I'm reminded of an old Beetle Bailey comic. An exasperated Sarge tells Beetle (or maybe it was Zero, I forget) that he's a "model soldier". On looking it up in the dictionary, our grunt discovers:
Per your analysis, it sounds to me more like: Marketing departments, desiring to keep their well-paid jobs, are desperately trying to ensure that higher-ups don't notice that corporate marketing has been rendered obsolete by viral marketing (including "piracy").
That's exactly what it is. I have two zip codes (street address and POBox) and can never remember which credit card is billed to where... always manage to input the wrong one first.
Is this the one the morons in this state voted to build a couple elections back?
Per the data published in the voter info packet, if you ran the numbers for projected cost vs expected ridership, ticket price worked out to around $1000 per trip.
An article which could just as easily have been titled, "National_debt_by_U.S._legislative_terms"... at which point it suddenly becomes an enlightening document rather than propaganda.
The food shortage isn't something "America caused". Egypt did this to themselves. Nassar just HAD to have a dam, to prove that Egypt was a "modern" country, but it destroyed the Nile-based ecology and economy -- before the Aswan Dam was built, Egypt was a net food EXPORTER.
Here's an excerpt from a letter written in 2008, by a PhD who lived there at the time, was in thick with the higher-ups, and knew the situation firsthand:
======= The Aswan High Dam (read Miles Copeland's book "The Game of Nations") blocked silt and nutrient transport downriver and into the eastern Mediterranean. Egypt had a thriving coastal sardine fishery, which landed about 18,000 tons of sardines a year. Within two years after completion of the dam, the sardine fishery collapsed, with the yield falling below 500 tons a year. It has stayed down ever since.
It took a bit longer to use up the nutrients in agricultural soils, or for the irrigated soils, deprived of their annual "flush", to become so saline no crops would grow.
Deprived of sediment, the Delta will probably also erode. That's what's happening to New Orleans and vicinity - we've messed around with the river enough that the sediment transport is less and the delta is no longer self-sustaining, but is gradually (well, not so gradually) sinking into the Gulf of Mexico.
Egypt had a lot of very good fisheries and freshwater biologists - some of them among the best in the world. Nasser convened a scientific panel to advise him about building the dam. They told him what would happen. He didn't like hearing that, so all those scientists lost their jobs and had to emigrate. The U.S., for example Texas A&M University, profited greatly by snapping them up....
Well, the reasons for building it were primarily political and had to do with the Cold War. Nasser sucked the Russians and the U.S. into a bidding contest. The Copeland book lays it all out, in a rather amusing way.
And of course Egypt had, as a matter of national pride, to have a gigantic dam....
Big dams (well, all dams) eventually silt up - they have a finite lifetime. Once the reservoir is silted up the dam can no longer regulate water flow. Don't remember what the anticipated lifetime of Aswan is - maybe a century or less. =======
[Undoing a bunch of moderation to post this, but I couldn't let the historical ignorance stand unchallenged.]
I call BS on the "deficit-operating" bit. The GG is privately owned and was fully paid for decades ago. Any costs incurred are operating costs and overhead (as in director salaries). The operating costs aren't all that (yes they constantly repaint the bridge but they also have chosen in the past to use the same lead paint from the 1930s rather than a more modern but like colored paint that lasts for 20+ years)."
I was wondering about that myself. Marine paint for oceangoing ships still needs upkeep, but not to the degree described -- and it wouldn't surprise me if there's some of that typical California "job insurance" going on, where a deliberately poorer grade of paint and other repair materials are used, much to the delight of the paint/repair contractor(s) AND the paint/parts salesmen.
Los Angeles County does this kind of shit all the time (you should see the crap "repaving" they do on county roads, guaranteed to last one season at most even in areas of relatively light traffic; and now some tree service has a $500k/year contract that amounts to basically kill-and-replace all the healthy trees along county roads -- roughly half the trees they've "trimmed" out here in the desert have died from this abuse, in just the first two years of the program). I expect given its greater age and more left-leaning politics, San Francisco has a longer history of such shenanigans and the relevant union has 'em down to a fine art.
I do find it telling that there were a bunch of responses that rudely screamed about all the maintenance needs, rather than explaining politely. Not to mention the horrors the toll-takers "endure"... well, other jobs that are equally lousy are not paid $25/hour plus benefits; why are tollbooth workers special?
You'd think it would make sense to have one human-operated lane, but the losses on untollable cars probably are less than the cost of one attendant, given what they're paid. Of course, the more you pay the attendants, the less money is left for directors' bonuses, which I suspect is more to the point.
Not to mention that yet another contractor will benefit from installing automation.. the lobbying for that would probably make fascinating reading, much akin to that from automated redlight camera companies.
So what happens when the kill switch is extended to the cellphone networks?? They still need THEIR infrastructure, ya know. Unless there's some new sort that run on magic?
As to wifi alone, that's probably all right in a FidoNet sort of way, but not very practical for anything beyond email.
I don't doubt it takes a lot of maintenance, but I'll bet the budget for same is a fine model of union, er, efficiency at peeling money out of the system...
Whilst reading TFA (I know, it's embarrassing, but I still do it) I noted the bridge "operates with a $89M deficit"... um, how the hell does it manage THAT? The bridge itself must be long since paid for, and maintenance can't be all THAT high -- surely they don't do a total resurfacing every year? So how much of the deficit is a direct cost of running the toll system itself? Or is it just more of the vaunted California gov't economy's ability to spend at a rate 3x its means?
Also:
"A toll-taker's base pay starts at $48,672 a year and tops out at $54,080."
Holy shit, where do WE sign up to make that kind of money for sitting in a booth?? (Yeah, I know that's barely getting by in San Francisco, but still...) Plus benefits and retirement, no doubt.
BTW, we already do get taxed evenly, based on usage -- that's what the gasoline tax does. You're taxed in direct proportion to miles driven and weight on the road surface (which translates into wear and tear) because that's the reality of a given driving distance and a given vehicle's weight-to-MPG ratio. Yeah, it gets harsh if you're forced to commute long distances, but I've yet to see a fairer system.
That's why other forms of production, notably grazing of livestock, are likely to take precedence (tho winter wheat can scrape by in such soils and climates; the question is whether a lower yield is worth the diesel to harvest it). However, that's fine, since in general what the world's population needs more of isn't calories, it's quality protein.
A friend regales me with all manner of serious anime plots, some actually pretty involved, but the fact is it still offends my eyes (and ears) beyond all bearing... even the 'serious' stuff.
I see I've only got another 11 months to salvage my geek card... well, I gotta hit the library this week anyway:)
That may be, but when the motive becomes police snooping, and this making it much cheaper and easier to accomplish (and much more broadly at that)... it's on a par with the various methods of snooping through walls, in that it's not an expected surveillance vector for an average normal person.
There's a lot of land below the bogland that has too short a growing season now, and needs too much winter fodder to be useful for grazing. At any rate, there's been some good reasearch on this already, and IIRC the conclusion was that 2 degrees warmer meant a net of 30% more arable land worldwide.
I doubt the methane is that big a deal.. the bogland thaws and spews every summer as it is, it's just that the summer is too short for it to ever dry out.
Anime makes my eyes bleed and my brain shrivel... but yeah, everyone (or almost everyone, anyway!) says the same, that the first was by far the best. I suppose someday I'll have to scrounge it up and watch it, so they don't take away my Geek License.:)
Seriously, what happens when one is buzzing a schoolyard looking for drug deals, loses control due to gusty winds, and winds up plowing into people below? Lot more likely with craft that lack the mass to counter the wind.
I'd differentiate that in the one case, someone has to crane their neck to see what can be seen from an adjoining property. They can't dangle over your fence to do it. Conversely, the drone can enter the airspace directly above your property.
Slashdot Mirror
"All things not compulsory are forbidden."
-- old Soviet jape
The People's Democratic Republic of Amerika.
Nice ring to it, eh, comrade??
Model citizen...
I'm reminded of an old Beetle Bailey comic. An exasperated Sarge tells Beetle (or maybe it was Zero, I forget) that he's a "model soldier". On looking it up in the dictionary, our grunt discovers:
Model, n.: A small copy of the real thing.
Per your analysis, it sounds to me more like: Marketing departments, desiring to keep their well-paid jobs, are desperately trying to ensure that higher-ups don't notice that corporate marketing has been rendered obsolete by viral marketing (including "piracy").
So why don't we have nuclear-powered automobiles? Seriously... someone enlighten me, why not? What's wrong with scaling down a nuclear submarine?
Yeah, yeah, high cost per each... but think in terms of millions of units. Could it scale??
That's exactly what it is. I have two zip codes (street address and POBox) and can never remember which credit card is billed to where... always manage to input the wrong one first.
Come to mention it, who's going to manufacture the rolling stock and the rails? Cuz we've long since shut down all that industry in the U.S.
Is this the one the morons in this state voted to build a couple elections back?
Per the data published in the voter info packet, if you ran the numbers for projected cost vs expected ridership, ticket price worked out to around $1000 per trip.
An article which could just as easily have been titled, "National_debt_by_U.S._legislative_terms" ... at which point it suddenly becomes an enlightening document rather than propaganda.
The food shortage isn't something "America caused". Egypt did this to themselves. Nassar just HAD to have a dam, to prove that Egypt was a "modern" country, but it destroyed the Nile-based ecology and economy -- before the Aswan Dam was built, Egypt was a net food EXPORTER.
Here's an excerpt from a letter written in 2008, by a PhD who lived there at the time, was in thick with the higher-ups, and knew the situation firsthand:
=======
The Aswan High Dam (read Miles Copeland's book "The Game of Nations") blocked silt and nutrient transport downriver and into the eastern Mediterranean. Egypt had a thriving coastal sardine fishery, which landed about 18,000 tons of sardines a year. Within two years after completion of the dam, the sardine fishery collapsed, with the yield falling below 500 tons a year. It has stayed down ever since.
It took a bit longer to use up the nutrients in agricultural soils, or for the irrigated soils, deprived of their annual "flush", to become so saline no crops would grow.
Deprived of sediment, the Delta will probably also erode. That's what's happening to New Orleans and vicinity - we've messed around with the river enough that the sediment transport is less and the delta is no longer self-sustaining, but is gradually (well, not so gradually) sinking into the Gulf of Mexico.
Egypt had a lot of very good fisheries and freshwater biologists - some of them among the best in the world. Nasser convened a scientific panel to advise him about building the dam. They told him what would happen. He didn't like ...
hearing that, so all those scientists lost their jobs and had to emigrate. The U.S., for example Texas A&M University, profited greatly by snapping them up.
Well, the reasons for building it were primarily political and had to do with the Cold War. Nasser sucked the Russians and the U.S. into a bidding contest. The Copeland book lays it all out, in a rather amusing way.
And of course Egypt had, as a matter of national pride, to have a gigantic dam. ...
Big dams (well, all dams) eventually silt up - they have a finite lifetime. Once the reservoir is silted up the dam can no longer regulate water flow. Don't remember what the anticipated lifetime of Aswan is - maybe a century or less.
=======
[Undoing a bunch of moderation to post this, but I couldn't let the historical ignorance stand unchallenged.]
Considering how many municipal busses I see with just one or two passengers... no wonder.
Welcome to Slashdot, where there is only One True Way to do anything, yet where All Monopolies are Bad!!
Seriously, in our rush to "modernization", we often neglect lower-tech solutions like this one, when they could be just what the situation ordered.
(Yeah, I RTFA'd ... very interesting.)
An AC says,
I call BS on the "deficit-operating" bit. The GG is privately owned and was fully paid for decades ago. Any costs incurred are operating costs and overhead (as in director salaries). The operating costs aren't all that (yes they constantly repaint the bridge but they also have chosen in the past to use the same lead paint from the 1930s rather than a more modern but like colored paint that lasts for 20+ years)."
I was wondering about that myself. Marine paint for oceangoing ships still needs upkeep, but not to the degree described -- and it wouldn't surprise me if there's some of that typical California "job insurance" going on, where a deliberately poorer grade of paint and other repair materials are used, much to the delight of the paint/repair contractor(s) AND the paint/parts salesmen.
Los Angeles County does this kind of shit all the time (you should see the crap "repaving" they do on county roads, guaranteed to last one season at most even in areas of relatively light traffic; and now some tree service has a $500k/year contract that amounts to basically kill-and-replace all the healthy trees along county roads -- roughly half the trees they've "trimmed" out here in the desert have died from this abuse, in just the first two years of the program). I expect given its greater age and more left-leaning politics, San Francisco has a longer history of such shenanigans and the relevant union has 'em down to a fine art.
I do find it telling that there were a bunch of responses that rudely screamed about all the maintenance needs, rather than explaining politely. Not to mention the horrors the toll-takers "endure" ... well, other jobs that are equally lousy are not paid $25/hour plus benefits; why are tollbooth workers special?
You'd think it would make sense to have one human-operated lane, but the losses on untollable cars probably are less than the cost of one attendant, given what they're paid. Of course, the more you pay the attendants, the less money is left for directors' bonuses, which I suspect is more to the point.
Not to mention that yet another contractor will benefit from installing automation.. the lobbying for that would probably make fascinating reading, much akin to that from automated redlight camera companies.
So what happens when the kill switch is extended to the cellphone networks?? They still need THEIR infrastructure, ya know. Unless there's some new sort that run on magic?
As to wifi alone, that's probably all right in a FidoNet sort of way, but not very practical for anything beyond email.
I don't doubt it takes a lot of maintenance, but I'll bet the budget for same is a fine model of union, er, efficiency at peeling money out of the system...
Whilst reading TFA (I know, it's embarrassing, but I still do it) I noted the bridge "operates with a $89M deficit" ... um, how the hell does it manage THAT? The bridge itself must be long since paid for, and maintenance can't be all THAT high -- surely they don't do a total resurfacing every year? So how much of the deficit is a direct cost of running the toll system itself? Or is it just more of the vaunted California gov't economy's ability to spend at a rate 3x its means?
Also:
"A toll-taker's base pay starts at $48,672 a year and tops out at $54,080."
Holy shit, where do WE sign up to make that kind of money for sitting in a booth?? (Yeah, I know that's barely getting by in San Francisco, but still...) Plus benefits and retirement, no doubt.
BTW, we already do get taxed evenly, based on usage -- that's what the gasoline tax does. You're taxed in direct proportion to miles driven and weight on the road surface (which translates into wear and tear) because that's the reality of a given driving distance and a given vehicle's weight-to-MPG ratio. Yeah, it gets harsh if you're forced to commute long distances, but I've yet to see a fairer system.
This may be a dumb question, but how do we know some other hostile party didn't cut some critical cables?
"Democracy imposed from without is the severest form of tyranny."
-- Lloyd Biggle Jr.
Okay, former tundra :)
That's why other forms of production, notably grazing of livestock, are likely to take precedence (tho winter wheat can scrape by in such soils and climates; the question is whether a lower yield is worth the diesel to harvest it). However, that's fine, since in general what the world's population needs more of isn't calories, it's quality protein.
A friend regales me with all manner of serious anime plots, some actually pretty involved, but the fact is it still offends my eyes (and ears) beyond all bearing... even the 'serious' stuff.
I see I've only got another 11 months to salvage my geek card... well, I gotta hit the library this week anyway :)
That may be, but when the motive becomes police snooping, and this making it much cheaper and easier to accomplish (and much more broadly at that) ... it's on a par with the various methods of snooping through walls, in that it's not an expected surveillance vector for an average normal person.
There's a lot of land below the bogland that has too short a growing season now, and needs too much winter fodder to be useful for grazing. At any rate, there's been some good reasearch on this already, and IIRC the conclusion was that 2 degrees warmer meant a net of 30% more arable land worldwide.
I doubt the methane is that big a deal.. the bogland thaws and spews every summer as it is, it's just that the summer is too short for it to ever dry out.
Anime makes my eyes bleed and my brain shrivel... but yeah, everyone (or almost everyone, anyway!) says the same, that the first was by far the best. I suppose someday I'll have to scrounge it up and watch it, so they don't take away my Geek License. :)
Sue 'em for crashing that drone into your house.
Seriously, what happens when one is buzzing a schoolyard looking for drug deals, loses control due to gusty winds, and winds up plowing into people below? Lot more likely with craft that lack the mass to counter the wind.
I'd differentiate that in the one case, someone has to crane their neck to see what can be seen from an adjoining property. They can't dangle over your fence to do it. Conversely, the drone can enter the airspace directly above your property.