I wonder how many fatcat "royals" and other assorted aristocratic doffuses attending soirées where music is played that the cops there have gone and busted up? I am guessing maybe around zero or close to that. "oh, beg pardon your royal duchess, but you didn't receive the proper assembly and entertainment permit, sorry, this £million sweet sixteen birthday party is now over"
Maybe I am wrong though, maybe they do that there. uh huh
If you look at the larger picture, *some* people pay at the price gouging "official" level like you point out, a lot more pay at the pegleg "arrgh matey" level. Both. The real sweet spot that has yet to be achieved, as this is a dynamic market (restrictive laws versus obvious demand), is in between those two places, but is much closer to the pegleg "price point" than it is now.
The white market vendors have been frantic to try and maintain the old "per unit" pricing models they got long accustomed to when the only copies that could be traded on the market were all expensive to produce tangible copies. Digital reality and the internet has stomped that flat on a technical basis, and the market has yet to fully adjust other than then lobbying hard to make it so the public is forced "legally" to ignore this. That's why I termed it forced luddism, and why I see it as threat to the eventual ability to have real replicators and to reduce want, to reduce the effects of poverty and scarcity. That's the long view and why I think the current biz models are such a boneheaded move and actual threat, they establish a very bad legal precedent that ignores proven scientific reality.
When the only scarcity in this or that is artificially constructed and maintained, it has lapsed to a burden on society and will get ignored, if possible. Now with tangible cars, it is near impossible for people to make their own copies of cars cheaply, hence why they could get away with a price point like that. Digital bits throw that right out the window, brand new ballgame.
When the laws are skewed in such a way as the official white market prices annoy the people, they turn to the black market, which is also capitalism, it just is, it's part of the overall market, even if it means bending the rules by large segments of the consuming public.
..so called "justice" authority dweebs going to investigate the music and movie industry for widescale and ongoing racketeering, for collusion and price fixing and so on? What they want for a cheap bit of stamped plastic or a digital download is beyond ludicrous, and is really only explainable by the industry as a whole maintaining the illusion that somehow, especially as regards digital bits transferred on the internet, that there is a "scarcity" of copies that would result in such high prices, which everyone knows is blatantly false.
Letting them get away with this and legislating technological luddism into law will *really* bite humanity once we have tangible replicator tech down better. This precedent with enforced artificial scarcity and ludicrous "per unit" prices that seek to mimic charges back when it actually took a lot of resources to make additional copies is *nuts*.
Sure, there are production costs of X for this or that music or movie, but then they fail at making the copies that could be much cheaper "legally" available. A dollar for less than a penny's worth of bandwith for a tune, and not much more for a movie when they want 10 or 20 bucks for a few gigs of data bits transferred down the tubes is blatant price gouging, no way around that, and "regional" pricing and restrictions are even more unfair. It's not only an unfair and quite *stupid* business practice**, but they created a serious adversarial condition with their customers on purpose to pull this off. Economies of scale, selling millions and millions more copies for cheaper, would have basically nipped so called "piracy" in the bud years ago, and maintained profitability at the same time.
**Having been in both areas professionally before, all I can say is it is THE most chronically drunken and drug abusing industry out there I have ever been exposed to, generally speaking of course. I think that might help explain these stupid decisions they make all the time. It doesn't explain all of it, but a lot of it.
Easy, too. The author, once his works "take off", even past a much shorter copyright period, contracts with another publisher for a print run, adds a new forward and a new epilogue, plus hand autographs every copy. Given a choice of the same $7.95 paperback or $24.95 hardcover, one that is the author's new version and signed, as opposed to brand x publisher's "out of copyright" version, which would most people buy then?
I remember when it happened and it was one of those big collective "oh shit!!" moments. Everyone grokked what this meant, the rooskies now had the high ground and could do stuff we weren't even close to doing yet. Ya, there was also a lot of grudging admiration..but it was tempered with some sober reality. The US people were used to being topdogs in about any tech out there, I mean this was just a default assumption "we're the bestus in anything!!", it was taken for granted, so this really got to people. Of course we caught up quickly, but it really was a good kick to the pants.
I would have rather they had stuck with the dropship idea like they ran with the X-15 and now Rutan's/Branson's method, at least for light duty, low earth orbit human movers. Big dumb capsules are good for moving bulk freight, but we need a real highly reusable, fast turn around and cheap spaceplane. The shuttle is a compromise between the two and just didn't cut it. There's trucks, then cars, we need both.
And yes, this is annoying to me as well. I think that if there is even one penny of public tax money that goes to the researchers who write these articles, that the entire paper be free to view in its entirety. Those academic paywalls are *most annoying*, especially when even the summaries/abstracts suck and don't tell much. I try to not even tease myself anymore and just use sites like PlOS, etc. Google should have a way to not show paywalls on request. You can do that with the negative modifiers with your search, -elsevier.com, like that, but it's a chore.
On a side issue, I'd go further and say similar for patents, any public monies used, the patents become public domain.
The big dogs like google could start charging these guys to index their precious. I wish they would have done something like that rather than cave into AP, etc, for just quoting little snippets to have *something* to show where this news link was coming from. Do it on a case by case basis, the various news websites want their news paywall to be indexed, they should pay for that professional servgice, if they don't throw up a paywall, then they get indexed for free, like today. Ball is in the news orgs court then when it comes to what they think things are worth or not.
I have mixed feelings about google, but sometimes I think they are too nice and cave in too readily. It can't be that much fun to be the biggest of the big dogs and not get to bite some ass once in awhile.
Users do so know what they want! When they fire up a browser, they want it to render a webpage and not get hung up on something, or bog the whole system down if it has been running for a day. When they want to print, they want it to *print*. When they hit a media player from a menu, they want the *&*^&*()(ing sound to come out of the speakers, not go google around to see if jack has alsaed his pulse correctly with this week's hot new "distro" du jour. If they download a new app, they want it to show up in the graphical menu, not get teleported away in/lusr/share/binned/buried. When they first boot up, they want the monitor to be functional, not look like the machine is on electronic qualudes. And stuff like that and it is that simple.
The details are for the devs, not for the endusers, blaming the endusers for their sound not working or printer not working or screen looking like ass is not a smooth move, because it isn't their fault at all. Car analogy, when folks buy a car, they don't want to even think about needing 10 grand worth of snapon on wrenches, another 10 grand of analysis gadgets, and a huge library of manuals, they just want it to work, and they are willing to pay for that. Some people who own cars are gearheads, most are not, same with computer users, and until this is grokked better, the problems will continue.
If they are having a problem, and maybe could actually ask a legitimate question or offer a suggestion, regular computer users shouldn't be required to register AGAIN at one of the 10,000 support places,(where to go, the distro forums, no the app developers forums, no, register for some arcane mailing list straight out of 1987, no...) It should just have an automatic way to capture the latest instance of this or that running and ship it to the devs, with a little comment box to add the details, and should be CCed to both the distro maintainer and also the main dev for the app, *simultaneously*, so no ignoring or buck passing can happen. As in a bugzilla that didn't suck.
And here's the main reason none of this stuff really gets fixed, this nutso fixation on "Release early, release often", because that means *perpetual alpha or at best betaware*. Perpetual. The main devs go on to the next new featureset three nanoseconds after the alleged "gold" release, which is always beta at best, and never really fix the old features so they really work and are cast iron.
Sure, people shouldn't bitch when they are getting it free, I agree, that's why I would support some distro that actually was paid, and had a system where the outside developers could get paid as well based on user feedback and interest, a micropayments situation. Ignore bugs and feature requests for whatever app you develop or work on? No loot for you. It's all up to you, take feedback as it comes or not, binary decision there. Really listen to the end users and try to fix bugs and add features that people want, you make more loot.
The system could be run by the distro seller, with a ranking "karma" like system for apps, both for which app gets included and for how well it evolves, splitting the income and profits, and don't throw a thousand apps on the thing, one CD worth is more than enough for a base system, you don't need a full huge DVD worth of stuff for regular ole desktop users, the market in question here. Those folks are never going to use beyond a fraction of that stuff on there anyway. Trash all the redundant apps and just make an executive decision with what to start with, and stick to it, and have one good "thing" as opposed to 15 things that all kinda sorta similar but none of them really work all that well. Talking regular computer users/drivers, not professional drivers or professional mechanics. I bet a lot of people would pay say 20-40 bucks (some number that isn't 100 or 200 or 300 dollars, but not zero, either) for a simple and functional desktop OS version as opposed to some free version with thousands of redundant and sorta non
If the video feed was open to the public, it wouldn't be long before there would be clips of the mayor's butt crack showing up on youtube, as he bent over to work in his garden, or the city council folks walking their dogs and letting them take a dump on neighbor's lawns, or local fatcat businessmen passed out drunk in their back yards, all the local cop cars on patrol making illegal left turns at stoplights, etc.
that's why I said this "The only way around it is better water management (try to not contaminate sources, make sure the infrastructure isn't leaky, charge a fair but reasonable price for mass water delivery, educate the populations better, etc), better conservation (variety of methods), and *more storage*."
I agree, water delivery, especially to big cities, is way undervalued and cheap. So are most of the other things they need to import. The US in particular has been using the rural "flyover" areas as a form of external exploited colony, that's why there are such wide diverse wage pay scales and cost of living, etc. Food, electricity, water, natgas, etc is all being sold way too cheap and the original owners, where this necessary stuff comes from, have been getting almost bupkis for it, so cheap the big cities waste it constantly and are extravagant with it.
In other words, I'll take the complaints of urbanites about our big trucks and mileage more seriously when I start to see them shut off those ludicrous advertise to the space aliens huge corporate lit up signs at night, and they get real on commuting and let a few million more people stay home to sit in front of a computer screen and work, as opposed to commuting back and forth twice a day to go sit in front of a computer screen in a totally unecessary huge corporate ego "office tower". What a freeking waste of resources and energy. Moving electrons on a data wire is loads cheaper than moving humans all the time. Along with all the wasted water and so on, Ya, golf, if it is a drought, let them play on all sand and dried dirt. When we are shutting down farmland because of lack of irrigation water, but golf courses are being watered, something is just *wrong*.
We also need a national water pipeline "grid", pipelines and deep reservoirs, to help balance out excess water in some areas to lack of water in other areas. As a nation we get enough water, we just don't yet have the means to really shift it around where it is needed better. I would have much rather seen them do something like that rather than bailout the casino bank wealth skimming "industry"
You could to a limited degree, but the big buyers represent the fast food chains and the supermarkets, something like 95% or better of the market. You just have to have someplace to sell, else no reason to be a grower. Also you have to remember, the farmers/growers don't own the birds, ever, a few producers own that segment of the market (tyson,pilgrims pride, etc, a small handful), they are the ones who negotiate the contracts with the buyers cartels, because all of this is done at mass quantities levels. mass in a HUGE amount. So in other words, there are two cartels over the farmer/grower. The offered cash from any of the packers is roughly identical. The big buyers offer what they offer, that is almost identical all the time.
Farmers/growers grow on a flock to flock contract basis, the baby birds are supplied, the feed is supplied (that costs directly), any other ancillary costs are picked up by the farmer, propane, electricity, water, etc, then they are harvested and you get paid so much for good bird. After expenses..a few pence per bird net profit, if *lucky* and the gods of the market have smiled that month. A lot of times, a net loss.
The producers and packers run the packing plants, which are very expensive to license/build/operate, many millions. A small coop couldn't get up that sort of scratch and would be hard pressed to find anything but a teeny fragmented market.
There are some smaller fully independent growers who have carved out extremely limited little niche markets, but that's about it, and the combination of federal laws and state laws (which vary widely) on how hard this is to do make it quite the challenge. It goes from hard to "OMG, why bother..."
Here's another example about how this has been cartelized. If you go to buy a big farm, you won't even get a loan for it unless you have a contract in hand from some recognized producer/packer, and even if you have it cash, that's no guarantee you'll ever get a contract. You could theoretically pay 10 million cash for a small to medium farm and have some operating expenses in cash and still get stuck with a white elephant if you have no proven market upfront.
Another factor to consider is most big farmers/ranchers mindset..they HATE being organized, they don't like it, say the word union or coop and they want to draw a gun and start talking about hippie environmentalists and go on a rant. I've heard it from too many farmers to ignore, it's just reality, they been brainwashed way beyond the point of rationality about this. They are almost totally opposed to organizing in a cooperative fashion with each other (believe me, I thought of this and have brought it up before, a coop, etc), even if they keep getting screwed into bankruptcy by another "organization", the cartels, which they bitch about all the time. It seems an obvious solution but they simply will not do it, too "hippy" "communist" "socialist" "libruhl", and etc. I know I have to assume artificial redneckerson manners just to maintain in my community, it is camouflage. Bad enough I have a yankee accent...heh
Go figger, I long ago stopped trying to figure it out beyond "Stockholm Syndrome" seems to be hard coded in their psychology. Brainwashed deluxe by the big ag business boys and dudes like rush limbeau, that they listen to, and so on. Anything that seems to make sense "hey, how about doing some small scale alternative energy projects like this here.." NO! THAT HIPPY SHIT DON'T WORK!!
I gave up years ago, ain't worth it. A few are reasonable, most are just too boneheaded and will adopt being screwed over and over again as a lifestyle choice. Anything a few select pols and monsanto and a few other corps tell them, they take as gospel, end of story. Any chemical released is automatically safe as mommas milk. any seed with gene alteration, perfectly safe, never a problem, etc.
You can point out dozens of things taken off the market after the fact of being proven too dangerous, ne
...no signal, nothing? What's your solution at that point?
My guess is, a lot of people will go for the service if it is affordable enough. Just another option when you have no cell or wifi coverage, using the same handset.
Have to disagree there. Long term drought is a real possibility for several areas of the nation. My own state of Georgia got down to a pretty darn low amount of water in our dammed up reservoirs the last two years due to severe summer drought. It was nip and tuck there whether or not atlanta metro would be able to have any water at all. Luckily it finally rained, but man it got close. They've determined we really do need more reservoirs and I would have to agree with them. When you have entire cities just slap running out, no river water, low reservoirs, ground water table dropped to ridiculous low levels, etc you only have one option, build more reservoirs so in wet years you can store more, and that will mean dams, and as long as you are building dams, might as well have some hydropower with it.
You can't just tell 5 million people in a state tough luck, no water for you, buh bye! Or 35 million people in California or elsewhere. this isn't a joke anymore, it is completely serious business.. And similar is happening all over, not only in the US but all over the world.
The only way around it is better water management (try to not contaminate sources, make sure the infrastructure isn't leaky, charge a fair but reasonable price for mass water delivery, educate the populations better, etc), better conservation (variety of methods), and *more storage*. If you need water and let it all run down to the ocean without adequate storage and use first, you will just run out, and that causes a bit of social messiness it does.... You need all three avenues to be taken, just one or the other won't be enough.
Home cisterns and storage is cool too, nothing against that, I do it myself here with water barrels as a backup, but tons of people live in apartments and so on and there are industrial and agricultural uses of water that just require reservoirs, the quantities needed just cabn't be met with man made containers other than earth, rock, concrete and river valleys. We simply can't build stand alone vessels to the scale we need, in size or quantity, it would..aw heck, who knows, a few hundred gallon plastic stock tank cost a few hundred, so scale it up from there. It would cost buhzillions, some huge number, to take the place of reservoirs, it just couldn't and wouldn't be done. That leaves dams and reservoirs as the only other viable option. Mankind has struggled with this since we have been mankind, reservoirs are the option everyone has come up with.
Ya, if you area tiny nation that is rich as snot and have ocean front property you can setup some nuke powered desalinator, but we have to get real on mass scale here for mass quantities of people, we aren't desalinating the ocean to the scale we need anytime soon. So..catch rain water and slow down river water, that's it more or less.
We have three different fairly large man made ponds/reservoirs here on the farm and I am real glad we have them. The last two summers when it didn't rain my cows had *nothing* to drink except that pond water, stored up rainwater. The normal "year round" creek they drink from dried up to hard rock and sand with a few muddy patches left. It would have wiped us out without that pond, and it dropped more than ten feet! Luckily as well we had enough stored hay, because the pastures just went to brown dust mostly. This spring though has been wet and the pond has come half way back up, but still, much lower than it was some years ago now. This is all over the south, do you remember all the fgire stories from last year? It's not just outwest that has been getting nailed, the southeast has been off and on for a few years now and longer range predictions have us for less water, with a higher demand. The feds own and control most of the reservoirs here, so now the state is thinking of building their own, so they can control them themselves.
The Better Place project They are developing the entire EV stack, the car, the charging stations, battery pack swapout, etc. Nissan/Renault are building the cars. They are talking that in some circumstances, the upfront costs will be less, as they are going to follow something like a cellphone plan,get the ride for cheaper up front, then pay them for the juice to run it. Private charging stations for at home, then at various places out on the road for fast charging or battery swapout, so you can do trips as well. It is a *very* ambitious project, but several nations and states and some cities inside the US have signed into the deal so far.
With that said, same as every other electric gadget out there, my bet would be some Chinese manufacturers will be the first to get really cheap/affordable electric cars on the mass market. Chery and BYD seem to be the ones to watch.
It doesn't take long for markets to change, or for the big names to fall. I remember when seeing a Japanese car was not happening at all, to then it got to ultra rare and guys said they would never catch on to now they have superior marques and cred and have a huge international market. So who knows, the transportation sector is going through more changes than ever today. And we ARE going to be getting quite a bit more choice than what we had previously, prices, drivetrains, fuel source, all of it.
Here's an interesting new electric truck that is soon to hit the market the IDEA. A city delivery truck.
Tell ya the one I would want, a mild hybrid, diesel electric, extended cab, 4wd work truck. For short range around the farm, electric only, need to go further, the diesel kicks the generator on. Stationary it would be a whole house electric backup system/job site generator. Haven't seen any proposed yet, but if someone builds one, I bet they would sell, there's a lot of guys out there who want/need trucks, just would be nicer if they had better mileage and that diesel genny option built in would be *sweet*. With some plugin battery capacity, even if it is just say 10 miles, pure gravy. Being a truck, they could even make that an option, say 10 came standard, then you could pay more for each additional battery pack to give ten more miles on the charge up to some reasonable limit, say 50 miles maybe (you wouldn't want to lose all your cargo capacity in other words, but have options to suit each guy's needs).
The other idea I really like is a pure electric ride, then an attachable generator trailer for long trips. Best of both worlds that way, the electric modular hybrid. You wouldn't even need to buy the generator trailer unless you wanted to, the dealers (or whomever...) could have them for rent for the times you need to travel long distance, and that could be for both cars and trucks.
NAIS eventually will apply to all livestock, even chickens. A ten cent tag would add considerably to the cost (the labor, plus the cost of the tag, think 25,000 cluckers per house, times many houses, and that's just one farm, with a brand new flock every 8 weeks or so..it would start to add up quick. I have no idea how they would read them fast as they got caught to go to the packing houses either. If you have ever watched how this is done you'd see why). It would wipe out the profit margin there (which usually is a few cents per bird for the grower if everything goes good, and no guarantees anymore what with mass commodities speculation and so forth), which is very slim today, so slim that a lot of the packing houses have closed facilities, it simply cost more to produce than what they can be sold for, and there are only a half a dozen or so big buyers in the US and they dictate the price. It's a cartel that would make the RIAA or MPAA proud...
As to the cattle, with those wild cattle, you have to physically catch each one out there and rope it down or something to install the tag, plus with every calf born, like in the olden days. Lotta work.. then try to get next to the calf later on, close enough to read the tag again? They split, they run like hell, they think they are like wild big deer or something, they are mostly wild, especially the frisky calves. I have a few beefers like that, almost impossible to get them into the barn. Most are OK with coming in to get a little corn, some are just wild, and a severe lack of trained horse here to go do some cowboy thing with a lasso...;)...don't even know if I could do that, never tried really.. It can take me quite some time to get them all tamed up enough to be regular travelers into and out of the barn. Can't just snap some fingers and say "do it", and if they insist on that and push some huge fine per day or something..screw it, I just won't do it them, wouldn't be possible, couldn't take the chance on getting fined. You don't make very much anyway with this today, prices are abysmal compared to production costs, I know for me it is well below minimum rage if I look at hours worked, minus expenses of all sorts and what is left over. Not really sure how much less a lot of us are supposed to make in this economy and still stay in business, but it got rather dicey some time ago.
There really is no reason to do this tagging-if at all really- until such a point as they are corralled up for transport and delivered to the auction or finishing lots, and they could be tagged there *much* easier once you have a string of them in the chute. And right there you get tied to the critter, so there's your tracking, this is already in place. They slap a number on them as soon as they are off your trailer. That the big processing plants get contaminated and run a million lbs production through without catching it...the tag in the critter will do *nothing* to stop that, not a dang thing, and once the cow is cut up, there's no individual tag per chunk 0 beaste, so they couldn't "track it back" anyway.
The whole idea is either pure dumb (clueless government make work busywork), or pure sinister (create a few big food monopolies), or both, not sure, but it's cuckoo.
Cows are herd animals, it is actually loads easier to move a lot of them at once rather than one at a time. *Loads easier* Doing it out on the range would be a severe PITA, I can see why those big western ranchers are opposed to this when they have to deal with hundreds or thousands of cattle. The whole thing seems like it was thought up by some city dudes who never worked on a farm or ranch and think cows are like big stationary cabbages or something, or are all as tame as old dogs or something, or like berssie the moo cow on some TV commercial. That just isn't the case. Now dairy cows can get pretty tame eventually, they are moved in and out of the milking barn two or three times a day and have close human contact all the time, but beef cattle..nope, the best
windows mobile and assorted normal windows smartphone apps, multiband (with the sat freqs, some GSM freqs, wifi, hifi, lowfi, french fri...), MicroSD, USB, 2.6 inch screen, qwerty keyboard, camera, plays some vids and tunes, etc. Basically a normal smartphone that also can do the satphone gig. No mention of cost or subscription plan cost that I could see on the site (might be there, just not seeing it easy). An interesting device and network idea, a little convergence there.
Most large dams are there also for water storage and flood control, to even the supply out over the year, and we really don't have much in the way of alternatives for that.
..that's the only thing I have found that works for me on the farm. Top pocket, with a secured button. Anything in my pants pocket or on a holster, etc is due for a drop or a smashing. A shirt pocket with no button, same thing, lean over, out it goes, and around where I work, that could be right into a pile of cow exhaust or in the swamp/mud, etc.. The other thing cellphones don't seem to have is a lanyard loop. The sleeves sometimes have then, but the phone itself needs one, so you can put your own "safe" on them when doing work off the ground or whatever, just like with your other tools. If you drop it accidentally, it's only going a coupla feet then and easy enough to retrieve it.
Anyway, this is why I only use cheap prepaid phones now. If they get creamed, no biggee really. I would *like* a full featured smartphone, but can't take a chance on them, just too wuss and too expensive at the same time.
I honestly don't think there's a single cellphone designer out there who has ever worked a normal hard blue collar job before, else a good simple basic phone might exist for this market. It has to have buttons that can work with gloves on if necessary, at least for the main function of making and answering calls, have a readable screen in bright daylight, not have a weak case, be able to take getting washed off with the garden hose, etc. Maybe these landrover phones are OK, no idea really, but I've never seen a phone here that was any good in the rugged department. It can be larger and heavier, who cares, you know we carry weight all the time, those designers seem to think a lb would induce a hernia or something. Cellphones nowadays seem designed for very young people, children really, with teeny delicate fingers, and always using the phones inside someplace under climate control and artificial light.
I wonder if there would be a market for taking people's cellphones (the few nice ones that guys like us want, but are impractical to carry) and just physically fitting them into better cases, and doing the other things necessary to make them tougher and more functional? I mean physically remove all the electronics and stick that in a totally different case that was blue collar emphasis designed? Cellphone case mods.
Projects like this are part of "all of the above", part of getting food, clean water and medicine. The things needed to help people's and nations get to be better. I see a lot of comments about how useless this would be. On the contrary, given a village access to the net means they can learn about new ways to make indigenous water filters using cheap available resources. They can find out about newer methods of farming/sustainable agriculture. Look for new markets for their goods, or sources for cheaper goods they might need, tools, seeds etc. The access to just a lot of books and papers could help, from the schoolkids to the local overwhelmed medical person. It's not just one or the other that is needed in a lot of these places, it is all of it, all of the above. Civilization.
Some orgs concentrate on medicines/vaccines, others on food aid, others on..whatever. This is just another way to help, and to do it cheaper, to leapfrog the old model of very expensive centralized wired infrastructure for both power and communications, and go directly to decentralized models that are faster/cheaper and easier to deploy.
And socially, once people start to realize there is more than just the local tribe and the surrounding few square miles and whatever the local warlord or shaman dictates to them, beyond the abstract, with just a narrow and skewed jingoistic viewpoint, they can start to see we all need to get along better, because we are all human and have to share this planet, that we have more in common than what they might have been brainwashed into believing previously.
In other words, with less viewpoints being available, remaining insular and cutoff, it is easier for the local warlords and power goons to keep their populations controlled and under their thumb and doing nutso stuff. Once they see there are other ways to "think and do", at least it gets them considering saner and more rational alternatives.
We see it daily, look around at the headlines, dictatorship/regime X, the first thing they try to do if it looks like their rule might be threatened is they cut off and restrict and censor communications. This is *precisely* why we should encourage more widespread and open and free-er communications, *especially* in areas that have a rather severe lack of them to begin with.
..GPS tracking by the government shows how far apart we are just in general principles as per my above first reply about how far we are into a full police state and how people have been slowly conditioned to accept it and not even see it. I remember saying the same thing about electronic computerized voting way back here before it even started, when it was a lot more popular in concept because it was "computerized', high tech, so it just must be mo' bettah. I called shenanigans then as well, because I could see the obvious high level abuse potential and how they could hack elections easier. And most likely, they have, given all the evidence that has come out since the 2000 elections to today.
Same deal here, just part of their NWO stew of crap they keep throwing at the people and making "law". From my POV, just at a very basic and important level, the GPS tracking itself is an outright outrageous *abuse*, let alone *charging* you cash money for this dubious privilege.
And like I said, it has nothing to do with revenue, that's the misdirection part, the con they are using to push this. I already outlined a completely viable alternative for both increasing road maintenance revenue, plus reducing the cost of fuel to the driver, without any obnoxious big brother tracking required.
We'll have to more or less agree to disagree on at least a few points here. I'm just lucky enough to remember living when such things would have been almost automatically vilified and would have stood no chance in hell of being made "law"..now..looks like the goons are winning "hearts and minds". Sadly.
And I will keep pointing out when that is happening, or when it looks to happen, like with this issue. Because I actually care about old fashioned personal freedoms and a strictly regulated and controlled government. An all powerful government with a strictly controlled population is not the original design here.
Heh, I am in farming, I can recognize easily when a farmer is controlling his herd, I do it daily, what needs to happen. You have to do surveillance, control, and watch your fences. Look around at government now, what do you see? What I see has way too many parallels for complacency or for me to accept it is anything other than what it looks like, using occam's razor.
Higher levels of co2 are one of the things that keep the planet from being in a long term and rather drastic ice age. Ya know, ice miles deep extending all the way to the midwestern states, and still rather cold even beyond that south. It is precisely because we have some moderately higher levels of co2 in the atmosphere that Canada, northern and central Europe and large parts of the northern US are even habitable today. Greenland not that long ago had a more temperate climate, for example.CO2 levels are helping us right now, not hurting for the most part. If we were to lose frost free months up north, the planet would lose untold millions of tons of valuable grain production. We'd be facing some serious threats of famine right now if conditions got any colder than they are. A slightly warmer climate in other words is a LOT better than a colder one.
Cap and trade is an outright con and scheme designed to impose a trillion dollar a year tax on everyone, and transfer that money to the already rich globalist investment speculators and traders, and also as a by product, to give them more international control outside of the normal political process. It has nothing to do with fixing the climate. That's the con they are offering, the bait.
If they wanted to fix the climate (which really doesn't need much fixing right now, we are in the middle of a nice temperate period between ice ages, we just mainly need to sort out the erroneous idea that people can live in deserts with no adequate water, this reality is sinking in finally, like in California where they just *screwed* their big food production areas by denying them irrigation water, because they have just slap run out. It's a desert, it just can't support as many people who want to live there as want to given their supplies, plus have the largest winter vegetable production. Geographical reality), or just encourage somewhat cleaner industries (I'm all for energy decentralization and a more wide diversification of energy production and the mass adoption of such things as personal home solar, etc), all they would need to do is offer universal tax credits for those industries and products. No tax is needed whatsoever, no "war on carbon", and zero new governmental employees or additional expense is needed for this either, just a checkbox on your tax form and clip on the receipts if required. And it really is that easy.
Elimination of taxes encourages investments and improvements, not impositions of new taxes-even if they don't call them taxes. Forcing new artificial fees on energy products-which in turn will increase the cost of just about every single tangible product you buy, and a lot of the intangibles as well, such as digital products dependent on expensive hardware plus energy, is a defacto "new tax".
Energy companies could really not give a shit how they go about it, producing electricity for you to send you a monthly bill. They just want that check from you, that's all, it's not rocket surgery to see this. Give them a 100% tax credit to install massive windfarms and solar thermal and so on, that would be a heckuva inducement for them, you'd see them switch from coal rapidly, (as much as feasible anyway), with no "cap and trade" middleman skimming scheme needed.
Same with individuals, give them a 100% tax credit to install say a decent 2 or 3 kw sized home solar rig, perhaps at a limit of around 25 grand in cost, tax credit extending for ten years (within payback time IOW), you'd see twenty (whatever, a lot) new solar companies producing panels and the assorted gear within a few months, and untold tens of millions of panels going up all over the nation. No regressive tax needed. The tax *credit*, the "anti-tax", is the most amazing and *benevolent* tool the government can use for fair and constructive change. I like to call it the carrot method, instead of the stick or "club you over the economic head" method, which for some odd reason they always seem to prefer. Proly because they dig on forcing you to obe
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I wonder how many fatcat "royals" and other assorted aristocratic doffuses attending soirées where music is played that the cops there have gone and busted up? I am guessing maybe around zero or close to that.
"oh, beg pardon your royal duchess, but you didn't receive the proper assembly and entertainment permit, sorry, this £million sweet sixteen birthday party is now over"
Maybe I am wrong though, maybe they do that there. uh huh
How many of the companies you own stock in trade with/do business in red china (or Viet Nam for that matter)? Or put it another way, how many *don't*?
If you look at the larger picture, *some* people pay at the price gouging "official" level like you point out, a lot more pay at the pegleg "arrgh matey" level. Both. The real sweet spot that has yet to be achieved, as this is a dynamic market (restrictive laws versus obvious demand), is in between those two places, but is much closer to the pegleg "price point" than it is now.
The white market vendors have been frantic to try and maintain the old "per unit" pricing models they got long accustomed to when the only copies that could be traded on the market were all expensive to produce tangible copies. Digital reality and the internet has stomped that flat on a technical basis, and the market has yet to fully adjust other than then lobbying hard to make it so the public is forced "legally" to ignore this. That's why I termed it forced luddism, and why I see it as threat to the eventual ability to have real replicators and to reduce want, to reduce the effects of poverty and scarcity. That's the long view and why I think the current biz models are such a boneheaded move and actual threat, they establish a very bad legal precedent that ignores proven scientific reality.
When the only scarcity in this or that is artificially constructed and maintained, it has lapsed to a burden on society and will get ignored, if possible. Now with tangible cars, it is near impossible for people to make their own copies of cars cheaply, hence why they could get away with a price point like that. Digital bits throw that right out the window, brand new ballgame.
When the laws are skewed in such a way as the official white market prices annoy the people, they turn to the black market, which is also capitalism, it just is, it's part of the overall market, even if it means bending the rules by large segments of the consuming public.
..so called "justice" authority dweebs going to investigate the music and movie industry for widescale and ongoing racketeering, for collusion and price fixing and so on? What they want for a cheap bit of stamped plastic or a digital download is beyond ludicrous, and is really only explainable by the industry as a whole maintaining the illusion that somehow, especially as regards digital bits transferred on the internet, that there is a "scarcity" of copies that would result in such high prices, which everyone knows is blatantly false.
Letting them get away with this and legislating technological luddism into law will *really* bite humanity once we have tangible replicator tech down better. This precedent with enforced artificial scarcity and ludicrous "per unit" prices that seek to mimic charges back when it actually took a lot of resources to make additional copies is *nuts*.
Sure, there are production costs of X for this or that music or movie, but then they fail at making the copies that could be much cheaper "legally" available. A dollar for less than a penny's worth of bandwith for a tune, and not much more for a movie when they want 10 or 20 bucks for a few gigs of data bits transferred down the tubes is blatant price gouging, no way around that, and "regional" pricing and restrictions are even more unfair. It's not only an unfair and quite *stupid* business practice**, but they created a serious adversarial condition with their customers on purpose to pull this off. Economies of scale, selling millions and millions more copies for cheaper, would have basically nipped so called "piracy" in the bud years ago, and maintained profitability at the same time.
**Having been in both areas professionally before, all I can say is it is THE most chronically drunken and drug abusing industry out there I have ever been exposed to, generally speaking of course. I think that might help explain these stupid decisions they make all the time. It doesn't explain all of it, but a lot of it.
Easy, too. The author, once his works "take off", even past a much shorter copyright period, contracts with another publisher for a print run, adds a new forward and a new epilogue, plus hand autographs every copy. Given a choice of the same $7.95 paperback or $24.95 hardcover, one that is the author's new version and signed, as opposed to brand x publisher's "out of copyright" version, which would most people buy then?
I remember when it happened and it was one of those big collective "oh shit!!" moments. Everyone grokked what this meant, the rooskies now had the high ground and could do stuff we weren't even close to doing yet. Ya, there was also a lot of grudging admiration..but it was tempered with some sober reality. The US people were used to being topdogs in about any tech out there, I mean this was just a default assumption "we're the bestus in anything!!", it was taken for granted, so this really got to people. Of course we caught up quickly, but it really was a good kick to the pants.
I would have rather they had stuck with the dropship idea like they ran with the X-15 and now Rutan's/Branson's method, at least for light duty, low earth orbit human movers. Big dumb capsules are good for moving bulk freight, but we need a real highly reusable, fast turn around and cheap spaceplane. The shuttle is a compromise between the two and just didn't cut it. There's trucks, then cars, we need both.
And yes, this is annoying to me as well. I think that if there is even one penny of public tax money that goes to the researchers who write these articles, that the entire paper be free to view in its entirety. Those academic paywalls are *most annoying*, especially when even the summaries/abstracts suck and don't tell much. I try to not even tease myself anymore and just use sites like PlOS, etc. Google should have a way to not show paywalls on request. You can do that with the negative modifiers with your search, -elsevier.com, like that, but it's a chore.
On a side issue, I'd go further and say similar for patents, any public monies used, the patents become public domain.
The big dogs like google could start charging these guys to index their precious. I wish they would have done something like that rather than cave into AP, etc, for just quoting little snippets to have *something* to show where this news link was coming from. Do it on a case by case basis, the various news websites want their news paywall to be indexed, they should pay for that professional servgice, if they don't throw up a paywall, then they get indexed for free, like today. Ball is in the news orgs court then when it comes to what they think things are worth or not.
I have mixed feelings about google, but sometimes I think they are too nice and cave in too readily. It can't be that much fun to be the biggest of the big dogs and not get to bite some ass once in awhile.
They got down to the meat and potatoes. Everything else is all gravy.
Users do so know what they want! When they fire up a browser, they want it to render a webpage and not get hung up on something, or bog the whole system down if it has been running for a day. When they want to print, they want it to *print*. When they hit a media player from a menu, they want the *&*^&*()(ing sound to come out of the speakers, not go google around to see if jack has alsaed his pulse correctly with this week's hot new "distro" du jour. If they download a new app, they want it to show up in the graphical menu, not get teleported away in /lusr/share/binned/buried. When they first boot up, they want the monitor to be functional, not look like the machine is on electronic qualudes. And stuff like that and it is that simple.
The details are for the devs, not for the endusers, blaming the endusers for their sound not working or printer not working or screen looking like ass is not a smooth move, because it isn't their fault at all. Car analogy, when folks buy a car, they don't want to even think about needing 10 grand worth of snapon on wrenches, another 10 grand of analysis gadgets, and a huge library of manuals, they just want it to work, and they are willing to pay for that. Some people who own cars are gearheads, most are not, same with computer users, and until this is grokked better, the problems will continue.
If they are having a problem, and maybe could actually ask a legitimate question or offer a suggestion, regular computer users shouldn't be required to register AGAIN at one of the 10,000 support places,(where to go, the distro forums, no the app developers forums, no, register for some arcane mailing list straight out of 1987, no...) It should just have an automatic way to capture the latest instance of this or that running and ship it to the devs, with a little comment box to add the details, and should be CCed to both the distro maintainer and also the main dev for the app, *simultaneously*, so no ignoring or buck passing can happen. As in a bugzilla that didn't suck.
And here's the main reason none of this stuff really gets fixed, this nutso fixation on "Release early, release often", because that means *perpetual alpha or at best betaware*. Perpetual. The main devs go on to the next new featureset three nanoseconds after the alleged "gold" release, which is always beta at best, and never really fix the old features so they really work and are cast iron.
Sure, people shouldn't bitch when they are getting it free, I agree, that's why I would support some distro that actually was paid, and had a system where the outside developers could get paid as well based on user feedback and interest, a micropayments situation. Ignore bugs and feature requests for whatever app you develop or work on? No loot for you. It's all up to you, take feedback as it comes or not, binary decision there. Really listen to the end users and try to fix bugs and add features that people want, you make more loot.
The system could be run by the distro seller, with a ranking "karma" like system for apps, both for which app gets included and for how well it evolves, splitting the income and profits, and don't throw a thousand apps on the thing, one CD worth is more than enough for a base system, you don't need a full huge DVD worth of stuff for regular ole desktop users, the market in question here. Those folks are never going to use beyond a fraction of that stuff on there anyway. Trash all the redundant apps and just make an executive decision with what to start with, and stick to it, and have one good "thing" as opposed to 15 things that all kinda sorta similar but none of them really work all that well. Talking regular computer users/drivers, not professional drivers or professional mechanics. I bet a lot of people would pay say 20-40 bucks (some number that isn't 100 or 200 or 300 dollars, but not zero, either) for a simple and functional desktop OS version as opposed to some free version with thousands of redundant and sorta non
If the video feed was open to the public, it wouldn't be long before there would be clips of the mayor's butt crack showing up on youtube, as he bent over to work in his garden, or the city council folks walking their dogs and letting them take a dump on neighbor's lawns, or local fatcat businessmen passed out drunk in their back yards, all the local cop cars on patrol making illegal left turns at stoplights, etc.
The spy in the sky program would end pronto then.
that's why I said this "The only way around it is better water management (try to not contaminate sources, make sure the infrastructure isn't leaky, charge a fair but reasonable price for mass water delivery, educate the populations better, etc), better conservation (variety of methods), and *more storage*."
I agree, water delivery, especially to big cities, is way undervalued and cheap. So are most of the other things they need to import. The US in particular has been using the rural "flyover" areas as a form of external exploited colony, that's why there are such wide diverse wage pay scales and cost of living, etc. Food, electricity, water, natgas, etc is all being sold way too cheap and the original owners, where this necessary stuff comes from, have been getting almost bupkis for it, so cheap the big cities waste it constantly and are extravagant with it.
In other words, I'll take the complaints of urbanites about our big trucks and mileage more seriously when I start to see them shut off those ludicrous advertise to the space aliens huge corporate lit up signs at night, and they get real on commuting and let a few million more people stay home to sit in front of a computer screen and work, as opposed to commuting back and forth twice a day to go sit in front of a computer screen in a totally unecessary huge corporate ego "office tower". What a freeking waste of resources and energy. Moving electrons on a data wire is loads cheaper than moving humans all the time. Along with all the wasted water and so on, Ya, golf, if it is a drought, let them play on all sand and dried dirt. When we are shutting down farmland because of lack of irrigation water, but golf courses are being watered, something is just *wrong*.
We also need a national water pipeline "grid", pipelines and deep reservoirs, to help balance out excess water in some areas to lack of water in other areas. As a nation we get enough water, we just don't yet have the means to really shift it around where it is needed better. I would have much rather seen them do something like that rather than bailout the casino bank wealth skimming "industry"
You could to a limited degree, but the big buyers represent the fast food chains and the supermarkets, something like 95% or better of the market. You just have to have someplace to sell, else no reason to be a grower. Also you have to remember, the farmers/growers don't own the birds, ever, a few producers own that segment of the market (tyson,pilgrims pride, etc, a small handful), they are the ones who negotiate the contracts with the buyers cartels, because all of this is done at mass quantities levels. mass in a HUGE amount. So in other words, there are two cartels over the farmer/grower. The offered cash from any of the packers is roughly identical. The big buyers offer what they offer, that is almost identical all the time.
Farmers/growers grow on a flock to flock contract basis, the baby birds are supplied, the feed is supplied (that costs directly), any other ancillary costs are picked up by the farmer, propane, electricity, water, etc, then they are harvested and you get paid so much for good bird. After expenses..a few pence per bird net profit, if *lucky* and the gods of the market have smiled that month. A lot of times, a net loss.
The producers and packers run the packing plants, which are very expensive to license/build/operate, many millions. A small coop couldn't get up that sort of scratch and would be hard pressed to find anything but a teeny fragmented market.
There are some smaller fully independent growers who have carved out extremely limited little niche markets, but that's about it, and the combination of federal laws and state laws (which vary widely) on how hard this is to do make it quite the challenge. It goes from hard to "OMG, why bother..."
Here's another example about how this has been cartelized. If you go to buy a big farm, you won't even get a loan for it unless you have a contract in hand from some recognized producer/packer, and even if you have it cash, that's no guarantee you'll ever get a contract. You could theoretically pay 10 million cash for a small to medium farm and have some operating expenses in cash and still get stuck with a white elephant if you have no proven market upfront.
Another factor to consider is most big farmers/ranchers mindset..they HATE being organized, they don't like it, say the word union or coop and they want to draw a gun and start talking about hippie environmentalists and go on a rant. I've heard it from too many farmers to ignore, it's just reality, they been brainwashed way beyond the point of rationality about this. They are almost totally opposed to organizing in a cooperative fashion with each other (believe me, I thought of this and have brought it up before, a coop, etc), even if they keep getting screwed into bankruptcy by another "organization", the cartels, which they bitch about all the time. It seems an obvious solution but they simply will not do it, too "hippy" "communist" "socialist" "libruhl", and etc. I know I have to assume artificial redneckerson manners just to maintain in my community, it is camouflage. Bad enough I have a yankee accent...heh
Go figger, I long ago stopped trying to figure it out beyond "Stockholm Syndrome" seems to be hard coded in their psychology. Brainwashed deluxe by the big ag business boys and dudes like rush limbeau, that they listen to, and so on. Anything that seems to make sense "hey, how about doing some small scale alternative energy projects like this here.." NO! THAT HIPPY SHIT DON'T WORK!!
I gave up years ago, ain't worth it. A few are reasonable, most are just too boneheaded and will adopt being screwed over and over again as a lifestyle choice. Anything a few select pols and monsanto and a few other corps tell them, they take as gospel, end of story. Any chemical released is automatically safe as mommas milk. any seed with gene alteration, perfectly safe, never a problem, etc.
You can point out dozens of things taken off the market after the fact of being proven too dangerous, ne
...no signal, nothing? What's your solution at that point?
My guess is, a lot of people will go for the service if it is affordable enough. Just another option when you have no cell or wifi coverage, using the same handset.
That's exactly what this new network is for, where you have good normal cell or wifi coverage, it will use that, outside that coverage, it will be using the satellite.
Have to disagree there. Long term drought is a real possibility for several areas of the nation. My own state of Georgia got down to a pretty darn low amount of water in our dammed up reservoirs the last two years due to severe summer drought. It was nip and tuck there whether or not atlanta metro would be able to have any water at all. Luckily it finally rained, but man it got close. They've determined we really do need more reservoirs and I would have to agree with them. When you have entire cities just slap running out, no river water, low reservoirs, ground water table dropped to ridiculous low levels, etc you only have one option, build more reservoirs so in wet years you can store more, and that will mean dams, and as long as you are building dams, might as well have some hydropower with it.
You can't just tell 5 million people in a state tough luck, no water for you, buh bye! Or 35 million people in California or elsewhere. this isn't a joke anymore, it is completely serious business.. And similar is happening all over, not only in the US but all over the world.
The only way around it is better water management (try to not contaminate sources, make sure the infrastructure isn't leaky, charge a fair but reasonable price for mass water delivery, educate the populations better, etc), better conservation (variety of methods), and *more storage*. If you need water and let it all run down to the ocean without adequate storage and use first, you will just run out, and that causes a bit of social messiness it does.... You need all three avenues to be taken, just one or the other won't be enough.
Home cisterns and storage is cool too, nothing against that, I do it myself here with water barrels as a backup, but tons of people live in apartments and so on and there are industrial and agricultural uses of water that just require reservoirs, the quantities needed just cabn't be met with man made containers other than earth, rock, concrete and river valleys. We simply can't build stand alone vessels to the scale we need, in size or quantity, it would..aw heck, who knows, a few hundred gallon plastic stock tank cost a few hundred, so scale it up from there. It would cost buhzillions, some huge number, to take the place of reservoirs, it just couldn't and wouldn't be done. That leaves dams and reservoirs as the only other viable option. Mankind has struggled with this since we have been mankind, reservoirs are the option everyone has come up with.
Ya, if you area tiny nation that is rich as snot and have ocean front property you can setup some nuke powered desalinator, but we have to get real on mass scale here for mass quantities of people, we aren't desalinating the ocean to the scale we need anytime soon. So..catch rain water and slow down river water, that's it more or less.
We have three different fairly large man made ponds/reservoirs here on the farm and I am real glad we have them. The last two summers when it didn't rain my cows had *nothing* to drink except that pond water, stored up rainwater. The normal "year round" creek they drink from dried up to hard rock and sand with a few muddy patches left. It would have wiped us out without that pond, and it dropped more than ten feet! Luckily as well we had enough stored hay, because the pastures just went to brown dust mostly. This spring though has been wet and the pond has come half way back up, but still, much lower than it was some years ago now. This is all over the south, do you remember all the fgire stories from last year? It's not just outwest that has been getting nailed, the southeast has been off and on for a few years now and longer range predictions have us for less water, with a higher demand. The feds own and control most of the reservoirs here, so now the state is thinking of building their own, so they can control them themselves.
The Better Place project They are developing the entire EV stack, the car, the charging stations, battery pack swapout, etc. Nissan/Renault are building the cars. They are talking that in some circumstances, the upfront costs will be less, as they are going to follow something like a cellphone plan,get the ride for cheaper up front, then pay them for the juice to run it. Private charging stations for at home, then at various places out on the road for fast charging or battery swapout, so you can do trips as well. It is a *very* ambitious project, but several nations and states and some cities inside the US have signed into the deal so far.
With that said, same as every other electric gadget out there, my bet would be some Chinese manufacturers will be the first to get really cheap/affordable electric cars on the mass market. Chery and BYD seem to be the ones to watch.
It doesn't take long for markets to change, or for the big names to fall. I remember when seeing a Japanese car was not happening at all, to then it got to ultra rare and guys said they would never catch on to now they have superior marques and cred and have a huge international market. So who knows, the transportation sector is going through more changes than ever today. And we ARE going to be getting quite a bit more choice than what we had previously, prices, drivetrains, fuel source, all of it.
Here's an interesting new electric truck that is soon to hit the market the IDEA. A city delivery truck.
Tell ya the one I would want, a mild hybrid, diesel electric, extended cab, 4wd work truck. For short range around the farm, electric only, need to go further, the diesel kicks the generator on. Stationary it would be a whole house electric backup system/job site generator. Haven't seen any proposed yet, but if someone builds one, I bet they would sell, there's a lot of guys out there who want/need trucks, just would be nicer if they had better mileage and that diesel genny option built in would be *sweet*. With some plugin battery capacity, even if it is just say 10 miles, pure gravy. Being a truck, they could even make that an option, say 10 came standard, then you could pay more for each additional battery pack to give ten more miles on the charge up to some reasonable limit, say 50 miles maybe (you wouldn't want to lose all your cargo capacity in other words, but have options to suit each guy's needs).
The other idea I really like is a pure electric ride, then an attachable generator trailer for long trips. Best of both worlds that way, the electric modular hybrid. You wouldn't even need to buy the generator trailer unless you wanted to, the dealers (or whomever...) could have them for rent for the times you need to travel long distance, and that could be for both cars and trucks.
NAIS eventually will apply to all livestock, even chickens. A ten cent tag would add considerably to the cost (the labor, plus the cost of the tag, think 25,000 cluckers per house, times many houses, and that's just one farm, with a brand new flock every 8 weeks or so..it would start to add up quick. I have no idea how they would read them fast as they got caught to go to the packing houses either. If you have ever watched how this is done you'd see why). It would wipe out the profit margin there (which usually is a few cents per bird for the grower if everything goes good, and no guarantees anymore what with mass commodities speculation and so forth), which is very slim today, so slim that a lot of the packing houses have closed facilities, it simply cost more to produce than what they can be sold for, and there are only a half a dozen or so big buyers in the US and they dictate the price. It's a cartel that would make the RIAA or MPAA proud...
As to the cattle, with those wild cattle, you have to physically catch each one out there and rope it down or something to install the tag, plus with every calf born, like in the olden days. Lotta work.. then try to get next to the calf later on, close enough to read the tag again? They split, they run like hell, they think they are like wild big deer or something, they are mostly wild, especially the frisky calves. I have a few beefers like that, almost impossible to get them into the barn. Most are OK with coming in to get a little corn, some are just wild, and a severe lack of trained horse here to go do some cowboy thing with a lasso... ;)...don't even know if I could do that, never tried really.. It can take me quite some time to get them all tamed up enough to be regular travelers into and out of the barn. Can't just snap some fingers and say "do it", and if they insist on that and push some huge fine per day or something..screw it, I just won't do it them, wouldn't be possible, couldn't take the chance on getting fined. You don't make very much anyway with this today, prices are abysmal compared to production costs, I know for me it is well below minimum rage if I look at hours worked, minus expenses of all sorts and what is left over. Not really sure how much less a lot of us are supposed to make in this economy and still stay in business, but it got rather dicey some time ago.
There really is no reason to do this tagging-if at all really- until such a point as they are corralled up for transport and delivered to the auction or finishing lots, and they could be tagged there *much* easier once you have a string of them in the chute. And right there you get tied to the critter, so there's your tracking, this is already in place. They slap a number on them as soon as they are off your trailer. That the big processing plants get contaminated and run a million lbs production through without catching it...the tag in the critter will do *nothing* to stop that, not a dang thing, and once the cow is cut up, there's no individual tag per chunk 0 beaste, so they couldn't "track it back" anyway.
The whole idea is either pure dumb (clueless government make work busywork), or pure sinister (create a few big food monopolies), or both, not sure, but it's cuckoo.
Cows are herd animals, it is actually loads easier to move a lot of them at once rather than one at a time. *Loads easier* Doing it out on the range would be a severe PITA, I can see why those big western ranchers are opposed to this when they have to deal with hundreds or thousands of cattle. The whole thing seems like it was thought up by some city dudes who never worked on a farm or ranch and think cows are like big stationary cabbages or something, or are all as tame as old dogs or something, or like berssie the moo cow on some TV commercial. That just isn't the case. Now dairy cows can get pretty tame eventually, they are moved in and out of the milking barn two or three times a day and have close human contact all the time, but beef cattle..nope, the best
Link to the handset specs (PDF)
windows mobile and assorted normal windows smartphone apps, multiband (with the sat freqs, some GSM freqs, wifi, hifi, lowfi, french fri...), MicroSD, USB, 2.6 inch screen, qwerty keyboard, camera, plays some vids and tunes, etc. Basically a normal smartphone that also can do the satphone gig. No mention of cost or subscription plan cost that I could see on the site (might be there, just not seeing it easy). An interesting device and network idea, a little convergence there.
Most large dams are there also for water storage and flood control, to even the supply out over the year, and we really don't have much in the way of alternatives for that.
..that's the only thing I have found that works for me on the farm. Top pocket, with a secured button. Anything in my pants pocket or on a holster, etc is due for a drop or a smashing. A shirt pocket with no button, same thing, lean over, out it goes, and around where I work, that could be right into a pile of cow exhaust or in the swamp/mud, etc.. The other thing cellphones don't seem to have is a lanyard loop. The sleeves sometimes have then, but the phone itself needs one, so you can put your own "safe" on them when doing work off the ground or whatever, just like with your other tools. If you drop it accidentally, it's only going a coupla feet then and easy enough to retrieve it.
Anyway, this is why I only use cheap prepaid phones now. If they get creamed, no biggee really. I would *like* a full featured smartphone, but can't take a chance on them, just too wuss and too expensive at the same time.
I honestly don't think there's a single cellphone designer out there who has ever worked a normal hard blue collar job before, else a good simple basic phone might exist for this market. It has to have buttons that can work with gloves on if necessary, at least for the main function of making and answering calls, have a readable screen in bright daylight, not have a weak case, be able to take getting washed off with the garden hose, etc. Maybe these landrover phones are OK, no idea really, but I've never seen a phone here that was any good in the rugged department. It can be larger and heavier, who cares, you know we carry weight all the time, those designers seem to think a lb would induce a hernia or something. Cellphones nowadays seem designed for very young people, children really, with teeny delicate fingers, and always using the phones inside someplace under climate control and artificial light.
I wonder if there would be a market for taking people's cellphones (the few nice ones that guys like us want, but are impractical to carry) and just physically fitting them into better cases, and doing the other things necessary to make them tougher and more functional? I mean physically remove all the electronics and stick that in a totally different case that was blue collar emphasis designed? Cellphone case mods.
Projects like this are part of "all of the above", part of getting food, clean water and medicine. The things needed to help people's and nations get to be better. I see a lot of comments about how useless this would be. On the contrary, given a village access to the net means they can learn about new ways to make indigenous water filters using cheap available resources. They can find out about newer methods of farming/sustainable agriculture. Look for new markets for their goods, or sources for cheaper goods they might need, tools, seeds etc. The access to just a lot of books and papers could help, from the schoolkids to the local overwhelmed medical person. It's not just one or the other that is needed in a lot of these places, it is all of it, all of the above. Civilization.
Some orgs concentrate on medicines/vaccines, others on food aid, others on..whatever. This is just another way to help, and to do it cheaper, to leapfrog the old model of very expensive centralized wired infrastructure for both power and communications, and go directly to decentralized models that are faster/cheaper and easier to deploy.
And socially, once people start to realize there is more than just the local tribe and the surrounding few square miles and whatever the local warlord or shaman dictates to them, beyond the abstract, with just a narrow and skewed jingoistic viewpoint, they can start to see we all need to get along better, because we are all human and have to share this planet, that we have more in common than what they might have been brainwashed into believing previously.
In other words, with less viewpoints being available, remaining insular and cutoff, it is easier for the local warlords and power goons to keep their populations controlled and under their thumb and doing nutso stuff. Once they see there are other ways to "think and do", at least it gets them considering saner and more rational alternatives.
We see it daily, look around at the headlines, dictatorship/regime X, the first thing they try to do if it looks like their rule might be threatened is they cut off and restrict and censor communications. This is *precisely* why we should encourage more widespread and open and free-er communications, *especially* in areas that have a rather severe lack of them to begin with.
..GPS tracking by the government shows how far apart we are just in general principles as per my above first reply about how far we are into a full police state and how people have been slowly conditioned to accept it and not even see it. I remember saying the same thing about electronic computerized voting way back here before it even started, when it was a lot more popular in concept because it was "computerized', high tech, so it just must be mo' bettah. I called shenanigans then as well, because I could see the obvious high level abuse potential and how they could hack elections easier. And most likely, they have, given all the evidence that has come out since the 2000 elections to today.
Same deal here, just part of their NWO stew of crap they keep throwing at the people and making "law". From my POV, just at a very basic and important level, the GPS tracking itself is an outright outrageous *abuse*, let alone *charging* you cash money for this dubious privilege.
And like I said, it has nothing to do with revenue, that's the misdirection part, the con they are using to push this. I already outlined a completely viable alternative for both increasing road maintenance revenue, plus reducing the cost of fuel to the driver, without any obnoxious big brother tracking required.
We'll have to more or less agree to disagree on at least a few points here. I'm just lucky enough to remember living when such things would have been almost automatically vilified and would have stood no chance in hell of being made "law"..now..looks like the goons are winning "hearts and minds". Sadly.
And I will keep pointing out when that is happening, or when it looks to happen, like with this issue. Because I actually care about old fashioned personal freedoms and a strictly regulated and controlled government. An all powerful government with a strictly controlled population is not the original design here.
Heh, I am in farming, I can recognize easily when a farmer is controlling his herd, I do it daily, what needs to happen. You have to do surveillance, control, and watch your fences. Look around at government now, what do you see? What I see has way too many parallels for complacency or for me to accept it is anything other than what it looks like, using occam's razor.
Higher levels of co2 are one of the things that keep the planet from being in a long term and rather drastic ice age. Ya know, ice miles deep extending all the way to the midwestern states, and still rather cold even beyond that south. It is precisely because we have some moderately higher levels of co2 in the atmosphere that Canada, northern and central Europe and large parts of the northern US are even habitable today. Greenland not that long ago had a more temperate climate, for example.CO2 levels are helping us right now, not hurting for the most part. If we were to lose frost free months up north, the planet would lose untold millions of tons of valuable grain production. We'd be facing some serious threats of famine right now if conditions got any colder than they are. A slightly warmer climate in other words is a LOT better than a colder one.
Cap and trade is an outright con and scheme designed to impose a trillion dollar a year tax on everyone, and transfer that money to the already rich globalist investment speculators and traders, and also as a by product, to give them more international control outside of the normal political process. It has nothing to do with fixing the climate. That's the con they are offering, the bait.
If they wanted to fix the climate (which really doesn't need much fixing right now, we are in the middle of a nice temperate period between ice ages, we just mainly need to sort out the erroneous idea that people can live in deserts with no adequate water, this reality is sinking in finally, like in California where they just *screwed* their big food production areas by denying them irrigation water, because they have just slap run out. It's a desert, it just can't support as many people who want to live there as want to given their supplies, plus have the largest winter vegetable production. Geographical reality), or just encourage somewhat cleaner industries (I'm all for energy decentralization and a more wide diversification of energy production and the mass adoption of such things as personal home solar, etc), all they would need to do is offer universal tax credits for those industries and products. No tax is needed whatsoever, no "war on carbon", and zero new governmental employees or additional expense is needed for this either, just a checkbox on your tax form and clip on the receipts if required. And it really is that easy.
Elimination of taxes encourages investments and improvements, not impositions of new taxes-even if they don't call them taxes. Forcing new artificial fees on energy products-which in turn will increase the cost of just about every single tangible product you buy, and a lot of the intangibles as well, such as digital products dependent on expensive hardware plus energy, is a defacto "new tax".
Energy companies could really not give a shit how they go about it, producing electricity for you to send you a monthly bill. They just want that check from you, that's all, it's not rocket surgery to see this. Give them a 100% tax credit to install massive windfarms and solar thermal and so on, that would be a heckuva inducement for them, you'd see them switch from coal rapidly, (as much as feasible anyway), with no "cap and trade" middleman skimming scheme needed.
Same with individuals, give them a 100% tax credit to install say a decent 2 or 3 kw sized home solar rig, perhaps at a limit of around 25 grand in cost, tax credit extending for ten years (within payback time IOW), you'd see twenty (whatever, a lot) new solar companies producing panels and the assorted gear within a few months, and untold tens of millions of panels going up all over the nation. No regressive tax needed. The tax *credit*, the "anti-tax", is the most amazing and *benevolent* tool the government can use for fair and constructive change. I like to call it the carrot method, instead of the stick or "club you over the economic head" method, which for some odd reason they always seem to prefer. Proly because they dig on forcing you to obe