I'm sure there's enough buildings between 20 and 1000 years old such that a national program of improvements is a good idea
That's part of the problem. A lot of historic buildings are being changed irreversibly in order to make them comply with modern efficiency standards. It's almost a crying shame to see a late-19th century Grunderzeit villa facade get covered in foam blocks and painted over. In 30 years, people will regret a lot of the construction going on today, even if it saves a few thousand litters of heating oil.
I own a house in Germany, unlike most readers here. To be clear, the money from the KfW is a loan, not a subsidy. The subsidy, if there is one, is that most KfW loans are interest free for the first 10 years.
The irritating thing to this home owner is that there seems to be no end to home improvements that our German government would like for me to implement. Be it tripple-paned windows, foam insulation, solar heating, solar power, and now batteries. And my house is barely 20 years old. I'm not against somebody who wants to put all these things into their home, but for this home owner, none of these things make any economic sense - even with a zero interest loan. This home owner has decided to do exactly nothing. And that in and of itself saves the environment a lot of waste.
Yes, a certain amount of spying is expected and allowed. An ambassador is basically a legalized spy who has diplomatic protection and is allowed to work in the open.
The problem is that the NSA is not following the same priorities as the State Department. How many European political leaders will give the American diplomats their private phone number in the future? The NSA's spying on allies is destroying any future back channel communication abilities that we may have. The conspiracy theorist in me would be saying it's intentional so that the NSA becomes the ONLY source for intelligence gathering in the American government.
So after sorting out all that spam, the NSA is now busy creating files on people such as miss Wumi Abdul, the only Daughter of late Mr and Mrs George Abdul, whose father was a very wealthy cocoa merchant in Abidjan, the economic capital of Ivory Coast before he was poisoned to death by his business associates on one of their outing to discus on a business deal.
So Miss Wumi Abdul, if that's your real name, wherever you are, the NSA's on to you now.
What's currently happening in Washington doesn't fundamentally impact most people day to day....The fact that certain high profile programs have seen funding cut is nothing but a political ploy to make citizens feel some of the pain. We're supposed to believe that the sky....
Nope, the programs affected by the shutdown are discretionary spending, that means nice to have, but not essential. So if we open national parks, memorials, museums, etc. What would you suggest we close in its place? The military?
You have to admire apple for their ingenuity. What better way to force people to ditch that old phone than to update the OS, make it more resource hungry...
That's been going on for as long as there has been a computer industry.
Not at all! You could always keep your old OS in your computer. The "great innovation" of apple is to FORCE YOU TO UPGRADE if you need to reinstall the OS, whether you like it or not....
That's quite true, but even in the "olden" days, it was hard to downgrade because within about a year, most of your apps would have no longer been compatible, or the OS would no longer run the latest must-have apps or games.
iOS 6 was an optimization of iOS 5 and runs much better on my old 3GS than 5 ever did. I cannot imagine anyone seriously recommending iOS 5 for these older devices.
You have to admire apple for their ingenuity. What better way to force people to ditch that old phone than to update the OS, make it more resource hungry...
That's been going on for as long as there has been a computer industry.
The good old EU, the highest-paid bureaucrats in the world, working hard at uniting Europe under one flag...because the one thing everyone from the Finns to Greeks, and the Portuguese and the Romanians all agree on is that the EU is run by a bunch of ivory-tower morons who are busy finding new and expensive solutions to problems that nobody really cares about. Meanwhile Rome is burning...at least if you're under 30 and live in southern Europe.
But on to more important problems, next it will be hairnets for fishers, cube-shaped tomatoes, minimum-curvature bananas, or banning the Germans from printing "made in Germany" on things they make... oh wait, they've already tried all that. Maybe now they'll go back to trying to force local communities to give their drinking water infrastructure away to multinationals such as Nestle in the name of "improving competition and service." They've never really given up on that idea. But we know who the EU-comissioners really work for. The EU is a phenomenon, and give it another 20 or 30 years and it will be something our kids read about in the history books.
A German friend of mine asked me, when will the Americans finally get around to controlling weapons and reducing violence. I replied as soon as the Germans get around to imposing a nationwide speed limit on the Autobahn.
Stupid Canadians... Don't they know the Moon is American property! We claimed it, planted flags there and all. Even left a couple old trucks parked out on the front lawn. Sign says "No Tresspassing", can't y'all read?
Yes, the actual high speed rail technology is a concept that's been done before - however, stomping over all of that privately owned land between LA and SF is a political concept that's completely infeasible at this point in time.....
It's called right of way. The government has used right of way before to build the highways (freeways in CA). The only difference is CA has become much more densely populated in the last 60 years, so more than just orange groves would be displaced.
....Sculley, who fractured the Mac lineup into a large number of similar and confusing models? Sculley, who had Apple branch out into every random consumer electronic category he could think of...
Sculley left Apple in 1993. Most of what you are referring to such as fracturing the mac lineup and the Pippen occurred under Spindler's watch.
Screw you Obama for giving Russia, with all their human rights problems like Pussy Riot, the moral high ground here. Screw you for making the US look like a bunch of mean-spirited whiners that have lost their shit because Snowden revealed the emperor has no clothes. It's going to be a long time, if ever, until we get back the home of the free and the land of the brave.
yea, and you, Obama + Bush, have ruined all the good Yakov Smirnoff jokes. "In America you watch television. In America, television watch you!"
Infrastructure in and of itself doesn't necessarily make a direct profit. But having good universal infrastructure, from clean water, sewage, roads, etc. is necessary to having a decent standard of living and a solid economic foundation. Yes, private enterprise can do infrastructure. But generally private infrastructure takes over the profitable segments of the country and leaves the government (by extension, the tax payers) with the cost of doing the unprofitable areas, if they're served at all. Then when the government inevitably loses money, because the most profitable markets have been privatized, the magical-market-political-types stomp on how inefficient the government is and how government can only squander resources. It's like having Fed-Ex trash talking the USPS, even though Fed-Ex doesn't do universal mail delivery.
Businesses, at least corporations, are required by law to maximize profits. Otherwise they are negligent in their fiduciary duties to their shareholders and could be sued for fraud.
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I'm sure there's enough buildings between 20 and 1000 years old such that a national program of improvements is a good idea
That's part of the problem. A lot of historic buildings are being changed irreversibly in order to make them comply with modern efficiency standards. It's almost a crying shame to see a late-19th century Grunderzeit villa facade get covered in foam blocks and painted over. In 30 years, people will regret a lot of the construction going on today, even if it saves a few thousand litters of heating oil.
I own a house in Germany, unlike most readers here. To be clear, the money from the KfW is a loan, not a subsidy. The subsidy, if there is one, is that most KfW loans are interest free for the first 10 years.
The irritating thing to this home owner is that there seems to be no end to home improvements that our German government would like for me to implement. Be it tripple-paned windows, foam insulation, solar heating, solar power, and now batteries. And my house is barely 20 years old. I'm not against somebody who wants to put all these things into their home, but for this home owner, none of these things make any economic sense - even with a zero interest loan. This home owner has decided to do exactly nothing. And that in and of itself saves the environment a lot of waste.
Yes, a certain amount of spying is expected and allowed. An ambassador is basically a legalized spy who has diplomatic protection and is allowed to work in the open.
The problem is that the NSA is not following the same priorities as the State Department. How many European political leaders will give the American diplomats their private phone number in the future? The NSA's spying on allies is destroying any future back channel communication abilities that we may have. The conspiracy theorist in me would be saying it's intentional so that the NSA becomes the ONLY source for intelligence gathering in the American government.
Nice troll, but what does the Tea Party have to do with a gas giant? Oh wait, now I understand.
So after sorting out all that spam, the NSA is now busy creating files on people such as miss Wumi Abdul, the only Daughter of late Mr and Mrs George Abdul, whose father was a very wealthy cocoa merchant in Abidjan, the economic capital of Ivory Coast before he was poisoned to death by his business associates on one of their outing to discus on a business deal.
So Miss Wumi Abdul, if that's your real name, wherever you are, the NSA's on to you now.
What's currently happening in Washington doesn't fundamentally impact most people day to day....The fact that certain high profile programs have seen funding cut is nothing but a political ploy to make citizens feel some of the pain. We're supposed to believe that the sky....
Nope, the programs affected by the shutdown are discretionary spending, that means nice to have, but not essential. So if we open national parks, memorials, museums, etc. What would you suggest we close in its place? The military?
You have to admire apple for their ingenuity. What better way to force people to ditch that old phone than to update the OS, make it more resource hungry...
That's been going on for as long as there has been a computer industry.
Not at all! You could always keep your old OS in your computer. The "great innovation" of apple is to FORCE YOU TO UPGRADE if you need to reinstall the OS, whether you like it or not....
That's quite true, but even in the "olden" days, it was hard to downgrade because within about a year, most of your apps would have no longer been compatible, or the OS would no longer run the latest must-have apps or games.
Could you imagine turning on your old iPhone 1 and being told it was now installing iOS 7?
iOS 6 was an optimization of iOS 5 and runs much better on my old 3GS than 5 ever did. I cannot imagine anyone seriously recommending iOS 5 for these older devices.
You have to admire apple for their ingenuity. What better way to force people to ditch that old phone than to update the OS, make it more resource hungry...
That's been going on for as long as there has been a computer industry.
Splitting these organizations into separate parts, each with a different mission could fix that, but effective oversight would be required.
The Titanic, but without the luxurious accommodations and there won't be any break-dancing peasants in steerage either.
If plates become electronic and networked, then the question needs to be asked, why do we even need a license plate to display a number at all.
The good old EU, the highest-paid bureaucrats in the world, working hard at uniting Europe under one flag...because the one thing everyone from the Finns to Greeks, and the Portuguese and the Romanians all agree on is that the EU is run by a bunch of ivory-tower morons who are busy finding new and expensive solutions to problems that nobody really cares about. Meanwhile Rome is burning...at least if you're under 30 and live in southern Europe.
But on to more important problems, next it will be hairnets for fishers, cube-shaped tomatoes, minimum-curvature bananas, or banning the Germans from printing "made in Germany" on things they make... oh wait, they've already tried all that. Maybe now they'll go back to trying to force local communities to give their drinking water infrastructure away to multinationals such as Nestle in the name of "improving competition and service." They've never really given up on that idea. But we know who the EU-comissioners really work for. The EU is a phenomenon, and give it another 20 or 30 years and it will be something our kids read about in the history books.
A German friend of mine asked me, when will the Americans finally get around to controlling weapons and reducing violence. I replied as soon as the Germans get around to imposing a nationwide speed limit on the Autobahn.
Stupid Canadians... Don't they know the Moon is American property! We claimed it, planted flags there and all. Even left a couple old trucks parked out on the front lawn. Sign says "No Tresspassing", can't y'all read?
Don't make me laugh, eh? Hosehead.
The real question is, does it keep a man in a tiger suit away?
If it's smaller, then it must be less powerful, right?
Well, sir, there's nothing on earth
.....
Like a genuine,
Bona fide,
Electrified,
Six-car
Monorail!
What'd I say?
Yes, the actual high speed rail technology is a concept that's been done before - however, stomping over all of that privately owned land between LA and SF is a political concept that's completely infeasible at this point in time.....
It's called right of way. The government has used right of way before to build the highways (freeways in CA). The only difference is CA has become much more densely populated in the last 60 years, so more than just orange groves would be displaced.
....Sculley, who fractured the Mac lineup into a large number of similar and confusing models? Sculley, who had Apple branch out into every random consumer electronic category he could think of...
Sculley left Apple in 1993. Most of what you are referring to such as fracturing the mac lineup and the Pippen occurred under Spindler's watch.
Screw you Obama for giving Russia, with all their human rights problems like Pussy Riot, the moral high ground here. Screw you for making the US look like a bunch of mean-spirited whiners that have lost their shit because Snowden revealed the emperor has no clothes. It's going to be a long time, if ever, until we get back the home of the free and the land of the brave.
yea, and you, Obama + Bush, have ruined all the good Yakov Smirnoff jokes. "In America you watch television. In America, television watch you!"
If there was such a thing as justice, I'd make a killing selling rope and pitchforks... literally.
As a believer in nonviolence, a nice hot barrel of tar and a lot of feathers would do.
Infrastructure in and of itself doesn't necessarily make a direct profit. But having good universal infrastructure, from clean water, sewage, roads, etc. is necessary to having a decent standard of living and a solid economic foundation. Yes, private enterprise can do infrastructure. But generally private infrastructure takes over the profitable segments of the country and leaves the government (by extension, the tax payers) with the cost of doing the unprofitable areas, if they're served at all. Then when the government inevitably loses money, because the most profitable markets have been privatized, the magical-market-political-types stomp on how inefficient the government is and how government can only squander resources. It's like having Fed-Ex trash talking the USPS, even though Fed-Ex doesn't do universal mail delivery.
Businesses, at least corporations, are required by law to maximize profits. Otherwise they are negligent in their fiduciary duties to their shareholders and could be sued for fraud.