No, both are CDMA phones with a GSM module shoehorned in as well, which allows you to "fallback" to GSM in foreign parts where CDMA isn't supported. The "Verizon SIM" is just a billing hack to make the GSM module work. It's not like you can stick any SIM in an 8800, or pull the Verizon SIM out of one and stick it in an iPhone.
Oh, and their next generation network (which is launching 2+ years before AT&T's) is LTE, based off the GSM standard.
Yeah, that's all well and good... but you'll still be limited to phones custom built for Verizon's network, which is the primary shortcoming of Verizon wireless service. They're not using the GSM standard design. I can't order the latest totally nuts japanese cell phone and just stick my Verizon SIM card in it now can I? I can with AT&T. I can't take my Verizon phone on my trip to [europe|asia|*] and buy a prepaid SIM and stick it in now can I? No, because Verizon uses a one-off network incompatible with most of the rest of the world. Same goes for Sprint/Nextel.
livin like a king compared to the middle class of only a generation or two ago,
When you look at it empirically, we live better than even kings did 100 years ago. I daresay that even being poor in the US is measurably better than being lower middle class in some parts of the world. The "poor" in the us often have automobiles, several changes of clothes, and they all seem to have televisions.... drive through a bad neighborhood in south los angeles and I challenge you to find more than the occasional house that doesn't have a satellite dish on the roof. The standard of living here in the US is an embarrassment of riches compared to how people live in (say) Bangladesh.
the only requirement is that the drive train be destroyed
No, the requirement is that the engine be destroyed. You really ought to actually look up the definitions of long words before you use them. The drive train is everything from the powerplant on back to the road. This includes transmission, drive shaft, differential, axles, wheels, and technically even the tires. Cripes, it's not even that hard to figure out using common sense! You know what a "train" is, right? A long collection of linked together parts? What do you think a drive train might refer to based on that?
The program is designed to get fuel inefficient cars off the road.
Not to reward the rich and environmentally irresponsible,
not to subsidize cars for lower income Americans,
only to get fuel inefficient cars off the road.
Bullshit. This is a handout to the automotive industry and nothing else. The fuel economy aspect is nothing more than candy coating to make it seem "responsible". Your analysis completely fails to look at the big picture, i.e. where would that "old" car have gone if the government hadn't destroyed it. Every 16mpg 1993 GMC pickup they destroy is one more 12mpg 1988 GMC pickup driven that much longer by a poor person who could never in a million years afford to make payments on a 2009 GMC truck... but could've afforded that '93 being sold used for the $3000 it's worth.
It's not a net gain. The "clunkers" being destroyed are perfectly safe, serviceable vehicles being taken out of the used car market, essentially keeping even older, more polluting, less safe cars on the road, because people driving real clunkers can't afford a new car no matter how much they get for their old junker. This is basically a No Airbags for Poor Folks program.
ah, but in America the single largest debt the vast majority of Americans will ever hold, their home, is exempt from bankruptcy
That's not a debt, genius. The house is an asset, the loan used to buy it is a debt--- but because the asset is worth more than the debt, the net difference is equity, a net asset, not a debt. Even in the case of a home loan where the house is worth less than the loan, you're not "on the hook" for the difference, as evidenced by all the foreclosures and short sales we're seeing now.
Nah, the poor have cars, they just have to stay with their unsafe, polluting old cars because they can't afford to buy a new car and the better used car they would have bought has been destroyed to give GM a handout.
Who is losing in this case? What is the waste? The old car that is destroying the environment, tearing up the roads, sucking up valuable oil resources? Good riddance, I say.
And Jose the construction worker continues to drive his 12mpg 1987 GMC pickup because the 16mpg 1993 GMC pickup he would have bought from Joe Middleclass for $3000 instead was destroyed by the government so they could give GM a handout. I say good riddance to myopic economic analysis like yours.
The fuel economy improvement angle is just the sugarcoating that makes this ridiculous program palatable. The real purpose of the program is to bail out the auto industry. Your fuel tax plan doesn't do that.
It's designed to get inefficient cars off the road and to stimulate the auto industry and all of the companies in that employment chain.
The second two points are true. The first point is just window dressing. The program only gets the second-tier polluters driven by well-to-do middle class people off the road. The third tier polluters, the serious beaters driven by people who can't afford a new car at all, not even with a $4500 incentive, those cars will just stay on the road longer. The government is basically reducing the supply of relatively safe, relatively non-polluting vehicles to the lower classes--- what my wife likes to call the "No Airbags for Mexicans" program. Pollution reduction is just a candy coating to get people to swallow what is actually a gigantic handout to a grossly mismanaged industry.
I think our engineers probably spend $800 just to analyze solar plans and visit the site
Wow, that's just the sort of confident analysis I like to base my opinions on.
And even if that number isn't pulled wholly from your ass, it's not being analyzed with an eye to the nature of the whole operation. See, what a lot of power company apologists fail to remember is that much of what these companies do is done "free" because that's a mandated part of the deal by which they are granted a monopoly position in providing power. Power companies don't get to decide who they will and will not hook up to the grid simply based on profitability. It's part of the deal by which they are allowed to run power transmission infrastructure all over all sorts of private property without having to secure permission from each and every property owner; the deal by which no one else is allowed to do the same and compete; the deal they made with the local seat of government that outlies their rights and responsibilities as a regulated power utility.
Seriously, if the deal is so unfair and unprofitable, maybe they ought to go into sellng fucking oranges on a street corner.
Farm subsidies are arguably bullshit, though. They arose out of turn of the century mechanization which saw huge increases in production and a subsequent lowering of price. Up until that point, farming was simply occupation, practiced by families who operated with little long term discipline, but the scale of production was gradually turning it into more of an industry requiring business-like organization. Farmers were upset that they couldn't sell a bushel of wheat for what they used to and, not wanting to abandon their traditional lifestyle (google "leisure preference"), they were up in arms. Congress panicked, and decided to do something about it and basically developed modern agricultural policy. They managed to prop up the quaint and outdated notion of the "family farm" long past its expiration date until it finally collapsed under the weight of modernization. As a result, what we have now is a large-scale corporate farm system that gets outlandish subsidies from the government simply for conducting its business. Agricultural subsidies are not a good example of the government doing a good job.
You are leasing equipment (a meter) from them though. They are obligated to replace that equipment out of their own funds if it breaks.
You're not leasing the meter, you are providing the power company a place to install their own billing equipment. Besides, those meters cost from 30 dollars (basic design, hasn't changed for 100 years) to 100 dollars (modern multi-rate electronic meter), and they last essentially forever. On the astronomically rare occasion when they do malfunction, replacing them is literally a plug-and-play swap out that takes under 60 seconds.
You'll need to come up with another justification for their greed, power company apologist!;)
Imagine for a moment what his novels would read like if Dan Brown got his facts correct.
You could conceivably have a factually accurate mystery/thriller. But the result of the above thought experiment would be a factually accurate book that reads like it was written by a semi-literate 4th grader. Dan Brown's writing deficiencies go far beyond the ridiculously improbably fantasy of the content. The fucker has no skill at pacing, plot, characterization, or even choosing appropriate vocabulary. But hey, kudos to him for getting people to buy his asinine tripe.
If you actually believe that then I suggest you get an FFL and try it out in reality.
May come as a surprise to you, but you don't need to be an FFL holder to sell a gun, just like you don't need to have a business license as a car dealer to sell a car.
And my point is that in most cases that defense doesn't fly.
Incorrect. This is a state law issue. In Nevada, I can sell my 9mm pistol to my neighbor's brother, and if he turns out to live in NY city and not on my neighbors couch as I'd assumed and takes it back to NY with him, ATF can't do jack shit to me. If I lived in California, however, I'd be in violation of state law for not transferring via state-approved procedures.... but even then, the ATF still wouldn't show up at my door, it would be California DOJ dragging me off to the clink.
I recall that there were some briefcase nukes that came up missing in the old Soviet Union.
You mean you recall hearing one of the myths about there being suitcase nukes. (read truth here)
The key flaw in the mythology is the "minor" flaw that fissionable material in a device that small would decompose in a matter of months. Even if there were such devices, their warheads would now be all but useless.
You screwup the hookups, or the power feed isn't phased correctly, and your whole neighborhood goes dark because of your home improvement project.
Actually, one of the interesting properties of AC is that mechanical generation equipment will automagically synchronize. If you're out of phase with the power company, your tiny generation equipment will be forced into phase and the power company's equipment won't even notice it. The worst that could happen is you completely destroy your generation equipment because it can't handle the stress of being slammed into phase with their generators.
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both are CDMA phones with SIM cards
No, both are CDMA phones with a GSM module shoehorned in as well, which allows you to "fallback" to GSM in foreign parts where CDMA isn't supported. The "Verizon SIM" is just a billing hack to make the GSM module work. It's not like you can stick any SIM in an 8800, or pull the Verizon SIM out of one and stick it in an iPhone.
Oh, and their next generation network (which is launching 2+ years before AT&T's) is LTE, based off the GSM standard.
Yeah, that's all well and good... but you'll still be limited to phones custom built for Verizon's network, which is the primary shortcoming of Verizon wireless service. They're not using the GSM standard design. I can't order the latest totally nuts japanese cell phone and just stick my Verizon SIM card in it now can I? I can with AT&T. I can't take my Verizon phone on my trip to [europe|asia|*] and buy a prepaid SIM and stick it in now can I? No, because Verizon uses a one-off network incompatible with most of the rest of the world. Same goes for Sprint/Nextel.
What would be great is if we can get a quad band Android phone that supported those frequencies, but as of yet, there is none.
...except for the G1's and G2's made for Rogers Wireless in Canada. Available on ebay.
There are already huge bodies of caselaw on this. There are distinct differences between a leased dwelling and land leased for other purposes.
and sprinkle riddalin on your cornflakes
Let me guess.... theater major?
Ritalin
Didn't it show up with a red line under it in your browser?
I utilized the Veterans Administration medical system exactly once after I got out of the military. That's all the warning sign *I* need.
livin like a king compared to the middle class of only a generation or two ago,
When you look at it empirically, we live better than even kings did 100 years ago. I daresay that even being poor in the US is measurably better than being lower middle class in some parts of the world. The "poor" in the us often have automobiles, several changes of clothes, and they all seem to have televisions.... drive through a bad neighborhood in south los angeles and I challenge you to find more than the occasional house that doesn't have a satellite dish on the roof. The standard of living here in the US is an embarrassment of riches compared to how people live in (say) Bangladesh.
the only requirement is that the drive train be destroyed
No, the requirement is that the engine be destroyed. You really ought to actually look up the definitions of long words before you use them. The drive train is everything from the powerplant on back to the road. This includes transmission, drive shaft, differential, axles, wheels, and technically even the tires. Cripes, it's not even that hard to figure out using common sense! You know what a "train" is, right? A long collection of linked together parts? What do you think a drive train might refer to based on that?
The program is designed to get fuel inefficient cars off the road. Not to reward the rich and environmentally irresponsible, not to subsidize cars for lower income Americans, only to get fuel inefficient cars off the road.
Bullshit. This is a handout to the automotive industry and nothing else. The fuel economy aspect is nothing more than candy coating to make it seem "responsible". Your analysis completely fails to look at the big picture, i.e. where would that "old" car have gone if the government hadn't destroyed it. Every 16mpg 1993 GMC pickup they destroy is one more 12mpg 1988 GMC pickup driven that much longer by a poor person who could never in a million years afford to make payments on a 2009 GMC truck... but could've afforded that '93 being sold used for the $3000 it's worth.
It's not a net gain. The "clunkers" being destroyed are perfectly safe, serviceable vehicles being taken out of the used car market, essentially keeping even older, more polluting, less safe cars on the road, because people driving real clunkers can't afford a new car no matter how much they get for their old junker. This is basically a No Airbags for Poor Folks program.
ah, but in America the single largest debt the vast majority of Americans will ever hold, their home, is exempt from bankruptcy
That's not a debt, genius. The house is an asset, the loan used to buy it is a debt--- but because the asset is worth more than the debt, the net difference is equity, a net asset, not a debt. Even in the case of a home loan where the house is worth less than the loan, you're not "on the hook" for the difference, as evidenced by all the foreclosures and short sales we're seeing now.
Scrap metal is in demand and hulls alone will pay off nicely
No they won't. Scrap metal demand has tanked in the last 12 months. Where have you been?
Nah, the poor have cars, they just have to stay with their unsafe, polluting old cars because they can't afford to buy a new car and the better used car they would have bought has been destroyed to give GM a handout.
Its the No Airbags for Mexicans Program
Who is losing in this case? What is the waste? The old car that is destroying the environment, tearing up the roads, sucking up valuable oil resources? Good riddance, I say.
And Jose the construction worker continues to drive his 12mpg 1987 GMC pickup because the 16mpg 1993 GMC pickup he would have bought from Joe Middleclass for $3000 instead was destroyed by the government so they could give GM a handout. I say good riddance to myopic economic analysis like yours.
The fuel economy improvement angle is just the sugarcoating that makes this ridiculous program palatable. The real purpose of the program is to bail out the auto industry. Your fuel tax plan doesn't do that.
It's designed to get inefficient cars off the road and to stimulate the auto industry and all of the companies in that employment chain.
The second two points are true. The first point is just window dressing. The program only gets the second-tier polluters driven by well-to-do middle class people off the road. The third tier polluters, the serious beaters driven by people who can't afford a new car at all, not even with a $4500 incentive, those cars will just stay on the road longer. The government is basically reducing the supply of relatively safe, relatively non-polluting vehicles to the lower classes--- what my wife likes to call the "No Airbags for Mexicans" program. Pollution reduction is just a candy coating to get people to swallow what is actually a gigantic handout to a grossly mismanaged industry.
I think our engineers probably spend $800 just to analyze solar plans and visit the site
Wow, that's just the sort of confident analysis I like to base my opinions on.
And even if that number isn't pulled wholly from your ass, it's not being analyzed with an eye to the nature of the whole operation. See, what a lot of power company apologists fail to remember is that much of what these companies do is done "free" because that's a mandated part of the deal by which they are granted a monopoly position in providing power. Power companies don't get to decide who they will and will not hook up to the grid simply based on profitability. It's part of the deal by which they are allowed to run power transmission infrastructure all over all sorts of private property without having to secure permission from each and every property owner; the deal by which no one else is allowed to do the same and compete; the deal they made with the local seat of government that outlies their rights and responsibilities as a regulated power utility.
Seriously, if the deal is so unfair and unprofitable, maybe they ought to go into sellng fucking oranges on a street corner.
Farm subsidies are arguably bullshit, though. They arose out of turn of the century mechanization which saw huge increases in production and a subsequent lowering of price. Up until that point, farming was simply occupation, practiced by families who operated with little long term discipline, but the scale of production was gradually turning it into more of an industry requiring business-like organization. Farmers were upset that they couldn't sell a bushel of wheat for what they used to and, not wanting to abandon their traditional lifestyle (google "leisure preference"), they were up in arms. Congress panicked, and decided to do something about it and basically developed modern agricultural policy. They managed to prop up the quaint and outdated notion of the "family farm" long past its expiration date until it finally collapsed under the weight of modernization. As a result, what we have now is a large-scale corporate farm system that gets outlandish subsidies from the government simply for conducting its business. Agricultural subsidies are not a good example of the government doing a good job.
You are leasing equipment (a meter) from them though. They are obligated to replace that equipment out of their own funds if it breaks.
You're not leasing the meter, you are providing the power company a place to install their own billing equipment. Besides, those meters cost from 30 dollars (basic design, hasn't changed for 100 years) to 100 dollars (modern multi-rate electronic meter), and they last essentially forever. On the astronomically rare occasion when they do malfunction, replacing them is literally a plug-and-play swap out that takes under 60 seconds.
;)
You'll need to come up with another justification for their greed, power company apologist!
Imagine for a moment what his novels would read like if Dan Brown got his facts correct.
You could conceivably have a factually accurate mystery/thriller. But the result of the above thought experiment would be a factually accurate book that reads like it was written by a semi-literate 4th grader. Dan Brown's writing deficiencies go far beyond the ridiculously improbably fantasy of the content. The fucker has no skill at pacing, plot, characterization, or even choosing appropriate vocabulary. But hey, kudos to him for getting people to buy his asinine tripe.
If you actually believe that then I suggest you get an FFL and try it out in reality.
May come as a surprise to you, but you don't need to be an FFL holder to sell a gun, just like you don't need to have a business license as a car dealer to sell a car.
And my point is that in most cases that defense doesn't fly.
Incorrect. This is a state law issue. In Nevada, I can sell my 9mm pistol to my neighbor's brother, and if he turns out to live in NY city and not on my neighbors couch as I'd assumed and takes it back to NY with him, ATF can't do jack shit to me. If I lived in California, however, I'd be in violation of state law for not transferring via state-approved procedures.... but even then, the ATF still wouldn't show up at my door, it would be California DOJ dragging me off to the clink.
Fucked up the hyperlink above. (read truth here)
I recall that there were some briefcase nukes that came up missing in the old Soviet Union.
You mean you recall hearing one of the myths about there being suitcase nukes. (read truth here)
The key flaw in the mythology is the "minor" flaw that fissionable material in a device that small would decompose in a matter of months. Even if there were such devices, their warheads would now be all but useless.
You screwup the hookups, or the power feed isn't phased correctly, and your whole neighborhood goes dark because of your home improvement project.
Actually, one of the interesting properties of AC is that mechanical generation equipment will automagically synchronize. If you're out of phase with the power company, your tiny generation equipment will be forced into phase and the power company's equipment won't even notice it. The worst that could happen is you completely destroy your generation equipment because it can't handle the stress of being slammed into phase with their generators.
You mean the bastards are selling us the same electrons over and over again?