No, it's certainly not an urban legend, it's the best way to adjust your mirrors. You know that an overtaking car is in a given relative position because of what mirror it is in. Combine that with knowing things farther away appear smaller than things closer and you should be able to figure it out. If you need to see the back end of your car to work this out, please step out of your habit/comfort zone to try something new.
Sony is/was losing money on every sale, banking on making it up in licensing fees from the games purchased for each console sold
Other people have already mentioned this, proving that none of you read the article and/or thought it through at all. It clearly states the USAF purchased them by working directly with Sony, not sending a few hundred privates out to get a few from the local Best Buy. When the USAF called to place an order for 1,700 units, do you seriously think Sony quoted them the retail price at which they lose a few bucks per unit? Furthermore the folks at Sony planned on the USAF to send legions of privates out to buy an average of 3 games each in order to make a profit on the software side of the deal? It took you 10 times longer to type your post than it should have to think of these minor details.
If we want to make it at least as secure as the U.S. Mexico border fence (with fences along both sides of every track),
In short, Ms. Napolitano clearly has not thought this through. Either that or she has thought it through and she's just the biggest idiot on the face of the planet.
1. there is no fence along the entire Mexico/USA border, only a small section in southern California and various main road checkpoints.
2. She gets whopping piles of gifts from the scanner machine lobbyists.
I mean, since we really don't have much at all in the way of trains or other mass transportation over the majority of the country, this won't be a budget breaker.
Then again...didn't I hear the current administration is trying to fund to build out new long distance high speed rail systems?
And yet yesterday's article thread had several people arguing with me that all the USA needs is more high speed rail and everything will be wonderful - no more TSA scanners or gropings and get there almost as fast as airplanes. All it takes is some other people's tax money so who cares?
I'm not making up scenarios; you suggested Denver to Salt Lake City as a pair of cities that might get high speed rail. I have illustrated this is not cost effective. I have tried to think of viable city pairs in the US and only a couple come to mind (see higher up post). I think high speed rail is a waste of taxpayer's money in this country and yes, since airports are already built and are MUCH more flexible than fixed track, airplanes come out ahead, how could they not? Feel free to enlighten me with your own numbers on the cost effectiveness of rail travel.
Let's take your first city pair and look at the numbers: yahoo travel lists 19 daily direct flights on a weekday between Denver and Salt Lake City. Half of the planes are CRJs, about 70 seats, and the other half are A320/319/318 at around 120 seats. Rough total of about 1700 to 1800 seats. A single train seats 500 to 600, or about 3 trains per day. One every 4 daytime hours. A little googling around reveals the construction cost for medium speed rail in the USA is probably around 2 to 6 million, depending on the terrain. Distance from SLC to DEN as the crow flies is 368 miles and if we take the mid cost because some of the terrain is mountainous and some is relatively flat, comes to 1.47 billion $$. That's a whopping pile of money for setting up track for three trains per day.
Do these numbers add up to a sensible project or not?
Compare to China where the Beijing to Shanghai train departs full of people every 15 minutes. Again, in one of these places, there are enough people to make it worthwhile and in the other there is a romantic notion of trains being better somehow. It is not chicken/egg, it is not about adjusting perception; it is about economic feasibility.
Yes, that's why they are willing to suffer being groped by the Testicle Scrutinizing Authority - so that they could enjoy the very personal transportation in a flying rabbit hutch.
Airlines are public access transportation, not public mass transportation. Public mass transportation even in the form of high speed rail, will not compete with airlines except in a few cases so this isn't a valid comparison. One can take 5 hour trip on the new Beijing to Shanghai high speed rail versus a three hour flight and this makes the train a valid competitor. China has a LOT of large cities that are this distance or less between for high speed rail and that makes it more worth their time. How many city pairs in the US are there? New York / Washington DC and Los Angeles/San Francisco are the only two that come to mind. Maybe Chicago/Pittsburg also?
Anyway, the USA's population is too spread out and too small to support a nationwide network of high speed rail that could compete with air travel. And even if it were built, a Los Angeles to New York high speed train would still take 12 hours nonstop and it's more likely to have to stop adding many more hours. Never mind that to built it would cost a noticeable fraction of GDP and take 15 years. Compared to a 6 hour ride by air? So yes, people prefer the "flying rabbit hutch" over rail in the USA.
Oh, and I forgot: 3.China's population density is many times that in the USA. Most people in China live in the strip of land along the coastline and there are 1,600,000,000 of them. The subway in Beijing for example runs 6 car trains every 2 minutes during rush hour and it is standing room only. The light rail here in Denver is a 3 car train every 15 minutes and you can usually sit. (yes, I've ridden both) One of these public transportation systems pays its own way on ticket sales and one of them is HEAVILY subsidized by taxpayers. Your guess which one is a sensible public mass transit system and which one exists mainly to make people feel good about some abstract idealized notion of public transportation.
The only reason the United States doesn't do more with mass transit including rail is the government is a sell out to to auto and airline industries.
More likely a combination of several other factors:
1. The central government in China just says 'build a rail line there' and construction starts next month. In the USA it would take five years of environmental impact studies, lawsuits from Friends of the Little Frogs Who Live in the Way of the Proposed Rail Line, lawsuits from people who don't want their land condemned and/or a big loud train rumbling through the neighborhood. 2. Americans want the convenience of personal transportation.
Combine the aggravation of part 1 with the lack of demand in part 2 and you get the state of mass transit in the USA.
Sounds like american companies doing it to each other, to me.
All the manufacturing companies in China must be majority owned by a local Chinese company which is owned by Chinese citizens. So it may be a joint venture partnership "division" of a US rival who owns a large chunk, but no, it is not just two US companies involved.
Note that while this particular piece was ruled a treasure, this isn't automatic. It depends on how rare of an artifact it one finds. This is apparently a specialty religious item. If it were a a more plain medallion then it might not be ruled a treasure even if it was gold and the same age.
If the business of the concert venue was to sell tickets to third party ticket vendors then yes, this is a speed of business problem. However, the business of the concert venue is to sell tickets to concertgoers. Intercepting that sale creates an artificial arbitrage opportunity. Arbitrage is a byproduct of free market operations caused by imperfect dissemination of access and information. Therefore, ticket scalping, especially by such shenanigans, is NOT a free market capitalist operation.
Exactly. Going through all that effort is a pretty clear demonstration they wanted the ticket more than other people who were not as highly motivated.
If the true market value is higher than the face value, then I think the right of first sale should apply. I should be able to buy something for $X, and sell it for $2X if the market will support it.
They weren't interested in paying more than other players, they were interested in hijacking access.. The free market model of capitalism requires all players to have equal information and access. In the real world this rarely happens because a few players will have some small to medium advantage over another player but that's just because information and access can't be perfectly distributed at the same time to all players. These guys registering thousands of placeholder domains and shell companies were artificially creating an INSANELY HUGE advantage for themselves and did not even vaguely represent a free market capitalism operation.
That law also applies to original creditors now. I'm no expert, but I did recently take Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University class and he had a lesson on how to deal with debt collectors. They can contact relatives, but they can't mention that they are debt collectors, only that they wish to get in touch with you. I'm pretty sure she would have a legal basis for suing them.
No, the FDCPA does not apply to original creditors. Here is the link to the FTC's page where you can read the whole act: http://www.ftc.gov/os/statutes/fdcpajump.shtm I don't know who Dave is, and if he's taught you about collectors then he's correct but he's mistaken if he told you the FDCPA applies to creditors. Maybe he is thinking of some other piece of legislation or you misheard.
Again, the same thing. The link to fmdconsumer.com is about collections agencies, not primary debt providers. The/. article is about a primary debt provider, not a collections agency. Your point and your link about collector calls concerns rules for collection agencies, not primary debt providers.
The article says it is the company that financed the car, which would make them the primary debt holder and not a collections agency. Read the Wiki you linked: "While the FDCPA generally applies only to third party debt collectors—not internal collectors for an "original creditor"
In that case you can get a used Cessna 172 for $20K and make that kind of trip in a couple of hours or less. As a bonus, show up in Vegas in your own plane and your favorite casino will send their limo for you, even if it is a cheap plane.
Is the passenger train industry moving to capitalize on this at all?
Probably not. Let's check a fairly normal distance USA city pair: Denver to Chicago by train: 18 hours, 40 minutes, $400 for an economy seat. By plane, 2 hours, 20 minutes, $340. Even adding the time to get hassled by the goons at the airport, paying extra to sit on the train for another 16 hours can't compete except for the most leisurely of leisure travelers.
And the "we need a colony to preserve the human race in the event of disaster" doesn't hold either, due at least in part to tragedy of the commons issues. At most, very, very few people would be able to be transported to Mars
The Boston Commons problem in economics is a situation wherein *everyone* benefits up front for free and illustrates the long term problem of lack of ownership of natural resources. It does not apply here, expect maybe if the Martian colonists treated a scarce, non-renewable resource on Mars as a common resource.
Slashdot Mirror
No, it's certainly not an urban legend, it's the best way to adjust your mirrors. You know that an overtaking car is in a given relative position because of what mirror it is in. Combine that with knowing things farther away appear smaller than things closer and you should be able to figure it out. If you need to see the back end of your car to work this out, please step out of your habit/comfort zone to try something new.
Sony is/was losing money on every sale, banking on making it up in licensing fees from the games purchased for each console sold
Other people have already mentioned this, proving that none of you read the article and/or thought it through at all. It clearly states the USAF purchased them by working directly with Sony, not sending a few hundred privates out to get a few from the local Best Buy. When the USAF called to place an order for 1,700 units, do you seriously think Sony quoted them the retail price at which they lose a few bucks per unit? Furthermore the folks at Sony planned on the USAF to send legions of privates out to buy an average of 3 games each in order to make a profit on the software side of the deal? It took you 10 times longer to type your post than it should have to think of these minor details.
Assets under management listed in millions? Whoever wrote that list is confused - there isn't so much money in the world.
If we want to make it at least as secure as the U.S. Mexico border fence (with fences along both sides of every track),
In short, Ms. Napolitano clearly has not thought this through. Either that or she has thought it through and she's just the biggest idiot on the face of the planet.
1. there is no fence along the entire Mexico/USA border, only a small section in southern California and various main road checkpoints.
2. She gets whopping piles of gifts from the scanner machine lobbyists.
I mean, since we really don't have much at all in the way of trains or other mass transportation over the majority of the country, this won't be a budget breaker.
Then again...didn't I hear the current administration is trying to fund to build out new long distance high speed rail systems?
And yet yesterday's article thread had several people arguing with me that all the USA needs is more high speed rail and everything will be wonderful - no more TSA scanners or gropings and get there almost as fast as airplanes. All it takes is some other people's tax money so who cares?
I'm not making up scenarios; you suggested Denver to Salt Lake City as a pair of cities that might get high speed rail. I have illustrated this is not cost effective. I have tried to think of viable city pairs in the US and only a couple come to mind (see higher up post). I think high speed rail is a waste of taxpayer's money in this country and yes, since airports are already built and are MUCH more flexible than fixed track, airplanes come out ahead, how could they not? Feel free to enlighten me with your own numbers on the cost effectiveness of rail travel.
Let's take your first city pair and look at the numbers: yahoo travel lists 19 daily direct flights on a weekday between Denver and Salt Lake City. Half of the planes are CRJs, about 70 seats, and the other half are A320/319/318 at around 120 seats. Rough total of about 1700 to 1800 seats. A single train seats 500 to 600, or about 3 trains per day. One every 4 daytime hours. A little googling around reveals the construction cost for medium speed rail in the USA is probably around 2 to 6 million, depending on the terrain. Distance from SLC to DEN as the crow flies is 368 miles and if we take the mid cost because some of the terrain is mountainous and some is relatively flat, comes to 1.47 billion $$. That's a whopping pile of money for setting up track for three trains per day.
Do these numbers add up to a sensible project or not?
Compare to China where the Beijing to Shanghai train departs full of people every 15 minutes. Again, in one of these places, there are enough people to make it worthwhile and in the other there is a romantic notion of trains being better somehow. It is not chicken/egg, it is not about adjusting perception; it is about economic feasibility.
Yes, that's why they are willing to suffer being groped by the Testicle Scrutinizing Authority - so that they could enjoy the very personal transportation in a flying rabbit hutch.
Airlines are public access transportation, not public mass transportation. Public mass transportation even in the form of high speed rail, will not compete with airlines except in a few cases so this isn't a valid comparison. One can take 5 hour trip on the new Beijing to Shanghai high speed rail versus a three hour flight and this makes the train a valid competitor. China has a LOT of large cities that are this distance or less between for high speed rail and that makes it more worth their time. How many city pairs in the US are there? New York / Washington DC and Los Angeles/San Francisco are the only two that come to mind. Maybe Chicago/Pittsburg also?
Anyway, the USA's population is too spread out and too small to support a nationwide network of high speed rail that could compete with air travel. And even if it were built, a Los Angeles to New York high speed train would still take 12 hours nonstop and it's more likely to have to stop adding many more hours. Never mind that to built it would cost a noticeable fraction of GDP and take 15 years. Compared to a 6 hour ride by air? So yes, people prefer the "flying rabbit hutch" over rail in the USA.
Oh, and I forgot:
3.China's population density is many times that in the USA. Most people in China live in the strip of land along the coastline and there are 1,600,000,000 of them. The subway in Beijing for example runs 6 car trains every 2 minutes during rush hour and it is standing room only. The light rail here in Denver is a 3 car train every 15 minutes and you can usually sit. (yes, I've ridden both) One of these public transportation systems pays its own way on ticket sales and one of them is HEAVILY subsidized by taxpayers. Your guess which one is a sensible public mass transit system and which one exists mainly to make people feel good about some abstract idealized notion of public transportation.
The only reason the United States doesn't do more with mass transit including rail is the government is a sell out to to auto and airline industries.
More likely a combination of several other factors:
1. The central government in China just says 'build a rail line there' and construction starts next month. In the USA it would take five years of environmental impact studies, lawsuits from Friends of the Little Frogs Who Live in the Way of the Proposed Rail Line, lawsuits from people who don't want their land condemned and/or a big loud train rumbling through the neighborhood.
2. Americans want the convenience of personal transportation.
Combine the aggravation of part 1 with the lack of demand in part 2 and you get the state of mass transit in the USA.
"Chinese division of a US rival of Ford's."
Sounds like american companies doing it to each other, to me.
All the manufacturing companies in China must be majority owned by a local Chinese company which is owned by Chinese citizens. So it may be a joint venture partnership "division" of a US rival who owns a large chunk, but no, it is not just two US companies involved.
Note that while this particular piece was ruled a treasure, this isn't automatic. It depends on how rare of an artifact it one finds. This is apparently a specialty religious item. If it were a a more plain medallion then it might not be ruled a treasure even if it was gold and the same age.
If the business of the concert venue was to sell tickets to third party ticket vendors then yes, this is a speed of business problem. However, the business of the concert venue is to sell tickets to concertgoers. Intercepting that sale creates an artificial arbitrage opportunity. Arbitrage is a byproduct of free market operations caused by imperfect dissemination of access and information. Therefore, ticket scalping, especially by such shenanigans, is NOT a free market capitalist operation.
Exactly. Going through all that effort is a pretty clear demonstration they wanted the ticket more than other people who were not as highly motivated.
If the true market value is higher than the face value, then I think the right of first sale should apply. I should be able to buy something for $X, and sell it for $2X if the market will support it.
They weren't interested in paying more than other players, they were interested in hijacking access.. The free market model of capitalism requires all players to have equal information and access. In the real world this rarely happens because a few players will have some small to medium advantage over another player but that's just because information and access can't be perfectly distributed at the same time to all players. These guys registering thousands of placeholder domains and shell companies were artificially creating an INSANELY HUGE advantage for themselves and did not even vaguely represent a free market capitalism operation.
That law also applies to original creditors now. I'm no expert, but I did recently take Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University class and he had a lesson on how to deal with debt collectors. They can contact relatives, but they can't mention that they are debt collectors, only that they wish to get in touch with you. I'm pretty sure she would have a legal basis for suing them.
No, the FDCPA does not apply to original creditors. Here is the link to the FTC's page where you can read the whole act: http://www.ftc.gov/os/statutes/fdcpajump.shtm I don't know who Dave is, and if he's taught you about collectors then he's correct but he's mistaken if he told you the FDCPA applies to creditors. Maybe he is thinking of some other piece of legislation or you misheard.
Again, the same thing. The link to fmdconsumer.com is about collections agencies, not primary debt providers. The /. article is about a primary debt provider, not a collections agency. Your point and your link about collector calls concerns rules for collection agencies, not primary debt providers.
The article says it is the company that financed the car, which would make them the primary debt holder and not a collections agency. Read the Wiki you linked: "While the FDCPA generally applies only to third party debt collectors—not internal collectors for an "original creditor"
In that case you can get a used Cessna 172 for $20K and make that kind of trip in a couple of hours or less. As a bonus, show up in Vegas in your own plane and your favorite casino will send their limo for you, even if it is a cheap plane.
Is the passenger train industry moving to capitalize on this at all?
Probably not. Let's check a fairly normal distance USA city pair: Denver to Chicago by train: 18 hours, 40 minutes, $400 for an economy seat. By plane, 2 hours, 20 minutes, $340. Even adding the time to get hassled by the goons at the airport, paying extra to sit on the train for another 16 hours can't compete except for the most leisurely of leisure travelers.
And the "we need a colony to preserve the human race in the event of disaster" doesn't hold either, due at least in part to tragedy of the commons issues. At most, very, very few people would be able to be transported to Mars
The Boston Commons problem in economics is a situation wherein *everyone* benefits up front for free and illustrates the long term problem of lack of ownership of natural resources. It does not apply here, expect maybe if the Martian colonists treated a scarce, non-renewable resource on Mars as a common resource.
Because how many tweets you send out is a reliable indicator of how interested you are in tech...
I thought the number of tweets you make indicated how much of a narcissist you are.
However, they aren't trading at 30x earnings like Google and Apple
Check the figures before posting next time:
YHOO $16/share, 21 P/E
GOOG $600/share, 25 P/E
Because 0+0=1!
In all fairness, the formula in this case is more like -5.0 (AOL) + 0.5 (Yahoo!) = -10.0
"Clearly the answer is to ban the thing the bomb came in and search those things..." Wow... what if somebody tries to hide a bomb in their anus?
On many a flight I've wished there was a ban on assholes and the idea of allowing cell phones just makes me hope that ban gets put in place first.
Several of Clevo's models are still like that, especially the larger ones. Shop outside the box and you can find lots more options in laptops.