If a merchant accepts a transaction without signature, then the merchant is responsible for the charge if the charge is disputed and the merchant can't prove validity. On the other hand, when the merchant accepts a transaction with a signature, unless the bank can prove the signature on the slip did not match the signature on the card (which is pretty hard when it's someone using a stolen card), then the bank is liable for the transaction if disputed.
I googled for "merchant agreement" and didn't see terms like this in a couple of agreements that showed up. Are you basing this on something else?
I did see in one (here, section 10.2.1) that the merchant is responsible for chargebacks when a cardholder disputes the validity of a transaction. (In the case of fraudulent use, the cardholder has a valid dispute of the validity of the transaction, even if the merchant had no hope of detecting the fraud.) Is this clause unusual?
The money didn't come out of the bank's pocket, it came out of the merchant's pocket. Banks are in a pretty strong position when a merchant sends them a charge that the cardholder didn't authorize.
Now, given that the merchant was a cell phone company, I'd assume they're too incompetent to even be able to cut off service to the thief. But they'll charge you another $300 if he cancels his contract.
Why should the end user care what license the software was developed under?
The GPL licenses the distribution. The user may be interested in knowing the basis under which the software they've received has been distributed to them, and may be interested in knowing whether they can pass it on. But if they're not, they can just click on the Next button, they don't need to read the whole thing.
Actually I had the understanding that a lot of installer makers force you to have an EULA,
So why not use an open source installer? On Windows Inno Setup is very good; it doesn't force you to do this. (R offers the GPL in an information screen, with instructions saying "Please read", and "When you are ready to continue, click Next". I think that's about the right level: you want users to be aware of the GPL, but they don't need to accept it to do an installation.)
No, you don't. If you release any code under the GPL, any user is granted rights to that code.
That's right, but not very precise. If I release my code under the GPL, *I* grant any user certain limited rights to that code. I'm the owner of the code, so I can do that.
The recipient of the code doesn't become the owner. If they did, they wouldn't be bound by the GPL. They are using my code with my permission, only in the way that I've allowed them to use it.
Regardless of what crap you think. If you release "your" code under the GPL, I have full rights to modify, distribute or sell the code I got from you.
If I release it under the GPL, *I* am granting you rights to modify, distribute or sell the code, *under certain conditions*, namely the ones spelled out in the GPL. You don't have full rights. In particular, if you choose to modify and distribute it, you have to make your modifications available to everyone.
This is a fairly bizarre argument. The first link I posted showed USA second to Luxembourg in per capita emissions in 2002, and the second one showed it to be in 11th place in 2003, behind USVI, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Guam, Netherlands Antilles, Aruba, Trinidad and Tobago, and Luxembourg. I wouldn't count USVI and Guam as separate countries from the USA, but the others are.
And if you go down just below the USA in the two lists, you come to Australia and Canada right away, both producing more than "remotely as much CO2 per head of the population" as does the USA.
And as no nation on this planet produces even remotely as much CO2 per head of the population as Americans do, that makes the USA a de facto threat, instead of an ally.
That's not true. The USA is very high in total, but there are several small countries that are higher per capita, and some large countries that are close. See here, or here.
I just tried one of the test images from http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/6bit_8bit.htm on a year-old Macbook, and the smooth gradients looked equally ugly in OSX and in WinXP running under Parallels. I couldn't see any difference running XP in a window or running it full screen. So I suspect the claim that XP is better is just BS.
If you read the actual complaint, paragraphs 9 and 21.k, you'll see that part of it is that MacOSX isn't even doing the dithering as well as it should: the same laptop running Windows does a better job of displaying the colours.
That's true as air resistance goes, but the extra weight is going to increase the friction between the car and the road
Normally when I drive, I don't drag anything along the road, only the tires touch. I prefer them to have a *lot* of friction with the road. Infinite would be nice, but in the absence of that, more is better.
(not to mention the internal friction in the car between the wheels and the rest of the car), so the extra weight will drop your economy a bit.
You also forgot to mention rolling resistance in the tires. But tires and bearings can be adapted to the heavier car: it's not like you're just throwing the heavy battery in an existing car without being allowed to make any adjustment to the tires, bearing and suspension.
1) The money saved in the design by not having the electrical engine, battery, extra alternator system
What is this "extra alternator"? It's the electric motor.
The Prius also saves weight in the transmission by not needing a reverse gear: it just runs the electric motor backwards, and in the gas engine, which can be smaller because the electric motor is available for peak power needs.
So I'd guess the engine + transmission in your two cars would have similar weight and number of parts. The hybrid would be heavier due to the big battery.
Driving long stretches on the highway there is no braking involved and air resistance is high. You are limited by the power of the gas engine (because you'd drain your battery if you tried to use it continually), so most of the time the weight of the electric portion is a disadvantage.
At constant speeds weight doesn't matter. It's only when you're accelerating that you pay the cost of the weight, and (in a hybrid) you recover some of it when you brake.
At constant highway speeds you don't need a lot of power from your engine, so having a small gas engine (like a hybrid) gives better efficiency than having a great big engine which is hardly being used at all.
The biggest savings with a hybrid come during times of deceleration and moderate acceleration; "Intelligent" cars would do their best to avoid it.
That's exactly backwards. Intelligent cars plan ahead to avoid sharp deceleration and acceleration. Hybrids shine in a situation like that, since they use regenerative braking when the braking is gentle, and may not even need to start up the gas engine for moderate acceleration. Just for fun the other day I tried driving that way, and averaged about 80 mpg in city driving (with light traffic) over a 5 mile distance. I wouldn't expect mileage that good if I'd been surrounded by idiots and had to do a lot of sharp braking and acceleration.
Well, they do say it's a "four year clinical trial", which I would take to be a prospective study. But they also say "In June, U.S. researchers will announce the first direct link between cancer prevention and the sunshine vitamin. Their results are nothing short of astounding." So you're right, there's nothing real yet.
The "conflict of interest" doesn't bother me, but the lack of a link to or citation of a published study does. Does anyone know where the real details about this study are available?
So they bought a copy of XP and reinstalled. 3D looked like what a top of the line card should be able to do and dialup worked. Performance in general was vastly improved. Still had the 2GB memory limit though, probably not much to there except go to a 64bit system and suffer the issues involved with that... not worth it.
In XP you can up your limit to 3 GB by using the/3GB switch in boot.ini. According to this page, the same thing is accomplished somewhat differently on Vista.
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Give me a link, if there really is something there. I didn't see it.
If a merchant accepts a transaction without signature, then the merchant is responsible for the charge if the charge is disputed and the merchant can't prove validity. On the other hand, when the merchant accepts a transaction with a signature, unless the bank can prove the signature on the slip did not match the signature on the card (which is pretty hard when it's someone using a stolen card), then the bank is liable for the transaction if disputed.
I googled for "merchant agreement" and didn't see terms like this in a couple of agreements that showed up. Are you basing this on something else?
I did see in one (here, section 10.2.1) that the merchant is responsible for chargebacks when a cardholder disputes the validity of a transaction. (In the case of fraudulent use, the cardholder has a valid dispute of the validity of the transaction, even if the merchant had no hope of detecting the fraud.) Is this clause unusual?
The money didn't come out of the bank's pocket, it came out of the merchant's pocket. Banks are in a pretty strong position when a merchant sends them a charge that the cardholder didn't authorize.
Now, given that the merchant was a cell phone company, I'd assume they're too incompetent to even be able to cut off service to the thief. But they'll charge you another $300 if he cancels his contract.
Why should the end user care what license the software was developed under?
The GPL licenses the distribution. The user may be interested in knowing the basis under which the software they've received has been distributed to them, and may be interested in knowing whether they can pass it on. But if they're not, they can just click on the Next button, they don't need to read the whole thing.
Actually I had the understanding that a lot of installer makers force you to have an EULA,
So why not use an open source installer? On Windows Inno Setup is very good; it doesn't force you to do this. (R offers the GPL in an information screen, with instructions saying "Please read", and "When you are ready to continue, click Next". I think that's about the right level: you want users to be aware of the GPL, but they don't need to accept it to do an installation.)
End-users don't own my GPL'd code. I do.
No, you don't. If you release any code under the GPL, any user is granted rights to that code.
That's right, but not very precise. If I release my code under the GPL, *I* grant any user certain limited rights to that code. I'm the owner of the code, so I can do that.
The recipient of the code doesn't become the owner. If they did, they wouldn't be bound by the GPL. They are using my code with my permission, only in the way that I've allowed them to use it.
Regardless of what crap you think. If you release "your" code under the GPL, I have full rights to modify, distribute or sell the code I got from you.
If I release it under the GPL, *I* am granting you rights to modify, distribute or sell the code, *under certain conditions*, namely the ones spelled out in the GPL. You don't have full rights. In particular, if you choose to modify and distribute it, you have to make your modifications available to everyone.
Heck, end-users are not even allowed to OWN the code/software they buy from a proprietary vendor.
End-users don't own my GPL'd code. I do.
If the end-user owned it, they wouldn't be required to distribute their source with their modifications. They could do whatever they liked with it.
This is a fairly bizarre argument. The first link I posted showed USA second to Luxembourg in per capita emissions in 2002, and the second one showed it to be in 11th place in 2003, behind USVI, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Guam, Netherlands Antilles, Aruba, Trinidad and Tobago, and Luxembourg. I wouldn't count USVI and Guam as separate countries from the USA, but the others are.
And if you go down just below the USA in the two lists, you come to Australia and Canada right away, both producing more than "remotely as much CO2 per head of the population" as does the USA.
And as no nation on this planet produces even remotely as much CO2 per head of the population as Americans do, that makes the USA a de facto threat, instead of an ally.
That's not true. The USA is very high in total, but there are several small countries that are higher per capita, and some large countries that are close. See here, or here.
I just tried one of the test images from http://www.tftcentral.co.uk/articles/6bit_8bit.htm on
a year-old Macbook, and the smooth gradients looked equally ugly in OSX and in WinXP running under Parallels. I couldn't see any difference running XP in a window or running it full screen. So I suspect the claim that XP is better is just BS.
If you read the actual complaint, paragraphs 9 and 21.k, you'll see that part of it is that MacOSX isn't even doing the dithering as well as it should: the same laptop running Windows does a better job of displaying the colours.
That's true as air resistance goes, but the extra weight is going to increase the friction between the car and the road
Normally when I drive, I don't drag anything along the road, only the tires touch. I prefer them to have a *lot* of friction with the road. Infinite would be nice, but in the absence of that, more is better.
(not to mention the internal friction in the car between the wheels and the rest of the car), so the extra weight will drop your economy a bit.
You also forgot to mention rolling resistance in the tires. But tires and bearings can be adapted to the heavier car: it's not like you're just throwing the heavy battery in an existing car without being allowed to make any adjustment to the tires, bearing and suspension.
1) The money saved in the design by not having the electrical engine, battery, extra alternator system
What is this "extra alternator"? It's the electric motor.
The Prius also saves weight in the transmission by not needing a reverse gear: it just runs the electric motor backwards, and in the gas engine, which can be smaller because the electric motor is available for peak power needs.
So I'd guess the engine + transmission in your two cars would have similar weight and number of parts. The hybrid would be heavier due to the big battery.
Driving long stretches on the highway there is no braking involved and air resistance is high. You are limited by the power of the gas engine (because you'd drain your battery if you tried to use it continually), so most of the time the weight of the electric portion is a disadvantage.
At constant speeds weight doesn't matter. It's only when you're accelerating that you pay the cost of the weight, and (in a hybrid) you recover some of it when you brake.
At constant highway speeds you don't need a lot of power from your engine, so having a small gas engine (like a hybrid) gives better efficiency than having a great big engine which is hardly being used at all.
Oh. Well then, "never mind"!
The biggest savings with a hybrid come during times of deceleration and moderate acceleration; "Intelligent" cars would do their best to avoid it.
That's exactly backwards. Intelligent cars plan ahead to avoid sharp deceleration and acceleration. Hybrids shine in a situation like that, since they use regenerative braking when the braking is gentle, and may not even need to start up the gas engine for
moderate acceleration. Just for fun the other day I tried driving that way, and averaged about 80 mpg in city driving (with light traffic) over a 5 mile distance. I wouldn't expect mileage that good if I'd been surrounded by idiots and had to do a lot of sharp braking and acceleration.
I can yell "FIRE" in a crowded theater... if I'm petitioning the Government (maybe on the subject of what it should do with GWB)?
The Verizon argument was that their "speech" was true. So yes, if there really is a fire in the theatre, you should raise the alarm.
Of course, you'll probably be arrested as a terrorist when you do, but that's life.
The feds have set the same deadline for the whole country. Damn conservatives!
Well, they do say it's a "four year clinical trial", which I would take to be a prospective study. But they also say "In June, U.S. researchers will announce the first direct link between cancer prevention and the sunshine vitamin. Their results are nothing short of astounding." So you're right, there's nothing real yet.
The paper isn't a state secret. Read it.
Did you see a link to a paper? I'd like to read it, but couldn't find one. Am I blind?
The "conflict of interest" doesn't bother me, but the lack of a link to or citation of a published study does. Does anyone know where the real details about this study are available?
So they bought a copy of XP and reinstalled. 3D looked like what a top of the line card should be able to do and dialup worked. Performance in general was vastly improved. Still had the 2GB memory limit though, probably not much to there except go to a 64bit system and suffer the issues involved with that... not worth it.
/3GB switch in boot.ini. According to this page, the same thing is accomplished somewhat differently on Vista.
In XP you can up your limit to 3 GB by using the
No nation capable of detonation of nuclear devices in a foreign property has ever been invaded by a foreign nation.
Argentina invaded the Falklands, which were a British dependent territory at the time, i.e. under British sovereignty.
Poor english of the parent post aside, one can hardly fault a policy simply because it is "discriminatory."
That was only one part of the GP's complaint. What about the fact that the nuclear powers haven't lived up to their commitments for disarmament?
Penrose patented the pattern in the 1970's, but his patent should have expired now. I don't know if Pentaplex still has a business model.