--or just perhaps, you have noticed that the old left/right paradigm is really a too-generic description to be used for automatic "I agree with such and such because they are left wing" or right wing, and etc? Perhaps ideas are inherently more "human" than a direction or geographical area and those pre conceived constructs are not relevant any longer? Like right and wrong might be a better way to look at things than right and left.
I know you got a funny mod on it and it was funny, but it's funny because it's true. I frequently find myself agreeing with a point some pol made, after which I don't agree much with them, and it goes across the political spectrum.
As I get older I am less enamored of labels-applied, as I am of consistenency and results and logic and reason as pertains individuals. I guess that means removing one's self from the herd more and being more independent in thinking, using the right tool rather than some clique's currently "popular" tool. Something like that anyway.
Simpler, party labels or identifying as a political "side" or "wing" are forced and artificial, and usually promoted from places that have an agenda that is primarily designed to keep people in general from unifying around their common ground. For instance, the "left wing" lately is becoming alarmed over the first amendment, some strict traditional right wing have long been alarmed over the second and the 4th, both wings are alarmed over the 5th, both should be alarmed over the 10th and 13th, so there exists enough common ground to stop and for both sides to look around and see if perhaps there is a commonality of agreement to see where these threats come from,and to note that the "other side" has had a valid point all along,that a lot of the supposed differences were induced rather than naturally occuring, and maybe it's time to cooperate instead of squabble.
What I like to term "the goons", those of whom really control the planet and adhere to no particular bloc or wing outside of power and profit outside of their virtual congame labels, love to continue the charade game of "divide and conquer" because it is so immensely profitable for them, and because it is so easy for them to perpetuate this congame.
That "game" is why they have been so successful. Now, that means, the more people who can admit to a certain amount of personal fake-out,just accept it and deal with it rationally, and who can then step outside the box and stop playing that game with "the goons", the better off all of us who are being exploited will be, no matter language, race, nationality, etc.
--yes, I think living in lame megalopolii with millions of people is stupid, I have, won't ever do it again. Humans crammed together like that go crazy, the crime rate rises above acceptable levels. The fact is though, there still is a direct correlation between numbers of people who actually are capable of self defense and those who aren't in regards crime in general. and yes, I have lived in vermont and it really does sink int the criminal element that they can't just go pick any random victim and have their will with them. it actually *does* work. You might not know that there are literally millions of unreported but successful self defense defenses per annum in the US that don't make it into the official stats, now you do though. It can be as complex as you want, but my belief, and the beliefs of our founders are that you have a "born with" right to your person and property. Defense of those are just sine non qua obviously. I have read some stories about repeat offenders in englande, breaking into homes, abusing the occupants, and the homeowners getting charged when they resisted and fought back.
That, sir, is quite mad, and is far from civilized. In both england and in australia, the two largest and most-similar places to the US, since the recent mass almost total disarming of their populations the crimes rates have simply soared. while still perhaps "lower" than this or that other example, I suggest you just settle back and wait a bit, see how that goes. Please, enjoy the experience fully.
Here it is in a nutshell. I have been there, done that on self defense, unfortunately. I have personal anecdotal that trumps your academic theory, as opposed to my reality. I seemed to have avoided becoming a victim. YOU can be as undefended as you want to be. Please, go right ahead. If YOU or any government seek to disarm me,though,through any misguided social engineering constructs based on junk science and covert fascist tyrannical bents, you will not. No sir, you definetly will not. I am not a predator, never have been one, nor will I become a potential victim by allowing such an illegal act that violates my born-with rights as any human has. I will not become a potential victim like that. YOU can choose to be a victim,live like a potential victim,be a slave, live under any sort of disarmed existence you choose to, but I will not. If you or "your kind" insist,allegorically speaking, you will find out personally what it means to be a free person or a slave. You and your fellow slaves can live in your elite smug serfdom,you are welcome to it, just do not forget,your trusted governments are the biggest criminals,it is proven historical so many times it is indisputable, and once they get started on overt mass criminality, they will not stop, or be tempered in their efforts, they will not be impressed with your "beliefs" in you "superior civilization" or however you wish to term it.
Those 80 to 100 million people thought EXACTLY like you do now, and they were...quite wrong it turns out. Utterly and completly wrong. They wished it 'wasn't so" but it was. I am sure there were any number of them who "thought" they lived where it was "civilised" and "their governments would never do that".
I have fire extinguishers, I don't comnpletely rely on the fire department. I have some medical skills and equipment, so in an emergency I may be of some use. I also own self defense tools, plus I choose to live in a state that is cool with self defense. therefore when applicable I have a choice, based on the circumstance, personal self defense of any nature, plus I can also contact the authroties, but to think authorities can teleport many tens of miles in an emergency situation so as to be effective is quite naieve.
I sincerely hope you never become a victim, as you won't forget it and it might make you rethink your paradigm on this. I have noted this with several people who after becoming victims, seemed to rethink on reality a little. Sometimes it has to go that far to be able to adequately differen
--I have read all of the replies 0 and above as of late last night. After serious contemplation, at this time, my recommendation is earth bermed or underground construction. The reasons are all valid, it has a superior better energy model, it has a model as to "long lasting" which fit the criteria, and the design is by far the best when it comes to both natural disasters and man made disasters. Ignoring the potential for both of the latter is naieve, in my opinion. I would consider that to actually be the primary consideration.
I would also insist into any construction plans a definite way for planned air in and air out, and to make use of exisiting technology to filter and sterilise this air, and to have a ways to do that independent of the electrical power grid, although that can be "one" of the energy sources.
I will also recommend two books to start with, by the same author, a respected and recognized personal home structure architect/planner and geopolitical analyst, Joel Skousen. The two books are "The Secure Home" and "Strategic Relocation".
I guarantee you will need both those books, and will enjoy them. They are excellent for the tech library and for anyone considering a move or a new home or both.
His website is joelskousen.com easy enough to remember, and a lot of information there onsite.
The various underground/earth bermed/ earth ship styled construction techniques and tips and gotchas are easily researchable using normal search terms.
If you'd like to see what I consider to be a pretty cheap (real cheap really) but doable system, goto waltonfeeds website, look at their "grand daddy of all root cellars" project. It's pretty spiffy.
If you would like more book recommendations, just ask. Good luck on your new home! I think it is excellent you are thinking along these lines. Quality, safety, comfort, responsibility to not only yourself and family and this generation, but generations to come. That's the way to think and act!
I certainly saw some interesting concepts presented in the thread, most of them I were familiar with already though, a couple of new ones to me. One I noticed wasn't presented yet, it might be by now, is the norwegian-viking styled massive logs construction. It is log home construction using very few logs, but those are whoppers. Watched it once on one of the home shows on TV, forget which one now, this old shack or whatever.
--actually both weapons were crap when first deployed in real world situations. They required extensive modifications. The first models were betas, even though produced in large numbers. The 16 in particular was introduced because of the severe lack of marksmanship as more of the population was "city kids" who honestly did not have a full grasp of firearms, necessitating "spray and pray" models of individual weapons. And by being "spray and pray", they exhausted a basic battle load of ammunition, hence a reduced caliber, lighter in weight was required, the individual soldier then being able to cary more rounds to achieve the same "results" as soldiers in the past. It's also a function of the military industrial complex and it's profits, and this applies to all nations, as they all have a military industrial profit oriented industry. it is no different than any other manufacturing effort, they have to keep selling more to make any money. No large corporations seek to put themselves out of business. And no large corporations are thrilled to completely change their business model from one of "right now this quarter prifitability" to a gamble based on huge expense, re tooling, entering a new market, etc. They will do that sometimes, but only if they are convinced they will remain as profitable or get even more profitable. Econo 101 there.
With that said, the vast majority of casualities in warfare since ww2-very generally speaking, all over the world-have arisen from non-bullet injuries, they are more from shrapnel, etc. The indidividual rifle is still important, but only in the latter stages of warfare and in occupation of terrain. The assault stages of warfare and most of the "big work" involved in warfare are always done now (call it 99%) with larger weapons than man portable.
--there are around 80 to 100 MILLION people in the last century who died as a direct result of their OWN governments. In the 20th century, MORE people died as a result of their own governments murdereous actions than died as a result of foreigners killing them in wars. This is just DATA. It can not be disputed, it is *real*
You can't take a poll of those people, but I would wager all of them would have wished to own a simple, normal firearm with no BS politically correct crap associated with either it or it's ammunition. If not something even better quality.
Until you have become a victim of state sponsored terrorism and assorted indignities, maybe it's a good idea to at least contemplate the theoretical possibility? Not to mention normal crime?
Regimes who publically pronounce by words and laws that they cannot trust their own populations with firearms are not to be trusted. Populations who cannot contemplate their own regimes going rogue are naieve, and really shouldn't be trusted until they rid themselves of that naievete. The proper mindset, IMO, is that both the official state and it's citizenry remain armed. This is not a perfect solution,not at all, there are problems associated with it, but so far on the planet it approaches the best solution.
Inside the united states, there are 50 states. Of those, the state with the least restrictive laws, vermont, has the lowest crime rate. In europe, the nation with the least restrictive laws over "civilians" and firearms ownership-switzerland-has the lowest crime rate, and also the lowest level of what might be termed "human rights abuses" by their own government as they are commonly understood.
You might consider those verifiable stats to be just random and co-incidental, wheras a lot of scholars see it as a decent level of "proof of concept" with the premise of the universal right of self defense. You either believe you have a born with right to your person and self defense, or you believe that you do not, again, binary. If you do have this right, then a lot of situations require use of self defense tools. This is just reality.
There's theory, then practice. In the scientific model, results need to be reproducable. These social results have been in history. Once a state disarms it's own population, at some point they have always gone into serious exploitation mode. The time frame involved may be different, but it inevitably happens. Thinking that this somehow will now "not" happen because of....no reason ever offered from the other side.. is naieve.
No amount of anti weaponry legislation has ever resulted in the elimination of a states potential to fall into abusive mode, on the contrary, it can be shown to up the chances of it occurring eventually.
The US is sort of unique in the world, we have an historical belief system, currently under attack constantly unfortunately, that we have "born-with" as opposed to "government-granted" rights. No other nation has bingoed to this yet in their official designations of exactly what government and non government really are. All other nations assume government owns it's citizenry. We don't, although many here would like to see that happen. Those people I consider to be at best perhaps quite well meaning but seriously uninformed, at worst, traitors and a definete menace. All other nations operate exclusively under "government granted" rights. We theoretically do not. Our first born with right is "free speech", which everyone more or less assumes is basically a good idea, well, because it is. Our second, and one which at the time it was delineated had just been proven to be of a similar and extremely important nature, is our second delineation of a born-with right, that of self defense and to have the means to be able to defend from an organization as large as a "government". This by necessity means use of weapons, basically following whatever technology curve that "government" grants itself. It is unfortunate that governments always seem to seek a "monopoly on violence
---I looked in once and thought it was some sort of voodoo monitor ray insulation. This explains the critters that walk in and out of it, too, I guess....
..last I knew you could still get raw feeds with a big dish and appropriate receiver. I don't know if any of the major networks scramble their signal, last I watched any was several years ago now. Someone here probably has more up to date knowledge I'm sure. The raw feeds frequently don't (didn't) have commercials, you can see them talking and b.s.ing, etc during that time.
...well you could launch your own satellite, but because of the new "war on tarism" you would have to build your rocket using one million of those new 62.5 gram rocket motors. Just some minor technical engineering details, that's all....
And I checked the fine print, those FOOLS left something out, it's NOT illegal to build your own super scalar planeteary defense beams. Those neurally challeneged polidrones, hiring non geek lawyers to write all them new laws....heh heh heh
--will that still then work back into the 486? I'm interested in this thread because I got given an older toshiba laptop, a pentium 1, 100 speed, with "just a floppy" and a borked hard drive. Want another linux machine of some kind, or bsd or whatever. Not real interested in reinstalling 95 on it, and will put up with the speed loss I guess. And those burn one floppy then download for two months on my rural dialup and coal burner modem just ain't gonna happen. Was wondering how to do it easier than getting an external cd drive or some serial port connection, that sounds easier by far, now I wonder if it being a laptop that it won't work. Hmmm.. I never even looked yet, are laptop hard drive drive connections the same as desktops? I need to use my own advice and open that thing up, it's been sitting on a junque pile long enough I guess... projects, projects, projects..... whoo boy, spring gardening season too....
--find out how far you can go with the ram, update that, max it out used. That old of RAM you can find the ram *cheap*. You want it maxed. Buy a used hardrive of a gig or 2 or something like that. Borrow an external cd rom drive, or have the guy at the white box shop do it, ask to use his. Plug that in, put up with the slowness. Install something new like peanut or latest mandrake, pick and choose options, etc, and just put up with the speed of it, after all it's your kid gonna be using it mostly. Use a "you make it" window manager instead of guhhnome or k-thisandthat.
And there ya go! Proly take ya all freekin day and nite day to install it, but then you'll have it. ram might cost ya 5 bucks, a one gigger whatever drive maybe 10$. PLUS, junior gets to see hardware upgrading! It's part of geekdom! It ain't all typing and starin at the screen, there's important SCREWDRIVER action young lads need to learn! BLESS my dad for getting me REAL tools when I was a kid instead of those plastic toy tools. I got his grade b stuff he didn't want, some he cut down to size or picked for size, but they were *real* tools made outta 'murican steel like God intended. And I got old radios and busted lawnmowers and woodscraps and odd chunks of metallic things and stuff to dork with. Cool beans! I was building stuff and tearing apart crap before I could read all that well. Now I ain't askeered of nuthin, even though I still bork half or more of my junker projects.
--a large part of the infrastructure costs are directly blameable by the archaic notion that humans have to be in a centralised location in order to trade and do commerce. the major over priced locations that most of the content comes from are horribly over priced and based on , well, where oxen trails crossed or where port cities got established. the living costs in those areas are insane, as are the monopolies in 'broadcast' that arose around them, thereby driving up costs. it's artificial and doesn't need to happen. Look at salon and their economic problems, not necessary, they blew most of their money on location (not needed) and over paying for content, because their content providers demand too high a price because most of them choose to live where it's artificially expensive, ie, those old oxen trail crosing or port cities. It's ridiculous. The web is allowing people to actually move out of cities if they want to and are smart, major urban areas need to shrink in size and go back to being cheaper, they should be inhabited by people who have an actual NEED to be there, not an artificialality need brought about by historical inertia as much as anything else. We don't NEED our news to be coordinated around Dc and NYC. We don't NEED our entertainments to be coordinated around "hollywood". Not near as much anyway. Amd we sure don't NEED there to be an over paid "class" of monopolists, this pricing structure for any number of things, including bandwith, is driven by monopolies and artidfical scarcities and bogus "laws" that are primarily breaks given to those bribery based lobbying efforts that have the deepest pockets. It's not all that, but I would contend it's a large part of it.
Example, ww1, correspondent on the front lines, gets to some telegraph, sends in the news, got almost a complete lock on the info, it can be expensive and slow to propagate, plus be politically manipulated. Fast forward ww2. More, telephone voice used with transcription at the other end, faster, less monopolistic, more correspondents. Fast forward vietnam, slight delay video avaialble right in peoples living rooms. more correspondents possible. Fast forward desert storm one, real time as it's happening news. More correspondents, the tech existed then for thousands if that was what was wanted.
Now, anyone can be a news person, get published, real time,we can and now DO have millions of people reporting, I haunt forums, I get "news" all the time that isn't on drudge or cnn. The "need" for monopolies and for great expense has dropped to almost nil. It's becoming irrelevant to have a peter jennings telling me what's going on when I can just real time chat or video with someone actually living where that news is ahppening. We don't need to keep paying those salaries and for that infrastructure, we can skip the entire profit middleman if we choose to, it's just slow adopting, but we CAN do that now. A lot of us already do that, we own and use forums, wikis, chatrooms,blogs etc.
Costs will drop eventually as we de centralise more and more people are able to get out of first gear with their computers and use the rest of the transmission. and it will really drop when we drop the need to have middleman do our reporting for us, middlemen and their corps and buildings and huge salaries. then we won't need those adverts, either, can start to cut that bloated industry down, yet another waste of cash and we certainly don't need more sophisiticated brainwashing developed and deployed, which is what most advertising is. It ain't needed and I can come up with my own "opinion" and if I need a product all i want is a price, what it does, and look at some reviews, i don't need to be brainwashed into getting it.. I can share my "news" I get personally with people all over the planet, we all share, cut the middlemen out, not needed. THAT is one place some savings can come from, BIG BIG savings. Let's get rid of those bloated buggywhip jobs and industries, they made their TRILLIONS already,last century, cool, move forward, time to move on
--in my browser ten years from now? I want my choice of foxy babe talking head and voice to be my personal information guide. I talk to her, she goes and finds the data I want and I can either read it myself or she acts like a secretary of sorts, she reads the info to me, I can stop and interact, reply to a post or order something, etc, and I can give instructions for later use like a cronjob of sorts. maybe something like, "I'll want to see movie whatever this evening, go find me the best deal for download, automatically pay for it or get it free, que it up, around 9pm I'll be ready to watch it" "In the meantime, go to my site and check on my sales today, and if there any customer questions, answer them if you can, if you can't, redirect them to my priority inbox." Something like that. I can do my email or other communications with other people, using text or rich media. The browser (and my dreambabe guide) is integrated with other applications at my direction, and it's done via voice as well as keyboard or mouse, any or all of my choosing. The biggest trend I can see is really getting voice working, both ways. An Eliza type thing that really works. Typing and mousing around is getting old now, time to move on how humans communicate, and that is primarily voice. We talk, the other stuff is for archiving purposes more than anything else. And webpages are getting more dynamic, less static daily it seems. And the "web" is just a small subset mirror of "reality", even a pure e-commerce site that sells stuff still has a real warehouse someplace, real trucks deliver. Electronic news media is still just mirroring what's going on in the real world. We don't pass each other notes for all our communications, most of the time we only do that if voice isn't as avaialable or handy. We use text for time shifting and for archiving and for permanent records, but a lot of our communications doesn't require that, it can be sounds and visual images that are just used, then they can poof away except as memories.
If you look at how most humans learn,and how we continue as adults to communicate, starting as children, voice and body language is what is learned first, reading comes later. We need to be able to talk to the boxes, the boxes talk to each other, and web browsers will be that deal that links it all together. The work and play we do will be controlled by our voices, like it is now.
earrings that can have a trebel hook installed at the campsite and be turned into a good shiny fishing lure. Note, I suggest cheap brand metal for these earrings. The evil underwater stump monsters will snag them occassionally, heh.
A ring that somehow can be used to store your login/passwords. No idea how to do that but seems like a spiffy idea. Watch battery, bluetooth chip, small memory of some kind, something like that.
Take a clue from the middle east and the way they store family wealth there still,convert some of your soon to be less valuable petrodollars into gold coins, said coins get kludged together into a necklace, so you have some real money for emergency/survival situations. 1/10th ounce coins are available now and would seem to be easy to make a necklace out of them, small enough to not be ridiculous, already broken down into barterable unit size, reasonably attractive as jewelry. The spooks in ww2 and the southeast asian games did a variant on this with issuing their guys necklaces made of gold where the links broke off easily, to be used for bartering their way out of enemy territory should they get shot down, stranded, etc. Gold is still "money" around the world, always a good backup to have some of your wealth stored that way.
"In reviewing your web site I noticed you had a recent inquiry (Mr L Langman) for information on the Bike Bug Bicycle Engine. You were correct: Japanese manufacture to the mid-80s. Marketed under three different names: TAS Spitz, AquaBug Bike Bug, Sears Free Spirit. Two-cycle 28cc front fork mounted bicycle engine - 20 mph, 200 mpg."
--there's a little more at that page. These things were great, I think about the only reason they didn't catch on better was the cost, it was a tad under 200 bucks at the time, too steep for 70's money. I've seen a lot of negative comments from the elitist bikers on motorized assist, but I can tell you, I used mine when I had it all the time, because it could go uphill without strain and haul freight! Instead of panniers, I installed just a normal kids seat on the back. The shape of the seat was great to stick a bag of groceries or my duffle bag of laundry to go to the laundrymat. The kids seatbelt kept the load in place. I used mine tons, really liked it. If I ever see a used one someplace like at a yardsale I'll buy it. When I had my shop I had my choice of bikes to ride, it's not like I only rode the engine assist one, if I wasn't hauling freight I would ride either my puch centennial alloy frame with the silk sew ups and campy components or one of my other ones I had. My fav though had to be the bike I thought of as my "pickup". I lived in mass at the time, then moved to vermont, where it REALLY came in handy with those hills up there.
--for a short period of time,about a year, in the late 70's I owned a bicycle store. I had two front fork mounted assist motors, manufactured by "Aquabug" company. They worked perfectly great, wish I still had one. One I gave away, the other got stolen a few years later out of my rented storage unit, along with the bicycle it was mounted on. I remember getting roughly around 50 miles per small tank of gas, around a quart. It was a two stroke motor, needed the oil/gas mix. Pretty quiet, very easy to operate, it bump started by flicking a lever that cammed a rubber drive wheel down onto the front tire, you pedaled to around 5 mph then dropped it, and that's it, it started. At a stop you could throttle it low to an idle and flick the lever to take it off the wheel. That's all it had for controls, well, it had an off switch that grounded it, just a toggle switch, on/off. Having it on the front along with pedaling going to the real wheel was pretty nice,at least I liked it. It was certainly better than the moped I have now, and cost much less than any moped I am aware of. You could still shoulder the bike, carry it upstairs to your apartment or carry it around obstacles, etc, something you ain't doing with a normal moped. The same company made very small outboard motors for boats using the same basic engine as well.
--my GF has one of these, polish version. She got it the same new in wrapper. Yep, had to de slime it considerable. Coolest thing out of all the ones we looked at, it has a mostly blond stock. She picked it out, not me, you want your girlfriend to shoot, got to let them pick out what they want. Near as I can tell they do it the same way they pick cars, based on some arcane "curteness" concept. It's a decent enough gun so I didn't veto the choice. Actually, dollar for dollar they are dang good deals.
Shooting it at night is fun, the flash from the short barrel is pretty impressive. Thoroughly lame for fighting obviously, but still fun. Would be a decent deer gun.
So before her first shot at the range, she asks me "now is this gonna kick a lot?" I sez "NO" in loud,then under my breath "not near as much as a 10 bore magnum "
heh heh heh That actually worked, part of noob shooters fears dissolve when they have no frame of reference. The recoil is just normal, so it's OK with her.
She likes the bayonet, calls it the polish kielbasa campfire cooker.
--maybe find a local person who will work per incident and be on call for you? That might be a less expensive option. Heck there's tons of guys here on slashdot are unemployed or underemployed, maybe you can find a part timer on call here.
guys! There's more to fun than just electronics, real surplus stores also got military surplus. Geez I had so much fun at the old real army/navy stores used to be around. When I was a kid you'd go in one they had freeking bazookas hanging on the wall and torpedoes hanging from the ceiling and carried REAL STUFF. Oh man it was neat, I bet 3/4's of the stuff now is politically incorrect. sigh. Oh well, the better ones:
here's some larger ones with online presence:
http://www.majorsurplusnsurvival.com/
check this one out, some amazing stuff
http://www.colemans.com/
Now this isn't a surplus place, but it's pretty spiffy. Catalog that carries Xtreme low tech but functional devices, thing geek stuff for the amish, too cool, check it out
http://www.lehmans.com/
There used to be and might still exist an atlanta area electronics and stuff surplus stores called "Peachtree Salvage", they used to have several stores, I looked on google but didn't find a link that looked good, and it's been a few years since I have been to one,or atlanta for that matter, but if they still exist they had tons of odd stuff
--gas engines, or just personal motorized transpo? I'd say the bulk of the planet earth wants that. Most don't have it yet but that's the trends...when it comes to electrical power, actually, I DO think everyone, or to be more accurate, every building should generate some/most/all of their own power. I am totally against the way the grid electric monopoly is now. I am a big time personal preparedness/survivalist freak, it has too many advantages to it. There's too many reasons now to de centralise power,it served it's purpose but just like the "one" desktop OS it's time to move on, they are the same as long ago we decentralised computing and now everyone can have a computer, and the net is robust, and we aren't as critically vulnerable to a single virus taking it down from only having "one" OS. It's why taking away the long distance monopoly has (somewhat) worked, it's why having more than one car company works. I'm walking the walk on decentralised power, the advantages are clear to me. YOU don't control your power, and YOU got no control over weird political and economic events with centralised grid power.
Here's an open challenge I have thrown out over the entire time I have been on the web, whenever centralised power advocates challenge de centralised. I want to see ONE example where joe average can get a contract, for a bottom line price, carved in stone, for his "power", something that is guaranteed for like 10 or twenty years. It might exist, I don't know, but I've never seen an example of it. I HAVE seen examples and plenty of them where people's power bills went up drastically with little or no notice. And when peoples power does go out from the grid, it usually ain't at a convenient time like clear and sunny and 70 degrees out, nope, usually when the grid juice tanks is THE time you really want some power, it can actually get to the life threatening stages if you are up north and nothing works in your home because it's all dependent on electric to function and it's below zero out. Several years ago montreal came close when the ice storm hit there, a coupla big fires would have wiped that place out, right to the ground. that's the sort of real life real world threats over centralisation causes. it's not all "good", theres good and bad with both models, but de centralised gives ya a smidgen more fine tuning and tweaking and personal control. I like it. some do, some don't, but I am miffed that HUGE amounts of tax money and seizing peoples lands has gone into creating an extremely powerful monopoly industry, or near monopoly. I don't like that example of power politics corporatism. We HAD a robust and developing alternative decentralised energy market that was in full swing in the early days of the last century, if you research it you'll see what part power politics and creating a monopoly played in the whole way this "grid" centralised power thing came about.
You can get some of that independence and control with decentralised power, today, more of a guarantee of at least "some" power and having that %&^*(*^ bill paid OFF. Right this second, numerous places. You can't get it with bigelectro co. It's like hosting, you can get 2 9s to 4 or 5 9s, which is better? You can own or rent, which is better? Equity,or no equity?
I grow a lot of my own food, works good. Not all of it but a lot of it. If I had to go purchase that amount of organic chow I would somehow have to make an extra few thousand a year or more, plus live in some city where a market is that even sells it. That means to live in the city I would have to "make" even umpteen more thousands of dollars. I just plain don't like living where I would need 4 locks on the door, been there, done that. Phooie on that noise anymore, been there, done that, it ain't all it's cracked up to be. I can be 100% broke and I still got food and a ways to make more, this is a good deal to me. Same with power. Same with transpo. I took public transpo when I lived in town quite frequently,but that leaves 95% of the US landmass out though, we need cars and our public mass transit REALLY is this thing called "roads", because we are just all too different and got different things to do and to carry. so what else did we do? Take all the great rail systems we had, tear them up, violate the old deeds where theland should have reverted back to the real land owners, and put in restrictive "feel good" bike trails. Phooie, we should expanded the rails back to hauling more cargo, like it was designed for, and for hauling people. It was efficient, but now it isn't, because it leaves you stuck in a few large cities, again, not convenient for 95% of the land mass where people live. Humping anything more than a backpack gets to be a real pain on mass transit, I know, I've tried, sorta sucketh. I did the same with bicycles, I used to own a bike shop and was a two wheel fiend, but really, carrying cargo starts to be a pain in the tush. I just find that nowadays it gives me the willies to have to be forced to be dependent on all my critical systems that are filtered through large political and economic institutions. I don't trust them boys no more, they have proven to be lyin' weasels. I don't want anyone to be able to 100% control my water, my food, my power, I have to have at least some serious backups for all that stuff, if not total independece..
Too much weirdo crap going on in the world now for this boy. I got priorites, game machines and ski boats and trips to the "art" museum and watching large humans play with silly balls ain't high on the list right now.
---this is good, the more people who become aquainted to "in your face" high level corruption, the more people realise that their preconcieved notions of government/industry and the blends that are represented by instituitions like some universities, the quicker we can stop this slide to global fascism and big brotherism. Fascism only comes about from people al over being gradually introduced to it,going along with it, then it becomes "normal" and acceptable. Cashing the check and not making waves and overlooking "wrongness" becomes such a normal part of life that true evil can spread and become "normal". It takes actually seeing it to sink in for most people. Your situation isn't unique, it goes across the board, almost everywhere. It's different but not unique.
Practical solutions, document, make copies,take notes, times dates places names, who ordered what, etc, now keep them in different places. Approach both a public styled lawyer who is zealous of human rights, and also a mercenary type lawyer who's main strengths are big teeth and a willingness to use them, because you might wind up needing both types of lawyers.
Being a whistleblower is fraught with dangers, they frequently get massively screwed, as what low level corruption you uncover is usually the tip of the iceberg. Been there, done that, got the death threats myself, from government corruption. That is the main reason I rant so much on politics, seen too much really foul stuff happen and the perps get away with it. It CHANGES your outlook.
This is why the larger the government, the worse it gets, why more centralization is bad, why larger international monopolistic corporations have more scandals of much farther reaching consequences, why "closed-secret-hidden" is a bad model and why "open-free-exposed" is a better model. It's because people who really seek out "power" are ill equipped for it, they are usually the WORST choices possible, but our society insists that is the way to do it,to make everything a pyramidal structure based on..well, ruthlessness mostly. Cunning, reptile brain uncaring sociopathic ruthlessness. Not to mention the Peter Principle. Not in every case, no, not saying that, but in so many cases take it is as a default until proven otherwise, that's the safer bet.
Good luck, research the applicable laws FIRST before you do much more, cover your butt, because poking sticks at mad dogs will get you bit without some precautions. I've been able to prevail twice in matters of law and serious crime with me versus corrupt government, and it took every brain cell I had and a big dose of pure indignation and meaness I get when I see "bad" stuff happen to people to prevail. I so much believe in righteous self defense that I take stuff like that personal, so I think accordingly and I won't take their lying BS as the truth until I've exhausted all other avenues. You have to be like the sean connery character in the movie "untouchables". He's advising young elliot ness as represented by harrrison ford. He's telling him "you really want to take on the mob? This is what you do. One of his boys pulls a knife, you pull a gun. One of his boys puts one of your's in the hospital, you put one of their's in the morgue". That's sort of the mindset you need in analogous fashion fighting official corruption, or corporate corruption when you are stuck with it in your face. If you can't be that tough and smart, pass the baton to someone who can and bailout.
From what I can see it's the same dealing with private business or quasi private like unis are, you got to really understand you could be battling a much stronger and evil enemy than what you even think now. People in power and with large sums of cash to keep, even ill-gotten cash and ill-gotten power, can be downright nasty, so just be prepared for it. And make sure what you are seeing is really low-level corruption, it could be it's being ordered to happen by governmental police agencies, who in turn are circumventing the law, because they can, and always assume when talking to the law that they could very well lie to you and are never your friend. At best they are neutral, but never really on your side, even if they act like it.. it happens all the time, all over.
There's lotsa strange crap going on with this bogus "war on terrorism" dodge that the global fascists are pushing. Personal privacy and what you think is secure has been tossed out the window, it don't exist except in some idealistic but not practical thinking people's minds. Make sure you are really seeing what you *think* you are seeing before making any moves.
aaak, hope this was useful, I just hate to see innocent and honest people get shafted, it fries my grits to the max.
--oh man, I have a terrible memory for names. I can remember tunes once I re-hear them, and go "oh ya, I remember that now". Fro 60's music some stand out, the stones albums were pretty much all good tracks. So I can't really answer your question, but I'll take your word for it on the white album. As to lyrics, I was born with deficient midrange and it's only gotten worse, nowadays I am still amazed, with better tech I can actually understand a lot of lyrics that I never quite "got" back when they were new. Kinda nifty really.
but ya, the tech exists now for the labels to sell songs for a dime, if they just did that they could stay in business and make a living. they don't want to make a living, they want to make an extravagant living in a non extravagant market. Tell ya, with the economy tanking and going stagnant, "entertainments" as a "must-have" for people will be changing. So will expensive vacations, over large energy hog houses that require 30 year notes, excessive driving, going out to eat, etc. I think the music and movie biz in for a severe shock within a year. People with NO JOB don't waste what money they have on movie and concert tickets and buying canned music. People who got sucked into dumping their spare cash for years into the "market" every friday afternoon to see that cash that used to fold turn into cash that now jingles are getting hip to this "stupid and weasteful decision" mindset, ie, not good to be that way or to have false expectations. I don't know what goon came up with this current US trading and immigration model, but I just am not convinced that losing millions of jobs a year to replace them with only half as many jobs paying only half as much money is really such a smooth move. It's a great deal for the guys at the tippy top, for everyone else it sure ain't.
--there's such a thing as going overboard to extremes. over-concentrating electrical generational facilities produce less points of failure that mean when they DO fail they affect a lot more people, cause a lot more damage. It's a security issue. It's also a cost issue. Business scandals, political manipulation, insider trading, etc have NOT gone away. What is happening is with each new scandal uncovered, the crooks see where they failed, and refine their techniques so as to not get caught next time. I don't think you can ignore this issue. Big whopper piles of money, as represented by centralised energy, seem to always attract very big crooks. Same as any other "big" business especially when it's one of those quasi public/private hybrid industries that the utilities represent, ie "legal monopolies".
I'm not giving up my home PV unit. The grid has gone out a lot where I live since I've been living here, I keep my power. Kinda nifty. It's like the olden days with only a few mainframes, you willing to give up your own computer? How about mass transit, you willing to accept only mass transit for everywhere you go, or can you see the practicality of individual cars? Food, a few whopper farms, or millions of farms and gardens? It's like do you REALLY want to put all your eggs in one basket with energy?
Back to PV, I am always wondering how much better it would be if virtually every sunny side rooftop in the US was covered in panels now. Maybe actually put a lot of the manufacturing guys back to work, re-open some more plants, build them by the millions instead of thousands. The space exists on these roofs and now is composed of shingles that get hot, and that's it. How much electric do you get from that? And what might happen to the cost if millions more were in market demand? Would the R&D and the manufacturing advances result in better and cheaper? I am guessing it would, seems to work for everything else.
--the biggest problems with hydrogen are physically storing the stuff, and getting it. Besides that it's great fuel. Requires electroylis now for the most part, and fuel cells are expensive to make and use some exotic materials in rather short supply for the catalysts. Electric motors are old hat, efficient enough of course, they will 'work" quite well if you can get electricity to them. Now obtaining hydrogen could be more easily accomplished if the currently running experiments with extracting it from some species of algae pan out. That's really the only chemical breakthroughs I have been impressed with.
With that said, I also prefer the hybrid diesel/electric model as opposed to the various other schemes proposed, at least for "right now". Bring it on, I want a 4 wheel drive pickup model. Works already on several platforms in commercial useages. Lcocmotives, very large construction equipment, submarines, etc. Making it work for cars and normal trucks is just engineering detail of scale. And from my use of generators, I can see quite readily how running at a set optimum level increases efficiency, it's just easier to do and the sweet spot for the engine tune levels is reachable and constant. The parts that I think will prove problematic once large scale adoption occurs will be in the same areas you see now with "regular" vehicles, the electrical systems. They suck, work until they don't then it's a freeking nightmare to analyse and repair. More modern vehicles I mean. Hard to shield adequately to make them functional in impact/vibration areas and in particular with corrosion. Just about anyone who lives in the rust belt can offer a personal horror story about vehicle electronics if they have been driving any length of time I would wager. Won't even go into braking systems and repairs.
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--or just perhaps, you have noticed that the old left/right paradigm is really a too-generic description to be used for automatic "I agree with such and such because they are left wing" or right wing, and etc? Perhaps ideas are inherently more "human" than a direction or geographical area and those pre conceived constructs are not relevant any longer? Like right and wrong might be a better way to look at things than right and left.
I know you got a funny mod on it and it was funny, but it's funny because it's true. I frequently find myself agreeing with a point some pol made, after which I don't agree much with them, and it goes across the political spectrum.
As I get older I am less enamored of labels-applied, as I am of consistenency and results and logic and reason as pertains individuals. I guess that means removing one's self from the herd more and being more independent in thinking, using the right tool rather than some clique's currently "popular" tool. Something like that anyway.
Simpler, party labels or identifying as a political "side" or "wing" are forced and artificial, and usually promoted from places that have an agenda that is primarily designed to keep people in general from unifying around their common ground. For instance, the "left wing" lately is becoming alarmed over the first amendment, some strict traditional right wing have long been alarmed over the second and the 4th, both wings are alarmed over the 5th, both should be alarmed over the 10th and 13th, so there exists enough common ground to stop and for both sides to look around and see if perhaps there is a commonality of agreement to see where these threats come from,and to note that the "other side" has had a valid point all along,that a lot of the supposed differences were induced rather than naturally occuring, and maybe it's time to cooperate instead of squabble.
What I like to term "the goons", those of whom really control the planet and adhere to no particular bloc or wing outside of power and profit outside of their virtual congame labels, love to continue the charade game of "divide and conquer" because it is so immensely profitable for them, and because it is so easy for them to perpetuate this congame.
That "game" is why they have been so successful. Now, that means, the more people who can admit to a certain amount of personal fake-out,just accept it and deal with it rationally, and who can then step outside the box and stop playing that game with "the goons", the better off all of us who are being exploited will be, no matter language, race, nationality, etc.
Just my O there, hope it makes some sense.
--yes, I think living in lame megalopolii with millions of people is stupid, I have, won't ever do it again. Humans crammed together like that go crazy, the crime rate rises above acceptable levels. The fact is though, there still is a direct correlation between numbers of people who actually are capable of self defense and those who aren't in regards crime in general. and yes, I have lived in vermont and it really does sink int the criminal element that they can't just go pick any random victim and have their will with them. it actually *does* work. You might not know that there are literally millions of unreported but successful self defense defenses per annum in the US that don't make it into the official stats, now you do though. It can be as complex as you want, but my belief, and the beliefs of our founders are that you have a "born with" right to your person and property. Defense of those are just sine non qua obviously. I have read some stories about repeat offenders in englande, breaking into homes, abusing the occupants, and the homeowners getting charged when they resisted and fought back.
That, sir, is quite mad, and is far from civilized. In both england and in australia, the two largest and most-similar places to the US, since the recent mass almost total disarming of their populations the crimes rates have simply soared. while still perhaps "lower" than this or that other example, I suggest you just settle back and wait a bit, see how that goes. Please, enjoy the experience fully.
Here it is in a nutshell. I have been there, done that on self defense, unfortunately. I have personal anecdotal that trumps your academic theory, as opposed to my reality. I seemed to have avoided becoming a victim. YOU can be as undefended as you want to be. Please, go right ahead. If YOU or any government seek to disarm me,though,through any misguided social engineering constructs based on junk science and covert fascist tyrannical bents, you will not. No sir, you definetly will not. I am not a predator, never have been one, nor will I become a potential victim by allowing such an illegal act that violates my born-with rights as any human has. I will not become a potential victim like that. YOU can choose to be a victim,live like a potential victim,be a slave, live under any sort of disarmed existence you choose to, but I will not. If you or "your kind" insist,allegorically speaking, you will find out personally what it means to be a free person or a slave. You and your fellow slaves can live in your elite smug serfdom,you are welcome to it, just do not forget,your trusted governments are the biggest criminals,it is proven historical so many times it is indisputable, and once they get started on overt mass criminality, they will not stop, or be tempered in their efforts, they will not be impressed with your "beliefs" in you "superior civilization" or however you wish to term it.
Those 80 to 100 million people thought EXACTLY like you do now, and they were...quite wrong it turns out. Utterly and completly wrong. They wished it 'wasn't so" but it was. I am sure there were any number of them who "thought" they lived where it was "civilised" and "their governments would never do that".
I have fire extinguishers, I don't comnpletely rely on the fire department. I have some medical skills and equipment, so in an emergency I may be of some use. I also own self defense tools, plus I choose to live in a state that is cool with self defense. therefore when applicable I have a choice, based on the circumstance, personal self defense of any nature, plus I can also contact the authroties, but to think authorities can teleport many tens of miles in an emergency situation so as to be effective is quite naieve.
I sincerely hope you never become a victim, as you won't forget it and it might make you rethink your paradigm on this. I have noted this with several people who after becoming victims, seemed to rethink on reality a little. Sometimes it has to go that far to be able to adequately differen
--I have read all of the replies 0 and above as of late last night. After serious contemplation, at this time, my recommendation is earth bermed or underground construction. The reasons are all valid, it has a superior better energy model, it has a model as to "long lasting" which fit the criteria, and the design is by far the best when it comes to both natural disasters and man made disasters. Ignoring the potential for both of the latter is naieve, in my opinion. I would consider that to actually be the primary consideration.
I would also insist into any construction plans a definite way for planned air in and air out, and to make use of exisiting technology to filter and sterilise this air, and to have a ways to do that independent of the electrical power grid, although that can be "one" of the energy sources.
I will also recommend two books to start with, by the same author, a respected and recognized personal home structure architect/planner and geopolitical analyst, Joel Skousen. The two books are "The Secure Home" and "Strategic Relocation".
I guarantee you will need both those books, and will enjoy them. They are excellent for the tech library and for anyone considering a move or a new home or both.
His website is joelskousen.com easy enough to remember, and a lot of information there onsite.
The various underground/earth bermed/ earth ship styled construction techniques and tips and gotchas are easily researchable using normal search terms.
If you'd like to see what I consider to be a pretty cheap (real cheap really) but doable system, goto waltonfeeds website, look at their "grand daddy of all root cellars" project. It's pretty spiffy.
If you would like more book recommendations, just ask. Good luck on your new home! I think it is excellent you are thinking along these lines. Quality, safety, comfort, responsibility to not only yourself and family and this generation, but generations to come. That's the way to think and act!
I certainly saw some interesting concepts presented in the thread, most of them I were familiar with already though, a couple of new ones to me. One I noticed wasn't presented yet, it might be by now, is the norwegian-viking styled massive logs construction. It is log home construction using very few logs, but those are whoppers. Watched it once on one of the home shows on TV, forget which one now, this old shack or whatever.
--actually both weapons were crap when first deployed in real world situations. They required extensive modifications. The first models were betas, even though produced in large numbers. The 16 in particular was introduced because of the severe lack of marksmanship as more of the population was "city kids" who honestly did not have a full grasp of firearms, necessitating "spray and pray" models of individual weapons. And by being "spray and pray", they exhausted a basic battle load of ammunition, hence a reduced caliber, lighter in weight was required, the individual soldier then being able to cary more rounds to achieve the same "results" as soldiers in the past. It's also a function of the military industrial complex and it's profits, and this applies to all nations, as they all have a military industrial profit oriented industry. it is no different than any other manufacturing effort, they have to keep selling more to make any money. No large corporations seek to put themselves out of business. And no large corporations are thrilled to completely change their business model from one of "right now this quarter prifitability" to a gamble based on huge expense, re tooling, entering a new market, etc. They will do that sometimes, but only if they are convinced they will remain as profitable or get even more profitable. Econo 101 there.
With that said, the vast majority of casualities in warfare since ww2-very generally speaking, all over the world-have arisen from non-bullet injuries, they are more from shrapnel, etc. The indidividual rifle is still important, but only in the latter stages of warfare and in occupation of terrain. The assault stages of warfare and most of the "big work" involved in warfare are always done now (call it 99%) with larger weapons than man portable.
--there are around 80 to 100 MILLION people in the last century who died as a direct result of their OWN governments. In the 20th century, MORE people died as a result of their own governments murdereous actions than died as a result of foreigners killing them in wars. This is just DATA. It can not be disputed, it is *real*
You can't take a poll of those people, but I would wager all of them would have wished to own a simple, normal firearm with no BS politically correct crap associated with either it or it's ammunition. If not something even better quality.
Until you have become a victim of state sponsored terrorism and assorted indignities, maybe it's a good idea to at least contemplate the theoretical possibility? Not to mention normal crime?
Regimes who publically pronounce by words and laws that they cannot trust their own populations with firearms are not to be trusted. Populations who cannot contemplate their own regimes going rogue are naieve, and really shouldn't be trusted until they rid themselves of that naievete. The proper mindset, IMO, is that both the official state and it's citizenry remain armed. This is not a perfect solution,not at all, there are problems associated with it, but so far on the planet it approaches the best solution.
Inside the united states, there are 50 states. Of those, the state with the least restrictive laws, vermont, has the lowest crime rate. In europe, the nation with the least restrictive laws over "civilians" and firearms ownership-switzerland-has the lowest crime rate, and also the lowest level of what might be termed "human rights abuses" by their own government as they are commonly understood.
You might consider those verifiable stats to be just random and co-incidental, wheras a lot of scholars see it as a decent level of "proof of concept" with the premise of the universal right of self defense. You either believe you have a born with right to your person and self defense, or you believe that you do not, again, binary. If you do have this right, then a lot of situations require use of self defense tools. This is just reality.
There's theory, then practice. In the scientific model, results need to be reproducable. These social results have been in history. Once a state disarms it's own population, at some point they have always gone into serious exploitation mode. The time frame involved may be different, but it inevitably happens. Thinking that this somehow will now "not" happen because of....no reason ever offered from the other side.. is naieve.
No amount of anti weaponry legislation has ever resulted in the elimination of a states potential to fall into abusive mode, on the contrary, it can be shown to up the chances of it occurring eventually.
The US is sort of unique in the world, we have an historical belief system, currently under attack constantly unfortunately, that we have "born-with" as opposed to "government-granted" rights. No other nation has bingoed to this yet in their official designations of exactly what government and non government really are. All other nations assume government owns it's citizenry. We don't, although many here would like to see that happen. Those people I consider to be at best perhaps quite well meaning but seriously uninformed, at worst, traitors and a definete menace. All other nations operate exclusively under "government granted" rights. We theoretically do not. Our first born with right is "free speech", which everyone more or less assumes is basically a good idea, well, because it is. Our second, and one which at the time it was delineated had just been proven to be of a similar and extremely important nature, is our second delineation of a born-with right, that of self defense and to have the means to be able to defend from an organization as large as a "government". This by necessity means use of weapons, basically following whatever technology curve that "government" grants itself. It is unfortunate that governments always seem to seek a "monopoly on violence
---I looked in once and thought it was some sort of voodoo monitor ray insulation. This explains the critters that walk in and out of it, too, I guess....
oh well, thank goodness there's ebay recycling!
..last I knew you could still get raw feeds with a big dish and appropriate receiver. I don't know if any of the major networks scramble their signal, last I watched any was several years ago now. Someone here probably has more up to date knowledge I'm sure. The raw feeds frequently don't (didn't) have commercials, you can see them talking and b.s.ing, etc during that time.
...well you could launch your own satellite, but because of the new "war on tarism" you would have to build your rocket using one million of those new 62.5 gram rocket motors. Just some minor technical engineering details, that's all....
And I checked the fine print, those FOOLS left something out, it's NOT illegal to build your own super scalar planeteary defense beams. Those neurally challeneged polidrones, hiring non geek lawyers to write all them new laws....heh heh heh
--thanks man! Logical and makes sense and I'll remember the tips!
--will that still then work back into the 486? I'm interested in this thread because I got given an older toshiba laptop, a pentium 1, 100 speed, with "just a floppy" and a borked hard drive. Want another linux machine of some kind, or bsd or whatever. Not real interested in reinstalling 95 on it, and will put up with the speed loss I guess. And those burn one floppy then download for two months on my rural dialup and coal burner modem just ain't gonna happen. Was wondering how to do it easier than getting an external cd drive or some serial port connection, that sounds easier by far, now I wonder if it being a laptop that it won't work. Hmmm.. I never even looked yet, are laptop hard drive drive connections the same as desktops? I need to use my own advice and open that thing up, it's been sitting on a junque pile long enough I guess... projects, projects, projects..... whoo boy, spring gardening season too....
--find out how far you can go with the ram, update that, max it out used. That old of RAM you can find the ram *cheap*. You want it maxed. Buy a used hardrive of a gig or 2 or something like that. Borrow an external cd rom drive, or have the guy at the white box shop do it, ask to use his. Plug that in, put up with the slowness. Install something new like peanut or latest mandrake, pick and choose options, etc, and just put up with the speed of it, after all it's your kid gonna be using it mostly. Use a "you make it" window manager instead of guhhnome or k-thisandthat.
And there ya go! Proly take ya all freekin day and nite day to install it, but then you'll have it. ram might cost ya 5 bucks, a one gigger whatever drive maybe 10$. PLUS, junior gets to see hardware upgrading! It's part of geekdom! It ain't all typing and starin at the screen, there's important SCREWDRIVER action young lads need to learn! BLESS my dad for getting me REAL tools when I was a kid instead of those plastic toy tools. I got his grade b stuff he didn't want, some he cut down to size or picked for size, but they were *real* tools made outta 'murican steel like God intended. And I got old radios and busted lawnmowers and woodscraps and odd chunks of metallic things and stuff to dork with. Cool beans! I was building stuff and tearing apart crap before I could read all that well. Now I ain't askeered of nuthin, even though I still bork half or more of my junker projects.
--a large part of the infrastructure costs are directly blameable by the archaic notion that humans have to be in a centralised location in order to trade and do commerce. the major over priced locations that most of the content comes from are horribly over priced and based on , well, where oxen trails crossed or where port cities got established. the living costs in those areas are insane, as are the monopolies in 'broadcast' that arose around them, thereby driving up costs. it's artificial and doesn't need to happen. Look at salon and their economic problems, not necessary, they blew most of their money on location (not needed) and over paying for content, because their content providers demand too high a price because most of them choose to live where it's artificially expensive, ie, those old oxen trail crosing or port cities. It's ridiculous. The web is allowing people to actually move out of cities if they want to and are smart, major urban areas need to shrink in size and go back to being cheaper, they should be inhabited by people who have an actual NEED to be there, not an artificialality need brought about by historical inertia as much as anything else. We don't NEED our news to be coordinated around Dc and NYC. We don't NEED our entertainments to be coordinated around "hollywood". Not near as much anyway. Amd we sure don't NEED there to be an over paid "class" of monopolists, this pricing structure for any number of things, including bandwith, is driven by monopolies and artidfical scarcities and bogus "laws" that are primarily breaks given to those bribery based lobbying efforts that have the deepest pockets. It's not all that, but I would contend it's a large part of it.
Example, ww1, correspondent on the front lines, gets to some telegraph, sends in the news, got almost a complete lock on the info, it can be expensive and slow to propagate, plus be politically manipulated. Fast forward ww2. More, telephone voice used with transcription at the other end, faster, less monopolistic, more correspondents. Fast forward vietnam, slight delay video avaialble right in peoples living rooms. more correspondents possible. Fast forward desert storm one, real time as it's happening news. More correspondents, the tech existed then for thousands if that was what was wanted.
Now, anyone can be a news person, get published, real time,we can and now DO have millions of people reporting, I haunt forums, I get "news" all the time that isn't on drudge or cnn. The "need" for monopolies and for great expense has dropped to almost nil. It's becoming irrelevant to have a peter jennings telling me what's going on when I can just real time chat or video with someone actually living where that news is ahppening. We don't need to keep paying those salaries and for that infrastructure, we can skip the entire profit middleman if we choose to, it's just slow adopting, but we CAN do that now. A lot of us already do that, we own and use forums, wikis, chatrooms,blogs etc.
Costs will drop eventually as we de centralise more and more people are able to get out of first gear with their computers and use the rest of the transmission. and it will really drop when we drop the need to have middleman do our reporting for us, middlemen and their corps and buildings and huge salaries. then we won't need those adverts, either, can start to cut that bloated industry down, yet another waste of cash and we certainly don't need more sophisiticated brainwashing developed and deployed, which is what most advertising is. It ain't needed and I can come up with my own "opinion" and if I need a product all i want is a price, what it does, and look at some reviews, i don't need to be brainwashed into getting it.. I can share my "news" I get personally with people all over the planet, we all share, cut the middlemen out, not needed. THAT is one place some savings can come from, BIG BIG savings. Let's get rid of those bloated buggywhip jobs and industries, they made their TRILLIONS already,last century, cool, move forward, time to move on
--in my browser ten years from now? I want my choice of foxy babe talking head and voice to be my personal information guide. I talk to her, she goes and finds the data I want and I can either read it myself or she acts like a secretary of sorts, she reads the info to me, I can stop and interact, reply to a post or order something, etc, and I can give instructions for later use like a cronjob of sorts. maybe something like, "I'll want to see movie whatever this evening, go find me the best deal for download, automatically pay for it or get it free, que it up, around 9pm I'll be ready to watch it" "In the meantime, go to my site and check on my sales today, and if there any customer questions, answer them if you can, if you can't, redirect them to my priority inbox." Something like that. I can do my email or other communications with other people, using text or rich media. The browser (and my dreambabe guide) is integrated with other applications at my direction, and it's done via voice as well as keyboard or mouse, any or all of my choosing. The biggest trend I can see is really getting voice working, both ways. An Eliza type thing that really works. Typing and mousing around is getting old now, time to move on how humans communicate, and that is primarily voice. We talk, the other stuff is for archiving purposes more than anything else. And webpages are getting more dynamic, less static daily it seems. And the "web" is just a small subset mirror of "reality", even a pure e-commerce site that sells stuff still has a real warehouse someplace, real trucks deliver. Electronic news media is still just mirroring what's going on in the real world. We don't pass each other notes for all our communications, most of the time we only do that if voice isn't as avaialable or handy. We use text for time shifting and for archiving and for permanent records, but a lot of our communications doesn't require that, it can be sounds and visual images that are just used, then they can poof away except as memories.
If you look at how most humans learn,and how we continue as adults to communicate, starting as children, voice and body language is what is learned first, reading comes later. We need to be able to talk to the boxes, the boxes talk to each other, and web browsers will be that deal that links it all together. The work and play we do will be controlled by our voices, like it is now.
OK, I got a few
earrings that can have a trebel hook installed at the campsite and be turned into a good shiny fishing lure. Note, I suggest cheap brand metal for these earrings. The evil underwater stump monsters will snag them occassionally, heh.
A ring that somehow can be used to store your login/passwords. No idea how to do that but seems like a spiffy idea. Watch battery, bluetooth chip, small memory of some kind, something like that.
Take a clue from the middle east and the way they store family wealth there still,convert some of your soon to be less valuable petrodollars into gold coins, said coins get kludged together into a necklace, so you have some real money for emergency/survival situations. 1/10th ounce coins are available now and would seem to be easy to make a necklace out of them, small enough to not be ridiculous, already broken down into barterable unit size, reasonably attractive as jewelry. The spooks in ww2 and the southeast asian games did a variant on this with issuing their guys necklaces made of gold where the links broke off easily, to be used for bartering their way out of enemy territory should they get shot down, stranded, etc. Gold is still "money" around the world, always a good backup to have some of your wealth stored that way.
--replying to my own post. I just googled for some more information on these and found this paste at
r c0 316.htm
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~pattle/nacc/a
"In reviewing your web site I noticed you had a recent inquiry (Mr L Langman) for information on the Bike Bug Bicycle Engine. You were correct: Japanese manufacture to the mid-80s. Marketed under three different names: TAS Spitz, AquaBug Bike Bug, Sears Free Spirit. Two-cycle 28cc front fork mounted bicycle engine - 20 mph, 200 mpg."
--there's a little more at that page. These things were great, I think about the only reason they didn't catch on better was the cost, it was a tad under 200 bucks at the time, too steep for 70's money. I've seen a lot of negative comments from the elitist bikers on motorized assist, but I can tell you, I used mine when I had it all the time, because it could go uphill without strain and haul freight! Instead of panniers, I installed just a normal kids seat on the back. The shape of the seat was great to stick a bag of groceries or my duffle bag of laundry to go to the laundrymat. The kids seatbelt kept the load in place. I used mine tons, really liked it. If I ever see a used one someplace like at a yardsale I'll buy it. When I had my shop I had my choice of bikes to ride, it's not like I only rode the engine assist one, if I wasn't hauling freight I would ride either my puch centennial alloy frame with the silk sew ups and campy components or one of my other ones I had. My fav though had to be the bike I thought of as my "pickup". I lived in mass at the time, then moved to vermont, where it REALLY came in handy with those hills up there.
--for a short period of time,about a year, in the late 70's I owned a bicycle store. I had two front fork mounted assist motors, manufactured by "Aquabug" company. They worked perfectly great, wish I still had one. One I gave away, the other got stolen a few years later out of my rented storage unit, along with the bicycle it was mounted on. I remember getting roughly around 50 miles per small tank of gas, around a quart. It was a two stroke motor, needed the oil/gas mix. Pretty quiet, very easy to operate, it bump started by flicking a lever that cammed a rubber drive wheel down onto the front tire, you pedaled to around 5 mph then dropped it, and that's it, it started. At a stop you could throttle it low to an idle and flick the lever to take it off the wheel. That's all it had for controls, well, it had an off switch that grounded it, just a toggle switch, on/off. Having it on the front along with pedaling going to the real wheel was pretty nice,at least I liked it. It was certainly better than the moped I have now, and cost much less than any moped I am aware of. You could still shoulder the bike, carry it upstairs to your apartment or carry it around obstacles, etc, something you ain't doing with a normal moped. The same company made very small outboard motors for boats using the same basic engine as well.
--my GF has one of these, polish version. She got it the same new in wrapper. Yep, had to de slime it considerable. Coolest thing out of all the ones we looked at, it has a mostly blond stock. She picked it out, not me, you want your girlfriend to shoot, got to let them pick out what they want. Near as I can tell they do it the same way they pick cars, based on some arcane "curteness" concept. It's a decent enough gun so I didn't veto the choice. Actually, dollar for dollar they are dang good deals.
Shooting it at night is fun, the flash from the short barrel is pretty impressive. Thoroughly lame for fighting obviously, but still fun. Would be a decent deer gun.
So before her first shot at the range, she asks me "now is this gonna kick a lot?" I sez "NO" in loud,then under my breath "not near as much as a 10 bore magnum "
heh heh heh That actually worked, part of noob shooters fears dissolve when they have no frame of reference. The recoil is just normal, so it's OK with her.
She likes the bayonet, calls it the polish kielbasa campfire cooker.
--maybe find a local person who will work per incident and be on call for you? That might be a less expensive option. Heck there's tons of guys here on slashdot are unemployed or underemployed, maybe you can find a part timer on call here.
guys! There's more to fun than just electronics, real surplus stores also got military surplus. Geez I had so much fun at the old real army/navy stores used to be around. When I was a kid you'd go in one they had freeking bazookas hanging on the wall and torpedoes hanging from the ceiling and carried REAL STUFF. Oh man it was neat, I bet 3/4's of the stuff now is politically incorrect. sigh. Oh well, the better ones:
here's some larger ones with online presence:
http://www.majorsurplusnsurvival.com/
check this one out, some amazing stuff
http://www.colemans.com/
Now this isn't a surplus place, but it's pretty spiffy. Catalog that carries Xtreme low tech but functional devices, thing geek stuff for the amish, too cool, check it out
http://www.lehmans.com/
There used to be and might still exist an atlanta area electronics and stuff surplus stores called "Peachtree Salvage", they used to have several stores, I looked on google but didn't find a link that looked good, and it's been a few years since I have been to one,or atlanta for that matter, but if they still exist they had tons of odd stuff
--gas engines, or just personal motorized transpo? I'd say the bulk of the planet earth wants that. Most don't have it yet but that's the trends. ..when it comes to electrical power, actually, I DO think everyone, or to be more accurate, every building should generate some/most/all of their own power. I am totally against the way the grid electric monopoly is now. I am a big time personal preparedness/survivalist freak, it has too many advantages to it. There's too many reasons now to de centralise power,it served it's purpose but just like the "one" desktop OS it's time to move on, they are the same as long ago we decentralised computing and now everyone can have a computer, and the net is robust, and we aren't as critically vulnerable to a single virus taking it down from only having "one" OS. It's why taking away the long distance monopoly has (somewhat) worked, it's why having more than one car company works. I'm walking the walk on decentralised power, the advantages are clear to me. YOU don't control your power, and YOU got no control over weird political and economic events with centralised grid power.
Here's an open challenge I have thrown out over the entire time I have been on the web, whenever centralised power advocates challenge de centralised. I want to see ONE example where joe average can get a contract, for a bottom line price, carved in stone, for his "power", something that is guaranteed for like 10 or twenty years. It might exist, I don't know, but I've never seen an example of it. I HAVE seen examples and plenty of them where people's power bills went up drastically with little or no notice. And when peoples power does go out from the grid, it usually ain't at a convenient time like clear and sunny and 70 degrees out, nope, usually when the grid juice tanks is THE time you really want some power, it can actually get to the life threatening stages if you are up north and nothing works in your home because it's all dependent on electric to function and it's below zero out. Several years ago montreal came close when the ice storm hit there, a coupla big fires would have wiped that place out, right to the ground. that's the sort of real life real world threats over centralisation causes. it's not all "good", theres good and bad with both models, but de centralised gives ya a smidgen more fine tuning and tweaking and personal control. I like it. some do, some don't, but I am miffed that HUGE amounts of tax money and seizing peoples lands has gone into creating an extremely powerful monopoly industry, or near monopoly. I don't like that example of power politics corporatism. We HAD a robust and developing alternative decentralised energy market that was in full swing in the early days of the last century, if you research it you'll see what part power politics and creating a monopoly played in the whole way this "grid" centralised power thing came about.
You can get some of that independence and control with decentralised power, today, more of a guarantee of at least "some" power and having that %&^*(*^ bill paid OFF. Right this second, numerous places. You can't get it with bigelectro co. It's like hosting, you can get 2 9s to 4 or 5 9s, which is better? You can own or rent, which is better? Equity,or no equity?
I grow a lot of my own food, works good. Not all of it but a lot of it. If I had to go purchase that amount of organic chow I would somehow have to make an extra few thousand a year or more, plus live in some city where a market is that even sells it. That means to live in the city I would have to "make" even umpteen more thousands of dollars. I just plain don't like living where I would need 4 locks on the door, been there, done that. Phooie on that noise anymore, been there, done that, it ain't all it's cracked up to be. I can be 100% broke and I still got food and a ways to make more, this is a good deal to me. Same with power. Same with transpo. I took public transpo when I lived in town quite frequently,but that leaves 95% of the US landmass out though, we need cars and our public mass transit REALLY is this thing called "roads", because we are just all too different and got different things to do and to carry. so what else did we do? Take all the great rail systems we had, tear them up, violate the old deeds where theland should have reverted back to the real land owners, and put in restrictive "feel good" bike trails. Phooie, we should expanded the rails back to hauling more cargo, like it was designed for, and for hauling people. It was efficient, but now it isn't, because it leaves you stuck in a few large cities, again, not convenient for 95% of the land mass where people live. Humping anything more than a backpack gets to be a real pain on mass transit, I know, I've tried, sorta sucketh. I did the same with bicycles, I used to own a bike shop and was a two wheel fiend, but really, carrying cargo starts to be a pain in the tush. I just find that nowadays it gives me the willies to have to be forced to be dependent on all my critical systems that are filtered through large political and economic institutions. I don't trust them boys no more, they have proven to be lyin' weasels. I don't want anyone to be able to 100% control my water, my food, my power, I have to have at least some serious backups for all that stuff, if not total independece..
Too much weirdo crap going on in the world now for this boy. I got priorites, game machines and ski boats and trips to the "art" museum and watching large humans play with silly balls ain't high on the list right now.
cool! ya, I remember that one! I think that was the one that the "backwards masking" guys got all het up about.
---this is good, the more people who become aquainted to "in your face" high level corruption, the more people realise that their preconcieved notions of government/industry and the blends that are represented by instituitions like some universities, the quicker we can stop this slide to global fascism and big brotherism. Fascism only comes about from people al over being gradually introduced to it,going along with it, then it becomes "normal" and acceptable. Cashing the check and not making waves and overlooking "wrongness" becomes such a normal part of life that true evil can spread and become "normal". It takes actually seeing it to sink in for most people. Your situation isn't unique, it goes across the board, almost everywhere. It's different but not unique.
Practical solutions, document, make copies,take notes, times dates places names, who ordered what, etc, now keep them in different places. Approach both a public styled lawyer who is zealous of human rights, and also a mercenary type lawyer who's main strengths are big teeth and a willingness to use them, because you might wind up needing both types of lawyers.
Being a whistleblower is fraught with dangers, they frequently get massively screwed, as what low level corruption you uncover is usually the tip of the iceberg. Been there, done that, got the death threats myself, from government corruption. That is the main reason I rant so much on politics, seen too much really foul stuff happen and the perps get away with it. It CHANGES your outlook.
This is why the larger the government, the worse it gets, why more centralization is bad, why larger international monopolistic corporations have more scandals of much farther reaching consequences, why "closed-secret-hidden" is a bad model and why "open-free-exposed" is a better model. It's because people who really seek out "power" are ill equipped for it, they are usually the WORST choices possible, but our society insists that is the way to do it,to make everything a pyramidal structure based on..well, ruthlessness mostly. Cunning, reptile brain uncaring sociopathic ruthlessness. Not to mention the Peter Principle. Not in every case, no, not saying that, but in so many cases take it is as a default until proven otherwise, that's the safer bet.
Good luck, research the applicable laws FIRST before you do much more, cover your butt, because poking sticks at mad dogs will get you bit without some precautions. I've been able to prevail twice in matters of law and serious crime with me versus corrupt government, and it took every brain cell I had and a big dose of pure indignation and meaness I get when I see "bad" stuff happen to people to prevail. I so much believe in righteous self defense that I take stuff like that personal, so I think accordingly and I won't take their lying BS as the truth until I've exhausted all other avenues. You have to be like the sean connery character in the movie "untouchables". He's advising young elliot ness as represented by harrrison ford. He's telling him "you really want to take on the mob? This is what you do. One of his boys pulls a knife, you pull a gun. One of his boys puts one of your's in the hospital, you put one of their's in the morgue". That's sort of the mindset you need in analogous fashion fighting official corruption, or corporate corruption when you are stuck with it in your face. If you can't be that tough and smart, pass the baton to someone who can and bailout.
From what I can see it's the same dealing with private business or quasi private like unis are, you got to really understand you could be battling a much stronger and evil enemy than what you even think now. People in power and with large sums of cash to keep, even ill-gotten cash and ill-gotten power, can be downright nasty, so just be prepared for it. And make sure what you are seeing is really low-level corruption, it could be it's being ordered to happen by governmental police agencies, who in turn are circumventing the law, because they can, and always assume when talking to the law that they could very well lie to you and are never your friend. At best they are neutral, but never really on your side, even if they act like it.. it happens all the time, all over.
There's lotsa strange crap going on with this bogus "war on terrorism" dodge that the global fascists are pushing. Personal privacy and what you think is secure has been tossed out the window, it don't exist except in some idealistic but not practical thinking people's minds. Make sure you are really seeing what you *think* you are seeing before making any moves.
aaak, hope this was useful, I just hate to see innocent and honest people get shafted, it fries my grits to the max.
--oh man, I have a terrible memory for names. I can remember tunes once I re-hear them, and go "oh ya, I remember that now". Fro 60's music some stand out, the stones albums were pretty much all good tracks. So I can't really answer your question, but I'll take your word for it on the white album. As to lyrics, I was born with deficient midrange and it's only gotten worse, nowadays I am still amazed, with better tech I can actually understand a lot of lyrics that I never quite "got" back when they were new. Kinda nifty really.
but ya, the tech exists now for the labels to sell songs for a dime, if they just did that they could stay in business and make a living. they don't want to make a living, they want to make an extravagant living in a non extravagant market. Tell ya, with the economy tanking and going stagnant, "entertainments" as a "must-have" for people will be changing. So will expensive vacations, over large energy hog houses that require 30 year notes, excessive driving, going out to eat, etc. I think the music and movie biz in for a severe shock within a year. People with NO JOB don't waste what money they have on movie and concert tickets and buying canned music. People who got sucked into dumping their spare cash for years into the "market" every friday afternoon to see that cash that used to fold turn into cash that now jingles are getting hip to this "stupid and weasteful decision" mindset, ie, not good to be that way or to have false expectations. I don't know what goon came up with this current US trading and immigration model, but I just am not convinced that losing millions of jobs a year to replace them with only half as many jobs paying only half as much money is really such a smooth move. It's a great deal for the guys at the tippy top, for everyone else it sure ain't.
--there's such a thing as going overboard to extremes. over-concentrating electrical generational facilities produce less points of failure that mean when they DO fail they affect a lot more people, cause a lot more damage. It's a security issue. It's also a cost issue. Business scandals, political manipulation, insider trading, etc have NOT gone away. What is happening is with each new scandal uncovered, the crooks see where they failed, and refine their techniques so as to not get caught next time. I don't think you can ignore this issue. Big whopper piles of money, as represented by centralised energy, seem to always attract very big crooks. Same as any other "big" business especially when it's one of those quasi public/private hybrid industries that the utilities represent, ie "legal monopolies".
I'm not giving up my home PV unit. The grid has gone out a lot where I live since I've been living here, I keep my power. Kinda nifty. It's like the olden days with only a few mainframes, you willing to give up your own computer? How about mass transit, you willing to accept only mass transit for everywhere you go, or can you see the practicality of individual cars? Food, a few whopper farms, or millions of farms and gardens? It's like do you REALLY want to put all your eggs in one basket with energy?
Back to PV, I am always wondering how much better it would be if virtually every sunny side rooftop in the US was covered in panels now. Maybe actually put a lot of the manufacturing guys back to work, re-open some more plants, build them by the millions instead of thousands. The space exists on these roofs and now is composed of shingles that get hot, and that's it. How much electric do you get from that? And what might happen to the cost if millions more were in market demand? Would the R&D and the manufacturing advances result in better and cheaper? I am guessing it would, seems to work for everything else.
Back to the hydrogen from algae, here is the Google link using those search terms, several good hits, neat stuff