Comments on: Stimulus Bill Includes ‘Smart Monitors’

By: pdsand

pdsand — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 16:05:45 +0000

They won’t be able to find any wiggle room in the federal budget to put such a device on the white house. However maybe I could put together a spreadsheet that shows what the potential return on investment to the taxpayer is, and they’ll have to be swayed by that.
Speaking of the taxpayers making bank through these programs, man, I can’t wait til all this money from stimulus and the nationalized banks starts getting returned to me on 1099-div’s. We’ll all be gazillionaires! Of course a gazillion won’t be worth what it used to be worth, after all the inflation.

By: Confucius

Confucius — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 14:38:37 +0000

I think Google needs to work on a fart monitor. You know methane is a greenhouse gas. (And it can be deadly too.)

By: aze_216

aze_216 — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 07:28:01 +0000

In the future, government officials won’t have to send a worker to put an energy restricting device on a retired, WW2 veteran to shut off his heat and freeze him to death.. They can simply have an algorithm do it for them. What was google’s motto again… “Don’t be evil”… uh, yeah…

By: Liberals Demise

Liberals Demise — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 12:13:26 +0000

Semper Fi, 1st!!

By: 1sttofight

1sttofight — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 06:34:20 +0000

Here is your remoTe control;

MIDDLE FINGER EXTENDED.

By: BillK

BillK — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 05:08:49 +0000

That’s a bit like the remote-control thermostats that California was considering, where they’d be able to drive by and turn down your thermostat to a reasonable 67 or 68 if they found some jerk that had it turned up to 73

Obviously, given the events post-inaugural, the White House would need to remain immune from such monitoring.

By: brad

brad — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 05:02:23 +0000

Anything the gov’t can or does monitor, has NOTHING TO DO with efficiency!

What area the gov’t controls is efficient? Why doesn’t the gov’t monitor itself, and control itself? Because there is NO MONEY GENERATING in that. Once they get their claws in you, the lawyers will make arguments for taking more of your money. Everyone wants alternative fuels, gov’t wants control. Everyone wants electric cars, cheaper solar panels, wind power, recycle ideas, gov’t can only think of control, power, money money money! We don’t and never had a gov’t that tried to help us, why would we EVER think that suddenly they are concerned about our living habits now?

“Well, if stupid people would shut off their television when they are not using it, then we wouldn’t charge them 5x the normal rate.”
~~Just imagine how many lawyers will get calls trying to fight an unfair bill because the cat opened your refrigerator while you were on vacation, and ate up more energy? Or any of the other 10,000 other scenarios that happen while existing and living? Make way for injustice, and more lawyers!

UGH! It truly is time to move to another country and start over.

By: pdsand

pdsand — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 23:51:17 +0000

That’s a bit like the remote-control thermostats that California was considering, where they’d be able to drive by and turn down your thermostat to a reasonable 67 or 68 if they found some jerk that had it turned up to 73. Sure it may be “smart” and “reasonable”, but it isn’t any of their god forsaken business.
See, it’s a good thing that we finally hear what some of this “smart grid” technology is. From the name of it, you’d think, ‘yeah, yeah, I like smart, let’s do some of that smart stuff’. Then they tell us what a lovely bunch of tyranny it could all amount to, and it doesn’t feel so smart.
I would have thought “smart grid” had something to do with the “grid” itself, say transistors and transformers and capacitors or new line materials that would reduce the amount of power that is lost along the power lines itself or something. Maybe transporting the excess power from cities and counties that produce excess to California or somewhere that has far too little? Who knew it was a term derived from ancient latin that translates roughly to “allows the government to control your electricity usage”?
Plus, Powermeter, wow.
Whatever happened to walking around to the side of the house and looking at the plain old regular meter that’s already attached to your house? If I’m not mistaken it has something to do with tracking the amount of energy used as it’s consumed. Whatever happened to getting a Georgia Power bill, and reading the section that says “usage”. Or are we supposed to choose between believing Google or our own lying eyes?

By: Reality Bytes

Reality Bytes — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:49:45 +0000

Trog – Poor, poor Trog. You can’t cook on fires. It hurts the environment. Government will have us all on raw diets for our health, for their sake.

By: Trogdor

Trogdor — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:36:16 +0000

Start collecting dung for building fires to cook on.

By: proreason

proreason — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 18:03:40 +0000

Dear Moron,

Can I have desert with lunch today? I haven’t had a desert in weeks, and hope you will relent, even though I know it’s bad for the environment.

And Mrs. Reason wants to know if she can have a mammogram this year.

Your fan,
proreason