"Most stores that have looked into it give you the pin option first (wal-mart) because they don't have to pay as much per transaction to the card companies."
I don't know why they've started defaulting to debit cards recently, but I do know I don't like it. My bank gives me a small percentage rebate on my purchases when I use the card as a credit card and I feel better having to sign my name than using a pin number anybody could use, but I'm really beginning to get irked by all the systems that, after I've explicitly said "credit," kick me over to their pin entry screen. I'm reaching the point where I'm about to start telling the stores to either let me use it as a credit card or I'll walk out without my purchases.
"To play a single game for a substantial portion of a day everday for a year is... yikes."
Um... the internal clock is there so you don't have to play the game every day of the year for the game to know it's been a year since you first set the clock.
No, I still don't rate broadband (or internet connectivity in general) as being as important as or more important than mail delivery.
If you weren't so ready to jump to conclusions, you'd realize I was simply using the broadband market as an example of exactly the kind of market that truly privatized communications services can turn into. There is little to no government involvement in the ISP market in general (and broadband in particular), much like the letter delivery market UPS and others would like to see in the US. However, all the focus on competing for a relatively small customer base instead of expanding the customer base seems to put the lie to their models' ability to sustain universal letter delivery.
When everything is covered in snow, it can be difficult to know where the road ends and somebody's front yard begins. GPS would be helpful to the drivers in letting them know they're still plowing the road and not some poor shmuck's VW bug.
"including universities which use the technology to stop students from diddling away on phones during lectures."
Personally, I find it's a bigger problems when the professors whip out their cell phones and start yammering away during class. If only my employer were so lenient about what I could do on company time...
Physics has been funny for a while now, just nobody notices the way "cartoon physics" isn't an oxymoron.
Take your typical Road Runner cartoon, for example. It looks pretty fantastic until you consider treating the Road Runner and the coyote as subatomic particles. The coyote never falls until he looks down and resolves that there is no ground underneath him. And the catapult always collapses/breaks/misfires onto him because the coyote is resolving the way the catapult will break by pulling the rope. He paints pictures of tunnels onto rock faces and then watches the road runner quantum tunnel through the rock. And the road runner in motion is a featureless, indistinct dust cloud along the road until the observer resolves the road runner as a particle (either by the road runner stopping or through stop-motion photography).
And you know the bit where Elmer Fudd sticks his shotgun into a hole in a tree only to feel a barrel come up out of a hole in the ground into his rear? And he ties a bow on the end to "prove" the gun coming out of the ground really isn't his. Now, consider his gun is an electron...
"In the UK, we have an independent electoral commission who are in charge of this."
Since we seem to be talking about the US national government here, I must tell you we already have such commissions. They're called "state legislatures." Nobody in U. S. Congress draws their own districts (even Tom DeLay had to grease serious palms in the Austin statehouse to have things go his way).
The problem here is that, just as with people like you who live outside the US, nobody here much gives a damn about state government. The 50% turn-out in the 2000 election sounds pretty low until you consider that it's as good as it gets. In off-years between presidential elections, even fewer people turn out. Fewer still for statewide offices in states whose election cycles are out of synch with national elections (ie. odd-numbered years instead of even-numbered). And when you get to the state legislature most people can't even name their representatives, let alone turn out to vote for them. Meaning the election goes to whichever party can get more of its voters to bother driving to the polling places (assuming there isn't already an incumbent in the election).
"making many seats in the House of Representatives 'safe seats' which effectively gives incumbents a permanent seat."
There's a very simple solution here. Congress set an arbitrary size for the House of Representatives in 1910. Four more states and 200,000,000 more people, we're still stuck with 435 (nowhere near the current costitutional limit of 9,380).
Voting districts too polarized? House seats too stable? Break them into smaller chunks. It's easier to polarize large groups of voters than smaller groups, and smaller groups tend to be more dynamic (meaning more congresscritter turn-over for the district). This also has the added benefit of lowering campaign costs (fewer voters to reach).
Oh, bite me. At least you people in Europe have broadband. These little price wars are nice and all, but all they're doing is fighting over a handful of urban customers while continuing to ignore the teeming millions of us in suburbia (I don't exactly live on a farm here!). Keeping myself from giving up and just spending the $600 to sign up for EarthLink Satellite (at $70/month!) is getting more and more difficult. They do ethernet now...
Anybody who thinks privatizing the US Postal Service is a good idea needs to take a long, hard look at the broadband market here.
"I don't think so. There have been terrorist attacks on trains (e.g., Carlos the Jackal's bombing in 1983). They just haven't been very successful and haven't led to cumbersome security measures."
On the other hand, it's quite easy for non-passengers to get access to a train. Just slap a brick of C-4 onto a car as it passes by a certain railroad crossing.
"I suspect that a building is a better target than a train: easier to get to,"
Barely. See railroad crossing comment above.
"easier to get away from,"
Again, with the railroad crossing bit, the train gets away from you (in Soviet Russia!)
"and more likely to kill lots of people."
Depends on what the train is carrying. If it's a passenger train, then you'll probably kill no more than the passengers. But a train laden with liquified natural gas, liquified propane or dusty coal has the blast potential of a small nuclear weapon. Such a train could easily wipe a small town off the map.
"Is that where the Iraqi information minister ended up?"
Can't be. If he was there, I'm sure DPRK would have something more creative to say than "yeah, we got nukes." Maybe amusing little tidbits about capitalist infidels comitting suicide against the line of demarkation or somethin glike that.
"At any rate, the last thing the North Korean government wants is an online citizenry."
I think that's the least of Pyongyang's worries. Kinda hard to get your computer online when you can't even turn your computer on. Computers need electricity, donchaknow.
Let's see... we could either abide by this treaty we have with the US and get nuclear power plants, or we can steal the technology, set us up The Bomb and ensure dissidents never have the electricity needed for communications more complicated than two tin cans and a piece of string in one fell swoop!
Slashdot Mirror
"in my 10th grade computer science class on the old Windows 95 boxes."
When I was in high school, we were lucky to have WfW 3.11.
"Most stores that have looked into it give you the pin option first (wal-mart) because they don't have to pay as much per transaction to the card companies."
Are you sure?
I don't know why they've started defaulting to debit cards recently, but I do know I don't like it. My bank gives me a small percentage rebate on my purchases when I use the card as a credit card and I feel better having to sign my name than using a pin number anybody could use, but I'm really beginning to get irked by all the systems that, after I've explicitly said "credit," kick me over to their pin entry screen. I'm reaching the point where I'm about to start telling the stores to either let me use it as a credit card or I'll walk out without my purchases.
"i would define information pollution as all that info you dont really need to know!"
I'd say goatse is most definately in that category...
"To play a single game for a substantial portion of a day everday for a year is... yikes."
Um... the internal clock is there so you don't have to play the game every day of the year for the game to know it's been a year since you first set the clock.
"If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a noise?"
My tape recorder says it does.
"you want me to subsidize a cheap DSL for you?"
No, I still don't rate broadband (or internet connectivity in general) as being as important as or more important than mail delivery.
If you weren't so ready to jump to conclusions, you'd realize I was simply using the broadband market as an example of exactly the kind of market that truly privatized communications services can turn into. There is little to no government involvement in the ISP market in general (and broadband in particular), much like the letter delivery market UPS and others would like to see in the US. However, all the focus on competing for a relatively small customer base instead of expanding the customer base seems to put the lie to their models' ability to sustain universal letter delivery.
"Presumably plowing could be more efficient"
...Why? Because of GPS? Explain!"
"Why?
When everything is covered in snow, it can be difficult to know where the road ends and somebody's front yard begins. GPS would be helpful to the drivers in letting them know they're still plowing the road and not some poor shmuck's VW bug.
"including universities which use the technology to stop students from diddling away on phones during lectures."
Personally, I find it's a bigger problems when the professors whip out their cell phones and start yammering away during class. If only my employer were so lenient about what I could do on company time...
"Well, the Native American were the first people on your continent too."
Well, do you have a flag?
"an evil organization who's soul purpose is total world domination and eradication of freedom."
Heck, that's half the corporations listed on the NYSE...
"I know, this is pretty unheard of to most politician types, but why don't they just leave the internet alone?"
But think of the children!
Physics has been funny for a while now, just nobody notices the way "cartoon physics" isn't an oxymoron.
Take your typical Road Runner cartoon, for example. It looks pretty fantastic until you consider treating the Road Runner and the coyote as subatomic particles. The coyote never falls until he looks down and resolves that there is no ground underneath him. And the catapult always collapses/breaks/misfires onto him because the coyote is resolving the way the catapult will break by pulling the rope. He paints pictures of tunnels onto rock faces and then watches the road runner quantum tunnel through the rock. And the road runner in motion is a featureless, indistinct dust cloud along the road until the observer resolves the road runner as a particle (either by the road runner stopping or through stop-motion photography).
And you know the bit where Elmer Fudd sticks his shotgun into a hole in a tree only to feel a barrel come up out of a hole in the ground into his rear? And he ties a bow on the end to "prove" the gun coming out of the ground really isn't his. Now, consider his gun is an electron...
"In the UK, we have an independent electoral commission who are in charge of this."
Since we seem to be talking about the US national government here, I must tell you we already have such commissions. They're called "state legislatures." Nobody in U. S. Congress draws their own districts (even Tom DeLay had to grease serious palms in the Austin statehouse to have things go his way).
The problem here is that, just as with people like you who live outside the US, nobody here much gives a damn about state government. The 50% turn-out in the 2000 election sounds pretty low until you consider that it's as good as it gets. In off-years between presidential elections, even fewer people turn out. Fewer still for statewide offices in states whose election cycles are out of synch with national elections (ie. odd-numbered years instead of even-numbered). And when you get to the state legislature most people can't even name their representatives, let alone turn out to vote for them. Meaning the election goes to whichever party can get more of its voters to bother driving to the polling places (assuming there isn't already an incumbent in the election).
"making many seats in the House of Representatives 'safe seats' which effectively gives incumbents a permanent seat."
There's a very simple solution here. Congress set an arbitrary size for the House of Representatives in 1910. Four more states and 200,000,000 more people, we're still stuck with 435 (nowhere near the current costitutional limit of 9,380).
Voting districts too polarized? House seats too stable? Break them into smaller chunks. It's easier to polarize large groups of voters than smaller groups, and smaller groups tend to be more dynamic (meaning more congresscritter turn-over for the district). This also has the added benefit of lowering campaign costs (fewer voters to reach).
I'm not saying we should jump straight to 10,000, but there seems to be an argument for a cube-root relation, and 655 seem to be as good a number as any.
"but their shameless attempts to make you buy extra crap for it is infuriating,"
Obligatory Penny Arcade link
Oh, bite me. At least you people in Europe have broadband. These little price wars are nice and all, but all they're doing is fighting over a handful of urban customers while continuing to ignore the teeming millions of us in suburbia (I don't exactly live on a farm here!). Keeping myself from giving up and just spending the $600 to sign up for EarthLink Satellite (at $70/month!) is getting more and more difficult. They do ethernet now...
Anybody who thinks privatizing the US Postal Service is a good idea needs to take a long, hard look at the broadband market here.
... as soon as they let me use half-dollar coins.
You seem to be confusing slot machines with this device.
"I don't think so. There have been terrorist attacks on trains (e.g., Carlos the Jackal's bombing in 1983). They just haven't been very successful and haven't led to cumbersome security measures."
On the other hand, it's quite easy for non-passengers to get access to a train. Just slap a brick of C-4 onto a car as it passes by a certain railroad crossing.
"I suspect that a building is a better target than a train: easier to get to,"
Barely. See railroad crossing comment above.
"easier to get away from,"
Again, with the railroad crossing bit, the train gets away from you (in Soviet Russia!)
"and more likely to kill lots of people."
Depends on what the train is carrying. If it's a passenger train, then you'll probably kill no more than the passengers. But a train laden with liquified natural gas, liquified propane or dusty coal has the blast potential of a small nuclear weapon. Such a train could easily wipe a small town off the map.
"In other words, will I be arrested one day for making a copy of my friend's Ferrari?"
Personally, I'm more curious about what would happen if you made a copy of your friend.
I didn't ask if he was governor, I asked if he was related. Try reading my question before you tell me to RTFA.
"Is that where the Iraqi information minister ended up?"
Can't be. If he was there, I'm sure DPRK would have something more creative to say than "yeah, we got nukes." Maybe amusing little tidbits about capitalist infidels comitting suicide against the line of demarkation or somethin glike that.
Um... the first step in hiding WMD is not to admit you have them. Kim Jong Il never was one to read the instruction manual, I suppose.
"At any rate, the last thing the North Korean government wants is an online citizenry."
I think that's the least of Pyongyang's worries. Kinda hard to get your computer online when you can't even turn your computer on. Computers need electricity, donchaknow.
Let's see... we could either abide by this treaty we have with the US and get nuclear power plants, or we can steal the technology, set us up The Bomb and ensure dissidents never have the electricity needed for communications more complicated than two tin cans and a piece of string in one fell swoop!
Personally, I think my favorite Eminem quote is "Not guilty, your honor."