Within a matter of weeks, if not days, what you have on your computer is worth more than the machine, and is much harder to recreate than the machine is to fix or replace. Even just getting things set up the way you want them is worth more, in time value of money, to many people than the machine itself. You will notice that all these scandals have been about either misappropriation of personal data, or destruction of it.
How much do you think it's worth to people to not have their nude photos of their wife out on usenet?
How about all that quicken data you need for your taxes?
I'll give you one thing, you have illustrated the problem clearly: people don't value computer tech services, therefore they get services that have little or no value.
The problem goes beyond Best Buy, and to the tech industry in general. The buyers, be they consumers or the corporate CFOs, really have no idea what they are buying, so they can only distinguish based on price. The result has been a race to the bottom.
Honestly, I blame the consumers, they get what they deserve. Mechanics and Plumbers get paid more than computer techs, yet the computer field is more complex and changes faster. Why does anyone expect anything other than ignorant juvenile behavior for less than a living wage (which is at least $35/hr in CA)?
It's pretty simple cost containment/business sense. Not serving up a page to someone who isn't going to click through saves you costs that won't produce revenue.
This is analogous to a coffee shop that asks people who sit in their chairs and read the leftover newspapers but never buy coffee to go use the public library instead.
Businesses exist to make money. One of the ways a web-based, advertising supported, business can contain costs is by not serving up pages to people who aren't going to generate ad revenue. Whether blocking Firefox users actually increases your click through rate or other revenue or not is up to debate, but if it does, then doing so makes sense from a business standpoint.
If you don't want the ads, don't visit sites that serve them up.
Actually OPEC decides the price of oil. They employ very talented economists and use supercomputers to set supply targets in such a way as to maximize the price without encouraging switching to alternative energy sources.
It's always about how everyone contributes according to their ability, but the Politburo gets according to their greed.
Is anyone surprised at yet more socialist hypocrisy? Socialism is incompatible with human nature, so of course it gets abused. >
I'm no fan of MS, but at least they get that the profit motive is basic human nature. Channeling it, as opposed to denying it, works better. In the latter case, the altruists get abused by those who pretend to play the game, but take control for their own benefit.
What the GPL fans miss is that they are required to dual license the resulting code. That bugs them, because they want a world in which all software has to be GPL. So they ignore the BSD license, on the same basis as corps ignore the GPL "So sue me".
Wrong, IMNSHO (I'm not going to waste time explaining why I'm not so humble, but I really do know what I'm talking about).
If you are proactive, as opposed to reactive, the only people who know about any problems are the admins. The networks and systems keep humming in a properly designed and executed infrastructure. You may see diminished capacity if something goes wrong, but if you have an outage, it's your fault.
Since the real proof of actual productivity for network admins is negative: nothing goes wrong (no trouble tickets). Also, the PHB will get their wish: No one to pay is infinite productivity (measured as output per $ spent).
First, who said anything about a revolution? I just said that people gave up their right to keep and bear arms because they expect the government to keep them safe. The government CAN'T keep you safe against most criminals in the commission of a violent crime, only YOU or another ARMED citizen can. The cops can clean up the mess, and maybe catch the crook later.
Second: AK-47s and handguns are doing a pretty good job against Abrams in Iraq. Tanks are pretty much useless against an insurgency. Small arms are the meat of an insurrection. Armor is only useful against other organized armies.
However, in the words of the man who WROTE the Second Amendment, James Madison:
"Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments . . . forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition. . . . [The] several kingdoms of Europe . . . are afraid to trust the people with arms."
And, to your point, his fellow founding father, Noah Webster: "Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States."
Here's another great Madison quote that is more on-topic for this thread: "I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpation's." -- James Madison
Yep: The war against statism. The people have become sheeple who want the government to keep them safe, so they have willingly given up the right to keep and bear arms, the right to privacy, the right to be secure against unwarranted searches and seizures (see the "War on drugs"), and now the right to freedom of association (movement).
The biggest threat most Americans face is their own government, which imprisons a greater percentage of its population than even Stalinist Russia, and can knock down your door in the middle of the night with thugs armed with machine guns if they think you are engaged in non-state-approved recreation.
Especially since the US considers anyone not from NATO/SATO a potential terrorist.
But hey, lots of/. ers and ACLU types want to give the same government that demonstrated this little lack of common sense more power. ,br>
Remember: The opposition will have that power sooner or later, and the guy who enforces it is, at best just trying to make a living, at worst easily corruptible.
Actually, on the last point, if this had happened in Lat-Am, a few $$ would have made it all OK.
I'm all for reducing oil usage, disengaging from the middle east, etc. etc. See my other posts.I just don't think that anything that relies on the electric grid and stores the power in a battery is a practical, mass-market, full lifecycle environmentally friendly, way to do that.
When Ultra-caps are practical, the grid is upgraded, and the power comes from renewable sources; then talk to me about EV anything. Until then, IMNSHO, biofuels, especially biodiesel, are our most practical solution to the set of problems posed by petroleum powered transportation.
I don't think bringing the fact that most of the arguments in this area are based on articles of faith instead of practicality into the debate is changing the subject. In fact, you would find that that tracks with my original post, which is that the Prius, which is ostentatiously different from other cars, including other hybrids, is more about making a statement than actually caring for the environment.
As at least one poster (from the UK, I believe) pointed out, you can get an Audi A3 diesel that gets better mileage, and will burn bio-diesel, that doesn't require the nasty battery. Of course, except for the badging, and some noise, it's indistinguishable from a gasoline powered A3, so it only matters to the owner.
Does Tesla Motors have Tesla Girls? ('80s music subref)
The problem with your links is they are to products that are either unavailable now, or inaccessible to the masses.
It's not a whacked out conspiracy, it's people who check your links and go "vaporware", or think you're shilling your own products.
You're already seeing it with anti-Spam blacklists. People are blocking who they think don't behave well. Soon it will change to only allowing those they feel are. Like it or not, security in protocol enhancement is coming. If the OSS community resists it, then the only alternative will be the TCG/TPM, and we will have a network that forks, despite shared network layer protocols.
Just as the Linux community seems to have learned nothing from the way the tower of babel effect hamstrung unix, so it seems that IPV4 minimalists will cause the Internet to fork.
I don't think people are tools, just that; as Douglas Adams observed when he posited we were descended from exiled management consultants, hairdressers, and phone cleaners; they are more concerned with how things look, than how they really work.
From your website, it's clear that how things look is what you are good at, and what matters to you.
That doesn't mean that the choices you make actually make the world a better place, or even meet your stated goals. But the choice of a plug-in hybrid does meet your unstated ones, and the ones that clearly matter to you, being cool. Also, given that you live in a very dense city, where driving is mostly short distances, and plugs are readily available, a plug-in electric may well be the right choice for you. Go for it. Just make sure that battery isn't "recycled" in Latin America.
For the vast majority of the individual transportation market, and especially for any commercial transportation, it isn't practical. Bio-Diesel, however, is. And the trash of the bio-diesel, iron and steel, has enough value that finding a place where local officials turn a blind eye to dumping toxic waste, for a bribe, isn't the most economical way of dealing with it at the end of its useful life.
Since farm equipment is mostly diesel, you would presume the biodiesel farmers would power their equipment with their own product.
The refining process would use your eco-friendly electricity (which will NEVER be solely from wind, solar, tide, wave, and hydro, since all except Hydro are not reliable, and the eco-nuts opposed those projects all the time too).
I agree with you on that point.
However, we can reduce pollution as well, by switching to Biofuels, without the attendant environmental consequences of the batteries, elimination of vehicles that suit American lifestyles, and massive upgrades to our electrical grid.
In a perfect world, you're right. However, you have losses in the substations and the various transformers along the way. You also have the fact that electricity is not an on-demand power production system, so it has to always run with significant headspace to current usage. That headspace is wasted energy. The ICE, on the other hand, leaves its unneeded fuel in the tank.
Every technical article I've read has shown that the electric car (not the hybrid, but plug-ins) is, in terms of its usage of the total available chemical energy in the fuel burned, for an equivalent vehicle in terms of passenger capacity, cargo space, range and general performance, less efficient than the ICE. I may be wrong, and I don't have the cites handy (if I remember correctly, it was in IEEE Spectrum a few years back). It's also possible that I am operating on old data.
There are also many things that a plug-in electric is just plain bad at. Any off-road or heavy haulage for one. Bio-Diesel doesn't have that problem.
Bio-Diesel is also completely compatible with all the current transportation infrastructure we have (fuel distribution and gas stations). Plug-in electric requires a massive, entirely new, infrastructure.
The response to my post has been fascinating. It's clear to me that this isn't about science, economics, or even fashion. This is a politico-religious movement bordering on a cult.
For the record: I think that we need to abandon petroleum for personal transportation. I believe that as a matter of national security, and, ultimately, justice in the world. The Petroleum economy supports despotism around the world, and arms those who seek to destroy our way of life. However, I'm not a fanatic would shout down or sneer at those who believe differently. I even like hybrids. I just think that the bio-diesel hybrid is the answer, not the plug-in electric.
You can buy Diesels that work fine on bio-diesel today. They can also run on regular diesel when bio-diesel is not available.
Why would everyone want to give the power generation companies even more control over their lives? Doesn't anyone remember the battles Surfrider fought against PG&E and Edison?
It may be easier to make clean power centrally, but it is also easier for those large utilities to bribe (sorry, give contributions to) politicians. They have no reason to shift to alternative fuels. If anything, they could use our greater dependence on them to justify more strip mines, and lobby for lower safety and environmental standards in the coal mining industry, more damming of rivers, and huge ocean wave, tide, and wind power projects.
If you have adequate local (meaning at your home) generation capacity, then maybe a plug-in is the answer. However, there's still that really nasty battery to deal with.
YMMV, but I'm more of a fan of biofuels than electric.
Electricity is fungible? Really? I can turn it into steel, for example? What Physics classes did you take? As far as what fossil fuels can be turned into: have you ever heard of plastics? You must work in marketing.
Electricity is actually ephemeral. Unless consumed at the moment of availability, or stored in a pretty inefficient battery, it's wasted. I OTOH, am a EE.
Just one more thing the electric car fanboys ignore: our existing electric grid can barely support its current peak loads. Good luck with even 2% of the populace adopting plug-ins. All those cars charging in Silicon Valley when the State Operator declares an emergency, I can see it now!
Slashdot Mirror
Try raising a family on less in CA, especially the Bay Area.
Within a matter of weeks, if not days, what you have on your computer is worth more than the machine, and is much harder to recreate than the machine is to fix or replace. Even just getting things set up the way you want them is worth more, in time value of money, to many people than the machine itself. You will notice that all these scandals have been about either misappropriation of personal data, or destruction of it.
How much do you think it's worth to people to not have their nude photos of their wife out on usenet?
How about all that quicken data you need for your taxes?
I'll give you one thing, you have illustrated the problem clearly: people don't value computer tech services, therefore they get services that have little or no value.
The problem goes beyond Best Buy, and to the tech industry in general. The buyers, be they consumers or the corporate CFOs, really have no idea what they are buying, so they can only distinguish based on price. The result has been a race to the bottom.
Honestly, I blame the consumers, they get what they deserve. Mechanics and Plumbers get paid more than computer techs, yet the computer field is more complex and changes faster. Why does anyone expect anything other than ignorant juvenile behavior for less than a living wage (which is at least $35/hr in CA)?
It's pretty simple cost containment/business sense. Not serving up a page to someone who isn't going to click through saves you costs that won't produce revenue.
This is analogous to a coffee shop that asks people who sit in their chairs and read the leftover newspapers but never buy coffee to go use the public library instead.
Businesses exist to make money. One of the ways a web-based, advertising supported, business can contain costs is by not serving up pages to people who aren't going to generate ad revenue. Whether blocking Firefox users actually increases your click through rate or other revenue or not is up to debate, but if it does, then doing so makes sense from a business standpoint.
If you don't want the ads, don't visit sites that serve them up.
Actually OPEC decides the price of oil. They employ very talented economists and use supercomputers to set supply targets in such a way as to maximize the price without encouraging switching to alternative energy sources.
So who is being exploited here, and by whom?
It's always about how everyone contributes according to their ability, but the Politburo gets according to their greed.
Is anyone surprised at yet more socialist hypocrisy? Socialism is incompatible with human nature, so of course it gets abused.
> I'm no fan of MS, but at least they get that the profit motive is basic human nature. Channeling it, as opposed to denying it, works better. In the latter case, the altruists get abused by those who pretend to play the game, but take control for their own benefit.
What the GPL fans miss is that they are required to dual license the resulting code. That bugs them, because they want a world in which all software has to be GPL. So they ignore the BSD license, on the same basis as corps ignore the GPL "So sue me".
Wrong, IMNSHO (I'm not going to waste time explaining why I'm not so humble, but I really do know what I'm talking about).
If you are proactive, as opposed to reactive, the only people who know about any problems are the admins. The networks and systems keep humming in a properly designed and executed infrastructure. You may see diminished capacity if something goes wrong, but if you have an outage, it's your fault.
The fact his boss is asking for "productivity measurement" for a job that defies it, indicates to me he is trying to find a way to fire him anyway.
Like I said, time to find another job.
Since the real proof of actual productivity for network admins is negative: nothing goes wrong (no trouble tickets). Also, the PHB will get their wish: No one to pay is infinite productivity (measured as output per $ spent).
First, who said anything about a revolution? I just said that people gave up their right to keep and bear arms because they expect the government to keep them safe. The government CAN'T keep you safe against most criminals in the commission of a violent crime, only YOU or another ARMED citizen can. The cops can clean up the mess, and maybe catch the crook later.
Second: AK-47s and handguns are doing a pretty good job against Abrams in Iraq. Tanks are pretty much useless against an insurgency. Small arms are the meat of an insurrection. Armor is only useful against other organized armies.
However, in the words of the man who WROTE the Second Amendment, James Madison:
"Besides the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments . . . forms a barrier against the enterprises of ambition. . . . [The] several kingdoms of Europe . . . are afraid to trust the people with arms."
And, to your point, his fellow founding father, Noah Webster: "Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States."
Here's another great Madison quote that is more on-topic for this thread: "I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpation's." -- James Madison
Yep: The war against statism. The people have become sheeple who want the government to keep them safe, so they have willingly given up the right to keep and bear arms, the right to privacy, the right to be secure against unwarranted searches and seizures (see the "War on drugs"), and now the right to freedom of association (movement).
The biggest threat most Americans face is their own government, which imprisons a greater percentage of its population than even Stalinist Russia, and can knock down your door in the middle of the night with thugs armed with machine guns if they think you are engaged in non-state-approved recreation.
Especially since the US considers anyone not from NATO/SATO a potential terrorist.
/. ers and ACLU types want to give the same government that demonstrated this little lack of common sense more power.
But hey, lots of
,br> Remember: The opposition will have that power sooner or later, and the guy who enforces it is, at best just trying to make a living, at worst easily corruptible.
Actually, on the last point, if this had happened in Lat-Am, a few $$ would have made it all OK.
I'm all for reducing oil usage, disengaging from the middle east, etc. etc. See my other posts.I just don't think that anything that relies on the electric grid and stores the power in a battery is a practical, mass-market, full lifecycle environmentally friendly, way to do that.
When Ultra-caps are practical, the grid is upgraded, and the power comes from renewable sources; then talk to me about EV anything. Until then, IMNSHO, biofuels, especially biodiesel, are our most practical solution to the set of problems posed by petroleum powered transportation.
I don't think bringing the fact that most of the arguments in this area are based on articles of faith instead of practicality into the debate is changing the subject. In fact, you would find that that tracks with my original post, which is that the Prius, which is ostentatiously different from other cars, including other hybrids, is more about making a statement than actually caring for the environment.
As at least one poster (from the UK, I believe) pointed out, you can get an Audi A3 diesel that gets better mileage, and will burn bio-diesel, that doesn't require the nasty battery. Of course, except for the badging, and some noise, it's indistinguishable from a gasoline powered A3, so it only matters to the owner.
Fix the battery problem, and I'm an EV convert. Until then, fryer oil is my friend :-)
Does Tesla Motors have Tesla Girls? ('80s music subref)
The problem with your links is they are to products that are either unavailable now, or inaccessible to the masses.
It's not a whacked out conspiracy, it's people who check your links and go "vaporware", or think you're shilling your own products.
You're already seeing it with anti-Spam blacklists. People are blocking who they think don't behave well. Soon it will change to only allowing those they feel are. Like it or not, security in protocol enhancement is coming. If the OSS community resists it, then the only alternative will be the TCG/TPM, and we will have a network that forks, despite shared network layer protocols.
Just as the Linux community seems to have learned nothing from the way the tower of babel effect hamstrung unix, so it seems that IPV4 minimalists will cause the Internet to fork.
I don't think people are tools, just that; as Douglas Adams observed when he posited we were descended from exiled management consultants, hairdressers, and phone cleaners; they are more concerned with how things look, than how they really work.
From your website, it's clear that how things look is what you are good at, and what matters to you.
That doesn't mean that the choices you make actually make the world a better place, or even meet your stated goals. But the choice of a plug-in hybrid does meet your unstated ones, and the ones that clearly matter to you, being cool. Also, given that you live in a very dense city, where driving is mostly short distances, and plugs are readily available, a plug-in electric may well be the right choice for you. Go for it. Just make sure that battery isn't "recycled" in Latin America.
For the vast majority of the individual transportation market, and especially for any commercial transportation, it isn't practical. Bio-Diesel, however, is. And the trash of the bio-diesel, iron and steel, has enough value that finding a place where local officials turn a blind eye to dumping toxic waste, for a bribe, isn't the most economical way of dealing with it at the end of its useful life.
Beautiful photos, by the way.
Since farm equipment is mostly diesel, you would presume the biodiesel farmers would power their equipment with their own product.
The refining process would use your eco-friendly electricity (which will NEVER be solely from wind, solar, tide, wave, and hydro, since all except Hydro are not reliable, and the eco-nuts opposed those projects all the time too).
I agree with you on that point.
However, we can reduce pollution as well, by switching to Biofuels, without the attendant environmental consequences of the batteries, elimination of vehicles that suit American lifestyles, and massive upgrades to our electrical grid.
I get my facts from a variety of sources. I watch South Park for fun. South Park is great at satire.
I love your tagline:
"Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so."
That's exactly what the Gaiainists that have taken over the environmental movement are doing.
More here.
In a perfect world, you're right. However, you have losses in the substations and the various transformers along the way. You also have the fact that electricity is not an on-demand power production system, so it has to always run with significant headspace to current usage. That headspace is wasted energy. The ICE, on the other hand, leaves its unneeded fuel in the tank.
Every technical article I've read has shown that the electric car (not the hybrid, but plug-ins) is, in terms of its usage of the total available chemical energy in the fuel burned, for an equivalent vehicle in terms of passenger capacity, cargo space, range and general performance, less efficient than the ICE. I may be wrong, and I don't have the cites handy (if I remember correctly, it was in IEEE Spectrum a few years back). It's also possible that I am operating on old data.
There are also many things that a plug-in electric is just plain bad at. Any off-road or heavy haulage for one. Bio-Diesel doesn't have that problem.
Bio-Diesel is also completely compatible with all the current transportation infrastructure we have (fuel distribution and gas stations). Plug-in electric requires a massive, entirely new, infrastructure.
One thing I am sure of, at least where I live, the power generation and grid can't keep up with current use, and the same crowd that are big advocates of electric cars, are actively opposing the only project likely to fix that.
The response to my post has been fascinating. It's clear to me that this isn't about science, economics, or even fashion. This is a politico-religious movement bordering on a cult.
For the record: I think that we need to abandon petroleum for personal transportation. I believe that as a matter of national security, and, ultimately, justice in the world. The Petroleum economy supports despotism around the world, and arms those who seek to destroy our way of life. However, I'm not a fanatic would shout down or sneer at those who believe differently. I even like hybrids. I just think that the bio-diesel hybrid is the answer, not the plug-in electric.
You can buy Diesels that work fine on bio-diesel today. They can also run on regular diesel when bio-diesel is not available.
Why would everyone want to give the power generation companies even more control over their lives? Doesn't anyone remember the battles Surfrider fought against PG&E and Edison?
It may be easier to make clean power centrally, but it is also easier for those large utilities to bribe (sorry, give contributions to) politicians. They have no reason to shift to alternative fuels. If anything, they could use our greater dependence on them to justify more strip mines, and lobby for lower safety and environmental standards in the coal mining industry, more damming of rivers, and huge ocean wave, tide, and wind power projects.
If you have adequate local (meaning at your home) generation capacity, then maybe a plug-in is the answer. However, there's still that really nasty battery to deal with.
YMMV, but I'm more of a fan of biofuels than electric.
An A-H (Ad Hominem, of course), A-C.
Troll elsewhere.
And, BTW, those tanker trucks, which are Diesels, can burn biofuels.
Bio-Diesel makes a lot more environmental sense, not least because the WORST carbon footprint it can have is 0, than electric anything.
Not at the point of consumption, due to transmission losses.
Electricity is fungible? Really? I can turn it into steel, for example? What Physics classes did you take? As far as what fossil fuels can be turned into: have you ever heard of plastics? You must work in marketing.
Electricity is actually ephemeral. Unless consumed at the moment of availability, or stored in a pretty inefficient battery, it's wasted. I OTOH, am a EE.
Just one more thing the electric car fanboys ignore: our existing electric grid can barely support its current peak loads. Good luck with even 2% of the populace adopting plug-ins. All those cars charging in Silicon Valley when the State Operator declares an emergency, I can see it now!