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Submission + - Australian Farmers Switch To Diesel Power As Electricity Prices Soar (abc.net.au)

Submitted by connect4
connect4 writes: Local irrigators council representative, Dale Hollis, says right now, irrigators have two options. "They have to switch off the pumps and go back to dryland [cropping], and that impacts upon the productivity of the region and impacts on jobs" he said. "The second option is to go off the grid and look at alternatives."There are plenty of farmers installing panels, but many growers irrigate at night and can't afford the millions of dollars it could take to buy battery storage."

That's pushing many of them back to a dirtier option. "Right now, diesel stacks up" Mr Hollis said.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister claims the country faces an energy crisis, while Tesla claims they could solve the entire problem in less than 100 days, and they have form.

Comment Re:Reckless endangerment (Score 1) 209

by connect4 (#53898145) Attached to: Krebs: 'Men Who Sent SWAT Team, Heroin to My Home Sentenced'

It's not messed up. Well, not always. When you talk about intent, you're confusing conviction and sentencing.

Consider drink driving. If you get pulled over and blow over the limit, it's not exactly crime of the century. If you're drunk and you run over a pedestrian, it's a far more serious matter. Having said that, there are plenty of examples of habitual drunk drivers receiving custodial sentences, while a first time offender who runs someone over escapes jail.

Sentencing has to consider culpability, the prospect of rehabilitation, the rights of the victims, the need to protect society, and a range of other factors. It's not uncommon for an attempted murder to attract a more severe punishment than an actual murder.
The Courts

Techdirt Asks Judge To Dismiss Another Lawsuit By That Guy Who Didn't Invent Email (arstechnica.com) 82

Posted by EditorDavid from the talent-for-lawsuits dept.
Three months ago Shiva Ayyadurai won a $750,000 settlement from Gawker (after they'd already gone bankrupt). He'd argued Gawker defamed him by mocking Ayyadurai's claim he'd invented email, and now he's also suing Techdirt founder Michael Masnick -- who is not bankrupt, and is fighting back. Long-time Slashdot reader walterbyrd quotes Ars Technica: In his motion, Masnick claims that Ayyadurai "is seeking to use the muzzle of a defamation action to silence those who question his claim to historical fame." He continues, "The 14 articles and 84 allegedly defamatory statements catalogued in the complaint all say essentially the same thing: that Defendants believe that because the critical elements of electronic mail were developed long before Ayyadurai's 1978 computer program, his claim to be the 'inventor of e-mail' is false"...

The motion skims the history of e-mail and points out that the well-known fields of e-mail messages, like "to," "from," "cc," "subject," "message," and "bcc," were used in ARPANET e-mail messages for years before Ayyadurai made his "EMAIL" program. Ayyadurai focuses on statements calling him a "fake," a "liar," or a "fraud" putting forth "bogus" claims. Masnick counters that such phrases are "rhetorical hyperbole" meant to express opinions and reminds the court that "[t]he law provides no redress for harsh name-calling."
The motion calls the lawsuit "a misbegotten effort to stifle historical debate, silence criticism, and chill others from continuing to question Ayyadurai's grandiose claims." Ray Tomlinson has been dead for less than a year, but in this fascinating 1998 article recalled testing the early email protocols in 1971, remembering that "Most likely the first message was QWERTYIOP."

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