I have an ING account, and it's one of the best things I've done w/ my money. The rates are usually much better than a typical brick & mortar bank savings account. It also allows CD* investments without any minimum - at least not any minimum that I've run into.
* (Not actually a CD, but a long term deposit that behaves exactly like a CD.)
I should point out that HSBCdirect and Emigrant have better rates at the moment, though for CDs Emigrant has a minimum of $1,000 - not sure if HSBC has online CDs or not.
There is a reason polls are conducted during working hours in the US.
Take it from someone who used to do polling analysis- good polls are NOT conducted during work hours. Crappy "media" polls are conducted throughout the day because that's when one can get the cheapest rates at the call centers. Zogby also polls some during the day, but nobody in "the biz" takes his numbers seriously.
Another questionable polling technique is the computer automated response. Rassmussen and Survey USA have a computer call a zillion people and have them interact with a computer voice. While this does seem extremely questionable to me, in my opinion/experience Rassmussen's numbers seem to be closer than a lot of other publicly released polls.
99% of the population has never seen a "real" poll (Private poll from a reputable pollster complete with crosstabulated demographic data) and would have no idea what is actually done with one.
(Writing from an insignificant town in Central Pennsylvania)
"Downtown" parking is metered.
Other relatively high traffic areas have one or two-hour limit signs.
Residential areas often have 12 or 24 hour limits, just to make sure some homeless person doesn't park his/her VW Microbus on the street for a year and a half.
And of course, street sweeping night - no parking between 10pm and 6am on whichever day they sweep the streets.
A very significant fraction of total US military spending since the end of WW2 ought to count as foreign aid to Canada and Europe. The cold war was costly - and it was waged disproportionately by the US. Y'all had it easy for the past half century.
Say what you will about the wisdom of any particular conflict, but understand that no other democratic nation is capable of mobilizing such an extremely large force when it is necessary.
Lasting 4-5 days on standby isn't spectacular. My old monochrome nokia used to do it (until the battery started flaking out after 3 years of continuous use). My brand new samsung model (with color screen, external display, and funky ringtones) has been doing about that much, and weighs 2/3 what the Nokia did.
More to your original point however, it wouldn't be unthinkable to have a monochrome display on a very basic phone and have it last ten days with current battery technology... but almost nobody (save for you and me) would buy the phone.
I could see a free download. Doesn't the WOW retail pack come with some free time? Wouldn't this just be shifting the distribution mechanism? Also, Blizzard could more carefully control how fast the game world grew by not allowing too many downloads.
The totally free ad-supported version was more than a little suspicious.
Burgercraft was the clue-stick that some of us had to be beaten with.
95% less power use means that the product engineers will just cram more volt-sucking crap in the laptop - Battery life will not be enhanced due to feature-creep.
I've noticed that things that are outside your normal spending habits raise red flags. I once had an ECH refused at a department store not because of NSF, but because I hadn't written a check in a while.
I will never understand why PDF is not the standard for resume submittal. OOo and WordPerfect export PDF natively. Windows users with anything else (Office, Abiword, - anything) can use PDFCreator or some other such free PDF'er. Reasonably competent Linux and Mac users can create PDFs without extra proprietary software.
PDF looks the same anywhere, is reasonably read-only (ie, you have to purposely edit a PDF, and know how to do it), and doesn't have all of your previous edits and other info embedded it the file like.doc does.
But, even if that was not the case, "productivity" is up because even if people as individuals are accomplishing less (which I doubt), gains from tech accomplish more than the alleged loss of human input.
The whole idea of recruiters on job sites goes against the very thing that draws job seekers to the job site. A job seeker chooses to search a job-site to find specific things - to cut through the crap and find an actual position to apply to. Perhaps a well-placed advertisement on the job site would be appropriate ("Having trouble finding the right position? Visit Recruiter-X's website!") Not two dozen virtually identical postings, all keyword compliant, that only lead to the recruiter's site. The US military is pretty bad about this too.
Just today a recruiter called my cell phone while I was driving. It was a number I didn't recognize, so I didn't answer it. She called back thirty seconds later. I was peeved when I answered and it was some recruiter - I mean shit, I'm busy, that's why I didn't answer my phone. Leave a message or something. And she didn't even mention anything specific, just fishing.
I don't want to totally dismiss the idea of recruiters/headhunters, I just think they don't belong on job-sites.
I hate my ABS brakes. The car I bought in August is the first one I've had w/ ABS. In normal-condition driving I have never felt them kick in. (Traction control kicks on sometimes, especially when starting on a particular hill where there is a lot of gravel.)
Thus, this was the first winter where ABS has been an issue for me. I feel it has significantly lengthened stopping distances... to the point where I actually missed one turn because my car was not stopping. Not only was it not stopping, but I didn't feel like I had control over the brake. If I hit an ice patch and slide a little, fine - I'd like to think my winter driving style adjustments can handle that, but the ABS stays on way too long for my liking. I think I was going about 20 mph at that point, so it's not like I was tearing up the road.
In a *learning language*, the person has enough to learn about without having to deal with data types.
Speaking as a person who attempted to use python as a learning language (but gave up due to more pressing projects), you DO need to deal with data types, and I am undecided about whether declaring the type might be beneficial, as has been suggested.
I don't know about the whole quantum/relativity thing, but the hot dogs I can handle. Hot dogs come in both 8-pk AND 10-pk. Dogs are usually sold in 1 pound packs, and cheap bastards buy 10-to-1 hot dogs (more but smaller), where real men buy 8-to-1 hot dogs (fewer but larger). The bread people would rather not sell two kinds of hot dog buns, and just sell everybody the 10 packs since they're cheap as hell anyway.
To tell the truth, the strangest part of the story was that the kid didn't get the Little Red Book at the end. I guess I believed the story, but it didn't feel right.
Oh, and how does a fake story illustrate real abuses? wtf?
How about the fact that prior to 2001 the FISA court "modified" only 2 warrants, where after 2001 it has been 179? Now, if you're the Prez, and you have the choice between letting these cases drop or exercising executive authority (that may, contrary to popular opinion, be perfectly legal) to find terrorists in-country? Even if you come down on the side of sticking w/ FISA, at least admit that it's not exactly a no-brainer to do so when you've been shut down by them so many times.
And since I know not many/.ers read conservative news sources, a recent editorial in The Weekly Standard included this....
On Monday, December 19, General Michael Hayden, former director of the National Security Agency and now deputy director of national intelligence, briefed journalists. The back--and--forth included this exchange:
Reporter: Have you identified armed enemy combatants, through this program, in the United States?
Gen. Hayden: This program has been successful in detecting and preventing attacks inside the United States.
Reporter: General Hayden, I know you're not going to talk about specifics about that, and you say it's been successful. But would it have been as successful-can you unequivocally say that something has been stopped or there was an imminent attack or you got information through this that you could not have gotten through going to the court?
Gen. Hayden: I can say unequivocally, all right, that we have got information through this program that would not otherwise have been available.
Commander in Chief is not good at all. As with the West Wing, the political bias of the show is hard to swallow for anybody right-of-center such as myself. Donald Sutherland plays the unfortunately predictable Devil Incarnate Republican, and Pat Buchanan was held up as the ultimate boogieman in the premier episode. The only difference between the shows is that Sutherland represents what the writers think Republicans are actually like (Pure Concentrated Evil), and Alan Alda represents what the West Wing writers wish Republicans would be like (pro-choice, able and willing to articulate complex thoughts).
Not only does it absorb more heat than any natural ground cover, we routinely remove snow from it during the winter - snow that would otherwise reflect back a significant amount of solar radiation.
As I perceived it, Fox News was GREAT when it first came out, then degraded after only a few years. Now the only things worth watching on Fox News are "Special Report w/ Brit Hume" (the 6-7pm news show) and "Fox News Sunday" (which also airs on Fox affiliates).
For a long time, CNN was the only game in town. Now it seems to have drifted significantly leftward. I accidentally watched half an hour of CNN recently and found myself wanting to interject after each partial-fact was announced. But if there's anything CNN isn't, it's "right leaning".
MSNBC seems to take good talent and good shows and make them into crap. "Hardball" was once the best show of its genre because it had a large devotion to analysis. Now it's a shouting match like all the others. "The Situation w/ Tucker Carlson" was at least entertaining and engaging (a friendly "Air-America" host usually debates Tucker for a significant percentage of the show), but they moved it to the 11pm slot where I can't really justify staying up to watch it.
I reflexively change the channel any time I see the following people on a show: Andrea Mitchell (MS/NBC reporter), Sen. Barbara Boxer, Cindy Sheehan, Sen. Harry Reid, Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Those people are all insane and should be given large quantities of psychoactive drugs.
None of the network nightly newscasts are worth a damn. Some of the better shows are the weekly ones: Meet the Press, Washington Week (PBS), Fox News Sunday, McLaughlan Group, and as an honarable mention, the Chris Matthews Show.
Slashdot Mirror
* (Not actually a CD, but a long term deposit that behaves exactly like a CD.)
I should point out that HSBCdirect and Emigrant have better rates at the moment, though for CDs Emigrant has a minimum of $1,000 - not sure if HSBC has online CDs or not.
Take it from someone who used to do polling analysis- good polls are NOT conducted during work hours. Crappy "media" polls are conducted throughout the day because that's when one can get the cheapest rates at the call centers. Zogby also polls some during the day, but nobody in "the biz" takes his numbers seriously.
Another questionable polling technique is the computer automated response. Rassmussen and Survey USA have a computer call a zillion people and have them interact with a computer voice. While this does seem extremely questionable to me, in my opinion/experience Rassmussen's numbers seem to be closer than a lot of other publicly released polls.
99% of the population has never seen a "real" poll (Private poll from a reputable pollster complete with crosstabulated demographic data) and would have no idea what is actually done with one.
"Downtown" parking is metered.
Other relatively high traffic areas have one or two-hour limit signs.
Residential areas often have 12 or 24 hour limits, just to make sure some homeless person doesn't park his/her VW Microbus on the street for a year and a half.
And of course, street sweeping night - no parking between 10pm and 6am on whichever day they sweep the streets.
Say what you will about the wisdom of any particular conflict, but understand that no other democratic nation is capable of mobilizing such an extremely large force when it is necessary.
There was a Win95 w/ USB, but I can't name any device that ever had a driver for it.
More to your original point however, it wouldn't be unthinkable to have a monochrome display on a very basic phone and have it last ten days with current battery technology... but almost nobody (save for you and me) would buy the phone.
The totally free ad-supported version was more than a little suspicious.
Burgercraft was the clue-stick that some of us had to be beaten with.
95% less power use means that the product engineers will just cram more volt-sucking crap in the laptop - Battery life will not be enhanced due to feature-creep.
... and, if this isn't just cable as we know it, wouldn't cable companies be in better position to capitalize on the existing infrastructure?
You are aware that a Firefox user can add any number of search engines as plug-ins to the search bar, no? Mycroft is the project.
I've noticed that things that are outside your normal spending habits raise red flags. I once had an ECH refused at a department store not because of NSF, but because I hadn't written a check in a while.
PDF looks the same anywhere, is reasonably read-only (ie, you have to purposely edit a PDF, and know how to do it), and doesn't have all of your previous edits and other info embedded it the file like .doc does.
There is of course, No Such Agency that would do such a thing.
But, even if that was not the case, "productivity" is up because even if people as individuals are accomplishing less (which I doubt), gains from tech accomplish more than the alleged loss of human input.
Just today a recruiter called my cell phone while I was driving. It was a number I didn't recognize, so I didn't answer it. She called back thirty seconds later. I was peeved when I answered and it was some recruiter - I mean shit, I'm busy, that's why I didn't answer my phone. Leave a message or something. And she didn't even mention anything specific, just fishing.
I don't want to totally dismiss the idea of recruiters/headhunters, I just think they don't belong on job-sites.
Thus, this was the first winter where ABS has been an issue for me. I feel it has significantly lengthened stopping distances... to the point where I actually missed one turn because my car was not stopping. Not only was it not stopping, but I didn't feel like I had control over the brake. If I hit an ice patch and slide a little, fine - I'd like to think my winter driving style adjustments can handle that, but the ABS stays on way too long for my liking. I think I was going about 20 mph at that point, so it's not like I was tearing up the road.
Speaking as a person who attempted to use python as a learning language (but gave up due to more pressing projects), you DO need to deal with data types, and I am undecided about whether declaring the type might be beneficial, as has been suggested.
I don't know about the whole quantum/relativity thing, but the hot dogs I can handle. Hot dogs come in both 8-pk AND 10-pk. Dogs are usually sold in 1 pound packs, and cheap bastards buy 10-to-1 hot dogs (more but smaller), where real men buy 8-to-1 hot dogs (fewer but larger). The bread people would rather not sell two kinds of hot dog buns, and just sell everybody the 10 packs since they're cheap as hell anyway.
Not to mention significantly more alive.
Your tiger deterrent might be more impressive if you had previously been attacked by a tiger.
Oh, and how does a fake story illustrate real abuses? wtf?
How about the fact that prior to 2001 the FISA court "modified" only 2 warrants, where after 2001 it has been 179? Now, if you're the Prez, and you have the choice between letting these cases drop or exercising executive authority (that may, contrary to popular opinion, be perfectly legal) to find terrorists in-country? Even if you come down on the side of sticking w/ FISA, at least admit that it's not exactly a no-brainer to do so when you've been shut down by them so many times.
And since I know not many /.ers read conservative news sources, a recent editorial in The Weekly Standard included this....
Commander in Chief is not good at all. As with the West Wing, the political bias of the show is hard to swallow for anybody right-of-center such as myself. Donald Sutherland plays the unfortunately predictable Devil Incarnate Republican, and Pat Buchanan was held up as the ultimate boogieman in the premier episode. The only difference between the shows is that Sutherland represents what the writers think Republicans are actually like (Pure Concentrated Evil), and Alan Alda represents what the West Wing writers wish Republicans would be like (pro-choice, able and willing to articulate complex thoughts).
Not only does it absorb more heat than any natural ground cover, we routinely remove snow from it during the winter - snow that would otherwise reflect back a significant amount of solar radiation.
For a long time, CNN was the only game in town. Now it seems to have drifted significantly leftward. I accidentally watched half an hour of CNN recently and found myself wanting to interject after each partial-fact was announced. But if there's anything CNN isn't, it's "right leaning".
MSNBC seems to take good talent and good shows and make them into crap. "Hardball" was once the best show of its genre because it had a large devotion to analysis. Now it's a shouting match like all the others. "The Situation w/ Tucker Carlson" was at least entertaining and engaging (a friendly "Air-America" host usually debates Tucker for a significant percentage of the show), but they moved it to the 11pm slot where I can't really justify staying up to watch it.
I reflexively change the channel any time I see the following people on a show: Andrea Mitchell (MS/NBC reporter), Sen. Barbara Boxer, Cindy Sheehan, Sen. Harry Reid, Rep. Nancy Pelosi. Those people are all insane and should be given large quantities of psychoactive drugs.
None of the network nightly newscasts are worth a damn. Some of the better shows are the weekly ones: Meet the Press, Washington Week (PBS), Fox News Sunday, McLaughlan Group, and as an honarable mention, the Chris Matthews Show.
Thank God for the internet.
I'm not sure that the classic skin is any faster than the default xp skin, but I most certainly turn off most animation effects.