Alternatively one could use water tanks and potential energy as a energy store.
Much as I hate to, y'know, contribute to pie in the sky thinking; the first thing that came to my head when you said this was to use the grey water from the upper floors of the house (run through some kind of large particle filter to rid most of the debris) into a tank on the main floor which could run through some power conversion rig and eventually drain through the floor drain in the basement. Same principle applies to rain spouts on rooftops. Rather than pipe the water directly to the municipality and throw away all that potential you could...
Well, that's enough pie in the sky for one day...:)
Quoting a dollar amount is meaningless. Power cost varies WILDLY from location to location. How many kWh is $100?
Where I just moved to I'm paying $0.155/kWh. Where I was before it was $0.065/kWh.
Yeah. Where I am just outside of Toronto in Ontario, Canada I'm "paying" $0.05CDN/KWH, but in reality when you factor the bloody transportation charges, debt retirement charges (yeah, it's my fault you guys racked up a massive debt!) it works out a lot closer to $0.10/KWH, but it feels good to tell people I'm paying a nickel. {chortle}
"As someone who's made many high speed emergency manoeuvres while talking on my cell phone..."
One would think that needing to have made "many" high speed emergency maneuvers might have been, oh, like a clue.
A clue for what? That drivers often cut into a live lane without checking both directions first? That people will cross 2-3 lanes of freeway traffic because they missed the signs signalling their exit ramps? That people will often cut off transports to get into the express lanes RIGHT NOW even though there's another interchange coming up in 2-3KMs?
You'll note, BTW, in all of your snide retorts, that you missed something about my post; I said I'd made several high speed (and low speed, for that matter) emergency manoeuvres. I did not state that I'd had several (or any for that matter) high speed collisions. Even while talking on my phone I can still read the language of the lanes ahead of me. I'm always a couple KMs ahead with my eyes and I know what each driver is thinking. The problem comes in when a driver does something completely erratic such as the situations named above. That's when my escape routes come into play and I move my vehicle to a safe place to go around the situation.
The problem with the irrational arguments against cell phones is that people use them as a scapegoat for every traffic infraction going. Basic human psychology comes into play where they're concerned; people hear about the bane of cell phones on our roads and that's all they see when they're on the road. If you're looking to buy a new car from ${Manufacturer_X} that's all you'll see on the road.
As I said earlier; bad drivers are bad drivers. When you take a bad driver and add additional distractions to the mix you get a dangerous situation. Combine the fact that with today's modern vehicle safety systems people tend to feel invincible and you've got a real recipe for disaster. Myself, I prefer to look at all sides of a situation before making a rash decision. See, I'm not part of a lobby and I tend to engage drastic filters when it comes to information published by lobbies. I believe it gives me a more balanced view of the world. As always, though, your mileage may vary.
I've found that many women do have "better choices" available to them but in the end they pick the male stereotype they're most infatuated with.
Case in point; woman meets man during an evening of hard partying then later complains he's drinking too much. Woman meets man who's heavily vested in testosterone-inducing events such as UFC fighting, weight lifting, etc. Has many tatoos. Eventually woman complains man is hitting her "but really loves her".
I could go on and on, but usually the "better choice" winds up being the guy who listens patiently to her complaints and concerns but won't get anything more out of the relationship because he's too sensitive (a trait women claim to want, but it has to come in an overtly masculine package else it's rejected off-hand as a weakness creating lack of interest).
This is why guys like this exist. They teach men how to get women; period. Resort to your more baser instincts and increase your quotient of "getting laid". The fact that it works speaks volumes to the very nature of the state of affairs with the female half of our species at this point in time.
so you realistically think that on a highway of cars traveling 60mph, that every one of those cars should (read: can) be over 1/2 a football field's length away from the car in front of them?
Unequivocally; yes.
Based on your post I can surmise that you're one of those drivers who believes that they'll arrive to their destination faster if they're right on the bumper of the car in front of them, rather than a few car lengths back?
n.b. Nobody said anything about travelling at a slower rate of speed, however being "2 seconds back" travelling at the same rate of speed as the car in front of you a) gives you extra time to react to a change in velocity without a panic situation setting in and b) allows other drivers to merge efficiently thereby allowing the entire freeway system to operate more efficiently (read: everybody gets home faster).
"Some people can actually drive and talk on a phone at the same time...."
And some people (the same set, actually) only think they can.
I was a professional driver for a number of years whose logged well over half a million driven kilometres. There have been times where I've had my cell phone cradled on my shoulder, answered a call on our company radio in between sips of my coffee while smoking a cigarette and shifting gears.
The fact of the matter is there are good drivers, there are bad drivers, and there are inconsistent drivers. Bad drivers are bad drivers no matter what they're doing; be it concentrating on a cell phone, text message, their car stereo, navigation system, the kids in the back seat, their hair/make-up, the people and/or landmarks around them (stores/sales/window signs, etc.), their PDA, laptop, a book, a newspaper, a map,...
There are a thousand distractions that take a bad driver and make them a worse driver. As someone who's made many high speed emergency manoeuvres while talking on my cell phone and complaining to the party on the other end about how bad drivers really are out there I'm certain that I can do both. The only two times in my life I've ever been involved in collisions I was not talking on my phone and the fault lay solidly with the other party in both cases. (BTW; one hallmark of being a good driver is the instinct to let the phone drop the moment a critical situation arises, among other things).
You are trying to tell us that every airplane in the air today has been deliberately run through a thunderstorm so it will be hit by lightning, before it is allowed to be flown with passengers?
I call STRAWMAN on this one.
GP never said any such thing. They merely stated that [the equipment] be tested for direct lightening strikes. Once a set of equipment is passed there's no longer a need to test each subsequent piece of equipment. Moreover; there does exist equipment and test labs whose sole purpose is to test electrical and mechanical equipment against lightening strikes.
Know how to reliably tell when a crop of oranges is ready for harvest? Cut one in half. Can you picture a farmer in Florida slicing each and every orange in half during harvest time?
Which need updating, especially the highway testing. Their highway test process is a 16km trip at an average speed of 77kph and a top speed of 97kph. The speed limit on divided highways is 110kph, which increases the energy lost to drag (and therefore the energy required from the engine and thus the fuel usage rate) by about 1.5x over what you'd get at 97kph (and over 3x what you have at 77kph), which results in a very inflated figure.
The speed limits on the 400-series freeways in Ontario remain set firmly at 100KPH and most all divided highways are at anywhere between 60-90KPH depending on their relative proximity to a city or township.
However I will agree that the figures are completely incorrect when you apply real life to the situation. The average rate of travel on any given 400-series is 120KPH (undisputed; even by the O.P.P.) except, naturally, during rush hour. This actually gives an enormous advantage to very small displacement engines that are very capable at 97KPH but start to degrade exponentially over and above that speed.
You haven't seen infrared printers, infrared keyboards, mice, webcams? Your TV remote works by shining an infrared LED. Gameboy systems used to have infrared emitters/sensors so that they could communicate with each other.
Obviously you're right. Merely the existence of IR mice indicates that the story is most certainly referring to same. Oh, wait, the summary said; 'In July, a passenger clicking on a wireless mouse mid-flight was blamed for causing a Qantas jet to be thrown off course.'
Yeah. That says it was an infra-red mouse. I wonder if the passenger aimed it through the keyhole in the cockpit?
n.b. Infra-red mice are the most useless variety of wireless mice ever invented so they're extraordinarily few and far between. Any motion device that relies on line of sight and can be interrupted by the mere presence of direct sunlight is obsolete by the time it hits store shelves.
The battery life they give is like the car companies usual 80km/h 5th gear windows closed gallon numbers.
While battery usage estimates are pretty dismally inaccurate, here in Canada the fuel consumption ratings are only permitted to be advertised if they're the official "EnerGuide" Canadian Government supplied variety.
Are you people on drugs? Flamebait? the OP was referring to the fact that you might find yourself without a working phone if the battery dies. Hard users sometimes carry more than one battery with them just in case they have to close a deal during several hours or something. You can't do that with an iPhone, unless you resort to some 3rd party solution.
Well, for about the cost of a spare battery for my Blackberry I invested in a second wall charger and a car charger. Now I can charge from home, from work or on the road. If I'm going from vehicle to vehicle I roll up the car charger and stick it in my pocket.
I don't know about you, but I'd rather plug in to finish up a call or an e-mail than dismantle my phone and exchange batteries. The whole concept seems silly to me.
Call it pure lazy, but even I just snubbed off a certified letter recently because it was far more trouble to drive to the post office to accept it. If they would have just left it in my mailbox, I would have been far more likely to actually read it.
You're not kidding. First you have to find the damned post office local to you, then you have to arrive during business hours and inevitably wait in line. ("Nobody goes there anymore; it's too crowded." and such)
Video stores are similar for me. I'm generally getting home from work right around the time they're locking up for the night. So even if I managed to haul tail to get there before they closed I'd still be out of luck because I generally browse for some time before settling on a particular movie to rent.
I just like the wording. The fact that you bothered to include this error implies to me that you knew there was a chance that the system call could fail.
A friend of mine once programmed an if..then..else sequence that had a result that should never occur and it came with the error message "You should never see this message."
Essentially (If true then...else if false then... else You should never see this message!)
If they say it's unlimited without telling you there are limits, and then they put a limit on anything, then they are ripping you off. It doesn't matter at all what limits there were 10 years ago, unlimited doesn't just mean one limit has been removed, it means all limits have been removed.
Sure. Post a copy of your service agreement that states your connection is "unlimited" or quit beating the old strawman to death. We're all pretty bored of it by now.
AC doesn't seem to consider the time-value of money. Anyone who thinks about it will know that a dollar now is worth more than a dollar tomorrow. You don't just multiply the payment by the number of months to make your financing decision.
The problem comes in to play when you factor a person's trade cycle. See, whether you finance a car for 48 months or 72 months it doesn't affect the value of the car after 48 months. In one case you have equity when your loan comes due. In the other case, you may have negative equity to refinance in your next purchase.
The biggest problem with the car buying situation in North America is that so many people concentrate on one side of the equation without factoring in all the other factors. Every day I see payment buyers, trade value buyers, interest rate buyers, selling price buyers - and invariably they all wind up screwed in the end. I've shown people how they can actually get better than zero percent by taking the cash discounted price and financing at 8% bank rate and had them scoff that "Huh. I'd never pay that much interest for a car!" and walk away from the deal. The deal gets even sweeter when you consider how significantly lower their remaining principal balance will be down the road if they decide to fast track the loan, pay it off completely or trade the car in for a new one. But hey, what do I know right? 0% is the be-all-end-all. {shrug}
It really depends on the buyer's unique situation.
That's the best summary of the situation. Most people tend to forget that, especially when they find out a friend/family member/colleague is about to purchase a new car and the advice starts flowing. Inevitably most of the advice given is poor at best, dangerously bad at worst.
Someone did raise the point of resale value, where I sort of pulled numbers from my arse. The truth is, I have no idea how much more a TDI goes for over gas, but presuming $5000 more for the TDI after 10 years I'd guess deprecation would knock that down to $2500 depending on condition.
A same make/model car with a diesel versus gas engine will fetch approximately $1500-2500 more on resale within the first 5-6 years. After 10 years the car isn't worth much more than a hill of beans.
Did the police actually tell you that? (And even if they did, how do you know they didn't make it up because they, like so many people these days, think it's cool to sneer at anyone who does something good for the environment?)
I don't normally respond to trolls, but your enquiry bugged me. It's obvious that you know nothing about police mentality or SOP so why are you commenting?
n.b. I have two uncles who are retired Metro police, a business associate who's active, a neighbour who just retired, a colleague of mine who sits in the desk behind me put in his 25 years on the force and they all agree with the above assessment WRT traffic travelling at ~10-20KPH above the limit.
Long and short of it is this; you're extremely high and mighty about your own driving habits even though the clear majority of road travellers and "internet strangers" are telling you otherwise yet you keep opening your mouth on a subject in which you're clearly lacking in knowledge.
You think what you do is good for the environment? Apparently you have no idea how dangerous it is for you to cause so many people to make sudden manoeuvres to avoid you, how much excess fuel, brake wear and accidents people like you cause.
If you truly want to help the environment; learn to integrate with traffic so it flows more smoothly rather than fighting local traffic conventions. You'll do a lot more for your local environment than your current course of action.
Now I can't wait for you to tell me that you're the only one allowed to post an opinion on the matter and resort to the ad hominem attacks about me because I'm posting a contrary opinion. Let loose, friend, because the more you do it the more you weaken your own argument. Let 'er rip; I've got an incredibly thick skin. Something you should consider investing in if this is your typical posting behaviour.
If you find yourself being passed on the right, you should move over to the right.
Hear, hear.
Whenever I see a car in the centre lane of a 3 lane freeway creating their own 'island' with cars consistently passing them on the left and right it drives me nuts because it's not only illegal but it's unsafe. If the entire freeway is travelling at 120KPH and you're in the centre lane at 100KPH (as is often the case around here on the busiest stretch of freeway in North America) the one doing 100KPH is causing a dangerous situation.
Worse than these islands, though, are the people who seemingly can not maintain a consistent speed. It's aggravating following someone who's constantly waffling between 90 and 110 KPH. These people seem to be the ones who are terminally afraid to pass transport trucks. Well guess what? They're a fact of life around here (one of the reasons for the congestion on the 401 is the fact that it's a major shipping lane).
The fact that every "hypermiler" I've ever heard or talked to doesn't understand the dangers and added carbon emissions they're causing by not considering other drivers on the road is pretty sad.
Ok then I guess I am just a lowely piss boy with my measly certifications.
You said it, we didn't.
But seriously, they're right. There is no exam, for example, that covers the skills I perform in my I.T. engineering position. MCSE means you know what a registry is and how to edit it. But on-the-job experience also teaches you that AND when a problem is likely caused by registry issues and when it's not. Experience, experience, experience. You can't have enough. But you can have too many certs--it shows the candidate is spending all their time studying for exams and too little on the job.
You're not kidding. How many people I saw in high school and college in IT courses who had no (zero) prior knowledge in the field but were still getting high marks. Most all of them with any determination graduated. I wouldn't want any of them working on one of my computers or networks, mind you, but they had industry backed certifications to prove their knowledge.
Case in point; one of the students in the course actually had written and passed his CCNA. (The pompous ass actually signed his name with "First Last, CCNA" on EVERYTHING). We had an assignment that listed a company's telecommunications needs at present and their projected five year growth rate. We were tasked with creating a report detailing what equipment and data/voice lines were needed now, and how we would expand the system over the next five years - listing out the best course of action WRT whether to lease or purchase much of the core equipment. Our CCNA classmate provided 3/4 of one page. Know what it was? A list of model numbers with prices. Yeah. So a company asks you for a comprehensive plan and they get a 1/2 million dollar shopping list. Good luck, chuck, you'll go far.
Oh, this was the same student who spent an entire VLAN class configuring a Catalyst switch using the menu interface while his non-certified classmate configured three routers at the command-line.
Out in the work force I encountered so many people with certifications who couldn't figure out even the most mundane tasks. My boss used to test them on the spot when they'd come in looking for work. One guy couldn't figure out why a PC wouldn't boot with an error on the screen saying "NON SYSTEM DISK OR DISK ERROR." Yes. There was a floppy in the drive. The guy was advised to find a new career.
Then there's the MCSE who was trying to network something like a dozen computers together by installing two NICs in each (running Windows'98 no less) and using cross-over cables and "route add" commands on each computer to form some kind of token-ring-ethernet-something bastardization. When he called for a consultation we suggested he purchase a 16-port switch. This, apparently, would have been a "waste of money" (as if the additional 12 NICs wasn't somehow...) and a stupid idea. Also, he knows what he's doing - he's an MCSE. He was advised to become a garbage man.
Indeed. And if I show up for an interview and am left cooling my heels in the lobby for a half hour after the interview should start, I'd say that the tone has certainly been established.
If that's your attitude, I'm sure the feeling will be mutual.
Hint: companies are busy places. You, one of several dozen interviewees, is not more important than the company as a whole or, for that matter, than the previous interviewee. As I said though; sometimes companies are looking for you to show some ambition and/or self confidence and have the interviewer paged again.
I've watched countless candidates leave because that couldn't wait any amount of time from 5 to 30 minutes for a manager to be free to interview them. Usually they mill around, take a coffee, rummage through things, go have a smoke, then eventually just up and leave. Most of them don't even let the receptionist know they've gone. Anybody who requests that the interviewing manager be paged however is immediately looked upon in a better light.
God, I know this site is full of introverts but sometimes I forget just how bad it really is. Welcome to the real world. It's unfair and sometimes you just have to wait for an appointment.
Had you considered the situation from the other side of the coin? Why would you want to work for a company that was in such dire straits to hire that they can be prompt for each and every interview in a given day/week? Doesn't that shout a little bit of desperation? Why is the position so vacant, and why are they so good (and eager) at the interview process? Otherwise; do you want to work for a place where deadlines and schedules are timed to the second? What happens the first time you're five minutes late committing your code? Will they be forced to re-start the interview process?
Reality; where black and white are interspersed with many, many shades of gray. Sheesh.
If you were interviewing people for a position, would you schedule the appointment shortly before a deadline with people in the critical path? That shows a lack of planning from the company's side.
Based on a short list of situational references I gave a couple what-ifs. I don't know the situation; I was merely posing a hypothetical to illustrate that quite often in industry something comes up and things don't happen ticketty-boo.
As I said before; testing someone's patience level is often a key decision factor in the hiring. I've known companies who deliberately make candidates wait before speaking to them. It's generally considered prudent to have the interviewer paged after a reasonable period of time, say 15-20 minutes.
People need to realize that the tone of an interview happens before the two parties ever introduce themselves.
Same here. I don't require written tests of people I interview at all levels; I have a pretty standard list of basic knowledge questions (to see the gap between the resume and the person) and mostly I ask questions like "how would you solve this problem?"
But a written skills test? That's just someone trying to make a zeroth-order clown filter.
I didn't see any mention of a written skills test; sounds like a strawman on your part. FWIW; "a pretty standard list of basic knowledge questions" asked by an interviewer of an interviewee counts as a skills test.
Question, though; let's assume you're in a skilled IT job making $75k/year and for whatever of a plethora of reasons you find yourself looking at/for other work. You find a position in an expanding company in your field of interest/expertise that you'd like to work at. The interviewer tells you all's ok so far and upon completion of a basic 10 question written test to verify your problem solving abilities mesh with the needs of the company everything looks good for you to start your new $100k/year position. Do you seriously tell them to stick it?
A while back, I was laid off, and went with a recruiting firm.
Recruiting firms suck.
Sometimes, though, that's actually part of the test. Do you understand the company/field you're applying for?
Ferexample. I used to work in the restaurant industry. Anybody who came into the restaurant to apply for a job in the hours of, say, 6-9PM on a Friday or Saturday night were immediately black-listed. (Hint: dinner rush).
I'm now in the car industry. When people come in on say a Saturday afternoon and expect a manager to dedicate time to an interview is usually asked to leave.
So you passed the punctuality test, but you also have to realize that you're not the most important thing going on at the time. Imagine if you were on the other side of the coin; you had a project approaching deadline and you had to talk to one of your managers but he'd just started an interview you know will take a minimum of 1 hour. Are you going to put your project on hold so a potential candidate can have some uninterrupted face time?
Slashdot Mirror
Alternatively one could use water tanks and potential energy as a energy store.
Much as I hate to, y'know, contribute to pie in the sky thinking; the first thing that came to my head when you said this was to use the grey water from the upper floors of the house (run through some kind of large particle filter to rid most of the debris) into a tank on the main floor which could run through some power conversion rig and eventually drain through the floor drain in the basement. Same principle applies to rain spouts on rooftops. Rather than pipe the water directly to the municipality and throw away all that potential you could...
Well, that's enough pie in the sky for one day... :)
Quoting a dollar amount is meaningless. Power cost varies WILDLY from location to location. How many kWh is $100? Where I just moved to I'm paying $0.155/kWh. Where I was before it was $0.065/kWh.
Yeah. Where I am just outside of Toronto in Ontario, Canada I'm "paying" $0.05CDN/KWH, but in reality when you factor the bloody transportation charges, debt retirement charges (yeah, it's my fault you guys racked up a massive debt!) it works out a lot closer to $0.10/KWH, but it feels good to tell people I'm paying a nickel. {chortle}
"As someone who's made many high speed emergency manoeuvres while talking on my cell phone..."
One would think that needing to have made "many" high speed emergency maneuvers might have been, oh, like a clue.
A clue for what? That drivers often cut into a live lane without checking both directions first? That people will cross 2-3 lanes of freeway traffic because they missed the signs signalling their exit ramps? That people will often cut off transports to get into the express lanes RIGHT NOW even though there's another interchange coming up in 2-3KMs?
You'll note, BTW, in all of your snide retorts, that you missed something about my post; I said I'd made several high speed (and low speed, for that matter) emergency manoeuvres. I did not state that I'd had several (or any for that matter) high speed collisions. Even while talking on my phone I can still read the language of the lanes ahead of me. I'm always a couple KMs ahead with my eyes and I know what each driver is thinking. The problem comes in when a driver does something completely erratic such as the situations named above. That's when my escape routes come into play and I move my vehicle to a safe place to go around the situation.
The problem with the irrational arguments against cell phones is that people use them as a scapegoat for every traffic infraction going. Basic human psychology comes into play where they're concerned; people hear about the bane of cell phones on our roads and that's all they see when they're on the road. If you're looking to buy a new car from ${Manufacturer_X} that's all you'll see on the road.
As I said earlier; bad drivers are bad drivers. When you take a bad driver and add additional distractions to the mix you get a dangerous situation. Combine the fact that with today's modern vehicle safety systems people tend to feel invincible and you've got a real recipe for disaster. Myself, I prefer to look at all sides of a situation before making a rash decision. See, I'm not part of a lobby and I tend to engage drastic filters when it comes to information published by lobbies. I believe it gives me a more balanced view of the world. As always, though, your mileage may vary.
Maybe if we had better choices...?
I've found that many women do have "better choices" available to them but in the end they pick the male stereotype they're most infatuated with.
Case in point; woman meets man during an evening of hard partying then later complains he's drinking too much. Woman meets man who's heavily vested in testosterone-inducing events such as UFC fighting, weight lifting, etc. Has many tatoos. Eventually woman complains man is hitting her "but really loves her".
I could go on and on, but usually the "better choice" winds up being the guy who listens patiently to her complaints and concerns but won't get anything more out of the relationship because he's too sensitive (a trait women claim to want, but it has to come in an overtly masculine package else it's rejected off-hand as a weakness creating lack of interest).
This is why guys like this exist. They teach men how to get women; period. Resort to your more baser instincts and increase your quotient of "getting laid". The fact that it works speaks volumes to the very nature of the state of affairs with the female half of our species at this point in time.
so you realistically think that on a highway of cars traveling 60mph, that every one of those cars should (read: can) be over 1/2 a football field's length away from the car in front of them?
Unequivocally; yes.
Based on your post I can surmise that you're one of those drivers who believes that they'll arrive to their destination faster if they're right on the bumper of the car in front of them, rather than a few car lengths back?
n.b. Nobody said anything about travelling at a slower rate of speed, however being "2 seconds back" travelling at the same rate of speed as the car in front of you a) gives you extra time to react to a change in velocity without a panic situation setting in and b) allows other drivers to merge efficiently thereby allowing the entire freeway system to operate more efficiently (read: everybody gets home faster).
"Some people can actually drive and talk on a phone at the same time...."
And some people (the same set, actually) only think they can.
I was a professional driver for a number of years whose logged well over half a million driven kilometres. There have been times where I've had my cell phone cradled on my shoulder, answered a call on our company radio in between sips of my coffee while smoking a cigarette and shifting gears.
The fact of the matter is there are good drivers, there are bad drivers, and there are inconsistent drivers. Bad drivers are bad drivers no matter what they're doing; be it concentrating on a cell phone, text message, their car stereo, navigation system, the kids in the back seat, their hair/make-up, the people and/or landmarks around them (stores/sales/window signs, etc.), their PDA, laptop, a book, a newspaper, a map, ...
There are a thousand distractions that take a bad driver and make them a worse driver. As someone who's made many high speed emergency manoeuvres while talking on my cell phone and complaining to the party on the other end about how bad drivers really are out there I'm certain that I can do both. The only two times in my life I've ever been involved in collisions I was not talking on my phone and the fault lay solidly with the other party in both cases. (BTW; one hallmark of being a good driver is the instinct to let the phone drop the moment a critical situation arises, among other things).
I call BS on this one.
You are trying to tell us that every airplane in the air today has been deliberately run through a thunderstorm so it will be hit by lightning, before it is allowed to be flown with passengers?
I call STRAWMAN on this one.
GP never said any such thing. They merely stated that [the equipment] be tested for direct lightening strikes. Once a set of equipment is passed there's no longer a need to test each subsequent piece of equipment. Moreover; there does exist equipment and test labs whose sole purpose is to test electrical and mechanical equipment against lightening strikes.
Know how to reliably tell when a crop of oranges is ready for harvest? Cut one in half. Can you picture a farmer in Florida slicing each and every orange in half during harvest time?
Which need updating, especially the highway testing. Their highway test process is a 16km trip at an average speed of 77kph and a top speed of 97kph. The speed limit on divided highways is 110kph, which increases the energy lost to drag (and therefore the energy required from the engine and thus the fuel usage rate) by about 1.5x over what you'd get at 97kph (and over 3x what you have at 77kph), which results in a very inflated figure.
The speed limits on the 400-series freeways in Ontario remain set firmly at 100KPH and most all divided highways are at anywhere between 60-90KPH depending on their relative proximity to a city or township.
However I will agree that the figures are completely incorrect when you apply real life to the situation. The average rate of travel on any given 400-series is 120KPH (undisputed; even by the O.P.P.) except, naturally, during rush hour. This actually gives an enormous advantage to very small displacement engines that are very capable at 97KPH but start to degrade exponentially over and above that speed.
You haven't seen infrared printers, infrared keyboards, mice, webcams? Your TV remote works by shining an infrared LED. Gameboy systems used to have infrared emitters/sensors so that they could communicate with each other.
Obviously you're right. Merely the existence of IR mice indicates that the story is most certainly referring to same. Oh, wait, the summary said; 'In July, a passenger clicking on a wireless mouse mid-flight was blamed for causing a Qantas jet to be thrown off course.'
Yeah. That says it was an infra-red mouse. I wonder if the passenger aimed it through the keyhole in the cockpit?
n.b. Infra-red mice are the most useless variety of wireless mice ever invented so they're extraordinarily few and far between. Any motion device that relies on line of sight and can be interrupted by the mere presence of direct sunlight is obsolete by the time it hits store shelves.
The battery life they give is like the car companies usual 80km/h 5th gear windows closed gallon numbers.
While battery usage estimates are pretty dismally inaccurate, here in Canada the fuel consumption ratings are only permitted to be advertised if they're the official "EnerGuide" Canadian Government supplied variety.
Are you people on drugs? Flamebait? the OP was referring to the fact that you might find yourself without a working phone if the battery dies. Hard users sometimes carry more than one battery with them just in case they have to close a deal during several hours or something. You can't do that with an iPhone, unless you resort to some 3rd party solution.
Well, for about the cost of a spare battery for my Blackberry I invested in a second wall charger and a car charger. Now I can charge from home, from work or on the road. If I'm going from vehicle to vehicle I roll up the car charger and stick it in my pocket.
I don't know about you, but I'd rather plug in to finish up a call or an e-mail than dismantle my phone and exchange batteries. The whole concept seems silly to me.
Call it pure lazy, but even I just snubbed off a certified letter recently because it was far more trouble to drive to the post office to accept it. If they would have just left it in my mailbox, I would have been far more likely to actually read it.
You're not kidding. First you have to find the damned post office local to you, then you have to arrive during business hours and inevitably wait in line. ("Nobody goes there anymore; it's too crowded." and such)
Video stores are similar for me. I'm generally getting home from work right around the time they're locking up for the night. So even if I managed to haul tail to get there before they closed I'd still be out of luck because I generally browse for some time before settling on a particular movie to rent.
I just like the wording. The fact that you bothered to include this error implies to me that you knew there was a chance that the system call could fail.
A friend of mine once programmed an if..then..else sequence that had a result that should never occur and it came with the error message "You should never see this message."
Essentially (If true then...else if false then... else You should never see this message!)
If it says it in the advertising, and they don't do it, that is false advertising, which is illegal, REGARDLESS of what the agreement says.
Ok, show me some recent advertising that literally denotes that the service shall be without limitation.
In case you hadn't noticed, the theme here is "put up or shut up" because it's a windy day and that poor strawman is blown to tatters already.
If they say it's unlimited without telling you there are limits, and then they put a limit on anything , then they are ripping you off. It doesn't matter at all what limits there were 10 years ago, unlimited doesn't just mean one limit has been removed, it means all limits have been removed.
Sure. Post a copy of your service agreement that states your connection is "unlimited" or quit beating the old strawman to death. We're all pretty bored of it by now.
So you designed example.com?
WHo was your manager? A couple of people that worked with you on it?
We will give you a call tomorrow once we have checked out those references, thanks for coming....
How frigging difficult ....
Suuuuuuuure! Now do that for each of ten websites for 50 applicants and let me know how "frigging difficult" it was. :)
AC doesn't seem to consider the time-value of money. Anyone who thinks about it will know that a dollar now is worth more than a dollar tomorrow. You don't just multiply the payment by the number of months to make your financing decision.
The problem comes in to play when you factor a person's trade cycle. See, whether you finance a car for 48 months or 72 months it doesn't affect the value of the car after 48 months. In one case you have equity when your loan comes due. In the other case, you may have negative equity to refinance in your next purchase.
The biggest problem with the car buying situation in North America is that so many people concentrate on one side of the equation without factoring in all the other factors. Every day I see payment buyers, trade value buyers, interest rate buyers, selling price buyers - and invariably they all wind up screwed in the end. I've shown people how they can actually get better than zero percent by taking the cash discounted price and financing at 8% bank rate and had them scoff that "Huh. I'd never pay that much interest for a car!" and walk away from the deal. The deal gets even sweeter when you consider how significantly lower their remaining principal balance will be down the road if they decide to fast track the loan, pay it off completely or trade the car in for a new one. But hey, what do I know right? 0% is the be-all-end-all. {shrug}
It really depends on the buyer's unique situation.
That's the best summary of the situation. Most people tend to forget that, especially when they find out a friend/family member/colleague is about to purchase a new car and the advice starts flowing. Inevitably most of the advice given is poor at best, dangerously bad at worst.
Someone did raise the point of resale value, where I sort of pulled numbers from my arse. The truth is, I have no idea how much more a TDI goes for over gas, but presuming $5000 more for the TDI after 10 years I'd guess deprecation would knock that down to $2500 depending on condition.
A same make/model car with a diesel versus gas engine will fetch approximately $1500-2500 more on resale within the first 5-6 years. After 10 years the car isn't worth much more than a hill of beans.
Did the police actually tell you that? (And even if they did, how do you know they didn't make it up because they, like so many people these days, think it's cool to sneer at anyone who does something good for the environment?)
I don't normally respond to trolls, but your enquiry bugged me. It's obvious that you know nothing about police mentality or SOP so why are you commenting?
n.b. I have two uncles who are retired Metro police, a business associate who's active, a neighbour who just retired, a colleague of mine who sits in the desk behind me put in his 25 years on the force and they all agree with the above assessment WRT traffic travelling at ~10-20KPH above the limit.
Long and short of it is this; you're extremely high and mighty about your own driving habits even though the clear majority of road travellers and "internet strangers" are telling you otherwise yet you keep opening your mouth on a subject in which you're clearly lacking in knowledge.
You think what you do is good for the environment? Apparently you have no idea how dangerous it is for you to cause so many people to make sudden manoeuvres to avoid you, how much excess fuel, brake wear and accidents people like you cause.
If you truly want to help the environment; learn to integrate with traffic so it flows more smoothly rather than fighting local traffic conventions. You'll do a lot more for your local environment than your current course of action.
Now I can't wait for you to tell me that you're the only one allowed to post an opinion on the matter and resort to the ad hominem attacks about me because I'm posting a contrary opinion. Let loose, friend, because the more you do it the more you weaken your own argument. Let 'er rip; I've got an incredibly thick skin. Something you should consider investing in if this is your typical posting behaviour.
If you find yourself being passed on the right, you should move over to the right.
Hear, hear.
Whenever I see a car in the centre lane of a 3 lane freeway creating their own 'island' with cars consistently passing them on the left and right it drives me nuts because it's not only illegal but it's unsafe. If the entire freeway is travelling at 120KPH and you're in the centre lane at 100KPH (as is often the case around here on the busiest stretch of freeway in North America) the one doing 100KPH is causing a dangerous situation.
Worse than these islands, though, are the people who seemingly can not maintain a consistent speed. It's aggravating following someone who's constantly waffling between 90 and 110 KPH. These people seem to be the ones who are terminally afraid to pass transport trucks. Well guess what? They're a fact of life around here (one of the reasons for the congestion on the 401 is the fact that it's a major shipping lane).
The fact that every "hypermiler" I've ever heard or talked to doesn't understand the dangers and added carbon emissions they're causing by not considering other drivers on the road is pretty sad.
Ok then I guess I am just a lowely piss boy with my measly certifications.
You said it, we didn't.
But seriously, they're right. There is no exam, for example, that covers the skills I perform in my I.T. engineering position. MCSE means you know what a registry is and how to edit it. But on-the-job experience also teaches you that AND when a problem is likely caused by registry issues and when it's not. Experience, experience, experience. You can't have enough. But you can have too many certs--it shows the candidate is spending all their time studying for exams and too little on the job.
You're not kidding. How many people I saw in high school and college in IT courses who had no (zero) prior knowledge in the field but were still getting high marks. Most all of them with any determination graduated. I wouldn't want any of them working on one of my computers or networks, mind you, but they had industry backed certifications to prove their knowledge.
Case in point; one of the students in the course actually had written and passed his CCNA. (The pompous ass actually signed his name with "First Last, CCNA" on EVERYTHING). We had an assignment that listed a company's telecommunications needs at present and their projected five year growth rate. We were tasked with creating a report detailing what equipment and data/voice lines were needed now, and how we would expand the system over the next five years - listing out the best course of action WRT whether to lease or purchase much of the core equipment. Our CCNA classmate provided 3/4 of one page. Know what it was? A list of model numbers with prices. Yeah. So a company asks you for a comprehensive plan and they get a 1/2 million dollar shopping list. Good luck, chuck, you'll go far.
Oh, this was the same student who spent an entire VLAN class configuring a Catalyst switch using the menu interface while his non-certified classmate configured three routers at the command-line.
Out in the work force I encountered so many people with certifications who couldn't figure out even the most mundane tasks. My boss used to test them on the spot when they'd come in looking for work. One guy couldn't figure out why a PC wouldn't boot with an error on the screen saying "NON SYSTEM DISK OR DISK ERROR." Yes. There was a floppy in the drive. The guy was advised to find a new career.
Then there's the MCSE who was trying to network something like a dozen computers together by installing two NICs in each (running Windows'98 no less) and using cross-over cables and "route add" commands on each computer to form some kind of token-ring-ethernet-something bastardization. When he called for a consultation we suggested he purchase a 16-port switch. This, apparently, would have been a "waste of money" (as if the additional 12 NICs wasn't somehow...) and a stupid idea. Also, he knows what he's doing - he's an MCSE. He was advised to become a garbage man.
Indeed. And if I show up for an interview and am left cooling my heels in the lobby for a half hour after the interview should start, I'd say that the tone has certainly been established.
If that's your attitude, I'm sure the feeling will be mutual.
Hint: companies are busy places. You, one of several dozen interviewees, is not more important than the company as a whole or, for that matter, than the previous interviewee. As I said though; sometimes companies are looking for you to show some ambition and/or self confidence and have the interviewer paged again.
I've watched countless candidates leave because that couldn't wait any amount of time from 5 to 30 minutes for a manager to be free to interview them. Usually they mill around, take a coffee, rummage through things, go have a smoke, then eventually just up and leave. Most of them don't even let the receptionist know they've gone. Anybody who requests that the interviewing manager be paged however is immediately looked upon in a better light.
God, I know this site is full of introverts but sometimes I forget just how bad it really is. Welcome to the real world. It's unfair and sometimes you just have to wait for an appointment.
Had you considered the situation from the other side of the coin? Why would you want to work for a company that was in such dire straits to hire that they can be prompt for each and every interview in a given day/week? Doesn't that shout a little bit of desperation? Why is the position so vacant, and why are they so good (and eager) at the interview process? Otherwise; do you want to work for a place where deadlines and schedules are timed to the second? What happens the first time you're five minutes late committing your code? Will they be forced to re-start the interview process?
Reality; where black and white are interspersed with many, many shades of gray. Sheesh.
If you were interviewing people for a position, would you schedule the appointment shortly before a deadline with people in the critical path? That shows a lack of planning from the company's side.
Based on a short list of situational references I gave a couple what-ifs. I don't know the situation; I was merely posing a hypothetical to illustrate that quite often in industry something comes up and things don't happen ticketty-boo.
As I said before; testing someone's patience level is often a key decision factor in the hiring. I've known companies who deliberately make candidates wait before speaking to them. It's generally considered prudent to have the interviewer paged after a reasonable period of time, say 15-20 minutes.
People need to realize that the tone of an interview happens before the two parties ever introduce themselves.
Same here. I don't require written tests of people I interview at all levels; I have a pretty standard list of basic knowledge questions (to see the gap between the resume and the person) and mostly I ask questions like "how would you solve this problem?"
But a written skills test? That's just someone trying to make a zeroth-order clown filter.
I didn't see any mention of a written skills test; sounds like a strawman on your part. FWIW; "a pretty standard list of basic knowledge questions" asked by an interviewer of an interviewee counts as a skills test.
Question, though; let's assume you're in a skilled IT job making $75k/year and for whatever of a plethora of reasons you find yourself looking at/for other work. You find a position in an expanding company in your field of interest/expertise that you'd like to work at. The interviewer tells you all's ok so far and upon completion of a basic 10 question written test to verify your problem solving abilities mesh with the needs of the company everything looks good for you to start your new $100k/year position. Do you seriously tell them to stick it?
A while back, I was laid off, and went with a recruiting firm.
Recruiting firms suck.
Sometimes, though, that's actually part of the test. Do you understand the company/field you're applying for?
Ferexample. I used to work in the restaurant industry. Anybody who came into the restaurant to apply for a job in the hours of, say, 6-9PM on a Friday or Saturday night were immediately black-listed. (Hint: dinner rush).
I'm now in the car industry. When people come in on say a Saturday afternoon and expect a manager to dedicate time to an interview is usually asked to leave.
So you passed the punctuality test, but you also have to realize that you're not the most important thing going on at the time. Imagine if you were on the other side of the coin; you had a project approaching deadline and you had to talk to one of your managers but he'd just started an interview you know will take a minimum of 1 hour. Are you going to put your project on hold so a potential candidate can have some uninterrupted face time?