Or, most people don't actually CHOOSE what gets used to produce power - governments and corporations decide for millions. ?And they don't have to do it to be dicks - they do it to make money. Those who already spent a lot of money building infrastructure aren't keen on seeing their revenues goes to another product (even though it's cheaper for consumers), so they lobby like hell to keep governments from investing in those newer, better, technologies.
So, the people that are in energy to make money would rather lobby Congress to keep out competing energy sources than just invest in them? Perhaps you think that the people with the "newer better" energy sources are not in it for the money? As if they are developing these energy sources only out of the goodness of their hearts.
The only thing I can think of that can keep the profiteers from investing in a new energy source that would be cheaper and greener is that the "greenies" have some sort of monopoly on this technology but they would rather do without the investment of the profit seekers because there is some sort of ideological disparity keeping the "greenies" from taking their money. In that case it's not the profiteers keeping this technology from us but the "greenies" that would rather see the world burn than take their "dirty" money.
Why would the government play along with this? Aren't they humans too? Don't they have an inherent interest in clean air and water? I mean the profiteers can buy off a few politicians but they don't own the government. They don't own the means by which we communicate, as evidenced by your ability to post your comment. If this cheap and green technology exists then I expect that there would be a lot of very motivated people looking to get it. Motivated by profit, motivated to have clean air and water, motivated to just look good for saving the world.
This sounds like the conspiracy theory that the big auto makers are sitting on technology for fuel efficient vehicles but keep it to themselves out of some profit motive. That just does not add up since that profit only lasts so long as no one else figures it out, after which they will be left with nothing as everyone switches once the technology is revealed. The greater profit is to bring this technology to market as quickly as possible because of the billions of people on this planet every single one would choose the cheaper product if all else is equal.
These profiteers are spending money on lobbying the government to keep cheap energy from the government? And the government is playing along? When both could just as easily profit more by bringing this technology to market? If you honestly believe this then I think you've been off your meds. You need your head checked and your dosage adjusted.
5) Grudgingly accept that we should replace expensive fossil fuels with cheaper renewable energy.
If renewable energy is cheaper then why would anyone continue to use fossil fuels? Either renewable energy is more expensive or there is some aspect of renewable energy that makes it undesirable. But then whatever undesirable aspect of renewable energy that makes it nonviable is really just a restatement of saying it is too expensive.
You claiming that people burn coal, even though it costs more than renewable energy, implies that people burn coal just to be dicks about the environment and the quality of the air. Is that what you think? That people burn coal just to be dicks to everyone else? What is there to gain by burning coal for the coal burners if it costs them more money and they have to breathe the same dirty air as everyone else?
We don't burn coal because we are dicks. We burn coal because the benefits outweigh the costs. You can talk about "externalities" all you like but once people know about an "externality" it gets internalized. A true external cost is something we don't know about, and we know about global warming. A better example of an external cost is the "cost" of having electricity so cheap and abundant, which brings us affordable food, clothing, shelter, and medicine. This "cost" is of course negative, therefore it is a benefit.
Have you considered the "externalities" of wind or solar? People complain about how much mining is done for coal but rarely do I see how much mining must be done for collecting the wind and sun. To replace coal with wind worldwide would require 10 billion tons of steel and concrete annually. Current world production of steel and concrete is 1.5 billion tons. Wind requires over 500 tons of steel and 1000 tons of concrete per installed MW, about ten times that of nuclear, coal, or natural gas.
I can keep going with the numbers if you like, such as how much land must be cleared for wind and solar power. There is a cost to that, even if we somehow figure out how to dual use this land like using rooftops, roadways, and croplands. Windmills and solar panels are inherently incompatible with trees, as are the power lines run to carry the electricity from them.
Wind and solar power advocates aren't "tree huggers" like most people would claim, they are "tree haters". Either these people would rather we cut down trees for windmills and solar panels or they have not considered the "external" costs of collecting wind and sun.
If you really cared about the trees, and you want cheap electricity, then you'd be advocating for nuclear power. Nuclear power is as cheap as coal, lower carbon footprint than either wind or sun power, safer than any energy source we know about, and so abundant that the byproducts from the rare earth metal mining we do now for making windmills and batteries would be more than enough to meet current energy needs.
You want renewable energy? Why do you hate trees so much?
You mentioned LFTR which tells me you've seen something about them before. You should know that one big benefit of LFTR is that it can reach temperatures that are much higher than that of typical nuclear reactors, temperatures that make desalination much easier (and therefore cheaper) to do. Putting the LFTRs in the Midwest means that there is considerable distance between the reactors and the sea where we'd like to source the water, likely destroying the benefits of using LFTRs.
You should also know that LFTRs cannot melt down, at least not like solid fuel reactors. Putting them in an earthquake prone place like California should not be near the problem that it would be for solid fuel reactors. It should be considered in the design, for sure, but excluding nuclear reactors from California sounds to me to be beyond paranoia. I think we can figure out how to build LFTRs in California and gain the benefits that LFTRs can provide.
Also, I believe the security risks associated with nuclear power plants is overblown. Added to that LFTRs are useless for weapons even though it is a "breeder" style reactor. There are two kinds of breeders, fast spectrum uranium-plutonium cycle and thermal spectrum thorium-uranium cycle. The uranium used in the fast spectrum is U-235 and U-238, and the plutonium bred from it is Pu-239. U-235 and Pu-239 are potential fuels for weapons. LFTRs breed thorium into U-233. Thorium is useless for weapons, and a weapon from U-233 is only theoretical, people tried and failed to use U-233 in a weapon core. LFTRs are also problematic for weapon production because any uranium taken from it will be contaminated with U-232, U-234, and U-236, all of which are difficult to separate from U-235, are highly radioactive, and generally make the uranium undesirable for weapon use. LFTRs might contain some Pu-239 in the fuel but it will likewise be tainted with other Pu isotopes making it useless for weapons.
No doubt a LFTR power plant would be a target for sabotage or terrorism but no more than any other power plant. No need to require them to be placed only on military installations. They'd need security, that's for certain, just no more than a typical coal fired plant.
From what I've seen the biggest threat to nuclear power plants are the domestic eco-terrorist types. These people don't want to steal any nuclear weapon material, they just want to make a lot of noise to send some sort of message. The only message they are sending to me is that nuclear power would be much safer if they weren't trying to send a message about how unsafe they are.
because cows are friends to me. They live beneath the ocean and that's where I will be, beneath the waves, the waves. That's where I'll be. I'm goin' to see the cows beneath the sea.
Of course not. What they should do is build some nuclear power plants and desalinate the water. There is no shortage of water but it does take energy to make it suitable to drink or water crops. Any shortage of energy they have in California is self imposed. Their policies against nuclear power because of a mistaken association with nuclear weapons does fit my definition of being brain dead.
Can I play Battlefield on it? Can I play Civ 6? I guess not.
I was thinking more of if the OS can run call center software, supports the time clock system we use, has drivers for our 2D barcode scanner, things like that. You can play games, I got work to do.
Actually, I don't have work to do. I just finished playing a game on a Windows XP computer I keep around to run some old games I like. It also runs PuTTY and has a serial port, which is nice for talking to Cisco gear.
I happen to run games on Windows because I happened to need Windows at one time and I picked up some games for it. I don't consider myself a "gamer" and so I don't spend money on games any more. I just play the old ones I already own when I'm bored. When I do need a computer I consider what work I need to do and how a certain computer will help me do it. I do run Windows on a couple computers but not because of the games I can get.
If you choose your OS based on the games then that's fine by me. I'm just thinking that if someone wants me to use a different OS then they need to show me how it helps get work done.
I'm sure that getting popular games to run on an OS will get some people to switch but I don't know anyone that does not also use their "gaming" computer to also do work. One thing about gaming is that people will buy a game console for games if their work computer isn't suited for gaming. What people don't do is complain that their Nintendo doesn't let them do their taxes.
Will everyone still have USBA devices in 6 months or even 18 months? Yes. Next question.
You are correct. What you seem to miss is that this is a one time cost, just buy the cables and adapters needed to connect the existing devices and be done with it. You even said yourself it's not about the cost, it's about convenience. This adds convenience by not having to worry about which way is up on those stupid USB-A connectors any more. All it costs is $2 per cable to fix. If you are so absent minded that you keep losing your cables then you can pick up the cables and adapters at the same store you get your furnace filters and antifreeze.
If anything, that just tells you how many people need adapters, which just tells you what a FUCK UP it was not to include them on the laptop. It's not a small niche that need adapters, it's everybody. And if everybody needs these adapters, such that even backwards hardware stores are trying to cash in it... then the product is flawed for not having the ports.
Of all the people I've talked to about this you are quite literally the only person I've seen that considers this more than a minor inconvenience. Some people are even overjoyed about this because it rids them of having to deal with those stupid USB-A connectors any more.
You are looking in the wrong place. Remember that last-place-you'd-ever-look-hardware-store that you were giggling with delight at it carrying adapters?? That's your PROOF the entire market is inconvenienced. If it was just a small niche that needed adapters then they'd be special order or only carried in specialty shops.
Nobody wants adapters. They are a necessary but inconvenient reality. Except in this case, where there is no good reason for them being necessary. The laptop should have had the port built in.
You are bitching about the loss of ports that *YOU* see as vital to have on a laptop. Apple does their research and they are not going to make a computer that people aren't going to buy. The lack of HDMI and RJ-45 ports is evidence that few people are inconvenienced by this.
You see the popularity of these adapters as "proof" that Apple fucked up. I see it as proof that people are quite willing to do away with their USB-A ports. These people weren't forced to buy these computers with USB-C ports since there are plenty of computers with USB-A on the market yet. People are willing to make this shift and pay money for the convenience of not having to try plugging in their USB-A devices and find out they have to flip it over to first.
What people aren't willing to do though is toss out perfectly usable USB-A devices when an inexpensive adapter will allow them to keep it functional. Given that the local hardware store stocks their USB-C flash drives right next to the shotgun shells I'm quite confident that I'll be able to find USB-C devices, cables, and adapters when I need them.
I get the feeling that I've been trolled all this while and you've just been seeing how long you could get someone to argue with you. That and/or you had no intention to ever by an Apple product and you were just looking for a reason to justify your decision.
Actually, most of that "waste" can be reused as fuel. Modern light water nuclear plants only use about 3% of the energy in uranium. That's why the waste is "hot" for so long
That's not quite right. The uranium has a half life of billions of years, so it will be radioactive for a long time but that is not what makes spent fuel "hot". Just as a candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long a radioactive material with a long half life puts out very little radiation. Uranium has such a long half life and therefore very little radiation from it that uranium is routinely used as a shield against radiation.
Another thing about uranium is that most isotopes of the element are alpha emitters upon decay. In a solid fuel reactor the uranium is encased in a metal tube, an alpha particle would not leave the tube. Even if it did about a foot of air would stop it.
What makes spent fuel "hot" is the fission products, and to a lesser extent the transuranic elements. A fission product is from the uranium nucleus taking in a neutron and fissions into two smaller nuclei. The transuranic elements are from when the uranium takes a neutron and doesn't fission but instead decays into a heavier element, such as plutonium. These fission products and transuranic elements can be beta and gamma emitters upon decay, these require more shielding to stop, such as a few feet of water or other dense material.
In a solid fuel reactor it is very difficult to remove these elements. This is a problem because some of these elements like to soak up neutrons with a greater affinity than the uranium fuel. At some point the fission products will take up so many neutrons that a chain reaction cannot be maintained in the reactor, when this happens the fuel is "spent" even though there is still a large amount of uranium fuel in the fuel rod.
There's several ways to address this problem but one that is gaining traction is to use a liquid fuel. The uranium in a solid fuel reactor is usually a ceramic (an oxide), because in that form it can hold up to a lot of heat and radiation without turning into something else. In a liquid fuel reactor the uranium fuel is in the form of a salt, usually a fluoride (like the sodium fluoride in toothpaste). This salt can also withstand the radiation but it melts at a relatively low temperature, which make it easy to turn into a liquid. In liquid form many of the worst fission products, like xenon, will bubble out of the fuel and get collected at the top of the reactor tank. Many of the others, like noble metals, will fall to the bottom. With these fission products out of the way just about all the fuel can be burned. With the addition of a chemical processor on the liquid fuel the transuranic elements can be removed before they can become a problem of soaking up neutrons, becoming a weapon proliferation problem, or generally a nuisance. Some of these fission products and transuranic elements are quite valuable and would become a salable product for medicine and industry.
With a solid fuel the spent fuel rods are effectively worthless because the valuable elements are mixed in with the really radioactive stuff that built up over time. This is difficult to process until it has "cooled" which also means a lot of the really valuable elements have decayed away. A liquid salt reactor would save a lot of trouble by not producing this waste, and potentially save a lot of lives because many of the fission products the reactor could produce is used to treat and diagnose a lot of medical conditions. Some of them could also be used to disinfect surgical tools, find leaks in pipes, and make it easier to explore space.
A very good reactor using this liquid fuel is called the liquid fluoride thorium reactor, designed by Flibe Energy. Look it up.
Why would anyone put someone they believe to be a felon in a position as an advisor and administrator? Trump said that Clinton would be investigated and potentially put in prison for her crimes. That does not sound like an endorsement for a position in his administration.
Apple is making a device to sell for the next 18 months. Come back in 6 months and see if the same complaint holds.
I used hardware stores as an example of the last place people would go to find things like this. Even the small town hardware stores carry them, as in the same places people go to get paint and drywall screws. In a big box store like Walmart, a cell phone store, many truck stops, and so forth, there will be USB-C products on the shelves.
Also, you keep going on about RJ-45, which is odd to me. Do you know what is ubiquitous? WiFi.
HDMI is already dead or dying. I rarely see it on computers. It's limited to 1080p in many cases while DisplayPort will do at least 4K. HDMI might live on for a while as an alternate mode for DisplayPort, MHL, and USB-C but that means carrying a cable or adapter. Older computers have DVI which is compatible with HDMI with an adapter, which has been common for a long time, but it is still an adapter.
I'd like to buy a laptop with a real serial port, not these USB devices that are lacking in some active pins and often run at non-standard voltages. I also know I'm not likely to find one. You and I are a very small market and Apple simply cannot cater to us and stay in business.
This is a strawman and you know it. USBA is ubiquitous; apple is isn't dropping support for a 'very small market' apple is giving the middle finger to pretty much the ENTIRE market.
For every person like you that complains about the loss of the USB-A port there are a dozen people standing in line to buy a new MacBook Pro. Saying the "ENTIRE" market is somehow inconvenienced by this just does not show in Apple's sales results. By the time Apple is able to catch up on all the orders rolling in for their new laptops even the small town hardware store near me will have USB-C cables on the shelves.
Just for giggles I went back to a couple websites to see if the hardware stores near me has USB-C devices. I now see flash drives (with USB-C and USB-A connectors on the same device) on the shelves where they weren't last time. The USB-C to USB-A adapters are sold out in one store but they do have USB-C to 4 USB-A hubs. By next week I expect this to be rectified with the cables on the shelves.
I may have to revise my earlier comment, I don't think you'll have to wait 6 months but only 6 weeks. Given the sold out adapters as an indication of demand it may be only 6 days. These stores know what sells. If they see USB-C to USB-A adapters selling out then they'll start to stock USB-C to whatever adapters as well.
A person who has committed a felony is a felon, and upon conviction of a felony in a court of law is known as a convicted felon or a convict.
HRC has committed multiple felonies, the FBI has ample evidence of this. We have several high up people in the FBI that know HRC committed these felonies but these are complicated cases which means that they take time, politics is holding this up, and I suspect that her health and age are being factored as well. Now that she lost in the election for POTUS she has little to no cover from people in high office, but it effectively frees her to use the defense of limited mental capacity. Her ability to run for office would be gone but then she's not likely to run anyway, but it might keep her from prison.
Harris committed perjury and a judge called her on it. She might get away with it since someone would have to be properly motivated to do so. Competing with her for public office might just be the motivation one needs. Of course the opposition candidate won't charge her, that would appear unseemly. Instead it will be some one loyal to her competitor. She might also avoid prison time by doing like Bill Clinton did, give up her law license for a while, pay a heavy fine, and swear on a stack of Bibles that she did nothing wrong and she won't do it again.
Again I will say that this applies to all politicians, felons should not be running for office.
What I do see though is that Democrats have been often accused of felonies and seem to keep running for office. Perjury is a common one. Fraud of various kinds. Some rape, sexual abuse, and the like. Then there's the "technical" felonies like illegal drug possession, tax irregularities of various kinds, and maybe some form of abuse of office, all of which to many seem minor since so many other people have done it as well but didn't get caught and no one got hurt. Perjury to the point of putting innocent people in prison, fraud to the point that innocent people lose their homes, and abuse to the point that a woman goes to a hospital bruised and bleeding, is something that should keep someone from getting into office at a minimum, and at least serve some time in prison.
The Republican examples you had in that linked article are pretty weak on the Republicans. Sure they were accused of felonies for abuse of power, corruption, and campaign finance but those cases look like something that won't stick, and even if they do I have to wonder if it'd keep them from a government position. They might not be elected but they could be appointed by someone elected, because in those crimes no one got hurt. Not that I approve but if the Democrats can get perjurers in office then the Republicans can run someone that cheated on their taxes a decade ago.
The example on Gov. Perry was real weak from the start and he was cleared of all charges. From where I sit this wasn't about putting him in jail or removing him from office. This was "lawfare", the accusation of a crime to cause a person an inconvenience, create a distraction, put them in a bad light to the public, and just generally punish the person for doing something to a politically powerful person. There might be a small possibility of a plea deal to make it go away, someone finding something that they can convict on in court, and maybe cause enough lost time, funds, and sanity, through this to convince them to leave public office. It looks like Perry survived with little damage done, and no convictions.
ubiquitous |yoÍzoËbikwÉ(TM)tÉ(TM)s| adjective present, appearing, or found everywhere: his ubiquitous influence was felt by all the family | cowboy hats are ubiquitous among the male singers.
That's what I thought it meant. I did a quick internet search on some stores I know to be in small towns around here, did a search for USB-C adapters, and looked for in store pickup to see if it was actually at the store. First thing I found out is that even small town hardware stores carry these things. They might not have them in the store right now but they know how to get them in a few days or even overnight. By next Christmas they will be on the shelves next to the candy bars, cheap flashlights, and alkaline batteries.
The town I live in is not "small" but not huge either. There is a hardware store near me that I know will carry some pretty obscure stuff if even one customer asks for it. If someone asks for one of something they'll buy a dozen knowing that more people will likely be asking for it in the future. If I ask for USB-C cables they'll likely carry them by next week.
And that is why you don't get it. You've accepted that as something you should actually have to do with a $2000 pro series laptop. I want an all-in-one device. I shouldn't have to pack a bag of things to go with it.
I've accepted that at some point the old must be replaced by the new. USB 1.1 devices took a while to become ubiquitous too. This current rarity of USB-C devices will pass soon enough. I suspect in the next year or two HDMI on laptops will be as rare as VGA is now.
I've also accepted that as much as I'd like for someone to cater to my every product requirement I know it won't happen. I'd like to buy a laptop with a real serial port, not these USB devices that are lacking in some active pins and often run at non-standard voltages. I also know I'm not likely to find one. You and I are a very small market and Apple simply cannot cater to us and stay in business.
I've also accepted that when I pack my laptop I will need to carry stuff to go with it, if only to have a real mouse and the laptop charger. If I plan to do more than just surf the web at a coffee shop or my mom's house then I'll need to pack adapters. That has been the rule for a very long time. I don't know what the color of the sky is on your world but on this planet the sky is blue and Ethernet ports have been disappearing from laptops for a long time. It was only a matter of time for them to disappear from the high end laptops too.
I was actually going for a reference to the overheated batteries in Apple's laptops from way back, as well as the "merchandizing" skit from the movie Spaceballs. I then realized the waffle iron reference was probably too obscure and the Spaceballs reference just made me feel old.
And repeating yourself just because someone nodded you down is just pathetic. If what you said was actually useful to anyone then someone else will mod you back up. But if all you are doing is repeating yourself just to get a rise out of someone then you are being a troll and deserve downwards moderation.
My intent was not to "get a rise out of someone" but to encourage debate. Perhaps that is in some ways a distinction without a difference but I thought the point needed to be raised. All too often I'll see people get modded down not because they said anything provocative but because they said something unpopular. Again that might be a distinction without a difference.
Since I see that someone has responded to the anonymous post in question, and got modded up to +5, I believe I was successful in what I intended to do. This may in fact because your +2 reply to my post got it enough eyeballs for enough people to care enough to read it. If you want to call me a troll then you got trolled. If you want to say I merely made my case poorly then you have just made a valuable contribution to the debate.
As a wise man once said, "It's all in your point of view."
I would if I could. It must have been something like 2008 +/- 2 years.
Since even the coldest years this century have been half a degree C above average, I'm curious to know what exactly you mean by 'merely average'.
As in nothing noteworthy. It wasn't the hottest, coldest, windiest, calmest, most hurricanes or whatever. Just a year much like the ones before. I do recall that at about this same time (again +/- 2 years) we were discussing the "pause" in global warming that has at that point gone on for about a decade. Since this pause has continued for now nearly two decades there must come a time when we stop calling this global warming, no?
I do have to wonder about the mentality of these AGW "scientists". For people that claim to be all about science they seem very hostile to people that provide evidence that may disprove the AGW theory. I sort of understand why the news media print articles on AGW, because news of doom and gloom grabs eyeballs while stories of "everything's fine" do not. Should not something that shows that humanity is not committing societal suicide be met with relief? Or, at least cautious optimism? Instead I see anyone that sees a flaw in the "science" is met with accusations of being a "denier". Which I'm not sure why being a "denier" is supposed to be such a bad thing. I thought science was about taking in new evidence and using it to better our understanding of the universe. Instead we have "the science is settled" and then what? Are we supposed to stop looking at CO2 levels and temperatures now? If we don't look at the "science" then how are we supposed to know if what we are doing is helping or not?
I recall the warnings of the military industrial complex creating this "iron triangle" of a perpetual war time economy, a kind of feedback loop of government influence creating insane profits for defense contractors. Are we not seeing the same thing happen with the "perpetual war" against global warming? This is a feedback loop of where government influence is creating insane profits for "green" contractors, no?
Bob Inglis recently chaired a forum at the University of Chicago titled, âoeWhat Would Milton Friedman Do About Climate Change?â Two Chicago economists argued that Friedman would have applied the textbook analysis of âoenegative externalitiesâ to the issue of climate change, and therefore would have supported a carbon tax. The only problem is, they gave no actual quotes of Friedman supporting a carbon tax, even though he died in 2006. Furthermore, there is at least one quotation from Friedman in which he denounces the fear-mongering of the global warming movement. Contrary to the claims of a few academics and retired government officials, a U.S. carbon tax is not a âoeconservative free market solutionâ to the issue of climate change.
A few years ago, about this time of year, I was told by a co-worker about how that year was forecast to be exceedingly warm. I pointed out that the year wasn't over and it is quite possible to have an unusually cold November and December to average it out. When January came around I found a news article on how the last year was merely average. When I presented this to that same hysterical co-worker merely two months later and he denied he had made any hysterical comments before.
Now we see people not even waiting until the year starts to make such predictions. Those that get all worked up over it now will be exceedingly forgetful if the predictions fail and have very very good memories if it does. Here's my tiny tiny little mention of this phenomenon. It will be interesting if someone remembers this post and revisits it a year later to see how well I did in my prediction.
Simply driving those displays isn't that impressive, the question is how well can it drive them.
I can agree to that somewhat. Getting a Thunderbolt to DP/HDMI/VGA/whatever adapter isn't all that different than getting one of those USB GPUs that are relatively common now. It's not just the hardware though, it's the software. I have to deal with multiple monitor computers all the time now that dual displays is increasingly the norm for people. I'll still have to deal with Windows computers that will "lose" one of the displays for some crazy reason or another, or "forget" that a display supports more than 640x480 resolution.
What is impressive to me is how poorly Windows handles multiple displays given that I had a three display Mac back in the 1990s. I'd have my MP3 player on one screen, web browser on another, and my text editor front and center. We had to do things like that then, screens the size of 1024x768 was considered "huge" then.
For what I do, and I imagine a large portion of the population does on their laptops, I suspect that the MBP is more than sufficient. There are laptops with more powerful GPUs, of course, but as pointed out in other posts this requires a much larger laptop to handle the power consumption and dissipation. What the MBP has, but many competitors do not, is a high bandwidth connection like ThunderBolt to add a really nice GPU if one wants it. In that case bandwidth comes into play as well, the bottleneck is just in a different place.
But wake up apple, there is more than exactly one demographic, and the macbook air market is the only one you even acknowledge now.
My oh my, such a mountain out of a molehill.
You say you need USB-A ports? A pack of 3 USB 2.0 adapters cost $6. A USB 3.1 adapter costs maybe $12. Keep in mind this is for a $2000 laptop. Is an extra $20 going to break you?
When I pack my laptop I pack the cables I need, like the HDMI and Ethernet cables you mention. I have an older MacBook Pro and so when I think I need Ethernet I pack an Ethernet cable with the Thunderbolt adapter stuck on the end. That adapter costs maybe $30 and is the size of a pack of chewing gum. My MBP has an HDMI port and I never used it once. If I did need an HDMI cable I'd be tempted to get a Mini-DisplayPort to HDMI cable anyway since it'd be "future proof", cost only marginally more than a plain HDMI cable, and likely support higher resolutions than the port built-in.
I think you are just looking for something to complain about. The adapters you require are ubiquitous, inexpensive, standardized, and tiny compared to the cables they would be necessarily connected to. Your 1990s thinking would make sense if these adapters were still as large, expensive, fragile, and difficult to find as they were 20 years ago.
I was an engineering intern that wanted a $150 HTML editor for my semester project of updating a part of the company website. I spent at least a day writing a proposal to get a $150 HTML editor, getting paid for this time. So that the proposal could disappear for much of my internship, where I don't know who looked at it, and those people were getting paid to look it over. Not near the scale you speak of but I'm sure it happens all the time.
The alternative is to have "petty" expenses get fast tracked and therefore likely abused. I didn't think much of it at the time but after my discharge from the Army I went into a VA vocational training program to take some network certification classes. I asked for a computer, a nice computer, to run some network simulation software. I was told that if it was under $3000 it would get approved quickly, so I was told to put part of my order (the laptop itself) on one proposal and the rest (software, cables, and such) on another proposal. Years later I hear on the radio on how people in the VA are submitting sub-$3000 orders for all kinds of crazy stuff because they rarely get questioned.
People are people so we need watchmen. Who watches the watchmen then?
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I think you made some false assumptions in your numbers there. I don't know what you calculated but I'm quite certain it's not what you think it is.
Or, most people don't actually CHOOSE what gets used to produce power - governments and corporations decide for millions. ?And they don't have to do it to be dicks - they do it to make money. Those who already spent a lot of money building infrastructure aren't keen on seeing their revenues goes to another product (even though it's cheaper for consumers), so they lobby like hell to keep governments from investing in those newer, better, technologies.
So, the people that are in energy to make money would rather lobby Congress to keep out competing energy sources than just invest in them? Perhaps you think that the people with the "newer better" energy sources are not in it for the money? As if they are developing these energy sources only out of the goodness of their hearts.
The only thing I can think of that can keep the profiteers from investing in a new energy source that would be cheaper and greener is that the "greenies" have some sort of monopoly on this technology but they would rather do without the investment of the profit seekers because there is some sort of ideological disparity keeping the "greenies" from taking their money. In that case it's not the profiteers keeping this technology from us but the "greenies" that would rather see the world burn than take their "dirty" money.
Why would the government play along with this? Aren't they humans too? Don't they have an inherent interest in clean air and water? I mean the profiteers can buy off a few politicians but they don't own the government. They don't own the means by which we communicate, as evidenced by your ability to post your comment. If this cheap and green technology exists then I expect that there would be a lot of very motivated people looking to get it. Motivated by profit, motivated to have clean air and water, motivated to just look good for saving the world.
This sounds like the conspiracy theory that the big auto makers are sitting on technology for fuel efficient vehicles but keep it to themselves out of some profit motive. That just does not add up since that profit only lasts so long as no one else figures it out, after which they will be left with nothing as everyone switches once the technology is revealed. The greater profit is to bring this technology to market as quickly as possible because of the billions of people on this planet every single one would choose the cheaper product if all else is equal.
These profiteers are spending money on lobbying the government to keep cheap energy from the government? And the government is playing along? When both could just as easily profit more by bringing this technology to market? If you honestly believe this then I think you've been off your meds. You need your head checked and your dosage adjusted.
5) Grudgingly accept that we should replace expensive fossil fuels with cheaper renewable energy.
If renewable energy is cheaper then why would anyone continue to use fossil fuels? Either renewable energy is more expensive or there is some aspect of renewable energy that makes it undesirable. But then whatever undesirable aspect of renewable energy that makes it nonviable is really just a restatement of saying it is too expensive.
You claiming that people burn coal, even though it costs more than renewable energy, implies that people burn coal just to be dicks about the environment and the quality of the air. Is that what you think? That people burn coal just to be dicks to everyone else? What is there to gain by burning coal for the coal burners if it costs them more money and they have to breathe the same dirty air as everyone else?
We don't burn coal because we are dicks. We burn coal because the benefits outweigh the costs. You can talk about "externalities" all you like but once people know about an "externality" it gets internalized. A true external cost is something we don't know about, and we know about global warming. A better example of an external cost is the "cost" of having electricity so cheap and abundant, which brings us affordable food, clothing, shelter, and medicine. This "cost" is of course negative, therefore it is a benefit.
Have you considered the "externalities" of wind or solar? People complain about how much mining is done for coal but rarely do I see how much mining must be done for collecting the wind and sun. To replace coal with wind worldwide would require 10 billion tons of steel and concrete annually. Current world production of steel and concrete is 1.5 billion tons. Wind requires over 500 tons of steel and 1000 tons of concrete per installed MW, about ten times that of nuclear, coal, or natural gas.
I can keep going with the numbers if you like, such as how much land must be cleared for wind and solar power. There is a cost to that, even if we somehow figure out how to dual use this land like using rooftops, roadways, and croplands. Windmills and solar panels are inherently incompatible with trees, as are the power lines run to carry the electricity from them.
Wind and solar power advocates aren't "tree huggers" like most people would claim, they are "tree haters". Either these people would rather we cut down trees for windmills and solar panels or they have not considered the "external" costs of collecting wind and sun.
If you really cared about the trees, and you want cheap electricity, then you'd be advocating for nuclear power. Nuclear power is as cheap as coal, lower carbon footprint than either wind or sun power, safer than any energy source we know about, and so abundant that the byproducts from the rare earth metal mining we do now for making windmills and batteries would be more than enough to meet current energy needs.
You want renewable energy? Why do you hate trees so much?
You mentioned LFTR which tells me you've seen something about them before. You should know that one big benefit of LFTR is that it can reach temperatures that are much higher than that of typical nuclear reactors, temperatures that make desalination much easier (and therefore cheaper) to do. Putting the LFTRs in the Midwest means that there is considerable distance between the reactors and the sea where we'd like to source the water, likely destroying the benefits of using LFTRs.
You should also know that LFTRs cannot melt down, at least not like solid fuel reactors. Putting them in an earthquake prone place like California should not be near the problem that it would be for solid fuel reactors. It should be considered in the design, for sure, but excluding nuclear reactors from California sounds to me to be beyond paranoia. I think we can figure out how to build LFTRs in California and gain the benefits that LFTRs can provide.
Also, I believe the security risks associated with nuclear power plants is overblown. Added to that LFTRs are useless for weapons even though it is a "breeder" style reactor. There are two kinds of breeders, fast spectrum uranium-plutonium cycle and thermal spectrum thorium-uranium cycle. The uranium used in the fast spectrum is U-235 and U-238, and the plutonium bred from it is Pu-239. U-235 and Pu-239 are potential fuels for weapons. LFTRs breed thorium into U-233. Thorium is useless for weapons, and a weapon from U-233 is only theoretical, people tried and failed to use U-233 in a weapon core. LFTRs are also problematic for weapon production because any uranium taken from it will be contaminated with U-232, U-234, and U-236, all of which are difficult to separate from U-235, are highly radioactive, and generally make the uranium undesirable for weapon use. LFTRs might contain some Pu-239 in the fuel but it will likewise be tainted with other Pu isotopes making it useless for weapons.
No doubt a LFTR power plant would be a target for sabotage or terrorism but no more than any other power plant. No need to require them to be placed only on military installations. They'd need security, that's for certain, just no more than a typical coal fired plant.
From what I've seen the biggest threat to nuclear power plants are the domestic eco-terrorist types. These people don't want to steal any nuclear weapon material, they just want to make a lot of noise to send some sort of message. The only message they are sending to me is that nuclear power would be much safer if they weren't trying to send a message about how unsafe they are.
because cows are friends to me.
They live beneath the ocean and that's where I will be, beneath the waves, the waves. That's where I'll be. I'm goin' to see the cows beneath the sea.
What are they supposed to do, drink salt water ?
Of course not. What they should do is build some nuclear power plants and desalinate the water. There is no shortage of water but it does take energy to make it suitable to drink or water crops. Any shortage of energy they have in California is self imposed. Their policies against nuclear power because of a mistaken association with nuclear weapons does fit my definition of being brain dead.
Microsoft and Apple can sell stuff in their own stores because they make money on the OS. Google gives it away. Again, no money there.
Google is not selling an OS, that is true. What they are selling is access to eyeballs to advertisers.
There is a money incentive in selling Android products, they create a larger market for their advertising space.
Can I play Battlefield on it? Can I play Civ 6? I guess not.
I was thinking more of if the OS can run call center software, supports the time clock system we use, has drivers for our 2D barcode scanner, things like that. You can play games, I got work to do.
Actually, I don't have work to do. I just finished playing a game on a Windows XP computer I keep around to run some old games I like. It also runs PuTTY and has a serial port, which is nice for talking to Cisco gear.
I happen to run games on Windows because I happened to need Windows at one time and I picked up some games for it. I don't consider myself a "gamer" and so I don't spend money on games any more. I just play the old ones I already own when I'm bored. When I do need a computer I consider what work I need to do and how a certain computer will help me do it. I do run Windows on a couple computers but not because of the games I can get.
If you choose your OS based on the games then that's fine by me. I'm just thinking that if someone wants me to use a different OS then they need to show me how it helps get work done.
I'm sure that getting popular games to run on an OS will get some people to switch but I don't know anyone that does not also use their "gaming" computer to also do work. One thing about gaming is that people will buy a game console for games if their work computer isn't suited for gaming. What people don't do is complain that their Nintendo doesn't let them do their taxes.
Will everyone still have USBA devices in 6 months or even 18 months? Yes. Next question.
You are correct. What you seem to miss is that this is a one time cost, just buy the cables and adapters needed to connect the existing devices and be done with it. You even said yourself it's not about the cost, it's about convenience. This adds convenience by not having to worry about which way is up on those stupid USB-A connectors any more. All it costs is $2 per cable to fix. If you are so absent minded that you keep losing your cables then you can pick up the cables and adapters at the same store you get your furnace filters and antifreeze.
If anything, that just tells you how many people need adapters, which just tells you what a FUCK UP it was not to include them on the laptop. It's not a small niche that need adapters, it's everybody. And if everybody needs these adapters, such that even backwards hardware stores are trying to cash in it... then the product is flawed for not having the ports.
Of all the people I've talked to about this you are quite literally the only person I've seen that considers this more than a minor inconvenience. Some people are even overjoyed about this because it rids them of having to deal with those stupid USB-A connectors any more.
You are looking in the wrong place. Remember that last-place-you'd-ever-look-hardware-store that you were giggling with delight at it carrying adapters?? That's your PROOF the entire market is inconvenienced. If it was just a small niche that needed adapters then they'd be special order or only carried in specialty shops.
Nobody wants adapters. They are a necessary but inconvenient reality. Except in this case, where there is no good reason for them being necessary. The laptop should have had the port built in.
You are bitching about the loss of ports that *YOU* see as vital to have on a laptop. Apple does their research and they are not going to make a computer that people aren't going to buy. The lack of HDMI and RJ-45 ports is evidence that few people are inconvenienced by this.
You see the popularity of these adapters as "proof" that Apple fucked up. I see it as proof that people are quite willing to do away with their USB-A ports. These people weren't forced to buy these computers with USB-C ports since there are plenty of computers with USB-A on the market yet. People are willing to make this shift and pay money for the convenience of not having to try plugging in their USB-A devices and find out they have to flip it over to first.
What people aren't willing to do though is toss out perfectly usable USB-A devices when an inexpensive adapter will allow them to keep it functional. Given that the local hardware store stocks their USB-C flash drives right next to the shotgun shells I'm quite confident that I'll be able to find USB-C devices, cables, and adapters when I need them.
I get the feeling that I've been trolled all this while and you've just been seeing how long you could get someone to argue with you. That and/or you had no intention to ever by an Apple product and you were just looking for a reason to justify your decision.
Actually, most of that "waste" can be reused as fuel. Modern light water nuclear plants only use about 3% of the energy in uranium. That's why the waste is "hot" for so long
That's not quite right. The uranium has a half life of billions of years, so it will be radioactive for a long time but that is not what makes spent fuel "hot". Just as a candle that burns twice as bright burns half as long a radioactive material with a long half life puts out very little radiation. Uranium has such a long half life and therefore very little radiation from it that uranium is routinely used as a shield against radiation.
Another thing about uranium is that most isotopes of the element are alpha emitters upon decay. In a solid fuel reactor the uranium is encased in a metal tube, an alpha particle would not leave the tube. Even if it did about a foot of air would stop it.
What makes spent fuel "hot" is the fission products, and to a lesser extent the transuranic elements. A fission product is from the uranium nucleus taking in a neutron and fissions into two smaller nuclei. The transuranic elements are from when the uranium takes a neutron and doesn't fission but instead decays into a heavier element, such as plutonium. These fission products and transuranic elements can be beta and gamma emitters upon decay, these require more shielding to stop, such as a few feet of water or other dense material.
In a solid fuel reactor it is very difficult to remove these elements. This is a problem because some of these elements like to soak up neutrons with a greater affinity than the uranium fuel. At some point the fission products will take up so many neutrons that a chain reaction cannot be maintained in the reactor, when this happens the fuel is "spent" even though there is still a large amount of uranium fuel in the fuel rod.
There's several ways to address this problem but one that is gaining traction is to use a liquid fuel. The uranium in a solid fuel reactor is usually a ceramic (an oxide), because in that form it can hold up to a lot of heat and radiation without turning into something else. In a liquid fuel reactor the uranium fuel is in the form of a salt, usually a fluoride (like the sodium fluoride in toothpaste). This salt can also withstand the radiation but it melts at a relatively low temperature, which make it easy to turn into a liquid. In liquid form many of the worst fission products, like xenon, will bubble out of the fuel and get collected at the top of the reactor tank. Many of the others, like noble metals, will fall to the bottom. With these fission products out of the way just about all the fuel can be burned. With the addition of a chemical processor on the liquid fuel the transuranic elements can be removed before they can become a problem of soaking up neutrons, becoming a weapon proliferation problem, or generally a nuisance. Some of these fission products and transuranic elements are quite valuable and would become a salable product for medicine and industry.
With a solid fuel the spent fuel rods are effectively worthless because the valuable elements are mixed in with the really radioactive stuff that built up over time. This is difficult to process until it has "cooled" which also means a lot of the really valuable elements have decayed away. A liquid salt reactor would save a lot of trouble by not producing this waste, and potentially save a lot of lives because many of the fission products the reactor could produce is used to treat and diagnose a lot of medical conditions. Some of them could also be used to disinfect surgical tools, find leaks in pipes, and make it easier to explore space.
A very good reactor using this liquid fuel is called the liquid fluoride thorium reactor, designed by Flibe Energy. Look it up.
Let's see, they plan to replace coal with nuclear power. So, not insane.
Good job, France. I wish we'd do the same in the USA. With Trump it might happen.
Why would anyone put someone they believe to be a felon in a position as an advisor and administrator? Trump said that Clinton would be investigated and potentially put in prison for her crimes. That does not sound like an endorsement for a position in his administration.
Sure. But I live in the present.
Apple is making a device to sell for the next 18 months. Come back in 6 months and see if the same complaint holds.
I used hardware stores as an example of the last place people would go to find things like this. Even the small town hardware stores carry them, as in the same places people go to get paint and drywall screws. In a big box store like Walmart, a cell phone store, many truck stops, and so forth, there will be USB-C products on the shelves.
Also, you keep going on about RJ-45, which is odd to me. Do you know what is ubiquitous? WiFi.
HDMI is already dead or dying. I rarely see it on computers. It's limited to 1080p in many cases while DisplayPort will do at least 4K. HDMI might live on for a while as an alternate mode for DisplayPort, MHL, and USB-C but that means carrying a cable or adapter. Older computers have DVI which is compatible with HDMI with an adapter, which has been common for a long time, but it is still an adapter.
I'd like to buy a laptop with a real serial port, not these USB devices that are lacking in some active pins and often run at non-standard voltages. I also know I'm not likely to find one. You and I are a very small market and Apple simply cannot cater to us and stay in business.
This is a strawman and you know it. USBA is ubiquitous; apple is isn't dropping support for a 'very small market' apple is giving the middle finger to pretty much the ENTIRE market.
For every person like you that complains about the loss of the USB-A port there are a dozen people standing in line to buy a new MacBook Pro. Saying the "ENTIRE" market is somehow inconvenienced by this just does not show in Apple's sales results. By the time Apple is able to catch up on all the orders rolling in for their new laptops even the small town hardware store near me will have USB-C cables on the shelves.
Just for giggles I went back to a couple websites to see if the hardware stores near me has USB-C devices. I now see flash drives (with USB-C and USB-A connectors on the same device) on the shelves where they weren't last time. The USB-C to USB-A adapters are sold out in one store but they do have USB-C to 4 USB-A hubs. By next week I expect this to be rectified with the cables on the shelves.
I may have to revise my earlier comment, I don't think you'll have to wait 6 months but only 6 weeks. Given the sold out adapters as an indication of demand it may be only 6 days. These stores know what sells. If they see USB-C to USB-A adapters selling out then they'll start to stock USB-C to whatever adapters as well.
You are just being pedantic. A felon is someone that commits a felony, Wikipedia even says so.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
A person who has committed a felony is a felon, and upon conviction of a felony in a court of law is known as a convicted felon or a convict.
HRC has committed multiple felonies, the FBI has ample evidence of this. We have several high up people in the FBI that know HRC committed these felonies but these are complicated cases which means that they take time, politics is holding this up, and I suspect that her health and age are being factored as well. Now that she lost in the election for POTUS she has little to no cover from people in high office, but it effectively frees her to use the defense of limited mental capacity. Her ability to run for office would be gone but then she's not likely to run anyway, but it might keep her from prison.
Harris committed perjury and a judge called her on it. She might get away with it since someone would have to be properly motivated to do so. Competing with her for public office might just be the motivation one needs. Of course the opposition candidate won't charge her, that would appear unseemly. Instead it will be some one loyal to her competitor. She might also avoid prison time by doing like Bill Clinton did, give up her law license for a while, pay a heavy fine, and swear on a stack of Bibles that she did nothing wrong and she won't do it again.
Again I will say that this applies to all politicians, felons should not be running for office.
What I do see though is that Democrats have been often accused of felonies and seem to keep running for office. Perjury is a common one. Fraud of various kinds. Some rape, sexual abuse, and the like. Then there's the "technical" felonies like illegal drug possession, tax irregularities of various kinds, and maybe some form of abuse of office, all of which to many seem minor since so many other people have done it as well but didn't get caught and no one got hurt. Perjury to the point of putting innocent people in prison, fraud to the point that innocent people lose their homes, and abuse to the point that a woman goes to a hospital bruised and bleeding, is something that should keep someone from getting into office at a minimum, and at least serve some time in prison.
The Republican examples you had in that linked article are pretty weak on the Republicans. Sure they were accused of felonies for abuse of power, corruption, and campaign finance but those cases look like something that won't stick, and even if they do I have to wonder if it'd keep them from a government position. They might not be elected but they could be appointed by someone elected, because in those crimes no one got hurt. Not that I approve but if the Democrats can get perjurers in office then the Republicans can run someone that cheated on their taxes a decade ago.
The example on Gov. Perry was real weak from the start and he was cleared of all charges. From where I sit this wasn't about putting him in jail or removing him from office. This was "lawfare", the accusation of a crime to cause a person an inconvenience, create a distraction, put them in a bad light to the public, and just generally punish the person for doing something to a politically powerful person. There might be a small possibility of a plea deal to make it go away, someone finding something that they can convict on in court, and maybe cause enough lost time, funds, and sanity, through this to convince them to leave public office. It looks like Perry survived with little damage done, and no convictions.
I don't think you know what ubiquitous means.
Let me look it up...
ubiquitous |yoÍzoËbikwÉ(TM)tÉ(TM)s|
adjective
present, appearing, or found everywhere: his ubiquitous influence was felt by all the family | cowboy hats are ubiquitous among the male singers.
That's what I thought it meant. I did a quick internet search on some stores I know to be in small towns around here, did a search for USB-C adapters, and looked for in store pickup to see if it was actually at the store. First thing I found out is that even small town hardware stores carry these things. They might not have them in the store right now but they know how to get them in a few days or even overnight. By next Christmas they will be on the shelves next to the candy bars, cheap flashlights, and alkaline batteries.
The town I live in is not "small" but not huge either. There is a hardware store near me that I know will carry some pretty obscure stuff if even one customer asks for it. If someone asks for one of something they'll buy a dozen knowing that more people will likely be asking for it in the future. If I ask for USB-C cables they'll likely carry them by next week.
And that is why you don't get it. You've accepted that as something you should actually have to do with a $2000 pro series laptop. I want an all-in-one device. I shouldn't have to pack a bag of things to go with it.
I've accepted that at some point the old must be replaced by the new. USB 1.1 devices took a while to become ubiquitous too. This current rarity of USB-C devices will pass soon enough. I suspect in the next year or two HDMI on laptops will be as rare as VGA is now.
I've also accepted that as much as I'd like for someone to cater to my every product requirement I know it won't happen. I'd like to buy a laptop with a real serial port, not these USB devices that are lacking in some active pins and often run at non-standard voltages. I also know I'm not likely to find one. You and I are a very small market and Apple simply cannot cater to us and stay in business.
I've also accepted that when I pack my laptop I will need to carry stuff to go with it, if only to have a real mouse and the laptop charger. If I plan to do more than just surf the web at a coffee shop or my mom's house then I'll need to pack adapters. That has been the rule for a very long time. I don't know what the color of the sky is on your world but on this planet the sky is blue and Ethernet ports have been disappearing from laptops for a long time. It was only a matter of time for them to disappear from the high end laptops too.
Well done. [slow clap] Well done.
I was actually going for a reference to the overheated batteries in Apple's laptops from way back, as well as the "merchandizing" skit from the movie Spaceballs. I then realized the waffle iron reference was probably too obscure and the Spaceballs reference just made me feel old.
And repeating yourself just because someone nodded you down is just pathetic. If what you said was actually useful to anyone then someone else will mod you back up. But if all you are doing is repeating yourself just to get a rise out of someone then you are being a troll and deserve downwards moderation.
My intent was not to "get a rise out of someone" but to encourage debate. Perhaps that is in some ways a distinction without a difference but I thought the point needed to be raised. All too often I'll see people get modded down not because they said anything provocative but because they said something unpopular. Again that might be a distinction without a difference.
Since I see that someone has responded to the anonymous post in question, and got modded up to +5, I believe I was successful in what I intended to do. This may in fact because your +2 reply to my post got it enough eyeballs for enough people to care enough to read it. If you want to call me a troll then you got trolled. If you want to say I merely made my case poorly then you have just made a valuable contribution to the debate.
As a wise man once said, "It's all in your point of view."
You want to name that year?
I would if I could. It must have been something like 2008 +/- 2 years.
Since even the coldest years this century have been half a degree C above average, I'm curious to know what exactly you mean by 'merely average'.
As in nothing noteworthy. It wasn't the hottest, coldest, windiest, calmest, most hurricanes or whatever. Just a year much like the ones before. I do recall that at about this same time (again +/- 2 years) we were discussing the "pause" in global warming that has at that point gone on for about a decade. Since this pause has continued for now nearly two decades there must come a time when we stop calling this global warming, no?
I do have to wonder about the mentality of these AGW "scientists". For people that claim to be all about science they seem very hostile to people that provide evidence that may disprove the AGW theory. I sort of understand why the news media print articles on AGW, because news of doom and gloom grabs eyeballs while stories of "everything's fine" do not. Should not something that shows that humanity is not committing societal suicide be met with relief? Or, at least cautious optimism? Instead I see anyone that sees a flaw in the "science" is met with accusations of being a "denier". Which I'm not sure why being a "denier" is supposed to be such a bad thing. I thought science was about taking in new evidence and using it to better our understanding of the universe. Instead we have "the science is settled" and then what? Are we supposed to stop looking at CO2 levels and temperatures now? If we don't look at the "science" then how are we supposed to know if what we are doing is helping or not?
I recall the warnings of the military industrial complex creating this "iron triangle" of a perpetual war time economy, a kind of feedback loop of government influence creating insane profits for defense contractors. Are we not seeing the same thing happen with the "perpetual war" against global warming? This is a feedback loop of where government influence is creating insane profits for "green" contractors, no?
Milton Frieman said no such thing.
http://instituteforenergyresea...
Bob Inglis recently chaired a forum at the University of Chicago titled, âoeWhat Would Milton Friedman Do About Climate Change?â Two Chicago economists argued that Friedman would have applied the textbook analysis of âoenegative externalitiesâ to the issue of climate change, and therefore would have supported a carbon tax. The only problem is, they gave no actual quotes of Friedman supporting a carbon tax, even though he died in 2006. Furthermore, there is at least one quotation from Friedman in which he denounces the fear-mongering of the global warming movement. Contrary to the claims of a few academics and retired government officials, a U.S. carbon tax is not a âoeconservative free market solutionâ to the issue of climate change.
Raising taxes makes it get colder out.
I wish I could mod you up. Instead I'll just quote you and point it out as insightful.
I make the post and it gets modded down, so I quote it again. I got karma, how long are we going to play this game?
A few years ago, about this time of year, I was told by a co-worker about how that year was forecast to be exceedingly warm. I pointed out that the year wasn't over and it is quite possible to have an unusually cold November and December to average it out. When January came around I found a news article on how the last year was merely average. When I presented this to that same hysterical co-worker merely two months later and he denied he had made any hysterical comments before.
Now we see people not even waiting until the year starts to make such predictions. Those that get all worked up over it now will be exceedingly forgetful if the predictions fail and have very very good memories if it does. Here's my tiny tiny little mention of this phenomenon. It will be interesting if someone remembers this post and revisits it a year later to see how well I did in my prediction.
Raising taxes makes it get colder out.
I wish I could mod you up. Instead I'll just quote you and point it out as insightful.
Simply driving those displays isn't that impressive, the question is how well can it drive them.
I can agree to that somewhat. Getting a Thunderbolt to DP/HDMI/VGA/whatever adapter isn't all that different than getting one of those USB GPUs that are relatively common now. It's not just the hardware though, it's the software. I have to deal with multiple monitor computers all the time now that dual displays is increasingly the norm for people. I'll still have to deal with Windows computers that will "lose" one of the displays for some crazy reason or another, or "forget" that a display supports more than 640x480 resolution.
What is impressive to me is how poorly Windows handles multiple displays given that I had a three display Mac back in the 1990s. I'd have my MP3 player on one screen, web browser on another, and my text editor front and center. We had to do things like that then, screens the size of 1024x768 was considered "huge" then.
For what I do, and I imagine a large portion of the population does on their laptops, I suspect that the MBP is more than sufficient. There are laptops with more powerful GPUs, of course, but as pointed out in other posts this requires a much larger laptop to handle the power consumption and dissipation. What the MBP has, but many competitors do not, is a high bandwidth connection like ThunderBolt to add a really nice GPU if one wants it. In that case bandwidth comes into play as well, the bottleneck is just in a different place.
But wake up apple, there is more than exactly one demographic, and the macbook air market is the only one you even acknowledge now.
My oh my, such a mountain out of a molehill.
You say you need USB-A ports? A pack of 3 USB 2.0 adapters cost $6. A USB 3.1 adapter costs maybe $12. Keep in mind this is for a $2000 laptop. Is an extra $20 going to break you?
When I pack my laptop I pack the cables I need, like the HDMI and Ethernet cables you mention. I have an older MacBook Pro and so when I think I need Ethernet I pack an Ethernet cable with the Thunderbolt adapter stuck on the end. That adapter costs maybe $30 and is the size of a pack of chewing gum. My MBP has an HDMI port and I never used it once. If I did need an HDMI cable I'd be tempted to get a Mini-DisplayPort to HDMI cable anyway since it'd be "future proof", cost only marginally more than a plain HDMI cable, and likely support higher resolutions than the port built-in.
I think you are just looking for something to complain about. The adapters you require are ubiquitous, inexpensive, standardized, and tiny compared to the cables they would be necessarily connected to. Your 1990s thinking would make sense if these adapters were still as large, expensive, fragile, and difficult to find as they were 20 years ago.
Do you think that is unique to the military?
I was an engineering intern that wanted a $150 HTML editor for my semester project of updating a part of the company website. I spent at least a day writing a proposal to get a $150 HTML editor, getting paid for this time. So that the proposal could disappear for much of my internship, where I don't know who looked at it, and those people were getting paid to look it over. Not near the scale you speak of but I'm sure it happens all the time.
The alternative is to have "petty" expenses get fast tracked and therefore likely abused. I didn't think much of it at the time but after my discharge from the Army I went into a VA vocational training program to take some network certification classes. I asked for a computer, a nice computer, to run some network simulation software. I was told that if it was under $3000 it would get approved quickly, so I was told to put part of my order (the laptop itself) on one proposal and the rest (software, cables, and such) on another proposal. Years later I hear on the radio on how people in the VA are submitting sub-$3000 orders for all kinds of crazy stuff because they rarely get questioned.
People are people so we need watchmen. Who watches the watchmen then?