I'm skeptical that a plant would more cleanly burn fossil fuels by any significant margin than the cleanest burning internal combustion engines of today, which typically power the tiny cars that are also the target of these alternative fuel supplies.
And that is exactly the point. Most people don't have the cleanest burning internal combustion engines of today. Also, when someone comes up with a way to burn it even cleaner, you only have to upgrade some power plants, rather than every single car on the road. Sure, someone might make more efficient fuel cells, but they can't make fuel cells with less emissions, since they don't have emissions to begin with.
You also have to remember that in converting fossil fuels to electricity and then using that to create hydrogen, and then using that to create motion involves more loss than simply converting fossil fuels into motion.
Another nice thing about fuel cells is that they're agnostic to where exactly the power came from. It could be from fossil fuels, but it could just as easily be from, say, nuclear power.
I filter most spam, but every so often I inadvertantly open one with one of these "unique tracking ID" type images and Whoops! I've just confirmed my email address works!
My mailreader (Ximian Evolution) has an option to not download images off the Internet for display in HTML email. Unless I'm mistaken, it won't run JavaScript code or anything like that at all.
In other words, you get what you deserve for using a crappy (Web-based) mailer. Unless of course you have no choice, in which case you have my sympathy.
The solution to that problem is a lot simpler than you might think:
Who says they have to look at the radically new design and still think "car"?
Seriously, the requirement of these vehicles is not that they look and feel like cars. The requirement is that they have the same purpose as cars: to transport one or more people from one place to another, possibly (but not necessarily) in an enclosed cabin for comfort (when the weather is unpleasant).
Don't believe me? Go take a look at a Segway sometime.
And where does most electricity in the U.S. come from? Fossil fuel burning plants, of course. So what benefit are you providing to the environment?
Those fossil fuel burning power plants burn those fossil fuels much more cleanly than car engines. There's also fewer places where the fuels are burned, so that the power plants can be upgraded if some new technology to further reduce emissions emerges. Finally, there are numerous other sources of power which are used even in the United States -- tidal, wind, nuclear, and a dash of solar. All are, of course, much nicer to the environment than even the cleanest fossil-fuel power plant. (Yes, even nuclear waste can be recycled. Ever heard of a nuclear battery?)
On Slashdot, you're pretty much preaching to the choir. It's mostly those retarded redneck slobs and equally retarded blonde bimbos that drive SUVs even though they have no need for them.
Anyway, the Middle East oil tycoons will soon be out of business if GM's fuel-cell vehicles get anywhere. You don't need to be sitting on top of a huge patch of oil to make hydrogen fuel. I won't even start on the environment...
I've actually heard some stories of praise for the EV1 by people who've owned them. Apparently they're not half bad considering all their shortcomings.
I've always had the sneaking feeling that fuel cell technology was just another way for the petrochemical industries to keep their jobs when the wells run dry.
This isn't actually as bad as it sounds. With oil, your location is very important, since you have to drill for the oil and it's not everywhere. Hydrogen, on the other hand, is the most abundant element in the universe, so your location isn't nearly as important. This means that it's quite possible to end American dependence on foreign oil, since we have plenty of hydrogen of our own. Hydrogen isn't much of a pollutant, either.
Of course the very long term (for the future of man) solution would be to harness nuclear fusion
Don't forget about antimatter. The energy one gets from fusion is nothing compared to what matter-antimatter reactions produce. It's also more environmentally friendly than fusion, since it produces no byproducts at all; the matter and antimatter involved in the reaction are both turned into energy. This means no radioactive waste to get rid of or recycle. Also, antimatter reactions are easier to produce; with fusion, you have to fill up the reactor core with plasma so that it's hot enough to force the reactions to occur. Antimatter reacts at a simple touch with matter; no energy input of any kind is needed (aside from containment, of course). The only potential problem with antimatter is where to get the antimatter fuel, or how to make it.
The point is, you may pay a 10% penalty to convert an immobile source of power into a portable one
That's one hell of a lot better than the enormous amount of energy required to drill oil, refine it, and so forth. It's probably also better than the efficiency of recharging conventional batteries, which, as you may have noticed, produces a lot of heat in the process.
In summary, 90% efficiency is pretty damn good already.
Oddly, a lot of people seem to find this objectionable. I'm not sure why, though. If you have a CPU with a defective FPU, what's wrong with disabling the broken FPU and selling it at a discount? Or if it's more fragile and can't run as fast, why not lower its rating to whatever speed it can run at, and, again, sell it at a discount?
To replace them, bring in university professors that have nothing better to do than to sit on this panel of review.
And don't forget to pay them well. The USPTO's biggest problem is that it is horribly underfunded considering how much damage it is capable of causing. Homeland Security is frankly useless if your economy is cripped by rampant trivial patents being used as weapons of mass economic destruction.
The big looser in all of this is of course basically any non-corporate entity.
Actually, it's pretty rare for companies to use these frivolous patents except against other companies, probably because their marketing departments aren't (usually) stupid enough not to realize that pissing off large numbers of people does not increase market share. Personally, I think all this hoopla on Slashdot about patents is pretty overblown and paranoid, for this reason.
In fact, I can't recall any instance of a Free Software project receiving a cease-and-desist over a trivial patent. There were a few fiascos resulting from non-trivial patents -- GIF and MP3, namely -- but this is another story entirely.
You are correct IMHO. All Bush has to do is to make all airport security contractors into Federal employees, but NOOOOOOOO use the massive number of police in the US to form a police state instead, that's great. Then again instilling fear in the voters like binLaden has done is an excellent opportunity to form a totalitarian state which historically (Nazi Germany) is the only way to destroy a democratic system. So binLaden might have destroyed the US, not bad for some guy on the opposite side of the world that killed 0.05% of the US population. Looks like US democracy and Goverment is actually unstable, you need to learn lessons from the English and Europe about robust democracy. But Americans think they're the biggest and best at everything so they'll have to learn this lesson the hard way (maybe civil war), only after US democracy collapses will they come to Europe and ask us how to get the intricate checks and balances just right.
Apparently I forgot to mention that while we're expected to hand over all of our privacy to the FBI, those expectations are not being met. There is resistance to this sort of thing in the media and in Washington. Some of our elected representatives do actually represent their constituents, you know.
Turn a blind eye to it, let him make his money, as long as he doesn't make us say "Sieg Heil" I'm OK with it. After all if he doesn't get his money, then the only substitte is power.
Maybe you didn't pay attention in history class or something. Money is power.
IMHO this should happen, global monopolies screw over the customers, competitors and other countries, but at least it's better than old style colonialism (remember the British and French colonising the US/Canada and killing native Americans) because the megacorporations kill far fewer people and have far less demands than a colonising army, and yet the result is the same - an enslaved population.
Errm... sort of. We are not enslaved so long as competing with Microsoft is legal. Apropos Apple's "switch" ads that they're running on TV all over the place. I know Apple is ailing as a company, but they still are solvent and they still are competing, and they haven't been legislated out of business. More importantly, these ads are explicitly anti-Microsoft. If Microsoft is given the power to legislate competitors out of business, one of their first targets would be Apple.
Oh, and if they are legislated out of business, expect widespread civil disobedience, because it WILL be known to the public through the media. And once the media gets its hands on it and hypes it up, people will be PISSED. The media can be a powerful ally at times.
Take a pill. Sea levels aren't rising much and melting the polar ice caps won't make them rise much more. Know why? Because the polar ice caps are huge chunks of ice floating in the ocean. And guess what? Huge chunks of ice already have water displacement! Melting them won't affect the sea level. The only thing that will affect the sea level is huge chunks of ice which are currently on land rather than in the sea (ie, glaciers). These do exist, of course, but there's hardly enough of them to do much to the sea level.
Maybe you should have paid more attention in school or something. Water displacement is not exactly rocket science.
It does make it harder, though. The harder it is, the less people will be willing to do it. Of course, terrorists are willing to do pretty much anything, so I doubt this really applies to them. Still, domestic wannabe terrorists like the Shoe Bomber will be deterred.
I think the best deterrant to terrorists hijacking planes is the fact that most of the passengers will likely be more than happy to beat them to a bloody pulp with their bare hands if they try. That's probably the real reason why there hasn't been a hijacking since 9/11.
Free press and open judicial system is not the open cure all that you make sound like.
Without these, Richard Nixon would be Supreme Emperor of the United States of America, and every single poster on Slashdot would be getting a visit from the Gestapo-equivalent of his devising, just for not liking him.
Chinese are more capitalists than you or more. They actually work for a living, because they actually have to work to live. They don't have a government supported social security, medicaid, or charities willing to feed them. Actually those programs sound kinda socialist to me.
Getting government supported social security that pays you for a couple of loaves of bread a day is not my idea of socialist. China is not a capitalist nation because capitalism, by definition, is a free market.
So much the better that there'll soon be no oil left to have flow. Then Big Oil becomes obsolete, and people won't shut up because of it. And it has environmental benefits, just as a nice little bonus.
Same as if you look back on America after 100 years you might see that WTC attacks improved the US democratic system, making binLaden a hero in history's eyes that strengthened the American way, and made the US democratic system more like Europe's.
As a result of the WTC attacks, we're now expected to hand over all of our privacy to the FBI and bend over like good little sheep^Wcitizens. I would hardly call that a strengthening of the American way (which emphasizes freedom and privacy, as it has from day one).
when a company increases in size to 80% of the size of Micro$oft it changes from a legal entity into a publically accountable Federal body, and can be removed by public vote.
Then why the hell is Microsoft still in business?
It's up to the Government to implement this fine-tuning, they've started with Enron and Worldcom and will end with...? This would make Enron and Worldcom heroes in the history books
If it's up to the government to implement this fine-tuning, we're all done for. Remember, Dubious Dubya is at the helm of the White House, and he's in bed with corrupt big business executives, since he stands to make money off their crimes. I'm sure he made a sh*tload off Enron, and I wouldn't doubt he profited from Worldcom as well.
His being in bed with corrupt big business executives was well demonstrated during the California energy crisis last year, when our Governor made repeated appeals to him and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, only to be told to go screw himself, and in almost as many words. If that's not proof of his involvement, I don't know what is. It's also proof that he's a vengeful Nixon type. Probably compiled a blacklist of all the states that didn't vote for him. "California didn't vote for me, so I'm going to hurt them badly, and make a few hundred million bucks off their sorry asses in the process." At the rate things are going with the corporate corruption scandal, we'll find out soon...
All of this crap about "work ethic" and "entrepreneur" is really just a fancy way of describing slave labor. The only reason Chinese civilians have such a good "work ethic" is because they are starved, enslaved, and generally treated like disposable, cheap robots. It's a lot like the flood of Indian and Pakistani programmer slaves during the height of the H-1B disaster.
Despite the claims of filthy parasites of capitalism like George W Bush, human rights violations still run rampant in China, and free trade with China is not going to improve that situation. If anything, it'll just force the Chinese slaves to work harder, and make the wallets of various American and Chinese tycoons fatter. What really needs to happen is for the despotic Chinese government to be replaced by a government that treats its citizens like citizens, not mules. There needs to be strict enforcement of human rights, the freedoms granted by the United States Constitution and strict enforcement thereof, a minimum wage on par with that of the United States, worker's rights on par with those of the United States, labor unions with power as in the United States, and so forth. As you can probably imagine, none of this will ever happen so long greedy as tycoons are at the helm of the Chinese government.
Ever heard of testing? Replace 'stable', 'slink', or (when it's released) 'woody' with 'testing' in/etc/apt/sources.list and update. Then everything's fairly up-to-date, but since it's already gone through 2 weeks of testing by people who run unstable (like me), it's also fairly stable. It's not as stable as 'stable', of course, but it's not horribly outdated, either.
Slashdot Mirror
In other words, you get what you deserve for using a crappy (Web-based) mailer. Unless of course you have no choice, in which case you have my sympathy.
Who says they have to look at the radically new design and still think "car"?
Seriously, the requirement of these vehicles is not that they look and feel like cars. The requirement is that they have the same purpose as cars: to transport one or more people from one place to another, possibly (but not necessarily) in an enclosed cabin for comfort (when the weather is unpleasant).
Don't believe me? Go take a look at a Segway sometime.
Anyway, the Middle East oil tycoons will soon be out of business if GM's fuel-cell vehicles get anywhere. You don't need to be sitting on top of a huge patch of oil to make hydrogen fuel. I won't even start on the environment...
In summary, 90% efficiency is pretty damn good already.
Oddly, a lot of people seem to find this objectionable. I'm not sure why, though. If you have a CPU with a defective FPU, what's wrong with disabling the broken FPU and selling it at a discount? Or if it's more fragile and can't run as fast, why not lower its rating to whatever speed it can run at, and, again, sell it at a discount?
In fact, I can't recall any instance of a Free Software project receiving a cease-and-desist over a trivial patent. There were a few fiascos resulting from non-trivial patents -- GIF and MP3, namely -- but this is another story entirely.
And it's terrible PR, especially for a company only really known to engineers, such as a network infrastructure company.
Oh, and if they are legislated out of business, expect widespread civil disobedience, because it WILL be known to the public through the media. And once the media gets its hands on it and hypes it up, people will be PISSED. The media can be a powerful ally at times.
Then explain why telco ISPs such as AT&T have their own TOS (e.g., no spam), and are able to enforce it without getting sued.
Maybe you should have paid more attention in school or something. Water displacement is not exactly rocket science.
I think the best deterrant to terrorists hijacking planes is the fact that most of the passengers will likely be more than happy to beat them to a bloody pulp with their bare hands if they try. That's probably the real reason why there hasn't been a hijacking since 9/11.
Yeah, that's a problem with testing, but I'm sure it'll get worked out. In the mean time, it's still more up-to-date than stable.
So much the better that there'll soon be no oil left to have flow. Then Big Oil becomes obsolete, and people won't shut up because of it. And it has environmental benefits, just as a nice little bonus.
His being in bed with corrupt big business executives was well demonstrated during the California energy crisis last year, when our Governor made repeated appeals to him and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, only to be told to go screw himself, and in almost as many words. If that's not proof of his involvement, I don't know what is. It's also proof that he's a vengeful Nixon type. Probably compiled a blacklist of all the states that didn't vote for him. "California didn't vote for me, so I'm going to hurt them badly, and make a few hundred million bucks off their sorry asses in the process." At the rate things are going with the corporate corruption scandal, we'll find out soon...
Despite the claims of filthy parasites of capitalism like George W Bush, human rights violations still run rampant in China, and free trade with China is not going to improve that situation. If anything, it'll just force the Chinese slaves to work harder, and make the wallets of various American and Chinese tycoons fatter. What really needs to happen is for the despotic Chinese government to be replaced by a government that treats its citizens like citizens, not mules. There needs to be strict enforcement of human rights, the freedoms granted by the United States Constitution and strict enforcement thereof, a minimum wage on par with that of the United States, worker's rights on par with those of the United States, labor unions with power as in the United States, and so forth. As you can probably imagine, none of this will ever happen so long greedy as tycoons are at the helm of the Chinese government.
In summary, this is a Bad Thing.
Don't worry, I'm sure the moderator will get ripped a new one in meta for that.
Ever heard of testing? Replace 'stable', 'slink', or (when it's released) 'woody' with 'testing' in /etc/apt/sources.list and update. Then everything's fairly up-to-date, but since it's already gone through 2 weeks of testing by people who run unstable (like me), it's also fairly stable. It's not as stable as 'stable', of course, but it's not horribly outdated, either.