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Good enough?

What's nonsense is locking civil time to atomic time. There would be no need for leap seconds if civil time simply remained linked to astronomical time, as it was for millenia.

Sorry, but what the heck are you talking about? Your "solution" makes no sense given the need for accurate timekeeping today. Astronomical time varies significantly with the earth's rotation all the time by various amounts of milliseconds (see here for an illustration of that variance since modern UTC standards were adopted).

The "length of a day" is simply nowhere near precise enough for modern applications. It worked to lock civil time to astronomical time when an error of a few milliseconds here and there wouldn't make a difference -- you could just reset all your clocks. But now much of our timekeeping software dealing with civil time works on machines where a few milliseconds here and there will screw things up all over the place.

Are you at all aware of the mess things were before the modern UTC standards were adopted? They tried to make corrections on an order of milliseconds on a regular basis, and it was annoying as all hell. That's why they proposed only altering the standard clocks when the collective error accumulated to closer to a second -- the shift could then easily take place.

What exactly do you think you're proposing here? That seconds will just be arbitrary lengths for civil time, varying on a daily or weekly basis to track the earth's variance in rotation? Or we keep the second constant, but that we make daily or weekly corrections somehow? Or what?

Modern technology needs civil time to be consistent. And it needs to be precise because there are far to many machines which depend on it not varying by random little increments all the time. There are various ways of solving this problem, but just waving your hands and getting out your sundial to mark noon every day (as they did for millennia) is simply not possible in the modern world.

I see an intriguing resemblance to Wain's cats--paintings made by Louis Wain, while going insane, perhaps from schizophrenia.

Also this is an awesome graph, and illustrates that the Earth is a horrible clock: https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

More proof your source s bulshit:

http://www.vision-and-eye-heal...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...
http://www.best-3dtvs.com/wp-c...
http://www4.uwsp.edu/psych/dog...

Unless your eyes are on the side of your head like a dog or bird, you aren't getting past 200 degrees FOV IN ANY SITUATION.

No, no ... the big bushy beard is for Big Iron UNIX people, Dungeon Masters, and lumbersexuals. The still-filling-in beard, goatee, or chinstrap is for the Linux people.

This chap seems pretty Linuxy these days

https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

As long as it doesn't break any of the vi key sequences, there's nothing worse than being almost vi.

Well, you get GUI menus with vim if you run gvim, so that's better, right?

Why is it that the same people who claim the Moon mission was a fake, happily believe the Moon is now a secret military base, the world is ruled by shape shifting lizard aliens

Have you seen a film from 1969? How on earth could NASA have faked the moon landings without SFX assistance from the much more advanced space-lizards. And besides, leaking it so that the fakery is an open secret is a great way of hiding that they actually went there to install a secret base.

Duh.

It's like you're not even trying.

Is it the fluoride in the water, gang-stalking mind-control rays, or just the high altitude chem sprays?

Well tell me then Mr Sheeple, what precisely are these chemical spraying tanks doing in a 787 then if it's not chemtrails?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

I personally can't think of any reason one might want to test a plane with some sort of controlable dummy ballast and it fits the chemtrails conspiracy rather well.

Americans, you're just disgustingly fat, men and women: https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

Stop eating completely, for at least a couple of weeks.

1) It's not a vactrain. It's not even that similar to a vactrain. It functions like a very high altitude aircraft, with such rarified air (and the ground-effect surface for lift) being provided by a tube. Nothing is "sucking" or "pushing" it, and nor is it maglev. The compressor at the front exists to stop a column of higher pressure air from building up in front of it, not for propulsion.

2) It is not a train. Rates for building train tracks, rail bridges, etc, are not applicable. Of human structures it's most similar to, an oil pipeline is the most apt comparison - very long, continuously welded elevated tubular steel segments capable of withstanding a pressure differential. It has some disadvantages versus a pipeline, such as much tighter tolerances, as well as some advantages, such as not containing environmentally-hazardous flammable materials. A full comparative list is too long to go into at the moment.

3) Like a pipeline and unlike rail, costs for elevating it are significantly reduced because it doesn't experience wide load swings. The cars are an order of magnitude lighter than a high speed train and thus exert an order of magnitude less loading as they pass (and only briefly). The difference in throughput is compensated for by much higher launch frequency via computer control. With dramatically reduced loading comes dramatically reduced support structure costs - more akin to the supports on the Disney Monorail than that of a rail bridge.

4) It is not meant (as per the source) to be an exact replacement for rail; it's meant to be an intermediary transportation system between rail and air travel.

5) Yes, the original design has flaws. No, none of them are fundamental. Yes, the concept can be significantly improved upon.

Back to your regularly scheduled thread.

Years before the IBM PC there was the Commodore PET Personal Computer http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi... even said so on the name badge.

I found this link to an even sharper image:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

Sigh.

light pushes the fins of a radiometer in a vacuum - could this be a similar phenomenon??

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...

I figured this out when I was like seven years old. You just hook up one of these to a space ship and fly straight to Jupiter.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

Here's an sample specimen, but why would anybody want to see these annoying creatures up close?

I think I may have found her.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...

In RISC OS (operating system running on an ARM processor, several decades ago) applications where stored in an Apps folder ... E.g. see: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi... RISC OS had also drag & drop installation and several other nifty ideas, some which still live on. One can run a modern version on the Pi.

The total number of nuclear weapons is in decline.

Many of the doomsday horrors that tipped ICBMS for Cold War Game Over scenarios have been rendered into electricity.

cite "The Megatons to Megawatts program was initiated in 1993 and successfully completed in December 2013. A total of 500 tonnes of Russian warhead grade HEU (high enriched uranium, equivalent to 20,008 nuclear warheads) were converted in Russia to nearly 15,000 tonnes tons of LEU (low enriched uranium) and sold to the US for use as fuel in American nuclear power plants. During the 20-year Megatons to Megawatts program, as much as 10 percent of the electricity produced in the United States was generated by fuel fabricated using LEU from Russian HEU. During this period, on a comparatively modest basis, the U.S. government has also been converting some of its excess nuclear warhead HEU into power plant fuel. Efforts have also been undertaken to demonstrate the commercial feasibility of converting warhead plutonium into fuel to augment nuclear fuel for U.S. power plants."

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck.... Shoot it!

From 1950-present the effective yield of nuclear weapons in general has also increased by ~35% as people-targets voluntarily clump together.

I find it ironic that an approach with a proven track record, Mutual Assured Destruction, has been lambasted as some sort of cold-war artifact, of intrinsic evil. The threat of Armageddon is the evil, MAD was the preventative. The United States of America was even founded on it. The 'armed militia model' where the empire and an armed populace, each with the power to hold the other in check -- the whole quotable 'We the People' litany -- is just a flowery and (to our ears) archaically quaint way of introducing the concept of Mutual Assured Destruction as a deterrent to tyranny. In a practical and historical sense MAD is the only device capable of holding peoples in restraint, long enough that the meme of self-restraint might creep into the culture.

Decreasing weapons count is just a stage past what Carl Sagan referred to as 'nuclear adolescence', and from the height of tensions to now we're coming along fine. Too many young folk just dismiss the Cold War weapons buildout as some kind of mass psychosis without trying to place themselves there mentally. Sure it was insane, but when you believe your enemy is batty insane what would you do? You have to do something a bit dodgy yourself, in calculated fashion. When revisionist historians try to inject the idea that some hypothetical and magical Kissinger-robot could have descended from the heavens (The Day The Earth Stood Still) and defused the situation, gotten the nuclear powers to sit down and talk like kindergarteners in a circle waiting for a pat on the head, they cheat us all. There was rational thinking, difficult and courageous decisions and some pretty good know-how behind those Cold War excesses. The idea of a hostile invasion may seem quaint and laughable today, but then it was a very real concern. We had just fought a world war to prevent one.

Everybody talks about a new world in the morning.
New world in the morning, that's today!
It's time to weaponize space for quick response in defense of the Earth,
or we're ALL sitting ducks.

But... but... but without Dice, my python bash one-liner would make NO SENSE )-;

Err, sting...

Nice try but like most warmists you are too mired in "open mindedness" and political correctness that you fail to engage in any active mindedness. This allows any charlatan to shovel in any crap they want, take a look at Global Carbon Emission by Type to Y2004.png, the source data can be found at http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/ndp0..., and see if the numbers still look like a "fuckton".

What happened? - the market crash, the housing crash, worldwide economic collapse basically. Everyone suffered, but not equally. Greece couldn't effectively use monetary policy to help recover from the injury because it was tied to the EU - and Germany, who weathered the slump like a champ and saw no need for such measures, had more power to control that monetary policy in the EU than Greece or other suffering countries.

So, the dominoes start falling. Greece takes one measure after another to compensate for the lack of monetary policy flexibility as it crushes under debt without the ability to change the money supply and/or interest rates, or ease trade with fluctuating exchange rates. Their credit rating is downgraded making it impossible to get decent interest rates on loans needed to get themselves through the recession. There was no money for a stimulus package and the crippling debt just made the situation worse. The bailouts and debt-restructurings are nice peace-offerings, but wow... when you see how Greece was dealing with up to nearly 30% interest rates for a while there, it still feels like they're being fleeced. The whole thing smells of usury.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...

Coupled with austerity measures during a recession, I'm surprised Greece didn't just get up and leave the EU long ago.

While this looked like a great analysis of how using Euro hampered the Greeks, you missed one important point - it is very doubtful that had Greece not joined Eurozone, things would have been better.

Example, just look at how the East Asian countries fare during 2003 financial crisis. A lot of them faced the same credit problem as Greece did, and *compounded* to it was their currencies got attacked by speculators like Soros (see Indonesia for example). While devaluating your currency sounded nice for export, if it dropped like a bottomless pit, losing 50, 60, 70, 80 then 90% in value against the Dollar, you then get a mass panic on your hands, and now you are unable to afford necessary imports, yet the benefits of strong export is still a long way to come.

Greece avoided all that because they are using Euro, and thus shielded by the economic strength of other Eurozone countries. I have no doubt that had Greece not joined Eurozone, its currency would have been attacked by speculators long ago, causing even more havoc. (30% interest rates would look like a good deal when you faced with the option of borrowing in dollars while your exchange rate is dropping like a rock, thus in a year, your foreign debt might be 2x, 3x or even 10x as much.) That gave Greece the time to fix its problems. Unfortunately, because of the very fact that Greece have (or had) time, its leaders now lacked the political will and popular support to really save the country. Just look at the last election, the Greeks have spoken and they do not want to take the bitter medicine.

Yes and no. Germany isn't being nefarious. The crux of the issue is the same as it's always been - Greece should never have joined the EU. Germany and Greece have very different economies and different fiscal and monetary policies. Given Germany has more power in voting, Greece knew what they were getting into. In fact, they lied about their economy just to get in - because they wanted the benefits of the euro that all EU countries would enjoy plus the stability of the euro and the lower interest rate they could (and did) restructure their debt under when converting to the euro. This backfired during the Great Recession when they were disproportionately affected and subsequently every country in the EU was given a different interest rating for their government bonds based upon their individual risk where before, they were all given the same risk level - so they got currency stability, but lost interest rate stability.

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/...

Germany pushed for rules to entry that require a deficit lower than 3% of GDP - Greece cooked their books and lied when they showed numbers to the EU lower than that. There was also a rule that total debt had to be lower than 60% of GDP. Greece hadn't seen numbers like that in decades, but the rule was bent and they were allowed in. HUGE mistake for all parties. Greece wasn't a good fit even with lots of safeguards in place as their needs didn't match Germany and other players.

40% of Germany's GDP comes from exports... and they got rid of exchange rates between EU countries plus lower exchange rates worldwide because the euro wouldn't increase in value as quickly as the deutschmark - the trade-off for them was that they pay higher interest rates to support the overall euro. Greece got bonuses, too -- lower interest rates, lower inflation, and cheaper imports which briefly led to a higher standard of living. Greece was on track to lowering its debt and increasing GDP...

What happened? - the market crash, the housing crash, worldwide economic collapse basically. Everyone suffered, but not equally. Greece couldn't effectively use monetary policy to help recover from the injury because it was tied to the EU - and Germany, who weathered the slump like a champ and saw no need for such measures, had more power to control that monetary policy in the EU than Greece or other suffering countries.

So, the dominoes start falling. Greece takes one measure after another to compensate for the lack of monetary policy flexibility as it crushes under debt without the ability to change the money supply and/or interest rates, or ease trade with fluctuating exchange rates. Their credit rating is downgraded making it impossible to get decent interest rates on loans needed to get themselves through the recession. There was no money for a stimulus package and the crippling debt just made the situation worse. The bailouts and debt-restructurings are nice peace-offerings, but wow... when you see how Greece was dealing with up to nearly 30% interest rates for a while there, it still feels like they're being fleeced. The whole thing smells of usury.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...

Coupled with austerity measures during a recession, I'm surprised Greece didn't just get up and leave the EU long ago. I don't blame Germany for acting in their own best interests, but I do blame each EU country that allowed members to join that did not match the necessary economic requirements.

Spain and Greece are suffering high unemployment largely because their wages are in euros and they can't do much with fiscal and monetary policies to ease their current competitive disadvantage:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...

If they hadn't joined the EU to begin with, they might have bee

Mozilla (as of their 2013 financial report) had $250 million in net assets, and during the year received $306 million in 'royalties' and spent $295 million ($200mm on software development, $45mm on branding/marketing, and $30mm on general admin).

The Wikimedia Foundation (as of their 2014 financial report) had $54 million in net assets, and during the year received $50 million in donations/support and spent $46 million ($20mm on salaries, $20 mm on other, $5 mm on grants/awards. Only $3mm spent on hosting and service expenses).

There is no reason that these entities require that kind of cash flow, and need to spend that much money. Non-profit =/= money spent efficiently or effectively, and the people running these entities have managed to get themselves a very sweet deal by controlling what should in all rights be a community-led structure, and dipping their greedy snout in the stream of cash flow.

For those reasons alone, I refuse to support either of them. It is greed and control writ large.

Sources:
https://static.mozilla.com/moc...
https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

Well the Apple line wasn't really intended for home use

Oh really ? Please tell me more !

Well the Apple line wasn't really intended for home use

Oh really ? Please tell me more !

...it's not furry.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/w...

--
BMO

Oh! So sorry! Feeling left out?

Yeah, the "People's" network.

In Cameroon, it is illegal to film sensitive places. This includes embassies. I was detained by police 'cause I filmed the US Embassy, and then the US security person came and spoke to me and basically said "don't you know about [Islamic group in Nigeria]" and "[they're going to kill us all!]".
I had managed to get home between filming and the police coming calling, so I swapped out the memory card in the camera and claimed to have deleted the film. I lied.
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w...
Enjoy.

All cops are bastards.
I won't mourn if all the American Embassies in the world are blown up tomorrow.

In the U.S., the vast majority of electricity still comes from Coal.

If my address was 1153 U.S. Street that would mean something. Meanwhile in Washington State where I live:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...

For those who don't like images...
Renewables:
Hydroelectric: 76.6%
Nuclear: 8.0%
Wind: 5.6%
Biomass: 1.4%

Fossil Fuels
Natural Gas: 4.7%
Coal: 3.2%
?Other: 0.5%?

Yeah, Zenith pioneered this. "Space Command". Pretty limited, obviously, but functional.

Microsoft funded half and fully developed OS/2 by themselves.

See this? It says Microsoft, not IBM.

I'll reiterate: People here think it's a ridiculous product. The page is stupid marketing to foreigners. Yes, there are separate accent and apostrophe keys (in case you're curious, here's what an Icelandic keyboard layout looks like). Hákarl (the fermented shark you refer to) isn't eaten commonly, it's actually fairly rarely eaten (though some people do like it). Most of the foods you'd consider weird are rarely consumed, like sheep heads, skate, etc, often associated with a particular festival or whatnot. Probably the only things you'd find weird that are eaten fairly commonly are horse and fish jerky (harðfiskur). Lamb is commonly eaten here but you probably wouldn't find that weird. We also have a lot of dairy products you don't have but I don't think you'd find most of them that weird. Anyway, probably the most commonly-eaten food here is pizza ;) Hamburgers and hotdogs are common too (though our hotdogs are made of lamb).

Whale is eaten here but rarely. Nearly half of the catch consumed in Iceland is eaten by tourists (a large percentage of which, I should add, come from America). Also I'm continually surprised by the percentage of Americans who criticize Iceland for whaling but don't know that America whales too, and no small amount (producing thousands of tonnes of whale meat per year). Yes, they're "natives" whaling, but 1) it's no less traditional for Icelanders to whale than it is for Alaskan natives, 2) Alaskan natives use modern equipment for whaling too, including chasing them down in speedboats, killing them with modern equipment, and dragging them on shore with backhoes; and 3) Alaskan whales end up no less dead than Icelandic ones. None of the Icelandic whale populations are threatened.

Anyone who wants to discourage whaling over here, a few tips.

One, don't come out with the self-righteous stuff, because it doesn't fly. Not only does the US whale too, but receiving lectures on morality from a country where a majority of the population supports torture and who engages in all sorts of obscene human rights abuses and whose domestic livestock are mostly raised in factory farms in horrible conditions doesn't exactly come across well.

Secondly, know that any overt pressure is just going to cause backlash, and the more overt, the more the backlash. Many of you may see for example Paul Watson as a hero. Here he's seen as a ecoterrorist; he literally sent people in to sink ships right in the public harbour. If you want to be taken seriously, you need to distance yourself from these sort of people. You don't make friends by talking up people who come in and wreck up the place.

Third, understand the local perspective. It's not only that they've been eaten traditionally since Iceland was settled (indeed, the word for "beached whale" also means "jackpot" or "godsend", because in the old days it could mean the difference between life or death for a whole town). It's that they live free out in the open ocean, growing up their whole lives unhindered by man (except when, say, a NATO ship uses a super-powerful anti-sub sonar in the area or whatnot :P), living a pretty much idyllic life - and a single whale provides a vast amount of meat. Meanwhile, pigs for example - also highly intelligent animals - grow up in horrible squalid conditions in many of the countries that criticize Iceland .

Fourth, there are actual arguments you can make that have effect, and have on their own been discouraging whale consumption - but which foreigners who oppose whaling rarely make. Probably the foremost of these is the health issue. Whales, being top predators, tend to have dangerously high levels of heavy metal and organic pollutant contamination. If you want to make someone feel uncomfortable about eating whale meat, point out how much mercury and lead they're eating in that serving. There are also lesser arguments you can make that may or ma

Speaking of the "come hither" look, here's Golda with a similar pose: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a1/1914_Golda_in_Milwaukee.jpg.

"There is ample evidence of Ocean acidification to suggest that CO2 needs to be treated as a pollutant."

Then I'm sure you'll have no problem providing that evidence of this and of any harm..

I can tell you ahead of time corals have genes that switch on to handle heat and co2 and they have survived 7000 ppm CO2 in the past and that this is not affecting reefs which by some miracle are only dying near man where he pollutes; in the open ocean coral is fine.

Tree of life with time scale
http://rs79.vrx.net/opinions/i...

Historic co2
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...

Corals can turn certain genes on and off to cope with heat
http://www.sciencemag.org/cont...

Dr. Bruce Carlson produced a wonderful video demonstrating the resilient capacity of coral reefs if humans would simply stopped interfering with nature.
http://www.advancedaquarist.co...

Palau's coral reefs surprisingly resistant to ocean acidification
http://nsf.gov/news/news_summ....

Total reef losses due to climate change are unlikely
http://www.advancedaquarist.co...

For cold water corals, warming is beating acidification to drive a growth spurt
http://arstechnica.com/science...

Yep, people who live next to a mountain don't know what "flat" really is.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...

That is FLAT, and it goes on for a LONG way...

I couldn't find a better map, but fluoride can always be found in meaningful amounts naturally in groundwater.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...

bla bla bla

the issue with carbon recycling the form of CO2 is twofold - it's a gas that must be stored under high pressure, like propane or butane, and two, it's not so great on energy density once you have to capture and haul along the heavy CO2 from like an automobile... harvesting CO2 from the atmosphere via ethanol amine ponds could be pondered, but otherwise all green life forms compete for the 0.03% CO2 in air, which is rising though and creates global warming and desertification or junglification and bad weather, but by far the fastest growing tomatoes are grown in the Dead Sea Valley which is the lowest dry point on Earth, and the sole reason is partial pressure of CO2 and carbon availablity is the highest anywhere in the world... such is the issue with scarcity of CO2 scrubbed from the atmosphere, but that is not to say, that when you have energy to blow, like solar in a desert, and nothing good to store it into, harvesting even humidity and CO2 from the atmosphere wasting a ton of energy because energy is cheap is not economically feasible

but otherwise, if a full recycling circle is done, a liquid or solid end product carried back to a recycling gas station is preferable, and in this lithium borohydride to lithium borate fuel cell for cars sounds like an expensive but leaves the CO2 recycling in the dust, or, even just lithium metal, beryllium metal (toxid), boron, or aluminum, and their hydrides beat carbon in energy storing efficiency by weight, but for stationary home based uses environmentally fairly friendly alkaline zinc air or iron air battery type setups might be more economical on a storage density by volume and cost basis even if by weight they both suck, and the zinc or electrolytic iron cathodes can be removed and stacked in a pile..

carbon's main ergonomic and energy efficiency efficiency lies in the fact that it's a gas that can be freely emitted through an exhaust, and capturing it back from that dilute form is very expensive energy wise.. not emitting it, and capturing it, like a car that has no exhaust pipe and instead embarks on compressing and heat echange cooling the CO2 into a compressed liquid cylinder has all kinds of issues, similar to the loco loco's page i'll cite below in the references

ref 1: chart I made a while back that relates to rocket fuels and this CO2 recycling question:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
it also explains why the space shuttle running on liquid hydrogen was such a bad idea, compared to solid rocket boosters based on aluminum - just compare carbon, hydrogen and aluminum (or boron or beryllium or lithium) in the above chart. Yes hydrogen has the highest energy storage density by weight even if it really really sucks by volume (cryogenic hydrogen that must be vented to stay cold is only 1/8th the density of water) and plain gasoline has more hydrogen in a gallon than cryogenic liquid hydrogen does, true it weighs a whole lot more.. still.. if you have to carry along the oxidizer too, such as liquid oxygen required for rockets, hydrogen sucks compared to aluminum powder powered solid rocket boosters even that mammoth dinosaur contraption of a Shuttle had to resort to just to get up there into space

ref.2 here is a chart I made a while back that somebody revised into svg with python
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w...
here is the original I made with an Excel screenshot
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w...
note that iron and zinc, with easy aqueous battery chemistries leave liquid hydrogen in the dust when it comes to energy density by volume, but they do suck by weight indeed.. boron, aluminum, silicon, lithium have no easy aqueous recycling chemistries, though some semi-aqueous processes might be found that are economical for both the abundant aluminum and magnesium. I'

bla bla bla

the issue with carbon recycling the form of CO2 is twofold - it's a gas that must be stored under high pressure, like propane or butane, and two, it's not so great on energy density once you have to capture and haul along the heavy CO2 from like an automobile... harvesting CO2 from the atmosphere via ethanol amine ponds could be pondered, but otherwise all green life forms compete for the 0.03% CO2 in air, which is rising though and creates global warming and desertification or junglification and bad weather, but by far the fastest growing tomatoes are grown in the Dead Sea Valley which is the lowest dry point on Earth, and the sole reason is partial pressure of CO2 and carbon availablity is the highest anywhere in the world... such is the issue with scarcity of CO2 scrubbed from the atmosphere, but that is not to say, that when you have energy to blow, like solar in a desert, and nothing good to store it into, harvesting even humidity and CO2 from the atmosphere wasting a ton of energy because energy is cheap is not economically feasible

but otherwise, if a full recycling circle is done, a liquid or solid end product carried back to a recycling gas station is preferable, and in this lithium borohydride to lithium borate fuel cell for cars sounds like an expensive but leaves the CO2 recycling in the dust, or, even just lithium metal, beryllium metal (toxid), boron, or aluminum, and their hydrides beat carbon in energy storing efficiency by weight, but for stationary home based uses environmentally fairly friendly alkaline zinc air or iron air battery type setups might be more economical on a storage density by volume and cost basis even if by weight they both suck, and the zinc or electrolytic iron cathodes can be removed and stacked in a pile..

carbon's main ergonomic and energy efficiency efficiency lies in the fact that it's a gas that can be freely emitted through an exhaust, and capturing it back from that dilute form is very expensive energy wise.. not emitting it, and capturing it, like a car that has no exhaust pipe and instead embarks on compressing and heat echange cooling the CO2 into a compressed liquid cylinder has all kinds of issues, similar to the loco loco's page i'll cite below in the references

ref 1: chart I made a while back that relates to rocket fuels and this CO2 recycling question:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
it also explains why the space shuttle running on liquid hydrogen was such a bad idea, compared to solid rocket boosters based on aluminum - just compare carbon, hydrogen and aluminum (or boron or beryllium or lithium) in the above chart. Yes hydrogen has the highest energy storage density by weight even if it really really sucks by volume (cryogenic hydrogen that must be vented to stay cold is only 1/8th the density of water) and plain gasoline has more hydrogen in a gallon than cryogenic liquid hydrogen does, true it weighs a whole lot more.. still.. if you have to carry along the oxidizer too, such as liquid oxygen required for rockets, hydrogen sucks compared to aluminum powder powered solid rocket boosters even that mammoth dinosaur contraption of a Shuttle had to resort to just to get up there into space

ref.2 here is a chart I made a while back that somebody revised into svg with python
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w...
here is the original I made with an Excel screenshot
http://commons.wikimedia.org/w...
note that iron and zinc, with easy aqueous battery chemistries leave liquid hydrogen in the dust when it comes to energy density by volume, but they do suck by weight indeed.. boron, aluminum, silicon, lithium have no easy aqueous recycling chemistries, though some semi-aqueous processes might be found that are economical for both the abundant aluminum and magnesium. I'

People say the average worker isn't making as much as they used to, but I think that people are just buying a lot more stuff than they used to.

That's a statement of median salary vs. GDP, which is only tangentially related to spending (i.e., only in the sense that consumer spending affects GDP). And wages and salaries really have been falling relative to GDP over the past 50 years.

Cellular phones, cable TV, Internet, and computers. None of this stuff existed 50 years ago. Our budgets may be stretched, but a lot of it is because of the things we have decided are necessary.

On the flip side, there are a lot of things that are cheaper today than they were 50 years ago, such as clothing and food (according to this article, those two expenses went from about 42% of the average household budget in 1950 to about 17% in 2003).

Ahh, the telescreen from Orwell's 1984 will finally be installed in all classrooms, feeding only appropriate knowledge into the young minds who know better than to ask questions anyway.

Now if you'll excuse me, I think now is an excellent time for a Two Minutes Hate!

They already have them, they're called 'smart' phones and are all the rage with children who can be indoctrinated all day long, 24/7/365.

Ahh, the telescreen from Orwell's 1984 will finally be installed in all classrooms, feeding only appropriate knowledge into the young minds who know better than to ask questions anyway.

Now if you'll excuse me, I think now is an excellent time for a Two Minutes Hate!

You should thank them for doing something new, without simply copying other systems.

I think that a window full of icons has been done before. It is not exactly a revolutionary interface.

You should thank them for doing something new, without simply copying other systems.

*New* tech, coming soon

Niggawatts

And rape rates in some other 1st-world countries are HUGELY higher--but nobody here cares apparently: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...

The numbers may say so, but they comprise only official data. In more advanced countries, the case must be that less rapes go unreported, so the figures may be closer to reality, while not so in the US. Consider the Japan rates, which are among the lowest, while having a strong culture of sexual harassment, (it's the same culture that created things like RapeLay): http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.1525/as.2007.47.5.811?uid=3737664&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21106029734881; http://scholarship.law.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1373&context=jil;http://ijo.sagepub.com/content/45/3/278.short.

It would appear that you're another of the judgmental types who have formed an opinion -- and a strong one at that -- without access to most of the facts.

For example, I didn't "try to start" a business, I actually started one. And it continues to serve clients today, nearly nine years later. What percentage of 2006 start-ups do you think are still open for business today? The practice of writing content in exchange for clients' payment was not "rejected by Wikipedia". Indeed, the practical justification for MyWikiBiz was underscored by the pre-existence of Wikipedia's own authorized "Reward Board", where (you guessed it), clients could and did (and still do) pay editors for content. Indeed, if the business practice was "rejected" by Wikipedia, why did Jimmy Wales (the co-founder of Wikipedia) publicly endorse MyWikiBiz?

https://lists.wikimedia.org/pi...

Further, my business practice from the start was to DISCLOSE ON WIKIPEDIA every one of my paying clients, so that my edits could be appropriately scrutinized. Jimmy Wales authored a new plan that would put a layer of separation between that disclosure and the provenance of the articles on Wikipedia.

The only thing you seem to have conveyed even remotely correctly is that I have been "shitty with them". But, I'd argue not "every (sic) since". I started getting shitty with Wales and the Wikimedia Foundation and the abusive administrators on Wikipedia when Wales reneged on his mutual agreement with me, and furthermore when I began to discover how much hypocrisy takes place in the Wikipedia community environment. For example, Wales dictated that "interwiki transclusion" links that included thousands of links to his for-profit enterprise Wikia site, should be "do follow", while all other external links should be "no follow". SEO specialists instantly know the enormous financial kick-back that this decision represented for Wikia and Wales. He later denied that he gave that order, but the head code developer for Mediawiki explicitly confirmed publicly that Jimmy Wales told him to switch on "no follow" for all but interwiki links. When you see such a liar and grifter making (literally) hundreds of thousands of dollars off his exploitation of Wikipedia, while I was shamed off the site as a paid editor who wanted to disclose all of his conflicts of interest, yes it rankled me, and it still does.

"Rape culture" isn't really about solving any problems. It's about generating fear to generate money and votes.

Rape rates have been falling drastically since the 70's.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ZlRN...

Rape rates on colleges are LOWER than outside of college:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...

And rape rates in some other 1st-world countries are HUGELY higher--but nobody here cares apparently:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...

But none of these facts comply with the myth of the "oppressive white male" who thinks he can rape and take whatever he wants.

Nobody disagrees with the idea that rape is a bad thing. But people are willing to hijack that axiom to create hysteria and generate political power.

"Rape culture" isn't really about solving any problems. It's about generating fear to generate money and votes.

Rape rates have been falling drastically since the 70's.
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_ZlRN...

Rape rates on colleges are LOWER than outside of college:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...

And rape rates in some other 1st-world countries are HUGELY higher--but nobody here cares apparently:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wi...

But none of these facts comply with the myth of the "oppressive white male" who thinks he can rape and take whatever he wants.

Nobody disagrees with the idea that rape is a bad thing. But people are willing to hijack that axiom to create hysteria and generate political power.