Go look at the footage of the more sane pols from the Great Society era who warned we were spending our children and grandchildren's inheritance... they were right. It's all spent. The social security 'trust fund' is just a bunch of IOUs from the government to be paid by the government; meaningless.
This is probably the biggest reason why young people should be voting, although it's probably far from their minds. The baby boomers and unions have been and are busy voting for policies that ensure they have a cushy retirement. The young people are expected to pay for that, but as they are relatively smaller number, they will lose out on existing services or pay higher taxes as the bill for the older people goes up and up. In some ways it's pretty short-sighted by the older generation as it could backfire on them later when they're getting too frail to fight back.
No, 3G is good enough most of the time, either to check something online on my phone, or even for me to work tethered (email obviously, not something ore fancy like RDP). Think about the 80 or 90% use-case when you're on the move at a station. 3G doesn't cost anything... included in the monthly data rate. Wifi in this case is going to cost money after the Olympics too...
Oh please, talk about a disingenuous argument. Nobody in their right mind buys paper tickets. Especially as they're priced high to discourage you. That was your choice.
I live in Hammersmith (at the Chiskwick end)... I mostly walk, or sometimes take the bus. Going from Hammersmith Broadway as you were to Shebu is an even shorter walk - probably 10-15 minutes (or the time it took you to buy your tickets, wait for the next train, travel there, and then walk from Goldhawk Rd or Shepherd's Bush Market. If you were going to a concert at the Empire, you only needed to go one stop on the Tube.
If you were going to be driving to Hammersmith, why not just go a bit further and look for free parking on a side street near Shebu? As somebody who lived five minutes walk from the Green, that's what I would do, and what my parents would do when they came to visit me.
BTW, Shepherd's Bush is in Hammersmith, but assuming you were only coming from Hammersmith Broadway (the start of your Tube journey), Shebu is 0.8 miles, much less than your 2 mile business. Yes, that makes it sound more expensive, but also really makes one scratch their head as to your motivation for taking the tube in the first place.
Shanghai has working phone reception and 3G data on trains and stations throughout the underground - who needs WIFI? Time to catch up with China.
Actually I'm glad there's no voice phone service on the Tube... I really don't want to be jammed in inches from somebody yammering on about their banal life and their dull X Factor hero worshipping.
I switched to Chrome a few months ago. There are a few annoyances that I've got used to. I don't regret the switch at all... now I can tell which page is using excessive CPU and draining my laptop battery. Now I can tell which page is using excessive memory. Now I can close the offending page without having to quit the whole bloody browser. You failed long ago Mozilla.
Convenient that you stopped at 2008. Your figures are offset from the ones on Wikipedia, but you've confirmed what I said: debt grew significantly from 2002 onwards, even though the economy was at the top of the economic cycle. Absolute madness by Tony Blair and George Brown. If they hadn't grown the public sector by 1 million employees, if they had focused on maintaining a healthy economy, they and the subsequent government would have been talking about growth policies instead of austerity when the freaking global crisis hit. Absolute moronic stewardship of the economy by Labour.
You generally pay taxes for the part of the year you were in Canada before you moved abroad, not for whole year. I.e. Canada taxes you for the time you're still considered a resident. If you move to country that also taxes you for the time you're resident, then you haven't really been dual taxed. Unlike the US who will double-tax their citizens for the whole year.
You seem to have a short memory. New Labour under Blair and Brown were running an increased deficit during the boom, even after increasing taxes. There was no room left for the government to do something with the economy when the recession came.
Government debt stood at 29% of GDP in 2002, and had increased to 37% before the crash in 2007, despite incredibly strong economic conditions. What exactly do you think was going to happen? That's why it's spiralled so quickly to 90% of GDP.
Servicing just the interest on the debt is about the same as the defence budget, or if you prefer, the fourth largest budget item. We're basically fucked for decades due to the previous government's profligacy.
I pay £145 / year (~CAD$233) for a TV license. My TV has a FreeView tuner built-in, but I also have a cheap-o Freesat box too. That's about a half what you need for basic cable in Canada. I actually refused to pay Rogers when I lived in Toronto due to being too expensive, and not offering much more than the handful of free channels from the CN tower (and way better video compression quality OTA).
To get the Game of Thrones, I'd have to pay for the Atlantic HD channel from Sky. That would double or probably triple the cost of TV, and support that scum Rupert Murdoch. Hmmmm, I wonder why people are downloading GoTs in the UK?
The metro area has over 4 million people, but to the OP's point, the city itself is pretty small (the CBD in particular feels tiny). Most of those people live the Aussie dream, in a mindless sprawling suburbia.
I got the impression that the rivers were a constraint on there being a loop, not a factor in haphazardness. Tokyo is spaghetti. London has its own constraints (river and difficulty tunnelling south of the river). Etc.
T-Mobile and Orange stopped two of us looking up the menu at one of my favourite (and family friendly) local pubs. We couldn't get to the following site on our iPhones: http://theblacklion-hammersmith.co.uk/eating.php
For me that's way worse than any of the other sites you listed:)
Probably not, unless Brazil is as fucked up as the US with regards to taxing non-domiciled citizens. Ironic and hypocritical concerning the how the country came about.
Of course, lots of Western countries have entrepreneur or investor visas. You can buy your way back in anywhere you like. Coupled with visa-free travel and ease of mobility and communications, it's not much of a hassle for somebody as rich as this.
I worked with Chris in the late nineties. Very smart guy. Very hard working. Some pretty good stories of his escape from Romanian and finding his feet in NYC. Not only is he technical, but he knows how to sell. He built up businesses, hiring talented people, and those business were acquired (I went through two acquisitions in under three years), before he started another company and I lost contact when I moved overseas. He's pretty much lived the American dream.
You can't call x264 a codec because it only does encoding, and does not do any decoding. Describing an H.264 encode as x264 format sounds rather uninformed, doesn't it?
DivX (and Xvid?) actually have a spec that includes more than just the requirements for the video. x264 can create DivX compliant video streams, as well as Blu-ray compliant streams, etc, so I'm still struggling to understand your comment:)
Hardware decoders were only needed for a short time in the late 90s. This wasn't an operating system requirement, it's just that computers weren't powerful enough for software decoding. I had DVD playback on NT4 BTW.
The other issue is that Windows didn't come with an MPEG-2 decoder, which was later bundled with Vista and W7 (or some SKUs of those OSes). Microsoft presumably decided that enough customers were needing the decoder that they'd swallow the licensing costs and make it easier for the users.
XP couldn't play DVDs because it didn't include an MPEG-2 decoder. Microsoft didn't want to pay the licensing fee for each XP install because at the time, the percentage of users trying to play DVDs on their computers was too low.
BD supports AVC, VC-1 and MPEG-2, although most serious people are only using AVC.
But that's all moot. With standards like UltaViolet gaining traction, and the general switch to internet-connected TVs, fewer and fewer people will be bothering in the next five years with optical disc playback on computers.
Slashdot Mirror
This is probably the biggest reason why young people should be voting, although it's probably far from their minds. The baby boomers and unions have been and are busy voting for policies that ensure they have a cushy retirement. The young people are expected to pay for that, but as they are relatively smaller number, they will lose out on existing services or pay higher taxes as the bill for the older people goes up and up. In some ways it's pretty short-sighted by the older generation as it could backfire on them later when they're getting too frail to fight back.
No, 3G is good enough most of the time, either to check something online on my phone, or even for me to work tethered (email obviously, not something ore fancy like RDP). Think about the 80 or 90% use-case when you're on the move at a station. 3G doesn't cost anything... included in the monthly data rate. Wifi in this case is going to cost money after the Olympics too...
Oh please, talk about a disingenuous argument. Nobody in their right mind buys paper tickets. Especially as they're priced high to discourage you. That was your choice.
I live in Hammersmith (at the Chiskwick end)... I mostly walk, or sometimes take the bus. Going from Hammersmith Broadway as you were to Shebu is an even shorter walk - probably 10-15 minutes (or the time it took you to buy your tickets, wait for the next train, travel there, and then walk from Goldhawk Rd or Shepherd's Bush Market. If you were going to a concert at the Empire, you only needed to go one stop on the Tube.
If you were going to be driving to Hammersmith, why not just go a bit further and look for free parking on a side street near Shebu? As somebody who lived five minutes walk from the Green, that's what I would do, and what my parents would do when they came to visit me.
BTW, Shepherd's Bush is in Hammersmith, but assuming you were only coming from Hammersmith Broadway (the start of your Tube journey), Shebu is 0.8 miles, much less than your 2 mile business. Yes, that makes it sound more expensive, but also really makes one scratch their head as to your motivation for taking the tube in the first place.
Shanghai has working phone reception and 3G data on trains and stations throughout the underground - who needs WIFI? Time to catch up with China.
Actually I'm glad there's no voice phone service on the Tube... I really don't want to be jammed in inches from somebody yammering on about their banal life and their dull X Factor hero worshipping.
I switched to Chrome a few months ago. There are a few annoyances that I've got used to. I don't regret the switch at all... now I can tell which page is using excessive CPU and draining my laptop battery. Now I can tell which page is using excessive memory. Now I can close the offending page without having to quit the whole bloody browser. You failed long ago Mozilla.
Convenient that you stopped at 2008. Your figures are offset from the ones on Wikipedia, but you've confirmed what I said: debt grew significantly from 2002 onwards, even though the economy was at the top of the economic cycle. Absolute madness by Tony Blair and George Brown. If they hadn't grown the public sector by 1 million employees, if they had focused on maintaining a healthy economy, they and the subsequent government would have been talking about growth policies instead of austerity when the freaking global crisis hit. Absolute moronic stewardship of the economy by Labour.
You're wrong about the healthcare. Residence status for tax and for OHIP for instance are different.
http://www.health.gov.on.ca/en/public/publications/ohip/travel.aspx
You generally pay taxes for the part of the year you were in Canada before you moved abroad, not for whole year. I.e. Canada taxes you for the time you're still considered a resident. If you move to country that also taxes you for the time you're resident, then you haven't really been dual taxed. Unlike the US who will double-tax their citizens for the whole year.
You seem to have a short memory. New Labour under Blair and Brown were running an increased deficit during the boom, even after increasing taxes. There was no room left for the government to do something with the economy when the recession came.
Government debt stood at 29% of GDP in 2002, and had increased to 37% before the crash in 2007, despite incredibly strong economic conditions. What exactly do you think was going to happen? That's why it's spiralled so quickly to 90% of GDP.
Servicing just the interest on the debt is about the same as the defence budget, or if you prefer, the fourth largest budget item. We're basically fucked for decades due to the previous government's profligacy.
I pay £145 / year (~CAD$233) for a TV license. My TV has a FreeView tuner built-in, but I also have a cheap-o Freesat box too. That's about a half what you need for basic cable in Canada. I actually refused to pay Rogers when I lived in Toronto due to being too expensive, and not offering much more than the handful of free channels from the CN tower (and way better video compression quality OTA).
To get the Game of Thrones, I'd have to pay for the Atlantic HD channel from Sky. That would double or probably triple the cost of TV, and support that scum Rupert Murdoch. Hmmmm, I wonder why people are downloading GoTs in the UK?
The metro area has over 4 million people, but to the OP's point, the city itself is pretty small (the CBD in particular feels tiny). Most of those people live the Aussie dream, in a mindless sprawling suburbia.
I got the impression that the rivers were a constraint on there being a loop, not a factor in haphazardness. Tokyo is spaghetti. London has its own constraints (river and difficulty tunnelling south of the river). Etc.
What makes NYC's subway network particularly haphazard?
I think you missed the point about it being subway networks. Most of the map you linked to is suburban rail. How much is actually subway?
T-Mobile and Orange stopped two of us looking up the menu at one of my favourite (and family friendly) local pubs. We couldn't get to the following site on our iPhones: http://theblacklion-hammersmith.co.uk/eating.php
For me that's way worse than any of the other sites you listed :)
Probably not, unless Brazil is as fucked up as the US with regards to taxing non-domiciled citizens. Ironic and hypocritical concerning the how the country came about.
Of course, lots of Western countries have entrepreneur or investor visas. You can buy your way back in anywhere you like. Coupled with visa-free travel and ease of mobility and communications, it's not much of a hassle for somebody as rich as this.
I worked with Chris in the late nineties. Very smart guy. Very hard working. Some pretty good stories of his escape from Romanian and finding his feet in NYC. Not only is he technical, but he knows how to sell. He built up businesses, hiring talented people, and those business were acquired (I went through two acquisitions in under three years), before he started another company and I lost contact when I moved overseas. He's pretty much lived the American dream.
Is this relevant in the light of Bollywood?
You can't call x264 a codec because it only does encoding, and does not do any decoding. Describing an H.264 encode as x264 format sounds rather uninformed, doesn't it?
DivX (and Xvid?) actually have a spec that includes more than just the requirements for the video. x264 can create DivX compliant video streams, as well as Blu-ray compliant streams, etc, so I'm still struggling to understand your comment :)
Hardware decoders were only needed for a short time in the late 90s. This wasn't an operating system requirement, it's just that computers weren't powerful enough for software decoding. I had DVD playback on NT4 BTW.
The other issue is that Windows didn't come with an MPEG-2 decoder, which was later bundled with Vista and W7 (or some SKUs of those OSes). Microsoft presumably decided that enough customers were needing the decoder that they'd swallow the licensing costs and make it easier for the users.
XP couldn't play DVDs because it didn't include an MPEG-2 decoder. Microsoft didn't want to pay the licensing fee for each XP install because at the time, the percentage of users trying to play DVDs on their computers was too low.
BD supports AVC, VC-1 and MPEG-2, although most serious people are only using AVC.
But that's all moot. With standards like UltaViolet gaining traction, and the general switch to internet-connected TVs, fewer and fewer people will be bothering in the next five years with optical disc playback on computers.
I'm trying to understand what you just said. Isn't x264 an h.264 encoder? Or is x264 some video standard I haven't heard of?
And better colour.
NTSC = Never The Same Colour, Never Twice the Same Colour, or No True Skin Colors
PAL = Pay for Additional Luxury, Peace At Last or Perfection At Last
That site shows Chrome surpassing Firefox for marketshare in late October, so even before the w3schools stats.