Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment Re:It's a radio telescope (Score 2) 28

Well, I dunno... the dish has mechanical parts that are 40 years old. What condition were they in? Did they need to replace any motors or bearings or control electricals or build new interfaces to old obsolete ones? Did they have to do anti-corrosion measures, maybe even paint the thing? It may have been quite a project. I'm not clicking no links that people have deemed to be a "hack attack" so am not about to read the original article.

Comment Re:I'll Always Want To Own (Score 1) 454

Don't have guns or bikes all the time, but yeah, sunglasses, insurance papers, etc, I have 'em along. I also don't have to worry if I leave my cell phone in the car, 'cuz it'll be right there in the car in the garage, and not taking off to meet the next fare who finds it and converts it to his own purposes. Them Android phones are expensive.

Comment Re:Exactly like a... taxi ! (Score 1) 454

Visited the courthouse a few days ago. "No cell phones, no pocket knives, etc. etc." The Taxi drove away 90 seconds ago. Now what? Call it back, have it take you back home and stash those things? I just emptied everything into my car, which was sitting outside like a portable vault. Cover valuable stuff with a newspaper or possibly a coat (the "messy car defense" for not having things stolen out of the car - if they can't see it, they won't break into it to steal it) and that problem was solved.

The only problem remaining is the blatant violation of 4th amendment rights when gov't agents conduct a search like that without any probably cause. Same thing for airports. Airlines could do it if they wanted to, but not gov't agents like the TSA. But they do. We are in a "post-Constitutional" era..." and on the way to a dictatorship if the President's last major constitutional-ignoring keeps getting repeated, which of course it will.

Comment Re:freedom and status (Score 1) 454

Nothing wrong with mass transit as long as you don't want to arrive with 300 lbs of tools, or maybe a hunting shotgun or maybe even a personal protection firearm which most pinhead mass transit systems ban. Nothing like being overexposed to the criminal elements on mass transit AND being defenseless at the same time.

Comment I'll Always Want To Own (Score 1) 454

My bike rack will be on the trailer hitch with my bike on it when I get up.

My hunting gun will be in the trunk, packed there the night before the trip to the cabin.

My self-protection gun will be secreted exactly where I want it to be and not need to be retrieved or possibly forgotten before departing.

The sunglasses I use will be in the center console.

The insurance stuff will be in the glove box.

Various hobby stuff or work things will be in the trunk where I don't have to remember to pack them.

Etc.

Comment Re:Ya...Right (Score 1) 285

What it means is that your car is a rollerskate with a Thimble Drome. We can't get "green" energy to do transportation until we invent the magic battery, and that may or may not happen, and it may or may not be soon.

LED's? Ive had my eye on them for a long time, and right now a 60 W bulb is $10. Yeah, they last a long time, but its like saying that a Tesla at $100K is fuel efficient because it is electric. Yeah, it is, but it costs too much, just like $10 for 60 watts. And no, they don't last commensurately longer because there's always some power spike on the line, or lightning, or some-such that streeses or outright fries 'em over a period of years.

And of course we consume so much energy because 1) we do a lot of industry and 2) we are huge, and have a very large transportation burden that has to be satisfied with fossil fuels, we just don't know how to do it any other way.

I have a home loan in process right now to hopefully get geothermal heat in right now, and that is a cost-thing, not a green-thing since I got a 1-month oil bill for $833 earlier this year. F-that. Going all-electric with geo has gotta save some $$$. If it helps relieve some CO2 or some other green aspect, I don't mind, but that isn't the main objective.

Comment Re:Ya...Right (Score 1) 285

"No, you have got to realize that the idea of their even being a hit to the economy is a complete and total fabrication."

Bull. I was going thru West Virginia a couple years ago and heard the local radio station announcing the layoff of 1200 miners myself. I've been listening to the radio and TV for years, and hearing this sort of thing on a regular basis. These miners make good money, and now they're on welfare. Mining was the last thing a workman could do in that area - all the other (good) jobs have gone overseas like everywhere else in the country, thanks to the income taxes which are gutting our country. (They _all_ must be repealed, every last one of 'em) The only reason you don't know about this is that the liberal, mainstream media won't report anything that makes the current administration look bad. They're withholding a LOT of news lately.

"no wamring ofr 18 years" indeed....reality says otherwise buddy."

Nope.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sci...

You have to go outside the USA to see stuff like this, 'cuz again, the Lamestream Media won't report it as it doesn't support the administration's power grab via the global warming scarecrow. Things like this "sky is falling" nonsense are characterized in the same manner as the old traveling salesman charlatans - ever see "The Music Man" play? "We have trouble. Right here in River City. That's Trouble with a capital 'T' that rhymes with 'P' that stand for POOL!" AGW is the same nonsense. Its trying to stampede people into spending money they way they want them too, and in the case of politicians allowing you to accept further gov't power increase. OMDB.

Comment Re:Ya...Right (Score 1) 285

Of course there are reasons to assume disaster. Wind is a very expensive technology that normally cannot be used for baseload power generation, it is too unreliable. So it is a "nice-to-have" without being of great utility. The thing that people seem to miss that this FORCED decommissioning of coal plants is VERY WASTEFUL, since something of great value is destroyed, and must be replaced by something of great cost that wouldn't otherwise need to be replaced for years.

So you get to build 100's of 1000's of wind turbines, AND you still must build gas-fired or nuclear or some other tech that can produce when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing, and doing it SOONER rather than LATER is the big inefficiency. If one would wait until the coal-fired plant finally wore out and was decommissioned for being more expensive to operate than alternatives, that'd be different, but coming along and saying "Emergency, emergency, we have to spend gazillions of dollars RIGHT NOW to cure a problem that some really smart scientist believe is a lot of hokum just rubs me the wrong way. Did you know that Feeman Dyson, the man who assumed the "Smartest physicist alive" title when Einstein died signed a petition for the gov't to spend _NO MONEY_ on the AGW problem, and further declared that the computer boys with their models didn't know what the F they were doing, and hugely fudging how clouds were affected by greenhouse gas concentrations? Well, he did, and clouds are huge in the equation, so if they don't really know how to model clouds vs. CO2, then their models are most likely crap. I don't want to go spending trillions of dollars, and throwing the entire remainder of the population of the USA into poverty to chase this nonsense.

Comment Re:Really? (Score 1) 285

What's that got to do with the price of tea in China?

We ALREADY have the coal plants, they work, and shutting them down means having to replace them. Hint: Don't shut 'em down 'til they wear out. Then try to find something cheaper than wind to replace 'em with.

Position the wind machines where there's wind? Didn't we just calculate that there are going to ber 1,211,000 wind machines? They'll probably be located every 1 mile throughout the USA. There's 2,959,064.44 square miles in the contiguous USA, so with that many wind machines, there's going ot be one every 2 1/2 square mles or so. BUT, by the time that the evironmental extremists get done saying you can't put 'em here and you can't put 'em there, and then you also subtract the Rocky Mountains and much of the Appalacian mountains because they are too steep and rugged to be building and servicing wind machines, you're going to have them probably every 2500 feet apart in any place that the wind actually blows at all. What to have your scenic landscape dotted with wind machines virtually everywhere? I didn't think so.

Slashdot Top Deals

It is easier to write an incorrect program than understand a correct one.

Working...