Before paranoia of identity theft reached the proportions it has today, I had friends in high school who used other's credit cards on numerous occassions. This was the late 90s, so buying online was fairly mainstream. But, I think you could still accomplish the same thing today with a little ingenuity. Back then, they simply found credit card receipts in the trash at a certain un-named chain store and then used that information to find any missing information (I think this store would print the credit card number and maybe the last name, but no street address information or other information). Once all the information was found, they just ordered stuff online or through catalogs and had it shipped to an abandoned house. By time the state cops (or feds maybe) caught on, all but 1 of them had given it up and I think the last one slipped out with a fine and returning the items that the cops knew about. I think one of them even built one of his computers with components ordered this way:\
I never participated though because my dad would have handed me my ass on a silver platter if he found out.
I'm not experienced on this topic at all. But, I believe you are allowed to excerpt certain portions of copyrighted works for the purposes of reviewing them. IE, you can quote books, but you can not take a whole chapter and claim it as your own. IE, you can show a couple 5 second clips of a movie while you criticize the movie. I think this comparison could easily fall under this category.
Let's look at this topic from a different perspective: the personal saving rate over the last few years has been the lowest ever in the entire history of the USA. Right now it is hovering around 1%. Meaning that 99% of the disposable income for the average person or family is being turned around and spent on something. So, let's assume we were able to completely eliminate piracy and that there really are 2.6 billion songs, movies, and programs people would now be buying instead of stealing (no laughing please). Where is that money going to come from? It would be hard to push that 1% figure even lower, but even if we did push it lower, the total 1% does not represent enough money to cover all those 2.6 billion items. So, the money to cover all those 2.6 billion items would have to come from somewhere else... people would have to restructure their disposable income so that they now spend less money on items and services from other industries. That means that other industries will suffer while the BSA, MPAA, and RIAA industries flourish.
But what is the net effect on the economy of the USA? Nothing. The net effect is 0 because the consumers are not spending any additional money. Perhaps we need to put the US Treasury in charge of this effort rather than the US DoJ. The only accomplishment of this new "war" effort is consumers spending extra taxes for the DoJ to shift wealth to the rich moguls of the BSA, MPAA, and RIAA.
"If you look historically at opiate use (heroin is an opioid, or synthetic opiate), you'll see that it very much mirrored alcohol use in our society: the majority of users were able to consume casually, and a small subset allowed themselves to become addicted."
Wow, someone is actually arguing that heroin is not addictive to most users? Geez, never though I'd see the day.
"Incidentally, opiate addiction is far less dangerous than alcohol addiction"
Omg, even worse, you seem to be arguing that a heroin addiction is ok. Lemme guess, you're a heroin dealer with a lobbyist in DC?
Let me put it plain and simple for you: if you try heroin once, you probably have a 75% chance of trying it a second time. If you try it a second time, you probably have a 100% chance of trying it a third time. Then after that, the only way you stop is if your life gets so fucked up that you realize you need to get into a detox center where someone restrains your addiction. Or, if you lose all monetary income and the heroin has already fucked your mind up so bad that you can't figure out how to rob someone. Or, if it kills you.
Plain and simple. Take you FUD and leave please. We don't need morons like you telling people it's ok to get addicted to heroin.
Actually, no. We do not freely provide information about our top secret spy and communication satellites so that the Russians or Chinese can take them down if they so choose. The only way you can try to determine the orbits of these satellites is by observing them and generating data points for a state vector.
And, the Russians have done just that in the past (as have we, the USA). The Russians and ourselves (for each other) use powerful and precise telescopes to look up at the sky to observe unknown payloads to (try to) determine their functions.
About the only freely available information from launch you get is the location of the launch pad... from which you can determine some boundaries on the inclination of the orbit and guess what its function might be.
You don't know all the positions of the government's satellites, why should you care about the blimps? And no, this isn't a tinfoil hat theory. Do you have any idea how many payloads are launched each year and described only as a "4000 kg to 6000 kg chunk of mass"?
Remember that satellite photo of the 9/11 ground zero area that could show vehicles and people? Think that's the best the government has... lmao... think again. It's amazing the things you learn when you get into defense - and then it's funny seeing people squirm about something so trivial as a blimp floating along the coast.
To me it looks more like Kerry and Bush equally avoided many parts of the questions and/or provided completely useless answers. And Nader seemed to go off topic many times. Just look at question #11 - Kerry justified his "flip-flopping" but avoided the rest of the question; Bush declined to answer; and as for Nader, since when is a hot dog a "topic of national importance"? (Although I do give him credit for being candid.)
And then question #5 - Bush completely avoids mentioning the electoral college system and looking at the popular vote (obviously the burning part of the question here); Kerry practically only focuses on the 2000 election and doesn't mention how he actually plans to fix anything; all the while, Nader covers most aspects of the question fairly well but does do a bit of 'rambling'.
Half of what I hate about politics anymore is that no one seems to address the issues, face the facts, cough up what their plan actually is, or answer the questions that are actually asked. Students would fail their tests if they answered essay questions in the way that the presidential candidates (or their campaign team) answered debate questions (unless they have some crack-pot teacher/professor). Don't start every response with an exposé on how great America is, or the last 20 bills you voted for that are vaguely related to the issue, or how the other candidate is a 'bad guy'.
Just answer the damn question.
A 2 to 4 sentence question should take a maximum of 8 to 12 sentences to answer with a targeted response. We don't need 2 introductory paragraphs, 5 sentences each, explaining your view on some far-reaching issue, then another 2 paragraphs telling us how bad your opponent is, then another paragraph telling us that you will fix the problem (without telling us how). Skip all the crap and just tell us how.
For the slow ones out there (Bush, Kerry, are you reading this?), here's an example...
Question: Social Security is failing, how do you plan to fix, or change, or eliminate this problem?
Answer #1: I will fix the problem by increasing tax rates by X% for these X tax areas. And, by reducing the benefits for retirees with more than X amount of assets or external income.
Answer #2: I will change the problem by increasing the age at which retirees begin receiving benefits.
Answer #3: I will eliminate the problem by eliminating the social security program by issuing bonds to pay current benefits and eliminating the social security tax for all current workers. Anyone who has already paid into the SS program will receive a proportionate amount of benefits back from the bond funds. By doing this, the entire public bears the burden of paying for SS benefits to retirees, while at the same time eliminating the normal SS revenue stream, but we are better off in the end because SS will have been eliminated alltogether.
There... now that wasn't too hard, was it? Politics is more fun when it is about the issues and not about slandering the other guy or avoiding questions or trying to cover your blunders.
HOW WILL YOU MOVE THE COUNTRY FORWARD AND FIX OUR PROBLEMS? NOT HOW WILL YOU MAKE YOURSELF NOT LOOK LIKE A MORON/DUMBASS/INCOMPETENT PRESIDENT/INCOMPETENT CANDIDATE?
For the record: Depending on how close the race is in my state, I will: 1(Close): Vote for Bush 2(Not Close): Vote for Badnarik - Libertarian 3(Not Close and #2 is not on the ballot): Vote for Nader [Due to the ridiculous electoral college system.]
What do you guys see in in RvB? The last time it came up on/. (or elsewhere) I downloaded a couple of the episodes and found them completely boring and lacking any humor whatsoever. The dialogue just wasn't funny, it sounded like a couple of boring people talking about what happened during their useless day. On the other hand, Family Guy is freaking hilarious!:P (Although it is a professional production.) So what's the deal here? Someone clue me in please. Has it changed since then and become funny?
I did not know that, but thanks for the information. If nothing else, it's a courtesy to the recipient (unless it's a major institution like the power company, etc). If you have your car fixed at a local mechanic and ask if you can post-date a day or two to wait for your paycheck, they'll probably be glad to wait a day or two rather than having a returned check from the bank for non-sufficient funds. Although, you should try to verify that you have available funds before having such kinds of work done:)
You actually have a good idea here that I have never seen implemented in any theater I have visited. After the previews but right before the movie starts (to ensure that as many people are seated since a lot of people skip the previews and come in right before the movie starts), they should flash a banner on the screen that says "Please take the next 20 seconds to silence all phones."
Well, see that's part of your problem. You may care about your kids, but no one else in the theater cares about your kids. They care about their own kids and have their phones set to vibrate only, so that if they need to be contacted then they are the only ones that know. Those backlit LCD screens are really freaking bright in an extremely dark theater and catch your eye very easily (unless tucked away in a pocket or something).
This may seem a bit blunt, but the fact of the matter is that I and many others have taken the appropriate steps to guarantee that we will not bother anyone while at the theater (or other similar event) and you should too.
And on a side note, if you've raised kids to the age of 16 that can't take care of themselves, then you have other issues... Or they're a bunch of hooligans getting into trouble all the time, which means you've failed as a parent.
I went to court (traffic court) once for a ticket and they had a sign on the door asking people to turn off their cell phones. I left mine in my vehicle because I didn't want to risk anything even before seeing the sign, even on vibrate. One lady did have her phone go off though, and the judge told her to cough it up. Funny enough, one of the prosecutors had a phone go off as well and gave it to the judge too. Serves the bastard right, lol! j/k:)
I agree, floating a check when you know you do not currently have the funds available but are expecting them in a day or two is not right. If you won't have the funds for a day or two, ask to post-date the check (although this could still be a gamble unless the funds are to come from a weekly pay check - ie if you expect someone to pay you back in a day or two). However, I have floated a check once or twice because I did not have access to a computer at that immediate point in time to transfer money from my savings to my checking account. But in this case I do have the money, I just need to get it into the right account (most of it stays in the savings account with the higher interest rate). And I think my overdraft protection would automatically take it out of my savings account anyways through a checking-to-savings account link.
Not many people know how the credit card system works because you usually only learn about it when you try to get a merchant account to process credit cards (or if you go into the business otherwise). There are 100s of credit card companies that will provide you with an account at their institution from which you can take money to pay for purchases. There are also 100s of merchant account companies that will provide merchants with an account at their institution to accept money from customers. But when you swipe your card at the store, the store doesn't directly talk to your institution, nor does your institution directly talk with the merchant's institution. It would be horribly complex (perhaps nearly impossible) for the 100s of credit card institutions, the 100s of merchant institutions, and the millions of credit card accepting locations around the world to individually and independently link up.
So, there is a middle man who provides a set of protocols for the credit card institutions, the merchant institutions, and the credit card accepting locations for each to connect to the middle man. (Think of having 5 computers and using 1 NIC in each to connect to a switch instead of giving each computer 4 NICs to connect to each of the other computers independently.) So when you swipe your card at the retail location, the retail location talks to the middle man who talks to your credit card institution who checks to see if you have an account with them and if you have the appropriate funds available. If both of the above conditions are true, your institution replies with an 'affirmative' to the middle man who forwards the reply on to the retail location. The goods are then given to the customer and the retail location asks for the money to be transferred to their merchant account. This request goes to the middle man, then to your credit card institution, which then transfers the money to the merchant's institution (from which the merchant can transfer the money into a traditional bank account) - I'm not sure if the money transfer goes back through the middle man, I'm thinking the actual money does not, but a signal indicating the transfer has occurred does pass through the middle man... I have not seen a clear answer on this yet.
My point here is that the middle men (of which there are only a handful - 2 or 3 major ones, maybe 4 or 5 total), who process $Billions a day and "are" the infrastructure of the credit card system (ie without which, no one's credit card would work) do not go down like this. They have redundant upon redundant systems so that if one fails then another picks up until they can get that one back online. If your particular institution happens to go down - it's no big deal because the other 99 institutions and their customers are still up. If the #1 middle man goes down, half the people in the world can't use their credit card - think about the ensuing pandemonium:\
It's amazing how fragile our financial system is when you actually look at the inner workings of it all.
Did the chargeback go through though? I paid for some stuff through PayPal, but it turned out to be something other than what was advertised, so I disputed the payment with my CC company (DiscoverCard). DiscoverCard investigated the case and said that they would not do the chargeback because PayPal "fulfilled their duties" by transfering the money to the intended party. So, from DiscoverCard's point of view, I was not purchasing anything from the seller... I was paying PayPal to perform a money transfer. Since PayPal performed the money transfer, I got what I paid for. The whole situation was complete crap; thankfully that was the first and last time I ever used PayPal.
When this situation originally came up, I first contacted the seller, but they just blew me off. So next I contacted PayPal, they basically blew me off too. So then I went to my CC company, figuring they were my friend. Nope, they just blew me off too.:\ I think I would have had better luck with Visa, so I'm gradually phasing out my connection with DiscoverCard.
Anyone ever play Carcassonne? It might be newer than Catan but it shares some very similar characteristics. I'm not sure if they have any relationship or if it's just because they are both German style games. In Carcassonne the game starts out with 1 landscape tile (could be part of a city, farmland, road, or water feature) and everyone takes turns placing 1 tile and can place 1 "follower" (a guy) if they choose (you have a total of 6 or 7 followers, but there are many more tiles - 71 in total). The followers give you control over certain stretches of a certain type of tile. After all the tiles are placed the game ends and you tally up everyone's score based on what areas they control. Most points win. The game is based on the French city Carcassone (I guess the Germans spent a lot of time there:D). Additional information can be found here:
http://boardgamecentral.com/games/carcassonne.ht ml
The game also has a bunch of expansion sets to expand the number of players, add tile types, and to add some new types of followers (originally there was only 1 type).
I've never heard about Catan before this, but based on my experience with Carcassonne and the description of Catan, I think I'll try to pick up a set.
The lights in London are like this. From red they go to yellow first to let everyone rev up their engine a tad (most people drive manual shifts in London) then they go to green. From green, they still go to yellow then to red. And, to add to the confusion, some lights are mounted horizontally (instead of vertically).
"some countries in africa the possibility of contracting HIV during your lifetime is now nearly 100% for teenagers."
If this includes contracting HIV at birth from your mother, that's a separate category. But, if this assumes that at age 0, 0% have HIV, then there's a simple solution: stop running around having sex with everyone! These people are just ignorant and either a) don't know that sex can transmit HIV or b) don't care. I'm 21 and haven't had sex yet because I'm scared shitless of contracting HIV or some other STD (even living in the US). Almost every person my age that I know is a sex-craving lunatic (to one extent or another) running around having sex with every other person they can find. You think I'm gonna risk it all and jump in the mix?
I had my engine stall while going 50 mph through a winding mountain road (was a '96 or '97 vehicle). Freaked the hell out of me, but I was able to stomp on the brakes and brute-force the steering wheel so I wouldn't drive off the side of the mountain. It took a lot of effort (as I suspected) and I don't know if really young drivers, seniors, or someone with just-below-average strength could have handled it. Luckily I found a turn-out fairly quickly and was able to pull off the road and check my vehicle out to see what had happened.
Imagine if we only had to pay $50 or $60 for a phone, internet, and cable combination service. That would be great. But I'm sure we would need more than the 1 local cable company we currently have in most areas to do this. The government should buy or seize (since cable companies have probably made back their investment in profits already) the broadband infrastructure or force the sharing of the infrastructure (as it has been with phone lines) to open up the markets to more providers. Then we could have 20 or 30 companies offering all these services together and prices would get pounded into the ground while the quality of services would keep rising. Man, that's a pipe dream.
When a CD comes in a slip case with the open side covered by one of those stickers, I just pull out my scissors and cut off the other end of the slip case. I get my CD out and the sticker was never tainted!:)
You've obviously never seen true HD format material then. The quality of a 1080 HD signal (not paying attention to interlaced versus progressive for now) absolutely blows away the 480 signal you get from DVDs. There is a very limited selection of material available over 480, but you can find some at Microsoft's WMV site here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/cont ent_provider/film/ContentShowcase.aspx that is easily played on your computer. Even on my dinky 19" monitor, I can see a quality difference... imagine what this would look like on a projector throwing an image larger than 100" diagonal, or on an all-in-one HD television at 40" or 50" diagonal.
I get jitters just thinking of what I could do with a 150" screen showing a 1080 signal. You could sit so close, and not see any pixelation effects, that it would almost feel like an IMAX theatre!
I've worked on scientific satellite designs and the Ka band is quite frequently used for downloading data from satellites to Earth. I would like to know what specific ranges of the Ka band Direct TV will be allowed to use, the article does not mention this information. If media content providers are allowed to move in on frequencies that are typically used for scientific satellites (or even close enough to cause interference), costs for obtaining this data and processing it could increase immensely. Or even worse, communication time could be reduced or even eliminated. Hopefully Direct TV will be constained enough that they don't impinge on these scientific efforts.
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Before paranoia of identity theft reached the proportions it has today, I had friends in high school who used other's credit cards on numerous occassions. This was the late 90s, so buying online was fairly mainstream. But, I think you could still accomplish the same thing today with a little ingenuity. Back then, they simply found credit card receipts in the trash at a certain un-named chain store and then used that information to find any missing information (I think this store would print the credit card number and maybe the last name, but no street address information or other information). Once all the information was found, they just ordered stuff online or through catalogs and had it shipped to an abandoned house. By time the state cops (or feds maybe) caught on, all but 1 of them had given it up and I think the last one slipped out with a fine and returning the items that the cops knew about. I think one of them even built one of his computers with components ordered this way :\
I never participated though because my dad would have handed me my ass on a silver platter if he found out.
I'm not experienced on this topic at all. But, I believe you are allowed to excerpt certain portions of copyrighted works for the purposes of reviewing them. IE, you can quote books, but you can not take a whole chapter and claim it as your own. IE, you can show a couple 5 second clips of a movie while you criticize the movie. I think this comparison could easily fall under this category.
Let's look at this topic from a different perspective: the personal saving rate over the last few years has been the lowest ever in the entire history of the USA. Right now it is hovering around 1%. Meaning that 99% of the disposable income for the average person or family is being turned around and spent on something. So, let's assume we were able to completely eliminate piracy and that there really are 2.6 billion songs, movies, and programs people would now be buying instead of stealing (no laughing please). Where is that money going to come from? It would be hard to push that 1% figure even lower, but even if we did push it lower, the total 1% does not represent enough money to cover all those 2.6 billion items. So, the money to cover all those 2.6 billion items would have to come from somewhere else ... people would have to restructure their disposable income so that they now spend less money on items and services from other industries. That means that other industries will suffer while the BSA, MPAA, and RIAA industries flourish.
But what is the net effect on the economy of the USA? Nothing. The net effect is 0 because the consumers are not spending any additional money. Perhaps we need to put the US Treasury in charge of this effort rather than the US DoJ. The only accomplishment of this new "war" effort is consumers spending extra taxes for the DoJ to shift wealth to the rich moguls of the BSA, MPAA, and RIAA.
"If you look historically at opiate use (heroin is an opioid, or synthetic opiate), you'll see that it very much mirrored alcohol use in our society: the majority of users were able to consume casually, and a small subset allowed themselves to become addicted."
Wow, someone is actually arguing that heroin is not addictive to most users? Geez, never though I'd see the day.
"Incidentally, opiate addiction is far less dangerous than alcohol addiction"
Omg, even worse, you seem to be arguing that a heroin addiction is ok. Lemme guess, you're a heroin dealer with a lobbyist in DC?
Let me put it plain and simple for you: if you try heroin once, you probably have a 75% chance of trying it a second time. If you try it a second time, you probably have a 100% chance of trying it a third time. Then after that, the only way you stop is if your life gets so fucked up that you realize you need to get into a detox center where someone restrains your addiction. Or, if you lose all monetary income and the heroin has already fucked your mind up so bad that you can't figure out how to rob someone. Or, if it kills you.
Plain and simple. Take you FUD and leave please. We don't need morons like you telling people it's ok to get addicted to heroin.
Actually, no. We do not freely provide information about our top secret spy and communication satellites so that the Russians or Chinese can take them down if they so choose. The only way you can try to determine the orbits of these satellites is by observing them and generating data points for a state vector. And, the Russians have done just that in the past (as have we, the USA). The Russians and ourselves (for each other) use powerful and precise telescopes to look up at the sky to observe unknown payloads to (try to) determine their functions. About the only freely available information from launch you get is the location of the launch pad ... from which you can determine some boundaries on the inclination of the orbit and guess what its function might be.
You don't know all the positions of the government's satellites, why should you care about the blimps? And no, this isn't a tinfoil hat theory. Do you have any idea how many payloads are launched each year and described only as a "4000 kg to 6000 kg chunk of mass"?
... lmao ... think again. It's amazing the things you learn when you get into defense - and then it's funny seeing people squirm about something so trivial as a blimp floating along the coast.
Remember that satellite photo of the 9/11 ground zero area that could show vehicles and people? Think that's the best the government has
To me it looks more like Kerry and Bush equally avoided many parts of the questions and/or provided completely useless answers. And Nader seemed to go off topic many times. Just look at question #11 - Kerry justified his "flip-flopping" but avoided the rest of the question; Bush declined to answer; and as for Nader, since when is a hot dog a "topic of national importance"? (Although I do give him credit for being candid.)
And then question #5 - Bush completely avoids mentioning the electoral college system and looking at the popular vote (obviously the burning part of the question here); Kerry practically only focuses on the 2000 election and doesn't mention how he actually plans to fix anything; all the while, Nader covers most aspects of the question fairly well but does do a bit of 'rambling'.
Half of what I hate about politics anymore is that no one seems to address the issues, face the facts, cough up what their plan actually is, or answer the questions that are actually asked. Students would fail their tests if they answered essay questions in the way that the presidential candidates (or their campaign team) answered debate questions (unless they have some crack-pot teacher/professor). Don't start every response with an exposé on how great America is, or the last 20 bills you voted for that are vaguely related to the issue, or how the other candidate is a 'bad guy'.
Just answer the damn question.
A 2 to 4 sentence question should take a maximum of 8 to 12 sentences to answer with a targeted response. We don't need 2 introductory paragraphs, 5 sentences each, explaining your view on some far-reaching issue, then another 2 paragraphs telling us how bad your opponent is, then another paragraph telling us that you will fix the problem (without telling us how). Skip all the crap and just tell us how.
For the slow ones out there (Bush, Kerry, are you reading this?), here's an example...
Question: Social Security is failing, how do you plan to fix, or change, or eliminate this problem?
Answer #1: I will fix the problem by increasing tax rates by X% for these X tax areas. And, by reducing the benefits for retirees with more than X amount of assets or external income.
Answer #2: I will change the problem by increasing the age at which retirees begin receiving benefits.
Answer #3: I will eliminate the problem by eliminating the social security program by issuing bonds to pay current benefits and eliminating the social security tax for all current workers. Anyone who has already paid into the SS program will receive a proportionate amount of benefits back from the bond funds. By doing this, the entire public bears the burden of paying for SS benefits to retirees, while at the same time eliminating the normal SS revenue stream, but we are better off in the end because SS will have been eliminated alltogether.
There... now that wasn't too hard, was it? Politics is more fun when it is about the issues and not about slandering the other guy or avoiding questions or trying to cover your blunders.
HOW WILL YOU MOVE THE COUNTRY FORWARD AND FIX OUR PROBLEMS? NOT HOW WILL YOU MAKE YOURSELF NOT LOOK LIKE A MORON/DUMBASS/INCOMPETENT PRESIDENT/INCOMPETENT CANDIDATE?
For the record: Depending on how close the race is in my state, I will:
1(Close): Vote for Bush
2(Not Close): Vote for Badnarik - Libertarian
3(Not Close and #2 is not on the ballot): Vote for Nader
[Due to the ridiculous electoral college system.]
lmao, that movie looks like the start of some crazy pr0n flick.
sheesh
What do you guys see in in RvB? The last time it came up on /. (or elsewhere) I downloaded a couple of the episodes and found them completely boring and lacking any humor whatsoever. The dialogue just wasn't funny, it sounded like a couple of boring people talking about what happened during their useless day. On the other hand, Family Guy is freaking hilarious! :P (Although it is a professional production.) So what's the deal here? Someone clue me in please. Has it changed since then and become funny?
I did not know that, but thanks for the information. If nothing else, it's a courtesy to the recipient (unless it's a major institution like the power company, etc). If you have your car fixed at a local mechanic and ask if you can post-date a day or two to wait for your paycheck, they'll probably be glad to wait a day or two rather than having a returned check from the bank for non-sufficient funds. Although, you should try to verify that you have available funds before having such kinds of work done :)
You actually have a good idea here that I have never seen implemented in any theater I have visited. After the previews but right before the movie starts (to ensure that as many people are seated since a lot of people skip the previews and come in right before the movie starts), they should flash a banner on the screen that says "Please take the next 20 seconds to silence all phones."
Then start the movie.
Well, see that's part of your problem. You may care about your kids, but no one else in the theater cares about your kids. They care about their own kids and have their phones set to vibrate only, so that if they need to be contacted then they are the only ones that know. Those backlit LCD screens are really freaking bright in an extremely dark theater and catch your eye very easily (unless tucked away in a pocket or something).
This may seem a bit blunt, but the fact of the matter is that I and many others have taken the appropriate steps to guarantee that we will not bother anyone while at the theater (or other similar event) and you should too.
And on a side note, if you've raised kids to the age of 16 that can't take care of themselves, then you have other issues... Or they're a bunch of hooligans getting into trouble all the time, which means you've failed as a parent.
I went to court (traffic court) once for a ticket and they had a sign on the door asking people to turn off their cell phones. I left mine in my vehicle because I didn't want to risk anything even before seeing the sign, even on vibrate. One lady did have her phone go off though, and the judge told her to cough it up. Funny enough, one of the prosecutors had a phone go off as well and gave it to the judge too. Serves the bastard right, lol! j/k :)
I agree, floating a check when you know you do not currently have the funds available but are expecting them in a day or two is not right. If you won't have the funds for a day or two, ask to post-date the check (although this could still be a gamble unless the funds are to come from a weekly pay check - ie if you expect someone to pay you back in a day or two). However, I have floated a check once or twice because I did not have access to a computer at that immediate point in time to transfer money from my savings to my checking account. But in this case I do have the money, I just need to get it into the right account (most of it stays in the savings account with the higher interest rate). And I think my overdraft protection would automatically take it out of my savings account anyways through a checking-to-savings account link.
Not many people know how the credit card system works because you usually only learn about it when you try to get a merchant account to process credit cards (or if you go into the business otherwise). There are 100s of credit card companies that will provide you with an account at their institution from which you can take money to pay for purchases. There are also 100s of merchant account companies that will provide merchants with an account at their institution to accept money from customers. But when you swipe your card at the store, the store doesn't directly talk to your institution, nor does your institution directly talk with the merchant's institution. It would be horribly complex (perhaps nearly impossible) for the 100s of credit card institutions, the 100s of merchant institutions, and the millions of credit card accepting locations around the world to individually and independently link up.
... I have not seen a clear answer on this yet.
:\
So, there is a middle man who provides a set of protocols for the credit card institutions, the merchant institutions, and the credit card accepting locations for each to connect to the middle man. (Think of having 5 computers and using 1 NIC in each to connect to a switch instead of giving each computer 4 NICs to connect to each of the other computers independently.) So when you swipe your card at the retail location, the retail location talks to the middle man who talks to your credit card institution who checks to see if you have an account with them and if you have the appropriate funds available. If both of the above conditions are true, your institution replies with an 'affirmative' to the middle man who forwards the reply on to the retail location. The goods are then given to the customer and the retail location asks for the money to be transferred to their merchant account. This request goes to the middle man, then to your credit card institution, which then transfers the money to the merchant's institution (from which the merchant can transfer the money into a traditional bank account) - I'm not sure if the money transfer goes back through the middle man, I'm thinking the actual money does not, but a signal indicating the transfer has occurred does pass through the middle man
My point here is that the middle men (of which there are only a handful - 2 or 3 major ones, maybe 4 or 5 total), who process $Billions a day and "are" the infrastructure of the credit card system (ie without which, no one's credit card would work) do not go down like this. They have redundant upon redundant systems so that if one fails then another picks up until they can get that one back online. If your particular institution happens to go down - it's no big deal because the other 99 institutions and their customers are still up. If the #1 middle man goes down, half the people in the world can't use their credit card - think about the ensuing pandemonium
It's amazing how fragile our financial system is when you actually look at the inner workings of it all.
Did the chargeback go through though? I paid for some stuff through PayPal, but it turned out to be something other than what was advertised, so I disputed the payment with my CC company (DiscoverCard). DiscoverCard investigated the case and said that they would not do the chargeback because PayPal "fulfilled their duties" by transfering the money to the intended party. So, from DiscoverCard's point of view, I was not purchasing anything from the seller ... I was paying PayPal to perform a money transfer. Since PayPal performed the money transfer, I got what I paid for. The whole situation was complete crap; thankfully that was the first and last time I ever used PayPal.
:\ I think I would have had better luck with Visa, so I'm gradually phasing out my connection with DiscoverCard.
When this situation originally came up, I first contacted the seller, but they just blew me off. So next I contacted PayPal, they basically blew me off too. So then I went to my CC company, figuring they were my friend. Nope, they just blew me off too.
Anyone ever play Carcassonne? It might be newer than Catan but it shares some very similar characteristics. I'm not sure if they have any relationship or if it's just because they are both German style games. In Carcassonne the game starts out with 1 landscape tile (could be part of a city, farmland, road, or water feature) and everyone takes turns placing 1 tile and can place 1 "follower" (a guy) if they choose (you have a total of 6 or 7 followers, but there are many more tiles - 71 in total). The followers give you control over certain stretches of a certain type of tile. After all the tiles are placed the game ends and you tally up everyone's score based on what areas they control. Most points win. The game is based on the French city Carcassone (I guess the Germans spent a lot of time there :D). Additional information can be found here:
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http://boardgamecentral.com/games/carcassonne.h
The game also has a bunch of expansion sets to expand the number of players, add tile types, and to add some new types of followers (originally there was only 1 type).
I've never heard about Catan before this, but based on my experience with Carcassonne and the description of Catan, I think I'll try to pick up a set.
No, I think he means they go like this:
green > yellow > red > yellow > green
The lights in London are like this. From red they go to yellow first to let everyone rev up their engine a tad (most people drive manual shifts in London) then they go to green. From green, they still go to yellow then to red. And, to add to the confusion, some lights are mounted horizontally (instead of vertically).
"some countries in africa the possibility of contracting HIV during your lifetime is now nearly 100% for teenagers."
If this includes contracting HIV at birth from your mother, that's a separate category. But, if this assumes that at age 0, 0% have HIV, then there's a simple solution: stop running around having sex with everyone! These people are just ignorant and either a) don't know that sex can transmit HIV or b) don't care. I'm 21 and haven't had sex yet because I'm scared shitless of contracting HIV or some other STD (even living in the US). Almost every person my age that I know is a sex-craving lunatic (to one extent or another) running around having sex with every other person they can find. You think I'm gonna risk it all and jump in the mix?
This happened to me when I was 20 driving through the Sierra-Nevada mountains.
I had my engine stall while going 50 mph through a winding mountain road (was a '96 or '97 vehicle). Freaked the hell out of me, but I was able to stomp on the brakes and brute-force the steering wheel so I wouldn't drive off the side of the mountain. It took a lot of effort (as I suspected) and I don't know if really young drivers, seniors, or someone with just-below-average strength could have handled it. Luckily I found a turn-out fairly quickly and was able to pull off the road and check my vehicle out to see what had happened.
Imagine if we only had to pay $50 or $60 for a phone, internet, and cable combination service. That would be great. But I'm sure we would need more than the 1 local cable company we currently have in most areas to do this. The government should buy or seize (since cable companies have probably made back their investment in profits already) the broadband infrastructure or force the sharing of the infrastructure (as it has been with phone lines) to open up the markets to more providers. Then we could have 20 or 30 companies offering all these services together and prices would get pounded into the ground while the quality of services would keep rising. Man, that's a pipe dream.
When a CD comes in a slip case with the open side covered by one of those stickers, I just pull out my scissors and cut off the other end of the slip case. I get my CD out and the sticker was never tainted! :)
You've obviously never seen true HD format material then. The quality of a 1080 HD signal (not paying attention to interlaced versus progressive for now) absolutely blows away the 480 signal you get from DVDs. There is a very limited selection of material available over 480, but you can find some at Microsoft's WMV site here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/cont ent_provider/film/ContentShowcase.aspx that is easily played on your computer. Even on my dinky 19" monitor, I can see a quality difference ... imagine what this would look like on a projector throwing an image larger than 100" diagonal, or on an all-in-one HD television at 40" or 50" diagonal.
I get jitters just thinking of what I could do with a 150" screen showing a 1080 signal. You could sit so close, and not see any pixelation effects, that it would almost feel like an IMAX theatre!
I've worked on scientific satellite designs and the Ka band is quite frequently used for downloading data from satellites to Earth. I would like to know what specific ranges of the Ka band Direct TV will be allowed to use, the article does not mention this information. If media content providers are allowed to move in on frequencies that are typically used for scientific satellites (or even close enough to cause interference), costs for obtaining this data and processing it could increase immensely. Or even worse, communication time could be reduced or even eliminated. Hopefully Direct TV will be constained enough that they don't impinge on these scientific efforts.