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Comment Re:Anthropogenic Global Warming (Score 1) 370

You first.

That is the problem. Everyone wants *everyone else* to deal with. As long as they can still drive to work with cheap gas and get a shiny new smart phone every year, its clearly other peoples real problem... if only they would deal with it right?

So what are you doing to deal with it?

Not sure about the parent specifically, but I would guess that most of the people trying to draw attention to the problem already *are* "dealing with it". Many of the folks that are so concerned about the problem already have taken steps to do their part in ways more significant than "Don't buy a smartphone" - the real issue is convincing the disbelievers that they should act as well. He can't very well save the world by composting/recycling/bicycling while you're delivering pizza in your H2, now can he?

You make it sound as if hipsters are the ones warning us of the crisis. Well, you got the first three letters right anyway...

Comment Re:It ends up being a boon doggle (Score 5, Insightful) 321

The light bulbs thing isn't about you saving money. It's about everyone making a very small change in their lives which results in a very large change for us all on this blue marble of ours. Making every single little government line item into "What does it do for me?" is part of how we got into this stupid mess in the first place.

Comment Ray LaHood needs to take a step back (Score 4, Interesting) 938

I recognize that someone in Mr. LaHood's position needs to strongly advocate for safety, but his position borders on authoritarian. I listened to an interview with him on Fresh Air (I think) where he basically shouted down anyone who offered a counterpoint to his position and portrayed them all as idiots. The best part was when the final caller claimed to actually be driving while calling and it set him off to the point I thought he was going to ask if they could trace the call.

Just get us self-driving cars already so that this and a number of related problems go away.

Comment Re:"driving from the back seat" (Score 1) 306

Dear US scientists, learn to share. We don't need another Large Hadron Collider.

The US really should accept that it doesn't need one of everything and there is no shame using the resources of other countries rather than duplicating them.

I'm sure "US scientists" would have absolutely no problem sharing. Your scorn is better directed at the military and bureaucrats.

Comment Could you tell the difference? (Score 4, Interesting) 140

As I am now located in proximity to an airport with a US Airways "service focus" and have had the "pleasure" of flying with them several times, I have to ask - how would you be able to tell the difference? Every time I've been in a US Airways terminal, there's always a significant number of non-weather-related delays and cancellations (compared to the other airlines' monitors). My wife and I have independently had three separate incidents this year where we were 4th and inches from having to stay overnight at an airport due to cancellations/late planes/overbooked crew/etc. In two of those cases, I had flights where we took off at the 2'55" mark, just shy of the three hour requirement to return to gate and let everyone off. The cynic in me suspects that US Airways is actually using that three hour window to plan its flights.

It's an abhorrent mess, and when I see the US Airways CEO defending against his last place customer service ranking, I have to wonder just how much denial one management team can stand.

Comment Story submitter here (Score 4, Interesting) 607

So, I didn't want to cram up the submission block, so here's what I really wanted to say.

A lot of you already sound jaded beyond the point of wanting Syfy to continue existing. Fair enough. It could be someone else doing things properly. I mean, right now the Science Channel seems to have more going for it than Syfy. BBC America is *increasing* its science fiction lineup where it already had more content than Syfy did. I don't know how the figures are working for Discovery, but BBCA has to see something if it's able to keep this stuff going. It's not like BBCA gets to use the UK TV franchise fee.

I'm not proposing an ad-free network like HBO. The market is niche but it's still not tiny. I mean, a MILLION people watched SGU last night, and that's with a whole bunch of Atlantis fans up-in-arms over it. Let's say that 1M is the audience. At $3 a month, that's $36M a year alone for SGU. Plus, as I mentioned in the summary, their ad revenue will go up because the spots become more valuable. Let's figure four TV tiers - nationwide network OTA (IE - free), local OTA (free), cable (paid), premium (paid AND personally invested). On a premium niche network, these are people that are specifically interested in a narrow segment of content that the network is carrying and not just putting that channel on because Son of Sharktopus is on. You know more about these people and can spend more money marketing to them because they have the money to spend not only on cable but on a premium channel.

And while I personally don't have a strong taste for the cheesy monster movies that they've shown lately, I was amused by the terrible disaster flicks. Not everyone's sci-fi tastes are the same, but they're close enough that I think if they weren't tainted with wrestling and other assorted crap, we'd have a really good network on our hands.

Let's not forget that SG1 started on Showtime, and Game of Thrones is doing *quite* well on HBO. The market is there. Maybe Syfy can't do it, but someone can, and I hope they do.

Submission + - Is it time for SyFy to go premium? 2

Cutriss writes: Now that Caprica is gone and SG:U has concluded, I see new shows coming in their place such as Alphas and the Red Faction series, and I find myself asking if the fate of Atlantis and SG:U have gone differently if SyFy had been a paid cable network. I know the /. audience would probably trade a few dollars a month if it meant replacing wrestling and ghost-chasing shows with relicensed classics and more appropriate treatment of original content. Plus, with a paying audience, the ad space would become much more lucrative and SyFy could lose some of the seedier ads it has been saddled with lately and better fund new original content.

Comment Re:Designerware (Score 1) 510

In my experience (as the AC mentions), carpeting in the US is rarely glued down. They mostly use the tacking strips along the baseboards. Oftentimes there's a foam-like padding layer that goes under the carpet and if glue were being used, it'd only be gluing the padding and not the carpet. You'll note that your Wikipedia citation says "or", not "and". So it may be common practice elsewhere, but not in the US.

Also I don't know anyone that wears shoes indoors. I myself have a sizeable weather mat inside the front door and a bench with an interior compartment for storing shoes. If I'm having guests I don't usually make them take their shoes off, but I never wear my own around the house.

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