"And I have no idea whether this would hold up in Europe, where this hack is actually useful."
How dare you? American law is applicable globally! all other legal systems are in place merely to resolve local squabbles about missing donkeys, lost goldfish or similar. For all important matters, US law takes precedence. And we'll back up those claims with Awe, Shock, Might, Force and occasional invasion if these little peasant nations don't respect this God ordained fact!
As gas stays above $3.00 a gallon, people, and businesses and organizations and governments who don't give a rats ass about the environment are going to start looking around at ways to save or make money.
Glad you're not a complete libertarian on this, I'm completely with you. Round where I live (in the UK) petrol (gas) is 7.20 dollars/US gallon in my local station. People are still filling up their cars and 4x4 SUVs are still fashionable, it's a disease we've caught from over the pond (I mean, in the mountains and rural areas yes, they might be useful but to go to the supermarket in urban southern England? How many litres of engine do you need to bump up that 4 inch curb on the side of the road?).
I think you're going to need some government intervention on this. People are very happy to keep driving tanks round small urban roads at 7 dollars a gallon. Other solutions more than welcomed, but just saying, don't believe there's some mythical point at 4 or 5 dollars a gallon when 'the people' will all discard their big autos and jump on public transport and bicycles...
Interesting in the article that the journalist doesn't include power generated by hydroelectric dams as renewable energy...
"TVA gets about 60 percent of its electricity from coal-fired power plants, 30 percent from nuclear plants and 10 percent from its 29 hydroelectric dams. Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar account for less than 1 percent."
Any idea why that might be? Political slant? ignorance?
Umm, I mean the water flows through the dam, it goes out to sea, it evaporates, and it rains back up in the mountains and comes through the dam again. Seems pretty renewable to me.... at least some of it is coming back up through that cycle if not all...
"Nobody is held accountable for the actions of a corporation. The board of directors and all officers should be held personally liable."
That's really not going to work too well in a country where you still have the death penalty. Who's going to want to be a director? You are going to have to go round executing a lot of CEOs every time bridges collapse, trains crash, etc. Mind you I suppose that's what happens in China.
Though I take the point you're making in spirit. We had some train crashes in the UK over the last decade and people are left with their husbands dead, while the top bosses just say sorry and take home another pay cheque. At worst they get sacked and instantly head hunted by other companies for another stupidly high wage. Maybe a few years in prison might not be a bad idea.
All I can offer is my personal experience - I lived in what is supposed to be one of the most criminally active parts of London (Hackney) for ten years and I never felt the need to get hold of a gun to make me feel happy about walking to the shops to buy a pint of milk or a paper. If you suggested this to me or my neighbours they'd think you were insane. Quite obviously, the vast majority of the 10 million other people who live in London also manage to buy their pints of milk, visit their neighbours, and go out to see a movie without having to carry a gun. London's not perfect - we've got a problem with more and more guns and knives being around and used for criminal purposes (apart from a very few exceptions, if you're not in uniform any gun use is criminal). But we're trying to keep on top of the problem by reducing their availability.
You suggest that where you are, people carry a gun or wear bulletproof vests to go to the stores. I find that quite a frightening society to be living in.
I am happy to pay taxes for professionals to protect me against the tiny minority of people in this country carrying guns. My opinion is that it's cheaper and less time consuming than choosing for a wild west full anarchist society where it's down to individuals to protect themselves. I think that's just an evolution of society, the same as I choose to pay taxes for somebody else to clean out the sewers, guard prisoners in jails, sweep the streets of rubbish. I'm happy to live in a more specialised society where we pay for other people to do the jobs we don't want to do.
Mmmm... but would a farmer of 100 years ago have a better understanding of levers and pulleys than a farmer today? Perhaps a better parallel to consider. Probably a farmer of a hundred years ago had a better understanding of physics than a shop girl or a newspaper boy of the time... but then all three probably had a poorer understanding of a lot of other things that an average person takes for granted today: the relevant knowledge that means its easier for a person to get by. Could be argued that knowing about levers and pulleys today is less important than understanding how to make a washing machine work, using modern banking facilities, or accessing the internet. Heck, I like messing around with my classic (1965) car but I'd not know what to do with the black box computer that controls my girlfriend's car...no levers or pulleys in there...
Most folk in the UK will grumble about the price of the licence fee. On the other hand, most people in the UK really like the BBC not having commercial breaks and really enjoy being able to watch a whole episode of "Heroes" or "Dr. Who" or a feature length movie without a break, and realise the money has to come from somewhere. Most people are pretty happy with the idea that the BBC sells on the programmes it produces to broadcasters in other countries and uses the money to turn out more high quality programmes. We don't mind if you like our programmes and want to pay us some money to see them. Gives us more money to do more cool things. I think it's quite a substantial earner, as well, not just a little bit.
Folk aren't too stupid - they know it's public broadcasting but they realise it still needs money. And to be selfish, if foreign sales can keep the licence fee down, most people would approve of that! There's a belief that Auntie Beeb still turns out high quality drama and sometimes off-the-wall humour and bringing money in allows a freedom and quality that isn't always possible in some countries with more commercial broadcasters. Folk are proud that seemingly uncommercial programmes can get given a chance.
If the current public transport systems are overtaxed, then improve them. Lay on more, improve the quality. I'd say that's a success story in the making. Please don't follow the idiots in power over here in the UK who decided the solution to trains being too popular was to raise ticket prices so less people would travel by train (or presumably squeeze more out of a captive audience).
I guess there is always the issue of car manufacturers and oil producers having influence in your government and being really unhappy that you're not buying their products. Probably that's unpatriotic and makes you a terrorist or something these days....
Actually, you got to admit, if he's looking to keep the bills down, shopping around for a good location isn't a bad idea. Wish that we were all rich enough to be able to move to where we wanted on the planet. As you note though, it's less of a challenge than some environments. Mind you I've never understood why people in hot areas crank up their air conditioning to put out freezer like temperatures, and folks in cold areas crank up the heating till you're dripping with sweat.
Heck if all he does is build the Apple-ified energy efficient house, and as a result, persuades a few million people to buy the same sort of house (or undertake improvements to their existing houses), that's got to be a good thing. I'd be very happy if Woz persuaded a whole demographic otherwise not interested that energy efficiency is a very cool thing to do.
How does the forced ventilation work? I'm more familiar with nicely insulated houses that my friends have in Finland, than Sweden, but on the other side, I'd heard some research that said you need airflow to make sure a house and the people in it remain healthy. How does the 'forced ventilation' work? How do folks in Sweden get fresh air round the house? cheers!
Video footage showed an adult pointing out aspects of the computer as the kids were working on it - so offering some sort of guidance. Not to take away from the fact that the kids did indeed work on the computer, but I think it should be noted.
A cute video but not very scientific evidence that this is transferable to any two children anywhere in the world. For all we know the two kids are complete hackers and spend all their days messing around with lego, meccano, taking things apart and putting them back together again. Might also have highly educated parents working in laptop development labs. Would be very interesting to try this experiment "in the field" - I'm sure something like this must be going on in the testing phase of the computers?
okay, so see the rest of my post, why not elasticated inners and gortex ski glove outers? still a heck of a lot slimmer than standard current space gloves...
Parent post I was responding to said "it's not that cold". Well if it's not that cold can't I just wear ski gloves? Probably stop sunburn as well.
Airtight at wrists - well, some diving suits seem to manage it - or in the above scenario, the suit just terminates in rubber elasticated gloves.
Hickeys -I had to look that up! (posting from the UK, didn't know the word) - see elasticated glove, above.
Ok, so you're saying that space is slightly cool, not too bad, and it would take a long time for your temperature to drop.
Excuse the ignorance (not much of a scientist)...so.... why do astronauts wear those big clunky gloves? If it's not much cooler than my fridge at home, why not just go out there with bare hands so they can fiddle around a lot better? I heard that fatigue is a real problem and the gloves are clumsy when they are working round the ISS. Why not seal the suit at the wrists with a stretchy rubber seal and let them out there with bare hands?
Or if the issue is that some of the surfaces out there are cold because they've been out there so long and we don't want astronauts getting frostbite touching metal bits of the space station, why not just give them a pair of skinny skiing gloves? Perhaps even a set of stretchy latex inners (like you get for a few cents for working on your car, or as a surgeon) if there's an issue with keeping the hands under pressure.
Seriously, I don't get it. I thought the reason for clunky astronaut gloves was that it's a superharsh environment. If it is just a slightly cold place, like the inside of my fridge, then why not latex inner gloves and a set of gortex outers from the ski shop?
Keep the rest of the body all cosy, in a breathable atmosphere, but surely it's ok for there to be no oxygen getting to the outside of my hands?
Radio 4 interviewed the man who exposed the situation in Abu Graib, it was on the radio this morning so you can listen to it online. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/thechoice/
30 minutes, nice broadcast. Sounds like he's getting support from the US government but Rumsfeld screwed his whole life up by announcing his name to the world. People harassed his wife and his wife's sister (apparently they couldn't spell Iraq right when they graffitti'd her house, spelling it "Iroc"...) and so the whole family had to get moved to another part of the country and set up with new lives. Seems like most of his fellow soldiers supported what he did - which is nice to know given the bad publicity the US military normally gets, but enough hometown neighbours considered him a traitor to mean he had to have the upheaval to ensure the safety of his family. A subtle hint from Rumsfeld?
... so why be surprised the tax man gets interested?
Go check out their website. Front page there's a prominent fact box with 5 facts, and fact 4 is "US$ Spent Last 24h".
Come on, you don't need a PhD in media studies or textual analysis to see they are saying "come to Second Life because you can make money here" - whether you can or not is beside the point, they are trying to give the impression you can.
Having laid out their stall quite plainly, is it any wonder the tax authorities are going to wake up and say "oohh, so people are making money here? Well I guess we better tax it". It's a real no brainer surely - people shouting out how much money they are making in their virtual world and then getting upset because the taxman wants his cut. Income is income as far as tax man is concerned, whether you are a lumberjack chopping down trees and selling timber, a banker making money for shunting imaginary figures round on a screen or a second life trader selling enough flying pigs or worse to make real cash.
All money is virtual anyway, what's so special about this development?
Parent's point I'd guess would be that it's an arms war. If you're saying that the way to stop being knifed is to carry a knife yourself, then the criminals carry guns. And if you match that with a gun, surely the only solution is for everybody to carry fecking ridiculous big guns around? Personally I am happy to be able to walk down to the shops without needing to carry a weapon.
If weapons stop crime, how come the USA, one of the most tooled up countries in the world, has so much crime and so many people die from gun injuries?
Slashdot Mirror
So what if Yorkshire wants out too then?
Then I suppose the question is - what's holding your nation together? coercion and force?
Not according to the article you link to. That's talking about freighter version.
Who knows, maybe someday you'll be able to buy a cell phone in your local supermarket--a cell phone not marked "Tracfone." [grin]
http://direct.tesco.com/homepage/phones.aspx
online as well, wooo!
Local supermarket always has 20 or so models in stock from major phone companies.
Goodness knows how many mobile phone shops there are selling handsets and comparing deals for you. People like Carphone Warehouse.
I guess you do things differently in the USA, not as free and independent a system.
"And I have no idea whether this would hold up in Europe, where this hack is actually useful."
How dare you? American law is applicable globally! all other legal systems are in place merely to resolve local squabbles about missing donkeys, lost goldfish or similar. For all important matters, US law takes precedence. And we'll back up those claims with Awe, Shock, Might, Force and occasional invasion if these little peasant nations don't respect this God ordained fact!
He could always use an internet cafe, perhaps get access down the local public library (many of these are free access these days).
Wow, is that how all gun owners talk in America?
remember kids, guns don't kill the internet, people do! ;-)
Does this mean the internet should be getting a bigger gun to defend itself with?
It's ok, the reverse is also true - people from outside the USA turn down jobs in the USA because they are in the USA.
As gas stays above $3.00 a gallon, people, and businesses and organizations and governments who don't give a rats ass about the environment are going to start looking around at ways to save or make money.
/US gallon in my local station. People are still filling up their cars and 4x4 SUVs are still fashionable, it's a disease we've caught from over the pond (I mean, in the mountains and rural areas yes, they might be useful but to go to the supermarket in urban southern England? How many litres of engine do you need to bump up that 4 inch curb on the side of the road?).
Glad you're not a complete libertarian on this, I'm completely with you. Round where I live (in the UK) petrol (gas) is 7.20 dollars
I think you're going to need some government intervention on this. People are very happy to keep driving tanks round small urban roads at 7 dollars a gallon. Other solutions more than welcomed, but just saying, don't believe there's some mythical point at 4 or 5 dollars a gallon when 'the people' will all discard their big autos and jump on public transport and bicycles...
Interesting in the article that the journalist doesn't include power generated by hydroelectric dams as renewable energy...
"TVA gets about 60 percent of its electricity from coal-fired power plants, 30 percent from nuclear plants and 10 percent from its 29 hydroelectric dams. Renewable energy sources such as wind and solar account for less than 1 percent."
Any idea why that might be? Political slant? ignorance?
Umm, I mean the water flows through the dam, it goes out to sea, it evaporates, and it rains back up in the mountains and comes through the dam again. Seems pretty renewable to me.... at least some of it is coming back up through that cycle if not all...
"Nobody is held accountable for the actions of a corporation. The board of directors and all officers should be held personally liable."
That's really not going to work too well in a country where you still have the death penalty. Who's going to want to be a director? You are going to have to go round executing a lot of CEOs every time bridges collapse, trains crash, etc. Mind you I suppose that's what happens in China.
Though I take the point you're making in spirit. We had some train crashes in the UK over the last decade and people are left with their husbands dead, while the top bosses just say sorry and take home another pay cheque. At worst they get sacked and instantly head hunted by other companies for another stupidly high wage. Maybe a few years in prison might not be a bad idea.
All I can offer is my personal experience - I lived in what is supposed to be one of the most criminally active parts of London (Hackney) for ten years and I never felt the need to get hold of a gun to make me feel happy about walking to the shops to buy a pint of milk or a paper. If you suggested this to me or my neighbours they'd think you were insane. Quite obviously, the vast majority of the 10 million other people who live in London also manage to buy their pints of milk, visit their neighbours, and go out to see a movie without having to carry a gun. London's not perfect - we've got a problem with more and more guns and knives being around and used for criminal purposes (apart from a very few exceptions, if you're not in uniform any gun use is criminal). But we're trying to keep on top of the problem by reducing their availability.
You suggest that where you are, people carry a gun or wear bulletproof vests to go to the stores. I find that quite a frightening society to be living in.
I am happy to pay taxes for professionals to protect me against the tiny minority of people in this country carrying guns. My opinion is that it's cheaper and less time consuming than choosing for a wild west full anarchist society where it's down to individuals to protect themselves. I think that's just an evolution of society, the same as I choose to pay taxes for somebody else to clean out the sewers, guard prisoners in jails, sweep the streets of rubbish. I'm happy to live in a more specialised society where we pay for other people to do the jobs we don't want to do.
Mmmm... but would a farmer of 100 years ago have a better understanding of levers and pulleys than a farmer today? Perhaps a better parallel to consider. Probably a farmer of a hundred years ago had a better understanding of physics than a shop girl or a newspaper boy of the time... but then all three probably had a poorer understanding of a lot of other things that an average person takes for granted today: the relevant knowledge that means its easier for a person to get by. Could be argued that knowing about levers and pulleys today is less important than understanding how to make a washing machine work, using modern banking facilities, or accessing the internet. Heck, I like messing around with my classic (1965) car but I'd not know what to do with the black box computer that controls my girlfriend's car...no levers or pulleys in there...
Most folk in the UK will grumble about the price of the licence fee. On the other hand, most people in the UK really like the BBC not having commercial breaks and really enjoy being able to watch a whole episode of "Heroes" or "Dr. Who" or a feature length movie without a break, and realise the money has to come from somewhere. Most people are pretty happy with the idea that the BBC sells on the programmes it produces to broadcasters in other countries and uses the money to turn out more high quality programmes. We don't mind if you like our programmes and want to pay us some money to see them. Gives us more money to do more cool things. I think it's quite a substantial earner, as well, not just a little bit.
Folk aren't too stupid - they know it's public broadcasting but they realise it still needs money. And to be selfish, if foreign sales can keep the licence fee down, most people would approve of that! There's a belief that Auntie Beeb still turns out high quality drama and sometimes off-the-wall humour and bringing money in allows a freedom and quality that isn't always possible in some countries with more commercial broadcasters. Folk are proud that seemingly uncommercial programmes can get given a chance.
If the current public transport systems are overtaxed, then improve them. Lay on more, improve the quality. I'd say that's a success story in the making. Please don't follow the idiots in power over here in the UK who decided the solution to trains being too popular was to raise ticket prices so less people would travel by train (or presumably squeeze more out of a captive audience).
I guess there is always the issue of car manufacturers and oil producers having influence in your government and being really unhappy that you're not buying their products. Probably that's unpatriotic and makes you a terrorist or something these days....
Actually, you got to admit, if he's looking to keep the bills down, shopping around for a good location isn't a bad idea. Wish that we were all rich enough to be able to move to where we wanted on the planet. As you note though, it's less of a challenge than some environments. Mind you I've never understood why people in hot areas crank up their air conditioning to put out freezer like temperatures, and folks in cold areas crank up the heating till you're dripping with sweat.
Heck if all he does is build the Apple-ified energy efficient house, and as a result, persuades a few million people to buy the same sort of house (or undertake improvements to their existing houses), that's got to be a good thing. I'd be very happy if Woz persuaded a whole demographic otherwise not interested that energy efficiency is a very cool thing to do.
How does the forced ventilation work? I'm more familiar with nicely insulated houses that my friends have in Finland, than Sweden, but on the other side, I'd heard some research that said you need airflow to make sure a house and the people in it remain healthy. How does the 'forced ventilation' work? How do folks in Sweden get fresh air round the house? cheers!
Video footage showed an adult pointing out aspects of the computer as the kids were working on it - so offering some sort of guidance. Not to take away from the fact that the kids did indeed work on the computer, but I think it should be noted.
A cute video but not very scientific evidence that this is transferable to any two children anywhere in the world. For all we know the two kids are complete hackers and spend all their days messing around with lego, meccano, taking things apart and putting them back together again. Might also have highly educated parents working in laptop development labs. Would be very interesting to try this experiment "in the field" - I'm sure something like this must be going on in the testing phase of the computers?
cheers! keeping heat out.... informative. Many thanks.
okay, so see the rest of my post, why not elasticated inners and gortex ski glove outers? still a heck of a lot slimmer than standard current space gloves...
Parent post I was responding to said "it's not that cold". Well if it's not that cold can't I just wear ski gloves? Probably stop sunburn as well.
Airtight at wrists - well, some diving suits seem to manage it - or in the above scenario, the suit just terminates in rubber elasticated gloves.
Hickeys -I had to look that up! (posting from the UK, didn't know the word) - see elasticated glove, above.
Ok, so you're saying that space is slightly cool, not too bad, and it would take a long time for your temperature to drop.
...so.... why do astronauts wear those big clunky gloves? If it's not much cooler than my fridge at home, why not just go out there with bare hands so they can fiddle around a lot better? I heard that fatigue is a real problem and the gloves are clumsy when they are working round the ISS. Why not seal the suit at the wrists with a stretchy rubber seal and let them out there with bare hands?
Excuse the ignorance (not much of a scientist)
Or if the issue is that some of the surfaces out there are cold because they've been out there so long and we don't want astronauts getting frostbite touching metal bits of the space station, why not just give them a pair of skinny skiing gloves? Perhaps even a set of stretchy latex inners (like you get for a few cents for working on your car, or as a surgeon) if there's an issue with keeping the hands under pressure.
Seriously, I don't get it. I thought the reason for clunky astronaut gloves was that it's a superharsh environment. If it is just a slightly cold place, like the inside of my fridge, then why not latex inner gloves and a set of gortex outers from the ski shop?
Keep the rest of the body all cosy, in a breathable atmosphere, but surely it's ok for there to be no oxygen getting to the outside of my hands?
Sorry for ignorance, inform me, folks...
Radio 4 interviewed the man who exposed the situation in Abu Graib, it was on the radio this morning so you can listen to it online. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/thechoice/
...) and so the whole family had to get moved to another part of the country and set up with new lives. Seems like most of his fellow soldiers supported what he did - which is nice to know given the bad publicity the US military normally gets, but enough hometown neighbours considered him a traitor to mean he had to have the upheaval to ensure the safety of his family. A subtle hint from Rumsfeld?
30 minutes, nice broadcast. Sounds like he's getting support from the US government but Rumsfeld screwed his whole life up by announcing his name to the world. People harassed his wife and his wife's sister (apparently they couldn't spell Iraq right when they graffitti'd her house, spelling it "Iroc"
... so why be surprised the tax man gets interested?
Go check out their website. Front page there's a prominent fact box with 5 facts, and fact 4 is "US$ Spent Last 24h".
Come on, you don't need a PhD in media studies or textual analysis to see they are saying "come to Second Life because you can make money here" - whether you can or not is beside the point, they are trying to give the impression you can.
Having laid out their stall quite plainly, is it any wonder the tax authorities are going to wake up and say "oohh, so people are making money here? Well I guess we better tax it". It's a real no brainer surely - people shouting out how much money they are making in their virtual world and then getting upset because the taxman wants his cut. Income is income as far as tax man is concerned, whether you are a lumberjack chopping down trees and selling timber, a banker making money for shunting imaginary figures round on a screen or a second life trader selling enough flying pigs or worse to make real cash.
All money is virtual anyway, what's so special about this development?
Parent's point I'd guess would be that it's an arms war. If you're saying that the way to stop being knifed is to carry a knife yourself, then the criminals carry guns. And if you match that with a gun, surely the only solution is for everybody to carry fecking ridiculous big guns around? Personally I am happy to be able to walk down to the shops without needing to carry a weapon.
If weapons stop crime, how come the USA, one of the most tooled up countries in the world, has so much crime and so many people die from gun injuries?