You must be from Seattle, where it's more important that a pedestrian not walk 3 feet out of your way, than a car pull up to see safely around a blind corner.
If you're turning right on red, I'll give it to you, since you're not going to be there long, and waiting or going behind you aren't a problem for the pedestrian. If you're going straight or turning left, then you're already past the solid white line and into the cross-walk for no reason at all.
Even the police do this in my town, and I've never gotten the point. You're probably already blocking the line of site of the guy who IS trying to make a legit right-on-red, and pedestrians who in some towns then have to walk within a foot of 30-45 MPH traffic.
Remember: when you're a car in a cross-walk on a red, you're just a visitor. This goes both ways: the same for a car parked on a sidewalk, or a pedestrian in a parking lot; get your business done and get out of the way!
Whenever someone loads up an online cart with a bunch of items (or a few big ticket items), I always envision some electronic storekeeper rubbing his hands together in glee. And then... you abandon the cart. Right there. Before the checkout - sometimes IN THE CHECKOUT LANE, like when you're standing there by the conveyor belt and someone has had the gall to leave something like cheese or meat right against the magazines to spoil, all because they didn't think to just give it to the cashier and say "I changed my mind." Idiots.
And: I also have this image of a great big store like Amazon littered with millions of electronic shopping carts, crowding the aisles.
For the hard drive, disassemble one in front of them and get their interest and curiosity.
I agree. I recently took an old Pentium 233MHz system and opened the case in front of my daughters (ages 6 and 8). I gave them screwdrivers and told them to take it apart. My older girl carried around the floppy drive (with cable) for about three months afterward, showing it to anyone who would listen. My younger girl helped install a NIC, too.
In Chicago, the court costs of contesting a parking ticket costs more than the ticket. I've gotten one - the point of contesting the ticket would be to get the chance to claim you're right, get told you're wrong, and pay more in the end. Sheesh.
When I was in college in the late 80s (yeah, I know), they had introduced the student ID card with a bar code and a magnetic strip on the back. However, they had no equipment to read either one, and the back of your card needed to display a 'valid student' sticker anyway - right over both the bar code and the strip. Four years later, still no readers, and an entrenchment of various stickers from other school functions (meal pass, library, transportation) made the back of the card useless anyway. I never did find out how that ended.
But, as we could see with the big 3 car manufacturers and basically every big publicly traded company (in private companies you can bet your sweet ass that there's an owner that will keep an eye on the managers), executives don't do a lick of a difference.
Up until the 80s, the average CEO had been with their company well-on 20 years, and had a vested personal interest in the long-term health of the company. Tax laws also rewarded long-term holding of company stock. Up until that point, you had a culture of owners - the culture that believes in changing the oil and washing a car for long-term benefit.
In the 80s, that changed. CEO tenure dropped to below 10 years, and most of the major disincentives for quick stock trading evaporated. Executive compensation got less and less tied to the long-term health of the company. Income tax rate on stock gains dropped below that of actually working for a living. We got a culture of 'renters' - those in it only for the short-term. When was the last time someone washed a rental car?
So what is the energy consumed during production for one of these LED lights?
If we're just using more energy per unit during manufacture, then what is the energy payoff balanced vs. the number of hours these will remain in service?
Market distortions aside (subsidies, etc.) the cost of R/D, production, transportation all get worked into the retail price in the end. If the energy cost is obscene, count on bulbs that don't sell well on the 'pays for itself in one year' model. In those situations, the cost of physically replacing the bulb factors into the purchase decision. This is usually the case where the bulb is in some hard-to-reach location and you'd have to pay an employee a fair amount to replace them.
Its not like you get a reduced rate if you buy the equipment outright, so you might as well take the subsidies.
Actually, there was a time a few years ago when I called to cancel service because I was "out of contract" with a still-working phone. The rep (AT&T/Cingular at the time) offered me a break of $5/month to stick with them, with my old phone. I took them up on it.
Of course, don't play this gambit if you don't have a viable switch plan, but know that it may work.
but you had to deal with the hell of going to Wal-Mart and being around their annoying customers. Maybe Wal-Mart customers aren't so bad where you live, but here in Arizona, going to a Wal-Mart is not a fun experience...
Here in the Chicagoland area, it's similar. The employees tended to be OK, but the customers spoiled the whole experience. I got to listen to customers one aisle over yell at their kids (not discipline... argue) people who wouldn't get out of your way and usually push carts down the middle of the too-narrow aisles. And nobody makes eye contact; it must be some primal thing from our forebearers - "if something makes eye contact with you, you either kill it or mate with it." Uh uh.
Forget corporate classes. If Wal Mart would start a customer courtesy policy, I might go back to one.
KEXP? I've heard of them and thanks for the link - I had forgotten about them. Their playlist is really pretty diverse. Your sibling post indicated/confirmed that advertisers are what 'happened' to shuffle. Looks like free/non-profit is where we'll see it.
I also see that they offer Windows, Real, and two bitrates of MP3. Pretty forward-thinking of them. I'll be there tomorrow.
It looks like the labels are doubly incompetent: MTV takes their money, but then it doesn't bother to play any music videos at all.
Parent got modded funny, but many of us remember the 80s when MTV started, and they truly ran the same model as the radio - 10-12 random songs per hour, interspersed with "VJ" dialog and commercials.
Slowly, slowly, they began to add "shows", usually 30 minutes in length. Some were heavily music-oriented such as the 'unplugged' series, while others were lighter such as "Remote Control". However, they all gave the ADVERTISERS what they were seeking: an easily labeled audience.
You see: since MTV was the first and largest of its kind, its audience was also pretty vague. "College student" was about all you could say and be close. But advertisers like narrower demographics: rich/poor, black/white, male/female. In its early days, when ad dollars were cheaper, they were willing to take a chance. As MTV got bigger and more expensive, they couldn't take such chances.
MTV splintered. "Yo, MTV Raps!" and other shows were aimed at smaller and clearer groups. Advertisers were largely happy, and viewers who didn't know better were also happy. We lost that random hour of music, though. I miss that opportunity that came when I could flip on a channel and discover a new rap song I would never have seen, or country, or any one of dozens of genres that I would have never 'picked' but was suddenly exposed to.
So: I put it to the/. masses. What is the current, best channel of media for opening one's horizons? Is it Pandora? Is it still Youtube? Or is there some other place that one can be 'fed' a steady flow of music from a wide net of types? Is there a venue where the music is more international? Where can I find Bollywood followed by rap?
...and Galaxy Quest also costars Sam Rockwell who stars alongside none other than Kevin Bacon. I win!! Oh wait... We were playing 6 Degrees To Kevin Bacon right?
No mod points, but thought I'd reply that I thought this was pretty funny.
Even if you live in an area with cheap natural gas, electric radiators allowing you to heat only the spaces you're using may end up saving you money over heating a whole house at night to keep the temperature toasty in two occupied bedrooms.
In our house, the timer controlled thermostat allows the house to drop to 59F degrees at night. Two of the bedrooms have those electric, oil-filled radiators in them that get turned on at bedtime. The radiators were cheap - about $30 each at the end of the winter one year.
The state makes a fortune off prison telephones. All of the talk about "planning crimes" or "drug deals" is total BS.
In Illinois, the collect call rate for the prison system is $2.00 to accept a call, then 25cents/min thereafter. Criminal. The fact is, contact with outside family is the only thing keeping some of these inmates sane, and helps reduce the recidivism rate as well. These collect call rates tend to lead to phone service disconnects for the people who accept them.
A half hour call with my brother costs more than it would cost to add another line to my cell phone plan.
Why not, for the immediate future, setup her voicemail to answer after 1 ring, and set the voicemail message to something like...
Because: I've noticed that most people don't listen to the outgoing voicemail message. During the ringing and soon after the pickup, most people are mentally rehearsing their script in their head. "Hi, I'm calling to tell you..." I've created messages to the effect of "I'm not in the office, won't be back for a week, and won't be checking messages. Here's an alternate number for you to try..." and they STILL leave a message oblivious to what I've just told them, asking for immediate or short-term response.
As mentioned in TFA, while we have a backlog of untranscribed communications from more relevant conversations, these employees were ordered to listen to and transcribe inane conversations of American citizens calling their families back home. Meanwhile, legit intelligence sits decaying on the shelves.
Sheesh, in addition to firing employees because of their religious beliefs or being gay, they've now got them taking notes on American Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders employees and volunteers who are calling home to check on their kids. I feel all warm and safe, now.<sarcasm/>
These weren't renegades. If you go all the way to page 3 of TFA (I know, who reads these!) you'll read that they were ordered to record these calls, even those of the American Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders, two groups that supposedly were exempt from such tracking.
They also indicated in the testimony that their higher-ups insisted on their continuing the recording and following of these groups even when they had protested.
Again: not 'a few bad apples', but something endemic to the system.
We don't even have to go as far as the law, or even public mores. It's a given now that many job interviews include a quick skim of Facebook and several other social networking sites by the interviewer, and several people have had job offers yanked after unflattering pictures made it to the public sphere. One involves a teacher in Colorado, who was at a party in college, and the school district thought the party pictures not appropriate (News Flash - people drink!) Or: high school students who are photographed with cups in hand, only to be pulled off the sports teams for suspicion of minor consumption. Or: a DUI offender who gets the book thrown at him because his Facebook profile shows him not to be the remorseful type he appeared to be in court. No links: these are easy ones and no more than a year old.
Face it, you will be judged by what's 'out there'; make it part of the noise, or make a louder noise. Or: use the same decision you make with "unsecure email" and decide "would I want this to be stuck on the front lawn on a big sign?"
Sorry - no good advice I can give. Just reminding everyone that you don't have to break the law or a future law to end up screwed by this system.
Like taking a percentage of revenues for 'breakage' based on the rates of vinyl records breaking in shipping even though CDs are much more sturdy and MP3 downloads are impervious.
Actually, the breakage percentage was based on the original shellac records breaking during shipment. They were extremely fragile, and so this 10% off the top was acceptable. According to "Entertainment Industry Economics" by Harold L Vogel, this fee has largely disappeared, although I couldn't verify.
found the shortcut for Microsoft Word, and clicks on it. It takes a second before anything happens, and then a little window pops up with what looks like an error message.
In Word 2003 and later, if an 3rd-party Word addin seems to be responsible for a prior crash, Word will bring up a dialog indicating that the addin (by name) seems to have had a problem last time, and asks if you would like to disable it. The default button is "Yes".
That's important; the average user operation is to hit the button with the darker border, regardless of what it says. Once they've disabled the addin, the setting to re-enable it is buried in the least obvious place (Help: About Microsoft Word) and the addin is dead.
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If you're turning right on red, I'll give it to you, since you're not going to be there long, and waiting or going behind you aren't a problem for the pedestrian. If you're going straight or turning left, then you're already past the solid white line and into the cross-walk for no reason at all.
Even the police do this in my town, and I've never gotten the point. You're probably already blocking the line of site of the guy who IS trying to make a legit right-on-red, and pedestrians who in some towns then have to walk within a foot of 30-45 MPH traffic.
Remember: when you're a car in a cross-walk on a red, you're just a visitor. This goes both ways: the same for a car parked on a sidewalk, or a pedestrian in a parking lot; get your business done and get out of the way!
And: I also have this image of a great big store like Amazon littered with millions of electronic shopping carts, crowding the aisles.
Must go take my meds now.
I agree. I recently took an old Pentium 233MHz system and opened the case in front of my daughters (ages 6 and 8). I gave them screwdrivers and told them to take it apart. My older girl carried around the floppy drive (with cable) for about three months afterward, showing it to anyone who would listen. My younger girl helped install a NIC, too.
In Chicago, the court costs of contesting a parking ticket costs more than the ticket. I've gotten one - the point of contesting the ticket would be to get the chance to claim you're right, get told you're wrong, and pay more in the end. Sheesh.
When I was in college in the late 80s (yeah, I know), they had introduced the student ID card with a bar code and a magnetic strip on the back. However, they had no equipment to read either one, and the back of your card needed to display a 'valid student' sticker anyway - right over both the bar code and the strip. Four years later, still no readers, and an entrenchment of various stickers from other school functions (meal pass, library, transportation) made the back of the card useless anyway. I never did find out how that ended.
GIMP = Graphics Imaging via Multiple Plug-ins
I love it!
Up until the 80s, the average CEO had been with their company well-on 20 years, and had a vested personal interest in the long-term health of the company. Tax laws also rewarded long-term holding of company stock. Up until that point, you had a culture of owners - the culture that believes in changing the oil and washing a car for long-term benefit.
In the 80s, that changed. CEO tenure dropped to below 10 years, and most of the major disincentives for quick stock trading evaporated. Executive compensation got less and less tied to the long-term health of the company. Income tax rate on stock gains dropped below that of actually working for a living. We got a culture of 'renters' - those in it only for the short-term. When was the last time someone washed a rental car?
Market distortions aside (subsidies, etc.) the cost of R/D, production, transportation all get worked into the retail price in the end. If the energy cost is obscene, count on bulbs that don't sell well on the 'pays for itself in one year' model. In those situations, the cost of physically replacing the bulb factors into the purchase decision. This is usually the case where the bulb is in some hard-to-reach location and you'd have to pay an employee a fair amount to replace them.
Actually, there was a time a few years ago when I called to cancel service because I was "out of contract" with a still-working phone. The rep (AT&T/Cingular at the time) offered me a break of $5/month to stick with them, with my old phone. I took them up on it.
Of course, don't play this gambit if you don't have a viable switch plan, but know that it may work.
My favorite FAIL.
Here in the Chicagoland area, it's similar. The employees tended to be OK, but the customers spoiled the whole experience. I got to listen to customers one aisle over yell at their kids (not discipline... argue) people who wouldn't get out of your way and usually push carts down the middle of the too-narrow aisles. And nobody makes eye contact; it must be some primal thing from our forebearers - "if something makes eye contact with you, you either kill it or mate with it." Uh uh.
Forget corporate classes. If Wal Mart would start a customer courtesy policy, I might go back to one.
KEXP? I've heard of them and thanks for the link - I had forgotten about them. Their playlist is really pretty diverse. Your sibling post indicated/confirmed that advertisers are what 'happened' to shuffle. Looks like free/non-profit is where we'll see it.
I also see that they offer Windows, Real, and two bitrates of MP3. Pretty forward-thinking of them. I'll be there tomorrow.
Parent got modded funny, but many of us remember the 80s when MTV started, and they truly ran the same model as the radio - 10-12 random songs per hour, interspersed with "VJ" dialog and commercials.
Slowly, slowly, they began to add "shows", usually 30 minutes in length. Some were heavily music-oriented such as the 'unplugged' series, while others were lighter such as "Remote Control". However, they all gave the ADVERTISERS what they were seeking: an easily labeled audience.
You see: since MTV was the first and largest of its kind, its audience was also pretty vague. "College student" was about all you could say and be close. But advertisers like narrower demographics: rich/poor, black/white, male/female. In its early days, when ad dollars were cheaper, they were willing to take a chance. As MTV got bigger and more expensive, they couldn't take such chances.
MTV splintered. "Yo, MTV Raps!" and other shows were aimed at smaller and clearer groups. Advertisers were largely happy, and viewers who didn't know better were also happy. We lost that random hour of music, though. I miss that opportunity that came when I could flip on a channel and discover a new rap song I would never have seen, or country, or any one of dozens of genres that I would have never 'picked' but was suddenly exposed to.
So: I put it to the /. masses. What is the current, best channel of media for opening one's horizons? Is it Pandora? Is it still Youtube? Or is there some other place that one can be 'fed' a steady flow of music from a wide net of types? Is there a venue where the music is more international? Where can I find Bollywood followed by rap?
No mod points, but thought I'd reply that I thought this was pretty funny.
In our house, the timer controlled thermostat allows the house to drop to 59F degrees at night. Two of the bedrooms have those electric, oil-filled radiators in them that get turned on at bedtime. The radiators were cheap - about $30 each at the end of the winter one year.
Yeah, or intercepting/tapping phone calls without a warrant, or...
In Illinois, the collect call rate for the prison system is $2.00 to accept a call, then 25cents/min thereafter. Criminal. The fact is, contact with outside family is the only thing keeping some of these inmates sane, and helps reduce the recidivism rate as well. These collect call rates tend to lead to phone service disconnects for the people who accept them.
A half hour call with my brother costs more than it would cost to add another line to my cell phone plan.
Maybe: he used parens, so it counts maybe as mumbling, maybe as just thinking it.
Because: I've noticed that most people don't listen to the outgoing voicemail message. During the ringing and soon after the pickup, most people are mentally rehearsing their script in their head. "Hi, I'm calling to tell you..." I've created messages to the effect of "I'm not in the office, won't be back for a week, and won't be checking messages. Here's an alternate number for you to try..." and they STILL leave a message oblivious to what I've just told them, asking for immediate or short-term response.
As mentioned in TFA, while we have a backlog of untranscribed communications from more relevant conversations, these employees were ordered to listen to and transcribe inane conversations of American citizens calling their families back home. Meanwhile, legit intelligence sits decaying on the shelves.
Sheesh, in addition to firing employees because of their religious beliefs or being gay, they've now got them taking notes on American Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders employees and volunteers who are calling home to check on their kids. I feel all warm and safe, now.<sarcasm/>
They also indicated in the testimony that their higher-ups insisted on their continuing the recording and following of these groups even when they had protested.
Again: not 'a few bad apples', but something endemic to the system.
Face it, you will be judged by what's 'out there'; make it part of the noise, or make a louder noise. Or: use the same decision you make with "unsecure email" and decide "would I want this to be stuck on the front lawn on a big sign?"
Sorry - no good advice I can give. Just reminding everyone that you don't have to break the law or a future law to end up screwed by this system.
Actually, the breakage percentage was based on the original shellac records breaking during shipment. They were extremely fragile, and so this 10% off the top was acceptable. According to "Entertainment Industry Economics" by Harold L Vogel, this fee has largely disappeared, although I couldn't verify.
In Word 2003 and later, if an 3rd-party Word addin seems to be responsible for a prior crash, Word will bring up a dialog indicating that the addin (by name) seems to have had a problem last time, and asks if you would like to disable it. The default button is "Yes".
That's important; the average user operation is to hit the button with the darker border, regardless of what it says. Once they've disabled the addin, the setting to re-enable it is buried in the least obvious place (Help: About Microsoft Word) and the addin is dead.
Now: allow me to rant on all of you who call it the "Patriot Act". ARGGGGGHHH!!
(There: got my pirate cred in there, too.)