And look how many seats the DUP have. Not a lot. Just enough to put the Tories over the edge, but not enough that they can make many demands of their own.
Rain doesn't affect solar output at all. Actually it's good for panels, it washes the dust and bird-crap off.
The clouds, however, so result in power output dropping. You still get some power in cloudy weather, but a fraction of what you'd get from clear skies.
I can think of one reason: Power. Not energy, but power. Fast charging cars takes an insane amount of watts, and in some areas that is going to mean upgrading the grid if you want to provide it all at once. Cheaper to fit your charging station with a battery itsself so it can handle the surge load - and if you are doing that, the extra cost of putting some panels on the roof is negligable, and you can be sure that 100% of the energy produced can be utilised so the economics are favorable.
You can do better than that. Put them at service stations!
- Ready-laid power lines to supplement the solar when the days are short or the clouds are dense. - Service stations would be more than happy to host a bank of solar chargers in their parking lot, because a lot of people are going to be stuck there for half an hour while their car does a fast-charge, which means captive customers with nothing to do other than shop and eat. - Plus the service station gets free power whenever the solars are producing more than can be stored. - And you get a consistent human presence nearby to aid in security (ie, stop people breaking in and stealing the cables and panels!) and to occasionally apply a broom to the panels after snow has fallen.
"Something must be done. This is something. Ergo, this must be done."
The public are afraid. They demand action to stop the terrorists. Politicians are obliged to provide action, if they value their careers - even if there is no good action they can take within available resource constraints, that just means they need to come up with a bad idea. At least if they put into force a bad idea, they will be seen trying - a better option then to be seen as uncaring or dismissive.
If you want to compare European politics to the US... you can't. Even our far-right parties would be on friendly speaking terms with the US far-left.
Can you imagine a serious politician in the US suggesting the government establish a national system of hospitals and healthcare providers, almost free of private sector involvement, operated by government employees and funded with tax money? They would be laughed out of office. But that's the normal thing in most of Europe. In the same way you rarely find European politicians who proudly lead religious ceremonies to win support and try to argue that gay marriage is an existential threat to civilisation, because that's just not going to go down here. Well, maybe in Poland.
I've spend a lot of time reading religious material. Their attitude to prison is that all prisoners are evil vile people and the scum of the earth, an the only possible hope for their reform is to find salvation in Jesus and be cleaned of their sins. Therefore all money spent on prisoner education and rehabilitation is wasted, because only Jesus can make someone into a good person.
Their main concerns are 1. Making sure prisons have plenty of chaplains who can convert people. 2. Protecting the religious freedom of the chaplains to preach without government control, especially if they want to preach about how evil homosexuals are. 3. Making sure that the filthy heathen Muslims don't get their own preachers in to turn prisoners into terrorists.
In short: They do not believe in rehabilitation, except via conversion.
Also note that, with the exception of people who convert while in prison, they regard prisons as having exactly zero Christian population: No true Christian would ever end up in prison, and anyone who claims to be a Christian but still ends up in prison is simply lying about their faith.
Like many countries, the US justice system is motivated largely by a very basic instinct: The desire for collective revenge. People like to dress is up as 'justice' to make it seem noble, but it is not. It's the natural human desire to see bad people made to suffer - a lot. Deterrence is a nice excuse, but it really is just an excuse.
The ACLU had to take legal action in some states to force prisons to install aid conditioning because prisoners were routinely being hospitalised for heat stroke - nothing had been done, because prison administrators, politicians and the public were all very happy to know that prisoners were experiencing conditions that were in effect a form of torture.
An excess of them. The US military is vastly bloated - it's simply huge, and expensive. The US spends three times more than Russia and China combined. It's certainly very nice to have enough firepower to take on the entire world at once, but is it really the best use of taxpayer money? If the military budget were cut in half it would instantly eliminate the spending deceit and with a lot left over, and the US would still be a military superpower.
1.Hack your target covertly. 2. Use your target to send a very non-covert attack against any major organisation with a reputation for active defense 3. Sit back and watch the retaliation.
There is an obvious answer to that: Perhaps the watch lists are simply so that they are essentially worthless. When half the country is on a watch list, you can't watch them all any more.
Just think how much money the state will save on legal costs if convicts are unable to appeal their sentencing. Sure, there's the chance of giving people a few more years in prison than is really appropriate, but has there ever been a time when the public called for more rights for convicted criminals?
It's hardly even an in insult. The world's most popular piracy website is called The Pirate Bay. Pirates have their own culture, adorned in treasure chests, flags, and stylish swords. They wear the label of pirate with pride now, and embrace it.
I, for one, would feel a lot more sympathy for the copyright-based industries had they not lobbied for the repeated term extensions. There is absolutely no way anyone can argue that ninety-five years is in the public interest. Here in the UK it's seventy years for music now - an extension passed with some urgency to keep the Beatles from going public domain. Because it's really important they maintain their incentive to publish more music.
I have no objection to companies having the ability to profit from content creation - this does result in the production of a lot of really good content, both for entertainment and for practical use. But when a whole industry is acting like some sort of mustache-twirling cartoon villain, well... steal from the rich, and give to yourself.
I still pay for independent studio games. The only big corporation involved there is Valve, and so far their ethical record has been pretty good by my judgment.
Not illegal yet. I'm sure their lawyers and lobbyists are already trying to figure out how to change that. Ideally within the next two or four years, before the political pendulum might swing and they lose their current advantage.
There is another option: You just create barriers to trade. A little underhanded, but it works. That might mean laws prohibiting unauthorised imports, or technological restrictions such as DVD region coding, or something as simple as making sure that the DVDs you sell in low-income countries do not include English or other European language audio tracks.
I can speak for the pirates, and we've seen the same thing. The most potent tools in the fight against piracy have been iTunes, Netflix and Steam. Most people don't pirate because they can't afford to buy a blu-ray. They pirate because it's quick, and convenient. Once legitimate purchasing became even faster and more convenient, a lot of people went back to doing that.
People are basically lazy. They don't want to have to go out of the house and walk to a store, or end up trapped in a cinema next to Baby Cries-A-Lot. They just want to be able to spend a few minutes picking out their entertainment and then start enjoying it.
- Less floor space needed. - Lower cleaning and upkeep costs. - Increased traffic improves safety, as any attempted assaults are twice as likely to be interrupted. - Any security staff can enter at any time without fear of awkwardness. - All these ugly political issues simply go away.
"I used to go to a bar where a black guy was a customer every so often. To me the presence of this person was visually revolting. I was not in the least afraid of this person, however I go to a bar to enjoy myself and the presence of this person impinged on my ability to enjoy myself. So I quit going to the bar."
Damned minorities, ruining your bar by existing. It shouldn't be allowed.
Slashdot Mirror
Take the far right, remove the religion, and you are left with... well, still the far right. But a quite different flavor of it.
And look how many seats the DUP have. Not a lot. Just enough to put the Tories over the edge, but not enough that they can make many demands of their own.
Rain doesn't affect solar output at all. Actually it's good for panels, it washes the dust and bird-crap off.
The clouds, however, so result in power output dropping. You still get some power in cloudy weather, but a fraction of what you'd get from clear skies.
I can think of one reason: Power. Not energy, but power. Fast charging cars takes an insane amount of watts, and in some areas that is going to mean upgrading the grid if you want to provide it all at once. Cheaper to fit your charging station with a battery itsself so it can handle the surge load - and if you are doing that, the extra cost of putting some panels on the roof is negligable, and you can be sure that 100% of the energy produced can be utilised so the economics are favorable.
You can do better than that. Put them at service stations!
- Ready-laid power lines to supplement the solar when the days are short or the clouds are dense.
- Service stations would be more than happy to host a bank of solar chargers in their parking lot, because a lot of people are going to be stuck there for half an hour while their car does a fast-charge, which means captive customers with nothing to do other than shop and eat.
- Plus the service station gets free power whenever the solars are producing more than can be stored.
- And you get a consistent human presence nearby to aid in security (ie, stop people breaking in and stealing the cables and panels!) and to occasionally apply a broom to the panels after snow has fallen.
To quote another famous British character:
"Something must be done.
This is something.
Ergo, this must be done."
The public are afraid. They demand action to stop the terrorists. Politicians are obliged to provide action, if they value their careers - even if there is no good action they can take within available resource constraints, that just means they need to come up with a bad idea. At least if they put into force a bad idea, they will be seen trying - a better option then to be seen as uncaring or dismissive.
If you want to compare European politics to the US... you can't. Even our far-right parties would be on friendly speaking terms with the US far-left.
Can you imagine a serious politician in the US suggesting the government establish a national system of hospitals and healthcare providers, almost free of private sector involvement, operated by government employees and funded with tax money? They would be laughed out of office. But that's the normal thing in most of Europe. In the same way you rarely find European politicians who proudly lead religious ceremonies to win support and try to argue that gay marriage is an existential threat to civilisation, because that's just not going to go down here. Well, maybe in Poland.
Knowing about jury nullification is a good means to get disqualified from jury service. Simply hint that you know what it is and you are out the door.
I've spend a lot of time reading religious material. Their attitude to prison is that all prisoners are evil vile people and the scum of the earth, an the only possible hope for their reform is to find salvation in Jesus and be cleaned of their sins. Therefore all money spent on prisoner education and rehabilitation is wasted, because only Jesus can make someone into a good person.
Their main concerns are 1. Making sure prisons have plenty of chaplains who can convert people. 2. Protecting the religious freedom of the chaplains to preach without government control, especially if they want to preach about how evil homosexuals are. 3. Making sure that the filthy heathen Muslims don't get their own preachers in to turn prisoners into terrorists.
In short: They do not believe in rehabilitation, except via conversion.
Also note that, with the exception of people who convert while in prison, they regard prisons as having exactly zero Christian population: No true Christian would ever end up in prison, and anyone who claims to be a Christian but still ends up in prison is simply lying about their faith.
Like many countries, the US justice system is motivated largely by a very basic instinct: The desire for collective revenge. People like to dress is up as 'justice' to make it seem noble, but it is not. It's the natural human desire to see bad people made to suffer - a lot. Deterrence is a nice excuse, but it really is just an excuse.
The ACLU had to take legal action in some states to force prisons to install aid conditioning because prisoners were routinely being hospitalised for heat stroke - nothing had been done, because prison administrators, politicians and the public were all very happy to know that prisoners were experiencing conditions that were in effect a form of torture.
An excess of them. The US military is vastly bloated - it's simply huge, and expensive. The US spends three times more than Russia and China combined. It's certainly very nice to have enough firepower to take on the entire world at once, but is it really the best use of taxpayer money? If the military budget were cut in half it would instantly eliminate the spending deceit and with a lot left over, and the US would still be a military superpower.
1.Hack your target covertly.
2. Use your target to send a very non-covert attack against any major organisation with a reputation for active defense
3. Sit back and watch the retaliation.
Who isn't known to police? They probably have a file on me somewhere, because I've given a statement in the past after witnessing a car accident.
Some drunk prat managed to flip her car right upside-down. On a flat road. I'd really like to know how they managed that.
I'd like to see a citation on your survey, because I suspect it might be the Daily Mail.
There is an obvious answer to that: Perhaps the watch lists are simply so that they are essentially worthless. When half the country is on a watch list, you can't watch them all any more.
Just think how much money the state will save on legal costs if convicts are unable to appeal their sentencing. Sure, there's the chance of giving people a few more years in prison than is really appropriate, but has there ever been a time when the public called for more rights for convicted criminals?
Yet they routinely break their own records for movie revenues.
It's hardly even an in insult. The world's most popular piracy website is called The Pirate Bay. Pirates have their own culture, adorned in treasure chests, flags, and stylish swords. They wear the label of pirate with pride now, and embrace it.
I, for one, would feel a lot more sympathy for the copyright-based industries had they not lobbied for the repeated term extensions. There is absolutely no way anyone can argue that ninety-five years is in the public interest. Here in the UK it's seventy years for music now - an extension passed with some urgency to keep the Beatles from going public domain. Because it's really important they maintain their incentive to publish more music.
I have no objection to companies having the ability to profit from content creation - this does result in the production of a lot of really good content, both for entertainment and for practical use. But when a whole industry is acting like some sort of mustache-twirling cartoon villain, well... steal from the rich, and give to yourself.
I still pay for independent studio games. The only big corporation involved there is Valve, and so far their ethical record has been pretty good by my judgment.
Not illegal yet. I'm sure their lawyers and lobbyists are already trying to figure out how to change that. Ideally within the next two or four years, before the political pendulum might swing and they lose their current advantage.
There is another option: You just create barriers to trade. A little underhanded, but it works. That might mean laws prohibiting unauthorised imports, or technological restrictions such as DVD region coding, or something as simple as making sure that the DVDs you sell in low-income countries do not include English or other European language audio tracks.
I can speak for the pirates, and we've seen the same thing. The most potent tools in the fight against piracy have been iTunes, Netflix and Steam. Most people don't pirate because they can't afford to buy a blu-ray. They pirate because it's quick, and convenient. Once legitimate purchasing became even faster and more convenient, a lot of people went back to doing that.
People are basically lazy. They don't want to have to go out of the house and walk to a store, or end up trapped in a cinema next to Baby Cries-A-Lot. They just want to be able to spend a few minutes picking out their entertainment and then start enjoying it.
Or, much more universally applicable, is it piracy if you torrent a movie which, absent the possibility of torrrenting, you would not bother to watch?
No, it's what you get when you half-retrofit it. It gives all the disadvantages of both single and dual rooms.
Just go for a single 'we don't care' unisex room.
- Less floor space needed.
- Lower cleaning and upkeep costs.
- Increased traffic improves safety, as any attempted assaults are twice as likely to be interrupted.
- Any security staff can enter at any time without fear of awkwardness.
- All these ugly political issues simply go away.
Everyone wins.
"I used to go to a bar where a black guy was a customer every so often. To me the presence of this person was visually revolting. I was not in the least afraid of this person, however I go to a bar to enjoy myself and the presence of this person impinged on my ability to enjoy myself. So I quit going to the bar."
Damned minorities, ruining your bar by existing. It shouldn't be allowed.