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Comment Re:Bad. (Score 1) 932

by sithkhan (#36039592) Attached to: Draft Proposal Would Create Agency To Tax Cars By the Mile
Was the Stimulus Program not mean for "Shovel-ready" projects? Such as road improvement, bridge refurbishment, and other "necessary infrastructure" projects? Question: How much have state and local taxes risen on gasoline since the early 80's? Question: If the Federal Gas tax goes into a trust fund, and said trust fund is completely exhausted, does that mean that there have been no tax collections to cause said depletion? If not, then what other factors have affected the highway improvement costs? How have environmental sustainability studies, indigenous species reports, and unionized labor costs affected this fund's disbursements? Question: If construction is the primary driver of the unemployment figure (and I sincerely doubt that), then why have four years of non-construction not created a higher unemployment number? Question: Who was in charge of the Senate, House of Representatives, and Executive Branch up until 2010? Could you say that there would be some culpability by those parties in not passing that all-important SAFETEA legislation? Question: Those environmental studies - how effective are they? Question: How much does a petroleum company make off off a gallon of gasoline? 2-4 cents. Question: What is the combined amount of taxes on a gallon of gasoline, on average? 45-55 cents. Question: Is another 17 cent increase going to make things better, if as you point out, the current fund is tapped out, and unable to start work in a timely fashion?
Earth

Boeing 747 Recycled Into a Private Residence 239

Posted by CmdrTaco from the would-you-like-to-see-my-cockpit dept.
Ponca City writes "Nicholas Jackson writes in the Atlantic about a woman who requested only curvilinear/feminine shapes for her new home and has purchased an entire Boeing 747-200. They transported it by helicopter to her 55-acre property in the remote hills of Malibu and after deconstructing it, had all 4,500,000 pieces put back together to form a main house and six ancillary structures including a meditation pavilion, an animal barn, and an art studio building. 'The scale of a 747 aircraft is enormous — over 230 feet long, 195 feet wide and 63 feet tall with over 17,000 cubic feet of cargo area alone and represents a tremendous amount of material for a very economical price of less than $50,000,' writes Architect David Hertz. 'In researching airplane wings and superimposing different airplane wing types on the site to scale, the wing of a 747, at over 2,500 sq. ft., became an ideal configuration to maximize the views and provide a self supporting roof with minimal additional structural support needed.' Called the 'Wing House,' as a structure and engineering achievement, the aircraft encloses an enormous amount of space using the least amount of materials in a very resourceful and efficient manner, and the recycling of the 4.5 million parts of this 'big aluminum can' is seen as an extreme example of sustainable reuse and appropriation. Interestingly enough, the architects had to register the roof of the house with the FAA so pilots flying overhead would not mistake it as a downed aircraft."
Earth

Debunking a Climate-Change Skeptic 807

Posted by kdawson from the so-many-notes-mister-mozart dept.
DJRumpy writes "The Danish political scientist Bjørn Lomborg won fame and fans by arguing that many of the alarms sounded by environmental activists and scientists — that species are going extinct at a dangerous rate, that forests are disappearing, that climate change could be catastrophic — are bogus. A big reason Lomborg was taken seriously is that both of his books, The Skeptical Environmentalist (in 2001) and Cool It (in 2007), have extensive references, giving a seemingly authoritative source for every one of his controversial assertions. So in a display of altruistic masochism that we should all be grateful for (just as we're grateful that some people are willing to be dairy farmers), author Howard Friel has checked every single citation in Cool It. The result is The Lomborg Deception, which is being published by Yale University Press next month. It reveals that Lomborg's work is 'a mirage,' writes biologist Thomas Lovejoy in the foreword. '[I]t is a house of cards. Friel has used real scholarship to reveal the flimsy nature' of Lomborg's work."
Privacy

Senators Want To Punish Nokia, Siemens Over Iran 392

Posted by kdawson from the no-cookies-for-you dept.
fast66 writes "After hearing about Nokia-Siemens sale of Internet-monitoring software to Iran, US Senators Schumer and Graham want to bar them from receiving federal contracts. They planned the action after hearing about a joint venture of Nokia Corp. of Finland and Siemens AG of Germany that sold a sophisticated Internet-monitoring system to Iran in 2008. According to Nextgov.com, Schumer and Graham's bill would require the Obama administration to identify foreign companies that export sensitive technology to Iran and ban them from bidding on federal contracts, or renew expiring ones, unless they first stop exports to Iran."
The Internet

What Data Center Designers Can Learn From Legos 210

Posted by CmdrTaco from the my-20-month-old-could-teach-them dept.
1sockchuck writes "It takes most companies at least a year to build a new data center. Digital Realty Trust says it can build a new data center in just 20 weeks using standard designs and modular components that can be assembled on site. The company equates its 'building blocks' approach to data centers to building with Legos — albeit with customized parts (i.e. the Millennium Falcon Lego kit). Microsoft is taking a similar approach, packaging generators, switchgear and UPS units into pre-assembled components for rapid assembly. Is this the future of data center design?"
Image

Parrots Can Dance Screenshot-sm 104

Posted by kdawson from the elephants-too dept.
juuri sends in an NPR article about the consensus created among scientists that some birds actually dance to music. "The results of this study are reported in the journal Current Biology, along with another scientific paper inspired by YouTube videos of dancing animals. Adena Schachner is a graduate student in the psychology department of Harvard University. She says she was familiar with the idea that some people had made videos of birds supposedly dancing. ... She and her colleagues eventually analyzed more than 5,000 videos. 'Imagine watching YouTube eight hours a day for a month,' she says. 'That's pretty much what we did. It was amusing for perhaps the first couple of hours.'" juuri adds, "While this makes them somewhat unique in the animal world, as only three animals are now known to dance by verifiable proofs, what struck me more was that this was the first time YouTube had helped forge a new scientific understanding. Given the explosive growth of uploading videos and people watching them, what other new understandings and popular misconceptions will be proven or disproved due to this emerging media?"
Windows

Post-Beta Windows 7 Build Leaked With New IE8 332

Posted by timothy from the seekret-leaks-from-nowhere-in-particular dept.
CWmike writes "A post-beta version of Windows 7, Build 7022, leaked to Internet file-sharing sites also includes an updated version of IE8, according to searches at several BitTorrent trackers. With Microsoft halting new Windows 7 beta downloads on Tuesday, and blocking all downloads as of noon (EST) today, users are again turning to illegal sources to get the new operating system."
Government

Obama Sides With Bush In Spy Case 906

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the disappointment-for-civil-liberties dept.
palegray.net is one of many who writes "President Obama has publicly sided with the Bush administration on the question of whether the President should be allowed to establish warrantless wiretapping programs designed to monitor US citizens. The President has asked a federal judge to stay a ruling that would allow key evidence into the domestic spying case against the government. 'Thursday's filing by the Obama administration marked the first time it officially lodged a court document in the lawsuit asking the courts to rule on the constitutionality of the Bush administration's warrantless-eavesdropping program.'" jamie points out that Obama's views and opinions were made clear through his Senate vote and numerous public statements, but many others see this as a disappointing start to an administration promising transparency and openness.
The Almighty Buck

GAO Reports Bailout and Tech Firms Love Tax Havens 347

Posted by kdawson from the how-to-spell-profit dept.
theodp writes "Most of America's largest publicly traded corporations and Federal contractors — including those receiving billions of dollars from US taxpayers to finance their recovery — have set up offshore operations that could help them avoid paying US taxes, according to a GAO study released yesterday. Of the 100 largest public companies, 83 do business in tax-haven hot-spots like the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and the British Virgin Islands. The report found that Citigroup, a recipient of $45B in bailout funds so far, has set up 427 subsidiaries in tax-haven countries, including 91 in Luxembourg, 90 in the Cayman Islands, and 35 in the British Virgin Islands. Household names on the lists from the tech sector include Apple (1 tax haven subsidiary), Cisco (38), Dell (29), HP (14), Intel (6), IBM (10), Microsoft (8), Motorola (4), and Oracle (77)."
Privacy

Wiretapping Program Ruled Legal 575

Posted by CmdrTaco from the can-we-rule-the-ruling-illegal dept.
BuhDuh writes "The New York Times is carrying a story concerning that well known bastion of legal authority, the 'Foreign Intelligence Surveillance' court, which has ruled that the National Security Agency's warrantless eavesdropping program was perfectly legal. It says, 'A federal intelligence court, in a rare public opinion, is expected to issue a major ruling validating the power of the president and Congress to wiretap international phone calls and intercept e-mail messages without a court order, even when Americans' private communications may be involved, according to a person with knowledge of the opinion.'"

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