I live about 5 minutes by foot from the Roasting Plant, and I can say with confidence that this is the best brewed coffee I've ever tasted. And I'm not the only one - the five or six friends (some of whom are connoisseurs) that I've taken to this place have all agreed that it's at or close to the top of all the coffee they've tasted.
The Rube Goldberg quality of the apparatus (it really is rather hypnotic to watch) naturally makes one suspicious that they sacrifice quality for spectacle, but the truth is that they designed the machine to make great coffee and then had a good designer make it pretty.
They use great beans and they don't burn them like Starbucks does. Though they will have a hard time sourcing enough good beans if they become a large chain, at this point, it's not a problem.
BTW, I promise that I have no connection to this establishment other than liking their coffee.
Well, excepting the cost of buying and maintaining the hardware, the pc should consume just as much power as an electric heater that consumes the same power. This is a thermodynamic inevitability. I have always understood that electric heat is something like 2-4 times as expensive as gas heat. This makes sense, since oil-fired coal plants operate somewhere in the 40-50% efficiency range (whereas, if you burned it in your heater you'd only give up the small amount of heat in your exhaust gas). Admittedly, natural gas is more expensive than the oil that power plants burn, but you could probably offset that with the losses due to the transmission on electrical power lines.
True, provided those "non-violent pot smokers" are also members of the 30 - 50 terrorist cells which are believed to be holed up in this country at this moment. Do you deny that the threat of future attacks is sufficient reason to allow the FBI to monitor electronic communications? Would you rather risk your email being read by a computer program and possibly a person, or being blown to bits as you sit down at your desk at work?
A democratic government's biggest challenge is to resolve conflicting interests. We are discussing weighing privacy against law enforcement and national security. Last Tuesday, the latter received an unforgettable point in its favor. I don't think this is alarmism. We have known it was possible for decades. I think we just didn't know there were people who were both willing to and capable of doing it. Now that we know, we must revise our policies accordingly.
Slashdot Mirror
I live about 5 minutes by foot from the Roasting Plant, and I can say with confidence that this is the best brewed coffee I've ever tasted. And I'm not the only one - the five or six friends (some of whom are connoisseurs) that I've taken to this place have all agreed that it's at or close to the top of all the coffee they've tasted.
The Rube Goldberg quality of the apparatus (it really is rather hypnotic to watch) naturally makes one suspicious that they sacrifice quality for spectacle, but the truth is that they designed the machine to make great coffee and then had a good designer make it pretty.
They use great beans and they don't burn them like Starbucks does. Though they will have a hard time sourcing enough good beans if they become a large chain, at this point, it's not a problem.
BTW, I promise that I have no connection to this establishment other than liking their coffee.
Dan
Well, excepting the cost of buying and maintaining the hardware, the pc should consume just as much power as an electric heater that consumes the same power. This is a thermodynamic inevitability. I have always understood that electric heat is something like 2-4 times as expensive as gas heat. This makes sense, since oil-fired coal plants operate somewhere in the 40-50% efficiency range (whereas, if you burned it in your heater you'd only give up the small amount of heat in your exhaust gas). Admittedly, natural gas is more expensive than the oil that power plants burn, but you could probably offset that with the losses due to the transmission on electrical power lines.
True, provided those "non-violent pot smokers" are also members of the 30 - 50 terrorist cells which are believed to be holed up in this country at this moment. Do you deny that the threat of future attacks is sufficient reason to allow the FBI to monitor electronic communications? Would you rather risk your email being read by a computer program and possibly a person, or being blown to bits as you sit down at your desk at work?
A democratic government's biggest challenge is to resolve conflicting interests. We are discussing weighing privacy against law enforcement and national security. Last Tuesday, the latter received an unforgettable point in its favor. I don't think this is alarmism. We have known it was possible for decades. I think we just didn't know there were people who were both willing to and capable of doing it. Now that we know, we must revise our policies accordingly.
honestbob