Much of the California coast between San Francisco and Los Angeles is quite rugged and expensive. However, that's irrelevant. The HS rail is being planned to go through the central valley, and that means it has to cross the San Gabriel Mountains to get into Los Angeles. Not impossible, but not easy.
Sacramento is 80 miles inland from San Francisco; that's hardly coastal.
Capitalism is capitalism without regard to how a particular government acts. If property rights are being violated, it ain't capitalism.
w.r.t. you sig. First, the official US poverty standard is nonsense: a multimillionaire with no income is officially in poverty. Second, many, perhaps most, of the poor in Texas are there illegally, and are there because they're better off than where they came from.
Here's how #1 works. The contractor has to post a bond (that is, he buys insurance that he finishes on time and on budget.) Since the bonding agent stands to lose an immense amount of money if the contractor fails, he applies pressure to everyone concerned to not waste time and materials.
Aside from union pressure, the primary reason for overruns is the contractor faces no personal penalties for overruns. In fact, he's usually rewarded with more taxpayer money while he prolongs his work.
There's a second way, bonus for early completion. This worked very well for replacing collapsed bridges after the Northridge earthquake. It has to be to everyone's perceived advantage to do a good job quickly.
They did struggle. Many of them went bankrupt. The history of railroads in the US has an astonishing number of failures. There are abandoned roadbeds, some still with rails, throughout the country.
The basis of all property is that I own myself. I am responsible for my actions and I own my labor. Anybody who says otherwise is defending slavery and worse, and I mean you, BasilBrush.
If I pick up a piece of driftwood as it approaches the Atlantic coastline, and carve that wood into a piece of fine art using nothing but my fingernails, it is mine, my property. The same principle of using my body guided by my mind, together with trading with others acting similarly, brings me all that I own.
Ownership is not a fiction, and it is essential to living as human beings as distinguished from brutes.
My PowerShot doesn't allow manual focus, and that is a severe limitation that causes about 1 shot in 10 to be lost or spoiled. I consider it an essential feature.
True optical image stabilization is a great feature and it's fairly common.
Road accidents hold up traffic for up to a couple of hours. Train accidents hold up traffic for a day or more, depending upon whether the track is damaged.
The problem is not so much the person who gets left behind, but the person who gets caught in a closing door. In a subway, automatic interlocks are supposed to keep the train from moving if the door doesn't close. In this scheme, there's no margin for error. A person caught in the door gets torn in half and pulverized. There's no fix for this.
An overhead view that looks like a diagram isn't nearly as exciting as the views that do reach your TV. Also, it's much harder to follow the football because it takes up such a small portion of the screen. The 9 inch diameter football is only 5 lines on a 1080 screen that covers the full 53.3 yard field width.
The biggest advantage of the top view is that you can see how inside runs work or fail. From the side, all inside runs look suicidal.
A quality, low f/number, high zoom ratio, sturdy lens is expensive. Cheap lenses on small cameras with moderate optical zoom (4:1) can produce about 3000x2300 (versus their advertised 4000x3000). So if you're seeing something that limits an expensive lens to 1920x1080, then the lens is being used at some extreme where its performance is degraded: fully opened or stopped down at one end of the zoom range. That, or there's something wrong.
The disadvantage of using linear extrapolations is that eventually you are wrong. Among other difficulties, do you understand that radiation is a T^4 phenomenon?
The conditions that allow for the estimate of a 50 year payback are so delicate that they are for all practical purposes useless. Just a few percent improvement in the efficiency of a competitor, or an uninsured shutdown of a couple of years, and the project never pays for itself.
Most people in the US consume a lot more salt than they need, fools who try to consume no salt notwithstanding. Those people, finding themselves thirsty after a couple of hours of heavy exertion, are far better off drinking water than waiting two more hours until they can hike back to a store with proper electrolytes.
People who've planned long periods of heavy exercise can easily drink plain water safely, rather than consuming some expensive electrolyte replacement. They bring along that rare secret substance called food.
In the town I live in, voters have twice refused to fund buying a new police car, and other expenses have also been voted down from time to time. If you start with the little stuff and also make sure everyone is well educated, the rest is much more likely to work out eventually.
OK, I just read the summary of the convention. One item is, children have the right to belong to a country. Sorry, nobody owns people in the US, certainly not the government. Another is, children have the right to join organizations (at whose cost? Is the mafia one such organization? Can a 17 year old boy join the Brownies?). Yet another is "Children have a right to privacy" (In order to hide their stash and their Uzi?). Wise people do not submit themselves to poorly crafted agreements. And given that the UN has a well-documented antipathy to the US, there's no doubt that ratifying the agreement would be used against us.
It sounds like it's time for the power company to sue the historic district. Or just declare "You want to be historic? Well, we'll help, you're going back to the era before electricity."
Many historic districts are tools for assholes to abuse their neighbors.
In some cases, accurate smart meters have replaced very old analog meters. These old meters may have developed excessive friction in critical bearings, resulting in dramatically low readings. I've read of people whose bills have quadrupled after the installation of a smart meter. Understandably, these people are very unhappy and some have complained loudly.
Slashdot Mirror
Much of the California coast between San Francisco and Los Angeles is quite rugged and expensive. However, that's irrelevant. The HS rail is being planned to go through the central valley, and that means it has to cross the San Gabriel Mountains to get into Los Angeles. Not impossible, but not easy.
Sacramento is 80 miles inland from San Francisco; that's hardly coastal.
Capitalism is capitalism without regard to how a particular government acts. If property rights are being violated, it ain't capitalism.
w.r.t. you sig. First, the official US poverty standard is nonsense: a multimillionaire with no income is officially in poverty. Second, many, perhaps most, of the poor in Texas are there illegally, and are there because they're better off than where they came from.
Come visit the east coast. Late at night, the train station is where you go to get mugged.
Here's how #1 works. The contractor has to post a bond (that is, he buys insurance that he finishes on time and on budget.) Since the bonding agent stands to lose an immense amount of money if the contractor fails, he applies pressure to everyone concerned to not waste time and materials.
Aside from union pressure, the primary reason for overruns is the contractor faces no personal penalties for overruns. In fact, he's usually rewarded with more taxpayer money while he prolongs his work.
There's a second way, bonus for early completion. This worked very well for replacing collapsed bridges after the Northridge earthquake. It has to be to everyone's perceived advantage to do a good job quickly.
They did struggle. Many of them went bankrupt. The history of railroads in the US has an astonishing number of failures. There are abandoned roadbeds, some still with rails, throughout the country.
The basis of all property is that I own myself. I am responsible for my actions and I own my labor. Anybody who says otherwise is defending slavery and worse, and I mean you, BasilBrush.
If I pick up a piece of driftwood as it approaches the Atlantic coastline, and carve that wood into a piece of fine art using nothing but my fingernails, it is mine, my property. The same principle of using my body guided by my mind, together with trading with others acting similarly, brings me all that I own.
Ownership is not a fiction, and it is essential to living as human beings as distinguished from brutes.
My PowerShot doesn't allow manual focus, and that is a severe limitation that causes about 1 shot in 10 to be lost or spoiled. I consider it an essential feature.
True optical image stabilization is a great feature and it's fairly common.
Road accidents hold up traffic for up to a couple of hours. Train accidents hold up traffic for a day or more, depending upon whether the track is damaged.
Even the nicest areas in a big city are shit holes compared to the average suburb. Shoving people into a dense city lowers quality of life.
e=0.5*m*v^2. There's so little energy at the low speed that the safety concerns overwhelm any energy gain.
I guess you've never heard of molesters, robbers, or murderers on subways. Or is it mature to like being with such people?
The problem is not so much the person who gets left behind, but the person who gets caught in a closing door. In a subway, automatic interlocks are supposed to keep the train from moving if the door doesn't close. In this scheme, there's no margin for error. A person caught in the door gets torn in half and pulverized. There's no fix for this.
An overhead view that looks like a diagram isn't nearly as exciting as the views that do reach your TV. Also, it's much harder to follow the football because it takes up such a small portion of the screen. The 9 inch diameter football is only 5 lines on a 1080 screen that covers the full 53.3 yard field width.
The biggest advantage of the top view is that you can see how inside runs work or fail. From the side, all inside runs look suicidal.
A quality, low f/number, high zoom ratio, sturdy lens is expensive. Cheap lenses on small cameras with moderate optical zoom (4:1) can produce about 3000x2300 (versus their advertised 4000x3000). So if you're seeing something that limits an expensive lens to 1920x1080, then the lens is being used at some extreme where its performance is degraded: fully opened or stopped down at one end of the zoom range. That, or there's something wrong.
Most often it's acre-feet per year, because one of the most common uses of water is agriculture, which has an annual cycle.
The disadvantage of using linear extrapolations is that eventually you are wrong. Among other difficulties, do you understand that radiation is a T^4 phenomenon?
The conditions that allow for the estimate of a 50 year payback are so delicate that they are for all practical purposes useless. Just a few percent improvement in the efficiency of a competitor, or an uninsured shutdown of a couple of years, and the project never pays for itself.
"democratizing"? Please stop abusing the language.
Most people in the US consume a lot more salt than they need, fools who try to consume no salt notwithstanding. Those people, finding themselves thirsty after a couple of hours of heavy exertion, are far better off drinking water than waiting two more hours until they can hike back to a store with proper electrolytes.
People who've planned long periods of heavy exercise can easily drink plain water safely, rather than consuming some expensive electrolyte replacement. They bring along that rare secret substance called food.
Try voting in primaries.
In the town I live in, voters have twice refused to fund buying a new police car, and other expenses have also been voted down from time to time. If you start with the little stuff and also make sure everyone is well educated, the rest is much more likely to work out eventually.
Disturbing the peace is not a legal right.
OK, I just read the summary of the convention. One item is, children have the right to belong to a country. Sorry, nobody owns people in the US, certainly not the government. Another is, children have the right to join organizations (at whose cost? Is the mafia one such organization? Can a 17 year old boy join the Brownies?). Yet another is "Children have a right to privacy" (In order to hide their stash and their Uzi?). Wise people do not submit themselves to poorly crafted agreements. And given that the UN has a well-documented antipathy to the US, there's no doubt that ratifying the agreement would be used against us.
Yep, that solar plant is never going to fail.
Let's see. A meter-reader in a suburban area can read at least 15 meters an hour, so that's 2400 a month.
Minimum 2000 x 2400 = 4,800,000.
The population of Nevada is 2,700,000.
You, sir, are a LIAR. And paranoid.
It sounds like it's time for the power company to sue the historic district. Or just declare "You want to be historic? Well, we'll help, you're going back to the era before electricity."
Many historic districts are tools for assholes to abuse their neighbors.
In some cases, accurate smart meters have replaced very old analog meters. These old meters may have developed excessive friction in critical bearings, resulting in dramatically low readings. I've read of people whose bills have quadrupled after the installation of a smart meter. Understandably, these people are very unhappy and some have complained loudly.