I don't think we can have our cake and eat it too. If diesels get 62 mpg and stink, what's more important? Are we that delicate that we can't put up with what the French put up with? The stink would just be incentive to buy something that doesn't - meanwhile, maybe our country wouldn't be going belly up from the trade deficits and the other economic problems brought on by expensive gasoline and fuel-hogging vehicles.
I think I'd trade the smell for 62 mpg, which will put money in my pocket, and maybe save the nation.
Paying down the deficit? With what? Our looks (as my high school friends always said, when we looked pretty darn good, especially compared to now...)
Yeah, we could do that, but 1e 1st have to recognize what's killing us. Hint: It isn't the unions, and it isn't greedy CEOs, and it isn't most of the common stuff.
Its the income tax. And it's especially the corporate taxes.
The union is all wigged out right now about GM planning to build more cars overseas and importing them as a way to profitability. Why is that? Everyone blames the unions because they don't want to join the retail workers in poverty just to CEOs can rake in 10's of millions in either salaries or golden parachutes. All that is irrelevant.
The bottom line is that the American equation of labor costs plus retiree costs plus health care costs plus taxes far exceeds the foreign sum of labor costs (not a lot different in many places), retiree costs (less because of foreign socialist states benefits,) health care costs (also less because of foreign socialist states benefits,) and taxes (far less in most places, since we are the 2nd-highest corporate-taxing country on the planet.
We can't do much about the retirees, and we can't do much about the health care, and we shouldn't be trying to pauperize our workers OR impoverish our executives either, but we could do a whale of a lot about the income taxes. We could eliminate them.
The web page for the "fair tax" explains it. Google it. Then get behind it. Quit bleeding our own corporations dry. The rust belt, the loss of our electronics industries, and all the rest... is the result of our lousy tax policy.
Fix the basic problem, then tax the rich. The good news is the same as the bad news here, as WE (all) will be "the rich." We have the best workforce, with the best work ethic on the planet, the most productive workforce, and the country is a big cornicopia of mineral and other resources. Its time we did the right thing, and competed with the world without having both hands tied behind our backs.
"If they take cars that don't meet the standards off the road, and apply the standards to imports too, then either people drive more efficient cars or they stop driving. Either way emissions fall."
No, genius - they just keep repairing their old, inefficient but beloved cars, like the Cubans that still drive the 50's iron...
Diesels? Dream on. You've got a cartel of 5 envirowacko states with pollution standards in excess of Europe's, which are essentially keeping most diesels out of the country now. The unreasonably-stringent anti-sulphur emissions standards are only capable of being met with some advanced anti-pollution equipment involving a reservoir of urea to process the exhaust to meet the emission standards of these 5 states. Most manufacturers deem this too great a burden to bring their (62 mpg) cars into the USA, so only VW and Merceedes do so, and forgo sales in those 5 states.
42 mpg average by 2016? Guffaw! It isn't going to happen. Between the safety Nazis making cars weigh more, and more, and more so they can crash at Star Trek's Warp 9 and have everybody walk away without a scratch, and the envirowackos trying to get the exhaust to be cleaner than the air that is ingested by the engine, we're soon going to have _no_ cars bigger than a breadbox that can be purchased in this country.
Wasting money on this was nonsense. Hydrogen is much too difficult to handle, takes far too much energy to compress it to get not nearly enough energy in high pressure vessels that are themselves an additional hazard. Hydrogen brittles the metals used for the containers to store it. Hydrogen would accumulate in corners of garages and ignite at the slightest provocation. Hydrogen made from fossil fuels is a huge mistake, and hydrogen made from electrolysis is a huge waste of energy.
Fergedaboudit.
Chase something else. Better batteries. railway systems to carry cars. Anything but hydrogen.
>MS needs to kill backwards compatibility and start over on windows.
BTDT. Its a stealth corporate project. It's called, "Linux." Not even the insiders know...
That's the whole building in my case.
I'm thinking of a netbook, and do my searches using the phrase, "optional webcam" Haven't decided to buy yet, but when/if I do buy a netbook or another phone, it will not have a camera.
No, damaging the camera isn't good enough. If someone accuses you, you can show 'em the damaged camera, but that doesn't mean you can convince 'em that it was damaged 2 months ago when the secret plans were photographed and sold to the enemy. If they think you did it, you _don't_ want to have such a question floating around.
Hey - I _might_ get to 5 Gb. this month 'cuz I'm building a new computer and downloading Vista SP1 and some Ubuntu images - 4 of 'em so far, all about a full CD's size. Sooo... I'm supposed to pay as much as people trying to watch movies and TV shows thru the internet instead of warming up their DVR and getting them that way, or via Netflix? I don't think so.
Split off a "poweruser" tier between business and home user and it's $80 - $100 a month, while my usage goes to $30 a month. Somebody's gotta pay for all that equipment to keep that big bandwidth available. Shouldn't be me, sitting down here reading slashdot, doing e-mail, and surfing the web. I want to send pix to someone for a magazine, I generally send a CD thru the mail.
As for 1st run movies, I'll see you at the theater. Better video, better / louder / higher fidelity sound, sometimes even THX, and better popcorn. Yeah, its expensive. Cry me a river. You get what you pay for.
Showing that you don't know right from wrong, with such statements as:
"1. "It steals property" - STEALING property implies making someone else NOT HAVE IT; "
doesn't change the fact that stealing property is taking something that doesn't belong to you, and that amply covers acquiring works of art that people produced while expecting to make money from the sale of it.
You're a criminal and don't even know it. It's funny - most criminals actually think they aren't. I read once that one of the '30's "chopper" artisans, was perplexed by the police chasing him, a "guy who wouldn't hurt a fly." Except that he used his "chopper" on more than 1 person and filled them full of holes. Not sure if it as a Thompson.45 submachine gun or not, but that was the popular "chopper" of the '30's gangsters.
I saw this and was thinking of the Navy civilians we've been sending to Camp Fallujah, Iraq to do... coding. At the time I applied for the job (didn't get it...) that place was getting hit daily.
There's no big deal about this - use nukes on the populace - use fire bombing on the populace - they're just as dead either way, and we'd been using fire bombing for quite some time during the war.
The best thing about it was that it scared hell out of 'em, and they surrendered. End of war. 100's of thousands of lives saved. That's how you justify it.
OK, we make a new canal... but not in Panama. With nukes, we can afford do dig it down to sea level all along our southern border.
So, the industrial activity associated with that would make the S. border worth protecting, and put enough people there that controlling who gets across would be a lot easier. I mean, they'd really have to _swim_, and look out for that really big boat, too. No more wading across.
And, it'd be harder for some Democrat to give away to a foreign country that didn't build it, again.
There's lots of reasons that satellite doesn't always work other than its expensive. I have 4 humongous oak trees to the south of me, and cutting them down would be a real trick. It'd be expensive, is what it would be. And dangerous. I'd have to have it done professionally, but it'd still be dangerous - too close to the house. I'd be somewhere else while that was going on. And people living in subdivisions around here can have antenna problems or also a prohibition of molesting the trees that are blocking their signals. DSL? In the country? It doesn't go very far down the wire, y'know? Cable is fine, I like mine with its ~3.5 Mbs download speed, but it doesn't go everywhere, either. The lead SW engineer on the last program I worked didn't have cable at all, 'cuz it didn't come down to the end of the street where he lives. Wireless was contemplated for this place by one or two potetial providers. Nope - there's too many trees. It'd require too many repeaters. That's 2 - 3 years ago, tho, maybe there's a better solution now. And of course BPL is the scourge of the shortwave bands, including emergency public service in the low vhf bands most used by state patrol and rural fire dept's who can't necessarily afford to switch. Hi speed internet in the country has a lot of bad juju. This ain't gonna be easy.
Exactly so. The inventor / discoverer of penecillan allowed it into the public domain and it languished for years, because no company wanted to market it and have it copied by dozens of its competitors, thus forcing the price into the basement. So, to guarantee it won't be used, just release it to the public domain. It will be read, everyone will say its a great idea, and... it'll never get built.
I use Windows XP firewall, no antivirus, no anti-spyware, IE7, and Eudora, and to the best of my knowledge, have never had a malware problem. I just don't click on anything I'm not sure of. I don't download much, either, especially music - as in "never."
Don't worry, be happy... the threats aren't all they're cracked up to be...
Canada's health care system? The same health care system that has those Canadians who can afford it coming here to get expensive treatment like MRI's, etc? Just wonderful. No thanks...
Meanwhile, posters here don't seem to have a clue about much of anything - how the Volt works, how useful a car with a 40 mile electricity-only range is, and what would happen to sales if the car only had a 7u mile range.
These geniuses don't seem to realize that a 40 mile range covers just about everyone for daily use. These genuises don't seem to realize that when the car gets to 40 miles and runs out of stored electrical energy, the on-board internal combustion engine keeps it moving. I live in Virginia and could drive the Volt to Los Angeles if I wanted to. These geniuses don't seem to realize that, by the time that the first battery replacement is necessary, the battery technology has a good chance of extending the Volt's range from 3X - 10X what it is now, either with the Standford nanowire lithium anode technology or the recently patented EEStore supercapacitor.
C'mon - it is NOT necessary to bash every new technology just because it came from an American car company. I know the socialist left is attempting to drive this country into the socialist way of life, and is working to bankrupt all successful capitalism and is largely responsible for the current economic mess via their attacks using the environmental boogeyman, but this is real progress, and _ought_ to transcend this kind of politics, just for once.
Oh, the problem is that Microsoft is an _American_ monopolist. Not to worry. With the way things are going, with the high American cost of living causing workers to demand higher wages, and the 2nd highest corporate tax rate on the planet, the problem will be solved when Microsoft, along with all the rest of American industry, flees both the high labor rates and the high tax rates. Then it will be an _Indian_ monopolist, which will be OK. Nobody will care, unless there's an opportunity to beat up on the US.
Eventually, it will start at the end of your driveway, and continue to wherever you're going.
Too many tolls now. I finally canned the idea of going to Atlantic City this weekend because... not
the price of the motels... and not the price of what I might lose at poker... but because of about $38
or so, if I remember right, for the tolls to get there. Bridges, tunnels, turnpikes - it all adds up.
Screw it. Stay here and chop some weeds, go shopping, haul stuff that's taking up too much room to
the Goodwill store.
This is too simple. You just KEEP your hard drive, throw it in the safe with the guns and the jewelry, because you're going to need some old data off it someday, anyway.
None of what I'm reading in this thread addresses the coincident all time low of people working on Linux.
This was predicted in a thread sometime last year, that when the economy turns into a bucket of feces, people are going to get tired of just giving their efforts away for free. With 401 K's plummeting like another space shuttle disaster, people with free time are likely looking for something to do that will allow them to retire on time. Working for free isn't it.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't think we can have our cake and eat it too. If diesels get 62 mpg and stink, what's more important? Are we that delicate that we can't put up with what the French put up with? The stink would just be incentive to buy something that doesn't - meanwhile, maybe our country wouldn't be going belly up from the trade deficits and the other economic problems brought on by expensive gasoline and fuel-hogging vehicles. I think I'd trade the smell for 62 mpg, which will put money in my pocket, and maybe save the nation.
Paying down the deficit? With what? Our looks (as my high school friends always said, when we looked pretty darn good, especially compared to now...) Yeah, we could do that, but 1e 1st have to recognize what's killing us. Hint: It isn't the unions, and it isn't greedy CEOs, and it isn't most of the common stuff. Its the income tax. And it's especially the corporate taxes. The union is all wigged out right now about GM planning to build more cars overseas and importing them as a way to profitability. Why is that? Everyone blames the unions because they don't want to join the retail workers in poverty just to CEOs can rake in 10's of millions in either salaries or golden parachutes. All that is irrelevant. The bottom line is that the American equation of labor costs plus retiree costs plus health care costs plus taxes far exceeds the foreign sum of labor costs (not a lot different in many places), retiree costs (less because of foreign socialist states benefits,) health care costs (also less because of foreign socialist states benefits,) and taxes (far less in most places, since we are the 2nd-highest corporate-taxing country on the planet. We can't do much about the retirees, and we can't do much about the health care, and we shouldn't be trying to pauperize our workers OR impoverish our executives either, but we could do a whale of a lot about the income taxes. We could eliminate them. The web page for the "fair tax" explains it. Google it. Then get behind it. Quit bleeding our own corporations dry. The rust belt, the loss of our electronics industries, and all the rest... is the result of our lousy tax policy. Fix the basic problem, then tax the rich. The good news is the same as the bad news here, as WE (all) will be "the rich." We have the best workforce, with the best work ethic on the planet, the most productive workforce, and the country is a big cornicopia of mineral and other resources. Its time we did the right thing, and competed with the world without having both hands tied behind our backs.
Hey, I write 'em to be funny as well as to make a point... might as well have fun reading a post as opposed to dry facts.
"If they take cars that don't meet the standards off the road, and apply the standards to imports too, then either people drive more efficient cars or they stop driving. Either way emissions fall." No, genius - they just keep repairing their old, inefficient but beloved cars, like the Cubans that still drive the 50's iron...
Diesels? Dream on. You've got a cartel of 5 envirowacko states with pollution standards in excess of Europe's, which are essentially keeping most diesels out of the country now. The unreasonably-stringent anti-sulphur emissions standards are only capable of being met with some advanced anti-pollution equipment involving a reservoir of urea to process the exhaust to meet the emission standards of these 5 states. Most manufacturers deem this too great a burden to bring their (62 mpg) cars into the USA, so only VW and Merceedes do so, and forgo sales in those 5 states. 42 mpg average by 2016? Guffaw! It isn't going to happen. Between the safety Nazis making cars weigh more, and more, and more so they can crash at Star Trek's Warp 9 and have everybody walk away without a scratch, and the envirowackos trying to get the exhaust to be cleaner than the air that is ingested by the engine, we're soon going to have _no_ cars bigger than a breadbox that can be purchased in this country.
Wasting money on this was nonsense. Hydrogen is much too difficult to handle, takes far too much energy to compress it to get not nearly enough energy in high pressure vessels that are themselves an additional hazard. Hydrogen brittles the metals used for the containers to store it. Hydrogen would accumulate in corners of garages and ignite at the slightest provocation. Hydrogen made from fossil fuels is a huge mistake, and hydrogen made from electrolysis is a huge waste of energy. Fergedaboudit. Chase something else. Better batteries. railway systems to carry cars. Anything but hydrogen.
Can you say, "False arrest lawsuit?" I knew you could...
>MS needs to kill backwards compatibility and start over on windows. BTDT. Its a stealth corporate project. It's called, "Linux." Not even the insiders know...
That's the whole building in my case. I'm thinking of a netbook, and do my searches using the phrase, "optional webcam" Haven't decided to buy yet, but when/if I do buy a netbook or another phone, it will not have a camera. No, damaging the camera isn't good enough. If someone accuses you, you can show 'em the damaged camera, but that doesn't mean you can convince 'em that it was damaged 2 months ago when the secret plans were photographed and sold to the enemy. If they think you did it, you _don't_ want to have such a question floating around.
Hey - I _might_ get to 5 Gb. this month 'cuz I'm building a new computer and downloading Vista SP1 and some Ubuntu images - 4 of 'em so far, all about a full CD's size. Sooo... I'm supposed to pay as much as people trying to watch movies and TV shows thru the internet instead of warming up their DVR and getting them that way, or via Netflix? I don't think so. Split off a "poweruser" tier between business and home user and it's $80 - $100 a month, while my usage goes to $30 a month. Somebody's gotta pay for all that equipment to keep that big bandwidth available. Shouldn't be me, sitting down here reading slashdot, doing e-mail, and surfing the web. I want to send pix to someone for a magazine, I generally send a CD thru the mail. As for 1st run movies, I'll see you at the theater. Better video, better / louder / higher fidelity sound, sometimes even THX, and better popcorn. Yeah, its expensive. Cry me a river. You get what you pay for.
Showing that you don't know right from wrong, with such statements as: "1. "It steals property" - STEALING property implies making someone else NOT HAVE IT; " doesn't change the fact that stealing property is taking something that doesn't belong to you, and that amply covers acquiring works of art that people produced while expecting to make money from the sale of it. You're a criminal and don't even know it. It's funny - most criminals actually think they aren't. I read once that one of the '30's "chopper" artisans, was perplexed by the police chasing him, a "guy who wouldn't hurt a fly." Except that he used his "chopper" on more than 1 person and filled them full of holes. Not sure if it as a Thompson .45 submachine gun or not, but that was the popular "chopper" of the '30's gangsters.
I saw this and was thinking of the Navy civilians we've been sending to Camp Fallujah, Iraq to do... coding. At the time I applied for the job (didn't get it...) that place was getting hit daily.
There's no big deal about this - use nukes on the populace - use fire bombing on the populace - they're just as dead either way, and we'd been using fire bombing for quite some time during the war. The best thing about it was that it scared hell out of 'em, and they surrendered. End of war. 100's of thousands of lives saved. That's how you justify it.
OK, we make a new canal... but not in Panama. With nukes, we can afford do dig it down to sea level all along our southern border. So, the industrial activity associated with that would make the S. border worth protecting, and put enough people there that controlling who gets across would be a lot easier. I mean, they'd really have to _swim_, and look out for that really big boat, too. No more wading across. And, it'd be harder for some Democrat to give away to a foreign country that didn't build it, again.
There's lots of reasons that satellite doesn't always work other than its expensive. I have 4 humongous oak trees to the south of me, and cutting them down would be a real trick. It'd be expensive, is what it would be. And dangerous. I'd have to have it done professionally, but it'd still be dangerous - too close to the house. I'd be somewhere else while that was going on. And people living in subdivisions around here can have antenna problems or also a prohibition of molesting the trees that are blocking their signals. DSL? In the country? It doesn't go very far down the wire, y'know? Cable is fine, I like mine with its ~3.5 Mbs download speed, but it doesn't go everywhere, either. The lead SW engineer on the last program I worked didn't have cable at all, 'cuz it didn't come down to the end of the street where he lives. Wireless was contemplated for this place by one or two potetial providers. Nope - there's too many trees. It'd require too many repeaters. That's 2 - 3 years ago, tho, maybe there's a better solution now. And of course BPL is the scourge of the shortwave bands, including emergency public service in the low vhf bands most used by state patrol and rural fire dept's who can't necessarily afford to switch. Hi speed internet in the country has a lot of bad juju. This ain't gonna be easy.
Exactly so. The inventor / discoverer of penecillan allowed it into the public domain and it languished for years, because no company wanted to market it and have it copied by dozens of its competitors, thus forcing the price into the basement. So, to guarantee it won't be used, just release it to the public domain. It will be read, everyone will say its a great idea, and... it'll never get built.
Yeah, it has to appeal to the masses. It's called "making money."
I use Windows XP firewall, no antivirus, no anti-spyware, IE7, and Eudora, and to the best of my knowledge, have never had a malware problem. I just don't click on anything I'm not sure of. I don't download much, either, especially music - as in "never." Don't worry, be happy... the threats aren't all they're cracked up to be...
Well, that's a good thing, cuz we have lots of it, and so don't have to buy it from people who hate us.
Canada's health care system? The same health care system that has those Canadians who can afford it coming here to get expensive treatment like MRI's, etc? Just wonderful. No thanks... Meanwhile, posters here don't seem to have a clue about much of anything - how the Volt works, how useful a car with a 40 mile electricity-only range is, and what would happen to sales if the car only had a 7u mile range. These geniuses don't seem to realize that a 40 mile range covers just about everyone for daily use. These genuises don't seem to realize that when the car gets to 40 miles and runs out of stored electrical energy, the on-board internal combustion engine keeps it moving. I live in Virginia and could drive the Volt to Los Angeles if I wanted to. These geniuses don't seem to realize that, by the time that the first battery replacement is necessary, the battery technology has a good chance of extending the Volt's range from 3X - 10X what it is now, either with the Standford nanowire lithium anode technology or the recently patented EEStore supercapacitor. C'mon - it is NOT necessary to bash every new technology just because it came from an American car company. I know the socialist left is attempting to drive this country into the socialist way of life, and is working to bankrupt all successful capitalism and is largely responsible for the current economic mess via their attacks using the environmental boogeyman, but this is real progress, and _ought_ to transcend this kind of politics, just for once.
Oh, the problem is that Microsoft is an _American_ monopolist. Not to worry. With the way things are going, with the high American cost of living causing workers to demand higher wages, and the 2nd highest corporate tax rate on the planet, the problem will be solved when Microsoft, along with all the rest of American industry, flees both the high labor rates and the high tax rates. Then it will be an _Indian_ monopolist, which will be OK. Nobody will care, unless there's an opportunity to beat up on the US.
"We charge an extra high tax on the gasoline..." Think electric cars. About 10 years and that's probably all there will be on the market.
Eventually, it will start at the end of your driveway, and continue to wherever you're going. Too many tolls now. I finally canned the idea of going to Atlantic City this weekend because... not the price of the motels... and not the price of what I might lose at poker... but because of about $38 or so, if I remember right, for the tolls to get there. Bridges, tunnels, turnpikes - it all adds up. Screw it. Stay here and chop some weeds, go shopping, haul stuff that's taking up too much room to the Goodwill store.
This is too simple. You just KEEP your hard drive, throw it in the safe with the guns and the jewelry, because you're going to need some old data off it someday, anyway.
None of what I'm reading in this thread addresses the coincident all time low of people working on Linux. This was predicted in a thread sometime last year, that when the economy turns into a bucket of feces, people are going to get tired of just giving their efforts away for free. With 401 K's plummeting like another space shuttle disaster, people with free time are likely looking for something to do that will allow them to retire on time. Working for free isn't it.