If as the summary says, cash and cards are infinitely more convenient, why then is clinging to them to be considered stubborn?
The summary is wrong, and so are you.
The reason we have very few Phone payment options in the US is that the Carriers somehow obtained a veto of this service. Some networks allow it and those users can "pay by bonk" at lots of places. Most networks won't allow payments via NFC, because they want a piece of the action for carrying that tiny bit of encrypted data, as opposed to huge gobs of encrypted web pages. It sounds like illegal restraint of trade if you ask me.
Some networks (AT&T) are going so far as to re-purpose their 700mhz C and D bands away from cell phones because the last FCC auction of those frequencies required them to allow any legal use of the bandwidth.
So instead of one App on your phone, you have to have one from each vendor you want to do business with, and they have to scan a bar code shown on your screen.
Americans would have long since happily adopted pay via NFC, just as they did in in Japan, and some parts of Europe.
Except they put themselves and their customers at risk, because every punk on the block knows everyone going in there has a habit of carrying lots of cash.
I suppose its no bigger risk than flashing some fancy phone over the terminal when you pay, but at least that is done inside, and when you step out on the street nobody knows how you paid.
As long as the minimal resolution was sufficient to allow the software to to deduce a launcher in spite of drop-out, clearly the most useful image would cover the area just large enough so that the software could deduce the existence of a launcher by running the above mentioned algorithm. There would be no point in having resolution sufficient to read a license plate, when what you are looking for is 30 feet tall, and has a known shape.
The thing is, people using this imaging technique have to know what they are looking for, and have the luxury of adjusting the satellite for the most economical and useful image.
When you only a poor MRI of a squirming child, and you don't know what exactly you are looking for, its a different matter.
Enhance 224 to 176. Enhance, stop. Move in, stop. Pull out, track right, stop. Center in, pull back. Stop. Track 45 right. Stop. Center and stop. Enhance 34 to 36. Pan right and pull back. Stop. Enhance 34 to 46. Pull back. Wait a minute, go right, stop. Enhance 57 to 19. Track 45 left. Stop. Enhance 15 to 23. Give me a hard copy right there.
Have you ever played with the compression level on jpg? At some point, enough is enough. Now instead of lossy compression, imagine we're talking about how much radiation to shoot into your nads to get a clean xray. There are diminishing returns on image quality for each doubling of the radiation. Are you still so sure you want to turn it up to 11?
Enough is not where we are at. The point is that THAT point hasn't been reached.
When looking at a highly compressed image of a person's face, you still recognize the face, and there is no reason to speculate about a Nuclear Aircraft Carrier floating on the film of tears on the eyeball. Similarly, when looking at an MRI where you were only able to get a partial image, there is no reason to assume a third eye will somehow be missed in any brain scan that carries detail finer than an eye.
By our own insane laws, the only way to fix things is to pass laws which modify law.
Nothing in our laws prohibits repealing laws, and it is done all the time. There is nothing in Case Law that holds any sway over the actions of Congress.
Of course, if a president who ran on a platform opposing the Patriot act hadn't switched his position once elected it would be a lot easier to get a majority in Congress. Is there even one person who doesn't believe both parties would rush to repeal the Patriot act IN TOTAL the minute the president asked them to? Anyone?
The efficiency falls off at low sun angles. It falls off faster for solar hotwater (like this plant) than for photo-voltaic. You start drawing on your stored heat WELL BEFORE sunset, usually several hours before sunset, because as I pointed out that is the peak demand period, and your storage is exhausted in 6 hours, from the time you start drawing.
So maybe two or three hours after sunset your storage is exhausted. Its a long time till sunrise.
Solar home for 20K per house? Closer to 30K, and only if your house happens to be conveniently situated.
You can get in for $5000, if all you want to heat is the pool or maybe some hot water.
Most of the figures you see for solar home additions are for auxiliary heat (usually for hot water), they make no attempt to cover a house's whole electrical load. With air conditioning, that load can be pretty high, and you never get off the grid.
This plant has at least an chance of lasting long enough to pay for itself, which, unfortunately is not always the case with with roof top solar. The rude awakening in that industry is that the equipment often doesn't last to the payout period.
Economies of scale, and the probability actually seeing maintenance make large installations more efficient than rooftop solar.
Actually, when you read up on it, the storage capacity is exhausted shortly after sunset. 6 Hours max. The efficiency falls off at low sun angles.
Sunset usually happens right at peak demand time, evening cooking, and late afternoon air conditioning. Plus the site has high ground to the immediate west, sunset comes earlier for them.
Don't get me wrong, this is an impressive feat of engineering.
It was installed very fast, hacked out of prime farm land (or as prime as it gets in Arizona). Google Maps Satellite view, with imagery dated 2013 http://goo.gl/maps/Qh7e5 shows nothing but desert with truck roads laid out, and now they are up and running.
(Either that or Google is Playing Fast and Loose with image dates, because Google Earth shows the same images but has a 2010 date on them)
Farmers still get weather reports, Military is up and running full tilt, even the civilian workers have been recalled. The Dow is trading in the range where its been trading all year and the Nasdaq is still within its monthly fluctuation. Wineries don't start that many new brands every years and have plenty of old brands they still use.
Still, don't you suppose a fair number of gold bugs actually took delivery during this last budget meltdown?
I know this guy in Juneau that took delivery on quite a bit of silver ingots. (More than the two of us could carry in one trip).
They were an "investment" too, but he had a substantial cache cemented into his basement floor. Being something of an artist at heart, he liked to work in silver, but being a bit of a "Prepper" he liked to keep at least part of his stash at hand.
Sure. It'd be nice if someone crowd-sources road building. That way I can enjoy all the goodies without paying a cent!
Well, lets look at that, shall we?
We all pay gas tax, tire tax, and property tax.
That goes into the highway trust fund which is MORE THAN ADEQUATE to maintain the roads. In fact its so much more than adequate, that the feds have been dipping into that money to pay for all sorts of things, and sequestering it just to balance the budget, while our infrastructure crumbles.
So Highway Maintenance is already Crowd-Sources, its just that the funds were put in the hands of corrupt people.
Absent those corrupt politicians, with the putative collapse of government, we would all have money to donate toward Crowd sourced road maintenance
I once found a radioactive test sample in a dumpster when I worked for a medical device manuf.
Good thing their budget wasn't large enough such that they could pay you enough for a proper apartment. Who knows how many radioactive samples might have gone missing had you not been sleeping there at the time.
Thing is, with all those teachers out of work, private schools in rented space will spring up everywhere, and since the state government won't be collecting taxes, people will be able to pay for these private "Charter" schools.
And, yeah, I have met home schoolers, and the children of home schoolers. They don't stop learning at 3:30. Their kids are usually better educated and have more social graces than the product of public schools.
Yes, we can't possibly survive without government.
Because we can't educate our children in private schools or at home. Roads need repair every single day and won't last a year without the government. Even if people crowd-source a contractor to fix the washout. Restaurants are all secretly waiting for the day that the inspectors don't show up so that they can poison their customers and ruin their own business.
Slashdot Mirror
If as the summary says, cash and cards are infinitely more convenient, why then is clinging to them to be considered stubborn?
The summary is wrong, and so are you.
The reason we have very few Phone payment options in the US is that the Carriers somehow obtained a veto of this service.
Some networks allow it and those users can "pay by bonk" at lots of places. Most networks won't allow payments via NFC, because they want a piece of the action for carrying that tiny bit of encrypted data, as opposed to huge gobs of encrypted web pages. It sounds like illegal restraint of trade if you ask me.
Some networks (AT&T) are going so far as to re-purpose their 700mhz C and D bands away from cell phones because the last FCC auction of those frequencies required them to allow any legal use of the bandwidth.
So instead of one App on your phone, you have to have one from each vendor you want to do business with, and they have to scan a bar code shown on your screen.
Americans would have long since happily adopted pay via NFC, just as they did in in Japan, and some parts of Europe.
Except they put themselves and their customers at risk, because every punk on the block knows everyone going in there has a habit of carrying lots of cash.
I suppose its no bigger risk than flashing some fancy phone over the terminal when you pay, but at least that is done inside, and when you step out on the street nobody knows how you paid.
But every once in a while, you'd be so screwed.
Occam would surely ride in and save the day.
As long as the minimal resolution was sufficient to allow the software to to deduce a launcher in spite of drop-out, clearly the most useful image would cover the area just large enough so that the software could deduce the existence of a launcher by running the above mentioned algorithm. There would be no point in having resolution sufficient to read a license plate, when what you are looking for is 30 feet tall, and has a known shape.
The thing is, people using this imaging technique have to know what they are looking for, and have the luxury of adjusting the satellite for the most economical and useful image.
When you only a poor MRI of a squirming child, and you don't know what exactly you are looking for, its a different matter.
Enhance 224 to 176. Enhance, stop. Move in, stop. Pull out, track right, stop. Center in, pull back. Stop. Track 45 right. Stop. Center and stop. Enhance 34 to 36. Pan right and pull back. Stop. Enhance 34 to 46. Pull back. Wait a minute, go right, stop. Enhance 57 to 19. Track 45 left. Stop. Enhance 15 to 23. Give me a hard copy right there.
Have you ever played with the compression level on jpg? At some point, enough is enough. Now instead of lossy compression, imagine we're talking about how much radiation to shoot into your nads to get a clean xray. There are diminishing returns on image quality for each doubling of the radiation. Are you still so sure you want to turn it up to 11?
Enough is not where we are at.
The point is that THAT point hasn't been reached.
When looking at a highly compressed image of a person's face, you still recognize the face, and there is no reason to speculate about a Nuclear Aircraft Carrier floating on the film of tears on the eyeball. Similarly, when looking at an MRI where you were only able to get a partial image, there is no reason to assume a third eye will somehow be missed in any brain scan that carries detail finer than an eye.
Doctors aren't total idiots.
By our own insane laws, the only way to fix things is to pass laws which modify law.
Nothing in our laws prohibits repealing laws, and it is done all the time.
There is nothing in Case Law that holds any sway over the actions of Congress.
Of course, if a president who ran on a platform opposing the Patriot act hadn't switched his position once elected it would be a lot easier to get a majority in Congress. Is there even one person who doesn't believe both parties would rush to repeal the Patriot act IN TOTAL the minute the president asked them to?
Anyone?
That includes protecting kids from fuck-up parents. (hey, nobody choses their own parents why should they be punished for them?)
But.. I also want a government that lets me raise my kids as I see fit. (the state should not be our mother of father)
Once you resolve that internal conflict within your own head, perhaps you will have more luck convincing others.
Right, and that is another reason this plant is way more efficient than roof top collectors.
It can make the best use of early morning and late afternoon sun, even when there is much more air the light has to go through.
Those education cuts really did hurt :(
The efficiency falls off at low sun angles.
It falls off faster for solar hotwater (like this plant) than for photo-voltaic.
You start drawing on your stored heat WELL BEFORE sunset, usually several
hours before sunset, because as I pointed out that is the peak demand period, and your
storage is exhausted in 6 hours, from the time you start drawing.
So maybe two or three hours after sunset your storage is exhausted.
Its a long time till sunrise.
Solar home for 20K per house? Closer to 30K, and only if your house happens to be conveniently situated.
You can get in for $5000, if all you want to heat is the pool or maybe some hot water.
Most of the figures you see for solar home additions are for auxiliary heat (usually for hot water), they
make no attempt to cover a house's whole electrical load. With air conditioning, that load can be
pretty high, and you never get off the grid.
There are a couple articles on this recently on AZ Central.
http://www.azcentral.com/business/consumer/articles/20130726arizona-solar-costs-high.html
and also
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2012-12-27/news/solar-eclipsed-why-the-sun-won-t-power-phoenix-despite-an-industry-boom/
This plant has at least an chance of lasting long enough to pay for itself, which, unfortunately is not
always the case with with roof top solar. The rude awakening in that industry is that the equipment
often doesn't last to the payout period.
Economies of scale, and the probability actually seeing maintenance make large installations more
efficient than rooftop solar.
Well after sunset?
Actually, when you read up on it, the storage capacity is exhausted shortly after sunset. 6 Hours max.
The efficiency falls off at low sun angles.
Sunset usually happens right at peak demand time, evening cooking, and late afternoon air conditioning.
Plus the site has high ground to the immediate west, sunset comes earlier for them.
Don't get me wrong, this is an impressive feat of engineering.
It was installed very fast, hacked out of prime farm land (or as prime as it gets in Arizona).
Google Maps Satellite view, with imagery dated 2013 http://goo.gl/maps/Qh7e5 shows nothing
but desert with truck roads laid out, and now they are up and running.
(Either that or Google is Playing Fast and Loose with image dates, because Google Earth shows the same
images but has a 2010 date on them)
Oh, come on, none of this is true.
Farmers still get weather reports,
Military is up and running full tilt, even the civilian workers have been recalled.
The Dow is trading in the range where its been trading all year and the Nasdaq is still within its monthly fluctuation.
Wineries don't start that many new brands every years and have plenty of old brands they still use.
Mountain=Molehill.
The ones that got sent home are simply paper pushing regulation junkies.
Not anyone actually involved in running power plants.
Nope.
All I see is someone spouting stereotypes with not a clue about how the real world works.
Still, don't you suppose a fair number of gold bugs actually took delivery during this last budget meltdown?
I know this guy in Juneau that took delivery on quite a bit of silver ingots. (More than the two of us could carry in one trip).
They were an "investment" too, but he had a substantial cache cemented into his basement floor. Being something of an artist at heart, he liked to work in silver, but being a bit of a "Prepper" he liked to keep at least part of his stash at hand.
Well maybe he should go see how good his paper is?
Sure. It'd be nice if someone crowd-sources road building. That way I can enjoy all the goodies without paying a cent!
Well, lets look at that, shall we?
We all pay gas tax, tire tax, and property tax.
That goes into the highway trust fund which is MORE THAN ADEQUATE to maintain the roads.
In fact its so much more than adequate, that the feds have been dipping into that money to
pay for all sorts of things, and sequestering it just to balance the budget, while our infrastructure crumbles.
So Highway Maintenance is already Crowd-Sources, its just that the funds were put in the hands of
corrupt people.
Absent those corrupt politicians, with the putative collapse of government, we would
all have money to donate toward Crowd sourced road maintenance
I once found a radioactive test sample in a dumpster when I worked for a medical device manuf.
Good thing their budget wasn't large enough such that they could pay you enough for a proper apartment.
Who knows how many radioactive samples might have gone missing had you not been sleeping there at the time.
That will look perfectly normal to the three eyed Tepco workers.
It doesn't have keys. Its a touch screen.
They actually use that to their advantage. See the Video on this page..
While tapping on the screen you don't need to push hard enough to rock the phone.
Thing is, with all those teachers out of work, private schools in rented space will spring up everywhere, and
since the state government won't be collecting taxes, people will be able to pay for these private "Charter" schools.
And, yeah, I have met home schoolers, and the children of home schoolers. They don't stop learning
at 3:30. Their kids are usually better educated and have more social graces than the product of public schools.
Those aren't mutually exclusive categories.
For instance, this mobile is probably not suitable for me because I do use my device while sitting on a flat surface (table, bar, etc...) quite often.
Because we all know curved objects can't possibly sit on a flat surface?
Basically I think its a pointless change, for change sake, And I've never had a problem holding a flat phone in my hand.
Yes, we can't possibly survive without government.
Because we can't educate our children in private schools or at home.
Roads need repair every single day and won't last a year without the government. Even if people crowd-source a contractor to fix the washout.
Restaurants are all secretly waiting for the day that the inspectors don't show up so that they can poison their customers and ruin their own business.
You're an idiot.