While I understand you're speaking from your personal experience, but to say that they can't do stuff like that is simply naive at best. Here in Ottawa, Canada, we have multiple kinds of signal available on the bus system... there's no signals on the commuter trains, but that's because they stop at every stop anyway. As for the bus, though, there're buttons every couple of vertical posts, as well as at the doors, there're cords running along the windows, and there are buttons at wheelchair height in the wheelchair bays at the front of the bus. The newer double decker buses they're rolling out don't have the cord any more, but are otherwise the same.
It's not really a question of money not being spent though... Ottawa has a woefully underfunded (and overpriced) transit system... many of the buses we're using are more than 15 years old, and I have seen much newer buses in use in other cities... we only *just* upgraded the buses to have a disembodied voice from above announcing the stops (which makes me giggle inside, because it does it in English and French, even though proper names don't translate and most of the time it's just saying the same thing again with a French accent), which is something I saw in use in Europe more than a decade ago. It's a question of the people buying the buses not really thinking through the features on the buses they're buying. Most of Ottawa's fleet is manufactured by New Flyer, in Winnipeg, and they're a company that does understand what they're doing in terms of accessibility... some of the other manufacturers of buses not so much, it would appear.
The reason to not use a local system is that many people are not restricted to just one system. I have 3 computers that I use on a regular basis, not counting my work PC. Portability/version controlling between the systems is not impossible to do on your own, but it is annoying just the same, and for most users, it is simply easier to use a centralized service.
There do exist usb key fob devices that can encrypt your password and store it on the key fob, that way all you have to do is put the key in your usb port, open the program from the drive, and enter your master password, but these things cost money, which is prohibitive for most users when a free alternative exists.
Of course, you could just do like I do... I have a virtual machine that gets used only for my banking (one bank, easy to do). I don't do any online transactions other than bill payments which get done through my bank's website: nobody other than my bank has any of my banking information. And as for forum passwords, facebook, etc., I don't really care about security and use a handful of easy to remember passwords. Like you suggest, it's based on one assumption: if I don't trust the system I'm working on, I've lost the game. I run a reasonably well locked down browser for general use, and I kill the browser and start up a completely different operating system when I want to do anything financial.
As for work, they're anal about resetting passwords way too frequently on the systems I use, and won't let me use any kind of password manager... so I simply keep all of the tool logins and passwords in a password-protected excel file on my network drive. It's their own damned fault if it gets compromised, because theoretically that can only be accessed by somebody logged in as me, and their own security policies are the reason I need to keep the passwords like that.
There's more to it than just the raw per capita number. You need to look at statistics on a much more granular demographic level. For instance, Dentists have a significantly higher suicide rate than the general population in the US. China has a largely agrarian population at the moment, and historically, people living in a rural area, and with rural occupations like farming, have a much lower suicide rate than people living in cities, even in the western world. Your guess is as good as mine as to why, but I would guess it's because rural living tends to be much lower stress, and because you get much more fresh air and time outside.
What's the suicide rate among employees of manufacturing plants in China, and how does Foxconn compare against the average? The impression we're getting from the press is that Foxconn is well above average, but we truthfully don't know, and can't know, because that kind of statistic isn't made public. We simply don't know if other Chinese manufacturers are having the same kind of suicide rate as Foxconn appears to be, or not.
Liquidity is one thing I don't need to worry about, personally... quite aside from how easy it is to borrow against the equity in your home (most banks will write you a line of credit against the equity if you need to), I also live in an area with unemployment insurance, and it only takes 2 weeks to clear before I can start collecting insurance in the event of a loss of job. This is aside from the fact that due to a few factors I don't really want to get in to, I'm basically untouchable and short of a mass layoff or a serious fuckup on my part, they can't fire me. Either way, unless I do something seriously illegal, I'd be entitled to severance, and the $1000 or so I keep in my bank account is enough liquidity to get me through until the UI starts coming in.
You are right, though. An awful lot of people would rather spend money on material things than pay down their debt, and those that would pay down the debt would rather pay off the smaller, lower interest debt first. I do see the logic in it: it removes one of your monthly payments and allows you to put a larger amount of money in to the remaining payments, but it does end up costing some money.
Second, if you are getting a 4.65% APR on a credit card this year, that's basically a miracle. My credit rating is very good, and despite the fact that I pay my cards off at the end of the month every month, if I didn't, I'd owe over 25% APR on pretty much every card I have. The banks have used the credit crunch as an excuse to double or triple credit card APRs. Heck, here in California, you can barely even get home mortgages at 4.65%.
If your credit card carries an interest rate of 25% then you are absolutely and unequivocably the last person I would *ever* want to listen to for financial advice. That's almost the maximum allowed by law. (anti-usury laws limit it to 29.99%/year max) Even when I was a poor student with an income measured by how many extra shifts I could pull waitressing tables, I was only paying 18% interest on my credit cards. Now that I actually have a pretty good credit rating and pay off my cards every month, I am only paying 9% interest on my credit card, and if I was willing to shift from a no-fees card to one that carries an annual cost, I could halve that interest rate.... you do know you can call your credit card company and ask them to lower your interest, right?
Not an American, but I usually keep a float of about $1000 (CAD) in my bank account to pay for incidentals, the rest of the overage in my monthly budget goes towards paying my car loan and mortgage off faster. If I wanted to, I could easily put away more (there's a little over $600/mo surplus in my monthly budget), but it makes better economic sense to pay off those large loans faster, in order to reduce the interest that I'm paying overall: if I pay my car loan off 2 years early, I only pay 0.9% interest on the thing (it goes up to 1.9% in the final two years). The mortgage is a higher interest rate anyway, and for now, that's what I'm overpaying.
It's well and good to suggest that people should be saving more money, but there's times where building up your savings is a bad idea. Most poor people aren't even in a position where building up their savings is an option because they simply aren't paid enough, and many if not most middle class people are in the same situation that I am: putting away money is possible, but it's bad economic sense in the long run, because they can save thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars by paying off their debt faster.
If you are just surfing free adult pr0n sites and come across a site with what looks like CP, you have not participated in any way in the creation of those images and should not be guilty of anything.
Once you come across something you suspect to be child porn on the web, you have a moral and a legal obligation to report it to the authorities. You are not guilty if the visit is accidental, but the visit is presumed to be intentional if you do not report it to the authorities, and if it happens to be one of the honey traps they use to catch people who are deliberately surfing child porn, you're boned. There's actually some very good protections in place for people who accidentally stumble on illegal child porn and report it to the authorities, because these are the people who make it easier to catch the slime that's producing child porn.
Interesting... while the weapon can be used at that kind of range, it would take a *lot* of luck to actually hit anything accurately. When I was in the military, the max effective range on a C7-A1 was about 300m, and at the range, people usually didn't train at ranges further than 200m except when they were doing the 300m rundown certification.
Keeping in mind that the C7-A1 is essentially an M16-A2 with a continuous fire mode (instead of the "burst of three" that the American counterpart is limited to), and is also manufactured by the same people as the M16, complete with the grips manufactured by Mattel, perhaps you meant 800 feet, and not 800 yards? I mean, if you're *really* good and *really* lucky, you can score a hit from 800 yards, but it's unlikely to be lethal and if you're shooting from that far away, the M16 would never be the weapon of choice. 5.56x45 simply doesn't have that kind of range.
And Harper is a corrupt autocrat with a penchant for saying "screw you guys, I'm going home" whenever he doesn't get his way. He is the single most dangerous prime minister that this country has ever known, and I would rather Ignatieff over Harper any day of the week. Neither of them is my first choice, but between them, I think that Ignatieff is significantly less frightening.
We're talking about a prime minister whose first act in office was to try to repeal the controls on the banking sector that are the very reason that Canada has managed to weather the current recession so well (and yet he's still claiming credit for how we managed to not be as fucked as he wanted us to be). We're talking about a prime minister who brought in somebody he knew had been convicted and disbarred for fraud to write his "transparency" legislation. We're talking about a prime minister who has repeatedly tried to repeal civil rights in this country (gay marriage, abortion, affirmative action, etc...). We're talking about a prime minister whose skill for diplomacy cost us a seat on the UN Security Council and has made us a laughing stock in international politics. We're talking about a prime minister who spent $1 billion on security for an event, with at least half of that money "disappearing" into ridings that his government controlled with no accountability on how it was actually spent. We're talking about a prime minister who criminalized dissent. We're talking about a prime minister who has a habit of *firing* anybody who disagrees with him. We're talking about a prime minister who refuses to acknowledge that climate change is happening. We're talking about a prime minister who still believes his government was defeated over the budget (hint: the budget passed. he was defeated over the contempt of parliament charges). We're talking about a prime minister who has no problem throwing people to the wolves over unfounded accusations in the name of appearing to be tough on corruption while ignoring the actual corruption going on (Helena Guergis, anybody?).
If you can honestly tell me with a straight face that Harper is good for this country, you need to have your head examined.
I would normally just moderate the above, but I need to share my own experiences which were disturbingly similar...
I have needed the help of my MP 3 times in the last few years... twice for a passport issue (needing to get a passport issued in a rush for X reason), and once concerning an issue with the office of the registrar general. I contacted my MP (Gordon O'Connor, Conservative), and was told in no uncertain terms that he was "too busy" to occupy himself with my troubles, or that he wasn't interested in helping me out, or some other excuse. Every time I contacted him.
In all three occasions, I contacted Paul Dewar, NDP, who was my MP when I lived in town. And in all three occasions, the issue was resolved within a week of contacting Mr. Dewar.
So yes, it really does depend on who your MP is. Some of them, like O'Connor, are as useless as condoms to a lesbian. Others really do remember who they work for, and are a joy to work with.
The Eschede accident did happen on normal tracks, but the faulty wheel design would have affected a train only travelling on high speed tracks as well... they replaced the wheels with a design that had a rubber buffer between the "tread" and the hub. The idea was that it would be quieter and more comfortable. It was quieter, but what they didn't count on was that the rubber would deform as it got hot, and it created a sort of wobble on the wheel tread. After enough kilometers, that wobble created enough fatigue in the wheel that it failed catastrophically, causing the derailment and accident.
The mistake was in using a wheel type that was originally designed for the Paris subway, and was never designed for the kinds of speeds that a high speed train, or even a normal above-ground train travels. Since then, they've gone back to solid wheels, and focused on improving the suspension in the cars in order to improve ride comfort. It's telling that Eschede was the only major accident in the world with the high speed train network, though, and that nothing like it has happened since.:) (well, yet, thanks to China....)
Just that you can't launch a human with a railgun... short of having a gun that's many hundreds of kilometers long, the acceleration needed to reach orbit would be lethal.:) It'd work fine for launching robotic payloads, but not for manned space flight.
We'd need one of these before we can start building ships in space in sufficient numbers to be worth it. There's already numerous groups around the world looking in to the technology and feasibility of doing it, and several proposed sites around the world. Alternately, we could also try a launch loop, but either way, our engineering is simply not capable of building something like that yet. "Yet" being the operative word.
As for why we don't build ships at a space station? The logistics of keeping a staff in orbit, and blasting parts into orbit so they can be assembled by staff in orbit, then blasting fuel into orbit so the ship can be fuelled, then blasting a crew and food supplies into orbit so that the ship can actually be launched are far more expensive than simply building craft on terra firma and blasting the whole kit and kaboodle into space. Until we're ready to start manned missions to deep space, it's simply not worth it, economically.
*shrugs* I pay about $62/mo for sattelite service with 2 dual-tuner HD PVR's, and I get all the channels I want. Maybe you should break the cable mold, and get Sattelite, as you can pick and choose specific packages you want, rather than the all-or-nothing paying for channels you don't care about cable model. It's not quite a-la-carte, but it does significantly cut down on paying for channels you don't want. And while the weather does affect the service, mine has gone out once in the last year. Today, it's grey, overcast, and pouring rain, and the dish is still giving me a cleaner picture than I ever got with cable.
An HTPC running XBMC so you can watch recent shows, a subscription to Netflix, and a pair of rabbit ears is still the direction I'd go if I could get an Internet connection with a decent bandwidth cap, but unfortunately, my ISP's approach to fixing bandwidth caps is to try to lobby the government into making unlimited caps illegal rather than raising their own cap. As soon as I have another choice, I'm switching.
Perhaps the amount of porting needed to get Netflix to run on WP7 is significantly less than the amount of work needed to get it to run in a sandboxed Java environment. Keep in mind that there was a Windows client for Netflix long before the iPhone or WP7 versions existed.
Though as I think about it, the Wii version of Netflix would probably be a good starting point for getting it to run on an Android phone.
yay proofreading... that should read "just because you're providing service to your guest doesn't mean you have to give them complete and unabridged access to the web at large...."
You don't worry about that, and instead focus on securing your guest WiFi through some kind of walled garden or forced proxy setting to prevent people from abusing the service. It's actually quite trivial to force all traffic through a silent proxy without having to configure client PC's for it at all. If you don't want to go to that much effort, you can also simply block everything that isn't on HTTP or HTTPS default ports, and just force those ports through a proxy.
Just because you're providing wireless service to your guests means you have to give them complete and unabridged access to the web at large. Most users would never notice the difference if you blocked ports, and those who would can be satisfied by posting a sign offering to open specific ports upon request.
When you realize that the 320kbit MP3 you've downloaded is actually ripped from a 192kbit CD, however...
MP3 is a lossy codec, though. A trained ear can hear the difference between a CD and an MP3 quite easily, and once somebody's pointed it out to you, you'll notice a big difference between an analog source and a digital source. You do need high end hi fi equipment to hear the difference, but when you're in that range, you won't ever want to go back to digital.
The problem is, it's precious difficult to find actual analog sources these days. There's no point in getting an analog pressing of something that was recorded in a digital studio, because the loss is happening at the source. Remember in the early days when CD's used to have a mark on the jewel case indicating AAD, ADD, or DDD, to indicate how it was recorded, how it was mastered, and how it was distributed? They stopped doing that when everybody went digital, and since then there's really no point in seeking out an analog media. But when I compare the CD version of my Deutsche Grammophon recording of Beethoven's 9th against the Vinyl version (which I also have), the Vinyl version comes out way ahead, even though they're based off the same master tapes, and the records are 30 years older than the CD. Ironically, of course, short of inviting you into my home to hear it in person, there is no way for me to prove it to you, because the moment I record it to a digital medium, or put it on Youtube, you'll lose the very information I'm complaining about losing in the CD.:)
Maybe I'm assuming that same-sex marriage = liberal, but I don't know too many conservatives that support it.
You can be liberal in some areas, and conservative in others, and it's not contradictory. Contrary to what some camps would have you believe, it's not an all or nothing proposal, nor is it an "us or them" situation.
Case in point, in terms of fiscal spending, I'm as conservative as it gets. I don't believe in spending money you don't have, I believe in cutting spending when you can, and raising taxes when you can't to make up the shortfall. Socially, however, I'm about as liberal as it gets. I believe firmly in equal rights, in having a social security net for the people, in having access to education opportunities as a fundamental human right, health care, etc..
And my partner is actually a member of the GOP, and she's in favour of gay marriage. Of course, that would largely be because it would mean that the US would recognize our marriage and we'd be able to go south, but still....
Specifically, did the company in question resume sending bills after the 3 months were up or not?
If the company did not resume sending bills after the 3 months had passed, then the company has no right to send the account to collections, and he was within his rights to challenge them in court. If it were me, I would have filed a countersuit for damages caused by sending me to collections, because that would seriously affect my credit rating (which is near perfect at the moment). The agreement was to suspend billing for 3 months, not to suspend billing for several years and then send him to collections for not paying the bills he wasn't receiving.
If the company did resume sending bills after the 3 months, or if the company did like my credit card company would, and continued sending bills during the 3 months in question, but sent them showing balance due but minimum payment of $0, then he was a douche and should have paid the bill.
Part of me says it's his own fault, as my personal practice is to cancel any credit card I didn't apply for... if I needed something in a hurry and didn't have balance left on my credit cards, that's why I have a line of credit with the bank (something that never happens, one of them has a balance of $0 and a limit of $20,000, and never gets used except in emergencies, the other has a limit of $2000 and keeps a running balance as I put my monthly recurring bills on it, but gets paid off every month, it's also the one I use when I don't have enough cash on hand to complete my transaction). But by the same token, he's not giving us enough information about the card company's behaviour to absolve the company entirely.
On the other hand, if I get a call from a collection agency and I inform the person I speak with that the charge is illegitimate and I intend to challenge it, it is harrassment if the collection agency keeps calling you.
Depending on jurisdiction, at least. But I have successfully sued a collection agency for far more than the debt in question was (and also successfully sued the company that sent me to the collection agency because, surprise surprise, it was actually their fuckup and I could prove they'd been paid in full the day I received the first bill).
... and those among us who chose to buy an iPhone or Android-based phone because of better interface, more open ecosystem (yes, even an iPhone has a more open ecosystem than Blackberry), or any other of the myriad of reasons? Try turning your Blackberry phone off and tell me how useful the Playbook is, and whether you feel you were better off spending $600 on the Playbook, or $450 on a 13" laptop with an HSDPA card.
Dog Whisperer is the only thing I'd miss from NatGeo. Most of the other content is substandard, and I can get better documentaries commercial-free on channels like eqhd, and OasisHD. If I could stream those two channels online, I would drop my Sattelite connection for streaming in a heartbeat... everything else I enjoy watching can be had through streaming. But those two channels are my standbys.... if I'm bored or want to watch something interesting, I will always find it on one of those two channels (and frequently both at the same time)
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While I understand you're speaking from your personal experience, but to say that they can't do stuff like that is simply naive at best. Here in Ottawa, Canada, we have multiple kinds of signal available on the bus system... there's no signals on the commuter trains, but that's because they stop at every stop anyway. As for the bus, though, there're buttons every couple of vertical posts, as well as at the doors, there're cords running along the windows, and there are buttons at wheelchair height in the wheelchair bays at the front of the bus. The newer double decker buses they're rolling out don't have the cord any more, but are otherwise the same.
It's not really a question of money not being spent though... Ottawa has a woefully underfunded (and overpriced) transit system... many of the buses we're using are more than 15 years old, and I have seen much newer buses in use in other cities... we only *just* upgraded the buses to have a disembodied voice from above announcing the stops (which makes me giggle inside, because it does it in English and French, even though proper names don't translate and most of the time it's just saying the same thing again with a French accent), which is something I saw in use in Europe more than a decade ago. It's a question of the people buying the buses not really thinking through the features on the buses they're buying. Most of Ottawa's fleet is manufactured by New Flyer, in Winnipeg, and they're a company that does understand what they're doing in terms of accessibility... some of the other manufacturers of buses not so much, it would appear.
The reason to not use a local system is that many people are not restricted to just one system. I have 3 computers that I use on a regular basis, not counting my work PC. Portability/version controlling between the systems is not impossible to do on your own, but it is annoying just the same, and for most users, it is simply easier to use a centralized service.
There do exist usb key fob devices that can encrypt your password and store it on the key fob, that way all you have to do is put the key in your usb port, open the program from the drive, and enter your master password, but these things cost money, which is prohibitive for most users when a free alternative exists.
Of course, you could just do like I do... I have a virtual machine that gets used only for my banking (one bank, easy to do). I don't do any online transactions other than bill payments which get done through my bank's website: nobody other than my bank has any of my banking information. And as for forum passwords, facebook, etc., I don't really care about security and use a handful of easy to remember passwords. Like you suggest, it's based on one assumption: if I don't trust the system I'm working on, I've lost the game. I run a reasonably well locked down browser for general use, and I kill the browser and start up a completely different operating system when I want to do anything financial.
As for work, they're anal about resetting passwords way too frequently on the systems I use, and won't let me use any kind of password manager... so I simply keep all of the tool logins and passwords in a password-protected excel file on my network drive. It's their own damned fault if it gets compromised, because theoretically that can only be accessed by somebody logged in as me, and their own security policies are the reason I need to keep the passwords like that.
... Imagine a beowulf cluster of people imagining beowulf clusters....think of the cluster you could envision!
There's more to it than just the raw per capita number. You need to look at statistics on a much more granular demographic level. For instance, Dentists have a significantly higher suicide rate than the general population in the US. China has a largely agrarian population at the moment, and historically, people living in a rural area, and with rural occupations like farming, have a much lower suicide rate than people living in cities, even in the western world. Your guess is as good as mine as to why, but I would guess it's because rural living tends to be much lower stress, and because you get much more fresh air and time outside.
What's the suicide rate among employees of manufacturing plants in China, and how does Foxconn compare against the average? The impression we're getting from the press is that Foxconn is well above average, but we truthfully don't know, and can't know, because that kind of statistic isn't made public. We simply don't know if other Chinese manufacturers are having the same kind of suicide rate as Foxconn appears to be, or not.
Liquidity is one thing I don't need to worry about, personally... quite aside from how easy it is to borrow against the equity in your home (most banks will write you a line of credit against the equity if you need to), I also live in an area with unemployment insurance, and it only takes 2 weeks to clear before I can start collecting insurance in the event of a loss of job. This is aside from the fact that due to a few factors I don't really want to get in to, I'm basically untouchable and short of a mass layoff or a serious fuckup on my part, they can't fire me. Either way, unless I do something seriously illegal, I'd be entitled to severance, and the $1000 or so I keep in my bank account is enough liquidity to get me through until the UI starts coming in.
You are right, though. An awful lot of people would rather spend money on material things than pay down their debt, and those that would pay down the debt would rather pay off the smaller, lower interest debt first. I do see the logic in it: it removes one of your monthly payments and allows you to put a larger amount of money in to the remaining payments, but it does end up costing some money.
If your credit card carries an interest rate of 25% then you are absolutely and unequivocably the last person I would *ever* want to listen to for financial advice. That's almost the maximum allowed by law. (anti-usury laws limit it to 29.99%/year max) Even when I was a poor student with an income measured by how many extra shifts I could pull waitressing tables, I was only paying 18% interest on my credit cards. Now that I actually have a pretty good credit rating and pay off my cards every month, I am only paying 9% interest on my credit card, and if I was willing to shift from a no-fees card to one that carries an annual cost, I could halve that interest rate. ... you do know you can call your credit card company and ask them to lower your interest, right?
Not an American, but I usually keep a float of about $1000 (CAD) in my bank account to pay for incidentals, the rest of the overage in my monthly budget goes towards paying my car loan and mortgage off faster. If I wanted to, I could easily put away more (there's a little over $600/mo surplus in my monthly budget), but it makes better economic sense to pay off those large loans faster, in order to reduce the interest that I'm paying overall: if I pay my car loan off 2 years early, I only pay 0.9% interest on the thing (it goes up to 1.9% in the final two years). The mortgage is a higher interest rate anyway, and for now, that's what I'm overpaying.
It's well and good to suggest that people should be saving more money, but there's times where building up your savings is a bad idea. Most poor people aren't even in a position where building up their savings is an option because they simply aren't paid enough, and many if not most middle class people are in the same situation that I am: putting away money is possible, but it's bad economic sense in the long run, because they can save thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars by paying off their debt faster.
If you are just surfing free adult pr0n sites and come across a site with what looks like CP, you have not participated in any way in the creation of those images and should not be guilty of anything.
Once you come across something you suspect to be child porn on the web, you have a moral and a legal obligation to report it to the authorities. You are not guilty if the visit is accidental, but the visit is presumed to be intentional if you do not report it to the authorities, and if it happens to be one of the honey traps they use to catch people who are deliberately surfing child porn, you're boned. There's actually some very good protections in place for people who accidentally stumble on illegal child porn and report it to the authorities, because these are the people who make it easier to catch the slime that's producing child porn.
Interesting... while the weapon can be used at that kind of range, it would take a *lot* of luck to actually hit anything accurately. When I was in the military, the max effective range on a C7-A1 was about 300m, and at the range, people usually didn't train at ranges further than 200m except when they were doing the 300m rundown certification.
Keeping in mind that the C7-A1 is essentially an M16-A2 with a continuous fire mode (instead of the "burst of three" that the American counterpart is limited to), and is also manufactured by the same people as the M16, complete with the grips manufactured by Mattel, perhaps you meant 800 feet, and not 800 yards? I mean, if you're *really* good and *really* lucky, you can score a hit from 800 yards, but it's unlikely to be lethal and if you're shooting from that far away, the M16 would never be the weapon of choice. 5.56x45 simply doesn't have that kind of range.
And Harper is a corrupt autocrat with a penchant for saying "screw you guys, I'm going home" whenever he doesn't get his way. He is the single most dangerous prime minister that this country has ever known, and I would rather Ignatieff over Harper any day of the week. Neither of them is my first choice, but between them, I think that Ignatieff is significantly less frightening.
We're talking about a prime minister whose first act in office was to try to repeal the controls on the banking sector that are the very reason that Canada has managed to weather the current recession so well (and yet he's still claiming credit for how we managed to not be as fucked as he wanted us to be). We're talking about a prime minister who brought in somebody he knew had been convicted and disbarred for fraud to write his "transparency" legislation. We're talking about a prime minister who has repeatedly tried to repeal civil rights in this country (gay marriage, abortion, affirmative action, etc...). We're talking about a prime minister whose skill for diplomacy cost us a seat on the UN Security Council and has made us a laughing stock in international politics. We're talking about a prime minister who spent $1 billion on security for an event, with at least half of that money "disappearing" into ridings that his government controlled with no accountability on how it was actually spent. We're talking about a prime minister who criminalized dissent. We're talking about a prime minister who has a habit of *firing* anybody who disagrees with him. We're talking about a prime minister who refuses to acknowledge that climate change is happening. We're talking about a prime minister who still believes his government was defeated over the budget (hint: the budget passed. he was defeated over the contempt of parliament charges). We're talking about a prime minister who has no problem throwing people to the wolves over unfounded accusations in the name of appearing to be tough on corruption while ignoring the actual corruption going on (Helena Guergis, anybody?).
If you can honestly tell me with a straight face that Harper is good for this country, you need to have your head examined.
He's the single most dangerous prime minister this country has ever known.
^^
I would normally just moderate the above, but I need to share my own experiences which were disturbingly similar...
I have needed the help of my MP 3 times in the last few years... twice for a passport issue (needing to get a passport issued in a rush for X reason), and once concerning an issue with the office of the registrar general. I contacted my MP (Gordon O'Connor, Conservative), and was told in no uncertain terms that he was "too busy" to occupy himself with my troubles, or that he wasn't interested in helping me out, or some other excuse. Every time I contacted him.
In all three occasions, I contacted Paul Dewar, NDP, who was my MP when I lived in town. And in all three occasions, the issue was resolved within a week of contacting Mr. Dewar.
So yes, it really does depend on who your MP is. Some of them, like O'Connor, are as useless as condoms to a lesbian. Others really do remember who they work for, and are a joy to work with.
The Eschede accident did happen on normal tracks, but the faulty wheel design would have affected a train only travelling on high speed tracks as well... they replaced the wheels with a design that had a rubber buffer between the "tread" and the hub. The idea was that it would be quieter and more comfortable. It was quieter, but what they didn't count on was that the rubber would deform as it got hot, and it created a sort of wobble on the wheel tread. After enough kilometers, that wobble created enough fatigue in the wheel that it failed catastrophically, causing the derailment and accident.
The mistake was in using a wheel type that was originally designed for the Paris subway, and was never designed for the kinds of speeds that a high speed train, or even a normal above-ground train travels. Since then, they've gone back to solid wheels, and focused on improving the suspension in the cars in order to improve ride comfort. It's telling that Eschede was the only major accident in the world with the high speed train network, though, and that nothing like it has happened since. :) (well, yet, thanks to China....)
Just that you can't launch a human with a railgun... short of having a gun that's many hundreds of kilometers long, the acceleration needed to reach orbit would be lethal. :) It'd work fine for launching robotic payloads, but not for manned space flight.
Whoring for Karma? why not....
We'd need one of these before we can start building ships in space in sufficient numbers to be worth it. There's already numerous groups around the world looking in to the technology and feasibility of doing it, and several proposed sites around the world. Alternately, we could also try a launch loop, but either way, our engineering is simply not capable of building something like that yet. "Yet" being the operative word.
As for why we don't build ships at a space station? The logistics of keeping a staff in orbit, and blasting parts into orbit so they can be assembled by staff in orbit, then blasting fuel into orbit so the ship can be fuelled, then blasting a crew and food supplies into orbit so that the ship can actually be launched are far more expensive than simply building craft on terra firma and blasting the whole kit and kaboodle into space. Until we're ready to start manned missions to deep space, it's simply not worth it, economically.
*shrugs* I pay about $62/mo for sattelite service with 2 dual-tuner HD PVR's, and I get all the channels I want. Maybe you should break the cable mold, and get Sattelite, as you can pick and choose specific packages you want, rather than the all-or-nothing paying for channels you don't care about cable model. It's not quite a-la-carte, but it does significantly cut down on paying for channels you don't want. And while the weather does affect the service, mine has gone out once in the last year. Today, it's grey, overcast, and pouring rain, and the dish is still giving me a cleaner picture than I ever got with cable.
An HTPC running XBMC so you can watch recent shows, a subscription to Netflix, and a pair of rabbit ears is still the direction I'd go if I could get an Internet connection with a decent bandwidth cap, but unfortunately, my ISP's approach to fixing bandwidth caps is to try to lobby the government into making unlimited caps illegal rather than raising their own cap. As soon as I have another choice, I'm switching.
Perhaps the amount of porting needed to get Netflix to run on WP7 is significantly less than the amount of work needed to get it to run in a sandboxed Java environment. Keep in mind that there was a Windows client for Netflix long before the iPhone or WP7 versions existed.
Though as I think about it, the Wii version of Netflix would probably be a good starting point for getting it to run on an Android phone.
yay proofreading... that should read "just because you're providing service to your guest doesn't mean you have to give them complete and unabridged access to the web at large...."
You don't worry about that, and instead focus on securing your guest WiFi through some kind of walled garden or forced proxy setting to prevent people from abusing the service. It's actually quite trivial to force all traffic through a silent proxy without having to configure client PC's for it at all. If you don't want to go to that much effort, you can also simply block everything that isn't on HTTP or HTTPS default ports, and just force those ports through a proxy.
Just because you're providing wireless service to your guests means you have to give them complete and unabridged access to the web at large. Most users would never notice the difference if you blocked ports, and those who would can be satisfied by posting a sign offering to open specific ports upon request.
When you realize that the 320kbit MP3 you've downloaded is actually ripped from a 192kbit CD, however...
MP3 is a lossy codec, though. A trained ear can hear the difference between a CD and an MP3 quite easily, and once somebody's pointed it out to you, you'll notice a big difference between an analog source and a digital source. You do need high end hi fi equipment to hear the difference, but when you're in that range, you won't ever want to go back to digital.
The problem is, it's precious difficult to find actual analog sources these days. There's no point in getting an analog pressing of something that was recorded in a digital studio, because the loss is happening at the source. Remember in the early days when CD's used to have a mark on the jewel case indicating AAD, ADD, or DDD, to indicate how it was recorded, how it was mastered, and how it was distributed? They stopped doing that when everybody went digital, and since then there's really no point in seeking out an analog media. But when I compare the CD version of my Deutsche Grammophon recording of Beethoven's 9th against the Vinyl version (which I also have), the Vinyl version comes out way ahead, even though they're based off the same master tapes, and the records are 30 years older than the CD. Ironically, of course, short of inviting you into my home to hear it in person, there is no way for me to prove it to you, because the moment I record it to a digital medium, or put it on Youtube, you'll lose the very information I'm complaining about losing in the CD. :)
You can be liberal in some areas, and conservative in others, and it's not contradictory. Contrary to what some camps would have you believe, it's not an all or nothing proposal, nor is it an "us or them" situation.
Case in point, in terms of fiscal spending, I'm as conservative as it gets. I don't believe in spending money you don't have, I believe in cutting spending when you can, and raising taxes when you can't to make up the shortfall. Socially, however, I'm about as liberal as it gets. I believe firmly in equal rights, in having a social security net for the people, in having access to education opportunities as a fundamental human right, health care, etc..
And my partner is actually a member of the GOP, and she's in favour of gay marriage. Of course, that would largely be because it would mean that the US would recognize our marriage and we'd be able to go south, but still....
There's missing information here, though....
Specifically, did the company in question resume sending bills after the 3 months were up or not?
If the company did not resume sending bills after the 3 months had passed, then the company has no right to send the account to collections, and he was within his rights to challenge them in court. If it were me, I would have filed a countersuit for damages caused by sending me to collections, because that would seriously affect my credit rating (which is near perfect at the moment). The agreement was to suspend billing for 3 months, not to suspend billing for several years and then send him to collections for not paying the bills he wasn't receiving.
If the company did resume sending bills after the 3 months, or if the company did like my credit card company would, and continued sending bills during the 3 months in question, but sent them showing balance due but minimum payment of $0, then he was a douche and should have paid the bill.
Part of me says it's his own fault, as my personal practice is to cancel any credit card I didn't apply for... if I needed something in a hurry and didn't have balance left on my credit cards, that's why I have a line of credit with the bank (something that never happens, one of them has a balance of $0 and a limit of $20,000, and never gets used except in emergencies, the other has a limit of $2000 and keeps a running balance as I put my monthly recurring bills on it, but gets paid off every month, it's also the one I use when I don't have enough cash on hand to complete my transaction). But by the same token, he's not giving us enough information about the card company's behaviour to absolve the company entirely.
On the other hand, if I get a call from a collection agency and I inform the person I speak with that the charge is illegitimate and I intend to challenge it, it is harrassment if the collection agency keeps calling you.
Depending on jurisdiction, at least. But I have successfully sued a collection agency for far more than the debt in question was (and also successfully sued the company that sent me to the collection agency because, surprise surprise, it was actually their fuckup and I could prove they'd been paid in full the day I received the first bill).
... and those among us who chose to buy an iPhone or Android-based phone because of better interface, more open ecosystem (yes, even an iPhone has a more open ecosystem than Blackberry), or any other of the myriad of reasons? Try turning your Blackberry phone off and tell me how useful the Playbook is, and whether you feel you were better off spending $600 on the Playbook, or $450 on a 13" laptop with an HSDPA card.
Dog Whisperer is the only thing I'd miss from NatGeo. Most of the other content is substandard, and I can get better documentaries commercial-free on channels like eqhd, and OasisHD. If I could stream those two channels online, I would drop my Sattelite connection for streaming in a heartbeat... everything else I enjoy watching can be had through streaming. But those two channels are my standbys.... if I'm bored or want to watch something interesting, I will always find it on one of those two channels (and frequently both at the same time)