It takes several pounds of grain (I have seen figures from 4 - 16) to produce 1 pound of beef.
Cows would be much healthier if they weren't fed so much grain. Pure grass fed beef is better for you, it's leaner and even has omega-3. But it's hard to run a factory farm without grain and antibiotics....
American's also eat too many carbs. We would be better off eating less grain as well.
Do you suppose all those retro soft drinks using sugar instead of corn syrup showing up in the stores right when corn prices are high is just a coincidence.
What would be nice is if they would stop wasting all that sweet biofuel on you smelly gassers.:-)
My pre-Powerchoke 7.3 IDI turbo runs much better on B20 than this ULSD they're selling these days. But no one wants to get serious about selling biodiesel. And I can't remember the last time I saw someone at the E85 pumps.
14 mpg here, it takes a lot to push 7000lbs at 75 mph.
The differences between languages are largely syntactic.
I understand the point of these arguments, and mostly agree with them, but this COBOL vs.NET argument loses me.
COBOL is a procedural language and.NET is both OOP and event driven. There is a lot more for a COBOL developer to learn than just new syntax. I remember the leap from procedural to OOP, and done right it is a huge step that not everyone can make. Once you have OOP, event driven is a smaller step.
An example I wouldn't have a problem with is GUI based C++ (Win, QT, etc) to a.NET language. That is primarily a simple language change.
This is one of the problems I am seeing with the job market. There are so many different languages in use and every employer wants you to be a specialist in the one that they use. It used to annoy me that my IT director used to complain that he couldn't find Delphi developers, but wouldn't even consider looking at candidates with experience in other OOP languages. Now I see it from the candidates side, 15 years of Delphi won't get you an interview for a C# job.
Languages are easy, but finding someone with a track record of good problem solving skills is not. I used to think it was a college thing, but I'm continually amazed when I run into developers who can't break down a problem and tackle it one piece at a time. I thought this was the age of Agile development.
Here are some hard earned lessons from dealing with Time Warner tech support. If you can isolate a specific piece of their equipment that has failed, disconnect it and take it to one of their cable stores for replacement. Rarely do they even ask what is wrong, and if they do it's simply to have something to put on the exchange tickets.
I used to have those cheap modems fail every year or two. When I was a TW tech support newb, I used to call them to find the problem, which means 30 minutes of going through scripts before they would agree to roll a truck. Later, I found they could remotely access the modem. So as quickly as I could I would get them to log into mine and check. They can check signal strength and error count. If it's signal strength then schedule a service call. If its errors, politely hang up and take the modem to their store for exchange.
With the last round of cable modems (no name boxes from china) I would check when it was last replaced. If it was over a year and the modem was acting strange I would simply exchange it.
As far as having a tech that won't transfer to a higher level, if they refuse then asked to be transferred to a supervisor. If again they refuse, take their name and call back and go to billing and ask to speak with Escalations. You can get to management, but they may be of no help either. If you aren't prepared to disconnect, avoid threatening to do so. But something they hate almost is much is having to roll a truck. If you have the patience to waste half a day waiting for them and a week to have a free appointment, make them send someone. It costs them money. Oh, and ask for a credit for down time.
The ONLY places I have seen cable not suck is the rare community where there are two cable providers.
Roadrunner service sucks there too. I live in a community that has service from Time Warner and CenturyLink. At the beginning of November my internet speeds dropped to 30kbps. I took their modem in and exchanged it. No speed increase, but the old one had been rebooting itself. I finally got a tech to come out on a Sunday. It was the only I could be here since I was working 6 days a week, and they don't do evenings. He connected to the cable and declared it was noise on the node, nothing he could do and would escalate to maintenance.
On Thanksgiving I managed to get another tech on site. RR claimed node problem was fixed, but speed was still slow for me. He slapped some new terminals on the end of some cables outside and replaced the 2' long cable from the wall plate to the modem. And declared all was fine. I had good speed for ONE WEEK. All through December I got no support, and they mysteriously forgot about the service credit that was promised in November. Mid January I delivered all their equipment to their store and told them politely where they could stick it.
I was a customer for over 15 years, 9 of them at this location. And from very early on I was happy with the service when it worked, but felt like shutting it all off when I had to deal with their support staff.
Before I'd do business with Time Warner again I'd dig out my old Courier and reinstall a land line. Compared to the service they were giving me when I disconnected, it would be just as fast and much more reliable.
The only thing local competition is getting you is a monthly fee $10 less than the competition. Time Warner's poor service is a systemic belief that the problem is ALWAYS the customers fault. If Comcast is truly addressing that, its a good thing, no matter what cheesy name they give it.
My TV has an ethernet port on it (which I use). It acts as a DLNA renderer, and can stream media (audio, video, photos) from connected devices. It can also pull photos from the network/internet as a picture frame (it is mounted on the wall). My father's TV has support for youtube, newsfeeds and more - and I suspect that as IPTV (eg Cairo) takes off we'll see TVs come with support for that too.
See, my personal preference would be an external 'set top' box that can be changed inexpensively if it becomes outdated or fails. I currently have a Buffalo Link Theater and it appears to support everything your TV does in an external package. But even though I've only had it a couple years I regularly find videos that have to be converted because it doesn't have XYZ codec. Oddly, WMV is worse than AVI due to DRM apparently being media player version specific.
So what do you do when Youtube goes to HTML5 and dumps Flash? Does your dad's TV stop playing Youtube or does he have to wait for the manufacturer to put out some kind of update? Will your TV handle IPv6 or will you have to run multiple protocols on your local net? And those are just the changes in the near future. I have one TV that is 16 years old.
My next step will be a custom built set top box (custom, because I have some special home automation requirements) running open source. My TV will have a power cable and a HDMI cable.
My bluray player has an ethernet port-- for downloading firmware, bd-live, youtube, pandora, and video on demand. AppleTVs have ethernet port for connecting to the Apple Store, and streaming from various computers. Internet Radio is occasionally found on computers. So, the idea of incorporating ethernet into HDMI-1.4 makes some sense--
Why is this, does your TV have a network switch in it? My Tivo has an Ethernet port too, and it needs it to keep it's schedule up to date. But the video/audio cables go to my TV, and the Ethernet is connected to my switch.
Sure, you could tell the TV manufacture that you want a network switch built in, but you just add one more thing to fail or get obsolete in your TV. Personally, I'd prefer my TV was a larger version of my computer monitor with more media inputs and a pair of reasonably good speakers. I don't even want an ATSC tuner.
Save more money - Stop most of the ridiculous "war on drugs" and the exorbitant spending and manpower on the marijuana aspect of it.
While in general I agree with you, I doubt much would be saved by eliminating marijuana from the 'War on Drugs'. The reason is that most of those activities would exist anyway. Border crossings would still be checked for other drugs, or are you saying we should legalize cocaine and heroin too? And if not for drugs, they'd still be searching for explosives.
Locally, they might be able to reduce some of their activities; such as flying over fields and forests looking for pot plantations, the gain wouldn't be large because they would still be out looking for meth.
I'd much rather have pot legal than alcohol. The worst collateral damage I've seen from pot is a contact high. OTOH, I have childhood friends who were killed by drunk drivers.
One thing I wonder is why the government doesn't just take some of the right of way that they granted the railroads way back when.
The land that was given to railroads in the 1800s was more than just to give them a right of way. Particularly in (now) western states, they were given alternating sections on each side of the right of way that they could sell to raise capital to build the line. Unlike recent history, the government chose to encourage private companies to preform a service. You see the same thing with Telcos and universal service.
Also, if you take back land it would affect the company's assets and could affect their ability to get financing for operations and freight rail projects. Although I think there should be a process to return right of ways to the public in cases of unused lines running through residential areas. Public opinion will never let them reopen them anyway and they don't maintain them. But we don't want to do it in a way that would give us yet another industry needing a bailout.
At least then the public has been getting a return for it's corporate welfare.
I mean if I was a shareholder in the railroads and they could perform upgrades to get stuff across the country in 1 week instead of 2 and thereby beat the trucking industry it seems like it would be a worthwhile investment.
Freight railroads are a volume transporter, speed only adds to costs and doesn't give a significant return. Railroads can never fully compete with trucking because you can't have rails that go everywhere roads do. Their solution to this is inter-modal facilities. Trailers/containers are loaded onto trains for the larger portion of their travel, then transferred to trucks for delivery. Already, depending on where you are sending your freight, you can send it on a train almost as fast as a truck.
The reason we have Amtrak is because none of the railroads want passenger traffic, for the same reason no other company wants it. The investment costs are too high and the potential profit too low. If there was any real commitment to inter city high speed rail, we could put the lines down the center median of the interstates, run the lines to the suburbs, then transfer the passengers to buses or light rail on existing freight rails.
Have you ever had an appraisal done? When I refinanced my house the broker hired an appraiser. They then proceeded to tell the appraiser the value my house needed to be appraised at so that I would have enough equity for them to process the loan. Oddly enough, the appraisal came back at EXACTLY that amount, no more, no less.
While I appreciated the opportunity to re-fi at a lower rate/shorter term and roll the thousands of dollars in closing costs into the loan, this is the kind of thing that got us into this foreclosure crisis.
And when I bought my house it appraised at the seller's asking price.
Uh, yeah. Bush and Cheney were secretly planning to ruin the economy because.... well just because they are evil.
I prefer to think the recession was like Katrina, too little too late. There were signs that there was a problem with mortgages long before the stock market started dropping. Well back into 2007. Since the government regulates banks it was their job to understand that the way the banks were handling mortgages had them way over leveraged. And if the government had taken control of Fannie and Freddie during 2007 and implemented the foreclosure circuit breakers that eventually came later, it's possible that it would have all been avoided. But that reeks of incompetence rather than anything nefarious.
But, if you want attractive conspiracy theories, look at where the money goes. In the wars started during the Bush administration it's pretty clear that companies like Haliburton, KBR, and Blackwater made out like bandits. Haliburton was getting no-bid cost plus contracts for services because 'no one else was big enough'. KBR and Blackwater where providing services that the military was already trained and equipped to provide, and those service men were re-allocated because in the Army, 'everyone is an infantryman'. And then Blackwater and other security contractors are using the money earned from federal contracts to poach resources from the armed forces.
In the economy, who came out ahead? I believe all the big banks but AIG have now made plans to repay the TARP funds that were used to prop up their balance sheets and executive bonuses are still on track. These loans were virtually free. On the other hand, have you seen what has happened to the value of all those foreclosed houses? Someone who had capital and expected the crash could be scooping up billions of dollars of real estate at fire sale prices. And while it is depressing the values of houses in certain regions, within a couple years after the rest of the economy recovers they will be valued right back where they were in 2007. So a theory could be presented that wealthy investors sacrificed the big financial businesses, knowing that they had congressional support for 'too big to fail'. And then picked the corpse.
That is, if we really thought there was a cabal capable of pulling off such complicated conspiracies.
Actually, Jack Ryan was the character in the book. Tom Clancy was the writer. The book is Executive Orders, and in it a Japanese terrorist flies a 747 into the Capitol during a full session of Congress being addressed by the President. And at the same time, the Iranians are spreading Ebola around the country.
It was published in 1996, so if the theory is that fiction is a good indicator of what could happen, there was plenty of time to analyze the plot.
But what he did would get us far enough to start paying back our external debt, for the first time in quite a long time.
As much as I understand and agree with your point that the Clinton administration left us in a much better financial state than the GW Bush administration, the above is not actually true. The best year of the Clinton administration (the last one) the national debt increase by $17b. Overall the Clinton administration spent $1.6t more than it brought in. Roughly the same as the Reagan administration.
The last time the US has reduced it's debt was during the fiscal year ending in 1957, under Dwight D Eisenhower. Although over his full administration ended with a net increase in the debt.
We will just have to save up a bit more and take the plane, where for some reason the border guards are somewhat better behaved, maybe because they are dealing with people who can afford plane tickets.
As was explained to me by the agent at the Port Huron/Sarnia crossing (Canadian side) when I commented I had NEVER had a problem entering at Toronto; if they turn you back at the airport they have to provide you with a ticket. At a land crossing they just send you back to the US border facility. It's all about the $$$.
Making algae farms that you can harvest from efficiently requires a major investment. Buying corn from a farmer who's already harvesting corn doesn't require such an investment.
Soybeans would have been a better direction. Just about anyone who can grow corn could grow soybeans instead. Many farmers already have the equipment necessary so they can rotate their fields. Corn is very hard on the soil.
It doesn't matter to him who's buying it - someone making tortillas or someone making Ethanol.
Corn used for food is a different variety than corn used for ethanol or animal feed. They would of course compete for the same land, so the farmer would have to make the decision of who to sell to at seeding time.
But if your argument is infrastructure, then ethanol still loses to soybeans. To use more than ~10% ethanol a gasoline engine needs considerable modifications. Other than the new smog equipment on 'clean' diesels, a diesel engine can use any percentage of biodiesel. (although research does need to be done on lowering the cloud point)
If we had pushed Biodiesel instead of ethanol, we could have tackled large fuel users (fuel per engine), such as trains and OTR trucks first, while the average consumer slowly migrated to diesel cars at their own pace. Which would have allowed time for algae infrastructure to mature.
A lot of electric power plants sit idle most of the time. They exist only for peak power demands. If most of those cars recharge overnight, you might not have to build a single extra plant.
You really don't want your utility running their peaking plants to charge your electric car. It is their most costly and inefficient method of generation, due to it's requirement of demand based startup and shutdown.
When I saw The Lost World in 3D two years ago, it gave me a headache.
That's how I felt after The Bourne Ultimatum and the shaky camera effects. I decided I'd never watch another movie by that director if he couldn't figure out what a steadycam was. And just my luck, other directors have become infatuated with the technique. So unfortunately, it's not as easy as looking for 3D in the name.
How do you Ronald Regan "all government is evil" fan-boys
Reagonites are about small government, they don't necessarily categorize it as good or evil. Their theory is that a smaller government is less wasteful, and it probably is. But here is where it goes off the rails: while they may be saying they are for less spending and a less invasive government, their actions have been the opposite. What they have done is outsourced what would have been done by the government and reduced the tax burden of the wealthy. Or maybe we just misunderstood, and 'trickle down' was referring to the debt burden.
Some examples would include; warrant-less wiretaps, Haliburton/KBR getting contracts for services the military was already equipped to do (mess facilities, water purification), and civilian military base security.
When the Treasury Department reported the national debt in Sept 1980 we owed $900 billion. In Sept 2008 it was $10 trillion.
President..Overspent..% Debt Increase Carter.....$ 287b..... 46% Reagon.....$1,695b.....187% Bush Sr....$1,462b..... 56% Clinton....$1,610b..... 40% Bush Jr....$4,351b..... 77%
On the actual topic of news, I would argue that there is more potential demand for their product thanks to the internet, they just haven't figured out how to monetize it. From my personal experience, I never read newspapers. And I'm old enough that if I had been inclined to develop the habit, I would have before internet news was established. But I read international news online daily, and it includes a lot that would not have made it in a single newspaper. I'm not necessarily against paying for quality news, but no one is offering a compelling solution.
but a thin client is easy and cheap to build, even mostly off the shelf as opposed to components.
Have any suggestions for a cheap set top box about the size of a mac mini or smaller that could use Linux, support HDMI and SVideo, and run 24/7 cool and quiet (fanless)? Components or complete system would be fine.
While remodeling my new house I chose to only run network connections to TVs. I want a small media box connecting each TV that can play media either through a remote (on screen menu) or pushed from a server.
It really is the whole programming culture that needs to have a mindset change. They need to care about Documentation more so other people can pickup where they left off.
Often the programmers have the wrong type of personality for writing documentation. They tend to be focused on creating/maintaining software rather than telling someone else how to use it. It makes them look at how the software accomplishes a task rather than how the user does. A greatly simplified analogy; suppose you asked your plumber how to get water from the kitchen faucet and he said "well, I tapped into the main in the utility closet, ran a line under the kitchen floor, up through the cabinet, and connected it to the cold water tap. Then I went to the hot water tank, ran another line under the kitchen floor and through the cabinet, and connected it to the hot water tap." And then a non-plumber would say "turn on the cold water faucet, then slowly turn on the hot water faucet and adjust it to the correct temperature." It all depends on perspective.
While that isn't an excuse for poor documentation, it might be a call for users of free software to give back by helping make it more usable. I'm a firm believer in Wikis.
And FWIW, if I have an available internet connection, Google has generally become the first place I tend to look.
The problem with "Most people aren't interesting enough" is that as technology improves the 'interesting people' bar keeps getting lowered. Once upon a time I not only didn't mind posting with my real name on Fidonet echos, I felt that you should use your real name and not hide behind an alias. Now messages that I posted there in the early 90s are indexed in Google Groups, and I no longer post anywhere with my real name. Who would have thought what you posted in a hobby network nearly two decades ago would be easily search-able by prospective employers.
Even though the only thing I have found objectionable in a Google search on my own name is a misquoted Usenet message that attributes someone else's stupidity to me, things that are socially acceptable in one period might not be in another. I'm eternally thankful that there was no Youtube in my late teens....
However, many older houses don't have 3-prong outlets and the system has no earth ground connection, so there's not much you can do.
The problem with older homes is not that the outlets are only 3-prong, it's that the wiring in the walls has no ground. Some two-prong outlets are installed in metal boxes that are grounded. If that is the case you can safely use a 3-prong adapter connected to the screw in the faceplate. On those it is possible to upgrade the outlet without rewiring the house.
And FWIW, when you do have a properly wired 3-prong outlet, you just have parallel grounds going back to the circuit panel. The white and bare copper ground are connected to the same bus.
Another bit of useless trivia; it has become standard practice to install the 3-prong outlet 'upside down' so that the ground prong is on the top. Since the ground prong is slightly longer on cords it aids in safely plugging in a device.
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All our democracy really means is that we get to elect our own group of robber barons.
I like that. I think I'll forward it to my congressional representatives. They seem to have forgotten the whole 'representative' thing.
It takes several pounds of grain (I have seen figures from 4 - 16) to produce 1 pound of beef.
Cows would be much healthier if they weren't fed so much grain. Pure grass fed beef is better for you, it's leaner and even has omega-3. But it's hard to run a factory farm without grain and antibiotics....
American's also eat too many carbs. We would be better off eating less grain as well.
Do you suppose all those retro soft drinks using sugar instead of corn syrup showing up in the stores right when corn prices are high is just a coincidence.
Ethanol isn't the only misuse of corn.
12 gallon tank would be nice.
What would be nice is if they would stop wasting all that sweet biofuel on you smelly gassers. :-)
My pre-Powerchoke 7.3 IDI turbo runs much better on B20 than this ULSD they're selling these days. But no one wants to get serious about selling biodiesel. And I can't remember the last time I saw someone at the E85 pumps.
14 mpg here, it takes a lot to push 7000lbs at 75 mph.
The differences between languages are largely syntactic.
I understand the point of these arguments, and mostly agree with them, but this COBOL vs .NET argument loses me.
COBOL is a procedural language and .NET is both OOP and event driven. There is a lot more for a COBOL developer to learn than just new syntax. I remember the leap from procedural to OOP, and done right it is a huge step that not everyone can make. Once you have OOP, event driven is a smaller step.
An example I wouldn't have a problem with is GUI based C++ (Win, QT, etc) to a .NET language. That is primarily a simple language change.
This is one of the problems I am seeing with the job market. There are so many different languages in use and every employer wants you to be a specialist in the one that they use. It used to annoy me that my IT director used to complain that he couldn't find Delphi developers, but wouldn't even consider looking at candidates with experience in other OOP languages. Now I see it from the candidates side, 15 years of Delphi won't get you an interview for a C# job.
Languages are easy, but finding someone with a track record of good problem solving skills is not. I used to think it was a college thing, but I'm continually amazed when I run into developers who can't break down a problem and tackle it one piece at a time. I thought this was the age of Agile development.
Here are some hard earned lessons from dealing with Time Warner tech support. If you can isolate a specific piece of their equipment that has failed, disconnect it and take it to one of their cable stores for replacement. Rarely do they even ask what is wrong, and if they do it's simply to have something to put on the exchange tickets.
I used to have those cheap modems fail every year or two. When I was a TW tech support newb, I used to call them to find the problem, which means 30 minutes of going through scripts before they would agree to roll a truck. Later, I found they could remotely access the modem. So as quickly as I could I would get them to log into mine and check. They can check signal strength and error count. If it's signal strength then schedule a service call. If its errors, politely hang up and take the modem to their store for exchange.
With the last round of cable modems (no name boxes from china) I would check when it was last replaced. If it was over a year and the modem was acting strange I would simply exchange it.
As far as having a tech that won't transfer to a higher level, if they refuse then asked to be transferred to a supervisor. If again they refuse, take their name and call back and go to billing and ask to speak with Escalations. You can get to management, but they may be of no help either. If you aren't prepared to disconnect, avoid threatening to do so. But something they hate almost is much is having to roll a truck. If you have the patience to waste half a day waiting for them and a week to have a free appointment, make them send someone. It costs them money. Oh, and ask for a credit for down time.
The ONLY places I have seen cable not suck is the rare community where there are two cable providers.
Roadrunner service sucks there too. I live in a community that has service from Time Warner and CenturyLink. At the beginning of November my internet speeds dropped to 30kbps. I took their modem in and exchanged it. No speed increase, but the old one had been rebooting itself. I finally got a tech to come out on a Sunday. It was the only I could be here since I was working 6 days a week, and they don't do evenings. He connected to the cable and declared it was noise on the node, nothing he could do and would escalate to maintenance.
On Thanksgiving I managed to get another tech on site. RR claimed node problem was fixed, but speed was still slow for me. He slapped some new terminals on the end of some cables outside and replaced the 2' long cable from the wall plate to the modem. And declared all was fine. I had good speed for ONE WEEK. All through December I got no support, and they mysteriously forgot about the service credit that was promised in November. Mid January I delivered all their equipment to their store and told them politely where they could stick it.
I was a customer for over 15 years, 9 of them at this location. And from very early on I was happy with the service when it worked, but felt like shutting it all off when I had to deal with their support staff.
Before I'd do business with Time Warner again I'd dig out my old Courier and reinstall a land line. Compared to the service they were giving me when I disconnected, it would be just as fast and much more reliable.
The only thing local competition is getting you is a monthly fee $10 less than the competition. Time Warner's poor service is a systemic belief that the problem is ALWAYS the customers fault. If Comcast is truly addressing that, its a good thing, no matter what cheesy name they give it.
My TV has an ethernet port on it (which I use). It acts as a DLNA renderer, and can stream media (audio, video, photos) from connected devices. It can also pull photos from the network/internet as a picture frame (it is mounted on the wall). My father's TV has support for youtube, newsfeeds and more - and I suspect that as IPTV (eg Cairo) takes off we'll see TVs come with support for that too.
See, my personal preference would be an external 'set top' box that can be changed inexpensively if it becomes outdated or fails. I currently have a Buffalo Link Theater and it appears to support everything your TV does in an external package. But even though I've only had it a couple years I regularly find videos that have to be converted because it doesn't have XYZ codec. Oddly, WMV is worse than AVI due to DRM apparently being media player version specific.
So what do you do when Youtube goes to HTML5 and dumps Flash? Does your dad's TV stop playing Youtube or does he have to wait for the manufacturer to put out some kind of update? Will your TV handle IPv6 or will you have to run multiple protocols on your local net? And those are just the changes in the near future. I have one TV that is 16 years old.
My next step will be a custom built set top box (custom, because I have some special home automation requirements) running open source. My TV will have a power cable and a HDMI cable.
My bluray player has an ethernet port-- for downloading firmware, bd-live, youtube, pandora, and video on demand. AppleTVs have ethernet port for connecting to the Apple Store, and streaming from various computers. Internet Radio is occasionally found on computers. So, the idea of incorporating ethernet into HDMI-1.4 makes some sense--
Why is this, does your TV have a network switch in it? My Tivo has an Ethernet port too, and it needs it to keep it's schedule up to date. But the video/audio cables go to my TV, and the Ethernet is connected to my switch.
Sure, you could tell the TV manufacture that you want a network switch built in, but you just add one more thing to fail or get obsolete in your TV. Personally, I'd prefer my TV was a larger version of my computer monitor with more media inputs and a pair of reasonably good speakers. I don't even want an ATSC tuner.
Save more money - Stop most of the ridiculous "war on drugs" and the exorbitant spending and manpower on the marijuana aspect of it.
While in general I agree with you, I doubt much would be saved by eliminating marijuana from the 'War on Drugs'. The reason is that most of those activities would exist anyway. Border crossings would still be checked for other drugs, or are you saying we should legalize cocaine and heroin too? And if not for drugs, they'd still be searching for explosives.
Locally, they might be able to reduce some of their activities; such as flying over fields and forests looking for pot plantations, the gain wouldn't be large because they would still be out looking for meth.
I'd much rather have pot legal than alcohol. The worst collateral damage I've seen from pot is a contact high. OTOH, I have childhood friends who were killed by drunk drivers.
One thing I wonder is why the government doesn't just take some of the right of way that they granted the railroads way back when.
The land that was given to railroads in the 1800s was more than just to give them a right of way. Particularly in (now) western states, they were given alternating sections on each side of the right of way that they could sell to raise capital to build the line. Unlike recent history, the government chose to encourage private companies to preform a service. You see the same thing with Telcos and universal service.
Also, if you take back land it would affect the company's assets and could affect their ability to get financing for operations and freight rail projects. Although I think there should be a process to return right of ways to the public in cases of unused lines running through residential areas. Public opinion will never let them reopen them anyway and they don't maintain them. But we don't want to do it in a way that would give us yet another industry needing a bailout.
At least then the public has been getting a return for it's corporate welfare.
I mean if I was a shareholder in the railroads and they could perform upgrades to get stuff across the country in 1 week instead of 2 and thereby beat the trucking industry it seems like it would be a worthwhile investment.
Freight railroads are a volume transporter, speed only adds to costs and doesn't give a significant return. Railroads can never fully compete with trucking because you can't have rails that go everywhere roads do. Their solution to this is inter-modal facilities. Trailers/containers are loaded onto trains for the larger portion of their travel, then transferred to trucks for delivery. Already, depending on where you are sending your freight, you can send it on a train almost as fast as a truck.
The reason we have Amtrak is because none of the railroads want passenger traffic, for the same reason no other company wants it. The investment costs are too high and the potential profit too low. If there was any real commitment to inter city high speed rail, we could put the lines down the center median of the interstates, run the lines to the suburbs, then transfer the passengers to buses or light rail on existing freight rails.
That's what real estate appraisers are for.
Have you ever had an appraisal done? When I refinanced my house the broker hired an appraiser. They then proceeded to tell the appraiser the value my house needed to be appraised at so that I would have enough equity for them to process the loan. Oddly enough, the appraisal came back at EXACTLY that amount, no more, no less.
While I appreciated the opportunity to re-fi at a lower rate/shorter term and roll the thousands of dollars in closing costs into the loan, this is the kind of thing that got us into this foreclosure crisis.
And when I bought my house it appraised at the seller's asking price.
Uh, yeah. Bush and Cheney were secretly planning to ruin the economy because.... well just because they are evil.
I prefer to think the recession was like Katrina, too little too late. There were signs that there was a problem with mortgages long before the stock market started dropping. Well back into 2007. Since the government regulates banks it was their job to understand that the way the banks were handling mortgages had them way over leveraged. And if the government had taken control of Fannie and Freddie during 2007 and implemented the foreclosure circuit breakers that eventually came later, it's possible that it would have all been avoided. But that reeks of incompetence rather than anything nefarious.
But, if you want attractive conspiracy theories, look at where the money goes. In the wars started during the Bush administration it's pretty clear that companies like Haliburton, KBR, and Blackwater made out like bandits. Haliburton was getting no-bid cost plus contracts for services because 'no one else was big enough'. KBR and Blackwater where providing services that the military was already trained and equipped to provide, and those service men were re-allocated because in the Army, 'everyone is an infantryman'. And then Blackwater and other security contractors are using the money earned from federal contracts to poach resources from the armed forces.
In the economy, who came out ahead? I believe all the big banks but AIG have now made plans to repay the TARP funds that were used to prop up their balance sheets and executive bonuses are still on track. These loans were virtually free. On the other hand, have you seen what has happened to the value of all those foreclosed houses? Someone who had capital and expected the crash could be scooping up billions of dollars of real estate at fire sale prices. And while it is depressing the values of houses in certain regions, within a couple years after the rest of the economy recovers they will be valued right back where they were in 2007. So a theory could be presented that wealthy investors sacrificed the big financial businesses, knowing that they had congressional support for 'too big to fail'. And then picked the corpse.
That is, if we really thought there was a cabal capable of pulling off such complicated conspiracies.
Except that Jack Ryan writer guy...
Actually, Jack Ryan was the character in the book. Tom Clancy was the writer. The book is Executive Orders, and in it a Japanese terrorist flies a 747 into the Capitol during a full session of Congress being addressed by the President. And at the same time, the Iranians are spreading Ebola around the country.
It was published in 1996, so if the theory is that fiction is a good indicator of what could happen, there was plenty of time to analyze the plot.
But what he did would get us far enough to start paying back our external debt, for the first time in quite a long time.
As much as I understand and agree with your point that the Clinton administration left us in a much better financial state than the GW Bush administration, the above is not actually true. The best year of the Clinton administration (the last one) the national debt increase by $17b. Overall the Clinton administration spent $1.6t more than it brought in. Roughly the same as the Reagan administration.
The last time the US has reduced it's debt was during the fiscal year ending in 1957, under Dwight D Eisenhower. Although over his full administration ended with a net increase in the debt.
We will just have to save up a bit more and take the plane, where for some reason the border guards are somewhat better behaved, maybe because they are dealing with people who can afford plane tickets.
As was explained to me by the agent at the Port Huron/Sarnia crossing (Canadian side) when I commented I had NEVER had a problem entering at Toronto; if they turn you back at the airport they have to provide you with a ticket. At a land crossing they just send you back to the US border facility. It's all about the $$$.
Making algae farms that you can harvest from efficiently requires a major investment. Buying corn from a farmer who's already harvesting corn doesn't require such an investment.
Soybeans would have been a better direction. Just about anyone who can grow corn could grow soybeans instead. Many farmers already have the equipment necessary so they can rotate their fields. Corn is very hard on the soil.
It doesn't matter to him who's buying it - someone making tortillas or someone making Ethanol.
Corn used for food is a different variety than corn used for ethanol or animal feed. They would of course compete for the same land, so the farmer would have to make the decision of who to sell to at seeding time.
But if your argument is infrastructure, then ethanol still loses to soybeans. To use more than ~10% ethanol a gasoline engine needs considerable modifications. Other than the new smog equipment on 'clean' diesels, a diesel engine can use any percentage of biodiesel. (although research does need to be done on lowering the cloud point)
If we had pushed Biodiesel instead of ethanol, we could have tackled large fuel users (fuel per engine), such as trains and OTR trucks first, while the average consumer slowly migrated to diesel cars at their own pace. Which would have allowed time for algae infrastructure to mature.
A lot of electric power plants sit idle most of the time. They exist only for peak power demands. If most of those cars recharge overnight, you might not have to build a single extra plant.
You really don't want your utility running their peaking plants to charge your electric car. It is their most costly and inefficient method of generation, due to it's requirement of demand based startup and shutdown.
Most apartment car parks here don't have power sockets nearby.
That's a small problem, I just bought a generator. I can even take it with me for long trips.
When I saw The Lost World in 3D two years ago, it gave me a headache.
That's how I felt after The Bourne Ultimatum and the shaky camera effects. I decided I'd never watch another movie by that director if he couldn't figure out what a steadycam was. And just my luck, other directors have become infatuated with the technique. So unfortunately, it's not as easy as looking for 3D in the name.
Probably going to piss off some Neocons, but....
How do you Ronald Regan "all government is evil" fan-boys
Reagonites are about small government, they don't necessarily categorize it as good or evil. Their theory is that a smaller government is less wasteful, and it probably is. But here is where it goes off the rails: while they may be saying they are for less spending and a less invasive government, their actions have been the opposite. What they have done is outsourced what would have been done by the government and reduced the tax burden of the wealthy. Or maybe we just misunderstood, and 'trickle down' was referring to the debt burden.
Some examples would include; warrant-less wiretaps, Haliburton/KBR getting contracts for services the military was already equipped to do (mess facilities, water purification), and civilian military base security.
When the Treasury Department reported the national debt in Sept 1980 we owed $900 billion. In Sept 2008 it was $10 trillion.
President..Overspent..% Debt Increase
Carter.....$ 287b..... 46%
Reagon.....$1,695b.....187%
Bush Sr....$1,462b..... 56%
Clinton....$1,610b..... 40%
Bush Jr....$4,351b..... 77%
On the actual topic of news, I would argue that there is more potential demand for their product thanks to the internet, they just haven't figured out how to monetize it. From my personal experience, I never read newspapers. And I'm old enough that if I had been inclined to develop the habit, I would have before internet news was established. But I read international news online daily, and it includes a lot that would not have made it in a single newspaper. I'm not necessarily against paying for quality news, but no one is offering a compelling solution.
but a thin client is easy and cheap to build, even mostly off the shelf as opposed to components.
Have any suggestions for a cheap set top box about the size of a mac mini or smaller that could use Linux, support HDMI and SVideo, and run 24/7 cool and quiet (fanless)? Components or complete system would be fine.
While remodeling my new house I chose to only run network connections to TVs. I want a small media box connecting each TV that can play media either through a remote (on screen menu) or pushed from a server.
It really is the whole programming culture that needs to have a mindset change.
They need to care about Documentation more so other people can pickup where they left off.
Often the programmers have the wrong type of personality for writing documentation. They tend to be focused on creating/maintaining software rather than telling someone else how to use it. It makes them look at how the software accomplishes a task rather than how the user does. A greatly simplified analogy; suppose you asked your plumber how to get water from the kitchen faucet and he said "well, I tapped into the main in the utility closet, ran a line under the kitchen floor, up through the cabinet, and connected it to the cold water tap. Then I went to the hot water tank, ran another line under the kitchen floor and through the cabinet, and connected it to the hot water tap." And then a non-plumber would say "turn on the cold water faucet, then slowly turn on the hot water faucet and adjust it to the correct temperature." It all depends on perspective.
While that isn't an excuse for poor documentation, it might be a call for users of free software to give back by helping make it more usable. I'm a firm believer in Wikis.
And FWIW, if I have an available internet connection, Google has generally become the first place I tend to look.
Chances are, no one in government cares about you
At least not now.
The problem with "Most people aren't interesting enough" is that as technology improves the 'interesting people' bar keeps getting lowered. Once upon a time I not only didn't mind posting with my real name on Fidonet echos, I felt that you should use your real name and not hide behind an alias. Now messages that I posted there in the early 90s are indexed in Google Groups, and I no longer post anywhere with my real name. Who would have thought what you posted in a hobby network nearly two decades ago would be easily search-able by prospective employers.
Even though the only thing I have found objectionable in a Google search on my own name is a misquoted Usenet message that attributes someone else's stupidity to me, things that are socially acceptable in one period might not be in another. I'm eternally thankful that there was no Youtube in my late teens....
However, many older houses don't have 3-prong outlets and the system has no earth ground connection, so there's not much you can do.
The problem with older homes is not that the outlets are only 3-prong, it's that the wiring in the walls has no ground. Some two-prong outlets are installed in metal boxes that are grounded. If that is the case you can safely use a 3-prong adapter connected to the screw in the faceplate. On those it is possible to upgrade the outlet without rewiring the house.
And FWIW, when you do have a properly wired 3-prong outlet, you just have parallel grounds going back to the circuit panel. The white and bare copper ground are connected to the same bus.
Another bit of useless trivia; it has become standard practice to install the 3-prong outlet 'upside down' so that the ground prong is on the top. Since the ground prong is slightly longer on cords it aids in safely plugging in a device.