I thought you DID pay a tax when you used a land line phone? For each and every call you make a small portion goes to state and federal tax coffers.
In the US -- and the article is about US taxes -- most landlines are billed a flat monthly fee for local service. Taxes are charged on this service, but in proportion to the total bill, not the number or duration of local calls made. Taxes on your local service would be the same if you made 0 or several thousand minutes of local calls. If you called a cab long distance, you would pay per minute for the call and be taxed on its cost, but that's not likely.
Whether it's something we see as fair or not, the law considers it your duty to familiarize yourself with it or accept the consequences of not being familiar with it.
Of course, laws in the US can be kept secret now . . .
On the contrary, texting while driving would be so outrageously dangerous that even the morons who will talk while driving would probably balk at attempting to type.
So you would agree that texting while driving would be so stupid that even a moron would know not to, right? Unfortunately, I witness texting while driving about once a week, and I'm in the US where even our morons are dumber.
You do realize parent poster was not referring to himself, right? Because the whole "the Polish don't have these rights" sort of made it clear that he was talking about Poles and not ugly-Americans like himself.
So you think he meant that "Your rights online" only refers to the rights that one has, not the rights one doesn't have, or wish one had? I can see how you could read it that way, but that would make for a rather dull discussion, chatting about all the things one could do online if one wished to . . .
How is this story "News for nerds" or "stuff that matters?" File it under the "Polish crime blotter" category and not "Your rights online" because clearly the Polish don't have these rights.
The translated subtitles were published online. You realize that the "Your" in "Your rights online" doesn't just refer to you, specifically, right?
I can even understand pulling your credit report as part of the process, someone who is bad with money is probably more likely to steal shit from their employer.
"Lisa, a guy who's got lots of ivory is _less_ likely to hurt Stampy than a guy whose ivory supplies are low."
All of the things that everyone has alleged negatively about these firings may be true. It doesn't matter, it was legal. If you think it was inappropriate, don't vote for G.W. Bush when he runs for re-election.
Let's say it was legal and above board. Fine. Even if they were fired for political reasons. OK. The president is a political entity, he can do politics.
Know what's also legal? Congress investigating actions of the executive branch, holding hearings, questioning interested parties. If you think it's inappropriate, don't vote for them when the run for re-election. Oh, that's right, most of them aren't your Senators and Reps, you can't vote for them.
To summarize, you can't vote for most of them, and what they're doing isn't illegal. So it's a non-story.
All we have to do is somehow get the RIAA in a legal fight with the Scientologists...
That would be an AWESOME steel-cage match. "Two litigious organizations go in, only one comes out!" Reminds me of when I tried to get the Mormons and the Baptists at the office to duke it out. Good times.
Of course, the danger is they might combine and form a more powerful entity, a la "Nomad" (or "V'ger").
To get coverage inside my stone home I simply installed a Cellphone repeater. They are dirt cheap ($550.00) and can be installed by any competent person or you can hire a contractor to install it.
In the US, even though they weren't offering party lines for new service, a friend's parents had a party line they shared with the neighbors. The party-line deal was grandfathered-in, I guess, and they kept that party line through the late 90s. They used old mechanical ringer phones, which were filtered to only ring (loudly) when their line was called. Newer phones with electronic ringers either wouldn't ring or rang for both lines. And this wasn't out in the country, either, but an inner suburb of a large metro area.
Simple. I wouldn't own a device whose functionality was tied to it contacting some company that could disappear whenever its business plans failed.
Surely you wouldn't enforce that rule strictly, otherwise you'd need to ditch the cellphone, the landline, the lights and A/C, the furnace and maybe even the car.
I get your point, I have a Tivo, but I probably wouldn't get another these days. I got in on a lifetime plan, before they killed that option. When this Tivo goes to Tivo Heaven, it'll probably be replaced with nothing.
Oh, and how do you handle devices that need to "dial home" periodically? (ReplayTV box, DirecTV box, etc.)
The Tivo needed the landline longer than I did to periodically download programming information, updates and upload statistics about how many times I replayed the "wardrobe malfunction". I finally cut the cord (to the phone company) by getting a TurboNet/TivoNet adapter for my 1st Generation Tivo and connecting it to the home network. Later Tivos are easier, since they acutally have external connections for network adapters.
"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart." - H. L. Mencken
PV = nRT, yes, thank you. T goes down, n goes up, P stays the same.
When you put more gas in, you expend energy doing it. If you then cool that gas in a rigid container, the pressure will decrease. If you put more gas in to bring the pressure back up, then you expend more energy doing that. And so on . . . You won't get free energy.
No you pull the energy out of the heat in the air.
Something is definitely being pulled out of something.
Check it - take 10800 cubic feet of air at stp, comrpess it to 6000psi - keeping it at the same pressure cool it with water, now figure out how many joules has gone into that water and how much that water temperature has now gone up.
How, pray, do you intend to remove the heat and keep it at the same pressure? Consider the ideal gas law:
pV=nRT
If you reduce the temperature (T) and keep the pressure (p) constant, you must do one or more of the following:
Increase the number of mols of gas (n) - i.e. adding more gas (by using more energy),
Increase the gas constant (R) - i.e. changing the laws of physics,
Reduce the volume (V) - i.e. expending the stored energy.
So, unless you can change the law of physics, you're pretty much stuck.
It has nothing to do with the cost of producing the power.
Not quite true. The costs of producing any good factors into the supply curve. To say that the production costs don't enter into it, would be the law of "demand and demand", I guess. Electricity is highly perishable, so the supply and demand equilibrium is different at different times of day.
I'm an EE, but not a power engineer. My Dad was, and we talked about his work a lot.
The capital costs of generating power vary with peak demand. The higher the peak demand, the more generating and transmission capacity you need. It doesn't really matter if the peak is at Noon or 4pm or midnight, the scale of the "plant" required is determined by this peak demand value.
So if you are in the business of selling electricity, you'd like to keep capital costs down, since these affect your fixed costs, and you charge more for power during peak hours (shifting the supply curve at that time) to reduce demand.
Another method is to charge a "demand charge" based on a customer's largest peak demand. This encourages commercial customers to keep their demand flatter, or even install load shedding devices to create their own local blackouts at their facilities to prevent their peak demand from exceeding a threshold that they are unwilling to pay for.
Electric customers can save money on electricity by buying it "off-peak". For a factory, this might mean running evening and night shifts. For a residential customer, this might mean installing an automatic thermostat, for example. As you said, though, most residential customers in the US do not pay for electricity at different "peak" and "off peak" rates, and most are not subject to a demand charge.
Slashdot Mirror
One step at a time, dude. First switch to Fmail, then Gmail.
In the US -- and the article is about US taxes -- most landlines are billed a flat monthly fee for local service. Taxes are charged on this service, but in proportion to the total bill, not the number or duration of local calls made. Taxes on your local service would be the same if you made 0 or several thousand minutes of local calls. If you called a cab long distance, you would pay per minute for the call and be taxed on its cost, but that's not likely.
Eat your heart out, Fox News!
Of course, laws in the US can be kept secret now . . .
Even better, just fondle your WWGD bracelet, ask yourself "what would Gonzales do?", and reply, in your best Steve Martin voice: "I forgot."
Reminds me of this commercial . . . http://youtube.com/watch?v=K45m79fEyz8
So you would agree that texting while driving would be so stupid that even a moron would know not to, right? Unfortunately, I witness texting while driving about once a week, and I'm in the US where even our morons are dumber.
Get with the times. No one's strapped an onion to his belt since back when nickels had pictures of bumblebees on 'em.
What would you have to do to get it down to a level 1? Burn the building down?
So you think he meant that "Your rights online" only refers to the rights that one has, not the rights one doesn't have, or wish one had? I can see how you could read it that way, but that would make for a rather dull discussion, chatting about all the things one could do online if one wished to . . .
The translated subtitles were published online. You realize that the "Your" in "Your rights online" doesn't just refer to you, specifically, right?
Could be. But the theory that he was actually shot by Christopher Marlowe seems ridiculous.
You'd think people would get tired of using this old chestnut . . .
"Lisa, a guy who's got lots of ivory is _less_ likely to hurt Stampy than a guy whose ivory supplies are low."
Let's say it was legal and above board. Fine. Even if they were fired for political reasons. OK. The president is a political entity, he can do politics.
Know what's also legal? Congress investigating actions of the executive branch, holding hearings, questioning interested parties. If you think it's inappropriate, don't vote for them when the run for re-election. Oh, that's right, most of them aren't your Senators and Reps, you can't vote for them.
To summarize, you can't vote for most of them, and what they're doing isn't illegal. So it's a non-story.
That would be an AWESOME steel-cage match. "Two litigious organizations go in, only one comes out!" Reminds me of when I tried to get the Mormons and the Baptists at the office to duke it out. Good times.
Of course, the danger is they might combine and form a more powerful entity, a la "Nomad" (or "V'ger").
Jeez, even the dirt is expensive there.
In the US, even though they weren't offering party lines for new service, a friend's parents had a party line they shared with the neighbors. The party-line deal was grandfathered-in, I guess, and they kept that party line through the late 90s. They used old mechanical ringer phones, which were filtered to only ring (loudly) when their line was called. Newer phones with electronic ringers either wouldn't ring or rang for both lines. And this wasn't out in the country, either, but an inner suburb of a large metro area.
Surely you wouldn't enforce that rule strictly, otherwise you'd need to ditch the cellphone, the landline, the lights and A/C, the furnace and maybe even the car.
I get your point, I have a Tivo, but I probably wouldn't get another these days. I got in on a lifetime plan, before they killed that option. When this Tivo goes to Tivo Heaven, it'll probably be replaced with nothing.
The Tivo needed the landline longer than I did to periodically download programming information, updates and upload statistics about how many times I replayed the "wardrobe malfunction". I finally cut the cord (to the phone company) by getting a TurboNet/TivoNet adapter for my 1st Generation Tivo and connecting it to the home network. Later Tivos are easier, since they acutally have external connections for network adapters.
"We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart." - H. L. Mencken
Tonight, on a very special Terminator.
When you put more gas in, you expend energy doing it. If you then cool that gas in a rigid container, the pressure will decrease. If you put more gas in to bring the pressure back up, then you expend more energy doing that. And so on . . . You won't get free energy.
Something is definitely being pulled out of something.
How, pray, do you intend to remove the heat and keep it at the same pressure? Consider the ideal gas law:
pV=nRT
If you reduce the temperature (T) and keep the pressure (p) constant, you must do one or more of the following:
Increase the number of mols of gas (n) - i.e. adding more gas (by using more energy),
Increase the gas constant (R) - i.e. changing the laws of physics,
Reduce the volume (V) - i.e. expending the stored energy.
So, unless you can change the law of physics, you're pretty much stuck.
Not quite true. The costs of producing any good factors into the supply curve. To say that the production costs don't enter into it, would be the law of "demand and demand", I guess. Electricity is highly perishable, so the supply and demand equilibrium is different at different times of day.
I'm an EE, but not a power engineer. My Dad was, and we talked about his work a lot.
The capital costs of generating power vary with peak demand. The higher the peak demand, the more generating and transmission capacity you need. It doesn't really matter if the peak is at Noon or 4pm or midnight, the scale of the "plant" required is determined by this peak demand value.
So if you are in the business of selling electricity, you'd like to keep capital costs down, since these affect your fixed costs, and you charge more for power during peak hours (shifting the supply curve at that time) to reduce demand.
Another method is to charge a "demand charge" based on a customer's largest peak demand. This encourages commercial customers to keep their demand flatter, or even install load shedding devices to create their own local blackouts at their facilities to prevent their peak demand from exceeding a threshold that they are unwilling to pay for.
Electric customers can save money on electricity by buying it "off-peak". For a factory, this might mean running evening and night shifts. For a residential customer, this might mean installing an automatic thermostat, for example. As you said, though, most residential customers in the US do not pay for electricity at different "peak" and "off peak" rates, and most are not subject to a demand charge.