Don't worry, it's a pretty common problem of people not reading my posts, so I'm used to it now.
Btw, is there a kind of "gift" system for paying for someone's subscription to WoW? It's usually a pain to buy something like that for someone with a credit card.
There's this married woman I really like. Do you guys think I'd have a chance with her if I introduced her husband to WoW so that he'd get hooked and not perform important functions like working and another I don't need to remind you of? I haven't played it myself so I'm not sure how effective this would be.
Yeah, well, what I think you're forgetting is that American sugar farmers don't like competition from overseas sugar growers, and American corn farmers really want higher prices for their corn. I mean, they could switch to other crops, but that's just a pain, you know? You might spend 100 hours a year adapting to keep your job skills relevant, but it's WAY too much to ask of American farmers that they grow a different fucking crop or sell their land and do something useful.
So, I understand your point, but it's more important for American farmers to get monopoly prices for their crops and not have to adapt to market conditions, than it is to prevent people from getting diabetes. You don't hate the romantic self-sufficient American farmer ideal... do you?
Your strategy of leaving earlier only works because most others leave later. If others adjusted their schedule, your strategy wouldn't look so hot. It's not a scalable solution for shortening commute times all around.
I disagree with the GP about "living near work" being an ideal solution to commuting, unless you like moving every time you change jobs. Tolls are the only way I see of shortening commute times all around with minimal side effects.
-I didn't argue for mass transit, just mentioned that one form of it (buses) it would probably result from what I did argue for.
but unless they run whenever I need it, I can't use it.
-They don't need to run "whenever you need them" just when you are unwilling to pay the tolls.
A vast majority of the bus routes that make sense where I live don't run but weekdays, 7-6.
-Yes, buses today run *differently* from how they would in an environment where there is high demand for workarounds for high peak hour tolls. What that has to do with an environment ripe for opportunties to start a bus or van line since it would save people a lot of money, I really have no idea.
(I'd have to walk home every time. That's 7 miles. No.)
-You'd never have to walk home under any scenario.
If push came to shove, I'd just drive using any number of slow altroutes. Ooh, it'd take me 20 minutes instead of 15 minutes.
-If you have a feasible alternative to the main routes, then yes, you should be using them, and being charged for the load you put on the infrastructure, rather than clogging it up for the other drivers, would be exactly what would lead you to use this alternative. Although I don't see it working if *everyone* was avoiding the high tolls this way.
I don't know if your post was a clever attempt to satirize the views of people who would oppose my proposal, or what. If you're being serious, I would submit that you didn't actually read my proposal, which was to charge for peak hour road usage commensurate with demand, or it didn't occur to you what transportation alternatives it would lead to. Either way, reading my posts is always appreciated.
I don't understand that though. If you're playing the game for the story, you want immersion, as suspension of disbelief, alternate world, etc. I would think you'd prefer the cutscenes to be integrated seamlessly with the rest of the game (i.e. have the game's logic give commands to the characters' models rather than run a pre-rendered scene with better graphics than the rest of the game and all objects out of place -- RE4 GameCube vs. PS2). So why would the extra space for detailed FMV's be better for you?
Well, I agree there are some rough spots to overcome, but today there are a lot of chartered buses that are very high quality. I think if some bus line just checked off the right boxes, they would qualify as a "private club" or something and be exempt from these rules, much like those chartered buses or vanpools are. (Or, outside of transportation, how country clubs and some bars and casinos are. Or even the Boy Scouts.) You could still have government buses running alongside the private buses too, to alleviate their concerns. Though I wouldn't be surprised if the same people who thought that government buses were "enough" for the bums, turn around the next day and say that they "need" access to the private buses too!
So you're right, there's no telling what city administators, forever on a power trip, will come up with, but I still think it can be done.
It may not matter at all in terms of health reasons. They may be scientifically able to rule out the possibility (to a high but imperfect level of confidence). But I still think that if people, for whatever reason, have some deep distrust of such products, they should still be given the OPTION to differentiate the products and not buy them. It's ridiculous to hide that information from them, even if their motives are ridiculous.
Considering that public transport doesn't (and never has), served my route to work at the times I work, all tolls would do would cost me even more money. There are already busses, but no-one uses them because they're slow, never go where you want them to go, and are full of criminals.
Would you kindly consider the impacts of a large portion of the population suddenly wanting to travel by bus? Is it that hard to believe that, with real, middle-class people actually using buses now, that private companies would set up more useful routes, and have non-smelly seats, and keep assholes off?
That's not an incentive it's a punishment. Financially punishing people for having the audacity to go to work is one of those elitist policies designed by the rich, to get their poor of 'their' roads so they have more room for their SUVs.
Cut the demagoguery. This isn't punishing people "for having the audacity to go to work". It's making them pay the costs they impose upon the infrastructure by clogging it at critical times. (no different than peak hour electrical pricing) It would charge the worker just as much as someone leaving on a vacation that morning. And if you think the elite, rich, suburban sprawl hating, power-tripping crowd wants anything like this proposal, you're seriously mistaken.
Is your free, long, stressful commute, really that valuable to you?
I don't see how this "punishes people for going to work" any more than it "punishes people for going to work" that they have to pay for any good. With roads, demand is well exceeding supply.
Nor do I think you understand the dynamics of it all: yes, you pay a monetary cost. You also have significantly less commute time. Same work hours, more opporunity to earn or have free time. That's why I say people aren't considering the alternatives appropriately: instead of paying peak-hour prices, you prefer the long and stressful, but free, goddamnit commute. That's fine -- if you're consciously making that tradeoff. But is this how most people feel? Two hours in stressful traffic everyday is "just the price we have to pay not to ride buses*" ? I'm amazed people have that kind of preference.
*privately run buses, of course, that keep the bums and urine out
Normally, I'd ignore crap like this until you actually make an argument, but since you'll probably get modded up and I know what you're getting at anyway, I'll respond.
I understand that there are tradeoffs between those goods, but my point was you can satisfy those specific constraints by sacrificing elsewhere -- specifically, the free peak-hour roads. If roads were priced in accordance with demand (i.e., such that peak hour is only a little worse than off peak), housing would still be cheaper (can pack people denser in the city, and can live farther out, and the monetary cost of using the roads bids down land prices), and the commute is less stressful because you don't have to drive (and you don't have to double the commute time to have someone else drive you) and the roads have been priced to the point that they are not overcrowded.
There is a cost -- the toll. I propose this is far below the benefits in terms of giving people more freedom from having to use a car, giving them more dense-living options, and giving them shorter commutes, all despite the immense psychological barrier to "paying for roads twice".
don't think that people would not drive on the roads if they tolled them on peak hours.
Sorry if I wasn't clear: the idea was that they would *use* the roads, but not necessarily as drivers, i.e., they would use transportation methods that cause less traffic per person, such as buses and vanpools.
I don't know if you're calling me an "anti-suburban-sprawl type" who argues "that everybody should live in the city along the mass transit lines", but that would be an error. All I want is to be able to live in a large city, affordably, without an extremely long, stressful commute across overcrowed roads. I'm fortunate in that I found work in a smaller (though still internationally famous) city that doesn't have traffic problems, but it would be nice if I didn't have to live so far out to avoid it.
I wonder if people really consider their alternatives appropriately. For "free" roads into town, you get a long, stressful, ~2 hour/day commute. How much of your life are you missing because your commute is ~3 times longer that it has to be? Would it be that bad if tolls made it so you could take a private bus to work in 1/3 of the time (or drive alone if you could afford the tolls)? (NOTE TO PEOPLE WHO ALWAYS MISREAD MY POSTS: I'm not saying people "should" ride buses, or that they should be forced into it specifically, or that there should be some petty system of incentives to push them in that direction. I just expect that to be the emergent result of appropriate peak hour pricing.)
As for "more roads bring congestion", I don't see why it's hard to grasp. At the moment the roads are widened, the farther-out sites are more attractive: "Hey, cheaper land, farther from the rabble, same commute time." But then EVERYONE thinks this way, and the aggregate effect is that those wider roads are no longer so sparse. You can ask anyone involved in transportation engineering for 20 years, and they'll tell you the same thing.
And as for better city-living alternatives, the sprawl-hating power-trippers are part of the problem in wanting to micromanage every such development, even though developers would love to build nicer, denser, safer housing there.
True, and it happens quite often. When you build new roads, you don't reduce congestion (except in the short term), you just encouarge more people to live along those roads, until you're back where you started. I've always thought it would make more sense to toll the roads at peak hours until congestion isn't much higher than off peak hours. That -- the hit to the pocketbook -- would do what petty little "tax credits to buses" or what not, haven't done, which is to get people to use more efficient forms of transportation. If you don't like the idea of "paying for a road twice", then redistribute all proceeds net of operating costs to the residents of the area equally. Don't drive, you get free money.
But back to the topic of BluRay: this seems to me like they're just not even trying to use better compression algorithms.
Anyone know why the US is stilling growing significantly, as opposed to most European countries?
Higher birth and immigration rates.
Which demographics are producing most children?
Red states. I'm serious. Comapre Utah to California. (I'd give you the stats if I were less lazy.)
How much does the number of legal immigrants contribute to the growth?
Don't know, but for comparison, I read that of all immigrants in the world (people who leave one country for another to live), 3/8 of them have the US as their destination.
Another stat I can't be bothered to check, but sounds reasonable.
People are responding to market signals all the time. You just don't hear about it. You don't hear about all the people aiming to profit from the expense of energy, BOTH today and tomorrow. The futures market indicates how likey it is to run out in the near future, and those future uses are reflected in prices today. If everyone falls behind in energy research, we'll know at least 20 years in advance.
I wonder if people have adequately allocated enough cabbage-growing land for future needs...
There are no tax breaks for developing oil, rather there are huge regulatory hurdles.
Government grants (e.g. if you build an atomic powerplant),
Name them. Be specific.
police protection (if you move Nuclear waste),
No, the companies must pay for this.
issuing permits
Allowing it to happen is a subsidy now?
(and building infrastructure)
It does not build their infrastructure.
etc. etc.
Please, name these cetera, at least as a hedge. If what you've given here is any guide, you're going to need all the cetera you can muster.
It appears you have unquestioningly bought into the popular "oil companies get huge subsidies" myth without doing a reality check. That won't fly here.
oh... you want to talk about legislative pull? All the cars around me don't noticeably pollute my air. You know what does? Woodburning in fireplaces, which happens every time it drops below 50 F (!). You ever hear about enforcement of restrictions on this?
You ever hear environmentalists moan about this kind of pollution?
Nope, because fireplaces, are like, cool. They pollute more than oil for the same heat output... but at least it doesn't generate profit, goddamnit!
Um... nobody (with any real financial knowledge) would use stocks (let alone, a *single* stock) as a monthly income fund. That's what bonds (preferably, a bond fund) are for. Those will pay ~7% on average, with moderate capital fluctuation. The purpose of stock investments is to grow your capital quickly *without* drawing significant income.
While I may have forgotten that part of the episode, Scrooge *did* demand that they mark "Thursday" material as "out of date", and there was a scene later in the episode where it showed a shot of downtown, and all the electronic signs went haywire as they tried to correct for incoming contradictory, rapidly-changing information, basically screwing up the economy.
I would show the EyeToy to folks who are non-gamers, and they thought it was interesting enough to buy a Playstation 2. Mind you, these were folks who would never consider playing typical console games.
Ditto. I got my mom a PS2 w/ Eyetoy:Kinetic, and she loved it so much she showed it to a neighbor, who then got it, and I just found out the other day that that neighbor showed it to her cousin, who has now gotten it.
Sony should be paying *me*... except that they don't have any money;-)
I remember an episode of Duck Tales, where the nephews (Huey, Dewey, and Louie) convinced Uncle Scrooge that the current day was Friday, rather than Thursday. (It was really Thursday.) They did this because they get their allowance on Friday, and they wanted to get it early.
Unfortunately, Uncle Scrooge is a major businessman, and when he was convinced that it was Friday, he "corrected" everyone. Since he's so respected, everyone else was convinced it was Friday too. This caused major disruptions in financial contracts, which rippled through the economy.
That morning, by the time the nephews got to the mall to spend their "early" allowance, the global economy had collapsed and they couldn't buy anything.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't worry, it's a pretty common problem of people not reading my posts, so I'm used to it now.
Btw, is there a kind of "gift" system for paying for someone's subscription to WoW? It's usually a pain to buy something like that for someone with a credit card.
There's this married woman I really like. Do you guys think I'd have a chance with her if I introduced her husband to WoW so that he'd get hooked and not perform important functions like working and another I don't need to remind you of? I haven't played it myself so I'm not sure how effective this would be.
Yeah, well, what I think you're forgetting is that American sugar farmers don't like competition from overseas sugar growers, and American corn farmers really want higher prices for their corn. I mean, they could switch to other crops, but that's just a pain, you know? You might spend 100 hours a year adapting to keep your job skills relevant, but it's WAY too much to ask of American farmers that they grow a different fucking crop or sell their land and do something useful.
... do you?
So, I understand your point, but it's more important for American farmers to get monopoly prices for their crops and not have to adapt to market conditions, than it is to prevent people from getting diabetes. You don't hate the romantic self-sufficient American farmer ideal
Your strategy of leaving earlier only works because most others leave later. If others adjusted their schedule, your strategy wouldn't look so hot. It's not a scalable solution for shortening commute times all around.
I disagree with the GP about "living near work" being an ideal solution to commuting, unless you like moving every time you change jobs. Tolls are the only way I see of shortening commute times all around with minimal side effects.
How exactly is your comment responsive to mine?
You can argue for mass transit
-I didn't argue for mass transit, just mentioned that one form of it (buses) it would probably result from what I did argue for.
but unless they run whenever I need it, I can't use it.
-They don't need to run "whenever you need them" just when you are unwilling to pay the tolls.
A vast majority of the bus routes that make sense where I live don't run but weekdays, 7-6.
-Yes, buses today run *differently* from how they would in an environment where there is high demand for workarounds for high peak hour tolls. What that has to do with an environment ripe for opportunties to start a bus or van line since it would save people a lot of money, I really have no idea.
(I'd have to walk home every time. That's 7 miles. No.)
-You'd never have to walk home under any scenario.
If push came to shove, I'd just drive using any number of slow altroutes. Ooh, it'd take me 20 minutes instead of 15 minutes.
-If you have a feasible alternative to the main routes, then yes, you should be using them, and being charged for the load you put on the infrastructure, rather than clogging it up for the other drivers, would be exactly what would lead you to use this alternative. Although I don't see it working if *everyone* was avoiding the high tolls this way.
I don't know if your post was a clever attempt to satirize the views of people who would oppose my proposal, or what. If you're being serious, I would submit that you didn't actually read my proposal, which was to charge for peak hour road usage commensurate with demand, or it didn't occur to you what transportation alternatives it would lead to. Either way, reading my posts is always appreciated.
I don't understand that though. If you're playing the game for the story, you want immersion, as suspension of disbelief, alternate world, etc. I would think you'd prefer the cutscenes to be integrated seamlessly with the rest of the game (i.e. have the game's logic give commands to the characters' models rather than run a pre-rendered scene with better graphics than the rest of the game and all objects out of place -- RE4 GameCube vs. PS2). So why would the extra space for detailed FMV's be better for you?
Well, I agree there are some rough spots to overcome, but today there are a lot of chartered buses that are very high quality. I think if some bus line just checked off the right boxes, they would qualify as a "private club" or something and be exempt from these rules, much like those chartered buses or vanpools are. (Or, outside of transportation, how country clubs and some bars and casinos are. Or even the Boy Scouts.) You could still have government buses running alongside the private buses too, to alleviate their concerns. Though I wouldn't be surprised if the same people who thought that government buses were "enough" for the bums, turn around the next day and say that they "need" access to the private buses too!
So you're right, there's no telling what city administators, forever on a power trip, will come up with, but I still think it can be done.
It may not matter at all in terms of health reasons. They may be scientifically able to rule out the possibility (to a high but imperfect level of confidence). But I still think that if people, for whatever reason, have some deep distrust of such products, they should still be given the OPTION to differentiate the products and not buy them. It's ridiculous to hide that information from them, even if their motives are ridiculous.
Considering that public transport doesn't (and never has), served my route to work at the times I work, all tolls would do would cost me even more money. There are already busses, but no-one uses them because they're slow, never go where you want them to go, and are full of criminals.
Would you kindly consider the impacts of a large portion of the population suddenly wanting to travel by bus? Is it that hard to believe that, with real, middle-class people actually using buses now, that private companies would set up more useful routes, and have non-smelly seats, and keep assholes off?
That's not an incentive it's a punishment. Financially punishing people for having the audacity to go to work is one of those elitist policies designed by the rich, to get their poor of 'their' roads so they have more room for their SUVs.
Cut the demagoguery. This isn't punishing people "for having the audacity to go to work". It's making them pay the costs they impose upon the infrastructure by clogging it at critical times. (no different than peak hour electrical pricing) It would charge the worker just as much as someone leaving on a vacation that morning. And if you think the elite, rich, suburban sprawl hating, power-tripping crowd wants anything like this proposal, you're seriously mistaken.
Is your free, long, stressful commute, really that valuable to you?
I don't see how this "punishes people for going to work" any more than it "punishes people for going to work" that they have to pay for any good. With roads, demand is well exceeding supply.
Nor do I think you understand the dynamics of it all: yes, you pay a monetary cost. You also have significantly less commute time. Same work hours, more opporunity to earn or have free time. That's why I say people aren't considering the alternatives appropriately: instead of paying peak-hour prices, you prefer the long and stressful, but free, goddamnit commute. That's fine -- if you're consciously making that tradeoff. But is this how most people feel? Two hours in stressful traffic everyday is "just the price we have to pay not to ride buses*" ? I'm amazed people have that kind of preference.
*privately run buses, of course, that keep the bums and urine out
Normally, I'd ignore crap like this until you actually make an argument, but since you'll probably get modded up and I know what you're getting at anyway, I'll respond.
I understand that there are tradeoffs between those goods, but my point was you can satisfy those specific constraints by sacrificing elsewhere -- specifically, the free peak-hour roads. If roads were priced in accordance with demand (i.e., such that peak hour is only a little worse than off peak), housing would still be cheaper (can pack people denser in the city, and can live farther out, and the monetary cost of using the roads bids down land prices), and the commute is less stressful because you don't have to drive (and you don't have to double the commute time to have someone else drive you) and the roads have been priced to the point that they are not overcrowded.
There is a cost -- the toll. I propose this is far below the benefits in terms of giving people more freedom from having to use a car, giving them more dense-living options, and giving them shorter commutes, all despite the immense psychological barrier to "paying for roads twice".
don't think that people would not drive on the roads if they tolled them on peak hours.
Sorry if I wasn't clear: the idea was that they would *use* the roads, but not necessarily as drivers, i.e., they would use transportation methods that cause less traffic per person, such as buses and vanpools.
I don't know if you're calling me an "anti-suburban-sprawl type" who argues "that everybody should live in the city along the mass transit lines", but that would be an error. All I want is to be able to live in a large city, affordably, without an extremely long, stressful commute across overcrowed roads. I'm fortunate in that I found work in a smaller (though still internationally famous) city that doesn't have traffic problems, but it would be nice if I didn't have to live so far out to avoid it.
I wonder if people really consider their alternatives appropriately. For "free" roads into town, you get a long, stressful, ~2 hour/day commute. How much of your life are you missing because your commute is ~3 times longer that it has to be? Would it be that bad if tolls made it so you could take a private bus to work in 1/3 of the time (or drive alone if you could afford the tolls)? (NOTE TO PEOPLE WHO ALWAYS MISREAD MY POSTS: I'm not saying people "should" ride buses, or that they should be forced into it specifically, or that there should be some petty system of incentives to push them in that direction. I just expect that to be the emergent result of appropriate peak hour pricing.)
As for "more roads bring congestion", I don't see why it's hard to grasp. At the moment the roads are widened, the farther-out sites are more attractive: "Hey, cheaper land, farther from the rabble, same commute time." But then EVERYONE thinks this way, and the aggregate effect is that those wider roads are no longer so sparse. You can ask anyone involved in transportation engineering for 20 years, and they'll tell you the same thing.
And as for better city-living alternatives, the sprawl-hating power-trippers are part of the problem in wanting to micromanage every such development, even though developers would love to build nicer, denser, safer housing there.
True, and it happens quite often. When you build new roads, you don't reduce congestion (except in the short term), you just encouarge more people to live along those roads, until you're back where you started. I've always thought it would make more sense to toll the roads at peak hours until congestion isn't much higher than off peak hours. That -- the hit to the pocketbook -- would do what petty little "tax credits to buses" or what not, haven't done, which is to get people to use more efficient forms of transportation. If you don't like the idea of "paying for a road twice", then redistribute all proceeds net of operating costs to the residents of the area equally. Don't drive, you get free money.
But back to the topic of BluRay: this seems to me like they're just not even trying to use better compression algorithms.
Anyone know why the US is stilling growing significantly, as opposed to most European countries?
Higher birth and immigration rates.
Which demographics are producing most children?
Red states. I'm serious. Comapre Utah to California. (I'd give you the stats if I were less lazy.)
How much does the number of legal immigrants contribute to the growth?
Don't know, but for comparison, I read that of all immigrants in the world (people who leave one country for another to live), 3/8 of them have the US as their destination.
Another stat I can't be bothered to check, but sounds reasonable.
Do you apply the same reasoning to all products?
People are responding to market signals all the time. You just don't hear about it. You don't hear about all the people aiming to profit from the expense of energy, BOTH today and tomorrow. The futures market indicates how likey it is to run out in the near future, and those future uses are reflected in prices today. If everyone falls behind in energy research, we'll know at least 20 years in advance.
I wonder if people have adequately allocated enough cabbage-growing land for future needs...
I agree, that explanation does bite. The three rotational axes are about the same axes as the translational.
I also heard that the SIXAXIS controller ... only uses three axes :-(
Sure they do. Through tax breaks,
There are no tax breaks for developing oil, rather there are huge regulatory hurdles.
Government grants (e.g. if you build an atomic powerplant),
Name them. Be specific.
police protection (if you move Nuclear waste),
No, the companies must pay for this.
issuing permits
Allowing it to happen is a subsidy now?
(and building infrastructure)
It does not build their infrastructure.
etc. etc.
Please, name these cetera, at least as a hedge. If what you've given here is any guide, you're going to need all the cetera you can muster.
It appears you have unquestioningly bought into the popular "oil companies get huge subsidies" myth without doing a reality check. That won't fly here.
Okay, I'm taking guesses on how Sony's use of Linux will violate the GPL. Anyone got an idea?
oh... you want to talk about legislative pull? All the cars around me don't noticeably pollute my air. You know what does? Woodburning in fireplaces, which happens every time it drops below 50 F (!). You ever hear about enforcement of restrictions on this?
... but at least it doesn't generate profit, goddamnit!
You ever hear environmentalists moan about this kind of pollution?
Nope, because fireplaces, are like, cool. They pollute more than oil for the same heat output
Um ... nobody (with any real financial knowledge) would use stocks (let alone, a *single* stock) as a monthly income fund. That's what bonds (preferably, a bond fund) are for. Those will pay ~7% on average, with moderate capital fluctuation. The purpose of stock investments is to grow your capital quickly *without* drawing significant income.
Go to vanguard.com.
While I may have forgotten that part of the episode, Scrooge *did* demand that they mark "Thursday" material as "out of date", and there was a scene later in the episode where it showed a shot of downtown, and all the electronic signs went haywire as they tried to correct for incoming contradictory, rapidly-changing information, basically screwing up the economy.
I would show the EyeToy to folks who are non-gamers, and they thought it was interesting enough to buy a Playstation 2. Mind you, these were folks who would never consider playing typical console games.
... except that they don't have any money ;-)
Ditto. I got my mom a PS2 w/ Eyetoy:Kinetic, and she loved it so much she showed it to a neighbor, who then got it, and I just found out the other day that that neighbor showed it to her cousin, who has now gotten it.
Sony should be paying *me*
I remember an episode of Duck Tales, where the nephews (Huey, Dewey, and Louie) convinced Uncle Scrooge that the current day was Friday, rather than Thursday. (It was really Thursday.) They did this because they get their allowance on Friday, and they wanted to get it early.
Unfortunately, Uncle Scrooge is a major businessman, and when he was convinced that it was Friday, he "corrected" everyone. Since he's so respected, everyone else was convinced it was Friday too. This caused major disruptions in financial contracts, which rippled through the economy.
That morning, by the time the nephews got to the mall to spend their "early" allowance, the global economy had collapsed and they couldn't buy anything.