It was also legal in England, and most of the world at the same time. Why pick just one example?
The thing was, the Chinese emperor at the time tried to make it illegal. The British started (and won) a few wars over the matter (which is how Hong Kong became a British protectorate).
I cant tell you if that really helps or harms the assertion that legalising drugs is good... I guess it could be twisted into fitting either case.
The more interesting part is the fact that opium was legal in many parts of SE Asia up until the 1960's when the US, coerced, sweet talked and cajoled many nations to shut them down. The opium dens in Thailand were shut down as the Vietnam wars hotted up.
To my knowledge, Mexico possesses an air force. Air forces are used to drop bombs on enemy locations using airplanes (and to use other airplanes to protect the ones carrying bombs).
It really can't be that hard to figure out where these cartels operate from. Once you know that, the solution is simple: drop bombs on them. You can't have an operating cartel if their mansions and other bases are blown to smithereens.
The Israeli's try this all the time. Assassination by rocket fired from AH64.
Despite Israeli intelligent being quite good (I.E. identifying when the target is home and vulnerable) quite a few of the assassinated turn up a few months later alive and well.
The point here is, bombs and rockets are very imprecise weapons and killing a specific individual you need to be 100% accurate.
Beyond this, after the first assassination happens the drug barons will just put the military chiefs on the payroll... if they aren't already. So you'll have to start shooting all the officers that are taking bribes as well, you'll need a lot of bullets for that job alone.
Finally, if you kill the Drug Lord Carlos, his lieutenant simply Juan takes over the operation. You cant simply kill the leader and expect the operation to die of it's own accord, you need to dismantle the operation in its entirety. Ultimately that's why rolling in there with tanks, bombers and helicopters will ultimately fail.
It's a simple bayonet with the added feature of one of fittings clips being able to move outwards in the event the attachment is knocked so the clip doesn't snap off.
So Apple have copied the same design as the battery cover on every single remote control I've ever owned.
What society really needs to do is admit that some people are simply unfit to be in control of a vehicle and deny them a license.
Fail the test three times, that's it. No more chances.
PS: I guess this isn't too expensive. By 2018 screens will be standard instead of analog instruments (they're cheaper!) and cameras will cost $0.10.
Yeah, nah.
I dont agree with that because it ignores two key points.
In Western Australia you can fail the test without it being your fault. In my first test I was perfect, not a single cross and a hearse pulled out in front of me literally 2 minutes from the licensing centre and I had to mount a curb in order to avoid hitting it (yep hearse, love the irony) but mounting the curb is an instant fail. Above this you have assessors that fail you just because they want to. They just drive you around until you make a mistake and the driving test in Western Australia is a lot harder than in the United States.
The second point is, a test is a demonstration of learned skills... once. It does not ensure that a driver will use those skills once the test is passed. When you're licensed and on the road you can forget everything you were tested for. If the rules aren't enforced, people will take it as a sign that the road rules don't apply.
If you want to make better drivers, stop concentrating on tests because they're once off events. Making them harder wont remove bad drivers from the road. What you need are.
1. Better training programs with an emphasis on defensive driving.
2. Better enforcement of laws. People who break laws or are dangerous drivers need to have their licenses revoked.
Making tests harder wont help one iota and would just lead to more people driving without a license (due to the lack of point #2, the risk of being caught is less than the hassle of being licensed and punishments are ineffective).
One other thing, in Western Australia, after you pass your test you still have to do 25 hours of supervised driving, here a good instructor can focus on teaching you the finer aspects of roadcraft to a more confident driver. Aspects such as how to be courteous, how to drive on the inside lane properly, parking techniques that aren't strictly by the book, advanced turning and overtaking, towing, so on and so forth.
Above this. a lot of drivers currently on the road are terrible and they wont be removed by harder testing because they've already passed it. If I took 10 full licensed drivers off Perth roads and gave them a standard Western Australian driving test, maybe 2 will pass.
Of course, this is ignoring the INCREASE in accidents this will cause by people looking forward, staring at a screen rather than backwards while backing up, missing little details like traffic to the left and right, etc. I'd be much happier if they mandated a minimum visibility spec out the back than cameras, we're now mandating distracted backing up... blech.
This, this x 1000.
A 120 degree view leaves a huge blindspot for reversing. You really need 240-270 degree views which means looking over your shoulders (yes, hazards come from beside your car, not just directly behind it). RV cameras whilst useful for cars that cant have a good centre rear view mirror are not a replacement for other mirrors or head checks, however people with reversing cameras in their never-been-offroad SUV keep their eyes glued to the screen... even as I lean on the horn.
I love the idea of phones exploding in a thiefs hand, but since nothing is perfect, we would just have more personal injury lawsuits, and I certainly don't want any more of those!
Given how reliable the other technology in my phone is, I'm more worried about it exploding in my hand.
"Driver training should not be a requirement. If it isn't a requirement for normal drivers,"
It should be
No it shouldn't. Driver training used to be common. Many high schools had "Driver's Ed" courses. Then empirical evidence showed that this training had no effect at all on accident rates. We shouldn't continue to do something that clearly doesn't work, despite the fact that it "should" work.
You need to drive in Europe where they take driver training seriously.
Drivers in the US are horrible because driver training in the US is pitiful. A "Drivers Ed" course in high school is not sufficient, your tests need to be improved and a proper training regiment put in place. Beyond this you need enforcement that actually works.
I'm serious, I thought Australian drivers were bad but then I drove in the US and discovered just what bad drivers are like. I saw 3 people indicate the entire time I was there. No one checked their mirrors, let alone blind spots when changing lanes. If you cant master simple things like looking and signalling, you completely fail at driving. Things like looking and signalling need to be drilled into learner drivers so they are instinctual long before even sitting the test. I hardly ever forget to indicate because I don't need to remember to indicate, it's subconscious and has been since a month after I started learning. I was taught defensive driving from the word go, all drivers need to be trained and tested in defensive driving and it does have an effect on accident and more importantly, fatality rates.
Feel free to look up the accident rates in the UK and Germany (where they drive faster on the highways) compared to the US. Then look at what is involved in getting your license in the UK and Germany... and what's involved in keeping it. Doing 30 over in Germany is an instant 1 month suspension... If that's not enough, look up Finland.
Google Glass only records from a first person point of view, and is less sensitive than normal human eyes or ears. So, pretty much by definition, if it can be recorded by Google Glass, it isn't private: the person doing the recording needs to be visibly present to record the information.
Australia is considerably more laid back about public recordings. Currently laws cover publication/syndication rather than recordings. So you can within reason record things in public (including the police) but publishing them without consent is another thing. For example, if I were pulled over and recorded a conversation with a police officer on my dashcam (which is in plain sight) that could be used as evidence to defend myself in court thats fine, but If I publish that video on YouTube, I've done wrong.
Laws on recording private conversations vary from state to state but many police forces in Australia have commented that they don't mind being recorded in public.
But the article is a fluff piece from the AFR (Fairfax media) and the laws haven't be implemented or passed by parliament. In fact they haven't even been introduced into parliament. They're just a proposal from a commission that boils down to nothing more than political grandstanding. It's been a slow news day since Fairfax supports the current government and can only report on the good things they've done.... It's been a slow news day for them since the Abbott government was elected.
I haven't heard a cogent explanation of Daylight Savings Time, ever.
It's some stupid thing that we do just because we do it.
Well, here in Western Australia the sun is shining at 4:30 in the morning in the summer. This means all the birds, dogs and retarded morning people up and waking the dead at 4-fucking-30. The Sun goes down around 7:30 PM.
We had daylight savings for 3 glorious years until the backwards idiots in this state repealed it. DST shifted the sunrise to 5:30 and sunset to 8:30... this had the added bonus of allowing you to do things that required daylight after work.
So there are two cogent explanations of why DST exists:
1. Sleep in the morning.
2. Can go to the beach after work.
You have been educated.
1. Traffic Shaping *CAN* be done in a Network Neutral way. If all RTP traffic is higher than all SMTP traffic (regardless if the RTP traffic is from my house to a friend and the SMTP traffic is from Comcast), then you have preserved NETWORK (not traffic) neutrality. I think this is acceptable to most people that support Network Neutrality.
This was my idea of what network neutrality was. HTTP is treated differently to streaming video but ALL streaming video is treated equally. So YouTube gets the same priority as Netflix and it's not legal to charge Netflix more to get the same level of service as YouTube.
The UK TV licence is a government mandated charge that pays for the public stations, worldwide known as BBC and the vast majority of voters is in favour of the system.
As an Australian, I'd happily pay for a UK TV license (A$270 p/a) just to get access to the BBC's online content.
Expect your travel insurance, extended warranty protection, points, cash back, and other credit card features to dry up rapidly if interchange fees are reduced. These perks that have been built up over the years are not free, they are paid for by interchange fees.
You say that as if its a bad thing.
Credit card features and rewards are the trap they use to get you addicted to using CC's. They are not worth what you pay for them but what you really pay is hidden from you.
Would you rather have the 3% Visa charge for accepting your card in your pocket, or some time-limited, imaginary points on your credit card?
Don't know about you, but that 3% is about $1500 p/a for me.
Maybe Walmart is just being stupid. Did they ever consider that? My swipe fees are zero. I pay $21 flat per month to the processor and then exactly what the card costs so if visa wants 0.8% on a debit card, that's what I pay. Maybe they should have gotten a plan that doesn't suck.
Maybe you're stupid. In fact, there's no maybe about it. You're just stupid.
Visa aren't charging you (well not directly) for using your card, they're charging the merchant (walmart) for accepting it.
So they get you addled on easy credit, addict you to using the card then rip the merchant a new one in merchant service fees. If the merchant refuses credit transactions or adds a surcharge to cover this cost then I guarantee you would be getting your knickers in a twist over it, so instead they hide the cost in higher prices.
The cost of credit card transactions are nowhere near zero. Transaction processing in any form is not cheap, even at high volumes. There are significant costs for both on the front end (credit card machines + computers + accounting + banking fees), and on the back end (computers, customer service, accounting, security (yeah, ironic I know), billing, payment transaction costs, marketing, and more).
Some of those things you have listed (credit card machines, computers, more computers) are fixed cost and should not be factored into transaction fees, which are a variable cost.
What's strange is why is the fee a percent? It should cost more to process a $10,000 purchase than a $1.59 stick of gun.
Hi, it sounds like you've got no clue how fees for EFT are structured.
First, the merchant pays for the terminal, this is normally rented on a per terminal fee. The merchant then pays a monthly service fee to cover the banks costs (and a bit of profit), after that they pay a flat rate per transaction (in Oz it's anywhere between $0.10 and $0.50) and then after that they get charged a percentage of each transaction made on credit.
So all the costs are covered before getting to the percentage based transaction fee. That fee is pure profit.
Its the perfect scam. Banks get consumers addled on easy credit then banks charge merchants for accepting credit transactions. If the merchant refuses credit or puts on a surcharge to cover this cost, they look like the bad guy. Meanwhile banks pocket the profit.
Is there a market for used or stolen Tesla cars or parts?
It wouldn't 100% shock me (though it'd have to be an export job, 'notable and uncommon', 'aggressively interacts with the vendor', and 'stolen' are not attributes that work well together); but it's probably not on the top of the list of cars that flip or chop easily.
On the other hand, its materials/recycle value is probably above average for vehicles of its size.
I know/. is very US centric, but in Europe driving a stolen car over a border is trivial and a Tesla will fetch a good price even in Eastern Europe.
Or Stargate and Firefly - by having the episodes explore and develop the environment around the characters.
I liked Stargate but it did have a fair few filler episodes. Every series had at least 1 clip episode. Even B5 had filler ep's (Grey 17 is missing immediately comes to mind).
The NSC cites McEvoy et al (2005); Redelmeier & Tibshirani (1997) as the source for the 1 in 4 stat. I don't see a ref Saurabh Bhargava and Vikram S. Pathania (2013)http://tech.slashdot.org/story.... Correlation does not mean causation, folks. Let's not forget that.
Yes,
Especially when considering Saurabh Bhargava and Vikram S. Pathania (2013).
The way people are trying to use their study is seriously flawed. Their research didn't disprove that mobile phone use causes accidents, that was the interpretation by people who wanted that answer. What they did the test did prove was that that people at night tended to crash more (well duh). Further more, they only measured calls, not texting or internet usage. Finally, their only evidence that mobile phone usage may not is that accidents did not rise, they didn't look at the cause or other trends, accidents due to phone use may have risen but accidents due to alcohol may have fallen, absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence.
Remember, not only does correlation not equal causation but also absence of evidence is not evidence of absence (and people with an agenda often co-opt and skew evidence, don't be fooled because you want it to be true).
You should see how the books are cooked for "alcohol-related" crashes. Beer in the trunk of the car that was blindsided? Alcohol-related! Agenda-driven statistics.
I can certainly believe 1-in-4 if you include passengers in the not-at-fault car on the phone as "phone related"
Remember, there are lies, damn lies, and anonymous posts on the internet! Or something like that.
I'd love to see real, peer reviewed evidence of this.
From somewhere like Europe or Australia where they take the issue seriously.
But I know you dont have any, like all the motoring conspiracy theorists. The statistics here in Oz come from the results of blood and breath tests, not the contents of the car and they dont paint a pretty picture.
Here's a question: Would the black box tell you how many of these accidents would have happened even if there was no cell phone involved? If so, let's see it. (I honestly don't know.)
Given that driving using a mobile phone seriously inhibits your ability to concentrate on driving and that the main cause of accidents is driver error, its a very good assumption.
Far better than the assumption that they would have had the accident anyway.
Here's the $64 question: If a quarter of accidents happen to occur while somebody is using a cell phone, does that also mean that accidents are up 25% above when nobody had cell phones?
Your strawman depends on no other factors being involved. It's like claiming drivers are safer since the 80's because fatalities have reduced, this completely ignores the advent and rise of ABS, the seatbelt pre-tensioner as well as crackdowns on speed and drunk driving (and awareness campaigns on driver fatigue).
Until that is determined, sensationalist figures like these are more harmful than helpful.
The figures aren't sensationalist when they're true.
And if they help morons on phones realise that they are morons for being on the phone whilst driving, it's extremely helpful.
Slashdot Mirror
You drive a silver Camry
Sounds like a Camry driver.
The ones I hate are the people who see a red light up the road and slow down to 10 KPH and just coast.
Ah, yes, as soon as I saw this topic I knew someone would be along to blame it all on America.
As Mexico is technically in America, if America disappeared so would Mexico (and the problems contained within).
At that point I think Europe and the ROW would be more concerned with the giant gaping hole where two continents used to be.
It was also legal in England, and most of the world at the same time. Why pick just one example?
The thing was, the Chinese emperor at the time tried to make it illegal. The British started (and won) a few wars over the matter (which is how Hong Kong became a British protectorate).
I cant tell you if that really helps or harms the assertion that legalising drugs is good... I guess it could be twisted into fitting either case.
The more interesting part is the fact that opium was legal in many parts of SE Asia up until the 1960's when the US, coerced, sweet talked and cajoled many nations to shut them down. The opium dens in Thailand were shut down as the Vietnam wars hotted up.
To my knowledge, Mexico possesses an air force. Air forces are used to drop bombs on enemy locations using airplanes (and to use other airplanes to protect the ones carrying bombs).
It really can't be that hard to figure out where these cartels operate from. Once you know that, the solution is simple: drop bombs on them. You can't have an operating cartel if their mansions and other bases are blown to smithereens.
The Israeli's try this all the time. Assassination by rocket fired from AH64.
Despite Israeli intelligent being quite good (I.E. identifying when the target is home and vulnerable) quite a few of the assassinated turn up a few months later alive and well.
The point here is, bombs and rockets are very imprecise weapons and killing a specific individual you need to be 100% accurate.
Beyond this, after the first assassination happens the drug barons will just put the military chiefs on the payroll... if they aren't already. So you'll have to start shooting all the officers that are taking bribes as well, you'll need a lot of bullets for that job alone.
Finally, if you kill the Drug Lord Carlos, his lieutenant simply Juan takes over the operation. You cant simply kill the leader and expect the operation to die of it's own accord, you need to dismantle the operation in its entirety. Ultimately that's why rolling in there with tanks, bombers and helicopters will ultimately fail.
It's a simple bayonet with the added feature of one of fittings clips being able to move outwards in the event the attachment is knocked so the clip doesn't snap off.
So Apple have copied the same design as the battery cover on every single remote control I've ever owned.
What society really needs to do is admit that some people are simply unfit to be in control of a vehicle and deny them a license.
Fail the test three times, that's it. No more chances.
PS: I guess this isn't too expensive. By 2018 screens will be standard instead of analog instruments (they're cheaper!) and cameras will cost $0.10.
Yeah, nah.
I dont agree with that because it ignores two key points.
In Western Australia you can fail the test without it being your fault. In my first test I was perfect, not a single cross and a hearse pulled out in front of me literally 2 minutes from the licensing centre and I had to mount a curb in order to avoid hitting it (yep hearse, love the irony) but mounting the curb is an instant fail. Above this you have assessors that fail you just because they want to. They just drive you around until you make a mistake and the driving test in Western Australia is a lot harder than in the United States.
The second point is, a test is a demonstration of learned skills... once. It does not ensure that a driver will use those skills once the test is passed. When you're licensed and on the road you can forget everything you were tested for. If the rules aren't enforced, people will take it as a sign that the road rules don't apply.
If you want to make better drivers, stop concentrating on tests because they're once off events. Making them harder wont remove bad drivers from the road. What you need are.
1. Better training programs with an emphasis on defensive driving.
2. Better enforcement of laws. People who break laws or are dangerous drivers need to have their licenses revoked.
Making tests harder wont help one iota and would just lead to more people driving without a license (due to the lack of point #2, the risk of being caught is less than the hassle of being licensed and punishments are ineffective).
One other thing, in Western Australia, after you pass your test you still have to do 25 hours of supervised driving, here a good instructor can focus on teaching you the finer aspects of roadcraft to a more confident driver. Aspects such as how to be courteous, how to drive on the inside lane properly, parking techniques that aren't strictly by the book, advanced turning and overtaking, towing, so on and so forth.
Above this. a lot of drivers currently on the road are terrible and they wont be removed by harder testing because they've already passed it. If I took 10 full licensed drivers off Perth roads and gave them a standard Western Australian driving test, maybe 2 will pass.
In Soviet Russia, dash cams are compulsory!
Hmmm, that didn't quite work out like I wanted.
In Soviet Russia dash cams make you compulsory.
Of course, this is ignoring the INCREASE in accidents this will cause by people looking forward, staring at a screen rather than backwards while backing up, missing little details like traffic to the left and right, etc. I'd be much happier if they mandated a minimum visibility spec out the back than cameras, we're now mandating distracted backing up... blech.
This, this x 1000.
A 120 degree view leaves a huge blindspot for reversing. You really need 240-270 degree views which means looking over your shoulders (yes, hazards come from beside your car, not just directly behind it). RV cameras whilst useful for cars that cant have a good centre rear view mirror are not a replacement for other mirrors or head checks, however people with reversing cameras in their never-been-offroad SUV keep their eyes glued to the screen... even as I lean on the horn.
Why would she allow a prejudicial video when an alternative, with no products from either side, is available? The entire text of her ruling reads:
Because a neutral video cant be used to influence the jury.
Judge Koh's handling of the previous Apple V Samsung case was extremely biased and she got away with it. Why would there be any need to be fair now?
I love the idea of phones exploding in a thiefs hand, but since nothing is perfect, we would just have more personal injury lawsuits, and I certainly don't want any more of those!
Given how reliable the other technology in my phone is, I'm more worried about it exploding in my hand.
"Driver training should not be a requirement. If it isn't a requirement for normal drivers,"
It should be
No it shouldn't. Driver training used to be common. Many high schools had "Driver's Ed" courses. Then empirical evidence showed that this training had no effect at all on accident rates. We shouldn't continue to do something that clearly doesn't work, despite the fact that it "should" work.
You need to drive in Europe where they take driver training seriously.
Drivers in the US are horrible because driver training in the US is pitiful. A "Drivers Ed" course in high school is not sufficient, your tests need to be improved and a proper training regiment put in place. Beyond this you need enforcement that actually works.
I'm serious, I thought Australian drivers were bad but then I drove in the US and discovered just what bad drivers are like. I saw 3 people indicate the entire time I was there. No one checked their mirrors, let alone blind spots when changing lanes. If you cant master simple things like looking and signalling, you completely fail at driving. Things like looking and signalling need to be drilled into learner drivers so they are instinctual long before even sitting the test. I hardly ever forget to indicate because I don't need to remember to indicate, it's subconscious and has been since a month after I started learning. I was taught defensive driving from the word go, all drivers need to be trained and tested in defensive driving and it does have an effect on accident and more importantly, fatality rates.
Feel free to look up the accident rates in the UK and Germany (where they drive faster on the highways) compared to the US. Then look at what is involved in getting your license in the UK and Germany... and what's involved in keeping it. Doing 30 over in Germany is an instant 1 month suspension... If that's not enough, look up Finland.
Google Glass only records from a first person point of view, and is less sensitive than normal human eyes or ears. So, pretty much by definition, if it can be recorded by Google Glass, it isn't private: the person doing the recording needs to be visibly present to record the information.
Australia is considerably more laid back about public recordings. Currently laws cover publication/syndication rather than recordings. So you can within reason record things in public (including the police) but publishing them without consent is another thing. For example, if I were pulled over and recorded a conversation with a police officer on my dashcam (which is in plain sight) that could be used as evidence to defend myself in court thats fine, but If I publish that video on YouTube, I've done wrong.
Laws on recording private conversations vary from state to state but many police forces in Australia have commented that they don't mind being recorded in public.
But the article is a fluff piece from the AFR (Fairfax media) and the laws haven't be implemented or passed by parliament. In fact they haven't even been introduced into parliament. They're just a proposal from a commission that boils down to nothing more than political grandstanding. It's been a slow news day since Fairfax supports the current government and can only report on the good things they've done.... It's been a slow news day for them since the Abbott government was elected.
I haven't heard a cogent explanation of Daylight Savings Time, ever.
It's some stupid thing that we do just because we do it.
Well, here in Western Australia the sun is shining at 4:30 in the morning in the summer. This means all the birds, dogs and retarded morning people up and waking the dead at 4-fucking-30. The Sun goes down around 7:30 PM.
We had daylight savings for 3 glorious years until the backwards idiots in this state repealed it. DST shifted the sunrise to 5:30 and sunset to 8:30... this had the added bonus of allowing you to do things that required daylight after work.
So there are two cogent explanations of why DST exists:
1. Sleep in the morning.
2. Can go to the beach after work.
You have been educated.
1) Hats - in a great position to measure lots of stuff, and would be just as good as Glass at photo/video work,
Finally, I can say my Trilby runs Fedora.
Couple things:
1. Traffic Shaping *CAN* be done in a Network Neutral way. If all RTP traffic is higher than all SMTP traffic (regardless if the RTP traffic is from my house to a friend and the SMTP traffic is from Comcast), then you have preserved NETWORK (not traffic) neutrality. I think this is acceptable to most people that support Network Neutrality.
This was my idea of what network neutrality was. HTTP is treated differently to streaming video but ALL streaming video is treated equally. So YouTube gets the same priority as Netflix and it's not legal to charge Netflix more to get the same level of service as YouTube.
Neither do UK networks implement such a licence.
The UK TV licence is a government mandated charge that pays for the public stations, worldwide known as BBC and the vast majority of voters is in favour of the system.
As an Australian, I'd happily pay for a UK TV license (A$270 p/a) just to get access to the BBC's online content.
Expect your travel insurance, extended warranty protection, points, cash back, and other credit card features to dry up rapidly if interchange fees are reduced. These perks that have been built up over the years are not free, they are paid for by interchange fees.
You say that as if its a bad thing.
Credit card features and rewards are the trap they use to get you addicted to using CC's. They are not worth what you pay for them but what you really pay is hidden from you.
Would you rather have the 3% Visa charge for accepting your card in your pocket, or some time-limited, imaginary points on your credit card?
Don't know about you, but that 3% is about $1500 p/a for me.
Maybe Walmart is just being stupid. Did they ever consider that? My swipe fees are zero. I pay $21 flat per month to the processor and then exactly what the card costs so if visa wants 0.8% on a debit card, that's what I pay. Maybe they should have gotten a plan that doesn't suck.
Maybe you're stupid. In fact, there's no maybe about it. You're just stupid.
Visa aren't charging you (well not directly) for using your card, they're charging the merchant (walmart) for accepting it.
So they get you addled on easy credit, addict you to using the card then rip the merchant a new one in merchant service fees. If the merchant refuses credit transactions or adds a surcharge to cover this cost then I guarantee you would be getting your knickers in a twist over it, so instead they hide the cost in higher prices.
The cost of credit card transactions are nowhere near zero. Transaction processing in any form is not cheap, even at high volumes. There are significant costs for both on the front end (credit card machines + computers + accounting + banking fees), and on the back end (computers, customer service, accounting, security (yeah, ironic I know), billing, payment transaction costs, marketing, and more).
Some of those things you have listed (credit card machines, computers, more computers) are fixed cost and should not be factored into transaction fees, which are a variable cost.
What's strange is why is the fee a percent? It should cost more to process a $10,000 purchase than a $1.59 stick of gun.
Hi, it sounds like you've got no clue how fees for EFT are structured.
First, the merchant pays for the terminal, this is normally rented on a per terminal fee. The merchant then pays a monthly service fee to cover the banks costs (and a bit of profit), after that they pay a flat rate per transaction (in Oz it's anywhere between $0.10 and $0.50) and then after that they get charged a percentage of each transaction made on credit.
So all the costs are covered before getting to the percentage based transaction fee. That fee is pure profit.
Its the perfect scam. Banks get consumers addled on easy credit then banks charge merchants for accepting credit transactions. If the merchant refuses credit or puts on a surcharge to cover this cost, they look like the bad guy. Meanwhile banks pocket the profit.
Is there a market for used or stolen Tesla cars or parts?
It wouldn't 100% shock me (though it'd have to be an export job, 'notable and uncommon', 'aggressively interacts with the vendor', and 'stolen' are not attributes that work well together); but it's probably not on the top of the list of cars that flip or chop easily.
On the other hand, its materials/recycle value is probably above average for vehicles of its size.
I know /. is very US centric, but in Europe driving a stolen car over a border is trivial and a Tesla will fetch a good price even in Eastern Europe.
I liked Stargate but it did have a fair few filler episodes. Every series had at least 1 clip episode. Even B5 had filler ep's (Grey 17 is missing immediately comes to mind).
The NSC cites McEvoy et al (2005); Redelmeier & Tibshirani (1997) as the source for the 1 in 4 stat. I don't see a ref Saurabh Bhargava and Vikram S. Pathania (2013) http://tech.slashdot.org/story.... Correlation does not mean causation, folks. Let's not forget that.
Yes,
Especially when considering Saurabh Bhargava and Vikram S. Pathania (2013).
The way people are trying to use their study is seriously flawed. Their research didn't disprove that mobile phone use causes accidents, that was the interpretation by people who wanted that answer. What they did the test did prove was that that people at night tended to crash more (well duh). Further more, they only measured calls, not texting or internet usage. Finally, their only evidence that mobile phone usage may not is that accidents did not rise, they didn't look at the cause or other trends, accidents due to phone use may have risen but accidents due to alcohol may have fallen, absence of evidence does not mean evidence of absence.
Remember, not only does correlation not equal causation but also absence of evidence is not evidence of absence (and people with an agenda often co-opt and skew evidence, don't be fooled because you want it to be true).
You should see how the books are cooked for "alcohol-related" crashes. Beer in the trunk of the car that was blindsided? Alcohol-related! Agenda-driven statistics.
I can certainly believe 1-in-4 if you include passengers in the not-at-fault car on the phone as "phone related"
Remember, there are lies, damn lies, and anonymous posts on the internet! Or something like that.
I'd love to see real, peer reviewed evidence of this.
From somewhere like Europe or Australia where they take the issue seriously.
But I know you dont have any, like all the motoring conspiracy theorists. The statistics here in Oz come from the results of blood and breath tests, not the contents of the car and they dont paint a pretty picture.
"When you PRY it from my COLD, DEAD... oh, yeah. Well, never mind. Carry on and all that."
Well they wont need to pry it from anywhere.
They will need to brush aside your corpse to get the phone from the footwell or if you drive an SUV, the roof.
Here's a question: Would the black box tell you how many of these accidents would have happened even if there was no cell phone involved? If so, let's see it. (I honestly don't know.)
Given that driving using a mobile phone seriously inhibits your ability to concentrate on driving and that the main cause of accidents is driver error, its a very good assumption.
Far better than the assumption that they would have had the accident anyway.
Your strawman depends on no other factors being involved. It's like claiming drivers are safer since the 80's because fatalities have reduced, this completely ignores the advent and rise of ABS, the seatbelt pre-tensioner as well as crackdowns on speed and drunk driving (and awareness campaigns on driver fatigue).
The figures aren't sensationalist when they're true.
And if they help morons on phones realise that they are morons for being on the phone whilst driving, it's extremely helpful.