No. Your wrong. The max you can get is controlled by the FTC. The max is quite small - like $500. Then Good Luck ever collecting that even after you "win".
larger fines for safety infractions: failure to use a turn signal while changing lanes? $100 for first offense annually, $200 for second, 30 day suspension for 3rd offense in a 1 year period. Failure to keep to the left hand lane clear except when passing (when possible)? Same fine as above. Run a stop sign or red light? $250 first offense, $500 2nd, 30 day suspension for 3rd. Offenses past the third in a calendar year: 90 day suspension, 6 month, one year and so on. Using a cell phone/tablet while driving? 30 day suspension for first offense plus $100 fine.
.
The fines need to be percentages of income or assets, otherwise they're either too painful for lower incomes or too insignificant for higher. Of course anyone driving a nice car would then be mercilessly harassed by the small town cops that pay their salary by writing tickets, so it might also require that all but a small, fixed amount of the fines go to some central state-wide fund (send it to the schools, maybe).
It doesn't even make sense as extortion. They are setting the fees so high that companies may be tempted to view settling as the more expensive alternative.
If they want to play Mafia games, then there is a small danger that some of these companies they extort may find that pooling resources and paying someone $10K or so plus expenses to take out these turds may be a more economical solution than either paying the troll or settling.
Let me show you the scanner... it's in here by the tape safe...
Why the transaction will ALWAYS be in the merchant's favor of course!
Depends. I suspect that "We always round cash down!!" will be plastered in quite a few front windows to try to attract customers. Of course it's easy for merchants to game the original price so this always works out in their favor. Depending on how much the CC companies are gouging the merchant, always rounding in the customer's favor might actually save both the customer and merchant money if more people pay cash.
In any case, I wouldn't really care. Given the amount of cash transactions I make every year, even if they cheated and rounded.01 up to.05 every time, my maximum yearly exposure would be about... $1? Maybe 2?
Is there some law that would force Google to pay? Otherwise, if they don't have an existing agreement, I would think they'd just file the bills in the circular filing cabinet under the desk. And maybe report them for some kind of fraud for sending out bogus bills?
Or is this just another case of "pay our 'fee' or we sue" extortion?
Just stay away from AAA titles completely, is what I'm learning (especially if it has "EA" anywhere on the box). You have to deal with DRM, always-online requirements, being unplayable without community bugfix mods, etc. Not to mention the stunted PC interfaces due to console cross-development (Bethesda, I'm looking at you).
I've had way more fun with the little indie games like Minecraft and Kerbal Space Program than any of the bigger titles (although Minecraft isn't so little any more).
No, they need to go a step further than that, really. Regulation that states that no one entity can do any two or more of create content (media companies), deliver content (ISPs), or provide physical connectivity (last-mile line installation/maint.). That would pretty much solve the problem overnight, especially if the last bit was handled by municipalities or co-ops.
If the price of so-called "freedom" is 20 dead children, then either you do not know what freedom is or the price is too high and I no longer wish to be "free".
Roughy 500 kids go permanently missing each year in the USA and are presumed dead. Millions of public monitoring cameras would surely reduce that number. Are you willing to sacrified the freedom to go about your daily business unwatched in order to save an order of magnitude more children? At what point does the price for a child's life become too high for you?
That's nothing. I couldn't find more recent data, but in 2000, over 6,400 children (age 0-18) died in motor vehicle crashes. That's a Sandy Hook EVERY TWO DAYS. Where's the outrage over that? (and the car-control lobby trying to ban cars?)
if all guns were gone tomorrow, loonies would still kill people.
In much smaller numbers.
I doubt it. Guns are currently just the easiest way to commit mass murder. These guys may have mental problems, but they sure seem to put a lot of thought into their killing sprees (body armor, etc.).
If they can't get guns, they'll just use something else. In the case of a school, they can normally count on everyone on the premises being completely unarmed, which guarantees them 5-10 minutes of unopposed slaughter regardless of the means.
It isn't the British tabloid journalist who is to blame for the sensationalism, though, because when they asked the Professor who wrote the paper, this is what he said:
“This is a significant breakthrough which will revolutionise the way visual media is produced. To accelerate this project we’ll need companies from around the world to get involved...[and] increase the potential applications of this game-changing research.”
Rough translation: "I'm full of shit, but if you send cash, I promise to polish the turds."
And where would you consider to be a "safe" area in the US that has no storms, no earthquakes, etc? And is also somewhat accessible and relatively close to a large population center?
I would think earthquakes are the only one of those disasters that are really hard to deal with. Floods? Pretty much anywhere has a few local high spots that won't flood. If not - make one. Storms? You can always follow the "add more concrete" school of engineering, I guess, but I'm guessing nuclear plants normal construction probably makes them all but immune to wind already.
So really, find a geologically stable area, and you can deal with the other problems.
My wife's last car had an in-dash GPS. After a few years when the maps started showing their age and missing entire subdivisions, we looked into replacing it.
Turned out to buy the DVD from GM to update the maps was on the order of $700 or so. Which, was obviously way more than it would cost to buy a Tom Tom or similar.
I try to avoid such things because they do go obsolete far faster than the thing they're attached to. Though, the BlueTooth integration in my KIA is pretty sweet.
Not to mention the fact that for the initial cost of most of those "navigation packages," you could buy a brand new standalone GPS every year for about THREE DECADES...:P Maybe only one decade if you're buying top-of-the-line units.
I've never met a car salesdroid that has a good answer when I point that out.
Funny thing is, I swear at least once a week someone runs a light right in front of a cop car, and I have also yet to see that cop actually give a crap and ticket them. Man, if I were the cop I'd make sure they got a ticket just for being so clueless... but I guess that's the point, they know most police don't really care unless they are specifically given that job.
I do a lot of volunteer work with my local PD, and so I've had a chance to talk to them about this very issue. What they told me is that it's extremely difficult to SAFELY enforce red light-running if they're not specifically staking out the intersection to do so.
They have to be able to see the light that the car ran, at the time they entered the intersection, or they likely can't get the ticket to stick in court ("It was green in this direction, so it must have been red for them" isn't good enough). If they can see that, they're on the wrong side of the intersection to catch them, which means they have to run the light themselves with lights/sirens, which, at a busy intersection has a fairly high chance to cause an accident itself. I've actually been in the car with them, while they're practically pulling their hair out and cursing because someone blatantly ran the light, but they can't get them, or can't get them without unduly endangering others.
It's not about the upgrades, so much as if the board fails, you have to pay for a new board AND CPU. Motherboard failures (or some other "soldered-on" component like an onboard NIC or RAID controller) are common enough that this would be a real pain.
If we have enough tech to make a warp drive we can probably disperse energy on route as opposed to all of it at the end of the trip.
Or perhaps use said energy to power the warp drive? Would be really cool if you just had to "jump start" the warp, and use mostly energy you collected afterwards. Sort of a warp speed Bussard ramjet.
Not to mention, I would definitely think twice about hiring someone who has Hostess on their employment history, knowing they did that to their last employer.
Not only do they now have no paycheck instead of 90% of one, but they might have more trouble now finding a new one.
Yep... I just ditched an iPhone for an SIII this round. The hardest part was leaving behind the apps, etc. that I can't use any more, or have to re-purchase an Android version.
Thing is, now that I'm on Android, I have a lot more choice for the next upgrade, and even if I don't get another Samsung, the chance that I'll go back to an iPhone is next to nothing. I think a lot of people keep getting iPhones because that's really the only upgrade path where you don't lose everything. Having switched, Android is much better than iOS, IMO, and once you break out of the lock-in, there's little reason to go back.
So every person that Samsung knocks away from Apple, is likely a permanent loss for Apple.
this may mean licensing or journeyman boards, but jesus. take some responsibility. right now you can just shit code out and put the words "rock star" on your resume. Stop with the entitlement shit until you stand behind your work.
Right... Given that the schedule is usually set by marketing, and stuff ships regardless of whether the devs think it's ready or not, I can't blame them for washing their hands of it.
A civil engineer isn't going to sign off on an unfinished bridge just because the city promised to have it open by today. A developer shouldn't have to, either.
The only thing tying a lot of people (myself included) to Windows is gaming. With how much I hate the new ModernUI, I've been taking another look at going back to Linux as a main O/S.
Done properly, you wouldn't even need Linux as your main OS, or even Wine. Games could ship with two installers - one that installs to a native/main Linux install, and another that installs the data files to whatever Linux-readable partition is handy, then you just boot a Live CD-like image off of the game DVD to play. Obviously less than ideal from a convenience standpoint, but it would be a way to get games running in Linux without a lot of fiddling by end users that primarily run Windows.
Slashdot Mirror
No. Your wrong. The max you can get is controlled by the FTC. The max is quite small - like $500. Then Good Luck ever collecting that even after you "win".
Just sell it to a competing debt collector :)
and (b) because I can't see these plastic magazines working exceptionally well.
Funnily enough, for a mass shooting, a crappy magazine that only stands up to a use or two would be fine, while it would suck for law-abiding owners.
Well, if we're lucky, they'll write the legislation referring to "clips", and we can continue to use whatever size magazines we want. :P
...my ass
Right up until the government shows up and demands that they send all the traffic to them first, and forbids them from notifying their customers.
larger fines for safety infractions:
failure to use a turn signal while changing lanes? $100 for first offense annually, $200 for second, 30 day suspension for 3rd offense in a 1 year period.
Failure to keep to the left hand lane clear except when passing (when possible)? Same fine as above.
Run a stop sign or red light? $250 first offense, $500 2nd, 30 day suspension for 3rd.
Offenses past the third in a calendar year: 90 day suspension, 6 month, one year and so on.
Using a cell phone/tablet while driving? 30 day suspension for first offense plus $100 fine.
.
The fines need to be percentages of income or assets, otherwise they're either too painful for lower incomes or too insignificant for higher. Of course anyone driving a nice car would then be mercilessly harassed by the small town cops that pay their salary by writing tickets, so it might also require that all but a small, fixed amount of the fines go to some central state-wide fund (send it to the schools, maybe).
It doesn't even make sense as extortion. They are setting the fees so high that companies may be tempted to view settling as the more expensive alternative.
If they want to play Mafia games, then there is a small danger that some of these companies they extort may find that pooling resources and paying someone $10K or so plus expenses to take out these turds may be a more economical solution than either paying the troll or settling.
Let me show you the scanner... it's in here by the tape safe...
*SLAM*
Why the transaction will ALWAYS be in the merchant's favor of course!
Depends. I suspect that "We always round cash down!!" will be plastered in quite a few front windows to try to attract customers. Of course it's easy for merchants to game the original price so this always works out in their favor. Depending on how much the CC companies are gouging the merchant, always rounding in the customer's favor might actually save both the customer and merchant money if more people pay cash.
In any case, I wouldn't really care. Given the amount of cash transactions I make every year, even if they cheated and rounded .01 up to .05 every time, my maximum yearly exposure would be about... $1? Maybe 2?
Is there some law that would force Google to pay? Otherwise, if they don't have an existing agreement, I would think they'd just file the bills in the circular filing cabinet under the desk. And maybe report them for some kind of fraud for sending out bogus bills?
Or is this just another case of "pay our 'fee' or we sue" extortion?
Just stay away from AAA titles completely, is what I'm learning (especially if it has "EA" anywhere on the box). You have to deal with DRM, always-online requirements, being unplayable without community bugfix mods, etc. Not to mention the stunted PC interfaces due to console cross-development (Bethesda, I'm looking at you).
I've had way more fun with the little indie games like Minecraft and Kerbal Space Program than any of the bigger titles (although Minecraft isn't so little any more).
Can you name any major political change that happened through normal democratic methods without widespread protests ?
How about corporate America taking over the government?
No, they need to go a step further than that, really. Regulation that states that no one entity can do any two or more of create content (media companies), deliver content (ISPs), or provide physical connectivity (last-mile line installation/maint.). That would pretty much solve the problem overnight, especially if the last bit was handled by municipalities or co-ops.
If the price of so-called "freedom" is 20 dead children, then either you do not know what freedom is or the price is too high and I no longer wish to be "free".
Roughy 500 kids go permanently missing each year in the USA and are presumed dead. Millions of public monitoring cameras would surely reduce that number. Are you willing to sacrified the freedom to go about your daily business unwatched in order to save an order of magnitude more children? At what point does the price for a child's life become too high for you?
That's nothing. I couldn't find more recent data, but in 2000, over 6,400 children (age 0-18) died in motor vehicle crashes. That's a Sandy Hook EVERY TWO DAYS. Where's the outrage over that? (and the car-control lobby trying to ban cars?)
if all guns were gone tomorrow, loonies would still kill people.
In much smaller numbers.
I doubt it. Guns are currently just the easiest way to commit mass murder. These guys may have mental problems, but they sure seem to put a lot of thought into their killing sprees (body armor, etc.).
If they can't get guns, they'll just use something else. In the case of a school, they can normally count on everyone on the premises being completely unarmed, which guarantees them 5-10 minutes of unopposed slaughter regardless of the means.
It isn't the British tabloid journalist who is to blame for the sensationalism, though, because when they asked the Professor who wrote the paper, this is what he said:
“This is a significant breakthrough which will revolutionise the way visual media is produced. To accelerate this project we’ll need companies from around the world to get involved...[and] increase the potential applications of this game-changing research.”
Rough translation: "I'm full of shit, but if you send cash, I promise to polish the turds."
And where would you consider to be a "safe" area in the US that has no storms, no earthquakes, etc? And is also somewhat accessible and relatively close to a large population center?
I would think earthquakes are the only one of those disasters that are really hard to deal with. Floods? Pretty much anywhere has a few local high spots that won't flood. If not - make one. Storms? You can always follow the "add more concrete" school of engineering, I guess, but I'm guessing nuclear plants normal construction probably makes them all but immune to wind already.
So really, find a geologically stable area, and you can deal with the other problems.
My wife's last car had an in-dash GPS. After a few years when the maps started showing their age and missing entire subdivisions, we looked into replacing it.
Turned out to buy the DVD from GM to update the maps was on the order of $700 or so. Which, was obviously way more than it would cost to buy a Tom Tom or similar.
I try to avoid such things because they do go obsolete far faster than the thing they're attached to. Though, the BlueTooth integration in my KIA is pretty sweet.
Not to mention the fact that for the initial cost of most of those "navigation packages," you could buy a brand new standalone GPS every year for about THREE DECADES... :P Maybe only one decade if you're buying top-of-the-line units.
I've never met a car salesdroid that has a good answer when I point that out.
Funny thing is, I swear at least once a week someone runs a light right in front of a cop car, and I have also yet to see that cop actually give a crap and ticket them. Man, if I were the cop I'd make sure they got a ticket just for being so clueless... but I guess that's the point, they know most police don't really care unless they are specifically given that job.
I do a lot of volunteer work with my local PD, and so I've had a chance to talk to them about this very issue. What they told me is that it's extremely difficult to SAFELY enforce red light-running if they're not specifically staking out the intersection to do so.
They have to be able to see the light that the car ran, at the time they entered the intersection, or they likely can't get the ticket to stick in court ("It was green in this direction, so it must have been red for them" isn't good enough). If they can see that, they're on the wrong side of the intersection to catch them, which means they have to run the light themselves with lights/sirens, which, at a busy intersection has a fairly high chance to cause an accident itself. I've actually been in the car with them, while they're practically pulling their hair out and cursing because someone blatantly ran the light, but they can't get them, or can't get them without unduly endangering others.
It's not about the upgrades, so much as if the board fails, you have to pay for a new board AND CPU. Motherboard failures (or some other "soldered-on" component like an onboard NIC or RAID controller) are common enough that this would be a real pain.
If we have enough tech to make a warp drive we can probably disperse energy on route as opposed to all of it at the end of the trip.
Or perhaps use said energy to power the warp drive? Would be really cool if you just had to "jump start" the warp, and use mostly energy you collected afterwards. Sort of a warp speed Bussard ramjet.
Not to mention, I would definitely think twice about hiring someone who has Hostess on their employment history, knowing they did that to their last employer.
Not only do they now have no paycheck instead of 90% of one, but they might have more trouble now finding a new one.
more than 17 petaflops a second.
Wait... 17 petaflop per second per second?! How long can it keep that up?
Yep... I just ditched an iPhone for an SIII this round. The hardest part was leaving behind the apps, etc. that I can't use any more, or have to re-purchase an Android version.
Thing is, now that I'm on Android, I have a lot more choice for the next upgrade, and even if I don't get another Samsung, the chance that I'll go back to an iPhone is next to nothing. I think a lot of people keep getting iPhones because that's really the only upgrade path where you don't lose everything. Having switched, Android is much better than iOS, IMO, and once you break out of the lock-in, there's little reason to go back.
So every person that Samsung knocks away from Apple, is likely a permanent loss for Apple.
this may mean licensing or journeyman boards, but jesus. take some responsibility. right now you can just shit code out and put the words "rock star" on your resume. Stop with the entitlement shit until you stand behind your work.
Right... Given that the schedule is usually set by marketing, and stuff ships regardless of whether the devs think it's ready or not, I can't blame them for washing their hands of it.
A civil engineer isn't going to sign off on an unfinished bridge just because the city promised to have it open by today. A developer shouldn't have to, either.
If he really believes that, he's at least making good progress on copying the Reality Distortion Field feature...
The only thing tying a lot of people (myself included) to Windows is gaming. With how much I hate the new ModernUI, I've been taking another look at going back to Linux as a main O/S.
Done properly, you wouldn't even need Linux as your main OS, or even Wine. Games could ship with two installers - one that installs to a native/main Linux install, and another that installs the data files to whatever Linux-readable partition is handy, then you just boot a Live CD-like image off of the game DVD to play. Obviously less than ideal from a convenience standpoint, but it would be a way to get games running in Linux without a lot of fiddling by end users that primarily run Windows.