And that is why I refuse to use those new-fangled elevators without windows.

I meant CASH as in CASH. Literally. Not figuratively.
I meant people paying CASH for a car. The segment of the population we are talking about in this thread does not use banks or credit unions.
That's one reason why they end up getting these horribly financed vehicles.

That may be true, but if you have the $5K, chances are you are not going to be shopping at one of these places in the first place.
These loans are for people who are are literally living week to week.

There seems to be a "sweet spot" of just how much cash most people can come up with for used vehicle and it appears to be around $4K max.
Case-in-point: I advertised my 12 year old pickup for $4500 and had several "offers" and tire kickers. I figured it was a very fair price for decent truck, but the buyer ended up being a dealer with a small lot of work trucks. He paid the full amount.
I asked him how much he thought he could get out of it. He said $8999.
How could a dealer find a buyer for that price when I had trouble at $4500? The difference was that they could finance it for the buyer.
Buyer had to put down maybe $2-3K, the rest was financed at a fairly high rate.

of course! after a year or two of living on the street, you will have saved enough money to buy a car.
Then you can live in that until you have saved enough money to buy a house.

or borrow the money from your parents like everyone else. (Romney joke)

The dealer will buy a car at auction for $2000, then offer it for sale for $5000 but you HAVE to finance it through them. They will NOT let you pay cash.
They take advantage of the fact that there are a large group of people out there that are employed at low wage jobs who need a car to get to and from work.
They take $500 or $1000 down, or more if possible. Once you make a few payments, the dealer's initial cost for the vehicle is paid and if you don't make the payment, they repo the car and sell it to someone else for the same amount, financing the deal again.
These dealers can sell the same car over and over again without having to buy new inventory.

That is an old wive's tale that has been proven wrong.
www.TheTruthAboutCables.com did an in depth study a few years ago.
I forgot about the parity alignment module though, thanks for the reminder.

Make sure the service you find does cable straightening or uses "MASSIVE" brand cables.
This ensures all the 1's and 0's get through. Cables with kinks can cause some of the 1's to get stuck.
I use 1 inch diameter cables to import all my VHS video footage.
Why would you trust your VHS footage to anything less?

find a used Digital8 camcorder with a Firewire (IEEE 1394) output.
Put tape in, plug into computer, import footage.
Digital8 camcorders will play back video8, HI-8 and Digital8 while converting the video8 to DV on the fly.

- Nigel Tufnel

These are excellent machines that will play back just about any VHS tape you can throw at them.
I am looking at 5 of them across the room from me right now. 3 are in excellent condition, one needs some audio work and one needs all the capacitors changed.
I also leave the screws off the covers so I can slide them back and manually clean the heads when I run into some bad tapes (tapes that were crinkled or damaged or have iron oxide flaking off).

The capacitors is the big issue with these. Every.Single.One needs to be replaced at some point.
I used to send my machines out to a place in Texas to have them changed for around $300 after I bought them on eBay.
Then there was a guy selling them on eBay with the caps changed out for around $300 and they were running like new.
I think he is still there.

These machines are excellent at playing back difficult to track tapes, or ones recorded in SLP/EP mode.
don't buy one of those all-in-one VHS to DVD machines unless your tapes are all in good condition and recorded in SP mode.

According the IRS if you run a business and don't make a profit, it is considered a HOBBY.

The person that chose to use a "drone" that could be taken over by a mobile phone, and had already experienced "a similar incident" earlier that day.

better link to single page of images and videos of the Mazda Suitcase Car

Ha! The page is still up.
I managed to get him to bring that to a small meet we had in 2004 and there are some pics of it unfolding from the suitcase and a video of someone "driving it" here

If I recall the brief history correctly, Mazda engineers created this as a fun concept and then the sales force got hold of it and would bring it to shows and give rides on it until it broke (it was always a prototype and they should have used splined shafts for the driven wheel, but did not).
Anyways, the thing would go back into storage until someone would go "hey where's that old Suitcase Car we made?" and they would drag it out, break it and then bring it to this guy to fix. One day they brought it to him to fix and then never picked it up. I guess it is better than being lost in storage someplace.
If Mazda wants it back all they have to do it Google it.

There is a good possibility that all this is a moot point in the end thanks to "hollywood accounting".

take a look at the end credits of any movie. They are ALWAYS initially "owned" by a shell corporation, usually using the name of the movie + LLC or something.
There is a reason for this.
Once the movie is made it is promptly sold for a loss (or very small profit) to the "parent" company or any number of other companies in between before it gets to the top. It could also be sold (on paper) for a massive amount of money so that the "costs" are never actually recouped.
I can't really say with any authority because that is an area kept secret from the likes of me.
The point of this is obfuscation of actual ownership, costs, and rights for tax advantages at the very least.