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Comment Invest in energy efficiency... and a generator (Score 3, Insightful) 250

by unimacs (#48329385) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Minimizing Oil and Gas Dependency In a Central European City?
You said you own the roof space. Do you own the whole dwelling? Can you insulate the walls, attic, and air seal bypasses? Can you run a heat pump? It still requires electricity but not that much. If you can purchase petrol when it's available and run a generator (or photovoltaics) when it's not, that might be the ticket. Of course the more more energy efficient your home and appliances are, the easier it will be to function off the grid, - even if it's just sporadically.

Do you really need to run your own server or can you have it hosted somewhere else?

Comment Re:Just like "free" housing solved poverty! (Score 1) 262

by unimacs (#48265507) Attached to: Power and Free Broadband To the People

Uh, hello genius, capitalistic enterprises can't hire people with no skills. You know how many welfare recipients can't even show up to work on time?

Employers hire unskilled people all the time and pay them accordingly. Education and experience are vehicles for becoming more skilled. Increasingly educational institutions expect students to have Internet access.

There are lots of different types of people on welfare for various reasons. When you're poor, transportation and child care can be barriers to employment. But even if some people on welfare are just plain lazy, I'd like it if their kids still had an opportunity to be contributing members of society, rather than just continuing the cycle. Wouldn't you?

I also can't help but notice the problems were all on the school's side...alternative communication methods could have been used, but darn it it's just too hard! (for us)

Alternative means of communication were used but were both slower and more expensive. And as I mentioned, more and more teachers want to use materials that are only available on-line.

We must eradicate capitalism and the free market! Forward to equalism! When everyone's income will be considered decent by a Pakistani bricklayer.

I said nothing about eradicating capitalism, but like any economic system, it has its downsides which can't be just waved away.

Comment Re:Just like "free" housing solved poverty! (Score 5, Informative) 262

by unimacs (#48264933) Attached to: Power and Free Broadband To the People
At my son's current high school (and even to a certain extent my daughter's grade school), having Internet access at home is an expectation.

At my son's grade school, it was a different story. They had a substantial number of kids whose families were below the poverty line and for whom Internet access could not be assumed. I was on the leadership council and the lack of Internet access for many families caused a lot of difficulties for the school both in terms of the educational materials that could be provided and in terms of communicating with parents.

It is my opinion that poverty is partially systemic. Our economic system depends on there being a pool of available workers (unemployed and underemployed). So as long as there is capitalism and a functioning free market, there will always be poor people. That being the case, we have a responsibility to make sure the basic needs of everyone are met. Increasingly in order to succeed in school and in life, Internet access isn't really a luxury.

Comment Re:Rain and snow? (Score 1) 287

by unimacs (#48214977) Attached to: Will the Google Car Turn Out To Be the Apple Newton of Automobiles?

Cars will use LIDAR, ultrasonic, and video for first party sensing.

But a lot of sensing will come from their party. Other cars reporting their position on the road. Their intent and upcoming moves.Details about the environment that they sense. Additional the infrastructure can provide info. The roads can report if cars are present. If there is ice, etc.

Anyways, the issue isn't if there is ice or snow on it's sensors. That will be easy to mitigate. The problem is the ice and snow in the environment that it needs to see through.

How much time have you spent scraping ice off of a windshield where it's gone from above freezing and raining when you parked your car to well below freezing overnight and sometimes even well below 0 F? How many times have you had to dig a car out of a snowbank? If you've had to do it over the course of a few winters you'll know that it's often not so easily mitigated.

I think people either don't know or often forget what a hostile environment winter can be in the the Northern part of our country. How densely packed are the sensors going to be in the road to tell reliably where there is ice, whether the ice is smooth or rough, whether there is snow and how deep it is and whether it is packed or fresh? How long are these sensors going to last when the roads I drive on end up filled with potholes each spring?

I'm sure it would all work great in a laboratory setting when every other car, plus all the roads and traffic control devices can talk. I'm not so convinced that it will work when things are in some state of disrepair as they often are in the real world.

Comment Re:Retired developers (Score 2) 155

by unimacs (#48203367) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Aging and Orphan Open Source Projects?
It sounds like the OP is looking for a long term solution to help the project move forward and attract new developers. A few of old timers might be willing to hang around and fix a few bugs or deal with security issues but that's just a slower death. And yeah, if these guys are currently getting paid by the company to maintain the software, they might not have any interest in doing so once they retire. Even if they are willing to maintain it, at any point on any open source project, there is nothing stoping anyone from deciding they're done. That's why you need new developers.

I personally have never worked on a single project that I was passionate enough about to want to make it a life long endeavor. Eventually I want to move on to something different. And I'm sure I'll reach a point in my life (or death) where I simply won't be able to do it anymore even if I wanted to.

And from maybe a more philosophical standpoint, one of the things I see as attractive about retirement is no longer having the burden of having to maintain anything. ;)

Comment Re:Can we stop trying to come up with a reason? (Score 1) 786

by unimacs (#48198529) Attached to: NPR: '80s Ads Are Responsible For the Lack of Women Coders
I have no doubt that there are places where that kind of thing goes on, but certainly not everywhere. For what it's worth, my young daughter thrives on proving people wrong. She played on a boys football team. At the same time, she appears to be more interested in a medical career at this point. Nevertheless I'll be building Lego Mindstorm robots with her and my son... just in case.

Comment Re:Solving the problem wrong (Score 1) 786

by unimacs (#48198185) Attached to: NPR: '80s Ads Are Responsible For the Lack of Women Coders
My experience has been a bit different. I was the only one among my friends or family to get a computer science degree. Though they have all done alright for the most part, I had the easiest time getting a job in my field and I was making good money while many of them still struggled.

As time has gone on, I've been better able to pick who I work for rather than having to just take whatever I could. I WAS in a company for awhile where ridiculous working hours for programmers were the norm, - but I figured out I didn't need to settle for that.

Comment Re:Bonus pay for having NO KIDS (Score 1) 253

by unimacs (#48154787) Attached to: Facebook and Apple Now Pay For Female Employees To Freeze Their Eggs
I would guess that most people who put off having kids until later end up having fewer kids anyway. If couples have two kids or less, statistically that will result in long term population decline. Looking at actual trends show that population is flat or declining in many parts of the world while exploding elsewhere.

Declining populations are problematic in several ways as well since many economic systems are designed around growth.

I don't disagree that unchecked world wide population growth isn't good, but draconian methods to keep women from having kids in regions where there is little if any population growth anyway isn't the answer.

Comment Re:Slippery Slope (Score 3, Insightful) 253

by unimacs (#48152509) Attached to: Facebook and Apple Now Pay For Female Employees To Freeze Their Eggs

From this article on the subject: http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/20...

"While still uncommon, egg-freezing allows women to remove and store eggs when they are in their prime fertility window, which often overlaps with prime career-advancement years. The quality of a woman’s eggs declines as she gets older, putting many women in a bind about whether to have children in their 20s and 30s. Egg freezing allows women to stockpile healthy eggs while advancing their careers or waiting to meet a partner with whom they’d like to start a family.

But the procedure is expensive, costing approximately $10,000 per round, and many doctors recommend two rounds to ensure the best possible batch of cells. In general, health insurance plans don’t cover the elective procedure."

The last sentence is key. You can bet we are inching towards this $10,000 elective procedure being mandated by American health insurance, which means men will be the ones paying for it through taxes as demonstrated here:

http://money.cnn.com/2013/05/1...

The sheer fact Apple and facebook are doing this is a "slippery slope". Give feminists an inch, and they will take a mile, and then blame you for not giving two miles. And the idea of giving $10,000 to a man to start a family? Nahhhhhhhh.

If a couple decides to delay having kids and takes advantage of this benefit, doesn't the husband (a male most likely) save $10,000 as well?

And last I checked, women were taxpayers too. ;)

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