Before engaging Cold Fjord, be aware that he is the NSA's most prolific Slashdot shill, an inveterate bootlicker, cheerleader for all things police state.
Total agreement. Blue LEDs suck with their retina piercing intensity. Why does everything designed to be in a dark room have fricken blue LEDs? Why not orange or red?
What the USA needs w/r/t energy is for the government to fuck off and let supply and demand sort it out.
Exactly how will that unicorn market recognize the ancillary costs associated with producing and using fossil fuels, which are shifted on to the commons so that a few may experience extreme private profit. I too would like to see all industries be treated fairly, but exactly how is that going to happen when the market has no builtin mechanism to prevent common resources from being in effect, stolen? Aside from regulation, nothing. Sadly, we have to rely on the Feds for such regs, and socializing expenses and privatizing profits for the few seems to be it's current purpose. The fossil fuel industry has just about zero worries.
I've just moved into a new place. I've replaced all the frequently used built in lights with soft-white LEDs which honestly, have a perfectly nice light. For less frequently used spaces, I have some spare CFLs I'll use up.
I did spend about $70 on seven "60 watt" and two "40 watt" LED bulbs, but it's a good investment. There is one light that will be on about 10 hours/day. A 60 watt bulb there would use 0.6 kWhrs/day, or about 219 kWhrs/yr. At 12c a kWhr, that's $26.28/year for that light if incandescent. The LED is a 9.5 watt bulb, 0.095 kWhrs/day, 34.7 kWhr's per year, $4.16/yr in electricity.
So that one one bulb will save me $22/yr -- almost 1/3 of what it cost me to buy all of the bulbs combined. Between all of them, I'll probably have them all paid off in energy savings by next year, and by then, all those incandescents would have popped anyway and needed to be rebought, saving me some more money.
I know $22 isn't much, but by the same token, I wouldn't pull a twenty out of my wallet and then just drop it on the street for no reason.
For instance, I already work at home, having essentially retired, presently producing software for the amateur radio community (software defined radio stuff.) I don't charge for it, I give it away... My self image, I assure you, is just fine.
So, you have managed to come to a place in your life through a combination of luck and perseverance, that leaves you in a position where you don't have to worry about basic survival needs, and can instead focus on satisfying your recreational desires. You are lucky. For many people, the difference between working for pay or not, is the difference between being homeless or not, and there is nothing that will crush a person's soul quite so much as not even being able to provide for one's self.
It's true that money won't buy you happiness, but it is also true that poverty won't buy you happiness and it is much much harder to be happy while starving in the rain. In this sense, labor does play a role in the self-worth that people feel because once a person earns enough for the basics, that person can then engage in things that are life enhancing and not merely life sustaining.
Let's say it has a plastic shell, and you put a paper bag over it, but there is a subtle crack in a seam and the paper degrades due to moisture. Then you crash. Then you're screwed, lulled into a sense of security by your safety precautions.
If they can make a helmet out of paper corrugated or designed in some way to absorb impacts, they could do the same thing with inherently waterproof materials -- maybe even corrugate styrofoam or plastic sheeting.
That would be with a dry helmet of course. How much protection will it offer when wet and soggy because of water intrusion through seams in the plastic shell (I presume there is a plastic shell -- if not, talk about a non-starter).
Damn -- where do you shop that you can find chicken for $0.67/lb? From the middle of July through the end of December each year (dungeness crab season), I'm often in the market for 10 lbs of the cheapest chicken I can find -- 10 pounds will load four crab traps for an overnight soak and crabs just love the stuff. This year, I was usually paying about $1.49 to 1.69/lb -- occasionally I'd find some on sale for 99 cents/lb and really feel like I scored. Because I really like crab, I pay close attention to the price of chicken in any size package and in any cut (or simply whole), and I haven't seen chicken that cheap in many years. It's probably been more than three years since I could regularly count on a non-sale price of even a buck/lb.
For reference, a Gilig hybrid 40 passenger (seated) plus 32 passenger (standing) bus gets about 4.64 mpg (with 30 passengers, that would be 139 passenger miles per gallon).
Back to the boat, with a cruising speed just a hair over 31 mph, and assuming 100 gph to cruise, that boat gets 0.31 mpg. At 30 passengers, that is 9.3 passenger miles per gallon.
The thirstiest hummer gets 10 mpg (combined) and with one passenger, that would be 10 passenger mpg. If only city driving occurred, the boat would just edge out the hummer's 9 mpg city rating. http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/bymodel/2010_Hummer_H3.shtml
So, Google really could just give each employee a hummer and at least break even green-wise.
It looks like the engines in the boat are the ones listed on page 8 of the pdf I referenced above (the website for the boat says the engines will do 2300 rpm, but the Cat materials say 2100 rpm). Anyway, at 2100 rpm, the 1300 hp version burns 64.4 gph, so two of them would 128.8 gph.
Now certainly it doesn't run always at top speed, but it probably still burns in the high 50s gph per engine at cruising speed.
This is a boat, not a bus. Now, boats can be incredibly efficient means of transportation if scaled up large enough and loaded to capacity, but using a small boat for a small group is astoundingly inefficient unless you're looking at a sailboat, which won't be fast enough for commuter purposes (or if so, certainly not dry enough).
So each passenger is probably responsible for 3-4 gallons of diesel per hour to ride this boat. In other words, it would probably be greener to send each employee to work alone in an F150.
I'm no economist, but isn't that backwards? Most currencies are inflationary, meaning that it takes more of them every year to buy the same junk as last. People thus want to spend their money on real stuff more quickly so they can get full value out of their money. In a deflationary cycle, it takes less money over time to buy the same amount of stuff -- this is the same as saying that the currency's value rises over time and in essence, it makes everything cheaper the longer you wait. This is considered bad because people will hoard money rather than spend it, and that slows trade in the economy.
Ultimately, if we are to have this thing called "interest", we have to have inflationary money otherwise, banks would end up with al the money in existence due to the nature of compounding. I don't particularly like this, but it seems that inflation and credit go hand in hand. We could live without credit, saving for everything we buy, but that would be a pretty massive change. Everyone's house would probably be worth about 25% or less of current value (total guess) for example -- whatever the reduction, current prices are where they are at because people can borrow more than they have -- a lot more.
A better question, why isn't the data automatically destroyed? I can understand storing it for a certain amount of time for the scenario where one's car is stolen while the owner is on vacation... two weeks would probably cover 99% of users and people who expect to be gone for months on end should have an opt-in method for longer storage. But most of the data should be discarded automatically and frequently.
Then we have Nancy Pelosi, my own lickspittle rep, and hundreds of other democrats totally on board with the whole neo-con agenda. You faux-liberals can take your awe of the Feds and just shove it.
Why would you count the cost of labor? Most people don't work for an employer that will allow them to work unlimited hours -- most people hit 40 hrs and that's it. Some people get overtime, but more than about 20 hours of OT is pretty rare. Some people get paid salary so there's no way for them to get more for some of their time. Some people get second jobs, but for the most part, moonlighting jobs pay less than one's regular gig, and most moonlighting jobs are low skill low pay.
Yes -- somebody out there will be the __rare__ exception to all that. You are an outlier.
In other words, the time a person has after work is not worth what their employer pays them -- it may be worth more or less depending on whether one is severely under or over compensated but ultimately, your time is worth zero dollars if you can't work extra hours. Stated otherwise, your time is priceless, and what matters is the joy you derive from it. That joy might come from assembling legos, growing carrots, DIY routers (and hey, pfSense http://www.pfsense.org/ is a great option for that), or whatever, but because your free uncompensatable time isn't worth anything monetary, don't count that in the cost of a DIY system -- it is perfectly valid however to count the joy value and for you, that is apparently a negative number, and you should probably spend $300 on a router. For others, a DIY system could prove cheaper in a monetary sense, and provide substantial joy, which in essence lowers the cost further (because that person did not have to spend money on hookers or books or ski trips -- that's a monetary savings).
And if the NSA could keep its hands off of domestic data
You know what is sad-funny? If you look at the original leaked verizon order, it applies to 3 out 4 categories of phone calls:
1. those that start and end in the US 2. those that start in the US and end in a foreign country. 3. those that start in a foreign country and end in the US.
It expressly excludes calls that start and end in a foreign country. Good job focusing outward NSA.
So true. Money is loaned into existence. It seems like such a scam that a bank can create money out of nothing and then make a profit it. I wish I could figure out a business where I sell nothing, not even air, for a profit.
I'm vague about Cryptomicon after reading it only once -- wasn't that mostly encryption machines and searching for lost gold?
I do recall in The Diamond Age a digital untraceable currency -- that is what lead to the breakdown of traditional governmental forms, the inability to collect taxes.
When that bootlicker shows up, you can refer him to this article:
If Snowden Returned to US For Trial, All Whistleblower Evidence Would Likely Be Inadmissible
If Edward Snowden comes back to the US to face trial, he likely will not be able to tell a jury why he did what he did, and what happened because of his actions. Contrary to common sense, there is no public interest exception to the Espionage Act. Prosecutors in recent cases have convinced courts that the intent of the leaker, the value of leaks to the public, and the lack of harm caused by the leaks are irrelevant -- and are therefore inadmissible in court.
The NSA is so busy building a haystack in which to search for needles, it misses the 100 ton girders with a Vegas scale neon sign pointing right at them.
The fact that the statute predates the constitution supports the opposite conclusion you are drawing because a more recent edict by a more powerful body clearly repeals prior inferior contrary law.
Slashdot Mirror
Before engaging Cold Fjord, be aware that he is the NSA's most prolific Slashdot shill, an inveterate bootlicker, cheerleader for all things police state.
Total agreement. Blue LEDs suck with their retina piercing intensity. Why does everything designed to be in a dark room have fricken blue LEDs? Why not orange or red?
Exactly how will that unicorn market recognize the ancillary costs associated with producing and using fossil fuels, which are shifted on to the commons so that a few may experience extreme private profit. I too would like to see all industries be treated fairly, but exactly how is that going to happen when the market has no builtin mechanism to prevent common resources from being in effect, stolen? Aside from regulation, nothing. Sadly, we have to rely on the Feds for such regs, and socializing expenses and privatizing profits for the few seems to be it's current purpose. The fossil fuel industry has just about zero worries.
You'll have to find a piece of paper, a pen, an envelope, and a stamp. Tweeting won't work here.
I've just moved into a new place. I've replaced all the frequently used built in lights with soft-white LEDs which honestly, have a perfectly nice light. For less frequently used spaces, I have some spare CFLs I'll use up.
I did spend about $70 on seven "60 watt" and two "40 watt" LED bulbs, but it's a good investment. There is one light that will be on about 10 hours/day. A 60 watt bulb there would use 0.6 kWhrs/day, or about 219 kWhrs/yr. At 12c a kWhr, that's $26.28/year for that light if incandescent. The LED is a 9.5 watt bulb, 0.095 kWhrs/day, 34.7 kWhr's per year, $4.16/yr in electricity.
So that one one bulb will save me $22/yr -- almost 1/3 of what it cost me to buy all of the bulbs combined. Between all of them, I'll probably have them all paid off in energy savings by next year, and by then, all those incandescents would have popped anyway and needed to be rebought, saving me some more money.
I know $22 isn't much, but by the same token, I wouldn't pull a twenty out of my wallet and then just drop it on the street for no reason.
So, you have managed to come to a place in your life through a combination of luck and perseverance, that leaves you in a position where you don't have to worry about basic survival needs, and can instead focus on satisfying your recreational desires. You are lucky. For many people, the difference between working for pay or not, is the difference between being homeless or not, and there is nothing that will crush a person's soul quite so much as not even being able to provide for one's self.
It's true that money won't buy you happiness, but it is also true that poverty won't buy you happiness and it is much much harder to be happy while starving in the rain. In this sense, labor does play a role in the self-worth that people feel because once a person earns enough for the basics, that person can then engage in things that are life enhancing and not merely life sustaining.
Let's say it has a plastic shell, and you put a paper bag over it, but there is a subtle crack in a seam and the paper degrades due to moisture. Then you crash. Then you're screwed, lulled into a sense of security by your safety precautions.
If they can make a helmet out of paper corrugated or designed in some way to absorb impacts, they could do the same thing with inherently waterproof materials -- maybe even corrugate styrofoam or plastic sheeting.
That would be with a dry helmet of course. How much protection will it offer when wet and soggy because of water intrusion through seams in the plastic shell (I presume there is a plastic shell -- if not, talk about a non-starter).
Damn -- where do you shop that you can find chicken for $0.67/lb? From the middle of July through the end of December each year (dungeness crab season), I'm often in the market for 10 lbs of the cheapest chicken I can find -- 10 pounds will load four crab traps for an overnight soak and crabs just love the stuff. This year, I was usually paying about $1.49 to 1.69/lb -- occasionally I'd find some on sale for 99 cents/lb and really feel like I scored. Because I really like crab, I pay close attention to the price of chicken in any size package and in any cut (or simply whole), and I haven't seen chicken that cheap in many years. It's probably been more than three years since I could regularly count on a non-sale price of even a buck/lb.
I'm pretty tolerant of articles for slashdot, but this seems really far off subject.
Call in Fraa Jad -- he can fix it.
For reference, a Gilig hybrid 40 passenger (seated) plus 32 passenger (standing) bus gets about 4.64 mpg (with 30 passengers, that would be 139 passenger miles per gallon).
see pages 3 & 4:
http://146.186.225.57/buses/reports/409.pdf?1347373958
Back to the boat, with a cruising speed just a hair over 31 mph, and assuming 100 gph to cruise, that boat gets 0.31 mpg. At 30 passengers, that is 9.3 passenger miles per gallon.
The thirstiest hummer gets 10 mpg (combined) and with one passenger, that would be 10 passenger mpg. If only city driving occurred, the boat would just edge out the hummer's 9 mpg city rating.
http://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/bymodel/2010_Hummer_H3.shtml
So, Google really could just give each employee a hummer and at least break even green-wise.
Actual boat specs:
http://www.allamericanmarine.com/project/83-whale-watch-tour-catamaran/
It looks like the engines in the boat are the ones listed on page 8 of the pdf I referenced above (the website for the boat says the engines will do 2300 rpm, but the Cat materials say 2100 rpm). Anyway, at 2100 rpm, the 1300 hp version burns 64.4 gph, so two of them would 128.8 gph.
Now certainly it doesn't run always at top speed, but it probably still burns in the high 50s gph per engine at cruising speed.
This is a boat, not a bus. Now, boats can be incredibly efficient means of transportation if scaled up large enough and loaded to capacity, but using a small boat for a small group is astoundingly inefficient unless you're looking at a sailboat, which won't be fast enough for commuter purposes (or if so, certainly not dry enough).
This is the boat designer and a similar boat: http://www.teknicraft.com/showcase/kachemak-voyager
If we assume that Triumphant is similar to this sister:
engines: 2 x Caterpillar C32 ACERT
hp: 1081kW(1450bhp) @2300rpm
That is apparently not combined hp but the hp of each engine. Only two Cat engines hit 2300 RPM and one is 1600 hp so it can't be that one -- the other one is a 1450 hp model that burns 77.4 gph -- with twins, that amounts to 154.8 gallons/hr. See pdf page 9: http://marine.cat.com/cda/files/1377726/7/Cat%20C32%20ACERT%20Spec%20Sheet%20-%20Commercial.pdf
So each passenger is probably responsible for 3-4 gallons of diesel per hour to ride this boat. In other words, it would probably be greener to send each employee to work alone in an F150.
I'm no economist, but isn't that backwards? Most currencies are inflationary, meaning that it takes more of them every year to buy the same junk as last. People thus want to spend their money on real stuff more quickly so they can get full value out of their money. In a deflationary cycle, it takes less money over time to buy the same amount of stuff -- this is the same as saying that the currency's value rises over time and in essence, it makes everything cheaper the longer you wait. This is considered bad because people will hoard money rather than spend it, and that slows trade in the economy.
Ultimately, if we are to have this thing called "interest", we have to have inflationary money otherwise, banks would end up with al the money in existence due to the nature of compounding. I don't particularly like this, but it seems that inflation and credit go hand in hand. We could live without credit, saving for everything we buy, but that would be a pretty massive change. Everyone's house would probably be worth about 25% or less of current value (total guess) for example -- whatever the reduction, current prices are where they are at because people can borrow more than they have -- a lot more.
A better question, why isn't the data automatically destroyed? I can understand storing it for a certain amount of time for the scenario where one's car is stolen while the owner is on vacation ... two weeks would probably cover 99% of users and people who expect to be gone for months on end should have an opt-in method for longer storage. But most of the data should be discarded automatically and frequently.
That's prejudice.
First off, look at exactly how warmongerish the DNC has been for the last decade. It's really sad that only a sanitized version of the Code Pink discussion with HRC exists any more (textual description: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0307-01.htm ) -- she was so rabidly for invading Iraq, despite failing to read the Intelligence Estimate which called in to question the WMD shit ( http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/02/03/448804/-Hillary-Clinton-and-the-2002-National-Intelligence-Estimate-A-case-of-evasion# )-- frothing at the mouth for war.
Then we have Nancy Pelosi, my own lickspittle rep, and hundreds of other democrats totally on board with the whole neo-con agenda. You faux-liberals can take your awe of the Feds and just shove it.
Why would you count the cost of labor? Most people don't work for an employer that will allow them to work unlimited hours -- most people hit 40 hrs and that's it. Some people get overtime, but more than about 20 hours of OT is pretty rare. Some people get paid salary so there's no way for them to get more for some of their time. Some people get second jobs, but for the most part, moonlighting jobs pay less than one's regular gig, and most moonlighting jobs are low skill low pay.
Yes -- somebody out there will be the __rare__ exception to all that. You are an outlier.
In other words, the time a person has after work is not worth what their employer pays them -- it may be worth more or less depending on whether one is severely under or over compensated but ultimately, your time is worth zero dollars if you can't work extra hours. Stated otherwise, your time is priceless, and what matters is the joy you derive from it. That joy might come from assembling legos, growing carrots, DIY routers (and hey, pfSense http://www.pfsense.org/ is a great option for that), or whatever, but because your free uncompensatable time isn't worth anything monetary, don't count that in the cost of a DIY system -- it is perfectly valid however to count the joy value and for you, that is apparently a negative number, and you should probably spend $300 on a router. For others, a DIY system could prove cheaper in a monetary sense, and provide substantial joy, which in essence lowers the cost further (because that person did not have to spend money on hookers or books or ski trips -- that's a monetary savings).
You know what is sad-funny? If you look at the original leaked verizon order, it applies to 3 out 4 categories of phone calls:
1. those that start and end in the US
2. those that start in the US and end in a foreign country.
3. those that start in a foreign country and end in the US.
It expressly excludes calls that start and end in a foreign country. Good job focusing outward NSA.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2013/jun/06/verizon-telephone-data-court-order
So true. Money is loaned into existence. It seems like such a scam that a bank can create money out of nothing and then make a profit it. I wish I could figure out a business where I sell nothing, not even air, for a profit.
I'm vague about Cryptomicon after reading it only once -- wasn't that mostly encryption machines and searching for lost gold?
I do recall in The Diamond Age a digital untraceable currency -- that is what lead to the breakdown of traditional governmental forms, the inability to collect taxes.
When that bootlicker shows up, you can refer him to this article:
If Snowden Returned to US For Trial, All Whistleblower Evidence Would Likely Be Inadmissible
https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/blog/2013/12/if-snowden-returned-us-trial-all-whistleblower-evidence-would-likely-be-inadmissible
The NSA is so busy building a haystack in which to search for needles, it misses the 100 ton girders with a Vegas scale neon sign pointing right at them.
Just go ahead and use the real word instead of the PC kindergarten teacher "authoritarian corporatocracy" bullshit. It's called "fascism".
The fact that the statute predates the constitution supports the opposite conclusion you are drawing because a more recent edict by a more powerful body clearly repeals prior inferior contrary law.