To be fair, very few major 1000+ year old European cities haven't had the %&*# bombed out of them in the past 100 years.
Prague is one of the only ones I can think of that avoided major bombing during WWII. Extensive rebuilding took place after that.
Additionally, rural public transport can work. I lived in rural Scotland for a while, and the bus network in my town of 15,000 was superior to what you'd find in US cities 5 times that size, with frequent (and direct) connections to larger cities elsewhere.
These bus services were inexpensive, clean, and well-patronized.
The rail network was so much better that I won't even begin to compare. The northeast US *does* have the density necessary to make rail transport work effectively. The fact that we don't take advantage of it is a crying shame.
HID lamps produce a much brighter output than 7,000 lumens, even when you consider the lumens-per-watt ratio.
This 1200W bulb puts out 110,000 lumens. This 500W bulb puts out 49,000 lumens. This 250W bulb puts out 18,000 lumens. This 150W bulb puts out 14,000 lumens.
Many dimmable LED lights don't actually dim the LED at all, instead they turn the LED on and off around a thousand times per second - much faster than the eye can distinguish.
Actually, this has been the dimming method of choice for incandescent lights for several decades. It's extremely efficient, and can be electronically controlled.
It's less noticeable on these types of lamps because incandescents have a much longer "rise" and "fall" time, although you can hear the filament "buzz" on some larger lamps (PAR64 especially).
Some newer dimmers can switch fast enough to simulate a full and proper sine wave.
Yes, but there is plenty of energy savings to be had in the datacenter as well. If you've got a rack of old servers, you could potentially save a bundle by virtualizing them, and placing them on a newer system.
In many cases, this saves enough power to pay for itself, gives you more processing power, saves space (reducing air-conditioning requirements), and grants you all of the portability/redundancy features inherent in VMs.
Although servers need to be "up" 24/7, most aren't working 24/7. Newer processors can throttle themselves down when idle.
The DIY $200 PC notion always makes me apprehensive. Although you can indeed get good deals by using high-end components from last year, inexpensive power supplies tend to be complete rubbish (talking from experience)
Spending $50 for a decent PSU, in addition to a bit more for a nice case (if you value aesthetics) puts you well above the $200 cost.
If you value reliability, and want a few modern features (eg. a hard drive that holds more than 80gb), you'll probably end up spending closer to $400 or $500. Still not a bad deal, but considerably less of a bargain.
Adding a small wrinkle to the problem is that NYC's electric grid is extremely taxed.
Although you'd be able to do clever things such as charging the batteries during off-peak hours, electrifying the taxi fleet would contribute even further to brownouts during the summer months.
Granted, these problems can all be fixed. However, it's a bit more involved than you might imagine.
In the end, Amazon listened to their customers, and reversed an unpopular policy very quickly. If anything, this is good news.
I don't know--it reminds me of the veloco-raptors in Jurassic Park methodically testing their electrified cage for things they can get away with...
You can bet this kind of "censorship" will happen much more slowly and gradually next time, so people don't notice.
In that case, we should be vigilant, not paranoid.
It's simply unhealthy to implicitly distrust (and loathe) every corporate and governmental entity on the planet.
Yes, it is important to make sure that abuses don't occur. However, going into hysterics over an isolated incident that was quickly corrected seems to be incredibly unhealthy; society needs at least a modicum of trust in order to function.
Holy heck, how big is your fuel tank? Does it have its own zip code? Do you *seriously* drive for 10 hours on end without eating, using the restroom, stretching, picking up coffee, or anything of the sort? If so, please let me know when you'll be driving near Iowa City so I can stay *off* the road. Standard safety advice is to average 5-10 minutes of break per hour of driving.
A modern diesel gets around 40MPG. Drive it well, and it's not unheard of to get 55+MPG on the highway.
Using the 40MPG figure, I'd estimate that a 15gal tank would be sufficient to drive 600mi. For the sake of comparison, a Honda Civic has a 13gal tank that gives it an average range of 345mi, while American cars tend to have 17-20gal tanks (and considerably poorer fuel economy).
A digital medium-format camera today will be better than a medium-format camera from the 60s (although expensive medium format cameras have always been stunningly good in terms of optics and resolution)
The DSLR claim might be debatable, given that some modern full-frame DSLRs have incredibly high resolutions.
Just out of curiosity, what exactly is a NE accent?
There are a few regional accents, though it seems as though the majority of us do sound pretty much the same, which is odd, considering that UK accents can vary wildly within just a few miles. Jersey, coastal Virginia, and Alaska* all sound pretty much the same to me.
There are a few pockets of people with absolutely ridiculous accents (Boston, Brooklyn, etc.), though these people are definitely the exception to the rule, even in the areas in which they live. I lived in NJ for 18 years, and never encountered a single person with a "Jersey accent" until I left the place.
*Forgot to mention this: Alaskans = easily the friendliest people I've met on the planet, their elected representatives notwithstanding.
Both Parisians and New Yorkers get a bad rap. In my experience, as long as you accept a few cultural norms, the residents of both cities tend to be gracious and helpful.
Firstly, you've got to understand that people in a city as large and dense as New York are going to appear somewhat impersonal at times...otherwise you'd collapse from sensory overload. However, beneath this facade, Similarly, for whatever reason, time on the subway is considered "private time," and it's generally frowned upon to talk loudly or make eye contact with strangers, etc. Perhaps an anthropologist or sociologist could chime in and suggest why this might be?
New Yorkers, in my opinion, tend to be some of the most gracious and sympathetic city-dwellers I know of. Of course, traditions and dispositions tend to vary tremendously from borough to borough. I've been living in the south for the past few years, and have found "Southern Hospitality" to be largely a myth, apart from the initial friendly facade that people tend to put on -- at the very least, the northeast doesn't deserve the rap it gets from the rest of the country.
Paris is somewhat similar. Parisians have a reputation for being rude and unfriendly to outsiders. I've visited the city three times, and have never observed this to be the case. I only speak a tiny bit of French, though this seems to be greatly appreciated. I could imagine being treated rudely if I didn't know any of the language (and rightfully so).
In fact, there are very few cities I've visited that I've found to be outwardly oppressive.
To be perfectly fair, even the UK doesn't have the population density necessary for this. Yes, the UK does tend to be more dense than the US, though British cities tend to be densely packed around a town center, rather than sprawling like US cities. There's often very little incentive to fill in the gaps between cities, given just how few people live in these areas.
How about the remote/rural areas of Korea and Japan? Do they have good broadband access?
(I honestly have no idea about the answer to this... perhaps somebody else could chime in who knows more. Contrary to popular belief, Asia is far from being one big city)
How about utilizing incompatible physical connectors and software protocols for the two networks?
It could even be as easy as using IPv4 for the blue network, and IPv6 for the green network. (Or foregoing the IP protocol entirely)
Of course, you'd want to run MAC authentication in any event. However, this doesn't protect against an intruder with physical access to the network, as a foreign machine could very easily be introduced with a spoofed MAC address.
I'm no expert in this field, but shouldn't it be possible (and relatively simple) to get data OUT of a system easily, without having to worry about security (assuming that the data itself isn't sensitive)?
You would preferably want to do this in hardware, ie. with a transmit-only fiber interface that lacks the physical capability to receive data.
Of course, you would want the monitoring system to be secure if you wanted to do anything useful with the data. However, it still does make a fair bit of sense to utilize a one-way data link when performing monitoring functions.
I think this problem has much more to do with international trade than it does with anything else.
If you want to sell your wares and/or do business in another country, you've got to have some sort of channel for funneling that money from one country to the other. Big labels have representation in most major markets, while independents tend to have partnerships with other independents abroad, or allow their artists to release their songs under a different imprint overseas.
In the midst of all this are several different sets of copyright, trade, and taxation laws. Lifting the digital restriction on music sales doesn't magically open up a channel for the artist to be paid. Until Apple has an address to mail the cheque to, they'd be pocketing the full $1.29.
If the music is that obscure, and hard-to-obtain, I wouldn't have a tremendously guilty conscience about pirating the music.
Yes, it'd be nice for these barriers to be knocked down, particularly with regard to digital sales. However, the situation is far beyond Apple's control.
Out of curiosity, what CD was it? It's rather unusual these days for an album (or anything for that matter) to be released in Canada, but not the US.
Maybe we could agree that both theories have their own share of credibility?
After all, modern political theory tends to be heavily concerned with reconciling the needs of the individual with the "greater good" of society.
Humans can indeed be fiercely individualistic, though you could just as easily argue that we're inherently social creatures under certain circumstances. (You'd also be daft to argue that the overall condition of society doesn't affect the individual -- even if you're a subsistence farmer living alone in the wilderness)
I would argue that, by historic standards, both the US and Europe are far better off now than they have ever been, both in terms of personal liberties, as well as the general health of society as a whole.
Sure, we pay a lot of taxes. However, our post-tax income is still pretty darn high, in terms of the purchasing power that it carries. Similarly, we do receive tangible benefits from those taxes (even though you might argue that those benefits might not be a good value for the money)
We can't carry guns, but have powerful mechanisms for resolving personal conflicts in a peaceful manner. If the government is corrupt, 20th Century history contains numerous examples of peaceful revolutions taking place under non-democratic governments (India, and the fall of the USSR most notably come to mind)
Are there improvements to be made? Sure!
Is the answer to swing far to the left, or far to the right? Probably not. It's been tried repeatedly on both ends of the spectrum, and has never been particularly successful.*
*I'm going to ignore ancient Sparta for the sake of this discussion. Although it makes a great case study, it's a single data point, and a bit of a paradoxical one at that.
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To be fair, very few major 1000+ year old European cities haven't had the %&*# bombed out of them in the past 100 years.
Prague is one of the only ones I can think of that avoided major bombing during WWII. Extensive rebuilding took place after that.
Additionally, rural public transport can work. I lived in rural Scotland for a while, and the bus network in my town of 15,000 was superior to what you'd find in US cities 5 times that size, with frequent (and direct) connections to larger cities elsewhere.
These bus services were inexpensive, clean, and well-patronized.
The rail network was so much better that I won't even begin to compare. The northeast US *does* have the density necessary to make rail transport work effectively. The fact that we don't take advantage of it is a crying shame.
HID lamps produce a much brighter output than 7,000 lumens, even when you consider the lumens-per-watt ratio.
This 1200W bulb puts out 110,000 lumens.
This 500W bulb puts out 49,000 lumens.
This 250W bulb puts out 18,000 lumens.
This 150W bulb puts out 14,000 lumens.
See where I'm going with this?
Many dimmable LED lights don't actually dim the LED at all, instead they turn the LED on and off around a thousand times per second - much faster than the eye can distinguish.
Actually, this has been the dimming method of choice for incandescent lights for several decades. It's extremely efficient, and can be electronically controlled.
It's less noticeable on these types of lamps because incandescents have a much longer "rise" and "fall" time, although you can hear the filament "buzz" on some larger lamps (PAR64 especially).
Some newer dimmers can switch fast enough to simulate a full and proper sine wave.
Yes, but there is plenty of energy savings to be had in the datacenter as well. If you've got a rack of old servers, you could potentially save a bundle by virtualizing them, and placing them on a newer system.
In many cases, this saves enough power to pay for itself, gives you more processing power, saves space (reducing air-conditioning requirements), and grants you all of the portability/redundancy features inherent in VMs.
Although servers need to be "up" 24/7, most aren't working 24/7. Newer processors can throttle themselves down when idle.
The DIY $200 PC notion always makes me apprehensive. Although you can indeed get good deals by using high-end components from last year, inexpensive power supplies tend to be complete rubbish (talking from experience)
Spending $50 for a decent PSU, in addition to a bit more for a nice case (if you value aesthetics) puts you well above the $200 cost.
If you value reliability, and want a few modern features (eg. a hard drive that holds more than 80gb), you'll probably end up spending closer to $400 or $500. Still not a bad deal, but considerably less of a bargain.
No big deal. It's been too long since they had a good blackout riot there, anyway.
I actually quite liked the 2003 blackout. Stargazing in Central Park was incredible.
Adding a small wrinkle to the problem is that NYC's electric grid is extremely taxed.
Although you'd be able to do clever things such as charging the batteries during off-peak hours, electrifying the taxi fleet would contribute even further to brownouts during the summer months.
Granted, these problems can all be fixed. However, it's a bit more involved than you might imagine.
I bet people called Kaczynski paranoid too.
The unabomber?
Really?
That depends on where you are, and what time of year it is...
In the end, Amazon listened to their customers, and reversed an unpopular policy very quickly. If anything, this is good news.
I don't know--it reminds me of the veloco-raptors in Jurassic Park methodically testing their electrified cage for things they can get away with...
You can bet this kind of "censorship" will happen much more slowly and gradually next time, so people don't notice.
In that case, we should be vigilant, not paranoid.
It's simply unhealthy to implicitly distrust (and loathe) every corporate and governmental entity on the planet.
Yes, it is important to make sure that abuses don't occur. However, going into hysterics over an isolated incident that was quickly corrected seems to be incredibly unhealthy; society needs at least a modicum of trust in order to function.
Seems a bit paranoid.
In the end, Amazon listened to their customers, and reversed an unpopular policy very quickly. If anything, this is good news.
It's blatantly not in Amazon's best interest to censor anything. The more variety and volume they sell, the larger the profit.
V. B. A.
I should be getting hazard pay.
Have you considered going into poetry?
gets 600 miles to the tank
Holy heck, how big is your fuel tank? Does it have its own zip code? Do you *seriously* drive for 10 hours on end without eating, using the restroom, stretching, picking up coffee, or anything of the sort? If so, please let me know when you'll be driving near Iowa City so I can stay *off* the road. Standard safety advice is to average 5-10 minutes of break per hour of driving.
A modern diesel gets around 40MPG. Drive it well, and it's not unheard of to get 55+MPG on the highway.
Using the 40MPG figure, I'd estimate that a 15gal tank would be sufficient to drive 600mi. For the sake of comparison, a Honda Civic has a 13gal tank that gives it an average range of 345mi, while American cars tend to have 17-20gal tanks (and considerably poorer fuel economy).
NASA are prolific Hasselblad users.
A digital medium-format camera today will be better than a medium-format camera from the 60s (although expensive medium format cameras have always been stunningly good in terms of optics and resolution)
The DSLR claim might be debatable, given that some modern full-frame DSLRs have incredibly high resolutions.
Ballmer's terrifying enough when he's sober. No thank you.
Care to offer any solutions that haven't already been tried?
Just out of curiosity, what exactly is a NE accent?
There are a few regional accents, though it seems as though the majority of us do sound pretty much the same, which is odd, considering that UK accents can vary wildly within just a few miles. Jersey, coastal Virginia, and Alaska* all sound pretty much the same to me.
There are a few pockets of people with absolutely ridiculous accents (Boston, Brooklyn, etc.), though these people are definitely the exception to the rule, even in the areas in which they live. I lived in NJ for 18 years, and never encountered a single person with a "Jersey accent" until I left the place.
*Forgot to mention this: Alaskans = easily the friendliest people I've met on the planet, their elected representatives notwithstanding.
Both Parisians and New Yorkers get a bad rap. In my experience, as long as you accept a few cultural norms, the residents of both cities tend to be gracious and helpful.
Firstly, you've got to understand that people in a city as large and dense as New York are going to appear somewhat impersonal at times...otherwise you'd collapse from sensory overload. However, beneath this facade, Similarly, for whatever reason, time on the subway is considered "private time," and it's generally frowned upon to talk loudly or make eye contact with strangers, etc. Perhaps an anthropologist or sociologist could chime in and suggest why this might be?
New Yorkers, in my opinion, tend to be some of the most gracious and sympathetic city-dwellers I know of. Of course, traditions and dispositions tend to vary tremendously from borough to borough. I've been living in the south for the past few years, and have found "Southern Hospitality" to be largely a myth, apart from the initial friendly facade that people tend to put on -- at the very least, the northeast doesn't deserve the rap it gets from the rest of the country.
Paris is somewhat similar. Parisians have a reputation for being rude and unfriendly to outsiders. I've visited the city three times, and have never observed this to be the case. I only speak a tiny bit of French, though this seems to be greatly appreciated. I could imagine being treated rudely if I didn't know any of the language (and rightfully so).
In fact, there are very few cities I've visited that I've found to be outwardly oppressive.
Gray water is not sewage. It generally comes from dishwater, laundry, and collected rainfall (ie. from rooftops).
You wouldn't want to drink it, but you could almost certainly swim it with no ill health effects. It's no worse than most pond/river waters.
To be perfectly fair, even the UK doesn't have the population density necessary for this. Yes, the UK does tend to be more dense than the US, though British cities tend to be densely packed around a town center, rather than sprawling like US cities. There's often very little incentive to fill in the gaps between cities, given just how few people live in these areas.
How about the remote/rural areas of Korea and Japan? Do they have good broadband access?
(I honestly have no idea about the answer to this... perhaps somebody else could chime in who knows more. Contrary to popular belief, Asia is far from being one big city)
"What's going to be the next scare over -- the radioactive americium in smoke detectors?"
Now I need a lead foil hat...
Wow, speaking of things that actually will give you cancer....
How about utilizing incompatible physical connectors and software protocols for the two networks?
It could even be as easy as using IPv4 for the blue network, and IPv6 for the green network. (Or foregoing the IP protocol entirely)
Of course, you'd want to run MAC authentication in any event. However, this doesn't protect against an intruder with physical access to the network, as a foreign machine could very easily be introduced with a spoofed MAC address.
I'm no expert in this field, but shouldn't it be possible (and relatively simple) to get data OUT of a system easily, without having to worry about security (assuming that the data itself isn't sensitive)?
You would preferably want to do this in hardware, ie. with a transmit-only fiber interface that lacks the physical capability to receive data.
Of course, you would want the monitoring system to be secure if you wanted to do anything useful with the data. However, it still does make a fair bit of sense to utilize a one-way data link when performing monitoring functions.
I think this problem has much more to do with international trade than it does with anything else.
If you want to sell your wares and/or do business in another country, you've got to have some sort of channel for funneling that money from one country to the other. Big labels have representation in most major markets, while independents tend to have partnerships with other independents abroad, or allow their artists to release their songs under a different imprint overseas.
In the midst of all this are several different sets of copyright, trade, and taxation laws. Lifting the digital restriction on music sales doesn't magically open up a channel for the artist to be paid. Until Apple has an address to mail the cheque to, they'd be pocketing the full $1.29.
If the music is that obscure, and hard-to-obtain, I wouldn't have a tremendously guilty conscience about pirating the music.
Yes, it'd be nice for these barriers to be knocked down, particularly with regard to digital sales. However, the situation is far beyond Apple's control.
Out of curiosity, what CD was it? It's rather unusual these days for an album (or anything for that matter) to be released in Canada, but not the US.
Maybe we could agree that both theories have their own share of credibility?
After all, modern political theory tends to be heavily concerned with reconciling the needs of the individual with the "greater good" of society.
Humans can indeed be fiercely individualistic, though you could just as easily argue that we're inherently social creatures under certain circumstances. (You'd also be daft to argue that the overall condition of society doesn't affect the individual -- even if you're a subsistence farmer living alone in the wilderness)
I would argue that, by historic standards, both the US and Europe are far better off now than they have ever been, both in terms of personal liberties, as well as the general health of society as a whole.
Sure, we pay a lot of taxes. However, our post-tax income is still pretty darn high, in terms of the purchasing power that it carries. Similarly, we do receive tangible benefits from those taxes (even though you might argue that those benefits might not be a good value for the money)
We can't carry guns, but have powerful mechanisms for resolving personal conflicts in a peaceful manner. If the government is corrupt, 20th Century history contains numerous examples of peaceful revolutions taking place under non-democratic governments (India, and the fall of the USSR most notably come to mind)
Are there improvements to be made? Sure!
Is the answer to swing far to the left, or far to the right? Probably not. It's been tried repeatedly on both ends of the spectrum, and has never been particularly successful.*
*I'm going to ignore ancient Sparta for the sake of this discussion. Although it makes a great case study, it's a single data point, and a bit of a paradoxical one at that.