The solar power part is a way to do this without condeming the tennants to a lifetime of mad energy bills.
Well, the article says that the rotation will only require the power of "20 electric kettles" or something (how many Libraries of Congress is that?) and I'd presume the people living in this building will be insanely wealthy, so...
They claimed that you can reduce the cost of heating (rooms, water, etc.)for a ~1000sqft house to rougly 300 Euro per year (using solar and geothermal heating, heat pumps and of course superior insulation).
But what does it cost to install all that stuff? How long does it take to pay for itself in reduced operating costs? Is that payoff time longer or shorter than the average time that a person/family stays in a given house?
What I don't understand is that a wealthy and educated country like America sees air-conditioning as the solution to being too hot and not quadruple glazing.
If quadruple-glazing and other advanced insulation techniques were cheaper than A/C, don't you think Americans would do it? In today's market, houses are already expensive enough to build with the relatively cheap materials we do use.
So by that logic a house uses half the power of a kettle. Modern fast boil kettles use 2kW. That'd be a good way to get people thinking about conserving power.
I suppose it would be... if people ran their fast-boil kettles 24/7. How long does a typical fast-boil kettle run? 1-2 minutes at a time? 2 kW times 1 minute = 0.033 kWh, costing $0.0033 at $0.10/kWh.
If your car was stolen, the cops would take a very unfavourable view of you impersonating a cop in order to retrieve it.
That's true. Ordinary citizens are not allowed to do this. The police and licensed investigators, however, are allowed to lie to suspects in the course of an investigation. The question is whether this should be permitted in cases like copyright infringement, or only in criminal investigations like murder, etc.
If you could impose and enforce a tax in all other countries, yes. But since there are still some countries left that the US haven't invaded, you need additional schemes to make sure you achieve more than just give imported goods advantages over domestic production and encourage lots of unnecessary long-haul transportation to boot.
OK, then - levy the carbon tax on US individuals and businesses, and impose a "carbon tarriff" on imported goods from any country that is not willing to levy their own carbon tax, or demonstrate other measures to significantly reduce CO2 emissions.
A libertarian shat on my carpet once. Claimed the free market would sort it out. No it sodding didn't.
That's just a silly strawman. Not all libertarians are anarchists, you know. The job of government is to protect the rights of citizens (i.e. life, liberty, and property) against those who would violate those rights. This job (the codification and defense of rights) is not something that a free market can do, because the existence of a free market requires the existence and protection of rights - it's a chicken-and-egg problem.
A carbon tax, levied on the f*ng idiots who drive SUVs in the city. Ideally, I'd like this tax to be paid each year, and it's amount to be directly proportional to the oil consumption of the car? Own an SUV? Fine, that will be 50% of its price, every year, as long as you own it. Own an hybrid/highly efficient/electric car? Fine, that will be 5% of its price every year. Don't own a car? Using your feet/your bike/ mass transit? OK, no taxes for you.
That sounds more like a "social agenda" tax than a carbon tax. You want a carbon tax? Tax all US oil refineries, and all importers of refined petroleum, on every barrel they produce, say $20, and let them pass the cost on to their customers. Everyone will end up paying based on how much they use, not how they use it.
I certainly wouldn't classify the Motorola StarTAC as bad or ugly. In fact, as far as mobile phones went, it was certainly ahead of its time.
If I hadn't broken my StarTAC a few years back, I'd still be using it. Best cell phone (cell phone - not phone/email/fax/camera/buttscratcher) I ever had.
Netcraft confirms: IBM, Sun, and Google make boatloads of money off of the countless unnamed and unpaid developers who write the code that they use.
You mean "off of the countless unnamed and unpaid volunteers who write that code"? Open-source developers write open-source code because they want to. No one is holding a gun to their heads. If they don't like what is done with their code, they are perfectly free to stop writing open-source code.
Take hydrogen. The day someone figures out how to easily produce hydrogen the days of energy monopolies are over - anyone with access to water (or whatever the raw material turns out to be) can do it.
Making hydrogen isn't the problem. Storing it, transporting it, and keeping it from leaking out of every valve, seam, and fitting along the way, are the problems.
... AND we use Courier up here, not Times New Roman or Arial or any of those pansy kerning fonts. Equal space for all letters; that's how you can tell we're Canadian, eh?
I thought you could tell by their beady little black eyes and the way their heads flop around when they talk.
It measures privacy. Not openness of discourse, or human rights, or other questions. The US has weak privacy protections: this is pretty well known.
Meanwhile, the US is pretty good when it comes to openness, to access to and freedom of information. Could it be that these two values oppose each other to some degree? If you want an open society, you put privacy at risk. But if you value privacy more, you sacrifice a degree of openness?
Perhaps what might be more instructive would be to examine why no one is blowing anything up in Canada.
Perhaps for the same reason no one is blowing anything up in New Zealand, or Bhutan, or Slovakia - because they're small, relatively powerless, relatively out-of-the-way places that don't have much impact on the world scene. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, and it can have its advantages, but it also doesn't constitute a reason to go bragging on the US.
I'm going to come up with my own list, it will be called the "Green Grass list" and will rank countries based on where people would most like to move to. Speaking as someone who has lived in Europe for several years, and have faced the "why did you leave America?!" question a thousand times, I have a sneaking suspicion that the US of A would top that list.
So, then... why'd you leave, if America's such a great place to live? (Which I happen to think it is, myself, BTW.)
In rich countries you can get computers for $100. Or even for free because people throw them out and buy new ones.
Even in rich countries, it's pretty hard to get a laptop for $100 that's small enough for a kid to carry back and forth to school and be powerful enough to be useful (e.g. WiFi, hi-res display, etc.)
There's a big difference between telling people how they ought to live, and, say, locking people up (or shooting them) for asking to live the way they want to, or keeping people from leaving a country and living somewhere else, or...
Just over majority in most states believe they have exclusivity on "marriage" as an arrangement between a male and a female, no other combinations may be recognised. I think it's pretty clear there are those who feel compelled enough to actually vote for bans when it's a ballot measure. That's just an example, but pretty a blatant willingness to carry on with some form of segregation of rights.
Meanwhile, we don't arrest or shoot people for speaking out in favor of gay marriage - whether in private, or live on national TV. If a gay couple want to leave the country and get married somewhere else, they're free to do so - they won't be shot down at the border while trying to escape. If a bunch of gay people want to have a rally in favor gay marriage, we don't mow them down with columns of tanks. (And if some tragedy were to occur at a gay rights rally, we wouldn't force Google not to show the pictures of it!) These are the kinds of differences I'm talking about. I don't know how the hell gay marriage got into a comparison between the United States and China.
Slashdot Mirror
Or perhaps it simply wouldn't be suited for them.
Well, considering the building is in Dubai, I think they're probably going to make sure that Muslims can live there...
The solar power part is a way to do this without condeming the tennants to a lifetime of mad energy bills.
Well, the article says that the rotation will only require the power of "20 electric kettles" or something (how many Libraries of Congress is that?) and I'd presume the people living in this building will be insanely wealthy, so...
They claimed that you can reduce the cost of heating (rooms, water, etc.)for a ~1000sqft house to rougly 300 Euro per year (using solar and geothermal heating, heat pumps and of course superior insulation).
But what does it cost to install all that stuff? How long does it take to pay for itself in reduced operating costs? Is that payoff time longer or shorter than the average time that a person/family stays in a given house?
What I don't understand is that a wealthy and educated country like America sees air-conditioning as the solution to being too hot and not quadruple glazing.
If quadruple-glazing and other advanced insulation techniques were cheaper than A/C, don't you think Americans would do it? In today's market, houses are already expensive enough to build with the relatively cheap materials we do use.
Be careful. Lest you provoke a "Al Gore invented the internet!"
Al Gore invented carbon dioxide!
So by that logic a house uses half the power of a kettle. Modern fast boil kettles use 2kW. That'd be a good way to get people thinking about conserving power.
I suppose it would be... if people ran their fast-boil kettles 24/7. How long does a typical fast-boil kettle run? 1-2 minutes at a time? 2 kW times 1 minute = 0.033 kWh, costing $0.0033 at $0.10/kWh.
If your car was stolen, the cops would take a very unfavourable view of you impersonating a cop in order to retrieve it.
That's true. Ordinary citizens are not allowed to do this. The police and licensed investigators, however, are allowed to lie to suspects in the course of an investigation. The question is whether this should be permitted in cases like copyright infringement, or only in criminal investigations like murder, etc.
If you could impose and enforce a tax in all other countries, yes. But since there are still some countries left that the US haven't invaded, you need additional schemes to make sure you achieve more than just give imported goods advantages over domestic production and encourage lots of unnecessary long-haul transportation to boot.
OK, then - levy the carbon tax on US individuals and businesses, and impose a "carbon tarriff" on imported goods from any country that is not willing to levy their own carbon tax, or demonstrate other measures to significantly reduce CO2 emissions.
Basically, they took the work of Walter Edward Demmings
[sigh] William Edwards Deming.
Apple is a large corp that started at pretty much the same time as Microsoft. They seem to be going down a different path less choked by bureaucracy.
They also haven't been nearly as successful or grown nearly as quickly as Microsoft.
A libertarian shat on my carpet once. Claimed the free market would sort it out. No it sodding didn't.
That's just a silly strawman. Not all libertarians are anarchists, you know. The job of government is to protect the rights of citizens (i.e. life, liberty, and property) against those who would violate those rights. This job (the codification and defense of rights) is not something that a free market can do, because the existence of a free market requires the existence and protection of rights - it's a chicken-and-egg problem.
A carbon tax, levied on the f*ng idiots who drive SUVs in the city. Ideally, I'd like this tax to be paid each year, and it's amount to be directly proportional to the oil consumption of the car? Own an SUV? Fine, that will be 50% of its price, every year, as long as you own it. Own an hybrid/highly efficient/electric car? Fine, that will be 5% of its price every year. Don't own a car? Using your feet/your bike/ mass transit? OK, no taxes for you.
That sounds more like a "social agenda" tax than a carbon tax. You want a carbon tax? Tax all US oil refineries, and all importers of refined petroleum, on every barrel they produce, say $20, and let them pass the cost on to their customers. Everyone will end up paying based on how much they use, not how they use it.
I certainly wouldn't classify the Motorola StarTAC as bad or ugly. In fact, as far as mobile phones went, it was certainly ahead of its time.
If I hadn't broken my StarTAC a few years back, I'd still be using it. Best cell phone (cell phone - not phone/email/fax/camera/buttscratcher) I ever had.
Netcraft confirms: IBM, Sun, and Google make boatloads of money off of the countless unnamed and unpaid developers who write the code that they use.
You mean "off of the countless unnamed and unpaid volunteers who write that code"? Open-source developers write open-source code because they want to. No one is holding a gun to their heads. If they don't like what is done with their code, they are perfectly free to stop writing open-source code.
Take hydrogen. The day someone figures out how to easily produce hydrogen the days of energy monopolies are over - anyone with access to water (or whatever the raw material turns out to be) can do it.
Making hydrogen isn't the problem. Storing it, transporting it, and keeping it from leaking out of every valve, seam, and fitting along the way, are the problems.
and the Legislative (which happens to have the Congress and the Senate as its two main parts)
No, the legislature of the United States is called the Congress. Its two houses are the House of Representatives, and the Senate.
I thought you could tell by their beady little black eyes and the way their heads flop around when they talk.
It measures privacy. Not openness of discourse, or human rights, or other questions. The US has weak privacy protections: this is pretty well known.
Meanwhile, the US is pretty good when it comes to openness, to access to and freedom of information. Could it be that these two values oppose each other to some degree? If you want an open society, you put privacy at risk. But if you value privacy more, you sacrifice a degree of openness?
Perhaps what might be more instructive would be to examine why no one is blowing anything up in Canada.
Perhaps for the same reason no one is blowing anything up in New Zealand, or Bhutan, or Slovakia - because they're small, relatively powerless, relatively out-of-the-way places that don't have much impact on the world scene. Now, there's nothing wrong with that, and it can have its advantages, but it also doesn't constitute a reason to go bragging on the US.
The Kentsfield release is all well and good, but I need those Quad-Core Xeons! Anyone know when we can expect them?
I'm going to come up with my own list, it will be called the "Green Grass list" and will rank countries based on where people would most like to move to. Speaking as someone who has lived in Europe for several years, and have faced the "why did you leave America?!" question a thousand times, I have a sneaking suspicion that the US of A would top that list.
So, then... why'd you leave, if America's such a great place to live? (Which I happen to think it is, myself, BTW.)
I, for one, welcome our new endogenous retrovirus overlords...
In rich countries you can get computers for $100. Or even for free because people throw them out and buy new ones.
Even in rich countries, it's pretty hard to get a laptop for $100 that's small enough for a kid to carry back and forth to school and be powerful enough to be useful (e.g. WiFi, hi-res display, etc.)
We in rich countries don't give laptops to every one of our kids
If they cost $100, I'll bet we would.
There's a big difference between telling people how they ought to live, and, say, locking people up (or shooting them) for asking to live the way they want to, or keeping people from leaving a country and living somewhere else, or...
Just over majority in most states believe they have exclusivity on "marriage" as an arrangement between a male and a female, no other combinations may be recognised. I think it's pretty clear there are those who feel compelled enough to actually vote for bans when it's a ballot measure. That's just an example, but pretty a blatant willingness to carry on with some form of segregation of rights.
Meanwhile, we don't arrest or shoot people for speaking out in favor of gay marriage - whether in private, or live on national TV. If a gay couple want to leave the country and get married somewhere else, they're free to do so - they won't be shot down at the border while trying to escape. If a bunch of gay people want to have a rally in favor gay marriage, we don't mow them down with columns of tanks. (And if some tragedy were to occur at a gay rights rally, we wouldn't force Google not to show the pictures of it!) These are the kinds of differences I'm talking about. I don't know how the hell gay marriage got into a comparison between the United States and China.