So this is for people to view and observe the border and report any activity right....well I guess this plan is already in the toilet now that people IN MEXICO can view the cameras and see exactly where they are pointed.
Ok yes, we see you. We will mark that crossing off our list of possibilities. Ok, a little further...there I can see you...keep going....now I can't, mark that with a flag or something.
Stop letting everyone who applies for a license get one. Bad drivers do not need to be issued a license. If the government was really concerned about making drivers safer and less about tax/fine dollars then there would be less poor drivers out there with government issued licenses. It is not a right to be able to drive, it is a privilege. If you do not have the capacity to operate a motor vehicle then you should not be issued a license. This is the ONLY way that there will be safe drivers on the road.
You make a smarter car that self parks, has a backup camera, 40 air bags, voice activated GPS etc and I'll show you the idiot who takes advantages of these things and kills themselves or someone else because they cannot do the basic task required when operating a motor vehicle which is BEING ABLE TO DRIVE.
I also think that it is funny that they stated in the article that this marketing campaign failed....but they use pretty words like "It did follow our projected timeline."
This is wrong on so many levels. Next we will have companies sending us letters from Nigeria telling people they have millions of dollars and all they need to do to get it is to buy a new car.
I for one am sick of companies using deceitful(all advertising is) tactics to trick/scare/lure people to their products and then when they get caught they use the "but its advertising so its OK!" line. If they would have made it clear that it was from a company and it was an advertising campaign(yes it would lose its intended effect) then I think it would be a bit different. But for them to make it appear as though a real person was traveling overseas who was in legal trouble was coming to visit a person is incredibly wrong.
I had this happen to a friend of mine last year. They lost their modest paying job and was unemployed for about 6 months. They were offered a part-time job that would pay less than the benefits, but at least it would get them out of the house and working again and hopefully networking with people to find a new full time job. However, after they spoke with the unemployment office, they were informed that even though they would be making very little money, they would receive next to nothing in unemployment benefits. Just to give you an idea of how crappy this system is, they were getting a little over $250 a week on unemployment, with this part time job they would have been making around $150 a week plus paying taxes, gas, lunch, etc and unemployment would stop. Where is the incentive to find a job?
In my line of work I've noticed that most people who purchase a product or service have an idea of what they want/need. However, many people have greater expectations than what can be achieved. It is my job to inform the consumer to the best of my ability what a product or service will do. I can't count the number of times in my previous role (project manager for a construction company) where people wanted to spend pennies and get the Taj Mahal or take an existing 50+ year old structure and have it look brand new. It just is not going to happen. The difference between purchasing on-line and buying in person is that on-line you rely on reviews, but in my opinion there are more negative reviews from people who had too great an expectation rather than people who have a legitimate negative claim thus skewing the reviews negative because people with good experiences have little motivation to post they had a good experience.
Seems every week we have a new fuel to run our cars on that do 3x-5x better MPG than standard gasoline. Hmm...Seems this has been a long time coming and it will still be a long time coming because I do not see big oil stepping down anytime soon. These articles are a nice "pie in the sky" to think about how great it would be if we could really get 150 MPG and have to fill up once a month, but if you do the math, that means a gallon of whatever we run our cars on would be about $10 a gallon. Sure it's green, but green's gotta turn a profit too.
First, I want to know what moron goes to Best Buy and asks the associate what they should buy? Oh, wait, that's right. Everyone not on/. does that. Too bad there's not enough intelligence in the US to do some due diligence and figure out what you really need. Lets go ask that 18 year old how I should spend my 5 grand.
If this is passed and all vehicles are required to have a GPS, I will just simply locate it and wrap it in tin foil!
On a serious note, how will this effect people whose jobs require them to drive daily on a sales route? What about truckers whose job it is to take freight across the country? Do you have any idea how much more the costs of goods would become IF there is a per mile tax? I mean come on, the IRS recommends $.50 a mile PAY for someone who works a route, so suddenly $.50 a mile no longer covers gas, wear and tear, plus incentive to drive freight/goods/services.
And another thing, with the recent number of 1 out of 6 Americans out of work, why do we not start a federally funded infrastructure rebuilding project using those who are currently out of work? You could use labor, engineers, managers, etc to repair the failing infrastructure we currently have.
I'll bet that everyone who is complaining about the travel times in WoW (Its what I use to play) is at max level. And I will agree with you that once you have "completed" a certain area you should be able to breeze through it.
I tried out AoC and their travel paths were MUCH more tedious than WoWs. I believe they changed it, but originally you had to run through lowbie world zones to reach the higher level zones. Now, here is the huge problem with that. Lowbie characters would hide, losing them playing time because a high level was running past, and high level players would be bored senseless from all the requests to "help out" for the 15 mins it took to get through the zone.
My only gripe about WoWs travel is that I thought that multizone flight paths should be instant. I always hated when you had to go from Booty Bay to The Hinterlands or Hillsbrad Foothills and the flight took 25 mins.
But! The good news is that WoW did change the flight paths from their original design in that you had to fly to each point and then hop back on the gryphon which was extremely tedious.
I do agree that travel is a pain to deal with, but I remember first playing the game and thinking how amazing the world looked and how vast it seemed. With instant travel it would lose some of that.
Police cannot entrap someone. They cannot coerce someone into doing an illegal act. When they operate a sting there are specific guidelines (NOT RULES) that they follow.
There have been plenty of cases overturned because the cops got someone to do something illegal that they would not normally have done.
Do you really think your cable/satellite provider is going to be happy that you have elected to bypass their service and are paying for an on-line TV programming lineup? NO! Just look at the recent article about Time Warner Cable talking about putting bandwidth caps for too much usage. Hell, it even says in the article that using their phone/video service won't count, but using other services will count against your download limit.
This would be the largest set back to a fully on-line a-la-carte system that we all dream of. Our providers, unless they offer a-la-carte and FREE(with monthly cable bill) On demand streaming video then it seems that the big cable companies will do whatever they can possible to circumvent this type of system from working.
I would be rich! RICH I TELL YOU! Just think, you buy a few thousand dollars of stock and then sell it. Someone else buys your shares and you should be entitled to part of their profit too! And the next person after that, why not! Just think, your few thousand dollars of stocks would pay you huge gains because you would be entitled to part of the gains of each sale.
I'm really sick of these greedy bastards trying to rip off customers and the middle man. If you want to have complete control over your product, install a self destruct mechanism in the discs and make them explode after X number of hours. I bet that would kill the used game market.
Customer: "Do you have game X used?"
Store: "Why, yes we do, but I will tell you that it only has 4 hours left on it till it explodes."
Customer: "Well from what I hear the explosion may be more entertaining than the game is, I'll take it."
If I sold you my house, I should have every right to walk in without you knowing and install something of my choosing. What does it do?
Well I just wanted to tell everyone that every house I've lived in has had a light switch that does nothing, so I thought I would add one to your ceiling. Don't worry, it will be out of the way.
Does it hurt anything? No, does it piss you the hell off to know there is a light switch on your ceiling now for no reason and you didn't ask to have it put there? You're damn right.
We need to stop making people product stupid. There should be no need for insane warning labels such as on a hair dryer, do not use in the shower, and on knives, may cause cuts.
I mean, people need to be held responsible for their own actions.
Media PCs coming to a living room near you!
on
Why TV Lost
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· Score: 1
Home theater enthusiasts on the edge of technology already know that through the use of a big screen LCD TV you can hook a DIY Media PC relatively cheap up to it and use it to play all your favorite programing through it.
There's no need for specs, but a basic "I want my PC to play streaming video/download video/hook up cable" does not take much computing power.
With a wireless mouse and keyboard, IR remotes, the ability to hook up cable to PCs, and the ability to download or stream your favorite shows, you will see cable boxes replaced by media PCs in the living room.
The movie companies started making good movies instead of the crap they have been rolling out. In the past year I have seen only a handful of movies that were worth the time and cost to go see them.
Put it this way, family of 4 goes to see a movie one night: two adult tickets $20, two kids tickets $14, two drinks and popcorn $20.
Wow, I just spent $54 and 3 hours of my time to sit in a theater and watch a sub-par movie when I could just rent/buy a movie and watch it at home for a total cost of $1 rent fee, $2.00 for 2L of soda, $5 for 8 bags of popcorn.
AND I don't have to deal with jerk offs talking/texting/ringing in the theater.
Make a better product, and people will pay to have it. When the product is crap, people don't mind if they get a crap version of it because there is no real loss.
And shouldn't the RIAA go after an admitted music pirate? Shouldn't it be Lars going to court for "making available" and "promoting piracy"?
Come on, where the fuck is the justice in this? The bastard just publicly admitted to downloading illegal copies of music and no one is going to touch him?
But I guess its OK to sue college students, grandmothers, and the disabled because they can't defend themselves.
A while back Blockbuster was accepting used games and were offering a promotion of "turn in ANY 2 used games and buy ANY used game for $10".
The only problem was that a smaller game store was selling old PS1 games for 50 cents each which meant I could spend $1, go to blockbuster buy the highest valued game in the store for $10 minus what the trade in games were worth (usually about a quarter).
Then, I would turn around and trade in the game I just bought for anywhere between $15 and $35 dollars. So, I spent $11, made $25 for a profit of $14 and proceeded to do this around 50 times until the store manager refused to accept PS1 games anymore because they had about 15 copies of Madden 98 and NHL 96. But other Blockbusters still would.
How's that for getting peanuts for your trade ins?
I think for once, every console gamer in the world can agree that this list is insanely incorrect. Maybe that's the record:
"First Time All Console Gamers Agree On A Game List In History".
All I know is that there are many people driving today that should not be behind the wheel of a car.
If you removed said people from the road we would not have nearly the amount of problems we do today. That being said, it is true that could become a slippery slope where no one is allowed to drive.
To remedy this problem I think there needs to be mandatory driving tests issued every 2-5 years and driving tests required after vehicular infractions. As much as this would be a huge pain in the ass we would accomplish threethings:
1) People would "remember" how to drive correctly
2) Public transportation would be a viable alternative due to demand
3) The DMV would have to start working at light speed
Slashdot Mirror
Ok yes, we see you. We will mark that crossing off our list of possibilities. Ok, a little further...there I can see you...keep going....now I can't, mark that with a flag or something.
Well played Border Control, well played.
You make a smarter car that self parks, has a backup camera, 40 air bags, voice activated GPS etc and I'll show you the idiot who takes advantages of these things and kills themselves or someone else because they cannot do the basic task required when operating a motor vehicle which is BEING ABLE TO DRIVE.
LOL
This is wrong on so many levels. Next we will have companies sending us letters from Nigeria telling people they have millions of dollars and all they need to do to get it is to buy a new car. I for one am sick of companies using deceitful(all advertising is) tactics to trick/scare/lure people to their products and then when they get caught they use the "but its advertising so its OK!" line. If they would have made it clear that it was from a company and it was an advertising campaign(yes it would lose its intended effect) then I think it would be a bit different. But for them to make it appear as though a real person was traveling overseas who was in legal trouble was coming to visit a person is incredibly wrong.
I had this happen to a friend of mine last year. They lost their modest paying job and was unemployed for about 6 months. They were offered a part-time job that would pay less than the benefits, but at least it would get them out of the house and working again and hopefully networking with people to find a new full time job. However, after they spoke with the unemployment office, they were informed that even though they would be making very little money, they would receive next to nothing in unemployment benefits. Just to give you an idea of how crappy this system is, they were getting a little over $250 a week on unemployment, with this part time job they would have been making around $150 a week plus paying taxes, gas, lunch, etc and unemployment would stop. Where is the incentive to find a job?
In my line of work I've noticed that most people who purchase a product or service have an idea of what they want/need. However, many people have greater expectations than what can be achieved. It is my job to inform the consumer to the best of my ability what a product or service will do. I can't count the number of times in my previous role (project manager for a construction company) where people wanted to spend pennies and get the Taj Mahal or take an existing 50+ year old structure and have it look brand new. It just is not going to happen. The difference between purchasing on-line and buying in person is that on-line you rely on reviews, but in my opinion there are more negative reviews from people who had too great an expectation rather than people who have a legitimate negative claim thus skewing the reviews negative because people with good experiences have little motivation to post they had a good experience.
Seems every week we have a new fuel to run our cars on that do 3x-5x better MPG than standard gasoline. Hmm...Seems this has been a long time coming and it will still be a long time coming because I do not see big oil stepping down anytime soon. These articles are a nice "pie in the sky" to think about how great it would be if we could really get 150 MPG and have to fill up once a month, but if you do the math, that means a gallon of whatever we run our cars on would be about $10 a gallon. Sure it's green, but green's gotta turn a profit too.
First, I want to know what moron goes to Best Buy and asks the associate what they should buy? Oh, wait, that's right. Everyone not on /. does that. Too bad there's not enough intelligence in the US to do some due diligence and figure out what you really need. Lets go ask that 18 year old how I should spend my 5 grand.
On a serious note, how will this effect people whose jobs require them to drive daily on a sales route? What about truckers whose job it is to take freight across the country? Do you have any idea how much more the costs of goods would become IF there is a per mile tax? I mean come on, the IRS recommends $.50 a mile PAY for someone who works a route, so suddenly $.50 a mile no longer covers gas, wear and tear, plus incentive to drive freight/goods/services.
And another thing, with the recent number of 1 out of 6 Americans out of work, why do we not start a federally funded infrastructure rebuilding project using those who are currently out of work? You could use labor, engineers, managers, etc to repair the failing infrastructure we currently have.
NOW THAT'S A BAILOUT THAT HELPS EVERYONE!
I tried out AoC and their travel paths were MUCH more tedious than WoWs. I believe they changed it, but originally you had to run through lowbie world zones to reach the higher level zones. Now, here is the huge problem with that. Lowbie characters would hide, losing them playing time because a high level was running past, and high level players would be bored senseless from all the requests to "help out" for the 15 mins it took to get through the zone.
My only gripe about WoWs travel is that I thought that multizone flight paths should be instant. I always hated when you had to go from Booty Bay to The Hinterlands or Hillsbrad Foothills and the flight took 25 mins.
But! The good news is that WoW did change the flight paths from their original design in that you had to fly to each point and then hop back on the gryphon which was extremely tedious.
I do agree that travel is a pain to deal with, but I remember first playing the game and thinking how amazing the world looked and how vast it seemed. With instant travel it would lose some of that.
I was just curious since we've been beating the poor mare now for years and still nothing significant has arose from the situation.
There have been plenty of cases overturned because the cops got someone to do something illegal that they would not normally have done.
This would be the largest set back to a fully on-line a-la-carte system that we all dream of. Our providers, unless they offer a-la-carte and FREE(with monthly cable bill) On demand streaming video then it seems that the big cable companies will do whatever they can possible to circumvent this type of system from working.
I'm really sick of these greedy bastards trying to rip off customers and the middle man. If you want to have complete control over your product, install a self destruct mechanism in the discs and make them explode after X number of hours. I bet that would kill the used game market.
Customer: "Do you have game X used?"
Store: "Why, yes we do, but I will tell you that it only has 4 hours left on it till it explodes."
Customer: "Well from what I hear the explosion may be more entertaining than the game is, I'll take it."
Well I just wanted to tell everyone that every house I've lived in has had a light switch that does nothing, so I thought I would add one to your ceiling. Don't worry, it will be out of the way.
Does it hurt anything? No, does it piss you the hell off to know there is a light switch on your ceiling now for no reason and you didn't ask to have it put there? You're damn right.
I mean, people need to be held responsible for their own actions.
Long live the Zerg!
Home theater enthusiasts on the edge of technology already know that through the use of a big screen LCD TV you can hook a DIY Media PC relatively cheap up to it and use it to play all your favorite programing through it.
There's no need for specs, but a basic "I want my PC to play streaming video/download video/hook up cable" does not take much computing power.
With a wireless mouse and keyboard, IR remotes, the ability to hook up cable to PCs, and the ability to download or stream your favorite shows, you will see cable boxes replaced by media PCs in the living room.
Put it this way, family of 4 goes to see a movie one night: two adult tickets $20, two kids tickets $14, two drinks and popcorn $20.
Wow, I just spent $54 and 3 hours of my time to sit in a theater and watch a sub-par movie when I could just rent/buy a movie and watch it at home for a total cost of $1 rent fee, $2.00 for 2L of soda, $5 for 8 bags of popcorn.
AND I don't have to deal with jerk offs talking/texting/ringing in the theater.
Make a better product, and people will pay to have it. When the product is crap, people don't mind if they get a crap version of it because there is no real loss.
Come on, where the fuck is the justice in this? The bastard just publicly admitted to downloading illegal copies of music and no one is going to touch him?
But I guess its OK to sue college students, grandmothers, and the disabled because they can't defend themselves.
I don't even need to RTFA to understand how funny this is.
A while back Blockbuster was accepting used games and were offering a promotion of "turn in ANY 2 used games and buy ANY used game for $10".
The only problem was that a smaller game store was selling old PS1 games for 50 cents each which meant I could spend $1, go to blockbuster buy the highest valued game in the store for $10 minus what the trade in games were worth (usually about a quarter).
Then, I would turn around and trade in the game I just bought for anywhere between $15 and $35 dollars. So, I spent $11, made $25 for a profit of $14 and proceeded to do this around 50 times until the store manager refused to accept PS1 games anymore because they had about 15 copies of Madden 98 and NHL 96. But other Blockbusters still would.
How's that for getting peanuts for your trade ins?
I think for once, every console gamer in the world can agree that this list is insanely incorrect. Maybe that's the record:
"First Time All Console Gamers Agree On A Game List In History".
...and they'll just build a better idiot behind the wheel. Stop making cars safer and start making the people driving them smarter!
If you removed said people from the road we would not have nearly the amount of problems we do today. That being said, it is true that could become a slippery slope where no one is allowed to drive.
To remedy this problem I think there needs to be mandatory driving tests issued every 2-5 years and driving tests required after vehicular infractions. As much as this would be a huge pain in the ass we would accomplish threethings:
1) People would "remember" how to drive correctly
2) Public transportation would be a viable alternative due to demand
3) The DMV would have to start working at light speed