Like Toronto there was a municipal law here in Halifax at one point that stores had to charge for bags, which is how the whole reusable bag thing got started here. That lasted all of a couple weeks, but some retailers used "ecofriendly" as an excuse to continue charging after the law was repealed, but offered no alternative to plastic bags.
All right; I didn't know that part. I was assuming that the store was simply covering the cost of the tax itself.
A little searching says that average costs for grocery bags (for the stores) run from about 2 to 5 cents per bag, depending on the quality of bag. Maybe Wal-mart manages to get lower rates for their patented fall-apart-if-you-look-at-them-too-hard bags, but the cost to the supermarket of using plastic bags might be higher than you think.
So as I pointed out, I've actually saved around $75 over the last four years by buying the reusable, which are durable and useful for all kinds of other things, and not having to pay for plastic bags.
If this store is eating the $0.05 cost of the plastic bags anyway, then isn't it the store that saved $75, not you? Most grocery stores around where I live do the same sort of thing too, largely to try to reduce the amount they spend on plastic bags. I know some stores have even started giving away rather than selling reusable bags in hopes of getting more people to use them.
I really wasn't being snarky in my post; the whole thing is a good idea. The stores save money, and we reduce the amount of waste.
What Sobey's did do right was start selling cheap reusable nylon and canvas bags, which they would replace if ever the bag was damaged. I paid around $12 for six bags and some how ended up with ten somewhere along the way.
Whoever came up with this one was a genius. Charge people for the reusable bags, and then save money at the same time by not having the store have to cover the cost of plastic bags.
You're not understanding the point of what he's saying. The non-legitimate user in his scenario doesn't have the legitimate user's password. If you require a password to disable this function, then the person who should have access can disable it, while the person who should not cannot.
Electricity generating facilities of all kinds are routinely described in terms of peak capacity.
True enough, but this sentence pretty clearly shows that this is a case of an article written by somebody who has no idea what watts are -- since the "peak capacity" explanation doesn't make any sense in context.
Google's renewable power facilities will be able to generate a total of 2 billion watts (gigawatts) of energy, enough to power 500,000 homes or all of the public elementary schools in New York, Oregon, and Wyoming for one year...
Obviously nuclear power is technically non-renewable, so how long would it be expected to last, assuming no refinements to extraction or fission methods?
...they were put there to keep cars out of certain national monuments, because those places get packed with tourists and require a law enforcement presence so people don't get run over and become speed bumps for the next impatient tourist.
Around here, they were barricading parking pullouts along the highway to prevent people from looking at the mountains in a national park. Yeah, I'm sure that was prompted by safety concerns.
No, normally - in a sane world - the buggy-as-hell version with all the new features is the x.0 version and the bugfixed version is x.y where y gets bigger as the bugs get smaller.
Only where "sane" is defined as "what rseuhs is used to."
2. What happens when the major digit begins to resemble Firefox / Chromes out of control version madness? How many years before Linux 19.4?
3.0 was released on 21 Jul 2011. Given the expected timeframe for 4.0 (if he decides to go through with this proposal, of course), then that's roughly 3.25 years per major version. So the answer to your question would be sometime in 2061.
It used to be version numbers actually meant something and conveyed some useful hint of scope or amount of change between versions.
With this proposal, it does mean something. It means that a 4.0 release is the result of focused testing and bugfixing of the changes and features added in the 3.x series. If the model seems to work, then 5.0 would probably be the culmination of the work put into the 4.x series. Sure, the meaning is different than is used for most projects, but that doesn't make it worse.
I'm still pissed that Linus moved away from the traditional development model: Even number x.Y releases were stable branch and odd releases were testing/development.
Linux moved away from that model because of the problems that it caused. There were very long (compared to today) cycles where the current "stable" kernel series was basically in maintenance, and the development kernel was diverging further and further from the stable kernel. So if you wanted to use a kernel with new features, you were stuck using the development branch -- and if you waited until there was a new stable series, then there was a big jump from the kernel you were on up to the new one.
Once Linus decided to change the development model, there was no point in keeping the old format for the version number. The version numbers should be determined based on the development policy, not the other way around.
In context, "loosing" is obviously the word that the submitter wanted to use. The word choice is a bit odd, but at least makes sense; "losing" on the other hand would not.
Because it's stupid. If you have to constantly search for things it means you are a lazy disorganized slob. The number of times I've had to search for an email can be counted on one hand because I have things organized so that I know where they are.
Why should I waste time manually organizing my e-mails when I can just search for them when I want to read them later? Computers exist to do menial work for me, so I don't have to do it myself.
Even if you don't use the roads, you benefit from living in a community where other people use the roads. Everyone should pay for the roads.
I tend to doubt that my life is improved by people choosing, for instance, to drive enormous SUVs rather than smaller cars. Yet the cost of road maintenance due to damage caused by those large vehicles is comparatively very high.
Furthermore, while maybe we do all benefit from the roads regardless of whether we actually drive or not, people who do use the roads get a more substantial benefit from the roads than those who don't.
Frankly, the number of full electric cars is almost non-existent
Today, sure. But it's pretty clear that electric vehicles are a market that is going to grow substantially over the next decade. You have to build the infrastructure at some point; it's best to do it before it becomes a serious problem rather than after.
For an example of what happens when you do things in the wrong order, see the federal healthcare website.
I'd say infrastructure is needed no matter what, so justifying a distance tax based on road usage seems like it misses the entire crux of the issue.
Wear and tear on the roads is due largely to people driving on them. It makes sense to me that those who use them should pay for their upkeep.
The other reply already addressed the fact that the purposes of gas taxes are primarily to raise revenue. If your source of revenue dries up, then either you have to reduce spending (stop maintaining roads) or find another source.
To a large extent, your use of fuel is proportional to your damage to roads. Lots of weight, acceleration and braking, will all put more wear on the road and at the same time use more fuel.
Full electric or plug-in cars can use no gas, but they sure as heck don't have zero impact on the roads. You can start taxing electricity to raise money for transportation maintenance, but since electricity is used for so many other things that's hardly fair either.
It's a problem that has to be solved at some point as more and more fuel-efficient cars get on the road. You can propose other alternatives than the GPS tracking-type systems -- the most obvious being to just tax based on odometer readings, possibly with a factor related to vehicle weight -- but pretending that you can continue to just increase gas taxes and everything will work out isn't going to solve anything.
The only proposal acceptable to the fucking teabaggers was to get their way or for the government to shut down.
You don't know that, because "your team" didn't bother trying. Instead they spent their time holding press conferences assigning blame, and betting that if they allowed the shutdown to happen that it would hurt their "enemies" more than it would hurt them.
Slashdot Mirror
Like Toronto there was a municipal law here in Halifax at one point that stores had to charge for bags, which is how the whole reusable bag thing got started here. That lasted all of a couple weeks, but some retailers used "ecofriendly" as an excuse to continue charging after the law was repealed, but offered no alternative to plastic bags.
All right; I didn't know that part. I was assuming that the store was simply covering the cost of the tax itself.
A little searching says that average costs for grocery bags (for the stores) run from about 2 to 5 cents per bag, depending on the quality of bag. Maybe Wal-mart manages to get lower rates for their patented fall-apart-if-you-look-at-them-too-hard bags, but the cost to the supermarket of using plastic bags might be higher than you think.
So as I pointed out, I've actually saved around $75 over the last four years by buying the reusable, which are durable and useful for all kinds of other things, and not having to pay for plastic bags.
If this store is eating the $0.05 cost of the plastic bags anyway, then isn't it the store that saved $75, not you? Most grocery stores around where I live do the same sort of thing too, largely to try to reduce the amount they spend on plastic bags. I know some stores have even started giving away rather than selling reusable bags in hopes of getting more people to use them.
I really wasn't being snarky in my post; the whole thing is a good idea. The stores save money, and we reduce the amount of waste.
What Sobey's did do right was start selling cheap reusable nylon and canvas bags, which they would replace if ever the bag was damaged. I paid around $12 for six bags and some how ended up with ten somewhere along the way.
Whoever came up with this one was a genius. Charge people for the reusable bags, and then save money at the same time by not having the store have to cover the cost of plastic bags.
Also, it reads like an advertisement.
Not true. Advertisers typically proofread their text for blatant mistakes before publishing it.
Because every single traditional power source is also heavily subsidized. It's only fair.
There are some who might say that the solution to bad policy is to fix the policy, not augment it with more bad policy.
Because that's not the scenario that either of the parent posts (1 2) that you replied to were talking about.
You're not understanding the point of what he's saying. The non-legitimate user in his scenario doesn't have the legitimate user's password. If you require a password to disable this function, then the person who should have access can disable it, while the person who should not cannot.
I am not so sure about consistency of typing style across every keyboard.
Perhaps we could perform experiments and gather data on the subject.
Nah, that's way too science-y for Slashdot. Better to just proclaim that it will never work and earn some karma.
Electricity generating facilities of all kinds are routinely described in terms of peak capacity.
True enough, but this sentence pretty clearly shows that this is a case of an article written by somebody who has no idea what watts are -- since the "peak capacity" explanation doesn't make any sense in context.
Google's renewable power facilities will be able to generate a total of 2 billion watts (gigawatts) of energy, enough to power 500,000 homes or all of the public elementary schools in New York, Oregon, and Wyoming for one year...
Obviously nuclear power is technically non-renewable, so how long would it be expected to last, assuming no refinements to extraction or fission methods?
One answer is here: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=how-long-will-global-uranium-deposits-last. The short version is that with current techniques, and usage levels, the available uranium will last a couple hundred years. However, there are methods that we expect would increase that by multiple orders of magnitude.
...they were put there to keep cars out of certain national monuments, because those places get packed with tourists and require a law enforcement presence so people don't get run over and become speed bumps for the next impatient tourist.
Around here, they were barricading parking pullouts along the highway to prevent people from looking at the mountains in a national park. Yeah, I'm sure that was prompted by safety concerns.
No, normally - in a sane world - the buggy-as-hell version with all the new features is the x.0 version and the bugfixed version is x.y where y gets bigger as the bugs get smaller.
Only where "sane" is defined as "what rseuhs is used to."
2. What happens when the major digit begins to resemble Firefox / Chromes out of control version madness? How many years before Linux 19.4?
3.0 was released on 21 Jul 2011. Given the expected timeframe for 4.0 (if he decides to go through with this proposal, of course), then that's roughly 3.25 years per major version. So the answer to your question would be sometime in 2061.
It used to be version numbers actually meant something and conveyed some useful hint of scope or amount of change between versions.
With this proposal, it does mean something. It means that a 4.0 release is the result of focused testing and bugfixing of the changes and features added in the 3.x series. If the model seems to work, then 5.0 would probably be the culmination of the work put into the 4.x series. Sure, the meaning is different than is used for most projects, but that doesn't make it worse.
I'm still pissed that Linus moved away from the traditional development model: Even number x.Y releases were stable branch and odd releases were testing/development.
Linux moved away from that model because of the problems that it caused. There were very long (compared to today) cycles where the current "stable" kernel series was basically in maintenance, and the development kernel was diverging further and further from the stable kernel. So if you wanted to use a kernel with new features, you were stuck using the development branch -- and if you waited until there was a new stable series, then there was a big jump from the kernel you were on up to the new one.
Once Linus decided to change the development model, there was no point in keeping the old format for the version number. The version numbers should be determined based on the development policy, not the other way around.
... "loosing" instead of "losing" ...
In context, "loosing" is obviously the word that the submitter wanted to use. The word choice is a bit odd, but at least makes sense; "losing" on the other hand would not.
Because it's stupid. If you have to constantly search for things it means you are a lazy disorganized slob. The number of times I've had to search for an email can be counted on one hand because I have things organized so that I know where they are.
Why should I waste time manually organizing my e-mails when I can just search for them when I want to read them later? Computers exist to do menial work for me, so I don't have to do it myself.
How much is fair? 20%? 30%? 50%? 60%? Whats fair?
"Fair" is usually defined as "enough to suitably punish the people that I don't like."
Even if you don't use the roads, you benefit from living in a community where other people use the roads. Everyone should pay for the roads.
I tend to doubt that my life is improved by people choosing, for instance, to drive enormous SUVs rather than smaller cars. Yet the cost of road maintenance due to damage caused by those large vehicles is comparatively very high.
Furthermore, while maybe we do all benefit from the roads regardless of whether we actually drive or not, people who do use the roads get a more substantial benefit from the roads than those who don't.
Frankly, the number of full electric cars is almost non-existent
Today, sure. But it's pretty clear that electric vehicles are a market that is going to grow substantially over the next decade. You have to build the infrastructure at some point; it's best to do it before it becomes a serious problem rather than after.
For an example of what happens when you do things in the wrong order, see the federal healthcare website.
I'd say infrastructure is needed no matter what, so justifying a distance tax based on road usage seems like it misses the entire crux of the issue.
Wear and tear on the roads is due largely to people driving on them. It makes sense to me that those who use them should pay for their upkeep.
The other reply already addressed the fact that the purposes of gas taxes are primarily to raise revenue. If your source of revenue dries up, then either you have to reduce spending (stop maintaining roads) or find another source.
To a large extent, your use of fuel is proportional to your damage to roads. Lots of weight, acceleration and braking, will all put more wear on the road and at the same time use more fuel.
Full electric or plug-in cars can use no gas, but they sure as heck don't have zero impact on the roads. You can start taxing electricity to raise money for transportation maintenance, but since electricity is used for so many other things that's hardly fair either.
It's a problem that has to be solved at some point as more and more fuel-efficient cars get on the road. You can propose other alternatives than the GPS tracking-type systems -- the most obvious being to just tax based on odometer readings, possibly with a factor related to vehicle weight -- but pretending that you can continue to just increase gas taxes and everything will work out isn't going to solve anything.
I name all of my classes and variables "George." Problem solved.
Your attempt to paint me as supporting or agreeing with the Republicans on this matter is kind of ridiculous, given what I have written.
The only proposal acceptable to the fucking teabaggers was to get their way or for the government to shut down.
You don't know that, because "your team" didn't bother trying. Instead they spent their time holding press conferences assigning blame, and betting that if they allowed the shutdown to happen that it would hurt their "enemies" more than it would hurt them.
"Give us what we want and we'll 'negotiate'" is not real negotiation.