an embargo on any particular commodity under the guise of fair trade/national security/cultural integrity/my-horoscope-said-so will likely hurt us more than it hurts you
A recent case in point was the softwood lumber tariffs instituted by the USA on Canadian softwood. This was a protectionist measure to help US softwood producers. It resulted in more expensive lumber for US customers, and was devastating to Canadian producers. The USA sneezes and we get a cold.
It seems standard practice these days that a seller won't even leave feedback until they see what you've written.
Yep! As a buyer, I even get emails from sellers saying "I see you haven't left feedback. Please leave some and then I'll leave feedback for you." I reply that I won't leave feedback until the seller does, and I never hear from them again.
I probably only leave feedback for about 50% of my transactions.
My rant about these enhanced IDs, and the Nexus pre-clearance card is this: The governments are making us *pay extra* for these enhanced IDs and the resultant 'privilege' of saving them money! If they do a background check on me and as a result pre-clear me ahead of time, then once I arrive at the booth I save them money, because they don't have to waste time (time = money) asking all these probing questions.
Instead, they can expend their energy trying to determine if individuals who aren't pre-cleared are suspect.
(Nexus takes it one step further, as I don't even have to interact with a border agent, saving gobs of cash!)
They should pay *us* for helping them save money, not the other way around.
So no, I won't get an enhance British Columbia driver's license, nor a Nexus card.
Maybe, but the possibility of there only being two main search engines out there, with the next largest competitor Ask.com at a paltry 4.1%, is fairly scary.
But this is really the situation today anyway. For all intents and purposes Google owns online search, eBay owns online Auctions, Amazon owns online book sales etc. etc. etc. No whippersnapper upstart is ever going to take away eBay's market share.
Try letting the Chinese take over 1/3 of your entire city, ie Vancouver, and see what happens. Outright refusal to learn English, contempt for non-Chinese (particulary Indians/Pakistanis, for some reason), massive corruption, etc. Basically a wholesale import of modern China. Canadian multiculturalism = failure.
I live in Vancouver, and while I basically agree, I don't think it's a failure. The parents fail to integrate, which creates a lot of problems, however the children in public school integrate considerably, and proceed to bring home brown, white etc. friends. It's not at all unusual to see an (east) indian, chinese and white twentysomething guys together at a hockey game. They're at the game based on friendships that started in elementary or high school.
can actually get on to a freeway without killing themselves or their occupants
I keep hearing this about the Smart Car and I just don't get it. They're all over the place here in Vancouver, Canada, and zip on and off the freeways with ease (I don't own one, but they often pass my old pickup on the Freeway, then zip off. Cute.). Their construction (basically you're inside a steel cage called a "Tridion Safety Cell") ensures you're pretty safe.
I bet Goldfinger isn't even fat enough to make his own mark on the tracking radar, either!
Ever noticed the continuity error in that sequence?
First we see the crew of the plane all tied up in a hangar and wriggling, trying to loosen their bonds. In the next cut to the hangar Felix and co. find the crew (before rushing to the control tower to watch Goldfinger's mark on the tracking radar), and they're all unconscious. Seems the whole crew wriggled themselves into unconsciousness.
>you'd be too busy fighting over the oxygen masks.
The O2 masks only last for a few minutes anyway, which is plenty of time for the pilots to get the plane down below 12K feet. Heck, even when Aloha Airlines Flight 243 had its fuselage ripped open at 24K feet (and as a result a third of the masks were gone altogether) no one asphyxiated.
At most Starbucks I've been to, the bottleneck is not the ordering process, it's the order fulfillment side of things - That's where they're backed up.
This seems to contrast with McDonald's, where the bottleneck is taking the orders (too many people don't start trying to decide what they want until they step up to the counter). As a result, here in Vancouver, Canada, lots of McDonalds have staff with wireless PDAs, wandering down the queues taking orders. When you get to the till all you have to do is pay and pick up your oder. They also wander down the queue at the drive through doing the same thing.
Isn't it better to give poor people $13,000 in free money and health care every year rather than paying that to lock them up ($26bn a year).
It makes good fiscal sense, but doesn't make cultural sense. In the USA, personal freedoms trump collective freedoms every time. So even though paying more for inner-city schools helps society as a whole, it doesn't happen in the USA because it goes against their individualist grain. Ditto spending money on programs instead of prisons. Goes against the national culture.
Everyone emails, which is why it is good to have a filter email which you expect to collect sales mail.
The OP was not complaining about receiving the emails, he was complaining about deceitful subject lines. I get lots of emails from online vendors I've dealt with. The subject lines say things like "Boxing Day Specials" or "Video Card Deals" not "Info about your order." I agree if they had misleading subject lines I'd boycott them too.
The UI for itunes is counter-intuitive and crash-prone on Windows
I couldn't agree more... Although it doesn't crash for me, the iTunes UI is completely non-sensical. And don't get me started on how much crap this piece of bloatware installs on my hard drive each time it does one of it (what seems weekly) 'upgrades.' How about deleting some of that rubbish, apple?
Darth Maul was definitely a super villain that could have meant so much for the next 2.
I recently listened to the "Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter" audiobook. It's set just before "Episode 1" and provides a lot of backstory on Maul and develops him a lot more as a character.
Although you ultimately know how it's going to end (all the Jedi are dead, after all), it's still an enjoyable listen / read.
but spending a weekend dicking around with stuff is a waste of money.
I know it's an anathema to most Americans, but the idea with these initiatives should not be individual gain - Rather, it should be looked at as societal gain. It's like switching to compact fluorescent 'bulbs' - The savings on your *own* energy bill might only be a few dollars a year, but the savings to society as a whole would be huge, i.e one less coal plant, less dependence on Saudi oil or whatever. Same deal here.
It is already a totalitarianism state, you don't have to wait for it. The key at the moment is to let people to think they are in a free state
While I believe the USA is giving up their hard-won rights willy-nilly, I don't believe you're even close to being in a totalitarian state.
You're typing your comments right now with no fear of recrimination - You have no risk of arrest. There's no 'great firewall of China' blocking where you can surf on the web (hate sites and child porn perhaps excepted). You can write whatever ramblings you want on your blog and no one will knock at your door.
To describe the USA as 'totalitarian' does a dis-service to all those who live in fear today.
Great job. Keep correcting grammar on this forum. We're supposed to be a clever group - It's ridiculous how many people on here can quote pi to 20 decimal points but can remember when to use an apostrophe or the fact that you don't 'loose' a race.
...when there's some new posting about Natalie Portman you guys can slashdot the server into submission in under five minutes. Why the heck can't you create a slashdot effect on the *polls* and vote these suckers out?
Ugh. Sounds like Premier Peckford's pickle palace all over again. The story of the Maritimes is the story of one failed government 'investment' scheme after another. Let's just admit that now that all the fish have been vacuumed up the economy simply can't support the number of people who live there, and leave it at that. Let economic migration deal with the problem.
you could easly collect several gigs of MP3's and copyrighted porn photos in a very short time on a P-P network. The gain from crime isn't always money.
That's still a monetary gain - To alternately get those several gigabytes of sounds and images you'd had to have paid money. Imagine it was 1975 - To get that amount of sounds and images you'd've had to have paid a considerable sum.
Slashdot Mirror
A recent case in point was the softwood lumber tariffs instituted by the USA on Canadian softwood. This was a protectionist measure to help US softwood producers. It resulted in more expensive lumber for US customers, and was devastating to Canadian producers. The USA sneezes and we get a cold.
Yep! As a buyer, I even get emails from sellers saying "I see you haven't left feedback. Please leave some and then I'll leave feedback for you." I reply that I won't leave feedback until the seller does, and I never hear from them again.
I probably only leave feedback for about 50% of my transactions.
Instead, they can expend their energy trying to determine if individuals who aren't pre-cleared are suspect.
(Nexus takes it one step further, as I don't even have to interact with a border agent, saving gobs of cash!)
They should pay *us* for helping them save money, not the other way around.
So no, I won't get an enhance British Columbia driver's license, nor a Nexus card.
But this is really the situation today anyway. For all intents and purposes Google owns online search, eBay owns online Auctions, Amazon owns online book sales etc. etc. etc. No whippersnapper upstart is ever going to take away eBay's market share.
I live in Vancouver, and while I basically agree, I don't think it's a failure. The parents fail to integrate, which creates a lot of problems, however the children in public school integrate considerably, and proceed to bring home brown, white etc. friends. It's not at all unusual to see an (east) indian, chinese and white twentysomething guys together at a hockey game. They're at the game based on friendships that started in elementary or high school.
I keep hearing this about the Smart Car and I just don't get it. They're all over the place here in Vancouver, Canada, and zip on and off the freeways with ease (I don't own one, but they often pass my old pickup on the Freeway, then zip off. Cute.). Their construction (basically you're inside a steel cage called a "Tridion Safety Cell") ensures you're pretty safe.
The article specifically references the issue of the prosecutors demanding the key.
Ever noticed the continuity error in that sequence?
First we see the crew of the plane all tied up in a hangar and wriggling, trying to loosen their bonds. In the next cut to the hangar Felix and co. find the crew (before rushing to the control tower to watch Goldfinger's mark on the tracking radar), and they're all unconscious. Seems the whole crew wriggled themselves into unconsciousness.
The O2 masks only last for a few minutes anyway, which is plenty of time for the pilots to get the plane down below 12K feet. Heck, even when Aloha Airlines Flight 243 had its fuselage ripped open at 24K feet (and as a result a third of the masks were gone altogether) no one asphyxiated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aloha_Flight_243
This seems to contrast with McDonald's, where the bottleneck is taking the orders (too many people don't start trying to decide what they want until they step up to the counter). As a result, here in Vancouver, Canada, lots of McDonalds have staff with wireless PDAs, wandering down the queues taking orders. When you get to the till all you have to do is pay and pick up your oder. They also wander down the queue at the drive through doing the same thing.
It makes good fiscal sense, but doesn't make cultural sense. In the USA, personal freedoms trump collective freedoms every time. So even though paying more for inner-city schools helps society as a whole, it doesn't happen in the USA because it goes against their individualist grain. Ditto spending money on programs instead of prisons. Goes against the national culture.
The OP was not complaining about receiving the emails, he was complaining about deceitful subject lines. I get lots of emails from online vendors I've dealt with. The subject lines say things like "Boxing Day Specials" or "Video Card Deals" not "Info about your order." I agree if they had misleading subject lines I'd boycott them too.
No longer an option - The Vandenberg shuttle launch facility was dismantled.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandenberg_Air_Force_Base#Space_Shuttle
I couldn't agree more... Although it doesn't crash for me, the iTunes UI is completely non-sensical. And don't get me started on how much crap this piece of bloatware installs on my hard drive each time it does one of it (what seems weekly) 'upgrades.' How about deleting some of that rubbish, apple?
I recently listened to the "Darth Maul: Shadow Hunter" audiobook. It's set just before "Episode 1" and provides a lot of backstory on Maul and develops him a lot more as a character.
Although you ultimately know how it's going to end (all the Jedi are dead, after all), it's still an enjoyable listen / read.
Incorrect. The market loves layoffs and usually share prices rise. "Finally management is cutting out that waste!"
I know it's an anathema to most Americans, but the idea with these initiatives should not be individual gain - Rather, it should be looked at as societal gain. It's like switching to compact fluorescent 'bulbs' - The savings on your *own* energy bill might only be a few dollars a year, but the savings to society as a whole would be huge, i.e one less coal plant, less dependence on Saudi oil or whatever. Same deal here.
While I believe the USA is giving up their hard-won rights willy-nilly, I don't believe you're even close to being in a totalitarian state.
You're typing your comments right now with no fear of recrimination - You have no risk of arrest. There's no 'great firewall of China' blocking where you can surf on the web (hate sites and child porn perhaps excepted). You can write whatever ramblings you want on your blog and no one will knock at your door.
To describe the USA as 'totalitarian' does a dis-service to all those who live in fear today.
Last night I was walking the dog and listening to that exact speech on the 'V for Vendetta' audiobook. You're bang-on.
I just pop the disks out of the box and put them in a CD binder...
http://cdn.overstock.com/images/products/3/L986895.jpg
As for buy vs. rent, most of the DVDs I buy are used (pardon me, "previously viewed"), so the price point is about the same.
Great job. Keep correcting grammar on this forum. We're supposed to be a clever group - It's ridiculous how many people on here can quote pi to 20 decimal points but can remember when to use an apostrophe or the fact that you don't 'loose' a race.
...when there's some new posting about Natalie Portman you guys can slashdot the server into submission in under five minutes. Why the heck can't you create a slashdot effect on the *polls* and vote these suckers out?
Ugh. Sounds like Premier Peckford's pickle palace all over again. The story of the Maritimes is the story of one failed government 'investment' scheme after another. Let's just admit that now that all the fish have been vacuumed up the economy simply can't support the number of people who live there, and leave it at that. Let economic migration deal with the problem.
Here's what the previous one looked like for the last go-round - However, it had turbofans, not rockets:
http://www.dfrc.nasa.gov/gallery/movie/LLRV/HTML/EM-0019-06.html
That's still a monetary gain - To alternately get those several gigabytes of sounds and images you'd had to have paid money. Imagine it was 1975 - To get that amount of sounds and images you'd've had to have paid a considerable sum.