As someone who doesn't drive and has almost been runover several times when legally crossing the street by some damn idiot on his or her cell phone or texting I have no problem with this...
Agreed. As a driver or pedestrian I've been in many close calls because some idiot was on their cellphone. The best is when they start yelling at ME because THEY ran the stop sign or red light without even knowing it.
However on the flip side, I've also almost hit some pedestrians because they were talking on their cellphone and decided to cross illegally without looking to see that I'm already 1 car length away because their cellphone is obscuring their vision of me.
Driving or walking, it's almost like cellphones are accident magnets.
As a pedestrian, it is genuinely difficult for me to comprehend this level of laziness. How many times do I have to walk a block out of my way because, due to cars, I can't cross the street where I please? So what? It's walking. It takes virtually no time or energy. Just part of life.
Before I continue, I don't drive into a major city... EVER. I'd rather take mass transit in.
And yes, it's part laziness.
But it's my opinion that if you're going to replace a system, practicality should come into play as much as cost/price.
The system in question seems kind of asinine: walk to the nearest kiosk, wait in line, get a receipt, place it in/on your car and PRAY the cop sees it, then go on your way.
I'm sorry, but that system just doesn't seem to cut it, the only thing it has going for it is the ability to do electronic payments and perhaps some *eventual* cost savings for the tax payers.
Without knowing any of the hard-numbers, I can't claim one way or another, but from my PoV this specific system appears to be way for a community to spend tax dollars while making life more difficult. How much will the system cost to purchase/install/maintain vs the current system? The only thing that might go down is the number of meter maids needed... maybe.
Their are alternative work flows mentioned by posters to the one described in the article. Link the purchase to a serial number on the parking space (A101, B257, etc), offer this as an *addition* to the old coin meters, enter in your license plate, etc.
The US in entirety could use more exercise, but such a poor system just doesn't seem the best use of funds or time.
Everyone says they want cities to stop over spending on infrastructure and to have realistic services but every time they inconvenience you just a little bit it's back to "spend spend spend! I can't walk half a block!"
I think it's the redundant walking that would bother me. - 1/2 block to meter - 1/2 block back to car to put receipt on windshield - Potentially 1/2+ block back in the direction of the meter to get to where you were going in the first place.
If the process ended at machine (the first trip) then that would be fine. I've been in payed parking lots where it's like that... - walk to the machine in the center of a big lot - type in the number painted on your spot - pay via cash/coin and get receipt - continue with your day
You analogy is flawed as I'm not the ones make the claims, you are.
Apparently they found out who it was already, so it's a moot point. But consider the following scenario.
A person in your life is a complete psycho. You're afraid of them. He/she has said and done certain things but you can't legally prove it was them (even though they practically admit it). Maybe they broke into your apartment and planted dog feces on your bed, maybe they did a bunch of other psycho things and practically admitted it with a smile, but not legally so.
You are scared of this person now, but can't do much about it because you can't physically prove what the person said or did. No TRO, nothing.
You come across a blog stating things, maybe things that they said to you the day of the blog posting. And you think "maybe it's Person X, he did say these things on the day this was posted."
If so, you now have documented proof to show the antagonism and perhaps grounds for a restraining order or more.
But, you don't want to risk saying "oh it MUST be him" to the judge because if it's not then you're SOL.
Maybe this anonymous poster isn't so anonymous. Maybe she suspects that it's someone she knows (ex boyfriend, ex friend, stalker, etc). If said person was harassing her in other ways as well, perhaps this could be the straw that broke the camel's back and can allow something to be done about it (such as a TRO).
I see nothing odd in that. I got my first Nokia cellphone when I was on 5th grade, I think. I'm not sure how long elementary school takes in USA but here in Finland it is 9 years and you finish it when you are 15 or 16 years old (assuming you don't have to redo any year or anything like that)
To answer your question about the USA. The numbers should should be about right (perhaps off by 1 year). At least where I live there's a cut-off like "You must turn X yrs old between September and June" (or something to that effect).
Kindergarten = 5 yrs old 1st Grade = 6 yrs old High School (9th-12th grade) = 15 - 18 yrs old
Some states (if not all) have Middle School (7th and 8th grade) where they try to ease you into a semi High School experience. Mainly, going from 1 teacher with a desk to multiple teachers/classrooms and the use of lockers.
All of that being said, Cellphones weren't that big yet while I was in High School. Sure students had them but I don't think it reached critical mass by us until my senior year or after I went to college.
That being said, back then teachers would confiscate cellphones and pagers if they even saw them (let alone heard them). They wanted all communication to/from parents to go through either the Principal's office, Nurse's office, or a payphone.
I think I got my first one towards the middle or end of High School, mostly because I had to work late and would either need a ride back from someone or if there was an emergency.
My Garmin, when connected to my phone (any phone, not just iPhone) via bluetooth does exactly the same thing. It supresses the nav prompts until you complete the call. I don't understand why this is a complaint? Especially for this particular situation since you're running this app on a PHONE whose primary purpose is to receive CALLS. Or have I missed something obvious?
No, because TFA actually says "For those of you wondering what happens when you get a call, the app turns off but restarts as soon as you finish the call, so it's not too bad."
I have a factory-installed system in my 2006 GM car. I don't know the brand, but it's a 6CD in-dash stereo and DVD GPS nav and doesn't have bluetooth.
I have the OnStar prepaid plan for the rare instances when I need to make a call.
Anyway, if I'm driving with my GPS directions on the GPS will continue to speak while I'm on the phone. I *think* the screen only changes to the "phone" for the first 15 seconds of the call so I can see the number, then it returns to the GPS.
This way works out fine for me, except when someone calls right around the time I'm getting a bunch of directions in which case I might ask them to call me back. But that has less to do with the voice GPS, and more to do with driving somewhere when I don't know the area well.
My objection isn't to the car, or to its performance. It's to a "new standard" for measuring mileage that produces essentially meaningless results
Yeh, I guess. But honestly, it is a pickel.
How do you, with just one set of numbers, describe the mile-age of a car that used both electricity (via a charge) and gas?
They do need to post *something* and it should be a short-and-sweet number because anything more than that will confuse the general public.
For example, if they said 40 gas-free miles, and then 50 MpG afterwards I'd be OK with it. But Joe Sixpack would either ignore or get confused by the "40 gas-free miles." He'd say "Huh?" or "So it's like a GM-made Prius."
So Accuracy, Realism, and Simplicity... pick and two (or one if you're a pessimist).
Then, you would kind of like to drive home that if you keep the mileage low enough each day and charge when you get home, that you'll be getting insane numbers.
The only conditions under which that "230 mpg" figure means anything is if you drive about 51 miles per day. Lower than that, and your actual mileage will be higher, higher than that, much lower.
But for many people, even 51 is overkill for a day. I think CNN states that 3/4 of drivers keep it under 40 miles per day.
During the work-week my commute is 22 round-trip, and I rarely put on another 10-20 during a day. That means 90% of the time I drive between 22 and 42 miles per day, I run most of my errands on the way home anyway to save time.
Now, I do drive the occasional 200-300 mile road-trip maybe every-other year. But it's rare and I don't know if I'd use this car for that.
Similarly I know someone that constantly brags about the mileage he gets on his Prius since he drives entirely in the city. And someone else usually says "good for you, but I drive my TDI on the highway."
I'm throwing the Shenanigans flag. No...scratch that...I'm throwing the COMPLETE AND UTTER BULLSHIT flag.
RTFA.
They discuss the electricity consumption/cost in the article, and that the number is an estimate that's hard to calculate since many people will use the battery exclusively about 75% of the time.
I agree, it's hard to calculate to give both an accurate and realistic number. If you drive non stop until the car both runs out of electricity and petrol, then calculate distance/gallons then that's an accurate number. But is it realistic? This car isn't designed for the cross-country road-trip in mind, but even still it would get hybrid (or better) mileage due to charging over nights.
So what number do I care about? Driving cross country or day to day driving?
Similarly I could try driving my hybrid on the highway, flooring it the entire way and I wouldn't get the advertised numbers.
Granted, it would be nicer to know "how many bushels of coal are needed to charge it to capacity" and then try to find an analogy between bushels of coal -> gallons of diesel -> gallons of petrol. Then you can say those 40 miles required so much diesel, which is about so much petrol. Then again, the entire country doesn't use coal-burning-plants so even then it wouldn't be accurate.
Is it possible? I guess. Just dropping something on my keyboard I've had improbable keystrokes take place, and that only triggered 2-3 "clicks." A cat could generate a LOT of clicks, a bunch of it could be valid input (enter, spacebar, mouseclick, tab, mouse move, etc).
As a juror, would I buy it? No. Though it does raise a doubt, I wouldn't feel it a reasonable one. It's too improbable, and I doubt they would be able to replicate the scenario in a court room.
But to play devil's advocate...
The guy could've had a Search Engine up, perhaps searching for ordinary/legal trash. He walks away and the cat jumps on desk and initiates a click-action on one of the bad links that can come up in the search-noise. Perhaps while taking a number of steps on the keyboard, or perhaps lying down on the thing and mashing keys. The resulting actions click on the bad link on the search results, click another link for images (perhaps a zip of a sampler"), and the next thing you know it's on his computer. And if it happened while a P2P client was up, then it's probably more possible as it might've clicked into a remote user's folders and did a download-all.
Again, I don't buy it. But random things can happen to cause an undesired effect.
This is in reply to all the posters above who wrote variations on the "There's nothing worth watching on TV anyway" theme. Are you kidding me?
Mad Men is a brilliant depiction of early 60's life on Madison Avenue. Breaking Bad is riveting drama. And Rescue Me oscillates between balls-out humour and tragedy.
I agree with the sentiment, though I don't watch your examples much.
There is simple so content out there you cannot generalize and say there's nothing worth watching. Books are in the same exact situation: there are a lot of trashy (or even simply bad) novels out there. Go to a local supermarket or grocery store and you'll see a bunch of trashy romance novels filling an entire section, with Fabio on the older covers. Go to a library or book store and pick a genre, you'll get so lost in the noise you won't know what to pick and a good fraction of those books are probably bad. There are a LOT of poorly written books out there.
Do I say there's nothing worth reading? No. Even though my tastes lie in specific areas I agree that there are definitely works of art out there, even recently written, that I might enjoy or might not.
Do I want to look through each book at the local Borders or Barnes and Noble? No. Yet I still manage to read a fair amount lately, I just try to find something that will interest me.
TV is similar: yes there is a lot of garbage out there but there are also good pieces as well. Some of the dramas and comedies are of high caliber and merit watching from beginning to end. If you don't want to waste your time trying to find that diamond in the rough, then that's more than your right.
Back on my old 486 there was some math-based educational game that I recall loving. It was a side-scroller with decent graphics. I think I even played it a few times a few years later when the math it was teaching was already below me just because it was a decent 2d game.
I'll be darned if I can remember what the name of that game was.
I also enjoyed "Where in the X is Carmen Sandiego"
Can this tell the difference between intoxication and merely having used said drug in the past couple of days? While cannabis may be illegal, a DUI should not be warranted if you happen to test positive, given the long time it's present in your bloodstream.
What about second hand smoke and what-not? Testing the "presence" is what concerns me.
I'm as clean as they come and don't think I've ever been exposed to second-hand illegal smoke/vapors, but the concern is there.
While a breathalyzer can measure the BA content, the article seems to read that this only detects presence.
So what if you're on your way back from a concert/party/new-years and up inhaling a little second-hand smoke or whatever is in the air. It will probably register as present (especially in the saliva) at a point check. Then what? I don't trust my town government very much, and could easily see them adopting this and make it offense to simply test positive.
Games have had in-game advertisements for YEARS and nothing bad has ever come from it. Some as blatant as in WipEout HD. Some games even paid the companies to advertise in the games - Guitar Hero and Rock Band jog your memory a bit?
It's not so much that there is advertising in the game. It's that a game that's been out for a year and is premium-priced on the PlayStationNetwork Store "all of a sudden" had commercials added via a nearly automatic update. To add insult to injury, said commercials are adding to the load time between tracks.
So if the game came with ads in the first place, then that would be one thing. I'd argue then said game should either the regular PSN price or slightly lower, but that's another story.
But if you buy a game and all of a sudden they patch it so it has ads/commercials then that's aggravating.
I considered it. I played the older Wipeout on my PSP a couple of years ago but found that while it was initially enjoyable I quickly lost interest. While I have no problem playing some racing games over and over and over such as the Mario Karts or NFS: Most Wanted, some loose their lust after I've beaten the single player a couple of times.
here's an onion article on this, but whenever I go by radio shack, I wonder how on earth they stay in business....
Internet mail order shops via ebay and other mechanisms is a lot more cost effective method for delivering high value specialty goods. I mean, I've seen CPU coolers and power supplies at radio shack : hello, newegg?
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I'm not a fan of RadioShack by any means, but as another posted pointed out there is a are multiple types of efficiency and there is difference between efficiency and convenience.
Yes, online stores can be more efficient than either RadioShack or even small boutique shops. They can have a better selection, have more in stock, re-order thing easier, only concern themselves with storage and not valuable shelf-space, etc. A well-designed website might be easier to navigate than shelves of small widgets, and this can all result in lower cost and prices.
However there is also a convenience factor which also plays into the efficiency of time. And sometimes my time is worth a few bucks more. Maybe I need to fix my PC immediately due to work. Maybe I need a small fuse right away. Maybe to fix something now, else have no lights in my restroom with no windows.
If I order online it is going to take a few days to get to me, and forget about Sundays. Then god forbid if I find out it isn't the right part of isn't working correctly then that's another few days to deal with the problem. I've received DoA parts before NewEgg before.
I'm not saying that online stores are worthless, heck I buy most of my non-clothes and non-food items online. But sometimes I need something now.
I can try going to the local small shop I can get what I need right away without worrying about delivery time. In my case I have a RadioShack 5 minutes away, a boutique PC Warehouse about 15-20 minutes away, and a large chain stores (BestBuy/WalMart/HomeDepot) 30 minutes away. Between the 2 small stores (and the large chain stores) I've never been unable to find what I needed and have the round trip take less than 1-1.5 hours (drive out + check 1st store + check 2nd store + return).
The Radio Shack has most of the A/V stuff I might need (and at 5 minutes away it's more convenient than online or even large stores). At night when I don't feel like making a big trek for 1 thing it's sometimes just easier to hit there first.
The PC Warehouse has a decent collection of PC parts (motherboards, CPUs, cases, components, cooling systems, etc). It's obviously not a NewEgg or Amazon, but if I need to resurrect a system ASAP it's a good place to visit. Heck, sometimes the price is close enough to online shops that I wouldn't even be saving much/anything going online.
Big Chain stores are about 30 minutes away, but at least in the same direction as the PC Warehouse so a multi-stop trip isn't a total loss.
Online stores are good, but sometimes I need/want something in a few hours and not a few days.
here's an onion article on this, but whenever I go by radio shack, I wonder how on earth they stay in business.... Internet mail order shops via ebay and other mechanisms is a lot more cost effective method for delivering high value specialty goods. I mean, I've seen CPU coolers and power supplies at radio shack : hello, newegg? I'm not a fan of RadioShack by any means, but as another posted pointed out there is a are multiple types of efficiency and there is difference between efficiency and convenience.
Yes, online stores can be more efficient than either RadioShack or even small boutique shops. They can have a better selection, have more in stock, re-order thing easier, only concern themselves with storage and not valuable shelf-space, etc. A well-designed website might be easier to navigate than shelves of small widgets, and this can all result in lower cost and prices.
However there is also a convenience factor which also plays into the efficiency of time. And sometimes my time is worth a few bucks more. Maybe I need to fix my PC immediately due to work. Maybe I need a small fuse right away. Maybe to fix something now, else have no lights in my restroom with no windows.
If I order online it is going to take a few days to get to me, and forget about Sundays. Then god forbid if I find out it isn't the right part of isn't working correctly then that's another few days to deal with the problem. I've received DoA parts before NewEgg before.
I'm not saying that online stores are worthless, heck I buy most of my non-clothes and non-food items online. But sometimes I need something now.
I can try going to the local small shop I can get what I need right away without worrying about delivery time. In my case I have a RadioShack 5 minutes away, a boutique PC Warehouse about 15-20 minutes away, and a large chain stores (BestBuy/WalMart/HomeDepot) 30 minutes away. Between the 2 small stores (and the large chain stores) I've never been unable to find what I needed and have the round trip take less than 1-1.5 hours (drive out + check 1st store + check 2nd store + return).
The Radio Shack has most of the A/V stuff I might need (and at 5 minutes away it's more convenient than online or even large stores). At night when I don't feel like making a big trek for 1 thing it's sometimes just easier to hit there first.
The PC Warehouse has a decent collection of PC parts (motherboards, CPUs, cases, components, cooling systems, etc). It's obviously not a NewEgg or Amazon, but if I need to resurrect a system ASAP it's a good place to visit. Heck, sometimes the price is close enough to online shops that I wouldn't even be saving much/anything going online.
Big Chain stores are about 30 minutes away, but at least in the same direction as the PC Warehouse so a multi-stop trip isn't a total loss.
Online stores are good, but sometimes I need/want something in a few hours and not a few days.
Just about every Radio Shack I've been to has been quite small. With one exception, all of the ones I've been to are about the size of a 2-3 car garage. I think I was at one a few years ago that was bigger, but still nowhere near the large-shop sizes. So it always boggles my mind why they want to go the BestBuy route, and yet have all of their stores are maybe 1/10 the size of the BestBuys near me.
The best I can figure is, they can throw MANY times the stores around so just about every neighborhood has one nearby. So if it's 7PM at night and you need something quick (RCA cable, watch battery, phone charger, TV Remote, etc) people are more likely to drive 10 minutes to the nearby RadioShack instead of 20-30 minutes to the nearest BestBuy/Walmart/etc. Sure the bigger stores might have a better selection but they're further out (perhaps a drive on a highway) and you have to wait in line.
The local small RadioShack by me has some electronic stuff. Probably nothing major like they used to but some. Our of 4 short aisles, 1 appears to be devoted to electronic parts. Fuses, wire tools, wire, adapters, alligator clips, non-A/V wire ends/adapters, etc.
However for anything major you'd probably have to go to an Electricians store. There's one a couple of towns over from me that has just about anything a working Electrician would need.
I guess I'm pretty lucky with my AT&T then. In the last couple of years I've had maybe 1 dropped call and that was inside a concrete building. I get max bars (or close-to) at home. The only other times I had an issue were when I was in Vegas, and at a certain building in NY... I was getting a lot of static (and not just white noise) on the line and had to call back, but I'd imagine that was me being routed through a bad repeater or something.
Depending on which way I drive to work though, there is a very small dead zone (maybe 50 yards wide) which I noticed at a red light while picking up my phone off the floor. But since I don't use the thing while driving I don't care.
Is Verizon better? Probably. But AT&T isn't bad where I am.
Yes, and I am both an Apple user and an iPhone owner.
I see it from both sides.
Apple's Side On Apple's side, I can see wanting to put some control on the iPhone store for many reasons. They're trying to limit the cr@p, limit the number of security-defeating apps, and keep unstable apps out of the picture. And as a result their "approval" process is taking a major time-hit as the number of submissions grows.
I can also understand them wanting to limit the number of apps that compete with core-features. Otherwise people start complaining "My iPhone's email sucks" when they're really complaining about the "Cool-Mail" client they installed.
As a Developer I'm a software developer, and I can easily see why people in my profession would get pissed. If it takes a long time to get my application (or update) released because of X, can be rejected because of Y, and removed from the store because of Z then I might think twice about developing for that platform.
Imagine what kind of Health insurance you would have to get for diamond treatment. You would have premiums of 10,000.00 a month.
Eh, I don't think so. Industrial-grade diamonds and artificially-created diamonds are not insanely expensive. It's only once you start going with "natural" jewelry-grade diamonds with good clarity/cut/carat that prices start going insane.
Artificially created diamonds are not fakes... they're still diamonds in every sense of the work (chemically and such).
So if you produced these things artificially, and bumped up serious production to meet healthcare needs, the price might actually come down to sane levels when compared with other treatments and medicines.
Despite a growing interest in piecing one together by it's fanbase; Zelda has no definitive timeline.... Hell, the intro to Wind Waker basically spells that out.
For the most part, especially the classic games, I have to agree.
However I thought the recent games (Wind Waker and Twilight Princess) stated they were MANY years (like 1+ centuries) after the events of Ocarina + Majora.
I couldn't possibly care less about a Tron sequel. The original was enjoyable when you were a kid, but watching it as an adult, you just realize what boring and uninteresting crap it is. It isn't even watchable in stretches longer than about fifteen minutes.
I feel that away about a lof of things I used to watch. The old Transformers cartoon, Knight Rider, even some films.. Back when I was a kid these shows were awesome and now I have to stop after just a few minutes. And while I love the Star Wars universe and it's characters, I've seen the original trilogy so many times I cannot sit through any of them anymore (but that's probably from seeing it too many times).
However a couple of months ago I caught an airing of Tron and still enjoyed it. Granted in my life I've probably only seen it 2 or 3 times, but I still enjoyed it.
War Games as well, though I'm starting to reach the point where (like StarWars) I've seen it too many times to enjoy it.
Sure, we remember some of these shows either through rose-colored glasses or through memories of a child that didn't take as much to entertain. But some childhood favorites are still valid.
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As someone who doesn't drive and has almost been runover several times when legally crossing the street by some damn idiot on his or her cell phone or texting I have no problem with this...
Agreed. As a driver or pedestrian I've been in many close calls because some idiot was on their cellphone. The best is when they start yelling at ME because THEY ran the stop sign or red light without even knowing it.
However on the flip side, I've also almost hit some pedestrians because they were talking on their cellphone and decided to cross illegally without looking to see that I'm already 1 car length away because their cellphone is obscuring their vision of me.
Driving or walking, it's almost like cellphones are accident magnets.
As a pedestrian, it is genuinely difficult for me to comprehend this level of laziness. How many times do I have to walk a block out of my way because, due to cars, I can't cross the street where I please? So what? It's walking. It takes virtually no time or energy. Just part of life.
Before I continue, I don't drive into a major city... EVER. I'd rather take mass transit in.
And yes, it's part laziness.
But it's my opinion that if you're going to replace a system, practicality should come into play as much as cost/price.
The system in question seems kind of asinine: walk to the nearest kiosk, wait in line, get a receipt, place it in/on your car and PRAY the cop sees it, then go on your way.
I'm sorry, but that system just doesn't seem to cut it, the only thing it has going for it is the ability to do electronic payments and perhaps some *eventual* cost savings for the tax payers.
Without knowing any of the hard-numbers, I can't claim one way or another, but from my PoV this specific system appears to be way for a community to spend tax dollars while making life more difficult. How much will the system cost to purchase/install/maintain vs the current system? The only thing that might go down is the number of meter maids needed... maybe.
Their are alternative work flows mentioned by posters to the one described in the article. Link the purchase to a serial number on the parking space (A101, B257, etc), offer this as an *addition* to the old coin meters, enter in your license plate, etc.
The US in entirety could use more exercise, but such a poor system just doesn't seem the best use of funds or time.
Everyone says they want cities to stop over spending on infrastructure and to have realistic services but every time they inconvenience you just a little bit it's back to "spend spend spend! I can't walk half a block!"
I think it's the redundant walking that would bother me.
- 1/2 block to meter
- 1/2 block back to car to put receipt on windshield
- Potentially 1/2+ block back in the direction of the meter to get to where you were going in the first place.
If the process ended at machine (the first trip) then that would be fine. I've been in payed parking lots where it's like that...
- walk to the machine in the center of a big lot
- type in the number painted on your spot
- pay via cash/coin and get receipt
- continue with your day
You analogy is flawed as I'm not the ones make the claims, you are.
Apparently they found out who it was already, so it's a moot point. But consider the following scenario.
A person in your life is a complete psycho. You're afraid of them. He/she has said and done certain things but you can't legally prove it was them (even though they practically admit it). Maybe they broke into your apartment and planted dog feces on your bed, maybe they did a bunch of other psycho things and practically admitted it with a smile, but not legally so.
You are scared of this person now, but can't do much about it because you can't physically prove what the person said or did. No TRO, nothing.
You come across a blog stating things, maybe things that they said to you the day of the blog posting. And you think "maybe it's Person X, he did say these things on the day this was posted."
If so, you now have documented proof to show the antagonism and perhaps grounds for a restraining order or more.
But, you don't want to risk saying "oh it MUST be him" to the judge because if it's not then you're SOL.
Maybe this anonymous poster isn't so anonymous. Maybe she suspects that it's someone she knows (ex boyfriend, ex friend, stalker, etc). If said person was harassing her in other ways as well, perhaps this could be the straw that broke the camel's back and can allow something to be done about it (such as a TRO).
To answer your question about the USA. The numbers should should be about right (perhaps off by 1 year). At least where I live there's a cut-off like "You must turn X yrs old between September and June" (or something to that effect).
Kindergarten = 5 yrs old
1st Grade = 6 yrs old
High School (9th-12th grade) = 15 - 18 yrs old
Some states (if not all) have Middle School (7th and 8th grade) where they try to ease you into a semi High School experience. Mainly, going from 1 teacher with a desk to multiple teachers/classrooms and the use of lockers.
All of that being said, Cellphones weren't that big yet while I was in High School. Sure students had them but I don't think it reached critical mass by us until my senior year or after I went to college.
That being said, back then teachers would confiscate cellphones and pagers if they even saw them (let alone heard them). They wanted all communication to/from parents to go through either the Principal's office, Nurse's office, or a payphone.
I think I got my first one towards the middle or end of High School, mostly because I had to work late and would either need a ride back from someone or if there was an emergency.
My Garmin, when connected to my phone (any phone, not just iPhone) via bluetooth does exactly the same thing. It supresses the nav prompts until you complete the call. I don't understand why this is a complaint? Especially for this particular situation since you're running this app on a PHONE whose primary purpose is to receive CALLS. Or have I missed something obvious?
No, because TFA actually says "For those of you wondering what happens when you get a call, the app turns off but restarts as soon as you finish the call, so it's not too bad."
I have a factory-installed system in my 2006 GM car. I don't know the brand, but it's a 6CD in-dash stereo and DVD GPS nav and doesn't have bluetooth.
I have the OnStar prepaid plan for the rare instances when I need to make a call.
Anyway, if I'm driving with my GPS directions on the GPS will continue to speak while I'm on the phone. I *think* the screen only changes to the "phone" for the first 15 seconds of the call so I can see the number, then it returns to the GPS.
This way works out fine for me, except when someone calls right around the time I'm getting a bunch of directions in which case I might ask them to call me back. But that has less to do with the voice GPS, and more to do with driving somewhere when I don't know the area well.
Yeh, I guess. But honestly, it is a pickel.
How do you, with just one set of numbers, describe the mile-age of a car that used both electricity (via a charge) and gas?
They do need to post *something* and it should be a short-and-sweet number because anything more than that will confuse the general public.
For example, if they said 40 gas-free miles, and then 50 MpG afterwards I'd be OK with it. But Joe Sixpack would either ignore or get confused by the "40 gas-free miles." He'd say "Huh?" or "So it's like a GM-made Prius."
So Accuracy, Realism, and Simplicity... pick and two (or one if you're a pessimist).
Then, you would kind of like to drive home that if you keep the mileage low enough each day and charge when you get home, that you'll be getting insane numbers.
But for many people, even 51 is overkill for a day. I think CNN states that 3/4 of drivers keep it under 40 miles per day.
During the work-week my commute is 22 round-trip, and I rarely put on another 10-20 during a day. That means 90% of the time I drive between 22 and 42 miles per day, I run most of my errands on the way home anyway to save time.
Now, I do drive the occasional 200-300 mile road-trip maybe every-other year. But it's rare and I don't know if I'd use this car for that.
Similarly I know someone that constantly brags about the mileage he gets on his Prius since he drives entirely in the city. And someone else usually says "good for you, but I drive my TDI on the highway."
RTFA.
They discuss the electricity consumption/cost in the article, and that the number is an estimate that's hard to calculate since many people will use the battery exclusively about 75% of the time.
I agree, it's hard to calculate to give both an accurate and realistic number. If you drive non stop until the car both runs out of electricity and petrol, then calculate distance/gallons then that's an accurate number. But is it realistic? This car isn't designed for the cross-country road-trip in mind, but even still it would get hybrid (or better) mileage due to charging over nights.
So what number do I care about? Driving cross country or day to day driving?
Similarly I could try driving my hybrid on the highway, flooring it the entire way and I wouldn't get the advertised numbers.
Granted, it would be nicer to know "how many bushels of coal are needed to charge it to capacity" and then try to find an analogy between bushels of coal -> gallons of diesel -> gallons of petrol. Then you can say those 40 miles required so much diesel, which is about so much petrol. Then again, the entire country doesn't use coal-burning-plants so even then it wouldn't be accurate.
Is it possible? I guess. Just dropping something on my keyboard I've had improbable keystrokes take place, and that only triggered 2-3 "clicks." A cat could generate a LOT of clicks, a bunch of it could be valid input (enter, spacebar, mouseclick, tab, mouse move, etc).
As a juror, would I buy it? No. Though it does raise a doubt, I wouldn't feel it a reasonable one. It's too improbable, and I doubt they would be able to replicate the scenario in a court room.
But to play devil's advocate...
The guy could've had a Search Engine up, perhaps searching for ordinary/legal trash. He walks away and the cat jumps on desk and initiates a click-action on one of the bad links that can come up in the search-noise. Perhaps while taking a number of steps on the keyboard, or perhaps lying down on the thing and mashing keys. The resulting actions click on the bad link on the search results, click another link for images (perhaps a zip of a sampler"), and the next thing you know it's on his computer. And if it happened while a P2P client was up, then it's probably more possible as it might've clicked into a remote user's folders and did a download-all.
Again, I don't buy it. But random things can happen to cause an undesired effect.
I agree with the sentiment, though I don't watch your examples much.
There is simple so content out there you cannot generalize and say there's nothing worth watching. Books are in the same exact situation: there are a lot of trashy (or even simply bad) novels out there. Go to a local supermarket or grocery store and you'll see a bunch of trashy romance novels filling an entire section, with Fabio on the older covers. Go to a library or book store and pick a genre, you'll get so lost in the noise you won't know what to pick and a good fraction of those books are probably bad. There are a LOT of poorly written books out there.
Do I say there's nothing worth reading?
No. Even though my tastes lie in specific areas I agree that there are definitely works of art out there, even recently written, that I might enjoy or might not.
Do I want to look through each book at the local Borders or Barnes and Noble? No. Yet I still manage to read a fair amount lately, I just try to find something that will interest me.
TV is similar: yes there is a lot of garbage out there but there are also good pieces as well. Some of the dramas and comedies are of high caliber and merit watching from beginning to end. If you don't want to waste your time trying to find that diamond in the rough, then that's more than your right.
But I hate it when people say there's NOTHING on.
Back on my old 486 there was some math-based educational game that I recall loving. It was a side-scroller with decent graphics. I think I even played it a few times a few years later when the math it was teaching was already below me just because it was a decent 2d game.
I'll be darned if I can remember what the name of that game was.
I also enjoyed "Where in the X is Carmen Sandiego"
What about second hand smoke and what-not? Testing the "presence" is what concerns me.
I'm as clean as they come and don't think I've ever been exposed to second-hand illegal smoke/vapors, but the concern is there.
While a breathalyzer can measure the BA content, the article seems to read that this only detects presence.
So what if you're on your way back from a concert/party/new-years and up inhaling a little second-hand smoke or whatever is in the air. It will probably register as present (especially in the saliva) at a point check. Then what? I don't trust my town government very much, and could easily see them adopting this and make it offense to simply test positive.
It's not so much that there is advertising in the game. It's that a game that's been out for a year and is premium-priced on the PlayStationNetwork Store "all of a sudden" had commercials added via a nearly automatic update. To add insult to injury, said commercials are adding to the load time between tracks.
So if the game came with ads in the first place, then that would be one thing. I'd argue then said game should either the regular PSN price or slightly lower, but that's another story.
But if you buy a game and all of a sudden they patch it so it has ads/commercials then that's aggravating.
I considered it. I played the older Wipeout on my PSP a couple of years ago but found that while it was initially enjoyable I quickly lost interest. While I have no problem playing some racing games over and over and over such as the Mario Karts or NFS: Most Wanted, some loose their lust after I've beaten the single player a couple of times.
FIXED A BLOCKQUOTE TAG
I'm not a fan of RadioShack by any means, but as another posted pointed out there is a are multiple types of efficiency and there is difference between efficiency and convenience.
Yes, online stores can be more efficient than either RadioShack or even small boutique shops. They can have a better selection, have more in stock, re-order thing easier, only concern themselves with storage and not valuable shelf-space, etc. A well-designed website might be easier to navigate than shelves of small widgets, and this can all result in lower cost and prices.
However there is also a convenience factor which also plays into the efficiency of time. And sometimes my time is worth a few bucks more. Maybe I need to fix my PC immediately due to work. Maybe I need a small fuse right away. Maybe to fix something now, else have no lights in my restroom with no windows.
If I order online it is going to take a few days to get to me, and forget about Sundays. Then god forbid if I find out it isn't the right part of isn't working correctly then that's another few days to deal with the problem. I've received DoA parts before NewEgg before.
I'm not saying that online stores are worthless, heck I buy most of my non-clothes and non-food items online. But sometimes I need something now.
I can try going to the local small shop I can get what I need right away without worrying about delivery time. In my case I have a RadioShack 5 minutes away, a boutique PC Warehouse about 15-20 minutes away, and a large chain stores (BestBuy/WalMart/HomeDepot) 30 minutes away. Between the 2 small stores (and the large chain stores) I've never been unable to find what I needed and have the round trip take less than 1-1.5 hours (drive out + check 1st store + check 2nd store + return).
The Radio Shack has most of the A/V stuff I might need (and at 5 minutes away it's more convenient than online or even large stores). At night when I don't feel like making a big trek for 1 thing it's sometimes just easier to hit there first.
The PC Warehouse has a decent collection of PC parts (motherboards, CPUs, cases, components, cooling systems, etc). It's obviously not a NewEgg or Amazon, but if I need to resurrect a system ASAP it's a good place to visit. Heck, sometimes the price is close enough to online shops that I wouldn't even be saving much/anything going online.
Big Chain stores are about 30 minutes away, but at least in the same direction as the PC Warehouse so a multi-stop trip isn't a total loss.
Online stores are good, but sometimes I need/want something in a few hours and not a few days.
Just about every Radio Shack I've been to has been quite small. With one exception, all of the ones I've been to are about the size of a 2-3 car garage. I think I was at one a few years ago that was bigger, but still nowhere near the large-shop sizes. So it always boggles my mind why they want to go the BestBuy route, and yet have all of their stores are maybe 1/10 the size of the BestBuys near me.
The best I can figure is, they can throw MANY times the stores around so just about every neighborhood has one nearby. So if it's 7PM at night and you need something quick (RCA cable, watch battery, phone charger, TV Remote, etc) people are more likely to drive 10 minutes to the nearby RadioShack instead of 20-30 minutes to the nearest BestBuy/Walmart/etc. Sure the bigger stores might have a better selection but they're further out (perhaps a drive on a highway) and you have to wait in line.
The local small RadioShack by me has some electronic stuff. Probably nothing major like they used to but some. Our of 4 short aisles, 1 appears to be devoted to electronic parts. Fuses, wire tools, wire, adapters, alligator clips, non-A/V wire ends/adapters, etc.
However for anything major you'd probably have to go to an Electricians store. There's one a couple of towns over from me that has just about anything a working Electrician would need.
I guess I'm pretty lucky with my AT&T then. In the last couple of years I've had maybe 1 dropped call and that was inside a concrete building. I get max bars (or close-to) at home. The only other times I had an issue were when I was in Vegas, and at a certain building in NY... I was getting a lot of static (and not just white noise) on the line and had to call back, but I'd imagine that was me being routed through a bad repeater or something.
Depending on which way I drive to work though, there is a very small dead zone (maybe 50 yards wide) which I noticed at a red light while picking up my phone off the floor. But since I don't use the thing while driving I don't care.
Is Verizon better? Probably. But AT&T isn't bad where I am.
Yes, and I am both an Apple user and an iPhone owner.
I see it from both sides.
Apple's Side
On Apple's side, I can see wanting to put some control on the iPhone store for many reasons. They're trying to limit the cr@p, limit the number of security-defeating apps, and keep unstable apps out of the picture. And as a result their "approval" process is taking a major time-hit as the number of submissions grows.
I can also understand them wanting to limit the number of apps that compete with core-features. Otherwise people start complaining "My iPhone's email sucks" when they're really complaining about the "Cool-Mail" client they installed.
As a Developer
I'm a software developer, and I can easily see why people in my profession would get pissed. If it takes a long time to get my application (or update) released because of X, can be rejected because of Y, and removed from the store because of Z then I might think twice about developing for that platform.
Imagine what kind of Health insurance you would have to get for diamond treatment. You would have premiums of 10,000.00 a month.
Eh, I don't think so. Industrial-grade diamonds and artificially-created diamonds are not insanely expensive. It's only once you start going with "natural" jewelry-grade diamonds with good clarity/cut/carat that prices start going insane.
Artificially created diamonds are not fakes... they're still diamonds in every sense of the work (chemically and such).
So if you produced these things artificially, and bumped up serious production to meet healthcare needs, the price might actually come down to sane levels when compared with other treatments and medicines.
Despite a growing interest in piecing one together by it's fanbase; Zelda has no definitive timeline. ...
Hell, the intro to Wind Waker basically spells that out.
For the most part, especially the classic games, I have to agree.
However I thought the recent games (Wind Waker and Twilight Princess) stated they were MANY years (like 1+ centuries) after the events of Ocarina + Majora.
I feel that away about a lof of things I used to watch. The old Transformers cartoon, Knight Rider, even some films.. Back when I was a kid these shows were awesome and now I have to stop after just a few minutes. And while I love the Star Wars universe and it's characters, I've seen the original trilogy so many times I cannot sit through any of them anymore (but that's probably from seeing it too many times).
However a couple of months ago I caught an airing of Tron and still enjoyed it. Granted in my life I've probably only seen it 2 or 3 times, but I still enjoyed it.
War Games as well, though I'm starting to reach the point where (like StarWars) I've seen it too many times to enjoy it.
Sure, we remember some of these shows either through rose-colored glasses or through memories of a child that didn't take as much to entertain. But some childhood favorites are still valid.