Although tantalum capacitors are used widely in PCs, they are not essential. Niobium (columbium) has no significant use in PCs AFAIK. Your broader point is correct.
I also said cell phones, and notice one of the links I provided is from cellular-news.com. What I didn't mention was all the other things we take for granted that use coltan and other rare earth mineral. Quite simple the US has little of the rare earth minerals and has to import most of it. I think given the tyme necessary the US can solve these problems, however even then it may be imported people (immigrants) who do it.
You're talking about those floodlight-shaped CFLs, right? Those damn things take forever to warm up (the light starts near the base and takes a few seconds to reach the tip) but I've found putting regular instant-on CFLS in those fixtures works just as well. Regular CFLS usually start >50% brightness and warm up much faster.
No I'm not. Sure Walmart has dimmable floodlight CFLs but they also have regular dimmable CFLs. GE CFL 26wt Dimmable Spiral - 3 bulbs $15.44. They have a bunch more too.
I think that's enough examples to show there are inexpensive dimmable CFL bulbs. However Walmart has more.
CFL sucks. We're better off with incandescent in the meantime.
I've used CFLs for more than 20 years and have not had a problem with them. That's not entirely true, I have had problems with them. In photography, photos on film show color casting with florescent bulbs, and with incandescent bulbs as well. The first CFL I bought I paid $20 for, and over the next 15 years it paid it's cost back in avoided cost. That is in energy not used and in not having to replace incandescent bulbs. I wonder if you enjoy wasting money.
In what way? I actually contend the opposite, international trade helps most people. The less paid for an item the more money people have. That money can be used to buy other items, pay down debt, or be invested. Of course, until recently, people here in the US lived beyond their means. They continuously borrowed money the buy more stuff.
As for Walmart/Sam's, Walmart now has stores in China. And Chinese make enough money to buy from Walmart, as well as upscale stores. I don't recall what newspaper it was but one reported the first week Apple's new iPhone was available in China more than 1 million were sold there. Seeing as Apple products are only affordable to the wealthy, there are a lot of wealthy people in China. And those people buy American products sending money to the US. Another American company making money in China is Caterpillar, which builds construction equipment in Indiana employing thousands of people. John Deere based in IL does business in Brazil, China, and around the world. There are many other US based multinational businesses who also are in Brazil, China, India, and Russia (BRIC) helping employ more American workers.
And without international trade you would not be using a PC, or a cell phone. The US does not have a ready supply of a number of metals used to make these products. A major source of Coltan, columbite–tantalite, is Congo. Unfortunately it's mining fuels the conflict there.
GE leads a call to develop rare earth minerals in the US to reduce our dependence on Chinese suppliers. If China wanted to it could shutdown a number of US businesses by stopping exporting these minerals ton the US.
I've tried different brands of CFL ( generic, GE, Philips, Nelson ) , many sizes as well (including a monster 65W unit) and the failure rate is high compared to the proposed life on the boxes.
I've been using CFLs for more than 25 years and I have never had a CFL last less than 5 years. the first CFL I bought I bought in a specialty store, it lasted about 15 years, and the last 2 tymes I bought them I bought them at Walmart.
Looking forward to converting to LEDs soon.
When LEDs are good for area lighting, the only spotlighting I use is my flashlight, then I switch to them.
Bought 10 CFL bulbs for my kitchen. They all died in less than a year.
The CFLs in my kitchen I put there more than 2 years ago. Of course they replaced other CFLs, and those were there more than 5 years, after surviving moving.
These things come with warranties? @ $20+ dollars per bulb, I'd be pretty pissed if the thing burned out after several months.
As I said in my original post, I bought an 8 pack of CFLs for less than $6. The first CFL I bought cost $20, but that was more than 25 years ago and it lasted about 15 years before burning out. Between the cost of the bulb, how much energy it saved, and how long it lasted I believe I saved money paying more to buy it than the total cost of buying incandescent bulbs instead.
Other than not being able to use dimmers, the biggest complaint I have with CFLs is that now it's tough to buy just one or two without paying a huge premium. The multi-bulb packs are sometimes so much cheaper per bulb that it's often worth it to just buy the pack. But, since they don't burn out very quickly, I end up with a fairly large collection of each type of bulb.
Walmart, at least the one I went to, have CFLs that can be used with dimmer switches. I have the same problem with the multi-bulb packs though. I didn't want to get an 8 bulb pack, but even more I didn't want to pay a higher price.
I had actually looked at them at full price earlier because CFLs die so quickly at the toilet and bathroom.
It's been almost 8 years since I placed the CFLs I use in my bathroom and they're still good to go.
I also bought 12v spotlights with LED.
I don't use spot lighting, so I'll wait to get LED lights until they're good for area lighting. Well, I may use a LED in a flashlight, replace the incandescent bulb in my Mag light with one.
The reduced cooling should help in lowering the costs of the LED versus the CFL and the reduced energy consumption will be a help as well.
Yesterday I went to Walmart to get new light bulbs, old CFLs I had burned out. There Walmart had LED bulbs in stock, at around $20 a bulb. I ended up going to Sam's to get CFLs, an 8 pack cost less than $6.
You must have an old MacBook since all the new ones are missing these keys. Only the "extended" keyboards have them. Glad to hear that you are running Ubuntu without problems. I know that there arre workarounds for the missing keys and you can remap things but it is frustrating to have to deal with this otherwise nice hardware.
Unfortunately it is old, it's a Santa Rosa 3,1 MBP. Released in July 2007, so it's more than 5 years old. But it still works fine. Of course I wanted to get a 17" MBP with a Retina display, however Apple dropped the 17" models. The 15" model has too small a display for the high resolution the Retina can display clearly. The only good is plugging in a large monitor capable of high resolution, which can be done with the 17" models. Actually I'm looking for a high res monitor, at least 24", with an IPS panel to plug into my laptop.
And my new desktop. It too is 5 years old but whereas my MBP has a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo the desktop is a 2.4GHz Quad Core. In the MBP I have a 750GB HDD, and it's almost full. The desktop has 2 HDDs. The first one is 160GB and is for the OS, also Ubuntu 12.04. However I plan on installing other distros in virtual machines on the first drive. The second drive is a 3TB drive and is for user files. For backups I use external HDDs, the latest one also being 3TB. The MBP is maxed out at 2GB RAM versus 4GB which I can double in the desktop.
By "modern" liberalism, I'm not referring to Jeffersonian libertarianism/liberal.
Yea, look at Wiki's entry to Modern liberalism in the United States and Classical Liberalism. Today the closest political party we have to Classical Liberalism in the US is the Libertarian Party. However even there, it seems to me that some libertarians are corporate libertarians. Thomas Jefferson warned about the corporate aristocracy though. Corporations were originally granted limited liability by government if the corporation served a public good. And when it did not the corporate charter could be revoked.
Most people don't even know about the history of corporations and where they got their start. The first corporate charter was granted to the Dutch East India Company by the Dutch government in 1602. In 1604 Britain granted a charter to the British East Indian Company. Both companies were shippers and shipping was a risky business. If cargo being shipped was lost the ship owner was liable. Whether by bad weather or by pirates cargo lost was expensive to replace or pay for. Both of these companies transported cargo between Europe and India. Someone who was able to set aside some money to invest in a ship was liable to lose everything they owned, including their home. But with corporate charters the same person could invest in a shipping corporation. Then if the ship was lost the only thing the investor lost was the amount they invested. This enabled more people to invest in and expand shipping which benefited a lot of people. So as it were, the Dutch and British East India Companies were the first multinational corporations.
But talk of revoking a corporate charter today is denigrated by some so called libertarians, those corporate libertarians I mentioned above, even as corporations write the rules and regulations they are regulated by.
I like my MacBook Pro. What I don't like is that Apple dropped the 17" MacBook Pro from the line-up. That's what mine is and it's about tyme I get a new one. But unfortunately the biggest MacBook Pro now is only 15". Now why would Apple put a retina display on a 15" laptop but not a 17"? Using as high a resolution as that on a small display is stupid, just how many people can distinguish the details on such a small display?
Except Macs have odd keyboards that are missing keys such as PgUp, PgDn, Home, End, Del/Backspace and have a special "flower power" key which does nothing on Linux.
Reading this I glanced down at my keyboard, I'm typing this on a MacBook Pro, and what do I see? I see Page Up, Page Down, Home, End, and Delete, which is Backspace on Linux and Windows PCs, keys. Now if I hold "fn" while pressing Delete I get the normal Delete. I dual-boot my MacBook, Snow Leopard and Ubuntu 12.04 and I've used the "flower power" when booted into Ubuntu. Without remapping the keyboard. I have not had a problem doing in Ubuntu what I do in Snow Leopard.
What *actually* happens, however, is that once government and those in it reach a certain level of power and control, they no longer have to even pay lip-service to any of that happy nonsense, and then the "economic crisis" (they aren't getting enough of your economy!), austerity measures, and tax hikes kick in, along with things like fully-militarized police, gun confiscations, and permanent "temporary" checkpoints.
Over the past couple of weeks I've been hearing about "economic cliff" and such. When I do I think I want to see it just to show people how dangerous government is to the economy. The bigger the part of economy the government is the worse. If I had my way I would abolish parts of the federal government. The DEA would be chopped off as would the ATF. Drug Czar? Gone. Washington state and Colorado are hopefully leading the nation here. Fatherland, er Motherland, er Homeland Security, bye bye. We already have national security, it's called the Department of Defense. And it would be pruned as well. End these wars that have off-line budgets and bring our troops back. Including the War on Drugs. I once started going through the federal budget and requests and came up with trillions of dollars in cuts without going through half the budget. By eliminating parts that are not in the Constitution of the USA.
Modern Progressivism & Liberalism
I don't know what Modern Progressivism is but liberalism is not what it used to be. Thomas Jefferson in advocating for liberty and small government was a liberal. Most so called liberals in the US are almost the opposite of him. They want bigger not smaller government. Conservatives are no better, they too want bigger government. The only difference between conservatives and today's liberals is what part of government will be big and what part will be small if not gone. For instance conservatives want morality police while fake liberals want to redistribute wealth.
Fine, I read your links. The newsbatch site states that the cap was only in place until the utility recovered its stranded costs. After that, they could charge whatever they wanted to. They give SDG&E as an example of a power company that had done this and then jacked up their retail prices.
One company may have paid back the subsidy it received but not all of them did. And where there is competition one company has to compeat with others by for instance having lower prices or offering better service In the case of electricity offering cleaner produced energy is a selling point to those who care about the environment.
But forget that for a minute. Lets say there were no restrictions at all and they could charge whatever they want whenever they wanted. It's not a free market situation where that would be appropriate but c'est la vie. Now Enron manipulates the market by shutting down power plants and causes a price spike. That cost is then passed straight to the consumer.
So open the market. Or have a non-profit such as a coop take over the grid. The members or owners of the coop could then be generators and electricity users, even the workers. But not government.
The consumer cannot afford the inflated price any more than the power company can. So, the people of California are still fucked and the state has to step in.
At the end of the day, all monopolies has to be regulated.
Here is where you make the same mistake as others, because where there are MONOPOLIES there are NOT FREE MARKETS. A free market is one with little to no government interference, and monopolies are government granted and therefore government interference. A free market is one where buyers have more than one option. Technically where cables, and fiber, has to be laid down there can not be a free market. For power, ie electricity, until it can be transmitted wirelessly like Nikolai Tesla worked on there will not be a free market. Earlier this year MIT demonstrated this however it has not been commercialized yet. And when it finally is it will probably be patented, thus ruling out a free market until the patent expires. Quite simply even in CA I can not buy electricity from any generator I want and pick the distributor I'll use to deliver it. Here I advocate encouraging more competition, for generators, and open access for distributors. Even better I think would be to have a coop own the power cables. Of course if I were in CA I'd have solar panels on my roof, and depending on where in CA, maybe a wind genie (generator) and or a geothermal system too.
It's not a free market and even Milton Friedman agrees with that (yeah, I actually read his books).
First, can you provide any links backing this up? Here's one on Milton Friedman speaking about government regulations. In it he targets the FDA saying the FDA should not be approving drugs. Instead drug companies are supposed to be held liable to harm or death caused by their drugs. While the FDA may save lives not approving a bad drug, it also causes deaths by taking too long to approve life saving drugs. Next, I don't want monopolies and would seek to get rid of them.
In short, any company that can fraudulently manipulate the energy markets will fuck you over no matter what.
I'm glad I don't live in your world, in mine not all businesses will screw over anyone they can. Though I know and knew people who have and had their own businesses, my sister owns one and I want to start one of my own among others, most of those people do not try to screw over others. Also if I had my own way I'd ban all monopolies I could. Well maybe not copyrights and patents, but I'd shorten their terms. I don't care if George Lucas makes another Billion dollars off of Star Wars 7, oops, he sold the franchise to Walt Disney, but after say 10 years it should enter
Bullshit. Enron asked plants to shut down to tighten supply and jack up the price. It's all well documented and, IIRC, they have recordings of it in the documentary "Enron: The Smartes Guys in the Room". It was flat out market manipulation. I also recall that Enron's contribution alone to California's debt was close $40 billion. Also, this whole notion that the power companies couldn't raise prices on electricity was also bullshit because Californians were paying about 4x the cost for electricity as most states.
Bullshit!!! You obviously didn't read the links I provided. You didn't provide any yourself either. Don't waste anymore tyme, I won't answer if you can't debate properly.
Unless, of course, you're actually Bill Gates and want to fund such a project. (Hey Bill, it *would* be a nice "in your face!" payback for all that "monopoly" stuff the government threw at you! Just sayin'.:-) )
Strat
Except it was government granted monopolies that made Bill Gates wealthy. That is what copyrights are, government granted monopolies.
Well yes. That's another thing why I don't trust airline pricing.... How can it be cheaper to buy a round-trip ticket and waive the return trip than a buying a one-way ticket.....
I didn't say buy round trip tickets but not fly back.
Accidently posting earlier gave me the idea to check flights for my next holiday. 109€ for a transatlantic flight, plus 388€ fees and taxes. that's crazy. plain crazy.
Now that is crazy, fees and taxes 3 times as much as the fare itself. Goes to show how dangerous government is to markets.
The California brown-outs were caused by Enron and others manipulating the energy market, which was a direct result of deregulation. The reality is that for the most part deregulation in various industries has made a few people very rich, but has been a bad thing for consumers.
That is not what caused the brown-outs. Sure Enron and other made money from it but they did not cause the problem. The problem was caused by the state government. Traders like Enron used state laws to do what they did. Partial deregulation was in fact reregulation. The new laws stipulated that electrical generators could not also own the electrical distribution cables. Also while generators could raise their prices to distributors, those distributors could not raise their prices to energy users without government permission. Consumer rates would be frozen With energy traders such as Enron buying electrical units prices went up which left distributors up a tree, they had to pay higher prices but could not raise their prices. That wasn’t deregulation!
Policy Debate: Has Deregulation Caused the Energy Shortage in California? "As an economist, whenever I hear the word "shortage" I wait for the other shoe to drop. That other shoe is usually "price control." So it was no great surprise to discover, after the electric power shortage in California made headlines, that there were price controls holding down the price of electricity to the consumers."
"Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric were required to charge consumers no more than 6.5 per kilowatt hour until March 2002. Because this rate had become much lower than the market rate, both utilities began to lose vast sums of money because they had to purchase power at the unregulated market rates."
Do you still want to call what happened in CA deregulation? If so then you don't know what deregulation is, which the removal of regulations without other regulations being added. However you're not the only one to think that way. To most reporters as well as the public the problem in CA was deregulation, that everything was deregulated when it was not. Sellers to end users could not raise prices but generators and trades not only could but did raise their prices to those sellers.
I hate to be the one to break you the bad news, but if you're flying without staying at least a night, you're travelling at "business rates" anyway and overcharged that those few bucks for luggage won't matter.
I just checked FRA - LHR with LH. (what I would have to fly to meet our customer). Fly there in the morning and back in the evening: €388. Spend the night at a pub, fly back the following day: 199€. For that 180€ saved, you could check quite a bit of luggage...
That may be true in the UK but I don't think it is the the US. However airlines used to give discounts for round trip tickets, I don't know if they still do. That's not the same thing.
Actually a new law took effect earlier this year to curb deceptive airline advertising. I won't claim it's 100% effective, but it does specifically preclude the two cases you mention: "airlines and ticket agents include all mandatory taxes and fees in published airfares and that they disclose baggage fees to consumers buying tickets."
And it's being contested:
Meanwhile, Spirit Airlines, Allegiant Air and Southwest Airlines - with backing from industry trade associations - are asking the Supreme Court to reverse an appeals court ruling forcing them to include taxes in their advertised fares. The appeals court upheld a Transportation Department rule that went in effect nearly a year ago that ended airlines' leeway to advertise a base airfare and show the taxes separately, often in smaller print. Airlines say the regulations violate their free-speech rights.
Does anyone remember when deregulation was supposed to usher in a golden era of cheap air travel with expanded service? Airlines would compete against each other to offer passengers the best travel experience at the lowest cost. The invisible hand would guarantee that customers would come first.
But there wasn't deregulation. Even if I had enough money I could not start a new airline without jumping through some hoops that have nothing to do with flying. All that happened was that some regulations were dropped but others were added.
The exact same thing happened when California "deregulated electricity" back in the late 1990s causing CA's blackouts and brownouts.
Did you ever see what people cram into the cabin just to avoid luggage fees? I'd love to see a fee for people travelling WITHOUT checked baggage and give an incentive to get all that baggage where it belongs - in the cargo area!
That's simple, charge extra for more than 2 bags carried on. I shouldn't have to pay more because I don't check in baggage if I don't need it. Let me give an example:
I'm a programmer who's been lain-off and I have an interview across the state, but for a local job. Now say the interview is 300 miles away. I have 2 choices drive or fly. I can drive 5 hours for it then 5 hours back. Or I can leave the house 3 hours before the interview to go to the airport to fly there and rent a car or take a taxi to the interview location then go back the opposite way. I don't need check-on luggage because I'm only going to be there a couple of hours. By charging for not having check-in luggage you're raising my costs.
The single price means the minimum total cost that is able to be quantified (or calculated) at the time of making the representation.
You must include in the single price any:
* charges of any desciption payable by a consumer to purchase the good or service (e.g. administration fees, compulsory services charges, booking fees)
* taxes, duties, fees, levies or charges payable by the consumer for the supply of the good or service (e.g. goods and services tax or sales tax).
The Transportation Department had a rule requiring airlines to provide the total price for air fair but the industry is fighting that rule in court:
"Meanwhile, Spirit Airlines, Allegiant Air and Southwest Airlines - with backing from industry trade associations - are asking the Supreme Court to reverse an appeals court ruling forcing them to include taxes in their advertised fares. The appeals court upheld a Transportation Department rule that went in effect nearly a year ago that ended airlines' leeway to advertise a base airfare and show the taxes separately, often in smaller print. Airlines say the regulations violate their free-speech rights."
Slashdot Mirror
Although tantalum capacitors are used widely in PCs, they are not essential. Niobium (columbium) has no significant use in PCs AFAIK. Your broader point is correct.
I also said cell phones, and notice one of the links I provided is from cellular-news.com. What I didn't mention was all the other things we take for granted that use coltan and other rare earth mineral. Quite simple the US has little of the rare earth minerals and has to import most of it. I think given the tyme necessary the US can solve these problems, however even then it may be imported people (immigrants) who do it.
Falcon
You're talking about those floodlight-shaped CFLs, right? Those damn things take forever to warm up (the light starts near the base and takes a few seconds to reach the tip) but I've found putting regular instant-on CFLS in those fixtures works just as well. Regular CFLS usually start >50% brightness and warm up much faster.
No I'm not. Sure Walmart has dimmable floodlight CFLs but they also have regular dimmable CFLs. GE CFL 26wt Dimmable Spiral - 3 bulbs $15.44. They have a bunch more too.
Falcon
There is virtually no selection of dimmable CFL, the few that exist are incredibly expensive
I think that's enough examples to show there are inexpensive dimmable CFL bulbs. However Walmart has more.
CFL sucks. We're better off with incandescent in the meantime.
I've used CFLs for more than 20 years and have not had a problem with them. That's not entirely true, I have had problems with them. In photography, photos on film show color casting with florescent bulbs, and with incandescent bulbs as well. The first CFL I bought I paid $20 for, and over the next 15 years it paid it's cost back in avoided cost. That is in energy not used and in not having to replace incandescent bulbs. I wonder if you enjoy wasting money.
Falcon
In what way? I actually contend the opposite, international trade helps most people. The less paid for an item the more money people have. That money can be used to buy other items, pay down debt, or be invested. Of course, until recently, people here in the US lived beyond their means. They continuously borrowed money the buy more stuff.
As for Walmart/Sam's, Walmart now has stores in China. And Chinese make enough money to buy from Walmart, as well as upscale stores. I don't recall what newspaper it was but one reported the first week Apple's new iPhone was available in China more than 1 million were sold there. Seeing as Apple products are only affordable to the wealthy, there are a lot of wealthy people in China. And those people buy American products sending money to the US. Another American company making money in China is Caterpillar, which builds construction equipment in Indiana employing thousands of people. John Deere based in IL does business in Brazil, China, and around the world. There are many other US based multinational businesses who also are in Brazil, China, India, and Russia (BRIC) helping employ more American workers.
And without international trade you would not be using a PC, or a cell phone. The US does not have a ready supply of a number of metals used to make these products. A major source of Coltan, columbite–tantalite, is Congo. Unfortunately it's mining fuels the conflict there.
GE leads a call to develop rare earth minerals in the US to reduce our dependence on Chinese suppliers. If China wanted to it could shutdown a number of US businesses by stopping exporting these minerals ton the US.
So who's the jerk?
Falcon
I've tried different brands of CFL ( generic, GE, Philips, Nelson ) , many sizes as well (including a monster 65W unit) and the failure rate is high compared to the proposed life on the boxes.
I've been using CFLs for more than 25 years and I have never had a CFL last less than 5 years. the first CFL I bought I bought in a specialty store, it lasted about 15 years, and the last 2 tymes I bought them I bought them at Walmart.
Looking forward to converting to LEDs soon.
When LEDs are good for area lighting, the only spotlighting I use is my flashlight, then I switch to them.
Falcon
Bought 10 CFL bulbs for my kitchen. They all died in less than a year.
The CFLs in my kitchen I put there more than 2 years ago. Of course they replaced other CFLs, and those were there more than 5 years, after surviving moving.
Falcon
These things come with warranties? @ $20+ dollars per bulb, I'd be pretty pissed if the thing burned out after several months.
As I said in my original post, I bought an 8 pack of CFLs for less than $6. The first CFL I bought cost $20, but that was more than 25 years ago and it lasted about 15 years before burning out. Between the cost of the bulb, how much energy it saved, and how long it lasted I believe I saved money paying more to buy it than the total cost of buying incandescent bulbs instead.
Falcon
Other than not being able to use dimmers, the biggest complaint I have with CFLs is that now it's tough to buy just one or two without paying a huge premium. The multi-bulb packs are sometimes so much cheaper per bulb that it's often worth it to just buy the pack. But, since they don't burn out very quickly, I end up with a fairly large collection of each type of bulb.
Walmart, at least the one I went to, have CFLs that can be used with dimmer switches. I have the same problem with the multi-bulb packs though. I didn't want to get an 8 bulb pack, but even more I didn't want to pay a higher price.
Falcon
I had actually looked at them at full price earlier because CFLs die so quickly at the toilet and bathroom.
It's been almost 8 years since I placed the CFLs I use in my bathroom and they're still good to go.
I also bought 12v spotlights with LED.
I don't use spot lighting, so I'll wait to get LED lights until they're good for area lighting. Well, I may use a LED in a flashlight, replace the incandescent bulb in my Mag light with one.
Falcon
The reduced cooling should help in lowering the costs of the LED versus the CFL and the reduced energy consumption will be a help as well.
Yesterday I went to Walmart to get new light bulbs, old CFLs I had burned out. There Walmart had LED bulbs in stock, at around $20 a bulb. I ended up going to Sam's to get CFLs, an 8 pack cost less than $6.
Falcon
You must have an old MacBook since all the new ones are missing these keys. Only the "extended" keyboards have them. Glad to hear that you are running Ubuntu without problems. I know that there arre workarounds for the missing keys and you can remap things but it is frustrating to have to deal with this otherwise nice hardware.
Unfortunately it is old, it's a Santa Rosa 3,1 MBP. Released in July 2007, so it's more than 5 years old. But it still works fine. Of course I wanted to get a 17" MBP with a Retina display, however Apple dropped the 17" models. The 15" model has too small a display for the high resolution the Retina can display clearly. The only good is plugging in a large monitor capable of high resolution, which can be done with the 17" models. Actually I'm looking for a high res monitor, at least 24", with an IPS panel to plug into my laptop.
And my new desktop. It too is 5 years old but whereas my MBP has a 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo the desktop is a 2.4GHz Quad Core. In the MBP I have a 750GB HDD, and it's almost full. The desktop has 2 HDDs. The first one is 160GB and is for the OS, also Ubuntu 12.04. However I plan on installing other distros in virtual machines on the first drive. The second drive is a 3TB drive and is for user files. For backups I use external HDDs, the latest one also being 3TB. The MBP is maxed out at 2GB RAM versus 4GB which I can double in the desktop.
Falcon
By "modern" liberalism, I'm not referring to Jeffersonian libertarianism/liberal.
Yea, look at Wiki's entry to Modern liberalism in the United States and Classical Liberalism. Today the closest political party we have to Classical Liberalism in the US is the Libertarian Party. However even there, it seems to me that some libertarians are corporate libertarians. Thomas Jefferson warned about the corporate aristocracy though. Corporations were originally granted limited liability by government if the corporation served a public good. And when it did not the corporate charter could be revoked.
Most people don't even know about the history of corporations and where they got their start. The first corporate charter was granted to the Dutch East India Company by the Dutch government in 1602. In 1604 Britain granted a charter to the British East Indian Company. Both companies were shippers and shipping was a risky business. If cargo being shipped was lost the ship owner was liable. Whether by bad weather or by pirates cargo lost was expensive to replace or pay for. Both of these companies transported cargo between Europe and India. Someone who was able to set aside some money to invest in a ship was liable to lose everything they owned, including their home. But with corporate charters the same person could invest in a shipping corporation. Then if the ship was lost the only thing the investor lost was the amount they invested. This enabled more people to invest in and expand shipping which benefited a lot of people. So as it were, the Dutch and British East India Companies were the first multinational corporations.
But talk of revoking a corporate charter today is denigrated by some so called libertarians, those corporate libertarians I mentioned above, even as corporations write the rules and regulations they are regulated by.
Falcon
Linus.
http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/19/an-interview-with-millenium-technology-prize-finalist-linus-torvalds/
I like my MacBook Pro. What I don't like is that Apple dropped the 17" MacBook Pro from the line-up. That's what mine is and it's about tyme I get a new one. But unfortunately the biggest MacBook Pro now is only 15". Now why would Apple put a retina display on a 15" laptop but not a 17"? Using as high a resolution as that on a small display is stupid, just how many people can distinguish the details on such a small display?
Falcon
Except Macs have odd keyboards that are missing keys such as PgUp, PgDn, Home, End, Del/Backspace and have a special "flower power" key which does nothing on Linux.
Reading this I glanced down at my keyboard, I'm typing this on a MacBook Pro, and what do I see? I see Page Up, Page Down, Home, End, and Delete, which is Backspace on Linux and Windows PCs, keys. Now if I hold "fn" while pressing Delete I get the normal Delete. I dual-boot my MacBook, Snow Leopard and Ubuntu 12.04 and I've used the "flower power" when booted into Ubuntu. Without remapping the keyboard. I have not had a problem doing in Ubuntu what I do in Snow Leopard.
Falcon
What *actually* happens, however, is that once government and those in it reach a certain level of power and control, they no longer have to even pay lip-service to any of that happy nonsense, and then the "economic crisis" (they aren't getting enough of your economy!), austerity measures, and tax hikes kick in, along with things like fully-militarized police, gun confiscations, and permanent "temporary" checkpoints.
Over the past couple of weeks I've been hearing about "economic cliff" and such. When I do I think I want to see it just to show people how dangerous government is to the economy. The bigger the part of economy the government is the worse. If I had my way I would abolish parts of the federal government. The DEA would be chopped off as would the ATF. Drug Czar? Gone. Washington state and Colorado are hopefully leading the nation here. Fatherland, er Motherland, er Homeland Security, bye bye. We already have national security, it's called the Department of Defense. And it would be pruned as well. End these wars that have off-line budgets and bring our troops back. Including the War on Drugs. I once started going through the federal budget and requests and came up with trillions of dollars in cuts without going through half the budget. By eliminating parts that are not in the Constitution of the USA.
Modern Progressivism & Liberalism
I don't know what Modern Progressivism is but liberalism is not what it used to be. Thomas Jefferson in advocating for liberty and small government was a liberal. Most so called liberals in the US are almost the opposite of him. They want bigger not smaller government. Conservatives are no better, they too want bigger government. The only difference between conservatives and today's liberals is what part of government will be big and what part will be small if not gone. For instance conservatives want morality police while fake liberals want to redistribute wealth.
Falcon
Fine, I read your links. The newsbatch site states that the cap was only in place until the utility recovered its stranded costs. After that, they could charge whatever they wanted to. They give SDG&E as an example of a power company that had done this and then jacked up their retail prices.
One company may have paid back the subsidy it received but not all of them did. And where there is competition one company has to compeat with others by for instance having lower prices or offering better service In the case of electricity offering cleaner produced energy is a selling point to those who care about the environment.
But forget that for a minute. Lets say there were no restrictions at all and they could charge whatever they want whenever they wanted. It's not a free market situation where that would be appropriate but c'est la vie. Now Enron manipulates the market by shutting down power plants and causes a price spike. That cost is then passed straight to the consumer.
So open the market. Or have a non-profit such as a coop take over the grid. The members or owners of the coop could then be generators and electricity users, even the workers. But not government.
The consumer cannot afford the inflated price any more than the power company can. So, the people of California are still fucked and the state has to step in.
At the end of the day, all monopolies has to be regulated.
Here is where you make the same mistake as others, because where there are MONOPOLIES there are NOT FREE MARKETS. A free market is one with little to no government interference, and monopolies are government granted and therefore government interference. A free market is one where buyers have more than one option. Technically where cables, and fiber, has to be laid down there can not be a free market. For power, ie electricity, until it can be transmitted wirelessly like Nikolai Tesla worked on there will not be a free market. Earlier this year MIT demonstrated this however it has not been commercialized yet. And when it finally is it will probably be patented, thus ruling out a free market until the patent expires. Quite simply even in CA I can not buy electricity from any generator I want and pick the distributor I'll use to deliver it. Here I advocate encouraging more competition, for generators, and open access for distributors. Even better I think would be to have a coop own the power cables. Of course if I were in CA I'd have solar panels on my roof, and depending on where in CA, maybe a wind genie (generator) and or a geothermal system too.
It's not a free market and even Milton Friedman agrees with that (yeah, I actually read his books).
First, can you provide any links backing this up? Here's one on Milton Friedman speaking about government regulations. In it he targets the FDA saying the FDA should not be approving drugs. Instead drug companies are supposed to be held liable to harm or death caused by their drugs. While the FDA may save lives not approving a bad drug, it also causes deaths by taking too long to approve life saving drugs. Next, I don't want monopolies and would seek to get rid of them.
In short, any company that can fraudulently manipulate the energy markets will fuck you over no matter what.
I'm glad I don't live in your world, in mine not all businesses will screw over anyone they can. Though I know and knew people who have and had their own businesses, my sister owns one and I want to start one of my own among others, most of those people do not try to screw over others. Also if I had my own way I'd ban all monopolies I could. Well maybe not copyrights and patents, but I'd shorten their terms. I don't care if George Lucas makes another Billion dollars off of Star Wars 7, oops, he sold the franchise to Walt Disney, but after say 10 years it should enter
Bullshit. Enron asked plants to shut down to tighten supply and jack up the price. It's all well documented and, IIRC, they have recordings of it in the documentary "Enron: The Smartes Guys in the Room". It was flat out market manipulation. I also recall that Enron's contribution alone to California's debt was close $40 billion. Also, this whole notion that the power companies couldn't raise prices on electricity was also bullshit because Californians were paying about 4x the cost for electricity as most states.
Bullshit!!! You obviously didn't read the links I provided. You didn't provide any yourself either. Don't waste anymore tyme, I won't answer if you can't debate properly.
Falcon
Unless, of course, you're actually Bill Gates and want to fund such a project. (Hey Bill, it *would* be a nice "in your face!" payback for all that "monopoly" stuff the government threw at you! Just sayin'. :-) )
Strat
Except it was government granted monopolies that made Bill Gates wealthy. That is what copyrights are, government granted monopolies.
Falcon
Well yes. That's another thing why I don't trust airline pricing.... How can it be cheaper to buy a round-trip ticket and waive the return trip than a buying a one-way ticket.....
I didn't say buy round trip tickets but not fly back.
Accidently posting earlier gave me the idea to check flights for my next holiday. 109€ for a transatlantic flight, plus 388€ fees and taxes. that's crazy. plain crazy.
Now that is crazy, fees and taxes 3 times as much as the fare itself. Goes to show how dangerous government is to markets.
Falcon
The California brown-outs were caused by Enron and others manipulating the energy market, which was a direct result of deregulation. The reality is that for the most part deregulation in various industries has made a few people very rich, but has been a bad thing for consumers.
That is not what caused the brown-outs. Sure Enron and other made money from it but they did not cause the problem. The problem was caused by the state government. Traders like Enron used state laws to do what they did. Partial deregulation was in fact reregulation. The new laws stipulated that electrical generators could not also own the electrical distribution cables. Also while generators could raise their prices to distributors, those distributors could not raise their prices to energy users without government permission. Consumer rates would be frozen With energy traders such as Enron buying electrical units prices went up which left distributors up a tree, they had to pay higher prices but could not raise their prices. That wasn’t deregulation!
Policy Debate: Has Deregulation Caused the Energy Shortage in California? "As an economist, whenever I hear the word "shortage" I wait for the other shoe to drop. That other shoe is usually "price control." So it was no great surprise to discover, after the electric power shortage in California made headlines, that there were price controls holding down the price of electricity to the consumers."
"Southern California Edison and Pacific Gas and Electric were required to charge consumers no more than 6.5 per kilowatt hour until March 2002. Because this rate had become much lower than the market rate, both utilities began to lose vast sums of money because they had to purchase power at the unregulated market rates."
Do you still want to call what happened in CA deregulation? If so then you don't know what deregulation is, which the removal of regulations without other regulations being added. However you're not the only one to think that way. To most reporters as well as the public the problem in CA was deregulation, that everything was deregulated when it was not. Sellers to end users could not raise prices but generators and trades not only could but did raise their prices to those sellers.
Falcon
Uhmm.. yes....
I hate to be the one to break you the bad news, but if you're flying without staying at least a night, you're travelling at "business rates" anyway and overcharged that those few bucks for luggage won't matter.
I just checked FRA - LHR with LH. (what I would have to fly to meet our customer). Fly there in the morning and back in the evening: €388. Spend the night at a pub, fly back the following day: 199€. For that 180€ saved, you could check quite a bit of luggage...
That may be true in the UK but I don't think it is the the US. However airlines used to give discounts for round trip tickets, I don't know if they still do. That's not the same thing.
Falcon
Actually a new law took effect earlier this year to curb deceptive airline advertising. I won't claim it's 100% effective, but it does specifically preclude the two cases you mention: "airlines and ticket agents include all mandatory taxes and fees in published airfares and that they disclose baggage fees to consumers buying tickets."
And it's being contested:
Meanwhile, Spirit Airlines, Allegiant Air and Southwest Airlines - with backing from industry trade associations - are asking the Supreme Court to reverse an appeals court ruling forcing them to include taxes in their advertised fares. The appeals court upheld a Transportation Department rule that went in effect nearly a year ago that ended airlines' leeway to advertise a base airfare and show the taxes separately, often in smaller print. Airlines say the regulations violate their free-speech rights.
Falcon
Does anyone remember when deregulation was supposed to usher in a golden era of cheap air travel with expanded service? Airlines would compete against each other to offer passengers the best travel experience at the lowest cost. The invisible hand would guarantee that customers would come first.
But there wasn't deregulation. Even if I had enough money I could not start a new airline without jumping through some hoops that have nothing to do with flying. All that happened was that some regulations were dropped but others were added.
The exact same thing happened when California "deregulated electricity" back in the late 1990s causing CA's blackouts and brownouts.
Falcon
Did you ever see what people cram into the cabin just to avoid luggage fees? I'd love to see a fee for people travelling WITHOUT checked baggage and give an incentive to get all that baggage where it belongs - in the cargo area!
That's simple, charge extra for more than 2 bags carried on. I shouldn't have to pay more because I don't check in baggage if I don't need it. Let me give an example:
I'm a programmer who's been lain-off and I have an interview across the state, but for a local job. Now say the interview is 300 miles away. I have 2 choices drive or fly. I can drive 5 hours for it then 5 hours back. Or I can leave the house 3 hours before the interview to go to the airport to fly there and rent a car or take a taxi to the interview location then go back the opposite way. I don't need check-on luggage because I'm only going to be there a couple of hours. By charging for not having check-in luggage you're raising my costs.
Falcon
The single price means the minimum total cost that is able to be quantified (or calculated) at the time of making the representation.
You must include in the single price any:
The Transportation Department had a rule requiring airlines to provide the total price for air fair but the industry is fighting that rule in court:
"Meanwhile, Spirit Airlines, Allegiant Air and Southwest Airlines - with backing from industry trade associations - are asking the Supreme Court to reverse an appeals court ruling forcing them to include taxes in their advertised fares. The appeals court upheld a Transportation Department rule that went in effect nearly a year ago that ended airlines' leeway to advertise a base airfare and show the taxes separately, often in smaller print. Airlines say the regulations violate their free-speech rights."
Falcon