I never had to do the duck and cover drills in elementary school but that was because my elementary school had a fallout shelter so once a year we had the drill where every one went into this large underground room that was under the the gym that was in the basement of the school. Granted this was in the early 80s and shortly there after the cold war ended
You think that is bad, I am really boned: I have a large pressure canner (14 one quart jars) and frequently look up how to can various things. my wife just went back to school shopping for our oldest and was looking up info on backpacks. I own a balaclava (blaze orange, awesome for keeping my head warm when deer hunting) I buy ammo online because it is impossible to find in store with people panic buying now (seriously settle down ammo does have a shelf life). I am going to the middle east for work in about 2 months I figure I will end up getting hauled off to gitmo in some form of extreme rendition shortly and no one will ever hear from me again. Then again I am white and clean shaven so I probably am safe.
Holy crap, what are they doing to their vehicles? Do they simply ignore oil changes and other basic maintenance?
Basically yes. After 5 years the vehicles are rusty pieces of crap that leak and burn oil like no tomorrow. Neither one of them is a very attentive drive so they hit curbs and potholes frequently. My step father drove a vehicle with a broken steering knuckle for a week once and described it a a little vibration.
Hey not all Chrysler vehicles are crap, my 96 Jeep Cherokee is doing just fine with 377K miles on it. Then again it is using the old inline 6 with a manual transmission and has no power accessories. Like your self all I have driven have been used vehicles, typically with over 100K miles on them, but have had a couple of GM's, a Ford, a Chrysler, and 4 BMWs. By the time I am finished with them they have either been wrecked (twice rear ended) or not worth fixing with over 250K miles on them. I would love to get a new 0 miles car as I would take care of it and it would probably be the last vehicle I owned.
Also, how does a competent COBOL programmer not find work? They are literally dying off before those old systems can be replaced, and COBOL maintenance programmers are still in need. He should have been able to pick from at least a couple of positions where the office chairs still had that fresh corpse aroma.
Easy he lacked the analytical skills to apply his knowledge to anything other then the system that he had been using for for 25 years. Either that or he just outright refused to try to try to apply himself to something different which wouldn't surprise me either.
While I don't entirely disagree that the screws have been put to the "middle class" but some of it was middle class people spending beyond their means for a very long time. My mother and step father are a perfect example of this, they had a very good income but spent every dime and quite a bit more for a very long time.
They got a new car every 2-3 years (cars got replaced every 5 years but were in really bad shape at that point) huge house with giant mortgage, bought an expensive time share that they have a mortgage on, buy all sorts of new gadgets and toys, vacations to multiple exotic destinations every year. They basically accumulated massive amounts of debt when times were good trying to live high on the hog to show off how rich they were. Then things took a turn and my step dad lost his job because he never bothered to keep up his skill set and was the last COBOL programmer at the only company he had ever worked at and when they shut down that system he couldn't adapt to anything else (they tried for over a year) and was fired.
That was 7 years ago and since they have had a very hard time. They have no savings, just had to buy a new vehicle (on a 72 month loan so they can afford the payment) since their 7 year old vehicle died (had less than 100,000 miles on it), did a cash out refinance on their house to a new 30 year mortgage (they only had 6 years left to go on their old one), and are still buying stuff they don't need (they just got 2 new iphones, 2 ipads, and a 60 inch TV). At the moment I think their plan is to die before their cash out refi money runs out since they have so much debt.
Here is a hint if a business can't hack it from competition then they should go out of business. A perfect example from around here is there was a regional home improvement chain that basically dominated the market for years with small stores slightly larger than hardware stores. Then the big national chains came in and guess what the regional chain is still around and is actually expanding since they decided to compete instead of whine and bitch that they were being driven out of business. The built bigger stores, offered more products, provided better service, and had cheaper prices on construction essentials (MDF, 2x4s, nails, drywall, screws, etc). They also pay more than their competition does for the same type of work. Then there are auto parts stores many of which are dying because they don't want to compete with the internet. The only time I go into an auto parts store is when I need something now and I think they will have it since most of the time they end up having to order it anyway and half of the time I end up having to return the part because the part isn't right. By not right I don't mean they gave a part with a different part number than was quoted, but whom ever made the part designed it wrong and claimed it worked. I have had to return various filters, housings, gaskets, belts, etc. so now all I really buy at the auto parts store are various automotive chemicals, adhesives, spark plugs, and light bulbs. Most of my car parts get ordered online now since it only takes a day longer to get them, I get the right part instead of something that claims to be the right part, I have a wider selection of parts and warranties on them, and is costs less even if I pay for shipping.
As much as I dislike how the ruling came about on that case it was the only reasonable ruling that could have been reached. As much as I try to see how I might have come to a different ruling given the current legal environment (wouldn't it be great if I could create law out of whole cloth) it seem like the ruling was the legally correct ruling. I would have tried for a much more narrow ruling since what was at stake was if a company could produce a movie that basically endorses or discourages voting for a particular candidate. One of the key arguments that was made was that if a company published a book doing the same thing that the book could be banned as well. The best answer I have been able to come up with is that yes the government overstepped it's bounds by preventing the movie from being released but I still haven't figured out a good way to distinguish in an unambitious way between what was in this case and the air time that is bought up by various PACs every election cycle that. A proper end run around this problem that I do like is effort happening over at movetoamend.org with proposing a constitutional amendment stating:
Section 1. [Artificial Entities Such as Corporations Do Not Have Constitutional Rights]
The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons only.
Artificial entities established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state shall have no rights under this Constitution and are subject to regulation by the People, through Federal, State, or local law.
The privileges of artificial entities shall be determined by the People, through Federal, State, or local law, and shall not be construed to be inherent or inalienable.
Section 2. [Money is Not Free Speech]
Federal, State, and local government shall regulate, limit, or prohibit contributions and expenditures, including a candidate's own contributions and expenditures, to ensure that all citizens, regardless of their economic status, have access to the political process, and that no person gains, as a result of their money, substantially more access or ability to influence in any way the election of any candidate for public office or any ballot measure.
Federal, State, and local government shall require that any permissible contributions and expenditures be publicly disclosed.
The judiciary shall not construe the spending of money to influence elections to be speech under the First Amendment.
If people want more electric cars then manufactures should be making cars like this. Make eclectic cars people lust after instead of ones that are strangelookingquirks. Make some electric halo cars and people will become interested. This is what Tesla did with the roadster, what MB is doing with the one you pointed out, and what BMW should be doing (ditch the little diesel and fuel tank and replace them with additional batteries) instead of the i3
To be fair the volume of vehicles have been increasing over time as well (lets ignore the American land yachts from the 60s). One of the biggest complaints about the BMW Mini it is huge size, they are absolutely gargantuan next to an Austin Mini. My wife has a 2000 VW Golf (not a large car by most people's standards) and when I got my project car in the garage next to it my wife's comment was how tiny it was because the Golf dwarfs the 68 Midget. Even look at the evolution of the Toyota Corolla to see how cars have gotten larger over time even for the same model from the same manufacturer.
Then companies should start distributing things on USB thumb drives. They seem to be more robust especially if they are write once and every computer now has USB ports (it isn't 1997 anymore).
By the time they release it I will probably be able to buy a 256GB USB stick from micro center for about $25. And then in another year or so I should be able to get a 512GB one for the same price. For removable storage it is getting pretty hard to beat USB sticks for cost or robustness. Granted they may not be the fastest but for that there are HDDs and SDDs.
It wasn't cheap oil that killed those electric cars it was their range. Early on in the automotive world steam (external combustion), electric, and gasoline vehicles were all competitive but the technology for internal combustion engines progressed faster than it's competitors thus allowing greater benefits if using an internal combustion engine. Electric vehicles of started falling out of fashion due to recharge times and limited range (sounds familiar). Steam vehicles had the problem where they needed to warm up typically taking about 30 minutes to be ready to go as well as needing to have water replenished or have a condenser. I would also hardly custom built playthings for the rich off the shelf products since while there were were auto manufactures then it really was mostly one off builds. For perspective here is a little snippet from wikipedia on Oldsmobile:
In 1901, the company produced 425 cars, making it the first high-volume gasoline-powered automobile manufacturer.
I would hardly call 425 vehicles produced, not sold, in a year off the shelf and even then gasoline vehicles weren't what people were buying who could afford a horseless carriage (very apt description of these early vehicles) as electrics and steam vehicles outsold gasoline ones. Other than for collector or historical value you wouldn't want one of those 1890s era vehicles regardless of the power source as a daily driver.
It is even worse than that, If the us was some how forced pay off it's existing debt because someone called it in (you can't do this but for argument's sake) they could just create a coin of appropriate value (see platinum coin seigniorage) and give that to the debtor since the amount to be paid is denominated in dollars. They could have the coin be 1/100 oz of platinum (nice round number chosen to make other calculations easier) and so long as it had a dollar amount stamped on it it would be worth that much. I hope China likes the ~$15 worth of platinum for the ~$1 trillion dollars they loaned us.
Except they can't. The Chinese (or anyone who bought US debt for that matter) bought a bond that is only payable once matured. So if the Chinese wanted to get out of US treasuries they would need to liquidate them on the secondary market and dumping that large of an amount (under 10% of US national debt) would devalue those holdings making things worse not better for them. Granted flooding the market with US treasuries would hurt many of the following monthly US treasuries auctions, thus driving up rates and cause Bernanke to shit kittens until his heart explodes out of his chest but don't think it would bring down the US Government.
probably long enough to electrocute you. I have put 110V and 220V through some very fine wires before and they don't blow immediately but started glowing and then went and that was with very low resistance. Considering that the human body has substantially higher resistance you could probably put 220V through a USB cable at 1-2 amps indefinitely and not have it melt.
and transformers where they used what seemed like standard varnish to coat the wires
Are you sure it wasn't shellac? Given that is is typically used as a very inexpensive finish it wouldn't surprise me if it was used in really low cost transformers instead of better materials given that it was used previously.
Hell, I still see stuff forwarded to me by adults which demonstrates a complete inability to differentiate between things which are bogus and things which are true. At 11 or 12, I expect them to be far less able to do that.
The first thing the jumped to my mind was the e-mail about an AOL MS partnership with e-mail and by forwarding it on you could get some money (I think the value that is quoted that someone got is ~$9000). I got that one a couple of months ago from a friend who believed it and didn't believe me that I got that same e-mail almost 20 years ago (I remember getting it back in 94 or 95 when I was on AOL).
Not all movies have to tell a captivating story for example The Expendables was fun for what it was, but then I did expect it to have a plot about as deep as my kid's pool and for it to be rather campy. Given that I enjoyed the movie but I would hardly say it was a great movie or even a great action movie but it was a a good fun brain melt movie. That said it will probably be forgotten and won't be one that other action movies are judged against like the Lethal Weapon, Die Hard, The Terminator, Terminator 2, or Aliens.
Yes they did. I had to use my old rs232 MS mouse a few weeks back as my existing one died after 7 years and all the other mice I had were PS2. My current computer doesn't have a PS2 port and I don't have a USB to PS2 converter but I had a USB to rs232. That 19 year old mouse still worked great, but I was more surprised that windows 7 automatically installed the correct driver for that ancient mouse and correctly identified it.
Slashdot Mirror
I never had to do the duck and cover drills in elementary school but that was because my elementary school had a fallout shelter so once a year we had the drill where every one went into this large underground room that was under the the gym that was in the basement of the school. Granted this was in the early 80s and shortly there after the cold war ended
You think that is bad, I am really boned:
I have a large pressure canner (14 one quart jars) and frequently look up how to can various things.
my wife just went back to school shopping for our oldest and was looking up info on backpacks.
I own a balaclava (blaze orange, awesome for keeping my head warm when deer hunting)
I buy ammo online because it is impossible to find in store with people panic buying now (seriously settle down ammo does have a shelf life).
I am going to the middle east for work in about 2 months
I figure I will end up getting hauled off to gitmo in some form of extreme rendition shortly and no one will ever hear from me again. Then again I am white and clean shaven so I probably am safe.
Holy crap, what are they doing to their vehicles? Do they simply ignore oil changes and other basic maintenance?
Basically yes. After 5 years the vehicles are rusty pieces of crap that leak and burn oil like no tomorrow. Neither one of them is a very attentive drive so they hit curbs and potholes frequently. My step father drove a vehicle with a broken steering knuckle for a week once and described it a a little vibration.
Hey not all Chrysler vehicles are crap, my 96 Jeep Cherokee is doing just fine with 377K miles on it. Then again it is using the old inline 6 with a manual transmission and has no power accessories. Like your self all I have driven have been used vehicles, typically with over 100K miles on them, but have had a couple of GM's, a Ford, a Chrysler, and 4 BMWs. By the time I am finished with them they have either been wrecked (twice rear ended) or not worth fixing with over 250K miles on them. I would love to get a new 0 miles car as I would take care of it and it would probably be the last vehicle I owned.
Also, how does a competent COBOL programmer not find work? They are literally dying off before those old systems can be replaced, and COBOL maintenance programmers are still in need. He should have been able to pick from at least a couple of positions where the office chairs still had that fresh corpse aroma.
Easy he lacked the analytical skills to apply his knowledge to anything other then the system that he had been using for for 25 years. Either that or he just outright refused to try to try to apply himself to something different which wouldn't surprise me either.
While I don't entirely disagree that the screws have been put to the "middle class" but some of it was middle class people spending beyond their means for a very long time. My mother and step father are a perfect example of this, they had a very good income but spent every dime and quite a bit more for a very long time.
They got a new car every 2-3 years (cars got replaced every 5 years but were in really bad shape at that point) huge house with giant mortgage, bought an expensive time share that they have a mortgage on, buy all sorts of new gadgets and toys, vacations to multiple exotic destinations every year. They basically accumulated massive amounts of debt when times were good trying to live high on the hog to show off how rich they were. Then things took a turn and my step dad lost his job because he never bothered to keep up his skill set and was the last COBOL programmer at the only company he had ever worked at and when they shut down that system he couldn't adapt to anything else (they tried for over a year) and was fired.
That was 7 years ago and since they have had a very hard time. They have no savings, just had to buy a new vehicle (on a 72 month loan so they can afford the payment) since their 7 year old vehicle died (had less than 100,000 miles on it), did a cash out refinance on their house to a new 30 year mortgage (they only had 6 years left to go on their old one), and are still buying stuff they don't need (they just got 2 new iphones, 2 ipads, and a 60 inch TV). At the moment I think their plan is to die before their cash out refi money runs out since they have so much debt.
Here is a hint if a business can't hack it from competition then they should go out of business. A perfect example from around here is there was a regional home improvement chain that basically dominated the market for years with small stores slightly larger than hardware stores. Then the big national chains came in and guess what the regional chain is still around and is actually expanding since they decided to compete instead of whine and bitch that they were being driven out of business. The built bigger stores, offered more products, provided better service, and had cheaper prices on construction essentials (MDF, 2x4s, nails, drywall, screws, etc). They also pay more than their competition does for the same type of work. Then there are auto parts stores many of which are dying because they don't want to compete with the internet. The only time I go into an auto parts store is when I need something now and I think they will have it since most of the time they end up having to order it anyway and half of the time I end up having to return the part because the part isn't right. By not right I don't mean they gave a part with a different part number than was quoted, but whom ever made the part designed it wrong and claimed it worked. I have had to return various filters, housings, gaskets, belts, etc. so now all I really buy at the auto parts store are various automotive chemicals, adhesives, spark plugs, and light bulbs. Most of my car parts get ordered online now since it only takes a day longer to get them, I get the right part instead of something that claims to be the right part, I have a wider selection of parts and warranties on them, and is costs less even if I pay for shipping.
I guess he is unaware of the medallion system that is currently in place in NYC.
Section 1. [Artificial Entities Such as Corporations Do Not Have Constitutional Rights]
The rights protected by the Constitution of the United States are the rights of natural persons only.
Artificial entities established by the laws of any State, the United States, or any foreign state shall have no rights under this Constitution and are subject to regulation by the People, through Federal, State, or local law.
The privileges of artificial entities shall be determined by the People, through Federal, State, or local law, and shall not be construed to be inherent or inalienable.
Section 2. [Money is Not Free Speech]
Federal, State, and local government shall regulate, limit, or prohibit contributions and expenditures, including a candidate's own contributions and expenditures, to ensure that all citizens, regardless of their economic status, have access to the political process, and that no person gains, as a result of their money, substantially more access or ability to influence in any way the election of any candidate for public office or any ballot measure.
Federal, State, and local government shall require that any permissible contributions and expenditures be publicly disclosed.
The judiciary shall not construe the spending of money to influence elections to be speech under the First Amendment.
And that is a sexy car.
If people want more electric cars then manufactures should be making cars like this. Make eclectic cars people lust after instead of ones that are strange looking quirks. Make some electric halo cars and people will become interested. This is what Tesla did with the roadster, what MB is doing with the one you pointed out, and what BMW should be doing (ditch the little diesel and fuel tank and replace them with additional batteries) instead of the i3
To be fair the volume of vehicles have been increasing over time as well (lets ignore the American land yachts from the 60s). One of the biggest complaints about the BMW Mini it is huge size, they are absolutely gargantuan next to an Austin Mini. My wife has a 2000 VW Golf (not a large car by most people's standards) and when I got my project car in the garage next to it my wife's comment was how tiny it was because the Golf dwarfs the 68 Midget. Even look at the evolution of the Toyota Corolla to see how cars have gotten larger over time even for the same model from the same manufacturer.
So how far back do you want to go:
Z8
8 Series
M1
New Six CS
BMW New Class
501/502
507
328
Then companies should start distributing things on USB thumb drives. They seem to be more robust especially if they are write once and every computer now has USB ports (it isn't 1997 anymore).
By the time they release it I will probably be able to buy a 256GB USB stick from micro center for about $25. And then in another year or so I should be able to get a 512GB one for the same price. For removable storage it is getting pretty hard to beat USB sticks for cost or robustness. Granted they may not be the fastest but for that there are HDDs and SDDs.
In 1901, the company produced 425 cars, making it the first high-volume gasoline-powered automobile manufacturer.
I would hardly call 425 vehicles produced, not sold, in a year off the shelf and even then gasoline vehicles weren't what people were buying who could afford a horseless carriage (very apt description of these early vehicles) as electrics and steam vehicles outsold gasoline ones. Other than for collector or historical value you wouldn't want one of those 1890s era vehicles regardless of the power source as a daily driver.
It is even worse than that, If the us was some how forced pay off it's existing debt because someone called it in (you can't do this but for argument's sake) they could just create a coin of appropriate value (see platinum coin seigniorage) and give that to the debtor since the amount to be paid is denominated in dollars. They could have the coin be 1/100 oz of platinum (nice round number chosen to make other calculations easier) and so long as it had a dollar amount stamped on it it would be worth that much. I hope China likes the ~$15 worth of platinum for the ~$1 trillion dollars they loaned us.
Except they can't. The Chinese (or anyone who bought US debt for that matter) bought a bond that is only payable once matured. So if the Chinese wanted to get out of US treasuries they would need to liquidate them on the secondary market and dumping that large of an amount (under 10% of US national debt) would devalue those holdings making things worse not better for them. Granted flooding the market with US treasuries would hurt many of the following monthly US treasuries auctions, thus driving up rates and cause Bernanke to shit kittens until his heart explodes out of his chest but don't think it would bring down the US Government.
probably long enough to electrocute you. I have put 110V and 220V through some very fine wires before and they don't blow immediately but started glowing and then went and that was with very low resistance. Considering that the human body has substantially higher resistance you could probably put 220V through a USB cable at 1-2 amps indefinitely and not have it melt.
and transformers where they used what seemed like standard varnish to coat the wires
Are you sure it wasn't shellac? Given that is is typically used as a very inexpensive finish it wouldn't surprise me if it was used in really low cost transformers instead of better materials given that it was used previously.
But I want to be a type III civilization.
Hell, I still see stuff forwarded to me by adults which demonstrates a complete inability to differentiate between things which are bogus and things which are true. At 11 or 12, I expect them to be far less able to do that.
The first thing the jumped to my mind was the e-mail about an AOL MS partnership with e-mail and by forwarding it on you could get some money (I think the value that is quoted that someone got is ~$9000). I got that one a couple of months ago from a friend who believed it and didn't believe me that I got that same e-mail almost 20 years ago (I remember getting it back in 94 or 95 when I was on AOL).
And for those who don't get the joke.
Sounds like a good netflix view then. Also that sounds like why I watched the expendables, basically mindless action and the only cost was my time.
Not all movies have to tell a captivating story for example The Expendables was fun for what it was, but then I did expect it to have a plot about as deep as my kid's pool and for it to be rather campy. Given that I enjoyed the movie but I would hardly say it was a great movie or even a great action movie but it was a a good fun brain melt movie. That said it will probably be forgotten and won't be one that other action movies are judged against like the Lethal Weapon, Die Hard, The Terminator, Terminator 2, or Aliens.
And now I don't really want to have sex again ever.
Time to start talking to the cleaning staff of all the congress critters.
Yes they did. I had to use my old rs232 MS mouse a few weeks back as my existing one died after 7 years and all the other mice I had were PS2. My current computer doesn't have a PS2 port and I don't have a USB to PS2 converter but I had a USB to rs232. That 19 year old mouse still worked great, but I was more surprised that windows 7 automatically installed the correct driver for that ancient mouse and correctly identified it.