The truckers were subsidized; the railroads were not.
The railroads weren't subsidized? You couldn't be further from the truth if you're discussing US railroads. In the 1800s the railroads were give huge land grants. Millions of acres were granted to the railroads that they used both to build their routes and to sell to raise capital.
And then the introduction of new lands (outlands, northrend) causes the previous thriving lands to be barren wastelands sitting there doing nothing but wasting cpu cycles on mobs just roaming around waiting for someone to kill them.
A bigger cause of empty zones is they are hard coded for characters of a specific level. Elwynn Forest and Dun Morogh become just a path to get someplace else, an no one goes to Teldrassil unless forced to by a quest. As you advance through levels you abandon a tier at a time. LOTRO has the same problem with parts of Bree, the Shire, and Evendim. Which seems like a huge waste of zones and quests. Not to mention there are some zones you like, and some you hate, but in the current system you have to play them all. When I find that I'm losing interest in a MMO, it's usually because I'm in a zone I don't find all that interesting. And have to stay there until I pick up 5 or so levels.
If they changed the zones so that they adapted to the character, then you could complete quests and explore the zones for your own race and then move into the next. And then go back as more quests are added to existing zones. If done right, it would also make it possible for characters with wide differences in level to group together without power leveling. If your character is supposed to be able to do 10% damage to a bear, it doesn't matter what zone it is in our how many hit points it should have. This, btw, would be a big advantage for long time players looking to introduce friends to the game.
I agree it was a bad article. I think they should grab a journalism student from a nearby university (MU) to fix it for them.
I can answer some questions from the research I have done, and can give an educated guess on the others.
Are the turbines really powering the town, or is that going into the grid in general?
The turbines are connected directly to the city's high voltage line, which is in turn connected to external generation. IE. the grid. The 4 turbines for the city (Loess Hills) are on a ridge on the west side of town. A couple miles away on the east side of town is the Cow Branch wind farm. It was the proximity to this wind farm that made Loess Hills feasible.
The article mentions the landowner that set the thing up. So is it privately owned, or part of the city?
I thought I read that the city owned the land, but all I find now is that they are installed on 'agricultural lands within the city limits'. The Cow Branch wind farm is built on land leased from local farmers. They install their tower and build a road to access it, and the owner continues to farm around them. Just like with cell towers.
What the heck does John Deere have to do with anything?
John Deere has been financing wind farms. John Deere has a name and reputation that is respected by farmers, and they are leveraging that trust and their credit business unit to get in the energy business. But no green and yellow turbines so far.
The pillar that the turbine is mounted to doesn't take up that much room.
I recently visited Rock Port to see their turbines as well as the nearby Cow Branch wind farm. The Cow Branch wind farm is only about 1 mile out of Rock Port, and has an additional 24 2.1 MW turbines. I had intended to also visit Bluegrass Ridge (27 2.1 MW turbines), but ran out of time. Here is some info on those wind farms.
But to address your comment, I failed to get any pictures of the base of any turbines. I guess I was paying too much attention to the shiny turning things at the top. The base itself doesn't require a lot of room, but there is a gravel road that runs from tower to tower. Along with a small work area at the base for maintenance. It's not a significant area, but I suspect some thought would need to be given to the path used for the road to keep from making the fields around it difficult to use. All in all, it's no worse that leasing an area for a cell tower.
As far as windmills on the skyline, I'd take one over a cell tower any day.
Because, it's not like low-flying planes have to criss-cross all over those farmers' fields to apply various pesticides and herbicides or anything.
It's rare to see any farmers in this area using planes to spray their fields. They tend to use the same tractors that they used for planting the crops. Oddly, the only time in recent memory I can remember seeing a crop duster, it was working on a field near KCI (MCI). I remember because I thought it was odd for them to be doing it so close to commercial flights.
emensely complicated code is all in SQL stored procedures (I didn't write it.) that all call other SQL stored procedures, that call SQL stored procedures... ect...
Wait until they start using stored procedures to build other stored procedures on the fly to call the next level of stored procedures. The code morphs based on data values.
I've owned two Metros and loved them both into the ground.
A Smart car is today's equivalent of the Geo Metro. 1800lbs, 1 liter engine. 33/41 mpg. (2008) Although it would have been nicer if they hadn't dropped the turbo from prior years. Unfortunately, the cars have been so popular that you have to order one 8-12 months in advance.
...you would see that the Census is being run by The Census Bureau. NOT THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION!
Not to be pedantic, but the Census Bureau is part of the Department of Commerce. And the Commerce Secretary is a cabinet position in the Bush Administration. So in effect, the person with the ultimate decision making authority over the Census Bureau is a Bush appointee.
Although from this article, it smells a whole lot more like a silver bullet project with feature creep. It sounds like a whole 'we can go paperless' crusade rather than simply implementing handhelds for the canvassers.
Making Biodeisel to ASTM standards is just a matter of following the directions and testing,
I'm sure there are plenty of people making biodiesel to ASTM standards. There are also a lot of people brewing it in their garage. BioWillie biodiesel is the first one that I have seen guaranteeing it. I think that guarantee is what is needed to push biodiesel. Either from a single brand like BioWillie or a number of brands with similar guarantees. It needs to be available at every Pilot and Flying J across the US.
The reason the certification is so important are the costs involved. If I blew up my 14 year old 1 ton using bad Bio it would cost me $2,000 for a used engine, if I could find one. Even good Bio in the wrong concentration could be a problem. For instance, if a station put B50 in a B20 tank in the winter. It would probably cost me an injection pump. I just checked and a rebuilt IP is $300. Those costs are trivial compared to someone using their truck to earn a living. I think if there were the same doubts about quality with ethanol people would never put E85 in their new $20k flex fuel car.
That's just scary to see such marketingdroid behavior attached to BioDiesel!
I didn't read the whole site, but I fail to see anything on it that is worse the biodiesel.org. If they can build a brand and push it to national chains, here is one thing that would be a big boost for BioDiesel:
BioWillie® meets or exceeds national ASTM fuel quality standards One thing keeping big users of diesel from switching is that you roll the dice every time you buy from an unknown supplier.
Some of the alternative/green pushes really don't make sense to me. Why push ethanol and hope to replace millions of personal vehicles that drive an average of 15,000 miles rather than BioDiesel for trucks that are driving 10x the miles? And when it comes to C02, they want to fix everybody's tailpipe while ignoring power plants. It seems to me that we have plenty of coal and it has been my experience that coal power plants tend to stay in one place.
Actually for most auctions, you either need to be pre-qualified or pay a deposit before even entering the auction hall
I think 'most auctions' is a bit of an exaggeration, or you live in a significantly different part of the world than I do.
I regularly go to arcade game auctions (items from a few $$ to a couple thousand) and have never been pre-qualified. Same for the utility auctions I attend twice a year. (hundreds of $$ to a hundred thousand) I have been to estate auctions, cattle auctions, and a few furniture auction houses. My paypal account required more info than any bidders card I have had.
Quite frankly, eBays' feedback system is a circle jerk. As a buyer, I never look at positive feedback, rarely at neutral, and only at bad feedback to see how the seller responds. The only metrics that interest me are; how many auctions the seller has concluded (info not available), and how many times they have had problematic transactions.
My biggest problem with eBay is that it has been overrun with storefronts. It's much easier to go to Amazon if that's what you're looking for. If you want to deal with individuals you're better off on craigslist. (despite it's horrible format) And neither of those sites have items posted with obscene shipping charges.
But every step of the way it is BobCo's choice to spend the money and maintain the relationship. If they didn't want to expand their sales, they wouldn't have contacted Walmart in the first place. And it's a well known fact that Walmart expects cost reductions from supply chain efficiency improvements. If a company is making multi-year commitments based solely on a one year agreement with a specific customer, it may well be that they deserve to be bankrupt.
Walmart isn't the only game around either. BobCo could make an agreement with with Target or Amazon. Or they might be able to market their wares as premium goods, a reputation they will not get distributing through Walmart.
And what better coverage could you have than your spouse working for a well respected health organization. Ask Tracy Pierce.
Any health system that has administrators overriding trained doctors is a bad system. When it is monetarily in their favor to override doctors then the system is fatally flawed.
I'm willing to give Paul and Kucinich a lot of credit for being honest.
Kucinich never had a chance. Right out of the gate they were trying to make him look like a nut job with things like questions about UFOs. I would have liked to have seen Biden get more coverage. He actually had a plan for getting out of Iraq and the experience to give it credibility.
Like someone else posted, I'm afraid our choice is going to be Clinton and Huckabee.
Clinton was too ineffectual too make any change for the better or worse.
And oddly, in 1998 the Clinton administration announced the first budget surplus in a generation. And in 2000 the surplus was the highest since Medicare was enacted. Granted, they were playing with numbers because they weren't including money that was being borrowed from Social Security, but they didn't count it either when Bush turned in record deficits.
The Clinton administration had a goal of reducing the government's debt by $2.9 trillion by 2010, which would have put them on track to eliminate it entirely by 2012. I should note that I don't believe it would have happened, simply because part of the governments job is to borrow money. A certain amount of government debt is a stabilizing influence for the economy. It's all academic though, we are about to hit $9.2 trillion national debt and whoever takes office next January will have the 'pleasure' of heading the administration that was in office when we crossed $10 trillion in debt.
America's health care isn't bad, it's just expensive.
No, America's health care system is bad. There are too many people with no coverage at all. The system is inefficient. And it hurts our ability to compete in a world market on labor costs. If you believe press releases like this one from the SBA, a huge portion of our economy is represented by small businesses. But are you willing to leave your corporate job knowing that you might not be able to buy insurance and still be competitive?
In my opinion, all the health care 'plans' presented by candidates do not go far enough. We need to take the profiteering middlemen out of the equation.
What, Walmart abusive to its suppliers? Incredible.
I don't see how buying a supplier's product is abusive. But Walmart does appear to have shrewd purchasing agents. Walmart collects huge amounts of data on what sells and what the price points are, so they come into negotiations well prepared. From the various articles I have read about supplier problems with Walmart (Levis, Vlasic, Huffy), it appears that the suppliers have been rather naive about the contracts they signed. If you sign a contract saying you're willing to supply Walmart up to X amount of an item for $Y, you need to be able to produce that maximum amount if Walmart requests it. Don't agree to supply 10,000 when you can only profitably produce 5,000.
I'm fairly sure that sometime in the near future, a company will create a barcode printer that has RFID tags embedded in the stickers it prints out.
Intermec and Zebra have both had this technology available for several years. We've been keeping our eye on RFIDs since aroudn '98 or '99.
That way, the distribution company doesn't have to worry about needing two systems in order to ship to all their customers.
With current tag prices, I doubt many companies are going to put RFIDs on shipments that don't require it. Maybe at the pallet level, but not any lower than that. In many industries it's not uncommon for customer specific label anyway, so you'd just add an RFID printer next to your cheaper barcode printer anyway. We have places were we install multiple barcode printers just so there is no wasted time changing label stock to print a different size customer label.
RFID (or barcode identification of pallets as we do it) is great, because you don't have to count all the stuff that comes in, because the supplier has already counted it when it was loaded.
RFID on pallets has absolutely no effect on who counts stuff. The supplier is going to count every time they build a pallet, regardless of what Walmart does. Walmart OTOH, does vendor rating. And I would assume that like other businesses, that vendor rating has a metric for shipment accuracy. Once a supplier reaches a set level, you either stop verifying quantity or skip lot (check 1 out of x number of pallets). You can also verify by pallet weight, if you have accurate information on item weight and dimensions.
When you receive a truck with one bill of lading and ~30 pallets, it's much easier to scan each pallet, and confirm what is on there against the electronically supplied list than to try to check 30 pallets by running from pallet to pallet with the bill of lading.
I know a lot of people are confused about this, but a Bill of Lading is NOT a customer document. It's sole purpose is to tell the carrier what they are transporting. A packing slip is a customer document. If the pallets are properly labeled (RFID or barcode), you can compare them automatically to the ASN (advance ship notice). But again, the container ID on that pallet only tells you what the supplier thinks they put on it. So again you fall back to vendor rating to determine your receiving processes.
They now can simply slap them into the delivery with the electronic bill of lading without any additional paperwork to get their bills paid.
I think you are confused about what an electronic bill of lading is.
As far as the Walmart issue is concerned, I would say that the $2 a pallet charge is exceptionally reasonable. I have seen customers charge $50 for a missing container ID or missing/late ASN. For some smaller suppliers it might be more cost effective to pay the $2 a pallet charge rather than spend the money on RFID. I don't remember the cost of printers, but I do remember that last year when we looked into it, it was going to cost $10k per dock door to get set up to receive by RFIDs.
From the supplier's perspective, they are going to need RFIDs (generally labels), and they won't be able to buy with Walmart's volume discounts. If they require tags that contain more than a simple container ID, then the customer will need a tag programmer (usually a barcode printer) and access to a verifier.
Download the free trial for Lotro, create a character and head to Bree. There is a quest there that starts at night, from a ghost near the southern gate, he asks you to find a ring that was lost at some baracks. Yet you don't recall any baracks even being at bree. It is suggested you ask around.
I'm familiar with that quest, though I don't remember people asking about it. The one I have seen a lot is people asking if the mining records are actually in Othrikar. I'll admit, many players aren't interested in exploring and their reading comprehension is rather low. But to be fair, I have found quite a few LOTRO quests that give you information that is 'imprecise'. And I do like exploring. As a friend keeps pointing out to me, LOTRO still needs a bit of polish.
Content costs money, there is a rather ambitious slideshow available somewhere that shows the expansions they once had planned, you are talking a couple of years worth to map all the way to mount doom, but what the hell kind of level will you be by that time?
And despite the fact that content is expensive, they still treat it as disposable. How quickly do you leave Ered Luin and the Shire? Or most of Bree. Why doesn't the region adjust for the player? Then they could put quests in any zone. Another problem is playing with friends of different levels. If you're more than few levels apart, one of you will be grinding to catch up and the other will be bored and earning no XP powerleveling you.
If, on the other hand, mobs adjusted for the character they are interfacing, there's no reason why a long time player at level 50 couldn't meet up with a friend on a newly created level 5 and quest together.
I'd just point out that bypassing Blizzard's 'Warden' monitoring software is not against their TOS. Or at least it didn't use to be. They told us how to bypass it after all the furor about privacy concerns over Warden scanning our systems for all running processes.
Essentially, rather than validating data on their servers, they're pushing an application to the clients to report any process they feel is inappropriate. I personally felt Warden was inappropriate, and never allowed it to run.
I know a number of people who have bought gen 1 Smart cars. They bought them because they are less than 102" long, and can be loaded behind the cab of their truck between the 5th wheel. Every one of them has been exceptionally pleased with the Smart as an all around car. Acceleration and ability to maintain a 70mph cruising speed is not a problem. I'm also surprised about your comment about requiring premium gas, I haven't heard anyone mention it.
I would personally consider buying a Smart Cabriolet if they would bring the CDI to North America. I might even trade off my motorcycle to do it.
BTW, their website lists the Smart Pure at $11,500
My biggest concern with the Smart is the same one I have when I ride my motorcycle; some dumb ass in an SUV plowing into me because they're too stupid to drive and talk on the phone at the same time. I think we need to start encouraging people to drive smaller cars. An inexpensive car might be a start. But knowing people, probably a better way would be to put special micro car parking places at shopping centers and enforce them. (similar to handicap parking)
Basically it allows us to feel warm and fuzzy about coal power without actually doing anything to reduce the net amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere.
Actually, it is a net reduction if the fuel produced replaces another CO2 producing fuel. It's most efficient use might be to feed it back into the power plant, reducing the amount of coal needed. Not only that, but there are other nasty things in coal that would be reduced.
Of course, I guess you could dump the CR5 and direct the heat from the collector directly into the power plant. They're just using the coal to boil water, after all.
Now the little Ninja ZX-6 does hit the 160kg range, at 368lbs dry weight (166 kg)
I could have looked up other brands, but I'm too lazy. There won't be much difference in comparable bikes between Kawasaki, Honda, Yamaha, or Suzuki.
Harley Sportster 883 XL 563lbs dry weight (255 kg)
None of the cruisers will be as light as the sport bikes, and Harley doesn't make sport bikes. Since the markets don't cross over, it's not fair to compare something like a Harley V-ROD to a Kawasaki Ninja. So that puts Harley's in the same range as a Kawasaki cruiser.
Harley doesn't post 0-60 performance on their bikes, it's a bogus measurement for that class of motorcycle anyway. But I've seen people report 4 second 0-60 on a larger V-ROD, so I doubt the difference in a similar sized bike from a competitor would be measurable without going to the track. An 'average' bike isn't going to get 2.5 seconds, not when a Ninja ZX-10 is 3.12 seconds. Unless you have a completely different idea of what average is, I would expect an average around 4 seconds.
And FWIW, when I read the summary I pictured cops on Vespas. That's almost as bad as bikers in B movies riding dirt bikes.
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The truckers were subsidized; the railroads were not.
The railroads weren't subsidized? You couldn't be further from the truth if you're discussing US railroads. In the 1800s the railroads were give huge land grants. Millions of acres were granted to the railroads that they used both to build their routes and to sell to raise capital.
And then the introduction of new lands (outlands, northrend) causes the previous thriving lands to be barren wastelands sitting there doing nothing but wasting cpu cycles on mobs just roaming around waiting for someone to kill them.
A bigger cause of empty zones is they are hard coded for characters of a specific level. Elwynn Forest and Dun Morogh become just a path to get someplace else, an no one goes to Teldrassil unless forced to by a quest. As you advance through levels you abandon a tier at a time. LOTRO has the same problem with parts of Bree, the Shire, and Evendim. Which seems like a huge waste of zones and quests. Not to mention there are some zones you like, and some you hate, but in the current system you have to play them all. When I find that I'm losing interest in a MMO, it's usually because I'm in a zone I don't find all that interesting. And have to stay there until I pick up 5 or so levels.
If they changed the zones so that they adapted to the character, then you could complete quests and explore the zones for your own race and then move into the next. And then go back as more quests are added to existing zones. If done right, it would also make it possible for characters with wide differences in level to group together without power leveling. If your character is supposed to be able to do 10% damage to a bear, it doesn't matter what zone it is in our how many hit points it should have. This, btw, would be a big advantage for long time players looking to introduce friends to the game.
I agree it was a bad article. I think they should grab a journalism student from a nearby university (MU) to fix it for them.
I can answer some questions from the research I have done, and can give an educated guess on the others.
Are the turbines really powering the town, or is that going into the grid in general?
The turbines are connected directly to the city's high voltage line, which is in turn connected to external generation. IE. the grid. The 4 turbines for the city (Loess Hills) are on a ridge on the west side of town. A couple miles away on the east side of town is the Cow Branch wind farm. It was the proximity to this wind farm that made Loess Hills feasible.
The article mentions the landowner that set the thing up. So is it privately owned, or part of the city?
I thought I read that the city owned the land, but all I find now is that they are installed on 'agricultural lands within the city limits'. The Cow Branch wind farm is built on land leased from local farmers. They install their tower and build a road to access it, and the owner continues to farm around them. Just like with cell towers.
What the heck does John Deere have to do with anything?
John Deere has been financing wind farms. John Deere has a name and reputation that is respected by farmers, and they are leveraging that trust and their credit business unit to get in the energy business. But no green and yellow turbines so far.
Again, here's a link to Wind Capital Group.
The pillar that the turbine is mounted to doesn't take up that much room.
I recently visited Rock Port to see their turbines as well as the nearby Cow Branch wind farm. The Cow Branch wind farm is only about 1 mile out of Rock Port, and has an additional 24 2.1 MW turbines. I had intended to also visit Bluegrass Ridge (27 2.1 MW turbines), but ran out of time. Here is some info on those wind farms.
But to address your comment, I failed to get any pictures of the base of any turbines. I guess I was paying too much attention to the shiny turning things at the top. The base itself doesn't require a lot of room, but there is a gravel road that runs from tower to tower. Along with a small work area at the base for maintenance. It's not a significant area, but I suspect some thought would need to be given to the path used for the road to keep from making the fields around it difficult to use. All in all, it's no worse that leasing an area for a cell tower.
As far as windmills on the skyline, I'd take one over a cell tower any day.
Because, it's not like low-flying planes have to criss-cross all over those farmers' fields to apply various pesticides and herbicides or anything.
It's rare to see any farmers in this area using planes to spray their fields. They tend to use the same tractors that they used for planting the crops. Oddly, the only time in recent memory I can remember seeing a crop duster, it was working on a field near KCI (MCI). I remember because I thought it was odd for them to be doing it so close to commercial flights.
Wait until they start using stored procedures to build other stored procedures on the fly to call the next level of stored procedures. The code morphs based on data values.
A Smart car is today's equivalent of the Geo Metro. 1800lbs, 1 liter engine. 33/41 mpg. (2008) Although it would have been nicer if they hadn't dropped the turbo from prior years. Unfortunately, the cars have been so popular that you have to order one 8-12 months in advance.
Not to be pedantic, but the Census Bureau is part of the Department of Commerce. And the Commerce Secretary is a cabinet position in the Bush Administration. So in effect, the person with the ultimate decision making authority over the Census Bureau is a Bush appointee.
Although from this article, it smells a whole lot more like a silver bullet project with feature creep. It sounds like a whole 'we can go paperless' crusade rather than simply implementing handhelds for the canvassers.
Making Biodeisel to ASTM standards is just a matter of following the directions and testing,
I'm sure there are plenty of people making biodiesel to ASTM standards. There are also a lot of people brewing it in their garage. BioWillie biodiesel is the first one that I have seen guaranteeing it. I think that guarantee is what is needed to push biodiesel. Either from a single brand like BioWillie or a number of brands with similar guarantees. It needs to be available at every Pilot and Flying J across the US.
The reason the certification is so important are the costs involved. If I blew up my 14 year old 1 ton using bad Bio it would cost me $2,000 for a used engine, if I could find one. Even good Bio in the wrong concentration could be a problem. For instance, if a station put B50 in a B20 tank in the winter. It would probably cost me an injection pump. I just checked and a rebuilt IP is $300. Those costs are trivial compared to someone using their truck to earn a living. I think if there were the same doubts about quality with ethanol people would never put E85 in their new $20k flex fuel car.
I didn't read the whole site, but I fail to see anything on it that is worse the biodiesel.org. If they can build a brand and push it to national chains, here is one thing that would be a big boost for BioDiesel: BioWillie® meets or exceeds national ASTM fuel quality standards One thing keeping big users of diesel from switching is that you roll the dice every time you buy from an unknown supplier.
Some of the alternative/green pushes really don't make sense to me. Why push ethanol and hope to replace millions of personal vehicles that drive an average of 15,000 miles rather than BioDiesel for trucks that are driving 10x the miles? And when it comes to C02, they want to fix everybody's tailpipe while ignoring power plants. It seems to me that we have plenty of coal and it has been my experience that coal power plants tend to stay in one place.
Actually for most auctions, you either need to be pre-qualified or pay a deposit before even entering the auction hall
I think 'most auctions' is a bit of an exaggeration, or you live in a significantly different part of the world than I do.
I regularly go to arcade game auctions (items from a few $$ to a couple thousand) and have never been pre-qualified. Same for the utility auctions I attend twice a year. (hundreds of $$ to a hundred thousand) I have been to estate auctions, cattle auctions, and a few furniture auction houses. My paypal account required more info than any bidders card I have had.
Quite frankly, eBays' feedback system is a circle jerk. As a buyer, I never look at positive feedback, rarely at neutral, and only at bad feedback to see how the seller responds. The only metrics that interest me are; how many auctions the seller has concluded (info not available), and how many times they have had problematic transactions.
My biggest problem with eBay is that it has been overrun with storefronts. It's much easier to go to Amazon if that's what you're looking for. If you want to deal with individuals you're better off on craigslist. (despite it's horrible format) And neither of those sites have items posted with obscene shipping charges.
But every step of the way it is BobCo's choice to spend the money and maintain the relationship. If they didn't want to expand their sales, they wouldn't have contacted Walmart in the first place. And it's a well known fact that Walmart expects cost reductions from supply chain efficiency improvements. If a company is making multi-year commitments based solely on a one year agreement with a specific customer, it may well be that they deserve to be bankrupt.
Walmart isn't the only game around either. BobCo could make an agreement with with Target or Amazon. Or they might be able to market their wares as premium goods, a reputation they will not get distributing through Walmart.
People don't have health care because it's expensive. Like I said. But those with it get good care. I defy you to prove otherwise.
Nataline Sarkisyan would probably disagree with you.
And what better coverage could you have than your spouse working for a well respected health organization. Ask Tracy Pierce.
Any health system that has administrators overriding trained doctors is a bad system. When it is monetarily in their favor to override doctors then the system is fatally flawed.
I'm willing to give Paul and Kucinich a lot of credit for being honest.
Kucinich never had a chance. Right out of the gate they were trying to make him look like a nut job with things like questions about UFOs. I would have liked to have seen Biden get more coverage. He actually had a plan for getting out of Iraq and the experience to give it credibility.
Like someone else posted, I'm afraid our choice is going to be Clinton and Huckabee.
Clinton was too ineffectual too make any change for the better or worse.
And oddly, in 1998 the Clinton administration announced the first budget surplus in a generation. And in 2000 the surplus was the highest since Medicare was enacted. Granted, they were playing with numbers because they weren't including money that was being borrowed from Social Security, but they didn't count it either when Bush turned in record deficits.
The Clinton administration had a goal of reducing the government's debt by $2.9 trillion by 2010, which would have put them on track to eliminate it entirely by 2012. I should note that I don't believe it would have happened, simply because part of the governments job is to borrow money. A certain amount of government debt is a stabilizing influence for the economy. It's all academic though, we are about to hit $9.2 trillion national debt and whoever takes office next January will have the 'pleasure' of heading the administration that was in office when we crossed $10 trillion in debt.
America's health care isn't bad, it's just expensive.
No, America's health care system is bad. There are too many people with no coverage at all. The system is inefficient. And it hurts our ability to compete in a world market on labor costs. If you believe press releases like this one from the SBA, a huge portion of our economy is represented by small businesses. But are you willing to leave your corporate job knowing that you might not be able to buy insurance and still be competitive?
In my opinion, all the health care 'plans' presented by candidates do not go far enough. We need to take the profiteering middlemen out of the equation.
What, Walmart abusive to its suppliers? Incredible.
I don't see how buying a supplier's product is abusive. But Walmart does appear to have shrewd purchasing agents. Walmart collects huge amounts of data on what sells and what the price points are, so they come into negotiations well prepared. From the various articles I have read about supplier problems with Walmart (Levis, Vlasic, Huffy), it appears that the suppliers have been rather naive about the contracts they signed. If you sign a contract saying you're willing to supply Walmart up to X amount of an item for $Y, you need to be able to produce that maximum amount if Walmart requests it. Don't agree to supply 10,000 when you can only profitably produce 5,000.
I'm fairly sure that sometime in the near future, a company will create a barcode printer that has RFID tags embedded in the stickers it prints out.
Intermec and Zebra have both had this technology available for several years. We've been keeping our eye on RFIDs since aroudn '98 or '99.
That way, the distribution company doesn't have to worry about needing two systems in order to ship to all their customers.
With current tag prices, I doubt many companies are going to put RFIDs on shipments that don't require it. Maybe at the pallet level, but not any lower than that. In many industries it's not uncommon for customer specific label anyway, so you'd just add an RFID printer next to your cheaper barcode printer anyway. We have places were we install multiple barcode printers just so there is no wasted time changing label stock to print a different size customer label.
RFID (or barcode identification of pallets as we do it) is great, because you don't have to count all the stuff that comes in, because the supplier has already counted it when it was loaded.
RFID on pallets has absolutely no effect on who counts stuff. The supplier is going to count every time they build a pallet, regardless of what Walmart does. Walmart OTOH, does vendor rating. And I would assume that like other businesses, that vendor rating has a metric for shipment accuracy. Once a supplier reaches a set level, you either stop verifying quantity or skip lot (check 1 out of x number of pallets). You can also verify by pallet weight, if you have accurate information on item weight and dimensions.
When you receive a truck with one bill of lading and ~30 pallets, it's much easier to scan each pallet, and confirm what is on there against the electronically supplied list than to try to check 30 pallets by running from pallet to pallet with the bill of lading.
I know a lot of people are confused about this, but a Bill of Lading is NOT a customer document. It's sole purpose is to tell the carrier what they are transporting. A packing slip is a customer document. If the pallets are properly labeled (RFID or barcode), you can compare them automatically to the ASN (advance ship notice). But again, the container ID on that pallet only tells you what the supplier thinks they put on it. So again you fall back to vendor rating to determine your receiving processes.
They now can simply slap them into the delivery with the electronic bill of lading without any additional paperwork to get their bills paid.
I think you are confused about what an electronic bill of lading is.
As far as the Walmart issue is concerned, I would say that the $2 a pallet charge is exceptionally reasonable. I have seen customers charge $50 for a missing container ID or missing/late ASN. For some smaller suppliers it might be more cost effective to pay the $2 a pallet charge rather than spend the money on RFID. I don't remember the cost of printers, but I do remember that last year when we looked into it, it was going to cost $10k per dock door to get set up to receive by RFIDs.
From the supplier's perspective, they are going to need RFIDs (generally labels), and they won't be able to buy with Walmart's volume discounts. If they require tags that contain more than a simple container ID, then the customer will need a tag programmer (usually a barcode printer) and access to a verifier.
Download the free trial for Lotro, create a character and head to Bree. There is a quest there that starts at night, from a ghost near the southern gate, he asks you to find a ring that was lost at some baracks. Yet you don't recall any baracks even being at bree. It is suggested you ask around.
I'm familiar with that quest, though I don't remember people asking about it. The one I have seen a lot is people asking if the mining records are actually in Othrikar. I'll admit, many players aren't interested in exploring and their reading comprehension is rather low. But to be fair, I have found quite a few LOTRO quests that give you information that is 'imprecise'. And I do like exploring. As a friend keeps pointing out to me, LOTRO still needs a bit of polish.
Content costs money, there is a rather ambitious slideshow available somewhere that shows the expansions they once had planned, you are talking a couple of years worth to map all the way to mount doom, but what the hell kind of level will you be by that time?
And despite the fact that content is expensive, they still treat it as disposable. How quickly do you leave Ered Luin and the Shire? Or most of Bree. Why doesn't the region adjust for the player? Then they could put quests in any zone. Another problem is playing with friends of different levels. If you're more than few levels apart, one of you will be grinding to catch up and the other will be bored and earning no XP powerleveling you.
If, on the other hand, mobs adjusted for the character they are interfacing, there's no reason why a long time player at level 50 couldn't meet up with a friend on a newly created level 5 and quest together.
I'd just point out that bypassing Blizzard's 'Warden' monitoring software is not against their TOS. Or at least it didn't use to be. They told us how to bypass it after all the furor about privacy concerns over Warden scanning our systems for all running processes.
Essentially, rather than validating data on their servers, they're pushing an application to the clients to report any process they feel is inappropriate. I personally felt Warden was inappropriate, and never allowed it to run.
I know a number of people who have bought gen 1 Smart cars. They bought them because they are less than 102" long, and can be loaded behind the cab of their truck between the 5th wheel. Every one of them has been exceptionally pleased with the Smart as an all around car. Acceleration and ability to maintain a 70mph cruising speed is not a problem. I'm also surprised about your comment about requiring premium gas, I haven't heard anyone mention it.
I would personally consider buying a Smart Cabriolet if they would bring the CDI to North America. I might even trade off my motorcycle to do it.
BTW, their website lists the Smart Pure at $11,500
My biggest concern with the Smart is the same one I have when I ride my motorcycle; some dumb ass in an SUV plowing into me because they're too stupid to drive and talk on the phone at the same time. I think we need to start encouraging people to drive smaller cars. An inexpensive car might be a start. But knowing people, probably a better way would be to put special micro car parking places at shopping centers and enforce them. (similar to handicap parking)
Basically it allows us to feel warm and fuzzy about coal power without actually doing anything to reduce the net amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere.
Actually, it is a net reduction if the fuel produced replaces another CO2 producing fuel. It's most efficient use might be to feed it back into the power plant, reducing the amount of coal needed. Not only that, but there are other nasty things in coal that would be reduced.
Of course, I guess you could dump the CR5 and direct the heat from the collector directly into the power plant. They're just using the coal to boil water, after all.
Yeah, you're talking shite.
So are you. Although I have no interest in owning one, Harley makes a quality bike these days. You must be stuck in the 70's.
Kawasaki Vulcan 500 LTD (smallest) 439lbs dry weight (199 kg)
Kawasaki Vulcan 2000 Classic LT (largest) 796lbs dry weight (361 kg)
Kawasaki crotch rocket Ninja ZX-14 485lbs dry weight (220 kg)
Now the little Ninja ZX-6 does hit the 160kg range, at 368lbs dry weight (166 kg)
I could have looked up other brands, but I'm too lazy. There won't be much difference in comparable bikes between Kawasaki, Honda, Yamaha, or Suzuki.
Harley Sportster 883 XL 563lbs dry weight (255 kg)
None of the cruisers will be as light as the sport bikes, and Harley doesn't make sport bikes. Since the markets don't cross over, it's not fair to compare something like a Harley V-ROD to a Kawasaki Ninja. So that puts Harley's in the same range as a Kawasaki cruiser.
Harley doesn't post 0-60 performance on their bikes, it's a bogus measurement for that class of motorcycle anyway. But I've seen people report 4 second 0-60 on a larger V-ROD, so I doubt the difference in a similar sized bike from a competitor would be measurable without going to the track. An 'average' bike isn't going to get 2.5 seconds, not when a Ninja ZX-10 is 3.12 seconds. Unless you have a completely different idea of what average is, I would expect an average around 4 seconds.
And FWIW, when I read the summary I pictured cops on Vespas. That's almost as bad as bikers in B movies riding dirt bikes.