yes, but most computers are on 24x7, not just a few hours per day
Yes, and I'm not the only person driving to work! If [one person's daily fuel consumption] == several hours electricity, and (say) 100,000 people consume fuel like that one person, then we have (several * 100,000) several hundred thousand hours of electricity.
Not intimately familiar with VAT or the specific PoS implementations, especially the "commie-european" kind, so I'll not comment on that...
Basically, the "Value Added Tax" is a tax that is applied every time goods change hands, as opposed to "Sales Tax", which only gets applied when the item is sold to the end user. It's a typical "cast the net wide and tax the living doodoo out of everyone" scheme like they've been doing in europe since feudal times. It was crap like that that Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, etc. were pissed off about when they wrote the Declaration of Independence. Taxation has always been unpopular in the US.
Gas pumps in most states clearly show the amount of taxes on each gallon of gas (state/federal)...
Well yeah, that's easy because gas is taxed per gallon at a rate that rarely changes.
and I think that kind of thing should be clear at other stores. Tell me the new Ultra-Wdget 3000 is only $39.99 on the big sign, but make sure it shows the after-tax price as well, perhaps in smaller print
Problem with that is that sales tax rates vary from city to city, county to county, and state to state. Also, one of the reasons why taxes are added "after" is to make sure people realize that it is THEY that are paying the tax, not the seller. This is a good thing, in my mind.
>I think the feds should use quarterly payments for EVERYONE instead of withholding per-paycheck too.
You can make that happen if you want to, I know people who have done it. There's nothing stopping you in the US.
Yes, and I do already pay quarterly. What I want is for EVERYONE to pay that way. As it is now, people get X% withheld from each check and, come tax time, they get a refund and treat it like it's free money, when actually it's money they've lent the government interest-free! I think it'd be better if the government was HONEST about it and sent a tax bill every 3 months.
Dude, it's called innovation. Just because you can't think of a use for this RIGHT NOW doesn't mean it isn't valid or that it won't be useful tomorrow. That's like saying in 1990 "I'll never fill up a 100MB hard drive!".
The comparison misses his point. He's not asking what use could one possibly have for a larger screen, he's asking what use is a folding screen. Even in 1990 you knew what all that extra data storage apace on that 100MB hard drive was for-- it was for data storage.
It would be nice if at stores all the prices would show tax included for items.
What, like some commie-european VAT tax? Nah. I think people should see their taxes. I think the feds should use quarterly payments for EVERYONE instead of withholding per-paycheck too.
there is a psychological tendancy to shy away from certain "maker" numbers as being too big. For example, the masses statistically believed that twenty dollars was too much to pay for item x, but for some reason, nineteen ninety-nine was not too much to pay for the same item. Funny thing is that with the same item, eighteen dollars would again be too much, but seventeen ninety-five wouldn't.
Totally of topic, I know, but I've noticed the same thing where I work. Several years back my boss upped his hourly rate from $50 to $65. When it was $50/hr, a good 60% of customers said something to the effect of "50 dollars! Wow that's pretty expensive!" Going up to $65/hr however, cut those complaints down to maybe one customer in twenty. We charge $85/hr now and still almost no complaints. I suspect if we ever get to $100 people will complain again. I suspect that 20, 50, and 100 dollars are all "big numbers" in people's minds and the ones between somehow aren't. Like Iexplained to my boss after he noted the drop in complaints: "You see, $50 is half of a hundred, which is a lot. $65 isn't half of a hundred, so it's less."
this makes you wonder how long it will be before information surpasses transportation as the largest consumer of energy on the planet
for that to happen transportation will have to use a LOT less energy. The fuel I use to get to work every morning could run a small generator powering three racks of [routers/servers/DSLAMs] for HOURS. Multiply times (everyone else who's driving) and thats a lot of energy consumption.
To those that mod the above (and the parent-parent above written by me) "-1 offtopic and/or troll", I commend you. This is the sort of modding that SHOULD go on.
Yeah, I sure am. I flame and troll here on/. so I don't have to be one in real life.:)
perhaps you could just point out that guy's mistake instead of flying off and saying he needs to learn to read. this isnt middle school.
I could, but I get tired of the same predictable old crap the same bunch of/. dopes vomit forth when one of a certain set of subjects arises:
"AMD CPU makes a good toaster...uhuhhuhhuh..."
"I'll patent taking out stupid patents...uhuhhuhhuh..."
"Wait till that critical [windows-based app] goes bluescreen!...uhuhhuhhuh.."
"I'll copyright that patent!...uhuhhuhhuh.."
"in soviet russia [etc]...uhuhhuhhuh.."
I just get sick of the karma-whore parroting of inanities every time the one of those subject comes up. No matter how wrong/lame one of these dopes is, there's always 3 or 4 more dopes with mod points marking it "+1 insightful" and making it show up even when I'm reading at +3 or higher. This isn't middle school? Coulda' fooled me...
Although spell checker wouldn't detect it, because it is spelled correctly, your use of the word their is incorrect **hint - think there
Heh. Yeah, and if you look more closely at my sig you'll notice "they're" is used incorrectly as well. So is "its/it's", "then/than" and (one off my personal favorites) "loose" instead of "lose". It's meant to illustrate four of my least favorite/. grammar errors.
Let's say that your site needs a boost in traffic. Just cook up a fake letter from some non-existent lawyer, saying cease-and-desist, then leak said letter to/. to get the effect we all know and love.
BAM! Your ISP staggers for half a day or so, but you'll probably enjoy residual traffic as a result of the exposure...
Not saying that's the case here, but what if...
Perhaps this has happened already?
Probably not the case here (since the site is down with no signs of ever returning), but I'd bet that a good 15% of the stuff submitted is feeble attempts to drum up traffic. Unfortunately, these sometimes reach the front page...often more than once [cough]dupes[cough...
Isn't posting it on the internet the same as retransmitting or disseminating?
No. The bit at the bottom applies to anyone who is NOT the intended recipient who might get the letter. If you drop some of the excess verbiage, it reads:
"Any dissemination by persons other than the intended recipient is prohibited."
Too many upseting stories... give us a break! Maybe somebody can post something uplifting???
The world is an upsetting place. Even on sunday.
Pretty please with sugar on top?
What a childish non-sequiter. I'll never understand why people use that phrase. "Please" is simply a word, and can neither be "pretty" nor can it be topped with sugar.
Make a movie about pilots and real pilots will say that itâ(TM)s fake and inaccurate. Make a movie about war and history buffs will complain that itâ(TM)s fake and inaccurate. The only "real" movie that can be made is a movie about making a movie...
Hah! Every movie I've seen that was (in whole or in part) about making a movie has been ridiculously fake and inaccurate. I'd even say that they do airplanes and war better because few [script writers/directors] think they "know everything" about those topics and usually hire consultants to help. For example, I've yet to see a "movie in a movie" where the crew is utterly exhausted because the director wants "one more shot" for the fiftieth time because he's only been on set since 2pm and they've been there since 6am.
I hate to say it but microsoft are in an extremely strong position to crush Google. Just come up with something that is nearly as good and then integrate it completely into Internet Explorer and the OS.
Then the only hurdle they'll have to overcome is getting people to search the web using their integrated system. I've noticed that most people don't even know they can type search queries into the address bar and still have a link to yahoo or google or altavista or whatever on their toolbar. It's a tougher nut to crack than the browser thing was. With netscape vs. IE, there was a huge wave of first-time computer buying. People were getting a computer so they could do email and the web and (surprise) most of them bought cheap windows boxes. This gave microsoft the advantage with browser bundling. Can't really do that with a serch engine.
Thats rather interesting - thanks. However, to swallow it whole, one would have to include the 9-11 hijackings in with the "conspiracy" to get the pipe-line, or alternately somehow disassociate Al-qiada (sp?) with the Taliban.
This conspiracy theory belongs in the bin along with the "Reagan funded the Contras because the US wanted to build a larger replacement for the panama canal through Nicaragua". Yeah, that's why, sure...buncha loons.
The US has a trade deficit of something like $450 billion per year--the highest of any country. Germany, for instance, has a trade surplus of about $100 billion per year.
Trade surplus/defecit has no bearing upon how much is exported in real quantities.
Germany exports $600 billion. France exports another $300 billion (with a small surplus), etc.
Half of Germany's exports are to other EU nations, as are more than 60% of France's. You can't count "internal exports" when adding up the numbers.
The EU easily exports much more than the US. And much, much more than China.
Admittedly, the US and EU are pretty close when it comes to total value of exports. But my point with China was that, despite their export value being less than half that of either the US or the EU, they could put themselves in a position of near-total self sufficiency. If they're not buying machinery, steel, or plastics from the rest of the world anymore, they no longer need to ask for payment in euros or dollars. Then suddenly their currency gets a lot harder.
What is actually still produced in the US and exported to other countries?
A general catergorized list? How about "capital goods, automobiles, industrial supplies and raw materials, consumer goods, agricultural products"?
Cars? Mainly for the domestic market.
The fact that the US produces more cars for its own consumption than it exports doesn't make the number of cars it exports any smaller. Levels of domestic consumption are irrelevant.
Food? Same thing.
Yep, same thing. If you think the US doesn't export a crapton of food, you're totally off your rocker. In fact, the US exported more than $3.5 billion worth of food to the EU in 2000. The US exports more food (in real numbers, not irrelevant "as % of food produced" numbers) than any other country on earth.
Clothing? Well look at the labels, even american companies like Nike, Gap, Eddie Bauer etc. produce offshore.
Yeah, the US doesn't export much in the way of clothing, but so what? You've listed three items, two of which the US does export.
So what are you guys exporting? The US actually has a huge trade defecit and that for quite some time.
Having a trade deficit doesn't mean the US doesn't export! All it means is that more is imported than exported. The fact that the US can still afford to buy so much offshore is, if nothing else, an indication of the strength of the dollar.
Your arguments are wrong and/or irrelevant. Try again.
I used to ride one, but then some numbskull turned left into me and smashed my left leg to fragments. Two years recovering led me to conclude that motorcycles are not safe in cities full of fools driving cars.
More to the point, what EU products? The US may not export like (say) China does, but by the same token the EU does so even less.
Off the top of my head:
[blah blah EU products blah]
Christ almighty, I didn't say that the EU didn't have a wide array of diverse exports from all its various regions! I could easily rattle off ten times as many products as you did that come from the US. But I won't, because my original point was in regard to the total value of exports. It was along the lines of "while the US may have lower total value of exports compared to (say) China, the EU total export value is lower still; therefore, other countries switching to the Euro from the dollar is unlikely".
You don't want power plants in your backyard? Pay a higher price, or a MUCH higher price the less "in your backyard" they are.
Use that profit to pay the neighborhoods that are willing to put up with the power plant through subsidized electricity.
Problem is, it's not the individual neighborhoods that get to decide whether a power plant can be built there, it's the state government. In california, part of the problem was environmentalists lobbying their hippie pals in the legislature to not approve a single power plant construction permit. If no one CAN build one, no one WILL build one.
Exactly what are you implying anyway? That we don't take our share of refuges or that we are white only soceity because we have more than 77% european descents? Can this perhaps be because we are europeans? To compare with USA isn't really fare since USA is almost 100% immigrants - it is easier to get a high percentage non europeans that way then start with 100% europeans and then add other continents.
Well yes, Sweden is mostly white for the same reason the US is mostly white. I'm not saying it's a bad thing or a good thing. I only point out that it has an effect on the assimilation of immigrants in that white/european culture predominates. I only point this out to balance the argument that somehow Sweden is better because its literacy rate is 99% vs. the US at 97%. We have more immigrants, and they therefore live in larger clusters, which results in significantly more people who have to learn to speak english before they can even begin to learn to read it.
Besides, what does this change the discussion anyway? Do you mean that people with other origin than europeans is harder to learn to read?
When they don't already speak english, learning to read english is much more difficult, yes. Even more so when they come from a poor country where they never learned to read their native language. A Norwegian who already speaks and reads Norwegian has a distinct advantage in learning Swedish over someone who speaks only Tagalog and can't read or write at all.
Most foregin people I know read just fine. Perhaps they don't speak Swedish fluently but they usually understand it good and can read it without a problem.
Where I live (Los Angeles), there are large neighborhoods where no english is spoken. A child can be born there and grow to age five without ever learning any english. The child then shows up at the local school for classes and is in a class full of other children which speak the same language but don't speak english. Around here it's mostly spanish-speakers, but there are so many other languages that simply "teaching them english" isn't so simple.
I don't see why it should be harder for a Somailian guy to learn Swedish than a Polish guy either - both languages isn't closley realated to swedish. Both have to learn it the same way.
Learning to speak Swedish, perhaps, is not much different for a Pole vs. a Somali, but reading and writing (LITERACY)? That's different. They use essentially the same alphabet in Poland and I suspect Polish has more common traits with Swedish than Somali or Arabic (Somalia's "elite" language-- like latin for scholars in europe). Given that if a Somali has learned to read an write, he has probably learned Arabic, I'd say that he'd have a harder time learning Swedish, yes.
All I'm saying is that literacy and such aren't necessarilly accurate means of gauging the effectiveness of government. Also, what works in one country will not necessarily work in another.
Re:110VAC outlets available today
on
42-Volt Autos
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· Score: 1
You know, I'm not disagreeing or anything, but people keep saying this and it still doesn't make any sense to me. The heat should be caused by resistance, meaning based on current, not voltage. I mean, to my mind, anyway. The current remains the same whether you have high volts or high amps, so why does raising the voltage and lowering the amperage mean you can have smaller wires? Ohm's law would seem to suggest that it won't make any difference, your wattage will remain the same. Could someone please fill me in on what I am not understanding here?
It's all about the amperage. The more amperage you try to shove through a given gauge of wire, the hotter it gets. In computer terms (roughly) voltage is bus speed and amperage is bus width. Wider bus is more wire. Since watts (volts x amps) stay the same, you have the choice of either a) using bigger wires or b) upping the voltage. Backwards compatibility has kept it at 12v since the late 1940's , but now that hybids which use higher voltages, and add-ons which are starting to require more capacity, upping the voltage is the logical solution.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, and I'm not the only person driving to work! If [one person's daily fuel consumption] == several hours electricity, and (say) 100,000 people consume fuel like that one person, then we have (several * 100,000) several hundred thousand hours of electricity.
Basically, the "Value Added Tax" is a tax that is applied every time goods change hands, as opposed to "Sales Tax", which only gets applied when the item is sold to the end user. It's a typical "cast the net wide and tax the living doodoo out of everyone" scheme like they've been doing in europe since feudal times. It was crap like that that Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, etc. were pissed off about when they wrote the Declaration of Independence. Taxation has always been unpopular in the US.
Gas pumps in most states clearly show the amount of taxes on each gallon of gas (state/federal)...
Well yeah, that's easy because gas is taxed per gallon at a rate that rarely changes.
and I think that kind of thing should be clear at other stores. Tell me the new Ultra-Wdget 3000 is only $39.99 on the big sign, but make sure it shows the after-tax price as well, perhaps in smaller print
Problem with that is that sales tax rates vary from city to city, county to county, and state to state. Also, one of the reasons why taxes are added "after" is to make sure people realize that it is THEY that are paying the tax, not the seller. This is a good thing, in my mind.
>I think the feds should use quarterly payments for EVERYONE instead of withholding per-paycheck too.
You can make that happen if you want to, I know people who have done it. There's nothing stopping you in the US.
Yes, and I do already pay quarterly. What I want is for EVERYONE to pay that way. As it is now, people get X% withheld from each check and, come tax time, they get a refund and treat it like it's free money, when actually it's money they've lent the government interest-free! I think it'd be better if the government was HONEST about it and sent a tax bill every 3 months.
The comparison misses his point. He's not asking what use could one possibly have for a larger screen, he's asking what use is a folding screen. Even in 1990 you knew what all that extra data storage apace on that 100MB hard drive was for-- it was for data storage.
What, like some commie-european VAT tax? Nah. I think people should see their taxes. I think the feds should use quarterly payments for EVERYONE instead of withholding per-paycheck too.
Totally of topic, I know, but I've noticed the same thing where I work. Several years back my boss upped his hourly rate from $50 to $65. When it was $50/hr, a good 60% of customers said something to the effect of "50 dollars! Wow that's pretty expensive!" Going up to $65/hr however, cut those complaints down to maybe one customer in twenty. We charge $85/hr now and still almost no complaints. I suspect if we ever get to $100 people will complain again. I suspect that 20, 50, and 100 dollars are all "big numbers" in people's minds and the ones between somehow aren't. Like Iexplained to my boss after he noted the drop in complaints: "You see, $50 is half of a hundred, which is a lot. $65 isn't half of a hundred, so it's less."
for that to happen transportation will have to use a LOT less energy. The fuel I use to get to work every morning could run a small generator powering three racks of [routers/servers/DSLAMs] for HOURS. Multiply times (everyone else who's driving) and thats a lot of energy consumption.
To those that mod the above (and the parent-parent above written by me) "-1 offtopic and/or troll", I commend you. This is the sort of modding that SHOULD go on.
Yeah, I sure am. I flame and troll here on /. so I don't have to be one in real life. :)
perhaps you could just point out that guy's mistake instead of flying off and saying he needs to learn to read. this isnt middle school.
I could, but I get tired of the same predictable old crap the same bunch of /. dopes vomit forth when one of a certain set of subjects arises:
"AMD CPU makes a good toaster...uhuhhuhhuh..."
"I'll patent taking out stupid patents...uhuhhuhhuh..."
"Wait till that critical [windows-based app] goes bluescreen!...uhuhhuhhuh.."
"I'll copyright that patent!...uhuhhuhhuh.."
"in soviet russia [etc]...uhuhhuhhuh.."
I just get sick of the karma-whore parroting of inanities every time the one of those subject comes up. No matter how wrong/lame one of these dopes is, there's always 3 or 4 more dopes with mod points marking it "+1 insightful" and making it show up even when I'm reading at +3 or higher. This isn't middle school? Coulda' fooled me...
Heh. Yeah, and if you look more closely at my sig you'll notice "they're" is used incorrectly as well. So is "its/it's", "then/than" and (one off my personal favorites) "loose" instead of "lose". It's meant to illustrate four of my least favorite /. grammar errors.
Not saying that's the case here, but what if...
Perhaps this has happened already?
Probably not the case here (since the site is down with no signs of ever returning), but I'd bet that a good 15% of the stuff submitted is feeble attempts to drum up traffic. Unfortunately, these sometimes reach the front page...often more than once [cough]dupes[cough...
"Any reproduction... by persons or entities other than the intended recipient is prohibited."
He's the "intended recipient", so he can do ANY of the actions listed. Get a clue. Learn to read.
No. The bit at the bottom applies to anyone who is NOT the intended recipient who might get the letter. If you drop some of the excess verbiage, it reads:
"Any dissemination by persons other than the intended recipient is prohibited."
The world is an upsetting place. Even on sunday.
Pretty please with sugar on top?
What a childish non-sequiter. I'll never understand why people use that phrase. "Please" is simply a word, and can neither be "pretty" nor can it be topped with sugar.
Hah! Every movie I've seen that was (in whole or in part) about making a movie has been ridiculously fake and inaccurate. I'd even say that they do airplanes and war better because few [script writers/directors] think they "know everything" about those topics and usually hire consultants to help. For example, I've yet to see a "movie in a movie" where the crew is utterly exhausted because the director wants "one more shot" for the fiftieth time because he's only been on set since 2pm and they've been there since 6am.
Then the only hurdle they'll have to overcome is getting people to search the web using their integrated system. I've noticed that most people don't even know they can type search queries into the address bar and still have a link to yahoo or google or altavista or whatever on their toolbar. It's a tougher nut to crack than the browser thing was. With netscape vs. IE, there was a huge wave of first-time computer buying. People were getting a computer so they could do email and the web and (surprise) most of them bought cheap windows boxes. This gave microsoft the advantage with browser bundling. Can't really do that with a serch engine.
snopes.com isn't a put on. It's a serious site that collects and [verifies/debunks] urban legends. fool.
This conspiracy theory belongs in the bin along with the "Reagan funded the Contras because the US wanted to build a larger replacement for the panama canal through Nicaragua". Yeah, that's why, sure...buncha loons.
Trade surplus/defecit has no bearing upon how much is exported in real quantities.
Germany exports $600 billion. France exports another $300 billion (with a small surplus), etc.
Half of Germany's exports are to other EU nations, as are more than 60% of France's. You can't count "internal exports" when adding up the numbers.
The EU easily exports much more than the US. And much, much more than China.
Admittedly, the US and EU are pretty close when it comes to total value of exports. But my point with China was that, despite their export value being less than half that of either the US or the EU, they could put themselves in a position of near-total self sufficiency. If they're not buying machinery, steel, or plastics from the rest of the world anymore, they no longer need to ask for payment in euros or dollars. Then suddenly their currency gets a lot harder.
A general catergorized list? How about "capital goods, automobiles, industrial supplies and raw materials, consumer goods, agricultural products"?
Cars? Mainly for the domestic market.
The fact that the US produces more cars for its own consumption than it exports doesn't make the number of cars it exports any smaller. Levels of domestic consumption are irrelevant.
Food? Same thing.
Yep, same thing. If you think the US doesn't export a crapton of food, you're totally off your rocker. In fact, the US exported more than $3.5 billion worth of food to the EU in 2000. The US exports more food (in real numbers, not irrelevant "as % of food produced" numbers) than any other country on earth.
Clothing? Well look at the labels, even american companies like Nike, Gap, Eddie Bauer etc. produce offshore.
Yeah, the US doesn't export much in the way of clothing, but so what? You've listed three items, two of which the US does export.
So what are you guys exporting? The US actually has a huge trade defecit and that for quite some time.
Having a trade deficit doesn't mean the US doesn't export! All it means is that more is imported than exported. The fact that the US can still afford to buy so much offshore is, if nothing else, an indication of the strength of the dollar.
Your arguments are wrong and/or irrelevant. Try again.
I used to ride one, but then some numbskull turned left into me and smashed my left leg to fragments. Two years recovering led me to conclude that motorcycles are not safe in cities full of fools driving cars.
Off the top of my head:
[blah blah EU products blah]
Christ almighty, I didn't say that the EU didn't have a wide array of diverse exports from all its various regions! I could easily rattle off ten times as many products as you did that come from the US. But I won't, because my original point was in regard to the total value of exports. It was along the lines of "while the US may have lower total value of exports compared to (say) China, the EU total export value is lower still; therefore, other countries switching to the Euro from the dollar is unlikely".
c'mon people, pay attention...
Problem is, it's not the individual neighborhoods that get to decide whether a power plant can be built there, it's the state government. In california, part of the problem was environmentalists lobbying their hippie pals in the legislature to not approve a single power plant construction permit. If no one CAN build one, no one WILL build one.
Don't forget Afghanis.
Well yes, Sweden is mostly white for the same reason the US is mostly white. I'm not saying it's a bad thing or a good thing. I only point out that it has an effect on the assimilation of immigrants in that white/european culture predominates. I only point this out to balance the argument that somehow Sweden is better because its literacy rate is 99% vs. the US at 97%. We have more immigrants, and they therefore live in larger clusters, which results in significantly more people who have to learn to speak english before they can even begin to learn to read it.
Besides, what does this change the discussion anyway? Do you mean that people with other origin than europeans is harder to learn to read?
When they don't already speak english, learning to read english is much more difficult, yes. Even more so when they come from a poor country where they never learned to read their native language. A Norwegian who already speaks and reads Norwegian has a distinct advantage in learning Swedish over someone who speaks only Tagalog and can't read or write at all.
Most foregin people I know read just fine. Perhaps they don't speak Swedish fluently but they usually understand it good and can read it without a problem.
Where I live (Los Angeles), there are large neighborhoods where no english is spoken. A child can be born there and grow to age five without ever learning any english. The child then shows up at the local school for classes and is in a class full of other children which speak the same language but don't speak english. Around here it's mostly spanish-speakers, but there are so many other languages that simply "teaching them english" isn't so simple.
I don't see why it should be harder for a Somailian guy to learn Swedish than a Polish guy either - both languages isn't closley realated to swedish. Both have to learn it the same way.
Learning to speak Swedish, perhaps, is not much different for a Pole vs. a Somali, but reading and writing (LITERACY)? That's different. They use essentially the same alphabet in Poland and I suspect Polish has more common traits with Swedish than Somali or Arabic (Somalia's "elite" language-- like latin for scholars in europe). Given that if a Somali has learned to read an write, he has probably learned Arabic, I'd say that he'd have a harder time learning Swedish, yes.
All I'm saying is that literacy and such aren't necessarilly accurate means of gauging the effectiveness of government. Also, what works in one country will not necessarily work in another.
It's all about the amperage. The more amperage you try to shove through a given gauge of wire, the hotter it gets. In computer terms (roughly) voltage is bus speed and amperage is bus width. Wider bus is more wire. Since watts (volts x amps) stay the same, you have the choice of either a) using bigger wires or b) upping the voltage. Backwards compatibility has kept it at 12v since the late 1940's , but now that hybids which use higher voltages, and add-ons which are starting to require more capacity, upping the voltage is the logical solution.