I went to a training session for our new $50k accounting system. They had forgotten to renew their own license for the training classroom. Took an extra hour to get their tech in there to get it fixed. Yup, should have got up and went home at that point.

sigh

We bought it cause it was industry specific (well focused at least) and by a small company that only did this for 20 years. Next year they are bought by a national company and instead of being 1 of 200 customers now we were 1 of 20000 on a minor product. Not exactly the same experience :/ Naturally, followed a couple years later by a purchase from a multinational software company :(

Try attacking it the other way.

If they AREN'T recording everything then why such big data centers? Metadata on every US call for the year would fit on a few dozen HDs max probably much less.

Raw data takes very little space with no media components involved. We ran 10 years worth of billing info on one 14MB drive platter in the 80-90's.

I'll let you fill in your own descriptions.

WTF, How are those two descriptions combined into one group of people to count ?

If I close my eyes and say "forward" what percentage do I get right?

Probably not good I had to think so hard to come up with just one answer.

Universal remote control

I can't find a pro that would overcome the cons. The only thing I'll use a smartphone (when I get around to one) is a better camera, it could do remote Credit Card transactions for 10 days a year(meh), and it could monitor the office security system. I can't see anything about a smartwatch to compensate for the losses.

The poor call quality and battery life have so far kept me from even getting the smartphone yet. No way is a watch going to help either of those, so really, none.

lol, looks like that is one way for me. Good luck with that one MS.

Something like this would be cool. I was just talking to someone about buying a washing machine and many have a 1 year warranty. Not much faith in the product is what I see :( I have a 40 year old washer to replace, seriously considering repair and cleaning even tho it isn't any cheaper to do so and is less efficient UNLESS the new one ends up at the recycler in a few years. That seems a lot worse than a few extra gallons of water here and there.

At least until one hits a pothole with those little wheels and he discovers that extended handlebar post :O

Cute idea. Him saying 1st utility patent on a bike in 100 years or however he phrased sounded cheeky and turned me off.
$850 makes it very uncute tho, no wonder no one was interested in 'investing' last time.

I think the newspaper article said $6500 out of about $20k for 2 year degree so that would be less. Not sure why the linked article says all, too lazy to search for a tie-breaker.

LOL, Salvation Army sign is full-color animated display consisting of Name, Time, and Temp. Didn't know they really needed to drum up new business and a totally unneeded use of color/motion not to mention money. Maybe it is there to create a few more poor disabled people :/

Imprinting implies they are not billing the card immediately at all.

Not billing your debit card at the moment is only slightly more risky than real CC. They are more likely concerned with image and customer satisfaction atm.

nope, we still use one for two weeks at the fairgrounds. No, I don't want to buy a smartphone and a data plan for 10 days a year. If you can't manage to not lose a handful of reciepts how the heck would a business deal with cash?

I imagine they figured the loses from bad cards were acceptable given the circumstances. I can't see them imprinting and immediately running the card. In that case a dial-up swipe terminal makes more sense.

They probably aren't processing the cards at all yet. Otherwise they key them into a dial-up terminal, in which case swipe makes more sense, or key them into the insecure system by hand??? Little tougher on the cash flow but few people get upset if not billed right now ;)

The local grocery stores brought in a dial-up swipe terminal when they had the same issue. You only had one lane at the customer service counter for cards for a week!

What if there ARE 100's of millions of civilizations advanced as us?

Wouldn't that sound an awful lot like background noise?

Perhaps no one else has cable TV and all 200 channels in each country are OTA and there are 200 billion signals floating around ;O
Perhaps think SETI is simply overmatched unless someone targets us and that signal would still be inroute most likely.

As opposed to getting hit by john on his way home with the minimum required insurance. That's a whole 10k for property damage and $25k medical in my state. Which has been the same for quite some time. The numbers seem a little outdated to say the least. Anything past a bent bumper and broken arm and you probably have to sue him anyway :(

Something seems a bit shady with them but it probably isn't the insurance issues. Of course the taxi business seems a bit odd on its own when they only allow X number or Y company to wait at the airport. Waiting 20 min for a taxi to show up at the airport was rather retarded.

Rather doubtful any pay all the right taxes to all the right places, try that route.

Really. If you want to try that test again. I've never used a GPS. I've barely used a touch screen. My current car radio has awesome buttons that you don't have to look at once you know which set is scan vs step. I've beta tested many complex games and a 50k accounting system while it was live.

I'll tell you real quick just how annoying it is to use :) Just don't make me keep it....