According to their website, Verizon sells unmetered service with 3-way calling, caller ID, and call waiting for less than I was paying for the same thing in my Bellsouth area. (I checked an address in Rutland, because it was easy to find a usable address there. YMMV, I've never even been to VT. But Vermontel is not exactly a major carrier there, they have 10% of the market.)
Outside of, I think, NYC (where IIRC unmetered landline plans were unavailable for a long time), and those that choose metered plans, landline-to-anything is free to the landline and has been so as long as I've been alive (32 yrs and counting). The resistance in the US market was the idea of paying to call someone else locally; callee gets the benefit of being mobile with the phone, so why should caller pay for it?
BTW, there's another crucial distinction: until very very recently, with the advent of unlimited free in-network calling, there was no difference in cost based on what you called. Even now, there is no difference in cost with a cellular phone in calling a landline or another network's mobile.
Anyway, with landline you pays your fee and you gets your line; use it 24/7 and the cost is still the same.
No, just non-mainstream. In hospital applications (the field I know best) they continue to be extraordinarily valuable because they are relatively nonintrusive, powered for weeks by a single AA battery, easily passed off to someone else, extremely durable to casual abuse, and much cheaper than cell phones.
I don't have a cell phone, although I am aware that is a rare thing these days. I just haven't figured out why I should pay $40 a month so my wife can reach me in the five minutes between when I walk out the door and when I roll into the garage.
Too bad you're anon, this is a good point. If you want less of a specific behavior, make it more expensive. Don't raise CAFE standards, or do dumb stuff like charge special fees - make the gas expensive and you'll get the desired result right away.
It's far more fuel-efficient to drive a Hummer to work for 3 miles away than it is to drive a hybrid to work from 40 miles away.
It's a Tahoe, and the alternative would only be about 15 miles... but that's my wife right there. And we've got a large vehicle to transport large objects when we need it.
You should invite these people to the rural USA - there are many, many train crossings for minor roads that consist of a railroad crossbuck. And nothing else. No alarm, no bell, nothing. Sign says railroad; best think about slowing down.
Even when the buyer has, say, classified military technology at hand? I'm sure they were all paid well, but I'm also quite certain that if they hadn't agreed there would have been an iron fist inside that velvet glove, starting with temporary blindings of the satellite and going up from there.
Indeed, one of the most common mistakes w/r/t US politics is a confusion of American patriotism with nationalist sentiment; although the two occasionally coexist, they are not as closely tied as in most European politics.
The trivial price of having the Postal Inspector (with the US Attorney lurking behind) on your side is one of the best bargains in the country. Send it registered mail, pay for it with a postal money order. Anyone, anywhere in the country, who tries to screw you over gets a very close, very looong look (on the order of 5 to 10 years) at what the federal government can do when it actually decides to do something.
I'd have said the same thing, if I hadn't watched it happen too many times to count. She reads each line in (max) two glances - I've watched her eyes as she reads, and there is at most one horizontal saccade (jump of the eyes) per vertical saccade.
Yes, you can communicate much more efficiently. Much of the length of English words is related to defining part of speech - we use "-ing" for adjectival forms of verbs, "-ly" for adverbs, etc. It's just an attribute that is expressed by a clearly recognizable pattern. As such, it's easily comprehended by the reader who can identify parts of words rather than letter-by-letter reading. This is the essence of true speed-reading.
An anecdotal observation: my wife is better than I am at linguistic tasks, but not a lot better if the words are spoken. Reading is an entirely different matter. I'm a letter-by-letter reader, I still sound out words in my head, and I'm pretty good at it - I read pulp fiction at around 100 pages an hour. She is one of those people who can read a line - or sometimes a paragraph - at a time, and routinely reads pulp books at 250 pages an hour with total recall. She can identify the pieces of words by sight and digests them instantly.
If you can figure out what she's doing, you've vastly multiplied the efficiency of human communication.
Debbie Boone sucked more than you could possibly know.
But not more than "Brandy, you're a fine girl" or whatever that abortion of a song is called. And, although I can't remember "You Light Up My Life", I can remember Martika's "Toy Soldiers" from 1989. I even own it on a Billboard Top Hits of 1989 album that I got as part of a package. It's not on my computer, not even as an ironic comment on the mutability of pop. And let me tell you, young'uns: it's staggeringly, painfully, crush-my-skull-so-it-will-stop bad.
Oldies stations don't suck because no good music was made back then. The songs they play were just as ghastly at the time.
That's the song. It's the theme of "The New AT&T", probably because they're still using (basically) their Death Star logo - see here for the old and new logos.
Interestingly, the guy who designed that logo had a thing for blue circles - he did Continental Airlines and Minolta, among many others.
People who don't have DVR's don't notice that they're missing anything. You only had to see one DVD to say "Wow, it looks a zillion times better and I don't have to rewind." Not to mention that people easily slotted it into their minds as a video version of a CD - with which they were quite familiar.
OTOH, the non-technical response to DVR is - based on the anecdotes I've heard - something like my wife's:
Week 1 with the ReplayTV: "I hate this complicated thing. I just want to watch my shows. Why do I have to go to Video mode on the TV?"
Week 2 with the ReplayTV: "It's okay, I still just want to watch my shows."
Week 3 with ReplayTV: "If you take away my Replay I will kill you in your sleep."
It's a slow process, and people aren't willing to commit to a year's subscription on something they think is a glorified VCR (especially when digital cable already includes guide data). You need about a month with someone who knows how to use them and will show you how to do it (many misperceptions are based on the VCR model, such as not realizing you can watch a show before it finishes recording), or 2-3 months if you're learning as you go.
Yeah, the 15 min - 1 hr time frame is what it's about. If it takes more than an hour... well, I'm just not going to be playing it much. I have a wife and a house, and video games are a fun (but necessarily brief) distraction.
I don't have a problem with unlimited donations. I have a problem with any level of secrecy about it, and that extends to indirect donations - like when corporations and foundations astroturf stuff. If you put money in politics, you should have to put your name on it (outside of small individual donations, such as the ones that already don't have to be identified). The danger to the political system doesn't come from hyperpolitical big donors; it comes from not knowing who they are. I don't know of any political reform that actually addresses this issue, but there it is.
Maybe I'm just a crank. BTW I don't necessarily believe your assessment of Bush on Iraq is wrong - as I said, I simply happen to think it was a good idea for unrelated reasons.
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According to their website, Verizon sells unmetered service with 3-way calling, caller ID, and call waiting for less than I was paying for the same thing in my Bellsouth area. (I checked an address in Rutland, because it was easy to find a usable address there. YMMV, I've never even been to VT. But Vermontel is not exactly a major carrier there, they have 10% of the market.)
BTW, there's another crucial distinction: until very very recently, with the advent of unlimited free in-network calling, there was no difference in cost based on what you called. Even now, there is no difference in cost with a cellular phone in calling a landline or another network's mobile.
Anyway, with landline you pays your fee and you gets your line; use it 24/7 and the cost is still the same.
This is obviously some definition of "dirt cheap" with which I am not familiar.
No, just non-mainstream. In hospital applications (the field I know best) they continue to be extraordinarily valuable because they are relatively nonintrusive, powered for weeks by a single AA battery, easily passed off to someone else, extremely durable to casual abuse, and much cheaper than cell phones.
I don't have a cell phone, although I am aware that is a rare thing these days. I just haven't figured out why I should pay $40 a month so my wife can reach me in the five minutes between when I walk out the door and when I roll into the garage.
That's why it will never pass. I'm aware of the problem; I live in a (mostly) rural state.
Particulate emissions are much worse with diesel, and particulates have always been high on the EPA list of no-nos.
It's far more fuel-efficient to drive a Hummer to work for 3 miles away than it is to drive a hybrid to work from 40 miles away.
It's a Tahoe, and the alternative would only be about 15 miles... but that's my wife right there. And we've got a large vehicle to transport large objects when we need it.
running away very very fast...
You should invite these people to the rural USA - there are many, many train crossings for minor roads that consist of a railroad crossbuck. And nothing else. No alarm, no bell, nothing. Sign says railroad; best think about slowing down.
Even when the buyer has, say, classified military technology at hand? I'm sure they were all paid well, but I'm also quite certain that if they hadn't agreed there would have been an iron fist inside that velvet glove, starting with temporary blindings of the satellite and going up from there.
Indeed, one of the most common mistakes w/r/t US politics is a confusion of American patriotism with nationalist sentiment; although the two occasionally coexist, they are not as closely tied as in most European politics.
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The trivial price of having the Postal Inspector (with the US Attorney lurking behind) on your side is one of the best bargains in the country. Send it registered mail, pay for it with a postal money order. Anyone, anywhere in the country, who tries to screw you over gets a very close, very looong look (on the order of 5 to 10 years) at what the federal government can do when it actually decides to do something.
Not surprisingly, she was an English major.
An anecdotal observation: my wife is better than I am at linguistic tasks, but not a lot better if the words are spoken. Reading is an entirely different matter. I'm a letter-by-letter reader, I still sound out words in my head, and I'm pretty good at it - I read pulp fiction at around 100 pages an hour. She is one of those people who can read a line - or sometimes a paragraph - at a time, and routinely reads pulp books at 250 pages an hour with total recall. She can identify the pieces of words by sight and digests them instantly.
If you can figure out what she's doing, you've vastly multiplied the efficiency of human communication.
But not more than "Brandy, you're a fine girl" or whatever that abortion of a song is called. And, although I can't remember "You Light Up My Life", I can remember Martika's "Toy Soldiers" from 1989. I even own it on a Billboard Top Hits of 1989 album that I got as part of a package. It's not on my computer, not even as an ironic comment on the mutability of pop. And let me tell you, young'uns: it's staggeringly, painfully, crush-my-skull-so-it-will-stop bad.
Oldies stations don't suck because no good music was made back then. The songs they play were just as ghastly at the time.
Interestingly, the guy who designed that logo had a thing for blue circles - he did Continental Airlines and Minolta, among many others.
Oh, I had v. 1.0 of that one; it was Donkey Kong for the Atari 2600.
Which game was it?
OTOH, the non-technical response to DVR is - based on the anecdotes I've heard - something like my wife's:
It's a slow process, and people aren't willing to commit to a year's subscription on something they think is a glorified VCR (especially when digital cable already includes guide data). You need about a month with someone who knows how to use them and will show you how to do it (many misperceptions are based on the VCR model, such as not realizing you can watch a show before it finishes recording), or 2-3 months if you're learning as you go.
Yeah, the 15 min - 1 hr time frame is what it's about. If it takes more than an hour... well, I'm just not going to be playing it much. I have a wife and a house, and video games are a fun (but necessarily brief) distraction.
You could change that today, but you are still left with 41 years' worth of money that can't be declared valueless.
I used halothane anesthesia - they go to sleep, they don't wake up. Nitrogen would also be an excellent way to kill them, and painless.
Open an account in both places, and transfer money as necessary? It's what I did in college a decade ago.
Maybe I'm just a crank. BTW I don't necessarily believe your assessment of Bush on Iraq is wrong - as I said, I simply happen to think it was a good idea for unrelated reasons.