Japan did it right. For various reasons they were very, very slow to accept credit cards. It is not uncommon for people to spend the equivalent of several thousand USD in cash for large purchases. When convenience was desired for small purchases, prepaid cards came into the picture that had nothing to do with credit cards and could be refilled for cash at kiosks located in department stores, train stations, hotels, etc. They can be anonymous or registered with a protected balance, are tied to rewards programs, etc. The end result was the big credit card companies had to beg merchants to accept their cards, and you're still much more likely to find EDY or a transit pass accepted at a merchant or vending machine than you will a credit card.
Adding to your list, the Chase Freedom card. Also, often simply having a bank account with a bank is usually enough to get that bank's rewards card.
There's also the fact that with halfway decent rewards programs, the annual fee cards provide annual bonus/perks that are typically worth more than the cash price of the fee. For example, Southwest Airlines various cards provide varying degrees of points / cash vouchers worth almost the cost of the fee itself. Marriott's credit cards actually exceed the value of the annual fee with the free night coupon(s) alone, and there's a lot more than that as an annual bonus perk.
The shipping is essentially free, which is why we do it. We buy a ton of goods from China, ships come in packed to the brim with cheap goods, then the ships and containers need to go back empty. Putting some ultra low value cargo in them for the trip back makes sense.
I suspect the Japanese sorting is ignored at the institutional level nowadays. If you look closely at the recycle bins attached to vending machines, they've removed the partition between "PET Bottle" (aka plastic) and "Can / Bottle" (aka aluminum), it goes into the same bin.
This is not as terrible as it sounds. The deposit fee in the Northeast hasn't kept up with inflation, but in the 90s/early 00s it was commonplace for homeless to push around large shopping carts with aluminum cans / glass bottles. There were no recycle bins anywhere, but the homeless/poor would gladly take the containers from you. I would put out two recycling bags, both clear plastic, one with deposit items and one with the non-redeemables. Without fail, the deposit item bag would disappear long before the official recycling truck came by. I found out there were a few ambitious people who would drive around the neighborhood grabbing them, they even had routes and agreed upon territories, it was quite interesting. Since my bag alone covered a gallon of gas, I'm pretty sure they made money. I wonder if they drive for Uber now...
I kinda wish all future Boeing orders used the Dreamliner platform instead. Go bold and move on from single aisle. Even with 9 across seating it feels less cramped than a 737, because you have 4.5 seats per square of aisle space instead of 6. This means faster loading/unloading, more bin space, a 2nd route to the restrooms (which can be large and more plentiful) if the drink cart is out. It might be too much plane for some routes, but anytime you have a 737-900 / max9 fully sold out, the extra seats would have come in handy.
They should focus their energies on in-house smarthome products. It's annoying that most of the Alexa-integrated products out there are 3rd party, and reading the reviews the reliability is suspect (or they're more tuned for Google, or worse owned by them as is the case with Nest). Amazon makes plugs and the echo itself, but that seems to be about it.
The everpresent hum of central AC is very calming. As long as the outdoor temperature isn't expected to drop below 55, I turn it on in fan mode most nights as a white noise generator. At work it keeps stress low, whenever they turn it off for maintenance the silence throws everyone off.
This is where the trend towards installing driving monitoring devices for lower car insurance will lead. Eventually it will be too expensive to not get one.
Oh man, status bar *and* word wrap at the same time?!? Not even sarcasm here, I never thought they would ever have bothered with it, yet the either-or choice annoyed me to no end (quick notes i wanted word wrapped, but config files I wanted line numbers). What next, having cake and eating it too?
The only time I ever witnessed an accident it was caused by an oblivious Subaru driver. Subaru had been weaving in and out of traffic randomly and getting very close to sideswiping other cars, so I dutifully sped past him until he disappeared in my rearview. Figured if he caused an accident at least it would be behind me, but a few minutes later he came from out of nowhere going ~75, passed me on the entrance lane to the right and plowed into a slower car (going maybe ~60MPH) like it wasn't even there. Then had the nerve to sue the driver he hit. I'm glad I stuck around to give my account and info to the cops, because a year later his lawyer called asking for details about the wreck. Subaru driver claimed the other car brake checked him. When I mentioned neither car had hit their brakes, he dropped Subaru douche like a hot potato.
Roads like that it is understood that the left lane isn't an overtaking lane (unless there is also a center turn lane), just two lanes going the same direction where one or the other may be slowed down by turning traffic.
For limited access divided highways, in many (but not all states), "keep right except to pass" is a law. In NY on the Thruway the signs are in the exact same font, size and style as the speed limit sign, suggesting equal weight should be given to the two.
What if your insurance company gets wind of this, and offers a better rate if you opt in to some kind of governor? (and eventually makes it cost prohibitive to not opt in?)
The same thing that happens with most regulations that make dangerous things more expensive; the rich can still play with their toys while the rest of us look on in envy. Working as intended.
I'd rather it be customisable to set either a percentage or flat offset of the posted limit. That offset could be positive or negative and that percentage could exceed 100.
I still share because all the data on what episodes of TV shows I'm up to, what movies I've seen, watch list, ratings, etc are on someone else's account. If I were to get my own, I'd have to write all that crap down. A simple "migrate profile to new account" feature would go along way to getting people to move to their own account.
When you can't try out software on some cheap commodity hardware, it never even gets to the cost-benefit analysis. Fronting tens of thousands of dollars just to try out a software-hardware combination is a non-starter in almost any company. x86 wins because the difference between a vm running on a dev's/sysadmin's laptop and one running in a VMWare or Hyper-V architecture is almost non-existent - they know what they're getting before they've spent any money.
At least ARM has some netbooks floating around with the architecture. IBM didn't bother to try and keep Apple on their architecture, and that has hurt the ability to court new customers.
In another state they tried to do simple fingerprinting of existing IT employees and got smacked down, and it was at employer's expense. Are Arizona's public employee unions made of toilet paper?
This phenomena manifests itself in a lot of rail projects. For some reason, they build less important segments first, under the mistaken notion that no one would cancel it before they get to the meat. Here are some examples: 1. San Juan (PR)'s Tren Urbano - Doesn't go to the airport, the tourist district, or the largest shopping mall in the Caribbean (Plaza Las Americas). The latter two locations are traffic nightmares. Hell most visitors to San Juan have no idea it even *has* a metro! 2. New York City's massive 2nd avenue subway project (the variant begun in the 1960s). They dug tunnels at the extreme north and south ends of the line. They also constructed a double deck 63st tunnel under the river for both subway and LIRR, but built absolutely nothing that would connect to an existing line before the money ran out. The subway level eventually opened as a stub connecting Manhattan to a single stop in Queens in 1990 (later connected to an existing main subway line in Queens in 2001 to make it less useless), and the LIRR level will open in 2022, pathetic timeline for a tunnel that was largely completed by the mid 1970s. 3. Toronto - Sheppard Subway - there was a lot of ambition intending it to connect multiple subway lines, but what ended up getting built was only 4 stops through purely residential areas on the outskirts of Toronto.
This was how I discovered backups weren't quite working right for a specific piece of closed source software (something like Sharepoint before there was a Sharepoint). The company had gone out of business so there was no support. I was tasked with learning this piece of unsupported software so my first step was to restore the product's proprietary backup file using the instructions provided by the vendor in order to create a dev environment. After working with this environment for a few weeks I realized the restore process produced something that on the surface *looked* like it worked but was actually missing random chunks of content. After pointing this out to higher ups, I was tasked with finding a restore procedure that would work. Due to the nature of the content being an unholy mess of data stored in flat files and a database, restoring ones taken while the product was active resulted in a non-functioning product. The ultimate solution was to shut down the software daily just before the nightly file system and DB backups.
Lessons learned: 1) anything less than actually performing a restore and using the resulting service is insufficient backup testing 2) if you ever encounter a web application that "closes" every night as if it were a brick and mortar business, some nonsense like this is probably why.
Slashdot Mirror
QCOM jumped $13 (23%) the moment this news broke.
Thanks for that, it looks like I'm one of today's lucky 10,000 who never heard of The Phantom Edit until today.
Japan did it right. For various reasons they were very, very slow to accept credit cards. It is not uncommon for people to spend the equivalent of several thousand USD in cash for large purchases. When convenience was desired for small purchases, prepaid cards came into the picture that had nothing to do with credit cards and could be refilled for cash at kiosks located in department stores, train stations, hotels, etc. They can be anonymous or registered with a protected balance, are tied to rewards programs, etc. The end result was the big credit card companies had to beg merchants to accept their cards, and you're still much more likely to find EDY or a transit pass accepted at a merchant or vending machine than you will a credit card.
Here's an article from a Singaporean newspaper: Parliament: Law against online falsehoods will not stifle free speech, say ministers.
Adding to your list, the Chase Freedom card.
Also, often simply having a bank account with a bank is usually enough to get that bank's rewards card.
There's also the fact that with halfway decent rewards programs, the annual fee cards provide annual bonus/perks that are typically worth more than the cash price of the fee. For example, Southwest Airlines various cards provide varying degrees of points / cash vouchers worth almost the cost of the fee itself. Marriott's credit cards actually exceed the value of the annual fee with the free night coupon(s) alone, and there's a lot more than that as an annual bonus perk.
The shipping is essentially free, which is why we do it. We buy a ton of goods from China, ships come in packed to the brim with cheap goods, then the ships and containers need to go back empty. Putting some ultra low value cargo in them for the trip back makes sense.
I suspect the Japanese sorting is ignored at the institutional level nowadays. If you look closely at the recycle bins attached to vending machines, they've removed the partition between "PET Bottle" (aka plastic) and "Can / Bottle" (aka aluminum), it goes into the same bin.
This is not as terrible as it sounds. The deposit fee in the Northeast hasn't kept up with inflation, but in the 90s/early 00s it was commonplace for homeless to push around large shopping carts with aluminum cans / glass bottles. There were no recycle bins anywhere, but the homeless/poor would gladly take the containers from you. I would put out two recycling bags, both clear plastic, one with deposit items and one with the non-redeemables. Without fail, the deposit item bag would disappear long before the official recycling truck came by. I found out there were a few ambitious people who would drive around the neighborhood grabbing them, they even had routes and agreed upon territories, it was quite interesting. Since my bag alone covered a gallon of gas, I'm pretty sure they made money. I wonder if they drive for Uber now...
A billion years go by and it's turned back into burnable oil for the next iteration of sentient life to burn.
I kinda wish all future Boeing orders used the Dreamliner platform instead. Go bold and move on from single aisle. Even with 9 across seating it feels less cramped than a 737, because you have 4.5 seats per square of aisle space instead of 6. This means faster loading/unloading, more bin space, a 2nd route to the restrooms (which can be large and more plentiful) if the drink cart is out. It might be too much plane for some routes, but anytime you have a 737-900 / max9 fully sold out, the extra seats would have come in handy.
They should focus their energies on in-house smarthome products. It's annoying that most of the Alexa-integrated products out there are 3rd party, and reading the reviews the reliability is suspect (or they're more tuned for Google, or worse owned by them as is the case with Nest). Amazon makes plugs and the echo itself, but that seems to be about it.
The everpresent hum of central AC is very calming. As long as the outdoor temperature isn't expected to drop below 55, I turn it on in fan mode most nights as a white noise generator. At work it keeps stress low, whenever they turn it off for maintenance the silence throws everyone off.
Expecting a dire wolf. Was not disappointed.
Such a commanist thing to do!
This is where the trend towards installing driving monitoring devices for lower car insurance will lead. Eventually it will be too expensive to not get one.
Oh man, status bar *and* word wrap at the same time?!? Not even sarcasm here, I never thought they would ever have bothered with it, yet the either-or choice annoyed me to no end (quick notes i wanted word wrapped, but config files I wanted line numbers). What next, having cake and eating it too?
The only time I ever witnessed an accident it was caused by an oblivious Subaru driver. Subaru had been weaving in and out of traffic randomly and getting very close to sideswiping other cars, so I dutifully sped past him until he disappeared in my rearview. Figured if he caused an accident at least it would be behind me, but a few minutes later he came from out of nowhere going ~75, passed me on the entrance lane to the right and plowed into a slower car (going maybe ~60MPH) like it wasn't even there. Then had the nerve to sue the driver he hit. I'm glad I stuck around to give my account and info to the cops, because a year later his lawyer called asking for details about the wreck. Subaru driver claimed the other car brake checked him. When I mentioned neither car had hit their brakes, he dropped Subaru douche like a hot potato.
Roads like that it is understood that the left lane isn't an overtaking lane (unless there is also a center turn lane), just two lanes going the same direction where one or the other may be slowed down by turning traffic.
For limited access divided highways, in many (but not all states), "keep right except to pass" is a law. In NY on the Thruway the signs are in the exact same font, size and style as the speed limit sign, suggesting equal weight should be given to the two.
What if your insurance company gets wind of this, and offers a better rate if you opt in to some kind of governor? (and eventually makes it cost prohibitive to not opt in?)
The same thing that happens with most regulations that make dangerous things more expensive; the rich can still play with their toys while the rest of us look on in envy. Working as intended.
I'd rather it be customisable to set either a percentage or flat offset of the posted limit. That offset could be positive or negative and that percentage could exceed 100.
I still share because all the data on what episodes of TV shows I'm up to, what movies I've seen, watch list, ratings, etc are on someone else's account. If I were to get my own, I'd have to write all that crap down. A simple "migrate profile to new account" feature would go along way to getting people to move to their own account.
When you can't try out software on some cheap commodity hardware, it never even gets to the cost-benefit analysis. Fronting tens of thousands of dollars just to try out a software-hardware combination is a non-starter in almost any company. x86 wins because the difference between a vm running on a dev's/sysadmin's laptop and one running in a VMWare or Hyper-V architecture is almost non-existent - they know what they're getting before they've spent any money.
At least ARM has some netbooks floating around with the architecture. IBM didn't bother to try and keep Apple on their architecture, and that has hurt the ability to court new customers.
In another state they tried to do simple fingerprinting of existing IT employees and got smacked down, and it was at employer's expense. Are Arizona's public employee unions made of toilet paper?
This phenomena manifests itself in a lot of rail projects. For some reason, they build less important segments first, under the mistaken notion that no one would cancel it before they get to the meat. Here are some examples:
1. San Juan (PR)'s Tren Urbano - Doesn't go to the airport, the tourist district, or the largest shopping mall in the Caribbean (Plaza Las Americas). The latter two locations are traffic nightmares. Hell most visitors to San Juan have no idea it even *has* a metro!
2. New York City's massive 2nd avenue subway project (the variant begun in the 1960s). They dug tunnels at the extreme north and south ends of the line. They also constructed a double deck 63st tunnel under the river for both subway and LIRR, but built absolutely nothing that would connect to an existing line before the money ran out. The subway level eventually opened as a stub connecting Manhattan to a single stop in Queens in 1990 (later connected to an existing main subway line in Queens in 2001 to make it less useless), and the LIRR level will open in 2022, pathetic timeline for a tunnel that was largely completed by the mid 1970s.
3. Toronto - Sheppard Subway - there was a lot of ambition intending it to connect multiple subway lines, but what ended up getting built was only 4 stops through purely residential areas on the outskirts of Toronto.
This was how I discovered backups weren't quite working right for a specific piece of closed source software (something like Sharepoint before there was a Sharepoint). The company had gone out of business so there was no support. I was tasked with learning this piece of unsupported software so my first step was to restore the product's proprietary backup file using the instructions provided by the vendor in order to create a dev environment. After working with this environment for a few weeks I realized the restore process produced something that on the surface *looked* like it worked but was actually missing random chunks of content. After pointing this out to higher ups, I was tasked with finding a restore procedure that would work. Due to the nature of the content being an unholy mess of data stored in flat files and a database, restoring ones taken while the product was active resulted in a non-functioning product. The ultimate solution was to shut down the software daily just before the nightly file system and DB backups.
Lessons learned:
1) anything less than actually performing a restore and using the resulting service is insufficient backup testing
2) if you ever encounter a web application that "closes" every night as if it were a brick and mortar business, some nonsense like this is probably why.