When talking about necessities like public utilities and so on, we are talking about safe habitation of human life.
And many people consider broadband, which this is about, as necessary. I have been attempting to show that people's definition of what's necessary is different than your definition. B ut you only accept your own version.
Well, no. It's primarily because cities are too crowded to safely have farm animals
Be whatever the cause may be, the reality is what we have today. It was the reality of yesterday also and the reality of most of the life of the world. Cities are notorious for not having lawns or gardens big enough to support the life of the occupants.
That's because there is no free market. Government policies were designed to drive people out of rural settings and into cities.
Lol.. And it would have nothing to do with the fact that Mexico's economic recovery process involved shipping it's citizens into the US so someone else has to deal with them? The entire Mexico economy is in shambles. It's not the fault of the US or the EU or any other nation, it's their economic system.
BS! Yea it's the government of Mexico's fault they signed NAFTA. If Mexicans had an import duty to raise the cost of corn so Mexican farmers could compeat with subsidized corn from the US then US agriculture businesses could sued Mexico for lost profits. The Canadian business Methanex sued the US when California banned MTBE, a known cancer causer.
It's the lost intercity idiots who get absolutely no help from the government.
Perhaps you don't understand real world economics, but when farmers are driven off the farm because they can't compeat they then move to cities. And when those cities are already crowded some of those resident will themselves move to where they think they have a better chance. Which is what is happening in Mexico. Having said that I agree that the Mexican government can do more to help people.
when banks started folding during the savings and loan scandal (a lot like present day problems), the banks called the notes on these farms in knowing that they couldn't pay them. You had farmers taking out loans at $1000 an acre to buy combines and build a new home or a new barn on land that was valued at $100 an acre just a year or two before (remind you of the housing bubble?).
And just as with the housing bubble those farmers and wannabe farmers who bought land at high prices are the ones at fault. Most either bought more than they could manage or they did not know what they were getting into.
You then had zoning and tax laws that were either nonexistent or didn't distinguish between residential, commercial, or agriculture uses.
It may surprise you, but I also believe zoning laws and tax laws are bad. Besides railing about the farm subsidies like I have, I've also railed about taxes and zoning. The money people work to earn should not be taxed. Instead there should be a tax on consumption, with one exception, corporations. Since corporations have limited liability, the most most stockholders can loose is how much they invested in the
Farms require the use of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizer, all of which are toxic to humans.
Organic farms do not use fertilizers, herbicides, or pesticides. However they do require more manhours. And guess what those chemical inputs are made from? Natural gas and petrochemicals, both of which are being used up.
And it takes cheap fuel to deliver crops from the farm to cities so people can eat. I'd like to see a life cycle analysis comparing both these vertical city farms and farming as it's done in the US. In Cuba after the collapse of the Soviet Union people started planting city gardens which now feed a lot of Cubans.
Grasses may require a lot of soil but not all crop plants do. Some grow quite well hydropnically. From TFA linked to: "After a strawberry farm in Florida was wiped out by Hurricane Andrew, the owners built a hydroponic farm. By growing strawberries indoors and stacking layers on top of each other, they now produce on one acre of land what used to require 30 acres." The article "In "Urban Farming," Crops Grow in Skyscrapers" says "More than 100 crops can be grown indoors by taking advantage of a technique called "hydroponics," where plants grow using mineral nutrient solutions instead of soil."
Similarly, a long distance company tried to forcibly move me to their Long Distance service. Even going so far as to saying I had approved in on the phone (they couldn't produce the recording when I demanded it).
That's called slamming and the FCC takes a dim view of it.
Worse we've raised a couple generations of fat stupid people who will gladly give up their rights as long as you give them a Whopper(tm) and American Idol at the properly programmed times periods.
That's kind of my point. These NDAs are used because it can be impossible to stop customers trying to get other companies to undercut you and take advantage of the work you've already done.
If you rely on NDA then change your business model.
Customers will mess you around big time. They'll get you to spend a lot of time preparing an assessment and quote, get you to travel halfway around the country to have a 45 minute meeting with you which is fair enough. However they'll then take your proposal, show it to another company who spend some time figuring out how they'd provide a similar service and travel up for a meeting. The customer would then say "can you do this £500 cheaper?". If they say yes they go back to the first company to see if they'll go lower.
That's called capitalism and in a free market is not only legal but right. Businesses should be able to reduce costs where they can so long as they don't violate other's rights. Are you don't have the right to make a profit, only the right to try to make a profit.
You can argue this is just being sensible but in truth, you're using up a lot of other people's time and eventually they'll have next to no profit margin but can't give up the contract because so much time has been invested already.
Then don't spend so much trying to gain one customer. Instead of going half way around the world try to find local customers. Perhaps if you can't find potential customers locally then either you're in the wrong business or wrong place. There's such a thing as personal responsibility and nobody automatically deserves a handout.
Many companies have no choice but to force NDAs on lots of aspects of proposals because of this.
Perhaps if an NDA is forced that's because what's being offered isn't worth the cost.
As much as I'd like it to be open source doesn't always do what's desired. Because I shouldn't spend the money Photoshop costs for a photography business I'll try to use CinePaint and see if it works for me. I've got a Mac and I already tried to install the Mac version of CinePaint, but it uses X11 and I haven't been able to get it to work. So Ive been thinking about setting up my Mac to dualboot Ubuntu, if so then I'll try CinePaint again. If it still doesn't work for me then I may end up having to buy Photoshop.
Supposedly using debit instead of credit at the checkout doesn't cost the store anything. Is that true?
Debit cards still have charges. I am a member of two coops and they recommend that if you use a card for payments then to use a debit card for purchases below $20 and a credit card for purchases over $20. Below $20 the fees are lower with debit cards and credit cards are cheaper over $20.
That's right. Contact your Congressional representatives, your Senators and your state legislators and demand they raise the gas tax.
Someone doing that, Oil refiner CEO advocates for higher fuel taxes. To tell the truth what I like more is to tax mileage instead. When a person renews their license plate tags their odometer is read then they pay a tax on how much they drove. This way even those who make or buy biofuels on the side pay.
First, the 'find everyone who lives at the same address' question is a valid one.
I can find easily everyone in my phone book.
The simple case is to find any contacts that don't have an address yet. Other reasons could be to find ones that don't have a home address or business address yet.
My phone book again. for instance I have 3 phone numbers I can use, her home, cellphone, qnd work numbers. Though I haven't I could also include the addresses.
What about history of addresses?
I can cross out one address and write in another.
See, you're only thinking about your own little address book. I'm thinking about millions of addresses and all the possible analytics that could be done on them.
I no longer keep one but I used to use a text file on my computer to do the same thing I can do with my phone book. And searching it is easy, [cont + f"] brings up the search box. Because it's a.txt file many programs can open it whereas if I had used a database I'd have to use the database software to open it. Heck, when I took both Java and Perl one of the things we did was to read and write text files.
People who enjoy broadband because they live in cities.
you ARE already paying for that food, the cost is just hidden in other taxes.
Oh, I agree. Every year the feds give billions in taxpayer subsidies to agricultural businesses. In 2008 congress approved almost $300 billion in subsidies.
I say make things cost what they actually cost. Then people get a CHOICE about what they want to put money into.
Oh, I agree. For years I'll railed about farm subsidies, even here on slashdot. These subsides distort markets.
the costs to society are HUGE and you're making the city people pay for the fact that someone gets to live in the country?
If cities folks don't want to subsidize broadband for rural folks then they can pay more for food.
Now we're going to fork out MASSIVE bucks in this 'stimulous' plan
Oh, don't think I support the "Stimulus plan" because I don't. I didn't support the bailout of banks either. If the banks that bought worthless papers had been allowed to go bankrupt then those who had exercised prudence and didn't buy those papers or made bad loans who of been left standing. The Troubled Asset Relief Program, TARP, part of the bailout was supposed to free banks to make loans. What they did instead was hoard the money or buyout other banks. If the banks were too big to allow the fail then the bigger ones are even more of a risk. They're like vampires only the more blood, er money, they get the more they need.
highways so people can live way out of town
And so city folks can have food delivered to them. Or do you think food will just appear on t=city tables without the highways? Or that those big screen TVs magically appear on store shelves? Fact is is cities benefit as much if not more than rural people because of the highway system.
There is a practical limitation to a lot of things that are now considered neccecities.
There are no necessities, not even life is a necessity. Everything that is considered a necessity is usually accompanied by a modifier, such as "food is a necessity of life."
Many people live in areas that don't allow farm animals
This is because of laws banning farm animals not because farm animals can not survive in cities.
don't have yards to turn into gardens or they aren't big enough to grow a years supply of food.
That's because of misguided economic policies that encouraged small farmers to leave their farms and move into cities while large scale farms grew food. Then there are the hugh farm subsidies the First World nations such as the EU, Japan, and the US give to farmers. People and the news in the US complain a lot about "illegal aliens", especially Lou Dobbs on CNN. What I have never heard them ask is why are they willing to risk life to get into to US? That's because US agriculture businesses get paid hundreds of billions of US taxpayer dollars in subsidies as well as NAFTA. With these subsidies and NAFTA US businesses can export and sell corn, which botanically originated in Central America, in Mexico cheaper than Mexican farmers can grow corn. This economically forces those farmers off of their farms, they then either move into already large Mexican cities or north where they try to cross the border. These subsides even affect small farmers in the US, large scale farms drive smaller farmers into US cities as well. About the only small farms that can make it are the organic farms, but even there big agri businesses like Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill are moving in.
And some of those areas that do, don't have the room or abilities to store the food for the duration necessary.
There are cheap and low tech ways to preserve food for months. There is canning, which I do myself. Some foods can be dehydrated, dried, I'd like to get a dehydrator. Smoking can preserve food as well.
most of the utilities have become such a necessity that if your lacking any of them, the state can actually take your children away
As I stated above, that's because those are laws not necessities.
So you go through each key and count the number of addresses and then return the ones that have more than one? Can look things up based on the Value and not the key? That would seem to be the only way to efficiently answer my questions posed above.
What exactly is your question? My own questions: Why would I want to go through each key to see if there's more than one value? Can who look things up?
Right now, you pay for roads whether you drive on them or not, through your taxes. If the every road could be made a toll road, then the people who drove on the roads would pay for them, and people who take public transportation or choose not to own a car wouldn't pay
You pay for roads whether you drive on them or not because you use roads even if you don't drive on them. When you buy something road costs are in the price.
How do you determine the mileage driven? GPS device like what one state was proposing(that also reports ALL of your travels, gee, that's not a violation of privacy, is it? Or some sort of odometer?
By checking the odometer. If the vehicle has been in state for more than a year then the state will have the odometer reading from the previous year. If the vehicle is new in the state the odometer can be read when it is registered.
I did read an interesting article the other day about an economist proposing we solve our traffic congestion and road funding problems by implementing a dynamic tolls system on all the major highways. A busy road would have a higher toll than a less crowded road, encouraging people to take the cheaper route, and at the same time, providing funds for the highway system.
That's done in California right now, as it is elsewhere. We have dynamic pricing where I live in Minneapolis/St Paul.
Slashdot Mirror
When talking about necessities like public utilities and so on, we are talking about safe habitation of human life.
And many people consider broadband, which this is about, as necessary. I have been attempting to show that people's definition of what's necessary is different than your definition. B ut you only accept your own version.
Well, no. It's primarily because cities are too crowded to safely have farm animals
Not really, I suggest you read the article thread I'm now going through, Spiraling Skyscraper Farms For a Future Manhattan.
Be whatever the cause may be, the reality is what we have today. It was the reality of yesterday also and the reality of most of the life of the world. Cities are notorious for not having lawns or gardens big enough to support the life of the occupants.
That's because there is no free market. Government policies were designed to drive people out of rural settings and into cities.
Lol.. And it would have nothing to do with the fact that Mexico's economic recovery process involved shipping it's citizens into the US so someone else has to deal with them? The entire Mexico economy is in shambles. It's not the fault of the US or the EU or any other nation, it's their economic system.
BS! Yea it's the government of Mexico's fault they signed NAFTA. If Mexicans had an import duty to raise the cost of corn so Mexican farmers could compeat with subsidized corn from the US then US agriculture businesses could sued Mexico for lost profits. The Canadian business Methanex sued the US when California banned MTBE, a known cancer causer.
It's the lost intercity idiots who get absolutely no help from the government.
Perhaps you don't understand real world economics, but when farmers are driven off the farm because they can't compeat they then move to cities. And when those cities are already crowded some of those resident will themselves move to where they think they have a better chance. Which is what is happening in Mexico. Having said that I agree that the Mexican government can do more to help people.
You really have a naive outlook on the scenario.
No, you're the one who's naive. "Small Farmers Seen Gaining Little from Subsidies". "How Farm Subsidies Harm Taxpayers, Consumers, and Farmers, Too". Groups from those supporting free markets, such as the Heritage Foundation, to socialists agree subsidies harm small farmers more than they help.
when banks started folding during the savings and loan scandal (a lot like present day problems), the banks called the notes on these farms in knowing that they couldn't pay them. You had farmers taking out loans at $1000 an acre to buy combines and build a new home or a new barn on land that was valued at $100 an acre just a year or two before (remind you of the housing bubble?).
And just as with the housing bubble those farmers and wannabe farmers who bought land at high prices are the ones at fault. Most either bought more than they could manage or they did not know what they were getting into.
You then had zoning and tax laws that were either nonexistent or didn't distinguish between residential, commercial, or agriculture uses.
It may surprise you, but I also believe zoning laws and tax laws are bad. Besides railing about the farm subsidies like I have, I've also railed about taxes and zoning. The money people work to earn should not be taxed. Instead there should be a tax on consumption, with one exception, corporations. Since corporations have limited liability, the most most stockholders can loose is how much they invested in the
You also forgot: A key part of photosynthesis is the "photo" part.
While crops like corn like full sun there are plenty of other food plants that prefer shade.
What is this idiot planning to do, have a zillion megawatts/acre of grow lights on all the lower levels?
Here's an article about "underground farms beneath tokyo".
Falcon
Farms require the use of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizer, all of which are toxic to humans.
Organic farms do not use fertilizers, herbicides, or pesticides. However they do require more manhours. And guess what those chemical inputs are made from? Natural gas and petrochemicals, both of which are being used up.
Falcon
Cuba is an example of what happens when absolutely everything goes wrong.
Except the city farms and gardens in Cuba are able to feed a lot of Cubans.
Falcon
And it takes cheap fuel to deliver crops from the farm to cities so people can eat. I'd like to see a life cycle analysis comparing both these vertical city farms and farming as it's done in the US. In Cuba after the collapse of the Soviet Union people started planting city gardens which now feed a lot of Cubans.
Falcon
Skyscaper farming is nothing new on /.
Plants (especially plants like alfalfa or grasses as depicted) have massive root systems requiring literally tons of soil to be healthy.
Grasses may require a lot of soil but not all crop plants do. Some grow quite well hydropnically. From TFA linked to: "After a strawberry farm in Florida was wiped out by Hurricane Andrew, the owners built a hydroponic farm. By growing strawberries indoors and stacking layers on top of each other, they now produce on one acre of land what used to require 30 acres." The article "In "Urban Farming," Crops Grow in Skyscrapers" says "More than 100 crops can be grown indoors by taking advantage of a technique called "hydroponics," where plants grow using mineral nutrient solutions instead of soil."
Falcon
Similarly, a long distance company tried to forcibly move me to their Long Distance service. Even going so far as to saying I had approved in on the phone (they couldn't produce the recording when I demanded it).
That's called slamming and the FCC takes a dim view of it.
Falcon
Worse we've raised a couple generations of fat stupid people who will gladly give up their rights as long as you give them a Whopper(tm) and American Idol at the properly programmed times periods.
It's not just Americans. In Hong Kong a passenger who is late to catch a flight "throws epic tantrum at Hong Kong airport"
Falcon
That's kind of my point. These NDAs are used because it can be impossible to stop customers trying to get other companies to undercut you and take advantage of the work you've already done.
If you rely on NDA then change your business model.
Falcon
Customers will mess you around big time. They'll get you to spend a lot of time preparing an assessment and quote, get you to travel halfway around the country to have a 45 minute meeting with you which is fair enough. However they'll then take your proposal, show it to another company who spend some time figuring out how they'd provide a similar service and travel up for a meeting. The customer would then say "can you do this £500 cheaper?". If they say yes they go back to the first company to see if they'll go lower.
That's called capitalism and in a free market is not only legal but right. Businesses should be able to reduce costs where they can so long as they don't violate other's rights. Are you don't have the right to make a profit, only the right to try to make a profit.
You can argue this is just being sensible but in truth, you're using up a lot of other people's time and eventually they'll have next to no profit margin but can't give up the contract because so much time has been invested already.
Then don't spend so much trying to gain one customer. Instead of going half way around the world try to find local customers. Perhaps if you can't find potential customers locally then either you're in the wrong business or wrong place. There's such a thing as personal responsibility and nobody automatically deserves a handout.
Many companies have no choice but to force NDAs on lots of aspects of proposals because of this.
Perhaps if an NDA is forced that's because what's being offered isn't worth the cost.
Falcon
As much as I'd like it to be open source doesn't always do what's desired. Because I shouldn't spend the money Photoshop costs for a photography business I'll try to use CinePaint and see if it works for me. I've got a Mac and I already tried to install the Mac version of CinePaint, but it uses X11 and I haven't been able to get it to work. So Ive been thinking about setting up my Mac to dualboot Ubuntu, if so then I'll try CinePaint again. If it still doesn't work for me then I may end up having to buy Photoshop.
Falcon
Supposedly using debit instead of credit at the checkout doesn't cost the store anything. Is that true?
Debit cards still have charges. I am a member of two coops and they recommend that if you use a card for payments then to use a debit card for purchases below $20 and a credit card for purchases over $20. Below $20 the fees are lower with debit cards and credit cards are cheaper over $20.
Falcon
Dubya is out of office, and Obama don't roll like that.
Obama voted to give telecoms immunity. Perhaps you didn't get the memo.
Falcon
That's right. Contact your Congressional representatives, your Senators and your state legislators and demand they raise the gas tax.
Someone doing that, Oil refiner CEO advocates for higher fuel taxes. To tell the truth what I like more is to tax mileage instead. When a person renews their license plate tags their odometer is read then they pay a tax on how much they drove. This way even those who make or buy biofuels on the side pay.
Falcon
That's their choice, one I don't want mandated.
Falcon
First and foremost: where did I say that the location data has to leave the car in the first place?
I didn't say you said that, however have you ever heard of mission creep? If some capability is there government will find some way to use it.
Falcon
First, the 'find everyone who lives at the same address' question is a valid one.
I can find easily everyone in my phone book.
The simple case is to find any contacts that don't have an address yet. Other reasons could be to find ones that don't have a home address or business address yet.
My phone book again. for instance I have 3 phone numbers I can use, her home, cellphone, qnd work numbers. Though I haven't I could also include the addresses.
What about history of addresses?
I can cross out one address and write in another.
See, you're only thinking about your own little address book. I'm thinking about millions of addresses and all the possible analytics that could be done on them.
I no longer keep one but I used to use a text file on my computer to do the same thing I can do with my phone book. And searching it is easy, [cont + f"] brings up the search box. Because it's a .txt file many programs can open it whereas if I had used a database I'd have to use the database software to open it. Heck, when I took both Java and Perl one of the things we did was to read and write text files.
Falcon
People who enjoy broadband because they live in cities.
you ARE already paying for that food, the cost is just hidden in other taxes.
Oh, I agree. Every year the feds give billions in taxpayer subsidies to agricultural businesses. In 2008 congress approved almost $300 billion in subsidies.
I say make things cost what they actually cost. Then people get a CHOICE about what they want to put money into.
Oh, I agree. For years I'll railed about farm subsidies, even here on slashdot. These subsides distort markets.
the costs to society are HUGE and you're making the city people pay for the fact that someone gets to live in the country?
If cities folks don't want to subsidize broadband for rural folks then they can pay more for food.
Now we're going to fork out MASSIVE bucks in this 'stimulous' plan
Oh, don't think I support the "Stimulus plan" because I don't. I didn't support the bailout of banks either. If the banks that bought worthless papers had been allowed to go bankrupt then those who had exercised prudence and didn't buy those papers or made bad loans who of been left standing. The Troubled Asset Relief Program, TARP, part of the bailout was supposed to free banks to make loans. What they did instead was hoard the money or buyout other banks. If the banks were too big to allow the fail then the bigger ones are even more of a risk. They're like vampires only the more blood, er money, they get the more they need.
highways so people can live way out of town
And so city folks can have food delivered to them. Or do you think food will just appear on t=city tables without the highways? Or that those big screen TVs magically appear on store shelves? Fact is is cities benefit as much if not more than rural people because of the highway system.
Falcon
There is a practical limitation to a lot of things that are now considered neccecities.
There are no necessities, not even life is a necessity. Everything that is considered a necessity is usually accompanied by a modifier, such as "food is a necessity of life."
Many people live in areas that don't allow farm animals
This is because of laws banning farm animals not because farm animals can not survive in cities.
don't have yards to turn into gardens or they aren't big enough to grow a years supply of food.
That's because of misguided economic policies that encouraged small farmers to leave their farms and move into cities while large scale farms grew food. Then there are the hugh farm subsidies the First World nations such as the EU, Japan, and the US give to farmers. People and the news in the US complain a lot about "illegal aliens", especially Lou Dobbs on CNN. What I have never heard them ask is why are they willing to risk life to get into to US? That's because US agriculture businesses get paid hundreds of billions of US taxpayer dollars in subsidies as well as NAFTA. With these subsidies and NAFTA US businesses can export and sell corn, which botanically originated in Central America, in Mexico cheaper than Mexican farmers can grow corn. This economically forces those farmers off of their farms, they then either move into already large Mexican cities or north where they try to cross the border. These subsides even affect small farmers in the US, large scale farms drive smaller farmers into US cities as well. About the only small farms that can make it are the organic farms, but even there big agri businesses like Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill are moving in.
And some of those areas that do, don't have the room or abilities to store the food for the duration necessary.
There are cheap and low tech ways to preserve food for months. There is canning, which I do myself. Some foods can be dehydrated, dried, I'd like to get a dehydrator. Smoking can preserve food as well.
most of the utilities have become such a necessity that if your lacking any of them, the state can actually take your children away
As I stated above, that's because those are laws not necessities.
Falcon
So you go through each key and count the number of addresses and then return the ones that have more than one? Can look things up based on the Value and not the key? That would seem to be the only way to efficiently answer my questions posed above.
What exactly is your question? My own questions: Why would I want to go through each key to see if there's more than one value? Can who look things up?
Falcon
Or perhaps we could just use tax on fuel...
So even if a driver drives more they will pay less because they have a more fuel efficient car.
Falcon
Right now, you pay for roads whether you drive on them or not, through your taxes. If the every road could be made a toll road, then the people who drove on the roads would pay for them, and people who take public transportation or choose not to own a car wouldn't pay
You pay for roads whether you drive on them or not because you use roads even if you don't drive on them. When you buy something road costs are in the price.
Falcon
the more you use the roads, the more you pay for them to be repaired.
Not if you drive a fuel efficient vehicle or use biofuel you make yourself.
Falcon
How do you determine the mileage driven? GPS device like what one state was proposing(that also reports ALL of your travels, gee, that's not a violation of privacy, is it? Or some sort of odometer?
By checking the odometer. If the vehicle has been in state for more than a year then the state will have the odometer reading from the previous year. If the vehicle is new in the state the odometer can be read when it is registered.
Falcon
I did read an interesting article the other day about an economist proposing we solve our traffic congestion and road funding problems by implementing a dynamic tolls system on all the major highways. A busy road would have a higher toll than a less crowded road, encouraging people to take the cheaper route, and at the same time, providing funds for the highway system.
That's done in California right now, as it is elsewhere. We have dynamic pricing where I live in Minneapolis/St Paul.
Falcon