No, and that's part of the problem. I pay a small fixed fee and a per kWh charge to my utility. Presumably, the fixed fee doesn't pay for the infrastructure, but what they make on the power they sell me on average lets them operate at a profit. If people are buying a whole lot less power because of domestic solar installations, the utility won't be able to cover their costs.
The other problem is that solar power is competing at consumer level prices, which often include an hefty tax. That makes solar attractive to consumers, but it also means that when you are generating a surplus, the utility is effectively buying that power back from you at consumer prices as well. Even if they can sell that power elsewhere and perhaps shut down a generator or two, it means that instead of generating power at a marginal cost of €0.02/kWh and selling it at €0.19/kWh, they buy and sell at the same price and make nothing.
Don't Comcast allow subscribers who have turned on the Xfinity service in their on router access to all other Xfinity hotspots? That's how my ISP sells its customers on the service (it's opt-out, but they did provide easy instructions on how to disable it).
True, advertising does serve a useful purpose. The problem is with the people who think it's a good idea to make their ad just a little bit louder, brighter or bouncier than the rest, so it gets noticed more. And then of course the rest of the advertisers, even the well-meaning ones, are forced to make their ads a little louder still. Yes, even the "regular" advertisers do this: television ads have been normalized in terms of dBs and often in compression as well. But those same exact same ads do not behave so well on unregulated channels, such as broadcasters' websites showing repeats of their shows with ads in between. Some of those ads fairly blast out your eardrums, and that's not just laziness on the webmaster's part for failing to adjust the volumes properly; those ads also have extreme compression (for higher perceived loudness) that is absent from the televised versions.
I agree that the patch is silly. However, the use of "they" or "them" in the singular, gender neutral sense has a very old history in the English language, more than a century at least.
[...] to reject a pull request that eliminates a gendered pronoun on the principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered would constitute a fireable offense for me and for Joyent. On the one hand, it seems ridiculous (absurd, perhaps) to fire someone over a pronoun -- but to characterize it that way would be a gross oversimplification: it's not the use of the gendered pronoun that's at issue (that's just sloppy), but rather the insistence that pronouns should in fact be gendered. To me, that insistence can only come from one place: that gender—specifically, masculinity—is inextricably linked to software, and that's not an attitude that Joyent tolerates.
This is about replacing "he" with "they" somewhere. Noordhuis' single response in the comments section to this change was "Sorry, not interested in trivial changes like that.", and a flamewar that is as stupid as it is predictable ensues. Joyent then jumps to the conclusion not just that rejecting a trivial change like this constitutes an insistence on principle that pronouns should be gendered, but that such insistence springs from the notion that masculinity is inextricably linked to software. And this is a sacking offense? MikeRT called it right when he used the term "SJW tools". To me, this would at most be cause to remind the employee of whatever Diversity policies the company has in place.
So far the evidence seems to weigh in favour of us being top dog in our immediate surroundings (earth, the solar system at least, perhaps nearby interstellar space as well). It is possible that superintelligent stuff exists near us, invisible to us, but very unlikely that this intelligence would leave no trace or mark that we can perceive yet not fit in our simple theories of physics and nature (indicating existence of another intelligence). And as far as the universe is concerned, we may well be near the top of the intelligence spectrum; superintelligence may be extremely rare or even impossible.
Gods or superintelligent beings, I'll believe in them when I see them, or at least when we see something inexplicable, clearly artificial or some phenomenon far outside our models that would require superintelligence to pull off.
Since they "are still in early stages", how would you want them to differentiate themselves? I can think of a few things that can set it apart from a site like Wikinews which is based on vanilla Mediawiki:
- Multiple, personal, compound filters (subject, region, country, town, breaking, highest ranked)
- Rich feeds (mail, RSS)
- A personalized front page based on your filters with some "suggested reading" thrown in
- Article ranking based on moderation and reputation (of both source site and submitter)
- Comment section (we need our flamewars)
- A mobile app (yes, you can go with a mobile theme, but some newspapers and news aggregators have apps that actually make finding and reading stuff a lot easier)
Pretty much this. The only place where I could see such a catch-all work is to ensure that mandates given to government agencies are interpreted as narrow (or as explicitly) as possible. And even there, the same danger exists i.e. constant challenges of that mandate could cripple essential and legitimate government functions.
He with nothing to hide should not have to fear for his privacy.
I'm not okay with the local Stasi installing bugs in my house. By the same token, I am not okay with them listening in on private conversations held over the phone or on the Internet. Even if it means a couple of terrorists go uncaught. Because what surveillance buys you is at best temporary security: a few high profile busts, and wrongdoers will find ways to evade that surveillance, which isn't all that hard.
France has plenty nukes, China is building them and has ramped up development of a new eactor type based on Thorium, and India plans to bring a Thorium-fueled prototype online in 2016, banking on powering a good deal of their country with such reactors in a few decades time.
Taxis are way too expensive for frequent use over longer distances. Rental cars aren't, but they are a pain: you have to go pick them up (and without a car, how are you going to get to the depot) and return them afterwards. Self-driving cars are a game-changer in this market: you could order one on a moment's notice, and have it park itself at your house 15 minutes later. It'll return itself when you're done. And it'll be even better if the company charges by the hour or distance driven.
Besides, people will probably still own cars, just not as many of them. Why drive an SUV or sedan to work every day if it's mostly just yourself in the vehicle? Why own a pickup if you're only using it occasionally to haul stuff? Do you really need 2 cars between you and your spouse if only one of you drives to work every day? If I could easily rent any of those vehicles when the need arises, I might ditch all my cars and get a small EV for my daily commute. But most likely I'd still want to own that car, for practical and economical reasons.
What does Rand or her followers have to do with this?
I'm no fan of tinfoil apparel, but there are indeed a couple of very fishy things about this case, all pointing to an organised effort to get Assange extradited or otherwise transported to the US. With that said, the court is right in letting the detention order stand from a procedural viewpoint (as far as I can tell, they haven't looked at the case itself, merely at the procedures)
Morally perfect? If they are losing sleep over what fossil fuels and oil companies are doing to the world of future generations, they should stop using oil based products, not sue the school for holding oil stock.
The success of Google and Facebook, as well as the enthusiasm of some for surveillance ("hey, I've got nothing to hide") show us that people don't give a toss about privacy. We care a little bit for security where our credit cards and naked selfies are concerned, and there may be a smallish market for secure, encrypted products and services, but that's doesn't mean corporate interests are aligned with our own when it comes to security. Quite the contrary, in a market where the prevailing business model is to hook as many eyeballs as possible with free stuff, and make money by selling their data.
Telling us to rely on corporations to shield us from an invasive government is like the fox convincing the chicken that it can rely on the wolf for protection. One way or another, you're going to get eaten.
Solar is being improved on all the time, and it's getting to the point where solar can compete with the grid at consumer price levels. Which is good enough, as solar power installations are well suited to be owned and operated by individual households. There are still some technical and economical issues, such as consumers effectively using the grid as an energy store without paying for the infra. it makes sense to continue to improve on solar power. With that said, I think no sane energy policy should focus on one single "way to go". Given the issues around renewables, projected timelines for practical fusion, environmental concerns, dwindling fossil fuel supplies and the questionable safety of existing nuclear plants, we need to bet on several horses here: fusion, safer fission (thorium), better renewables, energy storage, cleaner coal, etc.
I've no idea how Google approached this challenge, but in a lot of companies, innovation consists of clever and novel applications and combinations of existing technologies, or making good use of a couple of incremental improvements. It often does yield results: this is what Google did to reduce power requirements in their data centers. And it's in itself a useful exercise to identify gaps (e.g. "For a practical electric vehicle, we need a battery that is this good"), then focus on closing those gaps with a focused effort (researching new battery tech). It appears that Google either found too many gaps and concluded that the state of the art hadn't advanced far enough, or that they weren't prepared to do such fundamental research.
Does anyone really think a ride sharing app is really worth 84% of an airline that operates 5,400 flights daily over an international network that includes 333 destinations in 64 countries on six continents... and has its own mobile apps?
Yes because eyeballs and "social" and disruptive. And data. At least that's what these fast growing startups are being valued for these days.
Rising costs are no surprise. There doesn't appear to be direct collusion between insurers, but there is no real competition either. Do you think an insurer would prefer to charge a €100 monthly premium to cover a €1000 average yearly medical bill, or charge €200 premium for a €2000 bill? And prices are further inflated by empire building, ie. setting up and staffing a bunch of auxiliary functions and services that are not directly related to healthcare (and in practise do not work to benefit health either)
Since everybody has mandatory insurance for a fixed package of health care items, what added value do the insurers actually have? There's a few things that are mentioned from time to time:
- efficiency in operation. State-run schemes are notoriously bureaucratic, but there's no indication that private insurers are any more efficient; on the contrary. Especially since there are multiple companies, each with separate administration and management.
- purchasing savvy. Again, there's no indication that they are better at buying care and medicine than, for instance, the New Zealand govt which managed to get a massive discount on medicine.
- value added services like fitness programmes, health awareness campaigns, etc. this amounts to little more than the aforementioned empire building, and appears to add very little value.
I'd much prefer the Dutch government to handle basic insurance themselves, leaving the insurance companies to handle additional insurance packages (additional dental, homeopathic, acupuncture etc). I'm no commie, but universal health care has clear benefits, and if it's truly universal and socialised, it's better to let the state run it instead of a (in case of Dutch health insurance) dysfunctional market.
Perhaps that's just what FB want to address, and set up a separate work version that can be unblocked while the private FB remains blocked. Even so, I wouldn't touch it with a 6.096m pole. The main issue with FB is not employees goofing off at work.
I've seen several companies with a successful Yammer network, meaning it added real business value. Rolling out things like wikis, microblogging tools or discussion forums in a company requires more than just installing the software and announcing the new service; you need active champions, community managers, and a strategy to nurture the community continuously. That means you also need to understand the role you want these things to play in your business. . Those who perceive them as mere tools to be rolled out will most likely fail.
A good measure of fairness of the tax is a comparison between road tax revenue (fuel tax, road tax, tax on new vehicles) and outlays on infrastructure. Over here in NL it's gotten a bit out of whack: revenues are 3 times the expenses, and that includes expenses on public transport infra. Filling up that 55 liter tank costs €95 or so. Then there's road tax, and if you buy a car you pay a special tax on top of the list price and VAT. For some vehicles the total tax can be as much as 125% of the factory price. And no, I did not forget a decimal point in that figure: a Mercedes G 350 is listed at €72.500 but the after tax sticker price comes to €166.500
Even in a country with good public transport, the truth is that most people still need a car to get to work. It's pretty much a necessity, but it is one that we have been made to feel guilty about, so the government discovered that they can tax the crap out of it and not expect much protest. Especially in today's environmentalist society.
Slashdot Mirror
No, and that's part of the problem. I pay a small fixed fee and a per kWh charge to my utility. Presumably, the fixed fee doesn't pay for the infrastructure, but what they make on the power they sell me on average lets them operate at a profit. If people are buying a whole lot less power because of domestic solar installations, the utility won't be able to cover their costs.
The other problem is that solar power is competing at consumer level prices, which often include an hefty tax. That makes solar attractive to consumers, but it also means that when you are generating a surplus, the utility is effectively buying that power back from you at consumer prices as well. Even if they can sell that power elsewhere and perhaps shut down a generator or two, it means that instead of generating power at a marginal cost of €0.02/kWh and selling it at €0.19/kWh, they buy and sell at the same price and make nothing.
Don't Comcast allow subscribers who have turned on the Xfinity service in their on router access to all other Xfinity hotspots? That's how my ISP sells its customers on the service (it's opt-out, but they did provide easy instructions on how to disable it).
True, advertising does serve a useful purpose. The problem is with the people who think it's a good idea to make their ad just a little bit louder, brighter or bouncier than the rest, so it gets noticed more. And then of course the rest of the advertisers, even the well-meaning ones, are forced to make their ads a little louder still. Yes, even the "regular" advertisers do this: television ads have been normalized in terms of dBs and often in compression as well. But those same exact same ads do not behave so well on unregulated channels, such as broadcasters' websites showing repeats of their shows with ads in between. Some of those ads fairly blast out your eardrums, and that's not just laziness on the webmaster's part for failing to adjust the volumes properly; those ads also have extreme compression (for higher perceived loudness) that is absent from the televised versions.
I agree that the patch is silly. However, the use of "they" or "them" in the singular, gender neutral sense has a very old history in the English language, more than a century at least.
[...] to reject a pull request that eliminates a gendered pronoun on the principle that pronouns should in fact be gendered would constitute a fireable offense for me and for Joyent. On the one hand, it seems ridiculous (absurd, perhaps) to fire someone over a pronoun -- but to characterize it that way would be a gross oversimplification: it's not the use of the gendered pronoun that's at issue (that's just sloppy), but rather the insistence that pronouns should in fact be gendered. To me, that insistence can only come from one place: that gender—specifically, masculinity—is inextricably linked to software, and that's not an attitude that Joyent tolerates.
This is about replacing "he" with "they" somewhere. Noordhuis' single response in the comments section to this change was "Sorry, not interested in trivial changes like that.", and a flamewar that is as stupid as it is predictable ensues. Joyent then jumps to the conclusion not just that rejecting a trivial change like this constitutes an insistence on principle that pronouns should be gendered, but that such insistence springs from the notion that masculinity is inextricably linked to software. And this is a sacking offense? MikeRT called it right when he used the term "SJW tools". To me, this would at most be cause to remind the employee of whatever Diversity policies the company has in place.
Yes!: http://www.bestbv.nl/article/s...
So far the evidence seems to weigh in favour of us being top dog in our immediate surroundings (earth, the solar system at least, perhaps nearby interstellar space as well). It is possible that superintelligent stuff exists near us, invisible to us, but very unlikely that this intelligence would leave no trace or mark that we can perceive yet not fit in our simple theories of physics and nature (indicating existence of another intelligence). And as far as the universe is concerned, we may well be near the top of the intelligence spectrum; superintelligence may be extremely rare or even impossible.
Gods or superintelligent beings, I'll believe in them when I see them, or at least when we see something inexplicable, clearly artificial or some phenomenon far outside our models that would require superintelligence to pull off.
Pretty much anything having to do with Dutch euthanasia laws or cannabis use.
Since they "are still in early stages", how would you want them to differentiate themselves? I can think of a few things that can set it apart from a site like Wikinews which is based on vanilla Mediawiki:
- Multiple, personal, compound filters (subject, region, country, town, breaking, highest ranked)
- Rich feeds (mail, RSS)
- A personalized front page based on your filters with some "suggested reading" thrown in
- Article ranking based on moderation and reputation (of both source site and submitter)
- Comment section (we need our flamewars)
- A mobile app (yes, you can go with a mobile theme, but some newspapers and news aggregators have apps that actually make finding and reading stuff a lot easier)
Pretty much this. The only place where I could see such a catch-all work is to ensure that mandates given to government agencies are interpreted as narrow (or as explicitly) as possible. And even there, the same danger exists i.e. constant challenges of that mandate could cripple essential and legitimate government functions.
He with nothing to hide should not have to fear for his privacy.
I'm not okay with the local Stasi installing bugs in my house. By the same token, I am not okay with them listening in on private conversations held over the phone or on the Internet. Even if it means a couple of terrorists go uncaught. Because what surveillance buys you is at best temporary security: a few high profile busts, and wrongdoers will find ways to evade that surveillance, which isn't all that hard.
You can write with a lump of coal, but it doesn't come with a spelling checker...
France has plenty nukes, China is building them and has ramped up development of a new eactor type based on Thorium, and India plans to bring a Thorium-fueled prototype online in 2016, banking on powering a good deal of their country with such reactors in a few decades time.
Taxis are way too expensive for frequent use over longer distances. Rental cars aren't, but they are a pain: you have to go pick them up (and without a car, how are you going to get to the depot) and return them afterwards. Self-driving cars are a game-changer in this market: you could order one on a moment's notice, and have it park itself at your house 15 minutes later. It'll return itself when you're done. And it'll be even better if the company charges by the hour or distance driven.
Besides, people will probably still own cars, just not as many of them. Why drive an SUV or sedan to work every day if it's mostly just yourself in the vehicle? Why own a pickup if you're only using it occasionally to haul stuff? Do you really need 2 cars between you and your spouse if only one of you drives to work every day? If I could easily rent any of those vehicles when the need arises, I might ditch all my cars and get a small EV for my daily commute. But most likely I'd still want to own that car, for practical and economical reasons.
Would have been fun to let the robots shout that out every now and then. Perhaps also a random "Hey baby, wanna kill all humans?".
What does Rand or her followers have to do with this?
I'm no fan of tinfoil apparel, but there are indeed a couple of very fishy things about this case, all pointing to an organised effort to get Assange extradited or otherwise transported to the US. With that said, the court is right in letting the detention order stand from a procedural viewpoint (as far as I can tell, they haven't looked at the case itself, merely at the procedures)
Morally perfect? If they are losing sleep over what fossil fuels and oil companies are doing to the world of future generations, they should stop using oil based products, not sue the school for holding oil stock.
The success of Google and Facebook, as well as the enthusiasm of some for surveillance ("hey, I've got nothing to hide") show us that people don't give a toss about privacy. We care a little bit for security where our credit cards and naked selfies are concerned, and there may be a smallish market for secure, encrypted products and services, but that's doesn't mean corporate interests are aligned with our own when it comes to security. Quite the contrary, in a market where the prevailing business model is to hook as many eyeballs as possible with free stuff, and make money by selling their data.
Telling us to rely on corporations to shield us from an invasive government is like the fox convincing the chicken that it can rely on the wolf for protection. One way or another, you're going to get eaten.
Solar is being improved on all the time, and it's getting to the point where solar can compete with the grid at consumer price levels. Which is good enough, as solar power installations are well suited to be owned and operated by individual households. There are still some technical and economical issues, such as consumers effectively using the grid as an energy store without paying for the infra. it makes sense to continue to improve on solar power. With that said, I think no sane energy policy should focus on one single "way to go". Given the issues around renewables, projected timelines for practical fusion, environmental concerns, dwindling fossil fuel supplies and the questionable safety of existing nuclear plants, we need to bet on several horses here: fusion, safer fission (thorium), better renewables, energy storage, cleaner coal, etc.
I've no idea how Google approached this challenge, but in a lot of companies, innovation consists of clever and novel applications and combinations of existing technologies, or making good use of a couple of incremental improvements. It often does yield results: this is what Google did to reduce power requirements in their data centers. And it's in itself a useful exercise to identify gaps (e.g. "For a practical electric vehicle, we need a battery that is this good"), then focus on closing those gaps with a focused effort (researching new battery tech). It appears that Google either found too many gaps and concluded that the state of the art hadn't advanced far enough, or that they weren't prepared to do such fundamental research.
Does anyone really think a ride sharing app is really worth 84% of an airline that operates 5,400 flights daily over an international network that includes 333 destinations in 64 countries on six continents... and has its own mobile apps?
Yes because eyeballs and "social" and disruptive. And data. At least that's what these fast growing startups are being valued for these days.
Rising costs are no surprise. There doesn't appear to be direct collusion between insurers, but there is no real competition either. Do you think an insurer would prefer to charge a €100 monthly premium to cover a €1000 average yearly medical bill, or charge €200 premium for a €2000 bill? And prices are further inflated by empire building, ie. setting up and staffing a bunch of auxiliary functions and services that are not directly related to healthcare (and in practise do not work to benefit health either)
Since everybody has mandatory insurance for a fixed package of health care items, what added value do the insurers actually have? There's a few things that are mentioned from time to time:
- efficiency in operation. State-run schemes are notoriously bureaucratic, but there's no indication that private insurers are any more efficient; on the contrary. Especially since there are multiple companies, each with separate administration and management.
- purchasing savvy. Again, there's no indication that they are better at buying care and medicine than, for instance, the New Zealand govt which managed to get a massive discount on medicine.
- value added services like fitness programmes, health awareness campaigns, etc. this amounts to little more than the aforementioned empire building, and appears to add very little value.
I'd much prefer the Dutch government to handle basic insurance themselves, leaving the insurance companies to handle additional insurance packages (additional dental, homeopathic, acupuncture etc). I'm no commie, but universal health care has clear benefits, and if it's truly universal and socialised, it's better to let the state run it instead of a (in case of Dutch health insurance) dysfunctional market.
Perhaps that's just what FB want to address, and set up a separate work version that can be unblocked while the private FB remains blocked. Even so, I wouldn't touch it with a 6.096m pole. The main issue with FB is not employees goofing off at work.
I've seen several companies with a successful Yammer network, meaning it added real business value. Rolling out things like wikis, microblogging tools or discussion forums in a company requires more than just installing the software and announcing the new service; you need active champions, community managers, and a strategy to nurture the community continuously. That means you also need to understand the role you want these things to play in your business. . Those who perceive them as mere tools to be rolled out will most likely fail.
A good measure of fairness of the tax is a comparison between road tax revenue (fuel tax, road tax, tax on new vehicles) and outlays on infrastructure. Over here in NL it's gotten a bit out of whack: revenues are 3 times the expenses, and that includes expenses on public transport infra. Filling up that 55 liter tank costs €95 or so. Then there's road tax, and if you buy a car you pay a special tax on top of the list price and VAT. For some vehicles the total tax can be as much as 125% of the factory price. And no, I did not forget a decimal point in that figure: a Mercedes G 350 is listed at €72.500 but the after tax sticker price comes to €166.500
Even in a country with good public transport, the truth is that most people still need a car to get to work. It's pretty much a necessity, but it is one that we have been made to feel guilty about, so the government discovered that they can tax the crap out of it and not expect much protest. Especially in today's environmentalist society.