There is no market for huge solar arrays in space.
What? Yes, of course there is. There is a market for energy, and putting solar arrays in space makes them more efficient. The power can be broadcast back to inexpensive microwave rectenna arrays here on the planet. The transmission antennas on the power satellites won't be physically capable of focusing to narrow points, which addresses the issue of whether they will cook birds, or can be used to cook cities. (Plus, the major superpowers all have satellite-killing equipment.)
But I strongly suspect cash handling costs are much more than what the merchant pays to accept debit card payments.
Most gas stations aren't allowed to assess a surcharge for credit cards, but they CAN give a discount for cash. (Some gas stations ARE allowed to assess a credit surcharge, but that practice is prevented by some states.) That's why the default price is the credit price, and why there's a cash discount, it's actually a matter of law. The retailers have no motivation to argue against this, of course, because they make more money on the non-cash debit card sales.
However, as a customer, you should never use a non-credit-type debit card to make purchases anywhere, because those cards lack the strong purchase protection which is offered by credit cards. It's okay to make a Visa or Mastercard "debit card" purchase, but never make a Plus or Pulse debit card purchase. You can't trivially have those charges reversed like you can with the credit card-processor-backed ones.
Radio-isotopes bio-accumulate in the environment, they do not dilute.
Either you don't know the meaning of bio-accumulate, the meaning of the word dilute, or the size of the environment.
We literally figured out in the seventies that dilution doesn't work in ocean dumping, because of not only bioaccumulation, but also currents. Like stuff tends to get moved along like paths, where it accumulates even without biological influence. That's how the garbage gyre formed in one place from plastic dumped all over the planet.
What does importing tens of millions of illegals from third-world countries with no healthcare to speak of do to "herd immunity"?
That depends on whether you give them medical care or not, and also whether you force them to get vaccinated or not. I'll take your comment as an endorsement of giving them medical care, as well as supporting vaccination.
Unions are an inferior substitute for having laws which protect all workers. They don't protect workers in professions which are difficult or impossible to unionize, and they depend on good management — unions with poor management don't protect their workers, either. They're a lot better than nothing, but they're a lot worse than just having a living minimum wage, health care for everyone, etc. Having UBI and national health makes them largely unnecessary.
So, how to transition people who would rather go back to DOS than pay Microsoft to use their OS? You bring out back-to-back versions of Windows that are so hated and draconian that people will pay to keep security updates going on Windows 7.
It's going to transition people straight to Apple, probably, although they abandon operating system versions too. It will also transition many people straight to TPB to download the updates. And it will transition a few people to Linux.
The reason they don't crack down on political opinions they don't like si that they don't care. They make money by keeping user engagement high; rant fests are good for their bottom line.
Apple makes loads of profit per unit, if they wanted to lower their prices, they could do that already. They're not interested in those users, because those users aren't going to spend big bucks on apps or media.
If Apple wants to be more environmentally friendly, they should encourage repair. But they're not interested in that either, because they want to sell new units... at their typical high-profit prices.
This is only partially true. Yes, E-Waste is a substantial problem. But climate change is a much more serious environmental problem by any reasonable stretch.
The two problems are not unrelated. Reuse means less devices are produced, which means less industrial pollution. Recycling is a distant second. It's better than landfilling, but it doesn't reduce emissions nearly as much as reuse. And for older portable devices, reuse often requires repair.
Yes. At least, every time I have used it, it has worked for me. I've used it to get a fair shake from Amerigas twice, to get my money back from Freedompop after exploring their little scam (and I got it ALL back), used it with Digital Path (a WISP) twice... I didn't try it on Gargoyles sunglassses though, probably should have. Those broke in like month one because they redesigned the hinges to be garbage, the fuckers.
When you get bad customer service, make it unprofitable. Contact them again and again, deluge them with emails, until it costs them more to give you bad service than good. Don't just take it in the face, give it back. Escalate to someone whose hourly wage is significant. Open a case with the BBB. Share your story on social media. Do everything you can to be a total pill. Otherwise, they'll just keep doing it.
It's not censorship to shift dubious information to a place where the consumer has to lift two fingers instead of one, just as it wasn't censorship to confine pornography to pornographic magazines,
No, those two things are wholly different. This is Facebook choosing to take this action. The pornography was forced into little boxes (and forced off of the TV box) by government. One is free speech, the other is censorship.
Similarly, it's not censorship when YouTube demonitizes your channel because it's politically hard-edged, depriving you of a large audience of lazy people who won't make two clicks to express their independent viewing preferences.
Right, that's not censorship any more than Facebook kicking their soapbox out from under the anti-vaxxers, because nobody forced them to do it, and the anti-vaxxers are still free to set up PolioTube or whatever and spread their ridiculous views on the internets. The point at which they're denied a domain, or internet service, is the time to worry.
Take the Prius car for example. It doesn't become 'green' until almost 80,000 miles on the odometer, because that is when the resources used to manufacture it hit the neutral mark, and *then* and only then is it beginning to 'save energy'. So my fucking 1991 Chevy 350 cubic inch V8 truck is fucking 'greener' than a new motherfucking Prius.
Your fucking 1991 Chevy with a 350 is not fucking greener than a Prius. That Prius will still be going down the road long after your POS has disintegrated, because American car companies couldn't make a decent vehicle in the nineties. The average age of the US fleet is increasing year upon year, so the runtime after payback of energy investment is also increasing, making the initial energy cost of production less and less relevant.
Their poor state got them significant pity concessions when they joined the EU, and is one of the reasons you've only ever been one of those "EU lite" members, never seriously part of the club in the first place,
The biggest reason is that when they joined, they had a strong currency, and didn't want to give it up, so they never truly committed to being part of the EU. They thought they were gonna run things for ever and ever amen, and be first among equals, more equal than others, etc etc. They learned the wrong lesson from Animal Farm. Now they're preparing to get still more lost in their fantasy of reclaimed imperialism, but they have absolutely zero chance to reclaim their prior dominance, so it's just sad. The world has changed, and they haven't noticed.
Granted, the USA is heading down the same road, but we have a far superior position over here, so it's going to take longer to get there. We have more than some soggy little islands to work with, and we still dominate a number of other nations. England isn't in that situation, so they'd better wise up fast and learn to cooperate. If they don't get it figured out before Brexit, they're going to figure it out quick, and they'll have to make major changes before the EU lets them back in.
But how do you make sure this will not be the initial push for widespread censorship in the current climate of raising authoritarianism?
Nobody is forcing them to do this. The only thing the government's even made noises about forcing them to do is to take better control of political messaging.
I have no desire to educated the stupid. I just wish I was not on the same planet with them.
You can stow away on Musk's rocket to Mars, you can kill yourself, or you can educate the stupid. Any other result is going to leave you sharing the same ball of mud with dumbasses.
Haven't you heard? According to the EU, without them, Brits won't even be able to wipe their own asses.
Maybe they'll adopt the bidet. They still get enough rainfall to wash their asses, right? They can buy retrofit kits for their toilets from the Japanese. That will cause the Chinese to knock them off, and then maybe we'll buy the knockoffs here in the USA. The one good thing to come out of Brexit might be an improvement in the anal cleanliness of English speakers.
When is Reddit going to complete their web design?
This might seem like nothing more than a dig at Reddit, but it's a great question in light of the fact that Google+ finally got their web design right, just in time to cancel the service. They got rid of most of the unnecessary whitespace, and their translation feature was second-to-none. Any other social network would have to pay to integrate google translate, so no other social network but Facebook has adequate translation functions, and you have to otherwise get that functionality from your browser. G+ was far and away the easiest place to have an international, multilingual conversation in text.
You can call it corruption, or you can call it "putting your money where your mouth is", and the difference is essentially how openly you do things, and sometimes the timing.
The primary difference is what your job is. If you're the head of a corporation which will benefit from Brexit, and your constituency is made up of shareholders, then cheerleading Brexit is both legal and consistent with your responsibilities. That's an indictment against certain aspects of capitalism, but let's not stop and focus on that right now, because it will obscure the real point of this comment. To wit, if you are an elected official and your constituency is not restricted to shareholders but is actually the general citizenry, then supporting Brexit when it will hurt the common man is directly counter to your job duties as a supposed representative of the best interests of those constituents.
Apple is still "keen to show it's a good corporate citizen," reports the Australian Financial Review:
Apple's a good example of corporatism, because they literally invented a tax dodging system whose name sounds like one of those made-up degrading sex acts. ("Double Irish With A Dutch Sandwich" sounds like you take two shots of whiskey, then slap two prostitutes with your penis at the same time.) But they're not a good example of being a good citizen, for the same reason.
Last I checked, scooters are popular in wealthy enclaves of the US,
Scooters are popular in highly population dense areas of the US, where they may make some sense in spite of their deficiencies, because all the other options are either fully utilized or not really options due to complications.
while it's true that mountain bike wheels have become larger, road wheels are actually about the same.
Just wait a bit, they'll follow along. Changes come slowly in bicycles because they are perceived as old tech, which is not altogether incorrect — old doesn't mean bad. Chains have awesomely low resistance since only loaded links have full friction. But people who are into older technologies often resist change. Look how long it took for 29ers to become common! Not all change is positive, mind you. Hydraulic brakes are a boondoggle, IMO. You're better off using motorcycle cables and not having to screw with brake fluid, plus the hydraulic brakes are heavier. Disc brakes, on the other hand, are grrrreat.
A typical beginner bike in the 1980s came with a "27 x 1 1/4" tire,
A typical beginner bike in the 1970s had smaller wheels, though. I used to have a Schwinn with a banana seat which had 24s.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no market for huge solar arrays in space.
What? Yes, of course there is. There is a market for energy, and putting solar arrays in space makes them more efficient. The power can be broadcast back to inexpensive microwave rectenna arrays here on the planet. The transmission antennas on the power satellites won't be physically capable of focusing to narrow points, which addresses the issue of whether they will cook birds, or can be used to cook cities. (Plus, the major superpowers all have satellite-killing equipment.)
But I strongly suspect cash handling costs are much more than what the merchant pays to accept debit card payments.
Most gas stations aren't allowed to assess a surcharge for credit cards, but they CAN give a discount for cash. (Some gas stations ARE allowed to assess a credit surcharge, but that practice is prevented by some states.) That's why the default price is the credit price, and why there's a cash discount, it's actually a matter of law. The retailers have no motivation to argue against this, of course, because they make more money on the non-cash debit card sales.
However, as a customer, you should never use a non-credit-type debit card to make purchases anywhere, because those cards lack the strong purchase protection which is offered by credit cards. It's okay to make a Visa or Mastercard "debit card" purchase, but never make a Plus or Pulse debit card purchase. You can't trivially have those charges reversed like you can with the credit card-processor-backed ones.
Radio-isotopes bio-accumulate in the environment, they do not dilute.
Either you don't know the meaning of bio-accumulate, the meaning of the word dilute, or the size of the environment.
We literally figured out in the seventies that dilution doesn't work in ocean dumping, because of not only bioaccumulation, but also currents. Like stuff tends to get moved along like paths, where it accumulates even without biological influence. That's how the garbage gyre formed in one place from plastic dumped all over the planet.
Name calling means you have a weak argument.
What does it mean when you ignore the argument, and whine about the name calling?
What does importing tens of millions of illegals from third-world countries with no healthcare to speak of do to "herd immunity"?
That depends on whether you give them medical care or not, and also whether you force them to get vaccinated or not. I'll take your comment as an endorsement of giving them medical care, as well as supporting vaccination.
Unions are an inferior substitute for having laws which protect all workers. They don't protect workers in professions which are difficult or impossible to unionize, and they depend on good management — unions with poor management don't protect their workers, either. They're a lot better than nothing, but they're a lot worse than just having a living minimum wage, health care for everyone, etc. Having UBI and national health makes them largely unnecessary.
So, how to transition people who would rather go back to DOS than pay Microsoft to use their OS? You bring out back-to-back versions of Windows that are so hated and draconian that people will pay to keep security updates going on Windows 7.
It's going to transition people straight to Apple, probably, although they abandon operating system versions too. It will also transition many people straight to TPB to download the updates. And it will transition a few people to Linux.
The reason they don't crack down on political opinions they don't like si that they don't care. They make money by keeping user engagement high; rant fests are good for their bottom line.
But enough about Slashdot...
Apple makes loads of profit per unit, if they wanted to lower their prices, they could do that already. They're not interested in those users, because those users aren't going to spend big bucks on apps or media.
If Apple wants to be more environmentally friendly, they should encourage repair. But they're not interested in that either, because they want to sell new units... at their typical high-profit prices.
This is only partially true. Yes, E-Waste is a substantial problem. But climate change is a much more serious environmental problem by any reasonable stretch.
The two problems are not unrelated. Reuse means less devices are produced, which means less industrial pollution. Recycling is a distant second. It's better than landfilling, but it doesn't reduce emissions nearly as much as reuse. And for older portable devices, reuse often requires repair.
Open a case with the BBB
Does that do anything?
Yes. At least, every time I have used it, it has worked for me. I've used it to get a fair shake from Amerigas twice, to get my money back from Freedompop after exploring their little scam (and I got it ALL back), used it with Digital Path (a WISP) twice... I didn't try it on Gargoyles sunglassses though, probably should have. Those broke in like month one because they redesigned the hinges to be garbage, the fuckers.
When you get bad customer service, make it unprofitable. Contact them again and again, deluge them with emails, until it costs them more to give you bad service than good. Don't just take it in the face, give it back. Escalate to someone whose hourly wage is significant. Open a case with the BBB. Share your story on social media. Do everything you can to be a total pill. Otherwise, they'll just keep doing it.
It's not censorship to shift dubious information to a place where the consumer has to lift two fingers instead of one, just as it wasn't censorship to confine pornography to pornographic magazines,
No, those two things are wholly different. This is Facebook choosing to take this action. The pornography was forced into little boxes (and forced off of the TV box) by government. One is free speech, the other is censorship.
Similarly, it's not censorship when YouTube demonitizes your channel because it's politically hard-edged, depriving you of a large audience of lazy people who won't make two clicks to express their independent viewing preferences.
Right, that's not censorship any more than Facebook kicking their soapbox out from under the anti-vaxxers, because nobody forced them to do it, and the anti-vaxxers are still free to set up PolioTube or whatever and spread their ridiculous views on the internets. The point at which they're denied a domain, or internet service, is the time to worry.
Take the Prius car for example. It doesn't become 'green' until almost 80,000 miles on the odometer, because that is when the resources used to manufacture it hit the neutral mark, and *then* and only then is it beginning to 'save energy'.
So my fucking 1991 Chevy 350 cubic inch V8 truck is fucking 'greener' than a new motherfucking Prius.
Your fucking 1991 Chevy with a 350 is not fucking greener than a Prius. That Prius will still be going down the road long after your POS has disintegrated, because American car companies couldn't make a decent vehicle in the nineties. The average age of the US fleet is increasing year upon year, so the runtime after payback of energy investment is also increasing, making the initial energy cost of production less and less relevant.
Their poor state got them significant pity concessions when they joined the EU, and is one of the reasons you've only ever been one of those "EU lite" members, never seriously part of the club in the first place,
The biggest reason is that when they joined, they had a strong currency, and didn't want to give it up, so they never truly committed to being part of the EU. They thought they were gonna run things for ever and ever amen, and be first among equals, more equal than others, etc etc. They learned the wrong lesson from Animal Farm. Now they're preparing to get still more lost in their fantasy of reclaimed imperialism, but they have absolutely zero chance to reclaim their prior dominance, so it's just sad. The world has changed, and they haven't noticed.
Granted, the USA is heading down the same road, but we have a far superior position over here, so it's going to take longer to get there. We have more than some soggy little islands to work with, and we still dominate a number of other nations. England isn't in that situation, so they'd better wise up fast and learn to cooperate. If they don't get it figured out before Brexit, they're going to figure it out quick, and they'll have to make major changes before the EU lets them back in.
But these Jews are just a minority in that, the problem is far, far larger and it is not caused by religion.
It's caused by bullshit magical thinking, so it's not caused by religion, but by the same force that permits religion.
But how do you make sure this will not be the initial push for widespread censorship in the current climate of raising authoritarianism?
Nobody is forcing them to do this. The only thing the government's even made noises about forcing them to do is to take better control of political messaging.
I have no desire to educated the stupid. I just wish I was not on the same planet with them.
You can stow away on Musk's rocket to Mars, you can kill yourself, or you can educate the stupid. Any other result is going to leave you sharing the same ball of mud with dumbasses.
It's also worth keeping in mind that Apple is not the only user of these schemes by a long shot.
There's no shortage of sleazebags out there, but they are widely credited with inventing this scheme.
Haven't you heard? According to the EU, without them, Brits won't even be able to wipe their own asses.
Maybe they'll adopt the bidet. They still get enough rainfall to wash their asses, right? They can buy retrofit kits for their toilets from the Japanese. That will cause the Chinese to knock them off, and then maybe we'll buy the knockoffs here in the USA. The one good thing to come out of Brexit might be an improvement in the anal cleanliness of English speakers.
When is Reddit going to complete their web design?
This might seem like nothing more than a dig at Reddit, but it's a great question in light of the fact that Google+ finally got their web design right, just in time to cancel the service. They got rid of most of the unnecessary whitespace, and their translation feature was second-to-none. Any other social network would have to pay to integrate google translate, so no other social network but Facebook has adequate translation functions, and you have to otherwise get that functionality from your browser. G+ was far and away the easiest place to have an international, multilingual conversation in text.
You can call it corruption, or you can call it "putting your money where your mouth is", and the difference is essentially how openly you do things, and sometimes the timing.
The primary difference is what your job is. If you're the head of a corporation which will benefit from Brexit, and your constituency is made up of shareholders, then cheerleading Brexit is both legal and consistent with your responsibilities. That's an indictment against certain aspects of capitalism, but let's not stop and focus on that right now, because it will obscure the real point of this comment. To wit, if you are an elected official and your constituency is not restricted to shareholders but is actually the general citizenry, then supporting Brexit when it will hurt the common man is directly counter to your job duties as a supposed representative of the best interests of those constituents.
Apple's a good example of corporatism, because they literally invented a tax dodging system whose name sounds like one of those made-up degrading sex acts. ("Double Irish With A Dutch Sandwich" sounds like you take two shots of whiskey, then slap two prostitutes with your penis at the same time.) But they're not a good example of being a good citizen, for the same reason.
Says the cunt whining about US companies as a response to someone saying that the US is nothing like Nazi Germany.
Sounds like you don't know that corporations were much of the problem in Nazi Germany. Your ignorance knows no bounds, including national boundaries.
Last I checked, scooters are popular in wealthy enclaves of the US,
Scooters are popular in highly population dense areas of the US, where they may make some sense in spite of their deficiencies, because all the other options are either fully utilized or not really options due to complications.
while it's true that mountain bike wheels have become larger, road wheels are actually about the same.
Just wait a bit, they'll follow along. Changes come slowly in bicycles because they are perceived as old tech, which is not altogether incorrect — old doesn't mean bad. Chains have awesomely low resistance since only loaded links have full friction. But people who are into older technologies often resist change. Look how long it took for 29ers to become common! Not all change is positive, mind you. Hydraulic brakes are a boondoggle, IMO. You're better off using motorcycle cables and not having to screw with brake fluid, plus the hydraulic brakes are heavier. Disc brakes, on the other hand, are grrrreat.
A typical beginner bike in the 1980s came with a "27 x 1 1/4" tire,
A typical beginner bike in the 1970s had smaller wheels, though. I used to have a Schwinn with a banana seat which had 24s.