Eh, I've never been a big fan of VoIP. I realize it works well for some people but to my way of thinking if I'm going to have a fixed line I'd rather have the reliability of POTS. Any VoIP solution is going to be held hostage to my less than stable internet and power connections.
Right now I'm cellular-only. No need for a fixed line when I'm rarely home. If I had family members or roommates I'd probably want a POTS line in the house though.
Maybe I got snooping out of my system early enough, before I was an admin. I just don't even care what my users email about. I'm too busy actually fixing things to care, unless something breaks.
Maybe I got snooping out of my system early enough, before I was an admin. I just don't even care what my users email about. I'm too busy browsing/. to care, unless something breaks.
Fixed that for you;) Not that I'm any better, mind you....:P
Dude, I despise SUVs but you are peddling stereotypes and FUD here. An SUV driven by a competent driver isn't going to crash when it's a "little wet".
The main disadvantage to an SUV is the higher center of gravity. The trade-off for this is that you usually wind up with more ground clearance -- which can come in handy when driving on unplowed roads.
I just have a hard time accepting this "no we can't" mentality. Your whole argument boils down to what might happen, even though it never has in any Western nuclear power plant.
But nuclear power is no cheaper than coal or oil when all of its costs are factored in
And how much more expensive is coal and oil when you factor in all of the aforementioned environmental impacts?
Of course, they have problems that nuclear doesn't too, but I'd still rather have a bunch of ugly windmills on a hill nearby than a nuclear power plant or a nuclear waste site
And how many of those windmills do you need to produce the same amount of power that you can obtain from one nuclear power plant? What will the environmental impact be of removing that much energy from the atmosphere? How many migratory birds does the typical nuclear power plant kill?
What do you think would happen to our economy in the case of a single accident that affects a large metropolitan area
What do you think would happen to our economy in the case of a single accident in any industry that affects a large metropolitan area? Why are you singling out nuclear power but ignoring the chemical industry? It's not like their disasters are any better.
I don't know many teenagers that limit themselves to 90 minutes a month on the phone;)
I'd grant you the point for an unlimited wireless plan but how many people are going to fork over the $100 a month to get one of those? And aren't they more than that for a family plan anyway? For most people with typical usage a cell phone with a low minute plan (or even a prepaid phone) and a landline for calls at home will be a much cheaper option.
The reason the auto industry doesn't want electrics is because of their after market for parts and service - something on the order of $100 billion / year. Electric vehicles - especially those with regenerative breaking - require virtually no maintenance other than tires over the useful life of the vehicle. No oil. No plugs. No belts or fans. No transmission fluid. No engine flushes or tuning. Nothing. THAT's why the industry wants a fuel-based alternative energy solution instead of BEVs - that's why they're pushing plug-in hybrids and biofeuls instead of all-electrics.
All of that explains why Detroit hasn't come out with a BEV. But it doesn't explain why someone else hasn't come out with one? Funding? Engineering challenges? Political will? Something is stopping it -- if it was that easy someone would have gotten some VC by now and they'd be rolling off the assembly line.
Remember, it wasn't the whale oil industry that discovered and marketed petrochemicals. It wasn't the ocean liner industry that discovered and marketed aviation. It wasn't the cable industry that made satellite TV economical.
Waiting for Detroit to roll out a BEV makes no sense at all.
For some reason up there...they use heating OIL to heat their homes during the long, hard winters.
Oil is used for homes that are too far away from population centers to be economically hooked up to natural gas. Oil has the advantage of a higher energy density than the alternatives (typically propane) which allows delivery companies to provide more energy to their customers with less trips, thus requiring less trucks and less employees.
Propane is an alternative around these parts -- in my area I'd say it's probably a 50/50 split between propane and heating oil. A handful of homes heat with electric but that's generally not economical in New York State.
They blame everything down to blemishes on their skin on living in a city with nuclear power
Tell them there are hundreds of billions of particles steaming out of that power plant every second and going through their bodies. That should really freak them out;)
Nuclear is not financially sustainable when you factor in waste disposal and storage or waste reprocessing.
And carbon based energy sources are financially sustainable when you factor in the costs of global warming, food shortages, sea-level rise and increased disease?
Get your son his own cell phone. For $10 a month you can get a Tracfone in the U.S., or for that same amount you can often add a phone to a family plan. A heck of a lot cheaper than a landline.
How is a Tracfone with per-minute costs that range from $0.20 to $0.50 cheaper than a landline with unlimited local calling?
I'm always amazed to hear Americans complain about gas prices. We pay 1.70 Euro per liter of regular gas. That is (1.70 x 1.55 x 3.78) $9.96 per gallon. And guess what, we are still driving our cars and our economy is still running. Sure, people are mad about it, but it's not the end of the world.
I'm always amazed to hear Europeans try and compare Europe to the United States. Do you have any idea of the scale of the United States? Mass transit simply isn't an option for a vast majority of this country. Most Americans (particularly those in rural areas) have to commute to work, to buy groceries, etc, etc.
For starters, get your fat *ss out of your SUV when going places less than a mile away...
Nice way to stereotype but at least half of this country doesn't have ANYTHING within a mile of where they live. Where I grew up it was a four mile drive into town.
you are an uninformed idiot. Without Carter's ban on reprocessing there would be NO NUCLEAR WASTE. We had the technology then, we have it now. This is how European countries generate tons and tons of nuclear power without the waste problem.
Umm, I'm pro-nuclear and even I realize that reprocessing is not 100% efficient. There will always be isotopes created that aren't useful that need to be disposed of somehow. Reprocessing is a great technology that one that we should be working on -- it can drastically reduce the amount of waste created -- but it doesn't eliminate it entirely.
If it weren't for the Spitfire and Radar the RAF would not have stood a chance against the Luftwaffe despite the incompetence of Hermann Goering
Actually, most military historians think that the Battle of Britain was never was close as it seemed at the time. The Luftwaffe was disadvantaged from the start -- forced to fly to the limit of their range to fight over enemy territory -- losing every single pilot who was shot down (whereas Commonwealth pilots could be rescued and back in the air the next day) and facing an impossible task (destroy the RAF) in any event -- the RAF could have just withdrawn out of range and waited for the invasion if it had ever come to that point.
Understand that none of that is meant to diminish the psychological impact of the Battle of Britain, the horrible toll suffered by the British people after it turned into a terror bombing campaign or the bravery of the Commonwealth pilots that defended their homeland. In many respects though the German effort was doomed from the start -- any slim chance they had at victory vanished when Hitler and Goering stopped attacking the RAF and started terror bombing.
I don't mean to belittle the efforts of the US but I dislike the "the US alone won WWII" mentality when it would have been over for the US before it began if it weren't for the British and Chinese resistance.
Where did I say that the US alone won the war? I have never claimed that. It took the combined efforts of the entire Anglosphere, China, the Soviet Union and a host of other nations to defeat the Axis powers. I took issue with the GP for complaining about how the US "sat out" the first part of the war. The reality is that the US armed forces weren't particularly powerful in those days and that there was very little FDR could do except bide his time and start preparing the American people for the struggle to come.
He did what he could with the cards that he had. He sent aid to the Allied nations. He ordered the US Navy to engage the Kriegsmarine in the Atlantic. He put economic and diplomatic pressure on Japan to try and keep her out of the war. What else could he have done? The United States isn't a dictatorship -- he couldn't take us into the war at a time when a large majority of the population was fiercely opposed to it -- and we couldn't have decisively intervened in any event. Hell, it took two and a half years after Pearl Harbor before the logistical situation would permit Operation Overlord. And that doesn't even count the two years of arms buildups/recruitment that FDR secretly started when Germany invaded Poland.
You sprout this kind of BS, and come tell people read history? Go read some archives. FDR tried very hard to get Japan attack the US, and tried very hard to make it look like an unexpected aggression so that US populace will get behind the war.
-1, factually incorrect. FDR did not want a war with Japan. FDR was focused on Europe and did everything he could to avoid war with Japan. Once the United States actually got involved in the war we focused on Europe first -- in spite of the fact that it was Japan and not Germany (or Italy) that had actually attacked us. The European front got the bulk of the resources -- some estimates have said upwards of 85% of American war production went to Europe -- and the bulk of the manpower.
The same thing Canada did, throw out the leftover WW1 junk and build everything from scratch.
Actually, we gave a lot of our WW1 junk to the UK. Destroyers for bases comes to mind.
By the summer of 1940 Canada was able to make a real contribution to the battle of Britain:
Your calling 80 Canadian pilots a "real contribution" but not giving the United States any credit for the destroyers agreement, lend-lease or actively engaging in hostilities against the Kriegsmarine while still neutral? That doesn't make much sense to me.
I find it interesting that you jumped all over him pointing out how "unfriendly" Linux is when he never even mentioned Linux. All he mentioned was a response to the standard Microsoft sales drone pitch. He didn't discuss alternatives.
Hell, my company uses Windows and won't be changing anytime soon but I'm still going to pull out this example the next time I'm talking to a Microsoft fanboy who comes after me with that line.
Cripes, Canada, with a population about 1/12th of the United States at that time, suffered HALF as many casualties (67k killed, 150k wounded)! By proportion to overall population, Canada contributed approximately 24x as much as the USA!
So the only way to contribute to the war effort is to sustain casualties? By that logic I guess that Yugoslavia contributed more during WW2 than the US or UK?
World War II began in 1939. The Battle of Britian was fought in 1940. The Americans, after A LOT of wembling about "other peoples' problems", finally joined the war in December of 1941 (having essentially sat-out half of the conflict).
You might want to consider reading some history before you bemoan how the United States "sat out" the first half of WW2. Even if the American people were inclined to get involved (they weren't) the United States didn't really have much of a military to speak of in those years. The only branch of the American armed forces that was remotely ready for war was the US Navy. The US Army and Army Air Corps were a joke and meaningful American intervention simply wasn't possible until late 1942/early 1943.
FDR did what he could with the cards that he held -- he sent arms to the Allies (a blatant violation of the concept of neutrality), attempted to keep Japanese aggression in check and ordered the US Navy to escort conveys in the Atlantic and to sink u-boats on sight -- months before we were formally at war with Nazi Germany.
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Eh, I've never been a big fan of VoIP. I realize it works well for some people but to my way of thinking if I'm going to have a fixed line I'd rather have the reliability of POTS. Any VoIP solution is going to be held hostage to my less than stable internet and power connections.
Right now I'm cellular-only. No need for a fixed line when I'm rarely home. If I had family members or roommates I'd probably want a POTS line in the house though.
*shrug*, I'd rather have the landline and keep my minute plan low than just have the cell phone if I can do the former for the same cost or cheaper.
Maybe I got snooping out of my system early enough, before I was an admin. I just don't even care what my users email about. I'm too busy browsing /. to care, unless something breaks.
Fixed that for you ;) Not that I'm any better, mind you.... :P
Dude, I despise SUVs but you are peddling stereotypes and FUD here. An SUV driven by a competent driver isn't going to crash when it's a "little wet".
The main disadvantage to an SUV is the higher center of gravity. The trade-off for this is that you usually wind up with more ground clearance -- which can come in handy when driving on unplowed roads.
I just have a hard time accepting this "no we can't" mentality. Your whole argument boils down to what might happen, even though it never has in any Western nuclear power plant.
But nuclear power is no cheaper than coal or oil when all of its costs are factored inAnd how much more expensive is coal and oil when you factor in all of the aforementioned environmental impacts?
Of course, they have problems that nuclear doesn't too, but I'd still rather have a bunch of ugly windmills on a hill nearby than a nuclear power plant or a nuclear waste siteAnd how many of those windmills do you need to produce the same amount of power that you can obtain from one nuclear power plant? What will the environmental impact be of removing that much energy from the atmosphere? How many migratory birds does the typical nuclear power plant kill?
What do you think would happen to our economy in the case of a single accident that affects a large metropolitan areaWhat do you think would happen to our economy in the case of a single accident in any industry that affects a large metropolitan area? Why are you singling out nuclear power but ignoring the chemical industry? It's not like their disasters are any better.
I don't know many teenagers that limit themselves to 90 minutes a month on the phone ;)
I'd grant you the point for an unlimited wireless plan but how many people are going to fork over the $100 a month to get one of those? And aren't they more than that for a family plan anyway? For most people with typical usage a cell phone with a low minute plan (or even a prepaid phone) and a landline for calls at home will be a much cheaper option.
All of that explains why Detroit hasn't come out with a BEV. But it doesn't explain why someone else hasn't come out with one? Funding? Engineering challenges? Political will? Something is stopping it -- if it was that easy someone would have gotten some VC by now and they'd be rolling off the assembly line.
Remember, it wasn't the whale oil industry that discovered and marketed petrochemicals. It wasn't the ocean liner industry that discovered and marketed aviation. It wasn't the cable industry that made satellite TV economical.
Waiting for Detroit to roll out a BEV makes no sense at all.
And that's a bad thing? ;)
*duck*
Oil is used for homes that are too far away from population centers to be economically hooked up to natural gas. Oil has the advantage of a higher energy density than the alternatives (typically propane) which allows delivery companies to provide more energy to their customers with less trips, thus requiring less trucks and less employees.
Propane is an alternative around these parts -- in my area I'd say it's probably a 50/50 split between propane and heating oil. A handful of homes heat with electric but that's generally not economical in New York State.
Tell them there are hundreds of billions of particles steaming out of that power plant every second and going through their bodies. That should really freak them out ;)
And carbon based energy sources are financially sustainable when you factor in the costs of global warming, food shortages, sea-level rise and increased disease?
How is a Tracfone with per-minute costs that range from $0.20 to $0.50 cheaper than a landline with unlimited local calling?
The whole long-distance commuting lifestyle is not sustainable with current technology
Fixed that for you.
You try biking 4 miles through hilly terrain in a Northeast winter or Southeast summer.
I'm always amazed to hear Europeans try and compare Europe to the United States. Do you have any idea of the scale of the United States? Mass transit simply isn't an option for a vast majority of this country. Most Americans (particularly those in rural areas) have to commute to work, to buy groceries, etc, etc.
For starters, get your fat *ss out of your SUV when going places less than a mile away...Nice way to stereotype but at least half of this country doesn't have ANYTHING within a mile of where they live. Where I grew up it was a four mile drive into town.
Umm, I'm pro-nuclear and even I realize that reprocessing is not 100% efficient. There will always be isotopes created that aren't useful that need to be disposed of somehow. Reprocessing is a great technology that one that we should be working on -- it can drastically reduce the amount of waste created -- but it doesn't eliminate it entirely.
TSA is a Government agency and TSA screeners are definitely Government employees.
Actually, most military historians think that the Battle of Britain was never was close as it seemed at the time. The Luftwaffe was disadvantaged from the start -- forced to fly to the limit of their range to fight over enemy territory -- losing every single pilot who was shot down (whereas Commonwealth pilots could be rescued and back in the air the next day) and facing an impossible task (destroy the RAF) in any event -- the RAF could have just withdrawn out of range and waited for the invasion if it had ever come to that point.
Understand that none of that is meant to diminish the psychological impact of the Battle of Britain, the horrible toll suffered by the British people after it turned into a terror bombing campaign or the bravery of the Commonwealth pilots that defended their homeland. In many respects though the German effort was doomed from the start -- any slim chance they had at victory vanished when Hitler and Goering stopped attacking the RAF and started terror bombing.
I don't mean to belittle the efforts of the US but I dislike the "the US alone won WWII" mentality when it would have been over for the US before it began if it weren't for the British and Chinese resistance.Where did I say that the US alone won the war? I have never claimed that. It took the combined efforts of the entire Anglosphere, China, the Soviet Union and a host of other nations to defeat the Axis powers. I took issue with the GP for complaining about how the US "sat out" the first part of the war. The reality is that the US armed forces weren't particularly powerful in those days and that there was very little FDR could do except bide his time and start preparing the American people for the struggle to come.
He did what he could with the cards that he had. He sent aid to the Allied nations. He ordered the US Navy to engage the Kriegsmarine in the Atlantic. He put economic and diplomatic pressure on Japan to try and keep her out of the war. What else could he have done? The United States isn't a dictatorship -- he couldn't take us into the war at a time when a large majority of the population was fiercely opposed to it -- and we couldn't have decisively intervened in any event. Hell, it took two and a half years after Pearl Harbor before the logistical situation would permit Operation Overlord. And that doesn't even count the two years of arms buildups/recruitment that FDR secretly started when Germany invaded Poland.
-1, factually incorrect. FDR did not want a war with Japan. FDR was focused on Europe and did everything he could to avoid war with Japan. Once the United States actually got involved in the war we focused on Europe first -- in spite of the fact that it was Japan and not Germany (or Italy) that had actually attacked us. The European front got the bulk of the resources -- some estimates have said upwards of 85% of American war production went to Europe -- and the bulk of the manpower.
Actually, we gave a lot of our WW1 junk to the UK. Destroyers for bases comes to mind.
By the summer of 1940 Canada was able to make a real contribution to the battle of Britain:Your calling 80 Canadian pilots a "real contribution" but not giving the United States any credit for the destroyers agreement, lend-lease or actively engaging in hostilities against the Kriegsmarine while still neutral? That doesn't make much sense to me.
I find it interesting that you jumped all over him pointing out how "unfriendly" Linux is when he never even mentioned Linux. All he mentioned was a response to the standard Microsoft sales drone pitch. He didn't discuss alternatives.
Hell, my company uses Windows and won't be changing anytime soon but I'm still going to pull out this example the next time I'm talking to a Microsoft fanboy who comes after me with that line.
Shouldn't that be +1, Stoned? ;)
Find a US order of battle for 1939. Then tell me what YOU would have done with it.
So the only way to contribute to the war effort is to sustain casualties? By that logic I guess that Yugoslavia contributed more during WW2 than the US or UK?
World War II began in 1939. The Battle of Britian was fought in 1940. The Americans, after A LOT of wembling about "other peoples' problems", finally joined the war in December of 1941 (having essentially sat-out half of the conflict).You might want to consider reading some history before you bemoan how the United States "sat out" the first half of WW2. Even if the American people were inclined to get involved (they weren't) the United States didn't really have much of a military to speak of in those years. The only branch of the American armed forces that was remotely ready for war was the US Navy. The US Army and Army Air Corps were a joke and meaningful American intervention simply wasn't possible until late 1942/early 1943.
FDR did what he could with the cards that he held -- he sent arms to the Allies (a blatant violation of the concept of neutrality), attempted to keep Japanese aggression in check and ordered the US Navy to escort conveys in the Atlantic and to sink u-boats on sight -- months before we were formally at war with Nazi Germany.
Yeah, I hear those Government jobs have horrible benefits and pay.....