I fully agree. I have a credit card where I earn 2% cash back on gasoline and 1% on everything else. I pay it off in full every month so I never accrue interest charges. They're basically paying me to use the card, so why not? Like you said, it's a better deal than savings account interest.
I've heard about this before, from other Europeans. You guys seem to have either really cheap or free interbank transfers, whereas in the US it is never free (as far as I've seen) and is usually quite expensive.
One time, I needed to transfer some money--just a few hundred dollars--from my account to an account at another bank. I had the routing and account numbers, so it should've been pretty easy. And it was, only they charged me $25 for the privilege. I called around and this is pretty typical.
It's price pressures that encourage people to pay their bills with credit/debit cards. Those still have fees, but they are charged to the merchants rather than the customer.
Weird. I remember flying a Raptor back in 1994. Thing wrecked everything in its path, no problems. The best was when I installed the tracking gun to shoot up targets I wasn't even aiming at, to say nothing of the badass EMP cannon. Laid waste to most of the Third World with that baby.
Almost 20 years on and now it has problems? Definitely a government clusterfuck at work here.
Since you can't play the game at all without paying the subscription fee, I think it should either cost very little up front ($20 or so) or not require any initial purchase.
Paying full retail price for a game and having to pay a monthly fee for it just strikes me as greedy double-dipping.
That is certainly the theory, but in practice a diffusion of responsibility results also in a diffusion (and eventually lack) of accountability. It becomes possible for a corporation to do illegal or unethical things without the actual decisionmakers in the corporation necessarily being aware that the company is doing anything illegal or unethical. A corporate culture of criminality or at least reckless disregard for the law can develop, and the government is not going to step in and jail hundreds of thousands of people when this happens. There might be one or two token trials, and maybe somebody will get a year or two in prison and a fine.
I think it's fair to say that some accidents could be avoided by one party taking swift action, but there are also times when the circumstances are such that one driver's carelessness will cause an accident and there isn't much anyone could do about it. While driving, it's not possible to predict anything more than a few seconds into the future, as far as trying to guess what other drivers will do. In a heavy traffic situation, your awareness will be divided between multiple vehicles. Unless both parties are paying attention, it may not be possible for the one attentive party to avoid.
When stopped at a light, you can't even predict whether someone coming up from behind will stop. A lot of people like to slam their brakes at the last second. How do you tell the difference between that person and the one who isn't going to stop at all? And if there is a car in front of you, then what? Quickly back up and change lanes before the other vehicle arrives?
If people think "defensive driving" means "all accidents are avoidable," they're wrong. It can prevent some, but not all. If you want to be totally pedantic about it, all accidents are "avoidable" given adequate foresight--like knowing you should stay home that day because a semi is going to plow through your car at 12:09PM. Until we can peek into the future, though, we have to deal with what we've got.
Most of my hard drives have also been WDs. I even have a 250GB external that I bought back in 2003 or so that still works fine. I don't trust it with any critical data due to its age, but it's still a decent drive for transferring things around.
I have a couple other WD external drives that I bought in the past couple years. No problems so far.
So true. I do my best to watch out for motorcycles, but I've seen too many bikers who think having a really narrow vehicle means normal traffic laws don't apply to them. So they ride two (or more) abreast and--my personal favorite--bypass traffic jams by tearing down the space between lanes at high speed. They don't seem to realize that having small vehicles makes them harder to see, and when they weave through traffic doing 15mph more than everyone around them, they are just begging to get hit. I'd never hit anyone on purpose, but bikers seem to think both that they are invincible and extremely easy to see at any distance or angle. Gotta love the ones who do this shit while wearing no safety gear whatsoever, too.
The law may be interpreted that way by legal scholars, but it isn't enforced that way in practice, and most people do not have the resources to make a Fair Use defense in court. Much easier just to take down the offending work and hope it goes away.
Well, that's kinda the whole point of conservatism, isn't it? Keep stuff the way it is, or roll it back to how it "used to be." Except people's ideas of how things used to be tend not to have much relation to actual history.
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Well, what kind of name is "Google" for a reputable company? Come on...
I fully agree. I have a credit card where I earn 2% cash back on gasoline and 1% on everything else. I pay it off in full every month so I never accrue interest charges. They're basically paying me to use the card, so why not? Like you said, it's a better deal than savings account interest.
I've heard about this before, from other Europeans. You guys seem to have either really cheap or free interbank transfers, whereas in the US it is never free (as far as I've seen) and is usually quite expensive.
One time, I needed to transfer some money--just a few hundred dollars--from my account to an account at another bank. I had the routing and account numbers, so it should've been pretty easy. And it was, only they charged me $25 for the privilege. I called around and this is pretty typical.
It's price pressures that encourage people to pay their bills with credit/debit cards. Those still have fees, but they are charged to the merchants rather than the customer.
They should just charge a toll for people using that tunnel between Geneva and central Italy.
Weird. I remember flying a Raptor back in 1994. Thing wrecked everything in its path, no problems. The best was when I installed the tracking gun to shoot up targets I wasn't even aiming at, to say nothing of the badass EMP cannon. Laid waste to most of the Third World with that baby.
Almost 20 years on and now it has problems? Definitely a government clusterfuck at work here.
Silliest car analogy ever.
Since you can't play the game at all without paying the subscription fee, I think it should either cost very little up front ($20 or so) or not require any initial purchase.
Paying full retail price for a game and having to pay a monthly fee for it just strikes me as greedy double-dipping.
That is certainly the theory, but in practice a diffusion of responsibility results also in a diffusion (and eventually lack) of accountability. It becomes possible for a corporation to do illegal or unethical things without the actual decisionmakers in the corporation necessarily being aware that the company is doing anything illegal or unethical. A corporate culture of criminality or at least reckless disregard for the law can develop, and the government is not going to step in and jail hundreds of thousands of people when this happens. There might be one or two token trials, and maybe somebody will get a year or two in prison and a fine.
That would stand to reason since copyright infringement is the most common type of IP crime.
I think it's fair to say that some accidents could be avoided by one party taking swift action, but there are also times when the circumstances are such that one driver's carelessness will cause an accident and there isn't much anyone could do about it. While driving, it's not possible to predict anything more than a few seconds into the future, as far as trying to guess what other drivers will do. In a heavy traffic situation, your awareness will be divided between multiple vehicles. Unless both parties are paying attention, it may not be possible for the one attentive party to avoid.
When stopped at a light, you can't even predict whether someone coming up from behind will stop. A lot of people like to slam their brakes at the last second. How do you tell the difference between that person and the one who isn't going to stop at all? And if there is a car in front of you, then what? Quickly back up and change lanes before the other vehicle arrives?
If people think "defensive driving" means "all accidents are avoidable," they're wrong. It can prevent some, but not all. If you want to be totally pedantic about it, all accidents are "avoidable" given adequate foresight--like knowing you should stay home that day because a semi is going to plow through your car at 12:09PM. Until we can peek into the future, though, we have to deal with what we've got.
Most of my hard drives have also been WDs. I even have a 250GB external that I bought back in 2003 or so that still works fine. I don't trust it with any critical data due to its age, but it's still a decent drive for transferring things around.
I have a couple other WD external drives that I bought in the past couple years. No problems so far.
Your post deserved "Funny" mods, not "Insightful". :-p
So true. I do my best to watch out for motorcycles, but I've seen too many bikers who think having a really narrow vehicle means normal traffic laws don't apply to them. So they ride two (or more) abreast and--my personal favorite--bypass traffic jams by tearing down the space between lanes at high speed. They don't seem to realize that having small vehicles makes them harder to see, and when they weave through traffic doing 15mph more than everyone around them, they are just begging to get hit. I'd never hit anyone on purpose, but bikers seem to think both that they are invincible and extremely easy to see at any distance or angle. Gotta love the ones who do this shit while wearing no safety gear whatsoever, too.
What kind of lunatics modded this "Insightful"? Trolls got mod points, eh?
The law may be interpreted that way by legal scholars, but it isn't enforced that way in practice, and most people do not have the resources to make a Fair Use defense in court. Much easier just to take down the offending work and hope it goes away.
Oblig Trolldad: http://www.trolldad.com/comic/r4fp2
Yeah, this is what SLAs are for, so when you go down, the vendor pays you for that downtime--until it's fixed!
So you've reached a point where you don't believe you should have to learn anything else? I guess I just can't relate to that.
It's a sad world we live in when nobody has a sense of humor.
Well, that's kinda the whole point of conservatism, isn't it? Keep stuff the way it is, or roll it back to how it "used to be." Except people's ideas of how things used to be tend not to have much relation to actual history.
Someday, my friend. Someday.
This selection was more for the Arab Spring protests than the Occupy protests. I think it's a sensible choice.
Yes, one only ever posts troll posts or serious posts. No one ever does both.
But I sure care a lot if someone I don't know ignores me.
Carry on!
It's a sad world we live in when people confuse troll posts with serious ones.
I stopped reading after "What" and realized there would be a question which I'd end up ignoring anyway.
And take off all Apple products.