It's about as significant as shitting through a recruiting office letterbox in a mall.
Unless they dropped some malware on the site and infected the people who unknowingly visited the page.
Which is about the same as someone sending you tissue full of mucus and flu germs through the mail. If you're only at threat if you dont throw it away and wash your hands.
When I began my current job, I made it clear that I wouldn't be bringing work home with me. I was fine with the occasional after-hours emergency work. If a critical system failed and I needed to fix it, that's fine. But I wasn't going to bring coding work home with me so that we could finish the project a week or two early. There was occasional pressure to do more work at home, but I stood firm and made it clear that this was non-negotiable. When I'm home, I'm spending the time with my family or working on my own projects. Just because the company pays me a salary, doesn't mean they own all of my time.
This,
In Australia, where I live, the law places clear restrictions on being able to abuse unpaid overtime. All overtime must be compensated although companies are permitted to use Time Off In Lieu (TOIL) instead of payment. I think this is a bit of a rort myself but besides the point. A contract should establish clear boundaries for working hours, overtime and penalty rates and this contract needs to be in compliance with Australian laws.
I currently work for a university, we operate a psudo-24 hours service centre, so basically a member of each team is on call. When you're on call you get paid ~$4 per hour, far below award wage but 99% of the time I'm being paid to do nothing so it's a fair deal. They also dont pay overtime, but I get TOIL at penalty rates (time and a half for out of hours and Saturday, double time for Sunday).
That being said, I'm flexible. I'll give 10-15 minutes of my free time occasionally but my employer aslo doesn't mind if I duck off 10-15 minutes early occasionally to get to an appointment. If my employer wasn't flexible, I'd be pretty rigid as well.
So the lack of proper regulation allows companies to screw their employees? Paint me shocked...
Here companies are mandated by law to pay overtime and if it's after certain hours or above a certain amount it has to be paid *more* than the normal hourly rate. In my current company I was actually forbidden entry on the office on Saturday afternoon since I didn't get the proper authorisation by my manager. When I talked with him he was unwilling to give it to me since overtime on Saturday costs more than due time in the week.
Basically I never did unpaid overtime in my career, but I hope to in the future: the law protects only employees with a salary under 175K or something.
In the US, it's got more to do with the employers literally almost having the power of life and death over workers. They control the workers health insurance, no job == no coverage == huge bills if you get sick or injured. The fear alone keeps the Hoi Polloi in line and compliant.
Labour unions in most western nations worked hard to get workers rights like the 40 hour work week, paid overtime, penalty rates and so forth. Its a shame some people in Australia seem so willing to give them up for a pat on the head from their corporate overlords.
I'm sorry but your views has nothing to do with facts
I'm sorry, but that has nothing to do with facts.
And your link is from a clearly biased site. Also Stockholm is a very bad example as they're openly hostile to motorists, forcing traffic to go slower than it should be.
Now about that bridge, a car is approximately 3-4 times longer than a bike but travels at an average speed that allows them to cover a distance in 1/3 to 1/4 of the time. In a hour, you'd get far more cars through than due to a higher average speed. This is for a car that does an average speed of 50 KPH, Cyclists average 15 KPH. Over the Sydney harbour bridge, which is 1.149 KM a cyclist will take 4:35 to cross, a car doing 50 will take 1:22, a car doing the speed limit of 70 will take 0.58. If you take 3 bikes for every car (which you cant) you're still not matching the same throughput as a car doing 20 KPH under the limit.
Beyond this, a cyclist doing 25 KPH or more under the prevailing traffic instantly becomes a rolling roadblock. This is why they slow down traffic, not that we'd ever expect cyclists to admit that
Also you have high occupancy, a bike can carry one person, a car can carry 4-9 and ends up occupying the same space as 2 bikes.
But it's even worse in intersections, even small intersections can easily handle 10x to 20x the amount of persons by bike than in cars.
If cyclists obeyed red lights like motorists, you'd get far less through.
I dislike cyclists as a motorist and pedestrian because they've got zero respect for other road users and the fact your post needs to attack all other road users to make you point demonstrates this. I've never had a cyclist admit to doing something wrong on the road, let alone apologise for it, compared to motorists who do apologise and pedestrians who always apologise.
But isn't it meant to be Congresses job to know what the government is doing.
You'll have to forgive if this comment is in ignorance, I'm from a country with the Westminster system where the parliament is meant to know what various agencies are up to.
You can tell that you're argument is wrong when you need to result to pithy insults like that.
Even though PC gaming is more expensive to get into (consoles are sold at a loss, PC components aren't) its cheaper over the long run as you save $10-20 on the purchase price of new games. So if you buy 1 game a month, that's $120 saved. Two games a month, $240 a year. PC gaming pays for itself if you're a gamer, not to mention the superior gaming experience.
Don't play games on a console, install bug fix packs on the PC. Problem solved.
This. Bethesda's Fallout games are notorious for scripting errors/bugs in missions. On the PC there's usually a console command to fix them or progress in the mission, on consoles there's nothing.
So in other words. giving every passenger a cudgel on the way to their seat and locking the damned cabin door would be a cheaper, more effective means of on-plane security.
For bonus points, the pilot should bring up several contentious topics over the PA system.
The real problem with the bikes in New York and anywhere else that far North is that for 4 - 6 months out of the year it is simply too cold or too wet for anyone but insane bike messengers to ride around. All the money and effort that has gone into redesigning the traffic system for this seasonal commuting option is simply insane. The program would make much more sense in cities with milder weather.
I live in Perth, Western Australia and we have very mild winters (low daytime temperatures are in the mid teens). My commutes were faster in Winter when all the cyclists were in their nice, warm cars instead of on their bikes. They dont even want to ride when it's just a little bit cold so massive redesigns dont work here either.
Oh, and it's winter here right now. My drive to work is consistently 5-10 minutes faster.
If anything, it's an expensive waste of time and resources that makes terrorism more likely, especially when combined with unnecessary and counter-productive unconstitutional search and seizure and monitoring of American citizens in America, when the only useful actionable intel we have ever had has been due to intel gathering that started in the Middle East.
You're assuming the job of the TSA is to stop terrorists. All evidence points against this conclusion. The TSA is not a CT organisation, it's a PR organisation. The idea is not to stop threats rather it is to simply make Americans feel safer. This is why the key metric of the TSA is not how many terrorists or guns they find, but how safe the average traveller feels.
Also whilst intelligence gathering is a better approach to stopping terrorism than draconian laws, tyrannical airport cops and unnecessary, destructive wars, why limit it to the Middle East? Terrorists can come from anywhere. South America and Eastern Europe are hotbeds of activity, even Ireland was just a few decades ago and whilst technically not terrorists, western nations face more risk from Russian crime syndicates than Islamic extremists.
What the US needs to do is to stop making enemies. Prevention is better than cure.
The bigger problem is that our body politic is incapable of having an adult conversation about risk. We live in a society that won't let kids use playgrounds where they might scrape a knee.
Yet thinks its perfectly appropriate for people to walk around with loaded firearms.
You're right that the USA's idea of risk is seriously screwed up. I suspect the ensuing justifications from various gun nuts will only highlight the fact that your society is incapable of having an adult conversation about the subject.
Plus, I'd not be so sure we don't already have an SR-71 replacement which is faster, smaller, better already in operation.
We do.
The spy plane died because we had better alternatives, namely satellites.
The uses we have left for spy planes are real time surveillance of local areas, so supersonic jets are seriously over designed for this. They didn't use U2 for recon in Vietnam, they used Cessna O-2's because they were cheaper, could operate from improvised airfields, could remain in the area for longer periods of time and launched quickly. In this regard drones have taken over most observation and reconnaissance roles that satellites are too inflexible to fill.
Actually, the biggest problem was indeed the sonic booms
This.
When Boeing pulled out of the SST race in the 70's they petitioned the US government to make sonic booms over populated areas in the US illegal for civilian aircraft (of course because the US did it, the rest of the world was forced to follow as is always the case in aviation law). This meant that the Concorde could only go supersonic over the ocean which limited it's use to transatlantic routes.
However the biggest thing that lead to the retirement of the Concorde was age. The Concorde was designed in the 60's (first flight was in 69), laws had killed SST development in the 70's so the Concorde was produced up until 1979, so in 2003 the newest airframes were 24 years old. That is ancient for an aircraft. Air France has a fleet age of 11.4 years and BA 12 years. Both of these are pretty high for an airline of their calibre.
The fact Celsius has a well defined 0 point (the freezing point of water) means its not arbitrary.
Also SI units are computationally convenient, you can easily tell how many metres a a litre occupies, how many feet does 24 fl oz make?.
What does this leave us with? The US is not going metric any time soon.
It will eventually happen. You need to accept this. The more you fight it the worse it will be for the US.
You need to switch your education system to teach both metric and US customary as the first step to phasing out US customary because eventually they'll stop putting US customary measurements on things made overseas (they'll stop making things in US customary long before that).
the Fahrenheit scale makes a lot of sense for measuring weather.
You might have had a point about Kelvin not being useful outside a lab, but here you've lost all credibility.
You're better off having the same system of units for weather as you do for everything else you measure temperature in. You shouldn't have to convert units to know that 50 degrees C is going to make things hot to the touch or get confused that 75 degrees C will give you minor burns when 75 degrees F is just a little warm. Having to use two different measurements for the weather and oven will ensure that idiots will touch hot metal at 75 C thinking that it's only 75 F (23 C).
Beyond this, Celsius has solid points of reference. 0 C is the freezing point of water, if you're below 0 C you know it's going to be snowy or icy outside. 0 C is 32 F which makes no sense. 100 C is the boiling point of water (I cant be bothered looking that up in F). The difference between 22 and 23 degrees C isn't really noticeable unlike the difference between 17 and 22 C. We dont use decimal points when talking about the weather because they aren't necessary (unlike distance, I.E. 1.5 kilometres).
"But metric is so much easier once you know it!"
Ironically, your entire argument revolves around the point that you know a non-metric measurement system and dont want to change. None of the measurements make more sense than metric, many of them make less sense than metric.
Even you have to admit that metric is easier when doing any kind of calculation and you do that a lot with measurements.
Even in Metric countries like Canada, many people still use imperial units for a lot of things. Go to the lumber store and you can get a 2x4, and they are sold in 6, 8, 10, and 12 foot lengths. Plywood is sold in 4x4 foot sheets. Just about everybody I know refers to their weight in pounds and their height in feet and inches. Almost nobody can tell you the metric equivalent without a calculator. We order a pint of beer at the pub, and most people still refer to a block of butter as a "pound of butter". . British people still use "stone" to express their body weight, and they are supposed to be metric as well.
You can standardize all you want, and print whatever you want on the packaging, but people are still going to use whatever they are used to. You could have the US go metric tomorrow, but people will still use Imperial measurements for another century
You'll find a lot of things have changed in countries a bit further away. Wood is now measured in mm because you get planks in more than 2x4 (38x89) and at least in Australia, most hardware stores will cut to length. Butter, milk and all those other products are in ml. Petrol is in litres. Plumbers and electricians switched to metric decades ago (no more 2 and 1/2 inch pipes). I haven't been measured in feet and inches for my entire life, I've always known my height in cm.
The only non-metric measurement I use in any kind of regularity is a pint, which is a good example of why we dont use non-metric measurements as the definition of a pint changes depending on where I am. A US pint is 473ml, a British pint is 568 ml, in Australia we rounded this up to 570 ml except in Adelaide where it's 425ml and a 570ml glass of beer is an Imperial pint. Also in mainland Europe, beer is typically sold in 33 or 50 cl (that's centilitres) containers. The only reason pints remain is because they're ingrained in our drinking culture, they're largely superfluous as everyday measurements.
Even miles is an exception, I only use that for exaggerations (I.E. you missed that by a country mile), even the term "mileage" in Australia refers to measurements in KM and Litres.
No. Vaccination rates are highest in the Bible belt, while they are lowest on the west coast. I think it has less to do with political affiliation and more to do with who reads idiot granola mommy and food blogs.
This.
In Australia the only significant anti-vaxxer crowd are the nutbar organic and/or anti-government conspiracy crowds. Strangely enough these two groups tend to be so similar it's pointless to even try to separate them a venn diagram.
Well, a T-rex was a large meat eater... so I'm thinking bear or wolf might be better guesses.
And I gather as a rule large meat eaters don't make for good eating.
Predators aren't bad "eatin" but they're terrible for farming.
I've eaten crocodile, wolf and dingo. They're not bad, much like Kangaroo they tend to have a very rich flavour. The problem with sourcing this meat is that it needs to be hunted as farming it is prohibitively expensive and its also dangerous to hunt so it tends to be rare and relatively expensive. That being said, I regularly eat shark as it's the cheapest fillet for Fish and Chips in Australia (often called Flake in Oz) although I occasionally splash out on a bit of Cod or Hake (same family as Haddock).
The thing about meat is, the more sedentary an animal is, the more tender the meat is. This is why the cheap (tougher) cuts of a cow come from the shoulder and other parts that get exercised regularly. That being said, if prepared right, a beef shoulder can be quite nice. Predatory animals are a lot more active than our farm animals so cuts from most predators are tougher, which also limits the way in which they can be prepared. So I imagine T-Rex meat prepared like a steak would be a good alternative for boot leather but it might make a good stew or American style BBQ.
Like the intro to Fallout 3, it's intended to show somebody who knows nothing at all about the game enough that they can at least get themselves killed competently, rather than because they can't find the stimpack in their inventory and don't know what VATS is. If memory serves
Yep, but the intro to Fallout NV is much improved over FO:3.
Its shorter, less annoying, easier to get through and large parts of it can be skipped entirely. Beyond that it feels more like part of the game and gives you a reward for going through it (about 55 5.56mm rounds). Bethesda definitely learned their lesson there.
But I have to back up everything you've said (although I've never tried heading straight to McCarran from Goodsprings myself). FO:NV is a much improved version of FO:3 with Bethesda seeming to fix most of the things I found wrong with FO:3. NV is a lot less foreboding than 3 though, a lot less survival horror as the Mojave is a relatively safe place compared to the Capital Wasteland. One of the biggest differences between FO:3 and NV in my mind is that the companions are actually functional rather than liabilities.
It's rare that I need to read an old floppy, but if I do it's surely going to be on a USB device - I haven't had a 'real' floppy drive in a decade.
Yep, its getting that way. I used to use USB floppy drives for servers... Now days a 5 year old server has no issues accepting drivers from USB flash drives. I haven't even seen a floppy in the office in years. I suspect the next time I do it'll be a non functioning curio on someone's desk, much like an old ISA card or Zune.
Yep, they'll try. Some people will try anything. But the game's different now. You had a virtual guarantee of success up until 9/11 plane #3. After that, the slightest error and you're more likely to go down in history as the loser guy who got stomped.
Yep, organisations like HAMAS who used to take over planes to exert political pressure must be pissed at Al Queada. Before they used to be able to take over a plane and have everyone placidly sit there whilst they get one of their buddies freed from a western jail. Now they're just going to get ganked.
I think it was Bruce Schneier who said the only two security improvements that came out of 11 September are that the cockpit door is locked and passengers will fight back.
Anyone who thinks unions are the biggest rort around has never done seen an IT consultancy working on time and materials with nebulous goals managed by a PM that doesn't give a shit... and this happens more often than anyone is comfortable admitting.
Secretaries can make your life miserable, if you piss them off. Usually via office politics and gossip.
Then again, they also happily stab their "friends" in the back, so avoiding them is your best bet.
This, that being said 90% of them are OK and just want to be treated like a human being.
There are three people in the office you should never piss off.
1. Secretary/receptionist - You depend on this person for so many low level functions that can make your life a living hell, everything from supplying stationary to mail to taking accurate messages.
2. Helpdesk/Sysadmin - Again, you depend on this person for a lot of low level functions needed just to do your job. Also IT staff are vindictive (trust me, I am a sysadmin), annoy them at your own peril.
3. Bookkeeping/Accountant - Forget what your boss said, these are the people who actually sign your pay cheque. They do the pay runs and if there are every any problems, they're someone you want to like you enough to help you immediately.
Slashdot Mirror
It's about as significant as shitting through a recruiting office letterbox in a mall.
Unless they dropped some malware on the site and infected the people who unknowingly visited the page.
Which is about the same as someone sending you tissue full of mucus and flu germs through the mail. If you're only at threat if you dont throw it away and wash your hands.
This,
In Australia, where I live, the law places clear restrictions on being able to abuse unpaid overtime. All overtime must be compensated although companies are permitted to use Time Off In Lieu (TOIL) instead of payment. I think this is a bit of a rort myself but besides the point. A contract should establish clear boundaries for working hours, overtime and penalty rates and this contract needs to be in compliance with Australian laws.
I currently work for a university, we operate a psudo-24 hours service centre, so basically a member of each team is on call. When you're on call you get paid ~$4 per hour, far below award wage but 99% of the time I'm being paid to do nothing so it's a fair deal. They also dont pay overtime, but I get TOIL at penalty rates (time and a half for out of hours and Saturday, double time for Sunday).
That being said, I'm flexible. I'll give 10-15 minutes of my free time occasionally but my employer aslo doesn't mind if I duck off 10-15 minutes early occasionally to get to an appointment. If my employer wasn't flexible, I'd be pretty rigid as well.
So the lack of proper regulation allows companies to screw their employees? Paint me shocked...
Here companies are mandated by law to pay overtime and if it's after certain hours or above a certain amount it has to be paid *more* than the normal hourly rate. In my current company I was actually forbidden entry on the office on Saturday afternoon since I didn't get the proper authorisation by my manager. When I talked with him he was unwilling to give it to me since overtime on Saturday costs more than due time in the week.
Basically I never did unpaid overtime in my career, but I hope to in the future: the law protects only employees with a salary under 175K or something.
In the US, it's got more to do with the employers literally almost having the power of life and death over workers. They control the workers health insurance, no job == no coverage == huge bills if you get sick or injured. The fear alone keeps the Hoi Polloi in line and compliant.
Labour unions in most western nations worked hard to get workers rights like the 40 hour work week, paid overtime, penalty rates and so forth. Its a shame some people in Australia seem so willing to give them up for a pat on the head from their corporate overlords.
I'm sorry, but that has nothing to do with facts. And your link is from a clearly biased site. Also Stockholm is a very bad example as they're openly hostile to motorists, forcing traffic to go slower than it should be. Now about that bridge, a car is approximately 3-4 times longer than a bike but travels at an average speed that allows them to cover a distance in 1/3 to 1/4 of the time. In a hour, you'd get far more cars through than due to a higher average speed. This is for a car that does an average speed of 50 KPH, Cyclists average 15 KPH. Over the Sydney harbour bridge, which is 1.149 KM a cyclist will take 4:35 to cross, a car doing 50 will take 1:22, a car doing the speed limit of 70 will take 0.58. If you take 3 bikes for every car (which you cant) you're still not matching the same throughput as a car doing 20 KPH under the limit.
Beyond this, a cyclist doing 25 KPH or more under the prevailing traffic instantly becomes a rolling roadblock. This is why they slow down traffic, not that we'd ever expect cyclists to admit that
Also you have high occupancy, a bike can carry one person, a car can carry 4-9 and ends up occupying the same space as 2 bikes.
If cyclists obeyed red lights like motorists, you'd get far less through.
I dislike cyclists as a motorist and pedestrian because they've got zero respect for other road users and the fact your post needs to attack all other road users to make you point demonstrates this. I've never had a cyclist admit to doing something wrong on the road, let alone apologise for it, compared to motorists who do apologise and pedestrians who always apologise.
kinda/sorta goes with the territory.
Well yes,
But isn't it meant to be Congresses job to know what the government is doing.
You'll have to forgive if this comment is in ignorance, I'm from a country with the Westminster system where the parliament is meant to know what various agencies are up to.
It works both ways, He's not stalking her, he's providing extra security free of charge.
You can tell that you're argument is wrong when you need to result to pithy insults like that.
Even though PC gaming is more expensive to get into (consoles are sold at a loss, PC components aren't) its cheaper over the long run as you save $10-20 on the purchase price of new games. So if you buy 1 game a month, that's $120 saved. Two games a month, $240 a year. PC gaming pays for itself if you're a gamer, not to mention the superior gaming experience.
Don't play games on a console, install bug fix packs on the PC. Problem solved.
This. Bethesda's Fallout games are notorious for scripting errors/bugs in missions. On the PC there's usually a console command to fix them or progress in the mission, on consoles there's nothing.
So in other words. giving every passenger a cudgel on the way to their seat and locking the damned cabin door would be a cheaper, more effective means of on-plane security.
For bonus points, the pilot should bring up several contentious topics over the PA system.
The real problem with the bikes in New York and anywhere else that far North is that for 4 - 6 months out of the year it is simply too cold or too wet for anyone but insane bike messengers to ride around. All the money and effort that has gone into redesigning the traffic system for this seasonal commuting option is simply insane. The program would make much more sense in cities with milder weather.
I live in Perth, Western Australia and we have very mild winters (low daytime temperatures are in the mid teens). My commutes were faster in Winter when all the cyclists were in their nice, warm cars instead of on their bikes. They dont even want to ride when it's just a little bit cold so massive redesigns dont work here either.
Oh, and it's winter here right now. My drive to work is consistently 5-10 minutes faster.
And that's because we're being kind.
If anything, it's an expensive waste of time and resources that makes terrorism more likely, especially when combined with unnecessary and counter-productive unconstitutional search and seizure and monitoring of American citizens in America, when the only useful actionable intel we have ever had has been due to intel gathering that started in the Middle East.
You're assuming the job of the TSA is to stop terrorists. All evidence points against this conclusion. The TSA is not a CT organisation, it's a PR organisation. The idea is not to stop threats rather it is to simply make Americans feel safer. This is why the key metric of the TSA is not how many terrorists or guns they find, but how safe the average traveller feels.
Also whilst intelligence gathering is a better approach to stopping terrorism than draconian laws, tyrannical airport cops and unnecessary, destructive wars, why limit it to the Middle East? Terrorists can come from anywhere. South America and Eastern Europe are hotbeds of activity, even Ireland was just a few decades ago and whilst technically not terrorists, western nations face more risk from Russian crime syndicates than Islamic extremists.
What the US needs to do is to stop making enemies. Prevention is better than cure.
Americans are made of sterner stuff than that.
Empirical evidence suggests otherwise.
Yet thinks its perfectly appropriate for people to walk around with loaded firearms.
You're right that the USA's idea of risk is seriously screwed up. I suspect the ensuing justifications from various gun nuts will only highlight the fact that your society is incapable of having an adult conversation about the subject.
We do.
The spy plane died because we had better alternatives, namely satellites.
The uses we have left for spy planes are real time surveillance of local areas, so supersonic jets are seriously over designed for this. They didn't use U2 for recon in Vietnam, they used Cessna O-2's because they were cheaper, could operate from improvised airfields, could remain in the area for longer periods of time and launched quickly. In this regard drones have taken over most observation and reconnaissance roles that satellites are too inflexible to fill.
This.
When Boeing pulled out of the SST race in the 70's they petitioned the US government to make sonic booms over populated areas in the US illegal for civilian aircraft (of course because the US did it, the rest of the world was forced to follow as is always the case in aviation law). This meant that the Concorde could only go supersonic over the ocean which limited it's use to transatlantic routes.
However the biggest thing that lead to the retirement of the Concorde was age. The Concorde was designed in the 60's (first flight was in 69), laws had killed SST development in the 70's so the Concorde was produced up until 1979, so in 2003 the newest airframes were 24 years old. That is ancient for an aircraft. Air France has a fleet age of 11.4 years and BA 12 years. Both of these are pretty high for an airline of their calibre.
You need to look up the definition of arbitrary.
The fact Celsius has a well defined 0 point (the freezing point of water) means its not arbitrary.
Also SI units are computationally convenient, you can easily tell how many metres a a litre occupies, how many feet does 24 fl oz make?.
It will eventually happen. You need to accept this. The more you fight it the worse it will be for the US.
You need to switch your education system to teach both metric and US customary as the first step to phasing out US customary because eventually they'll stop putting US customary measurements on things made overseas (they'll stop making things in US customary long before that).
You might have had a point about Kelvin not being useful outside a lab, but here you've lost all credibility.
You're better off having the same system of units for weather as you do for everything else you measure temperature in. You shouldn't have to convert units to know that 50 degrees C is going to make things hot to the touch or get confused that 75 degrees C will give you minor burns when 75 degrees F is just a little warm. Having to use two different measurements for the weather and oven will ensure that idiots will touch hot metal at 75 C thinking that it's only 75 F (23 C).
Beyond this, Celsius has solid points of reference. 0 C is the freezing point of water, if you're below 0 C you know it's going to be snowy or icy outside. 0 C is 32 F which makes no sense. 100 C is the boiling point of water (I cant be bothered looking that up in F). The difference between 22 and 23 degrees C isn't really noticeable unlike the difference between 17 and 22 C. We dont use decimal points when talking about the weather because they aren't necessary (unlike distance, I.E. 1.5 kilometres).
Ironically, your entire argument revolves around the point that you know a non-metric measurement system and dont want to change. None of the measurements make more sense than metric, many of them make less sense than metric.
Even you have to admit that metric is easier when doing any kind of calculation and you do that a lot with measurements.
Even in Metric countries like Canada, many people still use imperial units for a lot of things. Go to the lumber store and you can get a 2x4, and they are sold in 6, 8, 10, and 12 foot lengths. Plywood is sold in 4x4 foot sheets. Just about everybody I know refers to their weight in pounds and their height in feet and inches. Almost nobody can tell you the metric equivalent without a calculator. We order a pint of beer at the pub, and most people still refer to a block of butter as a "pound of butter". . British people still use "stone" to express their body weight, and they are supposed to be metric as well.
You can standardize all you want, and print whatever you want on the packaging, but people are still going to use whatever they are used to. You could have the US go metric tomorrow, but people will still use Imperial measurements for another century
You'll find a lot of things have changed in countries a bit further away. Wood is now measured in mm because you get planks in more than 2x4 (38x89) and at least in Australia, most hardware stores will cut to length. Butter, milk and all those other products are in ml. Petrol is in litres. Plumbers and electricians switched to metric decades ago (no more 2 and 1/2 inch pipes). I haven't been measured in feet and inches for my entire life, I've always known my height in cm.
The only non-metric measurement I use in any kind of regularity is a pint, which is a good example of why we dont use non-metric measurements as the definition of a pint changes depending on where I am. A US pint is 473ml, a British pint is 568 ml, in Australia we rounded this up to 570 ml except in Adelaide where it's 425ml and a 570ml glass of beer is an Imperial pint. Also in mainland Europe, beer is typically sold in 33 or 50 cl (that's centilitres) containers. The only reason pints remain is because they're ingrained in our drinking culture, they're largely superfluous as everyday measurements.
Even miles is an exception, I only use that for exaggerations (I.E. you missed that by a country mile), even the term "mileage" in Australia refers to measurements in KM and Litres.
No. Vaccination rates are highest in the Bible belt, while they are lowest on the west coast. I think it has less to do with political affiliation and more to do with who reads idiot granola mommy and food blogs.
This. In Australia the only significant anti-vaxxer crowd are the nutbar organic and/or anti-government conspiracy crowds. Strangely enough these two groups tend to be so similar it's pointless to even try to separate them a venn diagram.
Well, a T-rex was a large meat eater ... so I'm thinking bear or wolf might be better guesses.
And I gather as a rule large meat eaters don't make for good eating.
Predators aren't bad "eatin" but they're terrible for farming.
I've eaten crocodile, wolf and dingo. They're not bad, much like Kangaroo they tend to have a very rich flavour. The problem with sourcing this meat is that it needs to be hunted as farming it is prohibitively expensive and its also dangerous to hunt so it tends to be rare and relatively expensive. That being said, I regularly eat shark as it's the cheapest fillet for Fish and Chips in Australia (often called Flake in Oz) although I occasionally splash out on a bit of Cod or Hake (same family as Haddock).
The thing about meat is, the more sedentary an animal is, the more tender the meat is. This is why the cheap (tougher) cuts of a cow come from the shoulder and other parts that get exercised regularly. That being said, if prepared right, a beef shoulder can be quite nice. Predatory animals are a lot more active than our farm animals so cuts from most predators are tougher, which also limits the way in which they can be prepared. So I imagine T-Rex meat prepared like a steak would be a good alternative for boot leather but it might make a good stew or American style BBQ.
Yep, but the intro to Fallout NV is much improved over FO:3.
Its shorter, less annoying, easier to get through and large parts of it can be skipped entirely. Beyond that it feels more like part of the game and gives you a reward for going through it (about 55 5.56mm rounds). Bethesda definitely learned their lesson there.
But I have to back up everything you've said (although I've never tried heading straight to McCarran from Goodsprings myself). FO:NV is a much improved version of FO:3 with Bethesda seeming to fix most of the things I found wrong with FO:3. NV is a lot less foreboding than 3 though, a lot less survival horror as the Mojave is a relatively safe place compared to the Capital Wasteland. One of the biggest differences between FO:3 and NV in my mind is that the companions are actually functional rather than liabilities.
It's rare that I need to read an old floppy, but if I do it's surely going to be on a USB device - I haven't had a 'real' floppy drive in a decade.
Yep, its getting that way. I used to use USB floppy drives for servers... Now days a 5 year old server has no issues accepting drivers from USB flash drives. I haven't even seen a floppy in the office in years. I suspect the next time I do it'll be a non functioning curio on someone's desk, much like an old ISA card or Zune.
It's already happened, multiple times. Shoe bomber. Underwear bomber.
Yep, they'll try. Some people will try anything. But the game's different now. You had a virtual guarantee of success up until 9/11 plane #3. After that, the slightest error and you're more likely to go down in history as the loser guy who got stomped.
Yep, organisations like HAMAS who used to take over planes to exert political pressure must be pissed at Al Queada. Before they used to be able to take over a plane and have everyone placidly sit there whilst they get one of their buddies freed from a western jail. Now they're just going to get ganked.
I think it was Bruce Schneier who said the only two security improvements that came out of 11 September are that the cockpit door is locked and passengers will fight back.
So do CEOs and politicians.
And consultants.
Anyone who thinks unions are the biggest rort around has never done seen an IT consultancy working on time and materials with nebulous goals managed by a PM that doesn't give a shit... and this happens more often than anyone is comfortable admitting.
Everything I do is a hack.
If you truly raced at Le Mans, you'd know how to spell it!
Or maybe he really does race the 24 hours of LeMons.
Secretaries can make your life miserable, if you piss them off. Usually via office politics and gossip. Then again, they also happily stab their "friends" in the back, so avoiding them is your best bet.
This, that being said 90% of them are OK and just want to be treated like a human being.
There are three people in the office you should never piss off.
1. Secretary/receptionist - You depend on this person for so many low level functions that can make your life a living hell, everything from supplying stationary to mail to taking accurate messages.
2. Helpdesk/Sysadmin - Again, you depend on this person for a lot of low level functions needed just to do your job. Also IT staff are vindictive (trust me, I am a sysadmin), annoy them at your own peril.
3. Bookkeeping/Accountant - Forget what your boss said, these are the people who actually sign your pay cheque. They do the pay runs and if there are every any problems, they're someone you want to like you enough to help you immediately.