I'm not buying it, how could you possibly screwup a USB charger to the point where it would be lethal? I mean the cables aren't generally thick enough to carry enough 220V current to kill someone before they melt and 5.5V DC certainly isn't going to kill someone.
It only takes 100mA - 200mA of current to kill someone, and every USB cable is designed to carry at least 500mA since the USB spec says that USB hosts can supply up to 500mA of current (and many plug-in chargers exceed that). So it's certainly feasible that a USB cable can carry enough current to kill someone. It's not the voltage the determines the size of the conductor, it's the current.
The USB cable wires may not have sufficient insulation to protect against 220VAC (peak voltage is higher, around 310V if I remember correctly), but that's the point -- 220VAC is not supposed to be supplied to a USB device. But even if it's not certified for the voltage it seems that the individual conductor insulation combined with the plastic outer sleeve of the USB cable would seem to provide at least enough isolation, I think most plastics used for insulation have around 500 - 1000V/mil (1/1000th of an inch) of breakdown voltage.
I'm surprised that a phone doesn't have at least 220VAC of isolation between the USB power and the phone case. Is this typical in phones?
$60k for someone straight out of school is goddamn ridiculous - H1B competition or not. Talk about a sense of fucking entitlement.
You just got out of school. You are on the Bottom. not the middle, not the top, the Bottom. Thats where you start. And the bottom is a lot lower than $60k.
Really?
In 1990, my first job out of school (bachelor's degree) job paid $35K/year (this was a midsized midwestern city, not a major IT market), which is $62K in today's dollars. Has starting pay degraded so much that current grads expect less than that?
His state/province has to subsidize farming to an extent because he and other farmers in his state/province has to compete on price with producers in other states/provinces and in other countries that are subsidizing farming to a similar extent. Besides, it's in the tax collection body's interest to have a uniform mail service to reach households that owe tax.
If the goal is to help farmers, why not provide subsidies direct to farmers instead of indirect rural subsidies that support others that want high cost rural infrastructure but don't want to pay the high costs? Oh wait, we do.
Because H1Bs are limited, the process is a pain in the butt, and often you have to deal with a language or cultural barrier. They may have "years of experience", but probably not in the US. Often, they find their degree worthless and get a masters or PhD in the US before seeking employment. Some of the best co-workers I've ever had have been H1Bs. Some of the worst, as well.:)
That sounds like a good argument for *not* expanding the H1B program and keeping low limits on the number of H1B workers. If the program is expanded and the only impediment to hiring an H1B interview is paying a few thousand dollars in application fees and relocation costs, then the H1B worker becomes more attractive than the college grad with no experience. It's not hard to find H1B's that have had a few years of experience working on outsourced projects from American companies and they already speak excellent English and have few cultural problems.
Who do you think grows the food sold in the market 3 blocks from your apartment? Why should they miss out on mail and Internet access just because they grow the food that you eat? And no, children don't choose their parents' lifestyle.
Why doesn't he pay for his expensive rural internet the same way he pays for the $200,000 tractor he uses to plow the fields and the $400,000 combine he uses to harvest his grain - build it into the price of the food he sells? Why pick and choose certain parts of the farmer's lifestyle to subsidize and leave him on the hook for others?
You are part of the reason home delivery is so expensive. If you don't want to drive miles to a mailbox cluster, the USPS doesn't want to drive those miles to deliver a bulk mail envelope that only earned them 25 cents.
So you are saying that we could all be better off (more comfortable, less junk mai) if the USPS just increased prices? Paying 2x the current amount isn't going to stop anyone from sending you important mail, but it COULD stop bulk mail. I often have to dump 95% of my mail right at the door, and I bet I have already lost *some* important mail that was hidden between some junk mail I tossed.
Since the USPS counts on bulk mail for the bulk (no pun intended) of its revenue, I think that if prices were raised to the point where bulk mail was stopped, the USPS would have to raise rates further to the point where its prices are the same as UPS and Fedex and it costs $12 to send a letter across the country. I don't think that's USPS's intention, and while many people wouldn't mind since they do so much business electronically, many others don't want to pay a $12/month service fee for paper billing or pay $12 anytime they need to get a document mailed to them.
Different is not better. I live in a city in a nice apartment, a 2 minute walk to the train that takes me to work (2 or 3 days/week I make the 30 minute bike ride to work), a thousand acre park nearby where I can do my morning runs and attend concerts and other events throughout the year, a grocery store 3 blocks away, over a dozen bars and restaurants within a 15 minute walk from home, a real butcher and baker within a 10 minute walk. I have a car, but only use it on weekends and since I only fill up the tank once a month or less, I don't care if gas is $3/gallon or $6/gallon.
I'd just like to point out that both of those items in bold are heavily subsidized. People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
But they are subsidized by the people that live and work in the city, as opposed to being subsidized by people outside of the city. (you could talk about federal transit subsidies, but roads also receive federal dollars (and aren't nearly covered by gas taxes), so I think that's a wash).
We don't need or want more lawyers or politicians. We want more scientists and engineers. It probably holds my salary down in the short-term, but it keeps the US competitive and makes my relatively high salary more sustainable in the long term. $60k right out of school is a very comfortable wage.
But why would a company pay you $60K right out of school when they can hire an H1B worker with years of experience for about the same wage?
How does this mirror compare to installing full spectrum lamps to light up the same 2000 sq ft area? Lights could provide extended "days" during the winter months, and could be solar powered from the same mountaintop that houses the mirrors when the sun is out.
Those mail clusters would be vandalized pretty soon, if road signs are any indication. Too many idiots in this country. I see damage everywhere as I drive around - graffiti, bullet holes, destruction... Some rural roads are so empty that nothing stops a fool from acting as a fool. It's not as bad in Canada.
That's not a "typical" road sign in the USA. Mailbox clusters have already been standard in new housing developments for years and there isn't widespread vandalism or theft of mail. An unlocked mailbox at the end of your driveway isn't exactly immune to theft or vandalism.
Maybe you should help subsidize them because you want to buy meat, bread and gas. You don't think the farmers live in the city, do you? What about the oil refineries? Obviously, they drill and refine oil in your city specifically for you, and could not possibly be doing this in an area that is unattractive (except for the oil refineries).
Since the farmers don't give me meat, bread and vegetables for free they can charge me more for the products to pay for their cost of living rather than having it hiding in subsidies.
You strike me as one of those city hipsters that doesn't actually know what goes into making their life possible.
I spent several summers working on my Uncle's farm and know what it takes to grow food (including getting up at 4am to be there in time for milking). Fortunately I only had one summer of helping with the hog slaughter, he sent them away to slaughter after that... that was my least favorite part of working there.
But now when I drive to his farm I'm struck by the large numbers of isolated houses in what used to be farmland. And a lot of the family farms have been bought out by large corporate interests (who in turn sold the lucrative land to developers for housing) - there are a lot fewer farmers living on their own land as there used to be, many of the farmhands are living in the nearby town and commute to work. Most of my relatives have sold off their farms when it became harder and harder to make a living at it.
My oil is refined around 20 miles from where I live, not some far away rural area. My oil arrives (largely) by boat, not sure where it's drilled but I certainly don't think I should be subsidizing oil companies to maintain their rural well sites.
Nobody should subsidize anyone, IMO. Note that I said not a word about prices that USPS may charge for delivery to certain locations. I'm all for them charging more; that would give me a reason to review the deal with USPS.
So you wouldn't mind paying back the FCC universal service fund subsides that help deliver your phone and internet service?
However many people live outside of cities just because they need the space. For an example, look here. Can you install such an antenna in your backyard (that you don't have anyway?) Other people have other interests, and often their needs exceed what a standard city home, with a one-car garage, can offer. Where do you set up your machine shop? Where is your nanoparticle-emitting 3D printer installed? Where do you do your welding and plasma cutting? You can't seriously suggest that human interests must be constrained to a morning jog in a park and a bar in the evening. I don't even know where any bar can be found in this area, since I have no use of them. But I have a good list of metal warehouses, electronic parts suppliers, and know every Harbor Freight within 100 miles.
Even city dwellers manage to operate ham radios - VHF/UHF obviously has a lot of activity (and antennas are small and easy to disguise), but even HF is possible if you're creative, I've managed some good contacts with a 3 foot diameter magnetic loop, and I know people that set up a buddipole outside in a clear area with good results... take it to the beach for even better results. If you want to use a big antenna, then you can use a remote station either through a club, or rental. If I want to use a machine shop or 3D printer, rather than spending money building my own small shop, I can join a hackerspace and have access to far better equipment than I could afford on my own (along with instant access to others that are experienced at using the equipment and can help out when needed).
Different is not better. I live in a city in a nice apartment, a 2 minute walk to the train that takes me to work (2 or 3 days/week I make the 30 minute bike ride to work), a thousand acre park nearby where I can do my morning runs and attend concerts and other events throughout the year, a grocery store 3 blocks away, over a dozen bars and restaurants within a 15 minute walk from home, a real butcher and baker within a 10 minute walk. I have a car, but only use it on weekends and since I only fill up the tank once a month or less, I don't care if gas is $3/gallon or $6/gallon.
And a lot of us don't dream of living in an ant colony. Different people have different needs and want. Amazing how that works, isn't it?
Sure, I don't care if you want to live in a rural house 50 miles from the nearest town, just stop asking me to pay extra to have your mail delivered or provide your rural broadband.
But the guy on his bicycle who delivers mail on my street can stop at each mail box very quickly, doesn't even need to get off his bike. If he had to get off it, go through a gate and walk up the path of every house, it would take him a day to do a couple of streets.
Uses less petrol than me stopping my car on the way home from work, or making a special trip to check for mail on Saturdays.
But the truck that delivers mail to the USPS drop boxes along his route (so the cyclist doesn't have to carry 50 lbs of mail on his entire route) could just deliver the mail to the neighborhood mail clusters instead and the USPS wouldn't need the guy on the bike. Even if it costs you more money or fuel to check your mail at a central delivery point, the USPS doesn't care about that, they are trying to decrease *their* costs, not yours.
The USPS has to go to each address each day, to see if there's any mail to be picked up. Customers could conceivably go to a cluster only once every one or two weeks.Until you account for this asymmetry, your accounting is defective.
Were humans bred to live in sprawling 2000 square foot houses on 2 acre lots that are so far away from town that the only way to run errands is to drive a 3000 lb car (or 6000 lb SUV)?
That you are jealous of those who have earned a better life than you, is neither a good argument nor an indication of good character.
Different is not better. I live in a city in a nice apartment, a 2 minute walk to the train that takes me to work (2 or 3 days/week I make the 30 minute bike ride to work), a thousand acre park nearby where I can do my morning runs and attend concerts and other events throughout the year, a grocery store 3 blocks away, over a dozen bars and restaurants within a 15 minute walk from home, a real butcher and baker within a 10 minute walk. I have a car, but only use it on weekends and since I only fill up the tank once a month or less, I don't care if gas is $3/gallon or $6/gallon.
Trust me, I don't dream of a sprawling rural lifestyle where I need to drive 30 minutes to town to buy food when surprise guests stop by for dinner. Some people *do* want that lifestyle, but I don't see why I should subsidize them.
Break a hip getting your junk mail, hope you never get old.
Wouldn't you also risk breaking a hip while going out for groceries or running other errands that even elderly people do unless they are complete shut-ins? If it's only junk mail, then there's no need to get it every day. And if they are complete shut-ins that don't venture outside, whoever helps care for them can stop by and pick up their mail.
If you don't want to drive miles to a mailbox cluster, the USPS doesn't want to drive those miles to deliver a bulk mail envelope that only earned them 25 cents.
This is so obviously untrue. Math to the rescue. USPS requires one customer per mile. Let's say there are two, and the road (dead end) is 10 miles long. There are 20 customers. A carrier has to travel 20 miles to make all deliveries if he starts at the mile 0 (and let's posit that the USPS office is there too.)
I don't recall the USPS say they were wanted to increase efficiency for their customers, they said they want to cut costs. If the USPS can deliver mail to 20 customers with a single stop, then they save money.
Now, if the carrier doesn't deliver then every resident has to drive to the USPS office. Let's even disregard the waiting time and focus only on miles driven. The fist customer drives one mile (0.5 mile * 2.) The second customer drives 2 miles (1 mile * 2). The third customer drives 3 miles. An obvious arithmetic progression here (every next resident has to drive extra to his neighbor and back.)
Rumor says that the sum of an arithmetic progression is often found as n*(a1+an)/2. Since the a1 is 1 and an is 20, we suddenly learn that all residents have to drive 20*(1+20)/2 = 210 miles per day!!! Compare to 20 miles that the carrier has to drive. If we force residents to drive to their mailbox cluster (under those conditions, that are typical in rural areas) then it would generate a lot more pollution and wear of vehicles.
You're assuming random placement of mailbox clusters - in general they'd be placed along main highways where customers would likely already be driving to run errands, so there may be 0 extra miles. There would have to be a much more intensive study to see what the environmental cost is.
Of course there is one simple solution to that - let's outlaw rural homes and make everyone live in 100-storey skyscrapers; Gil the Arm visited one of such buildings, as I recall. Arcologies are very efficient this way. And who needs all that nature anyway?
Or you could charge extra for rural delivery to make up for the higher costs. If you want to live in a rural area, that's fine, but why should others subsidize your lifestyle? Some people *have* to live in rural areas (farmers, for example), so they can charge the city folk more to make up for their unsubsidized cost of living.
Humans are born and bred to live in caves of steel and eat yeast products. They don't need all that dusty and dirty nature.
Were humans bred to live in sprawling 2000 square foot houses on 2 acre lots that are so far away from town that the only way to run errands is to drive a 3000 lb car (or 6000 lb SUV)?
'The idea that somebody is going to walk down to their mailbox in Buffalo, New York, in the winter snow to get their mail is just crazy.'"
Oh the horror, the horror....
How do those people go to work or even go to the store for supplies if they can't venture outside in the snow to get the mail? I think most people would just stop by the mailbox cluster on their home from work or errands (even if only once a week), just as millions of people do now who live in newer subdivisions with clustered mailboxes.
I've, um, never really had a problem with a pretty trustworthy guy sticking stuff in my door. Did you have some kind of bad experience or something?
I used to have a dog that saw it as her duty to bring the mail from the door slot box to the kitchen floor near the 'fridge, she'd usually wait by the door and grab it as the mailman shoved it in (after barking a cheery hello to him). Aside from the slobber she did a good job and never chewed up the mail, though at times she got distracted by something else outside and the letters ended up behind the couch when she was barking out the window. She'd have been disappointed without her "job".
They could instead, go to MULTIPLE door-to-door deliveries per day.
Until the 1950's the USPS *did* do multiple residential deliveries per day. In the 80's, I worked at a business that had 2 deliveries/day and sometimes we could send a letter across town the same day - send it out in the morning pickup and the other business would receive it in the afternoon. (didn't always work out that way, so we still had to courier documents that had to be there the same day)
Carriers walked as many as 22 miles a day, carrying up to 50 pounds of mail at a time. They were instructed to deliver letters frequently and promptly — generally twice a day to homes and up to four times a day to businesses. The second residential delivery was discontinued on April 17, 1950, in most cities. Multiple deliveries to businesses were phased out over the next few decades as changing transportation patterns made most mail available for first-trip delivery. The weight limit of a carrier’s load was reduced to 35 pounds by the mid-1950s and remains the same today.
Without this "almost free" mail, another segment of the economy collapses. Print shops would disappear, for one.
Look at it this way: Advertisers hire people to create copy and design layout, which goes to print shops that buy ink and paper, then bulk send the result via a postal service to my home - where I retrieve the contents and promptly deposit them in the recycling bin.
But it doesn't end there! Then the waste management company comes to collect those, deliver them to paper mills that supply the print shops... Cue Elton John! It's the "Circle of Life"!
Somebody is gainfully employed at every stage of this pipeline, and it is no more or less absurd than any other form of socially connected human endeavour. Everything is social policy, like it or not. Wait on the mail? Only at an overall social cost which, like the beat of a butterfly wing, may be of inestimable consequence.
In urban areas, many of those the same businesses would survive and instead of just plastering my car with advertisement cards, they'll leave them on my front door, along with the take-out menus that are rubber-banded to the door handle. It would probably spawn new businesses to deliver those ads.
It's not a problem in apartments, where it is safe and easy to get down to the mailboxes. However where I live the distance between residences is about 0.5 mile, and if they create a mailbox cluster it would be about 3 miles away. Do you want to drive for 12 minutes to just get useless ads? If they go ahead with this method, I would be tempted to cancel mail service. Those who I deal with have email, and I can pay them electronically.
You are part of the reason home delivery is so expensive. If you don't want to drive miles to a mailbox cluster, the USPS doesn't want to drive those miles to deliver a bulk mail envelope that only earned them 25 cents.
We lived in an apartment complex--a gated apartment complex as if that meant the USPS letter carrier, UPS courier, FedEx courier, Cops, Firemen, Pizza Delivery guys (every pizza place within two miles), florists, etc., etc. didn't have the code. Well, anyway, the kids in the complex would take the delivered mail after each delivery and toss in the trash, take it home, put it in other boxes, etc., etc. A central delivery point doesn't work too well for us.
You should ask your apartment manager for a locked delivery point. I've never lived in an apartment without locked mailboxes (the USPS has a master key that opens the entire cabinet at once so they can quickly drop off the mail in each box).
So not only would they take a loss on selling the devices at well below cost, but they have ongoing support/warranty costs. Fulfilling an order has some non-zero cost, so that also has to be deducted from the price of the device as well. They could try selling them without warranty or with a very simple 30 day exchange warranty for defective products, but that could leave them with a PR problem when people run into problems with no way to resolve them and the blogs start filling up with complaints about how Microsoft sucks because they won't stand behind their products.
I really wouldn't be surprised if selling the device for $50 costs MS more than destroying the devices.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not buying it, how could you possibly screwup a USB charger to the point where it would be lethal? I mean the cables aren't generally thick enough to carry enough 220V current to kill someone before they melt and 5.5V DC certainly isn't going to kill someone.
It only takes 100mA - 200mA of current to kill someone, and every USB cable is designed to carry at least 500mA since the USB spec says that USB hosts can supply up to 500mA of current (and many plug-in chargers exceed that). So it's certainly feasible that a USB cable can carry enough current to kill someone. It's not the voltage the determines the size of the conductor, it's the current.
The USB cable wires may not have sufficient insulation to protect against 220VAC (peak voltage is higher, around 310V if I remember correctly), but that's the point -- 220VAC is not supposed to be supplied to a USB device. But even if it's not certified for the voltage it seems that the individual conductor insulation combined with the plastic outer sleeve of the USB cable would seem to provide at least enough isolation, I think most plastics used for insulation have around 500 - 1000V/mil (1/1000th of an inch) of breakdown voltage.
I'm surprised that a phone doesn't have at least 220VAC of isolation between the USB power and the phone case. Is this typical in phones?
$60k for someone straight out of school is goddamn ridiculous - H1B competition or not. Talk about a sense of fucking entitlement.
You just got out of school. You are on the Bottom. not the middle, not the top, the Bottom. Thats where you start. And the bottom is a lot lower than $60k.
Really?
In 1990, my first job out of school (bachelor's degree) job paid $35K/year (this was a midsized midwestern city, not a major IT market), which is $62K in today's dollars. Has starting pay degraded so much that current grads expect less than that?
His state/province has to subsidize farming to an extent because he and other farmers in his state/province has to compete on price with producers in other states/provinces and in other countries that are subsidizing farming to a similar extent. Besides, it's in the tax collection body's interest to have a uniform mail service to reach households that owe tax.
If the goal is to help farmers, why not provide subsidies direct to farmers instead of indirect rural subsidies that support others that want high cost rural infrastructure but don't want to pay the high costs? Oh wait, we do.
Really? A "troll" moderation? What did I say that amounts to trolling?
Because H1Bs are limited, the process is a pain in the butt, and often you have to deal with a language or cultural barrier. They may have "years of experience", but probably not in the US. Often, they find their degree worthless and get a masters or PhD in the US before seeking employment. Some of the best co-workers I've ever had have been H1Bs. Some of the worst, as well. :)
That sounds like a good argument for *not* expanding the H1B program and keeping low limits on the number of H1B workers. If the program is expanded and the only impediment to hiring an H1B interview is paying a few thousand dollars in application fees and relocation costs, then the H1B worker becomes more attractive than the college grad with no experience. It's not hard to find H1B's that have had a few years of experience working on outsourced projects from American companies and they already speak excellent English and have few cultural problems.
Who do you think grows the food sold in the market 3 blocks from your apartment? Why should they miss out on mail and Internet access just because they grow the food that you eat? And no, children don't choose their parents' lifestyle.
Why doesn't he pay for his expensive rural internet the same way he pays for the $200,000 tractor he uses to plow the fields and the $400,000 combine he uses to harvest his grain - build it into the price of the food he sells? Why pick and choose certain parts of the farmer's lifestyle to subsidize and leave him on the hook for others?
You are part of the reason home delivery is so expensive. If you don't want to drive miles to a mailbox cluster, the USPS doesn't want to drive those miles to deliver a bulk mail envelope that only earned them 25 cents.
So you are saying that we could all be better off (more comfortable, less junk mai) if the USPS just increased prices? Paying 2x the current amount isn't going to stop anyone from sending you important mail, but it COULD stop bulk mail. I often have to dump 95% of my mail right at the door, and I bet I have already lost *some* important mail that was hidden between some junk mail I tossed.
Since the USPS counts on bulk mail for the bulk (no pun intended) of its revenue, I think that if prices were raised to the point where bulk mail was stopped, the USPS would have to raise rates further to the point where its prices are the same as UPS and Fedex and it costs $12 to send a letter across the country. I don't think that's USPS's intention, and while many people wouldn't mind since they do so much business electronically, many others don't want to pay a $12/month service fee for paper billing or pay $12 anytime they need to get a document mailed to them.
I'd just like to point out that both of those items in bold are heavily subsidized. People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.
But they are subsidized by the people that live and work in the city, as opposed to being subsidized by people outside of the city. (you could talk about federal transit subsidies, but roads also receive federal dollars (and aren't nearly covered by gas taxes), so I think that's a wash).
We don't need or want more lawyers or politicians. We want more scientists and engineers. It probably holds my salary down in the short-term, but it keeps the US competitive and makes my relatively high salary more sustainable in the long term. $60k right out of school is a very comfortable wage.
But why would a company pay you $60K right out of school when they can hire an H1B worker with years of experience for about the same wage?
How does this mirror compare to installing full spectrum lamps to light up the same 2000 sq ft area? Lights could provide extended "days" during the winter months, and could be solar powered from the same mountaintop that houses the mirrors when the sun is out.
Yes, I can tell that it's Canada. (I lived there for a few years.) There is no damage.
Here is a road sign that is more typical for the USA:
http://www.istockphoto.com/stock-photo-9983225-vandalized-road-sign-many-bullet-holes.php
Those mail clusters would be vandalized pretty soon, if road signs are any indication. Too many idiots in this country. I see damage everywhere as I drive around - graffiti, bullet holes, destruction... Some rural roads are so empty that nothing stops a fool from acting as a fool. It's not as bad in Canada.
That's not a "typical" road sign in the USA. Mailbox clusters have already been standard in new housing developments for years and there isn't widespread vandalism or theft of mail. An unlocked mailbox at the end of your driveway isn't exactly immune to theft or vandalism.
Maybe you should help subsidize them because you want to buy meat, bread and gas. You don't think the farmers live in the city, do you? What about the oil refineries? Obviously, they drill and refine oil in your city specifically for you, and could not possibly be doing this in an area that is unattractive (except for the oil refineries).
Since the farmers don't give me meat, bread and vegetables for free they can charge me more for the products to pay for their cost of living rather than having it hiding in subsidies.
You strike me as one of those city hipsters that doesn't actually know what goes into making their life possible.
I spent several summers working on my Uncle's farm and know what it takes to grow food (including getting up at 4am to be there in time for milking). Fortunately I only had one summer of helping with the hog slaughter, he sent them away to slaughter after that... that was my least favorite part of working there.
But now when I drive to his farm I'm struck by the large numbers of isolated houses in what used to be farmland. And a lot of the family farms have been bought out by large corporate interests (who in turn sold the lucrative land to developers for housing) - there are a lot fewer farmers living on their own land as there used to be, many of the farmhands are living in the nearby town and commute to work. Most of my relatives have sold off their farms when it became harder and harder to make a living at it.
My oil is refined around 20 miles from where I live, not some far away rural area. My oil arrives (largely) by boat, not sure where it's drilled but I certainly don't think I should be subsidizing oil companies to maintain their rural well sites.
Nobody should subsidize anyone, IMO. Note that I said not a word about prices that USPS may charge for delivery to certain locations. I'm all for them charging more; that would give me a reason to review the deal with USPS.
So you wouldn't mind paying back the FCC universal service fund subsides that help deliver your phone and internet service?
However many people live outside of cities just because they need the space. For an example, look here. Can you install such an antenna in your backyard (that you don't have anyway?) Other people have other interests, and often their needs exceed what a standard city home, with a one-car garage, can offer. Where do you set up your machine shop? Where is your nanoparticle-emitting 3D printer installed? Where do you do your welding and plasma cutting? You can't seriously suggest that human interests must be constrained to a morning jog in a park and a bar in the evening. I don't even know where any bar can be found in this area, since I have no use of them. But I have a good list of metal warehouses, electronic parts suppliers, and know every Harbor Freight within 100 miles.
Even city dwellers manage to operate ham radios - VHF/UHF obviously has a lot of activity (and antennas are small and easy to disguise), but even HF is possible if you're creative, I've managed some good contacts with a 3 foot diameter magnetic loop, and I know people that set up a buddipole outside in a clear area with good results... take it to the beach for even better results. If you want to use a big antenna, then you can use a remote station either through a club, or rental. If I want to use a machine shop or 3D printer, rather than spending money building my own small shop, I can join a hackerspace and have access to far better equipment than I could afford on my own (along with instant access to others that are experienced at using the equipment and can help out when needed).
Different is not better. I live in a city in a nice apartment, a 2 minute walk to the train that takes me to work (2 or 3 days/week I make the 30 minute bike ride to work), a thousand acre park nearby where I can do my morning runs and attend concerts and other events throughout the year, a grocery store 3 blocks away, over a dozen bars and restaurants within a 15 minute walk from home, a real butcher and baker within a 10 minute walk. I have a car, but only use it on weekends and since I only fill up the tank once a month or less, I don't care if gas is $3/gallon or $6/gallon.
And a lot of us don't dream of living in an ant colony. Different people have different needs and want. Amazing how that works, isn't it?
Sure, I don't care if you want to live in a rural house 50 miles from the nearest town, just stop asking me to pay extra to have your mail delivered or provide your rural broadband.
But the guy on his bicycle who delivers mail on my street can stop at each mail box very quickly, doesn't even need to get off his bike.
If he had to get off it, go through a gate and walk up the path of every house, it would take him a day to do a couple of streets.
Uses less petrol than me stopping my car on the way home from work, or making a special trip to check for mail on Saturdays.
But the truck that delivers mail to the USPS drop boxes along his route (so the cyclist doesn't have to carry 50 lbs of mail on his entire route) could just deliver the mail to the neighborhood mail clusters instead and the USPS wouldn't need the guy on the bike. Even if it costs you more money or fuel to check your mail at a central delivery point, the USPS doesn't care about that, they are trying to decrease *their* costs, not yours.
The USPS has to go to each address each day, to see if there's any mail to be picked up. Customers could conceivably go to a cluster only once every one or two weeks.Until you account for this asymmetry, your accounting is defective.
That you are jealous of those who have earned a better life than you, is neither a good argument nor an indication of good character.
Different is not better. I live in a city in a nice apartment, a 2 minute walk to the train that takes me to work (2 or 3 days/week I make the 30 minute bike ride to work), a thousand acre park nearby where I can do my morning runs and attend concerts and other events throughout the year, a grocery store 3 blocks away, over a dozen bars and restaurants within a 15 minute walk from home, a real butcher and baker within a 10 minute walk. I have a car, but only use it on weekends and since I only fill up the tank once a month or less, I don't care if gas is $3/gallon or $6/gallon.
Trust me, I don't dream of a sprawling rural lifestyle where I need to drive 30 minutes to town to buy food when surprise guests stop by for dinner. Some people *do* want that lifestyle, but I don't see why I should subsidize them.
Break a hip getting your junk mail, hope you never get old.
Wouldn't you also risk breaking a hip while going out for groceries or running other errands that even elderly people do unless they are complete shut-ins? If it's only junk mail, then there's no need to get it every day. And if they are complete shut-ins that don't venture outside, whoever helps care for them can stop by and pick up their mail.
If you don't want to drive miles to a mailbox cluster, the USPS doesn't want to drive those miles to deliver a bulk mail envelope that only earned them 25 cents.
This is so obviously untrue. Math to the rescue. USPS requires one customer per mile. Let's say there are two, and the road (dead end) is 10 miles long. There are 20 customers. A carrier has to travel 20 miles to make all deliveries if he starts at the mile 0 (and let's posit that the USPS office is there too.)
I don't recall the USPS say they were wanted to increase efficiency for their customers, they said they want to cut costs. If the USPS can deliver mail to 20 customers with a single stop, then they save money.
Now, if the carrier doesn't deliver then every resident has to drive to the USPS office. Let's even disregard the waiting time and focus only on miles driven. The fist customer drives one mile (0.5 mile * 2.) The second customer drives 2 miles (1 mile * 2). The third customer drives 3 miles. An obvious arithmetic progression here (every next resident has to drive extra to his neighbor and back.)
Rumor says that the sum of an arithmetic progression is often found as n*(a1+an)/2. Since the a1 is 1 and an is 20, we suddenly learn that all residents have to drive 20*(1+20)/2 = 210 miles per day!!! Compare to 20 miles that the carrier has to drive. If we force residents to drive to their mailbox cluster (under those conditions, that are typical in rural areas) then it would generate a lot more pollution and wear of vehicles.
You're assuming random placement of mailbox clusters - in general they'd be placed along main highways where customers would likely already be driving to run errands, so there may be 0 extra miles. There would have to be a much more intensive study to see what the environmental cost is.
Of course there is one simple solution to that - let's outlaw rural homes and make everyone live in 100-storey skyscrapers; Gil the Arm visited one of such buildings, as I recall. Arcologies are very efficient this way. And who needs all that nature anyway?
Or you could charge extra for rural delivery to make up for the higher costs. If you want to live in a rural area, that's fine, but why should others subsidize your lifestyle? Some people *have* to live in rural areas (farmers, for example), so they can charge the city folk more to make up for their unsubsidized cost of living.
Humans are born and bred to live in caves of steel and eat yeast products. They don't need all that dusty and dirty nature.
Were humans bred to live in sprawling 2000 square foot houses on 2 acre lots that are so far away from town that the only way to run errands is to drive a 3000 lb car (or 6000 lb SUV)?
'The idea that somebody is going to walk down to their mailbox in Buffalo, New York, in the winter snow to get their mail is just crazy.'"
Oh the horror, the horror....
How do those people go to work or even go to the store for supplies if they can't venture outside in the snow to get the mail? I think most people would just stop by the mailbox cluster on their home from work or errands (even if only once a week), just as millions of people do now who live in newer subdivisions with clustered mailboxes.
I've, um, never really had a problem with a pretty trustworthy guy sticking stuff in my door. Did you have some kind of bad experience or something?
I used to have a dog that saw it as her duty to bring the mail from the door slot box to the kitchen floor near the 'fridge, she'd usually wait by the door and grab it as the mailman shoved it in (after barking a cheery hello to him). Aside from the slobber she did a good job and never chewed up the mail, though at times she got distracted by something else outside and the letters ended up behind the couch when she was barking out the window. She'd have been disappointed without her "job".
How sad.
They could instead, go to MULTIPLE door-to-door deliveries per day.
Until the 1950's the USPS *did* do multiple residential deliveries per day. In the 80's, I worked at a business that had 2 deliveries/day and sometimes we could send a letter across town the same day - send it out in the morning pickup and the other business would receive it in the afternoon. (didn't always work out that way, so we still had to courier documents that had to be there the same day)
http://about.usps.com/publications/pub100/pub100_018.htm
Carriers walked as many as 22 miles a day, carrying up to 50 pounds of mail at a time. They were instructed to deliver letters frequently and promptly — generally twice a day to homes and up to four times a day to businesses. The second residential delivery was discontinued on April 17, 1950, in most cities. Multiple deliveries to businesses were phased out over the next few decades as changing transportation patterns made most mail available for first-trip delivery. The weight limit of a carrier’s load was reduced to 35 pounds by the mid-1950s and remains the same today.
Without this "almost free" mail, another segment of the economy collapses. Print shops would disappear, for one.
Look at it this way: Advertisers hire people to create copy and design layout, which goes to print shops that buy ink and paper, then bulk send the result via a postal service to my home - where I retrieve the contents and promptly deposit them in the recycling bin.
But it doesn't end there! Then the waste management company comes to collect those, deliver them to paper mills that supply the print shops... Cue Elton John! It's the "Circle of Life"!
Somebody is gainfully employed at every stage of this pipeline, and it is no more or less absurd than any other form of socially connected human endeavour. Everything is social policy, like it or not. Wait on the mail? Only at an overall social cost which, like the beat of a butterfly wing, may be of inestimable consequence.
In urban areas, many of those the same businesses would survive and instead of just plastering my car with advertisement cards, they'll leave them on my front door, along with the take-out menus that are rubber-banded to the door handle. It would probably spawn new businesses to deliver those ads.
It's not a problem in apartments, where it is safe and easy to get down to the mailboxes. However where I live the distance between residences is about 0.5 mile, and if they create a mailbox cluster it would be about 3 miles away. Do you want to drive for 12 minutes to just get useless ads? If they go ahead with this method, I would be tempted to cancel mail service. Those who I deal with have email, and I can pay them electronically.
You are part of the reason home delivery is so expensive. If you don't want to drive miles to a mailbox cluster, the USPS doesn't want to drive those miles to deliver a bulk mail envelope that only earned them 25 cents.
We lived in an apartment complex--a gated apartment complex as if that meant the USPS letter carrier, UPS courier, FedEx courier, Cops, Firemen, Pizza Delivery guys (every pizza place within two miles), florists, etc., etc. didn't have the code. Well, anyway, the kids in the complex would take the delivered mail after each delivery and toss in the trash, take it home, put it in other boxes, etc., etc. A central delivery point doesn't work too well for us.
You should ask your apartment manager for a locked delivery point. I've never lived in an apartment without locked mailboxes (the USPS has a master key that opens the entire cabinet at once so they can quickly drop off the mail in each box).
So not only would they take a loss on selling the devices at well below cost, but they have ongoing support/warranty costs. Fulfilling an order has some non-zero cost, so that also has to be deducted from the price of the device as well. They could try selling them without warranty or with a very simple 30 day exchange warranty for defective products, but that could leave them with a PR problem when people run into problems with no way to resolve them and the blogs start filling up with complaints about how Microsoft sucks because they won't stand behind their products.
I really wouldn't be surprised if selling the device for $50 costs MS more than destroying the devices.