Posts by Aaron Em

Not fast enough

And not in accordance with the claims being made on its behalf.

But I suppose you'll just have to forgive me for wanting to see some evidence of solid, sensible, evidence-driven planning, before we continue any further on a social re-engineering project easily equal in scope and breadth to the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward -- and with just as much potential for catastrophe as either.

Silly of me, I know.

Because we suspect you are making a horrible mistake

One with severe consequences for, at least, the subset of our species inhabiting what we please ourselves to think of as "the developed world".

For a lot of us, it'd be one thing if at least you lot could be convinced that nuclear power does not involve a contract with Satan himself, but you won't, and you've very obviously got the ear of those in power. So we're going to end up with a pure renewables plan, with no backstop; better, we're going to end up with a pure renewables plan with which the rich and powerful have no problem, because they're not the ones getting the shitty end of the "we can't generate enough electricity to satisfy all of the demand" stick, and all of it wrapped up in an overweening self-regard by those "virtuous" and "righteous" enough not to give a rat's ass about all the people you've plunged into privation.

"People have been predicting the end of the world for 2000 years. Can I therefore infer from your argument that the world is never in fact going to end?"

Not reasonably. But you can sure as hell draw the inference that we apes aren't any fucking good at making big scary predictions like that one and then getting them right. That said, I don't think the greens are wrong about things like peak oil and climate change being problems; I just think they're appallingly misguided in how they intend to go about addressing those problems, and I think that the reason you can't budge them from their path with a crowbar and a thousand pages of evidence is because they're operating as much or more on the basis of faith as on that of reason -- it's not just a matter of preserving good conditions for our progeny at this point; it's become a matter of morality and of virtue, and that scares the hell out of me because I know enough about history to be aware of what tends easily to happen when government becomes more concerned about living up to an ideology, no matter how noble, than it is about the people to whom it is at least theoretically responsible.

And worsening the situation, this is noble?

I sure don't see a hell of a lot of effort on the part of greens for better regulation of existing energy companies; the attitude seems to be "the worse, the better" on the theory that the quicker they're allowed to run themselves into the ground, the quicker they can be replaced with their supposed equivalent in solar and wind generation.

But why expect anything else? If there's one thing true of greens, it's that they give more of a damn for their ideology than they do for anyone who doesn't run in their social circles. Why should they be any different here?

You've left something out

You need to own a house for that. My landlord wouldn't let me install panels on the roof whether subsidized or otherwise, and I strongly suspect that whatever council owns the council house or the council flat wouldn't be any more welcoming of the idea.

Of course, you could just write off everybody who isn't a houseowner, but...

Sweetie, the grownups are talking

You go back and play with your Star Trek dolls, okay?

(Seriously: weather control? Try to keep it to things where we at least have any idea of whether or not it's possible on a large scale, much less how to go about it.)

Moore slaw

Moore's "law" -- actually, a mere observation, of which fools quickly make too much -- has already broken down for computer processors and other high-density ICs. Why do you think there hasn't been a new single-core processor in something like five years? Because parallel programming is an idea whose time has come, and Intel/AMD want to privilege social engineering over revenue and profit by forcing everyone over to it? Not likely! They're making multicore processors now, and forcing the developers to catch up, because they can't squeeze any more speed out of their single-core designs without a much smaller manufacturing process which appears to be a long time coming.

Now it's possible that a similar limit in solar PV is a long way away, and that we still have as much range to improve solar panel technology as we did computer processors in, say, 1990. If that turns out to be true, then it'll prove wrong all of us who counseled patience and caution in developing a dependency on the technology before it was known capable of handling the load. But, so far, the rate at which solar PV conversion efficiency improves has appeared much closer to a linear progression than to an exponential one. This being the case, I find it difficult in the extreme to credit the sunny predictions of solar fans who tell me not to worry, the next generation of the technology really will be the panacea they've been promising all along.

I look forward

to having my space heater "demand managed" at three o'clock on a windy January morning, when the grid's under heavy load because everyone is trying to keep warm.

Don't feel too bad, it's not just the UK

From here in the US, reading a news story such as this one is like looking two or three years into the future. I guess it's nice that rich people will have another way of extracting money from people like me who are foolish and useless enough to work for a living.

Also, don't worry too hard about your lack of a fireplace either; burning wood releases carbon, after all, and we must think of the precious forests, so I have no doubt whatsoever that that'll become a serious crime, not very long at all after people start needing to do it in any kind of serious way. Then you can go to prison for trying to keep Granny and Junior from freezing to death, and then *all* your labor will be at the service of rich people, instead of whatever mere fraction they're extracting from you right now, by means such as having to pay extra taxes for not owning something you cannot afford.

Don't complain, though! You're paying a premium now to improve the future of rich people's children and grandchildren, and since they are clearly the best of us, it only makes sense that we otherwise useless poor people should be put to privation on their behalf. What more do we deserve than nobly to suffer on behalf of our betters?

Spoken like a True Believer

"...even though you deny it, it looks like you really want the cutthroat capitalism, because you don't want it to change."

Currencies are defined top-down, not bottom-up; you don't get to decide what currency people use unless you are sovereign, which is unfortunate for you lot because the very concept of sovereignty is what you want to tear down.

It's not that sensible people find cutthroat capitalism appealing, at least not unless they're getting the benefit; it's that the argument you're advancing, that people where you live should be able to define and use their own alternative forms of currency without government interference, is utterly without meaning -- neither right nor wrong, but roughly as senseless as arguing that the sky should be green-and-orange paisley -- until you first succeed in tearing down your existing system of government and replacing it with one which suits your ideology. Until you can see a clear way of doing that, you're just wasting everyone's time. (And if you *do* find a clear way, please do all the rest of us the courtesy of offering enough warning ahead of time so that we can get the hell out of the country before you turn it into another Somalia.)

Oh you damn fool anarchists

Worse than libertarians, I swear. At least libertarianism has the courtesy to be unfashionable; I'm going to be hearing from dribbling anarcho-somethingists for the rest of my godforsaken life.

'30 seconds' indeed

I'd love to have people to talk on the phone with like you have! It's nice to have a chat, but it is sorely lacking in bandwidth by comparison with email. Not needing two people in the same 'place' at the same time is also often a benefit. So is having an email archive available to supplement memory, not just one's own but those of other people; I for one have frequently found it necessary to send someone a copy of their own months- or years-old email, laying down the law on whatever subject happens to be currently in contention -- it's generally rather difficult for someone to go on saying I'm doing it wrong, in the face of their own words telling me to do it exactly the way I have been.

Gratuitous Latin, I don't entirely disagree with you. For example, I shun instant-messaging technology for the blight on human communication that it is. But the general statement that telephones are always better than text-based media is one I find rather unreasonable on the whole; I think it's more accurate to say that a telephone conversation is almost always a better option than a *synchronous* text-based medium such as instant messaging, but that an asynchronous medium such as email, or even text messaging, is often much better than either.

What?

There's a difference between "conscientious about his job" and "has no sense of what must be dealt with right now and what can wait until Monday".

But, hey, I guess I now know the handle of at least one IT manager who posts on the Reg. Must remember that next time I'm looking for a laugh.

Doesn't matter who's to blame

Don't make excuses for the Linux kids; they're the ones with the attitude that Linux can never fail but can only be failed, they're the ones who have to put in the effort of explaining to me why it's my fault and not theirs that, out of five trials on five different laptops from three manufacturers, Linux has not yet been able to support all three of ACPI, audio, and a non-4:3-ratio screen -- even though bog-standard Windows 2000, without even any service packs, can handle all three of these features just fine.

"Run multiple desktops" oh ho!

It's called 'Virtual Dimension'. It's free to download from Sourceforge, which is not exactly a barrier to the sort of person who uses multiple desktops. It doesn't suck.

Try again!

God bless you, sir!

Someone talking sensibly about Linux on the desktop? In *my* Reg comments thread? It's likelier than you think!

"compared to the other half's Vista desktop"

Would you also argue that a Lada is a perfectly fine car because it's more efficient and easier to operate than a Stanley Steamer?

Maybe we do

We certainly aren't well equipped to rule ourselves -- we've got to the point where people don't even realize they've made a mistake when they say 'freedom' and mean 'liberty'.

But it won't work

Because there's no rule that says "popular and also not an asshole". If it's just popularity, then as someone else already said, there's nothing to prevent the assholes from banding together, upvoting or otherwise improving one another's popularity value, and then the wheels come off because they have the power to drive everyone else away and then all you've got left for customers is a batch of dipshits who aren't paying anyway -- basically your game has become Encyclopedia Dramatica, and nobody wants that.

One word...

SERIOUSLY

Think it'd be great to have a keyboard without tactile feedback, or even any way of telling with your fingers where the key boundaries are? Go try to write a term paper on your iPad, then come back and talk to me. No rush, I'll wait -- you'll probably be a while...

Yes, that is what I'm seriously saying

"Are you seriously saying that you don't believe that a POS system should be able to have coupon validity information uploaded and do a basic check that the coupon is in fact valid[?]"

I am indeed so saying. If it were more cost-effective to do that than to bust people who commit major fraud, like the /b/tard idiot under discussion, and eat the low-level stuff as the cost of doing business -- which it is; keeping customers happy is a requirement of doing business -- then don't you think that's what they'd be doing?

Your dribbling excuse for a 'logical' argument does not follow; there's an obvious, overriding business need to keep track of inventory, and far less of one to keep track of every single coupon in existence, which would require a lot more new infrastructure than I think you're imagining.

How, for example, do you see the coupon database info being kept reliably up to date? If it isn't, you will certainly end up sooner or later with a situation where a coupon gets printed in some magazine with eight-figure readership, everybody cuts it out and brings it to the store, and then it gets rejected at the register because the store's coupon database is a couple of days behind and doesn't know about that coupon yet. Pissing off customers by screwing them over something that's no fault of their own is a great way to lose customers.

And even if you leave aside that scenario, why expect stores and manufacturers to implement a coupon-validation system that'll cost them more than they're losing to coupon fraud? That's just dumb.

Maybe, but this isn't one of them

He's not being persecuted for being "smarter than big business"; he's being prosecuted for making it possible to defraud various companies out of a couple hundred grand.

Now I realize it's in vogue to imagine that every corporation is made out of Satan and all his demons, and in a lot of cases I'd be willing to grant the point when it comes to the occupants of the executive suites. But every corporation also has real human beings working for it, down at the lower levels where shit actually has to get done; since they have no collective bargaining power any more, guess who gets screwed first last and always when the profit margin takes a hit? But hey, that doesn't matter, FUCK THE MAN WOOO

As for the rest, I'll just assume that when somebody cons you out of a few grand and then gets busted for it, you'll testify in his defense that he's just being persecuted for being "smarter than you".

No

TRWTF is the idea that implementing a zillion bucks' worth of infrastructure, to combat a few million in coupon fraud a year, would make any kind of sense for an individual store/manufacturer pair, or indeed for all of them in the aggregate. It's not costing any one organization enough to be worth that kind of expenditure, or they'd already be doing it; why then assume that it's what the entire industry needs?

Besides which, most of the time people with bogus coupons don't even realize it, and they genuinely aren't at fault because expecting people to do an hour's due diligence on every coupon they intend to use is the sort of thing which, in a just world, would fetch you a smart slap across the mouth. Screwing them over at the POS for something that isn't their fault will accomplish nothing save to piss off the customer, who will piss off the cashier, the store manager, and everyone else within earshot before departing the store for its friendlier competitor.

Seriously, some people in here are talking so little sense on this subject that you'd think they'd never had a job.

There are legitimate uses for lockpicks

Try coming up with one for a fraudulent coupon.

And by your own excuse for reasoning: The people who printed off the coupons wouldn't have been able to do so in the first place, had it not been for the incredible dipshit under discussion here. That makes him the fraudster, surely.

Worse than Hershey's

"So much worse that I've thrown it away when its been given to me by friend or after I've mistakenly purchased it as a gift."

Ah. Palmer's?

Oh, yeah, it's not like we don't do good food

Lots of different kinds of good food, even -- you can find something delicious without even trying pretty much everywhere in the US, even New England if you can persuade them not to boil everything to death first. (Fortunately, there's no need to try being nice to people there, because they never reciprocate; you are therefore free to open negotiations with a shotgun, which I strongly recommend as I've found a crowbar just doesn't sufficiently impress.)

It's just that we seem to kind of suck at chocolate -- either it's Hershey's, or it's some hand-crafted concoction of pure organic cacao and free-range peacock's scrotum that costs seventy dollars a gram and tastes like something you'd scrape off the sole of your shoe. Or it's something worse than Hershey's, which in terms of quality is actually fair-to-middling among American chocolate manufacturers -- but I'll not horrify you with tales of *cheap* American chocolate.

At a guess...

...I'd say it's because, instead of having a list in their POS system of every coupon everywhere and who it's from and what it's for and what it's worth -- something which, given how many coupons there are everywhere, seems like it'd be an impressive trick -- stores instead use systems which read the barcodes on the coupon (there always seem to be two; I'd assume one identifies the product and the other encodes information about what the coupon is worth) and apply the discount, and then they settle up the coupons with the manufacturers at the end of the month or whatever period.

Because, seriously? If it didn't work something like that, if every cash register in every store knew about every legitimate coupon -- which is pretty much what you appear to be expecting -- then how do you think coupon fraud would even exist?

Latter-day Robin Hood, that's a good one!

Because people with computers and sufficient leisure to waste it on 4chan are *just like* people who are forced on pain of death to surrender so much of the crops they themselves have grown that they don't have enough left to live on. Well spotted.

Yes!

It's not quite as obviously stealing as if he'd busted open a cash register, but under the law, it's still stealing.

On the other hand, I suspect he'd never have heard a peep from the FBI if he weren't so fucking stupid (and so fucking insecure that he wanted approval from /b/tards -- I mean how sad is that?) as to post a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of the things.