Actually, the terrain varies enough across Montana that you don't tend to get road hypnosis and fall asleep. Now western Texas? the land of boredom and flatness? Best have a fog horn and a lot of caffeine in the car.
I lived in Montana during their infamous 'Safe and Reasonable' speed limit era. For those who don't know what that is; for a period during the 90's Montana's speed limit on the Interstate Highways was, in theory, unlimited during the day, and 85mph at night. The posted speed at the borders was "Safe and Reasonable. Night 85mph" This lasted for a number of years, until finally they capped it back down (apparently to 70). The story I heard most often that the reason for the change was due to accidents, generally involving out of state drivers. The locals knew the roads and conditions, and would self regulate for most part, but travelers from out of state (some probably seeking the 'no speed limit' thrill) would exceed the conditions, resulting in accidents. Now, because i've lived there, I can tell you, almost everywhere it is safe to drive 85mph on the Interstate, there is an alternative 'frontage' road that would be a 65/70mph road. I can't say I care one way or another if they change it back to 85mph, but I think the same problem will persist, of out of staters(and the occasional natural born idiot) exceeding the capabilities of their skill/vehicle/road conditions and wrecking.
What the HELL does the name of the movie on the disc, much less the star of said movie, actually contribute to this process / article? Confused clicks, thats what. I nominate this headline for this years "Most Worthless Headline" award.
Speaking as a big person, I'm going to have to go with:
Yeah, pretty much.
When it comes right down to it, any individual needs to be aware of themselves, and how they present themselves to the world. I, as a large person, am well aware that I can influence peoples perception of me, simply by the way I carry myself. It is a simple matter of posture and expression that changes me from 'big ole teddy bear' to 'menacing lumberjack from hell.' which is sure as shit not the persona I whip out if i'm being confronted by the police.
this is not restricted to 'big people' either. small wiry people can present a dangerous and menacing persona, dependent on an entirely different set of perceptions. agitation, fast movements, anger, and the like can present a character that seems ready to lash out, and may be extremely quick and dangerous.
In all reality, the fact is, there may be a time and place to act like a macho tough shit badass, but it sure as hell is NOT "When being questioned by the cops".
I'm probably a racist bastard, but there is this whole 'gangster' and 'thug' culture that we seem to have cultivated and trust me, its jumped into every culture, its not a black or latino exclusive thing, its young people across the entire race spectrum. This stupid damn 'culture' that glorifies to various degrees a criminal lifestyle, does absolutely jack shit to train young people how to avoid doing stupid shit with authority figures. Sure, there are corrupt cops, but if you don't act like a stupid arrogant fuckbag when dealing with them, you usually get out clean, and even if you get hauled in, at least your alive to fight it in court, which is better than dead because you grabbed for a cops gun or some other assed out stupid action.
I read about a neat idea for disposing of the stuff in Popular Science a few years back.. Long story short, you make graphite spheres (about the size of a basketball I think) fill them with nuke waste, bore as deep into the crust of the earth as you can, and drop the spheres in. The spheres heat up from the nuke waste inside, and melt their way down into the mantle of the earth, never to bother us again.
of course, there's probably a thousand arguments against it, but it was interesting.
Hell. its a less effective solution to a problem thats been solved already. I was talking to a person a while back who was telling me that in a large Fabrication facility he was in, they had what amounted to a huge machine that housed all sorts of tools, from wrenches to individual sockets, when a worker needed a tool, they would go up to it, swipe their ID, select the tool, and it was dispensed. Tool was associated with their ID, and off they go. Probably saves time hunting for the size you need in a bucket of wrenches as well.
The pawn and Restoration shows are *almost* appropriate for the History channel, simply because they discuss antique and sometimes historical items, and bring in the 'experts' to talk about some of the stuff they see. The others you mention are just dumb. On the other hand, when it comes right down to it, there is only so much of History that
A: The public will be interested in.
and
B: Can be made into something that can be shown on TV.
Combine that with documentary format shows falling out of favor in general, and you can see the History Channel's problem. You gotta keep making money, or close down, so they throw every 'historical' thing they can find at the wall, (even the loony conspiracy shit) and see what sticks.
Yeah, you cant run any of those things directly, which is why its "Wireless Charger" not "Wireless Power".
Sure, the toaster and coffee maker is a poor example, but a string of LED lights that is not on 24/7 could easily have a battery that could run them for several hours, and be topped off by the wireless charger while turned off. (like say, during the 8 or so hours your out of the house) Personally, I would love that, because there is no practical way to route power to where my cabinets are at, and under cabinet lighting is awesome.
Plenty of people would like having their smartphone charge by leaving it on their table near the fridge, and the same tech could be added to things like busses, cabs, and trains and rolled into the fare, so your phone gets topped off while you commute.
There are several other household items that need power that could easily charge as well, such as Wall clocks, alarm clocks, digital thermometers, small weather stations, Smoke detectors and whatnot. Never needing to replace the batteries in those things, while trivial, is also the sort of thing that people would buy, because we are slaves to convenience.
In the US these days? about 15 years, or so it seems. A generation is not a unit of time, its a *generation* You are 1 generation, your kids are the next one, your parents are the preceding one. Time is not a factor in generations, reproduction is.
Agreed. Every time you turn around, Amazon seems to be announcing some new feature, product, or service. I mean, off the top of my head, Amazon is:
The Internet Mall of Everything (which is nice, because you can buy everything from breakfast cereal to plasma TV's without having to re-register for ANOTHER website and feed yet another vendor your CC info).
A cloud service provider
A streaming video service
A music service
A mechanical turk service
A eBook service
A cell phone maker(sure, this one is still small, but its a thing)
A tablet maker
runs an alternate android app store
A online payments service
and thats just the surface layer, without drilling down into the details.
Obviously, to some degree, they don't charge enough for all these things, but as others here have said, they are basically aiming at being the go-to choice for that service, then finding a way to get more money out of it.
This may not be the best example, but lets equate it to Minecraft. (or any of a host of other paid alpha games) At first, it was free and buggy, and people played it. Then, as they added more and more features, more and more people where drawn to it, and they released the first paid version, at a low cost, and people paid because they liked the product. Then, as they added more and more features and players to the product, they slowly adjusted the price to match. This model made Minecraft a hilarious amount of money, and made them the "Go-To" pixelated block building game, despite there being a few dozen near identical clones out there.
This is what I think Amazon doing with a lot of its services. Become the go to name, grandfather your original (beta test) customers even if only for a limited duration grandfathering (free for the next 2 years) and then charge the newcomers a fair market price for the service, where fair market price is whatever Amazon wants because they ARE the market.
Re:Give it another decade - the problem will solve
on
The Future of Stamps
·
· Score: 1
While at the same time, by undercutting everyone by miles, the USPS is assured its eventual collapse. So I guess Postal Service Reform would be a decent platform to run for office on?
Re:Give it another decade - the problem will solve
on
The Future of Stamps
·
· Score: 1
Thats just it, we don't fund it. While it is mandated by the constitution to exist, and overseen to some degree by congress, which is why postage has barely crept up, because it is locked to the inflation rate, and can only be pushed beyond that with approval from a regulatory commission. So the postal service is required to fund itself. While congress has occasionally allotted certain funds towards the postal service for special situations (related to disabled and overseas voters mainly) It is meant to be a self sufficient agency of the government. Honestly, the fact that I can sent an envelope full of paper from Florida to Alaska for less than a dollar describes a hilariously broken system, and highlights the fact that the reason the postal service operated at a 4.8 billion dollar loss in 2012 is because the cost of mailing anything has been kept artificially low. I cant FedEx *anything* for a dollar. If the USPS could operate with a pricing scheme that was commercially viable, then it would not have these problems. And of course, having working capital would probably open up new avenues to expand and develop greater service. the USPS is basically any other carrier, only wearing a gimp mask and chained to the governments desk.
Re:Give it another decade - the problem will solve
on
The Future of Stamps
·
· Score: 2
Just because you don't send physical objects anymore does not mean everyone else does not. The cynical part of me sort of thought this was going to be sponsored by the USPS, as another last ditch attempt to get people to mail more things, to stave off its eventual demise. While its true that the Postal Service is dwindling to store flyers and political ads in the digital age, I dread the idea of them shutting down, simply because when it comes right down to it, If i need to send something, they have the quickest, simplest, and most user friendly meatspace interface of all the carriers. (there is no FedEx office in my town, and the UPS office is open to customers for literally 1 hour in the afternoon).
Apparently, the objective these people seem to have is to actually bring back sending things to one another, which they claim is sort of a cultural touchstone we have lost in the digital age. To quote them "when was the last time you received something someone else actually touched?"
Sure, its sort of hippy-dippy, but there is sort of a visceral enjoyment that comes from receiving a physical package or letter, and their goal is to make sending things supremely simple. I actually like the idea myself, but I doubt that it will get implemented without either starting their own carrier, or a deep partnership with one of the private carriers. I suspect The USPS is to mired in political crap to adopt this.
Dear god, I remember that insane thing. The first time I saw a diagram of that escape system, I thought to myself "This has about, 15 to many steps in it." So many things to go wrong and kill you, AFTER you've escaped from an exploding rocket.
I remember reading about the development of this escape system a few years back, and as I recall, there was much discussion of the fact that, because of how big a bomb the boost stage becomes if it fails, that the acceleration required to get the capsule off the stack fast enough to avoid being incinerated would be enough acceleration to kill the crew outright. At that time, the escape system was actually even more over complicated, with something like 9 parachutes in 3 deployments involved, so this is obviously an improvement, but I'm still curious about the other part of the problem.
The horror of all the tiny screws was, that wile tightening the very last one down, the blades on the head of the only size 000 philips driver i had actually sheered off on the last turn. Lessons learned? 1 apple uses very durable screws, 2 whoever made that screwdriver used crappy metal, and 3, holy shit, i'm glad that didn't happen five screws earlier. Thus, the screw driver was used up.
You know my first thought when I saw the 5K iMac? "Jesus, making desktop wallpapers for that is going to create some HUGE photoshop files. " followed by "How many people own a camera that will take a picture that will actually look good as a desktop on that?"
Never said I had a problem with the lack of Walmart, just that it annoys the local youngsters. Honestly though, our local economy is so lousy, i doubt anyone would notice the difference.
Happened where I live. Hell, at one point there was a sign up "Walmart, coming soon to this location" and then the sign came down. Turns out, a selection of the local 'elite' pushed the city council into doing *something* and now the closest walmart is over a 2 hour round trip. Much to the annoyance of just about anyone under the age of say, 25.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, the terrain varies enough across Montana that you don't tend to get road hypnosis and fall asleep. Now western Texas? the land of boredom and flatness? Best have a fog horn and a lot of caffeine in the car.
I lived in Montana during their infamous 'Safe and Reasonable' speed limit era. For those who don't know what that is; for a period during the 90's Montana's speed limit on the Interstate Highways was, in theory, unlimited during the day, and 85mph at night. The posted speed at the borders was "Safe and Reasonable. Night 85mph" This lasted for a number of years, until finally they capped it back down (apparently to 70). The story I heard most often that the reason for the change was due to accidents, generally involving out of state drivers. The locals knew the roads and conditions, and would self regulate for most part, but travelers from out of state (some probably seeking the 'no speed limit' thrill) would exceed the conditions, resulting in accidents. Now, because i've lived there, I can tell you, almost everywhere it is safe to drive 85mph on the Interstate, there is an alternative 'frontage' road that would be a 65/70mph road. I can't say I care one way or another if they change it back to 85mph, but I think the same problem will persist, of out of staters(and the occasional natural born idiot) exceeding the capabilities of their skill/vehicle/road conditions and wrecking.
What the HELL does the name of the movie on the disc, much less the star of said movie, actually contribute to this process / article? Confused clicks, thats what. I nominate this headline for this years "Most Worthless Headline" award.
Speaking as a big person, I'm going to have to go with:
Yeah, pretty much.
When it comes right down to it, any individual needs to be aware of themselves, and how they present themselves to the world. I, as a large person, am well aware that I can influence peoples perception of me, simply by the way I carry myself. It is a simple matter of posture and expression that changes me from 'big ole teddy bear' to 'menacing lumberjack from hell.' which is sure as shit not the persona I whip out if i'm being confronted by the police.
this is not restricted to 'big people' either. small wiry people can present a dangerous and menacing persona, dependent on an entirely different set of perceptions. agitation, fast movements, anger, and the like can present a character that seems ready to lash out, and may be extremely quick and dangerous.
In all reality, the fact is, there may be a time and place to act like a macho tough shit badass, but it sure as hell is NOT "When being questioned by the cops".
I'm probably a racist bastard, but there is this whole 'gangster' and 'thug' culture that we seem to have cultivated and trust me, its jumped into every culture, its not a black or latino exclusive thing, its young people across the entire race spectrum. This stupid damn 'culture' that glorifies to various degrees a criminal lifestyle, does absolutely jack shit to train young people how to avoid doing stupid shit with authority figures. Sure, there are corrupt cops, but if you don't act like a stupid arrogant fuckbag when dealing with them, you usually get out clean, and even if you get hauled in, at least your alive to fight it in court, which is better than dead because you grabbed for a cops gun or some other assed out stupid action.
I read about a neat idea for disposing of the stuff in Popular Science a few years back.. Long story short, you make graphite spheres (about the size of a basketball I think) fill them with nuke waste, bore as deep into the crust of the earth as you can, and drop the spheres in. The spheres heat up from the nuke waste inside, and melt their way down into the mantle of the earth, never to bother us again.
of course, there's probably a thousand arguments against it, but it was interesting.
Hell. its a less effective solution to a problem thats been solved already. I was talking to a person a while back who was telling me that in a large Fabrication facility he was in, they had what amounted to a huge machine that housed all sorts of tools, from wrenches to individual sockets, when a worker needed a tool, they would go up to it, swipe their ID, select the tool, and it was dispensed. Tool was associated with their ID, and off they go. Probably saves time hunting for the size you need in a bucket of wrenches as well.
Yep, sunburn on sub zero days is hilarious.
The pawn and Restoration shows are *almost* appropriate for the History channel, simply because they discuss antique and sometimes historical items, and bring in the 'experts' to talk about some of the stuff they see. The others you mention are just dumb. On the other hand, when it comes right down to it, there is only so much of History that
A: The public will be interested in.
and
B: Can be made into something that can be shown on TV.
Combine that with documentary format shows falling out of favor in general, and you can see the History Channel's problem. You gotta keep making money, or close down, so they throw every 'historical' thing they can find at the wall, (even the loony conspiracy shit) and see what sticks.
There needs to be a moderation tag for "Sad but True."
Yeah, you cant run any of those things directly, which is why its "Wireless Charger" not "Wireless Power".
Sure, the toaster and coffee maker is a poor example, but a string of LED lights that is not on 24/7 could easily have a battery that could run them for several hours, and be topped off by the wireless charger while turned off. (like say, during the 8 or so hours your out of the house) Personally, I would love that, because there is no practical way to route power to where my cabinets are at, and under cabinet lighting is awesome.
Plenty of people would like having their smartphone charge by leaving it on their table near the fridge, and the same tech could be added to things like busses, cabs, and trains and rolled into the fare, so your phone gets topped off while you commute.
There are several other household items that need power that could easily charge as well, such as Wall clocks, alarm clocks, digital thermometers, small weather stations, Smoke detectors and whatnot. Never needing to replace the batteries in those things, while trivial, is also the sort of thing that people would buy, because we are slaves to convenience.
In the US these days? about 15 years, or so it seems. A generation is not a unit of time, its a *generation* You are 1 generation, your kids are the next one, your parents are the preceding one. Time is not a factor in generations, reproduction is.
Agreed. Every time you turn around, Amazon seems to be announcing some new feature, product, or service. I mean, off the top of my head, Amazon is:
The Internet Mall of Everything (which is nice, because you can buy everything from breakfast cereal to plasma TV's without having to re-register for ANOTHER website and feed yet another vendor your CC info).
A cloud service provider
A streaming video service
A music service
A mechanical turk service
A eBook service
A cell phone maker(sure, this one is still small, but its a thing)
A tablet maker
runs an alternate android app store
A online payments service
and thats just the surface layer, without drilling down into the details.
Obviously, to some degree, they don't charge enough for all these things, but as others here have said, they are basically aiming at being the go-to choice for that service, then finding a way to get more money out of it.
This may not be the best example, but lets equate it to Minecraft. (or any of a host of other paid alpha games) At first, it was free and buggy, and people played it. Then, as they added more and more features, more and more people where drawn to it, and they released the first paid version, at a low cost, and people paid because they liked the product. Then, as they added more and more features and players to the product, they slowly adjusted the price to match. This model made Minecraft a hilarious amount of money, and made them the "Go-To" pixelated block building game, despite there being a few dozen near identical clones out there.
This is what I think Amazon doing with a lot of its services. Become the go to name, grandfather your original (beta test) customers even if only for a limited duration grandfathering (free for the next 2 years) and then charge the newcomers a fair market price for the service, where fair market price is whatever Amazon wants because they ARE the market.
While at the same time, by undercutting everyone by miles, the USPS is assured its eventual collapse. So I guess Postal Service Reform would be a decent platform to run for office on?
Thats just it, we don't fund it. While it is mandated by the constitution to exist, and overseen to some degree by congress, which is why postage has barely crept up, because it is locked to the inflation rate, and can only be pushed beyond that with approval from a regulatory commission. So the postal service is required to fund itself. While congress has occasionally allotted certain funds towards the postal service for special situations (related to disabled and overseas voters mainly) It is meant to be a self sufficient agency of the government. Honestly, the fact that I can sent an envelope full of paper from Florida to Alaska for less than a dollar describes a hilariously broken system, and highlights the fact that the reason the postal service operated at a 4.8 billion dollar loss in 2012 is because the cost of mailing anything has been kept artificially low. I cant FedEx *anything* for a dollar. If the USPS could operate with a pricing scheme that was commercially viable, then it would not have these problems. And of course, having working capital would probably open up new avenues to expand and develop greater service. the USPS is basically any other carrier, only wearing a gimp mask and chained to the governments desk.
Just because you don't send physical objects anymore does not mean everyone else does not. The cynical part of me sort of thought this was going to be sponsored by the USPS, as another last ditch attempt to get people to mail more things, to stave off its eventual demise. While its true that the Postal Service is dwindling to store flyers and political ads in the digital age, I dread the idea of them shutting down, simply because when it comes right down to it, If i need to send something, they have the quickest, simplest, and most user friendly meatspace interface of all the carriers. (there is no FedEx office in my town, and the UPS office is open to customers for literally 1 hour in the afternoon).
Apparently, the objective these people seem to have is to actually bring back sending things to one another, which they claim is sort of a cultural touchstone we have lost in the digital age. To quote them "when was the last time you received something someone else actually touched?"
Sure, its sort of hippy-dippy, but there is sort of a visceral enjoyment that comes from receiving a physical package or letter, and their goal is to make sending things supremely simple. I actually like the idea myself, but I doubt that it will get implemented without either starting their own carrier, or a deep partnership with one of the private carriers. I suspect The USPS is to mired in political crap to adopt this.
Dear god, I remember that insane thing. The first time I saw a diagram of that escape system, I thought to myself "This has about, 15 to many steps in it." So many things to go wrong and kill you, AFTER you've escaped from an exploding rocket.
Yeah, i've finally gotten used to the disappointment related to these articles and that name.
I remember reading about the development of this escape system a few years back, and as I recall, there was much discussion of the fact that, because of how big a bomb the boost stage becomes if it fails, that the acceleration required to get the capsule off the stack fast enough to avoid being incinerated would be enough acceleration to kill the crew outright. At that time, the escape system was actually even more over complicated, with something like 9 parachutes in 3 deployments involved, so this is obviously an improvement, but I'm still curious about the other part of the problem.
The horror of all the tiny screws was, that wile tightening the very last one down, the blades on the head of the only size 000 philips driver i had actually sheered off on the last turn. Lessons learned? 1 apple uses very durable screws, 2 whoever made that screwdriver used crappy metal, and 3, holy shit, i'm glad that didn't happen five screws earlier. Thus, the screw driver was used up.
You know my first thought when I saw the 5K iMac? "Jesus, making desktop wallpapers for that is going to create some HUGE photoshop files. " followed by "How many people own a camera that will take a picture that will actually look good as a desktop on that?"
No, he's fine, he just drinks WAY to much lime Gatorade.
I'm still doggedly using a customized "grays on white" theme for Adium, and never switching to Messages.
No, changing the fan in a 2007 macbook is not a task for ordinary mortals. I actually used up a screw driver on that project. USED UP A SCREWDRIVER.
Never said I had a problem with the lack of Walmart, just that it annoys the local youngsters. Honestly though, our local economy is so lousy, i doubt anyone would notice the difference.
Happened where I live. Hell, at one point there was a sign up "Walmart, coming soon to this location" and then the sign came down. Turns out, a selection of the local 'elite' pushed the city council into doing *something* and now the closest walmart is over a 2 hour round trip. Much to the annoyance of just about anyone under the age of say, 25.