>>>Women's average earnings will stay lower than men's average earnings
This is called lying with statistics. When you compare like-to-like, such as a female programmer with 20 years experience versus a male programmer with 20 years experience, you find the woman actually gets paid a few percent more. Given equal jobs with equal experience both sexes are treated basically equal.
The reason why the *overall* average shows women getting less is because there are simply fewer women willing to do high-paid jobs like programming, or dangerous high-pay jobs like living on an oil rig.
That's not my true in my case. When I was a teenager I thought a woman was beautiful all the way upto 40 (think classmates' attractive moms)
Nowadays I often think 30 is the cutoff point...sometimes even as young as 25 if she lets herself get fat... from "cute" to "porky" in just a few years. For example I might look at Britney Spears and think, 'She used to be hot, but now she has jumbo thighs and a beer belly." Ditto Ashley Simpson or that Ghostwhisper girl. I often find myself thinking younger is better.
I blame the internet. Whereas I used to think "girl == hot" and I really didn't care if she had saggy breasts just as long as she had some, now exposure to literally millions of photographs has made me prefer small, firm breasts. i.e. I'm more picky and shallow.
What I don't understand is why evolution would self-select for prettier women, but not prettier men. A man who is ugly is not going to get any play or opportunity to pass his ugly genes to the next generation. Right? So then men should be becoming more attractive.
The only reason I can think is that women are being honest when they say, "We don't care what the guy looks like."
No offense but I agree with your friends. Instead of wasting gasoline driving to the store, you could sit at home, shop amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com, and have the books delivered for free. You eliminate the waste of fuel.
You also have the option to save some money and buy these books for a few pennies on the used market. For example I just bought a Mary Higgins Clark paperback for 1 penny, plus 3.99 shipping. Using your approach of going to a physical store would have cost me 7 dollars plus ~3 dollars gasoline.
>>>gap between real books and their digital counterparts: the latter is simply a license to read the content on your device.
In other words you're merely RENTING the book for an undetermined length of time. Therefore we customers should be paying *rental* rates not purchase rates (which also includes the right of resale on the used market).
I think businesses like amazon are taking advantage of this confusion, letting customers believe they "own" the downloaded books and charging full price for them, when in reality it's just a temporary rental which can be deleted at any time.
I'll stick with physical books, thank you. At least I can resell them and recover 80-90% of my money.
>>>Up until the point where they - either "rightfully" or by accident - deny you accident to any game you bought on steam EVER. Or the company goes bankrupt or whatever else could happen. >>>
If a company did that to me, and they sold physical goods, I would give myself a five-finger discount equal to whatever they stole for me. So if for example I had bought $200 worth of downloadable books, and suddenly I lost access, I'd get that $200 worth of stuff returned to my possession in the form of actual books.
And don't give me that "two wrongs don't make a right" claptrap. Every time we throw a criminal in jail, we are doing exactly that - doing a wrong against a criminal by depriving him of freedom. It's called justice. An eye for an eye, and all that.
>>>They were deleted because the devices are remotely managed by Amazon.
That's even worse than DRM. If they can manage my Kindle, they can see what I have stored on their. For the most part that's probably harmless stuff, but there also might be photos of my kids, my naked wife, or my account numbers.
Usually these types of things leak due to dishonest employees abusing their power (like a waitress swiping your credit card, and then using the number to buy stuff). I don't want Amazon accessing my Kindle.
>>>For me, the "apology" doesn't sound heartfelt at all.
Amazon's been going downhill rapidly. The whole "we can erase your books" philosophy is why I never bought a Kindle. I like to keep my books indefinitely, read them at least once, and then resell them to somebody else. A Kindle doesn't let you do the first or the last.
Of course the other possibility is that I'm biased against amazon. I was a seller on amazon for three years - nothing special - just selling my old books, games, or videos. I had a 100% rating until I made a mistake and violated a rule by selling a Zenith DTV Converter box (for some reason this is not allowed). They suspended my account, I apologized, and then was reinstated. I was careful to obey the rules but they suspended my account again saying, "You issued a $200 refund which exceeds our new selling standards." Well yeah. A guy bought a $200 air conditioner, then he changed his mind, so I politely and happily refunded the money. That's what you're supposed to do.
Long-story short they refused to listen and just kept saying refunding $200 is a lot of money an unacceptable. Now they are holding almost $500 of my money earned off previous sales, and won't return it to me. I can understand a temporary hold but almost half-a-year has passed.
Amazon is rapidly following the path to destruction that Ebay followed last year when it alienated its sellers.
>>>I don't understand why people insist on comparing virtual 'goods' or 'services' to tangible goods in a store.
Because just like Walmart, the cellphone company has leasing and electrical costs that need to be covered. AT&T might give you a day of free calls, or Walmart might let you stand in their store all day enjoying free air conditioning, but it still costs them money to do that. I don't understand why people keep forgetting that basic fact.
How does learning an algorithm help me make a a human character from Final Fantasy 13 walk across the screen? That seems beyond the grasp of simple paper-and-pencil number crunching (which is why we have computers - to do things old tools could not do).
>>>-- Cooling, in the USA, is a bigger consumer of electricity than heating >>>-- Most heating is via other sources, oil, natural gas, propane, even wood. Many electrical heating systems are already supply controlled. Heating a house via electricity is expensive, getting the kwh at ~half price is alluring. >>>
First off, the goal is not just electricity reduction, but also carbon output reduction. As the engineer at my local college observed, "The best way to save energy is to not burn it in the first place." A PassivHaus reaches for that goal but being virtually airtight, and not allowing the heat to escape.
A PassivHaus doesn't need air conditioning either, since the mass of the house keeps the heat *outside* the building. It's somewhat similar to how a basement remains cool even when it's 90 degrees outside. All you need is a fan or ventitlation system to keep the inhabitants comfortable.
And you're wrong about the electric heating, because you confused the word "electric" with "reistance" heating. My house doesn't have resistance heating, but it does use electricity to run a heat-pump, which is the most-efficient form of heating ever invented by man. Why? Because it doesn't "make" heat - it simply moves the heat from the outside to the inside of the house.
>>>a.5PF CFL might waste 10% instead.
Not correct. A 15 watt CFL with 0.5 power factors draws 100% more current than if you replaced it with a 15 watt resistance, incandescent bulb with PF==1. Put another way:
- the 15 watt flourescent burns 30 volt-amps - the 15 watt incandescent burns 15 volt-amps - therefore the incandescent burns less coal at the electric plant
Anyone have suggestions on how I can remove the "dirt" off my self-search google results? I've deleted some of the original messages from the 1980s and 90s, but for some reason they keep hanging around in archives.
Could I claim "copyright" over my own words, and issue a DMCA takedown notice? Hmmm.
The summary calls this a "visual browser" but I don't see any downloadable browser programs??? All I see is a *search engine*. Oh well. I guess that's to be expected in a world where people think Google/Yahoo are browsers.
I typed in my name to this Sig.Ma search engine, and it turned-up virtually nothing. So yes, I'd say this approach has serious problems. Using my name in Google turns-up all kinds of dirt... er, information about myself. I'll stick with google.
Yeah but there are probably better things we could do with EU bureaucrats than have them negotiate 10 cent lower rates on international calls. Like:
- get laid off
That would save the taxpayers tons of money. I used to be a bureaucrat, and I (and three other engineers) basically sat all day surfing the net. Total work output - about one month at the start of the contract, and that was it. After my year was up I asked my boss, "Why were we here?" And he explained that he had about $500,000 to spend, and didn't want to give it back to Congress, so he paid us instead.
What a gigantic waste of taxpayer labor/money. It's in this case and similar bureacratic messes where the REAL waste occurs, not in cellphone cross-border charges.
Just because you're carrying a cellphone doesn't mean you have to answer it. I rarely answer my phone figuring whoever is trying to reach me probably had nothing important to say anyway. I answer my family's calls immediately but not others.
I'm not willing to pay for online newspapers (since the TV/radio news does an okay job), but I do already pay for access to online magazines like Reason or Newsweek.
Woosh. My point went right over your head. Does it really make sense to pay an EU bureaucrat (times say 50) to negotiate this "no interstate fees" with Cellphone companies, at a total labor cost of 5 million dollars, if the resulting savings is only 10 cents per international call?
You don't get charged for voicemail if you're sitting in your home market when you check it. In fact I've had all kinds of headhunters leave messages, and it doesn't cost me anything.
Yes it costs me ~$10/month but the point is it doesn't cost me any *additional* money. Whereas if I answered my cellphone and chatted 10 minutes, then it would cost me an extra dollar. So in comparison calling back on a wired phone is "free" - no extra charge.
Yeah I'm sure the $40 AKA nearly 7 hours of voicecalls had no financial impact on the company. Right. Sure. Uh huh. That's like saying there's no impact if I swipe a four $10 pairs of jeans from Walmart.
Anyway...
all I care about is that I paid $40, got ~7 hours worth of calls, and the phone cost me nothing. And no contract to bind me; I could have canceled service just a month later if I felt like it.
>>>more current for the same power means the infrastructure has to be able to deliver the current required for the apparent power (S in kVA) and not just the real power (P in kW). >>>
Therefore CFLs are not really giving us a 75% reduction in current draw.... more like 50-55%. Which is still good but even the newer incandescent bulbs can give a 50% reduction simply by using better filaments.
Well I guess you've been lucky then. First I tried Lights of America bulbs, all of which died in my upside-down kitchen lights due to heat. Then I went back to incandescents. Then I found Philips bulbs in Walmart that I decided to try because they are a known-good brand. Well they did last longer, but it didn't take long for them to start flickering when lit and then die completely. I opened them up, and all the caps were leaking fluid - a sure sign of overheating from being placed upside-down. So I'm back to the incandescents.
It seems the ONLY fixture where CFLs will work for me is a well-ventilated lampshade-type lamp. They won't work in upside-down fixtures, high-humidity areas like my bathroom, or outside in the cold porch light (they don't die; they just refuse to ignite).
I only learned of the Power Factor problem recently (via slashdot), so I'm far from an expert but I can provide a link to a good article: "Poor power factor causes inefficiency in the delivery of electricity to the end-user, requiring more energy to compensate for losses on the line. For example, a load with a power factor of 0.5 will require twice as much current as a load with a power factor of 1 for the same amount of usable power." Link - htthttp://www.edn.com/blog/1470000147/post/450043045.html
You can google for more articles.
Even if PF was not problem and CFLs only burned 15 watts as rated, I still think they are a bad idea for all the previous reasons discussed. I have too many spots in my house where the CFLs simply won't work, and I don't feel like buying all-new fixtures. Plus the "warm up time" is annoying as well.
And finally the savings are so small. I usually only have one light burning at a time. So that's 45 watts saved (versus the old bulb) times 5 hours a day times 30 days == ~7 kWh or ~about 60 cents saved in my house. Big whoop.
Slashdot Mirror
>>>Women's average earnings will stay lower than men's average earnings
This is called lying with statistics. When you compare like-to-like, such as a female programmer with 20 years experience versus a male programmer with 20 years experience, you find the woman actually gets paid a few percent more. Given equal jobs with equal experience both sexes are treated basically equal.
The reason why the *overall* average shows women getting less is because there are simply fewer women willing to do high-paid jobs like programming, or dangerous high-pay jobs like living on an oil rig.
That's not my true in my case. When I was a teenager I thought a woman was beautiful all the way upto 40 (think classmates' attractive moms)
Nowadays I often think 30 is the cutoff point...sometimes even as young as 25 if she lets herself get fat... from "cute" to "porky" in just a few years. For example I might look at Britney Spears and think, 'She used to be hot, but now she has jumbo thighs and a beer belly." Ditto Ashley Simpson or that Ghostwhisper girl. I often find myself thinking younger is better.
I blame the internet. Whereas I used to think "girl == hot" and I really didn't care if she had saggy breasts just as long as she had some, now exposure to literally millions of photographs has made me prefer small, firm breasts. i.e. I'm more picky and shallow.
That's true.
What I don't understand is why evolution would self-select for prettier women, but not prettier men. A man who is ugly is not going to get any play or opportunity to pass his ugly genes to the next generation. Right? So then men should be becoming more attractive.
The only reason I can think is that women are being honest when they say, "We don't care what the guy looks like."
No offense but I agree with your friends. Instead of wasting gasoline driving to the store, you could sit at home, shop amazon.com or barnesandnoble.com, and have the books delivered for free. You eliminate the waste of fuel.
You also have the option to save some money and buy these books for a few pennies on the used market. For example I just bought a Mary Higgins Clark paperback for 1 penny, plus 3.99 shipping. Using your approach of going to a physical store would have cost me 7 dollars plus ~3 dollars gasoline.
>>>gap between real books and their digital counterparts: the latter is simply a license to read the content on your device.
In other words you're merely RENTING the book for an undetermined length of time. Therefore we customers should be paying *rental* rates not purchase rates (which also includes the right of resale on the used market).
I think businesses like amazon are taking advantage of this confusion, letting customers believe they "own" the downloaded books and charging full price for them, when in reality it's just a temporary rental which can be deleted at any time.
I'll stick with physical books, thank you.
At least I can resell them and recover 80-90% of my money.
>>>Up until the point where they - either "rightfully" or by accident - deny you accident to any game you bought on steam EVER. Or the company goes bankrupt or whatever else could happen.
>>>
If a company did that to me, and they sold physical goods, I would give myself a five-finger discount equal to whatever they stole for me. So if for example I had bought $200 worth of downloadable books, and suddenly I lost access, I'd get that $200 worth of stuff returned to my possession in the form of actual books.
And don't give me that "two wrongs don't make a right" claptrap. Every time we throw a criminal in jail, we are doing exactly that - doing a wrong against a criminal by depriving him of freedom. It's called justice. An eye for an eye, and all that.
>>>They were deleted because the devices are remotely managed by Amazon.
That's even worse than DRM. If they can manage my Kindle, they can see what I have stored on their. For the most part that's probably harmless stuff, but there also might be photos of my kids, my naked wife, or my account numbers.
Usually these types of things leak due to dishonest employees abusing their power (like a waitress swiping your credit card, and then using the number to buy stuff). I don't want Amazon accessing my Kindle.
Probably. Sue amazon and find-out what the courts have to say.
Although the likely verdict will be that amazon "repaired" the damage by issuing refunds.
>>>For me, the "apology" doesn't sound heartfelt at all.
Amazon's been going downhill rapidly. The whole "we can erase your books" philosophy is why I never bought a Kindle. I like to keep my books indefinitely, read them at least once, and then resell them to somebody else. A Kindle doesn't let you do the first or the last.
Of course the other possibility is that I'm biased against amazon. I was a seller on amazon for three years - nothing special - just selling my old books, games, or videos. I had a 100% rating until I made a mistake and violated a rule by selling a Zenith DTV Converter box (for some reason this is not allowed). They suspended my account, I apologized, and then was reinstated. I was careful to obey the rules but they suspended my account again saying, "You issued a $200 refund which exceeds our new selling standards." Well yeah. A guy bought a $200 air conditioner, then he changed his mind, so I politely and happily refunded the money. That's what you're supposed to do.
Long-story short they refused to listen and just kept saying refunding $200 is a lot of money an unacceptable. Now they are holding almost $500 of my money earned off previous sales, and won't return it to me. I can understand a temporary hold but almost half-a-year has passed.
Amazon is rapidly following the path to destruction that Ebay followed last year when it alienated its sellers.
>>>I don't understand why people insist on comparing virtual 'goods' or 'services' to tangible goods in a store.
Because just like Walmart, the cellphone company has leasing and electrical costs that need to be covered. AT&T might give you a day of free calls, or Walmart might let you stand in their store all day enjoying free air conditioning, but it still costs them money to do that. I don't understand why people keep forgetting that basic fact.
How does learning an algorithm help me make a a human character from Final Fantasy 13 walk across the screen? That seems beyond the grasp of simple paper-and-pencil number crunching (which is why we have computers - to do things old tools could not do).
>>>-- Cooling, in the USA, is a bigger consumer of electricity than heating
>>>-- Most heating is via other sources, oil, natural gas, propane, even wood. Many electrical heating systems are already supply controlled. Heating a house via electricity is expensive, getting the kwh at ~half price is alluring.
>>>
First off, the goal is not just electricity reduction, but also carbon output reduction. As the engineer at my local college observed, "The best way to save energy is to not burn it in the first place." A PassivHaus reaches for that goal but being virtually airtight, and not allowing the heat to escape.
A PassivHaus doesn't need air conditioning either, since the mass of the house keeps the heat *outside* the building. It's somewhat similar to how a basement remains cool even when it's 90 degrees outside. All you need is a fan or ventitlation system to keep the inhabitants comfortable.
And you're wrong about the electric heating, because you confused the word "electric" with "reistance" heating. My house doesn't have resistance heating, but it does use electricity to run a heat-pump, which is the most-efficient form of heating ever invented by man. Why? Because it doesn't "make" heat - it simply moves the heat from the outside to the inside of the house.
>>>a .5PF CFL might waste 10% instead.
Not correct. A 15 watt CFL with 0.5 power factors draws 100% more current than if you replaced it with a 15 watt resistance, incandescent bulb with PF==1. Put another way:
- the 15 watt flourescent burns 30 volt-amps
- the 15 watt incandescent burns 15 volt-amps
- therefore the incandescent burns less coal at the electric plant
P.S.
Anyone have suggestions on how I can remove the "dirt" off my self-search google results? I've deleted some of the original messages from the 1980s and 90s, but for some reason they keep hanging around in archives.
Could I claim "copyright" over my own words, and issue a DMCA takedown notice? Hmmm.
The summary calls this a "visual browser" but I don't see any downloadable browser programs??? All I see is a *search engine*. Oh well. I guess that's to be expected in a world where people think Google/Yahoo are browsers.
I typed in my name to this Sig.Ma search engine, and it turned-up virtually nothing. So yes, I'd say this approach has serious problems. Using my name in Google turns-up all kinds of dirt... er, information about myself. I'll stick with google.
Yeah but there are probably better things we could do with EU bureaucrats than have them negotiate 10 cent lower rates on international calls. Like:
- get laid off
That would save the taxpayers tons of money. I used to be a bureaucrat, and I (and three other engineers) basically sat all day surfing the net. Total work output - about one month at the start of the contract, and that was it. After my year was up I asked my boss, "Why were we here?" And he explained that he had about $500,000 to spend, and didn't want to give it back to Congress, so he paid us instead.
What a gigantic waste of taxpayer labor/money. It's in this case and similar bureacratic messes where the REAL waste occurs, not in cellphone cross-border charges.
Just because you're carrying a cellphone doesn't mean you have to answer it. I rarely answer my phone figuring whoever is trying to reach me probably had nothing important to say anyway. I answer my family's calls immediately but not others.
I'm not willing to pay for online newspapers (since the TV/radio news does an okay job), but I do already pay for access to online magazines like Reason or Newsweek.
>>>100k / 300M = nothing.
Woosh. My point went right over your head. Does it really make sense to pay an EU bureaucrat (times say 50) to negotiate this "no interstate fees" with Cellphone companies, at a total labor cost of 5 million dollars, if the resulting savings is only 10 cents per international call?
"Penny wise, but pound foolish." - Ben Franklin
You don't get charged for voicemail if you're sitting in your home market when you check it. In fact I've had all kinds of headhunters leave messages, and it doesn't cost me anything.
Yes it costs me ~$10/month but the point is it doesn't cost me any *additional* money. Whereas if I answered my cellphone and chatted 10 minutes, then it would cost me an extra dollar. So in comparison calling back on a wired phone is "free" - no extra charge.
Yeah I'm sure the $40 AKA nearly 7 hours of voicecalls had no financial impact on the company. Right. Sure. Uh huh. That's like saying there's no impact if I swipe a four $10 pairs of jeans from Walmart.
Anyway...
all I care about is that I paid $40, got ~7 hours worth of calls, and the phone cost me nothing. And no contract to bind me; I could have canceled service just a month later if I felt like it.
They're not.
"Apple Not Immune from Bad Economy as Mac Sales Drop - PC World"
http://www.pcworld.com/article/155553/apple_not_immune_from_bad_economy_as_mac_sales_drop.html
>>>more current for the same power means the infrastructure has to be able to deliver the current required for the apparent power (S in kVA) and not just the real power (P in kW).
>>>
Therefore CFLs are not really giving us a 75% reduction in current draw.... more like 50-55%. Which is still good but even the newer incandescent bulbs can give a 50% reduction simply by using better filaments.
Well I guess you've been lucky then. First I tried Lights of America bulbs, all of which died in my upside-down kitchen lights due to heat. Then I went back to incandescents. Then I found Philips bulbs in Walmart that I decided to try because they are a known-good brand. Well they did last longer, but it didn't take long for them to start flickering when lit and then die completely. I opened them up, and all the caps were leaking fluid - a sure sign of overheating from being placed upside-down. So I'm back to the incandescents.
It seems the ONLY fixture where CFLs will work for me is a well-ventilated lampshade-type lamp. They won't work in upside-down fixtures, high-humidity areas like my bathroom, or outside in the cold porch light (they don't die; they just refuse to ignite).
If you think I'm lying (or that my problems are unique), then take a look at google: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=problems+with+CFLs ----- As for the "mythical half-power incandescents" you could have looked that up on wikipedia instead of calling bullshit. Or you could google it. Or you could read this article: http://www.businesswire.com/portal/site/ge/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20070223005120
Here's another technique that reduces incandescent power to 70% (i.e. a 42 watt Edison bulb can produce the same light as a 60) - http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/06/business/energy-environment/06bulbs.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
I only learned of the Power Factor problem recently (via slashdot), so I'm far from an expert but I can provide a link to a good article: "Poor power factor causes inefficiency in the delivery of electricity to the end-user, requiring more energy to compensate for losses on the line. For example, a load with a power factor of 0.5 will require twice as much current as a load with a power factor of 1 for the same amount of usable power." Link - htthttp://www.edn.com/blog/1470000147/post/450043045.html
You can google for more articles.
Even if PF was not problem and CFLs only burned 15 watts as rated, I still think they are a bad idea for all the previous reasons discussed. I have too many spots in my house where the CFLs simply won't work, and I don't feel like buying all-new fixtures. Plus the "warm up time" is annoying as well.
And finally the savings are so small. I usually only have one light burning at a time. So that's 45 watts saved (versus the old bulb) times 5 hours a day times 30 days == ~7 kWh or ~about 60 cents saved in my house. Big whoop.