I believe the statement necessary here is "to each his own". And for your initial argument of having the TV on while doing other things... one can do that JUST as easily with either the DVD series of a show, or by downloading or streaming the show online. And it saves a ton of money.
First, off, brush up on your reading skills. I'm working on my computer - how exactly do I stream the show at the same time without slowing down my work? Most of the shows I like aren't legally available for download. And why do I want to spend money on DVD's when I rarely watch a show more than once? Also, since both a full cable package and high speed internet are included in my rent, and there's no discount available for cancelling, why not take advantage of it?
Alternatively, since you just have the tv 'on', one can do the same with the radio, only completely for free. Or a CD. Or an mp3 player. Or again... streaming audio media.
I stopped listening to radio three or four years ago. There's just nothing I want to hear, and the music/ad ratio seems to be less than 1. But when I have the TV "on", I also use it as a DEW signal that everything's OK. If a tornado was coming, my TV would be beeping warnings like crazy, regardless of what station or show I was watching. And since part of my work revolves around the financial world, I flip between financial news channels. Again, I'm able to multi-task - pay attention to what I'm writing, and understand what's on the TV.
Nnnnope, I count myself in the 'To hell with TV' pile of people... over 2 years running. Of the maybe 3 or so shows I want to watch... that's what the good old internet is for. No ads, and I watch when I want, how I want, without the need to buy/build a PVR.
So your advice to me is become an internet pirate, and download p2p traffic (which could put me up against a traffic limit and/or shaping), when it's all available for free? Thanks, I appreciate that.
This is in reply to all the posters above who wrote variations on the "There's nothing worth watching on TV anyway" theme. Are you kidding me?
Mad Men is a brilliant depiction of early 60's life on Madison Avenue. Breaking Bad is riveting drama. And Rescue Me oscillates between balls-out humour and tragedy. I don't mind giving up three hours a week for the 16 new episodes each year of these shows. And, although in this post-literate world I doubt many realize it, most of Charles Dickens' classics were written as weekly serials that were eagerly awaited by his readers at the time.
At the same time, I enjoy spending time with my two teenage daughters watching The Simpsons and South Park. That's a communal experience where we share observations and thoughts triggered not only by the shows, but by the news breaks and even commercials.
I'll admit most prime time network fare leaves me cold (House is an exception), but there always seems to be something interesting on the "speciality" channels. Watching Deadliest Catch for example, made me much more cognizant of how exactly that king crab got on my plate. I've learned a lot about cooking from the Food Network. National Geographic and History channels both provide more depth to subjects which I previously knew only cursorily.
But here's the real thing: are you all brainless single-taskers? As I write this, there's a TV show playing next to me. I work at home, and I have both my computer and TV on pretty much all day. It doesn't seem to affect my ability to get work done.
And if I'm watching a set that's not near my computer, I usually have a book or magazine in my hand. Just last night, my daughters convinced me to watch "America's Best Dance Crew" with them. (My elder daughter spent 7 years in competitive dance before giving it up for soccer.) I was so proud of both of them. They paid attention while the different groups did their dance sets, listened to the judges' comments, and then both immediately turned away from the commercials and other drivel, and started reading the novels that were in their laps.
If your idea of watching TV is sitting with a remote in one hand, a drink in the other, and a bowl of chips in your lap, then I agree, get rid of your idiot box. But if you treat it as another, parallel, information source, and have some other useful content at hand, then TV can be entertaining, stimulating, and informative.
And why the hell the UK government should spend ANY UK taxpayers money to even consider his request is beyond me. He's not British.
What kind of nonsense is this? If George Bush had refused to release US gathered temperature data to British scientists, no doubt you would have been fulminating about his fascism, anti-intellectual approach, suppression of science, etc., etc. There are only three possible cases here:
1: You believe in the scientific process, and welcome any attempts to invalidate your conclusions because you believe in the long run that will maximize our knowledge.
2: You believe so strongly in your data and conclusions that you welcome any attempts to invalidate your conclusions because you believe each failed attempt will only strengthen your argument.
3: You're a chicken-sh*t quasi-scientist more interested in getting additional grant money than allowing people who haven't drunk the same Kool-Aid to review your data and conclusions. Hint: This is the door I think you're hiding behind.
And Steve McIntyre does have an advanced degree. What have you done, Basil? Good results on your O-levels? Twit.
He was making a referendum about the possibility of changing the constitution, you jump tp "president for life".
You did read the words "although not proven" in my original sentence, didn't you?
And PLEASE, stop repeating the canard that he was "illegally" removed from power. As I stated in my original post, you have a President who defies the Supreme Court and Congress, tries to get the head of the Army to do his illegal bidding and when the Army chief refuses, fires him, and then tries to get his supporters to do his illegal bidding. What would he have to do before you removed him from power? Bite the heads off chickens? Shoot people in the back of the head in public?
As I said earlier, putting him in jail risked an armed confrontation between Zelaya's supporters and the police protecting said jail. This would inevitably result in bloodshed on both sides, and could easily foment civil war.
As for your last comment, I doubt you'll understand, but let me try: the current Honduran constitution explicitly states that trying to change the President's term is treason. It is silent on an impeachment process, or trying to add one. So trying to change the former is treason, trying to change the latter is not. I hope that wasn't too difficult for you.
Like to move into the 21st century? I've lived in Ontario all my life, and while Niagara Falls does generate a lot of power, for many years, over 50% - that's more than half of Ontario's power has come from nuclear generation. You could look it up at the Ontario Power Generation (OPG) site. But, since much of our power did come from the Falls for many years, the firm was called "Ontario Hydro", and "hydro" has become a synonym for "electricity" here.
You admit batteries waste energy. They are not a solution for reducing energy usage and making a "greener" society.
Gee, did my closing line "I don't think it would ever make sense to use a battery system" help you reach that stunning conclusion? Thanks, Mr. Obvious.
Totally agree. Just looked up the Danish windfarm (Vestas) turbines figures. For each installed MW of capacity, they produce less than.25 MJ/s. So, 300 x 5 MW turbines= 1,500 MW capacity, but will produce, on average, less than a single 500 MW conventional plant. In addition, at my lakeside cottage, we noticed that the winds consistently died down around dawn, and again around dusk, which coincidentally is the time of peak demand (at least in Ontario; might be different in Texas).
I've posted elsewhere on this, but the Honduran constitution does not have an impeachment process. Also, although you didn't say this, others have contended someone (either Zelaya or the current civilian government - they took the current Speaker of the House and made him President; it's not an f***ing military government) fixed voting machines. Honduras doesn't have voting machines. Zelaya had paper ballots printed up, which he asked the army to distribute. When the Army chief refused to do so, Zelaya sacked him. The Supreme Court reinstated him. Zelaya then got his supporters to seize the ballots anyway. That's when he was hustled out of the country.
Geez, there's so much idiocy, misrepresentation, and error here, you'd think I was on/. Oh, wait...
If you had reading comprehension skills beyond the 3rd grade, you'd realize these weren't voting machines. The Honduran authorities had already seized the paper ballots Zelaya intended to distribute. No freakin' hacking was necessary; these were ordinary PC's with some bogus facts and figures on them.
However, I'll concede your point that we'll never know if these figures were created by Zelaya, or by the current government. From what I've read, each explanation seems quite plausible.
This isn't a case of "liberty"; this is a case of an elected official subject to term limits who was trying to subvert the constitution so he could extend his term, and although not proven, given his close friendship with Chavez, then declare himself "President for Life". I'm sure the originators of the document didn't include the provision that trying to change term limits for the President was treason on a whim.
Far better, I agree, that Honduras amend their constitution to include an impeachment process. But seriously, isn't "high crimes and misdemeanours" pretty wide in itself?
Quite an interesting solution to a problem that shouldn't exist.
This is only a problem in the US because you insist on voting for everything from dogcatcher to President on one day. No wonder it takes time to tabulate. Here in Canada, when we have a federal election, it's a federal election. I can concentrate on the candidates in my riding, and the policies of the various federal parties, and make a choice. Same thing when it's a provincial election. The only time we get multiple ballots is municipal elections, when you might be voting for a mayor, a local councilor, and a school trustee.
Balloting ends at 8 pm local time, and the results are usually known within two hours. Some very close seats may require a recount, and if the results are close enough, a losing candidate can require a second recount. But I can't remember a single time in my life when I went to bed without knowing who'd won.
And, as others have noted, each party sends a "scrutineer" to the counting process. Although the actual counts are performed by Elections Canada official (non-partisan in theory), each party can have a person present to challenge rejected or unclear ballots.
I would fight like hell against any attempt to replace this simple, workable, verifiable solution with electronic voting which could easily be subject to manipulation, just so we could know the results an hour sooner.
I don't know if the Honduran constitution has a mechanism to remove a sitting president from office
They don't. See "hondurascrisis.org" for details from a Honduran.
Wikipedia's article on the matter suggests that by even trying to hold the referendum, the constitution required that he was to be removed from office.
Again, according to the link above, the constitution does say that trying to change the length of the President's term (currently 4 years) is treason. Zelaya was trying to change the rules to allow for his re-election. So, technically, he was committing treason.
Now, for all those who call this a "coup", ask yourself what the Honduran authorities were supposed to do? You had a President committing treason, repeatedly ignoring the orders of the Supreme Court, and attempting to use the military to hold an illegal referendum. You don't have an impeachment process. Do you:
1: Put him in jail in Honduras? Possible, but then he's in a place where his supporters know where he is, which could lead to a mass assault in an attempt to free him. If that happens, hundreds of people could die, and incite a civil war.
2: Execute him. Obviously, a non-starter. It creates a martyr, and again the chance of civil war.
3: Exile him. Clearly the wisest choice. Get him out of the country, and away from his supporters, try to let the situation cool down, and get the facts out. The fact that CNN, the BBC, etc. are staunchly suppressing these facts, and dressing this up as a military coup says more about their agenda than it does their believability as objective news organizations.
In Ontario, at least, major industrial users are offered preferential pricing contracts, but with the proviso that they reduce demand during periods when demand exceeds supply. Also, time-of-use pricing, implemented for industrial commercial users a few years ago, has resulted in companies raising temperatures, reducing lighting (e.g. turning off every other bank of lights at the local Wal-Mart). It's amazing how well price signals work when you let them.
In Western Canada, many firms provide electric outlets in their parking lots - not to recharge batteries, but for block heaters in winter, so people's cars will start after 8 hours in the office. I'm sure they could work out some accomodation for 3rd shifters (and since off-peak industrial rates are cheaper in Canada than off-peak residential rates, those 3rd shifters might even save money.)
But don't let a little creative thinking get in the way of your anti-electric bias.
Here in Ontario, we will be moving to "time of use" pricing in another year or so (after virtually all homes and small businesses have smart meters installed; we got ours a couple of weeks ago). Peak prices now are 9.1 cents/kWh (Cdn); off-peak is 4.2 cents, and mid-peak is 7.6 cents. Let's assume the battery system is 90% (typical UPS's I've seen are about 66%).
Let's assume I use it to power my computer (200W) for the 6 hour peak period in summer. To get the 1.2 kWh at 90% means I use about 1.35 kWh to charge the battery. At off-peak rates, that's 5.6 cents. At peak rates, which means I wouldn't bother with the UPS, but just draw the power directly, I would use 1.2 kWh at 9.1 cents. That's 10.92 cents, or a difference of 5.3 cents/day. Since weekends are all off-peak, for the approximately 250 week days, that's $13.30 a year saved by using batteries (and it's actually less, as in the winter, the daytime peak period is shorter, but I'm too lazy to figure that out). Now, I found a standard commercial UPS with a 1500 VA capacity for $150 Cdn (not including tax). As noted above, it's nowhere near 90% efficient, but even if it is, with the taxes, it's about a 13 year payback, assuming the UPS can realistically cycle 13 * 250 = 3,250 times without any extra maintenance or battery replacement.
And since from what I've seen, UPS prices don't increase linearly with capacity, but rather become much more expensive per VA as capacity goes up, I think the equation gets worse if you try to add extra appliances. So, unless peak prices get to be almost 4 times off-peak, I don't think it would ever make sense to use a battery system.
Um, you should tell that to the thousands of unemployed lumbermen in New Brunswick, Quebec, and British Columbia. Between the use of recycled newsprint, the decline in newspaper readership, and people not buying as many books, the revenues of the Canadian pulp and paper industry have decreased from about $10 billion in 2000 to just over $5 billion last year.
Ironically, in our last election the moonbat leader of the Canadian Green Party actually campaigned on more logging. Cynics would suggest that's because of lot of those unemployed lumbermen were in her riding, and she was simply pandering for votes, but of course, I would never say that.
It's not even a new study. The Ars Technica article cited another article from November of last year right next to the "new" study. Same guys at U of M. Same conclusions. Now excuse while I yawn.
I don't disagree with you in general, but when companies started offering a bonus to sales agents for each new customer signed up - a not uncommon sales incentive, some agents quickly found that offering some of that rebate to the customer increased their gross sales dramatically. I remember a sales guy I worked with at a telecom firm after I left the cellular company complaining "You guys raped and pillaged us on handset prices". I thought this was a bit rich coming from a guy who charged $70,000 for a 4-channel voice mail system (and no, that's not a typo!), but it was indicative of consumer attitudes. Once they found some people offering lower prices on handsets, they were convinced that we were overcharging, and a few cents extra a minute on their contract seemed to be inconsequential. Never underestimate the inability of the general public to perform basic arithmetic! If Total Cost of Ownership had been a common process, Apple should have owned the business market after it introduced the Mac (shorter training, fewer crashes, etc.). But people looked at Macs, saw a $3500 price, looked at a PC-AT, saw a $2500 price, and the rest, as Bill Gates might say, is history.
Very droll. The issue is I used to use "li" all the time, and it worked perfectly fine. Now, sometimes it gives you one line, sometimes none, and sometimes two. See my sig for my reaction.
I don't disagree about the high prices; I remember the VP Marketing tell me, in no uncertain terms, "Our basic policy is we never discount minutes".
But you underestimate the challenges we faced after introduction (this was about 20 years ago). The collective genius of marketing predicted the number of subscribers as "X"; when it turned out to be "3X", every other division of the company was scrambling. There weren't enough people in customer service to handle all the complaints, so we got a reputation for lousy service. There weren't enough cell sites so the engineers were working 60 hours to provision and tune them. The billing system was from Cincinnati Bell, and they didn't give us source code. I was the technical liason from Marketing to these other departments. When the upper crust of Marketing decided we needed to add a new billing plan, they would send me down with the admonition "They'll try to give you some excuse about not having source code; it's just their way of stalling". So even though we were getting lots of customers, our costs with all the overtime, rush fees, etc., were very high. We had to rebate a lot of calls because they dropped part way through. And the sales people were allowed to give out "non revenue" lines to clients (read "friends"); when they finally audited that, they were astonished to find that we had given out over 20,000 non-rev lines in Ontario alone - that was about 1 in 8, IIRC. In that environment, trying to adapt to new equipment was, shall we say, problematic. I recall one occasion when I was trying to find the status of the integration of voice mail/paging system, the engineer in charge saw me in the switch room and literally ran away.
Still, it was a tremendous education in how not to run a business. I left after 18 months much wiser.
Sorry, this again misses the point. You clearly don't understand that network modifications might need to be made, changes to billing systems, etc., all of which cost money. A CDMA network is as different from a TDSM one as a highway is from a railroad. So Union Pacific should demand that GM - well, maybe Toyota - build cars that can on railways as well? Or, since that example is backward from this case, let's turn it around - GM should demand that UP change their signals, sidings, billing, etc., so their "dual" cars could run on UP's tracks? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
I used to work for a cellular carrier in Canada. When wireless data was introduced, there were quite significant technical differences between the devices. Trying to adapt our network to support all the devices was quite impossible - it would have cost way too much, sucked up engineering resources we needed elsewhere, and because of the testing needed to ensure there were no incompatibilities, delayed product introduction, giving our competitors an advantage.
It made a great deal of sense to select one or two devices, get them to agree to an exclusive contract, which would include us paying to promote their devices, and get the product to market. I don't see this situation being any different. It helped both us as a network provider, and them as a device provider. I don't see this as a conspiracy to restrict trade, just common business sense.
And, on an unrelated note, could anyone tell me why the HTML "li" code now works erratically? Is there another code that just gives me a simple new paragraph?
I was going to moderate on this discussion, but the hell with it..
I agree most non-competes are garbage. However, I have always signed someone else's name when requested to complete one (at least half a dozen times). No one ever checks the signature! I wonder how that would work out in court - "Hey, I didn't sign this! Someone named Frank Drakman did!".
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First, off, brush up on your reading skills. I'm working on my computer - how exactly do I stream the show at the same time without slowing down my work? Most of the shows I like aren't legally available for download. And why do I want to spend money on DVD's when I rarely watch a show more than once? Also, since both a full cable package and high speed internet are included in my rent, and there's no discount available for cancelling, why not take advantage of it?
Alternatively, since you just have the tv 'on', one can do the same with the radio, only completely for free. Or a CD. Or an mp3 player. Or again... streaming audio media.
I stopped listening to radio three or four years ago. There's just nothing I want to hear, and the music/ad ratio seems to be less than 1. But when I have the TV "on", I also use it as a DEW signal that everything's OK. If a tornado was coming, my TV would be beeping warnings like crazy, regardless of what station or show I was watching. And since part of my work revolves around the financial world, I flip between financial news channels. Again, I'm able to multi-task - pay attention to what I'm writing, and understand what's on the TV.
Nnnnope, I count myself in the 'To hell with TV' pile of people... over 2 years running. Of the maybe 3 or so shows I want to watch... that's what the good old internet is for. No ads, and I watch when I want, how I want, without the need to buy/build a PVR.
So your advice to me is become an internet pirate, and download p2p traffic (which could put me up against a traffic limit and/or shaping), when it's all available for free? Thanks, I appreciate that.
Mad Men is a brilliant depiction of early 60's life on Madison Avenue. Breaking Bad is riveting drama. And Rescue Me oscillates between balls-out humour and tragedy. I don't mind giving up three hours a week for the 16 new episodes each year of these shows. And, although in this post-literate world I doubt many realize it, most of Charles Dickens' classics were written as weekly serials that were eagerly awaited by his readers at the time.
At the same time, I enjoy spending time with my two teenage daughters watching The Simpsons and South Park. That's a communal experience where we share observations and thoughts triggered not only by the shows, but by the news breaks and even commercials.
I'll admit most prime time network fare leaves me cold (House is an exception), but there always seems to be something interesting on the "speciality" channels. Watching Deadliest Catch for example, made me much more cognizant of how exactly that king crab got on my plate. I've learned a lot about cooking from the Food Network. National Geographic and History channels both provide more depth to subjects which I previously knew only cursorily.
But here's the real thing: are you all brainless single-taskers? As I write this, there's a TV show playing next to me. I work at home, and I have both my computer and TV on pretty much all day. It doesn't seem to affect my ability to get work done.
And if I'm watching a set that's not near my computer, I usually have a book or magazine in my hand. Just last night, my daughters convinced me to watch "America's Best Dance Crew" with them. (My elder daughter spent 7 years in competitive dance before giving it up for soccer.) I was so proud of both of them. They paid attention while the different groups did their dance sets, listened to the judges' comments, and then both immediately turned away from the commercials and other drivel, and started reading the novels that were in their laps.
If your idea of watching TV is sitting with a remote in one hand, a drink in the other, and a bowl of chips in your lap, then I agree, get rid of your idiot box. But if you treat it as another, parallel, information source, and have some other useful content at hand, then TV can be entertaining, stimulating, and informative.
What kind of nonsense is this? If George Bush had refused to release US gathered temperature data to British scientists, no doubt you would have been fulminating about his fascism, anti-intellectual approach, suppression of science, etc., etc. There are only three possible cases here:
1: You believe in the scientific process, and welcome any attempts to invalidate your conclusions because you believe in the long run that will maximize our knowledge.
2: You believe so strongly in your data and conclusions that you welcome any attempts to invalidate your conclusions because you believe each failed attempt will only strengthen your argument.
3: You're a chicken-sh*t quasi-scientist more interested in getting additional grant money than allowing people who haven't drunk the same Kool-Aid to review your data and conclusions. Hint: This is the door I think you're hiding behind.
And Steve McIntyre does have an advanced degree. What have you done, Basil? Good results on your O-levels? Twit.
.. does it run Linux?
You did read the words "although not proven" in my original sentence, didn't you?
And PLEASE, stop repeating the canard that he was "illegally" removed from power. As I stated in my original post, you have a President who defies the Supreme Court and Congress, tries to get the head of the Army to do his illegal bidding and when the Army chief refuses, fires him, and then tries to get his supporters to do his illegal bidding. What would he have to do before you removed him from power? Bite the heads off chickens? Shoot people in the back of the head in public?
As I said earlier, putting him in jail risked an armed confrontation between Zelaya's supporters and the police protecting said jail. This would inevitably result in bloodshed on both sides, and could easily foment civil war.
As for your last comment, I doubt you'll understand, but let me try: the current Honduran constitution explicitly states that trying to change the President's term is treason. It is silent on an impeachment process, or trying to add one. So trying to change the former is treason, trying to change the latter is not. I hope that wasn't too difficult for you.
Like to move into the 21st century? I've lived in Ontario all my life, and while Niagara Falls does generate a lot of power, for many years, over 50% - that's more than half of Ontario's power has come from nuclear generation. You could look it up at the Ontario Power Generation (OPG) site. But, since much of our power did come from the Falls for many years, the firm was called "Ontario Hydro", and "hydro" has become a synonym for "electricity" here.
You admit batteries waste energy. They are not a solution for reducing energy usage and making a "greener" society. Gee, did my closing line "I don't think it would ever make sense to use a battery system" help you reach that stunning conclusion? Thanks, Mr. Obvious.
Totally agree. Just looked up the Danish windfarm (Vestas) turbines figures. For each installed MW of capacity, they produce less than .25 MJ/s. So, 300 x 5 MW turbines= 1,500 MW capacity, but will produce, on average, less than a single 500 MW conventional plant. In addition, at my lakeside cottage, we noticed that the winds consistently died down around dawn, and again around dusk, which coincidentally is the time of peak demand (at least in Ontario; might be different in Texas).
I've posted elsewhere on this, but the Honduran constitution does not have an impeachment process. Also, although you didn't say this, others have contended someone (either Zelaya or the current civilian government - they took the current Speaker of the House and made him President; it's not an f***ing military government) fixed voting machines. Honduras doesn't have voting machines. Zelaya had paper ballots printed up, which he asked the army to distribute. When the Army chief refused to do so, Zelaya sacked him. The Supreme Court reinstated him. Zelaya then got his supporters to seize the ballots anyway. That's when he was hustled out of the country. Geez, there's so much idiocy, misrepresentation, and error here, you'd think I was on /. Oh, wait...
If you had reading comprehension skills beyond the 3rd grade, you'd realize these weren't voting machines. The Honduran authorities had already seized the paper ballots Zelaya intended to distribute. No freakin' hacking was necessary; these were ordinary PC's with some bogus facts and figures on them.
However, I'll concede your point that we'll never know if these figures were created by Zelaya, or by the current government. From what I've read, each explanation seems quite plausible.
Far better, I agree, that Honduras amend their constitution to include an impeachment process. But seriously, isn't "high crimes and misdemeanours" pretty wide in itself?
Quite an interesting solution to a problem that shouldn't exist.
This is only a problem in the US because you insist on voting for everything from dogcatcher to President on one day. No wonder it takes time to tabulate. Here in Canada, when we have a federal election, it's a federal election. I can concentrate on the candidates in my riding, and the policies of the various federal parties, and make a choice. Same thing when it's a provincial election. The only time we get multiple ballots is municipal elections, when you might be voting for a mayor, a local councilor, and a school trustee.
Balloting ends at 8 pm local time, and the results are usually known within two hours. Some very close seats may require a recount, and if the results are close enough, a losing candidate can require a second recount. But I can't remember a single time in my life when I went to bed without knowing who'd won.
And, as others have noted, each party sends a "scrutineer" to the counting process. Although the actual counts are performed by Elections Canada official (non-partisan in theory), each party can have a person present to challenge rejected or unclear ballots.
I would fight like hell against any attempt to replace this simple, workable, verifiable solution with electronic voting which could easily be subject to manipulation, just so we could know the results an hour sooner.
They don't. See "hondurascrisis.org" for details from a Honduran.
Wikipedia's article on the matter suggests that by even trying to hold the referendum, the constitution required that he was to be removed from office.
Again, according to the link above, the constitution does say that trying to change the length of the President's term (currently 4 years) is treason. Zelaya was trying to change the rules to allow for his re-election. So, technically, he was committing treason.
Now, for all those who call this a "coup", ask yourself what the Honduran authorities were supposed to do? You had a President committing treason, repeatedly ignoring the orders of the Supreme Court, and attempting to use the military to hold an illegal referendum. You don't have an impeachment process. Do you:
1: Put him in jail in Honduras? Possible, but then he's in a place where his supporters know where he is, which could lead to a mass assault in an attempt to free him. If that happens, hundreds of people could die, and incite a civil war.
2: Execute him. Obviously, a non-starter. It creates a martyr, and again the chance of civil war.
3: Exile him. Clearly the wisest choice. Get him out of the country, and away from his supporters, try to let the situation cool down, and get the facts out. The fact that CNN, the BBC, etc. are staunchly suppressing these facts, and dressing this up as a military coup says more about their agenda than it does their believability as objective news organizations.
In Ontario, at least, major industrial users are offered preferential pricing contracts, but with the proviso that they reduce demand during periods when demand exceeds supply. Also, time-of-use pricing, implemented for industrial commercial users a few years ago, has resulted in companies raising temperatures, reducing lighting (e.g. turning off every other bank of lights at the local Wal-Mart). It's amazing how well price signals work when you let them.
In Western Canada, many firms provide electric outlets in their parking lots - not to recharge batteries, but for block heaters in winter, so people's cars will start after 8 hours in the office. I'm sure they could work out some accomodation for 3rd shifters (and since off-peak industrial rates are cheaper in Canada than off-peak residential rates, those 3rd shifters might even save money.)
But don't let a little creative thinking get in the way of your anti-electric bias.
Let's assume I use it to power my computer (200W) for the 6 hour peak period in summer. To get the 1.2 kWh at 90% means I use about 1.35 kWh to charge the battery. At off-peak rates, that's 5.6 cents. At peak rates, which means I wouldn't bother with the UPS, but just draw the power directly, I would use 1.2 kWh at 9.1 cents. That's 10.92 cents, or a difference of 5.3 cents/day. Since weekends are all off-peak, for the approximately 250 week days, that's $13.30 a year saved by using batteries (and it's actually less, as in the winter, the daytime peak period is shorter, but I'm too lazy to figure that out). Now, I found a standard commercial UPS with a 1500 VA capacity for $150 Cdn (not including tax). As noted above, it's nowhere near 90% efficient, but even if it is, with the taxes, it's about a 13 year payback, assuming the UPS can realistically cycle 13 * 250 = 3,250 times without any extra maintenance or battery replacement.
And since from what I've seen, UPS prices don't increase linearly with capacity, but rather become much more expensive per VA as capacity goes up, I think the equation gets worse if you try to add extra appliances. So, unless peak prices get to be almost 4 times off-peak, I don't think it would ever make sense to use a battery system.
Ironically, in our last election the moonbat leader of the Canadian Green Party actually campaigned on more logging. Cynics would suggest that's because of lot of those unemployed lumbermen were in her riding, and she was simply pandering for votes, but of course, I would never say that.
It's not even a new study. The Ars Technica article cited another article from November of last year right next to the "new" study. Same guys at U of M. Same conclusions. Now excuse while I yawn.
I don't disagree with you in general, but when companies started offering a bonus to sales agents for each new customer signed up - a not uncommon sales incentive, some agents quickly found that offering some of that rebate to the customer increased their gross sales dramatically. I remember a sales guy I worked with at a telecom firm after I left the cellular company complaining "You guys raped and pillaged us on handset prices". I thought this was a bit rich coming from a guy who charged $70,000 for a 4-channel voice mail system (and no, that's not a typo!), but it was indicative of consumer attitudes. Once they found some people offering lower prices on handsets, they were convinced that we were overcharging, and a few cents extra a minute on their contract seemed to be inconsequential. Never underestimate the inability of the general public to perform basic arithmetic! If Total Cost of Ownership had been a common process, Apple should have owned the business market after it introduced the Mac (shorter training, fewer crashes, etc.). But people looked at Macs, saw a $3500 price, looked at a PC-AT, saw a $2500 price, and the rest, as Bill Gates might say, is history.
Very droll. The issue is I used to use "li" all the time, and it worked perfectly fine. Now, sometimes it gives you one line, sometimes none, and sometimes two. See my sig for my reaction.
But you underestimate the challenges we faced after introduction (this was about 20 years ago). The collective genius of marketing predicted the number of subscribers as "X"; when it turned out to be "3X", every other division of the company was scrambling. There weren't enough people in customer service to handle all the complaints, so we got a reputation for lousy service. There weren't enough cell sites so the engineers were working 60 hours to provision and tune them. The billing system was from Cincinnati Bell, and they didn't give us source code. I was the technical liason from Marketing to these other departments. When the upper crust of Marketing decided we needed to add a new billing plan, they would send me down with the admonition "They'll try to give you some excuse about not having source code; it's just their way of stalling". So even though we were getting lots of customers, our costs with all the overtime, rush fees, etc., were very high. We had to rebate a lot of calls because they dropped part way through. And the sales people were allowed to give out "non revenue" lines to clients (read "friends"); when they finally audited that, they were astonished to find that we had given out over 20,000 non-rev lines in Ontario alone - that was about 1 in 8, IIRC. In that environment, trying to adapt to new equipment was, shall we say, problematic. I recall one occasion when I was trying to find the status of the integration of voice mail/paging system, the engineer in charge saw me in the switch room and literally ran away.
Still, it was a tremendous education in how not to run a business. I left after 18 months much wiser.
Sorry, this again misses the point. You clearly don't understand that network modifications might need to be made, changes to billing systems, etc., all of which cost money. A CDMA network is as different from a TDSM one as a highway is from a railroad. So Union Pacific should demand that GM - well, maybe Toyota - build cars that can on railways as well? Or, since that example is backward from this case, let's turn it around - GM should demand that UP change their signals, sidings, billing, etc., so their "dual" cars could run on UP's tracks? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
It made a great deal of sense to select one or two devices, get them to agree to an exclusive contract, which would include us paying to promote their devices, and get the product to market. I don't see this situation being any different. It helped both us as a network provider, and them as a device provider. I don't see this as a conspiracy to restrict trade, just common business sense.
And, on an unrelated note, could anyone tell me why the HTML "li" code now works erratically? Is there another code that just gives me a simple new paragraph?
I'd just have taken it to small claims court. But I like your idea of letting the media know. They love those "David vs. corporate Goliath" stories.
I was going to moderate on this discussion, but the hell with it.. I agree most non-competes are garbage. However, I have always signed someone else's name when requested to complete one (at least half a dozen times). No one ever checks the signature! I wonder how that would work out in court - "Hey, I didn't sign this! Someone named Frank Drakman did!".