Ok, I'll look for a better reference. Let me know if you know of one. But even so, is it off by an order of magnitude? It would take several orders of magnitude to make a serious dent.
Ethanol, or any biofuel, will be hard pressed to replace oil. Petroleum is essentially very old and dirty, but efficient biofuel, stockpiled underground. A year's worth of [insert favorite biofuel source plant(s) here] will be hard pressed to replace an eon's worth of petroleum.
Here is some back-of-the-napkin stuff - mostly unit conversions. Nothing fancy. If you trust my math skills, feel free to skip to the surprise ending.
My sources are just whatever came up first on Google.
So here goes:
According to this link, there were 598 million metric tons of corn produced globally in 2002. (That was the first year I came across. Let's assume it's typical.)
598 million metric tons * (2204.6 lbs/metric ton) ...converts to 1.3 billion lbs of corn.
A bushel of corn is currently defined as 56 lbs.
1.3 billion lbs * (1 bushel/56 lbs) ...converts to about 23.5 million bushels of corn.
According to this article, a bushel of corn can produce 2.7 gallons of ethanol.
23.5 million bushels * (2.7 gallons/bushel) ...tells us that 63.5 million gallons of ethanol could theoretically be made from all the corn grown globally in one year.
According to this, a barrel of petroleum has 42 gallons. After refining, it could be made into about 19.5 gallons of gasoline.
So if we say that 1 gallon of ethanol can replace one gallon of gasoline, then
63.5 million gallons * (1 barrel / 19.5 gallons) ...comes to 3.2 million barrels.
(The 1-to-1 ethanol-to-gasoline ratio is a falacy, as ethanol will only take your car 0.8 miles for every 1 mile gas will, but this is getting too complicated. Let's just say 1-to-1.)
According to this source, the United States currently uses 20 million barrels of oil per day.
3.2 million barrels * (1 day / 20 million barrels) ...amounts to 0.16 days.
So if we can stop using corn for livestock feed, corn starch, corn syrup, corn oil, corn chips, corn stoves, corn bread, popcorn, candy corn*, corn on the cob, corn dogs, creamed corn... er... sorry, I was channeling Forrest Gump for a second...
If we use all of the corn grown in one year for making ethanol, and production is still propped up by using current (petroleum-heavy) farming practices, it would keep the U.S. running for just about four hours. Or, if you prefer, Argentina could last almost a week. Or we could supply Togo with their fuel needs for the entire year.
"Your math is wrong!" you exclaim. Not unlikely. But show me where. Am I off by an order of magnitude? Let's take it from 4 hours to 40 hours. That's almost two days! Woohoo!
"Corn is the wrong source!" you shout. Let switch to sugar. Or switchgrass. Or anything you want. Let's imagine the Fubar tree, which is 100 times more efficient for making ethanol. So now we've gone from 3 hours to almost 17 days. Woohoo!
Let's dare to dream, and combine the last two! I'm off by an order of magnitude, and there's a massive switch to Fubar tree farming. The U.S. now has over 5 months of petroleum replacement. Sorry Argentina and Togo...
Feel free to check my math. I'm sure this must be due to rounding error.
--
* - I checked. Corn syrup is an ingredient in Candy Corn
the world won't come crashing down if gas gets more expensive
It's not about the price at the pump. It's about everything. Shipping. Manufacturing. Air travel. Agriculture. Medicine. Anything made from or packaged in plastic (i.e. everything). The average food item travels 1500 miles to the American plate. Many other industrialized countries are even higher.
Quick, name five things that aren't affected by high petroleum prices...
And we're not talking about gradual price increases. With China and India ramping up on the American Dream, and American usage increasing even with the current prices, demand is accelerating.
If production peaks and starts to decline (google for "Hubbert's Peak"), then you have a formula for skyrocketing prices. Falling supply + rising demand = huge price spike. If the decline is permanent, prices will only go up.
Easy prior art: NetIdentity has been making their collective living with this very technique since 1996...
Too bad their prices have increased about tenfold in that time. It's not as cool now that you can get an entire full-service hosted domain for a bit more than their e-mail plus 5mb web site.
I have not tried one of these, but I'd like to. This guy has an intriguing setup using a two-piece keyboard mounted to the arm rests of an office chair.
I know this isn't exactly what you're asking for, but MailWasher does a pretty good job of managing blacklist/whitelist filtering from Windows. You can pick from any number of public blacklists, as well as create your own for anything that sneaks through.
Re:Official Signs that you'd think would be jokes.
on
Hacking the Highways
·
· Score: 2
Reminds me of a bad Ohio joke:
You know what's halfway between Dayton and Marion?
Two-digit interstate numbers ending in zero (theoretically) traverse the country from east coast to west coast, and those ending in five (theoretically) traverse the country from the northern border to the southern border. They don't all make it the whole way, but that was the original intent. The tens digit increases from west to east and south to north.
So, I-5 runs up the West Coast and I-95 runs up the East coast. I-10 runs along the southern border and I-90 runs along the northern border. Give or take...
The PBS show NOVA did a program about engineers trying to recreate the famous Rainbow Bridge shown in this this 900-year-old painting.
It is widely believed that the bridge actually existed in China centuries ago, but it's actual design was a bit of a mystery. Using the famous painting as a guide, they were able to come up with a feasable design using wood and ropes. They eventually built a full sized bridge in a Chinese village. The bridge was remarkably strong for a millenium-old design.
Pressing Select-Play-Select-3-0-Select on 2.5 will turn your ->| key into a 30 second skip button (no backdoor mode needed). Of course it seems to disable the other uses for that button, but not a bad tradeoff...
I can't comment on the video compression because I haven't seen it in action yet.
One thing I do like is the new skip-by-tick-mark feature. It basically allows you to jump through a program in 15 minute intervals. While fast-forwarding (or rewinding), you hit the ->| (skip to end) button and it skips to the next tick mark on the progress bar.
Beyond that, they added a little to the "Showcase" section, which will apparently allow you to watch show previews and movie trailers (aka "ads") for upcoming programs. I haven't seen this in action yet either, but I don't imagine I'll use it much anyhow.
Now, if they'd only let me save my delay and offset for the FF jumpback correction, I'd be happy. Backdoor mode is really cool, but only as long as my power company doesn't hiccup. Anybody know the new backdoor code for 2.5 yet?
I built one basically straight from one of the BSTV plans. Cardboard, flat black spray paint, electrical tape and a frensel lens (a.k.a. "sheet magnifier" for $6 at Staples or Office Depot), and a 13" TV. I didn't expect much, but I thought it would be fun to try.
It works better than you might expect, if you can get your focal length right. It takes some tinkering, and it needs to be a bit dark in the room you're projecting in. It's not going to look like your local movie house, but it's really not too bad.
I tried it with a larger TV, but based on my 8x10 lens, the 13" TV worked best. It was also easier to turn upside down. (Oh, and for what it's worth, two frensel lenses won't re-reverse the image.)
But for a couple hours of my time and one trip to the office supply store, it was worth it.
Does anybody else get frustrated with the "unbalanced" nature of most keyboard/mouse configurations? Look down at your desktop or keyboard tray. Your left hand gets half the alphabet and one or two useful keys (Tab, Esc.) Your right hand gets the other half of the alphabet, plus all the other "power" keys: Enter, Backspace, cursors, Insert, Delete, Home, End, Page Up, Page Down and the numeric keypad, not to mention the mouse. In fact, your right pinky alone seems to carry a pretty big load.
Most keyboards these days are lightweight and have long cords, ostensibly so you can set it on your lap and type. But try it. You've either got to type off-center, or hang that number pad off the side, which makes the keyboard want to fall off the edge your lap.
This joystick-mouse may or may not be an ergonomic improvement, but I think we've still got a lot of room for improvement. Heck, an old fashioned typewriter-style keyboard would be an improvement in a lot of ways...
I know it's a right-handed world, but putting so much burden on the dominant hand is just asking for problems in the long run.
Since the majority of news sites are down, I thought I'd let everybody know that the ESPN web site is carrying news reports on the terrorist attacks, and the site is responding quickly at this time.
Seriously, if you don't have the ambition to go out and vote, then you don't get a vote. There seems to be a huge push on Slashdot (and everywhere else) to increase voter turnout. Why? Because your high school civics teacher clicked his tongue at low voter turnout and told you it was a "moral obligation" to do your "civic duty"?
I'm all for increasing accuracy, but everybody here is really gung-ho on voting over the Internet someday. Do we really want our president selected by people who can't be troubled to go get off the couch? By people who don't know any more about the candidates than what they saw on a couple TV ads? By people who are just "too busy" to muster up more than a few clicks of their index finger? If casting your vote is not a high enough priority to squeeze in a 30-minute errand on Election Day, then so be it.
I'm not trying to be elitist, it just seems like there's very little stopping people who want to vote from voting under the current system. Heck, I don't even like the idea of encouraging people to vote because they're "supposed to." I tend to think somebody voting based on peer pressure is worse than not voting, especially if they haven't educated themselves about the candidates and issues. A lot of people went to a lot of trouble (oh, and died) so you could vote. I have no patience for people who think our current system is too much effort.
I don't see low voter turnout as a problem. In fact, in a certain selfish sense, I like it because it makes my vote that much more valuable. Voting is a right that everyone should be more than welcome to not exercise.
</RANT>
1) Hypocrisy?
by Hobbex
How can IBM reconcile its spoken commitment to Linux and Free software software with its center-stage activity in projects like CPRM on harddisks and SDMI for music?
Handey:
At first I thought, if I were Superman, a perfect secret identity would be "Clark Kent, Dentist," because you could save money on tooth X-rays. But then I thought, if a patient said, "How's my back tooth?" and you just looked at it with your X-ray vision and said, "Oh it's okay," then the patient would probably say, "Aren't you going to take an X-ray, stupid?" and you'd say, "Aw screw you, get outta here," and then he probably wouldn't even pay his bill.
2) IBM + Linux = PPC?
by Xoro
IBM makes PowerPCs. Linux runs on PowerPCs. Does IBM's commitment to Linux imply that they will take the logical step and we will finally see a commodity (non-Apple) PPC motherboard?
This project always seems to generate so much enthusiasm when presented here or in other forums that its continued non-existence is shocking. Particularly since the PPC's superior electrical characteristics have made it all the more intriguing in the current energy climate.
Handey:
One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my little nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. "Oh, no," I said. "Disneyland burned down." He cried and cried, but I think that deep down, he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting pretty late.
3) Linux vs AIX
by milkmandan9
I work for a fairly small computing firm which relies mainly on AIX but also has a fair number of Linux boxen around.
In the past few months, the question has come up more than once as to whether AIX or Linux is a more appropriate solution to whatever problem my company is current facing...and often times we've installed Linux on commodity hardware instead of buying a fancy RS/6000 machine and buying another copy of AIX.
My question is that as Linux grows in stability and wider corporate-level acceptance, what's IBM going to do about it? IBM has invested a good deal in the AIX system and I'm sure that they generate a fairly hefty revenue stream from it. Do you foresee any of the IBM Linux initiatives losing funding if they encroach on AIX market share?
Handey:
If I lived back in the wild west days, instead of carrying a six-gun in my holster, I'd carry a soldering iron. That way, if some smart-aleck cowboy said something like "Hey, look. He's carrying a soldering iron!" and started laughing, and everybody else started laughing, I could just say, "That's right, it's a soldering iron. The soldering iron of justice." Then everybody would get real quiet and ashamed, because they had made fun of the soldering iron of justice, and I could probably hit them up for a free drink.
4) PR
by truthsearch
Microsoft's strength is largely in its public relations machine. When they talk, the media listens. Craig Mundie's (and therefore Microsoft's) opinion of open source and their own related plans made industry journal headlines. I'd bet many business managers have learned about MS's "shared source" plans. But there's no consistantly loud (or heard) front made against MS statements. Execs hear "open source: bad, shared source: good" from MS, but don't hear other opinions.
Does IBM plan on investing more in the image of Linux and open source? Will there be strong defensive marketing against MS statements? Do you think a closer balance can be made between pro-Microsoft and pro-Linux marketing?
In fact, aluminum bats are used all the way from t-ball to triple-A.
I can't find any documentation to confirm or refute your claim, but I don't believe aluminum bats are used in MLB-affiliated minor leagues.
High school, college and probably some independent pro/semi-pro leagues allow aluminum, but I'm pretty sure you won't find metal bats in the minors. And I know only wooden bats were allowed at the Sydney Olympics.
So what if there was one site that allowed you to pay for many different sites, either packaged or a la carte, like many cable systems do.
You can have Slashdot, K5 and Ars for $50/year, or you can just get Slash for $20. (Or maybe it's $5 and $2. The numbers are arbitrary.)
I have a feeling this is where we're headed, and I'd probably welcome it if it meant I didn't have to play whack-a-mole with pop-up ad windows.
But who's going to set up the infrastructure for this? Probably AOL-TW, maybe Yahoo, MS or Disney. The Big Boys. Of course they'll only include big corporate sites, so replace/., K5 and Ars in the example above with ESPN, IMDB and CNN. Of course, they're going to collect every bit of information they can about you. Labor-of-love and basement micro-budget sites struggle with the nickels they collect via PayPal donations and banner revenue.
Anybody wanna beat them to the punch? Let's build our own, the way we want it. Open source, privacy friendly, whatever. Who's with me?
"I don't know that anyone has ever asked for the source code for Word. If they did, we would give it to them"
So, I want it... Think they'll send me a CD?
Now seriously, do you really want that code? That thing is so bloated, it's like one of those Macy's Thanksgiving Parade balloons. Maybe there's a good reason nobody has asked for the source...
Actually, that's not true. Our house showed up on Realtor.com just a few days after we listed it. Perhaps some agents or agencies are slow in getting the information to Reator.com, but not everything on Realtor.com is two weeks old...
First, I think we should remember that the primary responsibility for students who are shot has to go to the person pulling the trigger. It's important to examine the reasons and motives, but it just doesn't make sense to say "it's the bully's fault." The bully may be wrong and be a bad person, but the bully did not open fire on anybody.
Second, I'd like to recommend a book called "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell. In it he talks about social and cultural epedemics, whether it be school shootings or Blues Clues.
The book covers a variety of examples. Why does a particular type of shoe suddenly become popular for no apparent reason? Why does the number of fatal auto accidents involving only one person go up whenever a story about a suicide is reported on the news? Why did crime dropped so dramatically and so quickly in NYC? Was it simply because they started keeping the subways free of graffiti? Maybe. Tiny changes can sometimes have huge impacts and pave the way for epedemic changes.
Here is a relevent comment from the author:
I'm convinced that ideas and behaviors and new products move through a population very much like a disease does. This isn't just a metaphor, in other words. I'm talking about a very literal analogy. One of the things I explore in the book is that ideas can be contagious in exactly the same way that a virus is. One chapter, for example, deals with the very strange epidemic of teenage suicide in the South Pacific islands of Micronesia. In the 1970's and 1980's, Micronesia had teen suicide rates ten times higher than anywhere else in the world. Teenagers were literally being infected with the suicide bug, and one after another they were killing themselves in exactly the same way under exactly the same circumstances. We like to use words like contagiousness and infectiousness just to apply to the medical realm. But I assure you that after you read about what happened in Micronesia you'll be convinced that behavior can be transmitted from one person to another as easily as the flu or the measles can. In fact, I don't think you have to go to Micronesia to see this pattern in action. Isn't this the explanation for the current epidemic of teen smoking in this country? And what about the rash of mass shootings we're facing at the moment--from Columbine through the Atlanta stockbroker through the neo-Nazi in Los Angeles?
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, I'll look for a better reference. Let me know if you know of one. But even so, is it off by an order of magnitude? It would take several orders of magnitude to make a serious dent.
Ethanol, or any biofuel, will be hard pressed to replace oil. Petroleum is essentially very old and dirty, but efficient biofuel, stockpiled underground. A year's worth of [insert favorite biofuel source plant(s) here] will be hard pressed to replace an eon's worth of petroleum.
Here is some back-of-the-napkin stuff - mostly unit conversions. Nothing fancy. If you trust my math skills, feel free to skip to the surprise ending.
My sources are just whatever came up first on Google.
So here goes:
According to this link, there were 598 million metric tons of corn produced globally in 2002. (That was the first year I came across. Let's assume it's typical.)
598 million metric tons * (2204.6 lbs/metric ton)
...converts to 1.3 billion lbs of corn.
A bushel of corn is currently defined as 56 lbs.
1.3 billion lbs * (1 bushel/56 lbs)
...converts to about 23.5 million bushels of corn.
According to this article, a bushel of corn can produce 2.7 gallons of ethanol.
23.5 million bushels * (2.7 gallons/bushel)
...tells us that 63.5 million gallons of ethanol could theoretically be made from all the corn grown globally in one year.
According to this, a barrel of petroleum has 42 gallons. After refining, it could be made into about 19.5 gallons of gasoline.
So if we say that 1 gallon of ethanol can replace one gallon of gasoline, then
63.5 million gallons * (1 barrel / 19.5 gallons)
...comes to 3.2 million barrels.
(The 1-to-1 ethanol-to-gasoline ratio is a falacy, as ethanol will only take your car 0.8 miles for every 1 mile gas will, but this is getting too complicated. Let's just say 1-to-1.)
According to this source, the United States currently uses 20 million barrels of oil per day.
3.2 million barrels * (1 day / 20 million barrels)
...amounts to 0.16 days.
So if we can stop using corn for livestock feed, corn starch, corn syrup, corn oil, corn chips, corn stoves, corn bread, popcorn, candy corn*, corn on the cob, corn dogs, creamed corn... er... sorry, I was channeling Forrest Gump for a second...
If we use all of the corn grown in one year for making ethanol, and production is still propped up by using current (petroleum-heavy) farming practices, it would keep the U.S. running for just about four hours. Or, if you prefer, Argentina could last almost a week. Or we could supply Togo with their fuel needs for the entire year.
"Your math is wrong!" you exclaim. Not unlikely. But show me where. Am I off by an order of magnitude? Let's take it from 4 hours to 40 hours. That's almost two days! Woohoo!
"Corn is the wrong source!" you shout. Let switch to sugar. Or switchgrass. Or anything you want. Let's imagine the Fubar tree, which is 100 times more efficient for making ethanol. So now we've gone from 3 hours to almost 17 days. Woohoo!
Let's dare to dream, and combine the last two! I'm off by an order of magnitude, and there's a massive switch to Fubar tree farming. The U.S. now has over 5 months of petroleum replacement. Sorry Argentina and Togo...
Feel free to check my math. I'm sure this must be due to rounding error.
--
* - I checked. Corn syrup is an ingredient in Candy Corn
It's not about the price at the pump. It's about everything. Shipping. Manufacturing. Air travel. Agriculture. Medicine. Anything made from or packaged in plastic (i.e. everything). The average food item travels 1500 miles to the American plate. Many other industrialized countries are even higher.
Quick, name five things that aren't affected by high petroleum prices...
And we're not talking about gradual price increases. With China and India ramping up on the American Dream, and American usage increasing even with the current prices, demand is accelerating.
If production peaks and starts to decline (google for "Hubbert's Peak"), then you have a formula for skyrocketing prices. Falling supply + rising demand = huge price spike. If the decline is permanent, prices will only go up.
Petroleum is not infinite.
Easy prior art: NetIdentity has been making their collective living with this very technique since 1996 ...
Too bad their prices have increased about tenfold in that time. It's not as cool now that you can get an entire full-service hosted domain for a bit more than their e-mail plus 5mb web site.
I have not tried one of these, but I'd like to. This guy has an intriguing setup using a two-piece keyboard mounted to the arm rests of an office chair.
Hey, you never know... It could happen.
I know this isn't exactly what you're asking for, but MailWasher does a pretty good job of managing blacklist/whitelist filtering from Windows. You can pick from any number of public blacklists, as well as create your own for anything that sneaks through.
You know what's halfway between Dayton and Marion?
Engagement...
Two-digit interstate numbers ending in zero (theoretically) traverse the country from east coast to west coast, and those ending in five (theoretically) traverse the country from the northern border to the southern border. They don't all make it the whole way, but that was the original intent. The tens digit increases from west to east and south to north.
So, I-5 runs up the West Coast and I-95 runs up the East coast. I-10 runs along the southern border and I-90 runs along the northern border. Give or take...
...Yahoo announced that it will change its marketing slogan from "Do you, uh, Yahoo?" to "You WILL Yahoo."
The PBS show NOVA did a program about engineers trying to recreate the famous Rainbow Bridge shown in this this 900-year-old painting.
It is widely believed that the bridge actually existed in China centuries ago, but it's actual design was a bit of a mystery. Using the famous painting as a guide, they were able to come up with a feasable design using wood and ropes. They eventually built a full sized bridge in a Chinese village. The bridge was remarkably strong for a millenium-old design.
NOVA has to be one of the coolest shows around...
Woohoo! 30-second skip is back!!
Pressing Select-Play-Select-3-0-Select on 2.5 will turn your ->| key into a 30 second skip button (no backdoor mode needed). Of course it seems to disable the other uses for that button, but not a bad tradeoff...
I just got the upgrade.
I can't comment on the video compression because I haven't seen it in action yet.
One thing I do like is the new skip-by-tick-mark feature. It basically allows you to jump through a program in 15 minute intervals. While fast-forwarding (or rewinding), you hit the ->| (skip to end) button and it skips to the next tick mark on the progress bar.
Beyond that, they added a little to the "Showcase" section, which will apparently allow you to watch show previews and movie trailers (aka "ads") for upcoming programs. I haven't seen this in action yet either, but I don't imagine I'll use it much anyhow.
Now, if they'd only let me save my delay and offset for the FF jumpback correction, I'd be happy. Backdoor mode is really cool, but only as long as my power company doesn't hiccup. Anybody know the new backdoor code for 2.5 yet?
I built one basically straight from one of the BSTV plans. Cardboard, flat black spray paint, electrical tape and a frensel lens (a.k.a. "sheet magnifier" for $6 at Staples or Office Depot), and a 13" TV. I didn't expect much, but I thought it would be fun to try.
It works better than you might expect, if you can get your focal length right. It takes some tinkering, and it needs to be a bit dark in the room you're projecting in. It's not going to look like your local movie house, but it's really not too bad.
I tried it with a larger TV, but based on my 8x10 lens, the 13" TV worked best. It was also easier to turn upside down. (Oh, and for what it's worth, two frensel lenses won't re-reverse the image.)
But for a couple hours of my time and one trip to the office supply store, it was worth it.
Why not take it one step further and make a career of it, like this guy did?
Does anybody else get frustrated with the "unbalanced" nature of most keyboard/mouse configurations? Look down at your desktop or keyboard tray. Your left hand gets half the alphabet and one or two useful keys (Tab, Esc.) Your right hand gets the other half of the alphabet, plus all the other "power" keys: Enter, Backspace, cursors, Insert, Delete, Home, End, Page Up, Page Down and the numeric keypad, not to mention the mouse. In fact, your right pinky alone seems to carry a pretty big load.
Most keyboards these days are lightweight and have long cords, ostensibly so you can set it on your lap and type. But try it. You've either got to type off-center, or hang that number pad off the side, which makes the keyboard want to fall off the edge your lap.
This joystick-mouse may or may not be an ergonomic improvement, but I think we've still got a lot of room for improvement. Heck, an old fashioned typewriter-style keyboard would be an improvement in a lot of ways...
I know it's a right-handed world, but putting so much burden on the dominant hand is just asking for problems in the long run.
Since the majority of news sites are down, I thought I'd let everybody know that the ESPN web site is carrying news reports on the terrorist attacks, and the site is responding quickly at this time.
Seriously, if you don't have the ambition to go out and vote, then you don't get a vote. There seems to be a huge push on Slashdot (and everywhere else) to increase voter turnout. Why? Because your high school civics teacher clicked his tongue at low voter turnout and told you it was a "moral obligation" to do your "civic duty"?
I'm all for increasing accuracy, but everybody here is really gung-ho on voting over the Internet someday. Do we really want our president selected by people who can't be troubled to go get off the couch? By people who don't know any more about the candidates than what they saw on a couple TV ads? By people who are just "too busy" to muster up more than a few clicks of their index finger? If casting your vote is not a high enough priority to squeeze in a 30-minute errand on Election Day, then so be it.
I'm not trying to be elitist, it just seems like there's very little stopping people who want to vote from voting under the current system. Heck, I don't even like the idea of encouraging people to vote because they're "supposed to." I tend to think somebody voting based on peer pressure is worse than not voting, especially if they haven't educated themselves about the candidates and issues. A lot of people went to a lot of trouble (oh, and died) so you could vote. I have no patience for people who think our current system is too much effort.
I don't see low voter turnout as a problem. In fact, in a certain selfish sense, I like it because it makes my vote that much more valuable. Voting is a right that everyone should be more than welcome to not exercise.
</RANT>
Jack Handey Tells What's Up With IBM and Linux
1) Hypocrisy?
by Hobbex
How can IBM reconcile its spoken commitment to Linux and Free software software with its center-stage activity in projects like CPRM on harddisks and SDMI for music?
Handey:
At first I thought, if I were Superman, a perfect secret identity would be "Clark Kent, Dentist," because you could save money on tooth X-rays. But then I thought, if a patient said, "How's my back tooth?" and you just looked at it with your X-ray vision and said, "Oh it's okay," then the patient would probably say, "Aren't you going to take an X-ray, stupid?" and you'd say, "Aw screw you, get outta here," and then he probably wouldn't even pay his bill.
2) IBM + Linux = PPC?
by Xoro
IBM makes PowerPCs. Linux runs on PowerPCs. Does IBM's commitment to Linux imply that they will take the logical step and we will finally see a commodity (non-Apple) PPC motherboard?
This project always seems to generate so much enthusiasm when presented here or in other forums that its continued non-existence is shocking. Particularly since the PPC's superior electrical characteristics have made it all the more intriguing in the current energy climate.
Handey:
One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my little nephew to Disneyland, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. "Oh, no," I said. "Disneyland burned down." He cried and cried, but I think that deep down, he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real Disneyland, but it was getting pretty late.
3) Linux vs AIX
by milkmandan9
I work for a fairly small computing firm which relies mainly on AIX but also has a fair number of Linux boxen around.
In the past few months, the question has come up more than once as to whether AIX or Linux is a more appropriate solution to whatever problem my company is current facing...and often times we've installed Linux on commodity hardware instead of buying a fancy RS/6000 machine and buying another copy of AIX.
My question is that as Linux grows in stability and wider corporate-level acceptance, what's IBM going to do about it? IBM has invested a good deal in the AIX system and I'm sure that they generate a fairly hefty revenue stream from it. Do you foresee any of the IBM Linux initiatives losing funding if they encroach on AIX market share?
Handey:
If I lived back in the wild west days, instead of carrying a six-gun in my holster, I'd carry a soldering iron. That way, if some smart-aleck cowboy said something like "Hey, look. He's carrying a soldering iron!" and started laughing, and everybody else started laughing, I could just say, "That's right, it's a soldering iron. The soldering iron of justice." Then everybody would get real quiet and ashamed, because they had made fun of the soldering iron of justice, and I could probably hit them up for a free drink.
4) PR
by truthsearch
Microsoft's strength is largely in its public relations machine. When they talk, the media listens. Craig Mundie's (and therefore Microsoft's) opinion of open source and their own related plans made industry journal headlines. I'd bet many business managers have learned about MS's "shared source" plans. But there's no consistantly loud (or heard) front made against MS statements. Execs hear "open source: bad, shared source: good" from MS, but don't hear other opinions.
Does IBM plan on investing more in the image of Linux and open source? Will there be strong defensive marketing against MS statements? Do you think a closer balance can be made between pro-Microsoft and pro-Linux marketing?
Handey:
In fact, aluminum bats are used all the way from t-ball to triple-A.
I can't find any documentation to confirm or refute your claim, but I don't believe aluminum bats are used in MLB-affiliated minor leagues.
High school, college and probably some independent pro/semi-pro leagues allow aluminum, but I'm pretty sure you won't find metal bats in the minors. And I know only wooden bats were allowed at the Sydney Olympics.
But I could be wrong. Somebody back one of us up!
I'd settle for seeing it throw an ephus pitch.
So what if there was one site that allowed you to pay for many different sites, either packaged or a la carte, like many cable systems do.
You can have Slashdot, K5 and Ars for $50/year, or you can just get Slash for $20. (Or maybe it's $5 and $2. The numbers are arbitrary.)
I have a feeling this is where we're headed, and I'd probably welcome it if it meant I didn't have to play whack-a-mole with pop-up ad windows.
But who's going to set up the infrastructure for this? Probably AOL-TW, maybe Yahoo, MS or Disney. The Big Boys. Of course they'll only include big corporate sites, so replace /., K5 and Ars in the example above with ESPN, IMDB and CNN. Of course, they're going to collect every bit of information they can about you. Labor-of-love and basement micro-budget sites struggle with the nickels they collect via PayPal donations and banner revenue.
Anybody wanna beat them to the punch? Let's build our own, the way we want it. Open source, privacy friendly, whatever. Who's with me?
Oh, you're brining the funding, right?
- Edson
Actually, that's not true. Our house showed up on Realtor.com just a few days after we listed it. Perhaps some agents or agencies are slow in getting the information to Reator.com, but not everything on Realtor.com is two weeks old...
First, I think we should remember that the primary responsibility for students who are shot has to go to the person pulling the trigger. It's important to examine the reasons and motives, but it just doesn't make sense to say "it's the bully's fault." The bully may be wrong and be a bad person, but the bully did not open fire on anybody.
Second, I'd like to recommend a book called "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell. In it he talks about social and cultural epedemics, whether it be school shootings or Blues Clues.
The book covers a variety of examples. Why does a particular type of shoe suddenly become popular for no apparent reason? Why does the number of fatal auto accidents involving only one person go up whenever a story about a suicide is reported on the news? Why did crime dropped so dramatically and so quickly in NYC? Was it simply because they started keeping the subways free of graffiti? Maybe. Tiny changes can sometimes have huge impacts and pave the way for epedemic changes.
Here is a relevent comment from the author: