"If your ATM card has the backing of Visa or Mastercard and used as a Credit Card, then you are in the worst case scenario out $50."
That's because of the protections offered by Visa and Mastercard (to the bank or card issuer, which can then pass them on to you), not usually the bank (although some credit unions offer those protections).
The trick is to find the credit card companies who have the best customer service. I have one issuer with awesome customer service. They offer all sorts of protections on travel, car rentals, lost/stolen cards, etc. without obligating me to pay anything in the case of loss or fraud. Additionally, there are some credit card issuers (e.g., American Express) that offer additional warranties on products you purchase with the card. So, for example, if I purchase a laptop with a one year warranty, some credit cards (even ones with no yearly fees) will extend that warranty to two years (you just work through the card issuer and not the company). But again, the trick is to find the issuers with good customer service who don't make things too difficult for you (they exist, a few of my cards are though companies with good customer service.
Because the merchant already raised prices, it behooves me to use a credit card. If I don't, I'm subsidizing those who do use cards; if I do, then I'm receiving the reward. Now, if everyone stopped using credit cards, merchants could lower prices. That would be great but it probably won't happen (and I won't be leading the charge [pun intended] in that battle).
Credit cards can be bad - I've worked with people who have had terrible self control issues with credit cards. It's almost tragic. However, it's not entirely the credit card's fault; people with spending problems have other issues that are the real problems.
I don't pay fees for credit cards. Okay, that's not true any more - I have one card where I pay fees but I paid $69 for a year and received $800 in rewards (3 round trip airline flights, which I've already redeemed). That's a good return on investment - pay $70 and receive $800. I'll most likely cancel the card before I have to pay the fee again (my credit score can handle the small hit it will take for a few months), although . All my other cards have no yearly fees (some of them have given $200-$300 in signup bonuses). This means at this point when I use the cards, the cash back I receive is just gravy to me (which I need as a grad student).
Exactly, although the rewards do also come from transaction fees charged to vendors. Credit card companies love people like me who use cards responsibly (there was a WSJ article about this a couple months ago). Even though they do not earn interest on my credit card payments, they receive the transaction fees and they know that they will receive the money I owe them on time and without having to chase me down for it.
I use a credit card for everything I can because of the rewards I earn. I've received thousands of dollars in rewards (I just received what amounts to $800 in rewards for signing up with a credit card) and cash back (anywhere from 1% - 20% per transaction, depending on the situation and retailer) over the years. The trick is to use credit cards like debit cards by paying them off completely every month. Living on credit can be stupid (most people need a mortgage to afford a house though; having a mortgage is "living on credit") but we shouldn't confuse using credit cards with living on credit. I'll use debit cards as soon as they offer rewards as good as credit cards (they won't though because of regulations as well as other reasons).
It's the scholars who are making the connection in this case. The online article is quite true to what the scholars are saying about the tablet. I'm not saying that they are necessarily right but this tablet does date to the time of Nebuchadnezzar II.
If you read the article you read: "'Here we have for the first time an illustration contemporary with Nebuchadnezzar II's restoring and enlargement of the Tower of Babel, and with a caption making the identity absolutely sure,' the Schøyen Collection stated on its website."
They're not saying Nebuchadnezzar built the original Tower of Babel, they're saying it looks like he might have (tried to) restore it (rebuild it). "Calling himself the 'great restorer and builder of holy places,' he also reconstructed Etemenanki, a 7-story, almost 300-foot-high temple (also known as a ziggurat) dedicated to the god Marduk. Biblical scholars believe that this temple may be the Tower of Babel mentioned in the Bible."
The article makes this pretty clear. Also, if you read the collection's website (http://www.schoyencollection.com/historyBabylonian.html), it is clear that this is simply a depiction of the rebuilding of the original tower. I don't see how the author of the article mangled either philology or biblical theology. The reference to the confusion of the languages ("God concluded that they were simply trying to gain power and caused the workers to speak many different languages. Unable to communicate with each other, the workers gave up the project.") was background about the original tower; the author was not implying that it occurred during Nebuchadnezzar II's reign.
They grow their food in the places that are not city (most of the world, based on the first link) and import it in. They'd just have to leave open the most fertile growing regions and put the city elsewhere. Or, they grow their food vertically in vertical farms (e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_farming). I'm sure we could come up with some sort of technological solution to where and how we grow food if we all lived in one large city.
"As a platform - the important thing - Apple's star is waning"
You misspelled "winning".
I own an Android-based phone; I'm running a custom 2.3 ROM and will upgrade to ICS as soon as it is available (when someone ports a ROM) but Apple's ecosystem and OS are still quite a bit more advanced than Android's. I really like my phone and I enjoy Android but compared to Apple's ecosystem, it's not that great. I had to root and install a custom ROM to make the phone more than barely functional. That's not entirely Google's fault but it is partially the result of the ecosystem Google didn't-quite-create. I know some people prefer the flexibility of Android (I like many things about it; I also run Linux at work and home) but Apple's star isn't waning; Apple is doing as well - even better - than they ever have. Apple defines the market and the other manufacturers mostly copy them (not that that is a bad thing, it's just that Apple is the market leader). Market share is far from everything.
I have to admit that the Star Wars Episode 1 trailer was quite amazing (it still is). After so many years of watching Star Wars over and over there was finally a new Star Wars movie. The trailer, in my opinion, is one of the greatest ever made. I downloaded it over my 14.4 modem (yes, I was stuck with a slow modem but sometimes I borrowed a 28.8 modem) and watched it many times. Of course the film didn't quite live up to the trailer and the hype but the trailer was definitely goose-bump inducing. There are a few others (e.g., LOTR, Saving Private Ryan, Independence Day) too.
"many students will use the device to play Angry Birds or check Facebook instead of paying attention in class"
So? If they didn't have that they would be sleeping or doodling or writing something else or planning out their week or checking out the other students. Professors should be able to hold the attention of most of the students; if not, maybe they should try something other than teaching. I've taught a number of university courses and always tried to make them sufficiently interesting and engaging so that the students would want to pay attention. There are always the students who will do other things but they also usually do not do well in the course either.
"I'm not a mathematician, but your percentages total more than 100%"
I'm not saying the parent poster's numbers are correct but the poster did state: "top 6 (as a percentage of revenue, spending is about 160% of revenue)" so the percentages should be more than 100% (because the federal government spends more than it takes in).
People have known that we'd have weird weather and other events in these days for a long time. Written about 1600 years ago (or, if you don't believe that, in 1829) in the Book of Mormon: "Yea, [there] shall come...a day when there shall be heard of fires, and tempests, and vapors of smoke in foreign lands; And there shall also be heard of wars, rumors of wars, and earthquakes in divers places. Yea, [there] shall come...a day when there shall be great pollutions upon the face of the earth; there shall be murders, and robbing, and lying, and deceivings." (Moroni 8:29-31).
Or, if you prefer the Bible: "And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows." (Mark 13:7-8).
I'm not saying we should encourage climate change, we need to do more to reduce our negative effects on the environment and climate, but people knew this was going to happen, a long time before people understood the science of it (not that we really do yet).
You raised many points but the issue with growing food up north is easily (not cheaply) solved. We start growing food indoors with sun lamps. I'm sure we can find some cheap renewable source of energy to power all of them. Things like this might not be economical now but at some point it will be. Or, we move much of our farming to the ocean out on huge floating farms. We will find a way to adapt. We might lose a lot of people in the process but we can adapt.
I know you're just trolling (and/or being ironic) but Pres. Bush was barely literate? He went to Yale and Harvard and did just fine (I'd wager, much better than many people on/. would do). He was quite bright (estimates based on SAT scores) and is a voracious book reader (mostly biographies and histories). Just because Pres. Bush was not an in-your-face-I'm-smarter-than-you type of person doesn't mean that he is barely literate and useless.
You might disagree strongly with his politics and his presidency - that's completely fine - but calling him names and resorting to insinuations about his intelligence adds nothing useful to the public political discourse.
Further, what's your evidence that Pres. Obama is a good lawyer? I'm not saying he wasn't, I just only know what little there is on Wikipedia about his legal work. He only practiced law for 3 years before he entered politics (and became a consultant for a law firm). Obama was never really a lawyer, he wanted to be a politician - law was a means to politics (I'm not saying that's necessarily bad). He's never done anything long enough to get a good gage of how good or not he is at it (other than running grassroots campaigns). He's very successful but a few years doing one thing and then a few years doing something else doesn't leave much of a trail by which to judge the quality of his work. Based on his record, a 4 year presidency would fit the pattern of his life.
I'm not saying these things to be negative, I'm simply offering critiques.
I know this is a little off-topic but phrenology was founded in good science. It's basic ideas play a large role in how we view the brain today. What happened was that the science of phrenology was popularized (essentially politicized), losing its soundness (for the day) and credibility in the process (think pop psychology shows on T.V.). Phrenology gets a bad wrap because it was misused and abused. Since Gall didn't have any lovely MRI machines at his disposal, he did what he could - try to localize cognition, emotion, and mental functions based on what he could measure - the skull. His ideas helped pave the way for a radical shift in our understanding of the relationships between brain and behavior. Yes, there are ideas of phrenology that seem quaint when looking back from today but Gall helped lead to a paradigm shift in our understanding of the brain. I'm not saying all his methods were sound - there were some serious flaws, but most of the problems stemmed from people misusing his work.
I really like the 7" tablet size for portability, however, the form factor of the iPad is perfect for usability. A widescreen aspect ratio is nice for watching movies but the aspect ratio of the iPad is better for reading, browsing, and so forth.
Macs also come with a lot of "free" software that is useful. There are not always similarly good applications for "free" or cheap for Windows or Linux (e.g., Garageband, iMovie). We could also throw in Pages, Keynote, and Numbers; they are inexpensive on the Mac and without a really good educational discount, you cannot get comparable products (i.e., Office) for as cheaply (LibreOffice is nice, so is Google Docs, but they're not in the same class as iWork and Microsoft Office). Add in, as you said, the cost of a really nice screen for the iMacs (27" IPS screens comparable to the 27" iMac screen go for about $1000). This means that the base 27" iMac, negating the monitor cost, is $700. That's not unreasonable for what you get (2.7 GHz quad core i5, Radeon 6770M, etc.) from a hardware perspective. Add in the superbly designed case plus the reliability of Macs (they have the highest reliability of any of the major manufacturers plus Apple has top-rated customer service). If you include the fact that you get a UNIX-based OS (with all the perks of that - command line, stability, etc.) and all the software, it's a very reasonably-priced package. Yes, you can purchase or put together a cheaper Windows or Liunx computer (particularly if you already have a monitor or don't mind a TN panel) but Macs (mainly the iMacs) are not unreasonably priced considering what you get.
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"If your ATM card has the backing of Visa or Mastercard and used as a Credit Card, then you are in the worst case scenario out $50."
That's because of the protections offered by Visa and Mastercard (to the bank or card issuer, which can then pass them on to you), not usually the bank (although some credit unions offer those protections).
The trick is to find the credit card companies who have the best customer service. I have one issuer with awesome customer service. They offer all sorts of protections on travel, car rentals, lost/stolen cards, etc. without obligating me to pay anything in the case of loss or fraud. Additionally, there are some credit card issuers (e.g., American Express) that offer additional warranties on products you purchase with the card. So, for example, if I purchase a laptop with a one year warranty, some credit cards (even ones with no yearly fees) will extend that warranty to two years (you just work through the card issuer and not the company). But again, the trick is to find the issuers with good customer service who don't make things too difficult for you (they exist, a few of my cards are though companies with good customer service.
Because the merchant already raised prices, it behooves me to use a credit card. If I don't, I'm subsidizing those who do use cards; if I do, then I'm receiving the reward. Now, if everyone stopped using credit cards, merchants could lower prices. That would be great but it probably won't happen (and I won't be leading the charge [pun intended] in that battle).
Credit cards can be bad - I've worked with people who have had terrible self control issues with credit cards. It's almost tragic. However, it's not entirely the credit card's fault; people with spending problems have other issues that are the real problems.
I don't pay fees for credit cards. Okay, that's not true any more - I have one card where I pay fees but I paid $69 for a year and received $800 in rewards (3 round trip airline flights, which I've already redeemed). That's a good return on investment - pay $70 and receive $800. I'll most likely cancel the card before I have to pay the fee again (my credit score can handle the small hit it will take for a few months), although . All my other cards have no yearly fees (some of them have given $200-$300 in signup bonuses). This means at this point when I use the cards, the cash back I receive is just gravy to me (which I need as a grad student).
Exactly, although the rewards do also come from transaction fees charged to vendors. Credit card companies love people like me who use cards responsibly (there was a WSJ article about this a couple months ago). Even though they do not earn interest on my credit card payments, they receive the transaction fees and they know that they will receive the money I owe them on time and without having to chase me down for it.
I use a credit card for everything I can because of the rewards I earn. I've received thousands of dollars in rewards (I just received what amounts to $800 in rewards for signing up with a credit card) and cash back (anywhere from 1% - 20% per transaction, depending on the situation and retailer) over the years. The trick is to use credit cards like debit cards by paying them off completely every month. Living on credit can be stupid (most people need a mortgage to afford a house though; having a mortgage is "living on credit") but we shouldn't confuse using credit cards with living on credit. I'll use debit cards as soon as they offer rewards as good as credit cards (they won't though because of regulations as well as other reasons).
It's the scholars who are making the connection in this case. The online article is quite true to what the scholars are saying about the tablet. I'm not saying that they are necessarily right but this tablet does date to the time of Nebuchadnezzar II.
If you read the article you read: "'Here we have for the first time an illustration contemporary with Nebuchadnezzar II's restoring and enlargement of the Tower of Babel, and with a caption making the identity absolutely sure,' the Schøyen Collection stated on its website."
They're not saying Nebuchadnezzar built the original Tower of Babel, they're saying it looks like he might have (tried to) restore it (rebuild it). "Calling himself the 'great restorer and builder of holy places,' he also reconstructed Etemenanki, a 7-story, almost 300-foot-high temple (also known as a ziggurat) dedicated to the god Marduk. Biblical scholars believe that this temple may be the Tower of Babel mentioned in the Bible."
The article makes this pretty clear. Also, if you read the collection's website (http://www.schoyencollection.com/historyBabylonian.html), it is clear that this is simply a depiction of the rebuilding of the original tower. I don't see how the author of the article mangled either philology or biblical theology. The reference to the confusion of the languages ("God concluded that they were simply trying to gain power and caused the workers to speak many different languages. Unable to communicate with each other, the workers gave up the project.") was background about the original tower; the author was not implying that it occurred during Nebuchadnezzar II's reign.
They grow their food in the places that are not city (most of the world, based on the first link) and import it in. They'd just have to leave open the most fertile growing regions and put the city elsewhere. Or, they grow their food vertically in vertical farms (e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_farming). I'm sure we could come up with some sort of technological solution to where and how we grow food if we all lived in one large city.
"As a platform - the important thing - Apple's star is waning"
You misspelled "winning".
I own an Android-based phone; I'm running a custom 2.3 ROM and will upgrade to ICS as soon as it is available (when someone ports a ROM) but Apple's ecosystem and OS are still quite a bit more advanced than Android's. I really like my phone and I enjoy Android but compared to Apple's ecosystem, it's not that great. I had to root and install a custom ROM to make the phone more than barely functional. That's not entirely Google's fault but it is partially the result of the ecosystem Google didn't-quite-create. I know some people prefer the flexibility of Android (I like many things about it; I also run Linux at work and home) but Apple's star isn't waning; Apple is doing as well - even better - than they ever have. Apple defines the market and the other manufacturers mostly copy them (not that that is a bad thing, it's just that Apple is the market leader). Market share is far from everything.
The Hobbit is a children's book, which is why it is so tidy. LOTRs are not children's books (although many of us enjoyed them as children).
They do have Frodo in the film though. I believe it's done, as it is in the trailer, as a telling of the story; hence, Elijah Wood in the film.
I have to admit that the Star Wars Episode 1 trailer was quite amazing (it still is). After so many years of watching Star Wars over and over there was finally a new Star Wars movie. The trailer, in my opinion, is one of the greatest ever made. I downloaded it over my 14.4 modem (yes, I was stuck with a slow modem but sometimes I borrowed a 28.8 modem) and watched it many times. Of course the film didn't quite live up to the trailer and the hype but the trailer was definitely goose-bump inducing. There are a few others (e.g., LOTR, Saving Private Ryan, Independence Day) too.
"many students will use the device to play Angry Birds or check Facebook instead of paying attention in class"
So? If they didn't have that they would be sleeping or doodling or writing something else or planning out their week or checking out the other students. Professors should be able to hold the attention of most of the students; if not, maybe they should try something other than teaching. I've taught a number of university courses and always tried to make them sufficiently interesting and engaging so that the students would want to pay attention. There are always the students who will do other things but they also usually do not do well in the course either.
"I'm not a mathematician, but your percentages total more than 100%"
I'm not saying the parent poster's numbers are correct but the poster did state: "top 6 (as a percentage of revenue, spending is about 160% of revenue)" so the percentages should be more than 100% (because the federal government spends more than it takes in).
Since when are medical doctors scientists? Most in the U.S. are decent in science classes but few are scientists.
People have known that we'd have weird weather and other events in these days for a long time. Written about 1600 years ago (or, if you don't believe that, in 1829) in the Book of Mormon: "Yea, [there] shall come...a day when there shall be heard of fires, and tempests, and vapors of smoke in foreign lands; And there shall also be heard of wars, rumors of wars, and earthquakes in divers places. Yea, [there] shall come...a day when there shall be great pollutions upon the face of the earth; there shall be murders, and robbing, and lying, and deceivings." (Moroni 8:29-31).
Or, if you prefer the Bible: "And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows." (Mark 13:7-8).
I'm not saying we should encourage climate change, we need to do more to reduce our negative effects on the environment and climate, but people knew this was going to happen, a long time before people understood the science of it (not that we really do yet).
You raised many points but the issue with growing food up north is easily (not cheaply) solved. We start growing food indoors with sun lamps. I'm sure we can find some cheap renewable source of energy to power all of them. Things like this might not be economical now but at some point it will be. Or, we move much of our farming to the ocean out on huge floating farms. We will find a way to adapt. We might lose a lot of people in the process but we can adapt.
Sure they do, they purchase Android-based phones! ;)
Disclaimer: I own an Android-based phone.
No, he's sad.
Argh, "its" not "it's".
I know you're just trolling (and/or being ironic) but Pres. Bush was barely literate? He went to Yale and Harvard and did just fine (I'd wager, much better than many people on /. would do). He was quite bright (estimates based on SAT scores) and is a voracious book reader (mostly biographies and histories). Just because Pres. Bush was not an in-your-face-I'm-smarter-than-you type of person doesn't mean that he is barely literate and useless.
You might disagree strongly with his politics and his presidency - that's completely fine - but calling him names and resorting to insinuations about his intelligence adds nothing useful to the public political discourse.
Further, what's your evidence that Pres. Obama is a good lawyer? I'm not saying he wasn't, I just only know what little there is on Wikipedia about his legal work. He only practiced law for 3 years before he entered politics (and became a consultant for a law firm). Obama was never really a lawyer, he wanted to be a politician - law was a means to politics (I'm not saying that's necessarily bad). He's never done anything long enough to get a good gage of how good or not he is at it (other than running grassroots campaigns). He's very successful but a few years doing one thing and then a few years doing something else doesn't leave much of a trail by which to judge the quality of his work. Based on his record, a 4 year presidency would fit the pattern of his life.
I'm not saying these things to be negative, I'm simply offering critiques.
I know this is a little off-topic but phrenology was founded in good science. It's basic ideas play a large role in how we view the brain today. What happened was that the science of phrenology was popularized (essentially politicized), losing its soundness (for the day) and credibility in the process (think pop psychology shows on T.V.). Phrenology gets a bad wrap because it was misused and abused. Since Gall didn't have any lovely MRI machines at his disposal, he did what he could - try to localize cognition, emotion, and mental functions based on what he could measure - the skull. His ideas helped pave the way for a radical shift in our understanding of the relationships between brain and behavior. Yes, there are ideas of phrenology that seem quaint when looking back from today but Gall helped lead to a paradigm shift in our understanding of the brain. I'm not saying all his methods were sound - there were some serious flaws, but most of the problems stemmed from people misusing his work.
I really like the 7" tablet size for portability, however, the form factor of the iPad is perfect for usability. A widescreen aspect ratio is nice for watching movies but the aspect ratio of the iPad is better for reading, browsing, and so forth.
And Garageband and iPhoto (although Picasa is a good free replacement) and iMovie and iDVD and...
Macs also come with a lot of "free" software that is useful. There are not always similarly good applications for "free" or cheap for Windows or Linux (e.g., Garageband, iMovie). We could also throw in Pages, Keynote, and Numbers; they are inexpensive on the Mac and without a really good educational discount, you cannot get comparable products (i.e., Office) for as cheaply (LibreOffice is nice, so is Google Docs, but they're not in the same class as iWork and Microsoft Office). Add in, as you said, the cost of a really nice screen for the iMacs (27" IPS screens comparable to the 27" iMac screen go for about $1000). This means that the base 27" iMac, negating the monitor cost, is $700. That's not unreasonable for what you get (2.7 GHz quad core i5, Radeon 6770M, etc.) from a hardware perspective. Add in the superbly designed case plus the reliability of Macs (they have the highest reliability of any of the major manufacturers plus Apple has top-rated customer service). If you include the fact that you get a UNIX-based OS (with all the perks of that - command line, stability, etc.) and all the software, it's a very reasonably-priced package. Yes, you can purchase or put together a cheaper Windows or Liunx computer (particularly if you already have a monitor or don't mind a TN panel) but Macs (mainly the iMacs) are not unreasonably priced considering what you get.