They have stated both on the show and in other interviews that a lot more testing goes on than just what we see on the show. For the "showcase" experiment on each show (the one that opens and closes the program), the producers have taken to placing video of most or all of the tests on their Discovery website: http://www.discovery.com/mythbusters
I do live in Texas, and the use of the word "pray" in a legal document, at least in the American legal system, does not imply communications with a religious deity. "Pray," as a verb, has at least two meanings that are distinctive here:
4. to make earnest petition to (a person).
5. to make petition or entreaty for; crave
OK, because at least someone on Slashdot knows, I have to ask: how would they do this? Is there some form of access key or security needed to uplink to a transponder, or is it simply a matter of finding the right satellite and frequency? I would hope that the latter is not true, but "security by obscurity" is a well-known (amusingly) procedure in many companies..
I wanted to lock in the 8c/kWh rate for as long as possible. The contract is terminable by me if I give up the $500 security deposit or if I find someone willing to take it over for me.
Again, as I said above, I do not have the credit to sustain a $25-$35k loan, even if it is for excellently cool solar energy.
This system does not use batteries. It relies on netmetering to build up "credits" during the bright parts of the day, which are subsequently used when it's dark outside.
I've signed up with CitizenRe as well, and I have not chosen to be a "ecopreneur," so I have no referral link to place.
To answer your question: yes, I would love to own the system outright, and to outfit it with a large bank of deep-cycle batteries, etc. However, I do not have the $35-50,000 that such a system would require, nor do I have the credit to finance such a system. Therefore, CitizenRe, with their virtually "no risk to either side" contract, is the best option for "going green" and also saving a whole bunch of money.
Right now, CitizenRe has nothing about me except a name, an address, a telephone number, and a signature on a piece of paper indicating I will purchase all the electricity their solar cells can generate for a period of 25 years at $0.08/kWh. I predict this will be an excellent gamble, as energy prices are unlikely to fall dramatically (right now, the average rate for electric service in Texas is $0.124/kWh), and I will still be generating electricity in an environmentally-friendly manner.
These are the reasons I signed up. Not to make "gobs" of money, or to try to recruit other people. I did so because I wanted to, and without selling, so they let me.
Culberson County itself is big, with just over 3800 square miles. For the record, Brewster is the largest, with about 6900 square miles. 453 square miles is just over the size of the city limits of Dallas and doesn't hold a candle to Houston.
See? Everything's bigger here.:)
In far west Texas, about the only thing the land is good for anymore is launching space ships. If he tried to do it any closer, the ranchers wouldn't sell (land's still viable) or it'd be too expensive (all the Californians, having bought up all the useful land in the urban areas, now want a "holiday getaway" in the "country"). Just go on eBay and search for "texas land." Roughly 85% of the listings are going to be for "ranches" carved out of old public school lands, or located so far from the only paved road that it'll take you a four-wheeler and a hunting guide just to find your parcel.
...why I pay Speakeasy almost $100 per month for an Internet connection. It's exactly for stuff like this. Speakeasy has made an entire business around giving people a completely open pipe with no restrictions, and it's the ISPs like this that I will patronize. Sure, $14.95 as a teaser rate sounds wonderful, but not to me when I consider the PPPoE travesty, port blocking, draconian ToS and the returning attitude of "we're the phone company; we don't have to care."
Covad (not Speakeasy; SE sells via the Covad network) has agreements with Verizon in some areas, namely the ex-GTE territories. I can speak authoritatively on this because my parents are in an ex-GTE Verizon area and are using Speakeasy via lineshare.
Covad is more prevalent in SBC and ex-Bell areas because SBC owns a chunk (approximately 20%, as I recall) of Covad, and has somewhat of a vested interest in keeping them alive. In addition, SBC's SDSL service is actually provisioned over Covad's network, since SBC does not have equipment to provide SDSL themselves.
Even beyond this, in most cities down here (TX), an officer must request permission to drive "code 3," lights and siren, and sometimes require permission for "code 2," lights only. An officer may only drive with lights and siren if it is an emergency call requiring the officer to arrive as fast as possible. If he is on an urgent call (lower priority than emergency, higher than routine), he does not drive code 3, usually not code 2, but may drive as quickly as the circumstances allow.
Oh. I usually take questions like that literally, since I can't assume everyone who asks is either from Texas or the US in general, so I answer as if they were serious. Terribly sorry.:)
For the record, in this case Ag means "agricultural." If a parcel of land meets certain (rather loose) requirements, it is subject to a vastly different valuation system than other land. In the case of Mr. Dell's estate, land that would be valued and taxed at almost $75 million is instead valued and taxed at $290,000 because he has some livestock roaming on it.
Someone who is inexplicably an Anonymous Coward wrote:
That's what the grandparent was on about. In the U.S. we write dates MM-DD-YY, while pretty much everyone else who uses the Christian calendar (and the U.S. Armed Forces as well) writes dates in DD-MM-YY format.
I for one don't think it matters all that much, unless you're looking for something stupid to bash someone about. The U.K. and many other countres drive on the other side of the road. Yay for them. Europe uses the Metric system and the U.S. continues to say "fuck that". But the U.S. had "metric" money before the U.K. did.
Everybody should just get the hell over themselves.
Oh wow. I think this is the first excellent comment I have ever read from an AC. I don't have mod points, so I'll copy/paste it at a score above 0 so everyone can see it. Very nice.
You will find a lot of Latin in legal jargon. Here's some more for you:
Writ of...
- habeas corpus ("you should have the body"), commanding an entity who is detaining another person to bring that person before the court for a determination of whether custody should be continued.
- mandamus ("mandate"), commanding a public servant or government officer to perform the function required by their position.
per se - "by itself," as in "that is not, per se, the correct definition."
ex post facto - "from a thing done after," as in " No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed."
Ordinarily I don't reply to a slashdot comment more than a day old, but I had to answer this one..
So, how many generations of your family had to live here before you became a true Texan? Are there gradations of "true"?
Greater than two.
Yes.
What is that supposed to mean? "True" Texans don't drive F-250 trucks or use air conditioning?
Not if you want to accurately project the "image" of being a country-boy rancher, no.
Texas has *always* been conservative, political affiliation notwithstanding.
I'll grant you that, but not this kind of Republican. Not the style of republican that will butcher local elections (more on that in a moment) just to get their way at the national level, or the kind of republican that will do what you so aptly snipped in your reply.
What have you done about those things? Have you been involved in local politics and institutions? Did you even vote in your local elections?
Campaigned for/against the various propositions as they came up, as necessary.
Yes, I have run for city council, have received an appointment to two boards (library and Planning and Zoning) in the city I used to live, and will run for city council in the city I now live, as well as county commissioner. After serving at that level for a few years, I intend to run for the state house.
Yes, every one, including bond or alcohol-only elections.
Amen to that. Born here from a long line of true Texans (my family is, oddly enough, part English, part Mexican settlers), and Bush ain't one. Hell, he drives around his ranch in an F-250 with the windows rolled up and the air conditioner on.
Yes, this state was solidly D, and I firmly believe we were the better for it. Now, in the name of "no new taxes, not even closing the loopholes in existing taxes," we have:
- cut our childrens' health insurance program - underfunded and misfunded education to the point that I pay more in school taxes than county and city combined, yet 28% of that money LEAVES my district, and two courts have slapped it down - begun projects to convert existing, paid-for roads, to toll roads to "free up" money for other projects (why can't those new projects be tolled? SH 121 in Denton County, anyone?) - completely sandbagged land and water rights owners in West Texas (a water table covering roughly 12 HUGE counties) because Dallas needs more water and doesn't care who they steal it from - completely sandbagged land and water rights owners in East Texas (Marvin Nicholls Reservoir) because Dallas needs more water and doesn't care who they plow under to get it from
This is not the state I was born in, and I wish Karl Rove, Rick Perry, G. W. Bush and all their other buddies would stop using here as their political testbed.
That's the thing.. In some rural areas (portions of Central Texas, anyone?), there is NO PHONE INFRASTRUCTURE at all. No splice box, no poles, no wires, no nothing. The "obscene price" quoted was likely the cost, in wire-feet, to connect her house to something on the PSTN, since there was currently no wire to her house.
Maybe where you are. Where I am, local school districts ("Independent" school districts, meaning they are not part of the city, county or any {fire|fresh water supply|college|hospital} districts) are their own taxing entities, and levy taxes on property. They directly receive this property tax revenue and use it to fund local schools. A statewide property tax does not exist (barred by our constitution), and each district sets it own rates.
I'm terribly sorry (actually, no I'm not, it just makes for a decent introductory phrase), but people who work as telemarketers automatically lose the "I'm just doing my job; don't be mean to me" exception. Just like the idiots who put up signs on telephone poles inviting me to Make Billions By Working From Home don't like being honked at and having their signs torn down, if you're going to do that job, you agree to all the abuse you can stand.
When your job is to basically be as annoying as humanly possible, you can't beg for mercy later. There's plenty of other, more respectable jobs. Lawyer, AOL CD mailer and politician all come immediately to mind.
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, that joke just went sailing right over your head...
Do you post from a DSL line?
They have stated both on the show and in other interviews that a lot more testing goes on than just what we see on the show. For the "showcase" experiment on each show (the one that opens and closes the program), the producers have taken to placing video of most or all of the tests on their Discovery website: http://www.discovery.com/mythbusters
4. to make earnest petition to (a person).
5. to make petition or entreaty for; crave
(See: dictionary.com)
The legal "pray" simply is a formal way to ask the Court for an action. You will find this phrase in many legal filings, not just in Texas courts.
Thanks for the slam, though; always good to see the myths and legends preserved.
OK, because at least someone on Slashdot knows, I have to ask: how would they do this? Is there some form of access key or security needed to uplink to a transponder, or is it simply a matter of finding the right satellite and frequency? I would hope that the latter is not true, but "security by obscurity" is a well-known (amusingly) procedure in many companies..
Again, as I said above, I do not have the credit to sustain a $25-$35k loan, even if it is for excellently cool solar energy.
You can see the contract here: http://wyvern.org/citizenre.pdf
This system does not use batteries. It relies on netmetering to build up "credits" during the bright parts of the day, which are subsequently used when it's dark outside.
I've signed up with CitizenRe as well, and I have not chosen to be a "ecopreneur," so I have no referral link to place.
To answer your question: yes, I would love to own the system outright, and to outfit it with a large bank of deep-cycle batteries, etc. However, I do not have the $35-50,000 that such a system would require, nor do I have the credit to finance such a system. Therefore, CitizenRe, with their virtually "no risk to either side" contract, is the best option for "going green" and also saving a whole bunch of money.
Right now, CitizenRe has nothing about me except a name, an address, a telephone number, and a signature on a piece of paper indicating I will purchase all the electricity their solar cells can generate for a period of 25 years at $0.08/kWh. I predict this will be an excellent gamble, as energy prices are unlikely to fall dramatically (right now, the average rate for electric service in Texas is $0.124/kWh), and I will still be generating electricity in an environmentally-friendly manner.
These are the reasons I signed up. Not to make "gobs" of money, or to try to recruit other people. I did so because I wanted to, and without selling, so they let me.
Culberson County itself is big, with just over 3800 square miles. For the record, Brewster is the largest, with about 6900 square miles. 453 square miles is just over the size of the city limits of Dallas and doesn't hold a candle to Houston.
:)
See? Everything's bigger here.
In far west Texas, about the only thing the land is good for anymore is launching space ships. If he tried to do it any closer, the ranchers wouldn't sell (land's still viable) or it'd be too expensive (all the Californians, having bought up all the useful land in the urban areas, now want a "holiday getaway" in the "country"). Just go on eBay and search for "texas land." Roughly 85% of the listings are going to be for "ranches" carved out of old public school lands, or located so far from the only paved road that it'll take you a four-wheeler and a hunting guide just to find your parcel.
Sorry, I'll take my Linksys WRT54GS (v3) running OpenWRT or dd-wrt. Small, quiet, and wireless!
...why I pay Speakeasy almost $100 per month for an Internet connection. It's exactly for stuff like this. Speakeasy has made an entire business around giving people a completely open pipe with no restrictions, and it's the ISPs like this that I will patronize. Sure, $14.95 as a teaser rate sounds wonderful, but not to me when I consider the PPPoE travesty, port blocking, draconian ToS and the returning attitude of "we're the phone company; we don't have to care."
Covad (not Speakeasy; SE sells via the Covad network) has agreements with Verizon in some areas, namely the ex-GTE territories. I can speak authoritatively on this because my parents are in an ex-GTE Verizon area and are using Speakeasy via lineshare.
Covad is more prevalent in SBC and ex-Bell areas because SBC owns a chunk (approximately 20%, as I recall) of Covad, and has somewhat of a vested interest in keeping them alive. In addition, SBC's SDSL service is actually provisioned over Covad's network, since SBC does not have equipment to provide SDSL themselves.
Even beyond this, in most cities down here (TX), an officer must request permission to drive "code 3," lights and siren, and sometimes require permission for "code 2," lights only. An officer may only drive with lights and siren if it is an emergency call requiring the officer to arrive as fast as possible. If he is on an urgent call (lower priority than emergency, higher than routine), he does not drive code 3, usually not code 2, but may drive as quickly as the circumstances allow.
Oh. I usually take questions like that literally, since I can't assume everyone who asks is either from Texas or the US in general, so I answer as if they were serious. Terribly sorry. :)
[Top Secret MS Code Phrase]
For the record, in this case Ag means "agricultural." If a parcel of land meets certain (rather loose) requirements, it is subject to a vastly different valuation system than other land. In the case of Mr. Dell's estate, land that would be valued and taxed at almost $75 million is instead valued and taxed at $290,000 because he has some livestock roaming on it.
Hot diggity, a fellow MS employee who doesn't work in one of the Redmond buildings. Hello. :)
MerlynEmrys67 for anything
That's what the grandparent was on about. In the U.S. we write dates MM-DD-YY, while pretty much everyone else who uses the Christian calendar (and the U.S. Armed Forces as well) writes dates in DD-MM-YY format.
I for one don't think it matters all that much, unless you're looking for something stupid to bash someone about. The U.K. and many other countres drive on the other side of the road. Yay for them. Europe uses the Metric system and the U.S. continues to say "fuck that". But the U.S. had "metric" money before the U.K. did.
Everybody should just get the hell over themselves.
Oh wow. I think this is the first excellent comment I have ever read from an AC. I don't have mod points, so I'll copy/paste it at a score above 0 so everyone can see it. Very nice.
You will find a lot of Latin in legal jargon. Here's some more for you:
Writ of...
- habeas corpus ("you should have the body"), commanding an entity who is detaining another person to bring that person before the court for a determination of whether custody should be continued.
- mandamus ("mandate"), commanding a public servant or government officer to perform the function required by their position.
per se - "by itself," as in "that is not, per se, the correct definition."
ex post facto - "from a thing done after," as in " No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed."
Ordinarily I don't reply to a slashdot comment more than a day old, but I had to answer this one..
So, how many generations of your family had to live here before you became a true Texan? Are there gradations of "true"?
Greater than two.
Yes.
What is that supposed to mean? "True" Texans don't drive F-250 trucks or use air conditioning?
Not if you want to accurately project the "image" of being a country-boy rancher, no.
Texas has *always* been conservative, political affiliation notwithstanding.
I'll grant you that, but not this kind of Republican. Not the style of republican that will butcher local elections (more on that in a moment) just to get their way at the national level, or the kind of republican that will do what you so aptly snipped in your reply.
What have you done about those things? Have you been involved in local politics and institutions? Did you even vote in your local elections?
Campaigned for/against the various propositions as they came up, as necessary.
Yes, I have run for city council, have received an appointment to two boards (library and Planning and Zoning) in the city I used to live, and will run for city council in the city I now live, as well as county commissioner. After serving at that level for a few years, I intend to run for the state house.
Yes, every one, including bond or alcohol-only elections.
Amen to that. Born here from a long line of true Texans (my family is, oddly enough, part English, part Mexican settlers), and Bush ain't one. Hell, he drives around his ranch in an F-250 with the windows rolled up and the air conditioner on.
Yes, this state was solidly D, and I firmly believe we were the better for it. Now, in the name of "no new taxes, not even closing the loopholes in existing taxes," we have:
- cut our childrens' health insurance program
- underfunded and misfunded education to the point that I pay more in school taxes than county and city combined, yet 28% of that money LEAVES my district, and two courts have slapped it down
- begun projects to convert existing, paid-for roads, to toll roads to "free up" money for other projects (why can't those new projects be tolled? SH 121 in Denton County, anyone?)
- completely sandbagged land and water rights owners in West Texas (a water table covering roughly 12 HUGE counties) because Dallas needs more water and doesn't care who they steal it from
- completely sandbagged land and water rights owners in East Texas (Marvin Nicholls Reservoir) because Dallas needs more water and doesn't care who they plow under to get it from
This is not the state I was born in, and I wish Karl Rove, Rick Perry, G. W. Bush and all their other buddies would stop using here as their political testbed.
That's the thing .. In some rural areas (portions of Central Texas, anyone?), there is NO PHONE INFRASTRUCTURE at all. No splice box, no poles, no wires, no nothing. The "obscene price" quoted was likely the cost, in wire-feet, to connect her house to something on the PSTN, since there was currently no wire to her house.
Unlimited local, $30; unlimited LD, $50; feature packages available
Unlimited cellular minutes, $100
Maybe where you are. Where I am, local school districts ("Independent" school districts, meaning they are not part of the city, county or any {fire|fresh water supply|college|hospital} districts) are their own taxing entities, and levy taxes on property. They directly receive this property tax revenue and use it to fund local schools. A statewide property tax does not exist (barred by our constitution), and each district sets it own rates.
I'm terribly sorry (actually, no I'm not, it just makes for a decent introductory phrase), but people who work as telemarketers automatically lose the "I'm just doing my job; don't be mean to me" exception. Just like the idiots who put up signs on telephone poles inviting me to Make Billions By Working From Home don't like being honked at and having their signs torn down, if you're going to do that job, you agree to all the abuse you can stand.
When your job is to basically be as annoying as humanly possible, you can't beg for mercy later. There's plenty of other, more respectable jobs. Lawyer, AOL CD mailer and politician all come immediately to mind.