First off, there is nothing wrong with electric cars. They
are no more inefficient than gas or diesel when fossil fuels
are used to create the energy.
Indeed, you get lower emissions
and cleaner air because you can install better filters, scrubbers
and cleaner generation facilities at the point of burn. Not to
mention that you get a superior tourque curve from an electric
motor.
The problem with electric cars is that you have to haul the
extra deadweight that the battery, generator and traction motors
are.
So, to do the SAME job, you have to burn more fossil fuel.
And that, no matter how little emissions the engine gives out,
that's still MORE carbon dioxyde spewed up in the atmosphere.
Face it, TRANSIT is the ONLY solution. The vast majority of
trips always are the same, day in, day out, so there is no reason
that people can't use transit at least on the more used portion
of their trips.
What? No transit? That's no excuse. Demand transit and there
it should be.
This is just my point. Why the hell shouldn't companies
be allowed to protect their property?
They can very well protect their property, but not using means that tramples
on the rights of others. Just like you can't protect your real-estate with
automatic infrared seeking guns and land mines.
Apart from a grade 3 teacher who almose "adopted" me (to the extent
of inviting me to her country place - with my parent's consent - for hunting
trips), the best teacher I ever had was a grade 9 math teacher who explained
calculus to me in 5 minutes.
He drew an arbitrary curve: "this is the curve of your function".
He then hashed the area under the curve up to a point "when you integrate
your function, you calculate the area of the curve". Then, he drew
a straight line tangent to one point of the curve "and when you differentiate,
you compute the slope at that point".
Empty? No, tape them to hunks of steel or large bricks.
Then you cost them a couple of bucks instead of a measly $.30. Apparently
some (all?) postmasters will refuse to deliver these, but I suspect that
isn't strictly legal. Anyway, it puts pressure on the PO to get things
changed as well.
On the one hand I have the same dread most people do when
one of their favorite books is going to be turned into a movie. Especially
since Clarke's books in general, and Rendezvouz With Rama in particular,
are more thoughtful than action-packed. Hopefully they don't try to
throw in anything that wasn't in the book.
On the other hand, 2001: A Space Odyssey was in my opinion the greatest
movie of all time. So who knows, this one might turn out halfway decent.
The public's fear seems to center on government, not
corporate, intrusions of privacy, although polls show that fear of
companies misuse of personal data is growing rapidly.
Helloo, anybody home at Katzhaus???
Have you been studying your history?
England's history is filled to the brim with revolts
by powerful barons (see Magna
Carta, Oliver
Cromwell) against weak kings who were consequently unable to see
their power (and thus the power of the State) constantly eroded.
The net result is that during the industrial revolution, when the bourgeois
seized economic power, they frowned upon the power of the state to interfere
with their profits. The british empire is filled with private corporations
that had their own armies to enforce their own justice over conquered lands
(like the East
India Company, the Hudson's
Bay Company - which still exists to this
day); of course in no way that "justice" is geared towards the well-being
of the people who lived there first - for example, the HBC forbade indians
to trade furs amongst themselves (as they did for thousands of years),
but instead, they had to SELL them (for trinkets) to the HBC, and, of course,
indians had to buy it from them if they needed furs).
The net result is a mindset which sees all evil in whatever the State
does, and turns a blind eye to the worst abuses by private citizens, a,
perhaps, every private citizens aspires to be a Bill Gates.
With such a mindset, it's no suprising that citizens see nothing wrong
in being screwed by private enterprise (after all, they might, one day,
become big enough to screw smaller fry) but jump to the ceiling each time
the government steps in to protect smaller people.
--
Re:infiltrating Toronto
on
Infiltration
·
· Score: 2
Infiltration.org is real nice,
and they're fine fellows, but sometimes, you have to draw the line. Someone
found my Montréal
Métro (sorry, just in french, except for
this page) website, and kept pestering me for infiltrating it. Not
something to do, and for safety, I had to put a disclaimer
on my Métro exploration pages (all my explorations were legit -
duly accompanied by Métro officials).
at the place i worked at i had to go to the deli to slice
meat every time the bell rang. To this day (a year later) i still instinctivly
drop whatever I'm fucking doing and start walking someplace whenever i
hear a similar bell, then it hits me....yuk.
Here various products are used because they provide X or
Y. We use exchange, not because it's any good, but because of the scheduling
stuff. I would rather use a real mail program, but that is not acceptable
as people can't then add appointments to my calendar...
Wasn't Windows and the whole GUI standardization schmooza
designed to easily transfer information from one application to
the next?
So, what's the big deal in using a REAL GOOD e-mail client with
a REAL GOOD scheduler/agenda???? It should not be hard to transfer
information from one to the other, no????
According to the inventor of "Ginger," Dean Kamen, his device
will be an alternative to products that "are dirty, expensive, sometimes
dangerous and often frustrating, especially for people in the cities."
The only two things that fit this description are dogs and automobiles.
A flying machine that works for peanuts as it rides on a small space warping à la olive pit between two fingers?
A space-warper that connects two distant spatial planes together, effectively zeroing the distance between those planes? Now, what if one plane is at a higher altitude than the other. What happens with the change of potential energy as an object goes from one plane to the other?
A total sensory-extender that allows one to "be" somewhere else at the same time?
An engine running on water? Hot air? Bullshit?
A car that can be folded flat and slipped in one's wallet (or under the garage door)?
The problem here is because a high-bandwidth machine can
cause _soo_ much havoc on a network.
It's just like leaving a car running, unattended, unlocked with the key
in the ignition. Any jerk can jump inside it and start driving it around
recklessly.
You do that, and you can bet your ass you'll be "ticketed" for leaving
your car running unattended.
You can start by noting that Russia has a nonstandard track
gauge... something about the czars being afraid of the railroad being used
by invading enemy armies...
So did Canada until about 1880something. But Canada re-gauged all it's
tracks so it could be compatible with the US (which, itself, wasn't much
standardized until just before the Civil War).
Russia could very well do the same thing; in Canada, it took only a
week-end to change the thousands of miles of track, so Russia could do
it fast, too.
What? How they did it? Well, a thousand of track gangs each changing
5 miles of track in 1 day could change 10,000 miles of track in 2 days...:):):)
Spain would also benefit by doing the same thing, but they also have
invented a TALGO, a train that can change
it's gauge at the borders (yes, the same one that runs between Seattle
and Vancouver)...
Hmmm, let's dream... A New-York_Moscow_Paris_Madrid train... That's
a trip I'll be glad to take!
You know what? I wouldn't trust a completely government
run program to pay me what I'm worth, were I a doctor ... The best possible solution? Personal insurance. Why? Because poor
health is usually an accident. I'm not always sick. In fact, many more
people are healthy when one person is sick. So, if all of us pay a little
bit into a pool
You know what? The canadian medicare system is just that. A personal
insurance. That is, an insurance policy that YOU have. Except
that the State pays for it, except that it can't deny you coverage,
except that it won't bill you for it (you pay for it through taxes).
Since there is no competing insurers, hospitals don't have to check whether
the procedure is covered or not (since everyone is similarly covered),
and they don't have to check for patient credit ratings either.
And it's the largest possible pool : everyone is in it!
Finally, since the State insurance don't have to show a profit, none
of the money spent by the public is wasted on unnecessary profits and dividends
and advertising and all other useless paraphernalia that is so typical
of competing private enterprise.
When my grandfather was a child, transportation was horse,
train, or boat. ... Nobody in his town had indoor plumbing. Nobody in mine didn't.
My grandfather was the first in his village to have an indoor toilet, because
HE installed it. But his sons kept pestering him about the neighbour who
always had the latest car in his farmyard.
Everytime, my grandfather would counter them by "yes, but they
shit on the snowbank!".
Slashdot Mirror
--
The problem with electric cars is that you have to haul the extra deadweight that the battery, generator and traction motors are.
So, to do the SAME job, you have to burn more fossil fuel. And that, no matter how little emissions the engine gives out, that's still MORE carbon dioxyde spewed up in the atmosphere.
Face it, TRANSIT is the ONLY solution. The vast majority of trips always are the same, day in, day out, so there is no reason that people can't use transit at least on the more used portion of their trips.
What? No transit? That's no excuse. Demand transit and there it should be.
--
--
Apart from a grade 3 teacher who almose "adopted" me (to the extent of inviting me to her country place - with my parent's consent - for hunting trips), the best teacher I ever had was a grade 9 math teacher who explained calculus to me in 5 minutes.
He drew an arbitrary curve: " this is the curve of your function ". He then hashed the area under the curve up to a point " when you integrate your function, you calculate the area of the curve ". Then, he drew a straight line tangent to one point of the curve " and when you differentiate, you compute the slope at that point ".
--
--
Sorry.
--
--
--
Moebius! FANTASTIC! The movie will look GREAT!!!
Too bad Stanley Kubrik is dead, though... :(
(When are they gonna do the INCAL series in film???)
--
Have you been studying your history?
England's history is filled to the brim with revolts by powerful barons (see Magna Carta , Oliver Cromwell ) against weak kings who were consequently unable to see their power (and thus the power of the State) constantly eroded. The net result is that during the industrial revolution, when the bourgeois seized economic power, they frowned upon the power of the state to interfere with their profits. The british empire is filled with private corporations that had their own armies to enforce their own justice over conquered lands (like the East India Company, the Hudson's Bay Company - which still exists to this day); of course in no way that "justice" is geared towards the well-being of the people who lived there first - for example, the HBC forbade indians to trade furs amongst themselves (as they did for thousands of years), but instead, they had to SELL them (for trinkets) to the HBC, and, of course, indians had to buy it from them if they needed furs).
The net result is a mindset which sees all evil in whatever the State does, and turns a blind eye to the worst abuses by private citizens, a, perhaps, every private citizens aspires to be a Bill Gates.
With such a mindset, it's no suprising that citizens see nothing wrong in being screwed by private enterprise (after all, they might, one day, become big enough to screw smaller fry) but jump to the ceiling each time the government steps in to protect smaller people.
--
Infiltration.org is real nice, and they're fine fellows, but sometimes, you have to draw the line. Someone found my Montréal Métro (sorry, just in french, except for this page) website, and kept pestering me for infiltrating it. Not something to do, and for safety, I had to put a disclaimer on my Métro exploration pages (all my explorations were legit - duly accompanied by Métro officials).
--
-- Igor Pavlov
--
Naah, that'll be for Woz...
--
--
So, what's the big deal in using a REAL GOOD e-mail client with a REAL GOOD scheduler/agenda???? It should not be hard to transfer information from one to the other, no????
--
--
Now, what if one plane is at a higher altitude than the other. What happens with the change of potential energy as an object goes from one plane to the other?
--
Of course, CICSO will charge an arm and a leg for that "feature"...
--
You do that, and you can bet your ass you'll be "ticketed" for leaving your car running unattended.
--
--
Russia could very well do the same thing; in Canada, it took only a week-end to change the thousands of miles of track, so Russia could do it fast, too.
What? How they did it? Well, a thousand of track gangs each changing 5 miles of track in 1 day could change 10,000 miles of track in 2 days... :) :) :)
Spain would also benefit by doing the same thing, but they also have invented a TALGO, a train that can change it's gauge at the borders (yes, the same one that runs between Seattle and Vancouver)...
Hmmm, let's dream... A New-York_Moscow_Paris_Madrid train... That's a trip I'll be glad to take!
--
And it's the largest possible pool : everyone is in it!
Finally, since the State insurance don't have to show a profit, none of the money spent by the public is wasted on unnecessary profits and dividends and advertising and all other useless paraphernalia that is so typical of competing private enterprise.
--
--
Everytime, my grandfather would counter them by " yes, but they shit on the snowbank! ".
--
--