I often see other cars with Partial Zero Emissions stickers. This confuses me as any part of zero is zero.
That's because you have to think like a california bureaucrat to understand this. It's not partially zero, it just partially counts towards meeting a zero-emission requirement.
In 1990, california passed a law that 10% of the cars for sale in california by 2003 needed to be ZEV zero emission vehicles. Note that ZEV doesn't mean zero-emissions for the environment, but simply zero tail-pipe emissions (e.g., electric cars or hydrogen fuel cells). The California Air Resources Board (aka CARB) that was tasked to enforce this law found out that basically battery and fuel cell technology wasn't mature enough yet and the whole mandate was not gonna happen. Rather than declare failure, after a while, the bureaucrats simply changed the rules and created two new category of cars in order to declare victory.
One category of cars was known as the "partial" ZEV or PZEV that was just a really clean gas powered car, but was only allowed to partially count towards the 10% requirement (only up to 6% could count towards the 10%). The other was the "advanced technology" or AT-PZEV which would be something like a hybrid electric or plug-hybrid (which was allowe to count another 2% towards the 10%).
Originally, car manufacturers only made small numbers of these PZEV cars and sold them exclusively in California and New-York simply to comply with emission mandates in those states. Now they slap the label on any gasoline car that happens to meet the PZEV low-emissions requirement and sell the cars pretty much everywhere.
Out of curiosity, since we aren't using latin/greek inflection these days, why does it matter if you "split" an infinitive in English?
Actually, it never mattered. The whole issue was cooked up by some class-concious grammar nazis in 19th century who didn't really know Latin, but wanted to attempt to assert their superiority by creating an artificial link between the then modern form of English back to Renaisance times rather than the actual Germanic roots of the language that introduced the infinitive form with "to/zu"...
We are perhaps fortunate to not be permanently stuck in that brief period of insanity.;^)
Unfortunately, that split infinitive thing keeps getting revived by people kind of like an internet hoax that won't go away...:^(
because a state does not have the power to tax a car driven in another state, this won't work.
Recent changes in state laws across the US allow for multi-state toll-collection reciprocity agreements to enable all-electronic tolling. The effect of these changes is that the entity that has the authority to tax you has effectively subcontracted with other authories in other state and the terms of that reciprocity agreement is that it makes you liable for certain things that didn't happen in your state of residence. Today that is traversal on toll roads, it's not a stretch to say that also includes miles traversed on non-toll roads (effectively that would make all roads to be toll roads). I'm sure there will be exemptions (like there are today) for stuff like industrial or farm equipment operated soley on private property to counter the most common argument against this.
If it was a real experiment, they'd have to have an ethics review and all the details of the research would have to be disclosed to the participants.
Not all research is scientific. Marketing research is real enough and nothing has to be disclosed or passed through an ethics review board, nor disclosed to participants. Arguably, some marketing research might have more effect on your real life than some "real" experiments (e.g., often influencing what you can buy, what is discontinued, features in new products, etc)...
The point is not to switch. Every one of the brands have nearly the same supply chain labor practices (do you think the Samsung device is made with labor conditions substantially different than an Apple device).
The point is to apply pressure to the brand that has the highest volume so it has the most incentive and the most leverage to change the situation and can benefit most from positive publicity for changing, not just to change the king of the hill. Otherwise the supply chain folks just get to meet the new boss, same as the old boss (the who won't get fooled again).
The sad reality is people don't think their brand does deplorable things, and/or they simply don't care.
Throwing a wrench in the master's machine is your moral duty if you can get away with it.
Of course, you might be apocryphally be throwing a sabot into the master's machine, but why would it be your moral duty to continue wearing crappy shoes?;^)
The question is why continue to support companies that do this? In the '90s, people boycotted companies like Nike for the labor practices of their sub-contractors, but sadly other than some brief noise to channel Apple, electronics companies have largely gotten a pass.
I think one underlying reason is that both the customer and the companies fear they have few options (people make have over-invested in the iOS ecosystem, and although garment factories are easy to move, electronics assembly, not so much). These type of labor issues may be yet another inconvenient truth that people have been overlooking to their own detriment.
Why? Because it makes things artificially cheap which increases the offshoring pressure. Remember the bounty of these savings are really just horded by the companies themselves (e.g., Apple and Foxconn) they rarely are passed back to the consumer in the form of reduced prices or even indirectly (taxes are avoided and typical economic investment multipliers are largely offshore).
0 is the first number, so everything should start at 0. When you're born you aren't 1 you're 0, 0 is the logical first place to start for counting.
0 may be the first non-negative number, but the first counting number (aka positive number) is 1. Also, if you happen to be chinese, you are 1 when you are born (which depending on your politics is a reasonable rounding given the fact that 9>12/2 ).
As it turns out, I helped to research and select merchant agreements for 2 businesses I consult for.
Agreements today are quite complicated. For small volume all-in-one agreements with aggregating processors with an average charge amount from $50-$100, although AMEX might be on par with MC/VISA rewards-style cards, AMEX is quite a bit more expensive than both debit-as-credit and vanilla MC/VISA. Usually, you can same some money on AMEX by going a-la-carte (direct w/ AMEX), but even then AMEX is still quite a bit more expensive than the cheapest low-volume vanilla MC/VISA. Of course some banks actually charge more for rewards-style MC/VISA than a-la-carte AMEX, but they usually aren't the cheapest MC/VISA processors you can pick. Also, most small merchant do such low Discover volume that their best a-la-carte bet is to be on a pay-as-you-go (swipe + percentage) bank plan that includes Discover which is quite a bit more expensive than a typical low cost MC/VISA plan (which is also generally swipe + percentage in the $ range of the typical agreement). The aggregators sometimes have plans that just toss in Discover at a reasonable rate (because they know there won't be many of them).
Depending on the mix of cards you see at your business (e.g., mostly rich middle class people with rewards cards, or working class people with vanilla cards, or no-pin-debit-as-credit, etc), and the average charge amounts your business generates, your mileage may vary, but I haven't ever seen a case where AMEX is anywhere near as cheap as vanilla MC/VISA for the situations I was looking at.
Actually, before I did this exercise, I figured money for credit-card rewards programs were a kick-back to the customer from the issuing bank's share of the profit. Now I know that money to pay those rewards is mostly collected from the merchants you use. Something you might think twice about when you purchase something less than $10 and pull out your rewards card for the small vendor just trying to make ends meet because you don't like carrying cash around (or not, depending if you actually worry about the health of your favorite mom/pop establishments)...
Some establishments actually do accept AMEX and DISC cards but swipe subtly attempt to dissuade customers from using them because of their higher swipe fees. With this device and the way most bill are handled, the cashier would probably need to swipe this generic card and now it's generally too late to go back to the customer to change negating this specific fee avoidance strategy***
***I suppose they could swipe the generic card charge, note that the charge was AMEX, reverse the charge, return the card back to the customer and have them switch the card to be VISA/MC and then reswipe, but I'm sure the POS terminals won't make that very easy for the overworked cashiers.
Why so gloomy sounding? Why can't it be called A Mix Of All Colors Friday?
If you work in retail (as opposed to actually owning a retail establishment), maybe you might wish for a dark friday...
Dark Friday: a Friday when the staff is taking the day off and the establishment is not open (normally only applied to a Play or Show) Pink Friday: a crappy album made by Nicki Minaj Red Friday: (US/CA) support the troops (UK) July 31, 1925, british coal miner labor union celebrate winning a temporary government backed minimum wage Orange Friday: (US baseball) support the SF Giants day Big Yellow Friday: Children's liver disease foundation awareness/fundraising day Green Friday: a social reform movement Blue Friday: support law enforcement officers KIA Purple Friday: (US football) support the Minnesota Viking or Baltimore Ravens Black Friday: (US) the day after thanksgiving (which is always on thursday) many business goes from "red" to "black". This follows the tradition of accountants to use black for non-negative numbers and red for negative numbers. (UK) April 15th 1921, the day the Triple Alliance chickened out and called off a strike that would have supported british miners in their fight or minimum wages (see Red Friday)
Thank God it's Friday: oops that was a day early, it's only thursday.
AFAIK, an IQ of 100 is technically the median score (50% above, 50% below). Of course the average (mean) score could be significantly less than one hundred if the dumb people are exceptionally dumb and the smart people are only a little bit smarter than median...
Substitutions for trans-fat in the commercial food industry isn't really a cost of materials issue. The change in the cost of materials is likely to be marginal. The primarly reason trans-fat is used is to increase shelf-life of products (polyunsaturated oils in food go rancid really quick) which means most change-outs will affect the distribution chain and the cost of distribution.
Say if a snack product is delivered weekly to market now, it might have to be delivered twice a week in smaller batches. Packaging sizes might also need to go down (as products will go rancid more quickly than before). These infrastructure and distribution changes are much higher and more distruptive and costly than simply the price of the ingredients.
It also isn't clear that the drop-in substitutes are significantly better. For example, using naturally saturated fats (e.g. palm oil) or animal fats would likely result in similar cardiovascular disease profile and more product variance. The new industrial processes to avoid trans-fat (e.g., modified hydrogenation, interesterification) may just be rolling the dice because in the end, they may be just as bad as trans-fat. Of course, many are not fans of the GMO seeds that are engineered to not produce polyunsaturated oils. On top of that, none yet have the shelf-life as long as the trans-fat versions.
What most large companies are doing now is to fractionate and blend various vegetable oils to create zero-polyunsaturated products that happen to work reasonably well for a specific cooking process. That isn't a cheap development, and it isn't a drop-in replacement that can be used industry wide (which is why only the mega-corps are doing this now).
Lobster used to be prisoner food, until someone got the bright idea to use the newly available railroad to sell canned lobster to inland dwellers who didn't know better and considered all seafood a delicacy.
Foie gras used to simply be a kosher source of cooking fat (since lard isn't kosher). It wasn't until the French gourmands elevated it to a delicacy.
As with all politically connected people, I'm sure a soft landing "place" was made for him in one of the companies owned/operated by one of the generous political donors to the current overlord administration's party, so he would be comfortable vacating his current cushy post before he became a total embarassment.
This is probably not too dissimilar to how some dictators seem to find themselves living with an annual stipend in some remote area of the world...
"Here in the U.S., Tesla Model S owners are likely to rarely reach the carâ(TM)s 130 mph top speed..." Does Montana still have no speed limit during the day?
Currently, Montana has normal speed-limits (75mph) and Tesla doesn't have a supercharger station anywhere near Montana... The "no-speed-limit, but reasonable and prudent" thing only lasted for a few years in the '90s, but was repealed as soon as the Feds threated highway funds.
The engine doesn't magically cut out at a car's rated "top speed."
Actually, I used to have a Nissan Maxima and it does actually did have an electronic engine governor based on the speed of the car. The way I know this is a fact is that I accidentally experienced it on I-80 straight-away in the salt-flats just outside of salt lake city*** Since the road was straight, I wanted to see how fast I could go, but apparently, not faster then the governor. Of course you could always remove this hardware...
** I'm sure the statute of limitations expired on this transgression as it was many, many moons ago
Start with an intense desire to building your own private empire that you control. Hiding information from others to gain a competitive advantage. Populating other groups with spys to see what progress they are making. Eventually giving rational people no choice but to join your team or be crushed.
Of course this wasn't the only genesis, but some folks attribute daylight savings time as a joke started by Benjamin Franklin who off handedly suggested that one way to save money on home lighting costs at night would be to force everyone to get up earlier in the summer. For the record he apparently wrote this in French as a suggestion for Parisians, no farmers involved. That whole farmer thing is a crock.
As with most jokes, nobody took this seriously until WWI when Germany decided to actually attempt this to help conserve energy for the war effort. After Germany did this, nearly every country involved in WWI followed suite (including the US).
Like many crazy things that require a massive societal change, it took place during a war. You might blame Americans for making the joke, but I choose to blame the Europeans for falling for the joke and dragging the rest of us into it.
Careful now... last time you declared war on Canada, your White House was burned to the ground.
Actually, the last time we tried to declare war on "Canada", they got scared and split the Oregon Territory rather than fight... Also, technically, both times were with the UK, not Canada, but if float the Canadian ego;^)
Language of course is as old as the hills and probably the biggest thing that separates us from other animals. However, the internet as we know it will be just another flash in the pan along the way.
Although the speed that current language is propagated is welcomed by some, the propagation is also serving to kill off local languages at lighting speed. English and (Mandarin) Chinese seem to be the only languages making headway in this new era and many languages are in a precipitous decline. Some think that instead of promoting diversity of thought, this destruction of language is serving to homogenize the cultures around the world. Something we should ask ourselves are we really saving the future with our actions today. We may all live w/o famine and disease, but some cultures may not survive the translation to English and Chinese. Thus we may be saving ourselves from our past, but we may not be saving things for the future (depending on your politics).
FWIW, perhaps you are unaware, but the pony express was the model of the prototypical.com company of the era. It was founded by people that made their money in the stage-coach shipping business, but wanted to try to start a company to capture a USPS delivery contract. The company didn't get the contract, was never profitable, and basically was only in existence for 18months until it was finally killed off the telegraph. The logo was one of only thing of value left of the company at the end (it was bought by Wells Fargo).
Like any tool it could be used for "good" or bad. Cryptographic techology allows both counter-cultures and terrorist networks to blossom (good or bad depending on your politics), and allows people to protect their IP from piracy (good or bad depending on your politics). Decentralized control of resources can be good (more experiments), or bad (segregation, discrimination). Unfortunatly just as it decentralizes, the internet also appears to be concentrating other resources (people are funneled to the large social networking companies) and delocalizing (killing off local small businesses).
The internet will change the world, The internet is already changing the world.
Will it save the world? It's a stretch, but maybe it will save the world from the past. But it won't save us from the future (one day no one will remember the Internet, as it will be a quaint reminder of a past era like the pony express).
"We don't know when, we don't know where, but we know you did it!" doesn't hold up very well in court.
A collegue of mine in the UK got a speeding ticking on the motorway (A4 or M4) on-ramp, and got another speeding ticket near London 1 hour later. Because of the speed he was going (about 30mph over the limit), he got a summons to appear in traffic court. In court, they looked at the two tickets and he was issued another citation based on the time difference between the two stops and the distance between the two cities (~100 miles). Being the UK, I think all he had to do was pay a fine (apparently he didn't have too many penalty points on his licence at that time).
The joke he always liked to tell was he probably should have told them he stopped for quick lunch along the way (as anyone will tell you there is no such thing as a quick lunch in any town between Bristol and London so this would be a perfect alibi).
Slashdot Mirror
I often see other cars with Partial Zero Emissions stickers. This confuses me as any part of zero is zero.
That's because you have to think like a california bureaucrat to understand this. It's not partially zero, it just partially counts towards meeting a zero-emission requirement.
In 1990, california passed a law that 10% of the cars for sale in california by 2003 needed to be ZEV zero emission vehicles. Note that ZEV doesn't mean zero-emissions for the environment, but simply zero tail-pipe emissions (e.g., electric cars or hydrogen fuel cells). The California Air Resources Board (aka CARB) that was tasked to enforce this law found out that basically battery and fuel cell technology wasn't mature enough yet and the whole mandate was not gonna happen. Rather than declare failure, after a while, the bureaucrats simply changed the rules and created two new category of cars in order to declare victory.
One category of cars was known as the "partial" ZEV or PZEV that was just a really clean gas powered car, but was only allowed to partially count towards the 10% requirement (only up to 6% could count towards the 10%). The other was the "advanced technology" or AT-PZEV which would be something like a hybrid electric or plug-hybrid (which was allowe to count another 2% towards the 10%).
Originally, car manufacturers only made small numbers of these PZEV cars and sold them exclusively in California and New-York simply to comply with emission mandates in those states. Now they slap the label on any gasoline car that happens to meet the PZEV low-emissions requirement and sell the cars pretty much everywhere.
Then I realised, 24 hour sunshine...
Only from a stoner who's listened to the dark side of the moon played one too many times... :^(
http://science.howstuffworks.com/dark-side-of-moon.htm
Out of curiosity, since we aren't using latin/greek inflection these days, why does it matter if you "split" an infinitive in English?
Actually, it never mattered. The whole issue was cooked up by some class-concious grammar nazis in 19th century who didn't really know Latin, but wanted to attempt to assert their superiority by creating an artificial link between the then modern form of English back to Renaisance times rather than the actual Germanic roots of the language that introduced the infinitive form with "to/zu"...
We are perhaps fortunate to not be permanently stuck in that brief period of insanity. ;^)
Unfortunately, that split infinitive thing keeps getting revived by people kind of like an internet hoax that won't go away... :^(
because a state does not have the power to tax a car driven in another state,
this won't work.
Recent changes in state laws across the US allow for multi-state toll-collection reciprocity agreements to enable all-electronic tolling.
The effect of these changes is that the entity that has the authority to tax you has effectively subcontracted with other authories in other state and the terms of that reciprocity agreement is that it makes you liable for certain things that didn't happen in your state of residence. Today that is traversal on toll roads, it's not a stretch to say that also includes miles traversed on non-toll roads (effectively that would make all roads to be toll roads). I'm sure there will be exemptions (like there are today) for stuff like industrial or farm equipment operated soley on private property to counter the most common argument against this.
If it was a real experiment, they'd have to have an ethics review and all the details of the research would have to be disclosed to the participants.
Not all research is scientific. Marketing research is real enough and nothing has to be disclosed or passed through an ethics review board, nor disclosed to participants. Arguably, some marketing research might have more effect on your real life than some "real" experiments (e.g., often influencing what you can buy, what is discontinued, features in new products, etc)...
The point is not to switch. Every one of the brands have nearly the same supply chain labor practices (do you think the Samsung device is made with labor conditions substantially different than an Apple device).
The point is to apply pressure to the brand that has the highest volume so it has the most incentive and the most leverage to change the situation and can benefit most from positive publicity for changing, not just to change the king of the hill. Otherwise the supply chain folks just get to meet the new boss, same as the old boss (the who won't get fooled again).
The sad reality is people don't think their brand does deplorable things, and/or they simply don't care.
Throwing a wrench in the master's machine is your moral duty if you can get away with it.
Of course, you might be apocryphally be throwing a sabot into the master's machine, but why would it be your moral duty to continue wearing crappy shoes? ;^)
The question is why continue to support companies that do this? In the '90s, people boycotted companies like Nike for the labor practices of their sub-contractors, but sadly other than some brief noise to channel Apple, electronics companies have largely gotten a pass.
I think one underlying reason is that both the customer and the companies fear they have few options (people make have over-invested in the iOS ecosystem, and although garment factories are easy to move, electronics assembly, not so much). These type of labor issues may be yet another inconvenient truth that people have been overlooking to their own detriment.
Why? Because it makes things artificially cheap which increases the offshoring pressure. Remember the bounty of these savings are really just horded by the companies themselves (e.g., Apple and Foxconn) they rarely are passed back to the consumer in the form of reduced prices or even indirectly (taxes are avoided and typical economic investment multipliers are largely offshore).
0 is the first number, so everything should start at 0. When you're born you aren't 1 you're 0, 0 is the logical first place to start for counting.
0 may be the first non-negative number, but the first counting number (aka positive number) is 1.
Also, if you happen to be chinese, you are 1 when you are born (which depending on your politics is a reasonable rounding given the fact that 9>12/2 ).
As it turns out, I helped to research and select merchant agreements for 2 businesses I consult for.
Agreements today are quite complicated. For small volume all-in-one agreements with aggregating processors with an average charge amount from $50-$100, although AMEX might be on par with MC/VISA rewards-style cards, AMEX is quite a bit more expensive than both debit-as-credit and vanilla MC/VISA. Usually, you can same some money on AMEX by going a-la-carte (direct w/ AMEX), but even then AMEX is still quite a bit more expensive than the cheapest low-volume vanilla MC/VISA. Of course some banks actually charge more for rewards-style MC/VISA than a-la-carte AMEX, but they usually aren't the cheapest MC/VISA processors you can pick. Also, most small merchant do such low Discover volume that their best a-la-carte bet is to be on a pay-as-you-go (swipe + percentage) bank plan that includes Discover which is quite a bit more expensive than a typical low cost MC/VISA plan (which is also generally swipe + percentage in the $ range of the typical agreement). The aggregators sometimes have plans that just toss in Discover at a reasonable rate (because they know there won't be many of them).
Depending on the mix of cards you see at your business (e.g., mostly rich middle class people with rewards cards, or working class people with vanilla cards, or no-pin-debit-as-credit, etc), and the average charge amounts your business generates, your mileage may vary, but I haven't ever seen a case where AMEX is anywhere near as cheap as vanilla MC/VISA for the situations I was looking at.
Actually, before I did this exercise, I figured money for credit-card rewards programs were a kick-back to the customer from the issuing bank's share of the profit. Now I know that money to pay those rewards is mostly collected from the merchants you use. Something you might think twice about when you purchase something less than $10 and pull out your rewards card for the small vendor just trying to make ends meet because you don't like carrying cash around (or not, depending if you actually worry about the health of your favorite mom/pop establishments)...
Some establishments actually do accept AMEX and DISC cards but swipe subtly attempt to dissuade customers from using them because of their higher swipe fees. With this device and the way most bill are handled, the cashier would probably need to swipe this generic card and now it's generally too late to go back to the customer to change negating this specific fee avoidance strategy***
***I suppose they could swipe the generic card charge, note that the charge was AMEX, reverse the charge, return the card back to the customer and have them switch the card to be VISA/MC and then reswipe, but I'm sure the POS terminals won't make that very easy for the overworked cashiers.
Why so gloomy sounding? Why can't it be called A Mix Of All Colors Friday?
If you work in retail (as opposed to actually owning a retail establishment), maybe you might wish for a dark friday...
Dark Friday: a Friday when the staff is taking the day off and the establishment is not open (normally only applied to a Play or Show)
Pink Friday: a crappy album made by Nicki Minaj
Red Friday: (US/CA) support the troops (UK) July 31, 1925, british coal miner labor union celebrate winning a temporary government backed minimum wage
Orange Friday: (US baseball) support the SF Giants day
Big Yellow Friday: Children's liver disease foundation awareness/fundraising day
Green Friday: a social reform movement
Blue Friday: support law enforcement officers KIA
Purple Friday: (US football) support the Minnesota Viking or Baltimore Ravens
Black Friday: (US) the day after thanksgiving (which is always on thursday) many business goes from "red" to "black". This follows the tradition of accountants to use black for non-negative numbers and red for negative numbers. (UK) April 15th 1921, the day the Triple Alliance chickened out and called off a strike that would have supported british miners in their fight or minimum wages (see Red Friday)
Thank God it's Friday: oops that was a day early, it's only thursday.
AFAIK, an IQ of 100 is technically the median score (50% above, 50% below). Of course the average (mean) score could be significantly less than one hundred if the dumb people are exceptionally dumb and the smart people are only a little bit smarter than median...
Foie gras used to simply be a kosher source of cooking fat (since lard isn't kosher). It wasn't until the French gourmands elevated it to a delicacy.
Citation needed. Ancient Egyptians made foie gras too (or effectively the same thing). They were worried about it being kosher?
The practice of fattening geese became nearly extinct during the dark ages except for the fact the Jews kept the practice alive.
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB121207726422829649
Substitutions for trans-fat in the commercial food industry isn't really a cost of materials issue. The change in the cost of materials is likely to be marginal. The primarly reason trans-fat is used is to increase shelf-life of products (polyunsaturated oils in food go rancid really quick) which means most change-outs will affect the distribution chain and the cost of distribution.
Say if a snack product is delivered weekly to market now, it might have to be delivered twice a week in smaller batches. Packaging sizes might also need to go down (as products will go rancid more quickly than before). These infrastructure and distribution changes are much higher and more distruptive and costly than simply the price of the ingredients.
It also isn't clear that the drop-in substitutes are significantly better. For example, using naturally saturated fats (e.g. palm oil) or animal fats would likely result in similar cardiovascular disease profile and more product variance. The new industrial processes to avoid trans-fat (e.g., modified hydrogenation, interesterification) may just be rolling the dice because in the end, they may be just as bad as trans-fat. Of course, many are not fans of the GMO seeds that are engineered to not produce polyunsaturated oils. On top of that, none yet have the shelf-life as long as the trans-fat versions.
What most large companies are doing now is to fractionate and blend various vegetable oils to create zero-polyunsaturated products that happen to work reasonably well for a specific cooking process. That isn't a cheap development, and it isn't a drop-in replacement that can be used industry wide (which is why only the mega-corps are doing this now).
... we need to learn how to eat them.
You eat the jelly fish, I'll eat the giant crabs...
Lobster used to be prisoner food, until someone got the bright idea to use the newly available railroad to sell canned lobster to inland dwellers who didn't know better and considered all seafood a delicacy.
Foie gras used to simply be a kosher source of cooking fat (since lard isn't kosher). It wasn't until the French gourmands elevated it to a delicacy.
As with all politically connected people, I'm sure a soft landing "place" was made for him in one of the companies owned/operated by one of the generous political donors to the current overlord administration's party, so he would be comfortable vacating his current cushy post before he became a total embarassment.
This is probably not too dissimilar to how some dictators seem to find themselves living with an annual stipend in some remote area of the world...
"Here in the U.S., Tesla Model S owners are likely to rarely reach the carâ(TM)s 130 mph top speed..."
Does Montana still have no speed limit during the day?
Currently, Montana has normal speed-limits (75mph) and Tesla doesn't have a supercharger station anywhere near Montana...
The "no-speed-limit, but reasonable and prudent" thing only lasted for a few years in the '90s, but was repealed as soon as the Feds threated highway funds.
The engine doesn't magically cut out at a car's rated "top speed."
Actually, I used to have a Nissan Maxima and it does actually did have an electronic engine governor based on the speed of the car. The way I know this is a fact is that I accidentally experienced it on I-80 straight-away in the salt-flats just outside of salt lake city*** Since the road was straight, I wanted to see how fast I could go, but apparently, not faster then the governor.
Of course you could always remove this hardware...
** I'm sure the statute of limitations expired on this transgression as it was many, many moons ago
Start with an intense desire to building your own private empire that you control.
Hiding information from others to gain a competitive advantage.
Populating other groups with spys to see what progress they are making.
Eventually giving rational people no choice but to join your team or be crushed.
I propose to call this the middle manager attack.
Of course this wasn't the only genesis, but some folks attribute daylight savings time as a joke started by Benjamin Franklin who off handedly suggested that one way to save money on home lighting costs at night would be to force everyone to get up earlier in the summer. For the record he apparently wrote this in French as a suggestion for Parisians, no farmers involved. That whole farmer thing is a crock.
As with most jokes, nobody took this seriously until WWI when Germany decided to actually attempt this to help conserve energy for the war effort. After Germany did this, nearly every country involved in WWI followed suite (including the US).
Like many crazy things that require a massive societal change, it took place during a war. You might blame Americans for making the joke, but I choose to blame the Europeans for falling for the joke and dragging the rest of us into it.
Careful now... last time you declared war on Canada, your White House was burned to the ground.
Actually, the last time we tried to declare war on "Canada", they got scared and split the Oregon Territory rather than fight... Also, technically, both times were with the UK, not Canada, but if float the Canadian ego ;^)
Language of course is as old as the hills and probably the biggest thing that separates us from other animals. However, the internet as we know it will be just another flash in the pan along the way.
Although the speed that current language is propagated is welcomed by some, the propagation is also serving to kill off local languages at lighting speed. English and (Mandarin) Chinese seem to be the only languages making headway in this new era and many languages are in a precipitous decline. Some think that instead of promoting diversity of thought, this destruction of language is serving to homogenize the cultures around the world. Something we should ask ourselves are we really saving the future with our actions today. We may all live w/o famine and disease, but some cultures may not survive the translation to English and Chinese. Thus we may be saving ourselves from our past, but we may not be saving things for the future (depending on your politics).
FWIW, perhaps you are unaware, but the pony express was the model of the prototypical .com company of the era. It was founded by people that made their money in the stage-coach shipping business, but wanted to try to start a company to capture a USPS delivery contract. The company didn't get the contract, was never profitable, and basically was only in existence for 18months until it was finally killed off the telegraph. The logo was one of only thing of value left of the company at the end (it was bought by Wells Fargo).
The internet is a tool, nothing more.
Like any tool it could be used for "good" or bad. Cryptographic techology allows both counter-cultures and terrorist networks to blossom (good or bad depending on your politics), and allows people to protect their IP from piracy (good or bad depending on your politics). Decentralized control of resources can be good (more experiments), or bad (segregation, discrimination). Unfortunatly just as it decentralizes, the internet also appears to be concentrating other resources (people are funneled to the large social networking companies) and delocalizing (killing off local small businesses).
The internet will change the world, The internet is already changing the world.
Will it save the world? It's a stretch, but maybe it will save the world from the past. But it won't save us from the future (one day no one will remember the Internet, as it will be a quaint reminder of a past era like the pony express).
"We don't know when, we don't know where, but we know you did it!" doesn't hold up very well in court.
A collegue of mine in the UK got a speeding ticking on the motorway (A4 or M4) on-ramp, and got another speeding ticket near London 1 hour later. Because of the speed he was going (about 30mph over the limit), he got a summons to appear in traffic court. In court, they looked at the two tickets and he was issued another citation based on the time difference between the two stops and the distance between the two cities (~100 miles). Being the UK, I think all he had to do was pay a fine (apparently he didn't have too many penalty points on his licence at that time).
The joke he always liked to tell was he probably should have told them he stopped for quick lunch along the way (as anyone will tell you there is no such thing as a quick lunch in any town between Bristol and London so this would be a perfect alibi).