I'm sure this will be redundant by the time I actually finish it and get it posted, but Penny Arcade needs to call Jackie on this right now. "Okay, Mister Thomson. We'll allow publicity before the event. We'll do our best to provide adequate security for the debate. See you at PAX."
If there's one set of online comic writers whose fans will listen to them when they call for moderation, it's Tycho and Gabe. Anyone going to PAX is going to be well aware of how much furor any pie-in-the-face attempt is going to create, and none of them will want to provide more fuel for the anti-gaming fire.
Some backbencher dude drafts up a bill, and puts it on the docket. It goes to the end of the queue for things to be discussed in the House. Two years later, it's still number 218 on the list, and it's election time. After the Federal election, the docket is wiped clean. If mister backbencher dude does get re-elected, he's more than welcome to submit the bill again.
What does this gain him? Nothing but a sound bite. Next election campaign, you see "I tried to clean up the Intarwebs to protect your childrenz." Odds that this bill will even get a first reading? Zero.
Every year or so I drop in to a donor centre to see if I qualify. I haven't yet. Curse my love of British beef.
Rest assured, as soon as that exclusion criterion is revoked, I'll be the first in line.
I've already signed my organ donor card, as I suspect someone dying of kidney failure would rather risk the (low) chance of contracting vCJD than stay on dyalisis.
Do the dimmers increase your quality of life? How much would you be upset if they were replaced by non-dimming fixtures?
Are you using an on-demand hot water heater? Are your pipes insulated? Do you have a blanket on your hot water tank?
For that matter, what's the insulation like in your house? Your walls? Your attic?
Do you hard power off your electronics when you're not using them? Being on standby still consumes power.
What kind of computer do you use? What kind of monitor? Would a laptop be sufficient for your needs?
Have you had a home energy audit? A leak test in your house to find out where the air is escaping? Are your attic hatches weather-sealed and insulated?
How much driving do you really need to do? Can you bike or walk sometimes instead of driving?
How about your food? How much of it is produced locally? Imported food has a high energy cost
Your washing machine, is it top-loading or front-loading?
Do you compost? Do you recycle? How extensively?
There is a lot that the average household can do to reduce their energy consumption. Often significant gains can be made for very little expenditure of money. Often changes can be made that do not significantly affect quality of life. You just need to look around and see what you are willing to change.
If you have already taken some of these steps, then I salute you, though I won't stop encouraging you to take more.
Lots of Niven works have good, hard science in them. Two that spring to mind are Smoke Ring and The Integral Trees, which take the idea of tides from Neutron Star as a starting point.
Just because something gets launched to higher than the arbitrary height we have assigned to "the edge of space" does not mean that it will stay up there. The object has to also be travelling at orbital velocity. At LEO of about 200km, orbital velocity is around 7800m/s, aka ~17,500mph.
Not to say that this gun cannot fire projectiles into orbit, just to say that firing something into space and having it stay there is much harder than just firing something into space.
It would probably be a good idea in an expanded study, then, to have four pictures - menstruating, ovulating, and half-way between the two in each direction.
that when I read the title, I expected an article about the dangers of chocolate chips, maimings performed with oatmeal-raisin, and death by fudgee-o's? Hrm, methinks I should have a snack.
[blah blah will] continue to broadcast three state-supported channels and several regional public broadcasters free of charge. In return, it can use the rest of the open bandwidth to charge around $18.50 a month for a package of other channels that is comparable with cable.
This is more death of free media. If the only FTA transmissions you can get are either state-sponsored or state-supported, how can you reliably get news?
I sincerely hope that, once the analog broadcasts are halted in this country, the corresponding digital broadcasts don't require a monthly subscription charge. If they do, I will have to put together a.torrent machine and connect that to my television. It won't make me happy, though.
Google's got the right idea for its search clients. But then again, come in there without having been there for a while and try to find where to submit URLs as a content provider.
Consider that re-roofing a house with asphalt shingles costs between five and ten thousand dollars. Re-roofing with solar cells would be orders of magnitude higher than that. Yes, you will eventually make your money back, over three years, or five years, or ten years, BUT, you must have available the initial capital costs to make the investment in the first place.
Do you have ten grand sitting in the bank right now? That's ten grand that you didn't have earmarked for other uses, like buying a car, emergency repairs, emergency medical care, vacation funds, etc. If you do, then you can re-roof your house. Do you have more than that? Maybe you can consider putting in solar cells. How many people in this world do you think have the money to make that investment, rather than just barely making enough to pay the bills?
The OP is correct. If the capital cost of installing the solar roof is beyond the reach of normal consumers, it does not matter that they will eventually make their money back. They don't have the cash to make the investment in the first place. If, however, the initial capital cost comes down to something nearer the cost of traditional roofing materials, then you will get people who start to consider it as a viable alternative when their shingles wear out.
Also, electricity costs about 25c/kWh here, once you count in all the distribution charges, etc. Hearsay from another poster says that an 80W panel runs an average of about 5% efficiency over any given year, when you count cloud, winter, haze, and night (in England). To make back that $3/W (or effectively, $3/0.05W), you'd need to generate 12kWh, which would take 240,000 hours, or 10,000 days, or just over 27 years. Not what I'd call a reasonable amount of time.
And I keep trying to explain to you, lasers will do no good. Some asshat in front of you cuts you off, so you lance his car with a beam. Good for you. Now there's a pile of molten slag in your path that you have to avoid, which you can only do by cutting off someone else.
What you really need is an RPG. With luck, the explosion will launch the fragments of the offending vehicle completely out of your path.
My favourite method of dealing with tailgaters is to send them into a panic by tromping on my brakes hard enough to make the car dive, but for a short enough period of time that my speed does not change measurably.
Get the fuck off my tail.
And while you're at it, take out those goddamn ultra-bright blue headlights.
You don't say whether that "under twenty bucks" includes the levy
It does.
You've apparently never driven across Canada in a van with no heat in the middle of winter playing gigs in small clubs and trying to make enough off t-shirt and CD sales to buy gas to make it to the next town
No, I haven't. Why doesn't the heat work? And will the 21 cents per CD really make that much of a difference?
And yes, many independent artist, who want nothing to do with the CPCC and the companies they represent, produce their own CDs.
So, why don't they buy CDs that are professionally pressed? A quick search shows a company that will provide you with 1000 CDs, jewel cases, colour printing on the CD, and colour inserts for just $1100. How much would it cost to do that at home, with normally available materials? US-Best Buy (no levy) sells 30-packs of CD-Rs with jewel cases for $21. You'd need to spend $700 just on the materials.
[able to bring unlevied blank media across the border] I'm not sure if you are right or wrong about that.
The levy is imposed upon importers and manufacturers who sell blank media. If you are not selling blank media, the levy is not applicable. See this web page for more details.
Oh, and let us know how much this little exercise cost you in gas.
Well, $10.50 will currently purchase about 12 litres of gas. The savings on one 50-pack will allow you to drive 140km, or a 70km round-trip before you hit the break-even point. Personally, I would have to purchase about 150 CDs before it became worth it to cross the border.
The Canadian government has given taxation authority to a collection of private businesses with no accountability to the public as to how and to whom these funds are allocated, and no recourse to members of the public who put blank media to uses that have nothing to do with their shitty music.
This is true, and probably a valid arguement against the levy. However, are you willing to say that you don't like _any_ music distributed by the big companies? Orchestral works recorded and distributed by Sony/BMG? Old Beatles albums? Classic songs from the 60's and 70's? Retro stuff from the 80's? If I hear a song _anywhere_, because of this levy, I can go on the internet, download it, and listen to it without fear of being strongarmed by a recording industry association into paying a $750 per song fine. Much as you may dislike the actions of the RIAA, in the US, downloading songs is copyright infringement, and if proven in court, it is something that you can suffer civil penalties for.
If you're using enough levied blank media that the levy has a significant impact on your bottom line, then it is probably worth the time and effort to import it yourself.
The levy on CD-Rs is 21 cents. I can buy cylinders of 50 CDs for under twenty bucks. How much does a CD at a concert cost? If they're being produced by the band on their home computers (the only reason they'd need to purchase blank media), how much are they saving over having the CDs professionally pressed?
Alternatively, they are free to go to a country that does not have the levy, purchase the CDs there, bring them in, and record their songs on them. As they are then not selling blank media, the CDs are not subject to the levy.
You'll have NIMBY for any power generation scheme. No-one wants a dam destroying their favourite river, no-one wants a nuclear plant irradiating their children, no-one wants a big tower with a bunch of mirrors pointed at it ruining their view. As for the birds:
Are wind turbines dangerous to birds? Bullfrog Power only sources energy from wind farms that meet the federal government's Environmental Choice Program EcoLogoM standard. This standard includes critieria focused on the protection of concentrations of birds, including endangered bird species. In addition, most major studies indicate that properly situated wind turbines pose minimal risk to birds. A 2001 study of wind farms in the United States and the UK, for example, found minimal ecological impacts on bird populations (Kerlinger; Avian Issues and Potential Impacts Associated with Wind Power). Bullfrog Power will also work with its producers to assess and minimize impacts on the local habitat of new wind power projects.
From Bullfrog Power, where I buy my electricity. Granted, they're blowing their own horns, so you have to expect some bias, but I've looked into the EcoLogo standard as well, and I'm satisfied with the requirements.
Yeah, I simplified where the power came from in the interests of clarity. I buy from Bullfrog Power. Their electricity is 20% wind turbines, 80% certified low-impact hydroelectricity.
However, when the wind isn't blowing here, it probably is still blowing somewhere else. The power all comes from the same grid.
Granted, there is no way to say that the watts that I'm using came directly from a wind turbine or low-impact hydroelectric station. BFP guarantees that it injects as many MWh into the grid as its customers use (and has hired auditors to confirm this), but a MWh is a MWh. In the end, my dollars just go towards subsidizing the construction of more clean generation capacity.
Waaah! What can I do? I'm only one person. One person can't make a difference in this world.
Have you seen what China makes? Cheap knock-offs of products from other countries. What happens when those other countries only produce environmentally friendly products? You'll end up with cheap knock-offs of environmentally friendly products.
Seriously, if the countries that are currently able to invest the money in R&D of carbon-neutral solutions, the entire world benefits. I pay a premium on my electricity to subsidize the construction of cleaner power generation. Will my $120/year pay for even one wind turbine? No. Will the $120/year that company gets from a hundred thousand people do so? Probably. Will more wind turbines being built make the cost of wind power lower due to the basic economic priciple of mass production? Probably. Will the wind turbines eventually be able to replace the coal-fired generation plants? Maybe. If that happens, will I stop paying a premium on my power? No. I'll keep paying, to support the next generations of even cleaner power stations, whatever they happen to be.
Unfortunately, prion proteins are not broken down by the heat of cooking. In fact, they can even survive autoclave temperatures. That, along with its potentially long period of dormancy, is what has lead to the restrictions on blood donation.
I hate NTP (the company) because of the lawsuit against RIM. But to make matters worse for myself - my mind has since associated NTP the company with NTP the time protocol. Everytime I have to setup a NTP connection to a server I think of RIM. However when I think of RIM, I think of a RIM job. No, not a job a RIM. Yes this is off-topic - but I had to get this off my chest.
If you need to get it off your chest, it's not a rim job. There's another name for that activity.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm sure this will be redundant by the time I actually finish it and get it posted, but Penny Arcade needs to call Jackie on this right now. "Okay, Mister Thomson. We'll allow publicity before the event. We'll do our best to provide adequate security for the debate. See you at PAX."
If there's one set of online comic writers whose fans will listen to them when they call for moderation, it's Tycho and Gabe. Anyone going to PAX is going to be well aware of how much furor any pie-in-the-face attempt is going to create, and none of them will want to provide more fuel for the anti-gaming fire.
Some backbencher dude drafts up a bill, and puts it on the docket. It goes to the end of the queue for things to be discussed in the House. Two years later, it's still number 218 on the list, and it's election time. After the Federal election, the docket is wiped clean. If mister backbencher dude does get re-elected, he's more than welcome to submit the bill again.
What does this gain him? Nothing but a sound bite. Next election campaign, you see "I tried to clean up the Intarwebs to protect your childrenz." Odds that this bill will even get a first reading? Zero.
Every year or so I drop in to a donor centre to see if I qualify. I haven't yet. Curse my love of British beef.
Rest assured, as soon as that exclusion criterion is revoked, I'll be the first in line.
I've already signed my organ donor card, as I suspect someone dying of kidney failure would rather risk the (low) chance of contracting vCJD than stay on dyalisis.
- Do the dimmers increase your quality of life? How much would you be upset if they were replaced by non-dimming fixtures?
- Are you using an on-demand hot water heater? Are your pipes insulated? Do you have a blanket on your hot water tank?
- For that matter, what's the insulation like in your house? Your walls? Your attic?
- Do you hard power off your electronics when you're not using them? Being on standby still consumes power.
- What kind of computer do you use? What kind of monitor? Would a laptop be sufficient for your needs?
- Have you had a home energy audit? A leak test in your house to find out where the air is escaping? Are your attic hatches weather-sealed and insulated?
- How much driving do you really need to do? Can you bike or walk sometimes instead of driving?
- How about your food? How much of it is produced locally? Imported food has a high energy cost
- Your washing machine, is it top-loading or front-loading?
- Do you compost? Do you recycle? How extensively?
There is a lot that the average household can do to reduce their energy consumption. Often significant gains can be made for very little expenditure of money. Often changes can be made that do not significantly affect quality of life. You just need to look around and see what you are willing to change.If you have already taken some of these steps, then I salute you, though I won't stop encouraging you to take more.
Lots of Niven works have good, hard science in them. Two that spring to mind are Smoke Ring and The Integral Trees, which take the idea of tides from Neutron Star as a starting point.
Or a JRPG. I'm sorry, why is the planet dying?
Depends. If the general is quoting in kinetic energy of the projectile, and kinetic energy of the Ford Taurus,
Ek = 1/2*m*v^2
Ektaurus = 1/2*1383*170*170 ~ 20 MJ
Using that kinetic energy, and the mass of the railgun projectile,
Vprojectile = sqrt(2*20MJ/3.2kg) ~ 3500m/s
Just because something gets launched to higher than the arbitrary height we have assigned to "the edge of space" does not mean that it will stay up there. The object has to also be travelling at orbital velocity. At LEO of about 200km, orbital velocity is around 7800m/s, aka ~17,500mph.
Not to say that this gun cannot fire projectiles into orbit, just to say that firing something into space and having it stay there is much harder than just firing something into space.
It would probably be a good idea in an expanded study, then, to have four pictures - menstruating, ovulating, and half-way between the two in each direction.
that it didn't end up jammed in his urethra.
that when I read the title, I expected an article about the dangers of chocolate chips, maimings performed with oatmeal-raisin, and death by fudgee-o's? Hrm, methinks I should have a snack.
Agreed. It did take me two or three attempts to get a query with the google URL submission page as the top link.
[blah blah will] continue to broadcast three state-supported channels and several regional public broadcasters free of charge. In return, it can use the rest of the open bandwidth to charge around $18.50 a month for a package of other channels that is comparable with cable.
.torrent machine and connect that to my television. It won't make me happy, though.
This is more death of free media. If the only FTA transmissions you can get are either state-sponsored or state-supported, how can you reliably get news?
I sincerely hope that, once the analog broadcasts are halted in this country, the corresponding digital broadcasts don't require a monthly subscription charge. If they do, I will have to put together a
Google's got the right idea for its search clients. But then again, come in there without having been there for a while and try to find where to submit URLs as a content provider.
& btnG=Search
It's linked right from the front page. See?
http://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+submit+URLs
Consider that re-roofing a house with asphalt shingles costs between five and ten thousand dollars. Re-roofing with solar cells would be orders of magnitude higher than that. Yes, you will eventually make your money back, over three years, or five years, or ten years, BUT, you must have available the initial capital costs to make the investment in the first place.
Do you have ten grand sitting in the bank right now? That's ten grand that you didn't have earmarked for other uses, like buying a car, emergency repairs, emergency medical care, vacation funds, etc. If you do, then you can re-roof your house. Do you have more than that? Maybe you can consider putting in solar cells. How many people in this world do you think have the money to make that investment, rather than just barely making enough to pay the bills?
The OP is correct. If the capital cost of installing the solar roof is beyond the reach of normal consumers, it does not matter that they will eventually make their money back. They don't have the cash to make the investment in the first place. If, however, the initial capital cost comes down to something nearer the cost of traditional roofing materials, then you will get people who start to consider it as a viable alternative when their shingles wear out.
Also, electricity costs about 25c/kWh here, once you count in all the distribution charges, etc. Hearsay from another poster says that an 80W panel runs an average of about 5% efficiency over any given year, when you count cloud, winter, haze, and night (in England). To make back that $3/W (or effectively, $3/0.05W), you'd need to generate 12kWh, which would take 240,000 hours, or 10,000 days, or just over 27 years. Not what I'd call a reasonable amount of time.
And I keep trying to explain to you, lasers will do no good. Some asshat in front of you cuts you off, so you lance his car with a beam. Good for you. Now there's a pile of molten slag in your path that you have to avoid, which you can only do by cutting off someone else.
What you really need is an RPG. With luck, the explosion will launch the fragments of the offending vehicle completely out of your path.
My favourite method of dealing with tailgaters is to send them into a panic by tromping on my brakes hard enough to make the car dive, but for a short enough period of time that my speed does not change measurably.
Get the fuck off my tail.
And while you're at it, take out those goddamn ultra-bright blue headlights.
It does.
No, I haven't. Why doesn't the heat work? And will the 21 cents per CD really make that much of a difference?
So, why don't they buy CDs that are professionally pressed? A quick search shows a company that will provide you with 1000 CDs, jewel cases, colour printing on the CD, and colour inserts for just $1100. How much would it cost to do that at home, with normally available materials? US-Best Buy (no levy) sells 30-packs of CD-Rs with jewel cases for $21. You'd need to spend $700 just on the materials.
The levy is imposed upon importers and manufacturers who sell blank media. If you are not selling blank media, the levy is not applicable. See this web page for more details.
Well, $10.50 will currently purchase about 12 litres of gas. The savings on one 50-pack will allow you to drive 140km, or a 70km round-trip before you hit the break-even point. Personally, I would have to purchase about 150 CDs before it became worth it to cross the border.
This is true, and probably a valid arguement against the levy. However, are you willing to say that you don't like _any_ music distributed by the big companies? Orchestral works recorded and distributed by Sony/BMG? Old Beatles albums? Classic songs from the 60's and 70's? Retro stuff from the 80's? If I hear a song _anywhere_, because of this levy, I can go on the internet, download it, and listen to it without fear of being strongarmed by a recording industry association into paying a $750 per song fine. Much as you may dislike the actions of the RIAA, in the US, downloading songs is copyright infringement, and if proven in court, it is something that you can suffer civil penalties for.
If you're using enough levied blank media that the levy has a significant impact on your bottom line, then it is probably worth the time and effort to import it yourself.
The levy on CD-Rs is 21 cents. I can buy cylinders of 50 CDs for under twenty bucks. How much does a CD at a concert cost? If they're being produced by the band on their home computers (the only reason they'd need to purchase blank media), how much are they saving over having the CDs professionally pressed?
Alternatively, they are free to go to a country that does not have the levy, purchase the CDs there, bring them in, and record their songs on them. As they are then not selling blank media, the CDs are not subject to the levy.
From Bullfrog Power, where I buy my electricity. Granted, they're blowing their own horns, so you have to expect some bias, but I've looked into the EcoLogo standard as well, and I'm satisfied with the requirements.
Yeah, I simplified where the power came from in the interests of clarity. I buy from Bullfrog Power. Their electricity is 20% wind turbines, 80% certified low-impact hydroelectricity.
However, when the wind isn't blowing here, it probably is still blowing somewhere else. The power all comes from the same grid.
Granted, there is no way to say that the watts that I'm using came directly from a wind turbine or low-impact hydroelectric station. BFP guarantees that it injects as many MWh into the grid as its customers use (and has hired auditors to confirm this), but a MWh is a MWh. In the end, my dollars just go towards subsidizing the construction of more clean generation capacity.
Waaah! What can I do? I'm only one person. One person can't make a difference in this world.
Have you seen what China makes? Cheap knock-offs of products from other countries. What happens when those other countries only produce environmentally friendly products? You'll end up with cheap knock-offs of environmentally friendly products.
Seriously, if the countries that are currently able to invest the money in R&D of carbon-neutral solutions, the entire world benefits. I pay a premium on my electricity to subsidize the construction of cleaner power generation. Will my $120/year pay for even one wind turbine? No. Will the $120/year that company gets from a hundred thousand people do so? Probably. Will more wind turbines being built make the cost of wind power lower due to the basic economic priciple of mass production? Probably. Will the wind turbines eventually be able to replace the coal-fired generation plants? Maybe. If that happens, will I stop paying a premium on my power? No. I'll keep paying, to support the next generations of even cleaner power stations, whatever they happen to be.
Clarification:
The original, pre-cgi, Han-shot-first Star Wars Trilogy.
Unfortunately, prion proteins are not broken down by the heat of cooking. In fact, they can even survive autoclave temperatures. That, along with its potentially long period of dormancy, is what has lead to the restrictions on blood donation.
If you need to get it off your chest, it's not a rim job. There's another name for that activity.