I wrote a comment about how the media experts were focussing on the wrong problems and how they clearly -surprisingly- knew very little about Wikipedia and its problems - BUT then I read the source article and found it's just an attack piece, cherry picking the least interesting parts of the conference and painting every controversy as being the fault of an iron-fist dictat from the Wikimedia Foundation.
What I learned: wikipediocracy is a nonsense website.
I agree, it seems to me these news organizations are just trying to discredit a competitor. You can't trust the news at all anymore. It's always been questionable but it's gotten worse over the past 10yrs... and incredibly bad over the past 2yrs or so.
Last night I was listing to police scanners from Ferguson, MO. People looted the Walmart, stole assault rifles, then road around shooting up the neighborhood. I saw images from people with cellphones of groups of police 50+ all in riot gear firing teargas and rubber bullets into crowds. People getting loaded into ambulances. 2 major interstates were shut down as the crowds threw bricks onto the freeway.
All this, yet the only media outlets that are following it seem to be local outlets, PBS and Yahoo news. I'm flabbergasted by the lack of coverage. These are some of the most violent race riots in American history and it's all getting swept under the rug so they can focus on Robin Williams?!?!
But it's not a monopoly. Your cable company has a franchise agreement with the local government. They license them to be the only cable operator in the area in exchange for control over the fees and rates the cable company can charge. They do the same thing for Gas, electricity, etc... If you don't like the deal, vote. Local Governments switch cable and telecom companies all the time.
Sounds like someone was circumventing controls. The DEA had access... but did everyone in the DEA have access? I doubt it. One department likely had the data and getting to it either required evidence some didn't want to bother with, or was political, or maybe involved transferring money from your department to the controlling department. I've seen businesses where IS has control of an application, but what they claimed it cost per license was high enough that another department went out and bought the application themselves. I can't help but think this is the sort of thing that lead to this.
Then again, a lot of integration could have purpose:
1. Steering wheel switches that don't have separate wiring to the stereo
2. Speed-controlled-volume adjustment (esp for convertibles!)
I never got the "enhanced" option from the dealer because it turned out to be a $1200 adder:/
Mine does both of those. The computer I bought hooks into the cars buss and adjusts the headunit via the remote control input on the back of the unit.
If you get one of the Kenwood units, it's just strait up compatible with Sync. Fairly sure they have to pay ford a licensing fee for that because the units are $$$ Or do what I did and get one of the computers that does the translation.
If you want to look into revolutionary design changes look into the Mill CPU architecture.
They've put their lecture series available on the web about their intended architecture - it's kinda a hybrid DSP / general purpose with some neat side steps of contemporary CPU architectures.
Thanks for that... that's very interesting. If it works, you're right, it would be amazing. Also... a CPU designed by Santa Clause?!?! I'm in!
Yeah, but like you said, the present neocon government is willing to give HUGE corporate welfare to make new nuclear reactor plans viable.
Given that Nuclear power is the best way to reduce CO2 emissions, wouldn't that make sense? http://www.scientificamerican.... Check out the silver consumption of Solar... silver mining is terrible for the environment. Keep in mind the graph doesn't track CO2 output of burning the fuel itself. So Coal, oil, natural gas and biomass fuels would have huge CO2 impacts. Biomass consumes much of what it produces, but it still imbalances CO2 levels throughout the seasons (spikes in the winter, troughs in the summer) Hydroelectric has the lowest impact, but damns are terrible for river ecosystems. Nuclear power has the least direct impact, though older reactor designs put out warm water that can lead to algae blooms in the immediate area. I used to live next to one, the areas where the water exited the plant were the best fishing spots in the state.
If we can build foolproof reactors, and we can, then nuclear power is by far and away the best and safest source of power we have.
There is just no pleasing this people: 'undesirable element' moves in - they complain about falling property value, 'highly paid tech professionals' move in - they complain about increasing property value.
No, they're talking about rent and taxes. When you concentrate that much wealth in one area, it starts a feedback loop in wages. Rent goes up, taxes go up, even gas and groceries go up. Then the lower income people are forced out... the local service industry has to pay more to get people to work, so prices go up even more, until everyone making under $100k/yr has to commute 2hrs just to get to work. The city panics and start enforcing rent control so people can at least afford an tiny apartment. For an example, see Manhattan.
I would have thought this Obvious given that Einstein developed the theory of Relativity, revolutionizing nearly every field of science, all while working there.
Let's see... light is always propagated in empty space with a definite velocity... er... Icons with round corners? Approved......which is independent of the state of motion of the emitting body... One click purchase? Whatever... approved... That is, light in vacuum propagates with the speed c...
I know, I know, simplicity is such an ugly word. It would be truly horrible if people had to concentrate on their driving rather than the six-channel, streaming video playing on their dashboard while they blend margaritas.
What's even crazier is, you don't even need what they are doing to get the the same services. Just give the car radio bluetooth and be done with it. I've got an after market headunit in my car that cost me less than $150 and it can stream, do audio calls, shows my contacts in the head unit, I can use voice activation to say "Call home" and my phone will dial... etc... for another $50 I could have even gotten an LCD screen and streamed movies if I wanted. The last thing I want is to buy a car with some proprietary system in it that I wont be able to upgrade for the next 15yrs until I trade the car in.
The last car I bought had "Ford Sync" in it, and it was a pain in the butt to take out. The entire dashes electronics were integrated into the radio. WHY?!?! I had to purchase an after market computer module to replace the functions of that head-unit so I could put in a real radio. What a joke.
It's just anecdotal evidence, but my kids Adopted from Africa... he's smart but in regards to entirely different things than I am. I'm your typical computer guy... terrible with people but good with math, bad at spelling and grammar. He's totally outgoing, a natural leader. I take him to the park and he's organizing group activities with all the kids within minutes. It's truly amazing. I couldn't do that now, as an adult! He's 6, and already reading at a level I wasn't at until middle school. So genetics are definitely a factor.
That being said, I'm intensely interested in the mechanics of just about everything. How do you build a fence? How does a lawn mower work? I've passed this curiosity on to my son. So nurture is a factor to.
I've learned more about life by adopting than just about any other thing I've ever done in my life. I highly recommend it, you'll get more out of the venture than you ever had to put in.
If a headline ends in a question mark the answer is always no. If the answer was yes they wouldn't ask, they'd tell.. The question mark is how shitty opinion pieces trying to push a view point try to masquerade as news.
Everything from medium.com is of low quality. They take some nice pictures, put them inline with some artsy text and then say absolutely nothing for several paragraphs. Every article I've read on there has been some made up controversy. "Does dark mater invalidate the big bang?" then 10 paragraphs later "No, not at all" So why exactly did you write this article?
ISP rates are directly related to population density.
Citation please. I know plenty of people in both urban and rural areas, and they pay about the same. Far more important is the amount of local competition, and American ISPs have carved up both urban and rural areas to prevent that as much as possible.
I've worked for multiple ISPs for over 15yrs in nearly every department you can imagine. I'm my own citation. You're right, people do pay the same in Urban and Rural areas. But that's because of federal law, not because it costs the same. Remember how people complain about the "monopoly" the phone company has? That's not really a monopoly... there's an agreement between the Local government, the FCC and the telecommunications company in the area. They are very long and complex agreements but basically they boil down to:
The FCC will set some/most rates and fees for the telecom. Changes to these rates must be approved by the FCC. The Telecom will charge everyone the same rate, and will not discriminate based on location. (location discrimination is specifically why the FCC regulates telecomes. The government wanted rural phone service and this was the only way to make it affordable) The telecom will provide service to everyone with rare exceptions (your house is on an island for example) In return for this the Local government will give the Telecom exclusive right to serve that area.
Now, the telecom does have some leeway in the rates they charge. But it's not a lot. The FCC will definitely get involved and definitely charge them fines if they do something wrong. I've seen billing mistakes lead to fines before. But what really keeps rates down are cellphones. People are moving to cellular in droves. It's to the point that POTs service and internet access are not profitable at all. Trust me, I've seen the numbers... landline stuff barely breaks even. But, where the telecoms make most of their money is in services to business. Managed networks, managed software, IP phones, collocation services, etc... if the telecom is the incumbent in the area, they are likely the first company a business will call about that sort of thing and those services are almost pure profit.
The best way to think about the whole thing is to realize how the equipment works. DSL works to about 30,000 feet. Meaning, you have a DSL card at one end, the furthest away you can go before the noise makes the DSL not work anymore is 30,000 feet. You may have heard of some new tech that lets it go farther. But I've seen real world tests of that stuff and it's all failed. So the phone company puts in a building in your town... everyone within 30k feet of that building is golden. After 30k feet the phone company has to install what we call a "DSA" this is basically a mini-switch that they run trunks to. Once again, everyone within 30k feet of that DSA is good. The problem is, each of those remotes pretty much costs the same. They're a few million dollars. They now have mini-DSA's that are basically just plastic boxes that cost a few hundred thousand, but they are still expensive.
So, you can probobly see where this is heading... you make as much money off that DSA as there are people within 30,000 feet of it. The more people, the more money you make. But I've seen DSA's that literally serve 20 people before. Think about that, a minimum $500,000 install to serve 20 people. So, the FCC mandates the phone company charges everyone the same. So the rates for people in town go up, to lower the rates for the people in rural areas. Like it or not, that's the way it works in this country. And before you rant on about rich people living on their ranches, these people are by and large poor and rural. Think of the Appalachian mountains. That's one of the most expensive areas to serve that I've seen. But without the subsidized service those people would not even have phone service. It would have a huge impact on their economy.
I wish there was more info out there for you to read about this. Unfortunately its something you pick up in the industry. You could start by looking at the FCC website. I tried to find more info for you but it's really lacking out there.
Compared to what you can get in Europe or Asia, those "decent prices" are in fact insanely expensive.
You seen to think "Europe" = London or Paris.
ISP rates are directly related to population density. Clarksville has a population density of 1,502 people/sq mile Scottlands got about the same population density... lets see what their rates are like:
http://www.scotnet.co.uk/servi... Service Name Fibre Ultra Fibre Ultra Plus Fibre Extreme Fibre Extreme Plus Upstream Speed* 10Mb/s 10Mb/s 20Mb/s 20Mb/s Downstream Speed* 40Mb/s 40Mb/s 80Mb/s 80Mb/s Connection charge (£) 85 85 85 85 Wifi Router (includes configuration) 49.99 49.99 49.99 49.99 Monthly Data Transfer Allowance** 50Gb 100Gb 50Gb 100Gb Monthly Rental (£) 29.99 39.99 39.99 49.99
Wow... that sucks. Still want to get European rates here?
Electronic visits or telemedicine is comprised of electronic document exchanges, telephone consultations, email or texting, and videoconferencing between physicians and patients.
So you call your doctor: "please refill my cholesterol pills" That counts as an evisit. Your doctor sends you message: "Your test results are in" That counts as an evisit.
The summary makes it sound like there were 75million video conference visits... which is not even remotely the case.
Decommissioning costs (including storage, disposal, and demolition) never seem to figure into these numbers.
All of which are difficult and expensive due to protests and alarmist by the anti-nuclear crowd. We could have a very safe waste disposal facility: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y...
If you care about the earth, climate change and CO2 emissions, you need to give up this hippie mother earth nonsense. Wind and Solar do not work yet. Given some time, sure, I'm sure we'll figure something out. But if you want to get off coal, Nuclear is the only option that's ready to go right now.
We should end all production of new coal and natural gas fired power plants as well as hydroelectric due to their impact on the environment. New plants should be modern nuclear plants. I don't like subsidies but if you really want the government to be involved in research, there should be a surcharge of power of 10% or so that goes directly into carbon neutral research like Fusion.
Politicians, like Al Gore, need to stay the hell out of the topic all together. Politicizing this was about the worst thing that could have happened.
Ammonia is caustic and would cause a chemical burn on the surface of your eyes, unlike LP.
I don't think the OP Realizes: This is not the propane you get at walmart. That stuff is filled with sufficient. Real ammonia is dangerous as hell. I'd be far more afraid of it than propane.
I''ve personally broken a propane tank before by accident (don't ask) and it was cold... and smelled bad, but it didn't hurt anything. It also wont lite unless the air/gas ratio is just right so it's not like it would explode. Pierce and ammonia tank? That's some scary shit. You'd immediately get burned, severely. If there's water nearby its going to react violently and all those fertilizer plant explosions that are so big they cause earthquakes? That's usually ammonia.
That said, we can build crash-proof ammonia tanks for cars, so screw it.
Is that we never end them. We implement them, then due to our collective national ego that manifests most clearly in congress, never roll them back for partial success. We take a hardline of "our way or the highway" and the highway ends up looking more appealing to your Cubas, your Irans, and now your Russias.
"The stick" only works when the donkey can see a future where it won't be beaten.
P.S. That's not to say anything other than screw Putin and his imperial ambitions.
The US imposes and ends Embargoes all the time. There are a few notable exceptions like Cuba, but to claim that is the norm is a bit silly. An Embargo on Russia is the absolute least the US should have done. Remember, we signed a treaty with Ukraine that assured we would aid them in the event of a war, if in return they gave up their nuclear weapons. Currently Obama is using the excuse that this not a war, but a civil issue to avoid fulfilling that treaty.
Now, I'm a libertarian (a real one) and as far as I'm concerned what's happening there is none of our damned business. But, we signed a treaty. We should uphold obligations we willingly signed up for. In the future, should we approach another country and ask them to dismantle their nuclear weapons, they'll very likely reply "Like the Russian province formally called Ukraine did? No thank you."
Some random nobody proclaims death of Java. Thousands of companies that do depend on Java EE just vanished in puff of logic.
Java has the Oracle taint now. Nobody will start a project to write anything of value in it. If you already have a Java department, ok, you'll maintain your existing applications, maybe even expand them. But is anyone going to write the next hit ticketing system using it? Hell no.
Back when the accident happened, a significant number of Slashdotters were saying that no meltdown had occurred, that there was no significant structural damage, that no radioactive material would reach the sea, that the incident was overblown and that the plant would be largely still operational.
God, we're sure lucky to have someone so intelligent as you to save us from ourselves... lets review the first article on slashdot about Fukushima so we can let you revel in our combined humiliation: http://hardware.slashdot.org/s...
What's this? The post had meltdown right in the title? How could this be?!!? Oh that's right, you're full of shit. And just to make it clear, if you read through those posts... the Slashdot consensus at the time was the same as yours: The worlds over... big corporations just killed us all.
The current death toll of the disaster: 0 With 1 worker who died of esophageal cancer... so maybe 1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
Long term affects:
Predicted future cancer deaths due to accumulated radiation exposures in the population living near Fukushima are predicted to be extremely low to none.
Your reactionary statements are not based in fact. Nuclear power is fairly safe, modern reactors literally CANNOT melt down. The nuclear industry is prevented from upgrading their plants to safer models because people like you panic and protest. Japan moved to coal to replace the power lost due to the loss of nuclear power: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/... 24,000 people per year died because of polution from coal fired power plants: http://www.catf.us/fossil/prob...
The containment buildings were supposed to contain everything, but they were damaged by hydrogen explosions. The hydrogen gas was supposed to have been vented, but the battery powered venting system stopped working after the disaster. Some consideration was given to venting into the atmosphere, but it was decided not to. A bad choice in hindsight, but they thought that their emergency cooling measures would work.
I don't know much about Japan... but in the US most plant upgrades have been denied permits by the feds because of work done by organizations like Greenpeace. If I didn't know better, I'd think they were intentionally trying to cause accidents to further their anti-nuclear agenda.
fuel at the No. 3 reactor began melting at 5:30 a.m. on March 13
I think this confirms that that they should not have flooded the reactor with seawater because the meltdown had already happened by the time they made that decision. They flooded the reactor on March 15th, as a last ditch attempt to prevent a meltdown. But it was too late to save the reactor since the fuel was already completely melted. So all the seawater did was let more nuclear material escape.
Or, alternatively, they should have flooded it with seawater days ahead of time. The tsunami was March 11th, so perhaps had they made that decision on March 12th it would have been in time to prevent the worst of it? Ehh... maybe not.... the reactor foundation was probably already damaged by that point.:-(
Armchair quarterbacking something this complex is a tad ridiculous don't you think? This reactor survived one of the worst natural disasters ever recorded. People were freaking out, the government was threatening to take over the plant, and worst of all they feared the earthquake was so strong that it had broken the containment vessel. Thank God it survived mostly unscathed.
If there's one thing we can say in hindsight it's that there would have been almost no release of dangerous materials if there had been proper waste disposal/storage and it had been a modern reactor. So lets take care of those two things on all of our remaining reactors and avoid this problem in the future.
In case of a nuclear accident, the industry will always downplay and deny everything that is not perfectly obvious. Has always been, and probably will always be. This is the main reason I do not trust nuclear power that is run for profit.
Slashdot Mirror
The linked article is just tabloid journalism.
I wrote a comment about how the media experts were focussing on the wrong problems and how they clearly -surprisingly- knew very little about Wikipedia and its problems - BUT then I read the source article and found it's just an attack piece, cherry picking the least interesting parts of the conference and painting every controversy as being the fault of an iron-fist dictat from the Wikimedia Foundation.
What I learned: wikipediocracy is a nonsense website.
I agree, it seems to me these news organizations are just trying to discredit a competitor. You can't trust the news at all anymore. It's always been questionable but it's gotten worse over the past 10yrs... and incredibly bad over the past 2yrs or so.
Last night I was listing to police scanners from Ferguson, MO. People looted the Walmart, stole assault rifles, then road around shooting up the neighborhood. I saw images from people with cellphones of groups of police 50+ all in riot gear firing teargas and rubber bullets into crowds. People getting loaded into ambulances. 2 major interstates were shut down as the crowds threw bricks onto the freeway.
All this, yet the only media outlets that are following it seem to be local outlets, PBS and Yahoo news. I'm flabbergasted by the lack of coverage. These are some of the most violent race riots in American history and it's all getting swept under the rug so they can focus on Robin Williams?!?!
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/ru...
http://www.ksdk.com/story/news...
Why isn't this the headline on every site in the country right now?
But it's not a monopoly. Your cable company has a franchise agreement with the local government. They license them to be the only cable operator in the area in exchange for control over the fees and rates the cable company can charge. They do the same thing for Gas, electricity, etc... If you don't like the deal, vote. Local Governments switch cable and telecom companies all the time.
Sounds like someone was circumventing controls. The DEA had access... but did everyone in the DEA have access? I doubt it. One department likely had the data and getting to it either required evidence some didn't want to bother with, or was political, or maybe involved transferring money from your department to the controlling department. I've seen businesses where IS has control of an application, but what they claimed it cost per license was high enough that another department went out and bought the application themselves. I can't help but think this is the sort of thing that lead to this.
Which headunit did you get?
Then again, a lot of integration could have purpose:
1. Steering wheel switches that don't have separate wiring to the stereo
2. Speed-controlled-volume adjustment (esp for convertibles!)
I never got the "enhanced" option from the dealer because it turned out to be a $1200 adder :/
Mine does both of those.
The computer I bought hooks into the cars buss and adjusts the headunit via the remote control input on the back of the unit.
If you get one of the Kenwood units, it's just strait up compatible with Sync. Fairly sure they have to pay ford a licensing fee for that because the units are $$$
Or do what I did and get one of the computers that does the translation.
http://www.crutchfield.com/S-N...
If you want to look into revolutionary design changes look into the Mill CPU architecture.
They've put their lecture series available on the web about their intended architecture - it's kinda a hybrid DSP / general purpose with some neat side steps of contemporary CPU architectures.
Thanks for that... that's very interesting. If it works, you're right, it would be amazing. Also... a CPU designed by Santa Clause?!?! I'm in!
Yeah, but like you said, the present neocon government is willing to give HUGE corporate welfare to make new nuclear reactor plans viable.
Given that Nuclear power is the best way to reduce CO2 emissions, wouldn't that make sense?
http://www.scientificamerican....
Check out the silver consumption of Solar... silver mining is terrible for the environment.
Keep in mind the graph doesn't track CO2 output of burning the fuel itself. So Coal, oil, natural gas and biomass fuels would have huge CO2 impacts. Biomass consumes much of what it produces, but it still imbalances CO2 levels throughout the seasons (spikes in the winter, troughs in the summer) Hydroelectric has the lowest impact, but damns are terrible for river ecosystems. Nuclear power has the least direct impact, though older reactor designs put out warm water that can lead to algae blooms in the immediate area. I used to live next to one, the areas where the water exited the plant were the best fishing spots in the state.
If we can build foolproof reactors, and we can, then nuclear power is by far and away the best and safest source of power we have.
There is just no pleasing this people: 'undesirable element' moves in - they complain about falling property value, 'highly paid tech professionals' move in - they complain about increasing property value.
No, they're talking about rent and taxes. When you concentrate that much wealth in one area, it starts a feedback loop in wages. Rent goes up, taxes go up, even gas and groceries go up. Then the lower income people are forced out... the local service industry has to pay more to get people to work, so prices go up even more, until everyone making under $100k/yr has to commute 2hrs just to get to work. The city panics and start enforcing rent control so people can at least afford an tiny apartment. For an example, see Manhattan.
...for others to follow.
You mean they should all get cancer and die?
I would have thought this Obvious given that Einstein developed the theory of Relativity, revolutionizing nearly every field of science, all while working there.
Let's see... light is always propagated in empty space with a definite velocity... ...which is independent of the state of motion of the emitting body...
er...
Icons with round corners? Approved...
One click purchase? Whatever... approved...
That is, light in vacuum propagates with the speed c...
Don't put this crap in cars in the first place.
I know, I know, simplicity is such an ugly word. It would be truly horrible if people had to concentrate on their driving rather than the six-channel, streaming video playing on their dashboard while they blend margaritas.
What's even crazier is, you don't even need what they are doing to get the the same services. Just give the car radio bluetooth and be done with it. I've got an after market headunit in my car that cost me less than $150 and it can stream, do audio calls, shows my contacts in the head unit, I can use voice activation to say "Call home" and my phone will dial... etc... for another $50 I could have even gotten an LCD screen and streamed movies if I wanted. The last thing I want is to buy a car with some proprietary system in it that I wont be able to upgrade for the next 15yrs until I trade the car in.
The last car I bought had "Ford Sync" in it, and it was a pain in the butt to take out. The entire dashes electronics were integrated into the radio. WHY?!?! I had to purchase an after market computer module to replace the functions of that head-unit so I could put in a real radio. What a joke.
It's just anecdotal evidence, but my kids Adopted from Africa... he's smart but in regards to entirely different things than I am. I'm your typical computer guy... terrible with people but good with math, bad at spelling and grammar. He's totally outgoing, a natural leader. I take him to the park and he's organizing group activities with all the kids within minutes. It's truly amazing. I couldn't do that now, as an adult! He's 6, and already reading at a level I wasn't at until middle school. So genetics are definitely a factor.
That being said, I'm intensely interested in the mechanics of just about everything. How do you build a fence? How does a lawn mower work? I've passed this curiosity on to my son. So nurture is a factor to.
I've learned more about life by adopting than just about any other thing I've ever done in my life. I highly recommend it, you'll get more out of the venture than you ever had to put in.
If a headline ends in a question mark the answer is always no. If the answer was yes they wouldn't ask, they'd tell.. The question mark is how shitty opinion pieces trying to push a view point try to masquerade as news.
Everything from medium.com is of low quality. They take some nice pictures, put them inline with some artsy text and then say absolutely nothing for several paragraphs. Every article I've read on there has been some made up controversy. "Does dark mater invalidate the big bang?" then 10 paragraphs later "No, not at all" So why exactly did you write this article?
ISP rates are directly related to population density.
Citation please. I know plenty of people in both urban and rural areas, and they pay about the same. Far more important is the amount of local competition, and American ISPs have carved up both urban and rural areas to prevent that as much as possible.
I've worked for multiple ISPs for over 15yrs in nearly every department you can imagine. I'm my own citation.
You're right, people do pay the same in Urban and Rural areas. But that's because of federal law, not because it costs the same.
Remember how people complain about the "monopoly" the phone company has? That's not really a monopoly... there's an agreement between the Local government, the FCC and the telecommunications company in the area. They are very long and complex agreements but basically they boil down to:
The FCC will set some/most rates and fees for the telecom. Changes to these rates must be approved by the FCC.
The Telecom will charge everyone the same rate, and will not discriminate based on location. (location discrimination is specifically why the FCC regulates telecomes. The government wanted rural phone service and this was the only way to make it affordable)
The telecom will provide service to everyone with rare exceptions (your house is on an island for example)
In return for this the Local government will give the Telecom exclusive right to serve that area.
Now, the telecom does have some leeway in the rates they charge. But it's not a lot. The FCC will definitely get involved and definitely charge them fines if they do something wrong. I've seen billing mistakes lead to fines before. But what really keeps rates down are cellphones. People are moving to cellular in droves. It's to the point that POTs service and internet access are not profitable at all. Trust me, I've seen the numbers... landline stuff barely breaks even. But, where the telecoms make most of their money is in services to business. Managed networks, managed software, IP phones, collocation services, etc... if the telecom is the incumbent in the area, they are likely the first company a business will call about that sort of thing and those services are almost pure profit.
The best way to think about the whole thing is to realize how the equipment works. DSL works to about 30,000 feet. Meaning, you have a DSL card at one end, the furthest away you can go before the noise makes the DSL not work anymore is 30,000 feet. You may have heard of some new tech that lets it go farther. But I've seen real world tests of that stuff and it's all failed. So the phone company puts in a building in your town... everyone within 30k feet of that building is golden. After 30k feet the phone company has to install what we call a "DSA" this is basically a mini-switch that they run trunks to. Once again, everyone within 30k feet of that DSA is good. The problem is, each of those remotes pretty much costs the same. They're a few million dollars. They now have mini-DSA's that are basically just plastic boxes that cost a few hundred thousand, but they are still expensive.
So, you can probobly see where this is heading... you make as much money off that DSA as there are people within 30,000 feet of it. The more people, the more money you make. But I've seen DSA's that literally serve 20 people before. Think about that, a minimum $500,000 install to serve 20 people. So, the FCC mandates the phone company charges everyone the same. So the rates for people in town go up, to lower the rates for the people in rural areas. Like it or not, that's the way it works in this country. And before you rant on about rich people living on their ranches, these people are by and large poor and rural. Think of the Appalachian mountains. That's one of the most expensive areas to serve that I've seen. But without the subsidized service those people would not even have phone service. It would have a huge impact on their economy.
I wish there was more info out there for you to read about this. Unfortunately its something you pick up in the industry. You could start by looking at the FCC website. I tried to find more info for you but it's really lacking out there.
Compared to what you can get in Europe or Asia, those "decent prices" are in fact insanely expensive.
You seen to think "Europe" = London or Paris.
ISP rates are directly related to population density.
Clarksville has a population density of 1,502 people/sq mile
Scottlands got about the same population density... lets see what their rates are like:
http://www.scotnet.co.uk/servi...
Service Name Fibre Ultra Fibre Ultra Plus Fibre Extreme Fibre Extreme Plus
Upstream Speed* 10Mb/s 10Mb/s 20Mb/s 20Mb/s
Downstream Speed* 40Mb/s 40Mb/s 80Mb/s 80Mb/s
Connection charge (£) 85 85 85 85
Wifi Router (includes configuration) 49.99 49.99 49.99 49.99
Monthly Data Transfer Allowance** 50Gb 100Gb 50Gb 100Gb
Monthly Rental (£) 29.99 39.99 39.99 49.99
Wow... that sucks. Still want to get European rates here?
This article is total nonsense:
Electronic visits or telemedicine is comprised of electronic document exchanges, telephone consultations, email or texting, and videoconferencing between physicians and patients.
So you call your doctor: "please refill my cholesterol pills"
That counts as an evisit.
Your doctor sends you message: "Your test results are in"
That counts as an evisit.
The summary makes it sound like there were 75million video conference visits... which is not even remotely the case.
Decommissioning costs (including storage, disposal, and demolition) never seem to figure into these numbers.
All of which are difficult and expensive due to protests and alarmist by the anti-nuclear crowd.
We could have a very safe waste disposal facility: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y...
If you care about the earth, climate change and CO2 emissions, you need to give up this hippie mother earth nonsense. Wind and Solar do not work yet. Given some time, sure, I'm sure we'll figure something out. But if you want to get off coal, Nuclear is the only option that's ready to go right now.
We should end all production of new coal and natural gas fired power plants as well as hydroelectric due to their impact on the environment. New plants should be modern nuclear plants. I don't like subsidies but if you really want the government to be involved in research, there should be a surcharge of power of 10% or so that goes directly into carbon neutral research like Fusion.
Politicians, like Al Gore, need to stay the hell out of the topic all together. Politicizing this was about the worst thing that could have happened.
lol... "This is not the ammonia you get at walmart"
I'm half asleep, sorry.
Ammonia is caustic and would cause a chemical burn on the surface of your eyes, unlike LP.
I don't think the OP Realizes: This is not the propane you get at walmart. That stuff is filled with sufficient.
Real ammonia is dangerous as hell. I'd be far more afraid of it than propane.
I''ve personally broken a propane tank before by accident (don't ask) and it was cold... and smelled bad, but it didn't hurt anything. It also wont lite unless the air/gas ratio is just right so it's not like it would explode. Pierce and ammonia tank? That's some scary shit. You'd immediately get burned, severely. If there's water nearby its going to react violently and all those fertilizer plant explosions that are so big they cause earthquakes? That's usually ammonia.
That said, we can build crash-proof ammonia tanks for cars, so screw it.
Is that we never end them. We implement them, then due to our collective national ego that manifests most clearly in congress, never roll them back for partial success. We take a hardline of "our way or the highway" and the highway ends up looking more appealing to your Cubas, your Irans, and now your Russias.
"The stick" only works when the donkey can see a future where it won't be beaten.
P.S. That's not to say anything other than screw Putin and his imperial ambitions.
The US imposes and ends Embargoes all the time. There are a few notable exceptions like Cuba, but to claim that is the norm is a bit silly. An Embargo on Russia is the absolute least the US should have done. Remember, we signed a treaty with Ukraine that assured we would aid them in the event of a war, if in return they gave up their nuclear weapons. Currently Obama is using the excuse that this not a war, but a civil issue to avoid fulfilling that treaty.
Now, I'm a libertarian (a real one) and as far as I'm concerned what's happening there is none of our damned business. But, we signed a treaty. We should uphold obligations we willingly signed up for. In the future, should we approach another country and ask them to dismantle their nuclear weapons, they'll very likely reply "Like the Russian province formally called Ukraine did? No thank you."
Some random nobody proclaims death of Java. Thousands of companies that do depend on Java EE just vanished in puff of logic.
Java has the Oracle taint now. Nobody will start a project to write anything of value in it. If you already have a Java department, ok, you'll maintain your existing applications, maybe even expand them. But is anyone going to write the next hit ticketing system using it? Hell no.
Back when the accident happened, a significant number of Slashdotters were saying that no meltdown had occurred, that there was no significant structural damage, that no radioactive material would reach the sea, that the incident was overblown and that the plant would be largely still operational.
God, we're sure lucky to have someone so intelligent as you to save us from ourselves... lets review the first article on slashdot about Fukushima so we can let you revel in our combined humiliation:
http://hardware.slashdot.org/s...
What's this? The post had meltdown right in the title? How could this be?!!?
Oh that's right, you're full of shit.
And just to make it clear, if you read through those posts... the Slashdot consensus at the time was the same as yours: The worlds over... big corporations just killed us all.
The current death toll of the disaster: 0
With 1 worker who died of esophageal cancer... so maybe 1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
Long term affects:
Predicted future cancer deaths due to accumulated radiation exposures in the population living near Fukushima are predicted to be extremely low to none.
http://blogs.nature.com/news/2...
Your reactionary statements are not based in fact.
Nuclear power is fairly safe, modern reactors literally CANNOT melt down.
The nuclear industry is prevented from upgrading their plants to safer models because people like you panic and protest.
Japan moved to coal to replace the power lost due to the loss of nuclear power:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...
24,000 people per year died because of polution from coal fired power plants:
http://www.catf.us/fossil/prob...
get a clue
The containment buildings were supposed to contain everything, but they were damaged by hydrogen explosions. The hydrogen gas was supposed to have been vented, but the battery powered venting system stopped working after the disaster. Some consideration was given to venting into the atmosphere, but it was decided not to. A bad choice in hindsight, but they thought that their emergency cooling measures would work.
I don't know much about Japan... but in the US most plant upgrades have been denied permits by the feds because of work done by organizations like Greenpeace. If I didn't know better, I'd think they were intentionally trying to cause accidents to further their anti-nuclear agenda.
fuel at the No. 3 reactor began melting at 5:30 a.m. on March 13
I think this confirms that that they should not have flooded the reactor with seawater because the meltdown had already happened by the time they made that decision. They flooded the reactor on March 15th, as a last ditch attempt to prevent a meltdown. But it was too late to save the reactor since the fuel was already completely melted. So all the seawater did was let more nuclear material escape.
Or, alternatively, they should have flooded it with seawater days ahead of time. The tsunami was March 11th, so perhaps had they made that decision on March 12th it would have been in time to prevent the worst of it? Ehh... maybe not.... the reactor foundation was probably already damaged by that point. :-(
Armchair quarterbacking something this complex is a tad ridiculous don't you think? This reactor survived one of the worst natural disasters ever recorded. People were freaking out, the government was threatening to take over the plant, and worst of all they feared the earthquake was so strong that it had broken the containment vessel. Thank God it survived mostly unscathed.
If there's one thing we can say in hindsight it's that there would have been almost no release of dangerous materials if there had been proper waste disposal/storage and it had been a modern reactor. So lets take care of those two things on all of our remaining reactors and avoid this problem in the future.
In case of a nuclear accident, the industry will always downplay and deny everything that is not perfectly obvious. Has always been, and probably will always be. This is the main reason I do not trust nuclear power that is run for profit.
Right, because coal is working out so safely for us.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K...
France, US, Columbia, and Panama. Jungle diseases of workers was a huge problem at beginning.
What they dug the panama canal with:
http://www.corbisimages.com/im...
Modern version:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
See your mistake?