Many happy hours playing team Civ 2 at a friend's house (high school or junior high, I think). Early game we'd each (3 or 4 of us) take control of a unit. Sadly this was around the time of the movie, Last of the Mohicans. One guy of course would always go off in a different direction than we wanted him to go, or would run away when we wanted him to fight...
"I ain't your scout, and I sure ain't no damn Militia!" - usually while said friend was controlling, what else, a militia (and refusing to do anything sane with it). It just got worse when he managed to take out a modern armor with his rogue militia.
Lame. Why do I need to be a member of an online service to play a predominantly single-person game? This online check-in BS is getting out of hand. I guess I'll stick to Civ IV (as soon as I get it back from my friend that I lent it to a couple months ago...)
I think his criticisms were pretty fair for Civ 3 (where I would say rapid expansion is much more feasible/optimal), but I agree with you on 4.
On the other hand, if you play Civ 4 in multiplayer with all human players that's less true -- because typically other human players are much too aggressive for the game to end with anything but a relatively early conquest victory. It's be interesting to see tweaks or options that would make that less true.
That was my biggest complaint about Civ 3 - every game was basically a giant race to build as many cities as quickly as possible on every single bit of available land. You basically had to do that to have any chance at competing, and teh computer was very good at rapid expansion. I remember it being a huge change from Civ 2, where it seemed you could expand in a much more leisurely fashion and still be very competitive. Civ3 just seemed like a race, and if you were hemmed in near the beginning you were completely screwed, whereas Civ2 you could connive your way out of such a situation.
Civ 4 fixed a lot of the things I didn't like about Civ 3, though I never really had much time to get into it (and I don't think I tried multiplayer more than once or twice - early on I had massive connection problems with it, I lost interest by the time these were ironed out). I might have to pop it in this weekend and get back into it...
The message from the linked Washington Times article does not ban military personnel from visiting WikiLeaks - it only appears to remind them that downloading classified material on/through public networks is against the rules, and attempts to put to rest the idea that just because a classified document has become publicly available does not automatically change the status.
There is the question of whether the rules make sense, but the only purpose of the messages appears to be to clarify what the rules actually are for publicly-available but still-classified documents (sounds like there was a wide-spread rumor that public disclosure of classified documents automatically removed the classified status). Until the documents are officially declassified soldiers must follow the rules and treat them as classified documents, which means not attempting to access them if they do not have the proper clearance level, and even if they do have the clearance to access them, they cannot do so over a public network (or store them on a non-secure system).
Note that I'm not saying the rules make sense, just that everyone is getting all riled up about the military simply clarifying the rules so that service members don't get themselves in trouble. This is analogous to your lawyer telling you, "Just because you can find copyrighted material freely available on a web site does not mean you legally have the right to download that material". Of course in this case it results in a perverse situation where everyone outside the military can access these classified military documents, particularly those the classified status was meant to prevent obtaining the documents, but until a rule change or declassification of the documents members of the military still need to follow the rules.
If you RTFA (blasphemy, I'm sure), Google doesn't say that 129,864,880 is an estimate - they say that is the number of books, total (at least until Sunday).
The only estimate is mentioned is "16 million bound serial and government document volumes".
Surprise surprise, subby is the culprit that turned such an exact number into an "estimate".
To give you an example, I've never liked or paid any attention to English or typing classes.
I recently ran across an old report card indicating I managed to get a 'D' in the required typing class in 7th or 8th grade. No idea how I managed that, considering I knew how to type long before then. I don't even have a vague recollection of having taken the class (which means I was probably doing my own thing during class, which may explain the grade).
I agree somewhat, although I think the size limits in Civ IV were more hardware limited than anything else. Mid- to late-game on Huge maps the computer would start to take 5+ minutes per turn to figure everything out, which became pretty unplayable to me. This was with a pretty decent (at the time) computer.
I do tend to think that they shouldn't put such hard limits in (as processing power will inevitably catch up), but from a playability perspective even the huge maps they offered were really too big for a decent experience in my opinion, at least at the time of release.
The LEMV will hover above Afghanistan at 20,000ft, equipped with the sort of super-powerful cameras that can read a signature on a letter from four miles away. It will be, Taylor says, ‘an unblinking eye’, recording every move made on the ground. In theory, no one will be able to plant a roadside bomb – a device which has claimed the lives of so many British soldiers – without the cameras seeing who did it and, more importantly, where they came from. And, if the LEMV is a success, it could prove to be a tipping point, ushering in a new age of airships.
Talk about big brother...
Welcome to the dawning of a new era. The HappyFun Syndicate is recruiting! Not interested? I think we can persuade you otherwise!
This is eerily reminiscent of Intel's flirtation with Rambus: they were so focused on bandwidth that they sacrificed latency to get it. Yeah, the Pentium4 series racked up impressive GHz numbers but the actual performance lagged because the insanely deep Rambus-optimized pipeline stalled all the time waiting for the first byte of a cache miss to arrive.
Same goes for optical interconnect to memory: the flood may be Biblical when it arrives, but while waiting for it to arrive the processor isn't doing anything useful.
Now, peripherals are another matter. But if bandwidth were all it took, we'd be using 10 Gb/s PCI Express for memory right now.
I was thinking the same thing regarding latency and remote memory. If you've got your memory 1 physical meter away, you're already looking at something like 6.6 ns round-trip latency (in a vacuum) just for light traveling that physical distance; seems like once you include switching plus getting to/from the optical interconnect you're looking at some pretty serious latency issues compared to onboard RAM (I think DDR3 SDRAM is on the order of 7-9 ns).
The extra speed makes it possible to consider moving a server's RAM a few feet from its CPUs to aid cooling and moving memory and computational power to peripherals like laptop docks and monitors
Why would I want to pay for computational power in my monitor? When I buy a monitor I want it to do it's job - show the best quality images for the cheapest cost possible. A good monitor should last much longer than the associated computer driving it (unless we suddenly have a huge increase in the rate of development of display technology). Why would I want added cost in my monitor that will only make it out of date more quickly?
Plenty of companies sell AMD computers. The thing is they are usually their lower end line. The reason is that AMD just can't compete with Intel's products in terms of price, performance, and power usage on the higher end. Even now they don't have anything that is a solid Core 2 competitor, and Intel has moved on to the Core i lineup.
AMD's real problem seems to be that they only do budget well, and Intel does that ok too. You get in to midrange and up and it is all Intel all the time.
Part of the problem is that when AMD did have competitive high-end parts (Athlon/Thunderbird/64) Intel was using these practices to keep OEMs from offering them. You could not buy an AMD-based computer from the likes of Dell, HP, or Gateway until after Intel caught up and surpassed what AMD was offering in the consumer market (the Opteron was competitive for a longer time, and may still be, I haven't really looked into that area lately). But you're right, AMD currently isn't really competing at the upper mid to high end of the consumer/desktop market. This ruling might have mattered if it had happened 10 years ago, but right now AMD just doesn't have the products to compete - partly due, no doubt, to a lack of R&D funding brought about by Intel's monopolistic practices at a time when AMD parts were competitive (the only time it matters).
I recall many wonderful hours at the local B&N in college - they had a good selection, pretty good prices, and the bookstore was centrally located downtown so made a great place to hang out while waiting to meet up with friends/waiting for a movie/waiting for a table/etc. Many, many times went there without the intention of buying something and coming out with an impulse buy thanks to a pretty extensive in-store selection.
For the last few (okay, ten) years I've been going to the local Borders, which never had the same selection as I was used to w/ the B&N, but it was good enough. Plus, they had a selection of CDs and DVDs, which the B&N didn't have. Not too bad, but I did have a soft spot for B&N.
A couple months ago I had a chance to go to a B&N, I was out of town and looking for a specific book. Went in, wasn't sure which section it would be in (literature? foreign? mystery? could have been any of the above). There was a big line at the help desk, so I went looking for a computer to look up the book. Nothing. No computer terminal. No way to easily search the store, or determine which section the book might be in. Absolutely ridiculous - at Borders there seems to be a computer every ten paces so you can look up what you are looking for.
Fortunately I eventually found an employee who instantly recognized the title of the book and led me straight to it (which was pretty impressive, not exactly a mainstream book), but the whole visit really turned me off to B&N (yes, sadly, despite the staff being knowledgeable and helpful once I found a free one, the fact that I couldn't just walk in and look up the location really turned me off to it). Seriously, no computer to search the in-store stock? Never mind that the price was about double what I could have gotten it for online, at least give me the tools to find what I'm looking for (hopefully this idiocy is unique to that B&N).
We NEED to be focusing more on vocational training. The world needs ditch diggers. The world also needs mechanics, electricians, welders.
I agree. The trouble is, institutes of higher education are not, and should not be, vocational schools. Corporate America has been pushing for years to turn universities into vocational schools, constantly complaining that *gasp* they still have to train new hires straight out of university. The purpose of a university is not to train people for a specific task or job; just because corporations don't want to invest any money in training their workforce doesn't mean we should turn universities into vocational schools.
I wish I could go back to my high school and give a swift cock punch to my guidance counselor that told me I couldn't take welding because I was college bound. There is so much stuff I'd love to make. Thankfully my dad taught me wood working and home repair and I learned to solder in an internship.
Wow, you actually listened to what your guidance counselor said? I'm sure I must have met with one from time to time (I think it was required), but I never really listened to them or followed their instructions. I knew I was college-bound, but I also knew I wanted to take some practical classes in junior high/high school. Wood shop, metal shop (including welding, casting, working at the forge - that was a fun class), auto shop, photography (we had pretty well-equipped dark room), programming, etc. As many have noted before,what the hell does a guidance counselor know - they ended up as a guidance counselor!
What's your point? We are also committed to building a high-speed train from Barstow to Lodi, at astonishing cost.
Hmm, looks like the planned route goes around Lodi and nowhere near Barstow; make stuff up much?
I do seem to recall that the initial section won't connect any terribly important/large communities, being located somewhere in the Central Valley where construction is expected to be relatively simple, but pretending the line just connects two small towns is pretty egregiously disingenuous.
California and green have little to do with each other. I just moved out here to take a job, and I was thinking I'd like to buy a diesel as my next vehicle, since to my way of thinking a diesel is far greener than a moderate hybrid like the Prius (the Volt is a different animal). Plus the low-end torque is great, as is the possibility of converting it to alternative fuels. Much to my surprise, I learned that you can't even buy a diesel car out here.
From what I can tell, California is about regulations that make people who don't know much feel good.
Wow, I'd better go tell my brother who just bought a new Jetta TDI that it is impossible for him to have done so.
Yes, it is true, diesel passenger cars were not available in California for a couple of years because of tightened particulate emission standards (and relatively high-sulfur fuel available here being incompatible with the cleaner diesels offered by many manufacturers). These issues have been largely resolved, and now you can buy diesel BMWs and VWs at least (not sure what other manufacturers offer diesels - Mercedes?).
I can't stand the idiocy of giving HOV passes to hybrids, electric cars, or any other type of vehicle. The purpose of HOV lanes is and should be to encourage people to ride-share, the primary goal of which is to reduce the need for additional highway capacity. Someone cruising along alone in their electric car is just as bad in this respect as someone cruising along alone in their Hummer.
There's just no perceived value... But "We created the car!" So us Americans are proud of our machines that we can just ignore and swap out every 2-5 years
See, that's why I buy German cars. That way I can just ignore it and swap it out every... well... let's see... 14 years and counting for 'my' care (scary, but our "new" car will be ten years old in a few months... though I think we will finally have to replace my 14-year-old with something bigger when MiniMe #2 arrives).
Yep, I've driven in the USA and it's awful. The one that really got me was people merging from ramps without even looking and just shoving me out of the way if I happened to be there. How does that work...?
In the U.S., merging traffic getting onto the freeway generally has the right of way - if you are cruising along the highway, it is your responsibility to make room for them (though yes, they should be looking around and trying to work themselves into traffic with as little interruption as possible). It makes sense if you consider that the merging cars are trying to get up to cruising speed, whereas traffic on the freeway is already at cruising speed and can speed up or slow down slightly to make room without much fuss. Merging traffic doesn't really have that luxury - they are already accelerating hard (usually), and if they have to slow down to avoid traffic on the highway, that just means they have to speed up that much more.
I liken it to owning two cars - a big family car with a huge luggage space and 7 seats, and a smaller Smart Car with only 2 seats, very limited storage space but the benefit of getting 70mpg and the ability to park perpendicular to the kerb; the ideal errand vehicle for short trips and little jobs, but no the car you would take on a 300 mile journey.
Mostly off-topic, but according to the EPA the Smart ForTwo only gets about 36 mpg. Which actually fits pretty nicely with your analogy, as it is a vehicle designed to look eco-friendly and trendy, but doesn't actually perform very well in that respect.
Actually, I think the iPad is way better than a Smart car - it might actually be useful for something at some point (I've only played with one a friend won in a raffle, but it was kind of cool - can't really say anything positive about the Smart car, which might have been interesting if it got in the neighborhood of 50 or 60 mpg but is totally useless as-is and is only owned by eco-posers with too much money and too little sense).
This is lazy reporting, nothing more. If the AZ Star et al. had bothered to talk to Southwest about it, they might have gotten a clue. It is a sensationalist headline to draw eyeballs and gin up controversy where there is none.
In our latest update, we offered our definition, which states that “Force Majeure Event means any event outside of Carrier’s control” and so the “mechanical difficulties” we are referring to as Force Majeure events would be those outside of our control, such as airport mechanical difficulties (e.g., the airport de-icing system breaks) or Air Traffic Control issues (e.g., airport or regional tower goes down).
We are not referring to our own aircraft mechanical difficulties, which would clearly be under our control. Our policies and practices confirm this interpretation.
None of our procedures have changed — we still accommodate customers exactly the same as we did previously in the event of our own aircraft mechanical issues occur.
Quit trying to inject your "facts" into our parody-fest. I was about to say something about adding "Not feeling like it" or "insufficient funds" to my list of Acts of God that do not require me to pay for my airline ticket, but then I saw your comment and I have to confine myself to this paltry idiotry.
Slashdot Mirror
Many happy hours playing team Civ 2 at a friend's house (high school or junior high, I think). Early game we'd each (3 or 4 of us) take control of a unit. Sadly this was around the time of the movie, Last of the Mohicans. One guy of course would always go off in a different direction than we wanted him to go, or would run away when we wanted him to fight...
"I ain't your scout, and I sure ain't no damn Militia!" - usually while said friend was controlling, what else, a militia (and refusing to do anything sane with it). It just got worse when he managed to take out a modern armor with his rogue militia.
Lame. Why do I need to be a member of an online service to play a predominantly single-person game? This online check-in BS is getting out of hand. I guess I'll stick to Civ IV (as soon as I get it back from my friend that I lent it to a couple months ago...)
I think his criticisms were pretty fair for Civ 3 (where I would say rapid expansion is much more feasible/optimal), but I agree with you on 4.
On the other hand, if you play Civ 4 in multiplayer with all human players that's less true -- because typically other human players are much too aggressive for the game to end with anything but a relatively early conquest victory. It's be interesting to see tweaks or options that would make that less true.
That was my biggest complaint about Civ 3 - every game was basically a giant race to build as many cities as quickly as possible on every single bit of available land. You basically had to do that to have any chance at competing, and teh computer was very good at rapid expansion. I remember it being a huge change from Civ 2, where it seemed you could expand in a much more leisurely fashion and still be very competitive. Civ3 just seemed like a race, and if you were hemmed in near the beginning you were completely screwed, whereas Civ2 you could connive your way out of such a situation.
Civ 4 fixed a lot of the things I didn't like about Civ 3, though I never really had much time to get into it (and I don't think I tried multiplayer more than once or twice - early on I had massive connection problems with it, I lost interest by the time these were ironed out). I might have to pop it in this weekend and get back into it...
The message from the linked Washington Times article does not ban military personnel from visiting WikiLeaks - it only appears to remind them that downloading classified material on/through public networks is against the rules, and attempts to put to rest the idea that just because a classified document has become publicly available does not automatically change the status.
There is the question of whether the rules make sense, but the only purpose of the messages appears to be to clarify what the rules actually are for publicly-available but still-classified documents (sounds like there was a wide-spread rumor that public disclosure of classified documents automatically removed the classified status). Until the documents are officially declassified soldiers must follow the rules and treat them as classified documents, which means not attempting to access them if they do not have the proper clearance level, and even if they do have the clearance to access them, they cannot do so over a public network (or store them on a non-secure system).
Note that I'm not saying the rules make sense, just that everyone is getting all riled up about the military simply clarifying the rules so that service members don't get themselves in trouble. This is analogous to your lawyer telling you, "Just because you can find copyrighted material freely available on a web site does not mean you legally have the right to download that material". Of course in this case it results in a perverse situation where everyone outside the military can access these classified military documents, particularly those the classified status was meant to prevent obtaining the documents, but until a rule change or declassification of the documents members of the military still need to follow the rules.
If you RTFA (blasphemy, I'm sure), Google doesn't say that 129,864,880 is an estimate - they say that is the number of books, total (at least until Sunday).
The only estimate is mentioned is "16 million bound serial and government document volumes".
Surprise surprise, subby is the culprit that turned such an exact number into an "estimate".
They should write a book!
To give you an example, I've never liked or paid any attention to English or typing classes.
I recently ran across an old report card indicating I managed to get a 'D' in the required typing class in 7th or 8th grade. No idea how I managed that, considering I knew how to type long before then. I don't even have a vague recollection of having taken the class (which means I was probably doing my own thing during class, which may explain the grade).
I agree somewhat, although I think the size limits in Civ IV were more hardware limited than anything else. Mid- to late-game on Huge maps the computer would start to take 5+ minutes per turn to figure everything out, which became pretty unplayable to me. This was with a pretty decent (at the time) computer.
I do tend to think that they shouldn't put such hard limits in (as processing power will inevitably catch up), but from a playability perspective even the huge maps they offered were really too big for a decent experience in my opinion, at least at the time of release.
The LEMV will hover above Afghanistan at 20,000ft, equipped with the sort of super-powerful cameras that can read a signature on a letter from four miles away. It will be, Taylor says, ‘an unblinking eye’, recording every move made on the ground. In theory, no one will be able to plant a roadside bomb – a device which has claimed the lives of so many British soldiers – without the cameras seeing who did it and, more importantly, where they came from. And, if the LEMV is a success, it could prove to be a tipping point, ushering in a new age of airships.
Talk about big brother...
Welcome to the dawning of a new era.
The HappyFun Syndicate is recruiting! Not interested? I think we can persuade you otherwise!
Stupid Roman numerals.
This is eerily reminiscent of Intel's flirtation with Rambus: they were so focused on bandwidth that they sacrificed latency to get it. Yeah, the Pentium4 series racked up impressive GHz numbers but the actual performance lagged because the insanely deep Rambus-optimized pipeline stalled all the time waiting for the first byte of a cache miss to arrive.
Same goes for optical interconnect to memory: the flood may be Biblical when it arrives, but while waiting for it to arrive the processor isn't doing anything useful.
Now, peripherals are another matter. But if bandwidth were all it took, we'd be using 10 Gb/s PCI Express for memory right now.
I was thinking the same thing regarding latency and remote memory. If you've got your memory 1 physical meter away, you're already looking at something like 6.6 ns round-trip latency (in a vacuum) just for light traveling that physical distance; seems like once you include switching plus getting to/from the optical interconnect you're looking at some pretty serious latency issues compared to onboard RAM (I think DDR3 SDRAM is on the order of 7-9 ns).
The extra speed makes it possible to consider moving a server's RAM a few feet from its CPUs to aid cooling and moving memory and computational power to peripherals like laptop docks and monitors
Why would I want to pay for computational power in my monitor? When I buy a monitor I want it to do it's job - show the best quality images for the cheapest cost possible. A good monitor should last much longer than the associated computer driving it (unless we suddenly have a huge increase in the rate of development of display technology). Why would I want added cost in my monitor that will only make it out of date more quickly?
Plenty of companies sell AMD computers. The thing is they are usually their lower end line. The reason is that AMD just can't compete with Intel's products in terms of price, performance, and power usage on the higher end. Even now they don't have anything that is a solid Core 2 competitor, and Intel has moved on to the Core i lineup.
AMD's real problem seems to be that they only do budget well, and Intel does that ok too. You get in to midrange and up and it is all Intel all the time.
Part of the problem is that when AMD did have competitive high-end parts (Athlon/Thunderbird/64) Intel was using these practices to keep OEMs from offering them. You could not buy an AMD-based computer from the likes of Dell, HP, or Gateway until after Intel caught up and surpassed what AMD was offering in the consumer market (the Opteron was competitive for a longer time, and may still be, I haven't really looked into that area lately). But you're right, AMD currently isn't really competing at the upper mid to high end of the consumer/desktop market. This ruling might have mattered if it had happened 10 years ago, but right now AMD just doesn't have the products to compete - partly due, no doubt, to a lack of R&D funding brought about by Intel's monopolistic practices at a time when AMD parts were competitive (the only time it matters).
I recall many wonderful hours at the local B&N in college - they had a good selection, pretty good prices, and the bookstore was centrally located downtown so made a great place to hang out while waiting to meet up with friends/waiting for a movie/waiting for a table/etc. Many, many times went there without the intention of buying something and coming out with an impulse buy thanks to a pretty extensive in-store selection.
For the last few (okay, ten) years I've been going to the local Borders, which never had the same selection as I was used to w/ the B&N, but it was good enough. Plus, they had a selection of CDs and DVDs, which the B&N didn't have. Not too bad, but I did have a soft spot for B&N.
A couple months ago I had a chance to go to a B&N, I was out of town and looking for a specific book. Went in, wasn't sure which section it would be in (literature? foreign? mystery? could have been any of the above). There was a big line at the help desk, so I went looking for a computer to look up the book. Nothing. No computer terminal. No way to easily search the store, or determine which section the book might be in. Absolutely ridiculous - at Borders there seems to be a computer every ten paces so you can look up what you are looking for.
Fortunately I eventually found an employee who instantly recognized the title of the book and led me straight to it (which was pretty impressive, not exactly a mainstream book), but the whole visit really turned me off to B&N (yes, sadly, despite the staff being knowledgeable and helpful once I found a free one, the fact that I couldn't just walk in and look up the location really turned me off to it). Seriously, no computer to search the in-store stock? Never mind that the price was about double what I could have gotten it for online, at least give me the tools to find what I'm looking for (hopefully this idiocy is unique to that B&N).
We NEED to be focusing more on vocational training. The world needs ditch diggers. The world also needs mechanics, electricians, welders.
I agree. The trouble is, institutes of higher education are not, and should not be, vocational schools. Corporate America has been pushing for years to turn universities into vocational schools, constantly complaining that *gasp* they still have to train new hires straight out of university. The purpose of a university is not to train people for a specific task or job; just because corporations don't want to invest any money in training their workforce doesn't mean we should turn universities into vocational schools.
I wish I could go back to my high school and give a swift cock punch to my guidance counselor that told me I couldn't take welding because I was college bound. There is so much stuff I'd love to make. Thankfully my dad taught me wood working and home repair and I learned to solder in an internship.
Wow, you actually listened to what your guidance counselor said? I'm sure I must have met with one from time to time (I think it was required), but I never really listened to them or followed their instructions. I knew I was college-bound, but I also knew I wanted to take some practical classes in junior high/high school. Wood shop, metal shop (including welding, casting, working at the forge - that was a fun class), auto shop, photography (we had pretty well-equipped dark room), programming, etc. As many have noted before,what the hell does a guidance counselor know - they ended up as a guidance counselor!
What's your point? We are also committed to building a high-speed train from Barstow to Lodi, at astonishing cost.
Hmm, looks like the planned route goes around Lodi and nowhere near Barstow; make stuff up much?
I do seem to recall that the initial section won't connect any terribly important/large communities, being located somewhere in the Central Valley where construction is expected to be relatively simple, but pretending the line just connects two small towns is pretty egregiously disingenuous.
California and green have little to do with each other. I just moved out here to take a job, and I was thinking I'd like to buy a diesel as my next vehicle, since to my way of thinking a diesel is far greener than a moderate hybrid like the Prius (the Volt is a different animal). Plus the low-end torque is great, as is the possibility of converting it to alternative fuels. Much to my surprise, I learned that you can't even buy a diesel car out here.
From what I can tell, California is about regulations that make people who don't know much feel good.
Wow, I'd better go tell my brother who just bought a new Jetta TDI that it is impossible for him to have done so.
Yes, it is true, diesel passenger cars were not available in California for a couple of years because of tightened particulate emission standards (and relatively high-sulfur fuel available here being incompatible with the cleaner diesels offered by many manufacturers). These issues have been largely resolved, and now you can buy diesel BMWs and VWs at least (not sure what other manufacturers offer diesels - Mercedes?).
I can't stand the idiocy of giving HOV passes to hybrids, electric cars, or any other type of vehicle. The purpose of HOV lanes is and should be to encourage people to ride-share, the primary goal of which is to reduce the need for additional highway capacity. Someone cruising along alone in their electric car is just as bad in this respect as someone cruising along alone in their Hummer.
Somebody should tell this idiot to preview his posts before submitting...
There's just no perceived value... But "We created the car!" So us Americans are proud of our machines that we can just ignore and swap out every 2-5 years
See, that's why I buy German cars. That way I can just ignore it and swap it out every... well... let's see... 14 years and counting for 'my' care (scary, but our "new" car will be ten years old in a few months... though I think we will finally have to replace my 14-year-old with something bigger when MiniMe #2 arrives).
Yep, I've driven in the USA and it's awful. The one that really got me was people merging from ramps without even looking and just shoving me out of the way if I happened to be there. How does that work...?
In the U.S., merging traffic getting onto the freeway generally has the right of way - if you are cruising along the highway, it is your responsibility to make room for them (though yes, they should be looking around and trying to work themselves into traffic with as little interruption as possible).
It makes sense if you consider that the merging cars are trying to get up to cruising speed, whereas traffic on the freeway is already at cruising speed and can speed up or slow down slightly to make room without much fuss. Merging traffic doesn't really have that luxury - they are already accelerating hard (usually), and if they have to slow down to avoid traffic on the highway, that just means they have to speed up that much more.
It's the only way to be sure.
Maybe if we had some space-faring sharks with fricking laser beams...
I'm pretty sure this was a Katamari level...
Where's Spaceball 1 when you need it? Just have to make sure Megamaid doesn't go from suck to blow.
That's enough, I'm done.
Badges? We don't need no stinkin' badges!
I liken it to owning two cars - a big family car with a huge luggage space and 7 seats, and a smaller Smart Car with only 2 seats, very limited storage space but the benefit of getting 70mpg and the ability to park perpendicular to the kerb; the ideal errand vehicle for short trips and little jobs, but no the car you would take on a 300 mile journey.
Mostly off-topic, but according to the EPA the Smart ForTwo only gets about 36 mpg. Which actually fits pretty nicely with your analogy, as it is a vehicle designed to look eco-friendly and trendy, but doesn't actually perform very well in that respect.
Actually, I think the iPad is way better than a Smart car - it might actually be useful for something at some point (I've only played with one a friend won in a raffle, but it was kind of cool - can't really say anything positive about the Smart car, which might have been interesting if it got in the neighborhood of 50 or 60 mpg but is totally useless as-is and is only owned by eco-posers with too much money and too little sense).
This is lazy reporting, nothing more. If the AZ Star et al. had bothered to talk to Southwest about it, they might have gotten a clue. It is a sensationalist headline to draw eyeballs and gin up controversy where there is none.
In our latest update, we offered our definition, which states that “Force Majeure Event means any event outside of Carrier’s control” and so the “mechanical difficulties” we are referring to as Force Majeure events would be those outside of our control, such as airport mechanical difficulties (e.g., the airport de-icing system breaks) or Air Traffic Control issues (e.g., airport or regional tower goes down).
We are not referring to our own aircraft mechanical difficulties, which would clearly be under our control. Our policies and practices confirm this interpretation.
None of our procedures have changed — we still accommodate customers exactly the same as we did previously in the event of our own aircraft mechanical issues occur.
Quit trying to inject your "facts" into our parody-fest.
I was about to say something about adding "Not feeling like it" or "insufficient funds" to my list of Acts of God that do not require me to pay for my airline ticket, but then I saw your comment and I have to confine myself to this paltry idiotry.