I think nVidea is just supplying technology, and not an actual chip. Sure, Sony will have to pay licensing fees and such, but they'll be free to figure out the least expensive way to manufacture the parts on their own.
That's a big deal, because in the chip world, parts generally get *more* expensive over time when you buy them from a third party. Microsoft is having this problem with the Xbox right now. Intel has discontinued the CPU and nVidea has done the same with the GPU so Microsoft has to pay a premium to keep the parts in production. It seems like they're going to try to avoid that for the Xbox2 by licensing the design for the CPU and renting some fab capacity.... That's probably one of the biggest reasons they switched from an intel to an IBM core. Intel isn't known for licensing their processor cores, but IBM does it all the time.
Just like a fanboy to assume that everybody else is a fanboy.
I'm not brand loyal, I'm just anti-Microsoft. If Sony ever decides to halt progress just because they happen to be the dominant market player I'll start being anti-Sony too. Until then I'll judge each of their products on it's own merits.
Is this the same crappy PS2 controller that contains *all* spring-free analog buttons (including the D-pad), and analog sticks that are in the position your thumb occupies at rest rather than up out of the way?
The size and shape of a controller may be a matter of personal preference, but the construction quality of the DualShock 2 is well beyond "crappy" and the technology in the DualShock 2 is far beyond that of the basic vibrating USB gamepad that comes with the Xbox.
If only there were a DualShock 2 Wavebird or a Nintendo Wavebird with DualShock style analog shoulder buttons instead of those springy things....
If, and let's hope that's a big if... If Microsoft wins and ends up with vast marketshare compared to it's competitors (like Sony has now), you'll see their real strategy kick in. Do you really want Microsoft software/hardware/formats/DRM as the technology interface between you and content providers? Do you want the console market to stagnate like the office application/web browser/operating system market has since they started dominating those markets?
Given Microsoft's history with how they've used a dominant market position in the past, there won't be an Xbox2 connected to my television no matter how good it is, lest we end up with a decade of video game technology stagnation.
It's like those computer stores that 'cash discount' their prices... Play on words to get around rules that prevent them from jacking up the price because you wanna pay by credit card...
Those computer stores likely have to pay as much as $0.25 plus 5% of the purchase price as a fee to the credit card company. If they wanted to charge the same price for cash or credit, they're have to raise the price for cash purchases. Online computer sales from small vendors are lucky to have an 8-9% margin, so having to give away 5% to your credit card company would mean they wouldn't be able to stay in business.
What you should actually be upset about is contracts that credit card companies force on merchants that prevent the merchant from passing on the savings to you when you pay with cash. It's not too long ago that you used to be able to get a 3-4% discount on gasoline if you paid with cash. Now you pay the higher price either way because the credit card company tells the gas station owner that he can't accept credit cards unless the price is the same cash or credit. The same goes for PayPal. Sellers aren't allowed to pass the PayPal fees on to the buyer... For fixed price items this means the price is higher wether you use PayPal or not.
The situation is even worse with the new Debit Visa cards. The fees are higher for the merchant if the customer doesn't use their PIN than they are for regular Visa charges, but smaller merchants have no leverage to negotiate a contract that lowers those fees, and Visa won't allow the merchant to accept regular Visa cards but not Debit Visa cards. The merchant is also not allowed to charge you more to use the debit card as a credit card, so the merchant is forced to raise all of their prices or to eat the fee.
It's the credit card companies that are evil... Not the stores that figure out a way to pass the savings on to you when you prevent them from paying credit card transaction fees.
As CPUs get faster you get more performance for your licensing dollar... Adding another core to the CPU is no different than adding a few more ALUs or a SIMD unit, or a memory channel, etc... Yet you don't see them charging more for a license on a CPU that performs better than they do for a slow processor.
Why aren't they licensing per database, or per application, or per unit of performance? Or something, anything, that actually has some actual meaning?
Then again, this whole thing is silly. Oracle is just like every other enterprise software company. They send their sales staff out and negotiate a price for each individual customer that is somewhere just below the absolute most that customer is willing to pay without going to another vendor. What they divide that price by on the invoice is just a petty detail.
I'm sorry, but a photograph of a sculpture is not a reproduction of said sculpture. If people were out making photographs of some artist's photographs you'd have a point.
Similarly, you can take photographs of jewlery, but if you take a wax mold and make your own reproductions - even if it's of a piece of jewelery you own - you are violating the artist's copyright. Even in that case though, jewelers get around the other jeweler's copyright my creating their own similar, but not copied, pieces with only subtle differences. Unless the original jeweler has a design patent on some of the unique elements of the design, this is perfectly legal.
The issue here is that the city wants to make money selling postcards and nobody has sued their asses yet.
Re:been thinking about mythtv for a while...
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MythTV 0.17 Released
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Just because there's an RCA connector on the end doesn't mean the construction of the cable isn't coxial. The component cables I have, PS2 cable included, each component wire is a round coaxially constructed cable. Even good composite video cables are coaxial these days. If you cut into yours I bet you'd find the same, since the coaxial construction makes each component less susceptable to noise from the others.
Re:been thinking about mythtv for a while...
on
MythTV 0.17 Released
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· Score: 1
...but the thought of going from component input to coax...
I know I'm just being pedantic, but don't you mean from component to RF? Your component cables probably are coaxial.
Around now, the MPAA is probably gleefully poring over the logs, going through IP numbers, and compiling a list of the "hundreds of thousands" of individuals it might sue next. Fun!
I hope those logs say what and not just who. I'd hate to have the MPAA try to sue me because I downloaded porn!
So therefore, the only way to instill fear in the mind of "internet shoplifters"...
The only time quantity of punishment will affect the behavior of somebody breaking the law is when it is accompanied by certainty of punishment.
They can make the punishment for internet copy infringement as large as they like, but they won't reduce the amount of copying that occurs as long as they are only capabale of catching one in a ten million infringers. All raising the penalty in that case does is unfairly punish the few people they do manage to catch.
This a great option, as the filing fee can usually be $30 or less but there are two things you should be aware of before you try this:
Most extended warranty contracts have an arbitration clause. That means you gave up your right to sue and instead will have the claim decided by an arbitration service that the company selected and pays.
Once you win in small claims court the initial burden of collection is on you. If you can't extract your money from the defendant, there are remedies you can ask the court for, but most aren't too helpful on business that don't own property in your home state.
It's still illegal for truck drivers to drive drunk. Maybe since they're experts, it should be okay for them? Other than stigma, what's the difference between chemical impairment and distractive impairment/attention impairment (what would you call it?)?
I'm not arguing that it should be legal for anybody to drive drunk... With that in mind, your other questions don't really make sense.
You can train yourself to not be distracted by something, but you can't train yourself to not have a high blood alcohol level. Either you're drunk, or your not... So people who have been drinking should not be allowed on the road.
Unless being on call means that being able to answer your call immediately is a matter of life and death[...]
What about if it's a matter of employment or unemployment? Or should people who's jobs require them to be on call be forced to stay home all the time?
In the past people were only on call in shifts because there was no such thing as ubiquitous wireless communications. These days, however, since companies know you can have a cell phone... In fact since they can provide you with a cellphone, they expect you to be available to answer the phone at any time. Waiting to get to your destination isn't really an option unless you want to risk losing your job.
that it's any more a violation of anyone's rights to make driving and talking illegal than it is drinking and driving.
Did you read the article? It says experience and caution make the negative effects of talking on the phone while driving go away... Experience and caution don't do anything to reduce the hazards of driving drunk. Therefore you can't judge the two on the same merits.
Incidentally, the study said that being old and using a cell phone could have similar effects. Does that mean we should ban old people from the road?
Read them all cover to cover? No... But I frequently pull one off the shelf to refresh my memory about a particular algorithm, or to see if there's a better one I haven't thought of to solve a problem I'm working on...
Um, no. I'm just on call. Always. But I like to be able to have a life at the same time.
I know people who drive drunk without a second thought, and they're either really lucky or a very skillful drivers for never getting into trouble. It's probably a little of both luck and skill; I think that the only thing it would take to tap the potential of that danger is something that requires an unusually quick reaction time; unexpectedly stopped vehicle just over a hill, person running across the street up around the curve. And as much as I love beer, I agree 110% with the illegality of driving while intoxicated.
Durnk driving should be illegal, because you're chemically impared, and nobody has shown that you can work around that in any way other than to not be drunk. At the same time, however, this report says:
"more experience and a tendency to take fewer risks helped negate any additional danger."
In other words, drivers who are exprienced behind the wheel, and trained to drive defensively didn't show the "drunk-like" symptoms. These people don't have to be out on the roads practicing to drive with a cell phone... They just have to be out on the roads practicing proper driving. The same way you practice to get a CDL. That's a standard we should be holding everybody on the road to. Cell-phone or no.
Using poor judgment by holding a telephone conversation when driving is cause to have that privilege taken away, IMHO.... Again, why this seemingly baseless defense of cell phones?
The defence is because I think it's rediculous to limit what somebody (in particular, myself) is allowed to do because of how it affects a subset of the population. People who are capable of driving properly under certain conditions should be allowed to do so. For example, people who can drive an enormous SUV correctly should be allowed to, whereas the people who can't seem to stay in their lane with one should not. Just because some people can't drive their large vehicles in a safe fassion doesn't mean we should disallow SUVs on the road... I do think we should require people to learn how to drive one before we let them though.
Truckers *all* have CB radios, and have since before cell phones existed. They manage to have a low accident rate compared to passenger vehicles dispite near continual use of a device that permits a 2-way conversation. Truckers also go through extensive driver traing. Clearly people can be trained to drive in such a way that these devices don't impair their ability to drive safely. Since it is possible to use the device safely, I'd rather that we force people to learn how, than to have my ability to use my cell phone and headset safely when I drive taken away.
but experience is the best teacher when it comes to driving
That, quite frankly, is bullshit.
Experience may teach you how to better control the vehicle, but it does nothing for teaching you how to behave in certain situations on the road. Using other drivers actions as an example will teach new drivers how to be worse drivers, not better.
If you let your attention lapse for a split second while driving, you could kill someone.
I agree. However, taking away a driver's cell phone only removes one distraction. There are other distractions, worse distractions, that would be socially unacceptable to dissallow.
PULL OVER if what you need to say is so important that it can't wait until you're in a safe place to call from.
There have been studies and states have even passed laws that have been repealed later... Pulling over causes more traffic problems than it prevents. I'd provide links, but I don't have more than a minute to post this.. Sorry.. Use google.
Listening to somebody talking to you on the phone is no more distracting than listening to talk radio. If you can disengage yourself from the conversation on the radio you can disengage yourself from the phone conversation. It's all about getting over the idea that it might be "rude" to suddenly ignore the caller. I understand that this is a skill some people lack, but again, the same can be said for the radio. If you can't focus on the more important task (the driving) you should get the hell off the road (not just pulling over). That said, however, since we can't remove all the distractions from driving, we should really be teaching people the proper way to deal with them. I know you'll probably take issue with my radio example, but consider looking for street addresses, getting mud splashed on your windshield/using the washers, having fighting children in the back seat, getting an insect in the vehicle, sneezing... The list can go on for ages. If you teach people how to cope with distractions, they won't drive poorly when they get distracted.
For example, if a truck suddenly pulls out in front of you, you will suddenly focus on it; your passenger will tend to notice this and stop talking. Someone on the other end of a phone won't.
Apparently you've never experienced small children in the back seat; a situation that can be as bad, or worse than a driver on the phone.
The real issue is not that people drive poorly when they're on the phone, the issue is that people are allowed to drive at all without better training and testing. Being slightly impared wouldn't be such a big deal if you could drive properly in the first place. Not only that, but if you were better trained and a better driver you would potentially be able to deal with the phone conversation in a way that wouldn't impair your driving.
Instead of driving test focusing on worthless crap like how many points you get on your license for passing a school bus, you should be forced to prove you can handle a variety of traffic situations, and you should have to get a perfect score. Once you've passed the test, traffic law enforcement needs to stop focusing on the easily prosecutable offences like speeding and start giving tickets for failure to signal, following too close, incorrect yielding of the right of way, blocking traffic because you never learned how to parallel park correctly, etc. Additionally, instead of just a vision test when you go to get your license renewed, you should have to prove that you retained some of those skills in order to retain permission to use the roads.
Taking the cell phones away from drivers is a symptom fix. We should attack the root of the problem.
I have never worked in fast food, but I have worked in the food-preparation industry. And I can say that I am leery about eating anything from my former employer; and, it has nothing to do with hatred toward my employer. While it was only a summer job to get me through my first year of university, I had an excellent employer and the pay was good. Unfortunately, I saw the kind of sanitation practices that took place during the preparation of food (including, for example, people touching food with licked fingers).
As a counter-example, I worked at a McDonalds for a year, and I still eat there on occation (It's still unheathy, no matter how clean it may be there). Corporate owned McDonalds resturants are cleaned to a degree that you won't find in any other food-service establishment. Their stuff may be greasy, fattening, or just plain gross (I can't even look at a Filet-O-Fish), but it's all sanitary.
I'd say that people who won't eat at a place they cooked, or won't use products made by a company they work for reflects on the quality of the work, not on a distaste for things people know too much about (all the flaws, etc...). I bet everybody who works at Apple uses an iPod too.
But baseball cards, if kept in mint condition, can at least be worth something in the future. Think of buying baseball cards each year as making a minimal-risk investment each year.
Hah!
First of all, most baseball cards are *worthless* in the future. Buying to find the potentially valuable ones is essentially gambling.
Secondly, most of the people who buy baseball cards don't keep them in mint condition. I'm sure many do, but most end up in a shoe box that gets thrown out by said purchaser's mom when they grow up and move out.
People buy these things because they are fans, and because they are fans to the level of obsession.
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I think nVidea is just supplying technology, and not an actual chip. Sure, Sony will have to pay licensing fees and such, but they'll be free to figure out the least expensive way to manufacture the parts on their own.
That's a big deal, because in the chip world, parts generally get *more* expensive over time when you buy them from a third party. Microsoft is having this problem with the Xbox right now. Intel has discontinued the CPU and nVidea has done the same with the GPU so Microsoft has to pay a premium to keep the parts in production. It seems like they're going to try to avoid that for the Xbox2 by licensing the design for the CPU and renting some fab capacity.... That's probably one of the biggest reasons they switched from an intel to an IBM core. Intel isn't known for licensing their processor cores, but IBM does it all the time.
Just like a fanboy to assume that everybody else is a fanboy.
I'm not brand loyal, I'm just anti-Microsoft. If Sony ever decides to halt progress just because they happen to be the dominant market player I'll start being anti-Sony too. Until then I'll judge each of their products on it's own merits.
...the crappy PS2 controller...
Is this the same crappy PS2 controller that contains *all* spring-free analog buttons (including the D-pad), and analog sticks that are in the position your thumb occupies at rest rather than up out of the way?
The size and shape of a controller may be a matter of personal preference, but the construction quality of the DualShock 2 is well beyond "crappy" and the technology in the DualShock 2 is far beyond that of the basic vibrating USB gamepad that comes with the Xbox.
If only there were a DualShock 2 Wavebird or a Nintendo Wavebird with DualShock style analog shoulder buttons instead of those springy things....
...the console wars are good for us gamers...
Yes, for now.
If, and let's hope that's a big if... If Microsoft wins and ends up with vast marketshare compared to it's competitors (like Sony has now), you'll see their real strategy kick in. Do you really want Microsoft software/hardware/formats/DRM as the technology interface between you and content providers? Do you want the console market to stagnate like the office application/web browser/operating system market has since they started dominating those markets?
Given Microsoft's history with how they've used a dominant market position in the past, there won't be an Xbox2 connected to my television no matter how good it is, lest we end up with a decade of video game technology stagnation.
But you get the idea, the Xbox2 will be cheaper than the PS3, I'm quite confident microsoft will make sure of that.
Bullshit.
The PS3 will cost exactly the same amount as the Xbox2. I'm quite confident Sony will make sure of that.
It's like those computer stores that 'cash discount' their prices... Play on words to get around rules that prevent them from jacking up the price because you wanna pay by credit card...
Those computer stores likely have to pay as much as $0.25 plus 5% of the purchase price as a fee to the credit card company. If they wanted to charge the same price for cash or credit, they're have to raise the price for cash purchases. Online computer sales from small vendors are lucky to have an 8-9% margin, so having to give away 5% to your credit card company would mean they wouldn't be able to stay in business.
What you should actually be upset about is contracts that credit card companies force on merchants that prevent the merchant from passing on the savings to you when you pay with cash. It's not too long ago that you used to be able to get a 3-4% discount on gasoline if you paid with cash. Now you pay the higher price either way because the credit card company tells the gas station owner that he can't accept credit cards unless the price is the same cash or credit. The same goes for PayPal. Sellers aren't allowed to pass the PayPal fees on to the buyer... For fixed price items this means the price is higher wether you use PayPal or not.
The situation is even worse with the new Debit Visa cards. The fees are higher for the merchant if the customer doesn't use their PIN than they are for regular Visa charges, but smaller merchants have no leverage to negotiate a contract that lowers those fees, and Visa won't allow the merchant to accept regular Visa cards but not Debit Visa cards. The merchant is also not allowed to charge you more to use the debit card as a credit card, so the merchant is forced to raise all of their prices or to eat the fee.
It's the credit card companies that are evil... Not the stores that figure out a way to pass the savings on to you when you prevent them from paying credit card transaction fees.
As CPUs get faster you get more performance for your licensing dollar... Adding another core to the CPU is no different than adding a few more ALUs or a SIMD unit, or a memory channel, etc... Yet you don't see them charging more for a license on a CPU that performs better than they do for a slow processor.
Why aren't they licensing per database, or per application, or per unit of performance? Or something, anything, that actually has some actual meaning?
Then again, this whole thing is silly. Oracle is just like every other enterprise software company. They send their sales staff out and negotiate a price for each individual customer that is somewhere just below the absolute most that customer is willing to pay without going to another vendor. What they divide that price by on the invoice is just a petty detail.
I'm sorry, but a photograph of a sculpture is not a reproduction of said sculpture. If people were out making photographs of some artist's photographs you'd have a point.
Similarly, you can take photographs of jewlery, but if you take a wax mold and make your own reproductions - even if it's of a piece of jewelery you own - you are violating the artist's copyright. Even in that case though, jewelers get around the other jeweler's copyright my creating their own similar, but not copied, pieces with only subtle differences. Unless the original jeweler has a design patent on some of the unique elements of the design, this is perfectly legal.
The issue here is that the city wants to make money selling postcards and nobody has sued their asses yet.
Just because there's an RCA connector on the end doesn't mean the construction of the cable isn't coxial. The component cables I have, PS2 cable included, each component wire is a round coaxially constructed cable. Even good composite video cables are coaxial these days. If you cut into yours I bet you'd find the same, since the coaxial construction makes each component less susceptable to noise from the others.
...but the thought of going from component input to coax...
I know I'm just being pedantic, but don't you mean from component to RF? Your component cables probably are coaxial.
Around now, the MPAA is probably gleefully poring over the logs, going through IP numbers, and compiling a list of the "hundreds of thousands" of individuals it might sue next. Fun!
I hope those logs say what and not just who. I'd hate to have the MPAA try to sue me because I downloaded porn!
why is it unfair?
It's unfair not because they don't deserve to be punised, but because the punishment no longer fits the crime.
So therefore, the only way to instill fear in the mind of "internet shoplifters"...
The only time quantity of punishment will affect the behavior of somebody breaking the law is when it is accompanied by certainty of punishment.
They can make the punishment for internet copy infringement as large as they like, but they won't reduce the amount of copying that occurs as long as they are only capabale of catching one in a ten million infringers. All raising the penalty in that case does is unfairly punish the few people they do manage to catch.
If none of this works, go to small claims court.
This a great option, as the filing fee can usually be $30 or less but there are two things you should be aware of before you try this:
Most extended warranty contracts have an arbitration clause. That means you gave up your right to sue and instead will have the claim decided by an arbitration service that the company selected and pays.
Once you win in small claims court the initial burden of collection is on you. If you can't extract your money from the defendant, there are remedies you can ask the court for, but most aren't too helpful on business that don't own property in your home state.
It's still illegal for truck drivers to drive drunk. Maybe since they're experts, it should be okay for them? Other than stigma, what's the difference between chemical impairment and distractive impairment/attention impairment (what would you call it?)?
I'm not arguing that it should be legal for anybody to drive drunk... With that in mind, your other questions don't really make sense.
You can train yourself to not be distracted by something, but you can't train yourself to not have a high blood alcohol level. Either you're drunk, or your not... So people who have been drinking should not be allowed on the road.
Unless being on call means that being able to answer your call immediately is a matter of life and death[...]
What about if it's a matter of employment or unemployment? Or should people who's jobs require them to be on call be forced to stay home all the time?
In the past people were only on call in shifts because there was no such thing as ubiquitous wireless communications. These days, however, since companies know you can have a cell phone... In fact since they can provide you with a cellphone, they expect you to be available to answer the phone at any time. Waiting to get to your destination isn't really an option unless you want to risk losing your job.
that it's any more a violation of anyone's rights to make driving and talking illegal than it is drinking and driving.
Did you read the article? It says experience and caution make the negative effects of talking on the phone while driving go away... Experience and caution don't do anything to reduce the hazards of driving drunk. Therefore you can't judge the two on the same merits.
Incidentally, the study said that being old and using a cell phone could have similar effects. Does that mean we should ban old people from the road?
Read them all cover to cover? No... But I frequently pull one off the shelf to refresh my memory about a particular algorithm, or to see if there's a better one I haven't thought of to solve a problem I'm working on...
You're a cell-phone addict.
Um, no. I'm just on call. Always. But I like to be able to have a life at the same time.
I know people who drive drunk without a second thought, and they're either really lucky or a very skillful drivers for never getting into trouble. It's probably a little of both luck and skill; I think that the only thing it would take to tap the potential of that danger is something that requires an unusually quick reaction time; unexpectedly stopped vehicle just over a hill, person running across the street up around the curve. And as much as I love beer, I agree 110% with the illegality of driving while intoxicated.
Durnk driving should be illegal, because you're chemically impared, and nobody has shown that you can work around that in any way other than to not be drunk. At the same time, however, this report says:
"more experience and a tendency to take fewer risks helped negate any additional danger."
In other words, drivers who are exprienced behind the wheel, and trained to drive defensively didn't show the "drunk-like" symptoms. These people don't have to be out on the roads practicing to drive with a cell phone... They just have to be out on the roads practicing proper driving. The same way you practice to get a CDL. That's a standard we should be holding everybody on the road to. Cell-phone or no.
Using poor judgment by holding a telephone conversation when driving is cause to have that privilege taken away, IMHO. ... Again, why this seemingly baseless defense of cell phones?
The defence is because I think it's rediculous to limit what somebody (in particular, myself) is allowed to do because of how it affects a subset of the population. People who are capable of driving properly under certain conditions should be allowed to do so. For example, people who can drive an enormous SUV correctly should be allowed to, whereas the people who can't seem to stay in their lane with one should not. Just because some people can't drive their large vehicles in a safe fassion doesn't mean we should disallow SUVs on the road... I do think we should require people to learn how to drive one before we let them though.
Truckers *all* have CB radios, and have since before cell phones existed. They manage to have a low accident rate compared to passenger vehicles dispite near continual use of a device that permits a 2-way conversation. Truckers also go through extensive driver traing. Clearly people can be trained to drive in such a way that these devices don't impair their ability to drive safely. Since it is possible to use the device safely, I'd rather that we force people to learn how, than to have my ability to use my cell phone and headset safely when I drive taken away.
$250 isn't a bad price considering what the system can do
When you think of what the system can do, forget about the processor specs and think of it this way:
The system can play the latest handheld video games.
In that past that ability has cost at least $100 less.
but experience is the best teacher when it comes to driving
That, quite frankly, is bullshit.
Experience may teach you how to better control the vehicle, but it does nothing for teaching you how to behave in certain situations on the road. Using other drivers actions as an example will teach new drivers how to be worse drivers, not better.
If you let your attention lapse for a split second while driving, you could kill someone.
I agree. However, taking away a driver's cell phone only removes one distraction. There are other distractions, worse distractions, that would be socially unacceptable to dissallow.
PULL OVER if what you need to say is so important that it can't wait until you're in a safe place to call from.
There have been studies and states have even passed laws that have been repealed later... Pulling over causes more traffic problems than it prevents. I'd provide links, but I don't have more than a minute to post this.. Sorry.. Use google.
Listening to somebody talking to you on the phone is no more distracting than listening to talk radio. If you can disengage yourself from the conversation on the radio you can disengage yourself from the phone conversation. It's all about getting over the idea that it might be "rude" to suddenly ignore the caller. I understand that this is a skill some people lack, but again, the same can be said for the radio. If you can't focus on the more important task (the driving) you should get the hell off the road (not just pulling over). That said, however, since we can't remove all the distractions from driving, we should really be teaching people the proper way to deal with them. I know you'll probably take issue with my radio example, but consider looking for street addresses, getting mud splashed on your windshield/using the washers, having fighting children in the back seat, getting an insect in the vehicle, sneezing... The list can go on for ages. If you teach people how to cope with distractions, they won't drive poorly when they get distracted.
For example, if a truck suddenly pulls out in front of you, you will suddenly focus on it; your passenger will tend to notice this and stop talking. Someone on the other end of a phone won't.
Apparently you've never experienced small children in the back seat; a situation that can be as bad, or worse than a driver on the phone.
The real issue is not that people drive poorly when they're on the phone, the issue is that people are allowed to drive at all without better training and testing. Being slightly impared wouldn't be such a big deal if you could drive properly in the first place. Not only that, but if you were better trained and a better driver you would potentially be able to deal with the phone conversation in a way that wouldn't impair your driving.
Instead of driving test focusing on worthless crap like how many points you get on your license for passing a school bus, you should be forced to prove you can handle a variety of traffic situations, and you should have to get a perfect score. Once you've passed the test, traffic law enforcement needs to stop focusing on the easily prosecutable offences like speeding and start giving tickets for failure to signal, following too close, incorrect yielding of the right of way, blocking traffic because you never learned how to parallel park correctly, etc. Additionally, instead of just a vision test when you go to get your license renewed, you should have to prove that you retained some of those skills in order to retain permission to use the roads.
Taking the cell phones away from drivers is a symptom fix. We should attack the root of the problem.
I have never worked in fast food, but I have worked in the food-preparation industry. And I can say that I am leery about eating anything from my former employer; and, it has nothing to do with hatred toward my employer. While it was only a summer job to get me through my first year of university, I had an excellent employer and the pay was good. Unfortunately, I saw the kind of sanitation practices that took place during the preparation of food (including, for example, people touching food with licked fingers).
As a counter-example, I worked at a McDonalds for a year, and I still eat there on occation (It's still unheathy, no matter how clean it may be there). Corporate owned McDonalds resturants are cleaned to a degree that you won't find in any other food-service establishment. Their stuff may be greasy, fattening, or just plain gross (I can't even look at a Filet-O-Fish), but it's all sanitary.
I'd say that people who won't eat at a place they cooked, or won't use products made by a company they work for reflects on the quality of the work, not on a distaste for things people know too much about (all the flaws, etc...). I bet everybody who works at Apple uses an iPod too.
But baseball cards, if kept in mint condition, can at least be worth something in the future. Think of buying baseball cards each year as making a minimal-risk investment each year.
Hah!
First of all, most baseball cards are *worthless* in the future. Buying to find the potentially valuable ones is essentially gambling.
Secondly, most of the people who buy baseball cards don't keep them in mint condition. I'm sure many do, but most end up in a shoe box that gets thrown out by said purchaser's mom when they grow up and move out.
People buy these things because they are fans, and because they are fans to the level of obsession.
The price is lower if you pay for more months at once... If you pay for a whole year up front it comes to $6.25 for a month.
Also, most of the games aren't anything like tetris.
Who buys baseball cards every year? I mean, how much really changes between years with baseball cards?