Not that I necessarily doubt that the video is genuine and shows what it claims, but he went to all the trouble to execute this, record handheld video, obtain the security camera footage, and sync it all together, but he doesn't once show us what he is supposedly sneaking through, other than a mostly unidentifiable glance in the security footage. He should have kept his camera filming the whole time while he walked into the bathroom, went into a stall, and then pulled out what he showed the camera. As it is, this could just as easily be a hoax. That "object" we see in the security cam footage could just as easily be a piece of fabric
When I read the summary, I was a bit confused by it. It almost makes it sound like it's the Voyager 2 that is being talked about. To make things even more confusing, I had thought the Voyager 1 had done this already many years ago. I guess I somehow didn't make the distinction between the termination shock and the helopause a decade ago. The illustration in the 3rd link shows that all much better. It's also interesting to see that the heliosphere extends MUCH farther i the opposite direction. I never really thought about that, but I guess it's because the solar system is moving to the left in that illustration.
Yeah, and I don't have the faintest idea where they get these numbers from (other than from their ass). I checked again now and my formerly million dollar home is now worth $44k, which is much closer, but now about 30-40% too low. But the numbers don't even make any sense. They don't come from the state assessed values. And they don't come from any of the automated appraisal sources like zillow, bank of america, epraisal etc. They have my entire block of mostly identical houses all listed in the low to mid $40ks, except for 3 houses that are just like the rest but somehow list for $600k. How do they come up with that?
I can't imagine anyone using spokeo for anything important, as their info is not even close to being correct. When I checked my profile a year or 2 ago (When you could see it all without paying), it had me living in a million dollar home (off by more than an order of magnitude), with a several hobbies which weren't even the slightest bit correct (knitting, and horses I think), and had someone the same age as my mother living in the house, despite the fact that she never lived there, had any mail delivered there, or anything. I don't remember the rest, but category after category I was reading it thinking "wow, I barely even know myself".
HBO, for one. And of course, anybody who enjoys big-budget HBO series like Game of Thrones, because the profitability of HBO determines how much they can afford to spend on a production.
Nice job taking that out of context. The context I used that in was "who cares if their costs go up, because their revenues will go up more" and you just turn it into "who cares if their costs go up". No company is going to give a shit if their expenses go up $X if that results in revenues increasing by $2X. People watching game of thrones on cable don't care, because it's not going to increase their cost. The extra cost will be paid for by the people subscribing to the direct service, and the price they pay will be way more than the cost increase. It won't have a negative effect on the end customer.
I completely disagree. Comcast's incentive to carry HBO is that people know HBO, they want HBO, and they are willing to pay for HBO. Comcast charges $15 for HBO, and they give HBO $7 of that, so Comcast makes $8/customer. If some customers go straight to HBO, it doesn't really increase Comcasts cost to carry HBO. $8/customer/month is still nearly-pure profit. Comcast has the whole distribution network online, so the incremental cost of carrying HBO is virtually zero for them, with the exception that it takes up a few slots in their limited bandwidth. So the only way it would make sense for Comcast to stop carrying HBO is if Comcast had a lineup in which every other channel was more profitable than HBO. Fat chance. It's more like the exact opposite...HBO is one of the most profitable channels.
As far as HBOs increased cost, who cares? They are going to be making twice as much per direct subscriber as they are per cable subscriber. That extra revenue will more than make up for any overhead costs. They don't even have to market it.They aren't marketing HBO direct now (because they are offering it) and look how many people are banging down the door. As it grows and becomes even more profitable, then they may decide to start marketing it. But they will have more than made up for those costs.
And if they want to appease the cable companies, then make HBO direct cost more than buying from your cable company. You can get it for $15 from cable, or $20 from HBO. Then cable subscribers still have an incentive to get it from their cable company, and non-cable-subscribers can still get it direct like they want. But I don't think that's necessary. TV still has a critical mass and most customers aren't so comfortable watching shows on their computer or hooking a computer up to their TV, so I think most customers will still choose TV. Offering direct will mostly just allow HBO to grab that extra money that's being left on the table right now.
But if HBO wants to take the route they are taking, then I guess they can just watch their most long term profitable option slip through their fingers. They won't be the first.
Point #1 is stupid because it acts like the only way to offer HBO Go direct is to STOP offering through cable companies. That's a false dichotomy. They can still offer it that way...they don't have to stop doing it, and you can be sure Comcast isn't going to refuse to carry HBO. So a number of their customers stay with the cable companies, a number switch to getting HBO Go direct from the source and HBO gets more money to offset the increased costs, and then HBO gets a whole class of customers who never would have paid the cable company. Considering they're already paying for the basic expenses of providing HBO Go, they only thing they'll have to do is scale their infastructure to handle the higher number of people watching HBO Go, and the increased revenue is more than going to pay for that.
Point #3 is stupid, because again it sets up this false dichotomy. Would you support TV or internet? Why the hell not both? Like I said, they've already got the basic infrastructure there for their TV subscribers. For internet subscribers they don't have to add much else. It's mostly just scaling up what they have. And why wouldn't it be good to jump on the small and upcoming market? What, do you want to wait until it's huge and the boat has already sailed? Well, yours wouldn't be the first industry to make that mistake.
Point #2...well, it's hard to argue with that. TW would certainly obstruct it. They're the worst cable company out there. Unlike other cable providers, TW won't even let you watch basic cable on a cablecard in linux because they copyprotect every channel. At least other companies mostly only do that with premium channels. As sad as it is to say, I'd rather have comcast than TW.
Actually, it's "correct horse battery staple". And the funny thing is, I didn't even have to look it up. As the comic says "you've already memorized it".
I think this is evolutions way of saying "Don't have children, dudes."
I'm in that category for other reasons. (Autoimmune. Besides I'd rather build a robot with my own AI)
So you think he shouldn't reproduce just because he's unable to watch certain types of television? WTF? That's one of the lamest criteria for deciding whether to reproduce. Hell, I bet some people would say that's a sign he should reproduce like crazy and create a bunch of kids who are physiologically forced to go outside and play.
I don't think I've actually watched an Olympic Games sports* event since I was 12.
Aside from the ridiculous rules, the insane costs, the fact that the country's representatives are not necessarily their best, the presence of 'team' sports, the use of pools (the competition form, not the bodies-of-water) in some sports events, etc. have long put me off watching.
* But I still watch the opening and closing ceremonies. I guess it's not entirely dissimilar to people who watch the SuperBowl for the commercials/halftime show, rather than for the football game.
Wait! There's a football game?
Not sure how to take that. Are you one of the people who watches it for the commercials, or are you from Europe?
If he tells you your security is lax, and he can get critical information off your product, you should at least let him show you where the mistake
From TFA:
We have requested information that will allow us to investigate the console in question and have still not received the information needed to replicate the researchers’ claims
I mean, how many accidents will occur once human error is removed from the equation?
Yes, because we all know that GPS and street information can never be wrong. That truck driver won't just be stuck under the overpass, he'll be all the way through (just missing a bit of the trailer), since the vehicle will be going full, safe speed for that unpaved part of the superhighway.
Lets see, since there cameras and sensors all over these autonomous vehicles, I guess it will be literally impossible to add one more sensor that sticks up about 3 inches or so above the trailer to detect potential collisions. Plus bridges are often labeled with signs indicating their height. It would literally be impossible to have all of those cameras OCR those signs as an additional indicator of a potential collision. And since I thought of these 2 possibilities in 60 seconds, theres no way there could possibly be any additional possibilities given just a bit more thought, and no way the guys at google could possibly think of the same. Nope, it's convertible trailer time for sure.
The problem is that it means that people will spend longer looking at the screen. Rather than glancing at it and seeing the layout instantly, they'll have to find the car on the screen, which may mean one or two seconds without their eyes on the road.
And not only that, but since the map can't scroll, I'm assuming the map can't rotate either. So people are going to have to spend additional time thinking how a direction on the map translates to a direction in the car. I can't see that helping matters.
Very good point. It's an odd example, but kind of applies. In the game Angband (a roguelike), there is an option to keep the map centred on the player. Normally I don't use this, because it slows things down on slower hardware, and the game has my full attention. If however I get teleported somewhere, I do fine myself needing to spend time trying to locate myself, as it's not immediately obvious. It seems silly to place drivers in the situation where they must spend time scanning the map for their car.
Not sure how your story is relevant. Oh, wait a minute....you've got a teleporting car?
Ideally though maybe it's best that devices are required to blank the map when the car is traveling above a certain speed, relying only on audio prompts.
Yes, I'd certainly appreciate that when I'm using the GPS in the passenger seat. Oh wait, no I wouldn't.
You might go to an arbitrator once or twice in your lifetime. These companies deal with them all the time. That means every arbitrator has no incentive to keep you happy and every incentive to keep the other side -- their repeat customers -- happy.
True. In fact, I was reading something a month or two ago where someone was researching arbitration. They called up a few arbitration companies, pretending to be a corporation interested in hiring for arbitration, and the arbitration companies were all making guarantees about how sure they are that they would be able to rule in their favor.
Sorry, but you are wrong. Yes, there is lots of legalese in the contract, but mostly that stuff covers just the corner cases. The only information that more than 99% of people need to know is contained in the Truth-in-Lending Disclosure Statement, which is a federally required and (mostly) standardized form. This form indicates: the amount you are borrowing how much you will pay in interest over the life of the loan what interest rate if the rate can adjust and if so by how much and how often your initial monthly payment, and if it's an adjustable rate also what the maximum monthly payment will be after adjustment if you have any balloon payment due at the end of the loan term your fees for establishing the mortgage (which are detailed separately in the HUD-1 form, also federally required and standardized) what the fee will be for late payments if there is a prepayment penalty
This information is as much as most people need to know to make an appropriate decision as to whether or not they should take the mortgage. I'm certainly not saying all of the legalese is unimportant, but if something in the mortgage is going to be a deal breaker, in almost all cases it's going to be something in the TIL or accompanying HUD-1 forms.
Well, that's not exactly correct. The section 179 deduction would let you take a tax deduction only for the purchase price of the vehicle, up to $100k max. So if you spent $50k on the vehicle, then your deduction was only $50k. If you spent $150k, you only got $100k.
Furthermore, those are deductions, not credits. That means you take the deduction amount and multiply it by your marginal tax rate to get the amount of the deduction (roughly...it will be slightly less than that if the deduction then knocks you into a lower tax bracket). That means a $100k deduction is only equivalent to tax credit of less than $40k.
It's a credit, not a deduction, so you get the $7500 regardless. Take my word as someone who bought a Leaf and is in the process of filling out the tax forms.
Sorry, but that's not what "credit" means to the IRS. Credit means you get a dollar-for-dollar discount on your tax due, whereas deductions mean you get less than a dollar-for-dollar discount. However, tax credits are divided into 2 types: refundable credits and non-refundable credits. A refundable credit means that even if you owe no tax, you still get the full amount of the credit. This is what you are thinking of. However, there are also non-refundable credits, which means the credit can be used to reduce taxes owed, but can NEVER*** be used to get back more than you payed.
The tax credit for these vehicles is filed on IRS form 8936. Reading the instructions from that form (http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f8936.pdf), the credit is non-refundable:
If you cannot use part of the personal portion of the credit because of the tax liability limit, the unused credit is lost. The unused personal portion of the credit cannot be carried back or forward to other tax years.
So no, even though you are currently in the process of filling out the forms, I won't take your word for. But I will suggest that you might want to double check that you filled out the forms correctly. If you used this credit to get back more than you payed***, then you filled out the forms wrong.
*** Note that since refundable credits are applied after non-refundable credits, it can APPEAR that a non-refundable credit gives you back more than you paid if you add it in after first figuring your taxes without it. However, that's not really the case. The non-refundable first gives you a credit up to the amount of tax liability (giving you back exactly what you already paid, but not a penny more) and THEN your refundable credits are applied giving you back money beyond what you already paid.
Evidently you are more humour-impaired than a Syrian border guard with 240mm shell up his scrotum.
Either that, or you just aren't very good at writing humor.
That said, some of the PenFed cards do have "Pentagon" across the front, evidently not yours.
Certainly not the one pictured on penfeds website. In fact, I don't think they've been putting that on cards for many years. Haven't had it on any of the visa or amex cards we've got from them in the last 2-3. That last card we got from them that said that was around 2006 or 2007.
Seriously? Ok, while we are suggesting things not to do, more than worrying about what credit card you'd pull out, I rather suggest that you don't try to sneak into countries where you aren't legally allowed to be, because while the guards might look the other way on your way in, your exit might not be so timely.
Oh yeah, there's also the fact that the word "pentagon" appears nowhere on the card, front or back.
They have no such card now. You can get "points" or cash back with no explanation of what a point it. The cash back card has 5% on gas but then 0.25% on everything else.
Yes they do. It's that platinum rewards card. The points can be redeemed for visa gift cards at 1 point = 1 cent. You can browse the rewards website here: www.penfedplatinumrewards.com
2) I like the fact that I am not paying the VISA transaction tax driving up the cost of goods constantly.
But you are paying the VISA tax. Very few places offer cash discounts (gas stations being the notable exception), so the transaction costs are already figured into the price whether you pay with cash or credit. By paying with cash, you are passing up the opportunity to get cash back on your purchases. Even when there are cash discounts, I almost always use credit cards. At gas stations, the typical cash discount is 10 cents or less. I've been getting 5% cash back on gas purchases for years, so I pay a 10 cent premium per gallon and then get 15-25 cents in cash back.
Slashdot Mirror
Not that I necessarily doubt that the video is genuine and shows what it claims, but he went to all the trouble to execute this, record handheld video, obtain the security camera footage, and sync it all together, but he doesn't once show us what he is supposedly sneaking through, other than a mostly unidentifiable glance in the security footage. He should have kept his camera filming the whole time while he walked into the bathroom, went into a stall, and then pulled out what he showed the camera. As it is, this could just as easily be a hoax. That "object" we see in the security cam footage could just as easily be a piece of fabric
Ugh, keep up on your space programme.
V2 was launched first, V1 was then launched later
When did I say otherwise?
When I read the summary, I was a bit confused by it. It almost makes it sound like it's the Voyager 2 that is being talked about. To make things even more confusing, I had thought the Voyager 1 had done this already many years ago. I guess I somehow didn't make the distinction between the termination shock and the helopause a decade ago. The illustration in the 3rd link shows that all much better. It's also interesting to see that the heliosphere extends MUCH farther i the opposite direction. I never really thought about that, but I guess it's because the solar system is moving to the left in that illustration.
Yeah, and I don't have the faintest idea where they get these numbers from (other than from their ass). I checked again now and my formerly million dollar home is now worth $44k, which is much closer, but now about 30-40% too low. But the numbers don't even make any sense. They don't come from the state assessed values. And they don't come from any of the automated appraisal sources like zillow, bank of america, epraisal etc. They have my entire block of mostly identical houses all listed in the low to mid $40ks, except for 3 houses that are just like the rest but somehow list for $600k. How do they come up with that?
I can't imagine anyone using spokeo for anything important, as their info is not even close to being correct. When I checked my profile a year or 2 ago (When you could see it all without paying), it had me living in a million dollar home (off by more than an order of magnitude), with a several hobbies which weren't even the slightest bit correct (knitting, and horses I think), and had someone the same age as my mother living in the house, despite the fact that she never lived there, had any mail delivered there, or anything. I don't remember the rest, but category after category I was reading it thinking "wow, I barely even know myself".
As far as HBOs increased cost, who cares?
HBO, for one. And of course, anybody who enjoys big-budget HBO series like Game of Thrones, because the profitability of HBO determines how much they can afford to spend on a production.
Nice job taking that out of context. The context I used that in was "who cares if their costs go up, because their revenues will go up more" and you just turn it into "who cares if their costs go up". No company is going to give a shit if their expenses go up $X if that results in revenues increasing by $2X. People watching game of thrones on cable don't care, because it's not going to increase their cost. The extra cost will be paid for by the people subscribing to the direct service, and the price they pay will be way more than the cost increase. It won't have a negative effect on the end customer.
I completely disagree. Comcast's incentive to carry HBO is that people know HBO, they want HBO, and they are willing to pay for HBO. Comcast charges $15 for HBO, and they give HBO $7 of that, so Comcast makes $8/customer. If some customers go straight to HBO, it doesn't really increase Comcasts cost to carry HBO. $8/customer/month is still nearly-pure profit. Comcast has the whole distribution network online, so the incremental cost of carrying HBO is virtually zero for them, with the exception that it takes up a few slots in their limited bandwidth. So the only way it would make sense for Comcast to stop carrying HBO is if Comcast had a lineup in which every other channel was more profitable than HBO. Fat chance. It's more like the exact opposite...HBO is one of the most profitable channels.
As far as HBOs increased cost, who cares? They are going to be making twice as much per direct subscriber as they are per cable subscriber. That extra revenue will more than make up for any overhead costs. They don't even have to market it.They aren't marketing HBO direct now (because they are offering it) and look how many people are banging down the door. As it grows and becomes even more profitable, then they may decide to start marketing it. But they will have more than made up for those costs.
And if they want to appease the cable companies, then make HBO direct cost more than buying from your cable company. You can get it for $15 from cable, or $20 from HBO. Then cable subscribers still have an incentive to get it from their cable company, and non-cable-subscribers can still get it direct like they want. But I don't think that's necessary. TV still has a critical mass and most customers aren't so comfortable watching shows on their computer or hooking a computer up to their TV, so I think most customers will still choose TV. Offering direct will mostly just allow HBO to grab that extra money that's being left on the table right now.
But if HBO wants to take the route they are taking, then I guess they can just watch their most long term profitable option slip through their fingers. They won't be the first.
Point #1 is stupid because it acts like the only way to offer HBO Go direct is to STOP offering through cable companies. That's a false dichotomy. They can still offer it that way...they don't have to stop doing it, and you can be sure Comcast isn't going to refuse to carry HBO. So a number of their customers stay with the cable companies, a number switch to getting HBO Go direct from the source and HBO gets more money to offset the increased costs, and then HBO gets a whole class of customers who never would have paid the cable company. Considering they're already paying for the basic expenses of providing HBO Go, they only thing they'll have to do is scale their infastructure to handle the higher number of people watching HBO Go, and the increased revenue is more than going to pay for that.
Point #3 is stupid, because again it sets up this false dichotomy. Would you support TV or internet? Why the hell not both? Like I said, they've already got the basic infrastructure there for their TV subscribers. For internet subscribers they don't have to add much else. It's mostly just scaling up what they have. And why wouldn't it be good to jump on the small and upcoming market? What, do you want to wait until it's huge and the boat has already sailed? Well, yours wouldn't be the first industry to make that mistake.
Point #2...well, it's hard to argue with that. TW would certainly obstruct it. They're the worst cable company out there. Unlike other cable providers, TW won't even let you watch basic cable on a cablecard in linux because they copyprotect every channel. At least other companies mostly only do that with premium channels. As sad as it is to say, I'd rather have comcast than TW.
I agree. It is embarrassing. Neither of these dorks have a clue how to use lmgtfy.com. You don't say "LMGTFY" and then post a link to wikipedia.
Actually, it's "correct horse battery staple". And the funny thing is, I didn't even have to look it up. As the comic says "you've already memorized it".
I think this is evolutions way of saying "Don't have children, dudes."
I'm in that category for other reasons. (Autoimmune. Besides I'd rather build a robot with my own AI)
So you think he shouldn't reproduce just because he's unable to watch certain types of television? WTF? That's one of the lamest criteria for deciding whether to reproduce. Hell, I bet some people would say that's a sign he should reproduce like crazy and create a bunch of kids who are physiologically forced to go outside and play.
I don't think I've actually watched an Olympic Games sports* event since I was 12.
Aside from the ridiculous rules, the insane costs, the fact that the country's representatives are not necessarily their best, the presence of 'team' sports, the use of pools (the competition form, not the bodies-of-water) in some sports events, etc. have long put me off watching.
* But I still watch the opening and closing ceremonies.
I guess it's not entirely dissimilar to people who watch the SuperBowl for the commercials/halftime show, rather than for the football game.
Wait! There's a football game?
Not sure how to take that. Are you one of the people who watches it for the commercials, or are you from Europe?
How many years already the Voyager spacecraft kept sending us valuable data?
And it does all that without any of the super-gigaherz chips nor gigabytes of RAM nor terabits/s connection devices
On the other hand, do you think your iPad will last 5 years?
Did the ipad 3 cost hundreds of millions of dollars? Did the voyager spacecraft have to fit into a purse?
If he tells you your security is lax, and he can get critical information off your product, you should at least let him show you where the mistake
From TFA:
We have requested information that will allow us to investigate the console in question and have still not received the information needed to replicate the researchers’ claims
I mean, how many accidents will occur once human error is removed from the equation?
Yes, because we all know that GPS and street information can never be wrong. That truck driver won't just be stuck under the overpass, he'll be all the way through (just missing a bit of the trailer), since the vehicle will be going full, safe speed for that unpaved part of the superhighway.
Lets see, since there cameras and sensors all over these autonomous vehicles, I guess it will be literally impossible to add one more sensor that sticks up about 3 inches or so above the trailer to detect potential collisions. Plus bridges are often labeled with signs indicating their height. It would literally be impossible to have all of those cameras OCR those signs as an additional indicator of a potential collision. And since I thought of these 2 possibilities in 60 seconds, theres no way there could possibly be any additional possibilities given just a bit more thought, and no way the guys at google could possibly think of the same. Nope, it's convertible trailer time for sure.
The problem is that it means that people will spend longer looking at the screen. Rather than glancing at it and seeing the layout instantly, they'll have to find the car on the screen, which may mean one or two seconds without their eyes on the road.
And not only that, but since the map can't scroll, I'm assuming the map can't rotate either. So people are going to have to spend additional time thinking how a direction on the map translates to a direction in the car. I can't see that helping matters.
Very good point. It's an odd example, but kind of applies. In the game Angband (a roguelike), there is an option to keep the map centred on the player. Normally I don't use this, because it slows things down on slower hardware, and the game has my full attention. If however I get teleported somewhere, I do fine myself needing to spend time trying to locate myself, as it's not immediately obvious. It seems silly to place drivers in the situation where they must spend time scanning the map for their car.
Not sure how your story is relevant. Oh, wait a minute....you've got a teleporting car?
Ideally though maybe it's best that devices are required to blank the map when the car is traveling above a certain speed, relying only on audio prompts.
Yes, I'd certainly appreciate that when I'm using the GPS in the passenger seat. Oh wait, no I wouldn't.
You might go to an arbitrator once or twice in your lifetime. These companies deal with them all the time. That means every arbitrator has no incentive to keep you happy and every incentive to keep the other side -- their repeat customers -- happy.
True. In fact, I was reading something a month or two ago where someone was researching arbitration. They called up a few arbitration companies, pretending to be a corporation interested in hiring for arbitration, and the arbitration companies were all making guarantees about how sure they are that they would be able to rule in their favor.
Sorry, but you are wrong. Yes, there is lots of legalese in the contract, but mostly that stuff covers just the corner cases. The only information that more than 99% of people need to know is contained in the Truth-in-Lending Disclosure Statement, which is a federally required and (mostly) standardized form. This form indicates:
the amount you are borrowing
how much you will pay in interest over the life of the loan
what interest rate
if the rate can adjust and if so by how much and how often
your initial monthly payment, and if it's an adjustable rate also what the maximum monthly payment will be after adjustment
if you have any balloon payment due at the end of the loan term
your fees for establishing the mortgage (which are detailed separately in the HUD-1 form, also federally required and standardized)
what the fee will be for late payments
if there is a prepayment penalty
This information is as much as most people need to know to make an appropriate decision as to whether or not they should take the mortgage. I'm certainly not saying all of the legalese is unimportant, but if something in the mortgage is going to be a deal breaker, in almost all cases it's going to be something in the TIL or accompanying HUD-1 forms.
Well, that's not exactly correct. The section 179 deduction would let you take a tax deduction only for the purchase price of the vehicle, up to $100k max. So if you spent $50k on the vehicle, then your deduction was only $50k. If you spent $150k, you only got $100k.
Furthermore, those are deductions, not credits. That means you take the deduction amount and multiply it by your marginal tax rate to get the amount of the deduction (roughly...it will be slightly less than that if the deduction then knocks you into a lower tax bracket). That means a $100k deduction is only equivalent to tax credit of less than $40k.
It's a credit, not a deduction, so you get the $7500 regardless. Take my word as someone who bought a Leaf and is in the process of filling out the tax forms.
Sorry, but that's not what "credit" means to the IRS. Credit means you get a dollar-for-dollar discount on your tax due, whereas deductions mean you get less than a dollar-for-dollar discount. However, tax credits are divided into 2 types: refundable credits and non-refundable credits. A refundable credit means that even if you owe no tax, you still get the full amount of the credit. This is what you are thinking of. However, there are also non-refundable credits, which means the credit can be used to reduce taxes owed, but can NEVER*** be used to get back more than you payed.
The tax credit for these vehicles is filed on IRS form 8936. Reading the instructions from that form (http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f8936.pdf), the credit is non-refundable:
If you cannot use part of the personal portion of the credit because of the tax liability limit, the unused credit is lost. The unused personal portion of the credit cannot be carried back or forward to other tax years.
So no, even though you are currently in the process of filling out the forms, I won't take your word for. But I will suggest that you might want to double check that you filled out the forms correctly. If you used this credit to get back more than you payed***, then you filled out the forms wrong.
*** Note that since refundable credits are applied after non-refundable credits, it can APPEAR that a non-refundable credit gives you back more than you paid if you add it in after first figuring your taxes without it. However, that's not really the case. The non-refundable first gives you a credit up to the amount of tax liability (giving you back exactly what you already paid, but not a penny more) and THEN your refundable credits are applied giving you back money beyond what you already paid.
Evidently you are more humour-impaired than a Syrian border guard with 240mm shell up his scrotum.
Either that, or you just aren't very good at writing humor.
That said, some of the PenFed cards do have "Pentagon" across the front, evidently not yours.
Certainly not the one pictured on penfeds website. In fact, I don't think they've been putting that on cards for many years. Haven't had it on any of the visa or amex cards we've got from them in the last 2-3. That last card we got from them that said that was around 2006 or 2007.
Seriously? Ok, while we are suggesting things not to do, more than worrying about what credit card you'd pull out, I rather suggest that you don't try to sneak into countries where you aren't legally allowed to be, because while the guards might look the other way on your way in, your exit might not be so timely.
Oh yeah, there's also the fact that the word "pentagon" appears nowhere on the card, front or back.
They have no such card now. You can get "points" or cash back with no explanation of what a point it. The cash back card has 5% on gas but then 0.25% on everything else.
Yes they do. It's that platinum rewards card. The points can be redeemed for visa gift cards at 1 point = 1 cent. You can browse the rewards website here:
www.penfedplatinumrewards.com
2) I like the fact that I am not paying the VISA transaction tax driving up the cost of goods constantly.
But you are paying the VISA tax. Very few places offer cash discounts (gas stations being the notable exception), so the transaction costs are already figured into the price whether you pay with cash or credit. By paying with cash, you are passing up the opportunity to get cash back on your purchases. Even when there are cash discounts, I almost always use credit cards. At gas stations, the typical cash discount is 10 cents or less. I've been getting 5% cash back on gas purchases for years, so I pay a 10 cent premium per gallon and then get 15-25 cents in cash back.