G
Gordon Beaton
Red Hat? CDs?
Kids indeed...
/gordon
Article: "Hi jackasses, RTFM and stop wasting our time trying to help you children learn."
Red Hat? CDs?
Kids indeed...
/gordon
D
dingbat
Ed said:
No, think of "MY HOMEWORK IS DUE IN 2 HOURS" as useful metadata
indicating that it should be ignored altogether. I'd hate not to have
this annotation!
I read c.i.w.a.h a lot (heavyweight HTML theory). it must be a useful
group technically, because I'd never put up with the abuse and
condescension otherwise!
M
Monique Y. Mudama
I'll hearken back to my olden days, and you can hearken back to yours
*grin*
C
Chris Smith
hiwa said:
I took a shot at:
It's not complete. It's on a Wiki though, so feel free to contribute.
--
www.designacourse.com
The Easiest Way To Train Anyone... Anywhere.
Chris Smith - Lead Software Developer/Technical Trainer
MindIQ Corporation
R
Roedy Green
It will all change come this winter. Old folks will be telling
stories of how easy they had it.
Oil prices are shooting up, (Feds predict $3.00 gas in May) and along
with it rising energy prices generally. Lots of people will go
without heat for the first time in their lives. If this Iran war does
not peter out soon, the Iran oil will also be off the market and
nothing we can do will fix the problem that there will not be nearly
enough fuel to go around.
As someone who lived through a winter in an unheated, uninsulated
cabin, I assure you it is much less fun than you would imagine.
Thoughts of roaring fires dominated my consciousness. It did occur to
me I could die.
For those who can afford fuel, it will take a big bite out your
budget. You will be doing without many "necessities" to pay the fuel
and electric bills.
Thinking of the old fable of the grasshopper and the ant, this is the
time to insulate and invest in some of that incredible technology that
can heat a condominium for $60 a year. Start now. You may find later
in the year you will have to queue up to get a contractor, and he
will, as any good capitalist, be raising prices to meet the demand.
Have a look at some of your power guzzling computer equipment. Now
might be a good time to trade up to more energy efficient models.
What a great excuse to buy one of those Sony flat screen TVs or big
flat screen monitors.
I read an article that Google ALREADY makes their server hardware
decisions based on power consumption since power such a big budget
item. This is good news for Sun whose Niagara line of processors are
all designed with low power in mind.
R
Roedy Green
Fuel was so cheap we used to heat the house even when we weren't home.
Can you believe it?
Fuel was so cheap we used to heat the whole house to 72 degrees, even
the basement.
Fuel was so cheap people used to grow pot indoors using thousands of
watts of artificial light. The heat was so great they could detect it
from satellites.
Electricity was so cheap we used to use screensavers instead of
turning off our monitors when not in use.
Electricity was so cheap we used to use 4x100 watt bulbs in the
bathroom to brush your teeth.
Electricity was so cheap stereo makers used to brag how many watts
their equipment consumed.
Fuel was so cheap, people used to drive around just one person in an
8-person van without picking up any paying passengers.
Fuel was so cheap, people used to drive to the minimart a block away
to get a quart of milk.
Fuel was so cheap, that people used to drag their homes with them
rather than rent accommodation to save money.
Fuel was so cheap you could buy produce from 5000 miles away cheaper
than that grown locally.
I once sat OUTSIDE at a restaurant and they had a radiant heater to
keep me warm.
You used to be able to go into stores and just look, or bus stations
to get warm, without having to pay a fuel surtax fee.
Some people ran around their houses in their UNDERWEAR all year round,
only putting on clothes for guests. Can you believe it, eating
breakfast in your underwear? It's like those crazy Finns leaping into
freezing lakes after a sauna.
M
Monique Y. Mudama
I suppose next you're going to say that Vail will turn off its heated
sidewalks.
H
hiwa
I took a shot at:
Thanks. It's much more generally usable than ESR's.
R
Roedy Green
Logically they should. If you waste energy just for a conspicuous
consumption display, because there is shortage of fuel, you are
literally forcing someone else to sit in the cold. The same would be
true of elaborate Christmas light displays.
So I would hope even the very rich will feel some civic duty to lower
their fuel bills.
At some point we may see people doing things like having a moving
"party", that is held each night in a different home. Everyone on the
block comes. That way everyone can turn off the heat back home, and
the house with the party is heated primarily by the body heat. They
would be lower key than real parties, perhaps watch TV, play board
games, do homework under supervision of an adult.
When I grew up most people had wood or coal furnaces hand stoked.
Nobody went into the bedrooms until late at night, just before bed.
They were cold clammy places. Aunt Hilda used a copper pad with coals
in it whisked around under the bedclothes to take the chill off. We
could well stop heating our bedrooms again to save fuel. In case you
think we were technologically backward, the phone had no touchtone
pad. You just spoke the name of the party you wanted to speak to or
his number into the mouthpiece.
..
M
Monique Y. Mudama
Well, strictly speaking, that's compassion, not logic. And I don't
hold much faith in the idea that the rich, on the whole, would eschew
luxury to help others, or to avoid thumbing their noses on the poor.
In fact, this really is no different from today. I ski at Vail, eat
fancy meals, and own a variety of luxury items while others in the world
starve or go without medical care. Maybe I'm a bad person for that,
but it's true. Even if all the people like me donated anything
beyond subsistence income to the less fortunate, I have trouble
imagining it would be more than a drop in the bucket, with much of the
funds being misused or rerouted to the less scrupulous.
R
Roedy Green
that is a little different. When you eat in a fancy restaurant you
are not actively denying anyone something, other than perhaps your
charity.
When you waste oil however, your action has a direct negative impact.
When there is a shortage, it means every gallon you waste means
someone else has to do without. It is quite different when there is
enough to go around. You are committing an environmental sin, but not
the sin of making someone sit in the cold.
It is like the difference between ordering three desserts at a
restaurant and scarfing 3 desserts at Sunday dinner when your mom has
prepared only one for everyone.
Another analogy. If you are in a rowboat and toss food over the side,
nobody is going to get too excited. However, if you do it in a
lifeboat, they may wring your neck.
I will be curious to see if society adjusts and conspicuous waste (at
least of fuel) stops being the preferred way to display status.
People who buy Hummers better get the diamond hard paint job to make
it easy to scrape off the spray paint.
R
Roedy Green
If you deliberately waste 100 gallons of fuel, in the entire economy
this not noticeable. But it will mean increasing the overall
shortfall by 100 gallons. Somebody will be stuck going with 100
gallons less. To THEM it matters, even if they too are just a drop in
the population bucket.
The pleasure you get from wasting 100 gallons is probably almost
negligible. The pain someone goes through not having 100 gallons of
needed fuel is considerable, possibly even a matter of life and death.
This is a variation on the crab thrower parable.
http://mindprod.com/deepthoughts/proverbs.html
You may say, no, that shortfall would be averaged, so it would not
hurt anyone. But if you do that, you must calculate the burden of
EVERY waster as well to sum up the total effect on any individual.
Further you know very well how such hardships tend to fall very
unequally. A few people get stuck with a very dirty end of the stick.
Quite literally then, those that deliberately waste fuel are
murderers. They wilfully freeze others to death for the most trivial
of motives.
A
Andrew McDonagh
Roedy said:
$3 a gallon!
I'd love that!
We in the uk are paying around $6.60 a gallon (or £3.71)
M
Monique Y. Mudama
So, spending money on a pair of skis when I could have paid for a
variety of life-saving medical treatments in a third world country
isn't denying someone something in the same way? I don't think I
agree. I find the question of how close something has to hit before
it affects us enough to do something about it to be interesting.
Obviously the answer is different from person to person.
Oil is used for plastics as well as for energy. I have trouble
believing that when the oil runs out, we'll all just sit around
freezing to death. There are already efforts toward alternative
fuels, and some folks have modified their Diesel cars to burn waste
oil from cooking.
When oil runs short, if we haven't come up with another way, then
we're all screwed, rich and poor. It just might take a little longer
to hit the rich.
D
Danno
Well, you are in a small country though. You can feasibly walk from
Dover to Newcastle in a couple of hours.
Just kidding Andrew.
I don't know if you been here in the states, but we are just plain pigs
with our cars. Everyone has one to their own and never shares and we
waste our time in countless of hours of gridlock. Don't know if it's
like that across the pond, but I am beginning to think high gas prices
may be a good thing on non-shipping consumers.
Dover to Newcastle in a couple of hours.
Just kidding Andrew.
I don't know if you been here in the states, but we are just plain pigs
with our cars. Everyone has one to their own and never shares and we
waste our time in countless of hours of gridlock. Don't know if it's
like that across the pond, but I am beginning to think high gas prices
may be a good thing on non-shipping consumers.
A
Andrew McDonagh
Danno said:Well, you are in a small country though. You can feasibly walk from
Dover to Newcastle in a couple of hours.
Just kidding Andrew.
I don't know if you been here in the states, but we are just plain pigs
with our cars. Everyone has one to their own and never shares and we
waste our time in countless of hours of gridlock. Don't know if it's
like that across the pond, but I am beginning to think high gas prices
may be a good thing on non-shipping consumers.
we are exactly the same
We are only now just trialing a car-sharing lane on our motorways
(freeways).
M
Monique Y. Mudama
I've thought that as well.
I do commute by bicycle sometimes during the summer, or ride my
motorcycle, which is at least more fuel efficient than my car. It's
about 12 miles, so cycling isn't too bad, but it does take extra time,
and it's not something I can do if I have appointments after work.
R
Roedy Green
This difference is the US road system is subsidised by general revenue
where in most parts of the world the gas tax pays for it. You could
look on it as a $3.00 a gallon subsidy.
You might say, so what, it still comes out of almost the same pockets
in the end anyway. But the problem with the US system it artificially
lowers the cost of transportation, so that people do silly things like
buy vegetables transported 5000 miles rather than buy locally grown
ones. They use trucking rather than rail freight even though rail is
more energy efficient.
see http://mindprod.com/money/subsidy.html
http://mindprod.com/environment/kyoto.html#LOCALLY
R
Roedy Green
when I was last there they had their mini rush hour traffic jams, but
nothing like the ones I've see in the USA and Canada.
The big difference is the train system. I burst out laughing at the
announcements that came over the PA in a John Cleese deeply serious
voice "We deeply regret that the train to Twickenham on Entwhistle
will be a minute and 30 seconds late." The trains are huge, spacious,
frequent, safe and comfortable. That is how you would get to work.
The people silently read newspapers. In the Netherlands the trains
are rolling parties. Everyone talks to everyone and smokes, both pot
and tobacco.
A
Andrew McDonagh
Roedy said:
We also pay a Car Tax for road use. Without it, you cant even keep a
car on a public road - never mind drive one on it!