In the US (I know, the story is about Canada. I believe similar laws apply), statements made before the Miranda warning is given, and not in a line of questioning, is a spontaneous confession.
For example, if you walk up to an officer, and say "I just shot someone", that can, and will be used against you.
If he asks "What's going on here?" , and you say "I just shot someone", it also will be used against you.
If he asks "Did you shoot John Smith behind the Kwik-E-Mart on May 4th at 2am?", you are being questioned in relation to a crime. If you were not read your rights, it might be refused as evidence.
There is a very short list of things that you should ever say to a law enforcement officer. It depends on the circumstances. If you were just mugged, talk away about the suspect and the situation. If you involved in a traffic stop, you have to provide your drivers license, registration, and proof of insurance. If they ask "is this your car?", and the registration is accurate, and does state that it *is* your car, say "yes sir." There isn't much beyond that, that you should say.
From the article,
She said she received an e-mail in January from a Toronto Police officer in 14 Division "asking me to contact them about an incident that occurred at The Piston (on Bloor St. W., Nov. 19, 2011)."
She should have contacted an attorney *first*, who may have advised her to STFU, or say "I wasn't there, sorry." Instead, she was arrested, and had to go through the courts. Her attorney could have conveyed the necessary facts to the police, without involving her at all, saving her court time and extensive legal fees.
1) To join that project, I'd have to move to New Hampshire.
2) It's cold there. I live happily in a climate without snow nor blizzards. We get the occasional hurricane, but after you've lived through a dozen or so you realize, it's just a big rain storm. If you're in a low lying area, grab some food, drink, and a few changes of clothes, and head inland to a friends place for a few days. In the Northeast, you can't drive 15 minutes away from a storm.
3) It's a long way from my job.
4) They *want* 200,000 people to move there. According to the population statistics, there hasn't been an influx of immigrants to the state. From 2003 to 2011, there was a net increase of 38,400 (3.00%). From 1993 to 2003, there was a net change of 150,300 (13.24%).
5) The population in 2011 was 1,318,200. The 2010 US Census showed that 21.8% of the population was under the page of 18. If we assume this percentage had not changed, that would give 287,368 minors, or 1,030,832 potential voters.
If 200,000 people of voting age did move to the state, the total voting pool (assuming all were eligible and active voters), would be 1,230,832. If they *all* agreed to lobby and vote the same on all liberty issues, that would give them 16.24% of the voting power.
That is not an assurance of freedoms and liberties. That is a special interest group.
I, and I'm sure others, cannot justify moving to another state, to hopefully find a job and affordable housing, to become part of a minority special interest group.
He was probably looking for some insight, from a huge group of nerds, many of whom may have researched it or done it themselves already.
I'm in the "researching it" group.. I'm still hung up on long range telemetry, and airframe simulations. I don't want an average high wing single engine prop clone. I also don't want to spend a year building something that either won't fly, or will do tremendously except it'll keep going for 1000 miles before it runs out of fuel over an ocean. Ideally, mine would be a very high altitude, high speed model. It makes for nice sketches right now.
I have no further advice for him though, which is why I just stayed quiet. He has a tough order. "Fly by itself, out of line of sight, at a low altitude in valleys, without hitting the valley wall or trees." I'd recommend staying above the valley, with better cameras.
You're right. You can't make everyone happy all the time. In any discussion, argument, or debate, there will be at least two sides. Apple/Windows/Linux gets 3, unless you could *BSD, but didn't Netcraft have something to say about that?:)
I guess that'll be another note in my travel journal. "Do not enter Arizona, I'm probably a criminal there." That list is getting pretty long. If only there were some place that guaranteed the rights of freedom of speech and expression.
I've dated people with teenage children when I had metered phones, and we all had phones on the plan. When they had their own phone "for emergencies", I was surprised more than once that they'd run up more minutes than me. That is surprised as in "look at this huge bill".
There may (and always will) be exceptions, but I won't even attempt to give a blanket statement that teenagers won't rack up an amazing number of minutes.
It's my cell phone. I gave up on the land line years ago. It became too much of a pain to tell people, "I'm I'm home, call this number. If I'm at a friends house, call these numbers. If I'm at the local office, call this number. If I'm at the main office, call this number....." you get the idea.
I did about 5 hours on the phone with Verizon getting a lock of static IPs on my business FiOS line at home for my personal servers. It's not a tough choice. $30 for the home line, plus $50 for the cell, or just $50 for the cell, and save the money.
I get on long involved calls all the time. It's not all work. I have friends all over the place. Friends in Europe have alternative ways to call the US (Skype, Magic Jack, etc).
Back in the day, when I had a metered cell (they counted minutes), it was Nextel, and I ran up 3,000 to 5,000 minutes a month normally. It's nice with the unlimited minutes. I don't have to tell anyone "your conversation isn't worth the money that it will cost to stay on the phone with you." Even calls with friends and family, trying to help them with computer problems would probably run me out of the minutes most metered phones provide.
Some people brag about the idea that they have their friends in a "friends and family" group rate. I have over 100 numbers stored in my phone, and get calls from at least half of them during the month. If I was an antisocial hermit, it'd be different. If all my friends and family lived within a few miles, I could just go to talk to them.
I can't believe I'm an edge case. Many teenagers burn up more minutes than I do. At least the things I talk about are more significant to real life.:)
With my Boost phone (with Android data service), it starts out at $55, and reduces to $40 if I keep the phone active for 18 months. Unlimited talk time. Unlimited text messages. Unlimited data. No throttling. And so far, it's worked everywhere I've been.
The regular phone plan is $50 and reduces to $35.
The only thing I can do to cause an "overage" is make international calls. I get dragged into multi-hour phone conferences all the time. 300 minutes (5 hours) wouldn't even cover the weekly phone meetings for 4 departments that I'm involved with. 4 calls/week, 1 hr/ea is 960 minutes. On your "best plan ever", that'd be $66 in overages, assuming I didn't make any personal calls all month, and assuming none of the meetings ran over, which they frequently do.
That was about the price when I bought my PS2.:) $100? Sure, why not.
And as someone else replied, you're better off with a regular Blu-Ray player. They're pretty cheap for PC's now, and there are a bunch of Chinese vendors selling standalone units to the big box stores.
But hey, when they're $100 or less, I'll consider it. I walked through the gaming departments at Home Depot and WalMart recently, and they're still over $200. That's more than I'm willing to pay for a toy I only play with a few times.
Other than plenty of overpriced games, there really isn't much interesting with them. Heck, I could have explored the possibilities of running Linux on one, before they patched. So now they killed that little "hey, lets try this" feature. I spent plenty of time playing with my TiVO, because I could get a shell on it.. "Check it out, I can ping from the TV".:) That was more of to get expanded storage space. I had it down to a fine art, and had an upgraded on every TV in the house, just because I could. That, and people were selling them cheap on eBay with dead hard drives. It was a good complement for a box of IDE drives I had at the house.
I was laid off several years ago. At the time, I had already cancelled my personal cell, because work required that I carry theirs. When they laid me off, suddenly I had no phone. No way for people to call (namely, prospective employers).
I was already researching prepaid providers, that I could send data over their network for telemetry of my car. It was just something I was toying with. I wanted to have it send GPS data, OBD-II data, and the occasional shot from a forward and rear facing camera.
On the drive home, I swung into Best Buy. They were on the way, and had some dirt cheap phones. I think I spent all of $15 on the phone, and $30 for unlimited use.
Most of my friends have gone to prepaid plans. They use a variety of providers. I'm still sticking with Boost. I've had a few smart phones with them. It meets all my qualifications. I get unlimited... well.. everything. I can talk as long as I want. I can tether it as needed. When I want a newer, better phone, I just buy it. I don't get the special discount rate by contracting for an extra years, with the risk of upsetting them and paying overages. When they decide to screw with me, I don't want to be contractually obliged to pay early termination fees.
I could decide tomorrow that Boost is horrible, sell my phone on Craigslist or eBay, and start with another prepaid provider. The only advantage I have with staying with Boost is that they have their "shrinkage" plan, and I've been with them long enough to get a nice discount on my rate.
Boost doesn't mention it, because it seems they monitor just about nothing. The only active monitoring that they appear to do is watching for the end of your paid period. By the ToS, tethering can be considered a violation of the ToS, but it's by their discretion. They don't really care, unless it's your only connection, and your using it to download torrents, or some other high utilization activity.
I've tethered something like a half dozen times in the last year. When I've done it, except once, I was very satisfied with their speeds. A few times, it was because I was in a hotel with awful speeds. It's not my 25Mb/s FiOS line, but I can connect from any arbitrary location, including driving down the road (as a passenger, of course). The only time it didn't work was at the last space shuttle launch, and the cell network was pretty much saturated. We had an awful time even getting phone calls out.
There's exactly one game that I'd want a PS3 for. Wipeout HD. I played it quite a bit at a friends house. I don't live close to them any more, so I don't play it. They had plenty of other games for it too. Some I liked, and there are PC versions, which play smoother and have better graphics. It's impossible to justify spending that much money on the console to play one game. I'm kind of waiting for the PS3 to go on clearance, or someone is selling it at a yardsale. Then I can spend dozens of hours playing it, and get my money's worth from it. Most likely, that won't be until the PS4 is out. I'm not that concerned about it, and won't be a PS4 user. Well, unless there's some great game that's available only on the PS4, and the price has dropped because the PS5 is out.:)
Some people posted good links. Here's some more information.
I live in Florida too (Tampa/St. Pete area), and have looked into it. We're finally making starting ourselves. I've lived in this general area of Florida most of my life. I assume you have too, but in case you haven't, I'll mention some obvious weather patterns.
One of the things you'll want to consider is, how much of the roof is shadowed and when. Look around online for information on peak solar exposure. There's a 5 to 6 hour window of the day that you get enough sunlight to make the panels practical. Ideally, you want the panels on the south and west facing side of your roof. Although we are farther South than most of the country, the North side of your roof is useless, unless you mount the panels very high and angled to the SSW. You don't really want to mount them high because of winds.
Morning fog and haze partially obscures the sun at sunrise, but typically burns off by 10am to 11am. That happens more in the winter, but we also have shorter days, so it has more of an effect.
Summer thunderstorms start building up cloud cover around 1pm to 5pm, so even though we have longer days, they'll be cut short many days of the summer.
Look at how your roof is shaded, Just check out your roof in the morning, afternoon, and evening. If that part of the roof is shaded for any part of the mid-day, from about 10am to 5pm, you probably don't want to use it. If you don't have a good candidate area in that period, you may want to consider panels mounted in your back yard. Check your local zoning to see if that is acceptable.
Thunderstorms are accompanied by heavy winds, rain, and hail. The winds can frequently have gusts that are the same as Category 1 hurricanes, and tornadoes spawned by them that are harsher than any hurricane. You may have a plan in place to pull the panels down for a hurricane, but a summer thunderstorm can build up and hit with very little notice.
Then we have tropical depressions, storms, and hurricanes. Your panels will experience heavy winds at some point in their lives. Make *very* sure they are well secured. If the wind hits just right, they can rip right off the roof. A friend of mine lost his solar pool panels a few years ago during a Category 2 hurricane. He found their remains about a half mile away.
Make *very* sure that you have the panels grounded properly, and the power system set up for lightning surge suppression. Something similar to what the power companies provide is a good idea.
Have the appropriate plans in place to provide for electricity in days without enough sun. I'm sure you've seen the skies stay black for days during a hurricane, or even just a very stormy summer. You'll probably want to reinforce your solar with a generator and tie it to the power grid. The boxes to do that can be pricy, but you'll want it.
I believe Florida law currently states that the power company will pay you wholesale rates for feeding back into the power grid. They charge you retail rates when you draw back from it. Depending on who your local power provider is, they may charge differently for day and night. Wholesale is usually about 10% of the retail rate. You do have to request a special power meter to make it work properly. They will work with you and your electrician to get that in for you. In some areas, it's free. Others charge a nominal fee.
And finally, just about everywhere in Florida that I've been, zoning is strict, and will be arbitrarily enforced. Make sure you have the proper permits, and licensed people doing the work as applicable (i.e., a licensed electrician does at least the final connections). Some HOA's have specific restrictions. For example, where my mom lives, she isn't allowed to make any external changes to the house. She can't put
Sometimes we have to spell it out for the simpler people in the audience. Plane crashes happen near the surface of the earth, so people need to be able to evacuate an aircraft quickly and safely if there is an incident when it is near the surface.
They're the same people who get pissy when they can't just get up and walk around during takeoff or landing, and refuse to wear their seatbelts in turbulence. They're also the same people who will complain or sue if something happens, even though it was their own fault.
Well, they actually work really hard in their testing. No sane research scientist would say "it worked on 10 mice, lets give it to people."
I haven't been involved in the whole series of testing required to get a drug FDA approved for human trials, but I have been on the human trial side of it. It was years between "we think we have something", to "lets try it on people".
Our test happened to be an contraceptive cream. We (my ex and I) were volunteers for the trial. Happy, horny couple, willing to have sex on a regular basis for the sake of science. They also paid us something like $150. It was a 6 month trial. I asked lots of questions. The only information we couldn't get was the chemical or proposed brand names, and the doctor(s) who did the work. We had a separate doctor assigned through the testing company, who would report back all the findings.
They had gone through the various tests. Does it work on animals? Does it cause irritation of various skin types. Are there any side effects. There was years of testing before it ever got to the point of human trials. The first human trials were simpler tests, like skin reactions, and allergic reactions of any sort.
In the interview, we were asked a whole series of questions. Understanding why they were asking made it really clear that they wanted to know everything. Do you smoke? Do you drink? Do you use any pharmaceutical drugs? recreational drugs? alcohol?
There were other questions. Were we fertile? We both already had kids from other relationships. Were there any problems with the kids?
We were accepted into the program as viable candidates for testing. I believe we were one couple of 300 couples chosen for this particular trial. We were to not use any other form of contraception. We had to keep a detailed journal of our sex life. With that, we were evaluated for side effects. Any itching, swelling in the obvious places. They even wanted to know if we suffered any other illnesses. Shortness of breath, regular illnesses, etc. If one of us caught a cold, it was to be logged and evaluated. If we didn't happen to have sex for a few days, they needed to know why.
About 3 months into the trial, it turned out my ex was pregnant. That brought on a whole new set of questions. Exactly what did we do How was the contraception applied? Was it within the window dictated in the instructions. The followed our pregnancy closely, including asking for the medical records after our daughter was born. They followed up with us monthly for the first year to see how our daughter was doing. Absolutely anything unusual, they wanted to know about.
And if you're curious, which I'm sure some people would be at this point, our daughter developed perfectly normally through the pregnancy, and was perfectly healthy when she was born. There was one complication, which wasn't related to the cream. She's 5 now, and still perfectly healthy and happy.
So, despite what some people here may think, no doctor in his right mind, who expects to keep his medical license and freedom, would ever say "It worked on 9 of 10 mice, lets try it on a human."
I have heard of other cases where medical trials went horribly wrong. An example is TGN1412. Even with a terminally ill patient, it is reckless and irresponsible to just try something on a human, without adequate preliminary testing. Sure, it may work, and I hope it does. But if they jumped ahead, and the first round of human trials resulted in prolonged painful deaths, No one would agree that it was "ok, because they were dying anyways".
That's dangerous ground. Jumping from "it worked in 9 of 10 mice for a few months", to "hey doc, try it on me" opens up using terminal human patients as guinea pigs.
I'm not re-reading the article, but as I recall, they tested on 10 mice over a 4 month period. What if in humans it works to a degree for 4 months, but in 6 months your bone marrow is killed off, and in the next month or two, even your skin dies. You die as your skin rots off your body.
It's a stretch, and an improbable one, but that's why we don't just jump straight into human trials any more.
IMHO, it was still too early to publish for peer review. I would have liked to see more testing than 10 mice in one experiment.
As you said, a lot of the blame does lay with overeager laymen. I've been caught up in the excitement of seeing the new great idea, that in time became nothing.
It's a start. But you are right. People (scientists) are pushed to publish with even preliminary results. I'd prefer that stuff like this stay firmly in the scientific process, and not put out the press release until they have done enough testing to be reasonably sure of the result.
10 mice is a start. A curiosity. Something to look more at. It's getting people's hopes up today, when we won't see it available to the general population for many years. Well, that's assuming that it does work as expected. They see a 90% success rate, with a sample set of 10. How does that translate out to a sample set of 1,000? How about humans of different ethnic origins, blood types, and other factors?
I hope it does work as advertised. No one suffering from terminal cancer now, should hold their breath that it may work in their lifetime.
Depending on my seat, sometimes I can't even see them. I really prefer 1st class upgrades, when I can get them ($75 to $125, depending on the airline and flight). They don't generally bother you with pedestrian things like the safety demo, but they will give you pre-flight drinks.:)
Really though, I'm planning on only flying Virgin Elite from now on.
Depends on dosage, and your tolerance. I don't have a great tolerance to it, so I literally nibble off a small piece of a pill, and that's enough for me to sleep soundly for 3 to 4 hours, despite screaming children and aircraft noise. So a pill may last me 5 to 10 flights. The last prescription lasted me years.:)
People who have taken it daily for a period of time can likely take several. Someone I knew abused them heavily, took a dozen or so and passed out. I threw her in the car and hauled ass to the hospital. She was awake and demanding to leave 6 hours later. She'd take the 2mg "bar", just to calm down, without getting drowsy. The 0.25mg pill will put me to sleep for about 8 hours.
Because I sometimes have problems with my eustachian tube, I wear pressure relief ear plugs, and wear noise cancelling headphones over them. If I'm listening to something, that's nice. At very least, it's better than blowing out an eardrum again. Trust me, that's an experience you never want to repeat.
So, I have my ritual for flying, that is completely FAA and TSA tolerant. Unless the day comes where they say you can't have earplugs, or legally prescribed pharmaceuticals. I have a small pharmacy that travels with me, and it's in a compartment on my laptop bag that I can reach without pulling the bag out from under the seat. The headphones are in a compartment, with any reading material that I may bring, my GPS, and power cords (laptop, phone, etc). The laptop is there, if I really want to do something with it and the person sitting ahead of me doesn't lean back.
My laptop bag has everything I *need*, both for the flight, and when I reach my destination. If my luggage ends up missing, I just have to find a store to pick up a change of clothes, toothbrush, and razor. And about 75% of the time, the TSA decides they want to search it.
I'm of the humble opinion that every airline should offer Xanax to passengers as they board. I have a high tolerance for an awful lot of things, but Xanax puts me right to sleep.. I can be oblivious to the world from the time they push back from the gate, to the time the plane lands. It's really nice to wake up all relaxed and refreshed when I get to where I'm going.:)
But (before anyone says it) the plane landing is enough to wake me up. That's a normal landing. If there were an incident, the adrenaline jolt would make me wide awake instantly. I hate it when there's bad turbulence. I wake up, see that we're not there yet, and go back to sleep.
As I understand it, I am the perfect passenger for the flight crew.
If I start multiple flights a week, I'll have to get doc to prescribe me some more Xanax.:) Crying babies? Annoying people in my row? No problem.
Nice quote, considering you're quoting something that wasn't said.
And I guess either you're young, or have been living under a rock. Jan 15, 2009, US Airways Flight 1549.
There are circumstances where it's good not to have your laptop, tablet, phone, etc, all occupying your space. Consider August 2, 2005, Air France Flight 358.
In both of these circumstances, it was advantageous for the passengers to be able to disembark the aircraft expeditiously and unencumbered by extra items.
Planes only crash land, when they are near land or water. That is the minutes surrounding takeoff and landing. During the rough of landings, objects in your hands can become objects flying around the cabin.
Proximity is a bitch. Someone in New York can't see a hurricane hitting Florida. To the best of my knowledge, we don't have any working probes on or around Mars at this time. So, you're seeing it.
Slashdot Mirror
In the US (I know, the story is about Canada. I believe similar laws apply), statements made before the Miranda warning is given, and not in a line of questioning, is a spontaneous confession.
For example, if you walk up to an officer, and say "I just shot someone", that can, and will be used against you.
If he asks "What's going on here?" , and you say "I just shot someone", it also will be used against you.
If he asks "Did you shoot John Smith behind the Kwik-E-Mart on May 4th at 2am?", you are being questioned in relation to a crime. If you were not read your rights, it might be refused as evidence.
There is a very short list of things that you should ever say to a law enforcement officer. It depends on the circumstances. If you were just mugged, talk away about the suspect and the situation. If you involved in a traffic stop, you have to provide your drivers license, registration, and proof of insurance. If they ask "is this your car?", and the registration is accurate, and does state that it *is* your car, say "yes sir." There isn't much beyond that, that you should say.
From the article,
She should have contacted an attorney *first*, who may have advised her to STFU, or say "I wasn't there, sorry." Instead, she was arrested, and had to go through the courts. Her attorney could have conveyed the necessary facts to the police, without involving her at all, saving her court time and extensive legal fees.
STFU is always the best option.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8167533318153586646
IANAL, and I don't live in your jurisdiction. Consult with a local attorney for the laws as they apply where you are.
Well, there are a few reasons.
1) To join that project, I'd have to move to New Hampshire.
2) It's cold there. I live happily in a climate without snow nor blizzards. We get the occasional hurricane, but after you've lived through a dozen or so you realize, it's just a big rain storm. If you're in a low lying area, grab some food, drink, and a few changes of clothes, and head inland to a friends place for a few days. In the Northeast, you can't drive 15 minutes away from a storm.
3) It's a long way from my job.
4) They *want* 200,000 people to move there. According to the population statistics, there hasn't been an influx of immigrants to the state. From 2003 to 2011, there was a net increase of 38,400 (3.00%). From 1993 to 2003, there was a net change of 150,300 (13.24%).
5) The population in 2011 was 1,318,200. The 2010 US Census showed that 21.8% of the population was under the page of 18. If we assume this percentage had not changed, that would give 287,368 minors, or 1,030,832 potential voters.
If 200,000 people of voting age did move to the state, the total voting pool (assuming all were eligible and active voters), would be 1,230,832. If they *all* agreed to lobby and vote the same on all liberty issues, that would give them 16.24% of the voting power.
That is not an assurance of freedoms and liberties. That is a special interest group.
I, and I'm sure others, cannot justify moving to another state, to hopefully find a job and affordable housing, to become part of a minority special interest group.
[tips hat] Thank you kind sir. And have I mentioned that your shoes are ugly? :)
He was probably looking for some insight, from a huge group of nerds, many of whom may have researched it or done it themselves already.
I'm in the "researching it" group.. I'm still hung up on long range telemetry, and airframe simulations. I don't want an average high wing single engine prop clone. I also don't want to spend a year building something that either won't fly, or will do tremendously except it'll keep going for 1000 miles before it runs out of fuel over an ocean. Ideally, mine would be a very high altitude, high speed model. It makes for nice sketches right now.
I have no further advice for him though, which is why I just stayed quiet. He has a tough order. "Fly by itself, out of line of sight, at a low altitude in valleys, without hitting the valley wall or trees." I'd recommend staying above the valley, with better cameras.
You're right. You can't make everyone happy all the time. In any discussion, argument, or debate, there will be at least two sides. Apple/Windows/Linux gets 3, unless you could *BSD, but didn't Netcraft have something to say about that? :)
I guess that'll be another note in my travel journal. "Do not enter Arizona, I'm probably a criminal there." That list is getting pretty long. If only there were some place that guaranteed the rights of freedom of speech and expression.
I've dated people with teenage children when I had metered phones, and we all had phones on the plan. When they had their own phone "for emergencies", I was surprised more than once that they'd run up more minutes than me. That is surprised as in "look at this huge bill".
There may (and always will) be exceptions, but I won't even attempt to give a blanket statement that teenagers won't rack up an amazing number of minutes.
It's my cell phone. I gave up on the land line years ago. It became too much of a pain to tell people, "I'm I'm home, call this number. If I'm at a friends house, call these numbers. If I'm at the local office, call this number. If I'm at the main office, call this number....." you get the idea.
I did about 5 hours on the phone with Verizon getting a lock of static IPs on my business FiOS line at home for my personal servers. It's not a tough choice. $30 for the home line, plus $50 for the cell, or just $50 for the cell, and save the money.
I get on long involved calls all the time. It's not all work. I have friends all over the place. Friends in Europe have alternative ways to call the US (Skype, Magic Jack, etc).
Back in the day, when I had a metered cell (they counted minutes), it was Nextel, and I ran up 3,000 to 5,000 minutes a month normally. It's nice with the unlimited minutes. I don't have to tell anyone "your conversation isn't worth the money that it will cost to stay on the phone with you." Even calls with friends and family, trying to help them with computer problems would probably run me out of the minutes most metered phones provide.
Some people brag about the idea that they have their friends in a "friends and family" group rate. I have over 100 numbers stored in my phone, and get calls from at least half of them during the month. If I was an antisocial hermit, it'd be different. If all my friends and family lived within a few miles, I could just go to talk to them.
I can't believe I'm an edge case. Many teenagers burn up more minutes than I do. At least the things I talk about are more significant to real life. :)
That doesn't sound like the "best plan ever".
With my Boost phone (with Android data service), it starts out at $55, and reduces to $40 if I keep the phone active for 18 months. Unlimited talk time. Unlimited text messages. Unlimited data. No throttling. And so far, it's worked everywhere I've been.
The regular phone plan is $50 and reduces to $35.
The only thing I can do to cause an "overage" is make international calls. I get dragged into multi-hour phone conferences all the time. 300 minutes (5 hours) wouldn't even cover the weekly phone meetings for 4 departments that I'm involved with. 4 calls/week, 1 hr/ea is 960 minutes. On your "best plan ever", that'd be $66 in overages, assuming I didn't make any personal calls all month, and assuming none of the meetings ran over, which they frequently do.
That was about the price when I bought my PS2. :) $100? Sure, why not.
And as someone else replied, you're better off with a regular Blu-Ray player. They're pretty cheap for PC's now, and there are a bunch of Chinese vendors selling standalone units to the big box stores.
But hey, when they're $100 or less, I'll consider it. I walked through the gaming departments at Home Depot and WalMart recently, and they're still over $200. That's more than I'm willing to pay for a toy I only play with a few times.
Other than plenty of overpriced games, there really isn't much interesting with them. Heck, I could have explored the possibilities of running Linux on one, before they patched. So now they killed that little "hey, lets try this" feature. I spent plenty of time playing with my TiVO, because I could get a shell on it.. "Check it out, I can ping from the TV". :) That was more of to get expanded storage space. I had it down to a fine art, and had an upgraded on every TV in the house, just because I could. That, and people were selling them cheap on eBay with dead hard drives. It was a good complement for a box of IDE drives I had at the house.
I'd say you should.
I was laid off several years ago. At the time, I had already cancelled my personal cell, because work required that I carry theirs. When they laid me off, suddenly I had no phone. No way for people to call (namely, prospective employers).
I was already researching prepaid providers, that I could send data over their network for telemetry of my car. It was just something I was toying with. I wanted to have it send GPS data, OBD-II data, and the occasional shot from a forward and rear facing camera.
On the drive home, I swung into Best Buy. They were on the way, and had some dirt cheap phones. I think I spent all of $15 on the phone, and $30 for unlimited use.
Most of my friends have gone to prepaid plans. They use a variety of providers. I'm still sticking with Boost. I've had a few smart phones with them. It meets all my qualifications. I get unlimited ... well .. everything. I can talk as long as I want. I can tether it as needed. When I want a newer, better phone, I just buy it. I don't get the special discount rate by contracting for an extra years, with the risk of upsetting them and paying overages. When they decide to screw with me, I don't want to be contractually obliged to pay early termination fees.
I could decide tomorrow that Boost is horrible, sell my phone on Craigslist or eBay, and start with another prepaid provider. The only advantage I have with staying with Boost is that they have their "shrinkage" plan, and I've been with them long enough to get a nice discount on my rate.
A few people have said Virgin Mobile is the best. nice. Except for the not so fine print.
http://www.virginmobileusa.com/cell-phone-plans/beyond-talk-plans.jsp?tab=tab2#
"All Plans Include 2.5GB Per Month of Full-Speed Data"
Unlimited, as long as you use 2.5GB or less.
Boost doesn't mention it, because it seems they monitor just about nothing. The only active monitoring that they appear to do is watching for the end of your paid period. By the ToS, tethering can be considered a violation of the ToS, but it's by their discretion. They don't really care, unless it's your only connection, and your using it to download torrents, or some other high utilization activity.
I've tethered something like a half dozen times in the last year. When I've done it, except once, I was very satisfied with their speeds. A few times, it was because I was in a hotel with awful speeds. It's not my 25Mb/s FiOS line, but I can connect from any arbitrary location, including driving down the road (as a passenger, of course). The only time it didn't work was at the last space shuttle launch, and the cell network was pretty much saturated. We had an awful time even getting phone calls out.
There's exactly one game that I'd want a PS3 for. Wipeout HD. I played it quite a bit at a friends house. I don't live close to them any more, so I don't play it. They had plenty of other games for it too. Some I liked, and there are PC versions, which play smoother and have better graphics. It's impossible to justify spending that much money on the console to play one game. I'm kind of waiting for the PS3 to go on clearance, or someone is selling it at a yardsale. Then I can spend dozens of hours playing it, and get my money's worth from it. Most likely, that won't be until the PS4 is out. I'm not that concerned about it, and won't be a PS4 user. Well, unless there's some great game that's available only on the PS4, and the price has dropped because the PS5 is out. :)
Some people posted good links. Here's some more information.
I live in Florida too (Tampa/St. Pete area), and have looked into it. We're finally making starting ourselves. I've lived in this general area of Florida most of my life. I assume you have too, but in case you haven't, I'll mention some obvious weather patterns.
One of the things you'll want to consider is, how much of the roof is shadowed and when. Look around online for information on peak solar exposure. There's a 5 to 6 hour window of the day that you get enough sunlight to make the panels practical. Ideally, you want the panels on the south and west facing side of your roof. Although we are farther South than most of the country, the North side of your roof is useless, unless you mount the panels very high and angled to the SSW. You don't really want to mount them high because of winds.
Morning fog and haze partially obscures the sun at sunrise, but typically burns off by 10am to 11am. That happens more in the winter, but we also have shorter days, so it has more of an effect.
Summer thunderstorms start building up cloud cover around 1pm to 5pm, so even though we have longer days, they'll be cut short many days of the summer.
Look at how your roof is shaded, Just check out your roof in the morning, afternoon, and evening. If that part of the roof is shaded for any part of the mid-day, from about 10am to 5pm, you probably don't want to use it. If you don't have a good candidate area in that period, you may want to consider panels mounted in your back yard. Check your local zoning to see if that is acceptable.
Thunderstorms are accompanied by heavy winds, rain, and hail. The winds can frequently have gusts that are the same as Category 1 hurricanes, and tornadoes spawned by them that are harsher than any hurricane. You may have a plan in place to pull the panels down for a hurricane, but a summer thunderstorm can build up and hit with very little notice.
Then we have tropical depressions, storms, and hurricanes. Your panels will experience heavy winds at some point in their lives. Make *very* sure they are well secured. If the wind hits just right, they can rip right off the roof. A friend of mine lost his solar pool panels a few years ago during a Category 2 hurricane. He found their remains about a half mile away.
Make *very* sure that you have the panels grounded properly, and the power system set up for lightning surge suppression. Something similar to what the power companies provide is a good idea.
Have the appropriate plans in place to provide for electricity in days without enough sun. I'm sure you've seen the skies stay black for days during a hurricane, or even just a very stormy summer. You'll probably want to reinforce your solar with a generator and tie it to the power grid. The boxes to do that can be pricy, but you'll want it.
I believe Florida law currently states that the power company will pay you wholesale rates for feeding back into the power grid. They charge you retail rates when you draw back from it. Depending on who your local power provider is, they may charge differently for day and night. Wholesale is usually about 10% of the retail rate. You do have to request a special power meter to make it work properly. They will work with you and your electrician to get that in for you. In some areas, it's free. Others charge a nominal fee.
And finally, just about everywhere in Florida that I've been, zoning is strict, and will be arbitrarily enforced. Make sure you have the proper permits, and licensed people doing the work as applicable (i.e., a licensed electrician does at least the final connections). Some HOA's have specific restrictions. For example, where my mom lives, she isn't allowed to make any external changes to the house. She can't put
Sometimes we have to spell it out for the simpler people in the audience. Plane crashes happen near the surface of the earth, so people need to be able to evacuate an aircraft quickly and safely if there is an incident when it is near the surface.
They're the same people who get pissy when they can't just get up and walk around during takeoff or landing, and refuse to wear their seatbelts in turbulence. They're also the same people who will complain or sue if something happens, even though it was their own fault.
Well, they actually work really hard in their testing. No sane research scientist would say "it worked on 10 mice, lets give it to people."
I haven't been involved in the whole series of testing required to get a drug FDA approved for human trials, but I have been on the human trial side of it. It was years between "we think we have something", to "lets try it on people".
Our test happened to be an contraceptive cream. We (my ex and I) were volunteers for the trial. Happy, horny couple, willing to have sex on a regular basis for the sake of science. They also paid us something like $150. It was a 6 month trial. I asked lots of questions. The only information we couldn't get was the chemical or proposed brand names, and the doctor(s) who did the work. We had a separate doctor assigned through the testing company, who would report back all the findings.
They had gone through the various tests. Does it work on animals? Does it cause irritation of various skin types. Are there any side effects. There was years of testing before it ever got to the point of human trials. The first human trials were simpler tests, like skin reactions, and allergic reactions of any sort.
In the interview, we were asked a whole series of questions. Understanding why they were asking made it really clear that they wanted to know everything. Do you smoke? Do you drink? Do you use any pharmaceutical drugs? recreational drugs? alcohol?
There were other questions. Were we fertile? We both already had kids from other relationships. Were there any problems with the kids?
We were accepted into the program as viable candidates for testing. I believe we were one couple of 300 couples chosen for this particular trial. We were to not use any other form of contraception. We had to keep a detailed journal of our sex life. With that, we were evaluated for side effects. Any itching, swelling in the obvious places. They even wanted to know if we suffered any other illnesses. Shortness of breath, regular illnesses, etc. If one of us caught a cold, it was to be logged and evaluated. If we didn't happen to have sex for a few days, they needed to know why.
About 3 months into the trial, it turned out my ex was pregnant. That brought on a whole new set of questions. Exactly what did we do How was the contraception applied? Was it within the window dictated in the instructions. The followed our pregnancy closely, including asking for the medical records after our daughter was born. They followed up with us monthly for the first year to see how our daughter was doing. Absolutely anything unusual, they wanted to know about.
And if you're curious, which I'm sure some people would be at this point, our daughter developed perfectly normally through the pregnancy, and was perfectly healthy when she was born. There was one complication, which wasn't related to the cream. She's 5 now, and still perfectly healthy and happy.
So, despite what some people here may think, no doctor in his right mind, who expects to keep his medical license and freedom, would ever say "It worked on 9 of 10 mice, lets try it on a human."
I have heard of other cases where medical trials went horribly wrong. An example is TGN1412. Even with a terminally ill patient, it is reckless and irresponsible to just try something on a human, without adequate preliminary testing. Sure, it may work, and I hope it does. But if they jumped ahead, and the first round of human trials resulted in prolonged painful deaths, No one would agree that it was "ok, because they were dying anyways".
That's dangerous ground. Jumping from "it worked in 9 of 10 mice for a few months", to "hey doc, try it on me" opens up using terminal human patients as guinea pigs.
I'm not re-reading the article, but as I recall, they tested on 10 mice over a 4 month period. What if in humans it works to a degree for 4 months, but in 6 months your bone marrow is killed off, and in the next month or two, even your skin dies. You die as your skin rots off your body.
It's a stretch, and an improbable one, but that's why we don't just jump straight into human trials any more.
IMHO, it was still too early to publish for peer review. I would have liked to see more testing than 10 mice in one experiment.
As you said, a lot of the blame does lay with overeager laymen. I've been caught up in the excitement of seeing the new great idea, that in time became nothing.
It's a start. But you are right. People (scientists) are pushed to publish with even preliminary results. I'd prefer that stuff like this stay firmly in the scientific process, and not put out the press release until they have done enough testing to be reasonably sure of the result.
10 mice is a start. A curiosity. Something to look more at. It's getting people's hopes up today, when we won't see it available to the general population for many years. Well, that's assuming that it does work as expected. They see a 90% success rate, with a sample set of 10. How does that translate out to a sample set of 1,000? How about humans of different ethnic origins, blood types, and other factors?
I hope it does work as advertised. No one suffering from terminal cancer now, should hold their breath that it may work in their lifetime.
Depending on my seat, sometimes I can't even see them. I really prefer 1st class upgrades, when I can get them ($75 to $125, depending on the airline and flight). They don't generally bother you with pedestrian things like the safety demo, but they will give you pre-flight drinks. :)
Really though, I'm planning on only flying Virgin Elite from now on.
Oh well. That's why we have doctors, and friendly pharmacies just over the borders in Mexico and Canada. :)
BTW, the later isn't for me. I'm nowhere near any borders.
Depends on dosage, and your tolerance. I don't have a great tolerance to it, so I literally nibble off a small piece of a pill, and that's enough for me to sleep soundly for 3 to 4 hours, despite screaming children and aircraft noise. So a pill may last me 5 to 10 flights. The last prescription lasted me years. :)
People who have taken it daily for a period of time can likely take several. Someone I knew abused them heavily, took a dozen or so and passed out. I threw her in the car and hauled ass to the hospital. She was awake and demanding to leave 6 hours later. She'd take the 2mg "bar", just to calm down, without getting drowsy. The 0.25mg pill will put me to sleep for about 8 hours.
Because I sometimes have problems with my eustachian tube, I wear pressure relief ear plugs, and wear noise cancelling headphones over them. If I'm listening to something, that's nice. At very least, it's better than blowing out an eardrum again. Trust me, that's an experience you never want to repeat.
So, I have my ritual for flying, that is completely FAA and TSA tolerant. Unless the day comes where they say you can't have earplugs, or legally prescribed pharmaceuticals. I have a small pharmacy that travels with me, and it's in a compartment on my laptop bag that I can reach without pulling the bag out from under the seat. The headphones are in a compartment, with any reading material that I may bring, my GPS, and power cords (laptop, phone, etc). The laptop is there, if I really want to do something with it and the person sitting ahead of me doesn't lean back.
My laptop bag has everything I *need*, both for the flight, and when I reach my destination. If my luggage ends up missing, I just have to find a store to pick up a change of clothes, toothbrush, and razor. And about 75% of the time, the TSA decides they want to search it.
Well, unfortunately, I've known parents who have done that. The kids were fine when they woke up.
But, I said offered. You don't have to, just like you don't have to take the complementary headphones, or eat the in flight "meal" of 1oz of peanuts.
I'm of the humble opinion that every airline should offer Xanax to passengers as they board. I have a high tolerance for an awful lot of things, but Xanax puts me right to sleep.. I can be oblivious to the world from the time they push back from the gate, to the time the plane lands. It's really nice to wake up all relaxed and refreshed when I get to where I'm going. :)
But (before anyone says it) the plane landing is enough to wake me up. That's a normal landing. If there were an incident, the adrenaline jolt would make me wide awake instantly. I hate it when there's bad turbulence. I wake up, see that we're not there yet, and go back to sleep.
As I understand it, I am the perfect passenger for the flight crew.
If I start multiple flights a week, I'll have to get doc to prescribe me some more Xanax. :) Crying babies? Annoying people in my row? No problem.
Nice quote, considering you're quoting something that wasn't said.
And I guess either you're young, or have been living under a rock. Jan 15, 2009, US Airways Flight 1549.
There are circumstances where it's good not to have your laptop, tablet, phone, etc, all occupying your space. Consider August 2, 2005, Air France Flight 358.
In both of these circumstances, it was advantageous for the passengers to be able to disembark the aircraft expeditiously and unencumbered by extra items.
Planes only crash land, when they are near land or water. That is the minutes surrounding takeoff and landing. During the rough of landings, objects in your hands can become objects flying around the cabin.
Proximity is a bitch. Someone in New York can't see a hurricane hitting Florida. To the best of my knowledge, we don't have any working probes on or around Mars at this time. So, you're seeing it.