Any new news on eliminating pennies?
on
Making Change
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· Score: 1
I've read several times that there could be substantial savings from just plain eliminating pennies and rounding to the nearest nickle.
Of couse they could eliminate $1 and $5 bills while they're at it and replace them with coins instead. But even the new Sacajawea dollar is almost never seen, another failure in the US for something sensible. I try to keep merchants aware by getting a roll at the bank every couple of weeks and spending them instead of paper.
But I have yet to see any coin machines that use them. The one machine I'm aware of that dispenses dollar-denominated change still spits out Susan B. Anthony dollars. Even more expensive vending machines at airports (the kind you can get a sandy or something out of) either take sub-$1 coins or bills, no dollar coins.
For this vac's money, I get someone to come to my house every three weeks and clean all the rooms (scrub kitchen and bathroom) as well as launder the towels and bathroom rugs for about a year.
Why can't they make a "generic" optical disc that can be written in any format (CD, DVD-R, DVD+R, etc) up to whatever the granularity of the dye is?
I know its probably a dumb question, but it seems like there's no reason I shouldn't be able to write a CD-R format disc onto a DVD-R, at least in terms of pit density.
One day on the bus home from campus, I sat next to two people having a conversation about philosophy. The one doing most of the talking was a fairly typical long-haired pseudointellectual type making a kind a claim about existence similar to Descartes but more in line with Berkeley.
After hearing him repeat "But I can't know if you really exist -- you could just be a figment of my imagination" in response to protests from his companion, I leaned forward with the following suggestion to the annoying metaphysician:
"After I punch you in the nose as hard as I can, will you tell me again about my being just a figment of your imagination, or will you just be too busy wiping away imaginary blood?"
Unfortunately I wasn't too original. I remember a philosophy lecture where Berkeley arrives at the home of a rival philospher (Locke?) in a rainstorm and finds the door locked. He bangs on the door loudly demanding to be let in, and his friend leans out the window and asks him what the problem is. Berekely complains that its raining, he's wet and cold, and the door is locked. His friend laughs and says "George, the door, the lock and the rain are all just figments of your imagination -- can't you get past them?"
Actually, "compleat" for "complete" in the titles of guidebooks is an ancient and revered practice, going back to this book.
Bah, it's just an attempt to upgrade it into something it is not.
It's not much different than the irritating practice of the local strip mall being referred to "The Shoppes of Glen Woode" or the local convention hall being called "River Centre".
They all just appear to be copping Olde British Spellings to grant status.
When they released the new $10s (which was not long after the new $20s), I had several places where I used the new $10 give me the change as if I had given them a $20.
I think it happened 3-4 times within a week or so, I'm pretty sure I netted at least $40 off of that.
I don't know if its tough times, the recent bad business press, Microsoft, or what, but it seems like the entire business world is being run by the Mafia, only with less ostentatious taste in clothes and a little less violence.
It's all about fixing prices, monopolies, screwing your employees, cheating investors, lining your own pockets, lying and stealing.
Have I suddenly just woken up from a dream world where businesses worked to build better products because better products sold better and made for happier consumers?
Weren't there a couple of "mail dumping" incidents a couple of years ago?
IIRC, they found one postal worker with a whole basement/attic/whatever filled with undelivered mail, and other worker was found to be dumping it under an overpass or something.
The residents had complained for years about poor mail service, lost mail, etc and when they finally found out what was going on it looked like the whole postal zone was a fscking disaster (bad management, etc etc etc).
Overall, this seems like a rare exception. I've never had a bill not get paid or not gotten something due to the post office.
In fact, I've had more problems with UPS trashing packages.
I wish more places used a Disney fastpass-style system.
I try to schedule an annual trip to Valleyfair here in MN on some oddball Tuesday when it looks like its going to rain, it usually cuts the wait by about half, but some rides *still* have an annoying wait.
Some suggestions for amusement park execs:
1) Have limited-admission days where park admission is capped. Charge more to get in to make up the difference.
2) Upcharge (2x? 3x?) admission to allow some kind of limited queue-jumping system (maybe a less restrictive fastpass deal where you could get multiple fastpasses for different rides). Set the fee high enough where not everyone does it.
3) Maybe just make more fun rides and fewer megabucks rides. Nobody buys your overpriced food or stuff when they're stuck in a queue. I have a great time on the scary-maintenance rides at the State Fair, and I almost never wait for them, and those rides are usually small enough that they can be folded up and transported on a semi trailer or two.
Is that just plain guide data? I'm not in front of the Tivo so I can't see what would come up.
The guide data could be used to *infer* some of this (eg, show description, year, etc), but it wouldn't be 100% accurate.
Season would be a guess and only accurate within 6 months, since a Jan 2003 episode and a December 2003 episode would likely be different seasons.
Gauging episodes would be easier if a code could be definitively associated with an episode, instead of just relying on the text of the episode description or title. Something numeric and unique would be better, like "Episode 34".
The first would be a hash code (and Tivo would likely have to do this themselves, probably with 95% automation and 5% human intervention) that indicated the show, the season and the episode. Masking the code would enable you to determine the show or the season or the episode.
The second which I mentioned in another reply would be adding two options to season passes. The first would be "Channel: All Channels or This Channel Only". The second would be a refinement of the first run/rerun option, "This Season or All Seasons".
Setting up a season pass with "All Channels, This Season Only" would grab "Friends" on any channel, but only for the current season. So you wouldn't get the 1st and second tier reruns on other channels.
Seasons should be pretty easy for Tivo to pick up, at least within 6 months of accuracy since it seems that all the shows have a season datecode.
Perfect? No, but it would help a little.
Re:Season Pass anomolies
on
TiVo Basic
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· Score: 1
God no. I'd hate to have to filter out the bazillion Simpsons episodes being syndicated if I just want to record what's on Fox. Or Friends or any other popular show that's in syndication.
There should be no TV shows in syndication where the same episodes are available on multiple channels. Syndication agreements generally are exclusive for a given market, so this shouldn't be an issue for syndicated programs.
I'd like to see an "all channels" option for season passes where it would hop channels. This could be refined with a "this season only" to avoid picking up syndicated re-runs on other channels.
Uh, because it's the same show on the same channel?
But its not the same season and its not the same timeslot, and Tivo will record both the original timeslot and the rerun in the same night.
Like I mentioned above, if season passes had a "this season only" option, that'd fix this. I want this *season's* re-runs, but not previous seasons. The timeslot option I guess can't be fixed.
What I find odd is that Season Passes don't cover a show if it jumps channels. I've had two experiences with this: Robbery Homicide, which was on Saturdays on CBS jumped to Monday Night on USA, and Rockford Files switched from TVLAND to WGN. Same thing with Curb Your Enthusiasm -- it was on one of the alternative HBOs (HBO-Comedy or something) and not on HBO Prime, but it didn't record.
I know a title wishlist would have grabbed both of these, but it'd be nice if a season pass would follow channels, especially if the channels are related like the HBO(s).
Oddly, I have a Season Pass for Saturday Night Live and the local affialiate runs full-length re-reuns (from several seasons ago, not the current season or show) at 2 AM, and the Season Pass picks up both for some dumb reason.
Well engineered and good looking aren't really the same in my book. Yes, I find neatly engineered internals appealing, but it's not really a *case* aesthetic, especially once its been closed up.
I'll buy performance and price, but looks? The best cases for the money are usually pretty homely, and especially once I jam two optical drives, a zip drive, a floppy, and a jaz drive, none of which look alike, it gets even worse.
I suppose somebody wastes time on making the case look good, but not me.
But I believe the parent poster's concept was that the defendant would be able to force some limitation on spending by both parties. If Ford said "$10k is the cap", even if the lawyer you hired was a compentant engineer, you'd have trouble doing discovery for $10k, let alone trying a case.
I'd worry that people would use the spending limit as a shield to block cases that legitimately require $10-50k to get off the ground and into courts.
In the case of Ford, while their cost-justification was nefarious, is it legitimate? While the actual production cost was $4, perhaps the implementation cost of the change would have raised the price of a vehicle by $1000.
Might some people want the option of buying a more dangerous car at a lower price?
You can see a similar kind of argument often made around safety devices. Some new safety widget will save N lives, but add X dollars to the cost of a new car. Are N lives worth X*the number of cars? At what point do you stop and decide some people will die because you can't have a car that costs $250k?
An interesting idea, but what if it works against you?
Say I want to sue Acme Holes for selling a bad product. I sell my house and business to raise the money to do the investigation and the legal work. I'm prepared to spend $500,000.
Acme Chemical decides that they don't want to spend more than $1500 defending this. Can they use this as a valid defense?
Many product liability cases or other torts require a lot of really expensive research, expert testimony and other costly components in addition to lawyers. If big companies can just refuse to pay and play, how could you ever bring these kinds of cases?
Means testing might be worthwhile, but you could spend a year just figuring out whether or not a company had the 'means' to defend themselves at the the level you want -- and, recursively, wouldn't means testing hearings be also subject to means tests? "We find the defendent had the means to defend himself up to $25,000 until he spend $30,000 defending himself in the means testing process."
The other problem with means testing for individuals is say I have $50k in my 401k and $150k in home equity plus another $50k in personal possessions. Am I required to liquidate myself to meet a $250k trial obligation? Or can I simply hold up my $10k in savings as my sole means?
Unforunately you've got to suck it up and get HBO. All of their original programming is stellar -- Sopranos, Sex In The City, Oz, The Wire, Six Feet Under, Curb Your Enthusiasm are all outstanding programming.
Free TV doesn't have a damn thing that compares, IMHO.
Spam control has spent too much time focusing on how to get rid of people who send bulk email.
This is an issue because it leads to ridiculous proposals like taxing email. I won't even start on how naive to assume you can implement a new tax that stays at its rate and actually goes towards a dedicated purpose.
While the bulker mailers are responsible for the SMTP transaction, they're seldom behind the penis enlargers, the stock scams, the mortgage scams and the other fraudulent activity in almost all spam messages which is the real CAUSE of spam.
If we could just get the government(s) (local, state, federal) to focus their powers on following the money trail and jailing people committing fraud we'd make a big dent in spam, especially if many of the big bulk emailers were indicted as co-conspirators.
It's right to complain about spam, but without focusing on the root causes of it we risk monumentally stupid ideas like taxes, licensing and so on which won't solve anything and will only complicate the internet for ordinary people.
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I've read several times that there could be substantial savings from just plain eliminating pennies and rounding to the nearest nickle.
Of couse they could eliminate $1 and $5 bills while they're at it and replace them with coins instead. But even the new Sacajawea dollar is almost never seen, another failure in the US for something sensible. I try to keep merchants aware by getting a roll at the bank every couple of weeks and spending them instead of paper.
But I have yet to see any coin machines that use them. The one machine I'm aware of that dispenses dollar-denominated change still spits out Susan B. Anthony dollars. Even more expensive vending machines at airports (the kind you can get a sandy or something out of) either take sub-$1 coins or bills, no dollar coins.
For this vac's money, I get someone to come to my house every three weeks and clean all the rooms (scrub kitchen and bathroom) as well as launder the towels and bathroom rugs for about a year.
Hey! Don't knock masturbation. It's sex with somebody I love! --Woody Allen
I had a crazy idea this morning.
Why can't they make a "generic" optical disc that can be written in any format (CD, DVD-R, DVD+R, etc) up to whatever the granularity of the dye is?
I know its probably a dumb question, but it seems like there's no reason I shouldn't be able to write a CD-R format disc onto a DVD-R, at least in terms of pit density.
One day on the bus home from campus, I sat next to two people having a conversation about philosophy. The one doing most of the talking was a fairly typical long-haired pseudointellectual type making a kind a claim about existence similar to Descartes but more in line with Berkeley.
After hearing him repeat "But I can't know if you really exist -- you could just be a figment of my imagination" in response to protests from his companion, I leaned forward with the following suggestion to the annoying metaphysician:
"After I punch you in the nose as hard as I can, will you tell me again about my being just a figment of your imagination, or will you just be too busy wiping away imaginary blood?"
Unfortunately I wasn't too original. I remember a philosophy lecture where Berkeley arrives at the home of a rival philospher (Locke?) in a rainstorm and finds the door locked. He bangs on the door loudly demanding to be let in, and his friend leans out the window and asks him what the problem is. Berekely complains that its raining, he's wet and cold, and the door is locked. His friend laughs and says "George, the door, the lock and the rain are all just figments of your imagination -- can't you get past them?"
Actually, "compleat" for "complete" in the titles of guidebooks is an ancient and revered practice, going back to this book.
Bah, it's just an attempt to upgrade it into something it is not.
It's not much different than the irritating practice of the local strip mall being referred to "The Shoppes of Glen Woode" or the local convention hall being called "River Centre".
They all just appear to be copping Olde British Spellings to grant status.
When they released the new $10s (which was not long after the new $20s), I had several places where I used the new $10 give me the change as if I had given them a $20.
I think it happened 3-4 times within a week or so, I'm pretty sure I netted at least $40 off of that.
I don't know if its tough times, the recent bad business press, Microsoft, or what, but it seems like the entire business world is being run by the Mafia, only with less ostentatious taste in clothes and a little less violence.
It's all about fixing prices, monopolies, screwing your employees, cheating investors, lining your own pockets, lying and stealing.
Have I suddenly just woken up from a dream world where businesses worked to build better products because better products sold better and made for happier consumers?
Weren't there a couple of "mail dumping" incidents a couple of years ago?
IIRC, they found one postal worker with a whole basement/attic/whatever filled with undelivered mail, and other worker was found to be dumping it under an overpass or something.
The residents had complained for years about poor mail service, lost mail, etc and when they finally found out what was going on it looked like the whole postal zone was a fscking disaster (bad management, etc etc etc).
Overall, this seems like a rare exception. I've never had a bill not get paid or not gotten something due to the post office.
In fact, I've had more problems with UPS trashing packages.
I wish more places used a Disney fastpass-style system.
I try to schedule an annual trip to Valleyfair here in MN on some oddball Tuesday when it looks like its going to rain, it usually cuts the wait by about half, but some rides *still* have an annoying wait.
Some suggestions for amusement park execs:
1) Have limited-admission days where park admission is capped. Charge more to get in to make up the difference.
2) Upcharge (2x? 3x?) admission to allow some kind of limited queue-jumping system (maybe a less restrictive fastpass deal where you could get multiple fastpasses for different rides). Set the fee high enough where not everyone does it.
3) Maybe just make more fun rides and fewer megabucks rides. Nobody buys your overpriced food or stuff when they're stuck in a queue. I have a great time on the scary-maintenance rides at the State Fair, and I almost never wait for them, and those rides are usually small enough that they can be folded up and transported on a semi trailer or two.
Is that just plain guide data? I'm not in front of the Tivo so I can't see what would come up.
The guide data could be used to *infer* some of this (eg, show description, year, etc), but it wouldn't be 100% accurate.
Season would be a guess and only accurate within 6 months, since a Jan 2003 episode and a December 2003 episode would likely be different seasons.
Gauging episodes would be easier if a code could be definitively associated with an episode, instead of just relying on the text of the episode description or title. Something numeric and unique would be better, like "Episode 34".
I can think of two fixes.
The first would be a hash code (and Tivo would likely have to do this themselves, probably with 95% automation and 5% human intervention) that indicated the show, the season and the episode. Masking the code would enable you to determine the show or the season or the episode.
The second which I mentioned in another reply would be adding two options to season passes. The first would be "Channel: All Channels or This Channel Only". The second would be a refinement of the first run/rerun option, "This Season or All Seasons".
Setting up a season pass with "All Channels, This Season Only" would grab "Friends" on any channel, but only for the current season. So you wouldn't get the 1st and second tier reruns on other channels.
Seasons should be pretty easy for Tivo to pick up, at least within 6 months of accuracy since it seems that all the shows have a season datecode.
Perfect? No, but it would help a little.
God no. I'd hate to have to filter out the bazillion Simpsons episodes being syndicated if I just want to record what's on Fox. Or Friends or any other popular show that's in syndication.
There should be no TV shows in syndication where the same episodes are available on multiple channels. Syndication agreements generally are exclusive for a given market, so this shouldn't be an issue for syndicated programs. I'd like to see an "all channels" option for season passes where it would hop channels. This could be refined with a "this season only" to avoid picking up syndicated re-runs on other channels.
Uh, because it's the same show on the same channel?
But its not the same season and its not the same timeslot, and Tivo will record both the original timeslot and the rerun in the same night.
Like I mentioned above, if season passes had a "this season only" option, that'd fix this. I want this *season's* re-runs, but not previous seasons. The timeslot option I guess can't be fixed.
What I find odd is that Season Passes don't cover a show if it jumps channels. I've had two experiences with this: Robbery Homicide, which was on Saturdays on CBS jumped to Monday Night on USA, and Rockford Files switched from TVLAND to WGN. Same thing with Curb Your Enthusiasm -- it was on one of the alternative HBOs (HBO-Comedy or something) and not on HBO Prime, but it didn't record.
I know a title wishlist would have grabbed both of these, but it'd be nice if a season pass would follow channels, especially if the channels are related like the HBO(s).
Oddly, I have a Season Pass for Saturday Night Live and the local affialiate runs full-length re-reuns (from several seasons ago, not the current season or show) at 2 AM, and the Season Pass picks up both for some dumb reason.
Pro, shmo, I'd love to have a stereo audio MP3 HD recorder, but only if its ipod sized and is suitable for recording live shows.
Went into a BB store around Christmas and bought a $15 clock radio for my wife.
At the checkout, the clerk asked me if I wanted to spend $10 on their BS protection plan.
I told her "You have to be fucking joking. Why would I double the cost of this thing?"
My brother in law worked there for about a year, management isn't any worse than the criminal class that they employ.
Well engineered and good looking aren't really the same in my book. Yes, I find neatly engineered internals appealing, but it's not really a *case* aesthetic, especially once its been closed up.
I'll buy performance and price, but looks? The best cases for the money are usually pretty homely, and especially once I jam two optical drives, a zip drive, a floppy, and a jaz drive, none of which look alike, it gets even worse.
I suppose somebody wastes time on making the case look good, but not me.
It kind of would appear to be from the "shape" and the fact she's in some kind of commando outfit with holsters.
But I believe the parent poster's concept was that the defendant would be able to force some limitation on spending by both parties. If Ford said "$10k is the cap", even if the lawyer you hired was a compentant engineer, you'd have trouble doing discovery for $10k, let alone trying a case.
I'd worry that people would use the spending limit as a shield to block cases that legitimately require $10-50k to get off the ground and into courts.
In the case of Ford, while their cost-justification was nefarious, is it legitimate? While the actual production cost was $4, perhaps the implementation cost of the change would have raised the price of a vehicle by $1000.
Might some people want the option of buying a more dangerous car at a lower price?
You can see a similar kind of argument often made around safety devices. Some new safety widget will save N lives, but add X dollars to the cost of a new car. Are N lives worth X*the number of cars? At what point do you stop and decide some people will die because you can't have a car that costs $250k?
An interesting idea, but what if it works against you?
Say I want to sue Acme Holes for selling a bad product. I sell my house and business to raise the money to do the investigation and the legal work. I'm prepared to spend $500,000.
Acme Chemical decides that they don't want to spend more than $1500 defending this. Can they use this as a valid defense?
Many product liability cases or other torts require a lot of really expensive research, expert testimony and other costly components in addition to lawyers. If big companies can just refuse to pay and play, how could you ever bring these kinds of cases?
Means testing might be worthwhile, but you could spend a year just figuring out whether or not a company had the 'means' to defend themselves at the the level you want -- and, recursively, wouldn't means testing hearings be also subject to means tests? "We find the defendent had the means to defend himself up to $25,000 until he spend $30,000 defending himself in the means testing process."
The other problem with means testing for individuals is say I have $50k in my 401k and $150k in home equity plus another $50k in personal possessions. Am I required to liquidate myself to meet a $250k trial obligation? Or can I simply hold up my $10k in savings as my sole means?
Unforunately you've got to suck it up and get HBO. All of their original programming is stellar -- Sopranos, Sex In The City, Oz, The Wire, Six Feet Under, Curb Your Enthusiasm are all outstanding programming.
Free TV doesn't have a damn thing that compares, IMHO.
Spam control has spent too much time focusing on how to get rid of people who send bulk email.
This is an issue because it leads to ridiculous proposals like taxing email. I won't even start on how naive to assume you can implement a new tax that stays at its rate and actually goes towards a dedicated purpose.
While the bulker mailers are responsible for the SMTP transaction, they're seldom behind the penis enlargers, the stock scams, the mortgage scams and the other fraudulent activity in almost all spam messages which is the real CAUSE of spam.
If we could just get the government(s) (local, state, federal) to focus their powers on following the money trail and jailing people committing fraud we'd make a big dent in spam, especially if many of the big bulk emailers were indicted as co-conspirators.
It's right to complain about spam, but without focusing on the root causes of it we risk monumentally stupid ideas like taxes, licensing and so on which won't solve anything and will only complicate the internet for ordinary people.
The first MS application I ever remember was TASC (The AppleSoft Compiler).
IIRC it was two sides of a 5.25 floppy, each side of the floppy holding one of the two compiler stages.
Of course I never did anything useful with it, other than compiling brickout and being amazed at how unplayable it had become.
Shit, he believes in chiropractic for starters. Doesn't that worry you enough?