The World Health Organization reports that 1 million people a year die in automotive accidents and another 3 million die from pollution. Assuming that 1/6th of the pollution deaths come from automobile pollution (I suspect it's actually quite a bit higher) and ignoring other negative indirect effects of automobiles (noise, aggravation, etc.) gives us a net worldwide death burden of 1,500,000 per year from the automobile.
That's over 4,000 people dead from automobiles, daily. Or, another way, a 9/11 every day of the year.
The world consumes about a quadrillion gallons of petroleum a year (1,000,000,000,000,000 gallons) of which roughly 70% goes into motor vehicles (700 trillion gallons)
Liquid hydrogen contains approx 30,000 BTUs of energy per gallon while liquid petroleum contains 130,000. Now assuming a fuel cell vehicle is roughly three times as efficient (90%) at converting liquid-hydrogen to horsepower as is an internal combusion engine (30%) then we will need to produce:
130,000 / 30,000 * 700 trillion / 3 = 1 quadrillion gallons of liquid hydrogen a year. Of course my estimate is conservative as we will need to use energy to compress and liquify the hydrogen as well as to keep it cold and to transport it in a distribution system.
According to British Petroleum (or Beyond Petroleum, depending on who you talk to), it takes 55kWh to produce a gallon of liquid hydrogen from electrolysis of water. Thus to produce enough liquid hydrogen from nuclear energy through electrolysis would require:
(by the way, here in Indiana electricity is roughly $0.04 a kWh so a gallon of liquid hydrogen would cost 55 * $0.04 = $2.20 to PRODUCE. Current liquid petroleum PRODUCTION costs are roughly $4 a barrel (42 gallons) = $0.10 per gallon to produce -- can liquid hydrogen compete economically with petroleum if production costs are 20x higher (not to mention distribution costs)?)
Current world production of nuclear energy is less than 3 trillion megawatt hour. Total world production of electricity is roughly 12 trillion megawatt hours. Thus to both replace petroleum as a transportation fuel the world would need to increase electricity production from 12 trillion to 55+12 = 67 trillion megawatt hours.
Assuming in the future that none of that electricity will be able to come from petroleum sources and that coal burning will not increase means that we need to build enough nuclear plants to satisfy about 60 trillion megawatt hours.
That's roughly twenty times the number of plants, worldwide, that we have now. Even more if it comes from smaller boutique plants.
I agree. However, if we're both right then the reverse, and more prevalent, calculation of jobs and money lost to software piracy is also invalid.
I don't think Microsoft, or the state of California, can claim (as the latter is) a loss of 18,000 jobs and $245 million due to software piracy. As you point out, the money most likely wouldn't have been spent on the products even with a perfect anti-piracy scheme.
Here's another way to look at it: According to the Chronicle article, 29% of all installed software is pirated. From WinMag.com's realtime windows copy counter, we find that:
150 million copies of Windows 3.x have been sold since 1990
100 million copies of Windows 95 have been sold since 1995
8,000,000 copies of Windows NT workstation have been sold since 1993
400,000 copies of Windows NT server have been sold since 1993
That's a total of 258.4 million copies of Windows sold since 1990. A piracy rate of 29% indicates that an additional 72.3 million copies of the software were illegally copied.
At a per-copy price of $150 each, 72.3 million "pirated" copies of Windows is nearly $11 BILLION dollars that employers DIDN'T pay Microsoft stockholders for Windows and $11 billion that they can instead use to hire people. Since 1990, that's $1.2 billion a year.
$1.2 billion is over 17,000 $55,000/yr jobs (including overhead). In other words, I can argue that a 29% pirate rate on Windows alone generates over 17,000 well-paying jobs per year.
That's the kind of cost that the government's protection of anti-competitive "intellectual property" costs US businesses per year.
The owner of the land decides what is done with it. Unless you hold your land in Allodial Title, you DO NOT own it, the government does.
So the fifth amendment doesn't apply when the government takes real estate through eminent domain? This is going to be a shocker to all the right-wing "property rights" activists around here.
But it does provide a heady remedy for the Justice Department. No breakup, no injunctions, no nothing needed to keep Microsoft in check. Just order them off the government's land!
"Rule of law" and "government regulation" aren't the same things. Look into it. How about giving us an example of how they differ? Is it your position that government regulations that prohibit my dumping of toxic chemicals into the aquifier on my property are "anti free market?" The bottled-water company that makes a profit off of that aquifier water (which also exists under their property) seems to be of the opinion that they're happy to have the government protect their private interests. greg
What are "free market principles?" A truly "free market" would be one in which I could simply kill my business competitors, break in and blatantly steal their inventions, and burn down their factories. All without fear of some pesky government and its "anti-business/anti-competition" laws. I suspect that you, like Microsoft, likes government regulation when it helps them and calls it "anti free market" when it doesnt. greg
Slashdot Mirror
The World Health Organization reports that 1 million people a year die in automotive accidents and another 3 million die from pollution. Assuming that 1/6th of the pollution deaths come from automobile pollution (I suspect it's actually quite a bit higher) and ignoring other negative indirect effects of automobiles (noise, aggravation, etc.) gives us a net worldwide death burden of 1,500,000 per year from the automobile.
That's over 4,000 people dead from automobiles, daily. Or, another way, a 9/11 every day of the year.
checked my own math, it's ~70 million barrels a day * 42 gallons/barrel * 365 = 1 trillion gallons a year, not a quadrillion.
Thus 700 billion gallons a year for motorfuels, blah, blah, 5.5 trillion megawatt hours = 2x the number of nuke plants needed, not 20.
How embarassing
All the other numbers wash (so far)
The world consumes about a quadrillion gallons of petroleum a year (1,000,000,000,000,000 gallons) of which roughly 70% goes into motor vehicles (700 trillion gallons)
Liquid hydrogen contains approx 30,000 BTUs of energy per gallon while liquid petroleum contains 130,000. Now assuming a fuel cell vehicle is roughly three times as efficient (90%) at converting liquid-hydrogen to horsepower as is an internal combusion engine (30%) then we will need to produce:
130,000 / 30,000 * 700 trillion / 3 = 1 quadrillion gallons of liquid hydrogen a year. Of course my estimate is conservative as we will need to use energy to compress and liquify the hydrogen as well as to keep it cold and to transport it in a distribution system.
According to British Petroleum (or Beyond Petroleum, depending on who you talk to), it takes 55kWh to produce a gallon of liquid hydrogen from electrolysis of water. Thus to produce enough liquid hydrogen from nuclear energy through electrolysis would require:
1 quadrillion * 55kWh = 55 trillion megawatt hours.
(by the way, here in Indiana electricity is roughly $0.04 a kWh so a gallon of liquid hydrogen would cost 55 * $0.04 = $2.20 to PRODUCE. Current liquid petroleum PRODUCTION costs are roughly $4 a barrel (42 gallons) = $0.10 per gallon to produce -- can liquid hydrogen compete economically with petroleum if production costs are 20x higher (not to mention distribution costs)?)
Current world production of nuclear energy is less than 3 trillion megawatt hour. Total world production of electricity is roughly 12 trillion megawatt hours. Thus to both replace petroleum as a transportation fuel the world would need to increase electricity production from 12 trillion to 55+12 = 67 trillion megawatt hours.
Assuming in the future that none of that electricity will be able to come from petroleum sources and that coal burning will not increase means that we need to build enough nuclear plants to satisfy about 60 trillion megawatt hours.
That's roughly twenty times the number of plants, worldwide, that we have now. Even more if it comes from smaller boutique plants.
Do check my math.
I agree. However, if we're both right then the reverse, and more prevalent, calculation of jobs and money lost to software piracy is also invalid.
I don't think Microsoft, or the state of California, can claim (as the latter is) a loss of 18,000 jobs and $245 million due to software piracy. As you point out, the money most likely wouldn't have been spent on the products even with a perfect anti-piracy scheme.
150 million copies of Windows 3.x have been sold since 1990
100 million copies of Windows 95 have been sold since 1995
8,000,000 copies of Windows NT workstation have been sold since 1993
400,000 copies of Windows NT server have been sold since 1993
That's a total of 258.4 million copies of Windows sold since 1990. A piracy rate of 29% indicates that an additional 72.3 million copies of the software were illegally copied.
At a per-copy price of $150 each, 72.3 million "pirated" copies of Windows is nearly $11 BILLION dollars that employers DIDN'T pay Microsoft stockholders for Windows and $11 billion that they can instead use to hire people. Since 1990, that's $1.2 billion a year.
$1.2 billion is over 17,000 $55,000/yr jobs (including overhead). In other words, I can argue that a 29% pirate rate on Windows alone generates over 17,000 well-paying jobs per year.
That's the kind of cost that the government's protection of anti-competitive "intellectual property" costs US businesses per year.
The owner of the land decides what is done with it.
Unless you hold your land in Allodial Title, you DO NOT own it, the government does.
So the fifth amendment doesn't apply when the government takes real estate through eminent domain? This is going to be a shocker to all the right-wing "property rights" activists around here.
But it does provide a heady remedy for the Justice Department. No breakup, no injunctions, no nothing needed to keep Microsoft in check. Just order them off the government's land!
"Rule of law" and "government regulation" aren't the same things. Look into it.
How about giving us an example of how they differ? Is it your position that government regulations that prohibit my dumping of toxic chemicals into the aquifier on my property are "anti free market?" The bottled-water company that makes a profit off of that aquifier water (which also exists under their property) seems to be of the opinion that they're happy to have the government protect their private interests. greg
What are "free market principles?" A truly "free market" would be one in which I could simply kill my business competitors, break in and blatantly steal their inventions, and burn down their factories. All without fear of some pesky government and its "anti-business/anti-competition" laws. I suspect that you, like Microsoft, likes government regulation when it helps them and calls it "anti free market" when it doesnt. greg