And therein lies the solution. Switch to a fee that's not only per mile, but which also takes into account the axle weight of your vehicle when fully loaded.
If it happens, I'll be laughing, because the axle weight of my car (a Smart ForTwo) is just ~880 pounds -- and that's including all fluids plus a half tank of gas. A typical passenger sedan is more like 1,680 pounds per axle, and a pickup truck is more like 2,270 pounds per axle. (Those figures are based on average curb weights for a 2015 Camry and F-150, respectively.)
And as for the idiotic SUV crowd, they'll finally be paying their fair share. Based on curb weight, the axle weight of a 2015 Escalade is 2,860 pounds. That's *3.25* times the axle weight of my vehicle, and 1.7 times the typical passenger sedan.
Of course, it would be even more fair were the figure to take into account the actual weight of your vehicle including passengers and cargo at all times, but short of mandating new sensors on every vehicle or building weigh stations into the road network, there's no realistic way to achieve that.
Yes, but the rest of your post was rendered irrelevant by the fact that if you'd looked for the answer yourself, you wouldn't have tried to make a point that was flat-out wrong. He was getting $14m because if they'd sacked him and paid somebody else to copy his voices for less money, he'd have sued and ended up costing them much more money. If he quits, though, he has no (or at least, much less) recourse when they hire somebody else to do the same voices for less.
They're not a charity, but they're well aware that if they sacked someone and replaced them with a cheaper copycat, they could end up in court spending a whole lot more money for the "cheap" option. It has nothing to do with how easy (or not) it is to mimic the voices. Listen to Bugs Bunny throughout the years and you'll find there's more variation in Blanc's own performances than there is between Blanc and some of those who came after him.
And that's as much of the legwork as I'm willing to do for you. You want answers to blindingly obvious questions? Go do the research -- it's not difficult.
tl;dr: Yes, multiple voice actors were individually able to parrot many or most of Blanc's creations
It has NOTHING to do with convenience, and everything to do with another C-word: Consumables. (Or if you prefer, brand lock-in.) Devices like the Keurig are aimed at the same idiots that buy things like Swiffers instead of a regular duster / mop that does the job just as well for infinitely less money in the long term.
Frankly, I wouldn't care myself, and would consider it no more than a tax on the mortally stupid -- except that it affects me and everybody else on this planet because of all the waste from these consumables that goes straight into landfills, plus all of the energy wasted making them in the first place.
We need to start educating consumers as to why products like these are a bad, bad thing, and boycotting companies who make proprietary consumables when a reusable alternative would suffice.
No, they didn't replace a single role of his. They replaced more or less every single role, and the average person wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Heck, listen to Bugs Bunny throughout the years and there's more variation in Mel Blanc's own delivery than there is between Mel Blanc and some of his successors.
Talented voice actors have been replaced quickly by equally talented voice actors in the past, and they will be again. After Mel Blanc died, it took only six months to the first broadcast of a work in which one of his best-known characters was voiced by another actor. And that's the broadcast, not the start of production -- chances are it was a few months at most to replace probably the most iconic voice actor in history, and many others have gone on to voice his characters since then.
Only one person on earth can be Mr. Burns, and a lot of people want to see Mr. Burns. So if you want Mr. Burns on your show, you had better pay that person a lot of money.
I'd be willing to bet the opposite is true -- there are a LOT of people out there who can do a completely convincing Mr. Burns. I doubt his main characters will even be retired -- they'll just have somebody else voice them.
When Mel Blanc died, did Warner retire Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety Bird, Sylvester the Cat, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, Marvin the Martian, Pepe Le Pew, Speedy Gonzales, Wile E. Coyote or the Tasmanian Devil? Nope. Take a look at Wiki and you'll find that even the legendary Blanc's characters were able to be mimicked by a raft of other voiceover artists, and some of those artists were able to cover not just a few but many of his characters.
The fact is that like any other job, voiceovers are something that can be done very well by a whole lot of people.
Mod parent up, this perfectly sums up the reason anything but in-person voting is a bad idea. Hell, even with in-person voting we have employers trying to coerce votes without punishment. David Siegel, anybody?
No, they're not. Why, you ask? Because they're heavier than windows, and so will increase fuel costs. "Windowless" first class section, maybe. Same screens used in cattle class to play non-stop ads, possibly if it offsets the cost of the fuel and increases overall profits. But wall screens like these being used merely to provide an outside view in the entire passenger section of regularly scheduled commercial flights? You'll get your flying car before you see that happen.
Sorry, but you don't go far enough here. As arbiters of the law, the police should be held to a higher standard than the rest of us, precisely because their career is ripe for abuse.
All investigations of the police should be handled by an impartial third party, and if at any point you or a family member have served in the police force, that should automatically bar you from working for that third party. And if you are found guilty of any misdemeanor as a member of the police force, you should automatically receive the highest possible penalty with no opportunity for appeal and (if jail time is involved) parole.
Ever fly a commercial airliner which programs itself, chooses its own route, and makes its own decisions throughout the flight, almost completely unmonitored while the pilot reads Playboy or snoozes? No, you say? (At least, you do if you're truthful.) So you'd like to make the leap to that future, would you? Yeah, I didn't think so. The autopilot thing is a fallacy: We're talking about journeys that are almost entirely free of things near you to crash into, along routes that were determined by a human rather than a computer, with a human paying attention at all times and with the only real risk coming during takeoff and landing where the computer is given significant external assistance in terms of its flight path and the actions of surrounding aircraft, and where it's even more closely-monitored by the crew (or simply disabled and the crew flies the approach and landing manually.) This is in no way comparable to a situation where there is almost no external indications the computer can rely on, other vehicles driving unpredictably all around it, and the computer is expected to make its own routing decisions. Apples to airships, my friend.
This. And doubly so when you consider that the human has to be paying attention all the time, or when the computer gives up / fails gracelessly and control has to be taken over by the human, it will take too long to assess the situation and take action. The only way to avoid the accident will be to pay attention the whole time, at which point you might as well occupy youself by simply switching off the computer and driving. Otherwise you're going to get bored and your attention will drift.
Of course, that won't happen. What will happen is that the drivers won't pay attention, and will also fail to salvage the situation most of the time when the computer has failed, simply because they weren't prepared and situationally aware. And that is one of the main reasons why driverless vehicles are a really, really bad idea. What we're doing is to create a vehicle that makes it less likely the human will be able to prevent a crash when (not if) the computer doesn't know what to do in the big, bad, dirty real world.
My Xperia Z2 is now a year old. It runs better than it did when I first bought it. It runs almost all Android apps without issue. I pretty much only charge it when I notice it running low -- I can't remember the last time it died overnight. The battery lasts at least 48 hours even with regular use. In an hour on the charger it is almost back to full charge. I've never had any kind of security issue, and if I lose it or it gets stolen, it is a brick to whomever ends up with it.
For the life of me, I don't see the advantage of your Blackberry over my existing Android device.
Android fragmentation exists because manufacturers refuse to maintain their phones. Pushing that job onto the carriers is a recipe for customer dissatisfaction and security breaches. If Google wants to solve this problem, they need to force the manufacturers to accept responsibility for updating their own hardware.
Balderdash. It isn't the carriers that create the updates, it is the manufacturers.
The carriers certainly hold up the updates for weeks or months on end for "testing" (read: making sure it doesn't brick the phone and all the contractually-required bloat is installed). But maintaining the phones isn't and never has been the carrier's job. It has always been the manufacturer's job, and to varying degrees, they do a shockingly bad job of it -- which is why Google needs to take it in-house.
This is the one and *only* area in which Android trails iOS: The availability of updates in a timely and bloat-free manner. Solve that and there will be no reason for iOS to exist any more.
Are you really suggesting that as a meaningful solution to bloat -- going in and force-stopping apps every time you start your phone, and quite possibly leaving it in an unstable state in the process?
Because that doesn't strike me as a solution, but rather as an attitude that's part of the problem.
Largely, they don't do it because the odds are carefully stacked in favor of those who paid for entry. With a TotalFark membership, you get to see the contests and prep your entries ahead of time, and because the voting happens from the moment their entries are posted *and* the entries are always shown chronologically, the winners are almost always among the first entries, and almost always from paying TotalFark subscribers. Which rather defeats the point of pretending it is a contest.
If it was actually a meaningful contest, voting wouldn't be possible until *after* entries had closed, and the entries would be shown in a random order to every potential voter. And if that happened, I'd probably start entering regularly again. As-is, the thing that made me sign up for Fark almost 12 years ago is something I almost never participate in or even bother to look at any more.
Yep, you don't want to drive if you're worried about code. There's a good chance your car contains close to 100 million lines of it these days. Wait, you bought an old car to avoid that, you say? GM has been using at least 50,000+ lines of code in all of its vehicles since the very early 80s, according to this IEEE article.
Slashdot Mirror
And therein lies the solution. Switch to a fee that's not only per mile, but which also takes into account the axle weight of your vehicle when fully loaded.
If it happens, I'll be laughing, because the axle weight of my car (a Smart ForTwo) is just ~880 pounds -- and that's including all fluids plus a half tank of gas. A typical passenger sedan is more like 1,680 pounds per axle, and a pickup truck is more like 2,270 pounds per axle. (Those figures are based on average curb weights for a 2015 Camry and F-150, respectively.)
And as for the idiotic SUV crowd, they'll finally be paying their fair share. Based on curb weight, the axle weight of a 2015 Escalade is 2,860 pounds. That's *3.25* times the axle weight of my vehicle, and 1.7 times the typical passenger sedan.
Of course, it would be even more fair were the figure to take into account the actual weight of your vehicle including passengers and cargo at all times, but short of mandating new sensors on every vehicle or building weigh stations into the road network, there's no realistic way to achieve that.
If only there were a way to find out whether a voice artist had sued anybody and won before claiming infringement of the voice they created.
Oh, wait, there is.
http://www.hollywoodreporter.c...
Yes, but the rest of your post was rendered irrelevant by the fact that if you'd looked for the answer yourself, you wouldn't have tried to make a point that was flat-out wrong. He was getting $14m because if they'd sacked him and paid somebody else to copy his voices for less money, he'd have sued and ended up costing them much more money. If he quits, though, he has no (or at least, much less) recourse when they hire somebody else to do the same voices for less.
They're not a charity, but they're well aware that if they sacked someone and replaced them with a cheaper copycat, they could end up in court spending a whole lot more money for the "cheap" option. It has nothing to do with how easy (or not) it is to mimic the voices. Listen to Bugs Bunny throughout the years and you'll find there's more variation in Blanc's own performances than there is between Blanc and some of those who came after him.
You do know you could just look this up yourself, right?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J...
And that's as much of the legwork as I'm willing to do for you. You want answers to blindingly obvious questions? Go do the research -- it's not difficult.
tl;dr: Yes, multiple voice actors were individually able to parrot many or most of Blanc's creations
It has NOTHING to do with convenience, and everything to do with another C-word: Consumables. (Or if you prefer, brand lock-in.) Devices like the Keurig are aimed at the same idiots that buy things like Swiffers instead of a regular duster / mop that does the job just as well for infinitely less money in the long term.
Frankly, I wouldn't care myself, and would consider it no more than a tax on the mortally stupid -- except that it affects me and everybody else on this planet because of all the waste from these consumables that goes straight into landfills, plus all of the energy wasted making them in the first place.
We need to start educating consumers as to why products like these are a bad, bad thing, and boycotting companies who make proprietary consumables when a reusable alternative would suffice.
No, they didn't replace a single role of his. They replaced more or less every single role, and the average person wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Heck, listen to Bugs Bunny throughout the years and there's more variation in Mel Blanc's own delivery than there is between Mel Blanc and some of his successors.
Talented voice actors have been replaced quickly by equally talented voice actors in the past, and they will be again. After Mel Blanc died, it took only six months to the first broadcast of a work in which one of his best-known characters was voiced by another actor. And that's the broadcast, not the start of production -- chances are it was a few months at most to replace probably the most iconic voice actor in history, and many others have gone on to voice his characters since then.
Only one person on earth can be Mr. Burns, and a lot of people want to see Mr. Burns. So if you want Mr. Burns on your show, you had better pay that person a lot of money.
I'd be willing to bet the opposite is true -- there are a LOT of people out there who can do a completely convincing Mr. Burns. I doubt his main characters will even be retired -- they'll just have somebody else voice them.
When Mel Blanc died, did Warner retire Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tweety Bird, Sylvester the Cat, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, Marvin the Martian, Pepe Le Pew, Speedy Gonzales, Wile E. Coyote or the Tasmanian Devil? Nope. Take a look at Wiki and you'll find that even the legendary Blanc's characters were able to be mimicked by a raft of other voiceover artists, and some of those artists were able to cover not just a few but many of his characters.
The fact is that like any other job, voiceovers are something that can be done very well by a whole lot of people.
Mod parent up, this perfectly sums up the reason anything but in-person voting is a bad idea. Hell, even with in-person voting we have employers trying to coerce votes without punishment. David Siegel, anybody?
You'd think that, but the websites he made were all on GeoCities.
No, they're not. Why, you ask? Because they're heavier than windows, and so will increase fuel costs. "Windowless" first class section, maybe. Same screens used in cattle class to play non-stop ads, possibly if it offsets the cost of the fuel and increases overall profits. But wall screens like these being used merely to provide an outside view in the entire passenger section of regularly scheduled commercial flights? You'll get your flying car before you see that happen.
Sorry, but you don't go far enough here. As arbiters of the law, the police should be held to a higher standard than the rest of us, precisely because their career is ripe for abuse.
All investigations of the police should be handled by an impartial third party, and if at any point you or a family member have served in the police force, that should automatically bar you from working for that third party. And if you are found guilty of any misdemeanor as a member of the police force, you should automatically receive the highest possible penalty with no opportunity for appeal and (if jail time is involved) parole.
This, this, a million times this.
Ever fly a commercial airliner which programs itself, chooses its own route, and makes its own decisions throughout the flight, almost completely unmonitored while the pilot reads Playboy or snoozes? No, you say? (At least, you do if you're truthful.) So you'd like to make the leap to that future, would you? Yeah, I didn't think so. The autopilot thing is a fallacy: We're talking about journeys that are almost entirely free of things near you to crash into, along routes that were determined by a human rather than a computer, with a human paying attention at all times and with the only real risk coming during takeoff and landing where the computer is given significant external assistance in terms of its flight path and the actions of surrounding aircraft, and where it's even more closely-monitored by the crew (or simply disabled and the crew flies the approach and landing manually.) This is in no way comparable to a situation where there is almost no external indications the computer can rely on, other vehicles driving unpredictably all around it, and the computer is expected to make its own routing decisions. Apples to airships, my friend.
This. And doubly so when you consider that the human has to be paying attention all the time, or when the computer gives up / fails gracelessly and control has to be taken over by the human, it will take too long to assess the situation and take action. The only way to avoid the accident will be to pay attention the whole time, at which point you might as well occupy youself by simply switching off the computer and driving. Otherwise you're going to get bored and your attention will drift.
Of course, that won't happen. What will happen is that the drivers won't pay attention, and will also fail to salvage the situation most of the time when the computer has failed, simply because they weren't prepared and situationally aware. And that is one of the main reasons why driverless vehicles are a really, really bad idea. What we're doing is to create a vehicle that makes it less likely the human will be able to prevent a crash when (not if) the computer doesn't know what to do in the big, bad, dirty real world.
My Xperia Z2 is now a year old. It runs better than it did when I first bought it. It runs almost all Android apps without issue. I pretty much only charge it when I notice it running low -- I can't remember the last time it died overnight. The battery lasts at least 48 hours even with regular use. In an hour on the charger it is almost back to full charge. I've never had any kind of security issue, and if I lose it or it gets stolen, it is a brick to whomever ends up with it.
For the life of me, I don't see the advantage of your Blackberry over my existing Android device.
Android fragmentation exists because manufacturers refuse to maintain their phones. Pushing that job onto the carriers is a recipe for customer dissatisfaction and security breaches. If Google wants to solve this problem, they need to force the manufacturers to accept responsibility for updating their own hardware.
Balderdash. It isn't the carriers that create the updates, it is the manufacturers.
The carriers certainly hold up the updates for weeks or months on end for "testing" (read: making sure it doesn't brick the phone and all the contractually-required bloat is installed). But maintaining the phones isn't and never has been the carrier's job. It has always been the manufacturer's job, and to varying degrees, they do a shockingly bad job of it -- which is why Google needs to take it in-house.
This is the one and *only* area in which Android trails iOS: The availability of updates in a timely and bloat-free manner. Solve that and there will be no reason for iOS to exist any more.
Are you really suggesting that as a meaningful solution to bloat -- going in and force-stopping apps every time you start your phone, and quite possibly leaving it in an unstable state in the process?
Because that doesn't strike me as a solution, but rather as an attitude that's part of the problem.
My reply wasn't to you. Your joke was pretty obvious; I doubt there's anybody here who didn't get it.
Jesus. I knew there would be a big difference, but I didn't realize it would be that big.
Largely, they don't do it because the odds are carefully stacked in favor of those who paid for entry. With a TotalFark membership, you get to see the contests and prep your entries ahead of time, and because the voting happens from the moment their entries are posted *and* the entries are always shown chronologically, the winners are almost always among the first entries, and almost always from paying TotalFark subscribers. Which rather defeats the point of pretending it is a contest.
If it was actually a meaningful contest, voting wouldn't be possible until *after* entries had closed, and the entries would be shown in a random order to every potential voter. And if that happened, I'd probably start entering regularly again. As-is, the thing that made me sign up for Fark almost 12 years ago is something I almost never participate in or even bother to look at any more.
Yep, you don't want to drive if you're worried about code. There's a good chance your car contains close to 100 million lines of it these days. Wait, you bought an old car to avoid that, you say? GM has been using at least 50,000+ lines of code in all of its vehicles since the very early 80s, according to this IEEE article.
No kidding. The Airbus A380 is said to have more than 100 million lines of code in its avionics (ie. excluding things like in-flight entertainment, etc.). By comparison, the Boeing 787 is said to have "only" around 6.5 million lines of code.
How much longer can a site that's largely based around the same handful of tired old memes remain relevant?