I don't work for them - I'm just a satisfied customer - but I found that T-mobile's PAYG plan is pretty fair. If you can tolerate a higher front-end investment, you can buy 1000 minutes of time for $100, and those minutes don't expire for a year. If you don't use the phone except to make calls that really need to be mobile - e.g., "Honey, I'm at the grocery store, what do we need?" and ordering take-out as you're leaving the office - it's more than enough talk time, and it costs less than $10/mo.
You did say that nonviolent means of crowd control are not, actually, better than violent ones. What exactly did you have in mind? No crowd control at all?
No, that only works if you're accelerating in the same direction at 1/2G the whole time. If you want to end up in the right place with zero speed, you need:
s = 0.5at^2
s = 0.5 * 4.9 * (3.5d * 24h/d * 3600s/hr)^2
= 224 042 112 000 m, a bit over 224 million km
Then double it, since you'll go just as far in the deceleration, and you get 448 million km, not 897.
I looked around a bit and went with T-Mobile. If you can tolerate a bit of up-front cost, you can get a phone for about $80 (phone price + $35 activation fee) and spend $100 to get 1000 prepaid minutes that don't expire for a year (if you put less on there, the minutes expire in 3 months). I got a Motorola v195, which no longer appears on their site, but it's a quad-band GSM - so I could use it worldwide. And T-mobile will unlock a prepaid phone on request after 3 months of use. (I don't work for them, or know anybody who does - but it was a pretty good deal.)
I've read your blog off and on for years. How odd that I should find you here, saying exactly what I would.
To reply to the Borg, let me point out that government consists of a bunch of people that enjoy a more-or-less exclusive right to use force in a given area. In the absence of a law framework, things get settled the old-fashioned way: can you make me do it? If I have a gun and you don't, there's pretty much nothing you can make me do. Ultimately, that's the way the goverment makes its decisions stick; it has the ability to throw you in jail for failing to follow the decisions of its courts.
I can't find exactly what I'm looking for, but I'm fairly certain that India's electronic system is meant solely for parliamentary elections. In the American system, such a thing is almost completely useless, as most elections involve an enormous number of smaller offices. In my next election, I will vote for a city council member; a county sheriff, tax assessor, clerk, judge, DA, and supervisor; and a state representative, senator, commissioner of insurance, public utilities commissioner, auditor, secretary of state, agriculture commissioner, and governor. And those are just the offices on the Democratic and Republican primary ballots that I saw on the county web site.
That gets people to take it back to a cart corral instead of just dropping it in the parking lot... I think this is more aimed at people who try to steal carts (they're surprisingly expensive).
I think you're responding to something I wasn't arguing. I didn't say "go to rot"; I said "go rot", as a slightly more polite version of "go f*** yourselves".
As for Reagan and China... well... I'm not sure what you think I believe. I don't think the Chinese are trying to export revolution, if that's what you mean about communism being a threat. I don't think they're likely to engage in large-scale military adventures any time soon. I do know that they, like all the other countries on earth, benefit from the fact that the US Navy keeps the seas open, and they recognize that the US has a power that no country can match and only one (the UK) can even say that it has to any degree: the ability to project military force wherever on the globe it is needed. Despite much talk about asymmetrical warfare over the past decade, the reality is that the utter dominance of the US in raw military power contributes significantly to its ability to deal with any kind of threat, because we can own the airspace.
As I said, do you think the world would be a better place if the US just closed up shop outside its borders?
If you are dissatisfied with the way the US runs the world - and to a large degree, it does - consider the other candidates for the job before you get too high with your dudgeon. Russia? China? Do you really think you'd be better off in their hands? Would you like to sail the seven seas without the giant hand of the US Navy making sure that problems stay local?
There seems to be an awful lot of "Quit it!" without a lot of thought into the next step. Do you really want an America that tells the world to go rot?
Maybe that if there were enormous fields of *industrial* hemp it would be a trivial matter to insert (quite a few) plants that weren't? You may disagree with the result, but the logic is pretty clear. As I understand it, numerous aerial techniques are used to identify stands of pot. These would cease to be of use. (I am aware that many on/. will view this as a feature, not a bug.)
If you think Time-Warner's cable service is bad, you have never experienced Comcast. The prices are no bargain, but in the three years I had Roadrunner my internet service dropped out *once*. For five days. Starting on August 29, 2005.
Since Comcast took over a few months ago, I have had dropouts lasting 30 minutes or more once or twice a week.
Others will comment on the rest of it, but one rather famous (among his critics) elision of his is in fact the flight of the bin Laden relatives out of the US. It occurred - as he clearly states in the movie - after 13 September. The assumption most people make, based on the overall flow of the movie and Moore's statement that "Not even Ricky Martin would fly. But really, who wanted to fly? No one. Except the bin Ladens," is that this was before the resumption of commercial flight patterns. It wasn't.
There's more at that 50 deceits website, but really it's a lot more important than just some guys on the internet pointing out where he "lied," or catching him in some technical error. It's the way that he casts the entire thing; he goes out of his way to create a fishy picture and then carefully neglects to tell you something that would cause you to reinterpret the events. E.g., in Bowling for Columbine, the famous gun-at-the-bank scene is not, in any way, what the bank normally did; they gave people a gift certificate and told them to go get it on their own. It's hardly surprising that he shows a lot of fishy situations when that is precisely what he is trying to create.
I think he does a great deal more harm to those who agree with him politically than he does to anyone else; don't be surprised if the mainstream tunes you out when you hop on board with conspiracy theorists. Of course, he's made a pile of cash off it, so why should he care?
I think you don't mean GSM as much as you mean "single standard", which is indeed advantageous. But for the vast majority of Americans who do not make frequent overseas trips, it doesn't matter whether the phones work overseas. What matters is that they work at home, at Grandma's, and on vacation - which they do. As is the case with Australia, the signature characteristic of the US is how damned big it is.
So no, our phones don't work overseas (unless you pony up and get a multi-band GSM), but that's also a near-valueless feature for the average consumer, because most of them will rarely (or never) go abroad. I'm 32, from a middle-class family, and I've left the lower 48 three times (though one was quite a trip). Next time I go, I'll just get a cheap mobile and prepaid card while I'm there, and tell the family what the number is. They can then call me whenever. (Or I'll just forward my Vonage. Even easier.)
Incidentally, as re: your distance comment, if you look at coverage maps of the US you'll find a lot of thin-to-nonexistent coverage areas - there is service on and within ~2 mi of major highways, but little or nothing off them. Similar solution to a similar problem - not enough people to make proper coverage worthwhile.
In the US, when mobile phones were first implemented, one of two choices could be made: either mobiles could be given a distinctive prefix (area code) of their own, or they could be integrated into the local phone systems. Because the overwhelming majority of US phone landlines feature free unlimited local calling, Americans were Not Into the idea of paying to call someone locally. Furthermore, the logic runs, the benefit of being mobile accrues to the person who is mobile, not to the person calling them, so the cost of being mobile should do so as well. So we chose to integrate them into the local systems, with the consequence that there is no easy way to know whether the phone number you are calling is a mobile or a landline; since number portability was introduced, it's virtually impossible unless you are privy to phone routing data (because what was once a landline number may now belong to a mobile).
This may or may not seem like a good idea to you, but it is the thought process that was applied. The practical upshot is that US plans feature a certain number of "primetime minutes" - minutes of phone usage between (typically) 7 am and 9 pm, M-F. Nights and weekends are free and unlimited. The network to which the destination belongs only matters if it's your own carrier; most higher-cost plans feature unlimited in-network mobile-to-mobile at all times of day or night. Otherwise, landline or mobile, it doesn't matter who you call, or who calls you. You have those minutes, you use them as you choose. With any major carrier, virtually all plans provide no-roaming service across the country.
Example: my wife's phone plan is $35/mo. For that she gets 300 primetime minutes and unlimited nights and weekends. She can make calls from anywhere in the US, to anywhere in the US, for no additional charge. This is in large measure what makes the system so palatable to Americans; for charges which are either similar to or less than total monthly charges anywhere else, we get a hugely flexible system. A GSM phone from the UK may operate in Greece, but not for the same price as if you were sitting in London.
Well, while the apostrophe is unforgivable, perhaps the misspelling was simply that they sponsored tuition for a child at that school. Thus, "Grant" Parents.
My wife has a cell phone, so there's one there when we travel. I can't get rid of the landline (though I did move to Vonage) because of said wife, who does not like the idea of not having a regular phone and would make it too much trouble to switch completely. So, given that I have to pay for her cell phone and a landline, it really would be $40 a month just so she can call me in a 10-minute span each day.
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I don't work for them - I'm just a satisfied customer - but I found that T-mobile's PAYG plan is pretty fair. If you can tolerate a higher front-end investment, you can buy 1000 minutes of time for $100, and those minutes don't expire for a year. If you don't use the phone except to make calls that really need to be mobile - e.g., "Honey, I'm at the grocery store, what do we need?" and ordering take-out as you're leaving the office - it's more than enough talk time, and it costs less than $10/mo.
You did say that nonviolent means of crowd control are not, actually, better than violent ones. What exactly did you have in mind? No crowd control at all?
So you think just shooting them is better?
Happens to us all. I think I rechecked my own math about a dozen times on that post.
Well, the guy *was* authoring cd's ca. 1990... I suspect he had a rather larger budget than you and I did.
It wasn't trivial to set up, but the docs were IIRC decent. I used it a few times.
Why not just get a new printer? They are still made, you know.
Green? Amber, baby, amber. Soothing to the eyes.
I looked around a bit and went with T-Mobile. If you can tolerate a bit of up-front cost, you can get a phone for about $80 (phone price + $35 activation fee) and spend $100 to get 1000 prepaid minutes that don't expire for a year (if you put less on there, the minutes expire in 3 months). I got a Motorola v195, which no longer appears on their site, but it's a quad-band GSM - so I could use it worldwide. And T-mobile will unlock a prepaid phone on request after 3 months of use. (I don't work for them, or know anybody who does - but it was a pretty good deal.)
To reply to the Borg, let me point out that government consists of a bunch of people that enjoy a more-or-less exclusive right to use force in a given area. In the absence of a law framework, things get settled the old-fashioned way: can you make me do it? If I have a gun and you don't, there's pretty much nothing you can make me do. Ultimately, that's the way the goverment makes its decisions stick; it has the ability to throw you in jail for failing to follow the decisions of its courts.
You know that a libertarian would just shoot the thief as soon as he broke into the house, right?
That was the example I was thinking of as well. Mod parent up.
I'd prefer paper, but...
That gets people to take it back to a cart corral instead of just dropping it in the parking lot... I think this is more aimed at people who try to steal carts (they're surprisingly expensive).
As for Reagan and China... well... I'm not sure what you think I believe. I don't think the Chinese are trying to export revolution, if that's what you mean about communism being a threat. I don't think they're likely to engage in large-scale military adventures any time soon. I do know that they, like all the other countries on earth, benefit from the fact that the US Navy keeps the seas open, and they recognize that the US has a power that no country can match and only one (the UK) can even say that it has to any degree: the ability to project military force wherever on the globe it is needed. Despite much talk about asymmetrical warfare over the past decade, the reality is that the utter dominance of the US in raw military power contributes significantly to its ability to deal with any kind of threat, because we can own the airspace.
As I said, do you think the world would be a better place if the US just closed up shop outside its borders?
There's a rather simple test to figure out which one is better and which is worse, you know: which one would you rather live under?
There seems to be an awful lot of "Quit it!" without a lot of thought into the next step. Do you really want an America that tells the world to go rot?
Maybe that if there were enormous fields of *industrial* hemp it would be a trivial matter to insert (quite a few) plants that weren't? You may disagree with the result, but the logic is pretty clear. As I understand it, numerous aerial techniques are used to identify stands of pot. These would cease to be of use. (I am aware that many on /. will view this as a feature, not a bug.)
Since Comcast took over a few months ago, I have had dropouts lasting 30 minutes or more once or twice a week.
There's more at that 50 deceits website, but really it's a lot more important than just some guys on the internet pointing out where he "lied," or catching him in some technical error. It's the way that he casts the entire thing; he goes out of his way to create a fishy picture and then carefully neglects to tell you something that would cause you to reinterpret the events. E.g., in Bowling for Columbine, the famous gun-at-the-bank scene is not, in any way, what the bank normally did; they gave people a gift certificate and told them to go get it on their own. It's hardly surprising that he shows a lot of fishy situations when that is precisely what he is trying to create.
I think he does a great deal more harm to those who agree with him politically than he does to anyone else; don't be surprised if the mainstream tunes you out when you hop on board with conspiracy theorists. Of course, he's made a pile of cash off it, so why should he care?
So no, our phones don't work overseas (unless you pony up and get a multi-band GSM), but that's also a near-valueless feature for the average consumer, because most of them will rarely (or never) go abroad. I'm 32, from a middle-class family, and I've left the lower 48 three times (though one was quite a trip). Next time I go, I'll just get a cheap mobile and prepaid card while I'm there, and tell the family what the number is. They can then call me whenever. (Or I'll just forward my Vonage. Even easier.)
Incidentally, as re: your distance comment, if you look at coverage maps of the US you'll find a lot of thin-to-nonexistent coverage areas - there is service on and within ~2 mi of major highways, but little or nothing off them. Similar solution to a similar problem - not enough people to make proper coverage worthwhile.
This may or may not seem like a good idea to you, but it is the thought process that was applied. The practical upshot is that US plans feature a certain number of "primetime minutes" - minutes of phone usage between (typically) 7 am and 9 pm, M-F. Nights and weekends are free and unlimited. The network to which the destination belongs only matters if it's your own carrier; most higher-cost plans feature unlimited in-network mobile-to-mobile at all times of day or night. Otherwise, landline or mobile, it doesn't matter who you call, or who calls you. You have those minutes, you use them as you choose. With any major carrier, virtually all plans provide no-roaming service across the country.
Example: my wife's phone plan is $35/mo. For that she gets 300 primetime minutes and unlimited nights and weekends. She can make calls from anywhere in the US, to anywhere in the US, for no additional charge. This is in large measure what makes the system so palatable to Americans; for charges which are either similar to or less than total monthly charges anywhere else, we get a hugely flexible system. A GSM phone from the UK may operate in Greece, but not for the same price as if you were sitting in London.
Well, while the apostrophe is unforgivable, perhaps the misspelling was simply that they sponsored tuition for a child at that school. Thus, "Grant" Parents.
I never said I wasn't a special case...