When has MS marketing ever been any good? Remember the whole MSN butterfly thing, with people running around in blue butterfly suits? It's amazing a company can stay in business with such horrible marketing for such a long time.
Last time I was there was 2002. I remember being able to get a weeklong unlimited pass for less than $20. I went through nearly that much, per person, in a single day on my recent trip, and didn't see any options for unlimited passes except maybe for a monthly one which was quite expensive (considering I was only there for a day).
What is the "SAS" line? And why did they name it after British and Australian special forces regiments?
However, you're wrong about commuters and light rails: while airports might not be a common destination for commuters, nearby areas like New Jersey and Long Island definitely are, and those areas would be much better served by a more frequent and/or higher-capacity rail service. The light rail I took back to NJ had a ridiculous wait time, so it didn't seem they were running many trains.
I disagree. Anon will probably show, publicly, what proof they have. Is it perfect? Surely not. But from what I've seen of the official justice systems, it's no worse. People are constantly being prosecuted and convicted of crimes they didn't commit in the normal system, just because some asshole DA wants to show he's "tough on crime" and because jurors are a bunch of racist morons. Just look at how many people are being released left and right now because DNA evidence exonerates them, but decades later so their lives are mostly over. Why aren't the jurors being punished for their decisions? And why do people assume the governmental justice systems are worth a shit? They're not. I'll trust Anonymous just as much, probably more in fact, than the governmental systems. We can probably expect a bunch of hackers to give far more weight to physical evidence, and not some dipshit's "testimony", than idiot jurors who are swayed by Billy Bob swearing on the Bible that "yeah, that's the guy who did it!".
I don't know about your city, but I live in Phoenix and have used cabs in both here and in NYC. They're no cheaper here (they cover a little more distance for the price maybe, but that's because the city isn't nearly as dense, and you need to go much farther here anyway because of the lower density so it's a wash). And I definitely wouldn't call the service "better"; the cabs here are just as stinky, and here, unlike NYC, the cabbies don't know where anything is, so you have to give them directions as they drive.
I've been to NYC several times now, the most recent time being two days ago. In my experience, the MTA is absolutely great at getting you around very quickly, between most of the places it goes, especially between subway stops. The subways aren't the newest or cleanest in the world, but there's lots of them and they'll get you around pretty quickly. However, if you need to go someplace where the MTA doesn't go, or you need to go to Long Island, it's an absolute nightmare. Getting over to NJ, or to Long Island, or Staten Island, or to JFK airport, is a giant PITA and requires either a horribly expensive cab ride (esp. if you need to cross any bridges--holy shit, $20 to cross a bridge?) or a special bus or a light rail that only leaves every couple hours. Since I was staying in NJ, the only reason half my day wasn't spent just traveling to and from Manhattan was because I took a helicopter to the Wall Street helipad in the morning, but that's not exactly realistic for most people.
Why on earth is there not a subway line straight to every airport in the area? When was the last time they built a new subway for that matter? The prices have gone WAY up since I was there last, but there's no increase in service at all. It doesn't seem like they've bothered investing in any new construction for 70 years. If they'd build more subways to link up with the existing systems, the whole thing would be much, much better, instead of using these shitty non-linked and non-frequent light rails.
This girl was a child, not an adult. If she was conned into acting against her best wishes by some asshole, I feel no sympathy for this asshole if some anonymous hackers make his life a complete living hell, and I hope they do. Then next time some asshole like this thinks of doing something similar, he'll remember what happened to this shithead and think again.
The government isn't interested in justice except as much as is needed to keep the people from rioting. The situation is no different at all from the governments in Medieval times, when there were kings and earls and such. Back then, nobility ruled and controlled all the money, but they also had the responsibility of running the justice system. It was largely a farce, but not completely, they tried to provide some sense of justice even if innocent people were being hanged left and right, but that didn't matter because the people wanted justice, not necessarily correctness. The whole thing was a bargain where the nobility (government) provided a justice system so people could air their grievances, in exchange for the nobility getting to be a bunch of rich bastards and keep their power. It's exactly the same now, just not quite as simple, with a lot more positions in the power hierarchy (DAs, lawyers, etc.).
What makes you think it consumes 40W? Have you used a power meter on it? Same goes for your "1000W" servers. Power supply ratings do not indicate typical consumption levels, only peak load capabilities, and the only time you get even close to that is when you're first powering the system on and spinning up your drives.
Yes, but coal power stations have economies of scale and are much more efficient than thousands or millions of small ICEs driving around at partial load most of the time. Yes, inverters and batteries decrease efficiency, as do transmission lines, but it still works out to be much cheaper. The easy way to see this is to simply compare the cost of driving per mile in each vehicle, given current gasoline prices and current electricity prices. Plug-in EVs always work out to be far, far cheaper in energy costs. And gasoline is only going to get more expensive, perhaps greatly so, whereas electricity can be generated from all sorts of sources so it doesn't have to rise in price nearly as much.
Sorry if some of my other points weren't quite clear. 35% is not the maximum Carnot efficiency, that's approximately the maximum real-world efficiency of modern gasoline cars. And don't forget, if you're going to count stuff like electric transmission lines, then you also need to count things like how much energy (fuel) is needed to transport crude oil from remote locations to refineries, to run the refineries, and then to transport the resulting gasoline to filling stations with semis.
That has nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with power. Why would rich authoritarians who have all the power want to give it up? Just about every government in history has suppressed efforts to replace that form of government with a different one.
And how would implementing democracy help "reform" things in Saudi Arabia? They're trying it in other Arab countries now and radical Islamists are coming to power. The people don't want reform or progressivism.
So how exactly are they 'the best thing' for the people?
All I'm saying is that, if the people had more power, things would probably be even worse and more oppressive. You and others here seem to be trying to blame all the ills of Saudi Arabia on its government alone, and what I'm trying to point out is that the people are probably worse. Just look at what's happened in the other Arab Spring countries: they replaced crappy dictatorships with even crappier and more oppressive Islamist governments, because that's what the people want. Libya's Gadafi, for instance, was actually fairly forward-thinking when it came to things like women's rights; he even had an all-female bodyguard contingent, and sure as heck didn't have them wearing burqas. With the new people, I wouldn't be too surprised to see things go backwards.
It just seems to me that most of these power-hungry leaders really don't care that much about religious ideals; they'll say whatever they need to to stay in power, but they're usually not the mindless lunatics that you find in the clerical ranks and among the most religious of the people.
“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.” - Seneca, Roman philosopher, mid-1st century AD
You know high-ranking Republican politicians personally? Or just Republican voters? The voters are indeed a bunch of religious hypocrites. The politicians are just telling them what they want to hear, for the most part. It's pretty hard to tell how much they really believe personally; that's the big problem with sociopaths, it's hard to tell where they really stand since they're so good at lying.
How on earth does making EVs "take so much energy"? They're fundamentally far simpler than gas-driven cars, with far fewer parts; the main problem is the batteries, and batteries don't cost that much to make. Just take a look at Teslas; you can compare the energy costs by comparing the production costs of the cars directly, since energy more or less translates into money. Teslas don't cost millions of dollars to make, and the only reason they cost as much as they do is because they haven't scaled up their production processes.
electric vehicles cost more simply because they take so much more energy to make
Bullshit. They cost more to make because they're low-volume vehicles, and low-volume products ALWAYS cost more than high-volume products. Go read about "economies of scale".
It does make us just a bit more independent since instead of burning oil you burn coal, but at the present it's only a slight slant towards coal.
Except that you need far less, because you eliminate the ridiculously poor efficiency of ICE engines and the Carnot cycle they're based on. Carnot-cycle engines are maximum 35% efficient; electric motors are in the 95+% range.
Just making those vehicles takes a lot of oil and natural gas for various industrial processes that come up with all the parts.
What, and regular cars don't need tens of thousands of parts too? How much energy do you think it costs to refine aluminum (for engine blocks and other parts), forge steel (for connecting rods and crankshafts), etc? This argument is simply stupid.
I think you're missing my point. The royal family's motivation is money and power: they want to be in power, because they like the power and/or the money (and considering how much money they spend and how lavishly they live, I think it's safe to assume money is either #1 or #2). What I'm questioning is their commitment to the religious ideals of Wahhabism. Do they really care that much about oppressing women and all that? According to the Wiki link someone else posted here about politics in SA, the King has now decreed that women will be able to be full members in politics there. That doesn't sound like a Taliban-like move to me, it sounds like a pretty serious effort at reform. Who knows, maybe his wife is pushing him? Whatever the cause, who cares; my point is that if the Wahhabists were really that powerful, that kind of thing wouldn't be happening at all.
So the way it looks to me, the Saudi royals only provide lip service to the extremely conservative Islamic stuff, enough to keep people from revolting or losing their alliance with the Wahhabist clerics, so they can stay in power and enjoy the money. And maybe while they're in there, some of them are even trying to improve things too, despite what the Wahhabist morons and their followers would like.
My whole point here, since it seems I need to spell it out, is that the conservatism and dedication to Wahhabism does not come from the top, it comes from the bottom. It's just like politics here in America; this nutty creationism-loving fundie Christianity isn't being pushed on us by a bunch of elitist politicians. That stuff is all coming from the bottom, from average everyday American people who believe in that insanity. The politicians who spout that stuff are just pandering to their base.
Are you sure about that? The way it looks to me, these Wahhabists control the clerical institutions, and the Sauds maintain this alliance because it keeps them in power. The Wahhabists are probably only able to stay in power because the people love them. It's little different from what we have here in America: a bunch of nutty fundie Christian groups have enormous popular support in certain quarters, so right-wing politicians pander to them (i.e., a strategic alliance) in order to gain power and stay in power. A lot of the Republicans probably don't buy a lot of the religious BS, they just want the power that goes with the job, but they'll give a lot of lip service to it to get votes from the religious nuts.
Remember, people are fundamentally followers for the most part, and want to be led. A progressive leader of a bunch of backwards morons can lead them out of backwardness to a certain extent, at a very slow and controlled rate, but if that leader tries to make too many reforms too quickly, suddenly the followers will turn against him and rebel.
Actually, I may be wrong, but the way I see it, the Saudi government is actually rather progressive, for a Muslim nation. The King has pushed for many reforms there. The problem isn't the government, it's the people themselves: they're mostly a bunch of lunatics. The government does things like this (calling for global censorship, etc.) to appease its people, and stay in power, and avoids pushing for too much reform too quickly, so that their nutty people don't start a revolution and set up an even worse and more oppressive government. In short, an autocratic government is really the best thing for the people of Saudi Arabia, if your goal is to further human rights and get away from Wahhabism. Left to their own devices, the people of Saudi Arabia will be worse than the Taliban.
Our economies deserve to be deep-sixed for our failure to make ourselves energy independent. We could have been doing far more to develop electric vehicles, public transit like SkyTran, developing renewable energy sources, etc., but we haven't.
No, you're an idiot, because you can't fucking read. I already said here that you can't accelerate past the speed of light, which is why some kind of "jump" would be needed to get past this barrier somehow.
Kubuntu is pretty well-known as being not well maintained due to lack of developers; basically, someone just slapped the vanilla KDE packages on top of Ubuntu and called it "done". It works, but it's not an official release at all (it is not maintained at all by Canonical, only a volunteer), and could really be a lot better.
If you want Ubuntu under the hood with KDE, Linux Mint KDE Edition is a better choice.
Actually, thanks for replying; I've seen this same thing happen over and over in different conversations, and always wondered why, and your explanation (browsing at +2) explains it completely.
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When has MS marketing ever been any good? Remember the whole MSN butterfly thing, with people running around in blue butterfly suits? It's amazing a company can stay in business with such horrible marketing for such a long time.
I disagree; I think MS's prices are far, far too low. They need to quintuple their prices, not just for Surface, but for everything else too.
Surely you can buy brown Zunes on Ebay if you're that much in love with them.
Last time I was there was 2002. I remember being able to get a weeklong unlimited pass for less than $20. I went through nearly that much, per person, in a single day on my recent trip, and didn't see any options for unlimited passes except maybe for a monthly one which was quite expensive (considering I was only there for a day).
What is the "SAS" line? And why did they name it after British and Australian special forces regiments?
However, you're wrong about commuters and light rails: while airports might not be a common destination for commuters, nearby areas like New Jersey and Long Island definitely are, and those areas would be much better served by a more frequent and/or higher-capacity rail service. The light rail I took back to NJ had a ridiculous wait time, so it didn't seem they were running many trains.
I disagree. Anon will probably show, publicly, what proof they have. Is it perfect? Surely not. But from what I've seen of the official justice systems, it's no worse. People are constantly being prosecuted and convicted of crimes they didn't commit in the normal system, just because some asshole DA wants to show he's "tough on crime" and because jurors are a bunch of racist morons. Just look at how many people are being released left and right now because DNA evidence exonerates them, but decades later so their lives are mostly over. Why aren't the jurors being punished for their decisions? And why do people assume the governmental justice systems are worth a shit? They're not. I'll trust Anonymous just as much, probably more in fact, than the governmental systems. We can probably expect a bunch of hackers to give far more weight to physical evidence, and not some dipshit's "testimony", than idiot jurors who are swayed by Billy Bob swearing on the Bible that "yeah, that's the guy who did it!".
I don't know about your city, but I live in Phoenix and have used cabs in both here and in NYC. They're no cheaper here (they cover a little more distance for the price maybe, but that's because the city isn't nearly as dense, and you need to go much farther here anyway because of the lower density so it's a wash). And I definitely wouldn't call the service "better"; the cabs here are just as stinky, and here, unlike NYC, the cabbies don't know where anything is, so you have to give them directions as they drive.
I've been to NYC several times now, the most recent time being two days ago. In my experience, the MTA is absolutely great at getting you around very quickly, between most of the places it goes, especially between subway stops. The subways aren't the newest or cleanest in the world, but there's lots of them and they'll get you around pretty quickly. However, if you need to go someplace where the MTA doesn't go, or you need to go to Long Island, it's an absolute nightmare. Getting over to NJ, or to Long Island, or Staten Island, or to JFK airport, is a giant PITA and requires either a horribly expensive cab ride (esp. if you need to cross any bridges--holy shit, $20 to cross a bridge?) or a special bus or a light rail that only leaves every couple hours. Since I was staying in NJ, the only reason half my day wasn't spent just traveling to and from Manhattan was because I took a helicopter to the Wall Street helipad in the morning, but that's not exactly realistic for most people.
Why on earth is there not a subway line straight to every airport in the area? When was the last time they built a new subway for that matter? The prices have gone WAY up since I was there last, but there's no increase in service at all. It doesn't seem like they've bothered investing in any new construction for 70 years. If they'd build more subways to link up with the existing systems, the whole thing would be much, much better, instead of using these shitty non-linked and non-frequent light rails.
Edit: "best wishes" -> "best interests"
This girl was a child, not an adult. If she was conned into acting against her best wishes by some asshole, I feel no sympathy for this asshole if some anonymous hackers make his life a complete living hell, and I hope they do. Then next time some asshole like this thinks of doing something similar, he'll remember what happened to this shithead and think again.
The government isn't interested in justice except as much as is needed to keep the people from rioting. The situation is no different at all from the governments in Medieval times, when there were kings and earls and such. Back then, nobility ruled and controlled all the money, but they also had the responsibility of running the justice system. It was largely a farce, but not completely, they tried to provide some sense of justice even if innocent people were being hanged left and right, but that didn't matter because the people wanted justice, not necessarily correctness. The whole thing was a bargain where the nobility (government) provided a justice system so people could air their grievances, in exchange for the nobility getting to be a bunch of rich bastards and keep their power. It's exactly the same now, just not quite as simple, with a lot more positions in the power hierarchy (DAs, lawyers, etc.).
Ok, those are very realistic numbers for a server.
What makes you think it consumes 40W? Have you used a power meter on it? Same goes for your "1000W" servers. Power supply ratings do not indicate typical consumption levels, only peak load capabilities, and the only time you get even close to that is when you're first powering the system on and spinning up your drives.
Yes, but coal power stations have economies of scale and are much more efficient than thousands or millions of small ICEs driving around at partial load most of the time. Yes, inverters and batteries decrease efficiency, as do transmission lines, but it still works out to be much cheaper. The easy way to see this is to simply compare the cost of driving per mile in each vehicle, given current gasoline prices and current electricity prices. Plug-in EVs always work out to be far, far cheaper in energy costs. And gasoline is only going to get more expensive, perhaps greatly so, whereas electricity can be generated from all sorts of sources so it doesn't have to rise in price nearly as much.
Sorry if some of my other points weren't quite clear. 35% is not the maximum Carnot efficiency, that's approximately the maximum real-world efficiency of modern gasoline cars. And don't forget, if you're going to count stuff like electric transmission lines, then you also need to count things like how much energy (fuel) is needed to transport crude oil from remote locations to refineries, to run the refineries, and then to transport the resulting gasoline to filling stations with semis.
Such as implementing democracy.
That has nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with power. Why would rich authoritarians who have all the power want to give it up? Just about every government in history has suppressed efforts to replace that form of government with a different one.
And how would implementing democracy help "reform" things in Saudi Arabia? They're trying it in other Arab countries now and radical Islamists are coming to power. The people don't want reform or progressivism.
So how exactly are they 'the best thing' for the people?
All I'm saying is that, if the people had more power, things would probably be even worse and more oppressive. You and others here seem to be trying to blame all the ills of Saudi Arabia on its government alone, and what I'm trying to point out is that the people are probably worse. Just look at what's happened in the other Arab Spring countries: they replaced crappy dictatorships with even crappier and more oppressive Islamist governments, because that's what the people want. Libya's Gadafi, for instance, was actually fairly forward-thinking when it came to things like women's rights; he even had an all-female bodyguard contingent, and sure as heck didn't have them wearing burqas. With the new people, I wouldn't be too surprised to see things go backwards.
It just seems to me that most of these power-hungry leaders really don't care that much about religious ideals; they'll say whatever they need to to stay in power, but they're usually not the mindless lunatics that you find in the clerical ranks and among the most religious of the people.
“Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.” - Seneca, Roman philosopher, mid-1st century AD
You know high-ranking Republican politicians personally? Or just Republican voters? The voters are indeed a bunch of religious hypocrites. The politicians are just telling them what they want to hear, for the most part. It's pretty hard to tell how much they really believe personally; that's the big problem with sociopaths, it's hard to tell where they really stand since they're so good at lying.
How on earth does making EVs "take so much energy"? They're fundamentally far simpler than gas-driven cars, with far fewer parts; the main problem is the batteries, and batteries don't cost that much to make. Just take a look at Teslas; you can compare the energy costs by comparing the production costs of the cars directly, since energy more or less translates into money. Teslas don't cost millions of dollars to make, and the only reason they cost as much as they do is because they haven't scaled up their production processes.
electric vehicles cost more simply because they take so much more energy to make
Bullshit. They cost more to make because they're low-volume vehicles, and low-volume products ALWAYS cost more than high-volume products. Go read about "economies of scale".
It does make us just a bit more independent since instead of burning oil you burn coal, but at the present it's only a slight slant towards coal.
Except that you need far less, because you eliminate the ridiculously poor efficiency of ICE engines and the Carnot cycle they're based on. Carnot-cycle engines are maximum 35% efficient; electric motors are in the 95+% range.
Just making those vehicles takes a lot of oil and natural gas for various industrial processes that come up with all the parts.
What, and regular cars don't need tens of thousands of parts too? How much energy do you think it costs to refine aluminum (for engine blocks and other parts), forge steel (for connecting rods and crankshafts), etc? This argument is simply stupid.
I think you're missing my point. The royal family's motivation is money and power: they want to be in power, because they like the power and/or the money (and considering how much money they spend and how lavishly they live, I think it's safe to assume money is either #1 or #2). What I'm questioning is their commitment to the religious ideals of Wahhabism. Do they really care that much about oppressing women and all that? According to the Wiki link someone else posted here about politics in SA, the King has now decreed that women will be able to be full members in politics there. That doesn't sound like a Taliban-like move to me, it sounds like a pretty serious effort at reform. Who knows, maybe his wife is pushing him? Whatever the cause, who cares; my point is that if the Wahhabists were really that powerful, that kind of thing wouldn't be happening at all.
So the way it looks to me, the Saudi royals only provide lip service to the extremely conservative Islamic stuff, enough to keep people from revolting or losing their alliance with the Wahhabist clerics, so they can stay in power and enjoy the money. And maybe while they're in there, some of them are even trying to improve things too, despite what the Wahhabist morons and their followers would like.
My whole point here, since it seems I need to spell it out, is that the conservatism and dedication to Wahhabism does not come from the top, it comes from the bottom. It's just like politics here in America; this nutty creationism-loving fundie Christianity isn't being pushed on us by a bunch of elitist politicians. That stuff is all coming from the bottom, from average everyday American people who believe in that insanity. The politicians who spout that stuff are just pandering to their base.
Are you sure about that? The way it looks to me, these Wahhabists control the clerical institutions, and the Sauds maintain this alliance because it keeps them in power. The Wahhabists are probably only able to stay in power because the people love them. It's little different from what we have here in America: a bunch of nutty fundie Christian groups have enormous popular support in certain quarters, so right-wing politicians pander to them (i.e., a strategic alliance) in order to gain power and stay in power. A lot of the Republicans probably don't buy a lot of the religious BS, they just want the power that goes with the job, but they'll give a lot of lip service to it to get votes from the religious nuts.
Remember, people are fundamentally followers for the most part, and want to be led. A progressive leader of a bunch of backwards morons can lead them out of backwardness to a certain extent, at a very slow and controlled rate, but if that leader tries to make too many reforms too quickly, suddenly the followers will turn against him and rebel.
Then you must do the same for Christianity
If this were an article about a bunch of morons in the Bible Belt calling for a Global Internet Censorship body, I'm sure he would.
Actually, I may be wrong, but the way I see it, the Saudi government is actually rather progressive, for a Muslim nation. The King has pushed for many reforms there. The problem isn't the government, it's the people themselves: they're mostly a bunch of lunatics. The government does things like this (calling for global censorship, etc.) to appease its people, and stay in power, and avoids pushing for too much reform too quickly, so that their nutty people don't start a revolution and set up an even worse and more oppressive government. In short, an autocratic government is really the best thing for the people of Saudi Arabia, if your goal is to further human rights and get away from Wahhabism. Left to their own devices, the people of Saudi Arabia will be worse than the Taliban.
Our economies deserve to be deep-sixed for our failure to make ourselves energy independent. We could have been doing far more to develop electric vehicles, public transit like SkyTran, developing renewable energy sources, etc., but we haven't.
No, you're an idiot, because you can't fucking read. I already said here that you can't accelerate past the speed of light, which is why some kind of "jump" would be needed to get past this barrier somehow.
Kubuntu is pretty well-known as being not well maintained due to lack of developers; basically, someone just slapped the vanilla KDE packages on top of Ubuntu and called it "done". It works, but it's not an official release at all (it is not maintained at all by Canonical, only a volunteer), and could really be a lot better.
If you want Ubuntu under the hood with KDE, Linux Mint KDE Edition is a better choice.
Actually, thanks for replying; I've seen this same thing happen over and over in different conversations, and always wondered why, and your explanation (browsing at +2) explains it completely.