OK, given that hint I went here.
The technology looks reasonably mature (except perhaps CO2 capture from the air), again just a cost issue to get artificial hydrocarbon prices down to petroleum price ranges (easy to say, harder to do:-).
I'm still favorable toward electrics, because we can produce electricity cheaply already from a relatively large number of mature technologies - including hydrocarbon-based fuel cells or engines - and the distribution infrastructure is multi-use (not just for engines).
But again, when you're EE, electricity always looks good. My house in Texas is 100% wind powered (sorry, Kermit, but it is easy being green:-). I even mow my yard with a Black & Decker plug-in mower and plug-in weed eater. Never needs a tune-up, or oil change, or new spark plugs, and it's high power under torque. Given my 45 mile round trip commute, I'm very interested in an electric commuter car.
Artificial hydrocarbons? My recent research into alternative technology for automobile propulsion didn't reveal any approaches that look feasible in the near-term (by which I mean Obama's proposed 10 year window). If I missed something, could you please provide a cite? Thanks in advance.
The benefit for me is in time - self-checkout lanes are always open and usually available, while the few full-service lanes open usually have a 2-4 person queue.
Perhaps that's thanks to your unwillingness to use self-checkout, come to think of it. Thanks!:-)
It's better than that. If you take non-potable water and produce pure hydrogen, then when you burn the hydrogen you get potable water. One popular demonstration of the "greenness" of hydrogen cars is to catch the water dripping from the tailpipe in a glass and drink it. I'd only try that if your hydrogen is pure, of course.;-)
I still favor electric vehicles over hydrogen, however, at least for the next few decades. Electrics have only one significant problem stopping mass deployment - energy density of batteries. Hydrogen has many - the cost of producing hydrogen, the cost of compressing or liquefying the hydrogen, the impermanence of liquid hydrogen ("venting"), the safety concerns of carrying around enough hydrogen to power a car without a "Hindenburg effect", and the cost of a new infrastructure to transport megatons of hydrogen to fueling stations scattered across your country.
I'm honestly not sure why CNR hasn't done better (which is to say, generate any noticeable use). It's free-as-in-beer, supports several major distros in a central location, offers social features such as reviews and ratings, allows grouping of apps into "aisles" for easy one-click installation and sharing, handles commercial software sales as well as free software installation compatibly and rather efficiently, and generally provides a rather nice experience.
Why has it wilted like a Friendster? Because it's not free-as-in-speech? Is Applications -> Add / Remove or Synaptic simply "good enough"? Do enough Linux users really object to their Microsoft deal and abstain on moral grounds?
Of course, I don't use it personally. And I'm not sure why. Would a FOSS version by a more credible member of the community generate more interest and enjoy some success?
The idea that if we eliminate or near-eliminate government in California it will somehow magically make things better is absurd.
An exceptionally wise and successful man once said, "Government isn't the solution, it's the problem." Meditate on these words, Grasshopper, and you may find the solution to California's eternal crisis yet. It certainly has worked well for us Texans and Wyomans (Wyomingans? Wynomingites? People from the great state of Wyoming!).
To me, the idea of part-time government seems an awful lot like hiring a Part-Time brain surgeon. If you don't care that much about the result, you might save a few bucks that way.
Not to rain on your parade, but isn't it California that's getting crappy government here? Or am I misreading TFA?
In Texas, we have a part-time legislature. They meet for a couple of months every two years and pass all the laws we need (including the constitutionally-mandated balanced budget). Then they have to go live under them for the rest of the term.
The major US corporations' employment contracts almost always include a provision granting them ownership of anything created by its employees within the corporate fields of business, even on the employees' own time.
So if you signed the standard contract and work for an aerospace company, and at home create a great little program for automating personal aircraft flight plan creation and filing... they own it. If you create a great cocktail recipe or write the next great American novel, it's yours.
If you have a great idea that might be marketable by your employer, then your first step is to get a clear, written exemption for that idea's implementation from an authorized agent of the corporation (think Legal).
I'm far too certain of this now, having negotiated just such an exemption with my employer's lawyers last year so I could work on certain open source projects on my own time. Nor am I grousing - I signed the contract in exchange for a job I love, and the lawyers were quite reasonable about the entire process. But it's important to be proactive to ensure clear title to your "home work". A mg of prevention is worth a kg of cure.:-)
Huh? The Yahoo yahoo submitted his address requesting the newsletter, replied to a confirmation email with "Yes, I want your newsletter", then complained about the newsletter he twice requested. Yet you think it's spam because he carries advertising?
Well, you are certainly overdue to enroll in Spam 101. Don't wait. Trust me, ignorance is never bliss.
I'll accept that you are genuinely distrustful of the government, and if you're American, you certainly have an excellent historical basis going back centuries. So I'll address your accusation seriously rather than humorously.
Politicians lie rather routinely. Some, such as Clinton and Nixon, get caught and pay severe consequences; others less so. Political Action Committees and the major parties are no different - they each have at least one agenda, and are usually more than happy to adjust the facts to whatever benefit their cause can grasp.
The General Accounting Office, on the other hand, is not a political organization but an accounting one. They routinely put out reports that embarrass both major parties, because they reveal the truth about some financial aspect of the federal government - and the federal government's finances are definitely a huge embarrassment!
So while I take what a politician or PAC says with a grain or less of salt, I do believe that the budget figures generated by the GAO are reasonably accurate - certainly far more so than the PAC you reference.
Hope that clears up why your comment was moderated down, and the post quoting GAO figures was moderated up.
I'm pretty much a hardcore Republican that thinks Obama is a sort of Pharonic anti-christ
So, basically you're a racist idiot? Knuckles drag on the ground, do they?
Hate to be the one to break the news to ya, but believing that the only reason not to enthusiastically support Obama is racism is really, really racist. Are you only supporting him because of his race? Really?
Um, the Executive Office of POTUS (the source linked and credited by the Wikipedia article) is "random people on the Net", while your source (a political action committee seeking to cut military budgets to fund more education projects) are "accountable"? Really? To whom?
Clearly the problem is under-funding and too little involvement of the federal government in schools, leading to under-performing students.
We need to create a full cabinet-level Department of Education, give it control of school curriculum, and load it up with money to fund endless studies of how to improve American education.
I do this quite a bit on my N800, and it works very well. The only problem is that the PIM sync only works over a wireless network, and wireless isn't permitted where I work. But otherwise, it's a very nice Garnet virtual platform, and runs my collection of Palm games flawlessly.
They are willing to sell the F-35 JSF however which in many ways is a detuned F-22.
Other than a generally similar body shape, the F-22 and F-35 have little in common. The F-35 is a clean sheet design by a Lockheed / Northrop / BAES team focused on strike and close air support missions, vertical take-off and landing, and carrier operations. The F-22 preceded it by 10 years, was designed by a Lockheed / Boeing team, and focuses on air dominance.
Different missions, different designs. The F-35 is far more versatile and affordable than its predecessor, and unlike the F-22 was designed from the ground up as an export product. It's not as good at the mission for which the F-22 was designed (of course!), but it's hardly "detuned".
My dad built a super-insulated church back in the late 1970's. The air handlers rarely even came on. The power company actually called the contractor to gain surreptitious access to the building to "figure out how they're rigging the meter". He told my dad about it a month later, and they had a good laugh. I don't think they'd ever seen such a well-insulated building.
I don't understand why all structures aren't built that way now. It really works.
Four years ago we bought an older 5500 sq ft ranch house in Texas. When I looked in the attic after my first electric bill, I found virtually no insulation (lots of wallboard visible, with clumps of fiberglass strewn about). How the previous owner paid for a/c and heat is beyond me.
We bought recycled newspaper-based insulation from Home Depot, and laid it in 18-20" deep for about $800. This reduced summer cooling costs by at least $400. We helped a friend blow recycled clothing-based fiber insulation into his attic - looked like snow, simply beautiful, even easier to install and fewer settling problems.
Add attic insulation to at lease R39. It's readily available, cheap, easy to install yourself, and reduces energy use significantly.
Who feeds you this meme of Poverty in India == Caste? Perhaps your friendly local church
I've been a Christian for 47 years, and still haven't heard a single sermon on Indian Caste. Seems like we're always talking about Jewish people for some reason. I feel deprived.
Let me be the first to say, "Yes, I do want [energy sources] in my back yard..."
Here, here! And let me add, I signed a mineral rights lease this year for just such an enterprise, given that my little acre of Texas sits square in the middle of the Barnett Shale, one of the largest natural gas reserves in the USA. The first drilling took place in our neighborhood recently (not related to my lease, though - that's a year off), and the gas is flowing. We had to search for the well, too - very nicely concealed a few blocks down from our house.
What we need less of is government regulation (to the point of the grandparent post). The government is not the solution, they are the problem. You can bank on it.
Personally, I heard about the *BSDs first, not long after they were given independent status by the courts. However, they were nothing special I could see - software born as proprietary software, and now offered under a license to permit more proprietary software (such as eventually Mac OS/X) to be built more cheaply and at greater profit. Since I don't seek wealth by writing proprietary software, it wasn't of much interest to me.
Free software was and is different, though - rather than seeking to make proprietary software more profitable, it was explicitly designed to give end users like me freedom. It's that philosophy that I find highly attractive and worth supporting with my money (I support several successful projects financially), time (I wrote and maintain several projects you've likely never encountered - but at least I try), and advocacy (well, you're readin' it:-).
Slashdot Mirror
OK, given that hint I went here. The technology looks reasonably mature (except perhaps CO2 capture from the air), again just a cost issue to get artificial hydrocarbon prices down to petroleum price ranges (easy to say, harder to do :-).
I'm still favorable toward electrics, because we can produce electricity cheaply already from a relatively large number of mature technologies - including hydrocarbon-based fuel cells or engines - and the distribution infrastructure is multi-use (not just for engines).
But again, when you're EE, electricity always looks good. My house in Texas is 100% wind powered (sorry, Kermit, but it is easy being green :-). I even mow my yard with a Black & Decker plug-in mower and plug-in weed eater. Never needs a tune-up, or oil change, or new spark plugs, and it's high power under torque. Given my 45 mile round trip commute, I'm very interested in an electric commuter car.
Artificial hydrocarbons? My recent research into alternative technology for automobile propulsion didn't reveal any approaches that look feasible in the near-term (by which I mean Obama's proposed 10 year window). If I missed something, could you please provide a cite? Thanks in advance.
The benefit for me is in time - self-checkout lanes are always open and usually available, while the few full-service lanes open usually have a 2-4 person queue.
Perhaps that's thanks to your unwillingness to use self-checkout, come to think of it. Thanks! :-)
It's better than that. If you take non-potable water and produce pure hydrogen, then when you burn the hydrogen you get potable water. One popular demonstration of the "greenness" of hydrogen cars is to catch the water dripping from the tailpipe in a glass and drink it. I'd only try that if your hydrogen is pure, of course. ;-)
I still favor electric vehicles over hydrogen, however, at least for the next few decades. Electrics have only one significant problem stopping mass deployment - energy density of batteries. Hydrogen has many - the cost of producing hydrogen, the cost of compressing or liquefying the hydrogen, the impermanence of liquid hydrogen ("venting"), the safety concerns of carrying around enough hydrogen to power a car without a "Hindenburg effect", and the cost of a new infrastructure to transport megatons of hydrogen to fueling stations scattered across your country.
Or maybe that's just my EE degree coming through.
Just curious, why do you equate "voting in line with the Kansas Association of School Boards" with "Quality Education"?
I'm honestly not sure why CNR hasn't done better (which is to say, generate any noticeable use). It's free-as-in-beer, supports several major distros in a central location, offers social features such as reviews and ratings, allows grouping of apps into "aisles" for easy one-click installation and sharing, handles commercial software sales as well as free software installation compatibly and rather efficiently, and generally provides a rather nice experience.
Why has it wilted like a Friendster? Because it's not free-as-in-speech? Is Applications -> Add / Remove or Synaptic simply "good enough"? Do enough Linux users really object to their Microsoft deal and abstain on moral grounds?
Of course, I don't use it personally. And I'm not sure why. Would a FOSS version by a more credible member of the community generate more interest and enjoy some success?
An exceptionally wise and successful man once said, "Government isn't the solution, it's the problem." Meditate on these words, Grasshopper, and you may find the solution to California's eternal crisis yet. It certainly has worked well for us Texans and Wyomans (Wyomingans? Wynomingites? People from the great state of Wyoming!).
Congratulations. You've succeeding in making us Texans look positively modest by contrast. And that is NOT easy!
Not to rain on your parade, but isn't it California that's getting crappy government here? Or am I misreading TFA?
In Texas, we have a part-time legislature. They meet for a couple of months every two years and pass all the laws we need (including the constitutionally-mandated balanced budget). Then they have to go live under them for the rest of the term.
Works pretty well.
The major US corporations' employment contracts almost always include a provision granting them ownership of anything created by its employees within the corporate fields of business, even on the employees' own time.
So if you signed the standard contract and work for an aerospace company, and at home create a great little program for automating personal aircraft flight plan creation and filing... they own it. If you create a great cocktail recipe or write the next great American novel, it's yours.
If you have a great idea that might be marketable by your employer, then your first step is to get a clear, written exemption for that idea's implementation from an authorized agent of the corporation (think Legal).
I'm far too certain of this now, having negotiated just such an exemption with my employer's lawyers last year so I could work on certain open source projects on my own time. Nor am I grousing - I signed the contract in exchange for a job I love, and the lawyers were quite reasonable about the entire process. But it's important to be proactive to ensure clear title to your "home work". A mg of prevention is worth a kg of cure. :-)
Huh? The Yahoo yahoo submitted his address requesting the newsletter, replied to a confirmation email with "Yes, I want your newsletter", then complained about the newsletter he twice requested. Yet you think it's spam because he carries advertising?
Well, you are certainly overdue to enroll in Spam 101. Don't wait. Trust me, ignorance is never bliss.
I'll accept that you are genuinely distrustful of the government, and if you're American, you certainly have an excellent historical basis going back centuries. So I'll address your accusation seriously rather than humorously.
Politicians lie rather routinely. Some, such as Clinton and Nixon, get caught and pay severe consequences; others less so. Political Action Committees and the major parties are no different - they each have at least one agenda, and are usually more than happy to adjust the facts to whatever benefit their cause can grasp.
The General Accounting Office, on the other hand, is not a political organization but an accounting one. They routinely put out reports that embarrass both major parties, because they reveal the truth about some financial aspect of the federal government - and the federal government's finances are definitely a huge embarrassment!
So while I take what a politician or PAC says with a grain or less of salt, I do believe that the budget figures generated by the GAO are reasonably accurate - certainly far more so than the PAC you reference.
Hope that clears up why your comment was moderated down, and the post quoting GAO figures was moderated up.
Best wishes regardless.
Hate to be the one to break the news to ya, but believing that the only reason not to enthusiastically support Obama is racism is really, really racist. Are you only supporting him because of his race? Really?
Um, the Executive Office of POTUS (the source linked and credited by the Wikipedia article) is "random people on the Net", while your source (a political action committee seeking to cut military budgets to fund more education projects) are "accountable"? Really? To whom?
You do need to get out more...
Clearly the problem is under-funding and too little involvement of the federal government in schools, leading to under-performing students.
We need to create a full cabinet-level Department of Education, give it control of school curriculum, and load it up with money to fund endless studies of how to improve American education.
Oh, wait...
I do this quite a bit on my N800, and it works very well. The only problem is that the PIM sync only works over a wireless network, and wireless isn't permitted where I work. But otherwise, it's a very nice Garnet virtual platform, and runs my collection of Palm games flawlessly.
And you can't beat the price. :-)
Other than a generally similar body shape, the F-22 and F-35 have little in common. The F-35 is a clean sheet design by a Lockheed / Northrop / BAES team focused on strike and close air support missions, vertical take-off and landing, and carrier operations. The F-22 preceded it by 10 years, was designed by a Lockheed / Boeing team, and focuses on air dominance.
Different missions, different designs. The F-35 is far more versatile and affordable than its predecessor, and unlike the F-22 was designed from the ground up as an export product. It's not as good at the mission for which the F-22 was designed (of course!), but it's hardly "detuned".
My dad built a super-insulated church back in the late 1970's. The air handlers rarely even came on. The power company actually called the contractor to gain surreptitious access to the building to "figure out how they're rigging the meter". He told my dad about it a month later, and they had a good laugh. I don't think they'd ever seen such a well-insulated building.
I don't understand why all structures aren't built that way now. It really works.
Four years ago we bought an older 5500 sq ft ranch house in Texas. When I looked in the attic after my first electric bill, I found virtually no insulation (lots of wallboard visible, with clumps of fiberglass strewn about). How the previous owner paid for a/c and heat is beyond me.
We bought recycled newspaper-based insulation from Home Depot, and laid it in 18-20" deep for about $800. This reduced summer cooling costs by at least $400. We helped a friend blow recycled clothing-based fiber insulation into his attic - looked like snow, simply beautiful, even easier to install and fewer settling problems.
Add attic insulation to at lease R39. It's readily available, cheap, easy to install yourself, and reduces energy use significantly.
Nah, you're thinking of the Romans. My God is a Jewish carpenter. :-)
I've been a Christian for 47 years, and still haven't heard a single sermon on Indian Caste. Seems like we're always talking about Jewish people for some reason. I feel deprived.
Here, here! And let me add, I signed a mineral rights lease this year for just such an enterprise, given that my little acre of Texas sits square in the middle of the Barnett Shale, one of the largest natural gas reserves in the USA. The first drilling took place in our neighborhood recently (not related to my lease, though - that's a year off), and the gas is flowing. We had to search for the well, too - very nicely concealed a few blocks down from our house.
What we need less of is government regulation (to the point of the grandparent post). The government is not the solution, they are the problem. You can bank on it.
Personally, I heard about the *BSDs first, not long after they were given independent status by the courts. However, they were nothing special I could see - software born as proprietary software, and now offered under a license to permit more proprietary software (such as eventually Mac OS/X) to be built more cheaply and at greater profit. Since I don't seek wealth by writing proprietary software, it wasn't of much interest to me.
Free software was and is different, though - rather than seeking to make proprietary software more profitable, it was explicitly designed to give end users like me freedom. It's that philosophy that I find highly attractive and worth supporting with my money (I support several successful projects financially), time (I wrote and maintain several projects you've likely never encountered - but at least I try), and advocacy (well, you're readin' it :-).
Exactly. If it weren't for proprietary software, from whence would the free software movement have copied TCP/IP, HTTP, and a decent web browser?
Oh, wait...