Ahh, yes, sniping with nothing but drug-induced good feelings to counter reality. (What are you on, anyway? If it lets you ignore reality that well, I might want some the next time I break my collarbone.)
they would've come up with a comprehensive, and practical, plan for creating stability and peace in the Middle East.
No such thing. There never will be. There never was. Not for 5000 years of recorded history. It has always been this group warring with that group, this tribe fighting that tribe, this sect against that sect. Always.
The only time there was anything resembling peace was when one side got enough of an advantage to force stability on a region. Kind of like Saddam Hussein did in Iraq for about 30 years. He was a megalomaniacal dictator, but he kept the peace. Mostly because he killed you if you broke the peace.
That's how you get stability and peace in the Middle East. Read some history and you'll find that to be true.
the only thing the extremists hate more than the US and the West is Israel.
Yes, but fixing Israel won't make them like us. Enough of them have declared a goal of the annihilation of the West and world domination for Islam, that you know where that road will lead. That's the whole point of extremists. There is no compromise, because the only acceptable conclusion for them is totally their way.
And, have you looked at what "fixing Israel" will mean? For Hamas, fixing Israel means the total destruction of the state of Israel. This is why the West has a problem with the Palestinian unity government right now. A government that does not recognize the right of Israel to exist as a separate state is not acceptable. You can argue all you want that Israel should not have been created in the 1940s in the first place (and I might even agree with you, this was a foreseeable problem then) but we're stuck with the situation now.
Figure out a solution that does not involve killing about 6 million people, please. Oh, and it has to be a solution that the extremists will accept, remember, you gave that condition.
what better way to galvanize potential terrorists than by fulfilling Osama's message that the Infidels want to invade the holy lands?
Look at what the Russians are doing with their little "internal matter" in Chechnya. That's religiously-motivated, and has nothing to do with holy lands. Not that I agree with what they are doing there.
But really, leaving the Middle East won't solve things. First, we do have national interests there (oil, obviously), though I'd be happier if we didn't. Switch to electric cars with nuclear power generation. (I'd like to continue that statement with "It'll be expensive, but it will get us out of that mess" except that it won't get us out of that mess.) But, if you read the teachings of Islam, you learn a few scary things. First, it is unacceptable for a Muslim to live under non-Muslim rule. This means that, if a single Muslim moves to and lives in a country, as a matter of religion, that government of that country must convert to Islam, and enforce Islamic law. This is the position of the religion. Second, non-Muslims in a Muslim country are second-class citizens, beneath all Muslims. Now, historically, non-Muslims in Muslim countries were treated a LOT better than Muslims in non-Muslim countries, but that's not really saying much, and being a second-class citizen is unacceptable. This is part of why you see so often the Muslim extremist position that democratic elections are great, until the first Muslim administration gets elected, and then the elections stop and the government doesn't change. At least until the next war.
the perception that the US is ignoring diplomacy with Iran because President Bush wants war
Bush doesn't want war. He just has the same position that a lot of religious extremists have. (He's a born-again Christian, remember. And just as much of a fruitcake as that makes you think he is.) He thi
But seriously, mainstream Christians (Pope included) have been saying that evolution and faith are completely compatible for many years.
Close. The position of the Catholic church on evolution is slightly more nuanced than that. Only slightly, really.
Evolution is (stealing from Wikipedia) the change from generation to generation in a population's inherited characteristics through random mutation.
The Catholic church has a problem with that word "random" but accepts the rest of it. Their position is that God causes the changes, and they are not random. At some point in history, God caused a change, said "these are now humans" and started handing out souls.
That is significant for them, because Catholics believe in souls in humans and not animals, and God had to define the point of separation where humans get souls and animals don't.
Except for that, Catholics officially have little problem with evolution.
By the way - to those who worry about it infringing on your freedom - unless you're a convicted pedophile, molester, etc, it hardly seems to apply to you.
Freedoms that only apply to people that have not yet had a problem with the law. Ahh, yes, we do have a class system, don't we?
If it doesn't affect you, you have no right to complain. Oh, and if it does affect you, why, we've taken away your right to vote, so you have no ability to complain. (Admittedly, this is a US answer for a UK proposed law. Yes, I understand that the situations are not exactly equivalent.) Yeah, that's a great way to make laws.
Oh, and one other thing.
Because sometimes pedophiles get off on technicalities.
The general reason that bad guys get off on a technicality is that the cops broke the law. Or, more politely stated, the cops did not follow proper procedure in the investigation and/or arrest of the accused perpetrator. 50 years ago in the US, the phrase "got off on a technicality" just as often meant "the judge threw out the confession the cops beat out of the scum". But we don't prosecute cops, because, after all, they're just good people doing a dirty job. You can trust them, right? All of recorded history showing how people abuse power is no reason not to trust people in power, right?
Yes, I understand that most cops really do start out as good people. I'm really curious how long it takes to develop the "us versus them" attitudes that cops are so known for. As a cop, almost all you deal with are cops and criminals. Oh, and "ordinary citizens" that are hindering an investigation by insisting on their rights, which should be illegal so they might as well be criminals too. I really do understand how cops get how they are. This is part of why most laws proposed by cops are bad ideas. A police state always sounds like a good idea to the police, even the good police. Because that's how they see the world.
I've told that pot roast story for about 10 years now, I loved it when I first came across it. There's another one with a similar theme, too, but other than the end message, completely different.
===
Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the other monkeys with cold water. After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result -- all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water.
Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it - violently. Now, put away the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his surprise and horror, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.
Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm! Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth.
Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked. Most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.
After replacing all the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana. Why not? Because as far as they know that's the way it's always been done around here.
===
Same message as the pot roast, yes?
Incidentally, I have no idea if this actually works with monkeys... but looking around my job, I'm sure it works with people.
Company A might have access to retail channels in the USA, while company B might have access to retail channels in the UK. Giving either a worldwide licensing deal would be a problem, since neither would be able to exploit it. Giving both a worldwide deal might cause them to step on each other's toes in some areas, which might cause actual competition.
There... corrected that for you.
Oh, sorry, this is capitalism, we don't like competition.
Err.
(Why does an italic tag not work inside a blockquote?)
Not to mention that energy prices aren't going to stay cheap like this forever...when oil production begins to slip, the price of energy will go up. And oil production will drop, sooner or later. It's just a question of when it will. It's not an infinite nor renewable resource.
Learn something about electricity production. In the United States, very little electricity is commercially produced using oil. True, the US mostly uses fossil fuels (mostly coal and natural gas) for electricity (70%). Then nuclear (20%), then hydro (5%) and other is the rest. Some of that fossil fuel is oil, but it's a very small percentage.
Lots of backup generators use diesel, but that's not really commercial electricity production.
Cost of oil has very little to do with commercial electricity production. Coal is readily available and abundant for a century, probably. It's expensive to burn it cleanly, but it is abundant. Natural gas is plentiful, but getting more expensive also, as more uses are found for it, particularly expanded commercial electricity production.
But as to your "it's just a question of when"... if energy prices rise noticeably after the useful life of your solar power system (25 years, optimally), then you don't see any benefit from your investment. Not now. Not ever.
If you are arguing cost, argue cost now, not hypothetical cost later.
You can play "inflation-adjusted" games... but then you'd better also include the interest you could have earned on the money required to install the solar power system too.
The manufacture and eventual disposal of solar panels does produce pollution.
So does traditional electricity generation, coal, natural gas, or whatever. Mining, refining, transport, cleanup, etc. Even nuclear has environmental impacts from mining and disposal. (When are we going to start recycling spent nuclear fuel, anyway? "Spent" nuclear fuel still has lots of usable uranium in it.)
But my big complaint with solar panels really disappeared in the early 1990s when you could finally get more energy out of them that it took to produce them.
Also, a tank full of hydrogen in your house is extremely dangerous.
It is, I believe, stored in the back yard, not inside the house. In a standard propane tank. You know, the ones used all over the nation, and which have a distressing habit of not blowing up all the time. Though I have to agree that I'm not too comfortable with the idea myself, I don't actually think it is dangerous. I'd be happier to replace this section of the design with simply selling the excess power back to the electric company, and then using power from the electric company at night and in winter. You can't brag "I'm self-sufficient" but you do have a simpler (and cheaper) design. Besides, if you heat your house with natural gas, or have a gas stove, you already have natural gas pipes in your house, so complaining about a tank of hydrogen seems like you might be intentionally wearing blinders. (I don't know if you use natural gas for heating or cooking. My house, for example, is pure electric.)
So yes, I do feel that it's too expensive, too destructive and impractical.
As I said, I agree with the hydrogen storage being impractical. It's a bragging rights thing. Too destructive, I simply don't know enough to be able to say. Requires more research.
Too expensive? Very much so, yes. But the cost will go down over time. It's not cost effective now. Give it 10 or 15 years, and it might be. $100,000 for 25 years of use, when the traditional electric power company would charge you $40,000? No thanks. (No, I didn't inflation-adjust the electric company charge, but then, I didn't include interest you don't earn on that $100,000 either, so that's fair.)
Isn't it interesting how I spent this entire post disagreeing with details, and agreed with your major conclusion anyway?
Notice I didn't accuse you of anything or call you any names.
I'm just pointing out that the military can solve many limitations by throwing money at them, and no one in the government is embracing plans to limit military spending at this time.
You need to read more about the DOD budget process inside the Pentagon and the White House. It isn't so much that they are proposing spending less, as there are a LOT of fights over exactly where to devote the spending, and which service gets how much, and how it is portioned out. How much goes to maintenance, how much to new equipment purchases, how much to soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen. How much to R&D like this?
Very high cost equipment does indeed get canceled, simply because it costs too much. Usually measured as "too much over budget" but it is related to cost. Cost does matter.
The Navy has this as a very real problem over the next 10 years. The next generation aircraft carrier is projected to cost $10 billion. The Navy currently spends $10 billion per year building ships and submarines. A ship must be fully appropriated in the year that construction is begun. The year they start building the next-gen aircraft carrier, does the Navy simply not build any submarines, which they want to build 2 per year for a cost of $2.2 billion each? How about DDG-51 class destroyers, at a cost of $1.4 billion each? Or DD(X) (now renamed to DDG-1000) class destroyers, at a cost of about $3 billion each? Amphibious assault ships, like the LPD-17, which I don't know a cost for, probably north of $1 billion? Or LCS ships, for the low cost of about $400 million each?
What doesn't get built the year they start the next aircraft carrier?
The Air Force has the same problem, with F-22 aircraft that cost $200 million each... they aren't buying 600 of them like they planned 10 years ago. Instead they are getting... 190 I think. Ditto with the F-35 (JSF), which they are not buying 4,000 of, or whatever the original purchase number was, because they are also fairly pricey.
Just because the military works with large budgets, doesn't mean that the cost of equipment doesn't matter. It matters very much.
And they really do care about limiting costs, because it really does affect how many they can buy.
You see, you are failing to understand part of the system here.
Our wonderful lawmakers have recognized that picking a single terrorist out of a population of 200 million mostly-law-abiding travelers is very very difficult. Understandably, they wish to simplify this problem. They have come upon a remarkable program that you obviously have not comprehended.
You see, they plan to make the process of traveling to the United States so horrible, that only a terrorist intent on nefarious deeds would even contemplate going through it. This makes it much easier to spot a terrorist, don't you agree?
So, your decision to not travel to the United States is really helping the program. We thank you for your assistance in our efforts to apprehend Evil Doers.
For the humor-impaired, yes, that was sarcasm you just read.
What's next, credit card companies deciding they don't like certain restaurants, types of products, etc?
Like, say, online gambling? Which VISA and MasterCard also block payment for.
Just like you can't use your VISA card to pay for illegal drugs, you cannot use it to pay for any other service which knowingly violates the law, including illegally-licensed music distribution.
Now, you can argue about whether they should be licensed, and how they should be licensed, but if you accept that they are operating without a legal license for the music, then the CC companies should not process payments to them for illegal goods.
That is a fairly large if, though.
Last time I checked, AllOfMP3.com only claimed to be legal inside Russia, and outside of Russia it was the buyer's responsibility to determine legality of the purchase. Which, of course, no one paid any attention to. Therefore, the response from VISA and MasterCard seems proper.
I'll accept that without specifically endorsing the viewpoint. There were a lot of people even at the beginning of our country's history that didn't like copyright at all. It took... a few decades (someone may correct me if this thread isn't too old) before the United States even recognized foreign copyrights registered in the US. Americans made lots of money printing European books in the US, in violation of copyright. This is fairly normal practice for developing nations, incidentally, you can watch it playing out in China right now. Back then England was saying to us similar things to what we are saying to China about copyright protections now.
Retroactive copyright extensions?
Agreed, these serve no purpose towards the stated goal in the Constitution. I do not like them.
Terms longer than a human lifespan?
Ahh... this one I'm going to take a silly/stupid position, just because I wonder if some people in corporate America really think like this...
Consider things this way: Original copyright was 14 years, plus an optional 14 year extension, giving a total of 28 years. For someone that produced a copyrighted work in their mid 30s, they could expect that work to stay covered by copyright approximately until they died. Statistically, probably a few years before they died, but not by too much. (Ignoring skew from infant mortality, if you lived to be 20 years old, you had a pretty good chance of living to see 65, in the late 1700s in America.) So 28 years of copyright covered you until you died, for something produced in your prime working years.
That worked great for copyright held by humans.
Now, we have copyrighted works that are, for major money-making stuff, held by corporations, instead of by people. Which rule are we going to change? The number of years, which is obviously an artificial construct, or the basic (implied) theory that copyright should last until around the death of the author.
The government, through careful application of lobbyist dollars, has decided that the proper part to hold on to is "death of the copyright holder" and, since corporations don't die, it is therefore logical that copyrights should go forever.
This is pretty much how it works right now... Every time the first Mickey Mouse movie is in danger of losing copyright protection, the copyright term gets (retroactively) extended, and the work is still/again protected for the life of the copyright holder. Because, really, you aren't changing the rules of the game... you're simply recognizing that the copyright holder is living longer than had originally been expected.
See? Makes perfect sense when looked at like that, doesn't it?
Okay, I'm done with my silly/stupid position, and I can stop feeling slimy. Eww. I need a shower. But it does give you at least a little bit of understanding of a possible defensible position that the corporate copyright holders could have. Ignoring the fact that they are mostly power-mad money-grubbing soul-sucking scum.:)
I was going to comment on CFLs, but the article already did. (That'll teach me to read the article, huh?)
But aside from more energy-efficient appliances (and lights), I really do have to wonder how much energy could be saved by just hooking up rooms to motion detectors.
I'm in my 30s, and growing up I often heard my Dad complain about rooms with the lights left on. Lately, I've been seeing advertisements from my power company about energy savings from turning off ceiling fans in rooms when no one is there.
How much energy does a motion detector use? They are generally passive IR, aren't they? Would it be offset by the gains from hooking the lights and ceiling fans into it? CFLs are great (I've replaced most of the incandescents in my house already, the rest as the little-used ones burn out eventually) but you save more by not having the lights on at all. If the lights came on automatically when I walked into a room, and turned off automatically 2 minutes after I walked out (to reduce needless quick on-off cycles) that would be both convenient and efficient... wouldn't it?
We're talking about child porn that tries to play games with legal loopholes about whether a child is actually harmed. It encourages the direct physical abuse of real children by conditioning the paedophile to consider their lustful and abusive mentality "acceptable" or "normal". It's the same problem that is caused by allowing pre-teen and teen models to be dressed up as if they were adults by clothing advertisers.
How is this different from trying to ban violent video games?
Either you know the difference between fantasy and reality, in which case CGI child porn should not be banned... or you don't, and violent video games should be banned also, by the same reasoning you use above.
Be very careful with your thinking, lest it be applied in ways you won't like. Decisions are not made in isolation, and consistency of thought is important.
The power draw required to charge a 30kWh battery pack in 60 seconds... that's taking the full capacity of a 25kV feeder line for those 60 seconds. Maybe more than that. You can do the math yourself. That's probably not going to be a nighttime charge, either, because you don't have that kind of electric feed going into a house, so you're back to charging during peak power usage times. Oops.
Plus they have a serious heat issue when charging batteries that fast. I don't want my car to melt when I charge it.
You're way off with the electrical grid capacity problem, though, since 60 million electric cars will never hit the streets all at once. Obviously, the numbers will grow slowly, giving plenty time for the grid to adapt to the new demand (nuclear is fine with me as well, at least in the relatively short term). And, as you say yourself, most of the charging will take place at night when usage is traditionally low.
This is the only part of your reply that I have any problem with, and I admit that a large piece of my objection I am uncertain about. You see, I don't know how much nighttime "slack" electrical generating capacity we have, relative to the draw you would get from overnight charging of electric vehicles.
But I'm going to assume it would be... significant, otherwise I wouldn't have any justification for replying to you.:)
I could probably figure out how much of a power draw you'd get charging a car's batteries... 30kWh capacity batteries? My house has a main 200Amp breaker at 110Volts... Charge the batteries over 4 hours, and you are drawing about 1/3 of the capacity of my 200Amp house feed. That's probably a significant power draw from the grid, if you and all your neighbors are doing it... That's also a new breaker in my box, because I don't have a 70amp breaker in there, but that's easy, really (the breaker box has plenty of 15 and 30 amp breakers in it). Consider that with this little tidbit. This past August, I used 25kWh per day, about 700kWh for the month. At least, that's what my electric company charged me for, and I'd think they'd know. Charge these batteries once every few days, and you've upped my electric usage a bunch. I don't know what my power draw was each hour of the day. I'd kind of like to know, really. That would tell me a lot about how much that 70Amp nighttime draw would effect the power grid.
My other problem with your statement is your assumption on time frames. No, we won't sell 60 million electric vehicles in the next 3 years... (besides, I made up the "60 million" number) probably not in the next 10 years. But the issue there is the time scale for constructing new power plants. Nuclear power plants take 15 years to go from proposal through approval through construction to going online supplying power. Coal and natural gas generating stations are quicker, yes, but still take 8-10 years. You're quickly getting to the point that those cars, that aren't here yet, are already coming too fast for us to build new plants to supply power for them. And that doesn't count the time required to lay all those extra high-voltage feeder lines.
Still not insurmountable. Just requires forethought and planning. And some major committments of resources.
I'm not really interested in a solution that only lets 1 ultra-green person out of 500 normal people have an electric car. Sounds like you aren't either, which is reassuring. This needs to scale to cover most of the car-driving public. Preferably, getting it so that in 5-10 years electric cars are a reasonable purchase, and then 10 years later (one car replacement cycle) you'll have mostly electric cars on local roads. (Maybe there's time to build that extra electric power generating capacity after all.) Possibly still hybrids on interstates, just for the faster refueling, unless battery swaps really work.
Oh, and my comment about the power draw of a 10-story parking garage with electric cars being charged overnight... It occurred to me that the power draw is probably not all that different from the 20-story office building right next door.
The really great thing about electric vehicles, as someone else already noted, is that when you centralize the power generating equipment, you can get a lot more bang-for-buck developing and deploying equipment to clean emissions. It's easier to make a "clean" power generating plant than it is 40,000 clean gas-burning cars.
As the movie points out, electric cars are the real answer: they're simple, cheap, fast, efficient, convenient and low maintenance
Electric cars have 2 major problems.
First, recharging takes hours. Electric cars are only useful for commuters. No long-distance driving. This can possibly be overcome by making recharging stations that swap battery packs instead of recharging in place. This requires a degree of standardization that I wouldn't expect to see in the American automotive industry, however.
Second, the electric grid is not capable of supplying the energy needed to recharge 60 million electric cars every night. Remember the power outages over the last 5 years? California, the Northeast. WAY worse if you start plugging in electric cars by the millions. A large number of new electric generating plants, and a lot of new high voltage transmission lines, would need to be built.
Most of this is also nighttime charging, so don't expect things like solar power to provide energy for this. On the plus side, with nighttime charging, you are drawing power during what is traditionally a low-usage time period, so you won't need as much new electricity production capacity as you'd first think. Still a bunch. Got a green solution for this? (Personally, I like nuclear power.)
This also means a LOT of changes in how cars are parked. Plugging in at home in your garage is easy... How about in the parking garage down the street from your apartment building? Can you imagine the power draw for a 10-level parking garage? Yipes.
Not insurmountable problems... but they require a lot of thought to let them scale to the level that we require.
The more I see how corporations in America act, the more I think of our old buddy Joseph Stalin.
"A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic."
A lot of corporate activity in America seems to be run with that as a guiding principle. Do something on a big enough scale, and it stops being bad, and simply becomes... unethical, but not actually illegal? And if it is done by a committee, no single person actually makes a decision, so it isn't even unethical.
Of course, this also goes back to the single purpose for a corporation. The sole purpose of a corporation is to shield liability.
*sigh*
You know, I was happier before I became cynical and jaded. Clueless, but happier.
Time pressures and price are fundamentally incompatable with code quality, even amongst the best programmers.
This is summarized in an old engineering saying. Not just software development, but pretty much all design and construction and engineering has the same issue.
Good. Fast. Cheap. Pick any two.
This ignores other things that contribute, like how good the people involved are. But it is still a very valid saying.
I look at the current $3 a gallon and I laugh as I fill up my gas guzzling SUV. Make it $6-$8 a gallon as in some countries and I would seriously limit driving or change to a more fuel efficient car.
I drive an F-150. I get about 17.5 or 18mpg. I drive about 20,000 miles per year.
$3/gal gas costs me about $3,000 per year.
Make the gas $8/gal, and over 10 years, the increased cost of gas means I've paid for a decent sedan that gets 40mpg, simply in the extra fuel costs. Unfortunately, I haven't seen many 40mpg sedans that I like, that cost in the neighborhood of $30,000. (I haven't looked that hard, though.)
Of course, that sedan doesn't carry my scuba gear too well, and I want to get as much of that done as I can before we finish killing all the coral reefs in the world. That also assumes that said "decent sedan" will last for 10 years. Pick properly, and that will probably be a good assumption.
As with the scuba stuff, I actually do use the truck for truck-specific purposes, hauling crap I wouldn't want in the passenger space. It's not an everyday occurrence, though. So it would be nice to keep the truck, and have the sedan as an additional vehicle, so I can't count trade-in value to offset the purchase cost of that sedan.
Keeping the truck for only truck-specific use... then the issue becomes non-fuel costs. Car insurance is awful, for single-driver multiple-vehicle. That kills the "cost-effective" argument right there. Yuck.
But yes, high priced gas makes replacing my truck more cost-effective. And, seriously, until it is a cost-effective decision, I'm not going to do it. The truck is paid for. But if I have a choice of a car payment to a bank, or a car payment to the gas station... I'll probably choose the bank. (I'm just dying to get one of those radar-assisted cruise-control vehicles anyway. Didn't Slashdot have an article about the Honda version in the UK a few months ago...)
But it's not sufficiently painful right now for me to care that much about gas prices and poor fuel efficiency.
An original IBM PC weighed 28 pounds with two floppy disk drives. A cell phone (err... mobile?) with a heavy gauge steel case would probably be pretty durable, but I wouldn't want to carry one around.
Have you looked at Verizon's new(ish) G'zOne Type-V phone?
It's a solid aluminum body, flip-phone, MIL-SPEC 810F (water/dust/shock resistant).
And weighs 5.3 ounces.
My girlfriend says the sales guy said you can drive over it with your car (while it's closed) and it will be okay. Not sure I believe that, but... it might actually be able to survive her treatment of cell phones, err, mobiles.
Of course, you pay for that... it's $299 with a 2-year contract, and most of that cost is for the durability. I have to admit, the hinge feels a lot most solid than my filp-phone.
Then you can take your printout to your boss at work and show him you voted the way he told you to so he won't fire you.
Don't even need that.
A printout that you take away is not needed for this scenario. You just need a cameraphone. Practically everyone has a cameraphone. Take a picture of your ballot before turning it in, and send it to your boss as a picturemessage. Nice, easy, simple.
I'm told you are not supposed to bring cellphones into polling places (state dependent, I expect). A co-worker said he voted early, was was asked to turn off his cellphone. I voted with my cellphone (turned on) on a beltclip, with no protests from anyone.
Pretending that anonymous voting is still possible ignores the technology available to get around it. I would like anonymous voting, with no records of who voted for who, but only records that so-and-so voted. But I don't think it is possible any more, without the kind of searches you get going into airports. And that will drive people away from voting.
that governments should act not on the basis of the likeliest outcome from climate change but on the risk of something really catastrophic
So we should ignore this climate change junk, and concentrate on building a big shield to protect us from the next killer asteroid that will strike the earth.
Right?
Oh, wait, that's only supposed to apply to the particular unlikely-but-horrible event that you are talking about right now. Not to the ones that people sniping from the sideline (like me) bring up to show how silly that statement is.
I have to wonder... people that seriously believe in global climate change... are any of them true believers enough that they are buying land at the +30ft topographical line (or whatever it is that sealevels will rise), so they will have beachfront property in 50 years? If you believe it is really going to happen... that would be a good investment, wouldn't it?
Slashdot Mirror
Much as I hate defending Bush...
Ahh, yes, sniping with nothing but drug-induced good feelings to counter reality. (What are you on, anyway? If it lets you ignore reality that well, I might want some the next time I break my collarbone.)
they would've come up with a comprehensive, and practical, plan for creating stability and peace in the Middle East.
No such thing. There never will be. There never was. Not for 5000 years of recorded history. It has always been this group warring with that group, this tribe fighting that tribe, this sect against that sect. Always.
The only time there was anything resembling peace was when one side got enough of an advantage to force stability on a region. Kind of like Saddam Hussein did in Iraq for about 30 years. He was a megalomaniacal dictator, but he kept the peace. Mostly because he killed you if you broke the peace.
That's how you get stability and peace in the Middle East. Read some history and you'll find that to be true.
the only thing the extremists hate more than the US and the West is Israel.
Yes, but fixing Israel won't make them like us. Enough of them have declared a goal of the annihilation of the West and world domination for Islam, that you know where that road will lead. That's the whole point of extremists. There is no compromise, because the only acceptable conclusion for them is totally their way.
And, have you looked at what "fixing Israel" will mean? For Hamas, fixing Israel means the total destruction of the state of Israel. This is why the West has a problem with the Palestinian unity government right now. A government that does not recognize the right of Israel to exist as a separate state is not acceptable. You can argue all you want that Israel should not have been created in the 1940s in the first place (and I might even agree with you, this was a foreseeable problem then) but we're stuck with the situation now.
Figure out a solution that does not involve killing about 6 million people, please. Oh, and it has to be a solution that the extremists will accept, remember, you gave that condition.
what better way to galvanize potential terrorists than by fulfilling Osama's message that the Infidels want to invade the holy lands?
Look at what the Russians are doing with their little "internal matter" in Chechnya. That's religiously-motivated, and has nothing to do with holy lands. Not that I agree with what they are doing there.
But really, leaving the Middle East won't solve things. First, we do have national interests there (oil, obviously), though I'd be happier if we didn't. Switch to electric cars with nuclear power generation. (I'd like to continue that statement with "It'll be expensive, but it will get us out of that mess" except that it won't get us out of that mess.) But, if you read the teachings of Islam, you learn a few scary things. First, it is unacceptable for a Muslim to live under non-Muslim rule. This means that, if a single Muslim moves to and lives in a country, as a matter of religion, that government of that country must convert to Islam, and enforce Islamic law. This is the position of the religion. Second, non-Muslims in a Muslim country are second-class citizens, beneath all Muslims. Now, historically, non-Muslims in Muslim countries were treated a LOT better than Muslims in non-Muslim countries, but that's not really saying much, and being a second-class citizen is unacceptable. This is part of why you see so often the Muslim extremist position that democratic elections are great, until the first Muslim administration gets elected, and then the elections stop and the government doesn't change. At least until the next war.
the perception that the US is ignoring diplomacy with Iran because President Bush wants war
Bush doesn't want war. He just has the same position that a lot of religious extremists have. (He's a born-again Christian, remember. And just as much of a fruitcake as that makes you think he is.) He thi
But seriously, mainstream Christians (Pope included) have been saying that evolution and faith are completely compatible for many years.
Close. The position of the Catholic church on evolution is slightly more nuanced than that. Only slightly, really.
Evolution is (stealing from Wikipedia) the change from generation to generation in a population's inherited characteristics through random mutation.
The Catholic church has a problem with that word "random" but accepts the rest of it. Their position is that God causes the changes, and they are not random. At some point in history, God caused a change, said "these are now humans" and started handing out souls.
That is significant for them, because Catholics believe in souls in humans and not animals, and God had to define the point of separation where humans get souls and animals don't.
Except for that, Catholics officially have little problem with evolution.
a fucking camcorder recording of a hollywood movie
There's a missing note of hilarity here. Let me modify your statement slightly so you'll see it.
a fucking camcorder recording of a hollywood movie that was filmed in Canada because it is cheaper there
Are you laughing now? The US is exporting IP-related jobs to a country it claims doesn't respect IP.
Personally, I think that's a great joke.
By the way - to those who worry about it infringing on your freedom - unless you're a convicted pedophile, molester, etc, it hardly seems to apply to you.
Freedoms that only apply to people that have not yet had a problem with the law. Ahh, yes, we do have a class system, don't we?
If it doesn't affect you, you have no right to complain. Oh, and if it does affect you, why, we've taken away your right to vote, so you have no ability to complain. (Admittedly, this is a US answer for a UK proposed law. Yes, I understand that the situations are not exactly equivalent.) Yeah, that's a great way to make laws.
Oh, and one other thing.
Because sometimes pedophiles get off on technicalities.
The general reason that bad guys get off on a technicality is that the cops broke the law. Or, more politely stated, the cops did not follow proper procedure in the investigation and/or arrest of the accused perpetrator. 50 years ago in the US, the phrase "got off on a technicality" just as often meant "the judge threw out the confession the cops beat out of the scum". But we don't prosecute cops, because, after all, they're just good people doing a dirty job. You can trust them, right? All of recorded history showing how people abuse power is no reason not to trust people in power, right?
Yes, I understand that most cops really do start out as good people. I'm really curious how long it takes to develop the "us versus them" attitudes that cops are so known for. As a cop, almost all you deal with are cops and criminals. Oh, and "ordinary citizens" that are hindering an investigation by insisting on their rights, which should be illegal so they might as well be criminals too. I really do understand how cops get how they are. This is part of why most laws proposed by cops are bad ideas. A police state always sounds like a good idea to the police, even the good police. Because that's how they see the world.
[pot roast story deleted]
I've told that pot roast story for about 10 years now, I loved it when I first came across it. There's another one with a similar theme, too, but other than the end message, completely different.
===
Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana. As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the other monkeys with cold water. After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result -- all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water.
Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it - violently. Now, put away the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his surprise and horror, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.
Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm! Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth, then the fifth.
Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked. Most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.
After replacing all the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana. Why not? Because as far as they know that's the way it's always been done around here.
===
Same message as the pot roast, yes?
Incidentally, I have no idea if this actually works with monkeys... but looking around my job, I'm sure it works with people.
There... corrected that for you.
Oh, sorry, this is capitalism, we don't like competition.
Err.
(Why does an italic tag not work inside a blockquote?)
Not to mention that energy prices aren't going to stay cheap like this forever...when oil production begins to slip, the price of energy will go up. And oil production will drop, sooner or later. It's just a question of when it will. It's not an infinite nor renewable resource.
Learn something about electricity production. In the United States, very little electricity is commercially produced using oil. True, the US mostly uses fossil fuels (mostly coal and natural gas) for electricity (70%). Then nuclear (20%), then hydro (5%) and other is the rest. Some of that fossil fuel is oil, but it's a very small percentage.
Lots of backup generators use diesel, but that's not really commercial electricity production.
Cost of oil has very little to do with commercial electricity production. Coal is readily available and abundant for a century, probably. It's expensive to burn it cleanly, but it is abundant. Natural gas is plentiful, but getting more expensive also, as more uses are found for it, particularly expanded commercial electricity production.
But as to your "it's just a question of when"... if energy prices rise noticeably after the useful life of your solar power system (25 years, optimally), then you don't see any benefit from your investment. Not now. Not ever.
If you are arguing cost, argue cost now, not hypothetical cost later.
You can play "inflation-adjusted" games... but then you'd better also include the interest you could have earned on the money required to install the solar power system too.
The manufacture and eventual disposal of solar panels does produce pollution.
So does traditional electricity generation, coal, natural gas, or whatever. Mining, refining, transport, cleanup, etc. Even nuclear has environmental impacts from mining and disposal. (When are we going to start recycling spent nuclear fuel, anyway? "Spent" nuclear fuel still has lots of usable uranium in it.)
But my big complaint with solar panels really disappeared in the early 1990s when you could finally get more energy out of them that it took to produce them.
Also, a tank full of hydrogen in your house is extremely dangerous.
It is, I believe, stored in the back yard, not inside the house. In a standard propane tank. You know, the ones used all over the nation, and which have a distressing habit of not blowing up all the time. Though I have to agree that I'm not too comfortable with the idea myself, I don't actually think it is dangerous. I'd be happier to replace this section of the design with simply selling the excess power back to the electric company, and then using power from the electric company at night and in winter. You can't brag "I'm self-sufficient" but you do have a simpler (and cheaper) design. Besides, if you heat your house with natural gas, or have a gas stove, you already have natural gas pipes in your house, so complaining about a tank of hydrogen seems like you might be intentionally wearing blinders. (I don't know if you use natural gas for heating or cooking. My house, for example, is pure electric.)
So yes, I do feel that it's too expensive, too destructive and impractical.
As I said, I agree with the hydrogen storage being impractical. It's a bragging rights thing. Too destructive, I simply don't know enough to be able to say. Requires more research.
Too expensive? Very much so, yes. But the cost will go down over time. It's not cost effective now. Give it 10 or 15 years, and it might be. $100,000 for 25 years of use, when the traditional electric power company would charge you $40,000? No thanks. (No, I didn't inflation-adjust the electric company charge, but then, I didn't include interest you don't earn on that $100,000 either, so that's fair.)
Isn't it interesting how I spent this entire post disagreeing with details, and agreed with your major conclusion anyway?
Notice I didn't accuse you of anything or call you any names.
Yes. Debate the facts, not the person. I agree.
I'm just pointing out that the military can solve many limitations by throwing money at them, and no one in the government is embracing plans to limit military spending at this time.
You need to read more about the DOD budget process inside the Pentagon and the White House. It isn't so much that they are proposing spending less, as there are a LOT of fights over exactly where to devote the spending, and which service gets how much, and how it is portioned out. How much goes to maintenance, how much to new equipment purchases, how much to soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen. How much to R&D like this?
Very high cost equipment does indeed get canceled, simply because it costs too much. Usually measured as "too much over budget" but it is related to cost. Cost does matter.
The Navy has this as a very real problem over the next 10 years. The next generation aircraft carrier is projected to cost $10 billion. The Navy currently spends $10 billion per year building ships and submarines. A ship must be fully appropriated in the year that construction is begun. The year they start building the next-gen aircraft carrier, does the Navy simply not build any submarines, which they want to build 2 per year for a cost of $2.2 billion each? How about DDG-51 class destroyers, at a cost of $1.4 billion each? Or DD(X) (now renamed to DDG-1000) class destroyers, at a cost of about $3 billion each? Amphibious assault ships, like the LPD-17, which I don't know a cost for, probably north of $1 billion? Or LCS ships, for the low cost of about $400 million each?
What doesn't get built the year they start the next aircraft carrier?
The Air Force has the same problem, with F-22 aircraft that cost $200 million each... they aren't buying 600 of them like they planned 10 years ago. Instead they are getting... 190 I think. Ditto with the F-35 (JSF), which they are not buying 4,000 of, or whatever the original purchase number was, because they are also fairly pricey.
Just because the military works with large budgets, doesn't mean that the cost of equipment doesn't matter. It matters very much.
And they really do care about limiting costs, because it really does affect how many they can buy.
then I will not travel to the US at all
Cool. You're helping the system, then.
You see, you are failing to understand part of the system here.
Our wonderful lawmakers have recognized that picking a single terrorist out of a population of 200 million mostly-law-abiding travelers is very very difficult. Understandably, they wish to simplify this problem. They have come upon a remarkable program that you obviously have not comprehended.
You see, they plan to make the process of traveling to the United States so horrible, that only a terrorist intent on nefarious deeds would even contemplate going through it. This makes it much easier to spot a terrorist, don't you agree?
So, your decision to not travel to the United States is really helping the program. We thank you for your assistance in our efforts to apprehend Evil Doers.
For the humor-impaired, yes, that was sarcasm you just read.
What's next, credit card companies deciding they don't like certain restaurants, types of products, etc?
Like, say, online gambling? Which VISA and MasterCard also block payment for.
Just like you can't use your VISA card to pay for illegal drugs, you cannot use it to pay for any other service which knowingly violates the law, including illegally-licensed music distribution.
Now, you can argue about whether they should be licensed, and how they should be licensed, but if you accept that they are operating without a legal license for the music, then the CC companies should not process payments to them for illegal goods.
That is a fairly large if, though.
Last time I checked, AllOfMP3.com only claimed to be legal inside Russia, and outside of Russia it was the buyer's responsibility to determine legality of the purchase. Which, of course, no one paid any attention to. Therefore, the response from VISA and MasterCard seems proper.
Copyright law WAS good at one point.
:)
I'll accept that without specifically endorsing the viewpoint. There were a lot of people even at the beginning of our country's history that didn't like copyright at all. It took... a few decades (someone may correct me if this thread isn't too old) before the United States even recognized foreign copyrights registered in the US. Americans made lots of money printing European books in the US, in violation of copyright. This is fairly normal practice for developing nations, incidentally, you can watch it playing out in China right now. Back then England was saying to us similar things to what we are saying to China about copyright protections now.
Retroactive copyright extensions?
Agreed, these serve no purpose towards the stated goal in the Constitution. I do not like them.
Terms longer than a human lifespan?
Ahh... this one I'm going to take a silly/stupid position, just because I wonder if some people in corporate America really think like this...
Consider things this way:
Original copyright was 14 years, plus an optional 14 year extension, giving a total of 28 years. For someone that produced a copyrighted work in their mid 30s, they could expect that work to stay covered by copyright approximately until they died. Statistically, probably a few years before they died, but not by too much. (Ignoring skew from infant mortality, if you lived to be 20 years old, you had a pretty good chance of living to see 65, in the late 1700s in America.) So 28 years of copyright covered you until you died, for something produced in your prime working years.
That worked great for copyright held by humans.
Now, we have copyrighted works that are, for major money-making stuff, held by corporations, instead of by people. Which rule are we going to change? The number of years, which is obviously an artificial construct, or the basic (implied) theory that copyright should last until around the death of the author.
The government, through careful application of lobbyist dollars, has decided that the proper part to hold on to is "death of the copyright holder" and, since corporations don't die, it is therefore logical that copyrights should go forever.
This is pretty much how it works right now... Every time the first Mickey Mouse movie is in danger of losing copyright protection, the copyright term gets (retroactively) extended, and the work is still/again protected for the life of the copyright holder. Because, really, you aren't changing the rules of the game... you're simply recognizing that the copyright holder is living longer than had originally been expected.
See? Makes perfect sense when looked at like that, doesn't it?
Okay, I'm done with my silly/stupid position, and I can stop feeling slimy. Eww. I need a shower. But it does give you at least a little bit of understanding of a possible defensible position that the corporate copyright holders could have. Ignoring the fact that they are mostly power-mad money-grubbing soul-sucking scum.
I wonder if anyone really does think like that.
I was going to comment on CFLs, but the article already did. (That'll teach me to read the article, huh?)
But aside from more energy-efficient appliances (and lights), I really do have to wonder how much energy could be saved by just hooking up rooms to motion detectors.
I'm in my 30s, and growing up I often heard my Dad complain about rooms with the lights left on. Lately, I've been seeing advertisements from my power company about energy savings from turning off ceiling fans in rooms when no one is there.
How much energy does a motion detector use? They are generally passive IR, aren't they? Would it be offset by the gains from hooking the lights and ceiling fans into it? CFLs are great (I've replaced most of the incandescents in my house already, the rest as the little-used ones burn out eventually) but you save more by not having the lights on at all. If the lights came on automatically when I walked into a room, and turned off automatically 2 minutes after I walked out (to reduce needless quick on-off cycles) that would be both convenient and efficient... wouldn't it?
Just wondering...
We're talking about child porn that tries to play games with legal loopholes about whether a child is actually harmed. It encourages the direct physical abuse of real children by conditioning the paedophile to consider their lustful and abusive mentality "acceptable" or "normal". It's the same problem that is caused by allowing pre-teen and teen models to be dressed up as if they were adults by clothing advertisers.
How is this different from trying to ban violent video games?
Either you know the difference between fantasy and reality, in which case CGI child porn should not be banned... or you don't, and violent video games should be banned also, by the same reasoning you use above.
Be very careful with your thinking, lest it be applied in ways you won't like. Decisions are not made in isolation, and consistency of thought is important.
"First, recharging takes hours."
i cle#Charging
No, there is fast charging. Wikipedia mentions research into 60 second charging and references General Motors 1998 technology that took 10 minutes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battery_electric_veh
I've read about that. There's a problem there.
The power draw required to charge a 30kWh battery pack in 60 seconds... that's taking the full capacity of a 25kV feeder line for those 60 seconds. Maybe more than that. You can do the math yourself. That's probably not going to be a nighttime charge, either, because you don't have that kind of electric feed going into a house, so you're back to charging during peak power usage times. Oops.
Plus they have a serious heat issue when charging batteries that fast. I don't want my car to melt when I charge it.
You're way off with the electrical grid capacity problem, though, since 60 million electric cars will never hit the streets all at once. Obviously, the numbers will grow slowly, giving plenty time for the grid to adapt to the new demand (nuclear is fine with me as well, at least in the relatively short term). And, as you say yourself, most of the charging will take place at night when usage is traditionally low.
:)
This is the only part of your reply that I have any problem with, and I admit that a large piece of my objection I am uncertain about. You see, I don't know how much nighttime "slack" electrical generating capacity we have, relative to the draw you would get from overnight charging of electric vehicles.
But I'm going to assume it would be... significant, otherwise I wouldn't have any justification for replying to you.
I could probably figure out how much of a power draw you'd get charging a car's batteries...
30kWh capacity batteries? My house has a main 200Amp breaker at 110Volts... Charge the batteries over 4 hours, and you are drawing about 1/3 of the capacity of my 200Amp house feed. That's probably a significant power draw from the grid, if you and all your neighbors are doing it... That's also a new breaker in my box, because I don't have a 70amp breaker in there, but that's easy, really (the breaker box has plenty of 15 and 30 amp breakers in it).
Consider that with this little tidbit. This past August, I used 25kWh per day, about 700kWh for the month. At least, that's what my electric company charged me for, and I'd think they'd know. Charge these batteries once every few days, and you've upped my electric usage a bunch. I don't know what my power draw was each hour of the day. I'd kind of like to know, really. That would tell me a lot about how much that 70Amp nighttime draw would effect the power grid.
My other problem with your statement is your assumption on time frames. No, we won't sell 60 million electric vehicles in the next 3 years... (besides, I made up the "60 million" number) probably not in the next 10 years. But the issue there is the time scale for constructing new power plants. Nuclear power plants take 15 years to go from proposal through approval through construction to going online supplying power. Coal and natural gas generating stations are quicker, yes, but still take 8-10 years. You're quickly getting to the point that those cars, that aren't here yet, are already coming too fast for us to build new plants to supply power for them. And that doesn't count the time required to lay all those extra high-voltage feeder lines.
Still not insurmountable. Just requires forethought and planning. And some major committments of resources.
I'm not really interested in a solution that only lets 1 ultra-green person out of 500 normal people have an electric car. Sounds like you aren't either, which is reassuring. This needs to scale to cover most of the car-driving public. Preferably, getting it so that in 5-10 years electric cars are a reasonable purchase, and then 10 years later (one car replacement cycle) you'll have mostly electric cars on local roads. (Maybe there's time to build that extra electric power generating capacity after all.) Possibly still hybrids on interstates, just for the faster refueling, unless battery swaps really work.
Oh, and my comment about the power draw of a 10-story parking garage with electric cars being charged overnight... It occurred to me that the power draw is probably not all that different from the 20-story office building right next door.
The really great thing about electric vehicles, as someone else already noted, is that when you centralize the power generating equipment, you can get a lot more bang-for-buck developing and deploying equipment to clean emissions. It's easier to make a "clean" power generating plant than it is 40,000 clean gas-burning cars.
As the movie points out, electric cars are the real answer: they're simple, cheap, fast, efficient, convenient and low maintenance
Electric cars have 2 major problems.
First, recharging takes hours. Electric cars are only useful for commuters. No long-distance driving. This can possibly be overcome by making recharging stations that swap battery packs instead of recharging in place. This requires a degree of standardization that I wouldn't expect to see in the American automotive industry, however.
Second, the electric grid is not capable of supplying the energy needed to recharge 60 million electric cars every night. Remember the power outages over the last 5 years? California, the Northeast. WAY worse if you start plugging in electric cars by the millions. A large number of new electric generating plants, and a lot of new high voltage transmission lines, would need to be built.
Most of this is also nighttime charging, so don't expect things like solar power to provide energy for this. On the plus side, with nighttime charging, you are drawing power during what is traditionally a low-usage time period, so you won't need as much new electricity production capacity as you'd first think. Still a bunch. Got a green solution for this? (Personally, I like nuclear power.)
This also means a LOT of changes in how cars are parked. Plugging in at home in your garage is easy... How about in the parking garage down the street from your apartment building? Can you imagine the power draw for a 10-level parking garage? Yipes.
Not insurmountable problems... but they require a lot of thought to let them scale to the level that we require.
The more I see how corporations in America act, the more I think of our old buddy Joseph Stalin.
"A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic."
A lot of corporate activity in America seems to be run with that as a guiding principle. Do something on a big enough scale, and it stops being bad, and simply becomes... unethical, but not actually illegal? And if it is done by a committee, no single person actually makes a decision, so it isn't even unethical.
Of course, this also goes back to the single purpose for a corporation. The sole purpose of a corporation is to shield liability.
*sigh*
You know, I was happier before I became cynical and jaded. Clueless, but happier.
BTW...whatever happened to Stryper? :)
They went to Hell with the Devil?
Time pressures and price are fundamentally incompatable with code quality, even amongst the best programmers.
This is summarized in an old engineering saying. Not just software development, but pretty much all design and construction and engineering has the same issue.
Good.
Fast.
Cheap.
Pick any two.
This ignores other things that contribute, like how good the people involved are. But it is still a very valid saying.
I drive an F-150. I get about 17.5 or 18mpg. I drive about 20,000 miles per year.
$3/gal gas costs me about $3,000 per year.
Make the gas $8/gal, and over 10 years, the increased cost of gas means I've paid for a decent sedan that gets 40mpg, simply in the extra fuel costs. Unfortunately, I haven't seen many 40mpg sedans that I like, that cost in the neighborhood of $30,000. (I haven't looked that hard, though.)
Of course, that sedan doesn't carry my scuba gear too well, and I want to get as much of that done as I can before we finish killing all the coral reefs in the world. That also assumes that said "decent sedan" will last for 10 years. Pick properly, and that will probably be a good assumption.
As with the scuba stuff, I actually do use the truck for truck-specific purposes, hauling crap I wouldn't want in the passenger space. It's not an everyday occurrence, though. So it would be nice to keep the truck, and have the sedan as an additional vehicle, so I can't count trade-in value to offset the purchase cost of that sedan.
Keeping the truck for only truck-specific use... then the issue becomes non-fuel costs. Car insurance is awful, for single-driver multiple-vehicle. That kills the "cost-effective" argument right there. Yuck.
But yes, high priced gas makes replacing my truck more cost-effective. And, seriously, until it is a cost-effective decision, I'm not going to do it. The truck is paid for. But if I have a choice of a car payment to a bank, or a car payment to the gas station... I'll probably choose the bank. (I'm just dying to get one of those radar-assisted cruise-control vehicles anyway. Didn't Slashdot have an article about the Honda version in the UK a few months ago...)
But it's not sufficiently painful right now for me to care that much about gas prices and poor fuel efficiency.
Have you looked at Verizon's new(ish) G'zOne Type-V phone?
It's a solid aluminum body, flip-phone, MIL-SPEC 810F (water/dust/shock resistant).
And weighs 5.3 ounces.
My girlfriend says the sales guy said you can drive over it with your car (while it's closed) and it will be okay. Not sure I believe that, but... it might actually be able to survive her treatment of cell phones, err, mobiles.
Of course, you pay for that... it's $299 with a 2-year contract, and most of that cost is for the durability. I have to admit, the hinge feels a lot most solid than my filp-phone.
Then you can take your printout to your boss at work and show him you voted the way he told you to so he won't fire you.
Don't even need that.
A printout that you take away is not needed for this scenario. You just need a cameraphone. Practically everyone has a cameraphone. Take a picture of your ballot before turning it in, and send it to your boss as a picturemessage. Nice, easy, simple.
I'm told you are not supposed to bring cellphones into polling places (state dependent, I expect). A co-worker said he voted early, was was asked to turn off his cellphone. I voted with my cellphone (turned on) on a beltclip, with no protests from anyone.
Pretending that anonymous voting is still possible ignores the technology available to get around it. I would like anonymous voting, with no records of who voted for who, but only records that so-and-so voted. But I don't think it is possible any more, without the kind of searches you get going into airports. And that will drive people away from voting.
Ohh... walked right into that one, didn't I?
that governments should act not on the basis of the likeliest outcome from climate change but on the risk of something really catastrophic
So we should ignore this climate change junk, and concentrate on building a big shield to protect us from the next killer asteroid that will strike the earth.
Right?
Oh, wait, that's only supposed to apply to the particular unlikely-but-horrible event that you are talking about right now. Not to the ones that people sniping from the sideline (like me) bring up to show how silly that statement is.
I have to wonder... people that seriously believe in global climate change... are any of them true believers enough that they are buying land at the +30ft topographical line (or whatever it is that sealevels will rise), so they will have beachfront property in 50 years? If you believe it is really going to happen... that would be a good investment, wouldn't it?