Agree 100%. It's all a political game so some can feel good about themselves while the State as a whole slowly dies of dehydration. But hey, on the plus side, we'll get a $70 billion train that will whisk us from Bakersfield to Fresno in just 4 hours!

You're going to upset some desert snail-darter lizard or something, and since they might have a range of [$insert_insane_value_here] miles we can't do ANYTHING in the desert. It's for the children, don't you know! After all, we're flushing 4 billion gallons - enough for the ANNUAL needs of 175,000 people - so that 6 steelhead could swim downstream.

Yeah that was the proposed 2013 rate (as reported in the Ventura County Star). My last water bill was $120.84 for 4488 gallons of water (not including service charges, waste water, or meter hookup cost). Or about $0.027 per gallon, which is about double the high-end costs for desalination.

As for Texas, that's your problem. You should also be furious that you're being charged quite a bit more than the costs associated with desalination of water. But then, you don't have an income tax, so you're probably going to pay more in direct costs for basic utilties/State/County services since you don't pay as much into a general slush fund like we do in California.

Desalinated water in most of the world is LOWER COST than the water we pay for right now. Why wouldn't we keep the desalination plants running, when it's lower cost for the consumers and leaves 100% of the "natural" water available so we can send [URL=http://www.westsideconnect.com/opinion/guest_columns/water-alliance-government-ordering-billion-gallons-of-water-for-six/article_35c2d376-df16-11e4-a347-3326ba293ded.html]4 billion gallons downstream for 6 fish to migrate[/URL]. Lower cost, no concerns about fish migration - why not use desalination?

Here in Ventura County we pay more for water than in Israel or Saudi Arabia, two countries with much more severe water problems than California - and who get a large (or even majority) portion of their water from desalination. We have the world's largest body of water right next to us - and we simply don't utilize it. Desalination.

I didn't come here to read what Dice wrote. I came here to read what you wrote.

For better or worse, slashdot attracts a collection of some very smart, and well-informed, and funny, people. And trolls, but hell, trolls are everywhere. Many places seem to only have trolls.

Knights. Huh. Not for me. I'm just a

shrubber

What hump?

So. How is life in a bubble?

There's no shortage of pretty good beer in the US (heck I make my own). The problem is that only a small percentage of people actually want it. Anything beyond Budweiser or Coors Light is considered "weird tasting". That's changing, but for the most part people are drinking that "mass marketed barley water" by choice, not out of lack of options.

Don't confuse knowing the difference with caring about it. I've using Linux since the late 1990's. I have a CS degree and am a programmer for a living. I understand very well the "free in beer vs free as in speech" argument.

HOWEVER, most people really only care about the "zero cost" definition of free. And when it comes to open source most only care about the source actually being available, not whether its under the GPL or not.

"Libre" as it is applied by the zealots is a concept that only a very small subset of computer users care about - even if they understand it. You're not going to get them outraged by explaining it.

Consider the opposite: lets say Ubuntu listed software as "Free", but when you clicked install it prompted you for payment credentials for $5, with the justification being that you're free to modify the source and do as you wish, but the software has a monetary cost. THEN you'd see outrage because it'd be stepping on the definition of free that people actually care about.

You don't believe me? Good grief, it's been illegal to consider all manner of things when hiring for years, all over the place. Not to mention there are questions you can't even ask.

No, it's why do local government's loathe their citizens? After all, they're the ones who are, almost always, signing exclusive contracts with these companies to provide a local monopoly of services while forcing unnecessary additional costs (local government access via cable TV) and franchise fees to fund them.

I didn't do anything of the kind. I substituted an act for an act. I pointed out a general truth that applies across the board. That's all.

Seriously, it's like some of you never made it through English class.

Oh, FFS. Look. No matter *what* I chose, the point, which you completely missed, was that one malfeasance is in no way made less by the existence of others.

By concentrating on the particulars -- which named no one and drew no level of equivalence except withing the example, as without -- you failed.

The example is the same if it is stealing from the cookie jar or shoplifting -- or murder -- or twisting the truth. That's the WHOLE POINT. That's the whooshing sound you heard.

The slashdotter below you screws up and makes some dumb remark about my post, missing the point? Doesn't excuse you doing it at all. How's that? A little closer to home?