While I have serious misgivings about the privacy and security issues surrounding RFID (or other) contactless payment systems, I have to say that they can be extremely convenient. On a recent trip to Hong Kong, my wife's aunt (resident of HK) gave us each an Octopus card pre-loaded with a few dollars when we arrived. Super convenient. My wife put hers in her purse, I put mine in my wallet. Going somewhere on the subway? Just pull out my wallet, slap it on the reader, and I'm through the gate. My wife could just wave her purse across the reader without even taking it off her arm (assuming the card was in her wallet near the bottom of the bag - it seemed to have a useful range of only 3-4 inches). No searching around for the right card, no worrying about losing the ride card between stops, just slap it down and it automatically calculates the fare and deducts from the amount on the card. When you need to increase or recharge the value on the card, you just take it to the recharge machine, pop it in, and put in a few dollars (or credit/atm card, whatever). In HK the cards are accepted on pretty much all forms of mass transit (trains, subway, buses) as well as at an increasing number of convenience (too many 7-Elevens) and other stores (and supposedly taxis are supposed to be accepting them soon).
I think this is really the ideal use for contactless payment. Basically a replacement for carrying cash around, used to pay for the multitude of small-ticket items and services that you make use of during the day. We do it here in California with FasTrak for paying tolls, but there are a lot of other potential uses. It also makes particular sense for transit, where it not only works to make the actual payment but also replaces the need for a fare ticket, doing the journey tracking by itself. These types of uses also in many respects counter some of the privacy concerns - if you're worried about someone tracking what you are doing, you can always just use cash to increase your balance on your card, or even get a new card every time rather than recharge (though that seems wasteful). Requiring recharge, rather than tying it directly to a bank account, also means that you only ever have to worry about the amount you put on the card. Just like carrying cash around, but more convenient.
On the other hand, I really don't see any reason to have an RFID-enabled credit card. If I could use a cash card for small purchases then I'd only be using a credit card for larger ones; the few times a week (or whatever) I'm doing this it really isn't a hardship to have to pull out a card.
I think there are some awesome, efficient, all-around great reasons to introduce contactless payment systems for some purposes. However, due to privacy and security concerns (and the lack of any real advantage) I don't see why anyone would want something like an RFID-equipped credit card. Too much potential for abuse, with little or no real benefit (to the individual - no doubt businesses would find all sorts of fun uses for cards tied to individual people that they can remotely sniff).
I hear this a lot, but I found it to be one of his greatest weaknesses. He basically kills all of the characters I found to be remotely interesting (or at least the ones that I could at all identify with). There didn't seem to be any central plot line, any goal he was going for, he just went for the shock value of killing off main characters left and right for no apparent reason. That said, I really enjoyed the first book. I read it, and immediately got everyone I knew who was into fantasy to start reading it. The second one was okay, and I think I quit the series part way through the third book - it just got boring. There were no characters to care about, and it completely lacked a strong central plotline to keep me going. It became apparent that he was merely writing the book to be contrary to what the reader wants/expects. Similar to Goodkind in that respect, except that Goodkind doesn't actually kill off his characters, he just tortures them over and over and over (along with the reader with his often blindingly dull prose, something that Martin generally avoids - his books are chock-full of individually interesting events, they just don't make a story that I care at all about).
I was wondering the same thing. If that is the case, it makes sense that it would be pretty slow - all that you would be doing by making use of the "video RAM" is cannibalizing system RAM, and accessing it in a presumably slower way (since any reads/writes to it would have the extra step of going through the video system, which depending on the age of the system is likely to be relatively slow).
I guess I am not alone in noticing that often the ads on a page drag the load time way down.
This is especially annoying on sites where the ads are apparently forced to load before things like the text (i.e., the content I am actually looking for) render. Anandtech used to really piss me off in this respect - the ad server would take forever, and there was nothing to read until the ads loaded (haven't noticed this behavior lately). I suppose I might be able to block the ads, but it is my feeling that as long as the ads are not overly obtrusive (pop-ups, etc.) I owe it to the website I am visiting to allow them their ad revenue. Seems pretty lame to me to block the source of income for a site I am visiting and enjoying (of course, for all I know they actually get the same income whether or not I block ads).
But yeah, I've noticed that the ads on a lot of sites tend to be the biggest source of problems (never mind the insistence some sites have on pissing you off with obnoxious ads that cover up the text you are trying to read - a very good way to make me not want to visit your website ever again).
But it all goes out the window for considering private 767s, of course. There's no way that it'd be outfitted as a commercial airliner with full seating capacity for use as a corporate jet. I'll bet it has closer to 30 seats and resembles a luxury yacht more than anything else. 50 seats according to that article or another, iirc.
That's an unbelievably ridiculous generalization. Anywhere outside of the few largest cities (eg. the greater Los Angeles and San Francisco area), and 200K will easily buy you a big house and an acre or perhaps two. This isn't in the middle of nowhere (with no electricity), this is most every city in the state of California with the noted exceptions. I wish. Have you ever actually looked at housing prices anywhere in California? They are high pretty much everywhere - if you can find any house for less than $200k you're lucky, and if you want land with that it is going to be considerably more (except in some very remote parts of the state).
According to this site only one county in CA has (had back in '06, anyway) an average sale price below $200k. That's for an average home - not for a large home with land. Even in remote parts of California you're looking at significantly more to get what you describe.
I would just like to point out that he could, in fact, have been more wrong. He could have stated, for instance, that Microsoft is run by dolphins from an secret underwater base in the artic.
Which is of course ludicrous, as the dolphins run Microsoft from a secret underwater base.
Re:Hey, give it some respect
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Oh, I don't know - I found that once you had them set up for an Origin game, you could run pretty much everything else. The only decision was whether or not to load the mouse driver, and then every so often you had to screw with the number of Files and Stacks (iirc) to get something to run.
Since comments are a valuable part of the site, no, this is not "his", or "their" site now. It's ours.
So that's why there are so many pointless and inane comments on here... it's not that people are boring and uninteresting, it's just that they're trying to raise their ownership stake in the site by increasing their percent share through posting whatever pops into their head!
But you do pay a yearly fee. It's called a "purchase" or "upgrade price" that you pay from time to time.
Purchasing an upgrade is in no way similar to paying a monthly fee to run software. See, the upgrade is entirely optional - I can go on using a piece of software I've purchased for as long as I have the hardware to run it. I may decide at some point that I do want the new features in the newest version of the software, but if budget is tight or if I don't really need the new features I can continue using the old.
Now, many software companies have been trying their damndest for many years to make what you say true - that you need to pay for a new version of their software every couple of years - but it simply isn't the case. Software as a Service has many positive points (which numerous people have pointed out in previous posts) - but pretending that people already pay a subscription fee for software they purchase is simply disingenuous.
I had (and still have, though it is my "backup" - it works, but the battery lasts about 30 seconds at this point) a Gateway laptop. I was very happy with it. While traveling, I ran into the need for a car adapter. No Problem, I thought, I can just head over to one of those new Gateway stores they're putting up everywhere and pick one up!
Nope. I find a store, ask if I can get a car adapter for my notebook, only to find out that Gateway stores don't actually carry anything, you can only order items from them. Not just power adapters (which I suppose aren't needed terribly often) - they don't stock anything. It was then that I realized Gateway was going to die - they spend all this money building stores all over the place, and then they don't even bother to stock them with a few useful items that their customers are likely to need. They basically just massively increased their costs without really offering any new or useful services. Brainy move!
Not surprising... he is the head of the armed forces, and the Coast Guard, which has jurisdiction over inland waterways (not sure exactly how this is defined... I think it includes navigable rivers and some large lakes), is one of those armed forces.
Have you actually seen Spiderman 3? It was absolutely awful. Though to be fair, the comment I made right after seeing it was, "What, did they get Lucas to write it?" - it had the same shallow, poorly-written and pitifully acted feel that the prequels possess. The main difference is that the non-sensical action sequences in Spidey appear to have been done on the cheap (despite the record-breaking cost of the movie), with generally very poor/un-lifelike animation, whereas the non-sensical action sequences in the prequels at least look really nice.
I wasn't really a big fan of the first two Spiderman movies (the first was okay, the second was pretty bad), but #3 is just terrible. It's one of those movies where you sit there cringing at the dialogue, bored by the special effects, and basically just waiting for the movie to be over. I'm actually a little embarassed that I paid money to go see it - definitely the worst movie I've seen in the theater in the last few years. The prequels weren't as good as I'd expected (or hoped), and they were painful at times (particularly the second one), but they didn't leave the bad taste in my mouth after enduring them that Spidey did.
If we're going to lament technology adoption let's compare it to say China or Australia or some other country with a large citizenry.
Australia probably wouldn't be the best comparison - it's population is smaller than California's (~20-odd million people). Or did you mean countries with large area?
A whole bunch of people seem to have missed the argument that Verizon is making. They are not claiming that the first amendment allows them to publish private records, they are claiming that the right to petition the government, which is specifically laid out in the First Amendment, allows them to share otherwise private records with the government.
Basically, they're saying that they suspect some of their customers may have been engaged in illegal activities, so it is their right under the First Amendment to petition the government (in this case by sharing personal data) to investigate these possible illegal activities. As ridiculous as it sounds, they may actually have a point.
Assuming a corporation is protected by the first amendment (which seems to be the case), this does make some sense. If an individual came to possess information about potentially illegal activities (say, they learn that the company they work for is dumping toxic waste in a nearby river), chances are it would be illegal for them to publish whatever proprietary information they possess that lead to their suspicion/conclusion. To publish the information would (potentially) infringe on the corportation's rights. However, it would be perfectly legal (according to Verizon's claim) for the person to share the data with the government, as a "petition" for something to be done about it.
I'm not a lawyer, but this argument actually does make some sense, if you base it on the assumption that a corporation (Verizon) shares the same constitutional protections as an individual (which while not spelled out, or even suggested AFAIK, in the constitution appears to have been enshrined in case history/judicial interpretation). If all this were to be true, the only question would be whether sharing data on all of their customers rather than specific individuals they suspect of wrongdoing really counts as petitioning the government (especially when it was in response to the government asking for the information).
Anyway, all this is pure speculation on my part, and as I said, I'm no lawyer. But Verizon's argument seems much more interesting than most of the comments I've read imply. They are not claiming the right to publish private information willy-nilly, but rather they apply to a specific provision in the first amendment - that a person has the right to petition the government - and that as part of that petition they may share otherwise confidential data.
But yeah - I hope this goes down in flames, as it seems likely to do.
My current credit union redirects to https automatically. Out of curiosity i also checked my last two banks - Wells Fargo seems to redirect to https as well, while US Bank doesn't appear to offer a secure login page from the http site. That one is a little annoying, as even if you leave the login blank and hit login it just pops up a dialog box and leaves you on the http site. You can just go to https, though.
Anyone know of a website that ranks banks on their online security? Might be interesting to take a look at.
Regarding the link between England and France - just because the amount they charge to run the train system doesn't produce enough revenue to service the debt doesn't mean it doesn't make sense. From what I've read, a large amount of traffic does in fact use the Chunnel - suggesting that the link has a positive economic impact. Just because it doesn't cover it's costs doesn't mean it is a failure, or useless. How many of the highways in the U.S. (or elsewhere) "make sense" based on your apparent criteria? There is a hell of a lot of traffic on I-80 between San Francisco and Sacramento, yet essentially 0% of the cost of building/maintaining the highway is recovered directly - does this mean the link doesn't make sense? Of course not - it is a highly-utilized link that produces enormous economic benefits.
Just because a piece of infrastructure isn't directly profitable, doesn't mean it makes no sense. This is an argument the auto lobby has been making for years - they lobby against public transportation/rail funding on the grounds that these projects rarely turn a profit, completely ignoring the fact that the immense infrastructure their industry depends on covers essentially none of the associated costs, either of original construction or ongoing maintenance.
I'm not trying to say that a tunnel between Siberia and Alaska would make economic sense, but to say that a highly-utilized piece of infrastructure is senseless because it doesn't completely cover it's operating costs (not even true in the Chunnel case - it is the interest on the original-construction loans that can't be serviced) is bordering on idiotic.
Hey, lets put a bunch of aircraft up at 10km, with cables that tie them to the ground! Excellent idea! Why didn't anyone think of this before?
Oh, that's right - they did. They used them to prevent aircraft from flying over towns/cities/military targets (it sort of worked).
It also doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense to stick a bunch of obstacles up in the jet stream. You know, where airliners tend to like to fly (at least when going west to east).
Oh, and doesn't the jet stream tend to be rather dynamic - as in, it's course often changes by hundreds or even thousands of miles?
It would make perfect economic sense in those areas.
The real stumbling blocks include the lobbying power of the motor industry, and the fragmented local government structure on places like California where it would take a miracle to get a straight railway line through the backyards of all the NIMBY merchants. There is a plan in place, at least for California, to build a high-speed rail system. While getting rights of way can be a bit of an issue, the main factor is cost. It would cost something like $33 billion to build the system (to connect LA, San Diego, Sacramento, and the bay Area it would require a system built from scratch that is approximately the size of the entire French high-speed system (~750 miles according to wikipedia), which has been built in stages over the last 30 years), and it is very unlikely that it would ever be completely self-supporting. Even for conventional rail, which is somewhat cheaper to operate (theoretically), most of the busiest passenger rail lines in California aren't even self sufficient. I think the Capitol Corridor, one of the "models" of commuter train efficiency in California, only covers something like 50% of its operating costs. When you try and sell such a huge bond measure to build such a system, and it is doubtful it will ever be self-supporting, it seems to scare people away (never mind that California voters just voted themselves something like $200 billion in new bonds for infrastructure construction - lots of it for highways that essentially pay for 0% of their operating costs, never mind their construction cost). That said, there is supposed to be a $10 billion bond measure on the ballot next year for the initial stages of construction.
Are you serious? They give SLO people the So Cal discount? Why didn't I ever try this when I lived down there?! I would just pay full price on the assumption that So Cal was, at most, Santa Barbara and south (except for the times we had our buddies in L.A. buy the tickets). Oh well.
Great. Now I have a craving for Splash Cafe. Bastard.
Yes, I did miss that... figured if they were going to announce it they'd wait until they had something to offer. Ah well, I was going to actually buy something just to show support for DRM-free music, but by the time they actually offer any I'll have forgotten all about it. Guess I'll just stick with CDs.
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While I have serious misgivings about the privacy and security issues surrounding RFID (or other) contactless payment systems, I have to say that they can be extremely convenient. On a recent trip to Hong Kong, my wife's aunt (resident of HK) gave us each an Octopus card pre-loaded with a few dollars when we arrived.
Super convenient. My wife put hers in her purse, I put mine in my wallet. Going somewhere on the subway? Just pull out my wallet, slap it on the reader, and I'm through the gate. My wife could just wave her purse across the reader without even taking it off her arm (assuming the card was in her wallet near the bottom of the bag - it seemed to have a useful range of only 3-4 inches). No searching around for the right card, no worrying about losing the ride card between stops, just slap it down and it automatically calculates the fare and deducts from the amount on the card. When you need to increase or recharge the value on the card, you just take it to the recharge machine, pop it in, and put in a few dollars (or credit/atm card, whatever).
In HK the cards are accepted on pretty much all forms of mass transit (trains, subway, buses) as well as at an increasing number of convenience (too many 7-Elevens) and other stores (and supposedly taxis are supposed to be accepting them soon).
I think this is really the ideal use for contactless payment. Basically a replacement for carrying cash around, used to pay for the multitude of small-ticket items and services that you make use of during the day. We do it here in California with FasTrak for paying tolls, but there are a lot of other potential uses. It also makes particular sense for transit, where it not only works to make the actual payment but also replaces the need for a fare ticket, doing the journey tracking by itself. These types of uses also in many respects counter some of the privacy concerns - if you're worried about someone tracking what you are doing, you can always just use cash to increase your balance on your card, or even get a new card every time rather than recharge (though that seems wasteful). Requiring recharge, rather than tying it directly to a bank account, also means that you only ever have to worry about the amount you put on the card. Just like carrying cash around, but more convenient.
On the other hand, I really don't see any reason to have an RFID-enabled credit card. If I could use a cash card for small purchases then I'd only be using a credit card for larger ones; the few times a week (or whatever) I'm doing this it really isn't a hardship to have to pull out a card.
I think there are some awesome, efficient, all-around great reasons to introduce contactless payment systems for some purposes. However, due to privacy and security concerns (and the lack of any real advantage) I don't see why anyone would want something like an RFID-equipped credit card. Too much potential for abuse, with little or no real benefit (to the individual - no doubt businesses would find all sorts of fun uses for cards tied to individual people that they can remotely sniff).
I LOL'd.
I hear this a lot, but I found it to be one of his greatest weaknesses. He basically kills all of the characters I found to be remotely interesting (or at least the ones that I could at all identify with). There didn't seem to be any central plot line, any goal he was going for, he just went for the shock value of killing off main characters left and right for no apparent reason.
That said, I really enjoyed the first book. I read it, and immediately got everyone I knew who was into fantasy to start reading it. The second one was okay, and I think I quit the series part way through the third book - it just got boring. There were no characters to care about, and it completely lacked a strong central plotline to keep me going. It became apparent that he was merely writing the book to be contrary to what the reader wants/expects. Similar to Goodkind in that respect, except that Goodkind doesn't actually kill off his characters, he just tortures them over and over and over (along with the reader with his often blindingly dull prose, something that Martin generally avoids - his books are chock-full of individually interesting events, they just don't make a story that I care at all about).
I was wondering the same thing. If that is the case, it makes sense that it would be pretty slow - all that you would be doing by making use of the "video RAM" is cannibalizing system RAM, and accessing it in a presumably slower way (since any reads/writes to it would have the extra step of going through the video system, which depending on the age of the system is likely to be relatively slow).
I guess I am not alone in noticing that often the ads on a page drag the load time way down.
This is especially annoying on sites where the ads are apparently forced to load before things like the text (i.e., the content I am actually looking for) render. Anandtech used to really piss me off in this respect - the ad server would take forever, and there was nothing to read until the ads loaded (haven't noticed this behavior lately).
I suppose I might be able to block the ads, but it is my feeling that as long as the ads are not overly obtrusive (pop-ups, etc.) I owe it to the website I am visiting to allow them their ad revenue. Seems pretty lame to me to block the source of income for a site I am visiting and enjoying (of course, for all I know they actually get the same income whether or not I block ads).
But yeah, I've noticed that the ads on a lot of sites tend to be the biggest source of problems (never mind the insistence some sites have on pissing you off with obnoxious ads that cover up the text you are trying to read - a very good way to make me not want to visit your website ever again).
According to this site only one county in CA has (had back in '06, anyway) an average sale price below $200k. That's for an average home - not for a large home with land. Even in remote parts of California you're looking at significantly more to get what you describe.
Which is of course ludicrous, as the dolphins run Microsoft from a secret underwater base.
Oh, I don't know - I found that once you had them set up for an Origin game, you could run pretty much everything else. The only decision was whether or not to load the mouse driver, and then every so often you had to screw with the number of Files and Stacks (iirc) to get something to run.
So that's why there are so many pointless and inane comments on here... it's not that people are boring and uninteresting, it's just that they're trying to raise their ownership stake in the site by increasing their percent share through posting whatever pops into their head!
Someone was listening to NPR this morning...
Purchasing an upgrade is in no way similar to paying a monthly fee to run software. See, the upgrade is entirely optional - I can go on using a piece of software I've purchased for as long as I have the hardware to run it. I may decide at some point that I do want the new features in the newest version of the software, but if budget is tight or if I don't really need the new features I can continue using the old.
Now, many software companies have been trying their damndest for many years to make what you say true - that you need to pay for a new version of their software every couple of years - but it simply isn't the case. Software as a Service has many positive points (which numerous people have pointed out in previous posts) - but pretending that people already pay a subscription fee for software they purchase is simply disingenuous.
Thank Apple for that annoying idea (all the fricking iMac clones).
I had (and still have, though it is my "backup" - it works, but the battery lasts about 30 seconds at this point) a Gateway laptop. I was very happy with it. While traveling, I ran into the need for a car adapter. No Problem, I thought, I can just head over to one of those new Gateway stores they're putting up everywhere and pick one up!
Nope. I find a store, ask if I can get a car adapter for my notebook, only to find out that Gateway stores don't actually carry anything, you can only order items from them. Not just power adapters (which I suppose aren't needed terribly often) - they don't stock anything. It was then that I realized Gateway was going to die - they spend all this money building stores all over the place, and then they don't even bother to stock them with a few useful items that their customers are likely to need. They basically just massively increased their costs without really offering any new or useful services. Brainy move!
I do still like that laptop, though.
Not surprising... he is the head of the armed forces, and the Coast Guard, which has jurisdiction over inland waterways (not sure exactly how this is defined... I think it includes navigable rivers and some large lakes), is one of those armed forces.
Have you actually seen Spiderman 3? It was absolutely awful. Though to be fair, the comment I made right after seeing it was, "What, did they get Lucas to write it?" - it had the same shallow, poorly-written and pitifully acted feel that the prequels possess. The main difference is that the non-sensical action sequences in Spidey appear to have been done on the cheap (despite the record-breaking cost of the movie), with generally very poor/un-lifelike animation, whereas the non-sensical action sequences in the prequels at least look really nice.
I wasn't really a big fan of the first two Spiderman movies (the first was okay, the second was pretty bad), but #3 is just terrible. It's one of those movies where you sit there cringing at the dialogue, bored by the special effects, and basically just waiting for the movie to be over. I'm actually a little embarassed that I paid money to go see it - definitely the worst movie I've seen in the theater in the last few years. The prequels weren't as good as I'd expected (or hoped), and they were painful at times (particularly the second one), but they didn't leave the bad taste in my mouth after enduring them that Spidey did.
Australia probably wouldn't be the best comparison - it's population is smaller than California's (~20-odd million people). Or did you mean countries with large area?
A whole bunch of people seem to have missed the argument that Verizon is making. They are not claiming that the first amendment allows them to publish private records, they are claiming that the right to petition the government, which is specifically laid out in the First Amendment, allows them to share otherwise private records with the government.
Basically, they're saying that they suspect some of their customers may have been engaged in illegal activities, so it is their right under the First Amendment to petition the government (in this case by sharing personal data) to investigate these possible illegal activities. As ridiculous as it sounds, they may actually have a point.
Assuming a corporation is protected by the first amendment (which seems to be the case), this does make some sense. If an individual came to possess information about potentially illegal activities (say, they learn that the company they work for is dumping toxic waste in a nearby river), chances are it would be illegal for them to publish whatever proprietary information they possess that lead to their suspicion/conclusion. To publish the information would (potentially) infringe on the corportation's rights. However, it would be perfectly legal (according to Verizon's claim) for the person to share the data with the government, as a "petition" for something to be done about it.
I'm not a lawyer, but this argument actually does make some sense, if you base it on the assumption that a corporation (Verizon) shares the same constitutional protections as an individual (which while not spelled out, or even suggested AFAIK, in the constitution appears to have been enshrined in case history/judicial interpretation). If all this were to be true, the only question would be whether sharing data on all of their customers rather than specific individuals they suspect of wrongdoing really counts as petitioning the government (especially when it was in response to the government asking for the information).
Anyway, all this is pure speculation on my part, and as I said, I'm no lawyer. But Verizon's argument seems much more interesting than most of the comments I've read imply. They are not claiming the right to publish private information willy-nilly, but rather they apply to a specific provision in the first amendment - that a person has the right to petition the government - and that as part of that petition they may share otherwise confidential data.
But yeah - I hope this goes down in flames, as it seems likely to do.
My current credit union redirects to https automatically. Out of curiosity i also checked my last two banks - Wells Fargo seems to redirect to https as well, while US Bank doesn't appear to offer a secure login page from the http site. That one is a little annoying, as even if you leave the login blank and hit login it just pops up a dialog box and leaves you on the http site. You can just go to https, though.
Anyone know of a website that ranks banks on their online security? Might be interesting to take a look at.
Regarding the link between England and France - just because the amount they charge to run the train system doesn't produce enough revenue to service the debt doesn't mean it doesn't make sense. From what I've read, a large amount of traffic does in fact use the Chunnel - suggesting that the link has a positive economic impact. Just because it doesn't cover it's costs doesn't mean it is a failure, or useless. How many of the highways in the U.S. (or elsewhere) "make sense" based on your apparent criteria? There is a hell of a lot of traffic on I-80 between San Francisco and Sacramento, yet essentially 0% of the cost of building/maintaining the highway is recovered directly - does this mean the link doesn't make sense? Of course not - it is a highly-utilized link that produces enormous economic benefits.
Just because a piece of infrastructure isn't directly profitable, doesn't mean it makes no sense. This is an argument the auto lobby has been making for years - they lobby against public transportation/rail funding on the grounds that these projects rarely turn a profit, completely ignoring the fact that the immense infrastructure their industry depends on covers essentially none of the associated costs, either of original construction or ongoing maintenance.
I'm not trying to say that a tunnel between Siberia and Alaska would make economic sense, but to say that a highly-utilized piece of infrastructure is senseless because it doesn't completely cover it's operating costs (not even true in the Chunnel case - it is the interest on the original-construction loans that can't be serviced) is bordering on idiotic.
Hey, lets put a bunch of aircraft up at 10km, with cables that tie them to the ground! Excellent idea! Why didn't anyone think of this before?
Oh, that's right - they did. They used them to prevent aircraft from flying over towns/cities/military targets (it sort of worked).
It also doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense to stick a bunch of obstacles up in the jet stream. You know, where airliners tend to like to fly (at least when going west to east).
Oh, and doesn't the jet stream tend to be rather dynamic - as in, it's course often changes by hundreds or even thousands of miles?
The real stumbling blocks include the lobbying power of the motor industry, and the fragmented local government structure on places like California where it would take a miracle to get a straight railway line through the backyards of all the NIMBY merchants. There is a plan in place, at least for California, to build a high-speed rail system. While getting rights of way can be a bit of an issue, the main factor is cost. It would cost something like $33 billion to build the system (to connect LA, San Diego, Sacramento, and the bay Area it would require a system built from scratch that is approximately the size of the entire French high-speed system (~750 miles according to wikipedia), which has been built in stages over the last 30 years), and it is very unlikely that it would ever be completely self-supporting. Even for conventional rail, which is somewhat cheaper to operate (theoretically), most of the busiest passenger rail lines in California aren't even self sufficient. I think the Capitol Corridor, one of the "models" of commuter train efficiency in California, only covers something like 50% of its operating costs. When you try and sell such a huge bond measure to build such a system, and it is doubtful it will ever be self-supporting, it seems to scare people away (never mind that California voters just voted themselves something like $200 billion in new bonds for infrastructure construction - lots of it for highways that essentially pay for 0% of their operating costs, never mind their construction cost).
That said, there is supposed to be a $10 billion bond measure on the ballot next year for the initial stages of construction.
Are you serious? They give SLO people the So Cal discount? Why didn't I ever try this when I lived down there?! I would just pay full price on the assumption that So Cal was, at most, Santa Barbara and south (except for the times we had our buddies in L.A. buy the tickets). Oh well.
Great. Now I have a craving for Splash Cafe. Bastard.
Yes, I did miss that... figured if they were going to announce it they'd wait until they had something to offer. Ah well, I was going to actually buy something just to show support for DRM-free music, but by the time they actually offer any I'll have forgotten all about it. Guess I'll just stick with CDs.