This mimics my limited experience with SSD failure too.
One instance was with a 128GB budget priced SSD (I think a PNY brand or something similar?). I set it up as a Windows 7 boot drive in a new PC tower I assembled for a client, and after several weeks of use, he complained Windows was booting to an unusable state with a black desktop background, missing icons, and a mostly empty set of applications under the Programs menu.
I suspected a virus initially, but the system registry was so clearly damaged, I decided to just format and re-install from scratch. Everything appeared fine so I gave it back to him. A week later, same issue. When I tried to reformat/reinstall that time around, the system blue-screened in the middle of using it with an error having to do with delayed disk write issues. I swapped the drive with a new one, and he's been running fine for about a year now with that one.
SMART in the PC's BIOS is utterly useless on SSDs from what I've seen, because all it does is examines error counts the drives track internally and flags a problem when certain values count up too high. I don't think the SSDs even use these counters. Perhaps they place false values in them that remain static, just to please software trying to probe them?
Both of these message threads have people answering back that it has around a $5,000 replacement cost... and that's not factoring in the 4 wheel re-alignment you need to do after you disassemble things enough to take the old CVT out and swap the new one in. So $5,600 sounds fairly close
I'm still using Sprint, myself, as my former employer originally issued most of their employees Nextel phones years ago, and it finally quit making sense to continue on with those. (Sprint bought out Nextel and has been slowly herding people off of that network.)
I don't work for them anymore, but I opted to keep the phone and service for now. (I have an iPhone 4s so at least the handset isn't too bad.)
Unlike a lot of people, I guess I never really felt screwed over by Sprint -- but I've also tried to keep realistic expectations about their offerings. Essentially, Sprint is the biggest "budget priced carrier" in the U.S. To find cheaper rates than they offer, you have to step down to regional carriers (who more often than not are contracted with Sprint to provide their service for them anyway!). Unfortunately, when you opt for the cheaper regionals, you discover they don't have all the roaming agreements in place that Sprint does, meaning your coverage is worse than what you get as a Sprint customer, despite your regional phone using their towers.
Yes, their data xfer rates are pretty poor, across the board. But they're not charging you by the megabyte or gigabyte downloaded either. When I'm on my phone, I'm not that concerned about my data being really fast. (It wasn't THAT long ago I remember using analog cellphones with built-in dial-up modems establishing their data connections. ANYTHING we've got today beats that!)
Also, Sprint does offer the "Airave" signal boosters for your home or office, which re-route your cellular data and calls onto your broadband wired network. If you have a lot of reception issues in your home or business, they'll often loan you an Airave at no charge if you talk to your sales rep about it.
All things considered, I'd rather have a Verizon (or even AT&T) phone if I wasn't the one paying the bill for it. But Sprint offers a pretty good compromise, IMO, of letting you stick with a nation-wide carrier who offers some of the more desirable handsets, while keeping costs below the others.
Honestly, I'd say this is entirely within the realm of possibility, at least in some years of ownership.
I'll give you a quick example:
2007 Jeep Patriot Sport 4x4 I bought used with about 45K miles on it. Front ball joints and tie-rod ends needed replacement by 49K miles. Battery died and needed replacement. Spent $150 or so on an issue where the plastic "well" behind the gas cap broke and fell down inside the vehicle's frame. CVT transmission bearing wore out at under 70K miles requiring a replacement transmission at a cost of about $5600 from Chrysler. Rear brakes needed new pads/rotors too.
I got a lot of that taken care of by a 3rd. party extended warranty I paid extra for when I bought it -- but otherwise? Oh yeah, we're in that $8500 ballpark right there.
Regardless of whether or not the current used car supply is "adequate", the REAL problem is slightly different.
People in the U.S. earning relatively low wages get clobbered by the costs of maintaining the inexpensive used cars they purchase. One of my good friend's younger sisters is a perfect example. She works full-time as a waitress / bartender where reliable transportation to/from work is a requirement. (People saying, "Just take the bus!" obviously aren't in touch with the reality of suburban restaurants not often being located conveniently close to bus routes, or demands of starting work on various shifts that don't correspond well with bus schedules.)
She's been struggling with a hand-me-down car, purchased affordably from her family. It's in the shop for repairs as often as it's on the road, and it's literally eating up all of her paychecks AND risking her job when she's made late or can't come in. So much for it being a good value.
People like her need RELIABLE vehicles that don't surprise them with unexpected costs over and above the usual, predictable costs of operation (gas, oil changes, etc.). Unfortunately, when one looks at used cars in, say, the under $10,000 price category, one tends to find A) high mileage vehicles, or B) vehicles known to be below average in reliability.
That's why so many people do go out and buy a new car, even though others have the opinion that with budgets as tight as they have, it's fiscally foolish. At least with a new vehicle, you're potentially covered by warranty for all major issues that could go wrong for at least as long as the period of the loan. So you're buying something guaranteed to be functional/drivable for as long as you make a fixed, predictable monthly payment on the loan.
There's actually nothing wrong with a micronation in theory, especially in modern society. Obviously, a great nation doesn't just pop up overnight, and unlike the settlers of ages past, we no longer really have large land masses far out of reach of other nations to claim, settle, and build up over time without interference. (Well, unless you're looking into colonizing other planets or moons?)
The reason a micronation *should* be feasible is the hope that the rest of the existing nations of the world are civilized enough not to come in and slaughter their populations, just because they don't like a little competition. It's actually a sad commentary on mankind that folks like yourself would call anyone attempting such an experiment a "libertarian moron". War is very costly and usually unjustified in the first place. Certainly, there's scarcely a reason to start one with a country that never attacked you first.
Personally, I don't consider those Sylvania SilverStar series of halogen bulbs "really nice". Not saying their light output isn't good. It is, but everyone I've known on 3 different car enthusiast message forums has encountered the same complaints with those. They burnt out far too quickly!
On a lot of cars, changing out the bulbs is kind of a pain. The auto makers figured it wasn't a task you were going to do more than once every 4-5 years or so. But the Sylvania bulbs tend to last as little as 6 months in some cases, with them typically dying well before 2 years are up.
Sadly, you're probably right that there aren't really any other aftermarket halogen replacements that perform as well as/better than these and would last much longer. It's just a downside of the technology, IMO -- and the reason you don't see these coming as standard equipment in any of the cars sold today.
When I think about all of this for a while, I keep coming back to the conclusion that in the U.S. today, half the problem lies with our own perceptions.
For many years, I worked in I.T. for manufacturing firms. Since the majority of their employees (and the ones directly handling the work that generated their profits!) were paid by the hour and punching time-cards, they definitely had a culture ingrained around the idea that the hardest workers were the folks you saw in the building most often. After all, you can't exactly take your work home with you if your job involves cutting steel beams or heat-treating metal in a blast furnace.
As much as the minority of us doing their I.T. liked to argue the fact that as "knowledge workers", we could do a lot of work from home and didn't need to keep long hours in the office? Truth is, we were often our own worst enemies because we'd complain when our co-workers weren't sitting at their desks. "What? He's out AGAIN? Must be nice! I guess I'll wind up taking these trouble tickets myself then...." And of course, everyone else working in the other departments sympathized and agreed that so-and-so wasn't doing their share since you were physically there and he wasn't. So it was immediately, short-term positive feedback from other employees and a strengthened sense that just by staying late, you could avoid being "that guy" you were just complaining about.
Now I'm doing work for a creative/marketing firm where we not only support direct-hire employees, but quite a few outside folks paid to work on various projects. The workforce is very mobile (so much so that we no longer issue anyone a desktop computer.... laptops only). People work all sorts of odd hours, not to mention hours that just feel odd to us because they're in different time zones. The one thing we don't have are employees punching in and out on time clocks. Still, you see some people (myself included at times) hanging around the office late, without any real good reason. Just can't quite shake that mentality that somehow, it doesn't look good to disappear when the clock strikes 5 all the time. I'm pretty sure management completely gets that it's your performance that matters -- not the hours you spend in the building. But it's tough for ME to completely put faith in that and start living differently!
Obviously so, but let's be fair here.... Even the most intelligent, geeky, and interested in learning wants to be entertained regularly as "downtime". It's not really healthy or ultimately even possible to be "on" 24/7, trying to learn complex new things.
So yes, entertainment generates vastly more income than educational lectures or science fairs. I'm just pointing out that maybe that's actually an okay thing -- not something to complain about as reflecting poorly on the nation?
Destroying the speed cameras might not be the "recommended" way to address the problem, but quite frankly? It sends a stronger message and does so more quickly than lobbying for a speed limit change.
The fact is, these things are ALL about revenue generation. If you turn them into a big EXPENSE to maintain, the revenue stops looking as attractive. It's that simple.
Ask yourself this: Would technologies costing a similar amount to implement be considered if there was no way for the police dept. and local govt. to receive profits from them? I think you and I both know the answer to that one... All their cries about the cameras being there for "safety" are just attempts to get acceptance for the automated ticket issuing system.
Lobbying for a higher speed limit is problematic because you're up against established groups in government who would lose money if it's changed. They've probably got more resources than you to push their side of the issue.
I'm not saying it can't be done (and often, it SHOULD be), but I have little sympathy for the police or local govt. when they complain about the expenses they're incurring when these cameras wind up damaged. Maybe they should have bought insurance on them? That's what they always force ME to do by law with my motor vehicle.
Any person who actually has a conscience would easily understand where you're coming from, but it's still really not a good excuse for the cameras. Already, I know I'm afraid to drive past a school because the "school zones" have such drastically reduced speed limits (and high probabilities of officers lurking in the parking lot or a nearby driveway), PLUS doubled or tripled fines for speeding, it's easy to get dinged with a really high dollar ticket for going any faster than a crawl through that whole area.
I really don't need the camera there to remind me I better slow down.
When I had my own side business doing computer service and consulting, I never followed through with incorporating (despite hearing many times it was the "thing to do"). Honestly, as a one-man operation, I never really saw the clear value to it, vs. the extra paperwork, higher chance of an IRS tax audit, and up-front expenses to get it done.
Even as a sole proprietorship, you're entitled to quite a few tax advantages simply by having your own business. (And yes, you have to meet a few basic qualifications so the IRS doesn't consider you a hobby instead. That would include keeping proof that you behaved like a legitimate business, including having business cards and receipts for advertising expenses.) But there's no need to incorporate just to write off such things as new computers/printers/monitors/paper/ink/office furniture as business expenses. You can write off postage used to mail out any advertising or marketing materials too (and the cost of the envelopes you purchased to put it in). If you keep mileage records accurately, you can write that percentage of use/depreciation of your vehicle too. And if you designate a portion of your primary residence to your business/office, you get a home office deduction on it as well. (That one can be a pain though, since a lot of people really don't maintain a portion of their place exclusively for business use. If you're ever audited on one of those home office deductions, an IRS agent could very well drop by and ask to inspect the area. Your kid leaving toys on the floor in there or something could pose an unexpected problem....)
Like others said, incorporating seems to only really shield you from one of your CO-WORKERS screwing things up in some manner. As a sole business owner, I can't see how it would protect anything of yours beyond the relatively few items you itemized as 100% used for the business. (If you screwed up and you're the sole proprietor of the business, the person wronged will still go after you regardless... Incorporating might keep them from seizing your office furniture and computers, but they could still get a financial judgement against you that forced you to liquidate assets like your new living room set or flat screen TV to pay it off!)
While yes, right now, the tide may be against the server manufacturers -- the cloud still requires them in large quantities to host those services. If it negatively impacts sales, it's only to the extent that efficiency is improved. (EG. Joe Businessman who once bought a server for his office of 10 employees skips it, in favor of cloud computing solutions. But it turns out his needs are small enough so they can share the load with 1-2 other small businesses like his, all on a single server in the cloud.)
In my opinion, Dell has the right idea -- changing the focus on who their customer is for their server products. Beyond that, what's really news here?
Going out on a bit more of a limb though? I'm really of the opinion that cloud services are over-hyped as the "in" thing for every business. Once companies migrate heavily to cloud hosted solutions and use them for a while, a fair number will conclude it's not really beneficial. Then you'll see a return to the business model of running in-house servers again. (Granted, those servers might be smaller, with lower power consumption than in the past. Little "microservers" handle many of the basic file and print sharing work companies used to relegate to full size rack mounted systems in the past.)
But my own experience with cloud migrations tells me that it's not so great, 9 times out of 10. For example, my boss has been using the Neat document management software for a while now to scan in all of his personal receipts and documents at home. Neat now offers "NeatCloud" so you can upload your whole database and then access your docs via an iPhone or iPad client, or even scan something new in by simply taking a picture of it. Sounds great, but in reality, he had nothing but problems with it. The initial upload tied up his PC for the better part of his weekend, only to report that some documents couldn't be converted or uploaded properly. He had close to 100 random pages of existing documents thrown in a new folder the software generated, to hold the problem ones. The only "fix" for this was to click to open a trouble ticket for EACH individual document that failed, so someone at Neat could examine it manually and correct whatever issue prevented their system from properly OCRing and uploading it. Clearly, that wasn't much of a solution! He tried, repeatedly, to get someone to remote control into his PC to do some sort of batch repair for him -- but after a couple promises to call back "the next day" to look at it, nobody ever did. Now, all Neat can tell him is they have another update patch coming out for the software in the next week, and to disable cloud uploads until that time.
Or take the recent migration a small office did from GoDaddy pop3/smtp email with Outlook to Google hosted mail. I usually help these guys with their computer issues but they thought they could tackle this migration on their own. Turns out, they wound up with a big mess of missing sub-folders of mail in Outlook on the owner's machine. After a lot of poking around, I discovered part of the problem was due to characters in the folder names that Google Apps didn't consider valid. When it hit one of those during the mail migration, it just skipped the whole mail folder upload with an error. (Did Google's migration wizard utility even warn about this in advance or offer to help rename the problem folders before continuing? Heck no!)
For that matter, take what you'd think is pretty basic functionality with cloud based data backup? I've run into multiple situation now where people used services like MozyPro for their backups, only to discover a full restore (when a drive crashed) was incredibly slow and kept aborting in the middle of the process, making the data restore essentially impossible. Mozy's solution? They're willing to burn a copy of the data onto optical disc and physically mail it back to you. So much for the whole cloud thing, huh?
As someone already commented on here earlier, "We'll keep sharing, and the labels will learn their place." This is quite simply a statement of reality, because the record labels are in the business of making money. It just so happens they do so by locking musicians into contractual deals where they promise to "promote" their music in return for a cut of the profits made selling people rights to obtain copies of the artists' recordings to listen to per the licensing/usage terms granted.
They can scream about it being illegal and punishable by law all the want, but it will never change the technological realities of things. These days, musicians no longer need the record labels as much as the record labels need them. The same technology that allows end-users to easily duplicate and redistribute the content on their own lets musicians record and redistribute (and market!) their content too, without help of a big company.
Following the money leads to a steady stream of revenue bleeding away from the record labels. Their best move to prove their worth these days lies in throwing down lawsuit after lawsuit to convince artists they're still "adding value" by forcing people to "pay up" when they're caught duplicating their artists' works without getting permission first.
But as we should all know by now? Those who don't innovate litigate. It's a sure sign of an industry in decline.
But there's another facet to all of this, IMO. With the U.S. economy in such a huge amount of debt (and growing every day), we've taken out massive loans from China (among other nations). When you look at the numbers showing the US's total debt (including all the unfunded mandates, etc.), we're so far in the hole, it's literally impossible to ever get back out.
Go to usdebtclock.org and scroll down till you see m2 money supply.That's the broadest measure of the money supply that the government tracks. Right now it's about 10 trillion dollars. Now look down further and notice unfunded liabilities at about 120 trillion. So we can't even pay 15% of the bills we've got coming, using *every dollar in existence*!
So ultimately, that means our economic system is going to eventually fail. We're going to file a national form of bankruptcy, essentially, at some point in time, when they've strung people along as far as they can go..... So knowing that, and knowing countries like China will be left on the hook for all that borrowed money that's not getting fully repaid -- what's the smartest way to do "damage control"? Make sure the people lending you the money have gotten a lot out of the whole "business relationship", so they're not going to retaliate when you tell them you're not paying them back anymore! We've pretty much done that by giving China so much education on how to build all of our technological goods for us, and by serving as one of their best customers for everything they're assembling.....
You could sum up the entire article as, "Windows 8 looks great, but I wound up not liking it personally, because I couldn't customize it to my more minimalist tastes, selectively hiding or turning off anything on the screen I decided I didn't care for."
And I'd say, "That's nice. But you're in a small minority of users, compared to all the people who find it difficult enough to get around their computer's OS, without having to cope with individual machines having different graphic elements present or missing, depending on the whims of whoever messed with it before you."
For starters, you talk about making grille openings smaller? On many vehicles, the grille openings are functional. The radiator (or even the air intake piping) may be placed behind it, so it needs to have good airflow. I'm not sure your idea provides a net benefit in many situations, and that's why you aren't seeing it done.
As for weight savings, I agree to a point. Some of this is the result of "old school" thinking and preferences of a generation who believed a big, heavy car had a better feel on the road and was safer. But you're seeing a shift away from those ideas, even with companies like Cadillac with their new ATS sport sedan. It's far lighter weight than the CTS sedan that came before it. But suggestions like using carbon fiber in place of sheet metal for more weight savings are probably largely ignored by the auto industry because it lacks durability. Anyone who "mods" their sports car with aftermarket parts for looks/styling can tell you, carbon fiber side-skirts or "ground f/x" tend to break off in pieces and develop nasty stress cracks with time. The material works a bit better for a component like a hood, where it won't take as much abuse from flying pebbles/rocks while driving, or accidentally scraping it on a curb. But still, saying carbon fiber is "stronger" than aluminum doesn't tell the whole story. Metal body parts absorb impacts by denting or creasing. That can be popped back out (such as you see with paintless dent removal places) pretty inexpensively. Carbon fiber just chips, cracks or snaps. A sheet of glass has a lot of strength too. (Try pulling it apart to "tear' it in two.) Doesn't mean it's not liable to shatter when stressed in a different way.
As for the auto transmission torque converters, what alternatives are you suggesting? I used to drive a Jeep Patriot with a continuously variable transmission (CVT). Pretty slick in concept, but not at all durable in reality. Most Patriot owners I knew had a CVT die of an internal bearing failure after 70K miles or so on the road. Plus, it was WAY more expensive to have fixed than a standard automatic transmission. Even the fluid it took was a special, very costly type since it had to have certain friction properties that changed with temperature.
Seriously, it's great if laptop makers can truly build upgradeable machines that don't sacrifice reliability in the process. But I remember the era of Dell laptops with socketed CPUs and upgradable video cards, and it wasn't all roses and unicorns.
I believe it was the old Latitude CP series where the CPU used to work itself loose from its socket over time, resulting in a system that refused to boot. (One of the "fixes" that used to get one going again was pressing down hard with the palm of one's hand near the center of the keyboard. The keyboard assembly happened to be right over the CPU and would flex enough to allow re-seating the chip, at least for a while.)
The models with the supposedly upgradeable video cards turned out to be more hype than substance too, because the type of video boards they took were proprietary, and no longer manufactured at all after 2 or 3 variations went through their initial production runs.
Ultimately, even on desktop PCs, expansion capabilities really don't get people too far.... Sure, you can upgrade processors -- until AMD or Intel goes and changes the design of the socket and pin layout. Then you're just as stuck as the next guy with his CPU soldered onto the motherboard. Same issue with RAM. Most machines only provide between 2 and 4 DIMM sockets, with a motherboard chipset unable to map/use more than a certain amount of memory. So what usually happens? The RAM upgrade becomes a nice thing to have initially, for the folks who tried to go cheap on the initial system purchase and selected less RAM than was optimal to save a few bucks. They get the chance to "buy now and pay later" to put the RAM in that probably should have really been there from the start. But down the road? You wind up saying "Gee... I'd like to upgrade this PC to 16GB of RAM but the board only supports 8. Oh well...."
Don't get me wrong... I like having a machine I can service myself if I determine a part died. And I've usually upgraded hard drives in most machines I've owned, as well as adding RAM to some, or upgrading the video in my higher-end machines. But as we demand ever lighter weight, slimmer portables with more and more functionality - we're really demanding technology that doesn't have any room for spare sockets, cables and connectors. It all depends on what the goal is, really. Expandability and modularity comes at a price of taking up extra space. Apple is big on going "cutting edge" with the "how small can we make this?" question on their minds -- so it makes perfect sense they wound up where they did, with not even so much as a removable laptop battery.
I follow that logic, except if you don't have any standard universally accepted currency EXCEPT specific precious metals (like gold), hoarding would prove difficult for most people. (If you have to decide between trying to stock up on gold or pay your rent, or buy groceries? It seems to me most people will give in and spend some of their saved up gold. The fact it would increase in value by hanging onto it isn't really any different than other forms of investment, IMO. If I bought Apple stock at pretty much any point in time in the last 10 years or so and just "hoarded" it, I'd have generated a lot of wealth too. But I don't own any stock because although I had pretty high confidence doing so would be profitable, I couldn't spare the money to purchase it after paying for all the necessities.)
The "elite" in positions to hoard significant quantities (perhaps oil barons, for example?) would still be taking chances, IMO. If they succeeded in making gold rare enough to run its price way up, people would lean more heavily on alternative precious metals like silver, platinum, or whatever else was in circulation. That could, in turn, make its price fall back down again -- correct?
IMO, currency has its value because people put trust in it. There's a collective agreement going on that it's assigned a value that's universally recognized.
There lies the problem with paper currency.... You can't just come up with billions or trillions of dollars worth of gold out of thin air. The world's supply is essentially fixed. When your symbol of wealth is simply paper printed by some central authority or body, you have to entrust its "caretaking" to that central authority.
Especially in more recent times, it's clear that authority is abusing its power, making huge loans to other nations when they likely don't even posses the amount of money required to extend the loan in the first place.... printing up more paper whenever they feel it would "help the economy" to do so (vs. letting things play out naturally), etc. People still have SOME trust in the currency right now, but much of that trust is probably only out of ignorance of the extent to which it's manipulated, and what that could mean for everyone. All in all, the trust is eroding.....
I'm having a really tough time following this logic?
You say a gold-backed currency would be a bad thing because the standard deflates (because the demand for money far outpaces the supply). Ok, except when you look at the whole point of having some sort of standardized currency in the first place, isn't it really nothing more than a symbol of one's labor?
It seems to me the assigned value for a certain amount of it is rather irrelevant, as long as it's agreed upon by all parties. If the demand outstrips the supply so badly, then perhaps people will simply deal in smaller quantities? Who says a coin has to be pure gold, for example? What if it's made of other materials of very little value, with a small (but verifiable) amount of gold included with it? Surely, there's enough gold to go around if we reach the stage where people aren't typically storing whole bars of the stuff, but rather, measurable amount of gold dust (or as I said previously, that same small amount mixed in with another material to make a convenient to handle coin)?
Not only that, but silver has long acted as gold's lesser valued twin. So when dealing in smaller amounts of money, I don't see why silver couldn't work in tandem with gold as a currency?
By contrast, the current system of printing up paper money means we put all the control over its worth in the hands of Federal Reserve bankers and the Federal govt. It's obvious to me why the people in power advocate such a system. They get to pull the strings whenever they like, printing more or less currency to purposely create more demand or flood the supply. But IMO, something as basic as a universally recognized symbol of the work we do shouldn't have ANYONE manipulating it subjectively at that low a level. If the Fed wants to raise or lower interest rates on loans, fine. That's one thing. But I like knowing that only a free marketplace of buyers, sellers, and investors determined the worth of a given piece of currency.
Your argument has some merit, but I've consistently found it not to really hold true for the smaller or mid-sized companies I've worked for.
The "high cost of entry but low maintenance cost" of tape just doesn't always pan out, IMO. For starters, you've always got the issue that the tape media isn't readable by anything except a system configured with one of those expensive tape drives designed to work with that generation and type of tape. That means if you're using those tapes for disaster recovery by storing them off-site, you've got to be sure you can read them back in if/when disaster strikes. If that disaster is, say, a fire in your building that destroys the computer equipment? Now you've got to be sure you've got quick access to a machine capable of restoring the data on those tapes so you can set up replacement systems from it. That means you may have to buy a duplicate, costly tape drive, and store it off-site with the media, or pay an outside firm to do the data recovery for you (because they have the needed equipment to read your tapes for you).
When your off-site data is stored on standard-issue hard drives, you don't need anything more fancy than an external USB hard drive enclosure to get to the data.
(And yeah, I realize you could do the accounting on something like this by claiming those extra costs are part of the "initial expense" instead of the "maintenance" portion.... but either way, you're spending the money.)
And that thing about putting a box of tapes in a panel van and bumpy roads not worrying you? Yeah, I suppose.... but any decent hard drive parks its heads when it's not spinning, and really shouldn't be affected by that sort of vibration. We've had nightly backups running here at two locations for years where the backup media is a consumer-grade SATA hard drive in a removable hot-swap drive tray, and people take them home every night by tossing one in the trunk of their car or truck. I think we've only had 1 drive fail out of the entire 2 week rotation used for both sites after 3 years or so of use. That's well within what you'd expect fro drives that never even get removed and carried around.
Yes, and no.... If they really did take it down 30 minutes early, it wasn't handled properly, period.
I don't think it's necessarily impossible they'd get 2,500 more signatures inside of 30 minutes. (We've seen how many HP TouchPads people were able to order in just 10 or 15 minute windows, during that whole blowout sale craze.)
Even if they didn't, it doesn't really matter.... By doing anything irregular with making the petition available, it opens it up to scrutiny or debate.
I do agree that this thing wasn't going to set policy though. It's obvious our government shoves every agenda down our collective throats that it wants to see happen. These things are more useful to wake up the public a bit about what's going on around them. (If you can show that a majority DOES oppose something government continues doing anyway, it strengthens people's resolve to protest the status quo.)
...that you and your close friends and family are far more enlightened about reality than the average sheep (oh, sorry... I mean citizen).
I'm making that assumption partially based on your tagline. After all, Ron Paul is *so* darn popular, his own political party won't give him any speaking time at their convention in Tampa, FL! (Oh, they're letting his son, Rand, talk a little bit as a concession, mind you. But as most of us know who follow politics in any serious way, Rand's politics does NOT line up too neatly with Ron's.)
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This mimics my limited experience with SSD failure too.
One instance was with a 128GB budget priced SSD (I think a PNY brand or something similar?). I set it up as a Windows 7 boot drive in a new PC tower I assembled for a client, and after several weeks of use, he complained Windows was booting to an unusable state with a black desktop background, missing icons, and a mostly empty set of applications under the Programs menu.
I suspected a virus initially, but the system registry was so clearly damaged, I decided to just format and re-install from scratch. Everything appeared fine so I gave it back to him. A week later, same issue. When I tried to reformat/reinstall that time around, the system blue-screened in the middle of using it with an error having to do with delayed disk write issues. I swapped the drive with a new one, and he's been running fine for about a year now with that one.
SMART in the PC's BIOS is utterly useless on SSDs from what I've seen, because all it does is examines error counts the drives track internally and flags a problem when certain values count up too high. I don't think the SSDs even use these counters. Perhaps they place false values in them that remain static, just to please software trying to probe them?
Really?
http://www.jeeppatriot.com/forum/showthread.php?t=83320
http://www.justanswer.com/dodge/4v9d4-dodge-caliber-sxt-estimated-cost-replace-cvt-transmission.html
(Dodge Caliber uses the same CVT transmission.)
Both of these message threads have people answering back that it has around a $5,000 replacement cost ... and that's not factoring in the 4 wheel re-alignment you need to do after you disassemble things enough to take the old CVT out and swap the new one in. So $5,600 sounds fairly close
I'm still using Sprint, myself, as my former employer originally issued most of their employees Nextel phones years ago, and it finally quit making sense to continue on with those. (Sprint bought out Nextel and has been slowly herding people off of that network.)
I don't work for them anymore, but I opted to keep the phone and service for now. (I have an iPhone 4s so at least the handset isn't too bad.)
Unlike a lot of people, I guess I never really felt screwed over by Sprint -- but I've also tried to keep realistic expectations about their offerings. Essentially, Sprint is the biggest "budget priced carrier" in the U.S. To find cheaper rates than they offer, you have to step down to regional carriers (who more often than not are contracted with Sprint to provide their service for them anyway!). Unfortunately, when you opt for the cheaper regionals, you discover they don't have all the roaming agreements in place that Sprint does, meaning your coverage is worse than what you get as a Sprint customer, despite your regional phone using their towers.
Yes, their data xfer rates are pretty poor, across the board. But they're not charging you by the megabyte or gigabyte downloaded either. When I'm on my phone, I'm not that concerned about my data being really fast. (It wasn't THAT long ago I remember using analog cellphones with built-in dial-up modems establishing their data connections. ANYTHING we've got today beats that!)
Also, Sprint does offer the "Airave" signal boosters for your home or office, which re-route your cellular data and calls onto your broadband wired network. If you have a lot of reception issues in your home or business, they'll often loan you an Airave at no charge if you talk to your sales rep about it.
All things considered, I'd rather have a Verizon (or even AT&T) phone if I wasn't the one paying the bill for it. But Sprint offers a pretty good compromise, IMO, of letting you stick with a nation-wide carrier who offers some of the more desirable handsets, while keeping costs below the others.
Honestly, I'd say this is entirely within the realm of possibility, at least in some years of ownership.
I'll give you a quick example:
2007 Jeep Patriot Sport 4x4 I bought used with about 45K miles on it. Front ball joints and tie-rod ends needed replacement by 49K miles. Battery died and needed replacement. Spent $150 or so on an issue where the plastic "well" behind the gas cap broke and fell down inside the vehicle's frame. CVT transmission bearing wore out at under 70K miles requiring a replacement transmission at a cost of about $5600 from Chrysler. Rear brakes needed new pads/rotors too.
I got a lot of that taken care of by a 3rd. party extended warranty I paid extra for when I bought it -- but otherwise? Oh yeah, we're in that $8500 ballpark right there.
Regardless of whether or not the current used car supply is "adequate", the REAL problem is slightly different.
People in the U.S. earning relatively low wages get clobbered by the costs of maintaining the inexpensive used cars they purchase. One of my good friend's younger sisters is a perfect example. She works full-time as a waitress / bartender where reliable transportation to/from work is a requirement. (People saying, "Just take the bus!" obviously aren't in touch with the reality of suburban restaurants not often being located conveniently close to bus routes, or demands of starting work on various shifts that don't correspond well with bus schedules.)
She's been struggling with a hand-me-down car, purchased affordably from her family. It's in the shop for repairs as often as it's on the road, and it's literally eating up all of her paychecks AND risking her job when she's made late or can't come in. So much for it being a good value.
People like her need RELIABLE vehicles that don't surprise them with unexpected costs over and above the usual, predictable costs of operation (gas, oil changes, etc.). Unfortunately, when one looks at used cars in, say, the under $10,000 price category, one tends to find A) high mileage vehicles, or B) vehicles known to be below average in reliability.
That's why so many people do go out and buy a new car, even though others have the opinion that with budgets as tight as they have, it's fiscally foolish. At least with a new vehicle, you're potentially covered by warranty for all major issues that could go wrong for at least as long as the period of the loan. So you're buying something guaranteed to be functional/drivable for as long as you make a fixed, predictable monthly payment on the loan.
There's actually nothing wrong with a micronation in theory, especially in modern society. Obviously, a great nation doesn't just pop up overnight, and unlike the settlers of ages past, we no longer really have large land masses far out of reach of other nations to claim, settle, and build up over time without interference. (Well, unless you're looking into colonizing other planets or moons?)
The reason a micronation *should* be feasible is the hope that the rest of the existing nations of the world are civilized enough not to come in and slaughter their populations, just because they don't like a little competition. It's actually a sad commentary on mankind that folks like yourself would call anyone attempting such an experiment a "libertarian moron". War is very costly and usually unjustified in the first place. Certainly, there's scarcely a reason to start one with a country that never attacked you first.
Personally, I don't consider those Sylvania SilverStar series of halogen bulbs "really nice". Not saying their light output isn't good. It is, but everyone I've known on 3 different car enthusiast message forums has encountered the same complaints with those. They burnt out far too quickly!
On a lot of cars, changing out the bulbs is kind of a pain. The auto makers figured it wasn't a task you were going to do more than once every 4-5 years or so. But the Sylvania bulbs tend to last as little as 6 months in some cases, with them typically dying well before 2 years are up.
Sadly, you're probably right that there aren't really any other aftermarket halogen replacements that perform as well as/better than these and would last much longer. It's just a downside of the technology, IMO -- and the reason you don't see these coming as standard equipment in any of the cars sold today.
When I think about all of this for a while, I keep coming back to the conclusion that in the U.S. today, half the problem lies with our own perceptions.
For many years, I worked in I.T. for manufacturing firms. Since the majority of their employees (and the ones directly handling the work that generated their profits!) were paid by the hour and punching time-cards, they definitely had a culture ingrained around the idea that the hardest workers were the folks you saw in the building most often. After all, you can't exactly take your work home with you if your job involves cutting steel beams or heat-treating metal in a blast furnace.
As much as the minority of us doing their I.T. liked to argue the fact that as "knowledge workers", we could do a lot of work from home and didn't need to keep long hours in the office? Truth is, we were often our own worst enemies because we'd complain when our co-workers weren't sitting at their desks. "What? He's out AGAIN? Must be nice! I guess I'll wind up taking these trouble tickets myself then...." And of course, everyone else working in the other departments sympathized and agreed that so-and-so wasn't doing their share since you were physically there and he wasn't. So it was immediately, short-term positive feedback from other employees and a strengthened sense that just by staying late, you could avoid being "that guy" you were just complaining about.
Now I'm doing work for a creative/marketing firm where we not only support direct-hire employees, but quite a few outside folks paid to work on various projects. The workforce is very mobile (so much so that we no longer issue anyone a desktop computer .... laptops only). People work all sorts of odd hours, not to mention hours that just feel odd to us because they're in different time zones. The one thing we don't have are employees punching in and out on time clocks. Still, you see some people (myself included at times) hanging around the office late, without any real good reason. Just can't quite shake that mentality that somehow, it doesn't look good to disappear when the clock strikes 5 all the time. I'm pretty sure management completely gets that it's your performance that matters -- not the hours you spend in the building. But it's tough for ME to completely put faith in that and start living differently!
Obviously so, but let's be fair here.... Even the most intelligent, geeky, and interested in learning wants to be entertained regularly as "downtime". It's not really healthy or ultimately even possible to be "on" 24/7, trying to learn complex new things.
So yes, entertainment generates vastly more income than educational lectures or science fairs. I'm just pointing out that maybe that's actually an okay thing -- not something to complain about as reflecting poorly on the nation?
Destroying the speed cameras might not be the "recommended" way to address the problem, but quite frankly? It sends a stronger message and does so more quickly than lobbying for a speed limit change.
The fact is, these things are ALL about revenue generation. If you turn them into a big EXPENSE to maintain, the revenue stops looking as attractive. It's that simple.
Ask yourself this: Would technologies costing a similar amount to implement be considered if there was no way for the police dept. and local govt. to receive profits from them? I think you and I both know the answer to that one... All their cries about the cameras being there for "safety" are just attempts to get acceptance for the automated ticket issuing system.
Lobbying for a higher speed limit is problematic because you're up against established groups in government who would lose money if it's changed. They've probably got more resources than you to push their side of the issue.
I'm not saying it can't be done (and often, it SHOULD be), but I have little sympathy for the police or local govt. when they complain about the expenses they're incurring when these cameras wind up damaged. Maybe they should have bought insurance on them? That's what they always force ME to do by law with my motor vehicle.
Any person who actually has a conscience would easily understand where you're coming from, but it's still really not a good excuse for the cameras. Already, I know I'm afraid to drive past a school because the "school zones" have such drastically reduced speed limits (and high probabilities of officers lurking in the parking lot or a nearby driveway), PLUS doubled or tripled fines for speeding, it's easy to get dinged with a really high dollar ticket for going any faster than a crawl through that whole area.
I really don't need the camera there to remind me I better slow down.
When I had my own side business doing computer service and consulting, I never followed through with incorporating (despite hearing many times it was the "thing to do"). Honestly, as a one-man operation, I never really saw the clear value to it, vs. the extra paperwork, higher chance of an IRS tax audit, and up-front expenses to get it done.
Even as a sole proprietorship, you're entitled to quite a few tax advantages simply by having your own business. (And yes, you have to meet a few basic qualifications so the IRS doesn't consider you a hobby instead. That would include keeping proof that you behaved like a legitimate business, including having business cards and receipts for advertising expenses.) But there's no need to incorporate just to write off such things as new computers/printers/monitors/paper/ink/office furniture as business expenses. You can write off postage used to mail out any advertising or marketing materials too (and the cost of the envelopes you purchased to put it in). If you keep mileage records accurately, you can write that percentage of use/depreciation of your vehicle too. And if you designate a portion of your primary residence to your business/office, you get a home office deduction on it as well. (That one can be a pain though, since a lot of people really don't maintain a portion of their place exclusively for business use. If you're ever audited on one of those home office deductions, an IRS agent could very well drop by and ask to inspect the area. Your kid leaving toys on the floor in there or something could pose an unexpected problem....)
Like others said, incorporating seems to only really shield you from one of your CO-WORKERS screwing things up in some manner. As a sole business owner, I can't see how it would protect anything of yours beyond the relatively few items you itemized as 100% used for the business. (If you screwed up and you're the sole proprietor of the business, the person wronged will still go after you regardless... Incorporating might keep them from seizing your office furniture and computers, but they could still get a financial judgement against you that forced you to liquidate assets like your new living room set or flat screen TV to pay it off!)
While yes, right now, the tide may be against the server manufacturers -- the cloud still requires them in large quantities to host those services. If it negatively impacts sales, it's only to the extent that efficiency is improved. (EG. Joe Businessman who once bought a server for his office of 10 employees skips it, in favor of cloud computing solutions. But it turns out his needs are small enough so they can share the load with 1-2 other small businesses like his, all on a single server in the cloud.)
In my opinion, Dell has the right idea -- changing the focus on who their customer is for their server products. Beyond that, what's really news here?
Going out on a bit more of a limb though? I'm really of the opinion that cloud services are over-hyped as the "in" thing for every business. Once companies migrate heavily to cloud hosted solutions and use them for a while, a fair number will conclude it's not really beneficial. Then you'll see a return to the business model of running in-house servers again. (Granted, those servers might be smaller, with lower power consumption than in the past. Little "microservers" handle many of the basic file and print sharing work companies used to relegate to full size rack mounted systems in the past.)
But my own experience with cloud migrations tells me that it's not so great, 9 times out of 10. For example, my boss has been using the Neat document management software for a while now to scan in all of his personal receipts and documents at home. Neat now offers "NeatCloud" so you can upload your whole database and then access your docs via an iPhone or iPad client, or even scan something new in by simply taking a picture of it. Sounds great, but in reality, he had nothing but problems with it. The initial upload tied up his PC for the better part of his weekend, only to report that some documents couldn't be converted or uploaded properly. He had close to 100 random pages of existing documents thrown in a new folder the software generated, to hold the problem ones. The only "fix" for this was to click to open a trouble ticket for EACH individual document that failed, so someone at Neat could examine it manually and correct whatever issue prevented their system from properly OCRing and uploading it. Clearly, that wasn't much of a solution! He tried, repeatedly, to get someone to remote control into his PC to do some sort of batch repair for him -- but after a couple promises to call back "the next day" to look at it, nobody ever did. Now, all Neat can tell him is they have another update patch coming out for the software in the next week, and to disable cloud uploads until that time.
Or take the recent migration a small office did from GoDaddy pop3/smtp email with Outlook to Google hosted mail. I usually help these guys with their computer issues but they thought they could tackle this migration on their own. Turns out, they wound up with a big mess of missing sub-folders of mail in Outlook on the owner's machine. After a lot of poking around, I discovered part of the problem was due to characters in the folder names that Google Apps didn't consider valid. When it hit one of those during the mail migration, it just skipped the whole mail folder upload with an error. (Did Google's migration wizard utility even warn about this in advance or offer to help rename the problem folders before continuing? Heck no!)
For that matter, take what you'd think is pretty basic functionality with cloud based data backup? I've run into multiple situation now where people used services like MozyPro for their backups, only to discover a full restore (when a drive crashed) was incredibly slow and kept aborting in the middle of the process, making the data restore essentially impossible. Mozy's solution? They're willing to burn a copy of the data onto optical disc and physically mail it back to you. So much for the whole cloud thing, huh?
As someone already commented on here earlier, "We'll keep sharing, and the labels will learn their place." This is quite simply a statement of reality, because the record labels are in the business of making money. It just so happens they do so by locking musicians into contractual deals where they promise to "promote" their music in return for a cut of the profits made selling people rights to obtain copies of the artists' recordings to listen to per the licensing/usage terms granted.
They can scream about it being illegal and punishable by law all the want, but it will never change the technological realities of things. These days, musicians no longer need the record labels as much as the record labels need them. The same technology that allows end-users to easily duplicate and redistribute the content on their own lets musicians record and redistribute (and market!) their content too, without help of a big company.
Following the money leads to a steady stream of revenue bleeding away from the record labels. Their best move to prove their worth these days lies in throwing down lawsuit after lawsuit to convince artists they're still "adding value" by forcing people to "pay up" when they're caught duplicating their artists' works without getting permission first.
But as we should all know by now? Those who don't innovate litigate. It's a sure sign of an industry in decline.
I agree with you, demachina.
But there's another facet to all of this, IMO. With the U.S. economy in such a huge amount of debt (and growing every day), we've taken out massive loans from China (among other nations). When you look at the numbers showing the US's total debt (including all the unfunded mandates, etc.), we're so far in the hole, it's literally impossible to ever get back out.
Go to usdebtclock.org and scroll down till you see m2 money supply.That's the broadest measure of the money supply that the government tracks. Right now it's about 10 trillion dollars. Now look down further and notice unfunded liabilities at about 120 trillion. So we can't even pay 15% of the bills we've got coming, using *every dollar in existence*!
So ultimately, that means our economic system is going to eventually fail. We're going to file a national form of bankruptcy, essentially, at some point in time, when they've strung people along as far as they can go..... So knowing that, and knowing countries like China will be left on the hook for all that borrowed money that's not getting fully repaid -- what's the smartest way to do "damage control"? Make sure the people lending you the money have gotten a lot out of the whole "business relationship", so they're not going to retaliate when you tell them you're not paying them back anymore! We've pretty much done that by giving China so much education on how to build all of our technological goods for us, and by serving as one of their best customers for everything they're assembling.....
http://gmauthority.com/blog/2012/04/cadillac-to-build-ats-cts-xts-in-china-for-china/
Yep.... exactly how I feel about this, too.
You could sum up the entire article as, "Windows 8 looks great, but I wound up not liking it personally, because I couldn't customize it to my more minimalist tastes, selectively hiding or turning off anything on the screen I decided I didn't care for."
And I'd say, "That's nice. But you're in a small minority of users, compared to all the people who find it difficult enough to get around their computer's OS, without having to cope with individual machines having different graphic elements present or missing, depending on the whims of whoever messed with it before you."
For starters, you talk about making grille openings smaller? On many vehicles, the grille openings are functional. The radiator (or even the air intake piping) may be placed behind it, so it needs to have good airflow. I'm not sure your idea provides a net benefit in many situations, and that's why you aren't seeing it done.
As for weight savings, I agree to a point. Some of this is the result of "old school" thinking and preferences of a generation who believed a big, heavy car had a better feel on the road and was safer. But you're seeing a shift away from those ideas, even with companies like Cadillac with their new ATS sport sedan. It's far lighter weight than the CTS sedan that came before it. But suggestions like using carbon fiber in place of sheet metal for more weight savings are probably largely ignored by the auto industry because it lacks durability. Anyone who "mods" their sports car with aftermarket parts for looks/styling can tell you, carbon fiber side-skirts or "ground f/x" tend to break off in pieces and develop nasty stress cracks with time. The material works a bit better for a component like a hood, where it won't take as much abuse from flying pebbles/rocks while driving, or accidentally scraping it on a curb. But still, saying carbon fiber is "stronger" than aluminum doesn't tell the whole story. Metal body parts absorb impacts by denting or creasing. That can be popped back out (such as you see with paintless dent removal places) pretty inexpensively. Carbon fiber just chips, cracks or snaps. A sheet of glass has a lot of strength too. (Try pulling it apart to "tear' it in two.) Doesn't mean it's not liable to shatter when stressed in a different way.
As for the auto transmission torque converters, what alternatives are you suggesting? I used to drive a Jeep Patriot with a continuously variable transmission (CVT). Pretty slick in concept, but not at all durable in reality. Most Patriot owners I knew had a CVT die of an internal bearing failure after 70K miles or so on the road. Plus, it was WAY more expensive to have fixed than a standard automatic transmission. Even the fluid it took was a special, very costly type since it had to have certain friction properties that changed with temperature.
Seriously, it's great if laptop makers can truly build upgradeable machines that don't sacrifice reliability in the process. But I remember the era of Dell laptops with socketed CPUs and upgradable video cards, and it wasn't all roses and unicorns.
I believe it was the old Latitude CP series where the CPU used to work itself loose from its socket over time, resulting in a system that refused to boot. (One of the "fixes" that used to get one going again was pressing down hard with the palm of one's hand near the center of the keyboard. The keyboard assembly happened to be right over the CPU and would flex enough to allow re-seating the chip, at least for a while.)
The models with the supposedly upgradeable video cards turned out to be more hype than substance too, because the type of video boards they took were proprietary, and no longer manufactured at all after 2 or 3 variations went through their initial production runs.
Ultimately, even on desktop PCs, expansion capabilities really don't get people too far.... Sure, you can upgrade processors -- until AMD or Intel goes and changes the design of the socket and pin layout. Then you're just as stuck as the next guy with his CPU soldered onto the motherboard. Same issue with RAM. Most machines only provide between 2 and 4 DIMM sockets, with a motherboard chipset unable to map/use more than a certain amount of memory. So what usually happens? The RAM upgrade becomes a nice thing to have initially, for the folks who tried to go cheap on the initial system purchase and selected less RAM than was optimal to save a few bucks. They get the chance to "buy now and pay later" to put the RAM in that probably should have really been there from the start. But down the road? You wind up saying "Gee... I'd like to upgrade this PC to 16GB of RAM but the board only supports 8. Oh well...."
Don't get me wrong... I like having a machine I can service myself if I determine a part died. And I've usually upgraded hard drives in most machines I've owned, as well as adding RAM to some, or upgrading the video in my higher-end machines. But as we demand ever lighter weight, slimmer portables with more and more functionality - we're really demanding technology that doesn't have any room for spare sockets, cables and connectors. It all depends on what the goal is, really. Expandability and modularity comes at a price of taking up extra space. Apple is big on going "cutting edge" with the "how small can we make this?" question on their minds -- so it makes perfect sense they wound up where they did, with not even so much as a removable laptop battery.
I follow that logic, except if you don't have any standard universally accepted currency EXCEPT specific precious metals (like gold), hoarding would prove difficult for most people. (If you have to decide between trying to stock up on gold or pay your rent, or buy groceries? It seems to me most people will give in and spend some of their saved up gold. The fact it would increase in value by hanging onto it isn't really any different than other forms of investment, IMO. If I bought Apple stock at pretty much any point in time in the last 10 years or so and just "hoarded" it, I'd have generated a lot of wealth too. But I don't own any stock because although I had pretty high confidence doing so would be profitable, I couldn't spare the money to purchase it after paying for all the necessities.)
The "elite" in positions to hoard significant quantities (perhaps oil barons, for example?) would still be taking chances, IMO. If they succeeded in making gold rare enough to run its price way up, people would lean more heavily on alternative precious metals like silver, platinum, or whatever else was in circulation. That could, in turn, make its price fall back down again -- correct?
IMO, currency has its value because people put trust in it. There's a collective agreement going on that it's assigned a value that's universally recognized.
There lies the problem with paper currency.... You can't just come up with billions or trillions of dollars worth of gold out of thin air. The world's supply is essentially fixed. When your symbol of wealth is simply paper printed by some central authority or body, you have to entrust its "caretaking" to that central authority.
Especially in more recent times, it's clear that authority is abusing its power, making huge loans to other nations when they likely don't even posses the amount of money required to extend the loan in the first place.... printing up more paper whenever they feel it would "help the economy" to do so (vs. letting things play out naturally), etc. People still have SOME trust in the currency right now, but much of that trust is probably only out of ignorance of the extent to which it's manipulated, and what that could mean for everyone. All in all, the trust is eroding.....
I'm having a really tough time following this logic?
You say a gold-backed currency would be a bad thing because the standard deflates (because the demand for money far outpaces the supply).
Ok, except when you look at the whole point of having some sort of standardized currency in the first place, isn't it really nothing more than a symbol of one's labor?
It seems to me the assigned value for a certain amount of it is rather irrelevant, as long as it's agreed upon by all parties. If the demand outstrips the supply so badly, then perhaps people will simply deal in smaller quantities? Who says a coin has to be pure gold, for example? What if it's made of other materials of very little value, with a small (but verifiable) amount of gold included with it? Surely, there's enough gold to go around if we reach the stage where people aren't typically storing whole bars of the stuff, but rather, measurable amount of gold dust (or as I said previously, that same small amount mixed in with another material to make a convenient to handle coin)?
Not only that, but silver has long acted as gold's lesser valued twin. So when dealing in smaller amounts of money, I don't see why silver couldn't work in tandem with gold as a currency?
By contrast, the current system of printing up paper money means we put all the control over its worth in the hands of Federal Reserve bankers and the Federal govt. It's obvious to me why the people in power advocate such a system. They get to pull the strings whenever they like, printing more or less currency to purposely create more demand or flood the supply. But IMO, something as basic as a universally recognized symbol of the work we do shouldn't have ANYONE manipulating it subjectively at that low a level. If the Fed wants to raise or lower interest rates on loans, fine. That's one thing. But I like knowing that only a free marketplace of buyers, sellers, and investors determined the worth of a given piece of currency.
Your argument has some merit, but I've consistently found it not to really hold true for the smaller or mid-sized companies I've worked for.
The "high cost of entry but low maintenance cost" of tape just doesn't always pan out, IMO. For starters, you've always got the issue that the tape media isn't readable by anything except a system configured with one of those expensive tape drives designed to work with that generation and type of tape. That means if you're using those tapes for disaster recovery by storing them off-site, you've got to be sure you can read them back in if/when disaster strikes. If that disaster is, say, a fire in your building that destroys the computer equipment? Now you've got to be sure you've got quick access to a machine capable of restoring the data on those tapes so you can set up replacement systems from it. That means you may have to buy a duplicate, costly tape drive, and store it off-site with the media, or pay an outside firm to do the data recovery for you (because they have the needed equipment to read your tapes for you).
When your off-site data is stored on standard-issue hard drives, you don't need anything more fancy than an external USB hard drive enclosure to get to the data.
(And yeah, I realize you could do the accounting on something like this by claiming those extra costs are part of the "initial expense" instead of the "maintenance" portion.... but either way, you're spending the money.)
And that thing about putting a box of tapes in a panel van and bumpy roads not worrying you? Yeah, I suppose .... but any decent hard drive parks its heads when it's not spinning, and really shouldn't be affected by that sort of vibration. We've had nightly backups running here at two locations for years where the backup media is a consumer-grade SATA hard drive in a removable hot-swap drive tray, and people take them home every night by tossing one in the trunk of their car or truck. I think we've only had 1 drive fail out of the entire 2 week rotation used for both sites after 3 years or so of use. That's well within what you'd expect fro drives that never even get removed and carried around.
Yes, and no.... If they really did take it down 30 minutes early, it wasn't handled properly, period.
I don't think it's necessarily impossible they'd get 2,500 more signatures inside of 30 minutes. (We've seen how many HP TouchPads people were able to order in just 10 or 15 minute windows, during that whole blowout sale craze.)
Even if they didn't, it doesn't really matter.... By doing anything irregular with making the petition available, it opens it up to scrutiny or debate.
I do agree that this thing wasn't going to set policy though. It's obvious our government shoves every agenda down our collective throats that it wants to see happen. These things are more useful to wake up the public a bit about what's going on around them. (If you can show that a majority DOES oppose something government continues doing anyway, it strengthens people's resolve to protest the status quo.)
...that you and your close friends and family are far more enlightened about reality than the average sheep (oh, sorry... I mean citizen).
I'm making that assumption partially based on your tagline. After all, Ron Paul is *so* darn popular, his own political party won't give him any speaking time at their convention in Tampa, FL! (Oh, they're letting his son, Rand, talk a little bit as a concession, mind you. But as most of us know who follow politics in any serious way, Rand's politics does NOT line up too neatly with Ron's.)