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Comment Re:Unbelievable. (Score 1) 180

Yeah, which is a good chunk more than $9 - showing that a lot of cost in a device is not really in the innards; and it still doesn't certify it for use on tests and all that jazz, where the true cost of graphing calculators normally referred to lies.
( There's certainly cheap graphing calculators as well - just can't use those in those situations. )

Comment Re:Unbelievable. (Score 4, Insightful) 180

In defense of the calculator - it has an included screen, dedicated custom keyboard, custom slim case, battery life measured in months if not years, etc.

In non-defense of the calculator - most of its cost is not in the above, but in its certification for use in [school / university / industry] - even if not for itself, then its sibling product which is.. and when that product costs $NN, you can't very well start selling this one for $N without people cluing in.

Comment What's the footprint of ecosalon.com? / tuning (Score 1) 395

Tuning is indeed important - as is balancing wheels; two fairly inexpensive steps you can take to get better efficiency out of your car.

But when I tried to look in the first-linked article for tuning.. I couldn't. It was stuck. I tried to click on the link for the study - I couldn't. It was stuck. I figured I'd wait it out.. that was a long wait.
By the time I could finally click the link for 'the study' (which is the 3rd link in TFS, for what it's worth, so just skip to that one), this is what the console showed:
http://i.imgur.com/n3wHVSC.png
That's 1,114 requests, 10.4MB transferred, taking 1.2 minutes. That's with ad blocking, without script blocking.

'ecosalon' should look in the mirror and consider how much energy is being wasted just by people loading that page - the useful content of which ultimately comes down to 10 small paragraphs of text.

Comment Re:Which is why we disguise cell towers (Score 1) 216

I'm confused what dressing up cell towers as X has to do with the subject at hand.

Unless you want to make either A. the argument that if only cell towers looked like cell towers, you'd know when to turn your cell phone 's radio off (completely) so as to avoid being tracked; because you definitely leave your cell phone on if you can't see a cell tower, or B. the argument that people think their cell phones work via the power of magic if they can't see anything that looks like a cell tower; if they even know what those actually look like.

Comment Re:Attacking me now are you? (Score 1) 1097

I don't disagree that this was provocative on purpose - the merits thereof I'll leave for some other day - but the situations presented aren't comparable.

This was a meeting held in some random location (a community center, with permission) - not inside a mosque.

Your freedom of speech expression apparently explicitly puts the BBQ in a synagogue. Unless you somehow got permission to do so, it's likely that you would be trespassing and - with the smoke from the BBQ - damaging property.

You could certainly hold your BBQ outside the synagogue, but then it would probably be just a BBQ. I'd imagine there's hot dog carts nearby synagogues in NYC, for example, without any particular issue.

Comment Re:'Hidden city' explanation (Score 1) 126

Only if you don't count the $250 they already got for the ticket you bought. Their complaint (on that issue) is that you're buying a cheaper ticket than they wanted to sell you. Everything else is smoke and mirrors, which amount to "we want to sell the same seat twice, and we can't when you do this, and we don't like it even though we couldn't if you bought the ticket we wanted to sell you."

I'm not sure that makes sense, from the airline's perspective.

If you bought a ticket NY-LA, you essentially bought two seats; NY-Chicago and Chicago-LA.

If you bail in Chicago, then their desire to have been able to sell the Chicago-LA seat doesn't mean they wanted to sell the seat twice - they would just rather have sold the NY-Chicago and the Chicago-LA seats on separate tickets, for a higher price on both seats.

And yes, there's all sorts of collateral issues - both positive and negative. I'm sure the same applies when I buy a roundtrip ticket from B to A and back to B when I just want to go from A to B, because the roundtrip ends up being much cheaper than the one-way (intercontinental flight, early 2000's - no idea if it's still the case as I haven't been in a situation lately where that would present itself as a necessity)

Comment Re:'Hidden city' explanation (Score 1) 126

I'm just paraphrasing the articles (had to click-through some). The first article summarizes it thus:

The âoehidden cityâ ticketing technique involves buying an airline ticket between two cities with a connection, but ditching the rest of the trip.

Which very much sounds like buying a ticket A-C, then getting off the plane after A-B and essentially discarding B-C.

That's very much different from buying tickets A-B and A-C separately with a price that's cheaper than buying a ticket A-C.

I don't know if both are colloquially called 'hidden city' or whether one of the two is termed incorrectly.

Comment 'Hidden city' explanation (Score 5, Informative) 126

Wouldn't have hurt to put this in the summary - who RTFA?

Say you want to fly from NY to Chicago, and that'd cost $300. You can also get a ticket from NY to LA, and that'd cost $250. The catch? That flight from NY to LA also lands in Chicago.
So if you wanted to go from NY to Chicago, you'd be better off buying the NY to LA ticket instead, saving $50.

The airlines don't like this, because if you book NY to LA, they can no longer sell the Chicago to LA seat (except at last minute rates or more often push standby passengers onto that flight) that might normally be $150. So not only are they out $50 on you, they're potentially out an additional $150 on the unsold seat.
( They save a few $ in fuel consumption, food and beverages, etc. )

Presumably the solution would be to not make part-flights more expensive than full-flights to begin with, but I'm sure the bean counters worked out that this is still the more profitable route for them.

As for headline - yeah, it's only tossed out because it's the wrong venue.. there's really no winner or loser, other than the courts who wasted time on a case that they apparently shouldn't have spent any time on at all.

Comment Re:MORE BLOAT! (Score 1) 81

Tell that to Apple who have bundled far more stuff with OS X (not so much on the driver front, thanks to building their own hardware) than Microsoft ever has with Windows - even before they were forced to remove parts - and whose users are quite happy that it includes everything and the kitchen sink.

You may never use iMovie, for example, but there it is, included with your Mac, whether you like it or not.

For those who much prefer a lean OS, there's always Arch.

Comment Re:Okay (Score 1) 74

I think we're getting way out of context here. OP's issue was indeed just a 2 minute thing, and any potential power-mad editor reverting entirely hypothetical. Even if the OP feels that hypothesis to be sound, then OP shouldn't refer to wikipedia in the first place - or at least not complain about not finding certain information there.

Comment Re:Okay (Score 1) 74

I'm not disputing that - I haven't had it happen, but I've read the stories.

I just feel that it's strange for some people to say they won't contribute to wikipedia - because they fear somebody else with an agenda will just revert their edits.. on any subject.. all the time.. with nobody backing them up despite facts - and at the same time complain about lack of certain information on wikipedia. At the point where they won't contribute, themselves, they should have written off wikipedia as a source of information entirely; unless they think they're special and everybody else's contributions are free of such tyranny.

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