"The big ass plane with the unique paint job, the helicopters with the presidential seal, the convoy of black Escalades, all those are kinda big giveaways."
Well... actually, there are TWO Air Force Ones. The Marine One HMX-1 squadron consists (IIRC) of 28 birds, and most POTUS transport missions fly three identical whitebacks in an aerial shell game. And there are often multiple convoys of Escalades and Cadilac limos.
So which plane? Which helicopter? Which convoy? Which limo? There's a difference between knowing where he is in a general sense, and in exactly which vehicle he's being transported.
Besides, all of those "kinda big giveaways" you mentioned also make kinda big decoys. Just because they're there doesn't mean HE'S there...
When going home for Christmas I drove by two major wind projects in Nebraska and Kansas. Costs are now close to on-par, and using coal means you have to buy coal, must locate near a railhead, have to deal with changing (and ever more expensive) environmental emission regulations, and so on.
While the geopolitical aspect may not hold, utilities watch the cost aspects of renewables carefully. After all, like most businesses, they exist to make money.
And in some cases even the cost argument isn't the main consideration. Often utilities are hit with federal, state, and local mandates (20% renewable power by 2015).
Foriegn oil is foriegn oil, and you're right, most US-bound foriegn oil comes from Canada, Mexico, or South America as it's cheaper to ship from there than the Middle East.
That said, all of that oil is sold on the world market and fluctuations in supply caused by problems and instabilities in the Middle East impact the world market as a whole. Let Iran fall out of production due to an internal civil war (for arguments sake), and supply drops, demand rises, prices skyrocket, and Japan and China and Europe AND the US are now all competing for that Canadian and Mexican oil.
Unless, of course, we're now self-sufficient and don't need it. In which case, China can have it and Europe or someone else can spend THEIR money jumping in to save the day...
BS. Seriously. We buy new cars anyway, so why NOT more efficient ones? Besides, if everyone drove dramatically more efficient vehicles it ALSO mean reducing (or eliminating) our trade deficit in oil. How does THAT trash the economy?
Eliminate dependence on foreign oil, and it also means we don't have to spend billions sending our kids off to die every time the Middle East hicups. How does THAT trash the economy?
And there are as many economic OPPORTUNITIES in doing the right things as there are not doing them. Solar cell have to be manufactured and installed. Wind turbines constructed. And so on. That spells jobs.
Less polution. Reduced environmental impact. Economic growth. Reduced trade deficit. Eliminate dependence on foreign oil. And perhaps, taking out some insurance on our planet. There are many, many, many reasons for making the investment.
"...they'll simply move from open networks to friend-to-friend encrypted multiprotocol stealthed darknets."
Bytes moving through commercial cable or DSL network lines are still bytes, multiprotocol, encrypted, stealthed, or otherwise. Bandwidth caps, bandwidth monitoring, and pay-per-use can and will impact the users and sustainability of those 'nets.
I say we move to pay-per-use, as at any point in time bandwidth is a finite resource anyway. You want to run a torrent server 24/7/365? No problem. But I hope you enjoy your monthly $500 bill from your ISP.
"For example, on our site we have tons of original music, videos and text."
A YouTube video of some jerk falling off a roof doesn't count (nor is it particularly original). I've yet to see many full length major motion pictures released under CC. (Or ANY, for that matter.)
Doubt it. On the web, perhaps, but practically every business of any significant size has internal IIS servers, Active Directory servers, Exchange servers, SQL Servers, and file servers galore. There's a lot of iron out there.
Well... actually if you go by browser statistics, Linux is around 0.9%, or less than one percent. Such statistics are a pretty good indication of "desktop" use, as servers and embedded systems tend not to go around browsing the web looking for porn...
There's also the often ignored fact that CD prices have DECLINED since introduction. Many new release CDs can be had for $10-12, despite decades of inflation where the costs of many other things ($3 for a loaf of bread) have dramatically increased.
"They could charge $15 for a CD that cost them $1 to print and $5 to create, market, and manage."
Aren't you forgetting the entire wholesale/retail aspect of that $15 price? The distributors? The music store that got half the money for stocking the shelves, BUYING the shelves, turning on the lights, hiring staff, paying the lease, and so on?
Saying in so many words that the labels got $9 in profit after $6 of expenses is just wrong.
No, PEOPLE are treating is as an intangible product with no costs involved or associated with creation, production, or distribution.
And even predating recording music had a tangible aspect: you needed musicians, instruments, often a concert hall or some other venue. You needed to give your time. You needed to travel to where it was being produced. You paid for a ticket. Music doesn't just appear out of thin air.
From my perspective, it's a pure accident of technology that are enabling people to swipe recordings at will. And a recent one at that.
"...it was by pure accident of technology that, at one time, it could be made into a tangible product."
Not counting player pianos and other "recorded" musical reproductions that go back as far as the 9th century, the gramophone disc was introduced in 1889, over a century ago. Music has been available as a tangible product for over a century now.
"...the large majority of people in a lot of places would be wholly surprised to find that they weren't "mainstream"..."
The feature may be there, but if it's not commonly used, it's not mainstream.
When it's common for me to bring up nearly any contact (including my mom) and click "video call", THEN it will be mainstream.
And if you're in Europe, just how many mobile video calls did you make this week? (Just looked at your history. Apparently you're not in Europe and as such don't even have secondhand knowledge of what's "mainstream" in Europe.)
"If it iPhone was open and I could buy it without a subscription for a normal price..."
You want a pony to go with that too? You want to set the terms (open, unsubsidized) AND the price? (normal, which translated equals what YOU want to pay).
When introduced, the iPhone was $499 unsubsidized. A 16GB Touch w/o cell phone or GPS is $299. What makes you think you're going to get an iPhone unsubsidized for less than $399?
"If you're a pro photographer or a serious graphic artist... have invested lots of money into color calibration devices..."
As such, reflections SHOULD be a non-issue. Everyone doing "serious" color-correction work uses a hood to block reflections and ambient light that could otherwise throw off color perception and accuracy. This was the case even back in the color CRT days.
Failure to do so means that a perceptive color match done during the morning might not match one done at noon, or at night. Something all "serious" pro photographers or graphic artists should know;
Those serious about color know better than to trust the screen anyway (especially NOTEBOOK screens), and use histograms and run the numbers to check colors and determine blown highlights and blocked shadows.
"If glossy displays are so great, how come this traditionally stubborn company made this concession?"
Because some stubborn a**holes have to be forced at gunpoint to use anything they're not already familiar with?
How is the above post considered "flamebait"? Every fact is true.
And the reflections are a non-issue. Everyone doing serious color-correction work uses a hood to block reflections and ambient light that could otherwise throw off color perception and accuracy.
"The simplest, most elegant solution I can think of to global warming is to build giant orbital sunshades to reduce the total solar irradiance to the earth's surface."
Why not skip that and just set off a couple of dozen nukes? A mild nuclear winter could offset the global warming trend quite nicely.
Slashdot Mirror
"The big ass plane with the unique paint job, the helicopters with the presidential seal, the convoy of black Escalades, all those are kinda big giveaways."
Well... actually, there are TWO Air Force Ones. The Marine One HMX-1 squadron consists (IIRC) of 28 birds, and most POTUS transport missions fly three identical whitebacks in an aerial shell game. And there are often multiple convoys of Escalades and Cadilac limos.
So which plane? Which helicopter? Which convoy? Which limo? There's a difference between knowing where he is in a general sense, and in exactly which vehicle he's being transported.
Besides, all of those "kinda big giveaways" you mentioned also make kinda big decoys. Just because they're there doesn't mean HE'S there...
When going home for Christmas I drove by two major wind projects in Nebraska and Kansas. Costs are now close to on-par, and using coal means you have to buy coal, must locate near a railhead, have to deal with changing (and ever more expensive) environmental emission regulations, and so on.
While the geopolitical aspect may not hold, utilities watch the cost aspects of renewables carefully. After all, like most businesses, they exist to make money.
And in some cases even the cost argument isn't the main consideration. Often utilities are hit with federal, state, and local mandates (20% renewable power by 2015).
"Do a cost analysis, see how much money would be saved, and how much it would cost to say, double your staff?"
Probably not as much as he thinks. EDUs and non-profits already get sweetheart licensing deals from Microsoft.
Foriegn oil is foriegn oil, and you're right, most US-bound foriegn oil comes from Canada, Mexico, or South America as it's cheaper to ship from there than the Middle East.
That said, all of that oil is sold on the world market and fluctuations in supply caused by problems and instabilities in the Middle East impact the world market as a whole. Let Iran fall out of production due to an internal civil war (for arguments sake), and supply drops, demand rises, prices skyrocket, and Japan and China and Europe AND the US are now all competing for that Canadian and Mexican oil.
Unless, of course, we're now self-sufficient and don't need it. In which case, China can have it and Europe or someone else can spend THEIR money jumping in to save the day...
"Trashed econmomy."
BS. Seriously. We buy new cars anyway, so why NOT more efficient ones? Besides, if everyone drove dramatically more efficient vehicles it ALSO mean reducing (or eliminating) our trade deficit in oil. How does THAT trash the economy?
Eliminate dependence on foreign oil, and it also means we don't have to spend billions sending our kids off to die every time the Middle East hicups. How does THAT trash the economy?
And there are as many economic OPPORTUNITIES in doing the right things as there are not doing them. Solar cell have to be manufactured and installed. Wind turbines constructed. And so on. That spells jobs.
Less polution. Reduced environmental impact. Economic growth. Reduced trade deficit. Eliminate dependence on foreign oil. And perhaps, taking out some insurance on our planet. There are many, many, many reasons for making the investment.
And practically none for NOT doing so...
"...they'll simply move from open networks to friend-to-friend encrypted multiprotocol stealthed darknets."
Bytes moving through commercial cable or DSL network lines are still bytes, multiprotocol, encrypted, stealthed, or otherwise. Bandwidth caps, bandwidth monitoring, and pay-per-use can and will impact the users and sustainability of those 'nets.
I say we move to pay-per-use, as at any point in time bandwidth is a finite resource anyway. You want to run a torrent server 24/7/365? No problem. But I hope you enjoy your monthly $500 bill from your ISP.
"For example, on our site we have tons of original music, videos and text."
A YouTube video of some jerk falling off a roof doesn't count (nor is it particularly original). I've yet to see many full length major motion pictures released under CC. (Or ANY, for that matter.)
Well.... personally I'd tend to agree that "sharing" one album or DVD with 10,000 or so people equals distribution on a "commercial" scale...
Doubt it. On the web, perhaps, but practically every business of any significant size has internal IIS servers, Active Directory servers, Exchange servers, SQL Servers, and file servers galore. There's a lot of iron out there.
Well... actually if you go by browser statistics, Linux is around 0.9%, or less than one percent. Such statistics are a pretty good indication of "desktop" use, as servers and embedded systems tend not to go around browsing the web looking for porn...
Based on current percentages, only one friend out of a hundred will (potentially) have the answer, whereas nine out of ten know or use Windows.
Heck, I use a Mac, and I've STILL used Windows.
There's also the often ignored fact that CD prices have DECLINED since introduction. Many new release CDs can be had for $10-12, despite decades of inflation where the costs of many other things ($3 for a loaf of bread) have dramatically increased.
"They could charge $15 for a CD that cost them $1 to print and $5 to create, market, and manage."
Aren't you forgetting the entire wholesale/retail aspect of that $15 price? The distributors? The music store that got half the money for stocking the shelves, BUYING the shelves, turning on the lights, hiring staff, paying the lease, and so on?
Saying in so many words that the labels got $9 in profit after $6 of expenses is just wrong.
No, PEOPLE are treating is as an intangible product with no costs involved or associated with creation, production, or distribution.
And even predating recording music had a tangible aspect: you needed musicians, instruments, often a concert hall or some other venue. You needed to give your time. You needed to travel to where it was being produced. You paid for a ticket. Music doesn't just appear out of thin air.
From my perspective, it's a pure accident of technology that are enabling people to swipe recordings at will. And a recent one at that.
"...it was by pure accident of technology that, at one time, it could be made into a tangible product."
Not counting player pianos and other "recorded" musical reproductions that go back as far as the 9th century, the gramophone disc was introduced in 1889, over a century ago. Music has been available as a tangible product for over a century now.
And that's hardly an accident.
"...the large majority of people in a lot of places would be wholly surprised to find that they weren't "mainstream"..."
The feature may be there, but if it's not commonly used, it's not mainstream.
When it's common for me to bring up nearly any contact (including my mom) and click "video call", THEN it will be mainstream.
And if you're in Europe, just how many mobile video calls did you make this week? (Just looked at your history. Apparently you're not in Europe and as such don't even have secondhand knowledge of what's "mainstream" in Europe.)
If a new iPhone appears that can do this and it takes off then don't be surprised.
Just because the feature exists somewhere in some limited fashion doesn't mean that Apple won't deserve credit for launching it into the mainstream.
"If it iPhone was open and I could buy it without a subscription for a normal price..."
You want a pony to go with that too? You want to set the terms (open, unsubsidized) AND the price? (normal, which translated equals what YOU want to pay).
When introduced, the iPhone was $499 unsubsidized. A 16GB Touch w/o cell phone or GPS is $299. What makes you think you're going to get an iPhone unsubsidized for less than $399?
"...but if you ingest them your body absorbs all of the radiation..."
So don't eat toxic radioactive waste?
Duh!
"If you're a pro photographer or a serious graphic artist ... have invested lots of money into color calibration devices..."
As such, reflections SHOULD be a non-issue. Everyone doing "serious" color-correction work uses a hood to block reflections and ambient light that could otherwise throw off color perception and accuracy. This was the case even back in the color CRT days.
Failure to do so means that a perceptive color match done during the morning might not match one done at noon, or at night. Something all "serious" pro photographers or graphic artists should know;
Those serious about color know better than to trust the screen anyway (especially NOTEBOOK screens), and use histograms and run the numbers to check colors and determine blown highlights and blocked shadows.
"If glossy displays are so great, how come this traditionally stubborn company made this concession?"
Because some stubborn a**holes have to be forced at gunpoint to use anything they're not already familiar with?
How is the above post considered "flamebait"? Every fact is true.
And the reflections are a non-issue. Everyone doing serious color-correction work uses a hood to block reflections and ambient light that could otherwise throw off color perception and accuracy.
"...and clearly knows a thing or two about graphic design and web design..."
Or at least the people he hired to do the job do. Besides, having a nice looking site doesn't make you an expert on ANYTHING.
Lipstick on a pig, remember?
"The simplest, most elegant solution I can think of to global warming is to build giant orbital sunshades to reduce the total solar irradiance to the earth's surface."
Why not skip that and just set off a couple of dozen nukes? A mild nuclear winter could offset the global warming trend quite nicely.
Unfortunately, it means that concerts, plays, parties, weddings and nearly every other event is going to filled with incessant beeps and clicks.
Seen Defiance? You take 'em from the military.