Not even Visa has a collective brain between them. They left a voicemail for me telling me there was this suspicious activity on my account and to please call "1-800-xxx-yyyy".... I called the 1-800 number on the back of my card instead (which was different than the number they left) and tried to convince the Visa representative what a bad idea it was for Visa to leave their phone number in a voice-mail... She kept trying to say "but we have you confirm all of your details with us so that we know it's you"... I was just not able to get through to her. So I spoke to her supervisor who was similarly afflicted and unable to be convinced.. I wasn't able to speak with the person holding the brain that day.
Since innocent people end up on death-row and are frequently exonnerated by DNA or new evidence, then how can it be logical to maintain a death penalty? If you're going to say "well, maybe.1% of the time an innocent person is put to death but it's for the greater good", then how about you line up to be the next.1%?
I live in Calgary. Electricity just isn't that expensive here. Contracted rates are on the order of 8.5 cents/kwh. Even if he's paying the regulated rate, I don't think it's gotten over $.15/kwh and that's only for one or two months a year. Those of us who know The0 aren't surprised that his numbers don't add up.
I have old hardware running in my basement as well... Volumetrically, probably about the same... If my power bills were even 1/4 what he's asking for, my wife would have my stones.
We're an XBMC house. We were a MythTV house for 7 years or so but switched to XBMC. If you color inside the lines it works terrifically. Just don't stray around the edges... There are certain files that the Acer Veriton upstairs won't play but play fine on my Mac Mini downstairs. My wife can't stream from pbs.org via the XBMC plugin on the veriton (some episodes are fine, some are all glitchy) but it works fine on the Mac Mini. Some plugins work for a while and then they stop working "foo.py addon script failed!"... Searching for a title doesn't work very well at all... Type in "Spartacus" and it can't find it, even if you're looking right at it in the Library. etc..
Still, it's an order of magnitude better than the alternative.
...is very ad-hoc... I'm doing a large reno of a cottage in the woods. I don't care so much about pressing a button in a room to set the lighting 'mood' or what have you. I care more about remotely monitoring and having the house do intelligent things while I'm away. I have a small ubuntu server that runs off a 12v SLA battery with a charger connected.
- I have an RCS TR-60 smart thermostat with RS-485. I can remotely monitor and set the temperature, fan, etc. My server also queries the indoor temp and outdoor temp every 5 minutes and populates an SQL db with that information (along with current set point, furnace runtime in the last hour, and whether the fan is running). - I screen scrape the local weather office for wind speed/direction - I will add an ultrasonic wind sensor this spring to avoid error prone screen scraping. - I have a cut-out on the well pump pressure switch so I can override the well pump. - I have water sensors on the floor in the electrical room. - I can control the yard light remotely so I can turn it on before I arrive (it gets very dark in the forest at night, miles away from civilization). - I can also remotely control sprinkler valves outside. - I have a low voltage hookup to the resistive floor heating in a couple places of the house. - I have a low voltage hookup to the hot water recirculation pump so there is always hot water at the kitchen sink which is a long way from the hot water heater.
So with the above, I can do things like tell whether the house is or is about to be occupied (if the thermostat setpoint is at the Away setting or the Run setting). From this I can turn on/off the recirculation pump, in-floor heating in the winter months, HRV, etc. I can set the thermostat before I leave home and when I arrive, the house is nice and toasty warm (or cool, in the summer)
With furnace runtime in the winter, I can compare with outside temperature and windspeed to get some good information on heat loss... If heat loss increases when the wind speed increases, I get a good idea if there are air leaks, and possibly even which side of the house based on wind direction.. I haven't implemented this yet but I do know how many btu's the house is actually losing vs a broad estimate based on construction. This has been helping to guide my renovations. When the furnace runtime has been slowly increasing over time vs outdoor temperature, I can tell when it's time to change the furnace filter.
I can automatically check the weather forecast and in the absence of rain, I can decide whether to water the gardens. Before turning on the sprinklers, I can activate the well pump and de-activate it when irrigation is finished. This way if a pipe bursts while I'm away, damage will be limited to the 1 gallon that is in the pressure tank as opposed to filling the house at 10gpm.
I did all the electrical, plumbing and wiring. I ran cat5e to each wall of each room. I ran a length of electrical conduit to each exterior wall of the house from the electrical room and installed an LB. I have lots of outdoor outlets. I ran 2" conduit between the furnace room and electrical room. So far I've used much of my exterior conduit for add-ons like VHF antenna, or ATSC, cellular signal booster antenna, etc.
It's all a work in progress and I am able to add stuff as I think of it. It's all very custom and DIY. It's all Python/mysql so far.
Exactly. My child was scoring in the 95th percentile on the standardized tests but was having problems at school. After a psych-ed assessment, he was classified as 'Gifted'. He was also being bullied relentlessly and had no friends to speak of. Constant headaches, tummy aches, and at times, debillitating anxiety; primarily as a result of the social environment at the school. Teachers and the principal were either powerless to do anything about it, or indifferent. We enrolled him in a local charter school which caters to gifted students. On his first day back from that school in gr. 5, he said "Mom! I've found my people!". He's been there a 2.5 years now and it's like night/day. He has lots of friends, is being academically challenged, has almost no tummy aches/headaches, and is in general a happy child now. Since all the kids in that school are gifted and many have additional issues (ADHD, Aspergers, Anxiety, etc), there appears to be no bullying of any sort... The kids who are there want to be there and feel lucky to be there.
I don't know whether our canadian charter schools are different from US charter schools but I have no idea what I'd do if we didn't have this school. There are just some kids for whom the public system does not work.
I don't really mean to life-coach you or anything but the benefits you will reap from learning how to cook and cooking your own meals is enormous. Not only will you be healthier, but you will meet eligible mates at the grocery store; and you will find yourself more interesting to potential mates if you can invite them over and make an absolutely amazing meal... My dad taught me how to cook and I'm now the creative cook in the family... My son has been helping to cook since he was 8 and now that he's 12, he is in charge of one meal every week. He makes things like schnitzel, pork roast, chilli, lasagna, stroganoff, etc...
That's great if you want to turn your furnace into a hobby... I suggest you wire in a couple of old manual tilt-switch thermostats in parallel and in series to ensure you don't freeze your pipes or have the furnace on 24x7 in case your arduino gets an unhandled interrupt or something.. Personally, I have a http://www.rcstechnology.com/oldsite/products/stats/serial.htm RCS TR60 thermostat with an RS-485 port. I have it hooked up to a mac mini running Ubuntu. Periodically it updates a mysql database with inside temperature, outside temperature, furnace runtime, current set point, etc... From that I can calculate the heat loss in the house and make certain decisions based on the current set point (if it's 55, my computer knows I'm not there; if it's above 65, it knows that I'm there)... I can submit commands to a private web-page to go to a specific set point, turn the fan on, etc.. It does what I want. It's all just a few python scripts that took hardly any time to make.. The biggest problem I have is keeping the cellphone internet connection active... Best part is, I know the thermostat will continue to work even if my linux machine goes down or what have you... It will continue along mindlessly so I know my pipes won't freeze as a result of any code that I wrote.
I'd love it if they would make it so your laptop would at least run on 12V-30V so you don't have to buy an expensive power supply to plug it into your car or truck. I don't care if it doesn't charge at full rate if plugged in to a car, but at least run.
A bunch of armchair physicians who dispensing advice like "in my day, they were just hyper and we would cuff them a good one upside the head until they behaved, now they called it some fancy shmancy thing and give them a medication" or "bah, send them outside for some exercise"... And then there's the people who are themselves or have kids who have been diagnosed... I know we've had my son assessed and were hoping for a negative diagnosis... Unfortunately, the testing showed that he does have the inattentive variety which we are not treating with medication but a lot of hard work on our part, the part of his teachers, and on his part... As a side effect, he is also gifted so we got him into a local school full of teachers who understand how to deal with this... It's been a life changer. With the proper support, he is flourishing... Don't get me wrong, it's still occasionally infuriating and he has his occasional failures... He can't remember from one minute to the next what he's supposed to be doing, and time passes without him even realizing so he is perpetually late for appointments or classes... But he's also nothing short of brilliant and someone I can turn to when I need a creative solution to a problem...
Our only question is whether he could really benefit from taking the medication or whether he's better off learning how to cope without it... The pediatricians have left it up to us...
So you have the nice conscientous postal delivery person who has an interest in ensuring you get your parcels delivered in a timely fashion. My wife works from home so is generally available to hear the door. Our postal delivery person would rather just make a single trip to London Drugs or Shoppers to drop off a big bag then to walk to peoples' doors or bother putting a parcel in the box and leaving the key in my box. I have no proof that the two boxes aren't full every time I get a parcel; but I haven't had a 'key' in my mailbox at all since the previous nice conscientous mail delivery guy retired... Of the neighbors I've spoken to about this, they have the same problem I do.
wrong. I've had one of these community mailboxes for years. I don't mind going across the street to get my mail. What I mind is my parcels don't get deposited in the box because there are only 2 parcel boxes per community mailbox. The 'sub post office' you mention is a drug store 8km from my house. The post office depot is in the back corner of the drug store, kitty corner to the doors. The aisles are all set up so you have to zig-zag through the store past all sorts of impulse-buy type merchandise and finally past the perfume counter staffed by sales people who are eager to spray a fragrance into the air as you walk through it. Then you have to stand in line with a dozen or so other disgruntled citizens who are there to pickup their parcel as well. The parcels are stored in the back room and the haggard worker (singular, one only) has to do a linear search for each parcel. Picking up my parcels is like lining up for meat in cold-war era east-germany.
The other minor issue that I have is the CP worker doesn't come to the door with parcels that need to be signed for; even though they are supposed to. They just fill out a card and leave it in my mailbox. On occasions where I know my wife was home and home all day, I would check my ZoneMinder setup and see the postal truck pull up at the box across the street, and then pull away, with no attempt to even come to the door. When I get home, there's a notice in the box that says "Attempted delivery failure - No answer" and it means I have to line-up for bread again.
So first people complain that government doesn't listen to the people, only to corporations. Now that those corporations are standing up against the government and taking a stance that the people support, everyone is complaining about the corporations.
Listen, since your government (I'm canadian) only does what corporations allow it to do; you should be happy that corporations are standing up against the government. You certainly weren't getting anywhere by writing comments on slashdot.
Me too. I just switched from iphone to N5. I couldn't find the built-in flashlight app that I assumed would have been standard fare at this point. Go to the Play store and the first 10 or so flashlight apps all want access to your phone calls, sms, filesystem, and network.... I finally found one that wanted only Camera access and Network. I still don't know why an app to toggle a GPIO would want access to the network... Other things that are basic functionality on IOS are apps you have to download and monkey about like displaying incoming text messages on your lockscreen... The widget that does that wants access to kitchen.sink as well..
I'm going to keep on trying to love the N5 but so far I miss my iphone...
In Alberta they tried the same thing but they actually got traction in Quebec. They attempted to rally the insurance companies and concoct all sorts of statistics about safety, etc. I went the other way. I bought the diesel drivetrain out of a JDM Land Cruiser and installed it in my US Spec land cruiser. But yes, the dealers (under the guise of AMVIC) are behind this.
I'm not a USian but I just don't get it... People cramming into planes flying halfway across the country to watch TV with their family and then cramming into planes again to go back to work...
I'm old and cantankerous too and also do a lot of my own maintenance (including engine rebuilds, transmission/transfer case rebuilds, etc)... I'm not overly afraid of the electricity warnings if there were some sort of repair manual available... There's probably not a lot of user servicable parts in a Tesla drivetrain though... Just consumables like brake pads, light bulbs, etc. Maybe some gearbox fluids? Dunno..
I have two reasons: My job situation is such that I'm not sure it's stable enough that I can handle consumer debt to buy one of these things, and also my almost religious aversion to buying a _new_ car fresh off the lot. I let other shlubs absorb the 20% instantaneous depreciation from driving it off the dealer's lot. It'll be a few years before you start seeing used Tesla's on the market and even then, I predict resale value would probably still be high... So buying a new Tesla would probably be a better choice than a new AnythingElse but still outside of my price range.
Actually, the biggest economy difference is in late september (here in Alberta, Canada) when they switch to winter-diesel... I track my mileage closely and I can tell you exactly which week they've switched to winter diesel and when they've switched back to summer diesel. My mileage goes from about 14.5l/100km down to 17.3l/100km and back again in the summer.
While this is probably technically true; the difference is really only tangibly apparent at temps below about -30C. I've experimented a bit with Dynolicious and my early 90's turbo diesel.. Once I get my gearbox and diffs up to operating temp, driving to work at -45C is really quite fun.. (Welcome to the Canadian prairies)
I was in the local computer discount retailer standing at customer service to return a faulty tablet... The guy next to me has his computer on the counter and the lady is helping him with it... "Yeah; it's just really really slow... I can't even load the google..." She asks "and these toolbars at the top here, did you install those on purpose?" "No, they just appeared. I can't get rid of them. I even paid $250 to have the computer cleaned of viruses and stuff!" "You did? Was it someone online that you paid to do this?" "Yeah! They called me up because they said my computer was causing problems on the internet and I paid them $250 to clean the viruses off of it but it didn't help at all."
I just turned and looked at the guy... It was weird. He didn't look like an idiot. Looked just like some kid's dad...
also doesn't work reliably. It charges my iphone and Asus tablet, but not my son's Samsung Galaxy Ace. I haven't received my Nexus-5 yet so I don't know whether that'll work. What's tricky about the Leviton one is they pay lipservice to the multiple charging standards by making each port different presumably in hopes that your favourite device will charge in one or the other...
I haven't met many adapters and ports that won't charge my iphone but other smartphone vendors need to get their poop in a group and find a standard that they'll all stick to... Part of the appeal of an Android phone is they're all microUSB and chargers/cables would be easy to make universal but it's an epic fail in my opinion.
I was at a buddy's place a couple weeks ago... I had 4 beers while helping him work on his truck in the span of about 3.5 hours. In the past, I've calculated by my weight, that I can tolerate 1 can of beer per hour and still be fine so that has been my basic guideline. Anyway, I got about half a mile from his place and ran into what we call a "Checkstop" which is essentially a bunch of police cars and officers standing by visually profiling who to interview. I was asked whether i'd been drinking and how much and I answered honestly. I was asked to step out of the vehicle and to blow into a small handheld device. After a few false starts where I either blew too slowly or too quickly, or ran out of breath, I managed to blow a.025. Based on how I was feeling, I would probably have chosen not to drive if I'd had any more beer or less time... Based on my own gauge of drunkeness, I can conclude I've never driven anywhere near the lower limit (.05 here)... I realize everyone is not the same but I think you'd have to be a retard to feel you're ok to drive at.05 and.08 is right out.
Slashdot Mirror
Not even Visa has a collective brain between them. They left a voicemail for me telling me there was this suspicious activity on my account and to please call "1-800-xxx-yyyy".... I called the 1-800 number on the back of my card instead (which was different than the number they left) and tried to convince the Visa representative what a bad idea it was for Visa to leave their phone number in a voice-mail... She kept trying to say "but we have you confirm all of your details with us so that we know it's you"... I was just not able to get through to her. So I spoke to her supervisor who was similarly afflicted and unable to be convinced.. I wasn't able to speak with the person holding the brain that day.
Since innocent people end up on death-row and are frequently exonnerated by DNA or new evidence, then how can it be logical to maintain a death penalty? If you're going to say "well, maybe .1% of the time an innocent person is put to death but it's for the greater good", then how about you line up to be the next .1%?
Allow people to make phone calls while in-flight... However, they should be asked to step outside for the duration of their phone call.
a thousand times this.
I live in Calgary. Electricity just isn't that expensive here. Contracted rates are on the order of 8.5 cents/kwh. Even if he's paying the regulated rate, I don't think it's gotten over $.15/kwh and that's only for one or two months a year. Those of us who know The0 aren't surprised that his numbers don't add up.
I have old hardware running in my basement as well... Volumetrically, probably about the same... If my power bills were even 1/4 what he's asking for, my wife would have my stones.
We're an XBMC house. We were a MythTV house for 7 years or so but switched to XBMC. If you color inside the lines it works terrifically. Just don't stray around the edges... There are certain files that the Acer Veriton upstairs won't play but play fine on my Mac Mini downstairs. My wife can't stream from pbs.org via the XBMC plugin on the veriton (some episodes are fine, some are all glitchy) but it works fine on the Mac Mini. Some plugins work for a while and then they stop working "foo.py addon script failed!" ... Searching for a title doesn't work very well at all... Type in "Spartacus" and it can't find it, even if you're looking right at it in the Library. etc..
Still, it's an order of magnitude better than the alternative.
...is very ad-hoc... I'm doing a large reno of a cottage in the woods. I don't care so much about pressing a button in a room to set the lighting 'mood' or what have you. I care more about remotely monitoring and having the house do intelligent things while I'm away. I have a small ubuntu server that runs off a 12v SLA battery with a charger connected.
- I have an RCS TR-60 smart thermostat with RS-485. I can remotely monitor and set the temperature, fan, etc. My server also queries the indoor temp and outdoor temp every 5 minutes and populates an SQL db with that information (along with current set point, furnace runtime in the last hour, and whether the fan is running).
- I screen scrape the local weather office for wind speed/direction
- I will add an ultrasonic wind sensor this spring to avoid error prone screen scraping.
- I have a cut-out on the well pump pressure switch so I can override the well pump.
- I have water sensors on the floor in the electrical room.
- I can control the yard light remotely so I can turn it on before I arrive (it gets very dark in the forest at night, miles away from civilization).
- I can also remotely control sprinkler valves outside.
- I have a low voltage hookup to the resistive floor heating in a couple places of the house.
- I have a low voltage hookup to the hot water recirculation pump so there is always hot water at the kitchen sink which is a long way from the hot water heater.
So with the above, I can do things like tell whether the house is or is about to be occupied (if the thermostat setpoint is at the Away setting or the Run setting). From this I can turn on/off the recirculation pump, in-floor heating in the winter months, HRV, etc. I can set the thermostat before I leave home and when I arrive, the house is nice and toasty warm (or cool, in the summer)
With furnace runtime in the winter, I can compare with outside temperature and windspeed to get some good information on heat loss... If heat loss increases when the wind speed increases, I get a good idea if there are air leaks, and possibly even which side of the house based on wind direction.. I haven't implemented this yet but I do know how many btu's the house is actually losing vs a broad estimate based on construction. This has been helping to guide my renovations. When the furnace runtime has been slowly increasing over time vs outdoor temperature, I can tell when it's time to change the furnace filter.
I can automatically check the weather forecast and in the absence of rain, I can decide whether to water the gardens. Before turning on the sprinklers, I can activate the well pump and de-activate it when irrigation is finished. This way if a pipe bursts while I'm away, damage will be limited to the 1 gallon that is in the pressure tank as opposed to filling the house at 10gpm.
I did all the electrical, plumbing and wiring. I ran cat5e to each wall of each room. I ran a length of electrical conduit to each exterior wall of the house from the electrical room and installed an LB. I have lots of outdoor outlets. I ran 2" conduit between the furnace room and electrical room. So far I've used much of my exterior conduit for add-ons like VHF antenna, or ATSC, cellular signal booster antenna, etc.
It's all a work in progress and I am able to add stuff as I think of it. It's all very custom and DIY. It's all Python/mysql so far.
Exactly. My child was scoring in the 95th percentile on the standardized tests but was having problems at school. After a psych-ed assessment, he was classified as 'Gifted'. He was also being bullied relentlessly and had no friends to speak of. Constant headaches, tummy aches, and at times, debillitating anxiety; primarily as a result of the social environment at the school. Teachers and the principal were either powerless to do anything about it, or indifferent. We enrolled him in a local charter school which caters to gifted students. On his first day back from that school in gr. 5, he said "Mom! I've found my people!". He's been there a 2.5 years now and it's like night/day. He has lots of friends, is being academically challenged, has almost no tummy aches/headaches, and is in general a happy child now. Since all the kids in that school are gifted and many have additional issues (ADHD, Aspergers, Anxiety, etc), there appears to be no bullying of any sort... The kids who are there want to be there and feel lucky to be there.
I don't know whether our canadian charter schools are different from US charter schools but I have no idea what I'd do if we didn't have this school. There are just some kids for whom the public system does not work.
xkcd did a good job of it:
http://xkcd.com/657/
I don't really mean to life-coach you or anything but the benefits you will reap from learning how to cook and cooking your own meals is enormous. Not only will you be healthier, but you will meet eligible mates at the grocery store; and you will find yourself more interesting to potential mates if you can invite them over and make an absolutely amazing meal... My dad taught me how to cook and I'm now the creative cook in the family... My son has been helping to cook since he was 8 and now that he's 12, he is in charge of one meal every week. He makes things like schnitzel, pork roast, chilli, lasagna, stroganoff, etc...
That's great if you want to turn your furnace into a hobby... I suggest you wire in a couple of old manual tilt-switch thermostats in parallel and in series to ensure you don't freeze your pipes or have the furnace on 24x7 in case your arduino gets an unhandled interrupt or something.. Personally, I have a http://www.rcstechnology.com/oldsite/products/stats/serial.htm RCS TR60 thermostat with an RS-485 port. I have it hooked up to a mac mini running Ubuntu. Periodically it updates a mysql database with inside temperature, outside temperature, furnace runtime, current set point, etc... From that I can calculate the heat loss in the house and make certain decisions based on the current set point (if it's 55, my computer knows I'm not there; if it's above 65, it knows that I'm there)... I can submit commands to a private web-page to go to a specific set point, turn the fan on, etc.. It does what I want. It's all just a few python scripts that took hardly any time to make.. The biggest problem I have is keeping the cellphone internet connection active... Best part is, I know the thermostat will continue to work even if my linux machine goes down or what have you... It will continue along mindlessly so I know my pipes won't freeze as a result of any code that I wrote.
I'd love it if they would make it so your laptop would at least run on 12V-30V so you don't have to buy an expensive power supply to plug it into your car or truck. I don't care if it doesn't charge at full rate if plugged in to a car, but at least run.
A bunch of armchair physicians who dispensing advice like "in my day, they were just hyper and we would cuff them a good one upside the head until they behaved, now they called it some fancy shmancy thing and give them a medication" or "bah, send them outside for some exercise"... And then there's the people who are themselves or have kids who have been diagnosed ... I know we've had my son assessed and were hoping for a negative diagnosis... Unfortunately, the testing showed that he does have the inattentive variety which we are not treating with medication but a lot of hard work on our part, the part of his teachers, and on his part... As a side effect, he is also gifted so we got him into a local school full of teachers who understand how to deal with this... It's been a life changer. With the proper support, he is flourishing... Don't get me wrong, it's still occasionally infuriating and he has his occasional failures... He can't remember from one minute to the next what he's supposed to be doing, and time passes without him even realizing so he is perpetually late for appointments or classes... But he's also nothing short of brilliant and someone I can turn to when I need a creative solution to a problem...
Our only question is whether he could really benefit from taking the medication or whether he's better off learning how to cope without it... The pediatricians have left it up to us...
So you have the nice conscientous postal delivery person who has an interest in ensuring you get your parcels delivered in a timely fashion. My wife works from home so is generally available to hear the door. Our postal delivery person would rather just make a single trip to London Drugs or Shoppers to drop off a big bag then to walk to peoples' doors or bother putting a parcel in the box and leaving the key in my box. I have no proof that the two boxes aren't full every time I get a parcel; but I haven't had a 'key' in my mailbox at all since the previous nice conscientous mail delivery guy retired... Of the neighbors I've spoken to about this, they have the same problem I do.
wrong. I've had one of these community mailboxes for years. I don't mind going across the street to get my mail. What I mind is my parcels don't get deposited in the box because there are only 2 parcel boxes per community mailbox. The 'sub post office' you mention is a drug store 8km from my house. The post office depot is in the back corner of the drug store, kitty corner to the doors. The aisles are all set up so you have to zig-zag through the store past all sorts of impulse-buy type merchandise and finally past the perfume counter staffed by sales people who are eager to spray a fragrance into the air as you walk through it. Then you have to stand in line with a dozen or so other disgruntled citizens who are there to pickup their parcel as well. The parcels are stored in the back room and the haggard worker (singular, one only) has to do a linear search for each parcel. Picking up my parcels is like lining up for meat in cold-war era east-germany.
The other minor issue that I have is the CP worker doesn't come to the door with parcels that need to be signed for; even though they are supposed to. They just fill out a card and leave it in my mailbox. On occasions where I know my wife was home and home all day, I would check my ZoneMinder setup and see the postal truck pull up at the box across the street, and then pull away, with no attempt to even come to the door. When I get home, there's a notice in the box that says "Attempted delivery failure - No answer" and it means I have to line-up for bread again.
I wonder why CP is losing money?
So first people complain that government doesn't listen to the people, only to corporations. Now that those corporations are standing up against the government and taking a stance that the people support, everyone is complaining about the corporations.
Listen, since your government (I'm canadian) only does what corporations allow it to do; you should be happy that corporations are standing up against the government. You certainly weren't getting anywhere by writing comments on slashdot.
Me too. I just switched from iphone to N5. I couldn't find the built-in flashlight app that I assumed would have been standard fare at this point. Go to the Play store and the first 10 or so flashlight apps all want access to your phone calls, sms, filesystem, and network.... I finally found one that wanted only Camera access and Network. I still don't know why an app to toggle a GPIO would want access to the network... Other things that are basic functionality on IOS are apps you have to download and monkey about like displaying incoming text messages on your lockscreen... The widget that does that wants access to kitchen.sink as well..
I'm going to keep on trying to love the N5 but so far I miss my iphone...
In Alberta they tried the same thing but they actually got traction in Quebec. They attempted to rally the insurance companies and concoct all sorts of statistics about safety, etc. I went the other way. I bought the diesel drivetrain out of a JDM Land Cruiser and installed it in my US Spec land cruiser. But yes, the dealers (under the guise of AMVIC) are behind this.
I'm not a USian but I just don't get it... People cramming into planes flying halfway across the country to watch TV with their family and then cramming into planes again to go back to work...
I'm old and cantankerous too and also do a lot of my own maintenance (including engine rebuilds, transmission/transfer case rebuilds, etc)... I'm not overly afraid of the electricity warnings if there were some sort of repair manual available... There's probably not a lot of user servicable parts in a Tesla drivetrain though... Just consumables like brake pads, light bulbs, etc. Maybe some gearbox fluids? Dunno..
I have two reasons: My job situation is such that I'm not sure it's stable enough that I can handle consumer debt to buy one of these things, and also my almost religious aversion to buying a _new_ car fresh off the lot. I let other shlubs absorb the 20% instantaneous depreciation from driving it off the dealer's lot. It'll be a few years before you start seeing used Tesla's on the market and even then, I predict resale value would probably still be high... So buying a new Tesla would probably be a better choice than a new AnythingElse but still outside of my price range.
Actually, the biggest economy difference is in late september (here in Alberta, Canada) when they switch to winter-diesel... I track my mileage closely and I can tell you exactly which week they've switched to winter diesel and when they've switched back to summer diesel. My mileage goes from about 14.5l/100km down to 17.3l/100km and back again in the summer.
While this is probably technically true; the difference is really only tangibly apparent at temps below about -30C. I've experimented a bit with Dynolicious and my early 90's turbo diesel.. Once I get my gearbox and diffs up to operating temp, driving to work at -45C is really quite fun.. (Welcome to the Canadian prairies)
I was in the local computer discount retailer standing at customer service to return a faulty tablet... The guy next to me has his computer on the counter and the lady is helping him with it ... "Yeah; it's just really really slow... I can't even load the google..." She asks "and these toolbars at the top here, did you install those on purpose?" "No, they just appeared. I can't get rid of them. I even paid $250 to have the computer cleaned of viruses and stuff!" "You did? Was it someone online that you paid to do this?" "Yeah! They called me up because they said my computer was causing problems on the internet and I paid them $250 to clean the viruses off of it but it didn't help at all."
I just turned and looked at the guy... It was weird. He didn't look like an idiot. Looked just like some kid's dad...
So my phone can finally have what my toothbrush has had for 10 years?
Similarly, the Leviton T5630 one:
http://www.amazon.com/Leviton-T5630-W-Tamper-Resistant-Receptacle-125-Volt/product-reviews/B008O11IEY
also doesn't work reliably. It charges my iphone and Asus tablet, but not my son's Samsung Galaxy Ace. I haven't received my Nexus-5 yet so I don't know whether that'll work. What's tricky about the Leviton one is they pay lipservice to the multiple charging standards by making each port different presumably in hopes that your favourite device will charge in one or the other...
I haven't met many adapters and ports that won't charge my iphone but other smartphone vendors need to get their poop in a group and find a standard that they'll all stick to... Part of the appeal of an Android phone is they're all microUSB and chargers/cables would be easy to make universal but it's an epic fail in my opinion.
I was at a buddy's place a couple weeks ago... I had 4 beers while helping him work on his truck in the span of about 3.5 hours. In the past, I've calculated by my weight, that I can tolerate 1 can of beer per hour and still be fine so that has been my basic guideline. Anyway, I got about half a mile from his place and ran into what we call a "Checkstop" which is essentially a bunch of police cars and officers standing by visually profiling who to interview. I was asked whether i'd been drinking and how much and I answered honestly. I was asked to step out of the vehicle and to blow into a small handheld device. After a few false starts where I either blew too slowly or too quickly, or ran out of breath, I managed to blow a .025. Based on how I was feeling, I would probably have chosen not to drive if I'd had any more beer or less time... Based on my own gauge of drunkeness, I can conclude I've never driven anywhere near the lower limit (.05 here)... I realize everyone is not the same but I think you'd have to be a retard to feel you're ok to drive at .05 and .08 is right out.