And... you -are- a taxpaying member of that state correct? And you -are- already paying this so called toll (read tax) in addition to your normal taxes? How is paying it as a tax any different than paying it as a toll???
Me? Sure it's the same to me since I'm paying both tolls and taxes anyway. But my neighbor who just uses public transportation might feel differently about having to pay extra in taxes for a service they don't benefit from. Not everyone in the state uses the roads and tunnels, so why should everyone pay for them?
Tolls serve only one reasonable purpose, and that is payback on road/bridge/tunnel construction. After those dues are payed, the toll system should be shut down.
Road expenses don't stop when the initial constructon is paid for. You have maintenance expenses, additional construction as needed, snow removal, state police, etc. As it is now, those who choose to use the pay roads cover the bill for road-related expenses...that sounds fair to me.
$500 million, so what...NJ makes about $400 million in toll revenue each year and about 230 million cars or trucks pass through the booths each year. (From the most recent budget report I could find)
Do away with tolls and that $400 Million comes from taxpayers instead. Doing away with tolls also increases congestion because the people who drive back roads to avoid paying will start driving on what are toll roads now.
I don't have a number for the initial construction expense, but removing the tolls means spending additional money on the task and would probably cause more congestion due to the construction needed to get rid of them.
Also, the $400 million a year in toll revenue does more than pay off the roads and cover operating expenses, it helps pay for construction projects and state police.
It seems like a lot, but it makes sense given how densely populated the area is.
NJ just spent over $500 million to install EZ-Pass. That's right, $500 million. That's like buying a $1 million diamond encrusted cash register to use at a 99-cent store. How many years of tolls need to be collected before the cash register itself is paid off? I wonder how much Christie Whitman (the gov at the time) made off of that deal?
New Jersey is very densely populated. It's not just a matter of spending money to save money, its also an expense to improve traffic flow.
As more people crowd the roads, you have a choice of building more toll booths, increasing the traffic flow, or letting increasing congestion go unchecked. Converting lanes to EZPass lets NJ increase traffic flow through bottlenecks without having to build new booths. It's a quality of life expense and a way to limit additional construction spending.
The Jews had no choice in the matter. I allow myself to be tracked out of free will because it saves me so much time. I don't mind for the same reason I don't mind having a cell phone, a debit card, or a domain name registered in my name.
No problem at all for me, my EZPass literally saves me hours a week since I'm on the NJ Turnpike regularly.
If I was planning on doing something seriously illegal, I'd just ditch the tag first. The cops who got caught claiming false overtime deserved it, not because they did wrong, but because they were stupid enough to think they weren't leaving an auditable trail behind them.
Kind of off-topic, but if you want to get back to variety on the radio, WFMU is a nice place to start. They have live streams of varying quality, so you don't have to be a local to listen.
I gave someone a bloddy nose with a Bible once, outside of a church. (Vacation Bible School and I did not get along). Does that mean that Bible Study causes violence too?
Idiots will do what idiots do. The vast majority of gamers will never hurt anyone, much less carry a gun around "just in case".
When all, most, or even a tenth of gamers start acting violently, maybe I'll consider that there's some kind of relationship between gaming and violence.
Take your big companies and give the poor open source non profit emulator developers some official support.
PC console emulation has always traveled hand-in-hand with pirated console games. I understand the difference between the two, but I doubt that subtle distinctions will influence console makers to give official support to anything that could cut into licensing fees. Yes, sales to PC users could increase fee revenue, but the risk of losing traditional sales is too great to take that chance.
I'm not a moron. I know how to pick my hardware and build a 1337 gaming rig without having some company pick it for me.
I could build a 1337 rig too, but the video card alone will probably cost more than an entire console. Consoles give people who don't have a few grand to drop on a gaming machine a chance to play too.
It's actually a lot easier with stone than with wood because you're sandblasting through a rubber stencil. The stencil can be designed from CAD, allowing a great degree of percision.
Agreed, the fancy "printer" is probably a lot easier to work with....but the sandblasting rig is a lot more versatile. Hard to clean off the side of a granite-faced building with a printer.
Tough call. I wouldn't want to bet on it, but maybe Apple just allows it to continue for awhile and sees if the idea will catch on or not. Might be better to let the market develop and enjoy the extra online sales until they decide if this is something they want to do in-house or not.
I wish they took the time to put in some more confirmation dialogs instead. Like maybe it's obvious to an experienced Mac user that plugging in my iPod to a machine with iTunes will clear it of all the music... But it sure was a surprize to me. Would asking "Are you sure you wanna delete 10 Gigs worth of MP3s off your iPod?" been so hard?!
Is this a new feature for the Windows iTunes? Plugging my iPod into either my machine or someone else's has never deleted anything from it. That would defeat half my reason for owning an iPod: using it as an external hard drive so I can conserve space in my iBook.
It states that the groupings deal with *one or more* of news, sports, money, entertainment, science & tech, life and weather. So, if any system keeps track of any of those settings, it is treading on Microsoft's patent. Well, if any site takes out all of those categories, to not violate the patent, what other categories can be made? I sure can't think of any.
"Life" is probably broad enough to cover just about anythin a human might want to look at...unless the categories must use those exact terms, in that case we might be checking the calefaction forecast for my zip code in the near future.
Indeed, Verizon has plans to convert parts of its network to CDMA
The article you linked to just refers to converting an new acquisition to CDMA. The rest of Verizon's network is already using CDMA as the network standard. The Japanese telcos like CDMA as well.
VLC is pretty good too, better for me because my mac is an older machine and the OS X version of mplayer doesn't always work well with my hardware (iBook 500).
I've always wondered why teachers don't "open source" some text books.
That would be nice, but that would interfere with the goal of most colleges: sucking every dollar they can out of you. The teachers might not mind the idea, but the campus bookstore that anally rapes students coming and going (even on used books) and the administration would probably have a fit if their teachers started making decisions that cut into their profit margin.
There are exceptions where schools appear to be doing something altruistic, but MIT is making more than their share on tuition and the usual. I'm sure they still turn away more than they admit, even if they are giving their course materials away.
Probably just a marketing decision...tactics appeals to the armchair general types, turn-based sounds outdated compared to realtime. Forgive me if I'm missing something, but every "tactical strategy" game I've heard of was turn based.
Google seems to be suffering from feature overload of late.
In what way are they suffering? Google continues to be the most useful search engine on the web. They're trying new things, but not at the cost of their core business. This feature isn't even out of development. It may never be on the Google home page. Would it be better if they never tried doing anything new?
Re:Damn you Neal Stephenson!
on
Quicksilver
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· Score: 1
I don't read any books that are part of an incomplete series.
With part one running 900+ pages, I wonder what the "Complete" edition would cost, or how much it would weigh if released as one volume.
Slashdot Mirror
Hate to say it, but I expect them to be "found" too...a few weeks before the next election. I'm expecting to see OBL in shackles around the same time.
Never do today what can be put off until tomorrow, especially when another 4 years are at stake.
FIVAnd... you -are- a taxpaying member of that state correct? And you -are- already paying this so called toll (read tax) in addition to your normal taxes? How is paying it as a tax any different than paying it as a toll???
Me? Sure it's the same to me since I'm paying both tolls and taxes anyway. But my neighbor who just uses public transportation might feel differently about having to pay extra in taxes for a service they don't benefit from. Not everyone in the state uses the roads and tunnels, so why should everyone pay for them?
Tolls serve only one reasonable purpose, and that is payback on road/bridge/tunnel construction. After those dues are payed, the toll system should be shut down.
Road expenses don't stop when the initial constructon is paid for. You have maintenance expenses, additional construction as needed, snow removal, state police, etc. As it is now, those who choose to use the pay roads cover the bill for road-related expenses...that sounds fair to me.
FIV$500 million, so what...NJ makes about $400 million in toll revenue each year and about 230 million cars or trucks pass through the booths each year. (From the most recent budget report I could find)
Do away with tolls and that $400 Million comes from taxpayers instead. Doing away with tolls also increases congestion because the people who drive back roads to avoid paying will start driving on what are toll roads now.
I don't have a number for the initial construction expense, but removing the tolls means spending additional money on the task and would probably cause more congestion due to the construction needed to get rid of them.
Also, the $400 million a year in toll revenue does more than pay off the roads and cover operating expenses, it helps pay for construction projects and state police.
It seems like a lot, but it makes sense given how densely populated the area is.
FIVNew Jersey is very densely populated. It's not just a matter of spending money to save money, its also an expense to improve traffic flow.
As more people crowd the roads, you have a choice of building more toll booths, increasing the traffic flow, or letting increasing congestion go unchecked. Converting lanes to EZPass lets NJ increase traffic flow through bottlenecks without having to build new booths. It's a quality of life expense and a way to limit additional construction spending.
FIVThe Jews had no choice in the matter. I allow myself to be tracked out of free will because it saves me so much time. I don't mind for the same reason I don't mind having a cell phone, a debit card, or a domain name registered in my name.
FIVNo problem at all for me, my EZPass literally saves me hours a week since I'm on the NJ Turnpike regularly.
If I was planning on doing something seriously illegal, I'd just ditch the tag first. The cops who got caught claiming false overtime deserved it, not because they did wrong, but because they were stupid enough to think they weren't leaving an auditable trail behind them.
FIV...Or Microsoft makes their users wait three weeks because it doesn't want to look insecure by releasing many patches each month.
FIVKind of off-topic, but if you want to get back to variety on the radio, WFMU is a nice place to start. They have live streams of varying quality, so you don't have to be a local to listen.
-FIVI lost my temper once, but my expert mouse clicking and keyboarding skills did me no good at all. All that training gone to waste, pity.
- FIV
I gave someone a bloddy nose with a Bible once, outside of a church. (Vacation Bible School and I did not get along). Does that mean that Bible Study causes violence too?
Idiots will do what idiots do. The vast majority of gamers will never hurt anyone, much less carry a gun around "just in case".
When all, most, or even a tenth of gamers start acting violently, maybe I'll consider that there's some kind of relationship between gaming and violence.
- FIV
Don't know if it's there or not anymore, but internet nostalgia makes me think of telneting to marvel.loc.gov from my university VMS/VAX account.
Link?
A quick google search turned up GoBoy for game boy games, but no GBA emulator.
I'd consider an NGage if I could play FFTA or Advance Wars on it.
FIV
Take your big companies and give the poor open source non profit emulator developers some official support.
PC console emulation has always traveled hand-in-hand with pirated console games. I understand the difference between the two, but I doubt that subtle distinctions will influence console makers to give official support to anything that could cut into licensing fees. Yes, sales to PC users could increase fee revenue, but the risk of losing traditional sales is too great to take that chance.
I'm not a moron. I know how to pick my hardware and build a 1337 gaming rig without having some company pick it for me.
I could build a 1337 rig too, but the video card alone will probably cost more than an entire console. Consoles give people who don't have a few grand to drop on a gaming machine a chance to play too.
- FIV
It's actually a lot easier with stone than with wood because you're sandblasting through a rubber stencil. The stencil can be designed from CAD, allowing a great degree of percision.
Agreed, the fancy "printer" is probably a lot easier to work with....but the sandblasting rig is a lot more versatile. Hard to clean off the side of a granite-faced building with a printer.
Tough call. I wouldn't want to bet on it, but maybe Apple just allows it to continue for awhile and sees if the idea will catch on or not. Might be better to let the market develop and enjoy the extra online sales until they decide if this is something they want to do in-house or not.
F.IV
I wish they took the time to put in some more confirmation dialogs instead. Like maybe it's obvious to an experienced Mac user that plugging in my iPod to a machine with iTunes will clear it of all the music... But it sure was a surprize to me. Would asking "Are you sure you wanna delete 10 Gigs worth of MP3s off your iPod?" been so hard?!
Is this a new feature for the Windows iTunes? Plugging my iPod into either my machine or someone else's has never deleted anything from it. That would defeat half my reason for owning an iPod: using it as an external hard drive so I can conserve space in my iBook.
It states that the groupings deal with *one or more* of news, sports, money, entertainment, science & tech, life and weather. So, if any system keeps track of any of those settings, it is treading on Microsoft's patent. Well, if any site takes out all of those categories, to not violate the patent, what other categories can be made? I sure can't think of any.
"Life" is probably broad enough to cover just about anythin a human might want to look at...unless the categories must use those exact terms, in that case we might be checking the calefaction forecast for my zip code in the near future.
Indeed, Verizon has plans to convert parts of its network to CDMA
The article you linked to just refers to converting an new acquisition to CDMA. The rest of Verizon's network is already using CDMA as the network standard. The Japanese telcos like CDMA as well.
Next, affordable handsets
And affordable customer service...and affordable billing systems...
This is good news, but there are many other expenses involved that new cell companies have to contend with.
VLC is pretty good too, better for me because my mac is an older machine and the OS X version of mplayer doesn't always work well with my hardware (iBook 500).
I've always wondered why teachers don't "open source" some text books.
That would be nice, but that would interfere with the goal of most colleges: sucking every dollar they can out of you. The teachers might not mind the idea, but the campus bookstore that anally rapes students coming and going (even on used books) and the administration would probably have a fit if their teachers started making decisions that cut into their profit margin.
There are exceptions where schools appear to be doing something altruistic, but MIT is making more than their share on tuition and the usual. I'm sure they still turn away more than they admit, even if they are giving their course materials away.
Maybe we should all start to think about jumping ship?
Hmm... -1 Flamebait in the story summary?
tactical strategy a.k.a. Turn-based strategy
Probably just a marketing decision...tactics appeals to the armchair general types, turn-based sounds outdated compared to realtime. Forgive me if I'm missing something, but every "tactical strategy" game I've heard of was turn based.
Google seems to be suffering from feature overload of late.
In what way are they suffering? Google continues to be the most useful search engine on the web. They're trying new things, but not at the cost of their core business. This feature isn't even out of development. It may never be on the Google home page. Would it be better if they never tried doing anything new?
I don't read any books that are part of an incomplete series.
With part one running 900+ pages, I wonder what the "Complete" edition would cost, or how much it would weigh if released as one volume.