I don't think it would be too far fetched to imagine organized crime ID theft rings trying to get people hired on as cleaning staff at high-end hotels to do this sort of thing.
IMO the problem is that we keep insisting on adjusting the time to match where the sun (more or less) is at our location. We need just ONE time, period.
It would just mean that I go to work at 1400Z and go home at 2200Z instead of going to work at exactly the same time and calling it 0800CST. As a bonus, it would get rid of all of the daylight savings time nonsense.
Exactly like a paper book, except that anyone who wants to borrow it needs to also have a $250 gadget (and it has to be a Nook, not just any other reader). Which makes that feature pretty useless, IMO, unless the software to read it on a PC or other device is freely available.
You forgot option 3 (home theater + Netflix or similar)
The math for me would work out as follows: If I watched my one movie per week or so, and purchased the food my SO and I consume while watching at a movie theater, we'd have to spend probably $30/wk or more. I spent around $7k on my HT equipment. That means less than 5 years to break even (assuming you don't get too much upgrade-itis).
Pros: Sound and picture as good OR BETTER than a theater (plus I control the volume) Additional people can join in at no cost Can use for gaming, tv, sports, music, etc. when you don't feel like a movie Pauseable Unlimited cheap food/drink options No cell phones, talking, jostling, or screen obscuring No travel or parking hassles No "armrestling" Can make out and canoodle all you want Babysitter is optional instead of required
Cons: High up-front cost (but can break even over the life of the system) Quality of experience depends on available space (appropriately sized "sealed" space with easily controllable light levels can be hard to come by) Quality of experience depends on how well the system was set up (probably not a problem for the/. crowd) Possible "Wife Acceptance Factor" issues ("You want to put a big ugly subwoofer WHERE?!") Not apartment-friendly Have to wait for movies to be rentable
You see, they have these nifty things called "car rental agencies." I predict that if small electrics become common, there will be a great opportunity for companies to rent larger trucks & gas-powered cars for people that only need them every few months to haul stuff around or go on a trip.
Your savings on gas would more than pay for the occasionally necessary rental.
I pretty much had the same experience. Dead simple. Given that I was expecting a Windows XP-esque bare-metal, driver-finding, profile-transferring all day nightmare, I was quite impressed.
They really need to split out install time vs. profile transfer time. When I installed (clean install on new i7/6GB), it took 30 minutes, with me only having to be there for about 3 minutes.
Of course it's going to take forever if you have hundreds of GB of crap to transfer. I had about 30GB, and it took about an hour (over the network with the transfer wizard) to get it done. I had to be there for only about 10 minutes of that, because it ACTUALLY WORKED without me having to baby-sit. For once.
I suspect that the "20 hour" upgrade was a "spend 15 minutes and walk away for 19.75 hours" upgrade.
And that's the problem... It costs the state nothing to pile as many charges as they please on you, but it costs a SHITLOAD to fight them.
Maybe it's time to make the state pay for your defense when you're aquitted? If they have one valid charge, and pile on 9 other bogus ones to see if they stick, they pay 90% of your defense bill if you're aquitted of 9/10 of them.
I'd rather add a provision that states that every bill must be submitted to J. Random Granny, who will then paraphrase it as she understands it. If her paraphrase doesn't match the intent of the authors, it has to be re-drafted.
Yup... It won't be "the end" until the government stops abiding by the election results (or starts fixing the elections). After that point, there's really no going back sans violence.
I keep having this crazy idea that I should run for president in '12. It would be the "Kick the Politicians Out of Washington" campaign. I keep wondering if enough people are fed up enough with the establishment that a movement to kick them all out and replace them with "normal" people would actually work.
My agenda: - Constitutional amendment: single-issue bills only. (reduce pork and make reps accountable for everything they vote on instead of being able to hide behind a "must pass" bill) - Constitutional amendment: 10 year sunset clause on ALL federal laws. (create an upper bound on the number of laws that the federal gov't can maintain) - Move elections to an instant-run-off system so voters don't feel they have to try to game the system - Move election day to July 4th. More people vote because they're off work. Can celebrate *getting* freedom and *keeping* it.
At least in my country, an officer is not allowed to just randomly pull over a vehicle for no reason and then search that vehicle. They are supposed to have probable cause; they can't just go search someoneone to see what they can find. Unless they have a dog, that is. That's right. A police dog can decide your vehicle has drugs or whatever else they're looking for and when the dog starts barking, suddenly the officer has a perfectly legal search. Yes, it would be illegal and a violation of civil rights if that officer used his hands and eyes to locate the same drugs. However, the same search performed with a dog's nose instead of a human officer's hands and eyes is suddenly legal and constitutional. Isn't that amazing, how you can take an unconstitutional act, filter it through the nervous system of the lowly dog, and suddenly it becomes legal and has the court's blessing?
Hold on there... Anything in "plain view" of a place an officer is legally allowed to be is fair game. If you leave a bag of weed on the seat, and an officer walks by the car and sees it, he can search. If your car is emitting detectable drug particles into a place an officer is legally allowed to be, how is that any different? Would you be happier if they were using some sort of electronic detector instead of a dog?
In many cases, I don't think it's so much that healthy food is more expensive, but that it takes MUCH more time to prepare.
Lower income demographics are more likely to have all available adults working more, with less time to cook. My mom didn't work when we were kids, and spent a LOT of time planning menus, shopping, and cooking. Only after I moved out did I start to appreciate how much work that was! This was only possible because dad made enough to support the family on his own.
It's the same as anywhere else: Fast Cheap High quality
I don't mind subsidizing someone who is missing a leg or arm or is paralyzed. What I don't like is subsidizing people which have a problem with the area between their ears. If someone in government could come up with a good mechanism to sort out the truly disadvantaged folks from the idiots who make dumbass decisions then i could get behind such a plan to pay for the people who are disadvantaged. Until then Capitol hill can go pound sand.
Requiring people who are capable of working to actually do (handout/min wage) hours of work (community service, volunteer hours, or whatever) before they can claim anything might help. Even if it doesn't reduce handounts, at least we'll get something for it. People who have more than one additional child while on the program get cut off until they're permanently sterilized.
I think that the entire point of the stormtrooper uniform is to emphasize the mechanistic, monolithic nature of stormtroopers. It also makes sense in the context of stormtroopers all being clones.
I was thinking along the same lines, but in a more practical sense. When the original movies were made, the cheapest and easiest way to make "clones" was probably to cover the actors' faces. No CGI crowds in the 70s.:) Having a fully covered/armored face would look quite odd without body armor, also.
Every single police officer sitting outside the community bar or manning a roadblock is one less police officer that could be patrolling the streets looking for impaired drivers who are swerving all over the place
It doesn't really matter. There are nowhere near enough to police officers to reliably catch those people "swerving all over the place."
However, your comment above about how many times do you wish there was a cop around when you see it holds the answer. If you see a drunk driving dangerously, and there's not a cop there, then CALL ONE! I've done this several times, and the officers are always appreciative. "We need more people to do this - we can't be everywhere at once." Yeah, you have to spend 30 minutes following the guy and giving a statement, but that's better than letting them kill someone.
The difference is that with an electric, you'll basically be topping it off any time you're at home. It's like leaving every morning with a full tank of gas, so unless you're doing a lot of driving that day, you should rarely get to the point where the "low fuel" light comes on.
Why do you need a backup generator? People run out of gas all the time due to poor planning. Do you have a "backup oil well" in your gasoline-powered car?
You're missing the fact that the shooter of the slug is accelerating it over the 2ft length of the shotgun barrel, and the body armor is stopping it in a few inches.
A shotgun can easily put an unwary shooter off-balance, so it would do worse to the target. Knocking them down might be marginal, but they'll be severely hurting and knocked around.
If this happened, it wouldn't be because of a criminal/super-villain. Any criminal smart enough to pull it off would realize that by causing a "global thermonuclear war" they would essentially wipe themselves out, or at least deny them a decent life. Totally counter-productive.
The people that WOULD do it would be the religious fanatic types that believe they're brining "God's judgement" or whatever, and don't mind martyring themselves in the process.
Wi-Fi is 2.4 GHz... The Navy used to use ELF radio to communicate (communicate = notify to surface so we can send you something at >.001bps) with submerged subs - according to Wikipedia the frequency the military used was around 60-80Hz (at the high end of ELF). It has to be that low freq to get that deep, and you need to drag a huge antenna wire behind you. I think Wi-Fi is probably safe, since by the time you were close enough to find the signal, you could just plug a cable into the sub's external ethernet jack.
My opinion has always been that people claiming that a phone conversation doesn't affect their attention to driving probably aren't paying attention to driving in the first place. The phone is just replacing whatever else they were using to split their attention before.
Therefore, anyone making this claim should just have their license revoked for all of our sakes.
I wonder if they could use triangulation between towers to tell when a phone is moving over 20mph and give a "This customer is currently travelling" type response instead of ringing through.
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How about never. In the US, at least, there will never be an organization willing to take on that liability.
I don't think it would be too far fetched to imagine organized crime ID theft rings trying to get people hired on as cleaning staff at high-end hotels to do this sort of thing.
IMO the problem is that we keep insisting on adjusting the time to match where the sun (more or less) is at our location. We need just ONE time, period.
It would just mean that I go to work at 1400Z and go home at 2200Z instead of going to work at exactly the same time and calling it 0800CST. As a bonus, it would get rid of all of the daylight savings time nonsense.
Exactly like a paper book, except that anyone who wants to borrow it needs to also have a $250 gadget (and it has to be a Nook, not just any other reader). Which makes that feature pretty useless, IMO, unless the software to read it on a PC or other device is freely available.
You forgot option 3 (home theater + Netflix or similar)
The math for me would work out as follows:
If I watched my one movie per week or so, and purchased the food my SO and I consume while watching at a movie theater, we'd have to spend probably $30/wk or more. I spent around $7k on my HT equipment. That means less than 5 years to break even (assuming you don't get too much upgrade-itis).
Pros:
Sound and picture as good OR BETTER than a theater (plus I control the volume)
Additional people can join in at no cost
Can use for gaming, tv, sports, music, etc. when you don't feel like a movie
Pauseable
Unlimited cheap food/drink options
No cell phones, talking, jostling, or screen obscuring
No travel or parking hassles
No "armrestling"
Can make out and canoodle all you want
Babysitter is optional instead of required
Cons: /. crowd)
High up-front cost (but can break even over the life of the system)
Quality of experience depends on available space (appropriately sized "sealed" space with easily controllable light levels can be hard to come by)
Quality of experience depends on how well the system was set up (probably not a problem for the
Possible "Wife Acceptance Factor" issues ("You want to put a big ugly subwoofer WHERE?!")
Not apartment-friendly
Have to wait for movies to be rentable
You see, they have these nifty things called "car rental agencies." I predict that if small electrics become common, there will be a great opportunity for companies to rent larger trucks & gas-powered cars for people that only need them every few months to haul stuff around or go on a trip.
Your savings on gas would more than pay for the occasionally necessary rental.
I pretty much had the same experience. Dead simple. Given that I was expecting a Windows XP-esque bare-metal, driver-finding, profile-transferring all day nightmare, I was quite impressed.
They really need to split out install time vs. profile transfer time. When I installed (clean install on new i7/6GB), it took 30 minutes, with me only having to be there for about 3 minutes.
Of course it's going to take forever if you have hundreds of GB of crap to transfer. I had about 30GB, and it took about an hour (over the network with the transfer wizard) to get it done. I had to be there for only about 10 minutes of that, because it ACTUALLY WORKED without me having to baby-sit. For once.
I suspect that the "20 hour" upgrade was a "spend 15 minutes and walk away for 19.75 hours" upgrade.
And that's the problem... It costs the state nothing to pile as many charges as they please on you, but it costs a SHITLOAD to fight them.
Maybe it's time to make the state pay for your defense when you're aquitted? If they have one valid charge, and pile on 9 other bogus ones to see if they stick, they pay 90% of your defense bill if you're aquitted of 9/10 of them.
WIth pigeons, i'm more worried about the *dropped* packets...
I'd rather add a provision that states that every bill must be submitted to J. Random Granny, who will then paraphrase it as she understands it. If her paraphrase doesn't match the intent of the authors, it has to be re-drafted.
Yup... It won't be "the end" until the government stops abiding by the election results (or starts fixing the elections). After that point, there's really no going back sans violence.
I keep having this crazy idea that I should run for president in '12. It would be the "Kick the Politicians Out of Washington" campaign. I keep wondering if enough people are fed up enough with the establishment that a movement to kick them all out and replace them with "normal" people would actually work.
My agenda:
- Constitutional amendment: single-issue bills only. (reduce pork and make reps accountable for everything they vote on instead of being able to hide behind a "must pass" bill)
- Constitutional amendment: 10 year sunset clause on ALL federal laws. (create an upper bound on the number of laws that the federal gov't can maintain)
- Move elections to an instant-run-off system so voters don't feel they have to try to game the system
- Move election day to July 4th. More people vote because they're off work. Can celebrate *getting* freedom and *keeping* it.
That should get us some REAL change!
At least in my country, an officer is not allowed to just randomly pull over a vehicle for no reason and then search that vehicle. They are supposed to have probable cause; they can't just go search someoneone to see what they can find. Unless they have a dog, that is. That's right. A police dog can decide your vehicle has drugs or whatever else they're looking for and when the dog starts barking, suddenly the officer has a perfectly legal search. Yes, it would be illegal and a violation of civil rights if that officer used his hands and eyes to locate the same drugs. However, the same search performed with a dog's nose instead of a human officer's hands and eyes is suddenly legal and constitutional. Isn't that amazing, how you can take an unconstitutional act, filter it through the nervous system of the lowly dog, and suddenly it becomes legal and has the court's blessing?
Hold on there... Anything in "plain view" of a place an officer is legally allowed to be is fair game. If you leave a bag of weed on the seat, and an officer walks by the car and sees it, he can search. If your car is emitting detectable drug particles into a place an officer is legally allowed to be, how is that any different? Would you be happier if they were using some sort of electronic detector instead of a dog?
Exactly...
Just take the $1250 and buy another laptop.
Not after the first plaintiff is permanently "settled" by the areal delivery of his solid gold settlement payment. :)
In many cases, I don't think it's so much that healthy food is more expensive, but that it takes MUCH more time to prepare.
Lower income demographics are more likely to have all available adults working more, with less time to cook. My mom didn't work when we were kids, and spent a LOT of time planning menus, shopping, and cooking. Only after I moved out did I start to appreciate how much work that was! This was only possible because dad made enough to support the family on his own.
It's the same as anywhere else:
Fast
Cheap
High quality
Pick any two.
I don't mind subsidizing someone who is missing a leg or arm or is paralyzed. What I don't like is subsidizing people which have a problem with the area between their ears. If someone in government could come up with a good mechanism to sort out the truly disadvantaged folks from the idiots who make dumbass decisions then i could get behind such a plan to pay for the people who are disadvantaged. Until then Capitol hill can go pound sand.
Requiring people who are capable of working to actually do (handout/min wage) hours of work (community service, volunteer hours, or whatever) before they can claim anything might help. Even if it doesn't reduce handounts, at least we'll get something for it. People who have more than one additional child while on the program get cut off until they're permanently sterilized.
I think that the entire point of the stormtrooper uniform is to emphasize the mechanistic, monolithic nature of stormtroopers. It also makes sense in the context of stormtroopers all being clones.
I was thinking along the same lines, but in a more practical sense. When the original movies were made, the cheapest and easiest way to make "clones" was probably to cover the actors' faces. No CGI crowds in the 70s. :) Having a fully covered/armored face would look quite odd without body armor, also.
Every single police officer sitting outside the community bar or manning a roadblock is one less police officer that could be patrolling the streets looking for impaired drivers who are swerving all over the place
It doesn't really matter. There are nowhere near enough to police officers to reliably catch those people "swerving all over the place."
However, your comment above about how many times do you wish there was a cop around when you see it holds the answer. If you see a drunk driving dangerously, and there's not a cop there, then CALL ONE! I've done this several times, and the officers are always appreciative. "We need more people to do this - we can't be everywhere at once." Yeah, you have to spend 30 minutes following the guy and giving a statement, but that's better than letting them kill someone.
The difference is that with an electric, you'll basically be topping it off any time you're at home. It's like leaving every morning with a full tank of gas, so unless you're doing a lot of driving that day, you should rarely get to the point where the "low fuel" light comes on.
Why do you need a backup generator? People run out of gas all the time due to poor planning. Do you have a "backup oil well" in your gasoline-powered car?
You're missing the fact that the shooter of the slug is accelerating it over the 2ft length of the shotgun barrel, and the body armor is stopping it in a few inches.
A shotgun can easily put an unwary shooter off-balance, so it would do worse to the target. Knocking them down might be marginal, but they'll be severely hurting and knocked around.
If this happened, it wouldn't be because of a criminal/super-villain. Any criminal smart enough to pull it off would realize that by causing a "global thermonuclear war" they would essentially wipe themselves out, or at least deny them a decent life. Totally counter-productive.
The people that WOULD do it would be the religious fanatic types that believe they're brining "God's judgement" or whatever, and don't mind martyring themselves in the process.
Wi-Fi is 2.4 GHz... The Navy used to use ELF radio to communicate (communicate = notify to surface so we can send you something at >.001bps) with submerged subs - according to Wikipedia the frequency the military used was around 60-80Hz (at the high end of ELF). It has to be that low freq to get that deep, and you need to drag a huge antenna wire behind you. I think Wi-Fi is probably safe, since by the time you were close enough to find the signal, you could just plug a cable into the sub's external ethernet jack.
My opinion has always been that people claiming that a phone conversation doesn't affect their attention to driving probably aren't paying attention to driving in the first place. The phone is just replacing whatever else they were using to split their attention before.
Therefore, anyone making this claim should just have their license revoked for all of our sakes.
I wonder if they could use triangulation between towers to tell when a phone is moving over 20mph and give a "This customer is currently travelling" type response instead of ringing through.