Yet still New Hampshire has one of the lowest rates of uninsured drivers at 11%.

I truly believe that this is because of the cost of liability insurance in NH. I moved here from Arlington MA (and previously RI) and insurance rates in RI and MA are quite high. If it's affordable to more people, obviously more will buy it.

It's certainly not because NH drivers are any better than Massholes or "FRIDs" (Friggin' RI Drivers) from what I've seen. Especially around here in Concord. Tailgating seems to be the state contact sport, along with going 40-50 on a residential city street. Keep yer pets indoors. Oh, and the guy with flags and straight pipes on his POS pickup truck: If I ever find you parked on my street, I'm ripping out your valve stems with a Vise-Grip(TM). Jerk.

--
BMO

Postscript: Pellet stoves and wood-burning stoves are quite popular here in NH for heating. Be sure to tell your insurance company so they can adjust the rate and include it on your fire policy. Because if you're a cheap fuck and don't tell them, and you have a fire, you're SOL. [InsuranceNazi] NO PAYMENT FOR YOU![/InsuranceNazi] (learned this lesson the easy way - home buying seminar).

Nobody watching TopGear should take anything they do as a serious attempt to evaluate anything.

And if I'd originally written 50 you'd have claimed it should only need 25. No real point even engaging. The point remains that he set out to make the robin look like all it does is roll over, when lots of people have managed to drive one without constantly going over.

I am not defending the assault, per se; nor was i even referring to it; By off screen antics I meant his persona in general. His columns, his books, his political views, his public appearances... etc.

Cite?

All the coverage I can find of a "fake breakdown" is simply an alternate phrasing for their "dramatization" of it running out of juice, and then being pushed into the garage.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i...

That said, the drivetrain did overheat on one, and the brakes did fail on the other one. (Yes they abused them... but that's what they do. And plenty of other super and hyper cars have broken down on them too and they've taken the piss out of them too.)

And he wasn't able to run a Reliant Robin more than a 100 yards without rolling it over either. He's Clarkson... his persona for like 15+ years is to be a bit of hooligan gorilla. Taking his on-screen and off-screen antics seriously... says more about the viewer than it does about Clarkson. Its not fair and balanced journalism. Sit back and enjoy the spectacle.

I've seen that episode several times. I like the Tesla, but I think Top Gear made a good point.

The actual quote:

âoeAlthough Tesla say it will do 200 miles we worked out that on our track it would run out after just 55 miles.â

55 miles on their TRACK.

55 miles on a track isn't really even that bad... but it would be a terrible track day car. I had to fill my 911 twice last time I took it to a track, and then again to get it home. But a complete fill on my car takes less than 5 minutes at the gas station next to the track. A tesla owner would not have that luxury.

Not "faked", but yes it was was done purely for dramatic effect.

And, again, in context, it was simply illustrating the point that after a day on the track the car would be dead; and wouldn't make the trip home. (without another lengthy recharge.)

Only a Tesla fangirl would get all twisted up in knots over the episode. It was a legitimate criticism delivered with typical Topgear dramatic sensibilities. (Ie 'over the top') But Clarkson and the gang routinely slag excellent cars and its all in pretty good humor. Clarkson has called the 911 Turbo a car that plots to kill its driver, and compared the Carrera 4S to a boob job... meanwhile he fell over himself in adulation of the Ford GT which he pre-ordered for himself and which had proven to be something of a lemon to actually own... "leeway" is what the audience wants from that show.

There are plenty of other places to get 'boring'. Few magazines ever say anything remotely critical of anything. Its pretty refreshing and entertaining to see these supercars and hypercars both shown in their best lights but also to see them taken down a peg now and again. To see a ferrari stuck in an alley it's too wide for, to watch them try and park a lambo, to see them collectively decide a cheap VW hatchback is more fun to drive than a BMW... that's what made TopGear.

It was terrible before too, if you wiggled the mouse too much and you were 7 layers deep into the heirarchy the start menu would close or flip over to another folder, and you'd have to start all over...it was usability garbage.

The replacement in vista was still tedious, but the previous incarnation was gouge-your-eyes-out-bad if you had to navigate to something that was deep.

Lol, well said.

However, to be fair to MS, they didn't "remove it" they revamped it. They rightfully identified that there was a ton of functionality jammed into it, and that it was a shitty UI for most of it, while simultaneously its primary design driver was a vestigial hierarchical folder structure from Windows 95 that really was quite hideous and unusable, and rarely used.

Every one used the start menu to shutdown, to get to control panels etc, to access frequently used and pinned apps, and to search.

shutdown? because that's where it was. No real need for it to be there relative to anywhere else.
control panels same thing. So they moved them (and also added them to right click start menu).
pinned apps... you can still create taskbar menus and pin apps etc in win8.

search -- there's two types of search:
-- type one ... "power user quick launch" . For example type cmd to launch command or pow to launch powershell, etc etc... the win7 start menu worked well for this

-- type two -- actual search. Where you want to find something that you don't know what its called, or to find a document. Having your whole search interface in a small popup in the corner that was liable to disappear on you at random was silly and useless. The win7 start menu sucks for real search.

Finally... heirarchical start menu browsing... was clumsy in Windows 95 and all but useless in a modern PC. Nobody used it unless they had to, and browsing multiple levels of nested folders was clumsy.

The start screen in windows 8 ... was better for search. And the other commands were relocated. The problem with windows 8 was simply that the new locations were non-obvious. (how do I shutdown?) And the "type one" quick search-launch functionality was now really clutzy switching to a full screen app for quick launch makes no sense. (And really the whole 'go full screen' was a mistake. The old start menu was broken... but the new one was also broken, better in some ways, but worse in most.

But they were looking for a solution to a definite problem. Anyone who honestly looks at the windows 7 start menu has to acknowledge that it does too much, and does MUCH of it poorly. It needed attention.

Unfortunately windows 8 was a step in mostly the wrong directions. Too touch centric. Too much key functionality hidden off screen. Charms bar was just bad. Not having window border controls for mouse users was just bad. Defaulting to using 'modern ui' for viewing pictures etc was just bad. 8.1 cleaned up a lot of that, but it was still not ideal. Too much was driven by the tablet/mobile design rather than really trying to solve the problem for desktop users in a way that made sense for desktop users.

Windows 10 (build 10240) seems like a pretty good compromise so far. There's still plenty I don't like, but I think its a genuine step forward from 7 rather than a step sideways.

"you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink (want a bet?)"

Short of violence and/or other behavior that most would consider animal abuse? Go figure that normal people exclude that as a valid solution to the 'problem'.

"doesn't have the horse sense to stay out of the rain"
(clearly never owned horses, they will seek shelter from rain -[...]"

"Horse sense" is a synonym for "good sense" or "sound judgment". The implication is that horses WILL stay out of the rain, and otherwise exhibit good sense. You mis-understood the proverb completely; and it means the opposite of what you think.

"you'll catch more flies with honey than with vinegar" (try that with a fly trap).

Fine you win one, sort of... if you get to pick the species of fly in question. Yes certain species of fruit flies are attracted to the scent of vinegar. Other species not so much.

I certainly don't mean to denigrate any of them. They all were very brave, and yup, MLK was assassinated but that's kind of my point... he was at risk but only at risk to outright illegal activities. They had to resort to assassination to kill him because they couldn't really act openly against him, they had no legal grounds to simply throw him into isolation and toss the keys forever.

With Snowden, they don't need to resort to a secret conspiracy against him, they can act in the open, with the full force of the law. It's a completely different threat level.

MLK could go on "Sunday talk shows" to paraphrase someone up in the thread. (Hell, that's one of the safest places he could be.) But Snowden would be a fool to try that; they'd pick him up immediately, and he'd never set a free foot down again.

I don't think you grasp just how different Snowden is from Parks.

What, pray tell was the maximum penalty Rosa Parks faced for failing to comply with a Montgomery city ordinance? Legally? She wasn't in any real danger. A modest fine, or a couple nights in jail.

Her only real risk was that she could have been beaten (illegally) by police in an era and region where the people beating her would have gotten away with it.

King Jr? Arrested several times. No serious charges, and no serious penalties. Like Parks his greatest risk was illegal beatings and vigilantism. There's certainly no question what he did took courage. But the authority of the government itself wasn't really a threat to him. And the government wasn't going to threaten to shoot down a passenger plane he was on just to get their hands on him.

How about Susan B Anthony? She was arrested, and fined $100. (A lot more then than now, but still... small potatoes.)

You are right, Parks, Anthony and King Jr aren't on the same level as Snowden. He's in a level of trouble so much greater; those others never even scratched the surface.

No, Snowden is up there with Ben Franklin and the like. People who resisted their government at the very highest levels, people who would have hanged for their activities if they'd allowed themselves to get caught.

I use tap to pay WITH my credit card. Its even more convenient and faster than getting out my phone. I can't even really imagine why I'd ever prefer to setup and use tap-to-pay with my phone.

Agreed. The trouble arises though when the personal brand and the person don't always mix.

I had a young real estate mortgage broker once, who as part of her attempt to develop her personal brand and maintain contact with clients sent everyone in her contact list an invitation to follow her on her then new twitter feed.

I never followed her, but I clicked on the link once some months later to review her tweets and see how it had worked out. Naturally it was a disaster.

She started out with the odd tweet about relevant news, interest rate changes, those common sense tips but as it was under name and clearly all her friends and family followed her, precisely the sort of thing one would have wanted or expected from following it. But it quickly devolved into a rapidfire feed where she used it to comment on everything from restaurants, concerts, clothes, politics, retweets of cat videos, argue with friends, etc. There's no way anyone whose only connection to her was her mortgage brokerage services would have even the slightest desire to constantly receive this stuff, and it certainly did nothing to improve her 'personal brand'.

The upshot is that the idea that she'd have a twitter account in her name to develop her personal brand wasn't a bad idea. But it ended up being a far to direct window into her personal life, which her clients neither needed (nor wanted) to see. She needed an anonymous twitter feed disconnected from her personal brand to shoot the shit with her friends with.

Last time I checked she no longer has twitter on her mortgage broker website.