large failure in schools to mitigate these situations in meatspace. I really think they're harping about the "cyber" part of it because there's a paper trail for them to fall back on.
... that sissies are not allowed on the internet. Is trolling/cyber-bullying bad, sure it is and I'm not condoning it. It's just sad that people are so thin-skinned that some goobers in politics feel the need to attempt to outlaw trollish comments!
Of course this probably has nothing to do with cyber-bulling or trolling and likely has everything to do with stopping leaks, dissent and general repression of free speech. After all, there is no speech more free than anonymous speech. Are they banning anon tips to the police and anon letters to the editor as well?
Depends on the price. If you don't watch online video, you might well be paying less than under a flat rate.
Then what happens is the unlimited providers get left with the higher usage customers, and they then have to raise their prices. Customers at the bottom end realise they will pay less under usage-based pricing, and leave. Rinse, repeat.
Nah. They'll keep the current price, just limit it and charge crazy punitive overage charges. Say it's $50 a month right now for unlimited. In the future it'll be $50 for the first (insert arbitrary but low # of gb) and probably $5 for every gb after that.
You didn't truly think this was going to save the consumer any money did you?
We are just defining efficiency differently. You're saying mpg == efficiency. I'm saying amount of work that can be done using an given quantity of gasoline == efficiency. The muscle cars turn the more efficient burning of gasoline into more horsepower per gallon, mileage be (mostly) damned. Japanese and European cars had more emphasis on mpg, so as they got better at turning gasoline into work they focused less on hp and more on mpg.
The reason for the different approaches is/was due to market demand. Now as the market is demanding more mpg's in the states you'll notice that the domestic manufactures are putting out more mpg efficient vehicles. The 1L Ecoboost that's going into the EU Focus for example.
What you describe is market evolution and demand, not technical evolution or efficiency.
A Lamborghini Gallardo of 2007 with the same capacity as your Mustang (5.0L) had 625bhp.
A Lotus Esprit S4s from 1995 with a 2.2 liter engine, less than half the size of your 1998 Mustang, had 300bhp, almost 50% more than the Mustang.
Apples to oranges much? I was taking a like for like example that I'm familiar with and showing an improvement over time. A mainstream muscle car that increased the efficiency with which it turns gasoline into horsepower... mpg is less of a concern. A better comparison would be a Gallardo vs a Diablo from 10 years previous. Or a Honda Civic of today vs 10-15 years ago.
Hell, I'll do it for you...
1998 Honda Civic 1.6L had 106hp and got 25 / 32 mpg.
2011 Honda Civic 1.8L had 140hp and got 25 / 36 mpg.
So Honda went the route of increasing mpg vs increasing hp... but they still got more efficient at turning gasoline into something other than heat & noise. MPG > HP for a compact commuter car. HP > MPG for a muscle car. Not too hard to grasp is it?
It's probably inevitable-- it's just a question of when. Battery cost per kWh has been decreasing at around 10% per year, and gasoline is getting consistently more expensive. It seems incredibly unlikely that both of these would stop moving toward the crossover point.
Gasoline engines have been keeping up with that 10% though. In 1998 the Ford Mustang GT with a 4.6L V8 had about 215hp. In 2011 the Mustang GT 5.0L V8 packed in 412hp. That's about 7% a year increase in power and a slight increase in mileage. It stands to reason if that extra efficiency was put towards more mpg instead of more power, that crossover point could be farther out than you think.
The good news is it's getting better on both fronts and fast!
What keeps diesel engines from becoming a standard in the US? I know regulations nearly disappeared them from the market, but that was for environmental reasons, which are the very reasons why diesel cars are attractive. While in Europe it is not outside the norm, here it seems like you are committing a crime if you run a diesel engine.
Also - since diesel engines are so efficient and all - what stops them from making a hybrid car that benefits from the even greater efficiency of diesel? or this new type of diesel like gas engine for that matter?
We have a couple of emissions regulations that are more strict, or at least used to be (I think they're getting closer to parity, but am too lazy to gtfy). That and diesel receives preferential treatment in Europe by not being as harshly penalized via taxes as gasoline.
So in the states, gasoline is cheaper (generally) and gasoline engined cars are less expensive that their diesel counterparts... the diesels being more expensive because of all the emissions stuff that must be added to them to pass muster.
Agreed. I love my Seiko 5... only paid about $100 for it. Looks good, 100% mechanical and keeps decent time. It dies over the weekend if I don't wear it, but Monday morning I just set it again at work and it stays accurate all week.
Sadly it seems to me that it's the same people that thought pets.com or whatever.com were were good bets, but only now they're slightly more informed. Back in the 90's it was "They're on the INTERNET! That's the FUTURE! CAN'T LOSE!!"
Now it's "Wow they've got the web 2.0, app store, iWhatever and wear hoodies. The kids love them and there's billions of users... CAN'T LOSE!!"
Nevermind that the beauty of the web is a lack of lock-in... especially for these free services. A new one will inevitably come out, and all it'll cost people is a few minutes to fill out a new profile. Hell this "new Facebook" will probably be seen as a great way to cull your friends list once and for all... at least until the "new new Facebook" comes out.
Wait a sec? Isn't Facebook just the new MySpace? So the "new Facebook" will really be the "new new MySpace?"
it's crap like that is that makes Americans want SUVs. The urban street is increasing turning into an off road experience between the god damn speed bumps and the god damn potholes. Try this guys... flat. Just try it.
[cough, cough]bull[cough, cough]it. American's wants SUVs because 1) they like complaining about "high gas prices" 2) they live so far from work their car has to be a little home and 3) they want to make sure that when they do cause an accident they kill the other guys instead of themselves.
4) They have a boat (one of my reasons) 5) They have a motorcycle they need to drag to the racetrack (another one of my reasons) 6) They have a couple kids and a dog that all like to go camping (another one... this is starting to look like the vehicle fit my needs) 7) They actually take them off road (another reason of mine... sand dunes are great fun and the kids love them) 8) They drag a utility trailer multiple times a month for Home Depot / Lowes trips, but would rather not buy a truck AND have the SUV for all the people hauling, and the SUV gets better mileage (just) 9) They live in the snow belt and enjoy pulling Priuii (ok anybody that's stuck, not just hybrids) out of the snowbanks/ditches in the winter... they never seem to complain about my Jeep and it's 20mpg on a good day then:) 10) They love the look on a 3 year old's face when they pull the top off their Jeep and drive to the ice-cream stand on a nice summer day.
There are lots out there with usages like mine that actually have a need for a vehicle that can haul a bunch of people and their stuff to someplace a few hundred miles away. A van won't cut it in the states either (really low tow ratings for some reason), unless of course it's a fullsize van which makes my Jeep look like a SmartCar in terms of efficiency!
Do people buy them just for the look? Sure! Should they be allowed to? We've rarely enacted a law to stop stupid people from wasting their money on stuff they don't "need" so I say sure waste away! It's their money they are wasting getting 20mpg when they could be getting 30mpg+ in a smaller car that fits their needs.
The cost of building a compact truck is nearly the same as building a full size, so their prices wind up about the same. In the Ranger's case, the gas V6 gets WORSE mileage than the V6 F150 and is much less capable for nearly the same cost. The 4-banger Ranger does significantly better mileage wise, but those only get sold as stripper models to fleet customers. (I actually owned a '98 4cyl manual Ranger and loved it, but kids make a bigger vehicle necessary.) So the Ranger costs about the same as an F150, is smaller, less capable... and if Ford were to keep building the Ranger, they'd have to keep another plant open to make it! Essentially, the profit margin on the F150 goes up if the revenue form those vehicles doesn't have to cover operating expenses for a Ranger plant. Google "chicken tax" to find our why they can't be imported. The only Ranger that makes sense, is a stripper 4cyl... it's cheaper and gets better mileage, but there's almost no profit to be had selling them!
Oil burners require a whole bunch of enviro-gadgets to make them pass US clean air standards on diesel, which are more stringent than the Europe's. That's why diesels aren't in 1/2 ton and smaller trucks in the states, too much cost and not enough benefit (just like they hybrids people aren't buying twice).
If you like the Hilux, a Tacoma is what you want... basically the same vehicle, you just can't get the diesel for the reason above.
Same here, redhead with a high tolerance for pain, but the dentist can never give me enough novocain to numb me up for a filling. High tolerance for pain? Played a half of a football game with a broken arm... didn't know it was broken until we stopped at halftime and it had a chance to swell up, making me look like Popeye. 3 shots at the dentist and I can still feel just about everything. Hurts like hell, but by then I'm aggravated enough to just let them do their work while I'm cursing them mentally.
Luckily when I had my wisdom teeth out the stuff to put me under worked just fine on me. Also the laughing gas seemed to really do the trick, I'm somewhat phobic of needles and I literally couldn't care less when they were giving me the IV for the sedative.
And the rest of the world would be buying millions and millions more US autos making it our number 1 industrial powerhouse again and pouring money into our coffers at such a booming rate that $10/gal of gas looks super cheap.
Why would anybody (outside the US) want to buy US cars? Nobody except US people likes them.
Really? The only two classes of car that aren't very similar are the extreme ends of the car market... Pickups/SUVs and Compact/Sub-compact cars. Everything else is practically the same between the two markets, except for the EU preference for diesel. Heck Ford for example is selling the EU Focus & Fiesta in the US and the next Mondeo is essentially the same as the next Fusion.
In the US people tend to 1) be fatter 2) have more kids and dogs and 3) have more outdoor toys. That means that us 'Merkins have a tendency to buy larger vehicles that we fit in comfortably, that can carry all our kids, the Labrador Retriever and all our stuff... while pulling the boat to a lake that might be 4hrs away. Pickups and SUVs are the only things that can do these things here legally. Most vans and cars have their towing limits set crazy low due to our litigious nature. (Sad but true)
In the EU folks generally aren't as large, I think families are smaller and ownership of outdoor toys is less (or at least ownership of toys that you have to tow to play with is lower). Also cities in the EU are much older and were designed around ox carts and the plague... so lots of places are narrow and parking is a nightmare and as such not very Escalade friendly.
If you took your average EU citizen and plopped them in the midwest with 3 kids a dog and a boat... they'd likely buy an F150 or a Tahoe or something similar. Those big comfy vehicles would simply meets their needs in a way that a Ka or Pugeot 20-whatever never could.
What's wrong with different strokes for different folks?
After searching a bit I think you're right. It looks like just a google account is required, not a full-blown G+ account. That makes it less terrible, but still a real pain in the ass.
All things considered, I'm glad I moved over to Smugmug. Gives me total control over my pics and allows me to share HD videos from my shiny new Nikon D5100 (Merry Xmas to me:)
was the biggest piece of crap ever made. After working with tons of residential customers who need their computers cleaned up and ask for an explanation as to what caused their machine to take so long to boot, Kodak Easy Share was the culprit in many cases. I know they're simply trying to make it easy for old people to just plug in their camera to the computer and magically have all their photos transferred to the All Users\My Pictures folder (which is stupid btw), but the software is just pure autorun garbage and why on earth it needed to execute during start up, I have no idea. Regardless of the quality of the cameras, having any negative response on your product cannot be a good thing. I don't think it's the main reason Kodak is filing bankruptcy obviously, but I do think it may have contributed to Kodak's negative consumer image.
THIS!
After fixing my folks machine for the ump-teenth time, I just bought them a little Nikon Coolpix and installed Picasa for them. Simplest camera to work I could find that took good photos and was pretty darned cheap. It also took all of 5 minutes to explain how to organize their photos while importing them into Picasa. (Which I think is the simplest, free photo organizing/editing application out there right now.)
That said, Google just recently ticked me off enough with Picasa that I now have a paid Smugmug account. The only thing I've used the online component of Picasa for is sharing pictures of my daughter with her grandparents and my other relatives that all live 500+ miles away. Not wanting everything public and searchable, I had them locked down to "only those with the link"... simple enough for grandparents to use. Recently they changed it to where they would all need a google+ account to view my photos if they weren't 100% public. SCREW THEM.
Step 1) All photos deleted on Picasa. Step 2) Smugmug plugin installed for Picasa application and photo uploaded there. Step 3) give my folks the URL and password to my now 100% non-searchable site.
No I'm not a paid shill, I've just been impressed with the service I've gotten from smugmug thus far. Also I really like the ability to upload HD videos into my albums so my folks don't have to jump between youtube the photo site. (Reminds me, I need to delete my stuff from there too:)
US naval ships wouldn't even need to be in the right hemisphere to make things very, very uncomfortable for Iran.
Google "Deigo Garcia" and know that we have a tendency to park a lot of B1s and B52s there...
By the time the USS Whatever showed up near the strait, their ability to do anything but wave at it would be gone.
(Disclaimer: My father was in the Naval Construction Battalion that built the US Air/Naval base there in the early 70's.)
It also takes just a couple hours to drive across your island. Yesterday I drove 500 miles home from taking my daughter to Grandma's for Christmas, a trip we make 6-10 times a year for various holidays/weddings/events. The equivalent for you would essentially be driving from Scotland to London. Many, many folks in the US are in a similar situation and $10/gal gasoline would be quite a pain. Beyond my direct personal cost, the indirect costs would go up considerably as well... simply due to shipping cost increases. Basically everything moves by truck in the US for the last mile, which can be a long distance from the train station to the shop. More by train less truck would be better... but good luck getting more track laid anywhere reasonably close to a metropolitan area!
It's the cost of wide open spaces and why Europe and the US cannot reasonably be compared in such a manner.
Should we use less oil? Yes. Can we do better? Yes. Would crazy high gas taxes like the EU states have a much more damaging effect in the US than it does in Europe? Yes, much more than those in the old world realize.
I haven't worked at any giant corporations where they would use Excel for mission critical databases. They wouldn't use PHP either but that's because they mistrust free stuff unless it comes from a corporation like Microsoft.
THIS. A truly giant corporation has a huge bank account they protect with teams of lawyers that are terrified by the various open source licenses, mainly because there's no indemnity built into most (all?). That's why we just moved off of IE6, getting Firefox requires EXECUTIVE approval, Chrome is only mentioned in hushed tones and getting an upgraded version of Eclipse requires an act of congress.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, but how much RESEARCH does it take to figure out that "It Costs $450 In Marketing To Make Someone Buy a $49 Nokia Lumia" ??? That is the real question!
Here's a wild guess ;)
Marketing budget / sales = $450
$49 cost from an advertisement
my niece would always go to sleep after about 20 minutes
Carcolepsy: best sleep condition ever!
Until she starts to drive and has trouble staying awake on the highway ... meaning her husband has to do ALL the driving more than 1/2hr away. My in-laws used to put my wife to sleep with the "drive around until she's asleep" method. I'm convinced that's why she gets really drowsy on the highway. On the plus side at least she isn't critiquing my driving all the time..
Very true, but I hope that I can instill in my daughter enough self-confidence and common sense that she'll be able to brush this type of stuff off as the worthless ramblings/rants of people who are lashing out because they are subconsciously aware that they are "peaking" in HS ... and life is all downhill for them.
Everyone had to deal with this type of stuff growing up in one way or another. How one dealt with it says quite a lot about their character or lack there of. Dealing with assholes is a fact of life that will never go away and a life skill that we all sadly must learn. Thankfully my daughter is only 3 and I've got a while before I need to deal with this type stuff.
I very much agree that there is currently a large failure in schools to mitigate these situations in meatspace. I really think they're harping about the "cyber" part of it because there's a paper trail for them to fall back on.
... that sissies are not allowed on the internet. Is trolling/cyber-bullying bad, sure it is and I'm not condoning it. It's just sad that people are so thin-skinned that some goobers in politics feel the need to attempt to outlaw trollish comments!
Of course this probably has nothing to do with cyber-bulling or trolling and likely has everything to do with stopping leaks, dissent and general repression of free speech. After all, there is no speech more free than anonymous speech. Are they banning anon tips to the police and anon letters to the editor as well?
Depends on the price. If you don't watch online video, you might well be paying less than under a flat rate.
Then what happens is the unlimited providers get left with the higher usage customers, and they then have to raise their prices. Customers at the bottom end realise they will pay less under usage-based pricing, and leave. Rinse, repeat.
Nah. They'll keep the current price, just limit it and charge crazy punitive overage charges. Say it's $50 a month right now for unlimited. In the future it'll be $50 for the first (insert arbitrary but low # of gb) and probably $5 for every gb after that.
You didn't truly think this was going to save the consumer any money did you?
We are just defining efficiency differently. You're saying mpg == efficiency. I'm saying amount of work that can be done using an given quantity of gasoline == efficiency. The muscle cars turn the more efficient burning of gasoline into more horsepower per gallon, mileage be (mostly) damned. Japanese and European cars had more emphasis on mpg, so as they got better at turning gasoline into work they focused less on hp and more on mpg.
The reason for the different approaches is/was due to market demand. Now as the market is demanding more mpg's in the states you'll notice that the domestic manufactures are putting out more mpg efficient vehicles. The 1L Ecoboost that's going into the EU Focus for example.
What you describe is market evolution and demand, not technical evolution or efficiency. A Lamborghini Gallardo of 2007 with the same capacity as your Mustang (5.0L) had 625bhp. A Lotus Esprit S4s from 1995 with a 2.2 liter engine, less than half the size of your 1998 Mustang, had 300bhp, almost 50% more than the Mustang.
Apples to oranges much? I was taking a like for like example that I'm familiar with and showing an improvement over time. A mainstream muscle car that increased the efficiency with which it turns gasoline into horsepower ... mpg is less of a concern. A better comparison would be a Gallardo vs a Diablo from 10 years previous. Or a Honda Civic of today vs 10-15 years ago.
...
... but they still got more efficient at turning gasoline into something other than heat & noise. MPG > HP for a compact commuter car. HP > MPG for a muscle car. Not too hard to grasp is it?
Hell, I'll do it for you
1998 Honda Civic 1.6L had 106hp and got 25 / 32 mpg.
2011 Honda Civic 1.8L had 140hp and got 25 / 36 mpg.
So Honda went the route of increasing mpg vs increasing hp
It's probably inevitable-- it's just a question of when. Battery cost per kWh has been decreasing at around 10% per year, and gasoline is getting consistently more expensive. It seems incredibly unlikely that both of these would stop moving toward the crossover point.
Gasoline engines have been keeping up with that 10% though. In 1998 the Ford Mustang GT with a 4.6L V8 had about 215hp. In 2011 the Mustang GT 5.0L V8 packed in 412hp. That's about 7% a year increase in power and a slight increase in mileage. It stands to reason if that extra efficiency was put towards more mpg instead of more power, that crossover point could be farther out than you think.
The good news is it's getting better on both fronts and fast!
What keeps diesel engines from becoming a standard in the US? I know regulations nearly disappeared them from the market, but that was for environmental reasons, which are the very reasons why diesel cars are attractive. While in Europe it is not outside the norm, here it seems like you are committing a crime if you run a diesel engine.
Also - since diesel engines are so efficient and all - what stops them from making a hybrid car that benefits from the even greater efficiency of diesel? or this new type of diesel like gas engine for that matter?
We have a couple of emissions regulations that are more strict, or at least used to be (I think they're getting closer to parity, but am too lazy to gtfy). That and diesel receives preferential treatment in Europe by not being as harshly penalized via taxes as gasoline.
... the diesels being more expensive because of all the emissions stuff that must be added to them to pass muster.
So in the states, gasoline is cheaper (generally) and gasoline engined cars are less expensive that their diesel counterparts
Agreed. I love my Seiko 5 ... only paid about $100 for it. Looks good, 100% mechanical and keeps decent time. It dies over the weekend if I don't wear it, but Monday morning I just set it again at work and it stays accurate all week.
Sadly it seems to me that it's the same people that thought pets.com or whatever.com were were good bets, but only now they're slightly more informed. Back in the 90's it was "They're on the INTERNET! That's the FUTURE! CAN'T LOSE!!"
... CAN'T LOSE!!"
... especially for these free services. A new one will inevitably come out, and all it'll cost people is a few minutes to fill out a new profile. Hell this "new Facebook" will probably be seen as a great way to cull your friends list once and for all ... at least until the "new new Facebook" comes out.
Now it's "Wow they've got the web 2.0, app store, iWhatever and wear hoodies. The kids love them and there's billions of users
Nevermind that the beauty of the web is a lack of lock-in
Wait a sec? Isn't Facebook just the new MySpace? So the "new Facebook" will really be the "new new MySpace?"
They have the most brain damaged athletes of any sport (see "Metta World Peace").
FTFY ;)
...
it's crap like that is that makes Americans want SUVs. The urban street is increasing turning into an off road experience between the god damn speed bumps and the god damn potholes. Try this guys... flat. Just try it.
[cough, cough]bull[cough, cough]it. American's wants SUVs because 1) they like complaining about "high gas prices" 2) they live so far from work their car has to be a little home and 3) they want to make sure that when they do cause an accident they kill the other guys instead of themselves.
4) They have a boat (one of my reasons) 5) They have a motorcycle they need to drag to the racetrack (another one of my reasons) 6) They have a couple kids and a dog that all like to go camping (another one ... this is starting to look like the vehicle fit my needs) 7) They actually take them off road (another reason of mine ... sand dunes are great fun and the kids love them) 8) They drag a utility trailer multiple times a month for Home Depot / Lowes trips, but would rather not buy a truck AND have the SUV for all the people hauling, and the SUV gets better mileage (just) 9) They live in the snow belt and enjoy pulling Priuii (ok anybody that's stuck, not just hybrids) out of the snowbanks/ditches in the winter ... they never seem to complain about my Jeep and it's 20mpg on a good day then :) 10) They love the look on a 3 year old's face when they pull the top off their Jeep and drive to the ice-cream stand on a nice summer day.
There are lots out there with usages like mine that actually have a need for a vehicle that can haul a bunch of people and their stuff to someplace a few hundred miles away. A van won't cut it in the states either (really low tow ratings for some reason), unless of course it's a fullsize van which makes my Jeep look like a SmartCar in terms of efficiency!
Do people buy them just for the look? Sure! Should they be allowed to? We've rarely enacted a law to stop stupid people from wasting their money on stuff they don't "need" so I say sure waste away! It's their money they are wasting getting 20mpg when they could be getting 30mpg+ in a smaller car that fits their needs.
I wish there was a mod "Ironically AC +1"
The cost of building a compact truck is nearly the same as building a full size, so their prices wind up about the same. In the Ranger's case, the gas V6 gets WORSE mileage than the V6 F150 and is much less capable for nearly the same cost. The 4-banger Ranger does significantly better mileage wise, but those only get sold as stripper models to fleet customers. (I actually owned a '98 4cyl manual Ranger and loved it, but kids make a bigger vehicle necessary.) So the Ranger costs about the same as an F150, is smaller, less capable ... and if Ford were to keep building the Ranger, they'd have to keep another plant open to make it! Essentially, the profit margin on the F150 goes up if the revenue form those vehicles doesn't have to cover operating expenses for a Ranger plant. Google "chicken tax" to find our why they can't be imported. The only Ranger that makes sense, is a stripper 4cyl ... it's cheaper and gets better mileage, but there's almost no profit to be had selling them!
... basically the same vehicle, you just can't get the diesel for the reason above.
Oil burners require a whole bunch of enviro-gadgets to make them pass US clean air standards on diesel, which are more stringent than the Europe's. That's why diesels aren't in 1/2 ton and smaller trucks in the states, too much cost and not enough benefit (just like they hybrids people aren't buying twice).
If you like the Hilux, a Tacoma is what you want
An Xbox 360 with Kinect built in?
Truthfully, Microsoft quietly released their new console, the Kinect, when nobody was looking.
It got my sister to buy an Xbox... my sister.
She wasn't even interested in the Wii!
one question. Is your sister hot?
You've got my vote for creepiest post on /. today. Especially when considering the subject matter and you're sig line of "be seeing you..."
... Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice...
"Fool me once ... shame on ... ... shame on ... you. You fool me but can't get fooled again!"
- G-Dub
Same here, redhead with a high tolerance for pain, but the dentist can never give me enough novocain to numb me up for a filling. High tolerance for pain? Played a half of a football game with a broken arm ... didn't know it was broken until we stopped at halftime and it had a chance to swell up, making me look like Popeye. 3 shots at the dentist and I can still feel just about everything. Hurts like hell, but by then I'm aggravated enough to just let them do their work while I'm cursing them mentally.
Luckily when I had my wisdom teeth out the stuff to put me under worked just fine on me. Also the laughing gas seemed to really do the trick, I'm somewhat phobic of needles and I literally couldn't care less when they were giving me the IV for the sedative.
And the rest of the world would be buying millions and millions more US autos making it our number 1 industrial powerhouse again and pouring money into our coffers at such a booming rate that $10/gal of gas looks super cheap.
Why would anybody (outside the US) want to buy US cars? Nobody except US people likes them.
Really? The only two classes of car that aren't very similar are the extreme ends of the car market ... Pickups/SUVs and Compact/Sub-compact cars. Everything else is practically the same between the two markets, except for the EU preference for diesel. Heck Ford for example is selling the EU Focus & Fiesta in the US and the next Mondeo is essentially the same as the next Fusion.
... while pulling the boat to a lake that might be 4hrs away. Pickups and SUVs are the only things that can do these things here legally. Most vans and cars have their towing limits set crazy low due to our litigious nature. (Sad but true)
... so lots of places are narrow and parking is a nightmare and as such not very Escalade friendly.
... they'd likely buy an F150 or a Tahoe or something similar. Those big comfy vehicles would simply meets their needs in a way that a Ka or Pugeot 20-whatever never could.
In the US people tend to 1) be fatter 2) have more kids and dogs and 3) have more outdoor toys. That means that us 'Merkins have a tendency to buy larger vehicles that we fit in comfortably, that can carry all our kids, the Labrador Retriever and all our stuff
In the EU folks generally aren't as large, I think families are smaller and ownership of outdoor toys is less (or at least ownership of toys that you have to tow to play with is lower). Also cities in the EU are much older and were designed around ox carts and the plague
If you took your average EU citizen and plopped them in the midwest with 3 kids a dog and a boat
What's wrong with different strokes for different folks?
Die in a fire spammer!
After searching a bit I think you're right. It looks like just a google account is required, not a full-blown G+ account. That makes it less terrible, but still a real pain in the ass.
All things considered, I'm glad I moved over to Smugmug. Gives me total control over my pics and allows me to share HD videos from my shiny new Nikon D5100 (Merry Xmas to me:)
was the biggest piece of crap ever made. After working with tons of residential customers who need their computers cleaned up and ask for an explanation as to what caused their machine to take so long to boot, Kodak Easy Share was the culprit in many cases. I know they're simply trying to make it easy for old people to just plug in their camera to the computer and magically have all their photos transferred to the All Users\My Pictures folder (which is stupid btw), but the software is just pure autorun garbage and why on earth it needed to execute during start up, I have no idea. Regardless of the quality of the cameras, having any negative response on your product cannot be a good thing. I don't think it's the main reason Kodak is filing bankruptcy obviously, but I do think it may have contributed to Kodak's negative consumer image.
THIS!
... simple enough for grandparents to use. Recently they changed it to where they would all need a google+ account to view my photos if they weren't 100% public. SCREW THEM.
:)
After fixing my folks machine for the ump-teenth time, I just bought them a little Nikon Coolpix and installed Picasa for them. Simplest camera to work I could find that took good photos and was pretty darned cheap. It also took all of 5 minutes to explain how to organize their photos while importing them into Picasa. (Which I think is the simplest, free photo organizing/editing application out there right now.)
That said, Google just recently ticked me off enough with Picasa that I now have a paid Smugmug account. The only thing I've used the online component of Picasa for is sharing pictures of my daughter with her grandparents and my other relatives that all live 500+ miles away. Not wanting everything public and searchable, I had them locked down to "only those with the link"
Step 1) All photos deleted on Picasa.
Step 2) Smugmug plugin installed for Picasa application and photo uploaded there.
Step 3) give my folks the URL and password to my now 100% non-searchable site.
No I'm not a paid shill, I've just been impressed with the service I've gotten from smugmug thus far. Also I really like the ability to upload HD videos into my albums so my folks don't have to jump between youtube the photo site. (Reminds me, I need to delete my stuff from there too
US naval ships wouldn't even need to be in the right hemisphere to make things very, very uncomfortable for Iran. Google "Deigo Garcia" and know that we have a tendency to park a lot of B1s and B52s there ...
By the time the USS Whatever showed up near the strait, their ability to do anything but wave at it would be gone.
(Disclaimer: My father was in the Naval Construction Battalion that built the US Air/Naval base there in the early 70's.)
In the UK we already do pay $10 a gallon
It also takes just a couple hours to drive across your island. Yesterday I drove 500 miles home from taking my daughter to Grandma's for Christmas, a trip we make 6-10 times a year for various holidays/weddings/events. The equivalent for you would essentially be driving from Scotland to London. Many, many folks in the US are in a similar situation and $10/gal gasoline would be quite a pain. Beyond my direct personal cost, the indirect costs would go up considerably as well ... simply due to shipping cost increases. Basically everything moves by truck in the US for the last mile, which can be a long distance from the train station to the shop. More by train less truck would be better ... but good luck getting more track laid anywhere reasonably close to a metropolitan area!
It's the cost of wide open spaces and why Europe and the US cannot reasonably be compared in such a manner.
Should we use less oil? Yes.
Can we do better? Yes.
Would crazy high gas taxes like the EU states have a much more damaging effect in the US than it does in Europe? Yes, much more than those in the old world realize.
I haven't worked at any giant corporations where they would use Excel for mission critical databases. They wouldn't use PHP either but that's because they mistrust free stuff unless it comes from a corporation like Microsoft.
THIS. A truly giant corporation has a huge bank account they protect with teams of lawyers that are terrified by the various open source licenses, mainly because there's no indemnity built into most (all?). That's why we just moved off of IE6, getting Firefox requires EXECUTIVE approval, Chrome is only mentioned in hushed tones and getting an upgraded version of Eclipse requires an act of congress.