Unless it's a gas line. Then it's everyone's problem.
I don't know who's on the hook for your backhoe bucket if it's an unmarked 5kV power line, but I'm pretty sure your operator has to cover his own laundry bill.
While Snow Crash also portrays the society where government failed, it also shows that we wouldn't necessarily be better off without a government.
I keep seeing what I call "arguments from fiction" here on/., and I do some of it myself , but I'd like to remind people that it is, after all, fiction. With all respect to Mr. Stephenson, whom I admire greatly and support by buying his books, I started wondering about some aspects of Snow Crash during a recent re-reading: How do electrical transmission lines stay up (not get stolen)? Who refines fuel, and how do they transport it? How can a corporation afford to make a cool motorcycle like that, when their market is all fragmented? Who maintains roads? Who grows food, and why?
A lot of my questions boil down to economics, and I'm not enough of an economist to even tell whether that issue was adequately addressed in the book. I know he mentioned inflation, and there was some hand-waving about Kongbucks, but really...
I got off track there. What I'm trying to say is that, as amazing as Snow Crash is, you really shouldn't think that it reflects reality any more than, say, Monty Python. Just saying.
Calling chihuahuas and wolves a different species is like calling Gary Coleman and Bao Xishun a different species.
I'm pretty sure that a mating between Gary Coleman and Bao Xishun would not happen in the wild, and if it were somehow forced it would still fail to produce viable offspring.
How many people have you heard of that wake up in the morning and read all day until 3AM the next morning, only stopping for meals and potty breaks?
Haven't heard of many, but I've been one.
If my department head had seen me ignoring students during my office hours while reading "Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," I would probably have lost my first real job.
OK, I agree that large centralized organizations tend to be hard to deal with, and my experience has been that private-sector ones are harder to deal with. On the other hand, the government can and will send big men and mean women with guns and clubs to force me to do business with them if they determine that that's what's needed. That's what I find scary about wanting the government to step in.
However inconvenient it might be, I can choose not to do business with any private sector entity. And I think that's what we're involved in here. We're convincing some portion of the people reading this article that they would be foolish to do business with Verizon. Those who don't have to sacrifice too much might decide to avoid Verizon. Perhaps that will make a difference next time.
While the 30 percent increase would be an average for both cars and light trucks, the percentage increase in cars would be much greater, rising from the current 27.5 mpg standard to 42 mpg starting in 2016. The average for light trucks would rise from 24 mpg to 26.2 mpg.
So this will not be a major problem for light trucks. They only have to increase their mileage by about 10%. Thus many of them will have even more of a power-to-weight advantage over 42 MPG cars, making them even more popular than they are now. I expect that this will increase the kill ratio in crashes involving motorcycles, pedestrians, bicyclists, and people driving econoboxes. I'm appalled, but not surprised, that the light trucks are being given essentially a pass in this proposal (move, adoption, legislation, administrative rule, whatever. TFA isn't real clear on the precise forms being used here).
Maintenance (4.67 cents per mile on a medium car) and Tires (0.85 cents per mile on a medium car).
Yeah, that's about right. I have 60,000 mile tires on my car, and I paid about $48,000 for them. They actually gave me the car for free with the tires!
That bullshit figure alone probably explains the complete bullshit number pointed out by the submitter...
I read the price of Tires as slightly less than a penny per mile. If that's the case, Mr. Google tells me that $0.0085 times 60,000 is $510.00. That's in the ball park of what I paid for my last set of tires.
According to TFA, all they have to do to make this stuff illegal to own again is to rewrite their regulation. I think I'm being paranoid too, in thinking they'll rewrite.
I dinked around with model rocketry some 30 years ago, and at that time the size motor you could buy without some serious paperwork was really tiny. In fact, that was the main reason I didn't pursue it further.
Anyway, I don't think "anyone" can buy a "powerful rocket motor" without sending up flags everywhere. Also, building a guidance system is not a trivial exercise, even with GPS.
Not knowing what I'm talking about, I feel free to pontificate wildly. Thanks,/.
I'm just as outspoken IRL as I am online, even at work. I actually get quite a lot of respect for it in fact, so yea, employers acting like in the TFA are probably crap places to work anyway.
You might think differently if you had a 7-digit UID like I do.;-)
I'd like to suggest building "the world's simplest fusion reactor. Go to fusor.net and read Tom Ligon's article on it. A vacuum chamber with pump and a medium voltage transformer are the only spendy items involved, and I'd think an undergraduate physics lab might already have access to such things. Tom's write-up implies that 72 man-hours should be more than sufficient to build the thing and start to play with it.
It's not quite as awesome as burning or exploding things, but creating nuclear fusion has to be pretty cool.
Just a short "Spelling Nazi" break: It's spelled "baling" wire, not "bailing" wire.
Baling wire is wire used for strapping bales of hay together. I'm not entirely how one would use wire for bailing out a sinking boat, but if you can figure it out then you can call it "bailing" wire. Until then, please spell correctly.
/Spelling Nazi
I affirm your "Spelling Nazi" correction, but would like to encourage you to proofread carefully when being pedantic. In a spirit of helpfulness, I'd like to provide the "sure" that I think you dropped between "entirely" and "how." You're welcome.
Almost 400 comments and no one's mentioned poker, though someone did mention card counting in Vegas. I'm too old to know about age limits. Is that a problem?
If not, there seems to be a lot of opportunity these days for those who are good at reading people and good with numbers.
Does everyone in the family avoid playing poker with her? Or is hers a family where she has never played? If she likes it she could do that for a while and then decide what to do next with her life. It might be more poker, might not.
This might not be the most socially responsible thing she could do with her life, but that wasn't the question, was it?
Thank you for your closely reasoned and penetrating analysis. I hereby stand (or rather, sit) corrected. When you're through with that bleach, could I use some of it?
Slashdot Mirror
Top #1 - thermo nuke fusion for clean, free electrical energy. Not cold fusion, but real tokamak magnetic bottle or big laser inertial confinement
Or maybe Polywell Fusion
Not a ton of appeal, but some.
Watch those fees!
.
My bare minimum landline is $12.80/month (Thanks Qwest!)
.
With taxes and fees, my phone bill runs $30.62/month. How's that ton of appeal?
Unless it's a gas line. Then it's everyone's problem.
I don't know who's on the hook for your backhoe bucket if it's an unmarked 5kV power line, but I'm pretty sure your operator has to cover his own laundry bill.
While Snow Crash also portrays the society where government failed, it also shows that we wouldn't necessarily be better off without a government.
I keep seeing what I call "arguments from fiction" here on /., and I do some of it myself , but I'd like to remind people that it is, after all, fiction. With all respect to Mr. Stephenson, whom I admire greatly and support by buying his books, I started wondering about some aspects of Snow Crash during a recent re-reading: How do electrical transmission lines stay up (not get stolen)? Who refines fuel, and how do they transport it? How can a corporation afford to make a cool motorcycle like that, when their market is all fragmented? Who maintains roads? Who grows food, and why?
A lot of my questions boil down to economics, and I'm not enough of an economist to even tell whether that issue was adequately addressed in the book. I know he mentioned inflation, and there was some hand-waving about Kongbucks, but really...
I got off track there. What I'm trying to say is that, as amazing as Snow Crash is, you really shouldn't think that it reflects reality any more than, say, Monty Python. Just saying.
Calling chihuahuas and wolves a different species is like calling Gary Coleman and Bao Xishun a different species.
I'm pretty sure that a mating between Gary Coleman and Bao Xishun would not happen in the wild, and if it were somehow forced it would still fail to produce viable offspring.
|;-)
Quite the opposite, our society is fucked up by people who mind other people's business.
Exactly. That and people who spend OPM (Other People's Money), but now I'm off topic. I would mod you up, but I've already commented.
Haven't heard of many, but I've been one.
If my department head had seen me ignoring students during my office hours while reading "Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," I would probably have lost my first real job.
OK, I agree that large centralized organizations tend to be hard to deal with, and my experience has been that private-sector ones are harder to deal with. On the other hand, the government can and will send big men and mean women with guns and clubs to force me to do business with them if they determine that that's what's needed. That's what I find scary about wanting the government to step in.
However inconvenient it might be, I can choose not to do business with any private sector entity. And I think that's what we're involved in here. We're convincing some portion of the people reading this article that they would be foolish to do business with Verizon. Those who don't have to sacrifice too much might decide to avoid Verizon. Perhaps that will make a difference next time.
FTFA:
So this will not be a major problem for light trucks. They only have to increase their mileage by about 10%. Thus many of them will have even more of a power-to-weight advantage over 42 MPG cars, making them even more popular than they are now. I expect that this will increase the kill ratio in crashes involving motorcycles, pedestrians, bicyclists, and people driving econoboxes. I'm appalled, but not surprised, that the light trucks are being given essentially a pass in this proposal (move, adoption, legislation, administrative rule, whatever. TFA isn't real clear on the precise forms being used here).
Yeah. There's the environment thing too.
Yeah, that's about right. I have 60,000 mile tires on my car, and I paid about $48,000 for them. They actually gave me the car for free with the tires!
That bullshit figure alone probably explains the complete bullshit number pointed out by the submitter...
I read the price of Tires as slightly less than a penny per mile. If that's the case, Mr. Google tells me that $0.0085 times 60,000 is $510.00. That's in the ball park of what I paid for my last set of tires.
YMMV
and then hit their head on the cement?
That's what we need - a law requiring pedestrians to wear helmets at all times.
/sarcasm>
Lets see... DARPA invented the internet,
Whaaa?? They told me it was Al Gore!!
"but barring extreme accidents, a steel plate will last a good long time." Steel? Didn't you read Cryptonomicon? It should be on gold.
No kidding. Someone stop by that village and explain the Streisand Effect to those morons.
I'd wager that it's becoming clearer to them by the millisecond.
This is probably the funniest post on this thread. C'mon moderators!
I think so too, and am kicking my butt because I just used my last mod point.
According to TFA, all they have to do to make this stuff illegal to own again is to rewrite their regulation. I think I'm being paranoid too, in thinking they'll rewrite.
I dinked around with model rocketry some 30 years ago, and at that time the size motor you could buy without some serious paperwork was really tiny. In fact, that was the main reason I didn't pursue it further.
Anyway, I don't think "anyone" can buy a "powerful rocket motor" without sending up flags everywhere. Also, building a guidance system is not a trivial exercise, even with GPS.
Not knowing what I'm talking about, I feel free to pontificate wildly. Thanks, /.
I'm just as outspoken IRL as I am online, even at work. I actually get quite a lot of respect for it in fact, so yea, employers acting like in the TFA are probably crap places to work anyway.
You might think differently if you had a 7-digit UID like I do. ;-)
Who else can pay?
I'd like to suggest building "the world's simplest fusion reactor. Go to fusor.net and read Tom Ligon's article on it. A vacuum chamber with pump and a medium voltage transformer are the only spendy items involved, and I'd think an undergraduate physics lab might already have access to such things. Tom's write-up implies that 72 man-hours should be more than sufficient to build the thing and start to play with it.
It's not quite as awesome as burning or exploding things, but creating nuclear fusion has to be pretty cool.
Just a short "Spelling Nazi" break: It's spelled "baling" wire, not "bailing" wire.
Baling wire is wire used for strapping bales of hay together. I'm not entirely how one would use wire for bailing out a sinking boat, but if you can figure it out then you can call it "bailing" wire. Until then, please spell correctly.
I affirm your "Spelling Nazi" correction, but would like to encourage you to proofread carefully when being pedantic. In a spirit of helpfulness, I'd like to provide the "sure" that I think you dropped between "entirely" and "how." You're welcome.
Moderators, this is a textbook example of a "funny" post. On that basis, I think it deserves a 4 or 5. But it isn't otherwise that interesting, IMHO.
"the new biogas buses will be quieter and will cut 44 tones of C02 per bus per year."
Almost 400 comments and no one's mentioned poker, though someone did mention card counting in Vegas. I'm too old to know about age limits. Is that a problem?
If not, there seems to be a lot of opportunity these days for those who are good at reading people and good with numbers.
Does everyone in the family avoid playing poker with her? Or is hers a family where she has never played? If she likes it she could do that for a while and then decide what to do next with her life. It might be more poker, might not.
This might not be the most socially responsible thing she could do with her life, but that wasn't the question, was it?
Thank you for your closely reasoned and penetrating analysis. I hereby stand (or rather, sit) corrected. When you're through with that bleach, could I use some of it?
RTFA This fungus digests cellulose. You don't. It might drive up the cost of paper, but it wouldn't compete for foods usable by humans.