This was california, and insurance claims/calling out a CHP are just as bad (Despite it legally stating you should call one out over 750 bucks in damage, they don't really want anyone called out for less than like 5k or an injury. Even though half the time people will claim 1000's in injuries after the fact without having had a cop out.
Yes, I am cynical about the whole system. When liars have a better shot at being believable than an honest guy/gal, you know there's something wrong with the system, society, etc:l
I'll give you another example: What if it's NOT a criminal trial per-say but a traffic violation.
You maintain your innocence, but have no eye-witnesses to the traffic violation in question. The cop lies on the ticket, police report, etc about what you were doing. The pretrial judges all think you're guilty, regardless of the requirement for presumption of innocence. In order to take it to trial you're going to have to wait months, pay two times the cost of the ticket for court fees (non-refundable), plus if you're over 2k/month income you have to hire your own lawyer (who doesn't really care about your case anyhow and is going to require 6k to defend you in court, unless you pleabargain with the DA for a reduced sentence/violation/whatever.)
All of a sudden you're choosing between trying to prove you're innocent by placing your word against the cop (regardless of right, wrong, just having a bad day). You have to either find a witness who can corroborate your story, or prove this isn't the first time the officer in question lied to corroborate a supposed infraction.
Thousands of dollars to prove you're innocent, and get nothing back, plus take lots of time, or pay a few hundred for a lesser penalty and saying you're guilty.
I chose the road less travelled, but having spoken to a number of other people, who could've been guilty or innocent, very few would risk the financial investment in proving their innocence given a lesser penalty (and hey in the case of traffic violations, pretty much everyone is guilty of something that day, even if the ticket in question wasn't something they did, right?)
Just my take on things, and increasing distaste for the system and how it handles things.
In regards to the M1911 I was just reading the wikipedia entry on them, and apparently they're still a favored sidearm among many specialty military units, and if it wasn't for the ammunition standardization on the 9mm Parabellum to coincide with the NATO(UN?) standards, they'd have a good chance of STILL being the standard sidearm.
So in regards to updating military technology: Sometimes there will be new technology leading to a revolutionary redesign of modern weapons and ways of thinking about them, but far more often it will be an evolutionary design, born of constant usage, percieved shortcomings, and minor incremental redesigns to help overcome them. You see it in guns, you see it in planes:)
I don't know about NYC, but around here, most of the cabs are franchised, meaning while they may have some interest in your as far as your conduct reflects on their company, they are not in fact 'your employer'. Furthermore, I'm less worried about this being used on the drivers, and more being used on the passengers. Doesn't anyone else see cameras being made mandatory soon enough in order to 'ensure driver safety' by photographing all passengers as they enter or leave the vehicle, thus allowing law enforcement, as well as perhaps the company to corroborate your trip around town to your face and possibly name (esp with a credit card!). Yeah it might help, but it could also be used for blackmail, another small step in reducing our privacy, etc.
Maybe it's just paranoia, but given everything else going on around here, do you really want to take that chance? Criminals walk away every day, but how many innocent people have been put away for crimes they didn't commit based on questionable evidence, and what are the odds the data could be 'lost' if it didn't corroborate?
Maybe someone didn't pay attention to their 'config file updates' and accidentally overwrote their xorg.conf file? Or yeah, had the nvidia drivers installed which broke due to a xorg major number change. (I don't think either of those *SHOULD* happen, but backwards compatibility has never been a linux strong suit... Hell the BSD's are generally much better for that (although pray you remember to update your core utilities that use kernel level system calls, nothing like finding out you can't in fact just swap the kernel and be 'upgraded':) FreeBSD I had that problem (whether it was kernel first, then utils, or utils first then kernel, I can't remember, WAS fixable, just got lots of errors from all the kernel specific tools.)
Keep in mind thought that's probably due to infrastructure limitations rather than technological ones.
Buying a whole bunch of electronics from china or malysia or whatnot is probably a lot easier than getting modern grade nuclear reactor components transported and placed in Iran.
Besides which is that there's plenty of Iranians trained in computer science, electrical engineering, etc, and I'd assume more flags raised if not outright blocked (in the us at east) in regards to studying nuclear engineering.
That's just my take on it, being some uneducated git, it could be completely off-base.
You had epic characters, even more epic enemies, plenty of crappy weapons to overcome (Oh crap, my bone sword! Wow, this guy is selling OBSIDIAN! Quests for metal weaponry!)
Furthermore, making mages exiles who'd have to keep their powers secret, lest they were found and executed.
Maybe that's just me though. the novels for the series imho were up there with the original Weis/Hickman Dragonlance trilogy, although perhaps more interesting due to the diversity in character's (Go read the Prism Pentad series, and whatever the other trilogy I believe it was with the schitzo main character.)
Thankies, I *KNOW* I saw it at some point, because the first 5 seconds or something of the intro reminded me of Bewitched, then got all different. Didn't watch it at the time because I was still in the girls are gross phase:P
As sarcastic as I'm sure this post was meant to be, I was thinking essentially the same thing: At this point in time, isn't UV the *MOST* useful band to be increasing solar cell capacity in? Besides the ozone depletion, you supposedly get more UV bouncing around on an overcast day due to smog and cloudcover anyhow, and if it's bad for your skin, then it must be plenty good for your solar cell's 'bad day' electricity production.
I'll be watching intently for more information on this technology. Given the low wattage computing devices we have coming out now, while it might not be enough to run a car or house off of, I can fully see it covering my cell phone charging, and perhaps even 'perpetual' low-wattage laptop/pda usage during the day, just by wearing a silly hat or backpack array of these panels, even in overcast conditions providing enough outdoor capacity to keep my devices running without looking for an outlet to plug into.
I would agree, except that I've actually run telnet if not ssh connections over a 2400 baud modem, with a couple of other connections open, so while yes I'd agree they're unusable for some, telnet could either A. fall under real-time apps, given that it's character rather than line based, and B. that those types of users have been spoiled by fast internet access for too many years:)
Regardless, the point was a mesh grid without one group controlling the whole, much like the internet ideally should be, and yes, it does have the potential to be abused, either maliciously or accidentally, but that doesn't mean it may not be worth doing.
How many time critical applications do any of us really use though?
I personally don't use VOIP or Webcams or play FPSes, so all the big things that'd make latency an issue aren't important for me.
Knowing that I'm in control of the internet and not just the cash hungry telcos would go pretty far in my book for most of what I do use it for (text based applications, web apps, email, and IM, none of which will see you fragged if you happen to spend 5-10 seconds waiting for your message to get through.
Mind you I'm not one of the myspace whoring masses.
Except that A. if you aren't voting you shouldn't be financing people you aren't willing to put your vote where your wallet is.
And more importantly, limiting to registered voters would keep corporations from being able to directly offer financial assistance to campaigners, since last I checked companies, despite other things people consider as 'citizenship status' aren't allowed to vote:)
Surewest is worth checking out as well, other than botching our static IP purchase (they stay just fine until you're off for a few hours, then your IP DOES change.)
But as far as servers and such go, they don't seem to care at all (I haven't gotten a mailserver up via them yet, but that was mosty lack of time and not having set one up in a good 5 years.)
On that note, because I've been lazy about getting one (but feeling more and more than I need it, a trade skill, and a surefire job to get me out of here).
What *IS* currently required to get a passport? And the current ones are just the ones with the RFID chips, not all the biometric stuff, right?
Just as a clingon to this comment, I was wondering if anyone knew if Urusei Yatsura was on cable at some point in the late 80's, possibly on USA or something? I vaguely remember having seen it, although at the time all that female chasing was yicky:P
I watched it pre-kindergarden I'm pretty sure (which would've been the early 80s) And had actually forgotten the name for quite a while (although I had and should still have the yellow lion sitting around someplace, was too broke to get all 5 though.) Actually happened upon it on Cartoon Network, playing M-F at like 5am I believe, check your local listings.
I've been watching cable pretty often at night staying at my grandmother's, and after about two weeks I realized: It's the EXACT SAME CRAP, sometimes days in a row. Sat/Sun on like TBS or FX or something they were playing the same movies back to back two nights in a row (in one case I think they even had austin powers 1 on twice in a row.) Another example is SciFi, where it's like the same 5 syndicated shows filled in with their crummy made for tv movies during the day till 9-10 at night (later depending on the day, but I only watch them on Fridays usually, the new show lineup and all.)
Anyhow, the only reason it's still in the house is momentum. She had it to watch CNN which she's stopped watching since TBS sold out, and to get clear local TV (which she has no interest in getting a decent antenna to replace, go figure!).
For the amount of money spent yearly on Cable, I could probably get the entire DVD collection of every seasonal show on that year, and still have enough left over for a really nice dinner, a box of condoms, and the prerequisite bottle of liquor to get the girl I took out to go down on me;p
And it's only assuming you make sure your lawyer doesn't waive it.
I found this out the hard way in a traffic ticket case, ironic since if they HADN'T the officer in questions report wouldn't have been in before the trial and it would've been thrown out altogether (took at least 4 months for the report to be filed and sent.)
Something for the rest of you to keep in mind if you're going to challenge a ticket and don't want to either settle or having it take a year or more to make it to trial.
Worst for me so far was being rear ended by a lady, not super bad, but enough for the bumper to roll up the edge of my rear fender. Long story short, after calling it in, since the requirement for having an officer out is officially more than 750 dollars worth of damage (I actually thought it was still 500), officer comes out, ignores me and drives right up to the other driver, takes her report first, then comes over to me, at which point I show the damage, and he interrupts me, saying I'm wrong. After about two or three more attempts to politely ask him to at least let me finish my statement before commenting on it, I finally turn to leave, at which point he actually followed me towards my car telling me 'you must be mistaken, it's obviously not true' etc.
I don't know about you but I really dislike trying to be honest and follow the law and be called a liar, argued with, physically followed to reiterate one's point, etc.
Yeah, but the real question is, which of you wanna be called terrorists while leading the armed revolution to make it happen? There's a reason nobody's done it yet and there's a reason it probably won't happen within our lifetime.
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This was california, and insurance claims/calling out a CHP are just as bad (Despite it legally stating you should call one out over 750 bucks in damage, they don't really want anyone called out for less than like 5k or an injury. Even though half the time people will claim 1000's in injuries after the fact without having had a cop out.
:l
Yes, I am cynical about the whole system. When liars have a better shot at being believable than an honest guy/gal, you know there's something wrong with the system, society, etc
I'll give you another example:
What if it's NOT a criminal trial per-say but a traffic violation.
You maintain your innocence, but have no eye-witnesses to the traffic violation in question. The cop lies on the ticket, police report, etc about what you were doing. The pretrial judges all think you're guilty, regardless of the requirement for presumption of innocence. In order to take it to trial you're going to have to wait months, pay two times the cost of the ticket for court fees (non-refundable), plus if you're over 2k/month income you have to hire your own lawyer (who doesn't really care about your case anyhow and is going to require 6k to defend you in court, unless you pleabargain with the DA for a reduced sentence/violation/whatever.)
All of a sudden you're choosing between trying to prove you're innocent by placing your word against the cop (regardless of right, wrong, just having a bad day). You have to either find a witness who can corroborate your story, or prove this isn't the first time the officer in question lied to corroborate a supposed infraction.
Thousands of dollars to prove you're innocent, and get nothing back, plus take lots of time, or pay a few hundred for a lesser penalty and saying you're guilty.
I chose the road less travelled, but having spoken to a number of other people, who could've been guilty or innocent, very few would risk the financial investment in proving their innocence given a lesser penalty (and hey in the case of traffic violations, pretty much everyone is guilty of something that day, even if the ticket in question wasn't something they did, right?)
Just my take on things, and increasing distaste for the system and how it handles things.
In regards to the M1911 I was just reading the wikipedia entry on them, and apparently they're still a favored sidearm among many specialty military units, and if it wasn't for the ammunition standardization on the 9mm Parabellum to coincide with the NATO(UN?) standards, they'd have a good chance of STILL being the standard sidearm.
:)
So in regards to updating military technology: Sometimes there will be new technology leading to a revolutionary redesign of modern weapons and ways of thinking about them, but far more often it will be an evolutionary design, born of constant usage, percieved shortcomings, and minor incremental redesigns to help overcome them. You see it in guns, you see it in planes
Just my 2 cents.
This...
:)
My Land...
You Land...
Copyrighted, so it's not our 'land'
I don't know about NYC, but around here, most of the cabs are franchised, meaning while they may have some interest in your as far as your conduct reflects on their company, they are not in fact 'your employer'. Furthermore, I'm less worried about this being used on the drivers, and more being used on the passengers. Doesn't anyone else see cameras being made mandatory soon enough in order to 'ensure driver safety' by photographing all passengers as they enter or leave the vehicle, thus allowing law enforcement, as well as perhaps the company to corroborate your trip around town to your face and possibly name (esp with a credit card!). Yeah it might help, but it could also be used for blackmail, another small step in reducing our privacy, etc.
Maybe it's just paranoia, but given everything else going on around here, do you really want to take that chance? Criminals walk away every day, but how many innocent people have been put away for crimes they didn't commit based on questionable evidence, and what are the odds the data could be 'lost' if it didn't corroborate?
Maybe someone didn't pay attention to their 'config file updates' and accidentally overwrote their xorg.conf file? Or yeah, had the nvidia drivers installed which broke due to a xorg major number change. (I don't think either of those *SHOULD* happen, but backwards compatibility has never been a linux strong suit... Hell the BSD's are generally much better for that (although pray you remember to update your core utilities that use kernel level system calls, nothing like finding out you can't in fact just swap the kernel and be 'upgraded' :) FreeBSD I had that problem (whether it was kernel first, then utils, or utils first then kernel, I can't remember, WAS fixable, just got lots of errors from all the kernel specific tools.)
Keep in mind thought that's probably due to infrastructure limitations rather than technological ones.
Buying a whole bunch of electronics from china or malysia or whatnot is probably a lot easier than getting modern grade nuclear reactor components transported and placed in Iran.
Besides which is that there's plenty of Iranians trained in computer science, electrical engineering, etc, and I'd assume more flags raised if not outright blocked (in the us at east) in regards to studying nuclear engineering.
That's just my take on it, being some uneducated git, it could be completely off-base.
As another aside, it had tie-ins to Planescape, Spelljammer, and Ravenloft.
In fact one of the sorcerer queens was supposed to have ended up trapped in the ravenloft setting along with her whole city?
Doesn't help when the overlord has either high reflex saving throws, or fire immunity though... Ooops :P
How about Darksun?
Best world ever behind FR IMHO.
You had epic characters, even more epic enemies, plenty of crappy weapons to overcome (Oh crap, my bone sword! Wow, this guy is selling OBSIDIAN! Quests for metal weaponry!)
Furthermore, making mages exiles who'd have to keep their powers secret, lest they were found and executed.
Maybe that's just me though. the novels for the series imho were up there with the original Weis/Hickman Dragonlance trilogy, although perhaps more interesting due to the diversity in character's (Go read the Prism Pentad series, and whatever the other trilogy I believe it was with the schitzo main character.)
I actually just picked up a bunch of the DVDs from Fry's, in fact partially because I vaguely recognized it from some prior point on TV.
Thankies, I *KNOW* I saw it at some point, because the first 5 seconds or something of the intro reminded me of Bewitched, then got all different. :P
Didn't watch it at the time because I was still in the girls are gross phase
As sarcastic as I'm sure this post was meant to be, I was thinking essentially the same thing: At this point in time, isn't UV the *MOST* useful band to be increasing solar cell capacity in? Besides the ozone depletion, you supposedly get more UV bouncing around on an overcast day due to smog and cloudcover anyhow, and if it's bad for your skin, then it must be plenty good for your solar cell's 'bad day' electricity production.
I'll be watching intently for more information on this technology. Given the low wattage computing devices we have coming out now, while it might not be enough to run a car or house off of, I can fully see it covering my cell phone charging, and perhaps even 'perpetual' low-wattage laptop/pda usage during the day, just by wearing a silly hat or backpack array of these panels, even in overcast conditions providing enough outdoor capacity to keep my devices running without looking for an outlet to plug into.
I would agree, except that I've actually run telnet if not ssh connections over a 2400 baud modem, with a couple of other connections open, so while yes I'd agree they're unusable for some, telnet could either A. fall under real-time apps, given that it's character rather than line based, and B. that those types of users have been spoiled by fast internet access for too many years :)
Regardless, the point was a mesh grid without one group controlling the whole, much like the internet ideally should be, and yes, it does have the potential to be abused, either maliciously or accidentally, but that doesn't mean it may not be worth doing.
How many time critical applications do any of us really use though?
I personally don't use VOIP or Webcams or play FPSes, so all the big things that'd make latency an issue aren't important for me.
Knowing that I'm in control of the internet and not just the cash hungry telcos would go pretty far in my book for most of what I do use it for (text based applications, web apps, email, and IM, none of which will see you fragged if you happen to spend 5-10 seconds waiting for your message to get through.
Mind you I'm not one of the myspace whoring masses.
Except that A. if you aren't voting you shouldn't be financing people you aren't willing to put your vote where your wallet is.
:)
And more importantly, limiting to registered voters would keep corporations from being able to directly offer financial assistance to campaigners, since last I checked companies, despite other things people consider as 'citizenship status' aren't allowed to vote
Surewest is worth checking out as well, other than botching our static IP purchase (they stay just fine until you're off for a few hours, then your IP DOES change.)
But as far as servers and such go, they don't seem to care at all (I haven't gotten a mailserver up via them yet, but that was mosty lack of time and not having set one up in a good 5 years.)
On that note, because I've been lazy about getting one (but feeling more and more than I need it, a trade skill, and a surefire job to get me out of here).
What *IS* currently required to get a passport? And the current ones are just the ones with the RFID chips, not all the biometric stuff, right?
Just as a clingon to this comment, I was wondering if anyone knew if Urusei Yatsura was on cable at some point in the late 80's, possibly on USA or something? I vaguely remember having seen it, although at the time all that female chasing was yicky :P
I watched it pre-kindergarden I'm pretty sure (which would've been the early 80s) And had actually forgotten the name for quite a while (although I had and should still have the yellow lion sitting around someplace, was too broke to get all 5 though.) Actually happened upon it on Cartoon Network, playing M-F at like 5am I believe, check your local listings.
Yeah, captive audience, nuff said.
;p
I've been watching cable pretty often at night staying at my grandmother's, and after about two weeks I realized: It's the EXACT SAME CRAP, sometimes days in a row. Sat/Sun on like TBS or FX or something they were playing the same movies back to back two nights in a row (in one case I think they even had austin powers 1 on twice in a row.) Another example is SciFi, where it's like the same 5 syndicated shows filled in with their crummy made for tv movies during the day till 9-10 at night (later depending on the day, but I only watch them on Fridays usually, the new show lineup and all.)
Anyhow, the only reason it's still in the house is momentum. She had it to watch CNN which she's stopped watching since TBS sold out, and to get clear local TV (which she has no interest in getting a decent antenna to replace, go figure!).
For the amount of money spent yearly on Cable, I could probably get the entire DVD collection of every seasonal show on that year, and still have enough left over for a really nice dinner, a box of condoms, and the prerequisite bottle of liquor to get the girl I took out to go down on me
And it's only assuming you make sure your lawyer doesn't waive it.
I found this out the hard way in a traffic ticket case, ironic since if they HADN'T the officer in questions report wouldn't have been in before the trial and it would've been thrown out altogether (took at least 4 months for the report to be filed and sent.)
Something for the rest of you to keep in mind if you're going to challenge a ticket and don't want to either settle or having it take a year or more to make it to trial.
Thanks for the reply, it's the kind of useful information I haven't recieved from ACTUAL legal sources.
Worst for me so far was being rear ended by a lady, not super bad, but enough for the bumper to roll up the edge of my rear fender.
Long story short, after calling it in, since the requirement for having an officer out is officially more than 750 dollars worth of damage (I actually thought it was still 500), officer comes out, ignores me and drives right up to the other driver, takes her report first, then comes over to me, at which point I show the damage, and he interrupts me, saying I'm wrong. After about two or three more attempts to politely ask him to at least let me finish my statement before commenting on it, I finally turn to leave, at which point he actually followed me towards my car telling me 'you must be mistaken, it's obviously not true' etc.
I don't know about you but I really dislike trying to be honest and follow the law and be called a liar, argued with, physically followed to reiterate one's point, etc.
But hey, that's just me.
Yeah, but the real question is, which of you wanna be called terrorists while leading the armed revolution to make it happen? There's a reason nobody's done it yet and there's a reason it probably won't happen within our lifetime.