In my experience in Africa people tend to use flourescent tubes a lot. Not compact, but same energy savings.
In the 6 months that I've been working in Africa, I don't think I have seen any incandescent lamps except in vehicles. Everyone uses fluorescents, everywhere.
it's the fact that you can't transmit data back out of the cave.
Bet you $1000 I can. It's actually east to do.
Knowing people who have been designing and building (and of course, using) "Molephones" for some thirty years, "easy" (if that's what you meant) is probably not one of the first words that would spring to their lips.
Underwater molephones - even harder. Do-able, but harder. Actually - I'll ask Bob next time I see him... but the presence of a guide line might make taking data out by a leaky feeder feasible. But then how do you link line reels? Whatever.
A couple of messages further on you say:
Voice data speeds, a lot faster than we are sending data from mars to earth. Do you think we have a 100megabit connection to mars? It's massively less than a 56K modem in data transfer speeds.
Voice data is around about 5kHz bandwidth ; most phone lines can handle 4k8 to 9k6 baud without too high an error rate. 56kbps modems work by fitting multiple bits per baud and applying fancy signal processing at the receiver.
You're right that we don't have a 100megabit connection to Mars. A little Googling... shows me that something's not happy in NASA's network. So, going through a different route... nope, I can't waste more time on this. I think that the communications links between the Mars constellation (satellites and landers, sharing each other's comms links) has a several mega-bit/s link to Earth. There's around 7terabytes of data storage buffers in that constellation, so for a 1 mega-bit link, that buffer would take around 700 days to empty. Doesn't sound very sensible to me. I think their pipe is going to need to be considerably fatter than you're saying. A 100-megabit/second link would still take a week to empty the buffer - pretty dodgy!
Anyway, we're getting away from the point.
It has increased in speed because of tech for What we have there now but it's still not even 9600 baud.
I think that you're talking about an antenna that was transmitting directly from the surface of Mars to the surface of Earth. Which is why they don't do that any more.
In fact, as a caver, I've paid a bit more attention than most to the question of Martian (and Lunar) caves. The putative examples that have been put forward have all been in the form of lava tubes which have suffered a partial roof collapse. Such a cave would have a fairly good profile for getting data out - they tend to be relatively simple in profile, and relatively straight. So to get your rover in (and later out), you
1- anchor a main device at surface.
send a daughter rover over to the cave mouth, trailing a data and structural cable;
Daughter#1 lowers itself over the edge, on the cable, and manoeuvres down until it is supporting itself on the lip of the drop into the cave, on a tight rope to the anchor station.
Daughter#1 then splits off Daughter#2 which lowers itself down the cable to the cave floor. The (relatively) elevated position of Daughter#1 can provide literally another point of view for Daughter#2 to navigate by.
Beyond that, it's a question of fine choices whether the daughter#2 rover is to be retrieved, if it's detachable, how it gets power... lots of issues. If it goes off-cable, but still receives (say) power by microwave, that's fine, but it needs to send data back through the "eye in the sky" (OK, roof). If it's coming back, it'll need the cable to climb up. (That's why Daughter#1 is on the lip - to prevent the cable fraying on a rough edge, and to reduce the chance of rock fall following cable movement during the ascent phase.)
Unfortunately, the floors of caves tend to have rocks on them. This isn't a major problem for cave exploration per se, but for a light weight
Same form of failure in terms of it's outcomes as happened to the Phobos-Grunt spacecraft over the last couple of months.
The launcher delivers the satellite into a parking orbit, from which it then re-shuffles itself (ejects cowlings, etc) and then fires one or more burns to put itself into it's final orbit. In Phobos-Grunt's case, on a heading for Mars ; for this satellite, a different geocentric orbit. But for some reason (rags, software glitches?), the secondary burns don't happen. Shortly after, the satellite becomes a meteor, and maybe a constellation of impactors.
Its a meme that just won't die. As a guy who's been doing SMD at home on and off since the 80s for ham radio microwave gear, it gets tiring hearing for about three decades that what I find easy to do and enjoyable is "impossible" and will be the "death of homebrewing" and all that rot.
While I can see more or less what it looks like from your end of the telescope, try for a second looking from my end of the telescope : I've done soldering often enough over the last 30 years to have a reasonable degree of confidence what I'm doing. replacing burned out transistors on signal conditioner boards - check. Re-doing rotted cables in the car/ washing machine/ computer/ mains circuits - check. Building small (10-minus components) things onto strip board - check. When I see a problem that needs soldering, I know what needs to be done, what tools to get (beg/ steal/ borrow or buy ; I don't do it often enough to keep the tools in my toolbox). Building a board like the Raspberry-Pi would be daunting, but not terribly off-putting.
But Surface Mount? I've never, ever seen a spread for doing it ; I've no idea what so ever it needs in the way of equipment ; I don't even know anyone who has ever known anyone who has done it (or not that I know of). Where do I start? What do I need. How critical is component positioning? How do I get the soldering iron's tool to the right temperature. How do I control that temperature? Do I need to invest 7xRaspberry-Pi in a soldering iron/ station, or 20x?
I'd have to start an entire new technique about which, I know almost nothing. I'm quite sure I could do it (I re-soldered an SMD connector on a hard drive from a broken laptop once, which lasted long enough to get the data off the drive before the 06:00 report was due, and to save my friend's job.) But given the likely cost of the learning curve, it'll probably be a much better investment of time and effort to buy it ready-populated, or buy the wire-through-hole version. I didn't express prices above in units of "Raspberry-Pi" by accident.
Obligatory car analogy : I know what welding is ; I've got half an idea of how to do it ; when carrying out maintenance or repairs on my cars, I'll stick to things my socket set works on. If it needs welding, I'll get someone else to do the job, because I'm not interested in devoting the time and material into learning how to do something I'd only need rarely. And there are dozens of more occasions that I've considered "I need to weld that" than there have been occasions where I've thought "Ah, shit. SMD to be repaired. "Now", not "soon". And no spare board to change-out. Pass the soldering iron."
The barriers of entry are those of experience and equipment available. A half-way decent soldering iron and a solder-sucker are available in towns of a few tens of thousands ; living in a 1/3-million city, I *might* be able to find SMD equipment, but I don't know for sure. As for somebody who can show me "howto"... I simply don't know anyone. I'd have to go to, at least, friends of friends ; and likely further.
Estimated US casualties were somewhere around 500,000 to a million dead, conservatively.
So... proportionately, you're looking at around one third to two thirds of the casualty rate that the Spartans suffered at Thermopylae. In a rearguard action.
And how many times a year do you look at the results of a normal experiment (in my case, a batch test of numerous hypotheses concerning the stratigraphy, rock properties and fluid charge history of volumes of rock, based on well-analysed remote sensing data and well-founded models ; a.k.a. drilling an oil exploration well), and look at the results, and say "that's weird".
And then Bean-Counter Central comes back and says "We can't afford to reproduce those tests.
Uh huh. That would be "Going equipped to spread..." then which ever several of "sedition", "civil disobedience", "fear, uncertainty and doubt" (or many others) the officers choose to charge you with. After tasering you into submission, of course.
Furthermore, California's Celebrity Rights Act in 1985 protects a celebrity's personality rights up to 70 years after their death.
Jobs was a designer and/ or programmer. Quite a good one by many accounts (though I'm not taken by his designs, personally). But what makes that grounds for celebrity?
I was about to ask if he had paparazzi photographing him when he was skinny dipping with porn stars, snorting coke off lost iPhone prototypes in night clubs etc., etc.. Then I remembered Rule 34. So maybe "celebrity" with a lower-case 'c'. In 4 point greeked text. In pale yellow on a white background.
Watching the initial lunge, then looping back through the (I assume) cloud of food reminds me of excessive hours playing Elite in the 1980s (and Oolite these days) : hit ^H^H^H come across the recently blown-apart carcass of a pirate victim and try to gather as many cargo canisters from the rapidly expanding and dispersing cloud BEFORE they disperse to the solar wind, while trying to play off acceleration time (your fuel scoops only operate at maximum speed) against distance and time used in decelerating and turning to make another pass through the "cloud".
It's a ha-ha-but serious, but several SF authors have speculated about a future where cetaceans are carried on space combat ships because of their instinctive understanding of such zero-G tactics. It took me months of real-time game play to try to get these tactics efficient ; and the whales have developed very similar tactics too. I think that's cool.
In fact, I think that's so cool that I'm going to pass the link (and this comment) to an evolutionary science blogger I subscribe to.
In other news, the energetics of rorqual whales have been under study for a time, with several results being published in the last year or so. Imagine how you'd feel if you fed by running forward at full speed, opening your mouth, and having around your body weight of water slammed into your lower jaw. Sounds like fun? Next time I'm in company with a whale skeleton (hopefully cleaned!), I'm going to be looking at that mandible joint with a new appreciation for what they actually do. Verily, blind chance and disinterested elimination of the comparatively inefficient from the population can perform wonders of pseudo-design!
... other countries don't have to apply it in their own territory (crotch-groping airport security and copyright infringement excepted).
End of argument.
Most Middle Eastern states are various degrees of not-free speech. You know that before you go in (well, you do if you're not an utter idiot) ; entry is an implicit (and often explicit, in the conditions of your visa, contract or landing card) acceptance that their laws apply to you.
Ignorance of the law is not a defence.
Excuse me for not being terribly outraged about this. Not even surprised.
Hey! No fair. That's the exclusive right of the Euro-american White supremacists. Slopes can't go around doing things like that!. It's unfair!
They know that a couple shipments of C4 that mysteriously wind up in a bunch of insurgent hands go a lot further than sending PLA troops in a region.
Or sending money to the IRA. Or supporting army coups in multiple South American countries, when convenient. Such a path has never been trodden before!
This is how they can win a battle in a theater of conflict without a single member of the Han race ever firing a shot.
It's just immoral, the way these filthy slopes take ideas that the West has used for decades or centuries, and do the same themselves. And even worse, they do it better that we do! Disgusting!
Where could they have possibly learned such duplicity and hypocrisy?
(As for "shithole countries"... well, I actually quite like working in such, being reasonably well paid for doing so, being appreciated for my efforts, and hopefully decreasing the inequality between my home part of the world and the "shithole countries" by improving their conditions without worsening mine. It helps me sleep easily at night (even when the mosquitoes try to bite). But I don't call them "shithole countries", because the people are not shitholes.)
That and SimulView is also a feature I will definitely use at my friends house once he gets his setup straight.
I note that you've not actually spent your own money on this stuff. Or at least, that's how your comment reads.
I'll take it as a near certainty that the quality of display in 5 years will be considerably better than today, at lower prices, and with at least half of the contenders in $FORMAT_WAR$ dead and decomposed. So I'll consider looking at the technology then. Mean time, going round to my friend's house to drink beer, smoke indoors, and drink more beer (in between drinking whisky from Kleinsteins) sounds like a sufficiently frequent reason to watch his 3d system. While having a conversation. And drinking beer.
Sorry, were we talking about TV?
And WTF is Simulview? Is it like watching the telly out of the corner of your eye while reading email, listening to the radio, or talking to the wife?
(Oh, it's a Sony-ism? That puts it out of consideration then.)
terms of service that require the destruction of that item in the event of any kind of dispute are clearly unconscionable. The only honourable course of action in this kind of case is for the item to be returned to the seller and the buyer's money refunded.
Scenario : a seller is selling (say) Kingston USB flash drives of 256GB size for GBP 15 (a true laughing price).
They are scammers : Kingston make no such device (and their 64GB flash drives are about GBP 80 for a real one).
I buy one, then raise a "significantly not as described" dispute, because it fails a H2testW examination with 99% plus of the claimed storage faulty. I also report errors on the packaging that indicate that there is something suspicious about the device.
I force the seller to refund my money (which is where the PayPal ToS play into my hands), leave feedback and then face my next choice : return or not return? If I return it : (1) the seller re-sells the device to some other victim, who may lose important data because of their gullibility ; (2) I commit a criminal offence of knowingly sending counterfeit goods through the post (what - you think I'm going to use anything other than the lowest-cost delivery route?) ; (3) I've lost the evidence that my continuing legal complaint to the Trading Standards Office in the seller's home town may require. (I only bother to do this with fraudsters trading within my own country, of course.)
So, after getting my refund, I refuse to return the goods to the seller, and challenge them with "I can of course return the goods to Kingston, who will arrange their return to you by hammering your front door down with a half-dozen police officers." I've not had anyone take me up on it, yet.
When PayPal insist on seeing evidence of destruction, I've sent them the photos of the packaging, intact, concentrating on the typical packaging errors, and I CC the real manufacturers on the message too (I'm in communication with them long before this point, of course) and put them in the loop of "what evidence do we (the manufacturer) need to secure a case against the counterfeiter?"
Oh, and I leave negative feedback too.
(Obviously I do this as a sort of vindictive assault on counterfeit sellers ; it's not a casual thing, it's a deliberate attempt to make life difficult for them, up to and including jail time.)
The PayPal ToS are quite capable of dealing with some situations quite well. But situations where there could be reasonable uncertainty about the state of an object... antiques, for example ; fossils might be something that I'd encounter naturally, or minerals (I'm a professional geologist, and I make mistakes too)... well then PayPal's ToS could cause problems. So care must be taken.
We had shit applications before there were Windows. Hell, Windows 1.0 was a piece of shit DOS application, and Windows 2 was only a little better. Things didn't get reasonably stable until Win 3.11 with it's 13-odd year working life (some very odd years, others merely uneven.).
I bloody well hope not! I've got $136million in cash reserves and I'm building up my crew of psionic warriors to launch an Avenger back at Cydonia. What I really don't need is a dispute resolution procedure on a crummy Plasma Rifle to screw up my accounts.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO:_Enemy_Unknown , for those who weren't around in the 1980s. Still fun.)
The transaction details (stored by ebaY/ PayPal, in addition to what records the buyer and seller keep) surely include photographs of the original item with it's identifying marks. If not, then either the buyer or the seller was failing to carry out due diligence. For an antique item of potentially disputable authenticity, I'd certainly be retaining records like that, and asking for them in the event of considering buying such an item.
It looks as if antiquities are definitely NOT what the PayPal terms of service considered when writing their ToS. Which suggests that PayPal should not be the route for buying/ selling such items. Tough on PayPal ; sad for the owner of the original (assertedly "original", whatever that means) violin. But it has the smell of the Law of Unintended Consequences to me.
I occasionally taunt sellers of fake memory cards on ebaY, making use of the PayPal ToS to avoid returning their fake goods. For that purpose, the PayPal ToS are useful. Different courses require different horses.
Either that, or "those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it." Which is advice that I wish that half of our first-world countries' leaders would listen to. Fall of the Roman Empire, anyone?
What do you think is going to be learned from studying the Romans? It's not as if they learned anything from their predecessors, the Akkadians, Sumerians, Hittites and Persians, and the way their successive empires fell after over-extending themselves. Useless idiots - if they can't keep their regional hegemonies together for much longer than 500 years, it's not as if they can match the glorious decades of our current self-proclaimed overlords.
The legal specification of what percentage of handicapped spaces are required ought to be revisited to reflect reality.
Yes. For a city with (say) 5000 handicapped drivers, then the first 5000 parking places of each parking lot should be reserved for disabled drivers, and only then should parking places be made available for non-disabled drivers.
Let the able-bodied lard-arses get some exercise.
(I speak as an able-bodied lard arse. With a driving license, and a car and, on most days, an all-day bus ticket. It's quicker and easier going into town on the bus than driving into town and attempting to find a parking place. As it should be.)
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In the 6 months that I've been working in Africa, I don't think I have seen any incandescent lamps except in vehicles. Everyone uses fluorescents, everywhere.
Knowing people who have been designing and building (and of course, using) "Molephones" for some thirty years, "easy" (if that's what you meant) is probably not one of the first words that would spring to their lips.
Underwater molephones - even harder. Do-able, but harder. Actually - I'll ask Bob next time I see him ... but the presence of a guide line might make taking data out by a leaky feeder feasible. But then how do you link line reels? Whatever.
A couple of messages further on you say :
Voice data is around about 5kHz bandwidth ; most phone lines can handle 4k8 to 9k6 baud without too high an error rate. 56kbps modems work by fitting multiple bits per baud and applying fancy signal processing at the receiver.
You're right that we don't have a 100megabit connection to Mars. A little Googling ... shows me that something's not happy in NASA's network. So, going through a different route ... nope, I can't waste more time on this. I think that the communications links between the Mars constellation (satellites and landers, sharing each other's comms links) has a several mega-bit/s link to Earth. There's around 7terabytes of data storage buffers in that constellation, so for a 1 mega-bit link, that buffer would take around 700 days to empty. Doesn't sound very sensible to me. I think their pipe is going to need to be considerably fatter than you're saying. A 100-megabit/second link would still take a week to empty the buffer - pretty dodgy!
Anyway, we're getting away from the point.
I think that you're talking about an antenna that was transmitting directly from the surface of Mars to the surface of Earth. Which is why they don't do that any more.
In fact, as a caver, I've paid a bit more attention than most to the question of Martian (and Lunar) caves. The putative examples that have been put forward have all been in the form of lava tubes which have suffered a partial roof collapse. Such a cave would have a fairly good profile for getting data out - they tend to be relatively simple in profile, and relatively straight. So to get your rover in (and later out), you
Beyond that, it's a question of fine choices whether the daughter#2 rover is to be retrieved, if it's detachable, how it gets power ... lots of issues. If it goes off-cable, but still receives (say) power by microwave, that's fine, but it needs to send data back through the "eye in the sky" (OK, roof). If it's coming back, it'll need the cable to climb up. (That's why Daughter#1 is on the lip - to prevent the cable fraying on a rough edge, and to reduce the chance of rock fall following cable movement during the ascent phase.)
Unfortunately, the floors of caves tend to have rocks on them. This isn't a major problem for cave exploration per se, but for a light weight
The launcher delivers the satellite into a parking orbit, from which it then re-shuffles itself (ejects cowlings, etc) and then fires one or more burns to put itself into it's final orbit. In Phobos-Grunt's case, on a heading for Mars ; for this satellite, a different geocentric orbit. But for some reason (rags, software glitches?), the secondary burns don't happen. Shortly after, the satellite becomes a meteor, and maybe a constellation of impactors.
While I can see more or less what it looks like from your end of the telescope, try for a second looking from my end of the telescope : I've done soldering often enough over the last 30 years to have a reasonable degree of confidence what I'm doing. replacing burned out transistors on signal conditioner boards - check. Re-doing rotted cables in the car/ washing machine/ computer/ mains circuits - check. Building small (10-minus components) things onto strip board - check. When I see a problem that needs soldering, I know what needs to be done, what tools to get (beg/ steal/ borrow or buy ; I don't do it often enough to keep the tools in my toolbox). Building a board like the Raspberry-Pi would be daunting, but not terribly off-putting.
But Surface Mount? I've never, ever seen a spread for doing it ; I've no idea what so ever it needs in the way of equipment ; I don't even know anyone who has ever known anyone who has done it (or not that I know of). Where do I start? What do I need. How critical is component positioning? How do I get the soldering iron's tool to the right temperature. How do I control that temperature? Do I need to invest 7xRaspberry-Pi in a soldering iron/ station, or 20x?
I'd have to start an entire new technique about which, I know almost nothing. I'm quite sure I could do it (I re-soldered an SMD connector on a hard drive from a broken laptop once, which lasted long enough to get the data off the drive before the 06:00 report was due, and to save my friend's job.) But given the likely cost of the learning curve, it'll probably be a much better investment of time and effort to buy it ready-populated, or buy the wire-through-hole version. I didn't express prices above in units of "Raspberry-Pi" by accident.
Obligatory car analogy : I know what welding is ; I've got half an idea of how to do it ; when carrying out maintenance or repairs on my cars, I'll stick to things my socket set works on. If it needs welding, I'll get someone else to do the job, because I'm not interested in devoting the time and material into learning how to do something I'd only need rarely. And there are dozens of more occasions that I've considered "I need to weld that" than there have been occasions where I've thought "Ah, shit. SMD to be repaired. "Now", not "soon". And no spare board to change-out. Pass the soldering iron."
The barriers of entry are those of experience and equipment available. A half-way decent soldering iron and a solder-sucker are available in towns of a few tens of thousands ; living in a 1/3-million city, I *might* be able to find SMD equipment, but I don't know for sure. As for somebody who can show me "howto" ... I simply don't know anyone. I'd have to go to, at least, friends of friends ; and likely further.
So ... proportionately, you're looking at around one third to two thirds of the casualty rate that the Spartans suffered at Thermopylae. In a rearguard action.
And then Bean-Counter Central comes back and says "We can't afford to reproduce those tests.
Where do you draw the line?
Uh huh. That would be "Going equipped to spread ..." then which ever several of "sedition", "civil disobedience", "fear, uncertainty and doubt" (or many others) the officers choose to charge you with. After tasering you into submission, of course.
Pfilthy terrist!
Jobs was a designer and/ or programmer. Quite a good one by many accounts (though I'm not taken by his designs, personally). But what makes that grounds for celebrity?
I was about to ask if he had paparazzi photographing him when he was skinny dipping with porn stars, snorting coke off lost iPhone prototypes in night clubs etc., etc.. Then I remembered Rule 34. So maybe "celebrity" with a lower-case 'c'. In 4 point greeked text. In pale yellow on a white background.
If I start a religion that requires daily oral sex ... would you want to join?
Their property ; their choices ; their rules. You have no expectation of privacy.
And no, I'm not going to tell you which one : dip in ; you're likely to enjoy the experience (I've enjoyed all the Stross books I've brought).
There are whole journals for "Irreproducable Results". And prizes too!
Subject says it all.
It's a ha-ha-but serious, but several SF authors have speculated about a future where cetaceans are carried on space combat ships because of their instinctive understanding of such zero-G tactics. It took me months of real-time game play to try to get these tactics efficient ; and the whales have developed very similar tactics too. I think that's cool.
In fact, I think that's so cool that I'm going to pass the link (and this comment) to an evolutionary science blogger I subscribe to.
In other news, the energetics of rorqual whales have been under study for a time, with several results being published in the last year or so. Imagine how you'd feel if you fed by running forward at full speed, opening your mouth, and having around your body weight of water slammed into your lower jaw. Sounds like fun? Next time I'm in company with a whale skeleton (hopefully cleaned!), I'm going to be looking at that mandible joint with a new appreciation for what they actually do. Verily, blind chance and disinterested elimination of the comparatively inefficient from the population can perform wonders of pseudo-design!
End of argument.
Most Middle Eastern states are various degrees of not-free speech. You know that before you go in (well, you do if you're not an utter idiot) ; entry is an implicit (and often explicit, in the conditions of your visa, contract or landing card) acceptance that their laws apply to you.
Ignorance of the law is not a defence.
Excuse me for not being terribly outraged about this. Not even surprised.
Hey! No fair. That's the exclusive right of the Euro-american White supremacists. Slopes can't go around doing things like that!. It's unfair!
Or sending money to the IRA. Or supporting army coups in multiple South American countries, when convenient. Such a path has never been trodden before!
It's just immoral, the way these filthy slopes take ideas that the West has used for decades or centuries, and do the same themselves. And even worse, they do it better that we do! Disgusting!
Where could they have possibly learned such duplicity and hypocrisy?
(As for "shithole countries" ... well, I actually quite like working in such, being reasonably well paid for doing so, being appreciated for my efforts, and hopefully decreasing the inequality between my home part of the world and the "shithole countries" by improving their conditions without worsening mine. It helps me sleep easily at night (even when the mosquitoes try to bite). But I don't call them "shithole countries", because the people are not shitholes.)
I note that you've not actually spent your own money on this stuff. Or at least, that's how your comment reads.
I'll take it as a near certainty that the quality of display in 5 years will be considerably better than today, at lower prices, and with at least half of the contenders in $FORMAT_WAR$ dead and decomposed. So I'll consider looking at the technology then. Mean time, going round to my friend's house to drink beer, smoke indoors, and drink more beer (in between drinking whisky from Kleinsteins) sounds like a sufficiently frequent reason to watch his 3d system. While having a conversation. And drinking beer.
Sorry, were we talking about TV?
And WTF is Simulview? Is it like watching the telly out of the corner of your eye while reading email, listening to the radio, or talking to the wife?
(Oh, it's a Sony-ism? That puts it out of consideration then.)
Scenario : a seller is selling (say) Kingston USB flash drives of 256GB size for GBP 15 (a true laughing price).
They are scammers : Kingston make no such device (and their 64GB flash drives are about GBP 80 for a real one).
(Obviously I do this as a sort of vindictive assault on counterfeit sellers ; it's not a casual thing, it's a deliberate attempt to make life difficult for them, up to and including jail time.)
The PayPal ToS are quite capable of dealing with some situations quite well. But situations where there could be reasonable uncertainty about the state of an object ... antiques, for example ; fossils might be something that I'd encounter naturally, or minerals (I'm a professional geologist, and I make mistakes too) ... well then PayPal's ToS could cause problems. So care must be taken.
We had shit applications before there were Windows. Hell, Windows 1.0 was a piece of shit DOS application, and Windows 2 was only a little better. Things didn't get reasonably stable until Win 3.11 with it's 13-odd year working life (some very odd years, others merely uneven.).
I bloody well hope not! I've got $136million in cash reserves and I'm building up my crew of psionic warriors to launch an Avenger back at Cydonia. What I really don't need is a dispute resolution procedure on a crummy Plasma Rifle to screw up my accounts.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO:_Enemy_Unknown , for those who weren't around in the 1980s. Still fun.)
It looks as if antiquities are definitely NOT what the PayPal terms of service considered when writing their ToS. Which suggests that PayPal should not be the route for buying/ selling such items. Tough on PayPal ; sad for the owner of the original (assertedly "original", whatever that means) violin. But it has the smell of the Law of Unintended Consequences to me.
I occasionally taunt sellers of fake memory cards on ebaY, making use of the PayPal ToS to avoid returning their fake goods. For that purpose, the PayPal ToS are useful. Different courses require different horses.
It's the extra head that does it. No additional brains though - all the more room to fill up with jizz.
Different cinemas, different films, different times, different prices.
Next topic?
What do you think is going to be learned from studying the Romans? It's not as if they learned anything from their predecessors, the Akkadians, Sumerians, Hittites and Persians, and the way their successive empires fell after over-extending themselves. Useless idiots - if they can't keep their regional hegemonies together for much longer than 500 years, it's not as if they can match the glorious decades of our current self-proclaimed overlords.
Yes. For a city with (say) 5000 handicapped drivers, then the first 5000 parking places of each parking lot should be reserved for disabled drivers, and only then should parking places be made available for non-disabled drivers.
Let the able-bodied lard-arses get some exercise.
(I speak as an able-bodied lard arse. With a driving license, and a car and, on most days, an all-day bus ticket. It's quicker and easier going into town on the bus than driving into town and attempting to find a parking place. As it should be.)