Haven't they recently (last year or so) finally implemented low-sulfur fuel mandates here in the US?
I seem to recall that the news stories about low sulfur fuel finally being required for on-road vehicles said we were looking at a whole new generation of cool diesel engine cars, just like the Euros have, because we finally had a fuel that would work with them.
Diesel *used* to cost less than gasoline, quite a bit less, which led to the bad 1970s/early 1980s diesels sold by GM and possibly Ford which got "better" mileage and were less expensive to fuel. It seems like the price went up to rough parity with gasoline sometime after that.
I'm not sure why its more expensive now, other than perhaps refining yields or perhaps added cost of low-sulfur refining.
But I'm behind the curve anyway, I drive a gasoline V8 and use 93 octane.
There should almost be some kind of internal review board that determines whether malfeasance which is technically illegal rises to the level of involving the prosecutor's office and possibly filing charges, to prevent petty bureaucrats from being tyrants and using access to the police and prosecutor's office to essentially enforce trivial workplace rules.
The real problem, of course, is that "we" taxpayers hear about the 1-in-a-million case of malfeasance that some government flunky "gets away with" and then we demand the legislature make ridiculous laws that essentially make taking home a paperclip a felony, and failing to report it to law enforcement by their superior, a felony as well to ensure rigorous enforcement and that "no one is innocent."
Either you get the watch, or you don't. I learned to tell time in the second grade and George actually gave me his watch because he didn't know how to tell time and I did (mom and dad made me give it back).
Had a digital watch as soon as they got cheap in the 70s (those of you born in the mid 60s will remember that well, I'm sure), an LCD watch when those got cheap. Bought a new Timex LCD in 1986 and wore it more or less continuously until 2007 when my wife gave me a Tag Heuer self-winding chronograph.
I'll never look back. This watch is a tank, keeps good time and looks fairly smart. Plus NO batteries.
My 5 year old must be way less sophisticated than your 3 year old. He can't/won't stop playing Animatch (concentration, with wonderful cartoon animals that make amazing sounds) and I get lost playing Backgammon NJ.
Both apps are super, but beyond that I don't find the idea of most games on a tiny screen worthwhile, free or otherwise.
You're being a little too semantic. From a technical perspective, OK, the OS isn't that great (with respect to multitasking or memory management) but as a host for the apps that run on it and the hardware interface it provides (multitouch, the display, etc) its way better than the WinMo phones.
Sorry, but before I jumped the WinMo phones from Verizon sucked hard in comparison to the iPhone (HTC slider/touch and a Samsung).
Look, I was with you -- I thought the iPhone was total hype until I finally got sick of the shit from Verizon and made a leap of faith. Does it have flaws? Of course, but its really much better than ANY WinBlow phone.
It would suck, but Microsoft could have only done that if it had released hardware *and* an operating system that was as far ahead of the competition as the iPhone was from its competition. Apple had the advantage of a really high quality device and OS; when you make something good you get to make a lot of rules.
Apple will change their tune when the rest of the smartphone world catches up to them. Android will gain a lot of traction due to the Droid/Verizon combination; I think there are a lot of business customers dying for an iPhone who can only use Verizon and if they get Droids it will boost the usage considerably.
And some of it may depend on Apple's ability to "sell" these restrictions as features; if Android ends up with a ton of rogue apps targeting it, people may flee for a redistricted phone out of fear. It's not like Apple doesn't aggressively market itself as free from the virus problems of PCs already.
Is ensuring he has a new Mercedes S600 every year, a decent yacht, a few homes, unlimited access to private jets, and access to the best schools for his children.
Why would you need to spend more money on health benefits for the poor if you have the National Health Service? Doesn't that provide universal health care regardless of income?
I'm not super close to this guy. I think part of the gimmick is the vehicle is large enough to be classified a truck, and IIRC trucks are treated differently than cars and are allowed greater depreciation. He didn't get deep enough into it to explain how it worked completely, but he did say it made too much sense to buy this expensive monster vs. something smaller like he had (Lexus GS430 sedan). He said the 3 year depreciation was so good that it was like buying a much, much cheaper vehicle.
Either way, his entire business seems like its a house of cards should he get seriously audited. I don't know if the IRS can look at what's been done as *technically* correct but still disallow it as abusive, but my guess is he's looking at that kind of a situation.
Fucking great. More resources wasted by state tax authorities strong-arming middle class shoppers for a couple hundred bucks in sales taxes while corporations and the wealthy *flaunt* the tax system for their own enrichment. Nothing like the strong taking on the weak, who almost always have no choice but to roll over and pay whatever the authorities claim they are supposed to pay because its another 8x defending yourself.
A "consultant" I know works exclusively for his wife's father's business (essentially an employee), but uses all the tax loopholes available to businesses to avoid taxes. Actually he doesn't actually save any money, he uses the loop holes to buy expensive cars and then take the depreciation. Given his sham consultancy, the state lost more on his Mercedes SUV depreciation deduction than any 10 consumers buying crap off Amazon.
But its a good thing the state goes after the little guy rather than the obvious cheat.
The thing I find really amusing about these use tax claims is my local city has a couple of tax surcharges and about every other tax time the paper runs an article with some finance geek from the city spouting his line on how city residents buying stuff outside of the city and hence not paying the city 0.25% surcharge are supposed to remit the difference!
I'd contact an employment attorney first and figure out what my options were when the boss fired me after I ratted him out to the BSA, and depending on the attorney or practice, have them document what your potential legal exposure may be if you turn the business in.
It may be possible to have the attorney contact the BSA anonymously on your behalf; your work with the attorney is protected as privileged communication so they may not be able to find out who turned them in, even if the BSA wanted to tell them.
At least this way you'd know what you'd be up against and would have everything lined up in case the employer tried to retaliate. In some cases you may be able to set them up so that you *want* them to retaliate so you can respond with a civil action.
The other day a friend called to warn me about a speed trap being run on a road I travel a lot. The Edina, MN police were running (another...) speed trap on MN-62 near Gleason Road, this time with FIVE squad cars involved. One parked on the overpass, presumably clocking the drivers, and four cars actually writing tickets.
The initial stunner was 5 squads; I don't know that Edina has more than a half-dozen or so squads on the streets at any one time.
Then we started thinking about the cost of a squad car -- I figure a well-equipped, late-model squad car is probably a $100k-150k when you factor in all the goodies -- Crown Vic police interceptor, voice radios, cell phones, mobile data, laptop, radar gun, lighting, weapons (I'm pretty sure Edina squads carry shotguns and MP5s or AR15s) and any other goodies the pack inside them.
Even at the low end, $100k, was that a great way to use a half-million dollars worth of public assets? And what was the hourly cost with the officer's salary and bennies thrown in, $200/hr? Were they really bringing in $1k/hr in fines? I suppose they might -- a speeding ticket being about $150, they'd only have to write about 7 tickets per hour among all of them. Assuming each officer could write two an hour (figuring all the paperwork and BS associated with them, that's probably not far off), they might get to knock off early.
Theoretically he could remain vital enough into his 90s to keep at it, although he could be six feet under before too long. He certainly looks like a bitter end of a long, bad road. His kids aren't terribly interested in the business -- Elisabeth dropped out and Lachlan's cut back.
It seems less likely that without a strong, central figure that News Corp could maintain its ideological bent..
If there's a dozen guys pissed off and zealous/brave/willing/stupid enough to hijack planes and fly them into buildings, surely there's 100s more pissed off guys with m@d sk1llz who could do this, and wouldn't be held back because it's not a suicide mission, and doesn't directly burn thousands to death in an ensuing fire and crash.
And I'd wager that hacking the power system is probably a decidedly less resource-intensive activity than even small-scale physical attacks (bomb/gun/kidnapping/etc), the participants can engage in almost total anonymity, and there's no messy explosives/weapons to buy or store or get caught with. All this means its something that even a lone crank could pull off, opening the doors to a whole panoply of groups with gripes, including or especially all manner of domestic crackpots. You don't need Al Quaalude or zillions of dollars or a complex intelligence network.
Forcing the grid offline and in a way that kept it down/brain damaged for any length of time over 48-72 hours, especially if it was widespread, would have such a cascading effect and probably spawn anarchy. At a minimum billions lost, thousands killed, possibly riots or widespread civil disorder. Katrina times 9/11. So the effect would be substantial and easily deniable, making it the kind of thing China or Russia or any other competitive major power might want to do just to fuck with the Americans and keep them off balance.
Yet it hasn't happened here or Western Europe or most modern Asian countries. Why?
I'll admit I may have the skip limitations down, but some of the "stations" I've defined are based on very specific songs, and switching to another station doesn't help me with more songs in the same vein as the ones on that station.
Perhaps you can game the system and define different accounts, multiple stations with the same songs, etc, but at that point its more effort than its worth.
Is to get 10 recommendations I have to listen to 10 songs in a row due to their skip limitations.
They can keep their skip limitation, that's fine, I get the licensing problem they have.
But why can't I get a simple list of the next N (10, 20...100?) songs they'd recommend based on my current "station"? It might even improve their recommendation engine for me because I could thumbs up/down (and I suppose, "I'm tired of this one", too) the songs and cut through the cruft faster. Sort of like Netflix "Rate Movies" engine which allows for more inputs to the rating system.
I also am annoyed that you can add a *song*, which is highly specific, or an artist which is somehwhat specific, but not highly so given some artists creative changes over time, but you cannot add by *album*.
For example, IMNSHO REM's Chronic Town, Murmur & Reckoning are brilliant and most everything else after is less (often much less) so. Adding those *albums* defines a general yet atomic set of musical criteria; adding the entire band and all its albums biases it much more towards the later records, even by sheer weight of number of songs.
This is true for dozens of bands whose sound changed substantially over time or whose last N albums were horseshit or whatever.
All in all, I *want* to like it but the "service" doesn't mesh with how I listen to music from a practicality sense (streaming via iPhone blows on my car stereo and is a battery hog elsewhere) and 10 recommendations aren't worth 30 minutes of sitting down.
I can see where it makes sense to tailor the anecdote to higher-end professions, but the version that's always stuck with me and been one that anyone can relate to is the auto mechanic.
A driver takes his car to the mechanic to find out why the car is making a strange noise and running rough. The mechanic says he will look at it. He opens the hood, listens and then grabs a hammer from his toolbox and hits the engine block. The car quits running rough and the noise goes away.
The mechanic turns to the customer and says "That'll be $500." The customer says "You're crazy if you think I'm paying you $500 to hit my car with a hammer." The mechanic says "You don't understand. Hitting the engine with a hammer is free. Knowing where to hit it? That's $500."
I like this version better because (a) almost everyone has experience with a car and a mechanic, and (b) it teaches people that the "work" may often *appear* simple but in actuality even the lowly blue-collar mechanic has information you don't to fix a problem.
I've told this anecdote countless times to my IT consulting customers who are, on occasion, miffed because they called me in to resolve a problem and I billed them an hour for what appeared to be a trivial amount of work. Almost always they kind of laugh and "get it" that what they're paying for isn't always some large unit of labor but for the skills and experience of someone who knows something they don't.
A lot of socially attractive (meaning they are considered attractive by their peers and others, not that they meet some objective standard) women reject childbearing because of its so-called negative impact on their appearance -- the weight gain, the accelerated sagging of breasts, and if the news reports on genital cosmetic surgery are to be believed, the effects on genital appearance as well.
It seems like whenever I read about a Hollywood actress with children, they're often adopted, which I can't help but associate with a certain narcissism.
But from what I've read, though, it's not the trivial social attractiveness (which is often highly manipulated by cosmetics, clothing, branding, etc) that matters in reproduction, it's the more subtle cues in relationship to bust-hip ratios and other sort of non-conscious cues about child rearing capacity. Social attractiveness is really just a glamorization of those cues.
IMHO, the more subtle cues are what account for the MILF phenomenon; "real" MILFs (as opposed to porn stars merely labeled) directly portray fertility cues, since presumably they were mothers.
I'm actually pretty underwhelmed by the maps in standalone GPS. I bought a DeLorme PN40; the maps are OK in the mapping application but I found it significantly less useful than google maps on my iPhone as a mapping device.
It was useful ATVing in the mountains of Arizona because the maps had the trails marked, but many of the other map features (terrain, etc) were plain hard to use due to the low-res screen and the chunky maps. I don't think it was a DeLorme issue, either, I looked at the other big brands before buying.
Even when planning trips, I found Google Maps 10x easier to use and the terrain feature far more useful than the topo lines included in the maps.
My dream is something like the iPhone in terms of usability (touchscreen, big, hi-res display, color) with maybe a couple more dedicated buttons and of course ruggedized to PN-40 standards, but with the visual quality of Google maps (cached locally to flash, of course).
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Haven't they recently (last year or so) finally implemented low-sulfur fuel mandates here in the US?
I seem to recall that the news stories about low sulfur fuel finally being required for on-road vehicles said we were looking at a whole new generation of cool diesel engine cars, just like the Euros have, because we finally had a fuel that would work with them.
Diesel *used* to cost less than gasoline, quite a bit less, which led to the bad 1970s/early 1980s diesels sold by GM and possibly Ford which got "better" mileage and were less expensive to fuel. It seems like the price went up to rough parity with gasoline sometime after that.
I'm not sure why its more expensive now, other than perhaps refining yields or perhaps added cost of low-sulfur refining.
But I'm behind the curve anyway, I drive a gasoline V8 and use 93 octane.
There should almost be some kind of internal review board that determines whether malfeasance which is technically illegal rises to the level of involving the prosecutor's office and possibly filing charges, to prevent petty bureaucrats from being tyrants and using access to the police and prosecutor's office to essentially enforce trivial workplace rules.
The real problem, of course, is that "we" taxpayers hear about the 1-in-a-million case of malfeasance that some government flunky "gets away with" and then we demand the legislature make ridiculous laws that essentially make taking home a paperclip a felony, and failing to report it to law enforcement by their superior, a felony as well to ensure rigorous enforcement and that "no one is innocent."
Either you get the watch, or you don't. I learned to tell time in the second grade and George actually gave me his watch because he didn't know how to tell time and I did (mom and dad made me give it back).
Had a digital watch as soon as they got cheap in the 70s (those of you born in the mid 60s will remember that well, I'm sure), an LCD watch when those got cheap. Bought a new Timex LCD in 1986 and wore it more or less continuously until 2007 when my wife gave me a Tag Heuer self-winding chronograph.
I'll never look back. This watch is a tank, keeps good time and looks fairly smart. Plus NO batteries.
My 5 year old must be way less sophisticated than your 3 year old. He can't/won't stop playing Animatch (concentration, with wonderful cartoon animals that make amazing sounds) and I get lost playing Backgammon NJ.
Both apps are super, but beyond that I don't find the idea of most games on a tiny screen worthwhile, free or otherwise.
And how do I use on a plane or where I have no network access?
You're being a little too semantic. From a technical perspective, OK, the OS isn't that great (with respect to multitasking or memory management) but as a host for the apps that run on it and the hardware interface it provides (multitouch, the display, etc) its way better than the WinMo phones.
Sorry, but before I jumped the WinMo phones from Verizon sucked hard in comparison to the iPhone (HTC slider/touch and a Samsung).
Look, I was with you -- I thought the iPhone was total hype until I finally got sick of the shit from Verizon and made a leap of faith. Does it have flaws? Of course, but its really much better than ANY WinBlow phone.
It would suck, but Microsoft could have only done that if it had released hardware *and* an operating system that was as far ahead of the competition as the iPhone was from its competition. Apple had the advantage of a really high quality device and OS; when you make something good you get to make a lot of rules.
Apple will change their tune when the rest of the smartphone world catches up to them. Android will gain a lot of traction due to the Droid/Verizon combination; I think there are a lot of business customers dying for an iPhone who can only use Verizon and if they get Droids it will boost the usage considerably.
And some of it may depend on Apple's ability to "sell" these restrictions as features; if Android ends up with a ton of rogue apps targeting it, people may flee for a redistricted phone out of fear. It's not like Apple doesn't aggressively market itself as free from the virus problems of PCs already.
OK, then strike that and change, "access to the best boys available."
Is ensuring he has a new Mercedes S600 every year, a decent yacht, a few homes, unlimited access to private jets, and access to the best schools for his children.
Why would you need to spend more money on health benefits for the poor if you have the National Health Service? Doesn't that provide universal health care regardless of income?
I'm not super close to this guy. I think part of the gimmick is the vehicle is large enough to be classified a truck, and IIRC trucks are treated differently than cars and are allowed greater depreciation. He didn't get deep enough into it to explain how it worked completely, but he did say it made too much sense to buy this expensive monster vs. something smaller like he had (Lexus GS430 sedan). He said the 3 year depreciation was so good that it was like buying a much, much cheaper vehicle.
Either way, his entire business seems like its a house of cards should he get seriously audited. I don't know if the IRS can look at what's been done as *technically* correct but still disallow it as abusive, but my guess is he's looking at that kind of a situation.
Fucking great. More resources wasted by state tax authorities strong-arming middle class shoppers for a couple hundred bucks in sales taxes while corporations and the wealthy *flaunt* the tax system for their own enrichment. Nothing like the strong taking on the weak, who almost always have no choice but to roll over and pay whatever the authorities claim they are supposed to pay because its another 8x defending yourself.
A "consultant" I know works exclusively for his wife's father's business (essentially an employee), but uses all the tax loopholes available to businesses to avoid taxes. Actually he doesn't actually save any money, he uses the loop holes to buy expensive cars and then take the depreciation. Given his sham consultancy, the state lost more on his Mercedes SUV depreciation deduction than any 10 consumers buying crap off Amazon.
But its a good thing the state goes after the little guy rather than the obvious cheat.
The thing I find really amusing about these use tax claims is my local city has a couple of tax surcharges and about every other tax time the paper runs an article with some finance geek from the city spouting his line on how city residents buying stuff outside of the city and hence not paying the city 0.25% surcharge are supposed to remit the difference!
It cracks me up.
I'd contact an employment attorney first and figure out what my options were when the boss fired me after I ratted him out to the BSA, and depending on the attorney or practice, have them document what your potential legal exposure may be if you turn the business in.
It may be possible to have the attorney contact the BSA anonymously on your behalf; your work with the attorney is protected as privileged communication so they may not be able to find out who turned them in, even if the BSA wanted to tell them.
At least this way you'd know what you'd be up against and would have everything lined up in case the employer tried to retaliate. In some cases you may be able to set them up so that you *want* them to retaliate so you can respond with a civil action.
The other day a friend called to warn me about a speed trap being run on a road I travel a lot. The Edina, MN police were running (another...) speed trap on MN-62 near Gleason Road, this time with FIVE squad cars involved. One parked on the overpass, presumably clocking the drivers, and four cars actually writing tickets.
The initial stunner was 5 squads; I don't know that Edina has more than a half-dozen or so squads on the streets at any one time.
Then we started thinking about the cost of a squad car -- I figure a well-equipped, late-model squad car is probably a $100k-150k when you factor in all the goodies -- Crown Vic police interceptor, voice radios, cell phones, mobile data, laptop, radar gun, lighting, weapons (I'm pretty sure Edina squads carry shotguns and MP5s or AR15s) and any other goodies the pack inside them.
Even at the low end, $100k, was that a great way to use a half-million dollars worth of public assets? And what was the hourly cost with the officer's salary and bennies thrown in, $200/hr? Were they really bringing in $1k/hr in fines? I suppose they might -- a speeding ticket being about $150, they'd only have to write about 7 tickets per hour among all of them. Assuming each officer could write two an hour (figuring all the paperwork and BS associated with them, that's probably not far off), they might get to knock off early.
...when seconds count, the cops are only minutes away.
What happens when Rupert croaks?
Theoretically he could remain vital enough into his 90s to keep at it, although he could be six feet under before too long. He certainly looks like a bitter end of a long, bad road. His kids aren't terribly interested in the business -- Elisabeth dropped out and Lachlan's cut back.
It seems less likely that without a strong, central figure that News Corp could maintain its ideological bent..
...it been taken out in the U.S.?
If there's a dozen guys pissed off and zealous/brave/willing/stupid enough to hijack planes and fly them into buildings, surely there's 100s more pissed off guys with m@d sk1llz who could do this, and wouldn't be held back because it's not a suicide mission, and doesn't directly burn thousands to death in an ensuing fire and crash.
And I'd wager that hacking the power system is probably a decidedly less resource-intensive activity than even small-scale physical attacks (bomb/gun/kidnapping/etc), the participants can engage in almost total anonymity, and there's no messy explosives/weapons to buy or store or get caught with. All this means its something that even a lone crank could pull off, opening the doors to a whole panoply of groups with gripes, including or especially all manner of domestic crackpots. You don't need Al Quaalude or zillions of dollars or a complex intelligence network.
Forcing the grid offline and in a way that kept it down/brain damaged for any length of time over 48-72 hours, especially if it was widespread, would have such a cascading effect and probably spawn anarchy. At a minimum billions lost, thousands killed, possibly riots or widespread civil disorder. Katrina times 9/11. So the effect would be substantial and easily deniable, making it the kind of thing China or Russia or any other competitive major power might want to do just to fuck with the Americans and keep them off balance.
Yet it hasn't happened here or Western Europe or most modern Asian countries. Why?
I'll admit I may have the skip limitations down, but some of the "stations" I've defined are based on very specific songs, and switching to another station doesn't help me with more songs in the same vein as the ones on that station.
Perhaps you can game the system and define different accounts, multiple stations with the same songs, etc, but at that point its more effort than its worth.
Is to get 10 recommendations I have to listen to 10 songs in a row due to their skip limitations.
They can keep their skip limitation, that's fine, I get the licensing problem they have.
But why can't I get a simple list of the next N (10, 20...100?) songs they'd recommend based on my current "station"? It might even improve their recommendation engine for me because I could thumbs up/down (and I suppose, "I'm tired of this one", too) the songs and cut through the cruft faster. Sort of like Netflix "Rate Movies" engine which allows for more inputs to the rating system.
I also am annoyed that you can add a *song*, which is highly specific, or an artist which is somehwhat specific, but not highly so given some artists creative changes over time, but you cannot add by *album*.
For example, IMNSHO REM's Chronic Town, Murmur & Reckoning are brilliant and most everything else after is less (often much less) so. Adding those *albums* defines a general yet atomic set of musical criteria; adding the entire band and all its albums biases it much more towards the later records, even by sheer weight of number of songs.
This is true for dozens of bands whose sound changed substantially over time or whose last N albums were horseshit or whatever.
All in all, I *want* to like it but the "service" doesn't mesh with how I listen to music from a practicality sense (streaming via iPhone blows on my car stereo and is a battery hog elsewhere) and 10 recommendations aren't worth 30 minutes of sitting down.
I can see where it makes sense to tailor the anecdote to higher-end professions, but the version that's always stuck with me and been one that anyone can relate to is the auto mechanic.
A driver takes his car to the mechanic to find out why the car is making a strange noise and running rough. The mechanic says he will look at it. He opens the hood, listens and then grabs a hammer from his toolbox and hits the engine block. The car quits running rough and the noise goes away.
The mechanic turns to the customer and says "That'll be $500." The customer says "You're crazy if you think I'm paying you $500 to hit my car with a hammer." The mechanic says "You don't understand. Hitting the engine with a hammer is free. Knowing where to hit it? That's $500."
I like this version better because (a) almost everyone has experience with a car and a mechanic, and (b) it teaches people that the "work" may often *appear* simple but in actuality even the lowly blue-collar mechanic has information you don't to fix a problem.
I've told this anecdote countless times to my IT consulting customers who are, on occasion, miffed because they called me in to resolve a problem and I billed them an hour for what appeared to be a trivial amount of work. Almost always they kind of laugh and "get it" that what they're paying for isn't always some large unit of labor but for the skills and experience of someone who knows something they don't.
Is that what this is for?
A lot of socially attractive (meaning they are considered attractive by their peers and others, not that they meet some objective standard) women reject childbearing because of its so-called negative impact on their appearance -- the weight gain, the accelerated sagging of breasts, and if the news reports on genital cosmetic surgery are to be believed, the effects on genital appearance as well.
It seems like whenever I read about a Hollywood actress with children, they're often adopted, which I can't help but associate with a certain narcissism.
But from what I've read, though, it's not the trivial social attractiveness (which is often highly manipulated by cosmetics, clothing, branding, etc) that matters in reproduction, it's the more subtle cues in relationship to bust-hip ratios and other sort of non-conscious cues about child rearing capacity. Social attractiveness is really just a glamorization of those cues.
IMHO, the more subtle cues are what account for the MILF phenomenon; "real" MILFs (as opposed to porn stars merely labeled) directly portray fertility cues, since presumably they were mothers.
Love it. But you misspelled "Government Sachs".
I'm actually pretty underwhelmed by the maps in standalone GPS. I bought a DeLorme PN40; the maps are OK in the mapping application but I found it significantly less useful than google maps on my iPhone as a mapping device.
It was useful ATVing in the mountains of Arizona because the maps had the trails marked, but many of the other map features (terrain, etc) were plain hard to use due to the low-res screen and the chunky maps. I don't think it was a DeLorme issue, either, I looked at the other big brands before buying.
Even when planning trips, I found Google Maps 10x easier to use and the terrain feature far more useful than the topo lines included in the maps.
My dream is something like the iPhone in terms of usability (touchscreen, big, hi-res display, color) with maybe a couple more dedicated buttons and of course ruggedized to PN-40 standards, but with the visual quality of Google maps (cached locally to flash, of course).