Sorry about your accident. Hope you weren't hurt badly.
JIC, some things I learned from my experience:
Make sure to follow-up with your physician in a week or so or whenever he/she wants you back.
Sadly, we've learned a lot about diagnosing and treating closed-head injuries, better safe than sorry if you got your "bell rung".
Two physicians and a lawyer told me to put off any settlement for injury costs for at least 6 months to be sure nothing comes up. Good advice, I hadn't even gotten all my bills until months after the driver's insurance sent me a claim form. I didn't even know that more were coming.
Your car insurance won't be interested in helping you in a case where you weren't driving your car.
Last -- if you do need to settle for medical costs, make sure you figure in what your insurance paid, not just your out-of-pocket -- some policies, like mine, have subrogation clauses that allow insurance companies to collect their full payment amount, even if you settle for less they're not required that you be "made whole". You could actually owe them more than you collected! (I learned two new terms from that episode.)
Again, sorry about your accident. I hope none of this applies (but do tell your doctor). Glad to hear about the netbook, at least.
If they cut delivery dates, that limits my options and makes me even less likely to use them, especially if I need timely delivery of something like say a rent check or a bill payment (believe it or not, there are landlords and rental companies, as well as utilities and such that still only accept payment in person or a check in the mail as opposed to paying online).
You're free to spend $13 to FedEx your rent check right now(get your quote here - I picked slowest/cheapest option to send an envelope across town). By what factor would first class postage rates need to increase to be "uncompetitive" with that?
I thought it was Congress that mandated that they prepay it all for the life of an employee when hired.
The "crisis" is entirely manufactured by Congress. Yes, Congress. They (and by "they," I mean mostly Republicans who seem to want to drive the post office into bankruptcy) required that the Post Office prepay pensions to the extent that no other business is required to do.
If you watch the tank temperatures vs. delivery temps on stations that have reconciliation modules on the gauges, the differences are big enough to cause meaningful changes in volume. Fuels like gasoline and Diesel also have a larger coefficient of thermal expansion than water.
This doesn't really help the average customer who doesn't have any reliable way of knowing when the last delivery came in and what temperature is was dropped at. If the tank gauge is sitting out in the open by the restrooms, I guess you could take a peek.
Gasoline retailers in the US claim that things average out between summer and winter, but nevertheless resist selling gasoline on a temperature compensated volume rather than gross. One reason they cite is understandable: they don't want customers coming in claiming the dispenser charged them for 17 gallons when they've only got a 16 gallon tank that wasn't quite on empty yet.
Their arguments are weakened though by the fact that our neighbors in Canada do sell gasoline by temperature-compensated volume, so clearly drivers can get used to it and station operators can cope.
You do realize that when you ship a box you *do* pay for the weight of the packaging, right?
And you also realize that you can measure it. You don't need to take the shipper's word for it, or let them tell you they have a different method of weighing stuff that you're not expected to understand.
"Buy your fuel on cold days, you get a *little* more for your $50 than you do on a hot day (hence airlines buy fuel by weight, not volume)."
Used to be more true than it is now. Most fuel station tanks in the USA are 2-3 ft underground, below the frost line, so the stored fuel temperature stays at a relatively constant 50 or 60-something degrees even on the hottest summer days. Sure, if it's a bloody hot day at a station that isn't used much, the fuel that's actually in the pump may warm up a little, but they retain very little gas.
Unless, of course, you lived in Centralia, PA. Then....then you have a very good point.
Surprisingly, even UST's have a pretty large temperature variation. Gas is usually refined, distributed and trucked above ground, so the fuel in a 10000 gallon UST at a station may not reach ground temperature before the next delivery of hot or cold liquid if it's selling fast enough.
Because its their network. You cant even cry monopoly, there is competition.
Dont stroll into their network, accept their terms, and then start up about how you want their service to comply with your vision; the world doesnt work that way.
But they strolled onto his lawn with their cable, so he and his fellow citizens do have a say about compliance with their vision.
You only have rights if you're beligerent and EXPLICITLY demand them. Quit presuming that the government has any obligations to give you your rights. They do their level best only because of the consequences of them not doing so and somoene calling them out on it. What we're being presented here is explictly UNCONSTITUTIONAL. Yeah, yeah, it costs all sorts of money and effort to stand up for your rights. Freedom's NEVER free.
It's come time to decide, people... Are you slaves? Are you free men? If you're free men, that comes at a price- and you've got to be willing to PAY it.
Firstly, "Freedom's Not Free" as a slogan is already taken, and sadly I report it doesn't mean what you and I would like it to.
Secondly, as the great George Carlin said: "This country is finished, it has been for a long time, but everyone has a cell phone that makes pancakes and rubs their balls, so they dont wanna rock the boat."
I thought I was just behind the times with my POP3 email. Apparently, it was foresight.
Not that it matters, really. I think we have to assume they can get anything they want without a warrant anyway and whether or not I think I removed it from a provider's server. Just say the magic words: "national security," aka "sudo," aka "Simon says."
First of all, the "social media" scene is specifically intended to reflect the real world, of which illness is a component. I can't help but think that you might get advance warning of all sorts of stuff that would take doctors several days to send in mandatory CDC disease reports on.
And timely? What was the world's first indication of the Osama Bin Laden raid in progress? Right, some dude's tweet in Pakistan.
And $3 million? What component of a warplane could you buy for that? If you can catch a man-made -- or even a plain-old organic -- disease outbreak early, you'd only need to prevent a handful of premature deaths to be worth the pricetag.
... I've had two major bike crashes where I got pretty descent injuries (chainline failures at bad times, both of them) with the thing in my backpack and it's still working perfectly today.
What is a "chainline failure"? I own a bike. I've even been hit by a car (ruining my backpack because I couldn't get the blood washed out). I've used google (and I got your post as like the 5th result -- I did not know they'd gotten so "real time"). But I don't know what you mean. Am I overthinking this and your chain broke or came off, or is this something else that can kill me I didn't even know I had to worry about?
BTW, my netbook didn't get crash tested like yours, but a bag of coffee beans I'd just purchased did. It survived.
Polling place, a nearby church's reception hall, not crowded, short wait. The 6 election officials, one young kid and 5 elderly people, seemed mostly well trained. The worst were the elderly ladies checking me in. They were hard of hearing and had difficulty locating my name on alphabetized list, even with me pointing it out. The workers directing the voters to machines and showing them how to operate them were competent.
On the other hand, Diebold machines seem quirky and needlessly difficult to use. The confirmation page required scrolling to see everything, but existence of scrollbar wasn't immediately obvious. It was on the left side of the display, and used non-standard icons and "programmer art" color scheme. Saving the completed ballot to the smart card was very slow, wasn't sure I pushed the "cast vote" -- or whatever its name was -- or not. No indication of status, very subtle change in button appearance when pushed vs. not pushed. About 90 seconds later it ejected the smart card as the poll worker told me it would and gave me the "all done" screen. I guess it worked. Designers badly need to read Norman's "Design of Everyday Things".
Stopped by a polling place in Missouri, too (not to vote again, on and errand). Also in a church. Lines were long but moved along. Voters voted on paper, unless they wanted to use the one electronic machine at the place. Volunteers from the church had a table out of the way where they gave cookies and coffee to the waiting voters. Things seemed to be running smoothly.
This may be a bit too much in the vein of US-centric Slashdotting. Others will disagree, and I may be modded down into oblivion. Yet I keep and will keep saying that Americanocentrism is one of the major negative characteristics of Slashdot, besides all the positive stuff there ( still ) is.
And as they say on election day here in the US: "If you don't vote (for articles of interest to you) you can't complain!" Actually, I put that parenthetical part in there myself. But really, go vote up the stuff that sounds interesting. There's a story about Skype and a Dutch teen. A BBC story about a guy resurecting Elite, something about the Portuguese government and cloud services, Welsh fiber optic researchers, another depressing story about Nokia . . . If you don't find something you like, contribute a story. Don't count on me to guess what you and other readers outside the US find relevant, help out. Maybe we'd like something other than election coverage in the US, too.
As others pointed out, the Kinect is not simply just a camera. There are infrared and laser sensors for depth detection. It likely won't be fooled by a 2D photograph.
At least you've got a cover story for that body-temperature realldoll, now.
There's so much high-quality content out there that more of it arguably makes little difference, especially since this quantity keeps increasing at such an exponential rate that we don't even have the time to watch a sliver of it anyway... I really don't see much of a down side to refusing to kowtow to any systems featuring 'safeguards' such as this, and that would include similar features.
Whether I agree with you or not about the existence of this "high-quality content" -- which is purely subjective anyway, of course -- wouldn't any content that a producer/publisher/gatekeeper felt was "high-quality" be the most likely to be subject to the "safeguards" of which you speak? At least safeguarded from non-technical, scrupulously law-abiding consumers.
It's sad that this was just a little throwaway snark until "first sale" came under attack. I think one can only assume there's a few more tricks up those sleeves.
are slashdotters really that dumb not to realize this?
That varies by state. Some states don't charge taxes on services, some charge different rates. Some states have different tax rates for different types of goods.
Every state requires that you pay sales tax on every out of state purchase. It does not matter if you order it over the phone, mail order, internet, or even drive across the border to buy something in person. Every state has a tax form to claim the amount of taxes owed that should be filed with your annual tax return.
No they don't. Oregon, Montana, Alaska, New Hampshire, and Delaware don't have sales tax.
The issue is in regard to collecting and paying applicable sales tax on interstate purchases. Sellers still need to compute the sales tax, even if the computation results in zero for a given state.
You know, a tenth of the country's states.
Or, to put it another way, a fortieth of the country's population.
I think the more likely scenario is that back when there were things such as 10 cent candy bars and comic books, the registers weren't so sophisticated and you could do this sort of math. If your register (or the records you kept by hand) just keeps track of total sales, keeping the rounding errors for yourself is what makes the math add up.
Also in the days of 10-cent candy, some (many? all?) states with sales tax issued helf-cent and tenth-cent coins/tokens. I suppose it was to reduce the rounding error when a penny was worth more, but it's a little before my time.
Slashdot Mirror
Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Maybe not, but it would be obvious from usage pattern exactly what is going on. It would quickly be shut down.
Use encryption, go to (internet) jail.
Sorry about your accident. Hope you weren't hurt badly.
JIC, some things I learned from my experience:
Make sure to follow-up with your physician in a week or so or whenever he/she wants you back.
Sadly, we've learned a lot about diagnosing and treating closed-head injuries, better safe than sorry if you got your "bell rung".
Two physicians and a lawyer told me to put off any settlement for injury costs for at least 6 months to be sure nothing comes up. Good advice, I hadn't even gotten all my bills until months after the driver's insurance sent me a claim form. I didn't even know that more were coming.
Your car insurance won't be interested in helping you in a case where you weren't driving your car.
Last -- if you do need to settle for medical costs, make sure you figure in what your insurance paid, not just your out-of-pocket -- some policies, like mine, have subrogation clauses that allow insurance companies to collect their full payment amount, even if you settle for less they're not required that you be "made whole". You could actually owe them more than you collected! (I learned two new terms from that episode.)
Again, sorry about your accident. I hope none of this applies (but do tell your doctor). Glad to hear about the netbook, at least.
If they cut delivery dates, that limits my options and makes me even less likely to use them, especially if I need timely delivery of something like say a rent check or a bill payment (believe it or not, there are landlords and rental companies, as well as utilities and such that still only accept payment in person or a check in the mail as opposed to paying online).
You're free to spend $13 to FedEx your rent check right now (get your quote here - I picked slowest/cheapest option to send an envelope across town). By what factor would first class postage rates need to increase to be "uncompetitive" with that?
Was it the Union or Congress?
I thought it was Congress that mandated that they prepay it all for the life of an employee when hired.
The "crisis" is entirely manufactured by Congress. Yes, Congress. They (and by "they," I mean mostly Republicans who seem to want to drive the post office into bankruptcy) required that the Post Office prepay pensions to the extent that no other business is required to do.
Lest you doubt this statement: The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 required the USPS to prepay pensions for all employees for 75 years in advance within 10 years.
That's right, 75 years. The USPS is required to prepay pensions for the next 75 years. Let that sink in.
Is there any other business you can think of that is required to stash away the pension funds now for its employees not yet born?
If you watch the tank temperatures vs. delivery temps on stations that have reconciliation modules on the gauges, the differences are big enough to cause meaningful changes in volume. Fuels like gasoline and Diesel also have a larger coefficient of thermal expansion than water.
This doesn't really help the average customer who doesn't have any reliable way of knowing when the last delivery came in and what temperature is was dropped at. If the tank gauge is sitting out in the open by the restrooms, I guess you could take a peek.
Gasoline retailers in the US claim that things average out between summer and winter, but nevertheless resist selling gasoline on a temperature compensated volume rather than gross. One reason they cite is understandable: they don't want customers coming in claiming the dispenser charged them for 17 gallons when they've only got a 16 gallon tank that wasn't quite on empty yet.
Their arguments are weakened though by the fact that our neighbors in Canada do sell gasoline by temperature-compensated volume, so clearly drivers can get used to it and station operators can cope.
You do realize that when you ship a box you *do* pay for the weight of the packaging, right?
And you also realize that you can measure it. You don't need to take the shipper's word for it, or let them tell you they have a different method of weighing stuff that you're not expected to understand.
"Buy your fuel on cold days, you get a *little* more for your $50 than you do on a hot day (hence airlines buy fuel by weight, not volume)." Used to be more true than it is now. Most fuel station tanks in the USA are 2-3 ft underground, below the frost line, so the stored fuel temperature stays at a relatively constant 50 or 60-something degrees even on the hottest summer days. Sure, if it's a bloody hot day at a station that isn't used much, the fuel that's actually in the pump may warm up a little, but they retain very little gas. Unless, of course, you lived in Centralia, PA. Then....then you have a very good point.
Surprisingly, even UST's have a pretty large temperature variation. Gas is usually refined, distributed and trucked above ground, so the fuel in a 10000 gallon UST at a station may not reach ground temperature before the next delivery of hot or cold liquid if it's selling fast enough.
Because its their network. You cant even cry monopoly, there is competition.
Dont stroll into their network, accept their terms, and then start up about how you want their service to comply with your vision; the world doesnt work that way.
But they strolled onto his lawn with their cable, so he and his fellow citizens do have a say about compliance with their vision.
For anything interesting - enough said.
Using it isn't the problem. Getting your friends, colleagues and family to is.
You only have rights if you're beligerent and EXPLICITLY demand them. Quit presuming that the government has any obligations to give you your rights. They do their level best only because of the consequences of them not doing so and somoene calling them out on it. What we're being presented here is explictly UNCONSTITUTIONAL. Yeah, yeah, it costs all sorts of money and effort to stand up for your rights. Freedom's NEVER free.
It's come time to decide, people... Are you slaves? Are you free men? If you're free men, that comes at a price- and you've got to be willing to PAY it.
Firstly, "Freedom's Not Free" as a slogan is already taken, and sadly I report it doesn't mean what you and I would like it to.
Secondly, as the great George Carlin said: "This country is finished, it has been for a long time, but everyone has a cell phone that makes pancakes and rubs their balls, so they dont wanna rock the boat."
I thought I was just behind the times with my POP3 email. Apparently, it was foresight.
Not that it matters, really. I think we have to assume they can get anything they want without a warrant anyway and whether or not I think I removed it from a provider's server. Just say the magic words: "national security," aka "sudo," aka "Simon says."
"And it's right next door to Switzerland."
You mean Sweden, right? People are always mixing those two up.
...Biological attack....
No wonder we are in such huge debt...
You're kidding, right?
First of all, the "social media" scene is specifically intended to reflect the real world, of which illness is a component. I can't help but think that you might get advance warning of all sorts of stuff that would take doctors several days to send in mandatory CDC disease reports on.
And timely? What was the world's first indication of the Osama Bin Laden raid in progress? Right, some dude's tweet in Pakistan.
And $3 million? What component of a warplane could you buy for that? If you can catch a man-made -- or even a plain-old organic -- disease outbreak early, you'd only need to prevent a handful of premature deaths to be worth the pricetag.
... I've had two major bike crashes where I got pretty descent injuries (chainline failures at bad times, both of them) with the thing in my backpack and it's still working perfectly today.
What is a "chainline failure"? I own a bike. I've even been hit by a car (ruining my backpack because I couldn't get the blood washed out). I've used google (and I got your post as like the 5th result -- I did not know they'd gotten so "real time"). But I don't know what you mean. Am I overthinking this and your chain broke or came off, or is this something else that can kill me I didn't even know I had to worry about?
BTW, my netbook didn't get crash tested like yours, but a bag of coffee beans I'd just purchased did. It survived.
Polling place, a nearby church's reception hall, not crowded, short wait. The 6 election officials, one young kid and 5 elderly people, seemed mostly well trained. The worst were the elderly ladies checking me in. They were hard of hearing and had difficulty locating my name on alphabetized list, even with me pointing it out. The workers directing the voters to machines and showing them how to operate them were competent.
On the other hand, Diebold machines seem quirky and needlessly difficult to use. The confirmation page required scrolling to see everything, but existence of scrollbar wasn't immediately obvious. It was on the left side of the display, and used non-standard icons and "programmer art" color scheme. Saving the completed ballot to the smart card was very slow, wasn't sure I pushed the "cast vote" -- or whatever its name was -- or not. No indication of status, very subtle change in button appearance when pushed vs. not pushed. About 90 seconds later it ejected the smart card as the poll worker told me it would and gave me the "all done" screen. I guess it worked. Designers badly need to read Norman's "Design of Everyday Things".
Stopped by a polling place in Missouri, too (not to vote again, on and errand). Also in a church. Lines were long but moved along. Voters voted on paper, unless they wanted to use the one electronic machine at the place. Volunteers from the church had a table out of the way where they gave cookies and coffee to the waiting voters. Things seemed to be running smoothly.
This may be a bit too much in the vein of US-centric Slashdotting. Others will disagree, and I may be modded down into oblivion. Yet I keep and will keep saying that Americanocentrism is one of the major negative characteristics of Slashdot, besides all the positive stuff there ( still ) is.
Try The Firehose.
And as they say on election day here in the US: "If you don't vote (for articles of interest to you) you can't complain!" Actually, I put that parenthetical part in there myself. But really, go vote up the stuff that sounds interesting. There's a story about Skype and a Dutch teen. A BBC story about a guy resurecting Elite, something about the Portuguese government and cloud services, Welsh fiber optic researchers, another depressing story about Nokia . . . If you don't find something you like, contribute a story. Don't count on me to guess what you and other readers outside the US find relevant, help out. Maybe we'd like something other than election coverage in the US, too.
As others pointed out, the Kinect is not simply just a camera. There are infrared and laser sensors for depth detection. It likely won't be fooled by a 2D photograph.
At least you've got a cover story for that body-temperature realldoll, now.
Odd postures?
You should not read the Kama Sutra while watching television anyway.
Not without the proper content license for the number of people participating, anyway.
There's so much high-quality content out there that more of it arguably makes little difference, especially since this quantity keeps increasing at such an exponential rate that we don't even have the time to watch a sliver of it anyway... I really don't see much of a down side to refusing to kowtow to any systems featuring 'safeguards' such as this, and that would include similar features.
Whether I agree with you or not about the existence of this "high-quality content" -- which is purely subjective anyway, of course -- wouldn't any content that a producer/publisher/gatekeeper felt was "high-quality" be the most likely to be subject to the "safeguards" of which you speak? At least safeguarded from non-technical, scrupulously law-abiding consumers.
The more I like books. Paper books.
Until they close that loophole . . .
It's sad that this was just a little throwaway snark until "first sale" came under attack. I think one can only assume there's a few more tricks up those sleeves.
Er, no body is complaining about paying taxes.
Just keep reading, someone here will take care of that omission. Probably find a way to insert some commentary on the gold standard, too.
sales tax is on GOODS AND SERVICES
are slashdotters really that dumb not to realize this?
That varies by state. Some states don't charge taxes on services, some charge different rates. Some states have different tax rates for different types of goods.
Every state requires that you pay sales tax on every out of state purchase. It does not matter if you order it over the phone, mail order, internet, or even drive across the border to buy something in person. Every state has a tax form to claim the amount of taxes owed that should be filed with your annual tax return.
No they don't. Oregon, Montana, Alaska, New Hampshire, and Delaware don't have sales tax.
The issue is in regard to collecting and paying applicable sales tax on interstate purchases. Sellers still need to compute the sales tax, even if the computation results in zero for a given state.
You know, a tenth of the country's states.
Or, to put it another way, a fortieth of the country's population.
I think the more likely scenario is that back when there were things such as 10 cent candy bars and comic books, the registers weren't so sophisticated and you could do this sort of math. If your register (or the records you kept by hand) just keeps track of total sales, keeping the rounding errors for yourself is what makes the math add up.
Also in the days of 10-cent candy, some (many? all?) states with sales tax issued helf-cent and tenth-cent coins/tokens. I suppose it was to reduce the rounding error when a penny was worth more, but it's a little before my time.