Map data is licensed by what the user is allowed to do with it. Microsoft Streets and Trips used Navteq data and was specifically prohibited from doing turn-by-turn realtime guidance. I think if you read the box it even said that you couldn't get get position updates more than every 30 seconds.
It is likely that the license Apple had to use Google map data specifically disallowed turn-by-turn navigation. It is possible that Navteq would not license their data to Apple for navigation either leaving Apple no choice but to roll their own. So the choice may have been to give up control to Google or do it themselves.
MapQuest is in fact Navteq data. They might be integrating something else into it, but I don't think so.
Google started out with Navteq + GDT data and then decided to do their own collection and drive lots of vans on every street in the world. Somewhere along the line they decided to tap into WiFi signals and see what they could snarf up as well as taking pictures showing folks in their pools thru the fence.
If Apple really wants to redo this, hopefully they will be a little less revealing.
Building a competing map database is probably a huge mistake. Google could throw money at it and they were forced to drive vans around pretty much worldwide. Navteq/Nokia is doing that already and really isn't in getting into the iOS/Android fight, at least I would think not. And they have been doing the data collection longer than just about anyone else.
Sure, you can throw money at it, but you are also going to be committed to driving every road on the planet at some point pretty soon. And picking up every available source and integrating it, such as Tiger. This has already been done and the data is available for licensing. Getting pretty 3D building pictures in cities is a much smaller task and is something that might make sense to do.
They might as well face the fact they need to make a deal to get data from Navteq/Nokia. Building your own map database is not a small undertaking and not something that Apple should build a new division to do. The can do a great job post-processing the Navteq data to refine it like Garmin does. Delivering it up raw is a huge mistake.
Right. Asking or demanding this from the prospective employee is just wrong. It is like insisting on a urine test - but saying "right here, right now". I'm not surprised there is a backlash against that sort of thing.
On the other hand, there is information there and it may be relevant to a hiring decision. Employers want as much information as they can get because choosing wrong is expensive and sometimes even dangerous. So there will be services that deliver this sort of stuff. Where are they going to get it? Well, I bet FaceBook would turn over access for a fee.
Or at least until you "friend" someone at the office.
The problem is, today employment is a high-risk business. You employ the wrong person, fire them and they come back and shoot up the office. Or they may sue for some misunderstanding. Remember, the US is a society where people get ahead by suing and getting a big settlement.
There is also the simple fact that choosing the wrong person to hire results in a lot of costs with just job related things. It costs time and money to train someone and if they do not work out and leave after six months that time and money were wasted, possibly affecting scheduled and having a real impact on revenue.
All this makes employers want as much information as they possibly can gather about prospective employees and make no mistake about it, you aren't going to change that desire with some laws about social media. If employer's can't get this directly there will soon be services to deliver the information indirectly just as now you can get a complete background check of someone from the Internet. When there is a need that people are willing to pay for, someone is going to fill that need.
Why is social media relevent? Because the expectation is that you may post things in an unguarded manner that reflect more of your true personality than at a job interview. If the employer can avoid hiring someone that is going to be a problem, they just saved a bunch of money and possibly saved a project from being delayed. You can consider this to be the new sort of "personality test" that was all the rage back in the 1970s.
Oh, and face reality. The prospective employer probably doesn't care that you got drunk once and someone took some stupid pictures. Now, if you have people publicly commenting about what a drunk you are and how you can barely drag yourself into the office that becomes relevant. Having a comment about how much of a jerk you were to someone isn't all that interesting, but again if you have a bunch of stuff that indicates you're an intolerant child that has to have everything your way... well, you get the picture. It is the same thing as a background check that shows a speeding ticket - not all that relevant. But if you are driving on a restricted license because of a license suspension that might be interesting. Having recently been released from shooting up your former employer's business might just be relevant as well.
Is all this relevant to being able to do the job? Probably. If you come across as a nice, easy going person in an interview but are in fact quite different on the job it could be a big problem and how is an employer supposed to know? And because of all the problems the employer really wants to know as much as they can. And the information is out there for someone to gather for them.
Privacy? Once you start exposing yourself online, you have none so you may as well just get over it.
What you are missing is that you cannot generate electricity and not have it used. It doesn't bleed off into space. You have to shut generating plants down if the electricity being generated is not being used. Today it is quite well known when electricity is needed and when it is not - except for commercial customers.
What Microsoft did was contract for X amount of electricity and then didn't use it. The generating company had to rearrange a lot of stuff and shut down generators and start them back up again because of this. Likely this involved additional staff costs as well as wear and tear on the equipment. Even hydroelectric generation does not trivally go on and off line.
So these additional costs are being passed onto the customer as per the contract. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
Please compare this to what would happen in the US should drugs be both legal and easily available. I suggest any frat party movie as a reference.
My guess is that 25% of the population of the US would behave as if it was a toga party at a frat house for a while. Then a small fraction would come to their senses and decide that this wasn't going to work as a long-term lifestyle.
I believe the only dissent is on the number that would continue the frat party after the first year or two.
We have all seen the first month of freshman class at any large state university. Somewhere around 10% of the freshman class is kicked out within 30 days, another 15% or more doesn't come back after the first semester. This is what happens when people discover a new freedom (to get drunk every day) and can't get it under control. Sure, there are a lot of people that could handle it, but so far we have chosen not to burden ourselves with the large percentage that can't handle it and would need to be taken care of. We have nearly 5% of the population as heroin addicts already that are going to be taken care of for life as it is. Do we really need to increase that number?
Am I saying that 25% of the US population are children that cannot control themselves and left to their own devices would screw up in ways that would require them to be cared for for the rest of their lives? Yes, indeed. Look at who gets elected and tell me I am wrong.
Understand that there are two types of "Music CDs":
- There are application code 01 discs that are the only discs that will work in stand-alone stereo component CD recorders. These discs are manufactured differently and there is a tariff charged to the manufacturer.
- There are application code FF discs that are just like any other disc except Memorex brands them as "Music CDs". The only difference is the branding and they cost more because, well, they cost more.
The second type are also the same as the "Photo CDs" that Memorex sells. Nothing different, just the branding.
I have not seen any "Movie DVD", ever. It might exist but again it would be only as a branding effort probably from Memorex.
The problem with replacing the bulb part of a CFL is that the flourscent tube almost never fails. These tubes do not have filiments in them that wear out, it is just a container of mercury vapor that is ionized by a high voltage. What fails is the electronics and that is where most of the cost is.
The other issue is these things are made in China for maybe $1 and all of the chemicals and nasty stuff used to make them stays over there - we just get the mercury.
Recycle CFLs? You must be kidding, right? I have not seen any recycling program that accepts them, even as electronic waste. You can package them up and send them to a company that specializes in handling mercury vapor lamps and they will recycle them, often for less than $5 a lamp.
How many homeowners in the US will ship their non-working CFL lamps to someone and enclose the required payment? That answer is zero. We are signing up for a lot more mercury in the environment with CFLs.
The problem is the energy difference is almost insignificant when the bulb cost is factored in. If the bulbs were the same price there might be a point to it all, but that is far from the case.
Even the cheap Chinese-made CFL bulbs are 10x what an incandescent bulb costs and the promised lifespan hasn't materialized for most people. So you get a bulb that lasts 2x but costs 10x. Yes, there is lower energy use and lower energy costs, but the difference is pennies.
Maybe the solution is to make electricity too expensive to use - you know, something like $1.50/Kwh. That would make CFL and LED bulbs far more cost effective - except that I think most people would simply be forced to do without.
So, how about some real energy savings? Everyone can go outside and bottle up some fireflies. We could have a new company that sells bottled-up fireflies for home use. Anyone know what the lifespan of a bottle of fireflies is?
Sure, a government monopoly can be OK sometimes. Nobody really wants seven different water companies constantly digging up the streets and competing for market share.
However, so far we have seen only the beginnings of the government using their ability to control delivery of services for political purposes. The last time there was a "budget crisis" with a threatened "shut down" some bright folks decided that without any real reason behind it to simply stop delivering government checks to people. They stated plainly that if things were not resolved by the next check run that there would simply be no checks coming forth. This immediately brought all government aid and pension recipients on the side of the Democrats without any thoughts as to what else was involved.
This was about the first example of the government using government services for political purposes.
Think about the results of the federal government deciding to shut down the interstate highways if the party in power didn't get their way. Why could they not do that, if they can withhold payment from people?
OK, now think about what happens with a highly political government willing to do anything to stay in power having control over health care in the US.
Unfortunately for the folks in the US, single-payer is what we are going to get, eventually. You see the whole proposal is predicated on the idea that businesses will continue to shoulder the burden of healthcare in the face of offering people subsidies if they aren't covered by their employer. And, if you don't like your employer's plan you can choose a different one - and the employer gets fined something like 10x what they get fined for not offering health insurance at all. Since the fine for not offering it is less than 1/10th of the average plan cost, you can see pretty much all employers will stop offering health insurance in 2014. Many have said this openly already.
So instead of being able to pretend this is revenue neutral, the fed will be looking at a 2-3 trillion dollar bill in 2015 or so. The simplest way of reducing the cost is to have all the management under one roof, which will mean single payer. Then the government can easily decide that all health care reimbursment is at 30% immediately cutting costs instead of how it is today with Medicare and Medicaid at around 30% and the rest of us picking up the slack.
This also means that if the government is having a tough year a bunch of stuff will suddenly not be available. Election year? Then everything is available right away so you are impressed with the efficiency of the goverment and the people in power.
When the government is able to control access to health care and is willing to use it for political purposes, literally nothing will be off the table.
1. Most cars aren't in their garage when the sun is shining.
2. Enough power to charge a car, ignoring energy storage issues, would require a lot of panels. Enough so that the cost of the panels would exceed the cost of most low-end and hybrid cars. $16,000 for the car and $25,000 for the panels that go with isn't going to be something car dealers are interested in. We aren't going to be getting that price down for that magnitude of panels for a long, long time, if ever.
Maybe when there is a rapid-change battery system so you can charge one battery at home during the day and have the other in the car... except the batteries are like $8K so a second battery is a huge expense. Maybe when solar panels finally reach the point where it is $10 per panel.
Since carbon sequestering is a theory and one that is going to encounter a huge amount of resistance, I suspect it will never happen. Let's say someone figures out a way to just pump CO2 into some kind of a big storage tank... what happens when the tank leaks? You know that question is coming from people that assume anything man-made will fail. So no carbon sequestering, ever.
Let's assume that the amount of carbon spewed into the atmosphere by driving a truck from LA to Chicago costs $5000. OK, assume there are 1000 tomatos on the truck - you can assume the price of tomatoes in Chicago goes up by $6 each. How about if there are 10 big-screen TVs - they would go up by at least $500 each, probably a bit more. After all, this will be a new tax and someone is going to have to file it and process it. They are going to get paid for doing this work, right?
You can say, well, new rail lines will be built which are electric and have less CO2 than the trucks. Except that will take a decade or more to do and this is something that is going to happen the week this goes into effect. So instead of $0.50 for a tomato it is $6.50. Instead of $500 for a TV it is $1050. Sure, things will eventually sort themselves out, but most people that understand what this means is that nobody will be buying tomatoes in Chicago anymore so there is no point in thinking up new inventive ways to ship them from California. Five years after this goes into effect people would look at a tomato and say "What's that?"
So what happens to the tomato growers, truck drivers and freight terminal guys that move the tomatoes around? Well, they are with the rest of the people still looking for a job after 2007. No, 2020 will not be the year of the electric truck, it will much more likely be the end of interstate transportation of goods. Yes, this would be better for the environment but we need to have a very large war to use up all the unneeded laborers before this is a really good idea. Otherwise they will be sitting around and wondering what to do... at least until someone comes along and suggest tearing down the government that put them in that situation. Sort of like Russia in 1918. Oh wait, almost exactly like Russia in 1918.
The result from cap-and-trade in the US would be 25-50% increase in just about every price that exists. If the object itself didn't cost more, transportation of it would drive the cost up. For example, there are only a few factories in the US that make glass bottles. Every glass bottle is trucked across the country from where it is made to where it is used.
Would changing away from the way things are done now be better? Sure, but it would take a long while to achieve that goal and the only driving force would be cap-and-trade. A shorter term result would be stores and factories would simply close and go out of business. If nobody is buying today it doesn't matter that there could be a better alternative in a year or two. This would mean a drastic change in lifestyle for most people.
Nobody in any sort of political office is going to want to be behind that so you can assume the government simply isn't going to do it.
The US will never build another nuclear plant, at least not until the government changes quite a bit and stifles the public outcry that would come. People are still saying "Three Mile Island" as a warning against nuclear energy. Ask one of these people how many died because of Three Mile Island and the answer will be thousands. In fact, nobody died.
The fact that people are allowed to bring incorrect statements like this to public comment sessions about building new nuclear plants insures that none will be built in the US ever again.
Getting the government to agree that shutting down all the coal burning power plants is impossible, but that doesn't mean that cannot be shut down by force.
Similarly, getting the government to decide "no more cars" would be impossible, but destruction of some bridges would make car commuting next to impossible and therefore decrease the use of cars overnight.
As far as the government is concerned, the most environmentally friendly thing that could be done would be a war with China. Stop all shipments of stuff from China immediately. The end result would be a lot less CO2 emissions. I do not think this is likely.
None of this is going to happen. Nobody is committed enough to blow up a coal power plant or a bridge. What we are going to see is an endless bleating about how we all need to get together and lower our energy use. Return to a lifestyle more compatible with the land. Eat only food that we or our neighbors grow. Reduce, reduce, reduce. None of this is likely to have any effect, but it will achieve certain political goals for a few people.
The problem is that it is possible to demonstrate that there is a signal that is being absorbed by the antenna and will move a meter connected to the antenna feed.
That then gives them a lot more credibility - they can show that even without something connected the antenna is producing electric power which people claim affects them.
I assure you, you do not want to go down that road without a firm grasp of all of the possible ramifications. Being surprised is one of the worst things that can happen in court or with a bunch of people claiming to be "the authorities" on site. All it takes is for one of the group (sometimes this starts with a group) having a little bit of knowledge about RF and HAM gear, like a FSM.
The caution here is that once a belief gets to be sufficiently mainstream it is going to be impossible to defeat in court.
Today, people with EMF concerns are indeed able to block electric transmission lines - building a new transmission line is almost impossible to do because of the public complaints. Physics has nothing whatsoever to do with it, belief does.
Why you should be concerned is that homeopathy is one step away from being mandated to be covered by the new federally approved insurance plans. This will mean that every insurance plan in the US must cover homoepathic treatments. This is going to be a huge boon for the believers and give them all sorts of new credibility.
We are walking - er, running - down the road to such things right now.
How about a law that says if you cannot compile and build your own phone software you have no business having a mobile phone?
How about a similar law that says if you cannot build and install Linux from source you cannot have a computer? Proof of such ability results in a federal license which is then required to buy any computer or computer parts. And the penalty for selling such devices to anyone without a license is banishment to some tiny island without Internet access.
The only problem with that is we would run out of islands long before the problem was solved. But it would solve the malware and spam problems as well as eliminate the rare earth metals monopoly held by China. It would also solve most environmental problems.
What about the rest of the Islamic world? Do they really think this will be enjoyed and improve the Google brand in places like Saudia Arabia? How about Palestine, Indonesia, Pakistan and a host of other Islamic countries?
Or are they going to wait for riots and then pull the video in those locations?
I don't think there is anything "sudden" about this at all. If you choose to go up against the legal system you better be on pretty solid ground. Protecting or even seeming to protect a defendant against prosecution is almost always going to get you nowhere, quickly.
Further, anything that can be considered to be withholding evidence is just going to get you slapped by the judge. The US legal system is pretty much dependent on a free exchange of information and anyone that has information is assumed to have an obligation to turn it over to the court in one way or another. That means if the prosecution or defense subpoena's something they are going to get it - eventually. Standing in the way of that, or even appearing to, isn't going to win you points.
About the only real defense is to try to claim that the material is not only bad to give out (they tried that) but also irrelevant (which they didn't try). If you can succeed in convincing the judge the material is irrelevant you win, but that can be very hard - and you may have to turn it over anyway just to prove how irrelevant the material is.
In this case, I don't think they have a ghost of a chance of proving it is irrelevant.
Slashdot Mirror
Map data is licensed by what the user is allowed to do with it. Microsoft Streets and Trips used Navteq data and was specifically prohibited from doing turn-by-turn realtime guidance. I think if you read the box it even said that you couldn't get get position updates more than every 30 seconds.
It is likely that the license Apple had to use Google map data specifically disallowed turn-by-turn navigation. It is possible that Navteq would not license their data to Apple for navigation either leaving Apple no choice but to roll their own. So the choice may have been to give up control to Google or do it themselves.
Nobody has map data that isn't vector based. Now, how they choose to render that is a different issue, but the raw data is not a bunch of bitmaps.
How do I know? Used to work at Navteq and I wasn't collecting map data.
MapQuest is in fact Navteq data. They might be integrating something else into it, but I don't think so.
Google started out with Navteq + GDT data and then decided to do their own collection and drive lots of vans on every street in the world. Somewhere along the line they decided to tap into WiFi signals and see what they could snarf up as well as taking pictures showing folks in their pools thru the fence.
If Apple really wants to redo this, hopefully they will be a little less revealing.
Building a competing map database is probably a huge mistake. Google could throw money at it and they were forced to drive vans around pretty much worldwide. Navteq/Nokia is doing that already and really isn't in getting into the iOS/Android fight, at least I would think not. And they have been doing the data collection longer than just about anyone else.
Sure, you can throw money at it, but you are also going to be committed to driving every road on the planet at some point pretty soon. And picking up every available source and integrating it, such as Tiger. This has already been done and the data is available for licensing. Getting pretty 3D building pictures in cities is a much smaller task and is something that might make sense to do.
They might as well face the fact they need to make a deal to get data from Navteq/Nokia. Building your own map database is not a small undertaking and not something that Apple should build a new division to do. The can do a great job post-processing the Navteq data to refine it like Garmin does. Delivering it up raw is a huge mistake.
Yup, I used to work for Navteq.
Right. Asking or demanding this from the prospective employee is just wrong. It is like insisting on a urine test - but saying "right here, right now". I'm not surprised there is a backlash against that sort of thing.
On the other hand, there is information there and it may be relevant to a hiring decision. Employers want as much information as they can get because choosing wrong is expensive and sometimes even dangerous. So there will be services that deliver this sort of stuff. Where are they going to get it? Well, I bet FaceBook would turn over access for a fee.
Or at least until you "friend" someone at the office.
The problem is, today employment is a high-risk business. You employ the wrong person, fire them and they come back and shoot up the office. Or they may sue for some misunderstanding. Remember, the US is a society where people get ahead by suing and getting a big settlement.
There is also the simple fact that choosing the wrong person to hire results in a lot of costs with just job related things. It costs time and money to train someone and if they do not work out and leave after six months that time and money were wasted, possibly affecting scheduled and having a real impact on revenue.
All this makes employers want as much information as they possibly can gather about prospective employees and make no mistake about it, you aren't going to change that desire with some laws about social media. If employer's can't get this directly there will soon be services to deliver the information indirectly just as now you can get a complete background check of someone from the Internet. When there is a need that people are willing to pay for, someone is going to fill that need.
Why is social media relevent? Because the expectation is that you may post things in an unguarded manner that reflect more of your true personality than at a job interview. If the employer can avoid hiring someone that is going to be a problem, they just saved a bunch of money and possibly saved a project from being delayed. You can consider this to be the new sort of "personality test" that was all the rage back in the 1970s.
Oh, and face reality. The prospective employer probably doesn't care that you got drunk once and someone took some stupid pictures. Now, if you have people publicly commenting about what a drunk you are and how you can barely drag yourself into the office that becomes relevant. Having a comment about how much of a jerk you were to someone isn't all that interesting, but again if you have a bunch of stuff that indicates you're an intolerant child that has to have everything your way... well, you get the picture. It is the same thing as a background check that shows a speeding ticket - not all that relevant. But if you are driving on a restricted license because of a license suspension that might be interesting. Having recently been released from shooting up your former employer's business might just be relevant as well.
Is all this relevant to being able to do the job? Probably. If you come across as a nice, easy going person in an interview but are in fact quite different on the job it could be a big problem and how is an employer supposed to know? And because of all the problems the employer really wants to know as much as they can. And the information is out there for someone to gather for them.
Privacy? Once you start exposing yourself online, you have none so you may as well just get over it.
What you are missing is that you cannot generate electricity and not have it used. It doesn't bleed off into space. You have to shut generating plants down if the electricity being generated is not being used. Today it is quite well known when electricity is needed and when it is not - except for commercial customers.
What Microsoft did was contract for X amount of electricity and then didn't use it. The generating company had to rearrange a lot of stuff and shut down generators and start them back up again because of this. Likely this involved additional staff costs as well as wear and tear on the equipment. Even hydroelectric generation does not trivally go on and off line.
So these additional costs are being passed onto the customer as per the contract. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me.
Please compare this to what would happen in the US should drugs be both legal and easily available. I suggest any frat party movie as a reference.
My guess is that 25% of the population of the US would behave as if it was a toga party at a frat house for a while. Then a small fraction would come to their senses and decide that this wasn't going to work as a long-term lifestyle.
I believe the only dissent is on the number that would continue the frat party after the first year or two.
We have all seen the first month of freshman class at any large state university. Somewhere around 10% of the freshman class is kicked out within 30 days, another 15% or more doesn't come back after the first semester. This is what happens when people discover a new freedom (to get drunk every day) and can't get it under control. Sure, there are a lot of people that could handle it, but so far we have chosen not to burden ourselves with the large percentage that can't handle it and would need to be taken care of. We have nearly 5% of the population as heroin addicts already that are going to be taken care of for life as it is. Do we really need to increase that number?
Am I saying that 25% of the US population are children that cannot control themselves and left to their own devices would screw up in ways that would require them to be cared for for the rest of their lives? Yes, indeed. Look at who gets elected and tell me I am wrong.
Understand that there are two types of "Music CDs":
- There are application code 01 discs that are the only discs that will work in stand-alone stereo component CD recorders. These discs are manufactured differently and there is a tariff charged to the manufacturer.
- There are application code FF discs that are just like any other disc except Memorex brands them as "Music CDs". The only difference is the branding and they cost more because, well, they cost more.
The second type are also the same as the "Photo CDs" that Memorex sells. Nothing different, just the branding.
I have not seen any "Movie DVD", ever. It might exist but again it would be only as a branding effort probably from Memorex.
The problem with replacing the bulb part of a CFL is that the flourscent tube almost never fails. These tubes do not have filiments in them that wear out, it is just a container of mercury vapor that is ionized by a high voltage. What fails is the electronics and that is where most of the cost is.
The other issue is these things are made in China for maybe $1 and all of the chemicals and nasty stuff used to make them stays over there - we just get the mercury.
Recycle CFLs? You must be kidding, right? I have not seen any recycling program that accepts them, even as electronic waste. You can package them up and send them to a company that specializes in handling mercury vapor lamps and they will recycle them, often for less than $5 a lamp.
How many homeowners in the US will ship their non-working CFL lamps to someone and enclose the required payment? That answer is zero. We are signing up for a lot more mercury in the environment with CFLs.
The problem is the energy difference is almost insignificant when the bulb cost is factored in. If the bulbs were the same price there might be a point to it all, but that is far from the case.
Even the cheap Chinese-made CFL bulbs are 10x what an incandescent bulb costs and the promised lifespan hasn't materialized for most people. So you get a bulb that lasts 2x but costs 10x. Yes, there is lower energy use and lower energy costs, but the difference is pennies.
Maybe the solution is to make electricity too expensive to use - you know, something like $1.50/Kwh. That would make CFL and LED bulbs far more cost effective - except that I think most people would simply be forced to do without.
So, how about some real energy savings? Everyone can go outside and bottle up some fireflies. We could have a new company that sells bottled-up fireflies for home use. Anyone know what the lifespan of a bottle of fireflies is?
Sure, a government monopoly can be OK sometimes. Nobody really wants seven different water companies constantly digging up the streets and competing for market share.
However, so far we have seen only the beginnings of the government using their ability to control delivery of services for political purposes. The last time there was a "budget crisis" with a threatened "shut down" some bright folks decided that without any real reason behind it to simply stop delivering government checks to people. They stated plainly that if things were not resolved by the next check run that there would simply be no checks coming forth. This immediately brought all government aid and pension recipients on the side of the Democrats without any thoughts as to what else was involved.
This was about the first example of the government using government services for political purposes.
Think about the results of the federal government deciding to shut down the interstate highways if the party in power didn't get their way. Why could they not do that, if they can withhold payment from people?
OK, now think about what happens with a highly political government willing to do anything to stay in power having control over health care in the US.
Unfortunately for the folks in the US, single-payer is what we are going to get, eventually. You see the whole proposal is predicated on the idea that businesses will continue to shoulder the burden of healthcare in the face of offering people subsidies if they aren't covered by their employer. And, if you don't like your employer's plan you can choose a different one - and the employer gets fined something like 10x what they get fined for not offering health insurance at all. Since the fine for not offering it is less than 1/10th of the average plan cost, you can see pretty much all employers will stop offering health insurance in 2014. Many have said this openly already.
So instead of being able to pretend this is revenue neutral, the fed will be looking at a 2-3 trillion dollar bill in 2015 or so. The simplest way of reducing the cost is to have all the management under one roof, which will mean single payer. Then the government can easily decide that all health care reimbursment is at 30% immediately cutting costs instead of how it is today with Medicare and Medicaid at around 30% and the rest of us picking up the slack.
This also means that if the government is having a tough year a bunch of stuff will suddenly not be available. Election year? Then everything is available right away so you are impressed with the efficiency of the goverment and the people in power.
When the government is able to control access to health care and is willing to use it for political purposes, literally nothing will be off the table.
It might have something to do with some facts.
1. Most cars aren't in their garage when the sun is shining.
2. Enough power to charge a car, ignoring energy storage issues, would require a lot of panels. Enough so that the cost of the panels would exceed the cost of most low-end and hybrid cars. $16,000 for the car and $25,000 for the panels that go with isn't going to be something car dealers are interested in. We aren't going to be getting that price down for that magnitude of panels for a long, long time, if ever.
Maybe when there is a rapid-change battery system so you can charge one battery at home during the day and have the other in the car... except the batteries are like $8K so a second battery is a huge expense. Maybe when solar panels finally reach the point where it is $10 per panel.
Since carbon sequestering is a theory and one that is going to encounter a huge amount of resistance, I suspect it will never happen. Let's say someone figures out a way to just pump CO2 into some kind of a big storage tank... what happens when the tank leaks? You know that question is coming from people that assume anything man-made will fail. So no carbon sequestering, ever.
Let's assume that the amount of carbon spewed into the atmosphere by driving a truck from LA to Chicago costs $5000. OK, assume there are 1000 tomatos on the truck - you can assume the price of tomatoes in Chicago goes up by $6 each. How about if there are 10 big-screen TVs - they would go up by at least $500 each, probably a bit more. After all, this will be a new tax and someone is going to have to file it and process it. They are going to get paid for doing this work, right?
You can say, well, new rail lines will be built which are electric and have less CO2 than the trucks. Except that will take a decade or more to do and this is something that is going to happen the week this goes into effect. So instead of $0.50 for a tomato it is $6.50. Instead of $500 for a TV it is $1050. Sure, things will eventually sort themselves out, but most people that understand what this means is that nobody will be buying tomatoes in Chicago anymore so there is no point in thinking up new inventive ways to ship them from California. Five years after this goes into effect people would look at a tomato and say "What's that?"
So what happens to the tomato growers, truck drivers and freight terminal guys that move the tomatoes around? Well, they are with the rest of the people still looking for a job after 2007. No, 2020 will not be the year of the electric truck, it will much more likely be the end of interstate transportation of goods. Yes, this would be better for the environment but we need to have a very large war to use up all the unneeded laborers before this is a really good idea. Otherwise they will be sitting around and wondering what to do ... at least until someone comes along and suggest tearing down the government that put them in that situation. Sort of like Russia in 1918. Oh wait, almost exactly like Russia in 1918.
The result from cap-and-trade in the US would be 25-50% increase in just about every price that exists. If the object itself didn't cost more, transportation of it would drive the cost up. For example, there are only a few factories in the US that make glass bottles. Every glass bottle is trucked across the country from where it is made to where it is used.
Would changing away from the way things are done now be better? Sure, but it would take a long while to achieve that goal and the only driving force would be cap-and-trade. A shorter term result would be stores and factories would simply close and go out of business. If nobody is buying today it doesn't matter that there could be a better alternative in a year or two. This would mean a drastic change in lifestyle for most people.
Nobody in any sort of political office is going to want to be behind that so you can assume the government simply isn't going to do it.
The US will never build another nuclear plant, at least not until the government changes quite a bit and stifles the public outcry that would come. People are still saying "Three Mile Island" as a warning against nuclear energy. Ask one of these people how many died because of Three Mile Island and the answer will be thousands. In fact, nobody died.
The fact that people are allowed to bring incorrect statements like this to public comment sessions about building new nuclear plants insures that none will be built in the US ever again.
Getting the government to agree that shutting down all the coal burning power plants is impossible, but that doesn't mean that cannot be shut down by force.
Similarly, getting the government to decide "no more cars" would be impossible, but destruction of some bridges would make car commuting next to impossible and therefore decrease the use of cars overnight.
As far as the government is concerned, the most environmentally friendly thing that could be done would be a war with China. Stop all shipments of stuff from China immediately. The end result would be a lot less CO2 emissions. I do not think this is likely.
None of this is going to happen. Nobody is committed enough to blow up a coal power plant or a bridge. What we are going to see is an endless bleating about how we all need to get together and lower our energy use. Return to a lifestyle more compatible with the land. Eat only food that we or our neighbors grow. Reduce, reduce, reduce. None of this is likely to have any effect, but it will achieve certain political goals for a few people.
The problem is that it is possible to demonstrate that there is a signal that is being absorbed by the antenna and will move a meter connected to the antenna feed.
That then gives them a lot more credibility - they can show that even without something connected the antenna is producing electric power which people claim affects them.
I assure you, you do not want to go down that road without a firm grasp of all of the possible ramifications. Being surprised is one of the worst things that can happen in court or with a bunch of people claiming to be "the authorities" on site. All it takes is for one of the group (sometimes this starts with a group) having a little bit of knowledge about RF and HAM gear, like a FSM.
Dimmer switches dim by chopping the AC line current at a high frequency, thereby inducing a high frequency component into the line current.
With the right tools, like a trace set, it is quite detectable at close range to the dimmer and along the wire feeding whatever it is controlling.
Florescent fixture dimmers and those compatible with CFL bulbs work differently and there isn't really a high frequency component there.
The caution here is that once a belief gets to be sufficiently mainstream it is going to be impossible to defeat in court.
Today, people with EMF concerns are indeed able to block electric transmission lines - building a new transmission line is almost impossible to do because of the public complaints. Physics has nothing whatsoever to do with it, belief does.
Why you should be concerned is that homeopathy is one step away from being mandated to be covered by the new federally approved insurance plans. This will mean that every insurance plan in the US must cover homoepathic treatments. This is going to be a huge boon for the believers and give them all sorts of new credibility.
We are walking - er, running - down the road to such things right now.
How about a law that says if you cannot compile and build your own phone software you have no business having a mobile phone?
How about a similar law that says if you cannot build and install Linux from source you cannot have a computer? Proof of such ability results in a federal license which is then required to buy any computer or computer parts. And the penalty for selling such devices to anyone without a license is banishment to some tiny island without Internet access.
The only problem with that is we would run out of islands long before the problem was solved. But it would solve the malware and spam problems as well as eliminate the rare earth metals monopoly held by China. It would also solve most environmental problems.
What about the rest of the Islamic world? Do they really think this will be enjoyed and improve the Google brand in places like Saudia Arabia? How about Palestine, Indonesia, Pakistan and a host of other Islamic countries?
Or are they going to wait for riots and then pull the video in those locations?
I don't think there is anything "sudden" about this at all. If you choose to go up against the legal system you better be on pretty solid ground. Protecting or even seeming to protect a defendant against prosecution is almost always going to get you nowhere, quickly.
Further, anything that can be considered to be withholding evidence is just going to get you slapped by the judge. The US legal system is pretty much dependent on a free exchange of information and anyone that has information is assumed to have an obligation to turn it over to the court in one way or another. That means if the prosecution or defense subpoena's something they are going to get it - eventually. Standing in the way of that, or even appearing to, isn't going to win you points.
About the only real defense is to try to claim that the material is not only bad to give out (they tried that) but also irrelevant (which they didn't try). If you can succeed in convincing the judge the material is irrelevant you win, but that can be very hard - and you may have to turn it over anyway just to prove how irrelevant the material is.
In this case, I don't think they have a ghost of a chance of proving it is irrelevant.