And then your accomplice has to get your half to you. A bank transfer of seven million is a little incriminating, or if they give you a suitcase of cash, you can't just lodge it into your account. "Enjoying" your money isn't so easy when you have to avoid ever creating a record of having the money.
Well, as long as you can avoid the government spying program, I mean Anti-terrorist program that requires banks to notify the government of any large deposit, I would think you would be okay. It is not like the inter state lottery is going to keep track of where their winners spend their money, or even has the jurisdiction to do so. The only reason they could is if there was previous suspicion and they could get a judge to issue a warrant.
Even if you tripped the government's bells over a large deposit, I don't think they would necessarily do anything if you could come up with a good reason, like "my friend just won the lottery and decided to give me a large chunk of money".
via USPS today instead of an email. I even remembered to put a stamp on it.
I don't know that USPS considers itself obsolete, and I don't either. I mail about 40 items per month. I do not consider an email an official notification, as anybody can fake an e-mail, but it would take effort to obtain somebody's letterhead, fake their signature and mail it from their zipcode so it is stamped at the right post office.
I lobbied to end the requirement for an examination of the ability to decode Morse code with your ear and brain.
There are still some navigational aids that identify themselves using morse code, as do some repeaters. It can be useful to be able to determine who you are listening to, especially when there may be several near enough to hear with the same frequency.
We still get some call detail via CD-Rs in the mail.
CD-Rs seem like relatively modern technology to me. Now if you had said 3.5 floppies I would have been impressed and if you said 5 1/4" then shocked. 8" and I would have just fallen over.
Back in 1999, which was admittedly quite awhile ago, I had to deliver my companies employee specific 401k information via 3.5" floppy. I am not sure when they finally converted that over to something useful. Even paper would have been more useful, but I guess they didn't want to type it in on their side.
FTA: "Five such 'unmanned aircraft systems' prevented California firefighters from dispatching helicopters with water buckets for up to 20 minutes over a wildfire that roared Friday onto a Los Angeles area freeway that leads to Las Vegas."
Yeah, I wouldn't have asked permission before shooting those drones from the sky.
This makes me support the FAAs proposed rulemaking to make it necessary to register such drones. Then we would be able to know who was responsible and give them the bill for hundreds of millions of dollars of damage that they caused.
If people are flashing their high beams at you because of your factory xenon low beams, maybe you should have your car checked by the dealer. There are a lot of cars out there with dangerously bright xenons. Some, like certain Acuras, are a bad design, but I assume most are mis-adjusted somehow.
It's not like the lights are shining in their eyes. They shine forward and down like they are supposed to. But people are used to hazed over and dirty headlamps so that the low beams put out about the same intensity as parking lamps.
Isn't this traditionally the kind of event where any Japanese man with any amount of self-respect commits Hara-Kiri instead of pointing fingers at each other?
Just wondering.
At least in Japan, they resign in disgrace. In the U.S., they would fight to the last breath to hold onto their job, and then when they got ousted by the Board, they would get a golden parachute, and another fortune 500 company would hire them on to help drive them into bankruptcy.
I find this interesting. I know of people who strangely put a lot of their 401Ks into the stock of the company they work for, but mostly in my experience 401k investments aren't particularly tied to the company of employment. At least I make sure my investments are not particularly tied to any one company.
If everyone lost their 401k, it is probably because the company was withdrawing the funds from the paychecks, but not actually funding the 401k program with them, or the company managed their own 401k portfolio rather than using an outside investment company, and then the money was lost when the company went belly up.
And back in the good old days, we bought them more often. Last vehicle I bought was to replace a ten year old one. When I started driving, in ten years, you were on your third vehicle.
Well, that was definitely the case with me. My first car was an 8 year old 1979 Ford Granada that was already unreliable and ready to be disposed of. A couple of years later, I "upgraded" to my mom's old car, a 1980 For Fairmont that was slightly more reliable, but still well past it's prime. About year after that I bought a 2 year old 1988 Toyota MR-2 that I never had any issue with and even when I sold it in probably 1995 or so, it had nothing on the squawk list at all. So I guess I had 4 cars in my first ten years, but the first two were just total crap even when I bought them. I only sold the MR-2 to move up to a Supra, otherwise it was still in great shape.
Infrared cameras also won't help much since most pedestrians at night tend to wear dark colored clothing that covers as much of their skin as possible.
Due to all of the tech in cars now, they are too fucking expensive. That's why most people lease cars -- because they cannot hope to actually pay for one outright any more. This is only going to exacerbate that problem. Until auto-makers can make cars that will last generations of drivers can they expect us to pay for them over generations.
The current average retail price of a new car is now $33,560 or about 64% of U.S. Household income. In 1980, it was $7,200 or 44% of 1980 median household income. The further back you go, the more affordable cars were. Compound that with the fact that most households used to be single income, and now most households are dual income means that the real rate of increase of car prices is even more out of control than it looks.
I know the low beams lights are brighter, but someone out there has to be telling people to drive in the city with their high beams on because when people are behind me, their lights shouldn't be brighter than mine.
When I am driving at night, I get at least one person flashing their brights at me, or even more annoying turning their brights on "in retaliation" and leaving them on. Thing is, I never use my brights. I have factory Xenon bulbs which are quite bright for normal low beams.
Which reminds me, hopefully Ford can design a light system that stops bright lights from hitting you straight in the eye.
My 1979 Ford Granada had that technology, but it was manual. My newest car (which is still 5 years old) automatically adjusts the rear view mirror tint so that you don't get brights in your eyes.
I gotta a feeling that's going to be a peak. There's no doubt that things like electronic fuel injection, electronic timing (basically replacing all of the mechnical components) have been great in allowing cars to run longer, I have to wonder about the new things that get added that aren't necessary. Do I really need two or more mode for my suspension, all wheel drive, electronic vents. I had a 2002 Chev that the alternator died and when it was repaired, nothing worked on the dashboard except the engine controls. They "reprogrammed" the thing and I lost the high speed on the fan, my heater would only work on at "hell" level or not at all, and my CD player didn't work. My electronically controlled AWD control unit was replaced three times. And the electronic seat failed (despite me not using it). Go ahead and blame Chevy, but when I look at BMWs and Mercedes I cringe.
So mechanically cars might last longer, it's just going to suck to drive them unless you sink money into it.
As long as the car still runs people will keep it. It is inconvenient and that all of the cheap electronic gizmos stop working and possibly unsafe to drive with some of them inoperable, but fixing all of the gizmos would cost thousands of dollars per year in maintenance that owners of older cars can't afford.
Slow down? Are you insane? At night you go faster faster FASTER! OMG I am soooo important I need to do 90!
Even at 70mph you are outdriving your low beam headlights on a modern car. High beams are required for speeds above 50. Yet 90% of the drivers on the road do not understand this and fly into the night at 80-90mph with low beams on and they get all pissy at the smart drivers that use their high beams.
Unless you live out in the country, streetlights are ubiquitous. I find that the only time I ever need to turn on my high beams is when I am out on country roads, which is very rarely. In fact, I have not used the high beams on my most recent car, which I bought 18 months ago. I can go faster in my car then I could comfortably stop within the headlight distance, but the fact is that I can see beyond the reach of my headlights due to all of the streets being illuminated.
My countries solution has been to legalize most of it, so we don't have as big a drug war.
Maybe the same would work for poaching?
Maybe they are onto something. We should legalize poaching, too. Then it is no longer a problem. We won't have any large mammals on the planet other than humans, but the problem WOULD be solved.
And if we legalize murder, then we wouldn't have any humans either. Then we REALLY wouldn't have all of these problems with illegal acts happening.
The PETA loons are out tonight. I'd like to see how far you'd go into starvation before you do WHATEVER it takes to feed yourself.
Poachers aren't taking the job because they are starving. They have high powered weapons and expensive off road vehicles. They choose this profession because there is a huge amount of money in it, because, well it is illegal.
These people are the equivalent of of people in the U.S. who kill people for their sneakers.
In today's dollars, a single Saturn V launch was about $20 billion. So now we are saying we can do it for half of that, including all of the research and development? The entire Apollo project was estimated in 2005 dollars as $170 Billion.
I would bet it will cost more like $100 billion including research. A single shot could probably be done for $15 billion.
NASA today doesn't have the budget for this sort of endeavor. In 1966, NASAs budget was $5.2 billion, or in today's dollars, $38.2 billion. Today's actual NASA budget is only $18.3 billion.
Since there are a lot of things that correlate with location of fracking sites, such as lower income, better chance of hurting oneself on drilling equipment, rural areas, it would lend more credence to the study to list if there were also more hospitalizations in those zip codes compared to other zip codes BEFORE fracking started.
Even for a flightless creature, wings could certainly help it run faster and steadier, turn quicker, and/or leap further. I've got no clue, just sayin.....
Other than leaping further, limbs would be just as useful if not more so than wings. Wings could also help you stop faster, if that was of any benefit.
Read another piece yesterday that mentioned the find in question here was of a very, very close cousin to the good ol' Velociraptor. The conclusion there was that the Velociraptor was likely feathered as well, and not likely to look much like the leather/scaley beasts from the movies (and, um, they weren't that big, either, apparently).
The movie mentioned that same thing about feathers and said that the public wanted big scary monsters with no feathers.
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Did he buy tickets with credit cards? Or he just couldn't find someone he trusted to not run away with the $14million?
The latter. You can't buy tickets with credit cards, because people are dumb and must be protected from their own dumb selves.
And then your accomplice has to get your half to you. A bank transfer of seven million is a little incriminating, or if they give you a suitcase of cash, you can't just lodge it into your account. "Enjoying" your money isn't so easy when you have to avoid ever creating a record of having the money.
Well, as long as you can avoid the government spying program, I mean Anti-terrorist program that requires banks to notify the government of any large deposit, I would think you would be okay. It is not like the inter state lottery is going to keep track of where their winners spend their money, or even has the jurisdiction to do so. The only reason they could is if there was previous suspicion and they could get a judge to issue a warrant.
Even if you tripped the government's bells over a large deposit, I don't think they would necessarily do anything if you could come up with a good reason, like "my friend just won the lottery and decided to give me a large chunk of money".
via USPS today instead of an email. I even remembered to put a stamp on it.
I don't know that USPS considers itself obsolete, and I don't either. I mail about 40 items per month. I do not consider an email an official notification, as anybody can fake an e-mail, but it would take effort to obtain somebody's letterhead, fake their signature and mail it from their zipcode so it is stamped at the right post office.
I lobbied to end the requirement for an examination of the ability to decode Morse code with your ear and brain.
There are still some navigational aids that identify themselves using morse code, as do some repeaters. It can be useful to be able to determine who you are listening to, especially when there may be several near enough to hear with the same frequency.
We still get some call detail via CD-Rs in the mail.
CD-Rs seem like relatively modern technology to me. Now if you had said 3.5 floppies I would have been impressed and if you said 5 1/4" then shocked. 8" and I would have just fallen over.
Back in 1999, which was admittedly quite awhile ago, I had to deliver my companies employee specific 401k information via 3.5" floppy. I am not sure when they finally converted that over to something useful. Even paper would have been more useful, but I guess they didn't want to type it in on their side.
We have a Windows 95 machine doing the same thing.
We use a thermostat.
Should we also bill the person who started the fire?
Sure. Why not? Undoubtedly it was someone throwing a cigarette out of their car in violation of state law.
If so, wouldn't it be double billing to bill that person and also the drone operators?
Well, it would be double billing unless it was a fine, then we can bill to infinity, and nobody gets to complain about double billing.
FTA: "Five such 'unmanned aircraft systems' prevented California firefighters from dispatching helicopters with water buckets for up to 20 minutes over a wildfire that roared Friday onto a Los Angeles area freeway that leads to Las Vegas."
Yeah, I wouldn't have asked permission before shooting those drones from the sky.
This makes me support the FAAs proposed rulemaking to make it necessary to register such drones. Then we would be able to know who was responsible and give them the bill for hundreds of millions of dollars of damage that they caused.
If people are flashing their high beams at you because of your factory xenon low beams, maybe you should have your car checked by the dealer. There are a lot of cars out there with dangerously bright xenons. Some, like certain Acuras, are a bad design, but I assume most are mis-adjusted somehow.
It's not like the lights are shining in their eyes. They shine forward and down like they are supposed to. But people are used to hazed over and dirty headlamps so that the low beams put out about the same intensity as parking lamps.
Unless you're black... Then the cops just shoot you dead for stealing $20... or even less.
What a fascinating story. I'm sure it is on the internet somewhere. Perhaps you could provide a link?
Isn't this traditionally the kind of event where any Japanese man with any amount of self-respect commits Hara-Kiri instead of pointing fingers at each other?
Just wondering.
At least in Japan, they resign in disgrace. In the U.S., they would fight to the last breath to hold onto their job, and then when they got ousted by the Board, they would get a golden parachute, and another fortune 500 company would hire them on to help drive them into bankruptcy.
everyone lost their 401Ks
I find this interesting. I know of people who strangely put a lot of their 401Ks into the stock of the company they work for, but mostly in my experience 401k investments aren't particularly tied to the company of employment. At least I make sure my investments are not particularly tied to any one company.
If everyone lost their 401k, it is probably because the company was withdrawing the funds from the paychecks, but not actually funding the 401k program with them, or the company managed their own 401k portfolio rather than using an outside investment company, and then the money was lost when the company went belly up.
Why does a car have a wireless system, and why is this wireless system accessible from outside the car?
And back in the good old days, we bought them more often. Last vehicle I bought was to replace a ten year old one. When I started driving, in ten years, you were on your third vehicle.
Well, that was definitely the case with me. My first car was an 8 year old 1979 Ford Granada that was already unreliable and ready to be disposed of. A couple of years later, I "upgraded" to my mom's old car, a 1980 For Fairmont that was slightly more reliable, but still well past it's prime.
About year after that I bought a 2 year old 1988 Toyota MR-2 that I never had any issue with and even when I sold it in probably 1995 or so, it had nothing on the squawk list at all. So I guess I had 4 cars in my first ten years, but the first two were just total crap even when I bought them. I only sold the MR-2 to move up to a Supra, otherwise it was still in great shape.
Infrared cameras also won't help much since most pedestrians at night tend to wear dark colored clothing that covers as much of their skin as possible.
Due to all of the tech in cars now, they are too fucking expensive. That's why most people lease cars -- because they cannot hope to actually pay for one outright any more. This is only going to exacerbate that problem. Until auto-makers can make cars that will last generations of drivers can they expect us to pay for them over generations.
The current average retail price of a new car is now $33,560 or about 64% of U.S. Household income. In 1980, it was $7,200 or 44% of 1980 median household income. The further back you go, the more affordable cars were. Compound that with the fact that most households used to be single income, and now most households are dual income means that the real rate of increase of car prices is even more out of control than it looks.
I know the low beams lights are brighter, but someone out there has to be telling people to drive in the city with their high beams on because when people are behind me, their lights shouldn't be brighter than mine.
When I am driving at night, I get at least one person flashing their brights at me, or even more annoying turning their brights on "in retaliation" and leaving them on. Thing is, I never use my brights. I have factory Xenon bulbs which are quite bright for normal low beams.
Which reminds me, hopefully Ford can design a light system that stops bright lights from hitting you straight in the eye.
My 1979 Ford Granada had that technology, but it was manual. My newest car (which is still 5 years old) automatically adjusts the rear view mirror tint so that you don't get brights in your eyes.
Current average is almost 11 years
Actually, it has increased to [18].
I gotta a feeling that's going to be a peak. There's no doubt that things like electronic fuel injection, electronic timing (basically replacing all of the mechnical components) have been great in allowing cars to run longer, I have to wonder about the new things that get added that aren't necessary. Do I really need two or more mode for my suspension, all wheel drive, electronic vents. I had a 2002 Chev that the alternator died and when it was repaired, nothing worked on the dashboard except the engine controls. They "reprogrammed" the thing and I lost the high speed on the fan, my heater would only work on at "hell" level or not at all, and my CD player didn't work. My electronically controlled AWD control unit was replaced three times. And the electronic seat failed (despite me not using it). Go ahead and blame Chevy, but when I look at BMWs and Mercedes I cringe.
So mechanically cars might last longer, it's just going to suck to drive them unless you sink money into it.
As long as the car still runs people will keep it. It is inconvenient and that all of the cheap electronic gizmos stop working and possibly unsafe to drive with some of them inoperable, but fixing all of the gizmos would cost thousands of dollars per year in maintenance that owners of older cars can't afford.
Slow down? Are you insane? At night you go faster faster FASTER! OMG I am soooo important I need to do 90!
Even at 70mph you are outdriving your low beam headlights on a modern car. High beams are required for speeds above 50. Yet 90% of the drivers on the road do not understand this and fly into the night at 80-90mph with low beams on and they get all pissy at the smart drivers that use their high beams.
Unless you live out in the country, streetlights are ubiquitous. I find that the only time I ever need to turn on my high beams is when I am out on country roads, which is very rarely. In fact, I have not used the high beams on my most recent car, which I bought 18 months ago. I can go faster in my car then I could comfortably stop within the headlight distance, but the fact is that I can see beyond the reach of my headlights due to all of the streets being illuminated.
My countries solution has been to legalize most of it, so we don't have as big a drug war. Maybe the same would work for poaching?
Maybe they are onto something. We should legalize poaching, too. Then it is no longer a problem. We won't have any large mammals on the planet other than humans, but the problem WOULD be solved.
And if we legalize murder, then we wouldn't have any humans either. Then we REALLY wouldn't have all of these problems with illegal acts happening.
The PETA loons are out tonight. I'd like to see how far you'd go into starvation before you do WHATEVER it takes to feed yourself.
Poachers aren't taking the job because they are starving. They have high powered weapons and expensive off road vehicles. They choose this profession because there is a huge amount of money in it, because, well it is illegal.
These people are the equivalent of of people in the U.S. who kill people for their sneakers.
In today's dollars, a single Saturn V launch was about $20 billion. So now we are saying we can do it for half of that, including all of the research and development? The entire Apollo project was estimated in 2005 dollars as $170 Billion.
I would bet it will cost more like $100 billion including research. A single shot could probably be done for $15 billion.
NASA today doesn't have the budget for this sort of endeavor. In 1966, NASAs budget was $5.2 billion, or in today's dollars, $38.2 billion. Today's actual NASA budget is only $18.3 billion.
Since there are a lot of things that correlate with location of fracking sites, such as lower income, better chance of hurting oneself on drilling equipment, rural areas, it would lend more credence to the study to list if there were also more hospitalizations in those zip codes compared to other zip codes BEFORE fracking started.
Even for a flightless creature, wings could certainly help it run faster and steadier, turn quicker, and/or leap further. I've got no clue, just sayin.....
Other than leaping further, limbs would be just as useful if not more so than wings. Wings could also help you stop faster, if that was of any benefit.
Read another piece yesterday that mentioned the find in question here was of a very, very close cousin to the good ol' Velociraptor. The conclusion there was that the Velociraptor was likely feathered as well, and not likely to look much like the leather/scaley beasts from the movies (and, um, they weren't that big, either, apparently).
The movie mentioned that same thing about feathers and said that the public wanted big scary monsters with no feathers.