Slashdot Mirror

You do realize that there is no service that is less conducive to violent or property crime than Uber, right? It would be like a store owner with video surveillance in his own store raping someone as they come in. Might as well walk into a police station and rape the guy at the front desk. There is literally no way you can't get caught. Your every move is tracked by GPS. Christ, you fucking liberals and your "basic needs". You'll have us all living in caves before you're through.

I don't remember a lot of stories about people being attacked by their taxi driver. But I do remember this and this and this. I'm not saying Uber is inherently dangerous. But it seems more than "no service that is less conducive to violent or property crime than Uber". According to my unscientific quick Googling, it seems regular taxis are safer.

Also the safest drivers:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ta...

Still doesn't mean we aren't massholes, but somehow we are safe massholes.

Of course, there probably is something inherently worse about the coal bogeyman than the nuclear one. It just doesn't get the headlines that the nuclear one does. This needs to change (and, we need to go to MSRs and/or Thorium - or at least gen 4 reactors, like say a pebble bed - so that we reduce the danger further).

I expect that at some point, the late 20th and early 21st centuries will be viewed as the "nuclear dark age", because we stopped making them safer and got so frightened that we didn't actually build better ones.

well no duh its gotten better, everything has gotten better and as far as size

http://img.gawkerassets.com/im... 1994
http://img.gawkerassets.com/im... 1995 *personally owned these
http://img.gawkerassets.com/im... 1996

seems smaller than
http://blogs-images.forbes.com... 2015

Ever heard of Matty Moroun and the Ambassador Bridge Company?

They own the biggest border crossing between Detroit and Canada. Since it's about 80, and it was a bit small before NAFTA, there's a significant need for more capacity at that border crossing. They want a second bridge, owned by them, at the same location. Nobody else wants that because they're so crazy the Forbes profile of Moroun was entitled "the Troll Under the Bridge." He's got political legs because he's got a lot of money, and he's very skilled at rationalizing his behavior until it fits into whichever ideology he thinks will be most helpful in getting the particular politician he's talking to at this exact moment vote for his current scheme. One of the first signs that made me question Kwame Kilpatrick's ethics, was Kilpatrick's status as a Marounie.

The Canadians had this figured out in the late 90s, and no Canadian pol has associated with Maroun since then. This is because it's a much more centralized system, so the PM or Provincial Premier will get asked about Maroun before an MP or MLA from the other side of the Province starts submitting Moroun-approved bills. In the US, OTOH, Michigan's State Senate voted the not-second-span idea down in Committee/a>, largely because a bunch of Senators didn't know/care that Moroun is one of the most hated figures in Detroit, and the dude has money. The Canadians out-manuevered the Senate by agreeing to pay for the entire cost themselves*, so Moroun put a Constitutional Amendment on the ballot banning publicly financed bridges...

There's no such thing as a system that keeps the wealthiest 10% with 10% of the political power. But if you think that our system is as bad as theirs you probably haven't been much attention.

*They'll get the money back eventually. They're the only ones allowed to charge tolls on the bridge.

Did everyone forget that many CEO's show signs of psychopathy? (now called something more P.C., like antisocial personality disorder) Some sources:
Forbes
Patheos
arts.mic
thestar

Is anyone really surprised that CEOs don't show the slightest regard for the well-being of the lives they can impact the most?

My comment was poorly worded, the "them" was meant to be the IPCC and Climatologists in general, not specifically the IPCC alone;

the GAO found that the State Department provided $19 million for administrative and other expenses, while the United States Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) provided $12.1 million in technical support through the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), averaging an annual $3.1 million to the IPCC over 10 years -- $31.1 million so far. U.S. Taxpayers Cover Nearly Half the Cost of U.N.’s Global Warming Panel

but for Climatologists and Green Energy in general

According to the GAO, annual federal climate spending has increased from $4.6 billion in 2003 to $8.8 billion in 2010, amounting to $106.7 billion over that period. The money was spent in four general categories: technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, science to understand climate changes, international assistance for developing countries, and wildlife adaptation to respond to actual or expected changes. Technology spending, the largest category, grew from $2.56 billion to $5.5 billion over this period, increasingly advancing over others in total share. Data compiled by Joanne Nova at the Science and Policy Institute indicates that the U.S. Government spent more than $32.5 billion on climate studies between 1989 and 2009. This doesn’t count about $79 billion more spent for climate change technology research, foreign aid and tax breaks for “green energy.” The Alarming Cost Of Climate Change Hysteria

so yes I stand by my billions. It's just stupid to think the IPCC would cherry-pick data that undermines their entire purpose for existing.

This about making country independent energy-wise too.

Yeah, yeah — and reduce Global Warming, right.

Except electric cars still need energy — so, instead of burning something inside the vehicle, we now have to burn something somewhere else — often enough losing overall. And instead of depending on our own oil, we now need the Chinese to make those wonder-batteries — so our dependence on the potential military rival only grows with each Tesla sold.

But a great idea otherwise — as great as any to come up from the so-called "progressives"... Keep at it.

They have vested interest in mobile now because it's much more effective to monetize through their own dominant OS.

Depends on what you mean by "Dominant" in this regard.

While it is true that there are more Android Devices in circulation that iOS Devices, Google makes its money from the INTERNET USAGE of those Devices. And when it comes to that particularly-interesting-to-Google metric, there is compelling evidence to suggest that iOS users spend up to SIX TIMES the amount of time on the Internet than do Android users.

So, when it comes to Google selling "ad impressions", iOS users might well be the "Dominant OS" as far as Google is concerned.

Among all the companies in that program the default rate was very low. Solyndra was the only noteworthy default. The DOE made a solid overall profit on the program. It was indisputably a successful program.

No, it isn't "indisputably a successful program". http://www.forbes.com/sites/ti...

Every cent of money funding this loan program was taken from a US citizen who could have been using it for some superior performing personal investment.

He's said that he wants people who provide services to the community to be able to afford to live in the community - people such as police officers, teachers, and nurses. This is definitely not section 8 housing, and he doesn't care if it loses money - he's pledged to give at least half his money to charity before he dies.

Some facts about the U.S. justice system:

* The Reid technique is widely used for interrogations, a technique notorious for its effectiveness in enticing false confessions.
* Only 5 % of convicted felons had their case tried in court; the rest make a plea bargain (typically under threats of excessively long prison sentences and/or the death penalty).
* Judges are elected, subjecting them to the whims of public opinion and making them more politicians than impartial legal officials.
* At least 4 % of people sentenced to death in the U.S. are innocent.
* The U.S. incarcerates more people than any other country in the world, not just relative to the population size, but in absolute numbers.
* U.S. private prisons sees $3+ billion in annual revenue... Not that that has anything to do with the above issues, I'm sure.

The U.S. justice system is broken in so many ways, I'm certainly forgetting some things.

Whoosh?

They didn't stop telecoms from merging either.

U.S. Moves to Block Merger Between AT&T and T-Mobile
T-Mobile Antitrust Challenge Gives AT&T Little Recourse

They didn't stop any of the airline or bank mergers that we have seen since 2009.

US government seeks to block American-US Airways merger
U.S., Filing Suit, Moves to Block Airline Merger

They didn't reign in the massive control that the insurance industry has over the consumer (indeed they gave the industry more power)

BLUE CROSS BLUE SHIELD OF MICHIGAN AND PHYSICIANS HEALTH PLAN OF MID-MICHIGAN ABANDON MERGER PLANS: Decision to Abandon Deal Follows Justice Department's Decision to Challenge the Acquisition
The Minimum Standards all Health Insurance Plans Sold on and Off the Exchange
Federal Insurance Office Act"
the 2010 Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

This seems highly unlikely given the pro-monopoly stance that...

U.S. Moves to Block Merger of 2 Theater Ad Companies
FTC Sues To Block Sysco-US Foods Merger
U.S. Sues to Block Big Beer Merger
3M Drops Avery Dennison Unit Buyout Amid Antitrust Worry

etc

I don't think Tim O'Reilly cares.

The fraudulent patents that makerbot has filed will eventually end up in the coffer of Stratasys

http://3dprintingindustry.com/...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ra...

WTF are you talking about?
Inside Sony's Mysterious 'Red Pockets': Hackers Blow Open China Bribery Probe
Sony Probed India Business for Corruption, E-Mails Show
There are more cases, even including bribery of US politicians, but I couldn't find a link in 5 seconds so I leave that to the people interested to find.

There is plenty of stuff in the leaked data that Sony doesn't want to get spread because it shows that they are engaging in criminal activity on a global level.
The "It's only personal data, think about the children!" nonsense is a lame attempt at covering up their wrongdoings and make people not look to closely into the leaked e-mails.

Which is why a real journalist would go through the emails and select the ones that specifically show/relate-to the corruption, bribing politicians, etc, and publish/release those rather than just releasing thousands of other emails that do nothing but screw average employees by releasing their addresses, SSN, salary, etc.

"What's the value of an unsourced, unvetted story about a grown man drinking at a bar?"

WTF are you talking about?
Inside Sony's Mysterious 'Red Pockets': Hackers Blow Open China Bribery Probe
Sony Probed India Business for Corruption, E-Mails Show
There are more cases, even including bribery of US politicians, but I couldn't find a link in 5 seconds so I leave that to the people interested to find.

There is plenty of stuff in the leaked data that Sony doesn't want to get spread because it shows that they are engaging in criminal activity on a global level.
The "It's only personal data, think about the children!" nonsense is a lame attempt at covering up their wrongdoings and make people not look to closely into the leaked e-mails.

Commercial driver is actually the eighth most dangerous job in America. In addition, a very large portion of on-the-job deaths in other professions are a result of motor vehicle accidents.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja...

Pilot: US Government Claims Of Plane Wi-Fi Hacking Wrong And Irresponsible

(1.) Churches are not required to file an application for recognition of tax-exempt status. .

(2.) Churches are not required to file an annual information return. . [i.e. Form 990]

(3.) Ministers of the gospel are able to receive a parsonage allowance.

(4.) Salaries of ministers of the gospel are exempted from income tax withholding and FICA taxes.

(5.) The IRS is required to follow specific procedures when examining a church

and the associated argument by the Athiest group in that case:

The Atheists argue that as a direct consequence of the IRS’s allegedly discriminatory policies, they are injured by being forced “to (1) submit an application for exemption, (2) file Form 1023, or (3) pay the 501(c)(3) application fee that is up to $850,” which establishes their injury is concrete and particularized, and far from conjectural or hypothetical.

Congress, who is actually in charge of passing laws, says, "Hey, wait a minute. Shouldn't we have looked at this first?"

You mean the same Congress that delegated power to the agency in question to make just these sort of rules??? If Congress wants to pass new legislation to revoke that authority (or the budget of the agency under the Executive), it is free to do so - but that does nothing to change the fact that Congress approved it in the first place. You can find similar examples on everything from pot to DADT.

I can see, how this may defeat (ab)users trolling for fun and not suspecting automated detection before it hits them (though, with only 80% accuracy, I dread the thought of the methods expanding out of the virtual realm).

But what about people "trolling" professionally — paid and/or otherwise compelled into it by a state or corporate actor pretending there to exist some kind of "grass-roots" movement? How would it deal with thousands of fake accounts mounting a coordinated assault, posting (while "liking" and "following" each other)?

Some times you may be able to catch accounts posting identical things at the same exact time (and ban them all in bulk), but Russians seem to have fixed that bug in their bots now...

This is turning into another battle like that, in which spammers have fought the best Information Technology minds into a standstill. I doubt, progress against forum-spammers will be much better than that — not when mere technology, however clever, is up against interests of a reasonably powerful state.

While I'm glad to hear they're open sourcing some technology... [quote]on networks like Tor, where Hidden Services are protected by the privacy-enhancing, encrypted hosting, often for good, often for bad[/quote] This is what concerns me. Just because the tool is supposedly there to find the bad doesn't mean that it can't be used to go after the good, and not just in the context of the US (though the US has proven itself perfectly willing to go after even journalists doing research into the subject: http://www.forbes.com/sites/sa...). You can't thwart the bad without thwarting the good as well.

They should not be using electricity in the first place. Desalination is a perfect pairing for cogeneration with Gen IV fission plants. Added benefit is you can put the entire output to desalination when demand is low to avoid using peeking plants.

High temperature gas reactor are very well suited for this purpose, even present generation PWRs would work well. You still need electricity for the process, you don't have to use electrolysis, but it still takes a lot of power. Reactors are a good choice because they produce the needed electricity within a small footprint, and the excess heat from the reactor can be used to increase the process temperature where it becomes much more efficient.

Getting a CSP plant big enough near the water source and keeping the system going 24/7 makes that technology much less attractive. And, since this is an energy intensive process, energy returns on energy invested (EROI) becomes an important consideration;

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja...

> They simply contract with a 3rd party bitcoin exchange that provides a payment address to the user

And that is where the risk enters. Many of them have already proven untrustworthy.

                http://www.forbes.com/sites/an...

                http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoi...

                http://insidebitcoins.com/news...

It's very difficult to evaluate trustworthy Bitcoin exchanges in such a shortlived market, and the faud rate seems to be quite high.

I'm happy as the next guy to pillory Halliburton, which deserves little but scorn for its shocking profiteering in US government contracts. But you probably don't want want to cite dated Chavezista leftie Froot-Loops talking about how the rapidly disintegrating former Venezuelan economy is a model for anything except citizen outrage.

Just ask the folks living in the former Socialist Paradise where condoms now cost $755/pack on the black market because the Bolivar is worth less than toilet paper and it turned out that Chavez was mortgaging his country's future to buy temporary popularity with oil dollars.

It's funny when Google, Apple or Microsoft complain about privacy issues.

Google, sure. But not Apple or Microsoft. For companies like Google and Facebook, you are the product and privacy is a roadblock they work around. Microsoft and Apple represents a different kind of company that wants you to buy actual products from them, and behave far better in this area. When customers desire privacy, these will try to sell you products that delivers this.

Intel fabrication plants are mostly in the US, with one in Israel, one in Ireland, and one in China (apparently a 65nm process plant, so definitely not their most cutting edge stuff). Yeah, surprised me too when I looked it up.

Then I thought a bit about it, and it's perhaps not so surprising. The last thing Intel wants is to lose their edge in the *process* of making those chips. Considering that it probably costs them up to $10 billion to set up a fab plant, labor costs probably aren't exactly the big expense there. As good as the Chinese are at cloning technology, it seems pretty unlikely they'd be able to clone the latest chips so easily unless they new the tech for the latest low-nm processes, and from what I can see, Intel isn't giving them the opportunity.

Your articles only show the following: The USA wants China to develop a thorium reactor. And China may invest $350 million. However, your last article did not show in what time frame.

After a short inquiry to Google, I found an article about investments of China into renewable energy specifically into wind power. That is not research, as in your last article, that is money for installing new wind turbines.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja...

In the article you may find

$473.1 billion on clean energy investments from 2011 to 2015.

This is 1000 time the money for your nuclear dream.

I have long stated that Affirmative Action is broken. I applaud its desire to fix a real problem, but the net effect is reverse discrimination. Best qualified is best qualified whether male, female, black, blue, brown, yellow, white, or orange.

There is no such thing as "reverse racism":

The term reverse racism may not be in common usage, but it does exist. In this case, in order to undo racism from 50+ years ago against Blacks, Affirmative Action institutionalizes racism against Whites. It does not abolish racism, just changes which race is discriminated against.

I guess "best qualified" is why Whites dominate in the CEO suite: http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/diversity_among_ceos.html

Correlation does not equal causation. More men are CEOs because more men have more time in the workforce and generally have higher education. Women traditionally take time off from their studies and careers to help raise the kids. My own mother earned her Associate's when she was 40, after raising seven kids.

It also must be the reason that the US Congress does not look like the US racially: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/01/05/the-new-congress-is-80-percent-white-80-percent-male-and-92-percent-christian/

You must run before you can get elected. The student body at my university was also overwhelmingly male (though extremely racially diverse). After studying the situation, it was determined that a female who was running was three times as likely to get elected as a male also in the running. Alas, the general population votes, so there is not single thing that everyone agrees on for what is "best qualified". I was called a sexist for not supporting Hillary Clinton and a racist for not supporting Barak Obama. When I vote, I vote for who's best (IMO) for the country, and not out of fear being called a bigot. I voted for a Black female for a different position, but it's because I agreed with her message. It was only years after the election that I learned of her religious background.

It also must be why there has not been a noticeable rise in minorities in the Forbes 400 Richest Americans list: http://gawker.com/5645917/the-forbes-400-a-demographic-breakdown

This is more about economic classes than races. Most lower and middle class individuals are not in a financial position to take the kind of gambles which can pay out the biggest dividends. It takes a million dollars to start a business. Those of us in the middle and lower classes look like too big a risk for banks to lend that money. Also note that 31% of those 400 come from old money.

A rich person doesn't want to give you money just so you can turn around and use it to buy stuff from him. Nobody gets richer that way.

Really? you might want to tell Henry Ford about that. In fact their is an entire economic theory named after him because he did just that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Don't believe everything you read on Wikipedia. The idea that Ford paid his workers more so they could buy cars is so ridiculous it is hard to believe the myth has spread so widely. Well not so hard to believe since so many people want to find references that "prove" the opinion they already had. I guess by this logic Boeing should raise their workers' wages high enough that each of them could buy a new jetliner. What is Boeing thinking by leaving those potential orders unfulfilled?

This article debunks this silly myth more thoroughly than I could in a Slashdot post.

That is a false dichotomy and you know it. Firstly jetliner’s aren't a consumer item cars are. Secondly his auto workers were not the sole consumers of the Model T but it was set at a price point his workers could afford.

A rich person doesn't want to give you money just so you can turn around and use it to buy stuff from him. Nobody gets richer that way.

Really? you might want to tell Henry Ford about that. In fact their is an entire economic theory named after him because he did just that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Don't believe everything you read on Wikipedia. The idea that Ford paid his workers more so they could buy cars is so ridiculous it is hard to believe the myth has spread so widely. Well not so hard to believe since so many people want to find references that "prove" the opinion they already had. I guess by this logic Boeing should raise their workers' wages high enough that each of them could buy a new jetliner. What is Boeing thinking by leaving those potential orders unfulfilled?

This article debunks this silly myth more thoroughly than I could in a Slashdot post.

Yes, really. You just cited a well-known myth about Fordism. Read this.

The focus of Fordism is mass-production, and the means of achieving it. The hearts-and-minds-winning notion of "paying his workers enough money that they could afford to buy his products" does not mean "paying his workers more than he makes off of them," which is logically impossible.

Rich people don't create money out of thin air. The government prints money, of course, but it does so as an abstract representation of wealth. How much wealth a dollar represents changes based on the ratio between the number of dollars in existence, and the amount of wealth in existence. Since wealth is an abstract concept and impossible to measure with precision, this whole enterprise is inexact.

But wealth is ultimately the product of human labor. Humans grow food that wasn't there before, or build cars that didn't exist before, and poof, new wealth exists. Rich people don't do this kind of work.....they just extract the value from their employees who *do* do this kind of work, and give them a fraction of that value back (in the form of wages).

Economics is a complicated subject, as it turns out. But it should be easy to understand that rich people don't become or stay rich by paying their workers more than they make off them.

"We now know not only that Netflix’s traffic management issues had nothing to do with paid prioritization, but that they were also the fault not of any ISP but of its own business partner."

http://www.forbes.com/sites/la...

Jesus, you don't know how to use google either? I literally typed in "Issac newton rude" and got this link almost immediately:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ro...

He was well known to be an asshole. A total genius... easily one of the most brilliant minds ever... but kind of a dick.

In any case, your premise that anyone that is educated and intelligent must be nice and respectful towards you is idiotic.

There is no logical rule that requires that an intelligent person has to be anything other than intelligent.

This is similar to those stupid arguments that Aliens have to be peaceful because they're advanced which ignores that the most advanced societies on earth are pretty fucking warlike.

You don't have a logical mind. You have a lot of feelings and ideologies and you've confused lookup tables with actual thinking.

I don't know if this is because you're stupid or if you were taught to think in a stupid way which makes you stupid. Either way, the person I am unfortunately being subjected to is not especially intelligent and it annoys me because on top of being stupid you're arrogant... so I can't even educate you. And that means you're just a waste of my time.

Worse still... you're boring... and apparently not very well read because the thing about Newton was something I learned in high school. Apparently either you weren't paying attention or your school was garbage. Either way... boring boring boring.

Facts are Facts man, if there is anything in that link you think is inaccurate attack it.

But just for you here is the second link of 700,000 links about Carson on this topic.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/he...

Ha ha. If you can get your work done and still have time to "goof off" like this then obviously you could do more work.

That's the mindset of most managers. It doesn't matter if that's good or bad; it's just a fact.

It does matter whether it's good or bad, and it seriously is a reason why many of these managers should be fired.

There are numerous scientific studies showing the benefits of breaks, downtime, doing leisure activities, naps, etc. during the workday -- resulting in greater productivity than if workers don't have such things. Managers who insist that workers be productive continuously are actually decreasing their productivity.

Same thing with forcing people to work 7 days per week. Same thing with vacation time. There are a number of studies showing that if people take a few weeks or even a month off from work per year, they more than make up for it in increased productivity after the rest.

I realize that many managers are stupid, but this kind of stupidity is costing their company productivity and thus MONEY. It may be the norm, but it does matter that it's a stupid policy that not only harms workers but often harms the managers and their companies too.

Oh, and guess what -- added stress and fatigue causes injuries and health problems, often leading to more extended leaves due to sickness that end up costing a lot more. What's a big expense for most companies? Health coverage. Not only are you decreasing the effectiveness of your workers during work hours, but you're driving up one of your biggest costs in terms of additional healthcare.

It's inexcusable. Some high-powered companies in finance, law, as well as hospitals with doctors doing crazy shifts, etc. have started to recognize that it's really bad to have your workers coming in 7 days per week or working days at a time. It leads to inferior work and thus some corporations have started actively trying to get people to stay home on Sundays or whatever. (Think I'm kidding? Here's a story from the New York Times about financial firms adopting policies trying to get workers to stay home on the weekends.)

Managers who refuse to acknowledge good scientific studies showing how to make workers productive are bad managers.

(This is not to say that "Easter eggs" are always a good thing or a good use of time or resources. There are many reasons they can be problematic, as others have pointed out, like unintentionally creating problems in the code or whatever. But objections should be founded on reasons relevant to the project or security or whatever, not on bad managerial science.)

No, it is ok to negotiate Iran onto a path that delays them from getting a nuke for the next 15 years, as opposed to the current path where, according to Netanyahu, they will have a nuke in the next year or two

It really is too bad, this discussion will be "archived" in 12 months and so it will be impossible to reply to you then ask you to eat a crow. If Iran does not have a nuke in 12-24 months, it would not be for lack of trying.

Do you honestly believe, Iranians haven't learned the lesson taught collectively by Bill Clinton and North Koreans? In 1994 the previous Democrat President went through the same motions Obama is doing now. NY Times wrote in 1994:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18— President Clinton approved a plan today to arrange more than $4 billion in energy aid to North Korea during the next decade in return for a commitment from the country's hard-line Communist leadership to freeze and gradually dismantle its nuclear weapons development program.

Had you and I met back then, you would've called me a war-mongering hater over my doubts, North Koreans can be trusted. But I woud've been right for they have been caught lying a number of times since. Its most recent test of a nuclear weapon was in February 2013.

The lesson of dealing with the West is perfectly clear: you agree to whatever and still work on your nukes as hard as you can. Once you have them, nobody can do anything other than keep asking critics to stop hating.

I buy a new phone about every 3 years, when my previous one is worn out. Most people do this every year or two. What a waste...This article shows what you're missing when you sign that lease, or buy that new iPhone.

I replace mine with about the same frequency. Not to toot Apple's horn but they have trade in programs which reduce the cost of the new phone and they refurbish or recycle the old one. Many people will hand their phones down, too. Often the only thing that the handsets really need is a battery.

The motors and battery (which needs to be replaced every X years) for your new Prius are not so great for the environment. Sure, it makes you feel good to not fill up at the gas pump, but what is the true environmental cost of that car?

One argument that can be made is efficiency, is it more efficient to tap the grid vs generating energy at home? Is less fuel consumption beneficial? Here's a Forbes article about Prius, having a battery replaced with a refurbished one from a 3rd party.

The reality is that there are 28 separate cells in the hybrid battery pack. When the unit starts to fail, only a handful of the individual cells are bad. What Prius Battery Repair of Houston does, and Toyota could do if it wanted to, is replace the bad hybrid battery pack with a reconditioned one to get the customer back on the road. Then, determine which cells are bad, and simply replace the bad battery cells, recondition the battery, and sell it to the next customer.

Same goes for windmills, etc. Are they really better for the environment than, say, nuclear power?

Better is so subjective. Replace windmills with $anyitem (minifridge, dams, coal power plants). Does it make it more or less profound?

I'm glad someone out there is forcing us to look at the downside of all of the technology we use. Kudos to them for doing it.

Forcing? Hardly. This is the byproduct of cheap.


I'd say this article just focuses on an admittedly bad area where stuff is done cheaply because that's what many people want world wide. A rare earth mine is ramping up production in California. Compare how it's done. It lowered capacity because of cost, a re-occuring theme with a lot of American industry.

I have seen the reports. I do not know if they are accurate or reliable. I am asked to present citations for this. Yet, I have repeatedly seen people claim that Big Oil supports AGW deniers but no one ever gives any citations to support that stance. It is just accepted as true.

Well here are some citations for what I said. I will repeat that I do not know if they are true, so don't respond by telling me they are biased sources:

http://www.climatedepot.com/20...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/la...

Even that promoter of non-skeptical acceptance of global alarmism "Skeptical Science" admits that Big Oil now supports AGW alarmism:
http://www.skepticalscience.co...

There are more. How about some citations supporting the allegation that Big Oil supports AGW skeptics?

Considering that nuclear power is the safest form of power the world has ever known, I'd say it's worthy of recognition for offsetting carbon more than anything else. To borrow a phrase, "It's the energy density, stupid."

There's a reason why China has 30 nuclear plants under construction, while the US just approved its first new plant in 30 years.

Or do like we have hear, where leave is paid for out of a fund that all taxpayers contribute to, so nobody is penalized for taking it, and the employer doesn't pay it.

You don't have to look to Europe - just look north of the New York border.

Also, I think most people would say that life and health is more important than money, and the US fails on that basis. Even the ACA is nowhere near as good as universal healthcare. Compare life expectancy. I'll stay in Kanuckistan, thanks :-)

Asking for your telephone number was a way of getting a unique identifier for each customer, allowing them to track your pattern of purchases. (They never called the numbers; Radio Shack did no telemarketing. They just used them as a database key.) There was the potential confound of multiple people living at the same address and having the same phone number, but it was the best they could do at the time outside of asking for your name and address, which would have been far more time consuming. Nowadays stores use loyalty cards or match your purchases to your credit card, but those tools weren't available to Radio Shack when they started collecting phone numbers.

If you also gave them your address (as you would if you had made a request to receive catalogs) they could have potentially used your purchase pattern to send you customized flyers, though so far as I know Radio Shack never did that. Target, years later, is a notable example of a company that DID send customized flyers and got in hot water for it: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ka...

Knowing the patterns in which people buy things is valuable data for a company. Even if they don't have any way to match it up with your personal information and thus have no way to contact you, it gives them information on things like which products are bought together or by the same people, which would allow them to design more effective advertising.

In fact women of great standing within tech have long said the exact opposite and that it's the constant lies and fearmongering from Social Justice types convincing people there's a wage gap that doesn't exist.

There's a word for when someone uses fear and lies to control someone else's behavior for their own gain. Generally we call that an abusive relationship.

Occupation and annexation of Crimea already a staggering success, Russia must be looking into organizing a referendum in Alaska.

Peace-loving Americans will not be objecting — a referendum conducted under occupation going in favor of the occupying power? What "conflict of interest"?

The knuckle-dragging haters will be neutralized by polite men with Russian accents wearing indiscernible uniforms...

wow.. were you asleep through the snowden leaks?

http://www.theguardian.com/wor...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ro...

Im sure you will come up with countless excuses as to why this is not really the case, and how .. secretly good old google was being the usual friendly open source mascot and trying to actually undermine the NSA.

That aside even if google was trying to minimally cooperate with the government to fulfil some legal requirement, many people including myself would not trust them. Sorry buddy, the advertising business is dirty and slimy and when you play in that playground you get slime on ya that's hard to shake off.

The amount of data that the police collect is tiny compared to that collected by private business. For $10 you can get access to a database of billions of license plate scans. Making the police data secret does not significantly improve anyone's privacy as long as companies like TLO are around with databases that are orders of magnitude larger. So no downside to releasing the data means it needs to be released for basic accountability purposes.

Actually, wind is about middle of the field. Depending on which figures you take (this seems to be reasonably balanced), solar is the most expensive and either coal or nuclear (or on this graph hydro) are the cheapest. If you want to reduce environmental impact, nuclear is actually your best option in the short term, although we absolutely need to be pursuing renewables long-term.

But, calculating costs is tricky, because if you want a really balanced view, you need to factor in externalities (indirect or down-system effects), and this puts things like coal and other fossil fuels as horribly expensive, and wind, hydro, and nuclear come out on top.

So, depending on how much of it's effect you are measuring, wind actually can be cheaper. (I haven't even gone into subsidies).

There are lots of people who can do that and all you need is decent credit & the ability to sign your name

http://www.zdnet.com/article/9...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/la...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/uc...

There are lots of people who can do that and all you need is decent credit & the ability to sign your name

http://www.zdnet.com/article/9...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/la...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/uc...