If prices were high enough, people would just walk down to their local lake.
I respectfully disagree. The appropriate substitute good for municipal water is a well and septic system of your own. The cost of those is considerably higher than a municipal water hookup.
And you are ignoring the environmental costs of gasoline production and the energy costs of moving crude oil, refining it, and transporting the resulting gasoline.
Since most electricity is still generated by burning fossil fuels, an all-electric car would most likely be worse than one burning the fuel directly. I have never heard of a perfectly efficient method of transmitting electricty from where it was produced to where it was needed (e.g. charge up the car). Ergo, there would be a net increase in "environmental badness" to use the e-car vs what we have now.
Not necessarily. Your argument is only true if the electric power plant and the gasoline-powered car operate at the same efficiency. If the power plant is significantly more efficient than a gasoline engine, then it is quite possible for the electric car to be more environmentally friendly than the gasoline car, even with transmission losses.
Your argument also ignores the fact that its generally easier to implement and upgrade pollution controls on a few dozen power plants versus several million automobiles.
No need to filter gutter water. You can usually get acceptable quality water (in most areas) by digging you own well, and having a septic system to handle wastewater exhaust. Though, given increased pollution and the costs of digging wells and septic systems, its not surprising that most go for municipal hookups when they're available.
/*I ahve never seen a water district that had "huge inefficiencies" granted, I hacen't seen them all.*/
I'm not saying that the water districts are inefficient distribution systems. I'm saying that the current highly-regulated water market encourages inefficient *use* of water (for example: swimming pools are popular in Phoenix due to low water prices).
/*And there are some subsidized area, Like Arizona, most is an overstatment.*/
Again, most of the western states (including California) have subsidized water due to the agricultural demands for irrigation and growing cities.
/*This is because the COST of providing water is very low, and competition assures that the price tracks these costs.*/
Huh? How is there competition in the water market? In most every city, there is a single provider working under a government enforced monopoly. The water market is probably the single most regulated market in the nation.
Also, if the cost of water reflected the costs of providing it, users in Phoenix, AZ would pay more than users in Buffalo, NY. This is currently NOT the case. The fact is, the price of water usually reflects the government subsidies, rather than actual market costs resulting in huge inefficiencies, and excessive depletion of groundwater supplies in many parts of the West.
/*This is another example of a rich guy with nothing better to do than expirement.*/
And what's wrong with that? After all, if it hadn't been for some "rich guy's experiment" we wouldn't have had Ubuntu Linux. Fact is, if you're independently wealthy, you have a lot more time (because time == money) to sit around and try stuff, even when there's not a huge chance of financial success.
They may not be able to disguise their physical appearance, but they will get (or forge) passports and identity papers from non-Middle Eastern countries to defeat racial profiling that targets specific countries or regions.
Re:Here's a scenario to show that you're wrong.
on
Flying Faster Without ID
·
· Score: 2, Informative
/*2) Using all the data available to determine those most likely to have what you are looking for*/
You are correct in stating that searching based on prior data is better. However, this assumes that the terrorists don't know that you're looking for them. If the terrorists know that you're looking, they can deliberately disguise themselves or their equipment so that it doesn't match with your prior data, making your search no better than random.
/*and if you aren't comfortable with that find a side road.*/
Which, given the fact that it was Bakersfield, may have been impossible to do. In that case, the safest thing to do would be drive at a comfortable speed and stay in the right lane.
/*I recall way back when Linux was smaller and faster than Windows. Dare I say it's going the other way now?*/
I don't think Linux is *more* bloated than Windows. After all, Knoppix manages to fit a kernel, X11, OpenOffice.org, several web browsers and several media players onto a single CD. Its like getting both Windows and Office on the same disk. Windows Vista alone exceeds the capacity of a single CD-ROM, and includes a far smaller selection of applications than comes with an elementary Linux distribution.
That said, I think most Linux distros have become more bloated with time. There are those that maintain "slim" distributions (Gentoo, Damn Small Linux, Feather Linux, etc.) but they are in the minority.
In this, China is much like WalMart. Sure, you get the access to the world's largest middle-class, but, in return, the Chinese have you on a leash. Any time you do something internally that the Chinese dislike, they can tug the leash by threatening to revoke access to their market.
The same principle applies to WalMart. By getting access to WalMart you get access to the largest distribution system in the world. Initially, this is a huge windfall for your company. However, later on you see that you've given up a lot of control in return for access. Walmart (or China) can regulate your internal decisions by virtue of the fact that you're tied to their market.
/*By the system of the site I use (Facebook) you should be a friend of a friend, or attend OSU to see that.*/
What do you mean by "... should be a friend of a friend or attend OSU..."? As far as I know, I can do a name search on Facebook for whomever I want and read whatever I want from their profile page. Anything you put on Facebook is *public* information and should be treated as such. I've already seen articles in my local paper about hiring officers using alumni e-mail addresses to look at what a person has posted on their Facebook account, and using that data as part of the hiring process.
As the grandparent said, social networking sites are as public as a sign on your lawn. If you put something up, and it gets read by the "wrong" person, well, that's your fault.
I wonder what this will mean for use of titanium in everyday applications. There's a certain cachet to titanium, but its not all that clear that everyday things, such as tools and such actually *need* the special properties of titanium.
You can get low-end computers for $600 or less. I have yet to see, though, a sub-$900 computer that has the graphics and CPU capability of the PS3. Too bad Sony has to go off and hobble the PS3, otherwise it could have made a very nice graphics workstation because of the Cell processor.
I understand that games will look better on a Blu-ray disk. But how will they load faster? Is the read speed of Blu-ray higher than that of standard DVD?
I know that it seems like I was making a value judgement, but I wasn't. I was just translating my personal experience into the terms used by the above discussion. I don't see anything wrong with desiring acceptable software now over perfect software in the future. However, there is something wrong when a culture of production creates a system where maintenance is impossible and potentially catastrophic flaws cannot be addressed.
/*but the US isn't really too different by comparison.*/
How can you justify saying that? I don't see Americans being sentenced to labor camps or execution for opposing the leadership of the country. I don't see mind crushing conformism being imposed from the very upper-reaches of society. I don't see a government whose past leadership has killed millions of its own citizens.
Now don't get me wrong, the PATRIOT act and the DMCA aren't *good* laws by any standard. However, they are, at least, laws determined by elected representatives. The unelected Chinese politboro, on the other hand, creates laws and simultaneously holds itself above the law. I have yet to see that on any scale in the US government.
Hardware support really hasn't been "solved". There are lots of Windows machines with ATI graphics cards out there. However, ATI's linux drivers are pretty horrid in terms of performance and stability. Until there are stable, high-performance drivers for all graphics hardware this idea remains impractical.
I don't know about Warcraft 3, but Starcraft is still eminently playable online. I regularly play it on BattleNet, and there's a thriving map and scenario-making community out there.
I think the parent, and the original poster are trying to make the same point: the programming language influences the programmer. It is true that a good programmer can write good code in any language. However it is far easier to write maintainable code in some languages than in others.
Customers do not want "good" software. Good software is tight, clean code created using a proper development methodology. Good software takes time to create, but is far easier to maintain. Customers want "acceptable" software. As long as it does what it is supposed to, doesn't have any show stopper bugs, and is available tomorrow, the customer will take it over any "good software" available the day after. Then, when the customer reaches the limits of the hacked-up solution he/she clamors for the next version.
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If prices were high enough, people would just walk down to their local lake.
I respectfully disagree. The appropriate substitute good for municipal water is a well and septic system of your own. The cost of those is considerably higher than a municipal water hookup.
And you are ignoring the environmental costs of gasoline production and the energy costs of moving crude oil, refining it, and transporting the resulting gasoline.
Since most electricity is still generated by burning fossil fuels, an all-electric car would most likely be worse than one burning the fuel directly. I have never heard of a perfectly efficient method of transmitting electricty from where it was produced to where it was needed (e.g. charge up the car). Ergo, there would be a net increase in "environmental badness" to use the e-car vs what we have now.
Not necessarily. Your argument is only true if the electric power plant and the gasoline-powered car operate at the same efficiency. If the power plant is significantly more efficient than a gasoline engine, then it is quite possible for the electric car to be more environmentally friendly than the gasoline car, even with transmission losses.
Your argument also ignores the fact that its generally easier to implement and upgrade pollution controls on a few dozen power plants versus several million automobiles.
No need to filter gutter water. You can usually get acceptable quality water (in most areas) by digging you own well, and having a septic system to handle wastewater exhaust. Though, given increased pollution and the costs of digging wells and septic systems, its not surprising that most go for municipal hookups when they're available.
/*I ahve never seen a water district that had "huge inefficiencies" granted, I hacen't seen them all.*/
/*And there are some subsidized area, Like Arizona, most is an overstatment.*/
I'm not saying that the water districts are inefficient distribution systems. I'm saying that the current highly-regulated water market encourages inefficient *use* of water (for example: swimming pools are popular in Phoenix due to low water prices).
Again, most of the western states (including California) have subsidized water due to the agricultural demands for irrigation and growing cities.
/*This is because the COST of providing water is very low, and competition assures that the price tracks these costs.*/
Huh? How is there competition in the water market? In most every city, there is a single provider working under a government enforced monopoly. The water market is probably the single most regulated market in the nation.
Also, if the cost of water reflected the costs of providing it, users in Phoenix, AZ would pay more than users in Buffalo, NY. This is currently NOT the case. The fact is, the price of water usually reflects the government subsidies, rather than actual market costs resulting in huge inefficiencies, and excessive depletion of groundwater supplies in many parts of the West.
/*This is another example of a rich guy with nothing better to do than expirement.*/
And what's wrong with that? After all, if it hadn't been for some "rich guy's experiment" we wouldn't have had Ubuntu Linux. Fact is, if you're independently wealthy, you have a lot more time (because time == money) to sit around and try stuff, even when there's not a huge chance of financial success.
/*Tetris and SMBs are timeless classics. That ain't something I could say of any shooter.*/
What about Half-Life, or Goldeneye64?
They may not be able to disguise their physical appearance, but they will get (or forge) passports and identity papers from non-Middle Eastern countries to defeat racial profiling that targets specific countries or regions.
/*2) Using all the data available to determine those most likely to have what you are looking for*/
You are correct in stating that searching based on prior data is better. However, this assumes that the terrorists don't know that you're looking for them. If the terrorists know that you're looking, they can deliberately disguise themselves or their equipment so that it doesn't match with your prior data, making your search no better than random.
/*and if you aren't comfortable with that find a side road.*/
Which, given the fact that it was Bakersfield, may have been impossible to do. In that case, the safest thing to do would be drive at a comfortable speed and stay in the right lane.
/*I recall way back when Linux was smaller and faster than Windows. Dare I say it's going the other way now?*/
I don't think Linux is *more* bloated than Windows. After all, Knoppix manages to fit a kernel, X11, OpenOffice.org, several web browsers and several media players onto a single CD. Its like getting both Windows and Office on the same disk. Windows Vista alone exceeds the capacity of a single CD-ROM, and includes a far smaller selection of applications than comes with an elementary Linux distribution.
That said, I think most Linux distros have become more bloated with time. There are those that maintain "slim" distributions (Gentoo, Damn Small Linux, Feather Linux, etc.) but they are in the minority.
In this, China is much like WalMart. Sure, you get the access to the world's largest middle-class, but, in return, the Chinese have you on a leash. Any time you do something internally that the Chinese dislike, they can tug the leash by threatening to revoke access to their market.
The same principle applies to WalMart. By getting access to WalMart you get access to the largest distribution system in the world. Initially, this is a huge windfall for your company. However, later on you see that you've given up a lot of control in return for access. Walmart (or China) can regulate your internal decisions by virtue of the fact that you're tied to their market.
/*It costs me NOTHING to turn on the radio - only my time - and I can hear the music for absolute free there. */
What about advertising? Do you suggest that, at the end of every song, there should be a 30-sec. ad spot.
/*By the system of the site I use (Facebook) you should be a friend of a friend, or attend OSU to see that.*/
What do you mean by "... should be a friend of a friend or attend OSU..."? As far as I know, I can do a name search on Facebook for whomever I want and read whatever I want from their profile page. Anything you put on Facebook is *public* information and should be treated as such. I've already seen articles in my local paper about hiring officers using alumni e-mail addresses to look at what a person has posted on their Facebook account, and using that data as part of the hiring process.
As the grandparent said, social networking sites are as public as a sign on your lawn. If you put something up, and it gets read by the "wrong" person, well, that's your fault.
I wonder what this will mean for use of titanium in everyday applications. There's a certain cachet to titanium, but its not all that clear that everyday things, such as tools and such actually *need* the special properties of titanium.
You can get low-end computers for $600 or less. I have yet to see, though, a sub-$900 computer that has the graphics and CPU capability of the PS3. Too bad Sony has to go off and hobble the PS3, otherwise it could have made a very nice graphics workstation because of the Cell processor.
I understand that games will look better on a Blu-ray disk. But how will they load faster? Is the read speed of Blu-ray higher than that of standard DVD?
Floppies don't autoplay like USB drives do. So, yes, this could have been done with floppy drives, but it would have taken more user intervention.
I know that it seems like I was making a value judgement, but I wasn't. I was just translating my personal experience into the terms used by the above discussion. I don't see anything wrong with desiring acceptable software now over perfect software in the future. However, there is something wrong when a culture of production creates a system where maintenance is impossible and potentially catastrophic flaws cannot be addressed.
/*but the US isn't really too different by comparison.*/
How can you justify saying that? I don't see Americans being sentenced to labor camps or execution for opposing the leadership of the country. I don't see mind crushing conformism being imposed from the very upper-reaches of society. I don't see a government whose past leadership has killed millions of its own citizens.
Now don't get me wrong, the PATRIOT act and the DMCA aren't *good* laws by any standard. However, they are, at least, laws determined by elected representatives. The unelected Chinese politboro, on the other hand, creates laws and simultaneously holds itself above the law. I have yet to see that on any scale in the US government.
Hardware support really hasn't been "solved". There are lots of Windows machines with ATI graphics cards out there. However, ATI's linux drivers are pretty horrid in terms of performance and stability. Until there are stable, high-performance drivers for all graphics hardware this idea remains impractical.
I don't know about Warcraft 3, but Starcraft is still eminently playable online. I regularly play it on BattleNet, and there's a thriving map and scenario-making community out there.
I think the parent, and the original poster are trying to make the same point: the programming language influences the programmer. It is true that a good programmer can write good code in any language. However it is far easier to write maintainable code in some languages than in others.
They want good software that does what they want.
Customers do not want "good" software. Good software is tight, clean code created using a proper development methodology. Good software takes time to create, but is far easier to maintain. Customers want "acceptable" software. As long as it does what it is supposed to, doesn't have any show stopper bugs, and is available tomorrow, the customer will take it over any "good software" available the day after. Then, when the customer reaches the limits of the hacked-up solution he/she clamors for the next version.
This is just from my personal experience.