Have you ever been to Central Florida? This happened decades ago.

Devil's advocate here, but we're talking tourism development dollars, which are presumably available to any tourism-generating entity. If this crazy fairytale town actually does generate an influx of believers who spend money in the community - presumably positively affecting the local economy and ALL residents who benefit from that - is it really the government respecting or endorsing an "establishment of religion"?

There are a couple manufacturers of Expresscard/34 SSDs that would fit the bill nicely.

Perhaps you misunderstood the meat of my comment. I have no problem with you, the owner of the third party ATM in question, charging me a fee to use your machine. I fully support the premise of a "cash only" restaurant providing an ATM for use by their patrons at a reasonable fee.

My post was addressing the _additional_ fee that most people have to pay to their own bank for the privilege of using that third party ATM. The same bank they *do* have a business relationship with, that often charges a monthly fee just for the privilege of allowing them to hold your money for you interest-free.

That fee, which easily runs $2-3 at most big banks, raises the transaction cost for most people to the "ludicrous" level when added on to the perhaps totally reasonable fee charged for the privilege of using the third party ATM.

Now that I've found a bank that doesn't charge for the "privilege" of dispensing your cash via someone else's machine, I could get on board with this, as it's a win-win for the business owner and myself (they save some money on card processing extortion fees, and presumably pass some of that overhead savings on to me). Unfortunately, the majority of people with accounts at the MegaBanks will still pay a $3+ "out of network ATM" fee, even if the restaurant's ATM only charges a quarter.

The concept of a 'C' grade as "average" or "mean" is a misconception right from the start.

If a 'C' were truly average, then a class full of students scoring 100% on all homework assignments and tests should all receive 'C's. That's clearly not the case nor the intent.

The intended use of grades should be to represent the pupil's mastery of the material, not their relative position amongst peers. An "average" grasp of the material might earn a 'C', regardless of the relative strength or weakness of other students.

The only person I actually know with an iPad is my 75 year old grandfather. It is, as far as I can tell, the best "grandparent" device currently available. Load it up with pics and videos of the grandkids, old Merle Haggard LPs, a couple bookmarks to large-font news outlets and maybe the family photo album so he can see new content.

He's happy as a clam. Point to what he wants to do and it does it. He can throw it in his bag and take it to the far reaches of the county to show off his progeny. It's more or less idiot proof and there's hardly anything "computer" about it to get in the way.

If it sported the front-facing camera and "Face Time" ability of the iphone 4, it would be damn near perfect.

From: sjobs@toyota.com
Subject: RE: Accelerator Problems

Just avoid pressing it that way.

- Sent from my iPhone

The Contour was a nice (for the time) car that suffered mightily at the hands of Ford's US brand management. It also suffered from unfortunate timing, being a smaller and more "efficient" car than most of its direct competitors at a time when gasoline was ridiculously cheap and SUVs were taking off like wildfire.

Subsequent generations of the Mondeo (the euro-spec car on which the Contour was based) have gone on to be hugely successful class-leading vehicles in Europe.

FWIW Ford is becoming quite competitive once again in the US as well. The 2010 Fusion has won numerous awards and is favorably reviewed against its peers. Quality ratings are consistently rising and are now as good as or better than their Japanese competitors. The new line of "ecoboost" turbo engines, finally replacing the trash version of the Focus with the superb model available in Europe, the introduction of the new Fiesta - all of these things are conspiring to resurrect Ford's passenger car line and sales are rising to match.

Alan Mulaly has done great things for that company and I hope he continues.

Fuck everything, we're doing seven panels.

These folks?

Perian - The swiss-army knife for Quicktime