Many parts of the UK are also like these suburban hell-holes. Gimmie city life anyday, I grew up in one of these and got out as soon as possible.
Suburbia is a bad thing on so many levels. It encourages use of the car for unnessesary trips bad for both the environment and public health through lack of execise. It cripples public transport making car use mandatory. Even a trip to get milk requires a drive to the shopping "complex".
There is nothing to do for the kids, except causing trouble. Any attempts to play ball somewhere only results in someone moving them on. And we wonder why kids are losing respect for the older generations...?
There is also no community spirit, though I television has got a lot to do with the breaking of community bonds. In suburbia, everyone is very much self-contained. It's a poor existance if you ask me...
Death/injury rises exponentially with speed increase (not linearly), so for example the difference between 30 and 35 mph results is many greater deaths.
I also live in the UK, and I know where you likely get this impression from: the advert with the kid getting knocked down. It's horrific and makes me particularly angry.
There are a number of falacies in this campaign, added to greaten the shock value. Did you notice how the car had it's wheels locked when braking? Well, locking the wheels makes your brakes next-to-useless. Notice how the car was quite old? No ABS. It's far from a modern representation of what would happen in that situation, in either a newer car, or if the driver had actually passed the emergency stop section of the driving test.
Now, I'm not saying doing 35 in a 30 is a good thing, I'm particularly careful about my speed in built-up areas, because the fatality rate between these two speeds of pedestrians is a huge leap. However, death/injury does not rise exponentially with speed generally, only in the case of hitting a pedestrian. But for motorway driving, the risk difference between 70 mph and 90 mph does not follow an exponential curve at all. Far from it.
Cameras for road policing IMO are a bad idea, except 30-mph speed cameras and red-light cameras, especially at accident blackspots. A camera can not pick up an erratic drunk driver. It cannot run a check on the car/driver to see if they have outstanding warants. It cannot detect false plates that don't match the make/model of the car. It cannot detect dangerously overloaded cars. It cannot detect 5 children squeezed into the back seat.
They should never be used as a replacement for real police in real cars. Only a suppliment.
My point is, if you can't stop criminals and psychopaths getting hold of weapons, you might as well at least allow ordinary people to fight on the same level.
Nonsence. Look at the gun death figures per head of population for the US then the UK. Then try and argue your point that there should be more guns in the UK.
Guns make killing people as simple as taking a photograph. Point and click. Stabbing someone to death is a horrific thing that I don't think many folk are capable of, ditto beating to death.
I don't understand these people who believe that guns=freedom. The only "freedom" relating to guns is the complete removal of all freedoms possesed by a person who has a gun pointed at them. They lose the freedom of free choice and the freedom of speach, and in the worst case, the freedom to live. Yeah, guns are all about freedom...
America has made it's bed on the gun issue. There are far too many around to ban them. A gun ban would only result in the criminals being the only one with guns. It simply wouldn't work.
My only worry is that all these guns are now finding their way into the hands of criminals in other countries were firearms are less common. I'd rather see tighter controls in customs with shipments originating from the US rather than these "terrorist" countries.
you aint gonna get any reception with orange in a cave in the middle of a desert now are you?
Bin Laden is extremely rich. If you believe he is living in a cave, then you are buying into the bullshit propaganda that has already been refered to in this thread.
People who deal dodgy things, e.g. drugs, know there is always the possibility that their communications aren't secure, so they don't talk about it over the phone or e-mail. Believe it or not, terrorists also know this.
Anyone that believes that a terrorist could get caught by saying something on e-mail or browsing on the web clearly doesn't have a clue. These measures are all about spying on the little people. The big fish know the score already and use encryption and third-party messengers to exchange information, if they even bother using modern communications.
They also don't try to give signals over videos in the news. That was another bullshit lie. God forbid the people ever find out the real reasons why some terrorists attack the US...
Yeah! All the hospitals do is treat bums who drink themselves to death.
What about Joe, father of three, who works in Burger King for minimum wage when he gets hit by a bus or contracts cancer? You gonna let him bleed to death because he doesn't have insurance?
I am with you on the babies thing though, I really do resent families thriving though handouts based on the number of children they spit out. Children who have a very high chance of going into the same life. Yay! We've broken evolution and turned it into "suvival of the useless". But it's not the same thing as socialized healthcare.
In the UK you have to "sign on" and you are assigned to a particular doctor in your area.
Maybe it's just a cultural misunderstanding, but do you mean "sign on" as being unemployed? The act of "signing on" in the UK usually means applying for unemployment benefit, which has nothing to do with health care. Theroretically, an unemployed person should get the same care as a rich business person.
As far as I'm aware, switching doctor isn't all that big a deal. Plus, your use of the word "assigned" makes it sound like a draconian system!;-) It's not, it's very good. I like the fact that I could get hit by a car and the first thing they'd check wouldn't be my medical insurance arrangements...
For all it's faults, the NHS is pretty damn good. Our media seems to be going down the "* bashing" formula, where critism sells media. The NHS get a lot of undeserved flak from these people. They seem to forget that doctors are human and contary to popular belief, not gods. Many people see the failure to cure a particular patients problem as a failure on the doctors/nurses fault. This thinking is disgusting and will lead to the litigation problems that are causing a large problem in other countries. Scientific advances are made using experimental techniques; what doctor will be willing to use them if there was a risk they could get sued if it didn't succeed?
You should also take a look at Cuba. I've seen a few reports that their health system is the best in the world, when comparing all the relative benefits...cost to patient, quality of treatment, waiting times, accessability and so on.
There could be an essence of validity in this claim. If Google deliberatly wrote code to specifically lower someones ranking, that is a very bad thing. If all they did was tweak the alogrithm so that the methods that SearchKing were using no longer worked, that is a good thing.
Google has a big responsibilty on the net. If they start to downgrade web pages for strategic or political reasons, then we should begin to look for another search engine, as it's no longer doing its job.
Your comparing office workers to socially brainwashed nazi soldiers?
The people working in these maildrops probably have limited visibility of the level of junk mail being sent out by their company, as well as having timed bathroom breaks.Cut them some slack, they gotta eat.
The Nazi soldiers weren't motivated by someone pointing a gun at them, they were led to that course of action (war) by carefully crafted political propaganda. Much like the modern world, but anyway...;-)
(By the way, you're also able to quit your job in other countries, not just "In America")
Running a CD-ROM (or hard-drive) requires a high-speed motor, which is a relatively large power drain. Most laptops have power management capabilites to limit the top speed of the CD-ROM to save power, but they are rarely used. When I'm working away from a power outlet, I try to limit CD-ROM access. If you were watching a movie, you could save power by copying all the media to the hard-drive first, as the CD-ROM/DVD won't be spinning for as long.
Solid-state storage doesn't have as much as a problem, and is usually more battery friendly.
The way I see it, you only have so much time to spend on this earth. Devices like these allow you to "buy" some of it back, just like your employer buys your time from you.
If a device costs less than the number of hours it saves, multiplied by your hourly wage, it's worth it. You can now spend your time doing fun things. Just don't use it to spend more time in front of the TV!
Yup, the lose money as well because they pay someone to open them.
Don't put nasty things in though. The person that opens them gets paid bugger-all, gets treated like shit and it isn't their fault. If anything, put in something that might make them smile!
They force you to use their dialer, meaning you can't do simple dial-up networking sharing, auto-dialing. Other ISPs use these but still allow you to set up an (unsupported) PPP connection using standard tools
Said dialer software is full of adverts. AOL/Time Warner removed popup handling abilities from Netscape for this reason, I believe.
At one point, you had to use their own browser
It forces you to have Real Player installed (evil) and complains every time you dial in if you remove it
They ask for your credit card during the trail for verification etc then automatically start billing you without warning. Cancelling used to be difficult and often went "wrong".
You are paying over the odds because the service has great customer help, which is useless to techies. (I'd recommend it to non-techies for this reason tho)
They send junk mail. Lot's of it. Regularly. To the same people.
Said junk mail is not just recyclable paper, it's a cd-rom and a complete waste of resources and bad for environment as it needs to be disposed of in landfills.
Typically, lamers and newbies were on AOL. A large majority of HTML posts to usenet are from AOL and other anti-social net activites are common, hence the term AOLamer
Easy use, always works, no special drivers, no monopoly.
I remember the fun to be had trasfering data between a PC clone and the Atari ST. It wasn't easy, rarely worked, required a specially formatted floppy etc.
But at least I didn't have to try it with an Amiga, same media, completely incompatible. The only reason the PC floppy standard came about was the the early manufacturers were cloning each others products; this compatability was essential otherwise your clone would be a useless beige blob in the pre-hard-drive days.
But, as another reply stated, the cd-rom is the new standard. Just about everything can read iso9660. The only time you need special drivers is on ancient OSs where the CD was more of a hack.
Hmm, I've had 3 in the past 8 years (all GSM) and have had to get new batteries in every case. Whenever the second battery got past it's useful stage, I'd get a new phone. Not by design, it just worked out that way.
And yes, I am familiar with memory effects and discarge fully before recharge. I used to phone a freephone automated system to properly drain them when they got low...the experience of owning a battery-hungry RC car showed me how important that is.
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Suburbia is a bad thing on so many levels. It encourages use of the car for unnessesary trips bad for both the environment and public health through lack of execise. It cripples public transport making car use mandatory. Even a trip to get milk requires a drive to the shopping "complex".
There is nothing to do for the kids, except causing trouble. Any attempts to play ball somewhere only results in someone moving them on. And we wonder why kids are losing respect for the older generations...?
There is also no community spirit, though I television has got a lot to do with the breaking of community bonds. In suburbia, everyone is very much self-contained. It's a poor existance if you ask me...
I also live in the UK, and I know where you likely get this impression from: the advert with the kid getting knocked down. It's horrific and makes me particularly angry.
There are a number of falacies in this campaign, added to greaten the shock value. Did you notice how the car had it's wheels locked when braking? Well, locking the wheels makes your brakes next-to-useless. Notice how the car was quite old? No ABS. It's far from a modern representation of what would happen in that situation, in either a newer car, or if the driver had actually passed the emergency stop section of the driving test.
Now, I'm not saying doing 35 in a 30 is a good thing, I'm particularly careful about my speed in built-up areas, because the fatality rate between these two speeds of pedestrians is a huge leap. However, death/injury does not rise exponentially with speed generally, only in the case of hitting a pedestrian. But for motorway driving, the risk difference between 70 mph and 90 mph does not follow an exponential curve at all. Far from it.
Cameras for road policing IMO are a bad idea, except 30-mph speed cameras and red-light cameras, especially at accident blackspots. A camera can not pick up an erratic drunk driver. It cannot run a check on the car/driver to see if they have outstanding warants. It cannot detect false plates that don't match the make/model of the car. It cannot detect dangerously overloaded cars. It cannot detect 5 children squeezed into the back seat.
They should never be used as a replacement for real police in real cars. Only a suppliment.
Nonsence. Look at the gun death figures per head of population for the US then the UK. Then try and argue your point that there should be more guns in the UK.
Guns make killing people as simple as taking a photograph. Point and click. Stabbing someone to death is a horrific thing that I don't think many folk are capable of, ditto beating to death.
I don't understand these people who believe that guns=freedom. The only "freedom" relating to guns is the complete removal of all freedoms possesed by a person who has a gun pointed at them. They lose the freedom of free choice and the freedom of speach, and in the worst case, the freedom to live. Yeah, guns are all about freedom...
My only worry is that all these guns are now finding their way into the hands of criminals in other countries were firearms are less common. I'd rather see tighter controls in customs with shipments originating from the US rather than these "terrorist" countries.
Bin Laden is extremely rich. If you believe he is living in a cave, then you are buying into the bullshit propaganda that has already been refered to in this thread.
People who deal dodgy things, e.g. drugs, know there is always the possibility that their communications aren't secure, so they don't talk about it over the phone or e-mail. Believe it or not, terrorists also know this.
Anyone that believes that a terrorist could get caught by saying something on e-mail or browsing on the web clearly doesn't have a clue. These measures are all about spying on the little people. The big fish know the score already and use encryption and third-party messengers to exchange information, if they even bother using modern communications.
They also don't try to give signals over videos in the news. That was another bullshit lie. God forbid the people ever find out the real reasons why some terrorists attack the US...
In the modern world, that may be true. Back in the past, people actually did things for the benefit of mankind and science. Suckers!
What about Joe, father of three, who works in Burger King for minimum wage when he gets hit by a bus or contracts cancer? You gonna let him bleed to death because he doesn't have insurance?
I am with you on the babies thing though, I really do resent families thriving though handouts based on the number of children they spit out. Children who have a very high chance of going into the same life. Yay! We've broken evolution and turned it into "suvival of the useless". But it's not the same thing as socialized healthcare.
What, 49%? Maybe they think taking half your wages is an insult, so they drop the level ever so slightly.
Maybe it's just a cultural misunderstanding, but do you mean "sign on" as being unemployed? The act of "signing on" in the UK usually means applying for unemployment benefit, which has nothing to do with health care. Theroretically, an unemployed person should get the same care as a rich business person.
As far as I'm aware, switching doctor isn't all that big a deal. Plus, your use of the word "assigned" makes it sound like a draconian system! ;-) It's not, it's very good. I like the fact that I could get hit by a car and the first thing they'd check wouldn't be my medical insurance arrangements...
For all it's faults, the NHS is pretty damn good. Our media seems to be going down the "* bashing" formula, where critism sells media. The NHS get a lot of undeserved flak from these people. They seem to forget that doctors are human and contary to popular belief, not gods. Many people see the failure to cure a particular patients problem as a failure on the doctors/nurses fault. This thinking is disgusting and will lead to the litigation problems that are causing a large problem in other countries. Scientific advances are made using experimental techniques; what doctor will be willing to use them if there was a risk they could get sued if it didn't succeed?
You should also take a look at Cuba. I've seen a few reports that their health system is the best in the world, when comparing all the relative benefits...cost to patient, quality of treatment, waiting times, accessability and so on.
Google has a big responsibilty on the net. If they start to downgrade web pages for strategic or political reasons, then we should begin to look for another search engine, as it's no longer doing its job.
The people working in these maildrops probably have limited visibility of the level of junk mail being sent out by their company, as well as having timed bathroom breaks.Cut them some slack, they gotta eat.
The Nazi soldiers weren't motivated by someone pointing a gun at them, they were led to that course of action (war) by carefully crafted political propaganda. Much like the modern world, but anyway... ;-)
(By the way, you're also able to quit your job in other countries, not just "In America")
Solid-state storage doesn't have as much as a problem, and is usually more battery friendly.
With many dogs hating vacuums, I'd love to see that war!
If a device costs less than the number of hours it saves, multiplied by your hourly wage, it's worth it. You can now spend your time doing fun things. Just don't use it to spend more time in front of the TV!
Don't put nasty things in though. The person that opens them gets paid bugger-all, gets treated like shit and it isn't their fault. If anything, put in something that might make them smile!
That would make a very good pro-enviornmental law to pass! Any polititions willing to take this up...? ;-)
That may hold for the USA, but (despite their name), AOL is global. I'm sure there's a few countries where they have to pay for it...
Just a few thoughts from the top of my head... ;-)
I'm looking forward to doing that soon, thanks for the idea! :-)
Ahh, remember the days of floppy disk magazine coverdisks? They always came in handy when you were running low on media...
Same for musical cassette promos.
Maybe he works for the RIAA?
Not to mention the effects of motion on the battery life as well...
I remember the fun to be had trasfering data between a PC clone and the Atari ST. It wasn't easy, rarely worked, required a specially formatted floppy etc.
But at least I didn't have to try it with an Amiga, same media, completely incompatible. The only reason the PC floppy standard came about was the the early manufacturers were cloning each others products; this compatability was essential otherwise your clone would be a useless beige blob in the pre-hard-drive days.
But, as another reply stated, the cd-rom is the new standard. Just about everything can read iso9660. The only time you need special drivers is on ancient OSs where the CD was more of a hack.
Unless the RIAA has something to do with it...
And yes, I am familiar with memory effects and discarge fully before recharge. I used to phone a freephone automated system to properly drain them when they got low...the experience of owning a battery-hungry RC car showed me how important that is.
Do you ever switch yours on? ;-)