This seems like a great way for a [criminal|terrorist|other bad guy] to scope out a location without exposing them self to the risk of actually going to the location.
Considering their closed business model (you can't read an eBook from any vendor other than Amazon on a Kindle), the device itself, even without ads, should be very close to free. Amazon should be looking at the Gilette business model; charge next to nothing for your razors and make your money on the blades. I might pay $25 for a device that locks me into Amazon as my exclusive eBook vendor, but not a penny more.
You can always write or call the company and tell them why you intend to not give them your business, but friends I have in the marketing and advertising industries think that this might have the exact opposite effect. The attitude at many companies is "any publicity is good publicity." Even if you're pissed off at the company, they got your attention, and got their name and logo in your head. And that's what they wanted.
Not so much. I certainly remember more than one of my doctors pulling his copy of the Physician's Desk Reference off the shelf more than one when writing a prescription for me. As a poster upstream pointed out, in the real world it's much better to check your reference material and know you're right than to make your best guess.
The lack of a clutch pedal probably has something to do with it, but not exactly in the way you're proposing. In the Audi case, investigators concluded that pedal placement had something to do with the incidents. Here were the relevant facts back then:
1) For virtually every incident, the Audi was the driver's first non-American car.
2) Distance between the brake and accelerator pedals in Audi 5000's was less than in most American cars (probably because they used the same pedal cluster as manual-transmission models)
3) Pedal height was different from what drivers of American cars would expect. Audi placed the brake and accelerator pedals at roughly the same height to facilitate heel-and-toe downshifting. Most American cars at the time had the brake pedal substantially higher than the accelerator.
All these factors taken together meant that some drivers would get confused about which pedal they were depressing. The greater prevalence of manual transmissions in the rest of the world would help to explain the lack of such incidents outside of the United States.
Excellent points. Nowadays, I run a development team in a consulting organization (and still code a fair amount myself), but a number of years ago, I was a career-changer seeing an entry-level programming position. In college, I'd majored in psychology and taken a few programming classes. When I wanted to get into IT as a profession, I enrolled in a one-year certificate program that taught me to be a COBOL (yes, it was THAT long ago) programmer. I learned 370 Assembler, COBOL, MVS JCL and other skills that were designed to get me a job. In the recession of 1992, I had an entry-level job within two months of finishing the program. This isn't to say that a BS in CS wouldn't have gotten me a comparable job, but the HR person that gave me that initial interview said that she specifically looks for people with some employment experience (I had about four years of real-world experience before deciding to make the change) and high grades from a program such as the one I attended.
Bear in mind also, that a car with a manual transmission must be tuned to provide power over a (relatively) broad band of rpm's. When you have a CVT, you can run the engine at or very near its torque peak pretty much all the time. This allows you to tune for a very narrow power band, and would (I think; I Am Not An Automotive Engineer) make the engine more efficient when run within that narrow band.
"Note that all race cars use manual transmissions, as does any decent sports car, for just these reasons. " (My emphasis)
Not true. Many drag racers are equipped with automatic transmissions. The slip inherent in having a torque converter allows the driver to keep the engine at a higher speed prior to launch, resulting in better quarter-mile times.
You said:
Statistically, a majority of Americans have tried pot.
Also, a majority of Americans are opposed to legalization.
Which means there are a significant number of assholes in this country who think it's perfectly fine if they use pot and get away with it, but YOU should go to jail if you get caught doing the same thing.
Have you considered the possibility the majority of Americans who've tried pot and are now opposed to legalization are opposed because they've come to the conclusion that it should be illegal as a result of their experiences with it and not because they're assholes?
The difference (assuming that a scheme to truly get passengers on board faster could be devised) is that flights missing their take-off slots could be minimized. If a flight is delayed at the gate by five minutes due to boarding issues, it may well get off the ground 45 minutes late because it misses its slot and ends up at the end of the line. It also means that the incoming flight waiting for that gate gets delayed and may well miss its outgoing slot as well. You get the idea.
Obviously this isn't an issue at an underutilized airport, but at Atlanta, and at the NYC airports, etc., this is a real issue. And this impacts the entire system. I can't remember where I read this, but supposedly the majority of flight delays nationwide can be traced to a delay at one of the three New York airports.
You said: Sadly, I must keep mine open so that I can use it with my work computer (gotta love the IT policies at my employer!!).
Have you considered limiting access to your router by MAC address? Just about every residential-grade wireless router you can buy nowadays does this, and it would require no configuration changes on your work machine, so your support PHBs would have nothing to complain about. I'm in the same situation, and I do this; works great.
I'm not sure I agree. While I don't have immigration/population breakdown numbers in front of me, I think that the population of the United States has pretty much always consisted of a large number of first- and second-generation Americans. Three out of four of my grandparents were first- or second- generation Americans. Where I live, in New York City (and I know this isn't a random sampling of America), I'm a bit unusual in that not ALL of my grandparents were first- or second-generation Americans.
I'm just guessing here but the tripod rule may relate to crowd conditions here in NYC. Ever strolled through Midtown at lunchtime or rush hour? Or Times Square or Canal Street at pretty much any hour of the day or night? Setting up a tripod or other fixed equipment in such areas would almost certainly disrupt pedestrian traffic flow. I used to work across the street from David Letterman's studio on Broadway, and would constantly see people blocking pedestrian traffic while taking photos in front of the marquee. I disagree with the idea of limiting the actual act of photography, but I see the point in limiting activities (such as setting up tripods/lighting equipment or posing groups of people) that could be disruptive or hazardous on Manhattan's already-crowded streets.
I got the Sonata case for it's noise reduction properties. It lives in my bedroom, and the freedom from fan/drive noise is a virtue. Kind of strange that they'd put the obnoxious lights on what's actually otherwise a pretty conservative case
The RAZR is provided by my job. Ditto the HP laptop and docking station. And the ThinkGeek handset is my solution to the apalling ergonomics of the RAZR; it was the first Bluetooth handset (not headset) I came across.
I drive a 10-year-old Honda, btw:-). And I took a look at your website, btw, and chuckled that you think _I_ buy too many gadgets.
Cheers!
I honestly can't think of any indicator lights on my electronics that don't serve a useful purpose...
Really? I can think of quite a few...
- The insanely bright blue LEDs on the front of my Antec Sonata case. A few seconds with a pair of diagonal cutters fixed these.
- The insanely bright red LEDs on my Abit motherboard (that shine through the ventilation grill on the back of the case). A judiciously placed piece of cardboard helps with this one.
- The insanely bright (yup, you guessed it, blue this time) LEDs around the "eject" button on the docking station for my HP nc6230 laptop. Electrical tape doesn't work here since they're right at the edge of the button. The only way to kill these is to eject the laptop. Sucks.
- The matching insanely bright blue LED on the front edge of the laptop that's on whenever the wireless adapter is powered on. The amber and green ones right next to it are much dimmer. One of them would have been fine.
- The backlight on the outside display on my RAZR that's on whenever the phone is charging. I leave it in a drawer when it's charging. Looks a bit stupid with the wire hanging out. Sigh.
- The (let's all say it together) insanely bright blue LED on my ThinkGeek Bluetooth Retro Handset. Again, my friend The Drawer comes to the rescue.
- The blinking green light on my Verizon cellular card. Electrical tape works here.
Wow. I didn't have to try very hard at all to come up with these.
This makes it too easy to keep in compliance with the law (reminders, ability to reload meter remotely) and would reduce the number of summonses issued for expired meters. While I don't have data to prove it, I'm convinced that NYC makes more money from the fines than from the actual meter charges. The fact that the Parking Violations Bureau is part of the NYC Department of Finance and not the Department of Motor Vehicles says something, no? The only sub-$100 parking ticket I've gotten in the past 5 years was for a crooked license plate (yes, you read that right, a crooked license plate!), and that one was $65.
I'm not qualified to comment on the skills of Navy docs in general, but if I were going to get laser eye surgery, I'd feel pretty comfortable knowing that the doc who's going to be doing it has done literally thousands of that same procedure before, and has turned out results good enough for their patients to qualify as fighter pilots.
I know that New York advises everyone who owns an iPod to get a different (preferably black) pair of earbuds to avoid mugging, which seems to be rather consistent from my view of people in New York.
Save up and buy yourself a clue. I live in New York City. I've lived here my entire life. I know more iPod owners than I can count. I don't know of any that have replaced their earbuds for fear of being mugged. I don't know of any that have been mugged for their iPods. I don't know anyone who lives in fear of being mugged in New York. Come to think of it, I don't know anyone who's been mugged in New York the past 15 years. New York is the safest big city in America. Come visit us here in the 21st Century sometime; you might like it.
The point is, you're *not* paying for ads, although it might seem that way. In most cases, the advertising is paying for much of the editorial content that you're buying the magazine for in the first place. I understand this, and I deal with it, for this reason as well as because it seems, in most of the magazines I read, at least, that a fair proportion of the ads are relevant to the topic of the publication. The ads that get on my nerves are the ones that are printed on heaver stock than the rest of the magazine, so the magazine jumps open to that page until you tear the damned thing out. Oh, and I'm not very fond of the magazines that put the table of contents on page 14 so they can cram in 13 pages of advertising that you have to pass trying to find it.
It bothers me less, or not at all to make these minor errors in a forum like/.
I'm as concerned about these errors when I post online as I am at work; postings in a forum like Slashdot last essentially forever. I'm a techie and I hire techies for consulting positions. And I always Google candidates (by name and email address) before hiring them. I believe that putting an illiterate consultant in front of my customers reflects poorly on my company and gives them little reason to choose my services over an offshore competitor.
Slashdot Mirror
This seems like a great way for a [criminal|terrorist|other bad guy] to scope out a location without exposing them self to the risk of actually going to the location.
Considering their closed business model (you can't read an eBook from any vendor other than Amazon on a Kindle), the device itself, even without ads, should be very close to free. Amazon should be looking at the Gilette business model; charge next to nothing for your razors and make your money on the blades. I might pay $25 for a device that locks me into Amazon as my exclusive eBook vendor, but not a penny more.
I think they're horrified at the prospect of giving them _their_ jobs
You can always write or call the company and tell them why you intend to not give them your business, but friends I have in the marketing and advertising industries think that this might have the exact opposite effect. The attitude at many companies is "any publicity is good publicity." Even if you're pissed off at the company, they got your attention, and got their name and logo in your head. And that's what they wanted.
Not so much. I certainly remember more than one of my doctors pulling his copy of the Physician's Desk Reference off the shelf more than one when writing a prescription for me. As a poster upstream pointed out, in the real world it's much better to check your reference material and know you're right than to make your best guess.
The lack of a clutch pedal probably has something to do with it, but not exactly in the way you're proposing. In the Audi case, investigators concluded that pedal placement had something to do with the incidents. Here were the relevant facts back then:
1) For virtually every incident, the Audi was the driver's first non-American car.
2) Distance between the brake and accelerator pedals in Audi 5000's was less than in most American cars (probably because they used the same pedal cluster as manual-transmission models)
3) Pedal height was different from what drivers of American cars would expect. Audi placed the brake and accelerator pedals at roughly the same height to facilitate heel-and-toe downshifting. Most American cars at the time had the brake pedal substantially higher than the accelerator.
All these factors taken together meant that some drivers would get confused about which pedal they were depressing. The greater prevalence of manual transmissions in the rest of the world would help to explain the lack of such incidents outside of the United States.
Excellent points. Nowadays, I run a development team in a consulting organization (and still code a fair amount myself), but a number of years ago, I was a career-changer seeing an entry-level programming position. In college, I'd majored in psychology and taken a few programming classes. When I wanted to get into IT as a profession, I enrolled in a one-year certificate program that taught me to be a COBOL (yes, it was THAT long ago) programmer. I learned 370 Assembler, COBOL, MVS JCL and other skills that were designed to get me a job. In the recession of 1992, I had an entry-level job within two months of finishing the program. This isn't to say that a BS in CS wouldn't have gotten me a comparable job, but the HR person that gave me that initial interview said that she specifically looks for people with some employment experience (I had about four years of real-world experience before deciding to make the change) and high grades from a program such as the one I attended.
Bear in mind also, that a car with a manual transmission must be tuned to provide power over a (relatively) broad band of rpm's. When you have a CVT, you can run the engine at or very near its torque peak pretty much all the time. This allows you to tune for a very narrow power band, and would (I think; I Am Not An Automotive Engineer) make the engine more efficient when run within that narrow band.
"Note that all race cars use manual transmissions, as does any decent sports car, for just these reasons. " (My emphasis)
Not true. Many drag racers are equipped with automatic transmissions. The slip inherent in having a torque converter allows the driver to keep the engine at a higher speed prior to launch, resulting in better quarter-mile times.
You said: Statistically, a majority of Americans have tried pot. Also, a majority of Americans are opposed to legalization. Which means there are a significant number of assholes in this country who think it's perfectly fine if they use pot and get away with it, but YOU should go to jail if you get caught doing the same thing.
Have you considered the possibility the majority of Americans who've tried pot and are now opposed to legalization are opposed because they've come to the conclusion that it should be illegal as a result of their experiences with it and not because they're assholes?
Just a thought.
Actually, here in America, you don't have to "prove your innocence." You're presumed innocent, and it's up to the prosecution to prove you guilty.
"She's dead, Jim"
The difference (assuming that a scheme to truly get passengers on board faster could be devised) is that flights missing their take-off slots could be minimized. If a flight is delayed at the gate by five minutes due to boarding issues, it may well get off the ground 45 minutes late because it misses its slot and ends up at the end of the line. It also means that the incoming flight waiting for that gate gets delayed and may well miss its outgoing slot as well. You get the idea. Obviously this isn't an issue at an underutilized airport, but at Atlanta, and at the NYC airports, etc., this is a real issue. And this impacts the entire system. I can't remember where I read this, but supposedly the majority of flight delays nationwide can be traced to a delay at one of the three New York airports.
...but should something like this ever come into common use, how long until someone figures out how to pump advertising through these things?
You said: Sadly, I must keep mine open so that I can use it with my work computer (gotta love the IT policies at my employer!!).
Have you considered limiting access to your router by MAC address? Just about every residential-grade wireless router you can buy nowadays does this, and it would require no configuration changes on your work machine, so your support PHBs would have nothing to complain about. I'm in the same situation, and I do this; works great.
A lot more minorities.
I'm not sure I agree. While I don't have immigration/population breakdown numbers in front of me, I think that the population of the United States has pretty much always consisted of a large number of first- and second-generation Americans. Three out of four of my grandparents were first- or second- generation Americans. Where I live, in New York City (and I know this isn't a random sampling of America), I'm a bit unusual in that not ALL of my grandparents were first- or second-generation Americans.
Why a tripod?
I'm just guessing here but the tripod rule may relate to crowd conditions here in NYC. Ever strolled through Midtown at lunchtime or rush hour? Or Times Square or Canal Street at pretty much any hour of the day or night? Setting up a tripod or other fixed equipment in such areas would almost certainly disrupt pedestrian traffic flow. I used to work across the street from David Letterman's studio on Broadway, and would constantly see people blocking pedestrian traffic while taking photos in front of the marquee. I disagree with the idea of limiting the actual act of photography, but I see the point in limiting activities (such as setting up tripods/lighting equipment or posing groups of people) that could be disruptive or hazardous on Manhattan's already-crowded streets.
Since you asked (sort of)...
:-). And I took a look at your website, btw, and chuckled that you think _I_ buy too many gadgets.
I got the Sonata case for it's noise reduction properties. It lives in my bedroom, and the freedom from fan/drive noise is a virtue. Kind of strange that they'd put the obnoxious lights on what's actually otherwise a pretty conservative case
The RAZR is provided by my job. Ditto the HP laptop and docking station. And the ThinkGeek handset is my solution to the apalling ergonomics of the RAZR; it was the first Bluetooth handset (not headset) I came across.
I drive a 10-year-old Honda, btw
Cheers!
I honestly can't think of any indicator lights on my electronics that don't serve a useful purpose...
Really? I can think of quite a few...
- The insanely bright blue LEDs on the front of my Antec Sonata case. A few seconds with a pair of diagonal cutters fixed these.
- The insanely bright red LEDs on my Abit motherboard (that shine through the ventilation grill on the back of the case). A judiciously placed piece of cardboard helps with this one.
- The insanely bright (yup, you guessed it, blue this time) LEDs around the "eject" button on the docking station for my HP nc6230 laptop. Electrical tape doesn't work here since they're right at the edge of the button. The only way to kill these is to eject the laptop. Sucks.
- The matching insanely bright blue LED on the front edge of the laptop that's on whenever the wireless adapter is powered on. The amber and green ones right next to it are much dimmer. One of them would have been fine.
- The backlight on the outside display on my RAZR that's on whenever the phone is charging. I leave it in a drawer when it's charging. Looks a bit stupid with the wire hanging out. Sigh.
- The (let's all say it together) insanely bright blue LED on my ThinkGeek Bluetooth Retro Handset. Again, my friend The Drawer comes to the rescue.
- The blinking green light on my Verizon cellular card. Electrical tape works here.
Wow. I didn't have to try very hard at all to come up with these.
What's the problem? It says it produces 7,780 horsepower per cylinder.
7780*14=108920 - looks right to me
This makes it too easy to keep in compliance with the law (reminders, ability to reload meter remotely) and would reduce the number of summonses issued for expired meters. While I don't have data to prove it, I'm convinced that NYC makes more money from the fines than from the actual meter charges. The fact that the Parking Violations Bureau is part of the NYC Department of Finance and not the Department of Motor Vehicles says something, no? The only sub-$100 parking ticket I've gotten in the past 5 years was for a crooked license plate (yes, you read that right, a crooked license plate!), and that one was $65.
I'm not qualified to comment on the skills of Navy docs in general, but if I were going to get laser eye surgery, I'd feel pretty comfortable knowing that the doc who's going to be doing it has done literally thousands of that same procedure before, and has turned out results good enough for their patients to qualify as fighter pilots.
Just my $0.02
I know that New York advises everyone who owns an iPod to get a different (preferably black) pair of earbuds to avoid mugging, which seems to be rather consistent from my view of people in New York.
Save up and buy yourself a clue. I live in New York City. I've lived here my entire life. I know more iPod owners than I can count. I don't know of any that have replaced their earbuds for fear of being mugged. I don't know of any that have been mugged for their iPods. I don't know anyone who lives in fear of being mugged in New York. Come to think of it, I don't know anyone who's been mugged in New York the past 15 years. New York is the safest big city in America. Come visit us here in the 21st Century sometime; you might like it.
The point is, you're *not* paying for ads, although it might seem that way. In most cases, the advertising is paying for much of the editorial content that you're buying the magazine for in the first place. I understand this, and I deal with it, for this reason as well as because it seems, in most of the magazines I read, at least, that a fair proportion of the ads are relevant to the topic of the publication. The ads that get on my nerves are the ones that are printed on heaver stock than the rest of the magazine, so the magazine jumps open to that page until you tear the damned thing out. Oh, and I'm not very fond of the magazines that put the table of contents on page 14 so they can cram in 13 pages of advertising that you have to pass trying to find it.
It bothers me less, or not at all to make these minor errors in a forum like /.
I'm as concerned about these errors when I post online as I am at work; postings in a forum like Slashdot last essentially forever. I'm a techie and I hire techies for consulting positions. And I always Google candidates (by name and email address) before hiring them. I believe that putting an illiterate consultant in front of my customers reflects poorly on my company and gives them little reason to choose my services over an offshore competitor.