People don't listen to that preflight announcement stuff because they've heard it a hundred times before
Its not the preflight announcement they're concerned about (if you dont listen to that, its the airlines problem) however flight attendants have to issue instructions before takeoff and landing. This is difficult without them being too wrapped up in their Iwotsits as people are arrogant, selfish idiots when they can hear you.
The article specifically mentions the the "flight attendants emergency announcements" not the safety video.
And yes, a flight attendant has to tell several people to put their seatbelt on, tray table away or seat back upright every single flight at the very least even when the flight has gone perfectly. This is why they spend the last few minutes before take off or decent patrolling the aisles.
What's needed is either to make those instructions INTERESTING
No, for the love of every deity ever invented by man, no.
You sir, should be banished from flying, or even commented on flying. They cant make instructions interesting, attempts to do so end up with videos so incredibly cringeworthy you spend your time criticising the terrible script writing rather than listening to the message. What they need to do is make them shorter, less music or terrible jokes and more getting to the point.
Real spam is not only unsolicited, but impossible to unsubscribe from
Technically, spam is unsolicited commercial email. So the ability to unsubscribe from it is immaterial. If you didn't sign up for it, it's spam. The only caveat here is that in many countries, if you cant unsubscribe from it, it's also considered spam but these are separate conditions, either one classes the email as spam.
The problem is, a lot of companies use sneaky methods to get you to opt-in. The most common is the pre-checked box saying "Yes I'd love to receive your delicious spam, email me thrice daily" when you sign up for a service.
I've never seen any of the Google advertisements that the GP claims, so I think it's safe to assume I didn't tick a box that he did. Google are pretty good about unsolicited advertising (most of the tech giants are... I guess even MS hates spam as much as we do).
I'll second this sentiment. Gmail catches an obscene amount of spam sent to my account accurately and with so few false positives it blows my mind. I've dealt with lots of anti-spam software and some hardware and Google does a fantastic job.
I'll third it.
In over 10 years of Gmail I've had two pieces of spam reach my inbox, one many years ago and the other just a few weeks back. Having managed spam on corporate email systems that's so far beyond five nines its stupid.
False positives are pretty good also. The worst legit emails that have been caught are advertisements I signed up for.
Not really, the first step in a dictionary attack is to go though the first 1000/10,000 most commonly used passwords. You do the same with pass phrases.
If you use a commonly used phrase, its the same as using a commonly used password.
Really...with 1000 dollars you can already have a luxury wedding in the Phillipines. Plus, you are already on your destination honeymoon.
Ironic you should mention that, a lot of Australians are going to the US to get married because the cost of a wedding over there is 1/4 of the cost of one here in Australia.
If both party's motives are pure, they should have no problem with one.
Well, if someone asks for a pre-nup he or she is already considering divorce to be a event with a rather high likelyhood. Is it really smart to marry someone who considers divorce a likely event?
Or someone who considers a divorce to be a low probability but high severity risk... One that is easily mitigated (well for whatever pre-nups are worth these days).
OTOH, being offended at the concept of a pre-nup more or less confirms that party is also thinking about divorce and taking a significant part of your wealth and possessions with them.
"rrrybgdts" is a nursery rhyme. It doesn't even have to be written on a sticky.
This is a really bad way of choosing passwords.
The number of verses of songs, nursery rhymes, poems and paragraphs that people would tend to think of probably number less than a million.
Your particular example has 946 hits on Google.
This,
Commonly used passwords are vulnerable to dictionary attacks, that doesn't change when you use passphrases. If you use common lyrics or phrases they'll be more vulnerable than random words put together in a way that your brain forms a coherent link between.
That's what it amounts to. He can't get the access he wants, so he just pushes his way in and takes it.
Having helped out a few hoteliers with their Wifi setups, a tool that allows them to kick of sleected BT users would actually be a great boon to them. A small hotel can have up to 30 guests and all of them sharing a business grade DSL or if they're lucky a low speed fibre connection (but because fibre is not cheap nor common, it's on DSL or Cable at best) and then you get one or two guests who think its free and they can download the entire internets.
The problem is, these people make the service unusable for the other 29 guests. Most hoteliers aren't IT experts but smart enough to run a tool like this. At the moment, their only solution to guests that are abusing the WiFi is to reset the router (although I know one who will get into the router and throttle them) but this is a temporary fix. An additional problem is that they dont want to block bit torrent, people travel and want to catch up on their favourite shows, especially since in many countries there is no legal alternative (try getting the latest US TV series in Thailand, get used to seeing "not available in your country" a lot) so they want guests to be able to do that, but not to saturate the connection.
He is supposed to HIRE someone that is. Just like you hire someone to install a water heater, or electrical lines. If you are deploying COMMERCIALLY, you should hire someone who knows what the fuck they are doing, or dont bother.
You would be surprised at the number of people who try to DIY these things with no training or experience.
Or more likely they just won't provide wifi and everyone loses?
This is an issue with Hipster cafe's in Oz.
They dont provide WiFi and put up a sign saying "No we dont have WiFi, you'll have to talk to each other" which really means "we're a bunch of hipster tosspots".
It doesn't work because everyone has data on their phones these days. The only people who suffer are those who just need to quckly connect to the office VPN... but end up just tethering their phones anyway.
Life's not all about cheap dope and Eastern European hookers. Native Dutch have been leaving the Netherlands for years.
"Last year, 144,175 people emigrated, the paper says, quoting figures from the national statistics office CBS. In 2011, nearly 134,000 people left and in 2010, 121,000." http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/a...
To put this into perspective, the Netherlands has a population of 16.8 Million people. 150,000 aren't even 1% so that's pretty normal for emigration. Hardly the crisis you're making out.
I'd be willing to bet a good proportion of those would be Dutch retiring to some place warmer with cheaper prostitutes like Thailand (Thailand seems to be the go-to place for European retirees, Americans usually end up in the Philippines, we Australians have infested both places).
That worked in '90s DSL world, where they'd oversubscribe the links from the CO to the core. But now, the links are not oversubscribed from the CO to the core,
Not in my country, the last mile is still the slowest part.
But when you're paying for an SLA for a site to site link, this does not matter (in fact, my traffic should not even leave the ISP's network).
What you do is download a file of a set size from a server you own and control on your ISP's network. I do this with site-to-site links. I have a 20, 200 and 500 MB file of randomness that I copy, the time taken to download is a pretty good indication of the links aggregate speed.
But no, I wouldn't trust sites like Speedtest to be accurate because ISPs that are dishonest will just prioritise traffic going to that site.
With residential broadband, the only thing you can do is sign up with an ISP that has a good reputation and doesn't lock you into a X month contract (so you can leave at any time). Australia has a few good ones like iinet and Amcom, but in the good ol' US you're pretty much stuffed because of local monopolies.
Newegg has your processor at $240 - the entire PS4, including controller & game is only $400.
The PS4 is a loss leader. This means you're paying more for games, peripherals and ancilary services to make up for it. So the more you game, the more a console costs you.
It's also worth pointing out the notorious unreliability of the last generation of consoles. Red Ring of Death, Yellow Light of Death.
I'd be curious to know what you shelled out for the full computer (please include input devices).
In that case, we'd need to include all the input devices for the PS4.
- 3 additional Dualshock controllers @ $59.99 each = $179.97.
- PS4 camera @ 59.99 = $59.99.
So an additional $239.96 (Plus taxes as these are American prices off of Best Buys web site). I'm using the PS4 beacuse it doesn't require a paid subcription for online content (yes, my point is strong enough that I can give my opponents the benefit of the doubt).
My PC peripherals cost me (in Australian prices so they include tax):
- 1 Keyboard = A$12.
- 1 Logitech gaming mouse = A$55
- 1 Logitech joystick = A$35
Total, $102.
You've always been able to buy more powerful machines than the consoles. Just not at console prices.
The thing is, this is a false economy because the console hardware are loss leaders. You cant buy a PC at the same price because PC's aren't being sold at less than cost. But this is also the reason that console games are more expensive than the PC equivalents.
Lets take the new release Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor.
PC: $ 49.99
PS4: $ 59.99
Xbone: $ 59.99
So if you buy two games a month, the console player pays $20 extra. Thats $240 per year, 480 over two years. Just two games a month pays for the difference between a $400 console and $880 PC in two years and yes, you can build a gaming box for under $900 in Australia so the US will be cheaper. What if you buy 1 game a week, that's $520 a year.
For the last couple of gens it's usually been possible to get a PC that 'looked better' - but you ended up paying a whole wedge more for the privilege.
I'm still running a AMD Phenom II 955 as a CPU, the newer Geforce 660GT GPU is still my bottleneck. A 5 year old CPU is still better than those put into consoles and it still runs any game I thrown at it.
Given that the PS4 and Xbox One are both sold as loss leaders, meaning they cost more than $400 to make. This also means they need to make up the money they lost on the initial hardware sales needs to be recovered from sales of games, peripherals and ancillary services. So you might spend $2-300 more on a PC rather than a console, but when you consider you aren't paying for Xbox Live subscriptions and can get games $20 cheaper on release the more you game, the faster you get ahead.
Also, the indie scene for PC games is also very lively. Whilst the AAA publishers like EA concentrate on releasing Sport2015 for the consoles, we're getting new games with some original thought put into them. Put simply, if you're serious about gaming, you're on the PC.
I've turned into a last years gamer in recent years, I rarely buy games on release these days and typically wait a few months until I can get them on sale. The only game that is tempting me on release is the next Starcraft instalment and the last game I bought on release was Galactic Civilizations 2 (yes, I bought it pre-release).
Only console I've any interest in is the WiiU (and even then just for the game exclusives I know will never come to my PC - and for some reason can mentally give Nintendo a pass on this).
Nintendo has had the only real console of the last three generations.
The reason Nintendo gets a free pass is because they've made a console that's meant to be a console, unlike Sony and Microsoft that are making consoles that are wannabe PC's. The Wii and Wii U have an abundance of simple yet fun games, yes its casual but consoles are meant to be causal. When you've got some friends over you aren't going to drag out four PC's and have a mini-LAN, no you're going to get the Wii out and play some Mario Kart.
The Wii and Wii U are the Toyota 86 of consoles, its not fast, flashy or high tech, but man are they fun. This is why the owners of Mustangs (Xbox) and Camaro's (Playstation) hate them, sure they have 2-3 times the horsepowers, but you cant throw them around the twisties gurning like an idiot because they cant corner.
Sigh, you do know the 50,000 dead is not from 1918 right, it's from recent years right?
You also know that in 1918, medical facilities weren't as common as they were today?
You also know that in 1918 there was no such thing as sick leave?
You do know it's not 1918 and the 1918 flu has no bearing on the discussion?
the 1918 was determined to be an H1N1 variant,
Which we had an outbreak of recently, there weren't that many casualties... Possibly because of the differences I alluded to above.
The statistic being bandied about that flu kills 50,000 in the US is from today, not 1918. It is taken from the millions of cases across all the strains of influenza active today. In 1918 workers pretty much had no choice but to come into work and infect others, they couldn't take time off to get better, they didn't have access to modern medical facilities, anti-biotics and anti-virals hadn't been invented yet. Finally, even the worst flu epidemics had nowhere near the fatality rates of Ebola.
The young and apparently healthy group of fatalities was actually larger than the old, sick or 'messed up before they got it' group
if you did your research on the 1918 epidemic you'd know that the reason for this reversal was in fact, a little war you may of heard of known affectionately as the first world war. One of the major causes of this was the fact that soldiers infected with a mild strain were kept in the field. and those with a serious infection were loaded onto trains and taken to crowded field hospitals where re-infection was rife and the deadlier strains were traded amongst the infected.
Your anecdote is no kind of proof. The news is already reporting Ebola victims are rising from graves. You're probably a goddamned zombie. You do scare me though. The movies have always made zombies out to be shambling stooooopids who want to eat brains because they have none. Well now your post just shows us all that zombies aren't as stupid as we thought! At least they can type. I'll be locked down in my bunker, kthxbai!
Top Gear had an interesting experiment where they raced a Prius against a BMW M3. But what they did was have the Prius go all out and the M3 just paced it. Then they measured the actual gas consumed and found that the BMW had better mileage under those circumstances.
The Prius on petrol isn't an efficient car because of its weight.
The traditional Prius (as featured on that Top Gear episode) has two drivetrains for two engines, electric and petrol. Its more or less the same engine as a Toyota Corolla (2ZR-Fxx) so basically it's a Corolla with an extra 160 KG (as Clarkson said, that's like a whole American sitting on the front). A proper 100% hybrid engine with the electric motor doing 100% of the driving and the petrol motor just being an electric generator would be much different, picture a BMW M3 vs a Fisker Karma.
What possible benefit is there to taxing fuel, other than to hand more money to the government to waste?
Oh, yeah, I forgot, it lets you force people into small cars they don't want, or force poor people onto buses.
Why do you hate the poor? What did they ever do to you?
The rationale for taxing fuel is to capture the externalities (pollution, climate, military costs) of using that fuel. The point about the regressiveness of the gas tax is valid, so we should raise the gas tax, but add a refundable credit to income taxes for it, to remove the regressiveness.
This.
But you dont need to add a tax credit for income taxes, just drop the income tax collection. Right now, for most places in the US roads are paid for by income taxes. Once you move that cost from income taxes to consumption taxes (a fuel tax is a consumption tax) you lessen the income tax by the amount you no longer require. This can be done, but the US will probably need someone more competent than their current leaders (at state, local and federal level).
The problem with fuel tax regression is mainly with goods and services that require fuel to get somewhere (read: all of them). Transport companies and the like should be allowed access to lower taxed fuel to prevent fuel taxes from becoming another form of inflation.
Beyond this, consumption taxes are good because it targets the heaviest users. A person in a big 3T SUV does more damage to the road than someone driving in a 1.2T Toyota Corolla doing the same distance. The 3T car is going to require more fuel regardless of engine size (ya canne change the lews of physics capt'n). The only people it unfairly punishes are people like me who drive a 1.2T 2L turbocharged sports car that gets 11L/100 KM. But people like me know their cars aren't going to be cheap going in and accept this because racecar.
Most cars are only carrying the driver, and doing speeds of less than 120 kilometres per hour.
In the rest of the world you don't need a multiton SUV for those uses.
A 1 litre normally aspirated 4 cylinder should be enough.
Whilst I agree with the SUV part, you dont need a massive tank just to take the kids to school. 1L NA isn't going to produce around 73 KW. Given that city cars weigh between 950 and 1300 KG, load that up with a small family (200 KG) you're potentially lugging around 1500 KG which gives you less than 50 kW/T but thats not the worst part, its the fact you're usually only getting 100 Nm of torque high in the rev range.
You're also European or British by the sounds of it, in the good ol' US, practically no-one can drive manual. So you're losing more power to a torque converter.
Not saying you need a big 6.2L V8 to lug the kids around, rather to get enough power and torque for the average person, you need a 1L turbo, or 1.5-2L naturally aspirated engine (most hybrid engines are supercharged in practical terms at the moment at the moment).
I drive a 2L turbocharged sports car, so both the SUV driving nutbars and Prius driving Enviro-mentalists hate me for being faster than they are.
The reason it's considered inferior is because it's inverted from what you really care about - what you care about is "how much fuel will it take me to get n miles".
No, what I really care about is, "can I make it to the next fuel stop with what I have in the tank." Which is not a problem in most of Europe, but is very much a problem in large parts of the USA.
I live in Australia where there is usually a distance of 100 KM or more between petrol stations on many highways. Especially in my state of Western Australia. Distances of 250+ KM between petrol stations are not uncommon.
So unless you're absolutely sure that your cars got enough fuel to get another 350 KM, it's a good practice to assume it doesn't and stop to brim the tank. If I'm driving long distances in OZ, I'll keep the tank topped up as I pass each town or roadhouse I pass as they're usually pretty far apart. Being 2+ hours apart, it's also a good excuse to get out of the car and stretch my legs. Taking a quick 10 minute break every few hours helps prevent fatigue from setting in (and fatigue is a real killer on long distance trips).
My big problem with DTE (Distance To Empty) readings is that few cars report them accurately, a problem made difficult by the fact that driving conditions change depending on changes in traffic and roads. 100 KM to empty can change to 40 KM to empty if you hit some traffic.
"But then, we should be using gallons-per-mile instead of miles-per-gallon, too".
No. You should be using litres per kilometer. Especially so when talking about the EU.
Actually it's Litres per 100 Kilometres as this gives an average reading over time (my car, a 2002 Nissan Silvia S15 is rated for 10.5L/100 KM (combined) and I get around 11 - 11.5 thanks to a heavy boot).
Not having a go at you, but you're probably not aware when talking about the measurement of length, it's spelled "metre" and "kilometre" when talking in context of Europe. In En_GB and it's derivative forms "metre" and "meter" have different meanings but the same sound:
Metre: I walked 120 metres.
Meter: I read the water meter.
I.E. The odometer measures in kilometres.
Probably the biggest concern is the possibility of a mutation occurring that would allow the virus to go airborne.
Besides the fact that Ebola is not capable of becoming airborne being a bit too complex (read: big) to become airborne. In order for Ebola to become airborne it needs to start replicating in the bronchial tubes instead of the blood. This is a significant mutation.
Secondly, we haven't actually seen a human virus change it's infection vector. Even viruses that have infected millions like HIV or Hepatitis have maintained the same infection vector. This is not to say it's impossible, but it is saying that it's so unlikely you may as well start preparing for your coronation as King of planet earth and all its colonies.
Beyond this, as diseases and viruses mutate, our bodies also mutate in response. It's an arms race, Ebola maintains it's deadly position because it's not widely spread, if it were our bodies would develop antibodies to fight it, just as we've done with other viruses. When Europeans bought influenza to the Americas, it killed a lot of people yes, but the survivors gained the ability to fight it off. But with Ebola, this eventuality is extremely unlikely as the likelihood of Ebola becoming airborne is extremely low.
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Its not the preflight announcement they're concerned about (if you dont listen to that, its the airlines problem) however flight attendants have to issue instructions before takeoff and landing. This is difficult without them being too wrapped up in their Iwotsits as people are arrogant, selfish idiots when they can hear you.
The article specifically mentions the the "flight attendants emergency announcements" not the safety video.
And yes, a flight attendant has to tell several people to put their seatbelt on, tray table away or seat back upright every single flight at the very least even when the flight has gone perfectly. This is why they spend the last few minutes before take off or decent patrolling the aisles.
What's needed is either to make those instructions INTERESTING
No, for the love of every deity ever invented by man, no.
You sir, should be banished from flying, or even commented on flying. They cant make instructions interesting, attempts to do so end up with videos so incredibly cringeworthy you spend your time criticising the terrible script writing rather than listening to the message. What they need to do is make them shorter, less music or terrible jokes and more getting to the point.
Real spam is not only unsolicited, but impossible to unsubscribe from
Technically, spam is unsolicited commercial email. So the ability to unsubscribe from it is immaterial. If you didn't sign up for it, it's spam. The only caveat here is that in many countries, if you cant unsubscribe from it, it's also considered spam but these are separate conditions, either one classes the email as spam.
The problem is, a lot of companies use sneaky methods to get you to opt-in. The most common is the pre-checked box saying "Yes I'd love to receive your delicious spam, email me thrice daily" when you sign up for a service.
I've never seen any of the Google advertisements that the GP claims, so I think it's safe to assume I didn't tick a box that he did. Google are pretty good about unsolicited advertising (most of the tech giants are... I guess even MS hates spam as much as we do).
I'll second this sentiment. Gmail catches an obscene amount of spam sent to my account accurately and with so few false positives it blows my mind. I've dealt with lots of anti-spam software and some hardware and Google does a fantastic job.
I'll third it.
In over 10 years of Gmail I've had two pieces of spam reach my inbox, one many years ago and the other just a few weeks back. Having managed spam on corporate email systems that's so far beyond five nines its stupid.
False positives are pretty good also. The worst legit emails that have been caught are advertisements I signed up for.
Yes, it does, unless you do all the following:
Not really, the first step in a dictionary attack is to go though the first 1000/10,000 most commonly used passwords. You do the same with pass phrases. If you use a commonly used phrase, its the same as using a commonly used password.
Really...with 1000 dollars you can already have a luxury wedding in the Phillipines. Plus, you are already on your destination honeymoon.
Ironic you should mention that, a lot of Australians are going to the US to get married because the cost of a wedding over there is 1/4 of the cost of one here in Australia.
A $5K wedding in the US is $20K in Oz...
If both party's motives are pure, they should have no problem with one.
Well, if someone asks for a pre-nup he or she is already considering divorce to be a event with a rather high likelyhood. Is it really smart to marry someone who considers divorce a likely event?
Or someone who considers a divorce to be a low probability but high severity risk... One that is easily mitigated (well for whatever pre-nups are worth these days).
OTOH, being offended at the concept of a pre-nup more or less confirms that party is also thinking about divorce and taking a significant part of your wealth and possessions with them.
This is a really bad way of choosing passwords.
The number of verses of songs, nursery rhymes, poems and paragraphs that people would tend to think of probably number less than a million.
Your particular example has 946 hits on Google.
This,
Commonly used passwords are vulnerable to dictionary attacks, that doesn't change when you use passphrases. If you use common lyrics or phrases they'll be more vulnerable than random words put together in a way that your brain forms a coherent link between.
That's what it amounts to. He can't get the access he wants, so he just pushes his way in and takes it.
Having helped out a few hoteliers with their Wifi setups, a tool that allows them to kick of sleected BT users would actually be a great boon to them. A small hotel can have up to 30 guests and all of them sharing a business grade DSL or if they're lucky a low speed fibre connection (but because fibre is not cheap nor common, it's on DSL or Cable at best) and then you get one or two guests who think its free and they can download the entire internets. The problem is, these people make the service unusable for the other 29 guests. Most hoteliers aren't IT experts but smart enough to run a tool like this. At the moment, their only solution to guests that are abusing the WiFi is to reset the router (although I know one who will get into the router and throttle them) but this is a temporary fix. An additional problem is that they dont want to block bit torrent, people travel and want to catch up on their favourite shows, especially since in many countries there is no legal alternative (try getting the latest US TV series in Thailand, get used to seeing "not available in your country" a lot) so they want guests to be able to do that, but not to saturate the connection.
He is supposed to HIRE someone that is. Just like you hire someone to install a water heater, or electrical lines. If you are deploying COMMERCIALLY, you should hire someone who knows what the fuck they are doing, or dont bother.
You would be surprised at the number of people who try to DIY these things with no training or experience.
Or more likely they just won't provide wifi and everyone loses?
This is an issue with Hipster cafe's in Oz.
They dont provide WiFi and put up a sign saying "No we dont have WiFi, you'll have to talk to each other" which really means "we're a bunch of hipster tosspots".
It doesn't work because everyone has data on their phones these days. The only people who suffer are those who just need to quckly connect to the office VPN... but end up just tethering their phones anyway.
Life's not all about cheap dope and Eastern European hookers. Native Dutch have been leaving the Netherlands for years.
"Last year, 144,175 people emigrated, the paper says, quoting figures from the national statistics office CBS. In 2011, nearly 134,000 people left and in 2010, 121,000."
http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/a...
To put this into perspective, the Netherlands has a population of 16.8 Million people. 150,000 aren't even 1% so that's pretty normal for emigration. Hardly the crisis you're making out.
I'd be willing to bet a good proportion of those would be Dutch retiring to some place warmer with cheaper prostitutes like Thailand (Thailand seems to be the go-to place for European retirees, Americans usually end up in the Philippines, we Australians have infested both places).
For UK and European readers, "the size of Delaware" is just a tad more than a fourth of "the size of Wales".
For Australian readers, "the size of Delaware" is about 2.8 times the size of the ACT.
Not in my country, the last mile is still the slowest part.
But when you're paying for an SLA for a site to site link, this does not matter (in fact, my traffic should not even leave the ISP's network).
... i thought they were going to blame it on piracy?
But there's no Piracy on a console and the streets are filled with cheese.
They are all ISP run, or open to bribery.
Not quite.
What you do is download a file of a set size from a server you own and control on your ISP's network. I do this with site-to-site links. I have a 20, 200 and 500 MB file of randomness that I copy, the time taken to download is a pretty good indication of the links aggregate speed.
But no, I wouldn't trust sites like Speedtest to be accurate because ISPs that are dishonest will just prioritise traffic going to that site.
With residential broadband, the only thing you can do is sign up with an ISP that has a good reputation and doesn't lock you into a X month contract (so you can leave at any time). Australia has a few good ones like iinet and Amcom, but in the good ol' US you're pretty much stuffed because of local monopolies.
Newegg has your processor at $240 - the entire PS4, including controller & game is only $400.
The PS4 is a loss leader. This means you're paying more for games, peripherals and ancilary services to make up for it. So the more you game, the more a console costs you.
It's also worth pointing out the notorious unreliability of the last generation of consoles. Red Ring of Death, Yellow Light of Death.
I'd be curious to know what you shelled out for the full computer (please include input devices).
In that case, we'd need to include all the input devices for the PS4.
- 3 additional Dualshock controllers @ $59.99 each = $179.97.
- PS4 camera @ 59.99 = $59.99.
So an additional $239.96 (Plus taxes as these are American prices off of Best Buys web site). I'm using the PS4 beacuse it doesn't require a paid subcription for online content (yes, my point is strong enough that I can give my opponents the benefit of the doubt).
My PC peripherals cost me (in Australian prices so they include tax):
- 1 Keyboard = A$12.
- 1 Logitech gaming mouse = A$55
- 1 Logitech joystick = A$35
Total, $102.
You've always been able to buy more powerful machines than the consoles. Just not at console prices.
The thing is, this is a false economy because the console hardware are loss leaders. You cant buy a PC at the same price because PC's aren't being sold at less than cost. But this is also the reason that console games are more expensive than the PC equivalents.
Lets take the new release Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor.
PC: $ 49.99
PS4: $ 59.99
Xbone: $ 59.99
So if you buy two games a month, the console player pays $20 extra. Thats $240 per year, 480 over two years. Just two games a month pays for the difference between a $400 console and $880 PC in two years and yes, you can build a gaming box for under $900 in Australia so the US will be cheaper. What if you buy 1 game a week, that's $520 a year.
If you're a gamer, the PC is ultimately cheaper.
I'm still running a AMD Phenom II 955 as a CPU, the newer Geforce 660GT GPU is still my bottleneck. A 5 year old CPU is still better than those put into consoles and it still runs any game I thrown at it.
Given that the PS4 and Xbox One are both sold as loss leaders, meaning they cost more than $400 to make. This also means they need to make up the money they lost on the initial hardware sales needs to be recovered from sales of games, peripherals and ancillary services. So you might spend $2-300 more on a PC rather than a console, but when you consider you aren't paying for Xbox Live subscriptions and can get games $20 cheaper on release the more you game, the faster you get ahead.
Also, the indie scene for PC games is also very lively. Whilst the AAA publishers like EA concentrate on releasing Sport2015 for the consoles, we're getting new games with some original thought put into them. Put simply, if you're serious about gaming, you're on the PC. I've turned into a last years gamer in recent years, I rarely buy games on release these days and typically wait a few months until I can get them on sale. The only game that is tempting me on release is the next Starcraft instalment and the last game I bought on release was Galactic Civilizations 2 (yes, I bought it pre-release).
Nintendo has had the only real console of the last three generations.
The reason Nintendo gets a free pass is because they've made a console that's meant to be a console, unlike Sony and Microsoft that are making consoles that are wannabe PC's. The Wii and Wii U have an abundance of simple yet fun games, yes its casual but consoles are meant to be causal. When you've got some friends over you aren't going to drag out four PC's and have a mini-LAN, no you're going to get the Wii out and play some Mario Kart.
The Wii and Wii U are the Toyota 86 of consoles, its not fast, flashy or high tech, but man are they fun. This is why the owners of Mustangs (Xbox) and Camaro's (Playstation) hate them, sure they have 2-3 times the horsepowers, but you cant throw them around the twisties gurning like an idiot because they cant corner.
The 1918 flu
Sigh, you do know the 50,000 dead is not from 1918 right, it's from recent years right?
You also know that in 1918, medical facilities weren't as common as they were today?
You also know that in 1918 there was no such thing as sick leave?
You do know it's not 1918 and the 1918 flu has no bearing on the discussion?
the 1918 was determined to be an H1N1 variant,
Which we had an outbreak of recently, there weren't that many casualties... Possibly because of the differences I alluded to above.
The statistic being bandied about that flu kills 50,000 in the US is from today, not 1918. It is taken from the millions of cases across all the strains of influenza active today. In 1918 workers pretty much had no choice but to come into work and infect others, they couldn't take time off to get better, they didn't have access to modern medical facilities, anti-biotics and anti-virals hadn't been invented yet. Finally, even the worst flu epidemics had nowhere near the fatality rates of Ebola.
The young and apparently healthy group of fatalities was actually larger than the old, sick or 'messed up before they got it' group
if you did your research on the 1918 epidemic you'd know that the reason for this reversal was in fact, a little war you may of heard of known affectionately as the first world war. One of the major causes of this was the fact that soldiers infected with a mild strain were kept in the field. and those with a serious infection were loaded onto trains and taken to crowded field hospitals where re-infection was rife and the deadlier strains were traded amongst the infected.
Your anecdote is no kind of proof. The news is already reporting Ebola victims are rising from graves. You're probably a goddamned zombie. You do scare me though. The movies have always made zombies out to be shambling stooooopids who want to eat brains because they have none. Well now your post just shows us all that zombies aren't as stupid as we thought! At least they can type. I'll be locked down in my bunker, kthxbai!
Quick, he's onto us.
Top Gear had an interesting experiment where they raced a Prius against a BMW M3. But what they did was have the Prius go all out and the M3 just paced it. Then they measured the actual gas consumed and found that the BMW had better mileage under those circumstances.
The Prius on petrol isn't an efficient car because of its weight.
The traditional Prius (as featured on that Top Gear episode) has two drivetrains for two engines, electric and petrol. Its more or less the same engine as a Toyota Corolla (2ZR-Fxx) so basically it's a Corolla with an extra 160 KG (as Clarkson said, that's like a whole American sitting on the front). A proper 100% hybrid engine with the electric motor doing 100% of the driving and the petrol motor just being an electric generator would be much different, picture a BMW M3 vs a Fisker Karma.
What possible benefit is there to taxing fuel, other than to hand more money to the government to waste?
Oh, yeah, I forgot, it lets you force people into small cars they don't want, or force poor people onto buses.
Why do you hate the poor? What did they ever do to you?
The rationale for taxing fuel is to capture the externalities (pollution, climate, military costs) of using that fuel. The point about the regressiveness of the gas tax is valid, so we should raise the gas tax, but add a refundable credit to income taxes for it, to remove the regressiveness.
This.
But you dont need to add a tax credit for income taxes, just drop the income tax collection. Right now, for most places in the US roads are paid for by income taxes. Once you move that cost from income taxes to consumption taxes (a fuel tax is a consumption tax) you lessen the income tax by the amount you no longer require. This can be done, but the US will probably need someone more competent than their current leaders (at state, local and federal level).
The problem with fuel tax regression is mainly with goods and services that require fuel to get somewhere (read: all of them). Transport companies and the like should be allowed access to lower taxed fuel to prevent fuel taxes from becoming another form of inflation.
Beyond this, consumption taxes are good because it targets the heaviest users. A person in a big 3T SUV does more damage to the road than someone driving in a 1.2T Toyota Corolla doing the same distance. The 3T car is going to require more fuel regardless of engine size (ya canne change the lews of physics capt'n). The only people it unfairly punishes are people like me who drive a 1.2T 2L turbocharged sports car that gets 11L/100 KM. But people like me know their cars aren't going to be cheap going in and accept this because racecar.
Most cars are only carrying the driver, and doing speeds of less than 120 kilometres per hour.
In the rest of the world you don't need a multiton SUV for those uses.
A 1 litre normally aspirated 4 cylinder should be enough.
Whilst I agree with the SUV part, you dont need a massive tank just to take the kids to school. 1L NA isn't going to produce around 73 KW. Given that city cars weigh between 950 and 1300 KG, load that up with a small family (200 KG) you're potentially lugging around 1500 KG which gives you less than 50 kW/T but thats not the worst part, its the fact you're usually only getting 100 Nm of torque high in the rev range.
You're also European or British by the sounds of it, in the good ol' US, practically no-one can drive manual. So you're losing more power to a torque converter.
Not saying you need a big 6.2L V8 to lug the kids around, rather to get enough power and torque for the average person, you need a 1L turbo, or 1.5-2L naturally aspirated engine (most hybrid engines are supercharged in practical terms at the moment at the moment).
I drive a 2L turbocharged sports car, so both the SUV driving nutbars and Prius driving Enviro-mentalists hate me for being faster than they are.
The reason it's considered inferior is because it's inverted from what you really care about - what you care about is "how much fuel will it take me to get n miles".
No, what I really care about is, "can I make it to the next fuel stop with what I have in the tank." Which is not a problem in most of Europe, but is very much a problem in large parts of the USA.
I live in Australia where there is usually a distance of 100 KM or more between petrol stations on many highways. Especially in my state of Western Australia. Distances of 250+ KM between petrol stations are not uncommon.
So unless you're absolutely sure that your cars got enough fuel to get another 350 KM, it's a good practice to assume it doesn't and stop to brim the tank. If I'm driving long distances in OZ, I'll keep the tank topped up as I pass each town or roadhouse I pass as they're usually pretty far apart. Being 2+ hours apart, it's also a good excuse to get out of the car and stretch my legs. Taking a quick 10 minute break every few hours helps prevent fatigue from setting in (and fatigue is a real killer on long distance trips).
My big problem with DTE (Distance To Empty) readings is that few cars report them accurately, a problem made difficult by the fact that driving conditions change depending on changes in traffic and roads. 100 KM to empty can change to 40 KM to empty if you hit some traffic.
"But then, we should be using gallons-per-mile instead of miles-per-gallon, too".
No. You should be using litres per kilometer. Especially so when talking about the EU.
Actually it's Litres per 100 Kilometres as this gives an average reading over time (my car, a 2002 Nissan Silvia S15 is rated for 10.5L/100 KM (combined) and I get around 11 - 11.5 thanks to a heavy boot).
Not having a go at you, but you're probably not aware when talking about the measurement of length, it's spelled "metre" and "kilometre" when talking in context of Europe. In En_GB and it's derivative forms "metre" and "meter" have different meanings but the same sound:
Metre: I walked 120 metres.
Meter: I read the water meter.
I.E. The odometer measures in kilometres.
Probably the biggest concern is the possibility of a mutation occurring that would allow the virus to go airborne.
Besides the fact that Ebola is not capable of becoming airborne being a bit too complex (read: big) to become airborne. In order for Ebola to become airborne it needs to start replicating in the bronchial tubes instead of the blood. This is a significant mutation.
Secondly, we haven't actually seen a human virus change it's infection vector. Even viruses that have infected millions like HIV or Hepatitis have maintained the same infection vector. This is not to say it's impossible, but it is saying that it's so unlikely you may as well start preparing for your coronation as King of planet earth and all its colonies.
Beyond this, as diseases and viruses mutate, our bodies also mutate in response. It's an arms race, Ebola maintains it's deadly position because it's not widely spread, if it were our bodies would develop antibodies to fight it, just as we've done with other viruses. When Europeans bought influenza to the Americas, it killed a lot of people yes, but the survivors gained the ability to fight it off. But with Ebola, this eventuality is extremely unlikely as the likelihood of Ebola becoming airborne is extremely low.