Exactly. Why is this my problem? I am not liable for fraudulent charges.
But you end up paying anyway.
Do you think the money they lose comes out of thin air?
Or maybe, just maybe you pay for it in fees and charges. What fees and charges you ask... because you just seem like that kind of dumb... well the fees and charges the merchant pays for accepting your card.
Not even remotely true. The information that can be obtained with a reader does not contain the actual keys (!) that would be used to sign a transaction.
You could actually read about EMV, the specification is public. It's fairly clear you haven't.
Actually, it contains your card number, name and expiry date.
Everything you need to start making transactions online.
I have to wonder why people still think that card cloning is a credible threat these days... Card fraud moved online years ago, far better return on effort.
The current RFID cards - Visa PayWave is one brand - provide the "Track 2" data plus an authentication code from the EMV chip. Quite usable for fraud.
Forget track 2 data, the card gives out your name, card number and expiry date wirelessly to anything that asks. That's enough for anyone to start making transactions.
The first thing I do when I get an NFC enabled card is disable the wireless. I do this using a Stanley knife. If you look at your card over a bright light, you can see the induction loop, It then becomes a simple matter of making a small incision into the card to sever the induction loop. No loop, no wireless, card still behaves nicely with Chip and Pin terminals.
I've tested this with an app on my Android phone (here but it hasn't been updated in a while and doesn't work with my Nexus 5x). Its also been tested many times by vendors who don't seem to get that yes, it's disabled now stick it in the machine so I can press savings.
Personally I wouldn't bother with trying to shield or jam it as malicious devices are most likely to be placed on terminals, ATM's and other places where you'll have your card unshielded. If you don't want your card to be exposed, disable it completely.
Seriously, who cares if it was going over by 9 mph? How does that significantly impact anything (other than the car and the trailer)? This is red herring that is being chummed right now. This is not a significant data point, or shouldn't be. They should just shut the fuck up until the report is complete.
It matters because the system is supposed to obey speed limits. This means that the system is operating outside of expected parameters. Likely causes are that the system is not working, the data is incorrect or the system has been modified.
The last one is the biggest concern to the NTSB. Tesla would have done a great deal of testing, but when the behaviour is messed with by the user all of that goes out the window.
To be fair Australian drivers are horrible, and I say this as an Australian who learnt to drive in Australia. Not only is road behavior bad but this stupid "Every K over is a Killer" marketing campagin has trained an entire country that it is more important to look at your dashboard than the road in front of you.
Cracking down on speeding is a good thing. Doing it Australian style is definitely not.
I'm an Aussie who learned to drive properly (now living in the UK).
The biggest problem is Australia is that most people are taught to drive by their parents... who are terrible drivers. So they begin to learn bad habits and never break them. Australians also treat driving as a right. So when they finally get busted for bad driving they cry that it's "all revenue raising, wah, wah, wah" rather than taking responsibility for themselves. However changing this means forcing people who have been driving for 20 years to admit they're shit drivers.
I agree that speed cameras have become a form of lazy policing in Oz. I used to live in Perth and they've just bought more cameras. You can fail to indicate, straddle multiple lanes, take shortcuts over the footpath, cut people off, tailgate and continue to do any manner of dangerous activities with reckless abandon as long as you manage not to crash. Speed has pretty much become the only offence you can get done for. This added to the entitlement attitude of Australians means there is no impetus for a driver to improve.
Here in the UK, its the opposite. There aren't that many speed cameras and most of them are in sensible places (I.E. roadworks), they have to be clearly marked and are usually pretty visible from a distance away. However we have actual cops on the road. If the Rozzers spot you doing 10-15 over on an empty motorway they'll let you be, if they catch you up the jacksie of another car you'll get an S59, same for the guy hogging the middle lane, that'll be 100 Quid thanks.
Speed still needs enforced (otherwise we'd have anarchy) but Australia needs to focus on excessive and dangerous speeders, no anyone who creeps over the limit on an empty motorway on a clear summers day (stop laughing, we have at least 3 of those a year in England). Also Australia needs to start enforcing other laws and taking dangerous drivers off the road. However this will never happen as cameras make it look like they're doing something and real policing is hard. Also telling most 40 somethings that they're shit drivers will go down like a lead balloon.
It's not just the one guy behind you, it's also the entire line of people going reasonable speeds behind him. There's also the chance the guy you're passing will speed up as you attempt to overtake, resulting in you two slowpokes creating a wall. *That* is when the guy behind you will tailgate. As the guy in the passing lane it's your job to break the stalemate, either by committing to the pass and speeding up, or "cancelling" and slowing down to go behind the other slowpoke. Otherwise, you create a far more dangerous situation than exceeding the speed limit would create.
Whilst I agree with the gist of your post, there is no defence for tailgating. Ever. Period.
No-one chooses to be tailgated. It is always the choice of the guy behind. I really dont care what their excuse is, it doesn't matter what the car in front is doing, it is your responsibility to keep a safe distance. More over, by deliberately trying to antagonise the driver in front, you risk them trying to antagonise you further. A lot of people will brake for tailgaters (personally I'm more creative, driving a 3L straight six turbo... manual).
Yes I'm annoyed by slow drivers in the overtaking lane, but as a mature, responsible adult, which is a prerequisite for owning a car, I absolutely will not tailgate. Beyond just not being a dick, chances are Dopey Doris in the overtaking lane hasn't noticed me, I don't want Doris to notice me so when I have the opportunity to pass I can do so without them trying to block mw. If you try to intimidate them you get their attention, their focus turns to you and they will try to make your life miserable in return. I'd rather the first thing Dopey Doris knew about me is the sound of my BOV as I shift up whilst passing.
Now I wholeheartedly agree that lane discapline should be better. The overtaking lane should be treated like a public lavatory, get in, do your business and move left again. Fortunately here in the UK, lane hoging gets you a ticket, so does tailgating and police actually enforce this over writing speeding tickets.
However, can we all agree that it is also incredible stupidity on Tesla's part to call this "Autopilot"?
As a Tesla owner, I do not agree. Tesla makes it abundantly clear what the capabilities and limitations are. Nobody that is actually using it has been misled.
Sorry, but the shrink-wrap, buried in the fine print excuse does not work when people get killed.
The feature is called "Autopilot", the "auto" part is the short form of "automatic" and the "pilot" part refers to person who controls an aircraft or ship. Even though I know autopilots on aircraft are anything but, the colloquial definition of an autopilot is that it is completely "hands off" automatic control of a vehicle. Tesla is not in a position to claim otherwise.
You cant apply the defences of tech companies to engineering cock ups. Safety boards will nail you and your entire company to the wall for even trying.
Plea bargains are only for criminal cases. This is about civil cases. And there are plenty of people who successfully represent themselves in both criminal and civil cases.
Its obvious he means an out of court settlement. And he's right.
A day in court almost always costs more, not just in actual damages but also lost productivity. This is why a credible threat of court is so damaging to businesses. The problem is that when one side can afford shyster lawyers and the other cannot that puts them at a severe disadvantage. Some people can successfully represent themselves but 99% of people cant, especially against someone who knows all the loopholes and dirty tricks of the petty court.
That is what this judge is proposing, by eliminating lawyers you get less dirty tricks being used against people who have done nothing wrong. It will also help the backlog of court cases before the petty courts. Lawyers tend to want to drag things out.
Apple will biuld cars in the same way they build phones. They buy complete components from someone else, have them bolted together by cheap labour, encase them in an body kit and then charge an arm and a leg for the "Transport Experience".
In reality this means you get the engine from a Nissan Leaf, the suspension from a Citroen C1, the chassis form a Chevorlet Cruze, the dash and cluster from a Tata Nano and the battery from a Halfords bargain bin wrapped an expensive plastic shell to be sold to you by a hipster who knows nothing about cars and spends the entire time looking down on you for daring to pretend you're as exclusive as they are.
You'll also need a proprietary charger and to change the battery you'll have to remove the drive train.
As ashamed as I am to admit it, the author sounds Australian.
Probably a bogan (En_UK: Chav, En_US: Trailer trash) who proclaims to hate foreigners and "Effnicks" but jets off to Bali twice a year in his singlet (wife beater) for a Bintang fuelled display of douchebaggery. Apparently this makes him "well travelled".
Disclosure: I'm a skip living in pommyland, both nations have pluses and minuses to living and working there..
Micro USB jacks wear out even more quickly. I wonder what the new connectors will be like. Everything is getting shittier.
This is a feature, not a bug.
Apple, et al. are starting to require new ways to make people "need" a new phone every year. Sales are flattening because the smartphone craze is over, everyone who wants one has one. Beyond this software and hardware releases are becoming more steady and aren't the huge leaps they were in previous years. So making the hardware crappier and adding in features that can force obsolescence is now the preferred way of generating sales.
You are apparently unaware that, to date, the only phones which have shipped without headphone jacks are Android phones...
Actually, they're motorola and ZTE.
Android isn't sold by a company, it's a platform. If you want an Android phone with a headphone jack, you've got plenty to chose from including options from Motorola and ZTE.
While I'm not thrilled at seeing the headphone jack disapear the author's reasons for keeping it apply to maybe.001 of the population. How many people really have a reason to carry both an iphone and a droid on them? Using my headphones on some one else's phone? How often does THAT come up for a normal person?
Speaking of poor arguments, yours is a shining example.
A standardised 3.5 mm headphone port means that the 1 pair of headphones I own works in every single audio device I own from my laptop, to my phone and tablet to my guitar amplifier. I don't have to carry adaptors nor have a specially authorised (read: overpriced) DCMA compliant pair of headphones for each device.
I revile hatred and bigotry. Yet I love the internet.
How can these both be true? Oh internet, you are a sweet sweet mystery.
Its called being irreverent.
For the most part the internet is very irreverent, even if the people who post the name "McGoebbels" are serious (and seriously messed up in the head) the internet refuses to take them seriously. Their act of hate and bigotry becomes an act to laugh at, rather than to revile.
I regularly call my brother in law a cunt. Usually being called that is pretty offensive but we both know we're not being serious about the entire thing. Whether something is humorous or bigoted depends on the intention as well as the forum it is being used in. Lets face it, if talking about racism wasn't able to be funny, stand up comedy would be decimated.
The debate [wikipedia.org] about the health benefits of raw vs pasteurized milk has not yet yielded much in the way of firm conclusions.
Actually the debate has some very firm conclusions with several deaths (mostly child deaths) directly linked to drinking raw milk. There was one in January here in the UK and in December 2014, one deaths and 4 serious injuries were caused by children consuming raw milk in Australia.
The debate is out about homogenisation, but the debate over pasteurisation is very clear cut. The problem is, like many times where science is very clear there are a few vocal nutters who refuse to give up their beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence. Personally I dont mind letting adult nutters have their dangerous milk, my problem is when they try to force their bad life choices onto others, especially kids who couldn't know any better.
Call a "switchboard operator"? "patched through" to your desk? What is this, 1946? The mid/highclass hookers aren't asking their customers for identification. Who writes this garbage?
Thats a fancy way of saying receptionist.
No high level exec of a fortune 500 company has a direct line in. There will be at least one human you'll have to get past to speak to the vice director of what ever, let alone a CxO.
That is just one of the cues that tell you this article is bullshit.
VCRs haven't competed against DVDs for a long time. If you buy a movie, it has come on DVD (or blue-ray) for over a decade.
The reason people buy VCRs now is to record shows off the TV to watch them later. That's not easy to do on a DVD player. So as DVRs have become more popular, they've replaced the final uses for VCR.
We've had DVR's for that for a long time now. The VCR is used almost elusively by the security industry because some laggards haven't updated to digital storage. There are a few VCR enthusiasts out there, same as there is for everything but they're very few in number and certainly not enough to sustain a single manufacturing plant.
Even more so in countries like Australia where our library is less than half the size of the US one. By blocking my access to other netflix regions, they're well on their way to losing another customer. I know it's the rights holders that are the issue, but the only language they understand is money.
What do you mean by "on their way".
I dumped Netflix the moment they blocked access to US content. My biggest regret is that I cant tell them why directly.
OK, the OP is wrong, American cars are not a bit shit... they're completely shit. The US is a place who thinks getting 270KW out of a 6.2L V8 is good. Europe (and Japan) can get that out of a 2L turbo these days.
We can also leave a car meet without ploughing into the crowd.
Also as a JDM fanboy, I have to say that Japan no longer makes the worlds best cars, hasn't done since the early 00's. Long gone are the days of budget super and sports cars rivalling their European counterparts for half the price. The Asian Fianancial Crisis and emissions regulations killed that and made all Japanese car companies ultra-conservative. The MKIV Supra by Toyota was compared with the Ferrari's of it's day, gone now. Same with the Honda NSX. The Honda S2000 is still considered the best in class roadster despite being killed off in 2009.
Same story with the Integras, Skylines, Sivlias, even the Z cars are watered down now.
If you want performance these days, Europe is killing everyone else at the moment. Japan doesn't seem to mind as they're making good money on whitegoods.
Also remember that European cars are very popular in the US. How often do you see a BMW X5, Audi Q7 or the latest Rangie?
So there is no theft. You are taxed by people who a conferred the right to enact and collect taxes by the consent of the governed, which is you and all your fellow citizens collectively.
This.
You also, in a democracy, have the right to run on a "abolish taxes" platform. You will get a few votes from people who have no clue but for the most part people wont vote for you because they know taxes pay for all the things they cant live without like police, fire brigades, armies, rail, roads, sanitation, water and other infrastructure.
Slashdot Mirror
Exactly. Why is this my problem? I am not liable for fraudulent charges.
But you end up paying anyway. Do you think the money they lose comes out of thin air? Or maybe, just maybe you pay for it in fees and charges. What fees and charges you ask... because you just seem like that kind of dumb... well the fees and charges the merchant pays for accepting your card.
Not even remotely true. The information that can be obtained with a reader does not contain the actual keys (!) that would be used to sign a transaction.
You could actually read about EMV, the specification is public. It's fairly clear you haven't.
Actually, it contains your card number, name and expiry date.
Everything you need to start making transactions online.
I have to wonder why people still think that card cloning is a credible threat these days... Card fraud moved online years ago, far better return on effort.
The current RFID cards - Visa PayWave is one brand - provide the "Track 2" data plus an authentication code from the EMV chip. Quite usable for fraud.
Forget track 2 data, the card gives out your name, card number and expiry date wirelessly to anything that asks. That's enough for anyone to start making transactions.
The first thing I do when I get an NFC enabled card is disable the wireless. I do this using a Stanley knife. If you look at your card over a bright light, you can see the induction loop, It then becomes a simple matter of making a small incision into the card to sever the induction loop. No loop, no wireless, card still behaves nicely with Chip and Pin terminals.
I've tested this with an app on my Android phone (here but it hasn't been updated in a while and doesn't work with my Nexus 5x). Its also been tested many times by vendors who don't seem to get that yes, it's disabled now stick it in the machine so I can press savings.
Personally I wouldn't bother with trying to shield or jam it as malicious devices are most likely to be placed on terminals, ATM's and other places where you'll have your card unshielded. If you don't want your card to be exposed, disable it completely.
Seriously, who cares if it was going over by 9 mph? How does that significantly impact anything (other than the car and the trailer)? This is red herring that is being chummed right now. This is not a significant data point, or shouldn't be. They should just shut the fuck up until the report is complete.
It matters because the system is supposed to obey speed limits. This means that the system is operating outside of expected parameters. Likely causes are that the system is not working, the data is incorrect or the system has been modified.
The last one is the biggest concern to the NTSB. Tesla would have done a great deal of testing, but when the behaviour is messed with by the user all of that goes out the window.
The machines are already trying to kill us all - *runs away screaming*
It doesn't feel remorse or pity or fear and absolutely will not stop, even if there is a truck in the way.
To be fair Australian drivers are horrible, and I say this as an Australian who learnt to drive in Australia. Not only is road behavior bad but this stupid "Every K over is a Killer" marketing campagin has trained an entire country that it is more important to look at your dashboard than the road in front of you.
Cracking down on speeding is a good thing. Doing it Australian style is definitely not.
I'm an Aussie who learned to drive properly (now living in the UK).
The biggest problem is Australia is that most people are taught to drive by their parents... who are terrible drivers. So they begin to learn bad habits and never break them. Australians also treat driving as a right. So when they finally get busted for bad driving they cry that it's "all revenue raising, wah, wah, wah" rather than taking responsibility for themselves. However changing this means forcing people who have been driving for 20 years to admit they're shit drivers.
I agree that speed cameras have become a form of lazy policing in Oz. I used to live in Perth and they've just bought more cameras. You can fail to indicate, straddle multiple lanes, take shortcuts over the footpath, cut people off, tailgate and continue to do any manner of dangerous activities with reckless abandon as long as you manage not to crash. Speed has pretty much become the only offence you can get done for. This added to the entitlement attitude of Australians means there is no impetus for a driver to improve.
Here in the UK, its the opposite. There aren't that many speed cameras and most of them are in sensible places (I.E. roadworks), they have to be clearly marked and are usually pretty visible from a distance away. However we have actual cops on the road. If the Rozzers spot you doing 10-15 over on an empty motorway they'll let you be, if they catch you up the jacksie of another car you'll get an S59, same for the guy hogging the middle lane, that'll be 100 Quid thanks.
Speed still needs enforced (otherwise we'd have anarchy) but Australia needs to focus on excessive and dangerous speeders, no anyone who creeps over the limit on an empty motorway on a clear summers day (stop laughing, we have at least 3 of those a year in England). Also Australia needs to start enforcing other laws and taking dangerous drivers off the road. However this will never happen as cameras make it look like they're doing something and real policing is hard. Also telling most 40 somethings that they're shit drivers will go down like a lead balloon.
It's not just the one guy behind you, it's also the entire line of people going reasonable speeds behind him. There's also the chance the guy you're passing will speed up as you attempt to overtake, resulting in you two slowpokes creating a wall. *That* is when the guy behind you will tailgate. As the guy in the passing lane it's your job to break the stalemate, either by committing to the pass and speeding up, or "cancelling" and slowing down to go behind the other slowpoke. Otherwise, you create a far more dangerous situation than exceeding the speed limit would create.
Whilst I agree with the gist of your post, there is no defence for tailgating. Ever. Period.
No-one chooses to be tailgated. It is always the choice of the guy behind. I really dont care what their excuse is, it doesn't matter what the car in front is doing, it is your responsibility to keep a safe distance. More over, by deliberately trying to antagonise the driver in front, you risk them trying to antagonise you further. A lot of people will brake for tailgaters (personally I'm more creative, driving a 3L straight six turbo... manual).
Yes I'm annoyed by slow drivers in the overtaking lane, but as a mature, responsible adult, which is a prerequisite for owning a car, I absolutely will not tailgate. Beyond just not being a dick, chances are Dopey Doris in the overtaking lane hasn't noticed me, I don't want Doris to notice me so when I have the opportunity to pass I can do so without them trying to block mw. If you try to intimidate them you get their attention, their focus turns to you and they will try to make your life miserable in return. I'd rather the first thing Dopey Doris knew about me is the sound of my BOV as I shift up whilst passing.
Now I wholeheartedly agree that lane discapline should be better. The overtaking lane should be treated like a public lavatory, get in, do your business and move left again. Fortunately here in the UK, lane hoging gets you a ticket, so does tailgating and police actually enforce this over writing speeding tickets.
However, can we all agree that it is also incredible stupidity on Tesla's part to call this "Autopilot"?
As a Tesla owner, I do not agree. Tesla makes it abundantly clear what the capabilities and limitations are. Nobody that is actually using it has been misled.
Sorry, but the shrink-wrap, buried in the fine print excuse does not work when people get killed.
The feature is called "Autopilot", the "auto" part is the short form of "automatic" and the "pilot" part refers to person who controls an aircraft or ship. Even though I know autopilots on aircraft are anything but, the colloquial definition of an autopilot is that it is completely "hands off" automatic control of a vehicle. Tesla is not in a position to claim otherwise.
You cant apply the defences of tech companies to engineering cock ups. Safety boards will nail you and your entire company to the wall for even trying.
Plea bargains are only for criminal cases. This is about civil cases. And there are plenty of people who successfully represent themselves in both criminal and civil cases.
Its obvious he means an out of court settlement. And he's right.
A day in court almost always costs more, not just in actual damages but also lost productivity. This is why a credible threat of court is so damaging to businesses. The problem is that when one side can afford shyster lawyers and the other cannot that puts them at a severe disadvantage. Some people can successfully represent themselves but 99% of people cant, especially against someone who knows all the loopholes and dirty tricks of the petty court.
That is what this judge is proposing, by eliminating lawyers you get less dirty tricks being used against people who have done nothing wrong. It will also help the backlog of court cases before the petty courts. Lawyers tend to want to drag things out.
Apple will biuld cars in the same way they build phones. They buy complete components from someone else, have them bolted together by cheap labour, encase them in an body kit and then charge an arm and a leg for the "Transport Experience".
In reality this means you get the engine from a Nissan Leaf, the suspension from a Citroen C1, the chassis form a Chevorlet Cruze, the dash and cluster from a Tata Nano and the battery from a Halfords bargain bin wrapped an expensive plastic shell to be sold to you by a hipster who knows nothing about cars and spends the entire time looking down on you for daring to pretend you're as exclusive as they are.
You'll also need a proprietary charger and to change the battery you'll have to remove the drive train.
As ashamed as I am to admit it, the author sounds Australian.
Probably a bogan (En_UK: Chav, En_US: Trailer trash) who proclaims to hate foreigners and "Effnicks" but jets off to Bali twice a year in his singlet (wife beater) for a Bintang fuelled display of douchebaggery. Apparently this makes him "well travelled".
Disclosure: I'm a skip living in pommyland, both nations have pluses and minuses to living and working there..
This is journalistic BS, disguised as 'science'.
Its from the Daily Mail, so the "journalistic" part is completely incorrect.
Micro USB jacks wear out even more quickly. I wonder what the new connectors will be like. Everything is getting shittier.
This is a feature, not a bug.
Apple, et al. are starting to require new ways to make people "need" a new phone every year. Sales are flattening because the smartphone craze is over, everyone who wants one has one. Beyond this software and hardware releases are becoming more steady and aren't the huge leaps they were in previous years. So making the hardware crappier and adding in features that can force obsolescence is now the preferred way of generating sales.
You are apparently unaware that, to date, the only phones which have shipped without headphone jacks are Android phones...
Actually, they're motorola and ZTE.
Android isn't sold by a company, it's a platform. If you want an Android phone with a headphone jack, you've got plenty to chose from including options from Motorola and ZTE.
While I'm not thrilled at seeing the headphone jack disapear the author's reasons for keeping it apply to maybe .001 of the population. How many people really have a reason to carry both an iphone and a droid on them? Using my headphones on some one else's phone? How often does THAT come up for a normal person?
Speaking of poor arguments, yours is a shining example.
A standardised 3.5 mm headphone port means that the 1 pair of headphones I own works in every single audio device I own from my laptop, to my phone and tablet to my guitar amplifier. I don't have to carry adaptors nor have a specially authorised (read: overpriced) DCMA compliant pair of headphones for each device.
That is the perspective of a normal person.
...I would've just created a "Fullet'o'Fush" and "Chups".
un sex chickun nugguts.
Mean as brew.
I revile hatred and bigotry. Yet I love the internet.
How can these both be true? Oh internet, you are a sweet sweet mystery.
Its called being irreverent.
For the most part the internet is very irreverent, even if the people who post the name "McGoebbels" are serious (and seriously messed up in the head) the internet refuses to take them seriously. Their act of hate and bigotry becomes an act to laugh at, rather than to revile.
I regularly call my brother in law a cunt. Usually being called that is pretty offensive but we both know we're not being serious about the entire thing. Whether something is humorous or bigoted depends on the intention as well as the forum it is being used in. Lets face it, if talking about racism wasn't able to be funny, stand up comedy would be decimated.
How much do you pay for your daily sunlight, air and gravity?
I'm somewhat large, and so I actually get a rebate from my gravity bill.
Yes, but the GP's mass is so great, he generates his own gravity.
Actually the debate has some very firm conclusions with several deaths (mostly child deaths) directly linked to drinking raw milk. There was one in January here in the UK and in December 2014, one deaths and 4 serious injuries were caused by children consuming raw milk in Australia.
The debate is out about homogenisation, but the debate over pasteurisation is very clear cut. The problem is, like many times where science is very clear there are a few vocal nutters who refuse to give up their beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence. Personally I dont mind letting adult nutters have their dangerous milk, my problem is when they try to force their bad life choices onto others, especially kids who couldn't know any better.
Call a "switchboard operator"? "patched through" to your desk? What is this, 1946? The mid/highclass hookers aren't asking their customers for identification. Who writes this garbage?
Thats a fancy way of saying receptionist.
No high level exec of a fortune 500 company has a direct line in. There will be at least one human you'll have to get past to speak to the vice director of what ever, let alone a CxO.
That is just one of the cues that tell you this article is bullshit.
VCRs haven't competed against DVDs for a long time. If you buy a movie, it has come on DVD (or blue-ray) for over a decade. The reason people buy VCRs now is to record shows off the TV to watch them later. That's not easy to do on a DVD player. So as DVRs have become more popular, they've replaced the final uses for VCR.
We've had DVR's for that for a long time now. The VCR is used almost elusively by the security industry because some laggards haven't updated to digital storage. There are a few VCR enthusiasts out there, same as there is for everything but they're very few in number and certainly not enough to sustain a single manufacturing plant.
Even more so in countries like Australia where our library is less than half the size of the US one. By blocking my access to other netflix regions, they're well on their way to losing another customer. I know it's the rights holders that are the issue, but the only language they understand is money.
What do you mean by "on their way".
I dumped Netflix the moment they blocked access to US content. My biggest regret is that I cant tell them why directly.
OK, the OP is wrong, American cars are not a bit shit... they're completely shit. The US is a place who thinks getting 270KW out of a 6.2L V8 is good. Europe (and Japan) can get that out of a 2L turbo these days.
We can also leave a car meet without ploughing into the crowd.
Also as a JDM fanboy, I have to say that Japan no longer makes the worlds best cars, hasn't done since the early 00's. Long gone are the days of budget super and sports cars rivalling their European counterparts for half the price. The Asian Fianancial Crisis and emissions regulations killed that and made all Japanese car companies ultra-conservative. The MKIV Supra by Toyota was compared with the Ferrari's of it's day, gone now. Same with the Honda NSX. The Honda S2000 is still considered the best in class roadster despite being killed off in 2009.
Same story with the Integras, Skylines, Sivlias, even the Z cars are watered down now.
If you want performance these days, Europe is killing everyone else at the moment. Japan doesn't seem to mind as they're making good money on whitegoods.
Also remember that European cars are very popular in the US. How often do you see a BMW X5, Audi Q7 or the latest Rangie?
This is 'Murica remember.
Violence and gore are pure, natural and healthy parts of 'Merican life like Apple Pie and invading third world nations for their natural resources.
Nudity and Sex on the other hand are vile, despicable things that are as un'Murican as concern for your fellow man or corporations paying taxes.
So there is no theft. You are taxed by people who a conferred the right to enact and collect taxes by the consent of the governed, which is you and all your fellow citizens collectively.
This.
You also, in a democracy, have the right to run on a "abolish taxes" platform. You will get a few votes from people who have no clue but for the most part people wont vote for you because they know taxes pay for all the things they cant live without like police, fire brigades, armies, rail, roads, sanitation, water and other infrastructure.