Similar thing with compressed gas cylinders (specifically scuba tanks). The wall thickness is *much* thinner for a steel tank than an aluminum one of similar pressures, so for the same mass of air and you can get away with a smaller tank and/or lower pressure. The resulting vessels end up being very close to the same mass despite aluminum's on-paper advantage in strength-to-weight ratio, which is killed by the maximum outer diameter that people are comfortable with handling.
I'm still trying to figure out why steel scuba tanks cost *more* than aluminum ones, though, looking at the spot prices for each of those metals.
But your induction coil requires something very important: a time varying current passing through the loop.
Off of the top of my head I can think of at least two ways to reduce or eliminate that current: The above mentioned DC distribution system (DC-DC isn't nearly as costly and inefficient as it was when Edison lost the format wars), and, wait for it.. balanced feed lines.
It happens to be cheaper to use a single line and earth return, but you can cut the net instantaneous current to zero with a properly balanced return line.
In other words, the power companies *could* reduce your exposure to electric potential <grin>, but instead they've chosen to save money at your expense without compensation, and also to bear the increased risk of parasitic loads.
Call your phone company and have them explain those fees line by line.
They'll generally call them "regulatory compliance fees." When you go to a restaurant, do you get charged extra for the hand sanitizer in the bathrooms (it's a regulation they must comply with, after all)
If they can bill your for their time complying with ordinary regulations on top of the agreed upon price, I wonder if you can bill them for your time spent budgeting, recording, and paying their bill....
Frankly, I'd be happy if they'd stop with the "charges we choose to add to your bill that aren't taxes, but we'd like them to look like taxes" plan.
The price should be the price. If the government levies taxes or obligations on the phone companies, it's their problem to fold it into the price. If the government levies taxes on the individual customers (e.g. sales tax) that's another matter. Between the government's real taxes and the phone companies' fake taxes, I'm paying like 30% more than the advertised price.
*and yes, I'm seriously considering switching to a prepaid plan, as I've heard that the price really is the price with those plans. The phones look not that crappy, too, now. Anyone know anything about the coverage? Is it the same as the company whose network they're ostensibly on, or is it a restricted subset of whatever network they're subordinate to?
Conversely, the power company ought to control their emissions. If they're leaking enough power onto a person's property to be usefully collected, they should compensate the property owner for the EM pollution.
It looks like the study mentions that, and that they can only go so far before they cut into the schedule too much for it to be convenient any more.
Anyway, the problem that I have (and, I think, many people do) is that mass transit is exceedingly poorly thought out in my area, turning a 1.2 hour (each way) driving commute (with horrendous traffic, so I look into mass transit every couple weeks to see if something changed or I missed an option) into a three hour quest.
Worse, is that because of the way it's laid out, and the fact that the place I work is in an area much more affluent than my job, means that I can only afford to move close enough to cut that three hour mass-transit commute down to just under two hours, with a three mile cab ride during the winter.
By poorly thought out, i mean that there is no transit option that follows the ring roads, so if you want to go to from one suburban area to a tangentially adjacent one, you have to go 20 miles into the city and then return after one or two transfers.
The point was this: as the library of off-the-shelf solutions grows, it's possible that what what you once had to do with custom software is now neatly covered with some vendor's standard offering, or in the parent's case, what he had to do with expensive vendors' software can now be done with even less expensive open source solutions.
So it's not scalping because of the collusion? BTW: Car dealers will not hesitate to sell a car above sticker price (at a premium) if there is a big demand for it.
Oh, how quaint. The sticker price is already at a premium. It's set above what they expect to get, because they expect you to haggle. "invoice" is the new "sticker" and they make plenty of profit at that price, too....
If the rear driver is so close that he can't brake when the car in front of him suddenly breaks, then he is endangering that driver and should be held accountable.
You've never driven in Massachusetts, I take it.
First law of driving in Massachusetts: If you ever find yourself in a position where you're actually a safe distance from the car in front of you, another car will instantly appear halfway between.
Corollary: If you try to game the system by positioning yourself almost a safe distance from the car in front of you (counting on your "paying extra attention" to protect you from most trouble), this new distance will be treated as a "safe" distance by the other drivers.
Indeed that raises interesting questions: on what basis can they justify levying a fee on everyone if it does not absolve its payers of any criminality associated with the act the fee is levied for?
It's not the same at all. We created the concept of copy rights out of whole cloth to (in the words of the US concept of it) promote the arts and sciences.
At 10,000 per day, they could deprive the entire population of france (including those that don't even have internet access) of internet access in like 16 years. If the numbers are that big, then it really is time to evaluate the situation, and maybe come up with a solution that doesn't make the entire population into criminals, which does not mean doing nothing, either.
One option would be to set up a government program to handle the distribution of monies to artists, with a canada style, "we know you're going to pirate anyway" extra fee on internet connections. Although there are many downsides to a solution like this, so hopefully there's a good solution out there, too.
You're making nearly 20% more than the median income in the US. How do you think your health-care, pension, and other benefits would stack up against the private sector?
Every public sector employee, no matter his pay, says that it's barely liveable and gets very defensive. They've always got some reason why people in the private sector just don't understand
They do it to their customers, too. They'll spend millions on poaching customers from other companies, but only the barest minimum on retention. The best deals are always for new customers. Just as you'd be foolish to keep working for the same company for decades in most cases, you'd be similarly foolish to stay with the same phone company for more than one contract-term.
I'd be willing to take a $10k-$20k cut in salary for a more secure job...one that isn't going to lay me off unless it at least has good reason to.
You're not. And you wouldn't be able to recognize it until after you put in a lifetime anyway. Better to sock that extra $10-$20k away until you've got a big enough buffer that you can weather through the storms. Better still to jump ship for an extra $10-20k on top of that and a slight improvement on the stability by finding a company that's not slowly riding its declining equity into the ground.
Building bridges isn't necessarily a great thing either. You can't just build a bridge and magically have commerce, there needs to be stuff on either side that is made more efficient by the easy way across.
Historically this has been solved by building toll bridges, sometimes with entirely private funding: if the tolls pay off the bridge, then enough people had a use for it that it was worth the expense.
What the government needs to do regarding construction isn't to just commit to dozens of additional projects. They need to stop letting the contractors bid way past their capacity on the already existing projects. Road construction ties up traffic and is economically damaging, better to finish each project quickly one at a time than to let contractors sit on dozens of projects that that they drag out for half a decade.
If your project isn't waiting on chemistry (the massive concrete pylons of a modern high bridge can take months to cure), then the worksite shouldn't be empty. There's no reason why a road should sit grated out in the weather for weeks before finishing the paving. That's a logistics failure. Government spending on infrastructure should be for completing infrastructure projects, not for giving contractors a stable work order for decades out.
I guarantee that the gp has heard that song and would recognize it very quickly from a sample. But I really had paid no attention to its singer, ever, and indeed thought it was much older than 1999.
Actually, I don't care much for the song itself, either. It's got that "won't offend anyone" quality whose reward is to be piped into corporate lobbies and elevators everywhere.
I don't think you realize the position that that puts you in: It would take the resources of a nation (perhaps a nation of nations) to crack a fifty-character passphrase. Even if you owe that much, so what? The numbers stop being real for individuals way before you march through billions of dollars.
If you owe a billion, they're not getting any of it back if you have to work at McDonald's. They're going to have to install you in a cushy CEO job somewhere or as Fed Chairman to hope for you to have sufficient wages to garnish that amount from.
Surely, even in the UK, they have legal documents which can be altered through political processes, at least one of which has had more than five revisions...
Slashdot Mirror
Similar thing with compressed gas cylinders (specifically scuba tanks). The wall thickness is *much* thinner for a steel tank than an aluminum one of similar pressures, so for the same mass of air and you can get away with a smaller tank and/or lower pressure. The resulting vessels end up being very close to the same mass despite aluminum's on-paper advantage in strength-to-weight ratio, which is killed by the maximum outer diameter that people are comfortable with handling.
I'm still trying to figure out why steel scuba tanks cost *more* than aluminum ones, though, looking at the spot prices for each of those metals.
So, still better than anything that "break the window" Keynes wrote...
I see you can count to zero.
But your induction coil requires something very important: a time varying current passing through the loop.
Off of the top of my head I can think of at least two ways to reduce or eliminate that current: The above mentioned DC distribution system (DC-DC isn't nearly as costly and inefficient as it was when Edison lost the format wars), and, wait for it.. balanced feed lines.
It happens to be cheaper to use a single line and earth return, but you can cut the net instantaneous current to zero with a properly balanced return line.
In other words, the power companies *could* reduce your exposure to electric potential <grin>, but instead they've chosen to save money at your expense without compensation, and also to bear the increased risk of parasitic loads.
If you have an unlimited plan, why would you need the text message?
Those extra things on your bill...
THEY'RE NOT TAXES.
Call your phone company and have them explain those fees line by line.
They'll generally call them "regulatory compliance fees." When you go to a restaurant, do you get charged extra for the hand sanitizer in the bathrooms (it's a regulation they must comply with, after all)
If they can bill your for their time complying with ordinary regulations on top of the agreed upon price, I wonder if you can bill them for your time spent budgeting, recording, and paying their bill....
Frankly, I'd be happy if they'd stop with the "charges we choose to add to your bill that aren't taxes, but we'd like them to look like taxes" plan.
The price should be the price. If the government levies taxes or obligations on the phone companies, it's their problem to fold it into the price. If the government levies taxes on the individual customers (e.g. sales tax) that's another matter. Between the government's real taxes and the phone companies' fake taxes, I'm paying like 30% more than the advertised price.
*and yes, I'm seriously considering switching to a prepaid plan, as I've heard that the price really is the price with those plans. The phones look not that crappy, too, now. Anyone know anything about the coverage? Is it the same as the company whose network they're ostensibly on, or is it a restricted subset of whatever network they're subordinate to?
Conversely, the power company ought to control their emissions. If they're leaking enough power onto a person's property to be usefully collected, they should compensate the property owner for the EM pollution.
I see what you did there
For long trips it'll be hybrid, so watt is all of the fuss about?
I see what you did there. *golf clap*
It looks like the study mentions that, and that they can only go so far before they cut into the schedule too much for it to be convenient any more.
Anyway, the problem that I have (and, I think, many people do) is that mass transit is exceedingly poorly thought out in my area, turning a 1.2 hour (each way) driving commute (with horrendous traffic, so I look into mass transit every couple weeks to see if something changed or I missed an option) into a three hour quest.
Worse, is that because of the way it's laid out, and the fact that the place I work is in an area much more affluent than my job, means that I can only afford to move close enough to cut that three hour mass-transit commute down to just under two hours, with a three mile cab ride during the winter.
By poorly thought out, i mean that there is no transit option that follows the ring roads, so if you want to go to from one suburban area to a tangentially adjacent one, you have to go 20 miles into the city and then return after one or two transfers.
Parent is not missing the point.
The point was this: as the library of off-the-shelf solutions grows, it's possible that what what you once had to do with custom software is now neatly covered with some vendor's standard offering, or in the parent's case, what he had to do with expensive vendors' software can now be done with even less expensive open source solutions.
So it's not scalping because of the collusion? BTW: Car dealers will not hesitate to sell a car above sticker price (at a premium) if there is a big demand for it.
Oh, how quaint. The sticker price is already at a premium. It's set above what they expect to get, because they expect you to haggle. "invoice" is the new "sticker" and they make plenty of profit at that price, too....
If the rear driver is so close that he can't brake when the car in front of him suddenly breaks, then he is endangering that driver and should be held accountable.
You've never driven in Massachusetts, I take it.
First law of driving in Massachusetts: If you ever find yourself in a position where you're actually a safe distance from the car in front of you, another car will instantly appear halfway between.
Corollary: If you try to game the system by positioning yourself almost a safe distance from the car in front of you (counting on your "paying extra attention" to protect you from most trouble), this new distance will be treated as a "safe" distance by the other drivers.
Indeed that raises interesting questions: on what basis can they justify levying a fee on everyone if it does not absolve its payers of any criminality associated with the act the fee is levied for?
Generally speaking, after one full revolution, you're right back where you started...
It's not the same at all. We created the concept of copy rights out of whole cloth to (in the words of the US concept of it) promote the arts and sciences.
At 10,000 per day, they could deprive the entire population of france (including those that don't even have internet access) of internet access in like 16 years. If the numbers are that big, then it really is time to evaluate the situation, and maybe come up with a solution that doesn't make the entire population into criminals, which does not mean doing nothing, either.
One option would be to set up a government program to handle the distribution of monies to artists, with a canada style, "we know you're going to pirate anyway" extra fee on internet connections. Although there are many downsides to a solution like this, so hopefully there's a good solution out there, too.
You're making nearly 20% more than the median income in the US. How do you think your health-care, pension, and other benefits would stack up against the private sector?
Every public sector employee, no matter his pay, says that it's barely liveable and gets very defensive. They've always got some reason why people in the private sector just don't understand
Hewlett Packard used to compete in a market with IBM and Xerox.. Now they compete with Dell. You do the math.
They do it to their customers, too. They'll spend millions on poaching customers from other companies, but only the barest minimum on retention. The best deals are always for new customers. Just as you'd be foolish to keep working for the same company for decades in most cases, you'd be similarly foolish to stay with the same phone company for more than one contract-term.
It's marketing 101.
and 203, 241L, 320, and 495.
Gah, she's running for office. She might get a position of power in the government.
She might get to help our economy the way she helped HP's bottom line!
I'd be willing to take a $10k-$20k cut in salary for a more secure job...one that isn't going to lay me off unless it at least has good reason to.
You're not. And you wouldn't be able to recognize it until after you put in a lifetime anyway. Better to sock that extra $10-$20k away until you've got a big enough buffer that you can weather through the storms. Better still to jump ship for an extra $10-20k on top of that and a slight improvement on the stability by finding a company that's not slowly riding its declining equity into the ground.
Building bridges isn't necessarily a great thing either. You can't just build a bridge and magically have commerce, there needs to be stuff on either side that is made more efficient by the easy way across.
Historically this has been solved by building toll bridges, sometimes with entirely private funding: if the tolls pay off the bridge, then enough people had a use for it that it was worth the expense.
What the government needs to do regarding construction isn't to just commit to dozens of additional projects. They need to stop letting the contractors bid way past their capacity on the already existing projects. Road construction ties up traffic and is economically damaging, better to finish each project quickly one at a time than to let contractors sit on dozens of projects that that they drag out for half a decade.
If your project isn't waiting on chemistry (the massive concrete pylons of a modern high bridge can take months to cure), then the worksite shouldn't be empty. There's no reason why a road should sit grated out in the weather for weeks before finishing the paving. That's a logistics failure. Government spending on infrastructure should be for completing infrastructure projects, not for giving contractors a stable work order for decades out.
Indeed dido is exactly that: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thank_You_(Dido_song)
I guarantee that the gp has heard that song and would recognize it very quickly from a sample. But I really had paid no attention to its singer, ever, and indeed thought it was much older than 1999.
Actually, I don't care much for the song itself, either. It's got that "won't offend anyone" quality whose reward is to be piped into corporate lobbies and elevators everywhere.
I don't think you realize the position that that puts you in: It would take the resources of a nation (perhaps a nation of nations) to crack a fifty-character passphrase. Even if you owe that much, so what? The numbers stop being real for individuals way before you march through billions of dollars.
If you owe a billion, they're not getting any of it back if you have to work at McDonald's. They're going to have to install you in a cushy CEO job somewhere or as Fed Chairman to hope for you to have sufficient wages to garnish that amount from.
Surely, even in the UK, they have legal documents which can be altered through political processes, at least one of which has had more than five revisions...