The problem is that so many 'environmentalists' simply state that we could replace all our power needs with solar/wind, and that to not do so is silly. The fact is, we cannot produce north america's energy needs (or anywhere near it) in this manner.
Obviously, it's entirely possible to live comfortably in a rural home on solar power (provided you are somewhere sunny). But what about building that home? What about the materials needed? What about manufacturing those batteries you use? All of this takes power as well.
Yes, especially in DC current, it's amps that kill you, so to speak. But it takes voltage to move amps.
However.. with household AC power, it's the 50 or 60 hz cycle *fibrilating the heart* and causing heart attack that kills people, not the actual amount of power. It doesn't take much AC voltage to kill people, only enough to make the signal reach the heart.
In that respect, 220 is more dangerous. That will only cause burns. Short of enough current to burn organs, all you have to fear is some surface burns (that could be bad).
Ummmm.......
How exactly do you 'store' power in the power grid? You don't.
Yes, you can run power 'back into the grid' and run your meter backwards... in effect, selling power back to the grid.... and it will most likely get used up somewhere else...
If all the power in the north-american grid isn't at 100% usage, the excess does not get 'stored' anywhere, it just vanishes. Want to do an experiment?
Get your honda generator out, put $10 in gas into it, and fire it up, but don't hook anything up to it (this simulates a generating station).
When it runs out of gas, try to run something off it. Gee, where did all that power go?
In our current global economic climate, solar power (and wind power, and every other type of power, except maybe Hydro... but that's only a guess..), is quite a bit more expensive per power unit.
I recall reading some studies showing how we could not simply 'convert' north america to solar/wind power, because there is simply no way to generate the same amount of energy, regardless of cost.
So, in that respect, solar power is much more expensive.
But if you try to use your diesel generator in these countries, first you have to find a supply of diesel... that gets expensive. Solar power is fairly self-sufficient, even though it has a higher initial cost. It just works.
If you factor in environmental costs... solar power is far cheaper. No pollution (other than manufacturing the units, don't forget that...). They have a long, long life cycle.
If you have limited power available,
But money isn't everything. Asking the typical North American society to change it's ways and use a hundred times less power isn't going to happen... but to these people, power is a new thing.
Their society can adapt to use the power they have in the best possible way... let's all hope that 100 years from now they aren't chugging out huge amounts of pollution, but instead have roof material made of solar cells, and perhaps a manufacturing plant leading the world in cell design.
Because microsofts 'innovations' revolve around world domination, not technology.
The whole.net idea isn't all that interesting in a technical sense, the idea has been out there for ages. Microsoft did not invent the idea of the ASP. Whatt's REALLY innovative is the business model they are going to try to achieve.
The oss/hobbyist (I don't mean the oss community are hobbyists, I just didn't want to exclude the hobyists) types simply don't try to take over the world.
Is anyone else sick of the 'titanium' buzzword that everyone is in love with?
I saw this guy on TV, selling titanium kitchen knives. He talked about how strong it was, because it was developed for the space program, etc....
Titanium is very strong for it's weight... but that's it. Steel is still stronger (or at least, not as brittle). Also, from a knife point of view, titanium may never rust, but it's very porous, and although it may hold an edge for a logn time, it will not be a very sharp one. You cannot approach the razor-sharpness of good steel with titanium.
I have a space-age titanium backing on the LCD portion of my vaio z505le. Didn't take much jostling in the backpack to put a huge shiny gouge in it...
I'll admit it. The Cube is the coolest sexiest looking computer I've seen yet (well next to some old Crays of course), especially when combined with a nice Cinema display, and those funkadelic matching speakers.
But the cube is not expandable, and, I'm sorry, but... too expensive for being not expandable. The lack of incremental upgradability means it'll be outdated on my desk that much sooner.
Or maybe its' just the thought of paying so much money for something so small.
You know... I thought about it. I don't have a problem with someone collecting information about me, as long as that information was volunteered by me.
I only have a problem with them selling it or giving it out to others.
Ever wonder why bank clerks get chatty? They get bonuses for referring people to the loans department (or any other bank service) when they hear the person is doing something. Oh, your daughter is just about to get married? That's great sir! (write not to loan department to give him a call).
Then there would be no point in having an 'income tax' in the first place, because they would never collect a dime.
Also, the current functioning of government/military/public spending is based on taxation. If this were not the case, we would have some other system, like taxation through inflation, or some other equally twisted system.
Yes. Lawyers should get paid, and not work for free. Nobody should work for free.
What does that have to do with Killustrator having to pay damages? Offering to change the name immediately, which should resolve the trademark issue, means that Adobe's problem is solved.
I don't know anything about German courts... but I am fairly sure that, were this a Canadian court, the first thing the judge would ask would be 'had you been notified prior to this that there was an infringement?' 'Oh, no? Then why is Adobe wasting this court's time'
No, bartering is not tax evasion. Neither is making a billion dollars and putting it in an offshore account.
Failing to claim either one on your income tax forms, however, IS tax evasion.
It doesn't matter if you barter or not; the taxman will look at the value of the goods in question. You cannot buy a house from your uncle for $1. Well, you can, but if that house is worth $250,000, then that's what you're gonna get taxed on.
Stock options... you exercise options at $1 and get 3000 shares of a stock valued at $21... you pay tax on *income* of $20*3000 = $60,000, because that's what it was worth.
IANATA either, but if it wasn't this way, nobody would pay tax, we'd just barter for everything and avoid cash altogether.
Right.. because they are providing a 'service' in acting as a conduit between the user and the.com photo printing site.
That, combined with passport, and it really can be that simple.
So, as much as *I* don't like the idea of MS-centralized everything, I can see where they are going, and I can see why it will be popular.
Besides, it's up to that same.com whether to go the microsoft way or another way, no? Of course, that's where antitrust comes in.. because there may be no other choice.
The digital camera software that comes with any camera I have seen so far is garbage. The most I use it for is copying the images to the computer, and I don't realy care who's software it is.
Kodak does not make money selling software for their cameras, they make money selling cameras!
Heck, if windows supported them all, they could avoid the software altogether and just provide drivers.
Personally, I'll stick with my vaio, my cybershot, and my 'proprietary' memory stick that just looks like a drive when I plug it in.
I understand perfectly. As I said, I understand that spam can cost money. My question is how much does it cost YOU.
As you have this information readily available, can you give a good guestimate as to how much extra money you paid last month because of spam?
Re:You twisted the question though.
on
ORBS Forks
·
· Score: 2
I have no sympathy for spammers either... and I support anti-spam policies of ISP's... open relays are bad, etc etc etc.
I live in europe, I know full well how the fees work.
My point is that so many of the people who whine about spam are people who spend far more time trying to block it from entering their mailbox than they would simply deleting it.
All I asked for was an example, and you provided the first one that actually makes really good sense.
Yes, I can appreciate that spam will cost you money.
What about a protocol that lets you choose which messages to download? I mean, that's what I do.. the beauty of imap.
You are still making the choice to download eachindividual message, even if you simply chose to download them all.
I still maintain that the bulk of people who whine about spam are just whining for the sake of whining; it's not costing them anything.
Re:You twisted the question though.
on
ORBS Forks
·
· Score: 2
Yes yes, I know that it costs money.. but how much money? Show how much more/less your monthly bill would be without spam... that's what I'm saying.
I'm not implying that bandwidth is free, only that the amount lost to spam by end users is negligible.
Re:You twisted the question though.
on
ORBS Forks
·
· Score: 2
Yes, I'm aware of that, I live in one of those countries.
Most poeople, however, who are whining about spam are NOT living in those countries, funny isn't it?
I don't dispute that spam is bad... just that people need to make a better and more convincing case for it.
Wow.. put words in my mouth.
on
ORBS Forks
·
· Score: 2
I didn't say I hate them, I don't. I also didn't say I like spam, I don't, and I realize that if we got hundreds or thousands of pieces a day, it would be a different story. But we don't.
I think there are several legal avenues by which we can reduce spam.
My point was that, currently, far more time is spent working on anti-spam systems (which also only treat the symptom, not the disease) than would be simply ignoring/deleting spam.
I'm not saying don't work on them either... simply that some kid who whines about how 'valuable' his time is so he spends it working on his anti-spam system to save him time is being a hypocrite.
I also think that, the reason spam persists is because SPAM WORKS. As long as people respond to spam, then there is a reason to spam. And if spam is working for some people, who are we to block it from them? We're better off to educate people and have people refuse to do business with companies who spam... when spam no longer gets a response, it will stop.
The credit card number was given during the purchase of the hardware. They TOLD people that they did NOT have to sign up for the internet service, and of course, would not be billed for it until they did.
Then they proceeded to charge these people for the service anyway. That's fraudulent.
As for the 'full internet functionality' thing, yes, us geeks who already know about it assume it can't do what our home PC can do.. however.. when you tell Joe American that something that looks like a cool computer has full internet functionality, you would buy it assuming you can do the same things with it that your neighbor does with his computer. This is not the case, so this is misleading. It's there deliberately to mislead the consumer into thinking it does more than it does.
I see where you might have come up with that reasoning, as SOON as they continued to charge you, you should have written a letter to both the I-opener people and to your credit card company ( as well as called the company to refute the charges). Your authorization was not given, and the charges were fraudulent.
People should not give *one inch* when a big company starts charging your card, by mistake or not.
Sure, if it was the little dive shop on the corner and the guy just made a mistake, and you can go to him in person and sort it out, maybe you don't get him in shit with Visa... but you have to consider, in a large company, how many times it happens if it happens to you.
The common perception when you tell someone that something that looks like a desktop computer has complete internet functionality, is that it will do what their neighbors Pentium box does. Yes, us geeks know differently... but still.
Nobody thinks their palm is going to be the same as a PC...
Slashdot Mirror
You are correct.
The problem is that so many 'environmentalists' simply state that we could replace all our power needs with solar/wind, and that to not do so is silly. The fact is, we cannot produce north america's energy needs (or anywhere near it) in this manner.
Obviously, it's entirely possible to live comfortably in a rural home on solar power (provided you are somewhere sunny). But what about building that home? What about the materials needed? What about manufacturing those batteries you use? All of this takes power as well.
Yes, especially in DC current, it's amps that kill you, so to speak. But it takes voltage to move amps.
However.. with household AC power, it's the 50 or 60 hz cycle *fibrilating the heart* and causing heart attack that kills people, not the actual amount of power. It doesn't take much AC voltage to kill people, only enough to make the signal reach the heart.
In that respect, 220 is more dangerous. That will only cause burns. Short of enough current to burn organs, all you have to fear is some surface burns (that could be bad).
Ummmm.......
How exactly do you 'store' power in the power grid? You don't.
Yes, you can run power 'back into the grid' and run your meter backwards... in effect, selling power back to the grid.... and it will most likely get used up somewhere else...
If all the power in the north-american grid isn't at 100% usage, the excess does not get 'stored' anywhere, it just vanishes. Want to do an experiment?
Get your honda generator out, put $10 in gas into it, and fire it up, but don't hook anything up to it (this simulates a generating station).
When it runs out of gas, try to run something off it. Gee, where did all that power go?
Well.. I can't quote any numbers.
In our current global economic climate, solar power (and wind power, and every other type of power, except maybe Hydro... but that's only a guess..), is quite a bit more expensive per power unit.
I recall reading some studies showing how we could not simply 'convert' north america to solar/wind power, because there is simply no way to generate the same amount of energy, regardless of cost.
So, in that respect, solar power is much more expensive.
But if you try to use your diesel generator in these countries, first you have to find a supply of diesel... that gets expensive. Solar power is fairly self-sufficient, even though it has a higher initial cost. It just works.
If you factor in environmental costs... solar power is far cheaper. No pollution (other than manufacturing the units, don't forget that...). They have a long, long life cycle.
If you have limited power available,
But money isn't everything. Asking the typical North American society to change it's ways and use a hundred times less power isn't going to happen... but to these people, power is a new thing.
Their society can adapt to use the power they have in the best possible way... let's all hope that 100 years from now they aren't chugging out huge amounts of pollution, but instead have roof material made of solar cells, and perhaps a manufacturing plant leading the world in cell design.
Because microsofts 'innovations' revolve around world domination, not technology.
.net idea isn't all that interesting in a technical sense, the idea has been out there for ages. Microsoft did not invent the idea of the ASP. Whatt's REALLY innovative is the business model they are going to try to achieve.
The whole
The oss/hobbyist (I don't mean the oss community are hobbyists, I just didn't want to exclude the hobyists) types simply don't try to take over the world.
I thought it was a latin-rooted prefix meaning 'one' or 'singular'.
monorail, mononucleosis, monotonous, monotone, etc.
Kind of made sense to me that way.
Of course, it DOES mean monkey in Spanish.... so...
but.. I have to say, regarding Titanium.
Is anyone else sick of the 'titanium' buzzword that everyone is in love with?
I saw this guy on TV, selling titanium kitchen knives. He talked about how strong it was, because it was developed for the space program, etc....
Titanium is very strong for it's weight... but that's it. Steel is still stronger (or at least, not as brittle). Also, from a knife point of view, titanium may never rust, but it's very porous, and although it may hold an edge for a logn time, it will not be a very sharp one. You cannot approach the razor-sharpness of good steel with titanium.
I have a space-age titanium backing on the LCD portion of my vaio z505le. Didn't take much jostling in the backpack to put a huge shiny gouge in it...
I'll admit it. The Cube is the coolest sexiest looking computer I've seen yet (well next to some old Crays of course), especially when combined with a nice Cinema display, and those funkadelic matching speakers.
But the cube is not expandable, and, I'm sorry, but... too expensive for being not expandable. The lack of incremental upgradability means it'll be outdated on my desk that much sooner.
Or maybe its' just the thought of paying so much money for something so small.
This happens when I order a Pizza.
I fail to see why people have a problem with people who they already do business with using whatever means they want to 'remember' that information.
It's when they share it/sell it that I take issue.
You know... I thought about it. I don't have a problem with someone collecting information about me, as long as that information was volunteered by me.
I only have a problem with them selling it or giving it out to others.
Ever wonder why bank clerks get chatty? They get bonuses for referring people to the loans department (or any other bank service) when they hear the person is doing something. Oh, your daughter is just about to get married? That's great sir! (write not to loan department to give him a call).
Then there would be no point in having an 'income tax' in the first place, because they would never collect a dime.
Also, the current functioning of government/military/public spending is based on taxation. If this were not the case, we would have some other system, like taxation through inflation, or some other equally twisted system.
Which would you rather have?
Yes. Lawyers should get paid, and not work for free. Nobody should work for free.
What does that have to do with Killustrator having to pay damages? Offering to change the name immediately, which should resolve the trademark issue, means that Adobe's problem is solved.
I don't know anything about German courts... but I am fairly sure that, were this a Canadian court, the first thing the judge would ask would be 'had you been notified prior to this that there was an infringement?' 'Oh, no? Then why is Adobe wasting this court's time'
No, bartering is not tax evasion. Neither is making a billion dollars and putting it in an offshore account.
Failing to claim either one on your income tax forms, however, IS tax evasion.
It doesn't matter if you barter or not; the taxman will look at the value of the goods in question. You cannot buy a house from your uncle for $1. Well, you can, but if that house is worth $250,000, then that's what you're gonna get taxed on.
Stock options... you exercise options at $1 and get 3000 shares of a stock valued at $21... you pay tax on *income* of $20*3000 = $60,000, because that's what it was worth.
IANATA either, but if it wasn't this way, nobody would pay tax, we'd just barter for everything and avoid cash altogether.
Right.. because they are providing a 'service' in acting as a conduit between the user and the .com photo printing site.
.com whether to go the microsoft way or another way, no? Of course, that's where antitrust comes in.. because there may be no other choice.
That, combined with passport, and it really can be that simple.
So, as much as *I* don't like the idea of MS-centralized everything, I can see where they are going, and I can see why it will be popular.
Besides, it's up to that same
The digital camera software that comes with any camera I have seen so far is garbage. The most I use it for is copying the images to the computer, and I don't realy care who's software it is.
Kodak does not make money selling software for their cameras, they make money selling cameras!
Heck, if windows supported them all, they could avoid the software altogether and just provide drivers.
Personally, I'll stick with my vaio, my cybershot, and my 'proprietary' memory stick that just looks like a drive when I plug it in.
I understand perfectly. As I said, I understand that spam can cost money. My question is how much does it cost YOU.
As you have this information readily available, can you give a good guestimate as to how much extra money you paid last month because of spam?
I have no sympathy for spammers either... and I support anti-spam policies of ISP's... open relays are bad, etc etc etc.
I live in europe, I know full well how the fees work.
My point is that so many of the people who whine about spam are people who spend far more time trying to block it from entering their mailbox than they would simply deleting it.
You're twisting it around. I agree with what you said completely....
BUt I'm not talking about the abuse of a mail server by brute-force spamming, I have no problems seeing how that should be illegal.
I'm talking about Joe Average who checks his email now and then, online, because that's who whines about spam the most.
You are talking about the mechanism used to deliver the spam, I'm talking about the end users actually fetching the mail.
All I asked for was an example, and you provided the first one that actually makes really good sense.
Yes, I can appreciate that spam will cost you money.
What about a protocol that lets you choose which messages to download? I mean, that's what I do.. the beauty of imap.
You are still making the choice to download eachindividual message, even if you simply chose to download them all.
I still maintain that the bulk of people who whine about spam are just whining for the sake of whining; it's not costing them anything.
Yes yes, I know that it costs money.. but how much money? Show how much more/less your monthly bill would be without spam... that's what I'm saying.
I'm not implying that bandwidth is free, only that the amount lost to spam by end users is negligible.
Yes, I'm aware of that, I live in one of those countries.
Most poeople, however, who are whining about spam are NOT living in those countries, funny isn't it?
I don't dispute that spam is bad... just that people need to make a better and more convincing case for it.
I didn't say I hate them, I don't. I also didn't say I like spam, I don't, and I realize that if we got hundreds or thousands of pieces a day, it would be a different story. But we don't.
I think there are several legal avenues by which we can reduce spam.
My point was that, currently, far more time is spent working on anti-spam systems (which also only treat the symptom, not the disease) than would be simply ignoring/deleting spam.
I'm not saying don't work on them either... simply that some kid who whines about how 'valuable' his time is so he spends it working on his anti-spam system to save him time is being a hypocrite.
I also think that, the reason spam persists is because SPAM WORKS. As long as people respond to spam, then there is a reason to spam. And if spam is working for some people, who are we to block it from them? We're better off to educate people and have people refuse to do business with companies who spam... when spam no longer gets a response, it will stop.
The credit card number was given during the purchase of the hardware. They TOLD people that they did NOT have to sign up for the internet service, and of course, would not be billed for it until they did.
Then they proceeded to charge these people for the service anyway. That's fraudulent.
As for the 'full internet functionality' thing, yes, us geeks who already know about it assume it can't do what our home PC can do.. however.. when you tell Joe American that something that looks like a cool computer has full internet functionality, you would buy it assuming you can do the same things with it that your neighbor does with his computer. This is not the case, so this is misleading. It's there deliberately to mislead the consumer into thinking it does more than it does.
I see where you might have come up with that reasoning, as SOON as they continued to charge you, you should have written a letter to both the I-opener people and to your credit card company ( as well as called the company to refute the charges). Your authorization was not given, and the charges were fraudulent.
People should not give *one inch* when a big company starts charging your card, by mistake or not.
Sure, if it was the little dive shop on the corner and the guy just made a mistake, and you can go to him in person and sort it out, maybe you don't get him in shit with Visa... but you have to consider, in a large company, how many times it happens if it happens to you.
The common perception when you tell someone that something that looks like a desktop computer has complete internet functionality, is that it will do what their neighbors Pentium box does. Yes, us geeks know differently... but still.
Nobody thinks their palm is going to be the same as a PC...
THat makes it misleading advertising.