Posted by Dominic
Tue, 29 Apr 2008 20:52:00 GMT
You read the subject correct - gas strikes generally don’t work, and here’s a short rant on why:
Every year when gas prices spike for some yet-unknown reason (other than profit), I get emails, SMS messages, IM messages and whatnot talking about how the world/nation/state/city is attempting to hold a “Fuel Strike” on a specific day.
The instructions generally are simple:
“Don’t buy gas on <day>”
The problem with this kind of strike, is that they never work. The short timespan is simply to short to have any impact, since people will storm gas stations the day before (and, potentially, the day after) in order to get their fill of gasoline.
One way in which a fuel strike might work (emphasis on might), is by prolonging the duration of the strike. I imagine if we all refused to fill fuel for a month or so, it might have some sort of impact (negative or positive, who knows).
However, we Americans are too in love with our gas-guzzling vehicles to last a long enough amount of time to have any impact.
I have attempted to solve the fuel consumption (and thus expense) issue for me by riding both my bicycle and my motorcycle to the extent that I can. Bicycle is near-free (food costs increase with the metabolism increase), and my motorcycle gets about 4 times the gas mileage that my truck does. (It has other drawbacks, though.)
So please, don’t bother holding a one-day strike (of any kind, actually) - it won’t accomplish anything, and you’ll be out time and energy best spent some other way.
Posted in Meta-internet, Soap Box | Tags fuel, gas, internet, madness, strike | no comments | no trackbacks
Posted by Dominic
Mon, 04 Feb 2008 15:42:00 GMT
This posting is mostly for my friends who may or many not be internet-savvy enough to know how to look past all the fear mongering and hyperbole that’s been put out there by media regarding the recent network cable breaks overseas.
I will try to summarize the information that was presented here, here, here and here - if you want more in-depth, please to go those links. :)
In a nutshell: Last week two undersea cables were cut in the Mediterranean north of Egypt. Whether this was an accident or not is still to be determined. The affected cables were SEA-ME-WE-4 and FLAG Europe-Asia.
The countries hardest affected by these cable cuts were Egypt, Pakistan, India and Kuwait.
Iran, contrary to common belief, was not even in the 10 top affected countries, despite having lost approx. 20% of it’s connectivity.
Don’t get me wrong, losing 20% of a countries internet connectivity is bad - real bad - but nothing compared to the 90+ percent for Egypt and Pakistan.
An interesting point of note, is that many of the countries have managed to recover some of their lost connectivity - but they’re far from being out of the woods. And even if in the next week or so more of the connectivity is re-established, it won’t be until cable repairs are completed that the internet for those affected, will be back at full speed. (Currently, some of Europe is getting across the Mediterranean via the US and Asia….)
Posted in Meta-internet, Soap Box | Tags cable, cut, hulksmash, internet, outage, undersea | 1 comment | no trackbacks
Posted by Dominic
Fri, 17 Aug 2007 17:08:00 GMT
This is one of those “How do others view you” things..
http://kevan.org/johari?name=uthrom
Posted in Just me, Meta-internet | Tags internet, johari, meme, stupid, window | no comments | no trackbacks
