Yeah because coal plant pollution doesn't drift anywhere./end sarcasm. Actually studies have shown a lot of the air-quality problems in eastern states are caused by the drift of pollutants from the midwest and western states. (And similarly pollution is drifting from China towards North America.) Perfectly natural - the wind moves the pollution.
So relocating your pollution from the car to the coal plant doesn't really solve the problem. And that's why ACEEE ranked the EV1 as no cleaner than a Prius.
>>>Do engines and transmissions typically go 300,000 mi without expensive major repairs?
Mine do. If you abuse your engines/transmissions then perhaps you get less mileage, but my Dodge Shadow went just over 340,000 miles before the engine died. Neither it nor the transmission had any major work except routine changes of oil. My Dodge Avenger is nearing 200,000 miles and it too has had ZERO major repairs. It's running even better than my Shadow did at that point, and I expect to reach 300,000 miles easily.
And then there's the guy in Maryland who ran a Honda Civic to 1.1 million miles before finally trading for a new model - again it was the original engine and transmission. So I'll stick with my previous post: "The battery required replacement every 100,000 miles - that's a cost equal to replacing an engine in a normal car, but about 3 times more frequently."
>>>They'd still invent it, what they wouldn't do is share it. It would be a trade secret, and so only JVC would manufacture VHS players
But without patent protection, the JVC VHS VCR would be reverse-engineered in less than a year by the other corporations (VHS clones). And then JVC would not be able to pay-off the billion-dollar bill it incurred during development. And it would go bankrupt.
Therefore, rather than take the risk in a world without patent protection, JVC would just not bother inventing the VCR. Why take risk when there's no reward?
No.... I said dollars are votes for or against corporations. When we buy something we cast a vote which says, "I like this company" and when we boycott then we cast a vote which says, "I don't like this company." If enough people boycott then the company ends-up like Circuit City (bankrupt and disappears).
As for government, we only get to vote once every two years. That vote certainly has influence, but we don't have the power to drive the government out of existence. And in-between votes the leaders typically ignore the will of the people (which is why the Bush Bailout Bill passed even though most Americans opposed it). Leaders only behave themselves once every 2 years, and the rest of the time they ignore us.
>>>h.264 is not substantially different from video codecs that were around 15 years ago; most of what has happened since is tweaks necessary to adapt it to higher resolutions.
Not really true. MPEG2 can be used to handle higher resolutions. It's the codec used for American TV at 1920x1080 and had been used for ~4000x2000 theater resolutions as well. The key difference is that MPEG4 AVC/h.264 can provide the same visual quality but at half the bitrate. It's able to do this because better understanding of human sight, and real-world tests, have allowed programmers to strip-away more data than previously thought possible when MPEG2 was developed.
- This disaster happened during Obama's 2nd year in office, but somehow the fault lies with Bush, even though Bush's people are now Obama's people. - Does that mean we can blame the Katrina debacle on the previous president as well (Clinton)? No, no that would be too consistent. .
IMHO if Bush is blamed for Katrina, then Obama should equally be blamed for his own gulf disaster. It took his administration 8 days to rally any kind of response (i.e. get a cleanup ship to burn off the oil). THAT would be consistent. Assign blame to whoever is currently in charge. (But of course people won't do that.)
In the unlikely event I get a computer-killing virus, trojan, or exploit (hasn't happened since 1985), I figure I'll just trash the thing and buy another one for $300-400. Computers have become disposable just like other appliances.
Maybe he should have subcontracted with Commodore to make Amiga 500s (and later 1200s) instead. They sold about a million a year while his NeXT sold little.
Of course a lot of the Amigas were hand-assembled in Pennsylvania. Maybe that's why they only cost ~$500 while the next cost ~$5000. Labor's cheaper than automation?
- You work your ass off trying to earn money. - I sit and watch TV or internet all day, and then I suck the cash out of your wallet to pay my bills (food stamps, housing, doctors' bills, welfare, other free handouts,.....)
You call that acceptable??? I call that legalized theft. Thank you very much (pockets YOUR money in my bank).
If communism has been tried about a Dozen times around the world, and it failed each time due to communism collapsing and becoming totalitarian Dictatorships or Oligarchies, then the idea is fundamentally flawed. It is unstable and will end the same way each time.
At least with our capitalist systems, we have Constitutions to chain our governments from being abusive, elections to remove dickheds from said government, and Courts to protect the citizens from abuse by one another or the corporations.
BTW I think corporate licenses should be revoked. Let them operate as traditional proprietorships with full liability for their actions. (i.e. Toyota's CEO and management would stand trial for manslaughter.) (Ditto Ford's CEO/management when the 70s-era Pintos were exploding.)
Communism has no government. The workers make decisions democratically about what items to make in their factory, and then make those items.
Of course such a system would never work outside of Marx's book. In the real world either there would be undirected chaos, or there would be a dictator (or oligarchs) who would take advantage of the situation and become the central leader --- which is what happened to the Soviet Union. In theory the "soviets" (groups of workers) were supposed to have a voice in their local factories and communities, similar to a democracy, but in reality it became a top-down system where the workers voices were ignored.
Is that's true, then why did the Chinese government start an investigation after suicide 6? Why is the news reporter saying Foxcon has management problems, and that it's destroying lives of their young people, and should be sharing some of it ~500 million earning with the workers? Sounds like concern to me --- not the cold-hearted "oh well, that's life" you described.
>>>the job, besides being low pay, isn't at all bad
The video shows a 24 year old woman committing suicide. She's so tired she can barely walk. It shows workers being denied their 10 minute breaks. It shows that 5% of the workers quit every month, and a diary where a man says he feels like he's living in workplace hell, day-after-day, year-after-year. Not that bad of a job? I certainly wouldn't do it.
Could you be any more fanboyish and defensive? The videos come from a Chinese news source, and they don't give a frak about Apple, HP, or anything else. They are reporting about a Suicidal factory and don't mention any brand names at all. Not even once. The Chinese reporters are talking about it, because there's a real problem at Foxcon that does not exist in their other factories.
Watch the video - workers are supposed to get a 10 minute break every hour, but the managers took away the privilege. No wonder they feel burned out
In the video they show the 24-yr-old woman committing suicide. She looks like she can barely walk, as if she's ready to pass out. What on earth does this company do their workers?
That woman on the front page looks tired. And what are they doing? Hand assembling the circuit boards? That's a rather primitive way of doing things.
They make about $132 a month.
About $30 a week. Why does the U.S. continue trading with this country? I used to earn $4.30 minimum or $172 a week. The US should demand higher minimum wages, else no trade.
400,000 employees? C'mon. Really? The biggest factory I've ever worked had about 10,000, and I thought the place was huge (took 15 minutes to walk from one end to the other). TechCrunch is claiming 40 times that amount..... it would have to stretch for miles.
As for the suicides:
Stupid. Even if you loss an iPhone or whatever, and get fired, so what? Working at Walmart isn't that bad of a job. Better alive than dead.
- Cable Internet + DISH satellite == $25 for 1 Mbit/s (or $43 for 15 Mbit/s) + $12 for Dish == $37 - Cable Internet + Lifeline TV == $25 for 1 Mbit/s plus $20 for TV == $45
Yeah the prices are fairly similar in cost. I'd still choose the satellite as it's cheaper.
>>>And where are you getting these "pristine" digital broadcasts? Most digital broadcasts are overcompressed pieces of shit due to the cable/satellite providers trying to cram way too many channels >>>
Ya know..... It helps if you read somebody's WHOLE post before responding. Quote: "The web SUCKS when compared to the quality of pristine digital broadcasts. Even cable can't compare because cable operators are too busy degrading signals so that they can cram more channels on their bandwidth...... there is the reception problem but that is easily addressed with a good antenna."
>>>local news channels fulfill a niche that the crush of 24/7 news channels doesn't touch.
That's true, but I can't help wondering if local channels are sabotaging themselves. In just the past year, the local FOX station added a news team, plus a 24 hour repeat on the -2 subchannel. The UPN station added a 10 o'clock and so too did the MyNetTV station. So now I literally have 6 different channels to choose from to get my local news. ----- I don't think there's enough audience to go around to support all these local news teams. .
>>>How the local stations fill the rest of their schedule, I have no idea.
In the morning they stream the network programming (Today Show, Good Morning, etc). After about 10am Eastern Time, they start showing syndicated originals like Courtroom trials, Talk shows, and some soaps. From 3 to 5 they typically air Oprah, Doctor Phil, Tyra Banks, The Doctors, and other popular celebrities. Then the local news at 5. Then at 6:30 is Network News. At 7 is Entertainment Tonight and other trash. 8pm to 6am is almost nonstop network programming. 6am is local news. And then they go back to the beginning of this paragraph (Today Show, etc).
So to summarize:
- Local TV largely consists of 12+ hours of Network feeds, 3-4 hours local news, and syndicated programs that they purchased independently. - On weekends they air lots of movies. I think I've seen "Godfather" four times in just the past month. And sports.
>>>Local TV may be free over the Air, but it really works best in cities and suburbs.
Not sure where you get that idea. I know lots of people who live in areas classified "rural" by the Census Bureau, and they get free television from 40-60 miles away. It works just fine. ----- IMHO a single point transmitter is still the most efficient way to reach ~1/2 a million households living in a television market. It's transmitting 20 Mbit/s * ~10 stations == 200 Mbit/s of data to each and every home. That's certainly more efficient than running 1/2 million cables. .
>>>the Big Three and the Little One.
I'm guessing "little one" refers to FOX but that's no longer true. They are now the #1 network in viewers, as of this 2009-10 season.
>>>hasn't WGN been a cable network for the last 15-20 years?
No. WGN-TV and WGN America are separate entities. WGN-TV is local broadcast while WGN-A is distributed via satellite (and the piped through local cable lines).
Corporations have no right to take away the People's airwaves, and leave them cutoff from receiving weather and news reports (for free). It's theft of the People's collective property, just as surely as if a corporation took over control of roads and started charging to use them.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah because coal plant pollution doesn't drift anywhere. /end sarcasm. Actually studies have shown a lot of the air-quality problems in eastern states are caused by the drift of pollutants from the midwest and western states. (And similarly pollution is drifting from China towards North America.) Perfectly natural - the wind moves the pollution.
So relocating your pollution from the car to the coal plant doesn't really solve the problem. And that's why ACEEE ranked the EV1 as no cleaner than a Prius.
>>>Do engines and transmissions typically go 300,000 mi without expensive major repairs?
Mine do. If you abuse your engines/transmissions then perhaps you get less mileage, but my Dodge Shadow went just over 340,000 miles before the engine died. Neither it nor the transmission had any major work except routine changes of oil. My Dodge Avenger is nearing 200,000 miles and it too has had ZERO major repairs. It's running even better than my Shadow did at that point, and I expect to reach 300,000 miles easily.
And then there's the guy in Maryland who ran a Honda Civic to 1.1 million miles before finally trading for a new model - again it was the original engine and transmission. So I'll stick with my previous post: "The battery required replacement every 100,000 miles - that's a cost equal to replacing an engine in a normal car, but about 3 times more frequently."
So how many western States do we have to pave-over with solar panels to crack water to fuel ~220 million hydrogen cars? 5? 10?
>>>They'd still invent it, what they wouldn't do is share it. It would be a trade secret, and so only JVC would manufacture VHS players
But without patent protection, the JVC VHS VCR would be reverse-engineered in less than a year by the other corporations (VHS clones). And then JVC would not be able to pay-off the billion-dollar bill it incurred during development. And it would go bankrupt.
Therefore, rather than take the risk in a world without patent protection, JVC would just not bother inventing the VCR. Why take risk when there's no reward?
No.... I said dollars are votes for or against corporations. When we buy something we cast a vote which says, "I like this company" and when we boycott then we cast a vote which says, "I don't like this company." If enough people boycott then the company ends-up like Circuit City (bankrupt and disappears).
As for government, we only get to vote once every two years. That vote certainly has influence, but we don't have the power to drive the government out of existence. And in-between votes the leaders typically ignore the will of the people (which is why the Bush Bailout Bill passed even though most Americans opposed it). Leaders only behave themselves once every 2 years, and the rest of the time they ignore us.
>>>h.264 is not substantially different from video codecs that were around 15 years ago; most of what has happened since is tweaks necessary to adapt it to higher resolutions.
Not really true. MPEG2 can be used to handle higher resolutions. It's the codec used for American TV at 1920x1080 and had been used for ~4000x2000 theater resolutions as well. The key difference is that MPEG4 AVC/h.264 can provide the same visual quality but at half the bitrate. It's able to do this because better understanding of human sight, and real-world tests, have allowed programmers to strip-away more data than previously thought possible when MPEG2 was developed.
So let me see:
- This disaster happened during Obama's 2nd year in office, but somehow the fault lies with Bush, even though Bush's people are now Obama's people.
- Does that mean we can blame the Katrina debacle on the previous president as well (Clinton)? No, no that would be too consistent.
.
IMHO if Bush is blamed for Katrina, then Obama should equally be blamed for his own gulf disaster. It took his administration 8 days to rally any kind of response (i.e. get a cleanup ship to burn off the oil). THAT would be consistent. Assign blame to whoever is currently in charge. (But of course people won't do that.)
If OS X is open source, how come nobody's made some modifications to not check for Apple's BIOS, and then recompiled it to run on an IBM PC Clone?
In the unlikely event I get a computer-killing virus, trojan, or exploit (hasn't happened since 1985), I figure I'll just trash the thing and buy another one for $300-400. Computers have become disposable just like other appliances.
Maybe he should have subcontracted with Commodore to make Amiga 500s (and later 1200s) instead. They sold about a million a year while his NeXT sold little.
Of course a lot of the Amigas were hand-assembled in Pennsylvania. Maybe that's why they only cost ~$500 while the next cost ~$5000. Labor's cheaper than automation?
Social Democracy eh?
- You work your ass off trying to earn money. .....)
- I sit and watch TV or internet all day, and then I suck the cash out of your wallet to pay my bills (food stamps, housing, doctors' bills, welfare, other free handouts,
You call that acceptable??? I call that legalized theft. Thank you very much (pockets YOUR money in my bank).
If communism has been tried about a Dozen times around the world, and it failed each time due to communism collapsing and becoming totalitarian Dictatorships or Oligarchies, then the idea is fundamentally flawed. It is unstable and will end the same way each time.
At least with our capitalist systems, we have Constitutions to chain our governments from being abusive, elections to remove dickheds from said government, and Courts to protect the citizens from abuse by one another or the corporations.
BTW I think corporate licenses should be revoked. Let them operate as traditional proprietorships with full liability for their actions. (i.e. Toyota's CEO and management would stand trial for manslaughter.) (Ditto Ford's CEO/management when the 70s-era Pintos were exploding.)
Communism has no government. The workers make decisions democratically about what items to make in their factory, and then make those items.
Of course such a system would never work outside of Marx's book. In the real world either there would be undirected chaos, or there would be a dictator (or oligarchs) who would take advantage of the situation and become the central leader --- which is what happened to the Soviet Union. In theory the "soviets" (groups of workers) were supposed to have a voice in their local factories and communities, similar to a democracy, but in reality it became a top-down system where the workers voices were ignored.
Is that's true, then why did the Chinese government start an investigation after suicide 6? Why is the news reporter saying Foxcon has management problems, and that it's destroying lives of their young people, and should be sharing some of it ~500 million earning with the workers? Sounds like concern to me --- not the cold-hearted "oh well, that's life" you described.
>>>the job, besides being low pay, isn't at all bad
The video shows a 24 year old woman committing suicide. She's so tired she can barely walk. It shows workers being denied their 10 minute breaks. It shows that 5% of the workers quit every month, and a diary where a man says he feels like he's living in workplace hell, day-after-day, year-after-year. Not that bad of a job? I certainly wouldn't do it.
Bull.
Could you be any more fanboyish and defensive? The videos come from a Chinese news source, and they don't give a frak about Apple, HP, or anything else. They are reporting about a Suicidal factory and don't mention any brand names at all. Not even once. The Chinese reporters are talking about it, because there's a real problem at Foxcon that does not exist in their other factories.
Watch the video - workers are supposed to get a 10 minute break every hour, but the managers took away the privilege. No wonder they feel burned out
In the video they show the 24-yr-old woman committing suicide. She looks like she can barely walk, as if she's ready to pass out. What on earth does this company do their workers?
That woman on the front page looks tired. And what are they doing? Hand assembling the circuit boards? That's a rather primitive way of doing things.
They make about $132 a month.
About $30 a week. Why does the U.S. continue trading with this country? I used to earn $4.30 minimum or $172 a week. The US should demand higher minimum wages, else no trade.
400,000 employees? C'mon. Really? The biggest factory I've ever worked had about 10,000, and I thought the place was huge (took 15 minutes to walk from one end to the other). TechCrunch is claiming 40 times that amount..... it would have to stretch for miles.
As for the suicides:
Stupid. Even if you loss an iPhone or whatever, and get fired, so what? Working at Walmart isn't that bad of a job. Better alive than dead.
Let's see:
- Cable Internet + DISH satellite == $25 for 1 Mbit/s (or $43 for 15 Mbit/s) + $12 for Dish == $37
- Cable Internet + Lifeline TV == $25 for 1 Mbit/s plus $20 for TV == $45
Yeah the prices are fairly similar in cost. I'd still choose the satellite as it's cheaper.
>>>And where are you getting these "pristine" digital broadcasts? Most digital broadcasts are overcompressed pieces of shit due to the cable/satellite providers trying to cram way too many channels
>>>
Ya know..... It helps if you read somebody's WHOLE post before responding. Quote: "The web SUCKS when compared to the quality of pristine digital broadcasts. Even cable can't compare because cable operators are too busy degrading signals so that they can cram more channels on their bandwidth...... there is the reception problem but that is easily addressed with a good antenna."
>>>local news channels fulfill a niche that the crush of 24/7 news channels doesn't touch.
That's true, but I can't help wondering if local channels are sabotaging themselves. In just the past year, the local FOX station added a news team, plus a 24 hour repeat on the -2 subchannel. The UPN station added a 10 o'clock and so too did the MyNetTV station. So now I literally have 6 different channels to choose from to get my local news. ----- I don't think there's enough audience to go around to support all these local news teams.
.
>>>How the local stations fill the rest of their schedule, I have no idea.
In the morning they stream the network programming (Today Show, Good Morning, etc). After about 10am Eastern Time, they start showing syndicated originals like Courtroom trials, Talk shows, and some soaps. From 3 to 5 they typically air Oprah, Doctor Phil, Tyra Banks, The Doctors, and other popular celebrities. Then the local news at 5. Then at 6:30 is Network News. At 7 is Entertainment Tonight and other trash. 8pm to 6am is almost nonstop network programming. 6am is local news. And then they go back to the beginning of this paragraph (Today Show, etc).
So to summarize:
- Local TV largely consists of 12+ hours of Network feeds, 3-4 hours local news, and syndicated programs that they purchased independently.
- On weekends they air lots of movies. I think I've seen "Godfather" four times in just the past month. And sports.
P.S.
>>>Local TV may be free over the Air, but it really works best in cities and suburbs.
Not sure where you get that idea. I know lots of people who live in areas classified "rural" by the Census Bureau, and they get free television from 40-60 miles away. It works just fine. ----- IMHO a single point transmitter is still the most efficient way to reach ~1/2 a million households living in a television market. It's transmitting 20 Mbit/s * ~10 stations == 200 Mbit/s of data to each and every home. That's certainly more efficient than running 1/2 million cables.
.
>>>the Big Three and the Little One.
I'm guessing "little one" refers to FOX but that's no longer true. They are now the #1 network in viewers, as of this 2009-10 season.
>>>hasn't WGN been a cable network for the last 15-20 years?
No. WGN-TV and WGN America are separate entities. WGN-TV is local broadcast while WGN-A is distributed via satellite (and the piped through local cable lines).
Same goes for WTBS and TBS
The airwaves belong to the People.
Corporations have no right to take away the People's airwaves, and leave them cutoff from receiving weather and news reports (for free). It's theft of the People's collective property, just as surely as if a corporation took over control of roads and started charging to use them.