I know, different legal systems, but I found this part funny:
The man has been arrested again in his cell today, now for involvement in the illicit online trade and evoking murder.
I'm picturing the cops busting him in his cell like how police in the USA often bust people in their houses on COPS or similar shows. I understand it's probably closer to what we know of as 'booking', IE informing him of the charges against him, updating jail records to show that he's now in for much more serious crimes, etc...
Though I wonder how much he had to do with the contract murder. My sick fascination makes me wonder who they wanted killed, and why.
Very true. As a moderate libertarian myself, my reaction to this is mostly a shrug. You have to be very smart in order to avoid getting caught, to the point that if you're that smart being legitimate is actually higher profit for less work. This is actually the way it *should* be, because it encourages people to be law abiding.
The point of *simpler* regulation, as opposed to 'no regulation'(which would be anarchy, not libertarian) is to make it so that dumber people can understand it and stay within the rules(for the most part).
This can be complicated. Off the top of my head, the EPA has vast powers to force cleanup, and funding in the form of the superfund. Of course, the superfund was mostly intended as a 'last ditch' cleanup program for when the business was or going to be out of business before finishing cleanup, sometimes for chemicals that were previously considered safe.
Somewhat paranoid, but I wonder if some of the tanks weren't actually that of the company that ended up doing the cleanup, or whether they were truly double-dipping or if hte government was essentially paying the deductible(IE cleanup costs $2M, insurance paid ~$1M, government another $1M).
Going by the settlements, I figure some fraud happened, just not as much as initially thought.
What about book publishers? What about car manufacturers? What about shoe manufacturers?
All physical products where, barring certain safety issues, are the consumer's problem once the warranty expires. Not so for digitally delivered software.
Also, there's a reason I called it 'Game Theory'. It's not proved or disproved, it's just a theory in a rather specific area.
By my figuring at one point nearly 1% of the adult population had a pilot's license. That's not especially esoteric. Expensive, I'll give you, but so isn't many other hobbies.
While copyrighted materials might not be the most fungible goods(able to substitute for each other), as a simple example there's dozens of tower games out there, hundreds of first person shooters, etc...
As such, while my boycott of EA means that I'm not playing Mass Effect anytime soon, there are plenty of other games to occupy my time.
All the pro-DRM people always seem to point to Gamestop as their bugbear. Please, there are legitimate reasons to want to resell a game or regift a game or trade a game, without having Gamestop involved.
Certainly, though I think you mean *methods* to resell a game without having gamestop involved. I remember getting some from garage sales. The point I'll make though is that while you can sell for a higher price/buy for a lower price if you do it yourself, whether through craigslist or ebay, that involves work, work that it seems a good number of people don't want to do.
And for indies and old games, GOG still sells cheaper than Steam and provides only DRM free games.
And doesn't disprove the model, because I believe that while GOG doesn't put DRM on their games, neither do they allow trading of games, so the purchased game remains on your account.
Consider that I wanted to buy a game for my wife, but that game was no longer offered for sale because original company went out of business and was sold. Under the no-resale model, I'm SOL.
Under a no-resale model there's incentive for whoever ends up with the rights to the game(since it's a complete package it's difficult to seperate out the IP to make the game unsellable) to market it. Also, a company that owns a number of still selling games is a bit like an author with a dozen older books sending in revenue - it might not make him rich, but it's enough that he can survive a few flops.
Another point is that, as I mentioned, there are positive benefits. I never said that there wouldn't be negatives. Whether the net effect is positive or negative for the end consumer depends on their consumption style. Whether it's a net positive or net negative depends on how you rate everything.
I found a related study(or maybe just the same study and I'm remembering a different spin). It's here
Sometimes they do. Their vaunted cheap games tend to be indie games or very old games.
And I play the hell out of them.;)
Furthermore, exceptions to the rule do not disprove an observation based on *averages*. Prices are set by Bethesda. I purchased Skyrim for ~$20 during the christmas sale.
I never denied that exceptions would exist. EA sucking, for example.
But publishers don't lower the initial game price from the goodness of their hearts. New releases on Steam still cost (typically) 50 Euros, that has not changed compared to pre-Steam times. In short, publishers try to charge as much as the market will tolerate and pocket the extra profit.
Console titles still tend towards more expensive, at least initially. The initial offer prices are often forced on them because they're forced to match the store price/MSRP. I believe that the big game stores like Gamestop take a higher initial bite than places like steam, plus have rules like 'You can't sell it for cheaper online if it's going to be in our stores!'.
New console games are going for $60-70 today, computer games are closer to $40-50, even less if you take advantage of the many specials.
I remember reading an analysis a while back that actually does a bit of economic/game theory on this, and he found that forbidding resale actually has positive benefits for the *consumer*. Part of his analysis was looking at prices between console games, resellable computer games, and games bought via services like Steam. More specifically, he looked at games with online-playing modes that require servers.
What he found is that with resellable games, gaming companies typically only got that 'first bite' and continued play was essentially free through quite a number of customers. Remember that places like gamestop will buy the old games for a song, and sell them for almost as much as a new game.
With games that can't be resold they're able to price the initial game lower, and keep the profit flowing in. It removes places like gamestop from the equation(so they hate it, of course). Consider that I can buy many year old initially $60 games from steam for like $10. Because the game is still being sold, there's still incentive to fix/patch/expand the game.
Roughly speaking, the results were that new game consumers don't pay any more(the new game is slightly cheaper, on average, by about the same amount as what they'd be able to sell it to gamestop for), used game consumers don't pay more, and the studios get more money vs resellers, increasing their profits and encouraging more/bigger games.
Unfortunate for humans on planet earth we require fresh water to live.
How fortunate we are that there are natural distillation processes that returns water to the fresh state we require to live. The condensation stage is generally known as 'rain'. That 2.5% is constantly refreshing itself via various processes. The ocean may not be immediately useful, but it's still part of the system.
Though I found reading about the deep disposal wells interesting.
The Ocean is part of the 'water supply system'; there's a lot of evaporation in the uses I mentioned. When you look at those systems it's an even tinier drop in the bucket.
You know, areas that are also doing other things to restrict water usage.
And you ignore that I then delve a bit deeper - suggesting alternative sources, extra fees, etc... Water companies don't have to sell to frackers if they need the water otherwise. But in reality their usage is small enough to not really matter.
Yes, digging up and replacing pipes is expensive, but it's not always the only solution, I've read about some neat sleeving techniques, various sealants, etc...
Use the frackers as an opportunity. Charge them enough for their water that you can afford to fix enough leaks and such that you'll save more than the water they bought in reduced leakage over the next couple years.
10M gallons is a lot of water, isn't it? 97B is unimaginable, isn't it?
Well, at least until you start figuring that American families average 300 gallons. So 10M gallons for a single well is 'merely' 1 years worth of water for a 100 families. With 115M households, that's ~12.6T gallons of water used by people at home every year. Meaning Fracking is.8% of domestic water usage.
Then figure that 'domestic' is only 8.5% of our water usage, with irrigation taking up 37% and thermoelectric power 42%.
I don't object to making fracking companies pay a premium, import their water, use treated & filtered sewage, or other options to leave the 'good water' to people who need it, but let's face it - your average water company could save more water patching leaks they've let sit for a while(17% of domestic usage is wasted on leaks) than what fraking companies use.
That vehicle would never get approval where I live, because it does not have suitable protection for driver and passenger. It would get bootstomped the moment an inattentive soccer mom in a big assed hummer H3 started yelling at her "adorable" group of kids, while trying to enter the roadway from the drive-through lane at the fast food gorge-and-puke she stopped at to get "food" for all her "little superstars."
In most locations 'kit-cars' assembled by the consumer are exempt from most safety requirements, only needing the very basics such as lights. Selling said vehicle might be difficult though, and if you're selling them you probably want to be able to show that you're not making a business of it. IE you pay $15k for the parts, spend dozens to hundreds of hours putting it together, drive it for 5 years, sell for $5k.
Depending on the strength of the body kit, it might not be that bad in a collision, though it's still more of a beefed up gold cart than a car.
No, hot weather is not a problem to all thermal electricity generation. It's a limitation only to those power plants that rely on water for cooling.
At the levels these plants operate on, it's all about economic decisions, and using water as your heatsink is relatively cheap.
The issue is that in exceptionally warm weather the temperature differential is not large enough to cool the water sufficiently.
Actually, at least in the states the problem is more likely to be EPA guidelines protecting the wildlife. Other countries have their own equivalents which is why I think the French killing fish stocks by raising a lake's water temperature too high is unlikely. On the other hand, I've read about shutdowns in the states where the natural temperature of the water rose to the point that it exceeded the allowable release temperature, IE it was coming in hotter than the plant was allowed to release it at.
I'm reminded of the proposed additional generators at Palo Verde which would have been dry cooling - completely air cooled, and while it's not in death valley it's still in a desert location.
Living up in Alaska, I'd love to see some cogenerating nuclear plants - use the 'waste' heat to warm buildings in the area. No real worry about things being too hot there!
Though for the 'entire' USA I'd recommend a mix, on the basis of energy generation(IE actual generation, not faceplate): 40% nuclear - this is average baseload for the states 20% solar - we average 50% more energy usage during the day than at night. 2(night) + 3(day) = 5, 1/5=20% 20% wind - max without serious risk of destabilization, not so high that we're putting too many turbines in non-ideal locations 20% other - about half this category is hydrodam, but also includes tidal, geothermal, biomass, etc... Most of your peaking is here.
Average losses from line loss is 6.6%, so I think that 30% would be a worst of the worst case scenario, something indicating that the grid is operating under abnormal circumstances that are normally avoided. For example, if Fairbanks suffers a generator failure, there's a feeder line to gain power from Anchorage.
Roughly speaking, any power generation system is going to put the necessary transmission systems in to keep losses to under 2%. Even a thousand kilometer transmission line should be under 7% East Coast to West Coast is about 4.5k km. HVDC is even better at only 3.5% per 1k km. So you're only looking at 16% for transmitting power from one coast to the other for use.
"TOTALLY UNSAFE! We'll walk it. Walking is safe." "But mom, it's 50 miles to where we have to go." "WALK."...
It's actually worse. It's like you're a business owner, and since you were hurt in a car, you don't purchase them anymore. But you can't do business without a car, so you keep using the cars that were in the fleet when you got hurt, even though at this point new cars would be an OOM safer. But NO NEW CARS!!!! means that you spend more money keeping the old unsafe beasts moving.
Maybe, maybe not. Another way to look at it would be to examine the customer base. There are lots of gas stations out there that are in business areas that don't really serve long distance traffic. This would be the one next to the grocery store, for example. There are also lots of gas stations that are right off highways, where 90% of the traffic is just passing by on the highway, there are generally cheaper stations located within any nearby towns that the locals use. There are also 'flystamp' stop areas that might have 2 gas stations and 2 restaurants, that are about 50-50 between visitors, locals, and farmers.
If you figure on a substantial ability to refuel at home, you don't need the gas stations at the grocery store anymore(fair bit of parking to be reclaimed there), though I'm sure 'top off' points would be nice - one advantage of electric charging is that you don't need the dedicated area for the fuel tanks or separation from buildings for safety, so you can just have a row of parking spots with chargers.
As such, you only really need 'supercharger' stations on the highways. Otherwise you charge wherever you're staying - home should already be setup, of course. Pack an appropriate cord to use the dryer outlet(if possible) if the people you're visiting isn't set up for EV charging. I still figure that there will be plenty of in-city charging available, mostly offered to draw in EV drivers - in choosing between 2 eating places, the fact that one has an EV charger(where I'm visiting and a bit low on charge) might make a difference.
Consider that today you can fly directly over the Atlantic/Pacific Oceans to various destinations today. Back before 1927 it wasn't possible, you had to detour/take the scenic route through areas like Iceland.
The comparison isn't exact, of course, Tesla is currently doing something more like stationing carriers across the ocean than extending the range of the planes. They simply haven't gotten their refueling lines expanded enough that they could take a more direct route; give them another year.
Slashdot Mirror
I know, different legal systems, but I found this part funny:
The man has been arrested again in his cell today, now for involvement in the illicit online trade and evoking murder.
I'm picturing the cops busting him in his cell like how police in the USA often bust people in their houses on COPS or similar shows. I understand it's probably closer to what we know of as 'booking', IE informing him of the charges against him, updating jail records to show that he's now in for much more serious crimes, etc...
Though I wonder how much he had to do with the contract murder. My sick fascination makes me wonder who they wanted killed, and why.
Very true. As a moderate libertarian myself, my reaction to this is mostly a shrug. You have to be very smart in order to avoid getting caught, to the point that if you're that smart being legitimate is actually higher profit for less work. This is actually the way it *should* be, because it encourages people to be law abiding.
The point of *simpler* regulation, as opposed to 'no regulation'(which would be anarchy, not libertarian) is to make it so that dumber people can understand it and stay within the rules(for the most part).
This can be complicated. Off the top of my head, the EPA has vast powers to force cleanup, and funding in the form of the superfund. Of course, the superfund was mostly intended as a 'last ditch' cleanup program for when the business was or going to be out of business before finishing cleanup, sometimes for chemicals that were previously considered safe.
Somewhat paranoid, but I wonder if some of the tanks weren't actually that of the company that ended up doing the cleanup, or whether they were truly double-dipping or if hte government was essentially paying the deductible(IE cleanup costs $2M, insurance paid ~$1M, government another $1M).
Going by the settlements, I figure some fraud happened, just not as much as initially thought.
What about book publishers? What about car manufacturers? What about shoe manufacturers?
All physical products where, barring certain safety issues, are the consumer's problem once the warranty expires. Not so for digitally delivered software.
Also, there's a reason I called it 'Game Theory'. It's not proved or disproved, it's just a theory in a rather specific area.
This includes any expensive esoteric hobbies
By my figuring at one point nearly 1% of the adult population had a pilot's license. That's not especially esoteric. Expensive, I'll give you, but so isn't many other hobbies.
While copyrighted materials might not be the most fungible goods(able to substitute for each other), as a simple example there's dozens of tower games out there, hundreds of first person shooters, etc...
As such, while my boycott of EA means that I'm not playing Mass Effect anytime soon, there are plenty of other games to occupy my time.
All the pro-DRM people always seem to point to Gamestop as their bugbear. Please, there are legitimate reasons to want to resell a game or regift a game or trade a game, without having Gamestop involved.
Certainly, though I think you mean *methods* to resell a game without having gamestop involved. I remember getting some from garage sales. The point I'll make though is that while you can sell for a higher price/buy for a lower price if you do it yourself, whether through craigslist or ebay, that involves work, work that it seems a good number of people don't want to do.
And for indies and old games, GOG still sells cheaper than Steam and provides only DRM free games.
And doesn't disprove the model, because I believe that while GOG doesn't put DRM on their games, neither do they allow trading of games, so the purchased game remains on your account.
Consider that I wanted to buy a game for my wife, but that game was no longer offered for sale because original company went out of business and was sold. Under the no-resale model, I'm SOL.
Under a no-resale model there's incentive for whoever ends up with the rights to the game(since it's a complete package it's difficult to seperate out the IP to make the game unsellable) to market it. Also, a company that owns a number of still selling games is a bit like an author with a dozen older books sending in revenue - it might not make him rich, but it's enough that he can survive a few flops.
Another point is that, as I mentioned, there are positive benefits. I never said that there wouldn't be negatives. Whether the net effect is positive or negative for the end consumer depends on their consumption style. Whether it's a net positive or net negative depends on how you rate everything.
I found a related study(or maybe just the same study and I'm remembering a different spin). It's here
slashdot ate my link?
Study
Sometimes they do. Their vaunted cheap games tend to be indie games or very old games.
And I play the hell out of them. ;)
Furthermore, exceptions to the rule do not disprove an observation based on *averages*. Prices are set by Bethesda. I purchased Skyrim for ~$20 during the christmas sale.
I never denied that exceptions would exist. EA sucking, for example.
Oh, and I think I found a related study.
Willing? Hell no.
That's where competition comes in. 'Able' means they're able to do so and still turn a profit.
But publishers don't lower the initial game price from the goodness of their hearts. New releases on Steam still cost (typically) 50 Euros, that has not changed compared to pre-Steam times. In short, publishers try to charge as much as the market will tolerate and pocket the extra profit.
Console titles still tend towards more expensive, at least initially. The initial offer prices are often forced on them because they're forced to match the store price/MSRP. I believe that the big game stores like Gamestop take a higher initial bite than places like steam, plus have rules like 'You can't sell it for cheaper online if it's going to be in our stores!'.
New console games are going for $60-70 today, computer games are closer to $40-50, even less if you take advantage of the many specials.
I remember reading an analysis a while back that actually does a bit of economic/game theory on this, and he found that forbidding resale actually has positive benefits for the *consumer*. Part of his analysis was looking at prices between console games, resellable computer games, and games bought via services like Steam. More specifically, he looked at games with online-playing modes that require servers.
What he found is that with resellable games, gaming companies typically only got that 'first bite' and continued play was essentially free through quite a number of customers. Remember that places like gamestop will buy the old games for a song, and sell them for almost as much as a new game.
With games that can't be resold they're able to price the initial game lower, and keep the profit flowing in. It removes places like gamestop from the equation(so they hate it, of course). Consider that I can buy many year old initially $60 games from steam for like $10. Because the game is still being sold, there's still incentive to fix/patch/expand the game.
Roughly speaking, the results were that new game consumers don't pay any more(the new game is slightly cheaper, on average, by about the same amount as what they'd be able to sell it to gamestop for), used game consumers don't pay more, and the studios get more money vs resellers, increasing their profits and encouraging more/bigger games.
Unfortunate for humans on planet earth we require fresh water to live.
How fortunate we are that there are natural distillation processes that returns water to the fresh state we require to live. The condensation stage is generally known as 'rain'. That 2.5% is constantly refreshing itself via various processes. The ocean may not be immediately useful, but it's still part of the system.
Though I found reading about the deep disposal wells interesting.
I do too. However it'd be disingenuous to think that we're the rule, not the exception. Most people get their water from piped systems.
It's there with the graphic - American Water Works Association Research Foundation, "Residential End Uses of Water". 1999.
A bit old - I'd prefer within the last decade, but I generally prefer government sources for this sort of thing.
The Ocean is part of the 'water supply system'; there's a lot of evaporation in the uses I mentioned. When you look at those systems it's an even tinier drop in the bucket.
You know, areas that are also doing other things to restrict water usage.
And you ignore that I then delve a bit deeper - suggesting alternative sources, extra fees, etc... Water companies don't have to sell to frackers if they need the water otherwise. But in reality their usage is small enough to not really matter.
Yes, digging up and replacing pipes is expensive, but it's not always the only solution, I've read about some neat sleeving techniques, various sealants, etc...
Use the frackers as an opportunity. Charge them enough for their water that you can afford to fix enough leaks and such that you'll save more than the water they bought in reduced leakage over the next couple years.
10M gallons is a lot of water, isn't it? 97B is unimaginable, isn't it?
Well, at least until you start figuring that American families average 300 gallons. So 10M gallons for a single well is 'merely' 1 years worth of water for a 100 families. With 115M households, that's ~12.6T gallons of water used by people at home every year. Meaning Fracking is .8% of domestic water usage.
Then figure that 'domestic' is only 8.5% of our water usage, with irrigation taking up 37% and thermoelectric power 42%.
I don't object to making fracking companies pay a premium, import their water, use treated & filtered sewage, or other options to leave the 'good water' to people who need it, but let's face it - your average water company could save more water patching leaks they've let sit for a while(17% of domestic usage is wasted on leaks) than what fraking companies use.
That vehicle would never get approval where I live, because it does not have suitable protection for driver and passenger. It would get bootstomped the moment an inattentive soccer mom in a big assed hummer H3 started yelling at her "adorable" group of kids, while trying to enter the roadway from the drive-through lane at the fast food gorge-and-puke she stopped at to get "food" for all her "little superstars."
In most locations 'kit-cars' assembled by the consumer are exempt from most safety requirements, only needing the very basics such as lights. Selling said vehicle might be difficult though, and if you're selling them you probably want to be able to show that you're not making a business of it. IE you pay $15k for the parts, spend dozens to hundreds of hours putting it together, drive it for 5 years, sell for $5k.
Depending on the strength of the body kit, it might not be that bad in a collision, though it's still more of a beefed up gold cart than a car.
No, hot weather is not a problem to all thermal electricity generation. It's a limitation only to those power plants that rely on water for cooling.
At the levels these plants operate on, it's all about economic decisions, and using water as your heatsink is relatively cheap.
The issue is that in exceptionally warm weather the temperature differential is not large enough to cool the water sufficiently.
Actually, at least in the states the problem is more likely to be EPA guidelines protecting the wildlife. Other countries have their own equivalents which is why I think the French killing fish stocks by raising a lake's water temperature too high is unlikely. On the other hand, I've read about shutdowns in the states where the natural temperature of the water rose to the point that it exceeded the allowable release temperature, IE it was coming in hotter than the plant was allowed to release it at.
I'm reminded of the proposed additional generators at Palo Verde which would have been dry cooling - completely air cooled, and while it's not in death valley it's still in a desert location.
Living up in Alaska, I'd love to see some cogenerating nuclear plants - use the 'waste' heat to warm buildings in the area. No real worry about things being too hot there!
Though for the 'entire' USA I'd recommend a mix, on the basis of energy generation(IE actual generation, not faceplate):
40% nuclear - this is average baseload for the states
20% solar - we average 50% more energy usage during the day than at night. 2(night) + 3(day) = 5, 1/5=20%
20% wind - max without serious risk of destabilization, not so high that we're putting too many turbines in non-ideal locations
20% other - about half this category is hydrodam, but also includes tidal, geothermal, biomass, etc... Most of your peaking is here.
Average losses from line loss is 6.6%, so I think that 30% would be a worst of the worst case scenario, something indicating that the grid is operating under abnormal circumstances that are normally avoided. For example, if Fairbanks suffers a generator failure, there's a feeder line to gain power from Anchorage.
Checking up more: a 100 mile 765 kV line carrying 1000 MW of energy can have losses of 1.1% to 0.5%. A 345 kV line carrying the same load across the same distance has losses of 4.2%..
Roughly speaking, any power generation system is going to put the necessary transmission systems in to keep losses to under 2%. Even a thousand kilometer transmission line should be under 7% East Coast to West Coast is about 4.5k km.
HVDC is even better at only 3.5% per 1k km. So you're only looking at 16% for transmitting power from one coast to the other for use.
"TOTALLY UNSAFE! We'll walk it. Walking is safe." "But mom, it's 50 miles to where we have to go." "WALK." ...
It's actually worse. It's like you're a business owner, and since you were hurt in a car, you don't purchase them anymore. But you can't do business without a car, so you keep using the cars that were in the fleet when you got hurt, even though at this point new cars would be an OOM safer. But NO NEW CARS!!!! means that you spend more money keeping the old unsafe beasts moving.
Remember, ALL gas stations are local to SOMEONE.
Maybe, maybe not. Another way to look at it would be to examine the customer base. There are lots of gas stations out there that are in business areas that don't really serve long distance traffic. This would be the one next to the grocery store, for example. There are also lots of gas stations that are right off highways, where 90% of the traffic is just passing by on the highway, there are generally cheaper stations located within any nearby towns that the locals use. There are also 'flystamp' stop areas that might have 2 gas stations and 2 restaurants, that are about 50-50 between visitors, locals, and farmers.
If you figure on a substantial ability to refuel at home, you don't need the gas stations at the grocery store anymore(fair bit of parking to be reclaimed there), though I'm sure 'top off' points would be nice - one advantage of electric charging is that you don't need the dedicated area for the fuel tanks or separation from buildings for safety, so you can just have a row of parking spots with chargers.
As such, you only really need 'supercharger' stations on the highways. Otherwise you charge wherever you're staying - home should already be setup, of course. Pack an appropriate cord to use the dryer outlet(if possible) if the people you're visiting isn't set up for EV charging. I still figure that there will be plenty of in-city charging available, mostly offered to draw in EV drivers - in choosing between 2 eating places, the fact that one has an EV charger(where I'm visiting and a bit low on charge) might make a difference.
Consider that today you can fly directly over the Atlantic/Pacific Oceans to various destinations today. Back before 1927 it wasn't possible, you had to detour/take the scenic route through areas like Iceland.
The comparison isn't exact, of course, Tesla is currently doing something more like stationing carriers across the ocean than extending the range of the planes. They simply haven't gotten their refueling lines expanded enough that they could take a more direct route; give them another year.