>>I would certainly use it, but Californians in general have a strange love for driving themselves everywhere.
As a Californian that has to drive from Northern California to Southern California once or twice a month, I can state with certainty that we do not have a strange love for driving through *LA*.
I voted for the measure, simply because I hate LA traffic so badly.
That said, we really need to figure out ways to make the building cheaper. Streamlining various bits of legislation and legal issues would probably be the best bet.
>>For years we have been joking that 1984 is not a guide
A better guide is "Dark Rivers of the Heart" by Dean Koontz, which basically this is. A data aggregation system run by the feds that taps into a variety of databases (credit, phone records, etc.) and can pull up data on you in a flash. It also gets some digs in on Asset Forfeiture (which is one of the biggest unconstitutional trends going in America today) as well as how powerless people can feel against an omniscient government.
>>NOOOO!!! I demand to be able to risk my children's lives due to my personal ignorance and FUD over retardation inducing vaccinations!!!
What if you know what the risks are, and still don't want your kid to be vaccinated? The CDC reports seizure risk at around 1 in 14,000 for DTaP (http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/side-effects.htm#dtap), but I've had two friends (of a relatively small sample set) had their kids go into seizure after the vaccine, and the incidents weren't reported to VAERS. So there's a known risk, and a possible systemic bias in the reporting of the adverse affects. One of the kids reportedly turned autistic after the seizure, too. (Normal before, autistic afterward.)
Would I vaccinate my hypothetical child? Yes. Would I want to be forced into it? No.
"i get surprisingly good images from a stupid little canon powershot"
+1.
I went hiking in Yosemite with a friend a couple months back. I had my superzoom powershot, he had his four-digit DSLR. We ended up taking a lot of similar shots (hey, a bird!) and the images were pretty comparable. Some instances the powershot looked better. He was obviously much better at the macro / shallow depth of field shots. That said, it was possible for me to take a photograph of a waterfall while scrambling on hands and knees up a cliffside, but it was impossible for him to maneuver the DSLR into place safely.
I'm not saying DSLRs are bad or anything, but a lot of the things that you need to take good photos (exposure and shutter control, white balance, ISO control, etc.) can be done in most mid-grade P&S cameras. I've taken some really nice photos with my powershots, that I'd have otherwise missed since I wouldn't have been able to carry a DSLR around in my pocket.
>>I would *love* to be able to produce 5kWh per day!
That's actually a pretty modest system. You could probably build it out for $6k or so, if my really rough back of the envelope estimate is accurate.
My system produces 30kWh/day at peak during summer, and around half that these days.
>>There are many multiple-source inverter systems available that work in conjunction with (or function as) an automated transfer switch for when utility power is unavailable, though such an inverter does add to the total cost to the system. A battery system is not necessary, although a small battery system for limited power at night isn't really all that expensive, compared with total system cost.
Well, if you have blackouts at night, you need batteries. =)
Adding a battery to cover 100% of my energy needs at night worked out to about $10k or so, but that was for a completely off-the-grid system... if you only need a little battery backup for occasional blackouts, you can probably pay a lot less.
>>The massive problem is the long term cost of decommissioning. I was at primary school when they started decommissioning my local nuclear plant. I'll be dead by the time they've finished..... That's one hell of a burden we are placing on our grand children.....
Which is why you typically pay decommissioning fees up front as part of the cost of energy from the power plant.
I've been paying to decommission Diablo Canyon for years, and it's still happily operational
>>I know if I could afford it, I would be installing a grid-connected system that could keep us going on emergency power (enough for a little heat, water and communication systems) for extended periods, even if we can't generate 100% of our needs, the peace of mind that would bring is priceless.
Grid tied systems will typically shut down if they detect a failure in the grid. If you want a battery backup, they add a tremendous cost to the system to handle the very occasional power outages. Just get a UPS. =)
>>In areas with a lot of sun, if you can get a majority of buildings to install solar heating/cooling/lighting and photovoltaic, and some local storage, you can make a big dent in the energy requirements (from coal) in a particular region.
Indeed. In my neck of California, top tier power rates are so high that solar panels have been sprouting on rooftops every where you look. Even with the decrease in federal and state subsidies, the excessively high power rates (up to 50c/kWh or so) are driving very strong demand for solar. And people generally aren't doing anything with their roofs anyway, so the land-use issue is a moot point.
>>It turns out 1GW of coal power uses 13500 acre-ft of water (4.4billion gal) per year, vs the 600 acre-feet for the solar project.
Yeah, the article is complete rubbish. 600 acre-feet sounds like a lot, except it's not. The Colorado river alone supplies 7.5 million acre-feet a year.
The guy that wrote the article had no clue as to the relative value of these "numbers" things, or that things like water are indeed "renewable" resources as well.
You think he could figure out for himself why certain things might be a concern, but other things not, but he just sort of throws everything against the wall to see what sticks. He also assumes that the growth in human energy consumption is some law of nature, and exponential and compounding, when in reality it simply has to do with more humans getting access to electricity and/or air conditioning. Americans are actually using less energy per capita now than in 2000.
Contrary to what the article believes, we can support 7B people at the US's level of consumption without any major problems.
>>So what? Even if the founders are the same, they're still separate legal entities.
Did you read what I said? "Zenimax = Bethesda. Look at the founders of it, then look at the owners of Bethesda. They're the same."
Zenimax is Bethesda's umbrella corporation. Same people. It is incorrect to say that Bethesda and Id are sister companies as the result, when the people running Bethesda are in a position of power over Id.
>>I don't know why I'm responding to someone sitting at -1, but
Eh, I could karma whore if I wanted. All the political parties are the same! Keep your laws off my internet! (See? Instant +5.)
>>That is a completely false statement. If you're in a union, that unon has signed a contract with your employer spelling out what is and isn't a punishable offense, and which offenses are and aren't punishable by firing. If a union member gets caught stealing from the employer or smoking crack in the rest room, he's going to fired, with the union's blessing to boot.
Great.
Now try firing a teacher with tenure who fails his students every year, or, in this case, a police officer "who was just doing his job". Or does that count is "just not liking someone", as you put it?
>>Wasn't there a Windows95 bug that would 100% crash the OS after 46 days? And it took years to find this bug because usually the OS would crash much much earlier...
At the time, Microsoft recommended daily reboots to enterprise servers to avoid memory leaks.
But I have a screenshot somewhere with over 100 days of uptime on my Win95 box. Might have been post-patch though.
>>>>Look at the founders of it, then look at the owners of Bethesda. >>I don't usually do this, but you really need to go check wikipedia. Here's the link so you don't hurt yourself figuring out how google works: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZeniMax_Media >>Suffice it to say, you are confused and incorrect.
"ZeniMax Media was founded in 1999 by Bethesda Softworks founder Christopher Weaver and Robert A. Altman"
Pazow.
How does it feel to get owned by your own reference?
I know Marxism and Communism probably than what you think you know yourself.
It takes on various aspects and forms depending on the country it finds itself in, like a polymorphic virus. Things like the Free Mumia campaign are classic Communist smokescreen tactics, even though it may confuse people such as you who don't see the direct connection between the one and the other.
>>I suggest reading @OccupyWallSt
I'm familiar with OWS, having various friend involved in the movement.
Just as an FYI, things like drum circles are classic hippie nonsense, and are linked to off that Twitter feed right now.
>>if the Pope had this sort of data way back, all you Protestant apostates could have been burned at the stake, along with that wench, Joan of Arc.
Sorry, I hate feeding trolls, but I'm boggling at this statement.
You honestly are accusing the Catholic church of burning one of their patron saints at the stake? The English very explicitly didn't allow Jean D'Arc to appeal to the Pope, as they were running a show trial (threatening the English churchmen with death if they failed to burn her).
>>Minor detail: id Software, as well as Bethesda Softworks, is owned by Zenimax Media. In other words, id and Bethesda are sister companies.
Zenimax = Bethesda. Look at the founders of it, then look at the owners of Bethesda. They're the same.
Re:Has anyone actually made any worthwhile with th
on
Doom 3 Source Released
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>>I'm curious because the tech is there. Are there any fun open source games?
People still play Quake 1 / Quakeworld with updated clients that have better textures, bloom, lighting, particle effects etc. Look up FTEQuake some time (http://www.fteqw.com/), and come to the weekly game sessions (http://www.attackersgored.com/?page_id=56)
>>Unfortunately the worst penalty the cop is likely to face is either a paid vacation known as "administrative leave" or maybe the loss of his job. This is a serious problem.
The problem is that unions make it very difficult to fire people that really deserve firing. So they can act with impunity, spraying military-grade pepper spray on dirty hippies without worrying about losing their jobs.
The irony is that the hippie Marxist OWS folk are presumably protesting FOR stronger unions, which then turns around and gets them sprayed in the face.
>>No, they're the 1% of dedicated Marxists in America.
Precisely. Which is why I hate the "99%" rhetoric so much. Who are they to say that they speak for me?
Besides, while I sympathize with the objection to special benefits and tax breaks for corporations, a lot of their beliefs are incoherent. For example - since they're all dirty hippie Marxists, they're presumably going to be pro-union, which leads to the problem of unfireable police officers, which leads to the problem of police officers casually dusting OWS folk with military-grade pepper spray...
Slashdot Mirror
>>I would certainly use it, but Californians in general have a strange love for driving themselves everywhere.
As a Californian that has to drive from Northern California to Southern California once or twice a month, I can state with certainty that we do not have a strange love for driving through *LA*.
I voted for the measure, simply because I hate LA traffic so badly.
That said, we really need to figure out ways to make the building cheaper. Streamlining various bits of legislation and legal issues would probably be the best bet.
>>A simple lottery would be better.
And look how well that worked out for the Athenians...
>>For years we have been joking that 1984 is not a guide
A better guide is "Dark Rivers of the Heart" by Dean Koontz, which basically this is. A data aggregation system run by the feds that taps into a variety of databases (credit, phone records, etc.) and can pull up data on you in a flash. It also gets some digs in on Asset Forfeiture (which is one of the biggest unconstitutional trends going in America today) as well as how powerless people can feel against an omniscient government.
It's actually a pretty enjoyable book, too.
>>If you look at the current Republican crop of presidential contenders their one main thing in common is their rejection of facts.
Jon Huntsman?
Oh, you mean *contenders*.
>>NOOOO!!! I demand to be able to risk my children's lives due to my personal ignorance and FUD over retardation inducing vaccinations!!!
What if you know what the risks are, and still don't want your kid to be vaccinated? The CDC reports seizure risk at around 1 in 14,000 for DTaP (http://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vac-gen/side-effects.htm#dtap), but I've had two friends (of a relatively small sample set) had their kids go into seizure after the vaccine, and the incidents weren't reported to VAERS. So there's a known risk, and a possible systemic bias in the reporting of the adverse affects. One of the kids reportedly turned autistic after the seizure, too. (Normal before, autistic afterward.)
Would I vaccinate my hypothetical child? Yes. Would I want to be forced into it? No.
"i get surprisingly good images from a stupid little canon powershot"
+1.
I went hiking in Yosemite with a friend a couple months back. I had my superzoom powershot, he had his four-digit DSLR. We ended up taking a lot of similar shots (hey, a bird!) and the images were pretty comparable. Some instances the powershot looked better. He was obviously much better at the macro / shallow depth of field shots. That said, it was possible for me to take a photograph of a waterfall while scrambling on hands and knees up a cliffside, but it was impossible for him to maneuver the DSLR into place safely.
I'm not saying DSLRs are bad or anything, but a lot of the things that you need to take good photos (exposure and shutter control, white balance, ISO control, etc.) can be done in most mid-grade P&S cameras. I've taken some really nice photos with my powershots, that I'd have otherwise missed since I wouldn't have been able to carry a DSLR around in my pocket.
>>I think we should power our society by burning chiropractors.
Not all chiropractors are crazy nuts. My guy doesn't believe it causes cancer or whatever, and he did an amazing job fixing my back.
What, would you prefer I be on painkillers the rest of my life and unable to walk?
>>it's still way more dangerous than hydro electric, geothermal, solar, etc. etc. But it was the best of a bad set of options.
It's safer than hydro and solar. I don't know how dangerous geothermal is.
Or do you think people never fall off roofs during solar installations?
Nuclear is safe, cheap, and produces no CO2.
>>I would *love* to be able to produce 5kWh per day!
That's actually a pretty modest system. You could probably build it out for $6k or so, if my really rough back of the envelope estimate is accurate.
My system produces 30kWh/day at peak during summer, and around half that these days.
>>There are many multiple-source inverter systems available that work in conjunction with (or function as) an automated transfer switch for when utility power is unavailable, though such an inverter does add to the total cost to the system. A battery system is not necessary, although a small battery system for limited power at night isn't really all that expensive, compared with total system cost.
Well, if you have blackouts at night, you need batteries. =)
Adding a battery to cover 100% of my energy needs at night worked out to about $10k or so, but that was for a completely off-the-grid system... if you only need a little battery backup for occasional blackouts, you can probably pay a lot less.
>>The massive problem is the long term cost of decommissioning. I was at primary school when they started decommissioning my local nuclear plant. I'll be dead by the time they've finished.....
That's one hell of a burden we are placing on our grand children.....
Which is why you typically pay decommissioning fees up front as part of the cost of energy from the power plant.
I've been paying to decommission Diablo Canyon for years, and it's still happily operational
>>I know if I could afford it, I would be installing a grid-connected system that could keep us going on emergency power (enough for a little heat, water and communication systems) for extended periods, even if we can't generate 100% of our needs, the peace of mind that would bring is priceless.
Grid tied systems will typically shut down if they detect a failure in the grid. If you want a battery backup, they add a tremendous cost to the system to handle the very occasional power outages. Just get a UPS. =)
>>In areas with a lot of sun, if you can get a majority of buildings to install solar heating/cooling/lighting and photovoltaic, and some local storage, you can make a big dent in the energy requirements (from coal) in a particular region.
Indeed. In my neck of California, top tier power rates are so high that solar panels have been sprouting on rooftops every where you look. Even with the decrease in federal and state subsidies, the excessively high power rates (up to 50c/kWh or so) are driving very strong demand for solar. And people generally aren't doing anything with their roofs anyway, so the land-use issue is a moot point.
>>It turns out 1GW of coal power uses 13500 acre-ft of water (4.4billion gal) per year, vs the 600 acre-feet for the solar project.
Yeah, the article is complete rubbish. 600 acre-feet sounds like a lot, except it's not. The Colorado river alone supplies 7.5 million acre-feet a year.
The guy that wrote the article had no clue as to the relative value of these "numbers" things, or that things like water are indeed "renewable" resources as well.
You think he could figure out for himself why certain things might be a concern, but other things not, but he just sort of throws everything against the wall to see what sticks. He also assumes that the growth in human energy consumption is some law of nature, and exponential and compounding, when in reality it simply has to do with more humans getting access to electricity and/or air conditioning. Americans are actually using less energy per capita now than in 2000.
Contrary to what the article believes, we can support 7B people at the US's level of consumption without any major problems.
>>Calm down. The first link which was titled "how not to get heatstroke"
Note that while it is legal in the United States to claim that water can be used to treat dehydration and heatstroke, it may become illegal to do so in the EU:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/8897662/EU-bans-claim-that-water-can-prevent-dehydration.html
Obviously, the high cost of the app was ensuring compliance with all international laws regarding drinking water.
>>So what? Even if the founders are the same, they're still separate legal entities.
Did you read what I said? "Zenimax = Bethesda. Look at the founders of it, then look at the owners of Bethesda. They're the same."
Zenimax is Bethesda's umbrella corporation. Same people. It is incorrect to say that Bethesda and Id are sister companies as the result, when the people running Bethesda are in a position of power over Id.
>>I don't know why I'm responding to someone sitting at -1, but
Eh, I could karma whore if I wanted. All the political parties are the same! Keep your laws off my internet! (See? Instant +5.)
>>That is a completely false statement. If you're in a union, that unon has signed a contract with your employer spelling out what is and isn't a punishable offense, and which offenses are and aren't punishable by firing. If a union member gets caught stealing from the employer or smoking crack in the rest room, he's going to fired, with the union's blessing to boot.
Great.
Now try firing a teacher with tenure who fails his students every year, or, in this case, a police officer "who was just doing his job". Or does that count is "just not liking someone", as you put it?
>>Wasn't there a Windows95 bug that would 100% crash the OS after 46 days? And it took years to find this bug because usually the OS would crash much much earlier...
At the time, Microsoft recommended daily reboots to enterprise servers to avoid memory leaks.
But I have a screenshot somewhere with over 100 days of uptime on my Win95 box. Might have been post-patch though.
>>>>Look at the founders of it, then look at the owners of Bethesda.
>>I don't usually do this, but you really need to go check wikipedia. Here's the link so you don't hurt yourself figuring out how google works: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZeniMax_Media
>>Suffice it to say, you are confused and incorrect.
"ZeniMax Media was founded in 1999 by Bethesda Softworks founder Christopher Weaver and Robert A. Altman"
Pazow.
How does it feel to get owned by your own reference?
I know Marxism and Communism probably than what you think you know yourself.
It takes on various aspects and forms depending on the country it finds itself in, like a polymorphic virus. Things like the Free Mumia campaign are classic Communist smokescreen tactics, even though it may confuse people such as you who don't see the direct connection between the one and the other.
>>I suggest reading @OccupyWallSt
I'm familiar with OWS, having various friend involved in the movement.
Just as an FYI, things like drum circles are classic hippie nonsense, and are linked to off that Twitter feed right now.
>>if the Pope had this sort of data way back, all you Protestant apostates could have been burned at the stake, along with that wench, Joan of Arc.
Sorry, I hate feeding trolls, but I'm boggling at this statement.
You honestly are accusing the Catholic church of burning one of their patron saints at the stake? The English very explicitly didn't allow Jean D'Arc to appeal to the Pope, as they were running a show trial (threatening the English churchmen with death if they failed to burn her).
>>Minor detail: id Software, as well as Bethesda Softworks, is owned by Zenimax Media. In other words, id and Bethesda are sister companies.
Zenimax = Bethesda. Look at the founders of it, then look at the owners of Bethesda. They're the same.
>>I'm curious because the tech is there. Are there any fun open source games?
People still play Quake 1 / Quakeworld with updated clients that have better textures, bloom, lighting, particle effects etc. Look up FTEQuake some time (http://www.fteqw.com/), and come to the weekly game sessions (http://www.attackersgored.com/?page_id=56)
No, but the rest of it does, though.
Yes, obviously... my calling for Pike to be fired certainly means that I "identify" with him, you fucking moron.
There's certainly NO connection between the difficulty of firing union workers and their attitudes toward work, is there?
>>Unfortunately the worst penalty the cop is likely to face is either a paid vacation known as "administrative leave" or maybe the loss of his job. This is a serious problem.
The problem is that unions make it very difficult to fire people that really deserve firing. So they can act with impunity, spraying military-grade pepper spray on dirty hippies without worrying about losing their jobs.
The irony is that the hippie Marxist OWS folk are presumably protesting FOR stronger unions, which then turns around and gets them sprayed in the face.
>>No, they're the 1% of dedicated Marxists in America.
Precisely. Which is why I hate the "99%" rhetoric so much. Who are they to say that they speak for me?
Besides, while I sympathize with the objection to special benefits and tax breaks for corporations, a lot of their beliefs are incoherent. For example - since they're all dirty hippie Marxists, they're presumably going to be pro-union, which leads to the problem of unfireable police officers, which leads to the problem of police officers casually dusting OWS folk with military-grade pepper spray...