That's partly why petition lists are frequently made public, so those who are documented as having signed a petition have the ability to say "um, no, I didn't sign that". It's a sad side effect that such information can (and sometimes is) misused by people from "the other side of the issue" to harass or pillory signers.
I live in Maine which is currently undergoing a potential recall on our gay marriage law. The law was (legislatively) enacted in response to a petition, and is being recalled in response to another petition. I signed one of the two petitions (if I state which one I signed, I'll just start a debate about gay marriage itself, so I'll refrain - this discussion is about petitions and not gay marriage).
Petitions are not private documents, they are a show of public support. I fully expect that my name is out there somewhere on some database, probably on the web, as having signed the petition. If I had signed the other petition, I would fully expect to see my name somewhere in a database as well.
And I have no doubt that BOTH sides of the issue are pulling these lists of names and telling their supporters to shun the evil bastages who dare disagree with their views. Screw 'em - most of the big organizers and big warchests are out-of-staters who have chosen our state as a battleground to their own ends.
In the end, it's us locals going to the polls that's going to count. Let the armies of people from away come on in and stay in our hotels and buy meals at our restaurants and spend money advertising their shills and fly in their big-money actors to scream their lies, damned lies, and statistics and try to get people all riled up. The money is good for our coffers, which are pretty empty right about now with the summer guests heading home and winter fast approaching.
In the end it's about what we, the residents of Maine, want for our state. After November them screamers will all pack up and go home just like the beachgoers and leafpeepers before them, and we'll start working with whatever we decided to do. There'll be some grumbling and bellyaching either way, but we'll settle back down and go back about our business.
If my vote in the November ballot initiative is made public, then I'd be concerned. Not because I've made some secret of my opinion on the matter - pretty much anyone who knows me well probably has my vote figured, and if anyone asks I'd tell them - but because individual votes in elections are supposed to be secret.
Of course, when you engage in a petition, there is always some chance someone who disagrees with you on a particular position might see your name and decide not to do business with you, to end your friendship, whatever. That's a risk you take when you take a stand on an issue. If you are concerned about that, don't sign the petition. Just remember that, if you refuse to take a stand for things you believe in, that's taking a stand in and of itself.
Perhaps "import" was a poorly chosen term on my part. Art 1 Sec 9 is referring to imports from other countries, not sales tax laws across domestic (State or Local) governments.
Same thing if I bought a major appliance in Tax Free New Hampshire and brought it up here to Maine. Legally, as a resident of Maine, I'm obligated to pay Maine Sales Tax on that purchase.
Maine even has an "alternate use tax" where you can check a little box to pay a certain percentage of your income to cover "incidental purchases" for the year, so you're covered in case you get audited and the State discovers you imported something from another state and didn't pay Maine taxes on it.
If you ever move to California, do exactly that. Then try to register it as a resident.
I've never lived in California, but I have a hard time believing they would allow such a loophole. I expect the conversation would go something like this:
You: "Hi, I just bought a car and I'd like to register it, please." DMV: "Great. Congrats. So let's see the paperwork, please." (shuffles paperwork). "Hmm, you a resident of California?" You: "Yes" DMV: "OK, you are aware that you needed to buy the California package as a resident of California for a car you intend to use here, right?" You: "Yes, that's why I drove across state lines, to avoid that and California's use tax on vehicles." DMV: "Ah, I think we have the problem sorted! OK, great, we can register that for you. Just take it to a local shop and pay the extra $250 for the gear we require, plus of course $1000 labor to install it, and please be aware this probably voids your warranty, though that's between you and the auto manufacturer. Then, remit the California use taxes that a California dealer would have been aware of and withheld for you, as opposed to the Nevada use taxes you paid which I'm sure Nevada is thrilled for the donation you just gave them."
All you'd be doing is driving across state lines and, in effect, donating a second dose use tax to another state and upgrading the vaseline with expensive sand.
When I moved from Tax-Free New Hampshire to Kentucky some years back, I had to pay use tax on the Kelly Blue Book value of all of the cars I "imported" into Kentucky, even though the cars were purchased BEFORE I WAS A RESIDENT and I had paid all of the fees (only none of them were called "use tax") when I purchased the vehicles originally. The total came to well over two thousand dollars for a 4-year-old car and a 2-year-old car.
When I moved to Maine, I had to show proof of payment of that use tax to Kentucky and, as a new resident, I was allowed a one-time exemption for my two vehicles since I had paid Use Tax in another state whose rate was as high as or higher than Maine's. If Kentucky's had been lower, I would have been on the hook for the difference. I was also informed that if I purchased a car outside the state once I became a resident, I'd have to pay full Maine use tax. Fortunately, Kentucky and Maine have "reciprocal agreements" in place, because if I'd moved to some states I would have owed use taxes all over again.
Neither of my cars had the California Package, which Maine requires, but I was still allowed to import them because they were not purchased in Maine and I was not a resident at the time of purchase, so the law did not apply to me. However, I would have trouble registering a new car purchased in another state if it lacked that package.
Better option: Don't move to California. Or declare your legal residence as Florida and register your cars there, then buy a mailstop address there. IANAL, so that may or may not be technically legal in your state.
Really? California has always had a separate standard for pretty much everything, and you can buy pretty much any car in any state with the "California Emissions Package". In California that this "option" is required of any new car purchased there.
The car manufacturers have, by and large, been making "California" versions of their vehicles for years. Some other states (like Maine) mandate the same package rather than going to the effort of developing their own standards.
So California is legislating, in effect, for themselves and a handful of other states. But certainly not for the nation.
In-car cell repeaters have been around for a long time, and they generally run off the CAR battery, not the cell one.
I'm also amazed at this - I would think simply dictating fuel mileage would be sufficient, and this technology would eventually catch on based on its own merits and not due to a legislative mandate.
Besides, if you want to reduce heat in a car, a simple white (and recyclable) cardboard foldy thingie placed on the dashboard seems to make a huge difference. Not to mention, wouldn't the color of your car and/or a cheap solar-powered fan have a far more profound effect on internal temperatures than special glass?
I started saving for my college fund when I was 12, when I got my first paper route. I continued working 1-2 part time jobs and saving as much as I could until I got out of high school, at which point I took on a full-time job plus a couple of part-time jobs. I was lucky in that my parents allowed me to live in their basement rent-free as long as I was getting an education, but unfortunate in that my father owned his own business and the government used an income formula from his business as the basis for determining how much financial aid I could get that ensured the aid amount was effectively zero. So it was "pay cash or get a loan".
I looked at the rates on college loans, my available funds, and my aid amount, and quickly decided that my chosen college (MIT) would have been really cool but I had enough saved up for about three classes in the first semester. So I went to a state University where I made it about 2 1/2 years before a full-time + 2 part-time job load + full-time University workload made me a crispy critter, plus I had run out of money and my father's business had folded putting him hock and leaving me looking for a new place to live.
So I did what I had to do. I left the University, leveraged what I had learned so far into an entry-level IT job, learned to continue loving Ramen Noodles, and focused on building a career and some financial freedom before returning to college to finish up my degree. That meant buying a VERY small house and 60+ hour weeks of employment to afford the mortgage on my house for a while, and saving every other penny by purchasing very little I didn't actually need. This continued for a few years.
So, from the ages of 12 to about 25 I worked at multiple simultaneous jobs pretty much continuously.
By then, I had enough experience that the sheepskin was really about unlocking job opportunities that required the "haz degree" tickybox checked, and various employers paid the lions share of various bits of the degree until I completed it a few years ago - 19 years after first entering the hallowed halls of a University.
My point is, if you don't have the money for the college of your choice, but circumstances keep you from getting any financial aid, then you have several options.
You can get a college loan, meaning the government will keep your lender from charging you interest while you are in school and give you a deferral period afterward, which means YOU have to take the risk if your education does not benefit you. The usurious rates on college loans are due, in part, to that risk. If you don't get a good job, you aren't likely to be able to pay them back. A student is a poor risk as a potential borrower, especially one who already has a sense of entitlement that he's worked a part time job through high school and society owes him something in return. Student loans, the stock market, and buying houses all have risks - if you can't leverage their value into some benefit and you can't handle the risk, then don't deal in.
You can start college out more slowly. Get a full-time job doing something, preferably an entry-level job in your chosen field. I guarantee it won't pay a lot, and you're in for some serious work. But, heck, you never know, after a couple of years many companies will pay for your college education or help you out a lot. This is a slow road, and it means lots of hard work supporting a job, possibly a family, and a college education at the same time, but you get to work on your career early and develop working relationships with employers. By the time you want your dream job, you've proven yourself worthy and have experience finding and keeping jobs. Just watch some of the college kids coming out, assuming that because they scrimped and got their college education, the world "owes" them a job. Sadly, it ain't any more so than the word "owing" you a college education just because you've worked hard so far.
Or you can join the military or peace corps and get your education paid for, plus get lots of other
Dang, you're right. I just went in again, and got the following that I expected or wasn't surprised too much by:
- Java (expected, Java asked me during install, I said YES).
- Shockwave Flash (expected, I installed Flash and it asked me if I wanted the Firefox plugin and I said YES.
- Virtual Earth 3D plugin (expected, I installed Virtual Earth and it asked what browsers I wanted support in).
- Microsoft Office 2003 (Benefit of doubt, this is a corporate install and maybe my company said YES by default for Office 2003).
The following were clearly unauthorized (and have now been disabled):
- Google Update / Google Updater (unexpected, I do have Google Earth but I didn't expect a Google plugin).
- Microsoft DRM (DRM Netscape Network Object)
- Microsoft DRM (DRM Store Netscape Plugin)
- Windows Media Player Plug-in Dynamic Link Library
So for those keeping score at home on unauthorized plugins - that's Google 2, Microsoft 3, all other companies zero so far in my very scientific test of a single computer.;)
It's also debatable because.NET is a required component to run certain software, like the control panel for some video cards, a lot of freeware/shareware, and many Microsoft software packages. I'm perfectly fine having.NET out there to run software packages I've specifically installed. I was not informed that.NET would be adding stuff to my Firefox install, and I was never given an option not to.
I do have a problem with Microsoft assuming (without asking me) that I also want to enable non-Microsoft software packages to use their services, and installing plugins for same.
I installed.NET because certain Microsoft software requires it. I don't give a rat's ass if Firefox supports Microsoft-specific standards for web sites, because I have IE to load those web sites.
Obviously, they meant "release" in the Klingon/rabid dog sense, as in "Release the Hounds!".
Not "release" in the software sense as in "publish the software and let people know it's available for download or sale."
Oh, and another thing that was missed, and I feel is important: Microsoft assumed that I wanted the.NET experience within Firefox and installed it without asking or even telling me about it.
If, during Windows Update, Microsoft had made "Mozilla Firefox Plugin for (Microsoft Service here)" a Recommended or even Critical update, I'd have applauded them for making an effort to make (Microsoft Service here) available in a wider range of browsers. I also would have had a checkbox to say "Ignore this update" and my Firefox would (a) not function on sites that require that specific service, and (b) not been vulnerable to security holes within that service.
I don't WANT Firefox to support Microsoft services. That's precisely why I run it and recommend its use to others. If you have a quirky site that needs to run a Microsoft-specific service, for God's sake open that site in Internet Explorer and don't expose Firefox to that vulnerability while accessing the other 99.999% of the Internet.
I'd be willing to give Microsoft the benefit of doubt here. Microsoft thought they were doing good by "extending" Firefox to support Microsoft-specific extensions. Except they ruined that benefit of doubt when they decided that they would decide how Firefox would operate in Windows with no user knowledge or consent.
I don't know. I didn't know it existed until I learned Firefox disabled it for me, and it's something I've never looked for or asked for in Firefox. Perhaps if I did a lot more.NET stuff I'd want it, and Microsoft would have done well to do a campaign to inform people it was out there and allow them to install it, so those who want to run Firefox for Microsoft-quirky sites (and open Firefox up to the same security holes IE is well-known for) could.
But, frankly, at that point, why run Firefox? OK, maybe you've got an add-on you love, but if Firefox is vulnerable to many of the same Windows vulnerabilities as IE, PLUS its own vulnerabilities... seems kinda pointless.
In Firefox, I go to "Tools / Addons" in Windows. Yup, "Java" is there. Oh, wait, that's the "Java Quick-Starter". Which I was asked about when I installed Java, and chose to add. Which is visible in my installed addons list. Oh, wait, and which also has a disable button. Hmm, which one of these tests did the.NET Firefox add-on pass?
Sorry, what are you comparing? An openly-disclosed, user-option install with a disable against a quietly-installed, no-user-option, disable-not-available install?
I installed Java because I wanted it available in my web browsers, and Java asked me which web browsers to add itself to.
I installed.NET because I needed it for some specific software, and it never asked me about adding things to my web browser of choice, which by the way is NOT a Microsoft product and if Microsoft wants to change it they should at LEAST ask me and allow me to turn it off.
I installed.NET so that Microsoft-specific programs which I purchased or downloaded could run. I did not install.NET in order to expose my Firefox browser to IE/ActiveX/.NET vulnerabilities. I have Internet Explorer for those very rare websites that require Microsoft-specific stuff.
If the add-on was made available and advertised to me, I would never have sought it out. If the add-on was installed and I was informed and could disable it, I would have disabled it. Instead, I find out only well after it was installed and running in the background on my Firefox implementation that it was there.
Sorry, that's a major trust issue with me. I run Firefox because it lacks the "hard ties" with the OS that IE has, and therefore tends to be more secure. I do NOT want Firefox accessing.NET, ActiveX, system default image viewing services, and other functions that are constantly being exposed as having serious security vulnerabilities.
So, to the Mozilla/Firefox team: THANK YOU for making me aware of this. Please keep up the great work!
To Microsoft: I still run XP, but it's this type of "assuming what I want and making it so" that bugs the crap out of me. YOU DO NOT OWN FIREFOX, and it's not yours to update without my knowledge or consent, even if it does add cool new features. I don't want 'em, I didn't ask for them, I didn't know you were installing 'em, and I'm pissed now that I know I had 'em. It's this kind of crap that makes me more and more tempted to join the Penguin side permanently, and I've been a mostly happy Microsoft user since the DOS on an 8088 with 5.25" floppies days, back when 640K of memory was enough for everyone.
Well, I did have a friend who owns a Lexus tell me, "Lexus is really the Cadillac of the automotive world". With a completely straight face (on their part, then a briefly befuddled one when I couldn't help burst out laughing).
In his defense, he did laugh along with me when he realized how silly it sounded.
I guess "HTC is the Jaguar of mobile phones" would work better.
The article states that her lawyer (who provided a lot of details about what she DID do in response to being allegedly threatened) refused to state whether she called the police or not.
You can draw your own conclusion from that one, unless there will be a separate forthcoming $100 million lawsuit based on a conversation exactly as you describe.:)
They sure did. Very creepy, and no doubt terrifying at the time... ummm...
Except if it was so terrifying, why did she do everything but call the police, who have the powers to actually investigate things like this and would have probably figured out in about 5 minutes who sent the emails? Why make her boyfriend sit by the bed with a club, when she's getting notices from someone who sounds like a hardened and probably ARMED criminal that they are coming for a visit? If this were a real event, she and her boyfriend would likely be dead by now.
Why sit cowering in your home for FIVE DAYS then claim you were unable to live your life for MONTHS, when a quick three-digit phone call ("911", in case anyone has forgotten the number) would have started an investigation that would have rapidly debunked it in a hurry? Toyota would have no doubt issued a deep apology to avoid a lawsuit, suffered some well-deserved bad press, and Ms. Duick could have gone about her life with nothing more than a probable (and understandable) lifetime hatred/contempt of Toyota Motor Company, and not a long-term debilitating fear.
I'm not saying Toyota was in the right here. No way. This was just plain effing stupid.
I think both parties are clearly in the wrong. Toyota's actions were reprehensible and deserving of punishment, but Ms. Duick's response (or utter lack thereof) certainly gave Toyota no indication of the harm they were causing to her. They thought they had agreement, she was unaware of the agreement, they acted stupidly, and she didn't do anything useful to help herself until after she found out it was a prank ad campaign.
Memory is the major Achilles Heel of the Blackberry line, and particularly the older ones. I have a Curve 83xx on AT&T with 64MB of memory, and the OS (4.6) takes up the lion's share of that. Blackberry App World now allows you to store applications on the SD and install/uninstall them at will, but that is not an acceptable solution, and merely increasing the memory space seems like a half-assed solution (but is probably here to stay because it's an architectural issue).
The background apps are a bit of an annoyance at times, though I've never actually had them interfere with receiving or talking on a call (though having them delay making a call is annoying in itself). However, that's the cost of doing business if you want to allow background apps - and probably the major reason Apple chose to avoid the discussion on the iPhone for so long.
I don't have WiFi, but it seems to me when I did (8800 series) Opera Mini seemed to work with it. However, I figured the camera would be more useful and that's largely worked out well. I'm not in WiFi range often enough, and when I am I usually have a larger and more useful computer to surf the web to go with it.
I still like my BB, and my wife is happy with her Pearl (chosen over the iPhone for a number of reasons, chief among them being that she wants a good phone and didn't want to buy a data plan, and the iPhone is pretty much useless without a data plan).
I don't know what I'd choose if I wasn't on a corporate plan, and I felt I *had* to have a cell phone. I'd have to try out a Pre and some of the newer Berries first. I've tried out an iPhone (briefly) and the areas it's strongest in are not areas I want to use a phone for, and it's relatively poor as a phone (especially in terms of picking up signal, from what I've seen).
Probably "none of the above", except that any WiFi-capable unit could talk to any other WiFi-capable unit. So if I want to talk on my car stereo or my small headset today, I need my phone to have Bluetooth, but if I want to copy data from my phone to my computer or vice-versa, I need my phone to have WiFi (*).
If this comes true, then all of my devices use WiFi and I don't need different radios for different purposes. My phone, desktop, car stereo, laptop, headset, keyboard, mouse, etc all use WiFi. If I want my computer to send data to my car stereo, they both have WiFi and I can probably do it.
This is similar to having serial, parallel, FireWire, and USB all consolidating to USB. I don't need 4 different connector types on my computer to connect pretty much any peripheral I damned well please. If it's got "USB" on the label, and has a driver for my operating system, I'm good to go.
So, if anything, the added capabilities of this might make configuring it MORE complex, only because of the new choices available. If you have two headsets, three computers, an access point, three mice, three keyboards, a couple of other cell phones, an iPod, a toaster, and a partridge in a pear tree all in range of your cell phone's WiFi radio, and you hit "discover", you'll have a larger list of things to surf through to find the device you want to connect to. In all likelihood, most profile managers on most platforms will get smart about this and ask what type of device you want to look for, and filter the list accordingly.
(*) yes, I could use a data cable (USB, whatever), but that's not helping the interoperability I'm looking at here.
A bluetooth headset is only going to need the lower-powered antenna, unless you want to increase its range. I think the OP was talking about the PHONE carrying (possibly) two transmitters - one to "replace" Bluetooth for very-short-range transmissions and one to be WiFi.
But you really wouldn't need that - you could simply have a WiFi radio that talks quietly when it's connected to some kind of local device, and more loudly only when it needs to reach a distant access point or something. The radio can always have a sensitive antenna to listen, because that will allow it to hear close/weak devices (headsets) as well as distant/strong ones (WiFi access points).
If anything, this would probably end up saving power, assuming you are interested in having WiFi on your phone, because you don't have to support a WiFi *and* a Bluetooth radio. Just WiFi, and it'll only pull heavy duty power when you want to use it to connect to a distant access point.
It largely depends on the size of the business, how much internal support they provide, and whether they have any large-scale internal (or purchased) applications written with Microsoft toolkits.
A lot of companies find themselves in a bind, because they only want to support one desktop OS on a standardized platform. Supporting XP *and* (Vista and/or Seven) costs a lot of money, and they already have an installed base of XP and can't afford to upgrade everyone to (Vista and/or Seven) all at once.
Add to that the IE6 dependency of a good number of applications, or dependencies on specific versions of XP (some apps don't allow SP2 or SP3 to be loaded in XP or they stop running, much less Vista/Seven!). Upgrading that software can often make a Windows upgrade look downright cheap.
A very small company can get Bob in Accounting a new Seven machine and all the trimmings, while Jim in Shipping will still be happy with his Pentium I Windows 2000 box because it runs his shipping software just fine. That small company buys special-purpose boxes for each employee that fit the needs of that employee specifically. A mix of OSes is less of a problem, generally, because if Bob's machine goes down they'll fix it especially for him, or order him a new one especially for him.
A larger company with hundreds or thousands of machines to support wants an operation where as many of those machines as possible are identical.
Most large companies get machines from a mass-assembler and load their own custom image with their installed/licensed base of software (or often have the vendor do it for them). These folks aren't about to switch to a mixed environment if they can possibly help it, and they have a crapload of old machines that can't possibly run Vista or Seven, so their standard will be "Least Common Denominator" until there is some compelling reason to break the standard.
Introduce software that ONLY runs on Seven and is absolutely required by a specific group or department, and they'll convert that group or department, but they aren't about to go out wholesale buying new machines unless they happen to be on a lease cycle.
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That's partly why petition lists are frequently made public, so those who are documented as having signed a petition have the ability to say "um, no, I didn't sign that". It's a sad side effect that such information can (and sometimes is) misused by people from "the other side of the issue" to harass or pillory signers.
Yeah, I'm a little confused about this, too.
I live in Maine which is currently undergoing a potential recall on our gay marriage law. The law was (legislatively) enacted in response to a petition, and is being recalled in response to another petition. I signed one of the two petitions (if I state which one I signed, I'll just start a debate about gay marriage itself, so I'll refrain - this discussion is about petitions and not gay marriage).
Petitions are not private documents, they are a show of public support. I fully expect that my name is out there somewhere on some database, probably on the web, as having signed the petition. If I had signed the other petition, I would fully expect to see my name somewhere in a database as well.
And I have no doubt that BOTH sides of the issue are pulling these lists of names and telling their supporters to shun the evil bastages who dare disagree with their views. Screw 'em - most of the big organizers and big warchests are out-of-staters who have chosen our state as a battleground to their own ends.
In the end, it's us locals going to the polls that's going to count. Let the armies of people from away come on in and stay in our hotels and buy meals at our restaurants and spend money advertising their shills and fly in their big-money actors to scream their lies, damned lies, and statistics and try to get people all riled up. The money is good for our coffers, which are pretty empty right about now with the summer guests heading home and winter fast approaching.
In the end it's about what we, the residents of Maine, want for our state. After November them screamers will all pack up and go home just like the beachgoers and leafpeepers before them, and we'll start working with whatever we decided to do. There'll be some grumbling and bellyaching either way, but we'll settle back down and go back about our business.
If my vote in the November ballot initiative is made public, then I'd be concerned. Not because I've made some secret of my opinion on the matter - pretty much anyone who knows me well probably has my vote figured, and if anyone asks I'd tell them - but because individual votes in elections are supposed to be secret.
Of course, when you engage in a petition, there is always some chance someone who disagrees with you on a particular position might see your name and decide not to do business with you, to end your friendship, whatever. That's a risk you take when you take a stand on an issue. If you are concerned about that, don't sign the petition. Just remember that, if you refuse to take a stand for things you believe in, that's taking a stand in and of itself.
"grammatically in correct" is, well, grammatically incorrect. :)
Perhaps "import" was a poorly chosen term on my part. Art 1 Sec 9 is referring to imports from other countries, not sales tax laws across domestic (State or Local) governments.
Same thing if I bought a major appliance in Tax Free New Hampshire and brought it up here to Maine. Legally, as a resident of Maine, I'm obligated to pay Maine Sales Tax on that purchase.
Maine even has an "alternate use tax" where you can check a little box to pay a certain percentage of your income to cover "incidental purchases" for the year, so you're covered in case you get audited and the State discovers you imported something from another state and didn't pay Maine taxes on it.
If you ever move to California, do exactly that. Then try to register it as a resident.
I've never lived in California, but I have a hard time believing they would allow such a loophole. I expect the conversation would go something like this:
You: "Hi, I just bought a car and I'd like to register it, please."
DMV: "Great. Congrats. So let's see the paperwork, please." (shuffles paperwork). "Hmm, you a resident of California?"
You: "Yes"
DMV: "OK, you are aware that you needed to buy the California package as a resident of California for a car you intend to use here, right?"
You: "Yes, that's why I drove across state lines, to avoid that and California's use tax on vehicles."
DMV: "Ah, I think we have the problem sorted! OK, great, we can register that for you. Just take it to a local shop and pay the extra $250 for the gear we require, plus of course $1000 labor to install it, and please be aware this probably voids your warranty, though that's between you and the auto manufacturer. Then, remit the California use taxes that a California dealer would have been aware of and withheld for you, as opposed to the Nevada use taxes you paid which I'm sure Nevada is thrilled for the donation you just gave them."
All you'd be doing is driving across state lines and, in effect, donating a second dose use tax to another state and upgrading the vaseline with expensive sand.
When I moved from Tax-Free New Hampshire to Kentucky some years back, I had to pay use tax on the Kelly Blue Book value of all of the cars I "imported" into Kentucky, even though the cars were purchased BEFORE I WAS A RESIDENT and I had paid all of the fees (only none of them were called "use tax") when I purchased the vehicles originally. The total came to well over two thousand dollars for a 4-year-old car and a 2-year-old car.
When I moved to Maine, I had to show proof of payment of that use tax to Kentucky and, as a new resident, I was allowed a one-time exemption for my two vehicles since I had paid Use Tax in another state whose rate was as high as or higher than Maine's. If Kentucky's had been lower, I would have been on the hook for the difference. I was also informed that if I purchased a car outside the state once I became a resident, I'd have to pay full Maine use tax. Fortunately, Kentucky and Maine have "reciprocal agreements" in place, because if I'd moved to some states I would have owed use taxes all over again.
Neither of my cars had the California Package, which Maine requires, but I was still allowed to import them because they were not purchased in Maine and I was not a resident at the time of purchase, so the law did not apply to me. However, I would have trouble registering a new car purchased in another state if it lacked that package.
Better option: Don't move to California. Or declare your legal residence as Florida and register your cars there, then buy a mailstop address there. IANAL, so that may or may not be technically legal in your state.
Really? California has always had a separate standard for pretty much everything, and you can buy pretty much any car in any state with the "California Emissions Package". In California that this "option" is required of any new car purchased there.
The car manufacturers have, by and large, been making "California" versions of their vehicles for years. Some other states (like Maine) mandate the same package rather than going to the effort of developing their own standards.
So California is legislating, in effect, for themselves and a handful of other states. But certainly not for the nation.
That would be Douglas Adams, though he is probably not the original source of the concept.
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
In-car cell repeaters have been around for a long time, and they generally run off the CAR battery, not the cell one.
I'm also amazed at this - I would think simply dictating fuel mileage would be sufficient, and this technology would eventually catch on based on its own merits and not due to a legislative mandate.
Besides, if you want to reduce heat in a car, a simple white (and recyclable) cardboard foldy thingie placed on the dashboard seems to make a huge difference. Not to mention, wouldn't the color of your car and/or a cheap solar-powered fan have a far more profound effect on internal temperatures than special glass?
I started saving for my college fund when I was 12, when I got my first paper route. I continued working 1-2 part time jobs and saving as much as I could until I got out of high school, at which point I took on a full-time job plus a couple of part-time jobs. I was lucky in that my parents allowed me to live in their basement rent-free as long as I was getting an education, but unfortunate in that my father owned his own business and the government used an income formula from his business as the basis for determining how much financial aid I could get that ensured the aid amount was effectively zero. So it was "pay cash or get a loan".
I looked at the rates on college loans, my available funds, and my aid amount, and quickly decided that my chosen college (MIT) would have been really cool but I had enough saved up for about three classes in the first semester. So I went to a state University where I made it about 2 1/2 years before a full-time + 2 part-time job load + full-time University workload made me a crispy critter, plus I had run out of money and my father's business had folded putting him hock and leaving me looking for a new place to live.
So I did what I had to do. I left the University, leveraged what I had learned so far into an entry-level IT job, learned to continue loving Ramen Noodles, and focused on building a career and some financial freedom before returning to college to finish up my degree. That meant buying a VERY small house and 60+ hour weeks of employment to afford the mortgage on my house for a while, and saving every other penny by purchasing very little I didn't actually need. This continued for a few years.
So, from the ages of 12 to about 25 I worked at multiple simultaneous jobs pretty much continuously.
By then, I had enough experience that the sheepskin was really about unlocking job opportunities that required the "haz degree" tickybox checked, and various employers paid the lions share of various bits of the degree until I completed it a few years ago - 19 years after first entering the hallowed halls of a University.
My point is, if you don't have the money for the college of your choice, but circumstances keep you from getting any financial aid, then you have several options.
You can get a college loan, meaning the government will keep your lender from charging you interest while you are in school and give you a deferral period afterward, which means YOU have to take the risk if your education does not benefit you. The usurious rates on college loans are due, in part, to that risk. If you don't get a good job, you aren't likely to be able to pay them back. A student is a poor risk as a potential borrower, especially one who already has a sense of entitlement that he's worked a part time job through high school and society owes him something in return. Student loans, the stock market, and buying houses all have risks - if you can't leverage their value into some benefit and you can't handle the risk, then don't deal in.
You can start college out more slowly. Get a full-time job doing something, preferably an entry-level job in your chosen field. I guarantee it won't pay a lot, and you're in for some serious work. But, heck, you never know, after a couple of years many companies will pay for your college education or help you out a lot. This is a slow road, and it means lots of hard work supporting a job, possibly a family, and a college education at the same time, but you get to work on your career early and develop working relationships with employers. By the time you want your dream job, you've proven yourself worthy and have experience finding and keeping jobs. Just watch some of the college kids coming out, assuming that because they scrimped and got their college education, the world "owes" them a job. Sadly, it ain't any more so than the word "owing" you a college education just because you've worked hard so far.
Or you can join the military or peace corps and get your education paid for, plus get lots of other
Dang, you're right. I just went in again, and got the following that I expected or wasn't surprised too much by:
- Java (expected, Java asked me during install, I said YES).
- Shockwave Flash (expected, I installed Flash and it asked me if I wanted the Firefox plugin and I said YES.
- Virtual Earth 3D plugin (expected, I installed Virtual Earth and it asked what browsers I wanted support in).
- Microsoft Office 2003 (Benefit of doubt, this is a corporate install and maybe my company said YES by default for Office 2003).
The following were clearly unauthorized (and have now been disabled):
- Google Update / Google Updater (unexpected, I do have Google Earth but I didn't expect a Google plugin).
- Microsoft DRM (DRM Netscape Network Object)
- Microsoft DRM (DRM Store Netscape Plugin)
- Windows Media Player Plug-in Dynamic Link Library
So for those keeping score at home on unauthorized plugins - that's Google 2, Microsoft 3, all other companies zero so far in my very scientific test of a single computer. ;)
Except Java and Acrobat ask me if I want to install Firefox plugins during install. Microsoft didn't.
It's also debatable because .NET is a required component to run certain software, like the control panel for some video cards, a lot of freeware/shareware, and many Microsoft software packages. I'm perfectly fine having .NET out there to run software packages I've specifically installed. I was not informed that .NET would be adding stuff to my Firefox install, and I was never given an option not to.
I do have a problem with Microsoft assuming (without asking me) that I also want to enable non-Microsoft software packages to use their services, and installing plugins for same.
I installed .NET because certain Microsoft software requires it. I don't give a rat's ass if Firefox supports Microsoft-specific standards for web sites, because I have IE to load those web sites.
Obviously, they meant "release" in the Klingon/rabid dog sense, as in "Release the Hounds!".
Not "release" in the software sense as in "publish the software and let people know it's available for download or sale."
Oh, and another thing that was missed, and I feel is important: Microsoft assumed that I wanted the .NET experience within Firefox and installed it without asking or even telling me about it.
If, during Windows Update, Microsoft had made "Mozilla Firefox Plugin for (Microsoft Service here)" a Recommended or even Critical update, I'd have applauded them for making an effort to make (Microsoft Service here) available in a wider range of browsers. I also would have had a checkbox to say "Ignore this update" and my Firefox would (a) not function on sites that require that specific service, and (b) not been vulnerable to security holes within that service.
I don't WANT Firefox to support Microsoft services. That's precisely why I run it and recommend its use to others. If you have a quirky site that needs to run a Microsoft-specific service, for God's sake open that site in Internet Explorer and don't expose Firefox to that vulnerability while accessing the other 99.999% of the Internet.
I'd be willing to give Microsoft the benefit of doubt here. Microsoft thought they were doing good by "extending" Firefox to support Microsoft-specific extensions. Except they ruined that benefit of doubt when they decided that they would decide how Firefox would operate in Windows with no user knowledge or consent.
I don't know. I didn't know it existed until I learned Firefox disabled it for me, and it's something I've never looked for or asked for in Firefox. Perhaps if I did a lot more .NET stuff I'd want it, and Microsoft would have done well to do a campaign to inform people it was out there and allow them to install it, so those who want to run Firefox for Microsoft-quirky sites (and open Firefox up to the same security holes IE is well-known for) could.
But, frankly, at that point, why run Firefox? OK, maybe you've got an add-on you love, but if Firefox is vulnerable to many of the same Windows vulnerabilities as IE, PLUS its own vulnerabilities... seems kinda pointless.
In Firefox, I go to "Tools / Addons" in Windows. Yup, "Java" is there. Oh, wait, that's the "Java Quick-Starter". Which I was asked about when I installed Java, and chose to add. Which is visible in my installed addons list. Oh, wait, and which also has a disable button. Hmm, which one of these tests did the .NET Firefox add-on pass?
Sorry, what are you comparing? An openly-disclosed, user-option install with a disable against a quietly-installed, no-user-option, disable-not-available install?
I installed Java because I wanted it available in my web browsers, and Java asked me which web browsers to add itself to.
I installed .NET because I needed it for some specific software, and it never asked me about adding things to my web browser of choice, which by the way is NOT a Microsoft product and if Microsoft wants to change it they should at LEAST ask me and allow me to turn it off.
I installed .NET so that Microsoft-specific programs which I purchased or downloaded could run. I did not install .NET in order to expose my Firefox browser to IE/ActiveX/.NET vulnerabilities. I have Internet Explorer for those very rare websites that require Microsoft-specific stuff.
If the add-on was made available and advertised to me, I would never have sought it out. If the add-on was installed and I was informed and could disable it, I would have disabled it. Instead, I find out only well after it was installed and running in the background on my Firefox implementation that it was there.
Sorry, that's a major trust issue with me. I run Firefox because it lacks the "hard ties" with the OS that IE has, and therefore tends to be more secure. I do NOT want Firefox accessing .NET, ActiveX, system default image viewing services, and other functions that are constantly being exposed as having serious security vulnerabilities.
So, to the Mozilla/Firefox team: THANK YOU for making me aware of this. Please keep up the great work!
To Microsoft: I still run XP, but it's this type of "assuming what I want and making it so" that bugs the crap out of me. YOU DO NOT OWN FIREFOX, and it's not yours to update without my knowledge or consent, even if it does add cool new features. I don't want 'em, I didn't ask for them, I didn't know you were installing 'em, and I'm pissed now that I know I had 'em. It's this kind of crap that makes me more and more tempted to join the Penguin side permanently, and I've been a mostly happy Microsoft user since the DOS on an 8088 with 5.25" floppies days, back when 640K of memory was enough for everyone.
Well, I did have a friend who owns a Lexus tell me, "Lexus is really the Cadillac of the automotive world". With a completely straight face (on their part, then a briefly befuddled one when I couldn't help burst out laughing).
In his defense, he did laugh along with me when he realized how silly it sounded.
I guess "HTC is the Jaguar of mobile phones" would work better.
The article states that her lawyer (who provided a lot of details about what she DID do in response to being allegedly threatened) refused to state whether she called the police or not.
You can draw your own conclusion from that one, unless there will be a separate forthcoming $100 million lawsuit based on a conversation exactly as you describe. :)
A series of smaller balls that make up basically a "slippery surface" with the player suspended in some form of harness to prevent falling?
They sure did. Very creepy, and no doubt terrifying at the time... ummm...
Except if it was so terrifying, why did she do everything but call the police, who have the powers to actually investigate things like this and would have probably figured out in about 5 minutes who sent the emails? Why make her boyfriend sit by the bed with a club, when she's getting notices from someone who sounds like a hardened and probably ARMED criminal that they are coming for a visit? If this were a real event, she and her boyfriend would likely be dead by now.
Why sit cowering in your home for FIVE DAYS then claim you were unable to live your life for MONTHS, when a quick three-digit phone call ("911", in case anyone has forgotten the number) would have started an investigation that would have rapidly debunked it in a hurry? Toyota would have no doubt issued a deep apology to avoid a lawsuit, suffered some well-deserved bad press, and Ms. Duick could have gone about her life with nothing more than a probable (and understandable) lifetime hatred/contempt of Toyota Motor Company, and not a long-term debilitating fear.
I'm not saying Toyota was in the right here. No way. This was just plain effing stupid.
I think both parties are clearly in the wrong. Toyota's actions were reprehensible and deserving of punishment, but Ms. Duick's response (or utter lack thereof) certainly gave Toyota no indication of the harm they were causing to her. They thought they had agreement, she was unaware of the agreement, they acted stupidly, and she didn't do anything useful to help herself until after she found out it was a prank ad campaign.
Memory is the major Achilles Heel of the Blackberry line, and particularly the older ones. I have a Curve 83xx on AT&T with 64MB of memory, and the OS (4.6) takes up the lion's share of that. Blackberry App World now allows you to store applications on the SD and install/uninstall them at will, but that is not an acceptable solution, and merely increasing the memory space seems like a half-assed solution (but is probably here to stay because it's an architectural issue).
The background apps are a bit of an annoyance at times, though I've never actually had them interfere with receiving or talking on a call (though having them delay making a call is annoying in itself). However, that's the cost of doing business if you want to allow background apps - and probably the major reason Apple chose to avoid the discussion on the iPhone for so long.
I don't have WiFi, but it seems to me when I did (8800 series) Opera Mini seemed to work with it. However, I figured the camera would be more useful and that's largely worked out well. I'm not in WiFi range often enough, and when I am I usually have a larger and more useful computer to surf the web to go with it.
I still like my BB, and my wife is happy with her Pearl (chosen over the iPhone for a number of reasons, chief among them being that she wants a good phone and didn't want to buy a data plan, and the iPhone is pretty much useless without a data plan).
I don't know what I'd choose if I wasn't on a corporate plan, and I felt I *had* to have a cell phone. I'd have to try out a Pre and some of the newer Berries first. I've tried out an iPhone (briefly) and the areas it's strongest in are not areas I want to use a phone for, and it's relatively poor as a phone (especially in terms of picking up signal, from what I've seen).
Probably "none of the above", except that any WiFi-capable unit could talk to any other WiFi-capable unit. So if I want to talk on my car stereo or my small headset today, I need my phone to have Bluetooth, but if I want to copy data from my phone to my computer or vice-versa, I need my phone to have WiFi (*).
If this comes true, then all of my devices use WiFi and I don't need different radios for different purposes. My phone, desktop, car stereo, laptop, headset, keyboard, mouse, etc all use WiFi. If I want my computer to send data to my car stereo, they both have WiFi and I can probably do it.
This is similar to having serial, parallel, FireWire, and USB all consolidating to USB. I don't need 4 different connector types on my computer to connect pretty much any peripheral I damned well please. If it's got "USB" on the label, and has a driver for my operating system, I'm good to go.
So, if anything, the added capabilities of this might make configuring it MORE complex, only because of the new choices available. If you have two headsets, three computers, an access point, three mice, three keyboards, a couple of other cell phones, an iPod, a toaster, and a partridge in a pear tree all in range of your cell phone's WiFi radio, and you hit "discover", you'll have a larger list of things to surf through to find the device you want to connect to. In all likelihood, most profile managers on most platforms will get smart about this and ask what type of device you want to look for, and filter the list accordingly.
(*) yes, I could use a data cable (USB, whatever), but that's not helping the interoperability I'm looking at here.
A bluetooth headset is only going to need the lower-powered antenna, unless you want to increase its range. I think the OP was talking about the PHONE carrying (possibly) two transmitters - one to "replace" Bluetooth for very-short-range transmissions and one to be WiFi.
But you really wouldn't need that - you could simply have a WiFi radio that talks quietly when it's connected to some kind of local device, and more loudly only when it needs to reach a distant access point or something. The radio can always have a sensitive antenna to listen, because that will allow it to hear close/weak devices (headsets) as well as distant/strong ones (WiFi access points).
If anything, this would probably end up saving power, assuming you are interested in having WiFi on your phone, because you don't have to support a WiFi *and* a Bluetooth radio. Just WiFi, and it'll only pull heavy duty power when you want to use it to connect to a distant access point.
If only we could do this with gamers who need exercise. They get a better immersive experience AND get fit at the same time.
OK, so the open-brain surgery thing is going to be controversial, but...
It largely depends on the size of the business, how much internal support they provide, and whether they have any large-scale internal (or purchased) applications written with Microsoft toolkits.
A lot of companies find themselves in a bind, because they only want to support one desktop OS on a standardized platform. Supporting XP *and* (Vista and/or Seven) costs a lot of money, and they already have an installed base of XP and can't afford to upgrade everyone to (Vista and/or Seven) all at once.
Add to that the IE6 dependency of a good number of applications, or dependencies on specific versions of XP (some apps don't allow SP2 or SP3 to be loaded in XP or they stop running, much less Vista/Seven!). Upgrading that software can often make a Windows upgrade look downright cheap.
A very small company can get Bob in Accounting a new Seven machine and all the trimmings, while Jim in Shipping will still be happy with his Pentium I Windows 2000 box because it runs his shipping software just fine. That small company buys special-purpose boxes for each employee that fit the needs of that employee specifically. A mix of OSes is less of a problem, generally, because if Bob's machine goes down they'll fix it especially for him, or order him a new one especially for him.
A larger company with hundreds or thousands of machines to support wants an operation where as many of those machines as possible are identical.
Most large companies get machines from a mass-assembler and load their own custom image with their installed/licensed base of software (or often have the vendor do it for them). These folks aren't about to switch to a mixed environment if they can possibly help it, and they have a crapload of old machines that can't possibly run Vista or Seven, so their standard will be "Least Common Denominator" until there is some compelling reason to break the standard.
Introduce software that ONLY runs on Seven and is absolutely required by a specific group or department, and they'll convert that group or department, but they aren't about to go out wholesale buying new machines unless they happen to be on a lease cycle.