If tax revenues are declining because of fuel-efficient cars, the obvious, simple solution is a small increase in the fuel tax. This provides the required $$$, and increases the incentive to reduce gasoline use.
A high-tech approach involving installation of expensive GPS units in every car is just crazy, if viewed as a revenue raising measure.
But gee, I bet there's lots of other uses for that GPS tracking data...
Until someone finds a technical solution that truly allows everyone to have 'unlimited' internet, you have to find some way to ration it.
I'd rather be charged for what I use and not have to worry about ISPs sticking their noses into my data stream and killing traffic they don't like.
Here in oz, I'm on a $A60 plan that gets me 40G/month @ 20 megabits/sec. I don't find that restrictive, I'm not constantly worrying about how much bandwidth I use (as some of the hysterical postings above imply) and I'm not paying for the wankers who download 400G/month of movies they never find time to watch.
I've also worked in jobs where assuming everyone was out to get you was a requirement.
This served me in good stead years later, when a lying back-stabbing b@st@rd of a workmate sabotaged the system in an attempt to make me look bad, I had all the logs I needed to prove what he'd done.
Saved my job, and nailing the b@st@rd with the evidence in front of his boss gave me great satisfaction.
My cat often sits in front of the mirror and practices her 'fighting stances'. It's obvious she knows it's herself in the mirror, and not some feline intruder.
Losing means being captured, chained up in some overly-complex death machine (still with your batman mask on) and then being left alone to make your escape.
From TFA:
So it was only natural it would look at the electronic brains that scientists in the United States were developing for scientific and military purposes as a way to streamline its own empire
Why do Americans have this urge to claim the credit for everything?
The Germans built a computer during WWII, and the brits built Colossus computers to break German codes. The University of Manchester built their first computer in 1948, and another in 1949, even the aussies had built CSIRAC in 1949, two years before LEO, and yet the NY times has to claim the LEO was based on what 'American Scientists' were doing.
There's a whole big world out there, and America doesn't have a monopoly on innovation.
From TFA:
> They create a huge soundstage that is focused, detailed and very natural. The sound of the Silent Source cables far exceeds their moderate price. They easily beat cables costing 10 to 20 times more.
So, their 'moderately priced' ($449/m) power cable is as good as others costing 20 times as much???
If this is to believed, there are people out there charging $18,000 for a 2 metre cable to connect your hi-fi to the wall-plug.
Please, please, someone tell me it isn't so.
The author doesn't consider the possibility that interstellar travel is prohibitively difficult.
It may be, for example, that a minimal interstellar expedition costs 20 years production of the entire civilization. That's a lot of effort to put into finding out that the neighboring star system consists of dead rocks, and even if we're lucky and find a habitable planet, it's our great-to-the-nth grandchildren who will reap the benefit.
Can you really see any human civilization taking such an enormous gamble? What politician is going to tell the people "You'll have to pay 20% more tax for the next 100 years, because I want to send a probe to Alpha Centauri, which is probably a dead rock, but our great-great-great-great grandchildren will be very interested in the result" ?
If a lunatic dictator did embark on such a folly, would his successor, and his successor, share his monomania? It only takes one politician in a century tp see some advantage in offering the people a huge tax cut, and the project would lapse.
It's not just "evaporation" at work in those places, there's also a filter that actively excludes "fresh water" from the lake.
Consider the position of the talentless drone who's achieved a position of junior management by virtue of being the longest-serving talentless drone in the room when the previous manager left.
Is this PHB-in-training going to hire the best and brightest?
No way, s/he doesn't want underlings making him/her look bad, so s/he'll be careful to only hire other talentless drones.
There's an additional benefit (for the PHB) here, as it requires 2 or 3 talentless drones to do the work on one talented geek, and a managers prestige and remuneration are proportional to the number of people s/he manages.
So only "brackish water" ever flows into the lake, evaporation then acts to make it even worse.
Slashdot Mirror
If tax revenues are declining because of fuel-efficient cars, the obvious, simple solution is a small increase in the fuel tax. This provides the required $$$, and increases the incentive to reduce gasoline use.
A high-tech approach involving installation of expensive GPS units in every car is just crazy, if viewed as a revenue raising measure.
But gee, I bet there's lots of other uses for that GPS tracking data...
</tinfoil-hat>
I got high marks in high school chemistry, the next year I tried helping a friend with his homework, and was completely lost.
The curriculum had changed!
One of the most persistent Republican attacks on Obama is that he's so well educated,
"yer cayn't trust a man wi' too much lernin'"
This doesn't bode well for education under a McCain/Palin presidency.
...it's so hard to find a Linux one.
I searched the computer retailers of Melbourne for 3 weeks before I found one that had a Linux 901 in stock, and bought their last one.
Memo to the geniuses of retail: customers can't buy if you don't have stock.
23% of the Texas population are morons.
Yes, I was. Sadly, Dubya never 'paid a scrap of attention to how anything in the world actually works'.
Wasn't the whole point of the invasion to remove the religious extremists from power in Afghanistan?
:(
Looks like that wasn't the great success Dubya would have is believe.
.
Finite resource, infinite demand, something's gotta give.
Until someone finds a technical solution that truly allows everyone to have 'unlimited' internet, you have to find some way to ration it.
I'd rather be charged for what I use and not have to worry about ISPs sticking their noses into my data stream and killing traffic they don't like.
Here in oz, I'm on a $A60 plan that gets me 40G/month @ 20 megabits/sec. I don't find that restrictive, I'm not constantly worrying about how much bandwidth I use (as some of the hysterical postings above imply) and I'm not paying for the wankers who download 400G/month of movies they never find time to watch.
There's a couple of hundred thousand Americans working there, and new vacancies being created every week.
I've also worked in jobs where assuming everyone was out to get you was a requirement.
This served me in good stead years later, when a lying back-stabbing b@st@rd of a workmate sabotaged the system in an attempt to make me look bad, I had all the logs I needed to prove what he'd done.
Saved my job, and nailing the b@st@rd with the evidence in front of his boss gave me great satisfaction.
My cat often sits in front of the mirror and practices her 'fighting stances'. It's obvious she knows it's herself in the mirror, and not some feline intruder.
Losing means being captured, chained up in some overly-complex death machine (still with your batman mask on) and then being left alone to make your escape.
From TFA: So it was only natural it would look at the electronic brains that scientists in the United States were developing for scientific and military purposes as a way to streamline its own empire
Why do Americans have this urge to claim the credit for everything?
The Germans built a computer during WWII, and the brits built Colossus computers to break German codes. The University of Manchester built their first computer in 1948, and another in 1949, even the aussies had built CSIRAC in 1949, two years before LEO, and yet the NY times has to claim the LEO was based on what 'American Scientists' were doing.
There's a whole big world out there, and America doesn't have a monopoly on innovation.
Deal with it.
"Yet"
From the sales-spiel for this $898 2m power cable... http://www.dedicatedaudio.com/inc/sdetail/2409
From TFA:
> They create a huge soundstage that is focused, detailed and very natural. The sound of the Silent Source cables far exceeds their moderate price. They easily beat cables costing 10 to 20 times more.
So, their 'moderately priced' ($449/m) power cable is as good as others costing 20 times as much???
If this is to believed, there are people out there charging $18,000 for a 2 metre cable to connect your hi-fi to the wall-plug. Please, please, someone tell me it isn't so.
Check out http://www.dedicatedaudio.com/interconnect_cable
The have several cables that make $499 look cheap.
The author doesn't consider the possibility that interstellar travel is prohibitively difficult.
It may be, for example, that a minimal interstellar expedition costs 20 years production of the entire civilization.
That's a lot of effort to put into finding out that the neighboring star system consists of dead rocks, and even if we're lucky and find a habitable planet, it's our great-to-the-nth grandchildren who will reap the benefit.
Can you really see any human civilization taking such an enormous gamble? What politician is going to tell the people "You'll have to pay 20% more tax for the next 100 years, because I want to send a probe to Alpha Centauri, which is probably a dead rock, but our great-great-great-great grandchildren will be very interested in the result" ?
If a lunatic dictator did embark on such a folly, would his successor, and his successor, share his monomania?
It only takes one politician in a century tp see some advantage in offering the people a huge tax cut, and the project would lapse.
repeat:
drink a shot of whisky
try to solve an algebra problem in your head
if you get it wrong, remove an item of clothing
until everyone is naked
and I stayed silent.
Then they disarmed the ewoks, and I stayed silent.
Then they came to disarm me, and there was no-one left to speak up.
Normally I'd say a 13 year old who can correct NASA on their mistakes has a bright future ahead of him ... but in this case, maybe he doesn't. :(
I wouldn't want anyone to think I was one ;)
It's not just "evaporation" at work in those places, there's also a filter that actively excludes "fresh water" from the lake.
Consider the position of the talentless drone who's achieved a position of junior management by virtue of being the longest-serving talentless drone in the room when the previous manager left.
Is this PHB-in-training going to hire the best and brightest?
No way, s/he doesn't want underlings making him/her look bad, so s/he'll be careful to only hire other talentless drones.
There's an additional benefit (for the PHB) here, as it requires 2 or 3 talentless drones to do the work on one talented geek, and a managers prestige and remuneration are proportional to the number of people s/he manages.
So only "brackish water" ever flows into the lake, evaporation then acts to make it even worse.
...but they didn't find Sarah Connor.
Time to look somewhere else.
You have ten years to comply.
First extra-solar Large Hadron Collider discovered.