It seems like a statement of fact: The kids at Columbine were bullied, and there's very little difference between bullying committed by students as opposed to faculty/staff.
Actually there is a difference, and it is not insignificant. Bullying by an authority figure is worse as it carries the implication that it is acceptable. A schoolyard tough bully is just using his force of muscle and/or threat of it to accomplish his goals. A member of the staff/faculty is using the authority of their position to do it - in addition to any other means they have. While they may be fundamentally the same concept, the effects are drastically different.
You expect the school yard bully to do it. You should not have to expect the staff/faculty to do it as well.
IMHO, the line should be drawn at tangible media, such as CDs and floppies (it's funny, laugh). If that forces these ways of distribution into nonexistence, then so be it.
After all, many such things if done by postal service are yet another crime.
If this goes through I say quit fighting spam. Let it start clogging up the archive mechanisms. When the pain is large enough these privacy violations go away. I'd rather get spam I can filter than have my traffic/email/etc. mandated to be stored where it is rapidly available and providing a big-ass target for crackers and bureaucrats looking for a cause to raise their pay or get votes on.
A large percentage of the bandwidth of site such as slashdot is created by people who want to limit what other people do, and the parent poster here is no different. Indeed several in this very thread talk about taxing other people.
Yet another major portion are about educating government types about technical details or getting technically literate people into office. The thinking being that this will solve the problem.
The problem is the entitlement society. From the parent poster who obviously believes he/she has some sort of right or entitlement to restrict me and what I own/drive/do, to the person who wants to instead tax cigarettes to pay for their own "entitlements". I call it Bill's Correllary to NIMBY: NFMW (Not From My Wallet).
Neither one will.
Ultimately the problem is the notion that the government should be providing all these so-called services. An old "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" episode had Hillary getting her first paycheck. She was immediately incensed that the government and "this FICA guy" was taking her money. It was pointed out to her that somebody had to pay for all the programs in government she was in favor of. Her response? "I thought that was supposed to be paid for by the government!"
Cut the alleged "services", move to a fee-based system for every "service" that can, stop preventing people from making a living starting at the bottom, stop electing statists. Only then will the voracious appetite for your money stand any chance at abatement. We should not have to have technically literate people in office if they don't have any authority over technical issues or if they aren't under any pressing need to pay for their campaign promises.
Otherwise it's like applying a finger bandage to a gaping chest wound.
How can George Bush get a subpoena in the first place. The same way you or I do, by having one served on us. President Bush doesn't obtain subpoenas. The "Justice" department issues subpoenas, not the President.
It's seems odd that a president can compel the private sector to divulge information in the pursuit of political policy.
It should appear odd. But remember it is not the President who does this but the "Justice Department". Then it won't seem so odd.
Plus this is from the Executive branch which doesn't even make the law. The executive branch executes the laws. The DoJ is part of the executive branch. The DoJ therefore issues subpoenas. Follow?
The Constitution gives the president authority over the military and cabinet; the power to grant pardons and make appointments. And thats about it. You forgot several things... lie the rest of Section2:
He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.
If you don't fixate on the POTUS, you'll figure out how the federal goverment can issue subpoenas.
And fixating on the POTUS is the source of the problem as to why abuses continue. It isn't Bush, it isn't Clinton, it isn't the next person. When you perpetuate the myth that the President does these things, you find yourself suprised all over again when the next one does it. The DoJ largely remains the same and remains unaffected when you blame the POTUS. It is like blaming Brown when it was Chertoff who needed to be canned for his actions. You leave the problem in place and employ a scapegoat.
It is also like the Democratic reaction to the DoJ's abuse of the so-called Patriot Act. They didn't object to it and it's abusive powers, they objected to who had control of said powers. As long as you blame the current figurehead, the problem will only get worse.
Shipping it off to Congress is no solution either. Where in the Constitution does it say Congress is an investigative body? It doesn't. And it merely clouds the underlying issue. The DoJ was/is trying to defend an unconstitutional law not by arguing that it really is constitutional, but that it works and as such should essentially be exempt from constitutionality requirements.
And that is the greatest danger in this whole mess. It isn't about privacy, or who is President, or forcing a "private" company (IMO you are no longer private when you apply for special protections and priviliges from the government, and they grant them) to hand over what may be trade secrets, and it isn't about who should be fighting for a law's existence or issuing subpooenas (it is the executive's job to defend laws).
It is about the DoJ arguing that a law that for some level does what it was designed to do should be allowed even if unconstitutional. The danger of that precedent is one of the most grave threats to the rule of constitutional law there is.
So to sum up, if some programmer doesn't do his/her job, we could see SQL Injection attacks, or buffer overflow vulnerabilities, or... must I go on? It could be argued (quite well IMO) that some programmer not doing their job is part and parcel of most security vulnerabilities and code bugs.
But once it hits as you describe, the black eye will be irrelevant. By then the tech will be "crucial to the actions" of first responders, airport security, etc.. Then what happens? Congress bloviates in a "special hearing" for a week or two, the pundits speak of it a litte with each of the two media sides saying that the other side is responsible. Then maybe a scandal of the week when some Senator who voted for it is discovered to have taken money from someone who may or may not have been involved in any RFID development companies. Maybe, just maybe, there might be some RFID "security regulations" passed, but as usual the government (DHS, FBI, CIA, airport (in)security systems contractors, Congress) will exempt itself from these regulations.
And that's pretty much it.
Bonus question: how much of that was involved in the Blackberry thing? At least the exemptions part at a minimum. Obviously neither RIM nor NTP(?) donated much to the Republican party.;)
I knew I had it here somewhere. Six times as much petroleum (oil) goes into making a gallon of gasoline as goes into even Pimental's invalid claim of how much goes into a gallon of ethanol. Is this why you fail to account for the Prius side of that equation? or were you under the faulty impression that gasoline had a positive balance on that account?
And therin you bump into the main failure of socialism. It works only for small groups that are doing so voluntarily and under the notion to limit themselves while continuing to produce for others. When you start adding in anyone who doesn't follow those rules the foundation crumbles under the weight of them.
However, a key aspect that is often missed is you can say the same thing for/real/ Anarchy (note this applies to lack of formal government not the "anarchy==chaos" crap). The same conditions/requirements apply. I've seen both socialism and anarchy work in small groups of people who all understood the basic principle and (usually/mostly) abided by it.
Indeed, in economic systems the same can be said of uninhibited by government capitalism. As long as people recognize their value and do not try to take undue advantage of the others, true capitalism has no flaws or pitfalls. Again, the underlying problem is generaly size of the body in question and how well each member adheres to the "don't harm others" maxim.
Where capitalism pulls ahead is that it can survive less than ideal even far less than ideal situations without collapsing. Socialism, however, can not. As you hint at we see this failure occurring in Europe, and we see it to a certain extent in the US as well. Socialism does not scale, partly because of increasing inefficiencies in higher population densities as well as increasing inefficiencies in ever growing bureaucracies for redistribution of resources. Capitalism's advantage in these cases is an increasing need for better efficiency and inherent ability to respond to changing conditions.
The more you use the quicker the problem of energy consumption goes away. We could solve the world's energy problems in about 30 minutes. That's about the time it would take to launch a full-scale first strike and trigger a full-scale retaliation strike and have them both hit their targets. Eliminate 90% of the population and infrastructure and *boom*, no more massive demand for energy and oil.
And most of us wouldn't feel a thing.;)...
Obviously that's a whole lotta sarcasm up there. Obviously there is no quick fix that doesn't involve an event of such magnitude. But there are a lot of *solutions*, as those of us who work on these things know. In a way it's sad that most of the real science and good stuff in this field generally doesn't or wouldn't get approved by by the/. editors. Then again, maybe in general/. nerds aren't interested in real solutions as opposed to "quick fix" hyped toys. I honestly don't know. I know some are at least, and that's a better ratio than in the mainstream press.
I've travelled the US a lot (all but three states), as well as foreign countries (German, France, England, Scotland, Greenland, Iceland... a few others I've forgotten), and I've not seen homeless "on the level of the US" anywhere, not in the US or out of it. There are pockets, but almost always in areas of high population density.
Population density is often noted as the single largest factor in crime rates. Yes, more so than poverty. As I recall, some of the highest density in Sweden is Stockholm, w/something like 4,000 per square kilometer, right? It may be a bit more or less now, I'm not sure. But you can't discount the effects of lower density on crime rates. That said, AIUI, crime is on the rise in Sweden and the victimization rate is on par with that of the US. I'd bet it is in the more densely populated areas.
Another major factor in crime rates is defensive capability of would be targets. While Sweden seems to have some rather restrictive laws, they are also very high in gun ownership rates. Another factor known to decrease person to person crime. High gun ownership rates nearly always shifts crime from muggings, assaults, rapes, and murders to larceny and burglary type crimes. Here, weather plays a factor. Colder weather tends to emphasize the opposite types of crime: person to person crimes. The resulting combination of generally cold weather and high gun ownership, in a generally lowe-density area is a powerful decrease in crime rates regardless of governmental type and laws.
Meanwhile, here in the US we have the Democrats and so-called "environmentalists" pushing against "urban sprawl", which actually produces lower population density. Why? I suspect the fact that the higher the population density the greater the likelihood of voting Democrat has a significant factor here.
Overall I'd suspect that if you compare Sweden to areas in the US of comparable crime rates you'd find them much closes than you might think.
Add into this the fact the the higher the population density the higher the homeless rate and more things will start to make sense. As that parent poster said, Sweden has them. Note where he said they would be expected to be seen. The higher density areas. Most of America is not high-density. As such, comparatively you won't see the "US level" of homeless everyone likes to believe exists. I'd bet that in Northern Sweden there is no or practically no homelessness.
If you want to make the most major (positive) impact in crime and homeless levels, and you believe government is the way to do it, then you should push for population density limits. Good luck though. Oddly enough, if you want a smaller government, putting in place population density limits will acheive much toward that goal. The lower the density, the less people turn to goverment as the solution.
Or you are ignorant. It's called basic math. My Suburban runs E85. Say I only get 10MPGf (MPG of fuel). Since only 15% of that is gasoline, how much gasoline am I burning? How many miles per gallon of gasoline(MPGg) am I getting?
Answer: about 67. What is the Prius' MPGg rating? According to the EPA 60. According to friends who drive it, more like 50. Either way which is burning more: a vehicle getting 67MPGg or one getting 50-60MPGg?
On the highway the difference is even larger. A Prius is rated by the EPA at 51MPGg on the highway (as I noted earlier, the hybrids get their main advantage by decreasing the work of getting a vehicle moving). In practical use my E85 powered Suburban is getting about 15MPGf at 75 MPH through the mountains, a 50% increase. Thus, on the interstate here my E85 powered Suburban is getting oh yeah about 100MPGg (100 miles of travel 6.67 gallons of E85. 6.67*.15=1. 1 gallon gasoline per hundred miles = 100MPG). Compared to the EPA rating of 51 for the Prius on the highway. So you see, I am neither lying nor deluded, it is merely the case that you are biased and ignorant. Now you should not be ignorant as you have been shown the details, but your bias may well remain.
But hey while we're banterign back and forth, I guess it's my turn to pick apart your biodeisel. Personally, I think we shoudl use more of it. Indeed, I've a couple that are converting their two gasoline powered vehicels to run on it, and I've convinced my neighbor down the street to convert his existing diesel (he's also going to convert one of his Vettes to E85, and I'm converting mine. Given I'm starting at 22MPG+ in town in the Vette it will burn very little gasoline).
That said... the only way to mass usage of biodiesel is algae farms.
Consider this from the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering:
Potential Production of Biodiesel It would be very ambitious to produce the amount of diesel used on the farm - 3.1 billion gallons. That would require all of the vegetable oil currently produced in the U. S. and would require about 15% of our total production land area.
It would in fact be very ambitious to have a 0.5 billion gallon per year biodiesel industry. This would be only 1.5% of our on-highway diesel fuel or less than 1% of our total fuel oil and kerosene use. A 0.5 billion gallon per year industry would require all of the surplus vegetable oil (0.13 bil. gal.), half of the used oil (0.17 bil. gal.), and all of the oil which could be produced on the 37 million acres of idle crop land (approx. 0.3 billion gal.) or the equivalent by displacing current crops.
It is apparent that a challenge for biodiesel production will occur at about 0.2 - 0.3 billion gallons when the acquisition of additional feedstocks will become very difficult.
It is a touch of irony for you to rail against US ethanol production while promoting biodeisel. Ethanol production in the US well exceeds biodiesel. On a per-acre basis we get more ethanol from an acre of farmland than we do oils for biodeisel. If you don't think ethanol can cut it, than there isn't a snowballs chance for biodeisel.
According to the agriculture census in 2002 harvested cropland in the US consisted of 363.3 million acres. There is additionally 71 million acres idle. If you planted soybeans or corn on ALL 363.3 million acres you would get about 74/73 billion gallons of vegetable oil. Using slightly out of fate production figures that same amount of land would produce 127 billion gallons of non-cellulosic ethanol.
But we don't need to, nor should we seriously consider such an idea. I merely used to it demonstrate some data regarding biodeisel. It clearly demonstrates that as an alternative ethanol in it's
Which source? The product of oil sands is solid at room temperature, and requires both cracking and desulfurization IIRC. I'm not talking about oil sands in Canada. Try to keep posts straight, EP, as that wasn't me. It harms your credibility to rail against strawmen.
Let's see, the US burns 140 billion gallons of gasoline per year but will produce only 5 billion gallons of ethanol Hogwash. Do some research to at least validate part of your namesake.
Cellulosic ethanol has so much resource available to it only someone ignorant of the reality would make such a statement. Apparently this includes you. Cellulosic ethanol utilizes paper sludge, grasses, agricultural waste (of which we produce about one billion tons/year) that currently is generally burned or dumped into landfills. Waste biomass along can produce approximately 25-30 billion gallons of ethanol per year at current level of conversion technology. Advancements in the pipeline can increase that by anywhere from 2.8 to 12%. Energy specific crops can produce, again at current technology, another approximately 30 billion gallons of ethanol per year - with no impact on food croppage. With today's technology ethanol can on a straight replacement basis replace more than a third of your gal/year total above. Diesel should be replaced w/biodiesel - if there is enough supply for it.
Further, the conversion of paper sludge and agricultural waste provides a financial benefit to these "products" and would thus provide additional economic benefits. Regarding paper sludge it would provide a financially viable and even profitable resource for paper recycling - which currently is subsidized ebcuase current uses are not financially sensible outside of small demand niches. Ramping up production on these require the plant construction and collection processes.
By using industry standard breeding and cropping practices, by 2050 using switchgrass alone grown on 114 million acres to produce 165 billion gallons of ethanol per year. Switchgrass is also a better protein source for animal feed than the 70 million acres we currently dedicate to soybeans grown for the sole purpose of providing protein for animal feed.
The results of work that some of us who are actually doing these things instead of typing away ancient information on/. are that a V8 engine (for example) converted to run E85, non-flex, will acheive approximately a 15% increase in fuel economy over straight gasoline. And this is the other side of the issue. By 2050 it is estimated that at current rates, and assuming no significant increases in fuel economy, the US will consume approximately 290 Billion gal/year of gasoline. The combination of switchgrass and agri/bio waste above would provide approximately 190 billion gallons of that, and with a 15% increase over gasoline in fuel economy, that is well over two thirds of the expected demand. The remaining piece is economy.
On the economy side the single largest factor is weight of the vehicle. Lightweight SUV class vehicles have been demonstrated using plain gasoline to acheive fuel economy beating today's compact and subcompact cars. By 2025 it is estimated that light trucks and cars (i.e. average Joe vehicles) will account for 45% of the US oil consumption. By moving to lightweight modern materials in ground up designs (not merely replacing a panel here or there with carbon fiber) these vehicles can reduce their consumption their current counterparts by 2/3rds. About 17% of the energy in the fuel of a vehicle is used to move it (most of it gets converted to heat, vibration, consumed by accessories and pollution controls, etc.). Reducing the work required reduces the energy required reduces the fuel required. There are two routes to fuel economy: work more efficiently and do less work.
On average about 7 or 8 units of fuel are used to put one unit of power to the wheels in modern vehicles. Thus, reducing each unit reduction of tractive load decreases fuel consumption by about 7 or 8 u
You miss several things which invalidate your position.
First, most of the newer plants and ethanol "farmers" are using ethanol powered equipment. Further, more and more of the ethanol is not coming from specifically grown crops, but agricultural waste and "garbage". (Yes this is personal knowledge here). Cellulosic ethanol is reaching the 4-6:1 energy range. Indeed, it does much of this by producing the necessary gasses used in the process (think of in-process recycling).
There are already farms that burn either E85 or are running on pure biodiesel and thus have no petroleum portions. Not to mention the cellulosic ethanol which produces the needed "gas" products for it's manufacture. Thus your claims above are becoming further and further incorrect. A situation that will only increase over time.
How does the Prius do on this account? Poorly at best. A Prius or other hybrid does nothing to increase a shift away from "gas guzzling". And it does so at a serious risk to future problems.
For example, currently most of the transportation infrastructure such as roads and bridges are paid for by gasoline taxes at the pump. Governments have already started increasing these taxes and considering raising them in accordance with better fuel economy. Why? Simple: as fuel economy improves dramatically, revenues will decrease. We all know that no government likes decreasing revenues. As a result, significantly better fuel economy will produce incentives for the government to eliminate or reduce incentives to get better fuel economy. It isn't the auto companies wanting to keep fuel economy down.
Another problem with the hybrid approach is that there is little in the way of future improvement. Hybrids get their fuel economy by shutting off or not using the ICE in stop and go, city traffic. Any additional improvements will be minor as a result.
On the other hand, E85 offers increased fuel economy over gasoline. We don't se eit in consumer vehicles right now because the current E85 vehicle is essentially a form of hybrid: it has to burn everything from plain gasoline to E85. However, an engine that is run on *only* E85 and designed such (for example: it has increased compression) will achieve better fuel economy than straight gasoline. Which means if I were to only run E85 (and wanted to void my warranty of course) I could make certain changes including bumping the engine compression and get mileag of approximately 18-20 in town, pure E85.
Hybrids don't build a market for alternates to petroleum fuels. A hybrid builds no additional markets. As a result it is nothing more than a bandaid containing nothing to clean the wound. E85 vehicles, however, build a market for a viable proven alternative, renewable fuel.
Hybrids don't (currently) scale. Looking at the largert hybrid vehicles, the MPG increase is neglible at that. E85 is largely proven at the larger vehicle level and only get better at smaller levels: the opposite of the hybrids.
Further, pollution-wise, the E85 Suburban pollutes less than the Prius, despite burning more fuel. E85 burns significantly cleaner. This results in the ability to go longe rbetween oil changes (cleaner oil), and less maintenance required on the engines. Cleaner, better maintained engines will pollute less over the long term particularly as they last longer. This also results in less petroleum use through reduced parts replacement and engine failures.
That said, I'd like to see E85 hybrids. Best of both worlds. A Prius that could run E85 would be quite potent in reduction of gasoline use and emissions. Sadly, I don't think Toyota will ever do it, at least not until the US companies have been producing E85 hybrids (word is GM is working on them). The Prius largely sells to people who are doing it for the transient prestige factor, and have the money to pay the premium. That factor will stop selling them very shortly. Much like Apple has been appealing to those who want to be different, eventually you are either stuck with a small mark
Which doesn't matter one bit if you can't produce it fast enough (due to limitations on e.g. water for gasification or natural gas for upgrading and desulfurization) to keep pace with the decline of conventional oil.
And what makes you think we can't? The crude that comes out of this source is actually easier to refine. In at least two of the processes natural gas is a suprluss product. Water usage isn't the issue for this source, power is. Hence part of the political roadblock. Indeed, if used intelligently, this process can be used to produce surpluss *clean* water, as well as power for the electrical grid.
In the method Shell has pionered recently, and in methods dating back to 1967, the work happens in ground through heating resulting in a pumpable oil source. Pumping oil is a pretty well known(read: old) and stable technology which we can do at the same speed as err uhh current oil pumping. Actually the crude that results from the above mentioned processes is easier to pump so we could pump it faster than heavy crude if we needed to.
The refining of said oil source requiring less steps (think of it as a few steps are already done) means that the refining process won't be slower than it is now. The processs of going from pumped crude to gasoline is limited by regulation, not technology. Surely you are aware of this EP.
As far as economically producing this oil, Shell's latest method brings it down into the $20/bbl range.
As far as eventually replacing oil, you are focusing on the wrong issue. Whether or not we eventually need to replace oil in a hundred, two hundred, or three hundred years is entirely irrelevant to the switching of oil sources. Indeed, we've demonstrated the ability to take today's trash and make light crude out of it. Light crude can be refined into gasoline. There is enough trash put out by Americans to handle more than today's requirements for gasoline and heating oil. Combine this, for example, ethanol and you have a recipe for elimination of the US importing oil. Indeed, many easy to obtain scenarios would lead to the US being the major exporter.
When you mix in: * North American shale oil reserves at a starting price of about 35USD/bbl dropping over the course of about 5 years to under 20USD/bbl * Efficient conversion of "waste" to light crude which can be used for heating oil and gasoline (at ~35USD/bbl initially eventually dropping to sub-20USD/bbl in mass usage) * Ability to convert agricultural waste to ethanol for automotive use (we have enough agricultural waste to power the US' automtive needs entirely on ethanol) * The growing availability of E85 vehicles and fuel stations
You have a recipe for success. With this recipe there would be no need to replace oil due to "dwindling supplies". Indeed, consider that each of those three items alone can solve the problem. Add them together and it is clear there is no looming crash of oil driven industry/economy.
And that isn't all. For a good read consult "Winning the Oil Endgame". Several additional advancements listed there will contribute, if used, to elimination of oil importation and dependence without the above three listed points.
A far as an eventual replacement of gas (gasoline/ethanol/E85) powered private vehicles (cars, SUV, lt. trucks, etc.) E85 provides a transition to ethanol driven fuel cells. Ethanol driven fuel cells are showing the best potential as far as infrastructure requirements. Hydrogen is a non-starter. Natural gas is considered non-renewable yet is widely held (in the public eye anyway) as the prime source of fuel for fuel cells. Ethanol is proving excellent as a fuel for fuel cells. It is renewable, and it you follow the above listed sequence is a natural extension of an E85 based fuel economy. Hydrated ethanol can produced for approximately 75-85 cents/gallon. Add in the usual 75 cents of taxes, about 15-25 cents for profit at the various levels and you get your ethanol cheaper than you get straight gasoline t
...notification about a new brand of tampon (the sorts of adverts that I always see on TV for some reason) Dude, seriously if you don't like it quit watching the Lifetime Network for Women. I don't think PlayboyTV has ever had tampon commercials on. Not that I would know of course.
Why would I want to give all my very personal information to a potential advertiser? It makes me cringe all of the suckers out there that will store their private word, excel or other docs and have no idea how insecure it is.
Since I may ruffle a few feathers I'll get a few things out front here: I hate getting spam I hate getting phone spam even more I hate getting postal spam, but it's lowest on the list.
Now that said, what *exactly* is it you are afraid of? That someone might market information to you that you might actually be interested in?? I'd certainly be leary of just anyone getting my personal information. But you specifically targeted "a potential advertiser". In other words someone who would want to sell you something you might actually be interested in.
For years we nerds have been clamoring for "agent" type systems. Where we specify what we are after and some clever AI or near-AI finds us just what we are looking for w/o a bunch of fluff and useless results. It has always been a user initiated crawler type system. And we are apparently not much closer to it's reality.
But if you think about it, Google may inadvertently accomplish it from the opposite angle. If you store documents about what you like and don't like, and if Google is smart enough to discern between them, you could see little textual ads regarding what you are really interested in. Can anyone say "time saver"? What if they had a service similar to Amazon's recommendations, but tailored much more personally and more broadly based as well?
Add in a lightweight "agent" piece where you could make specific requests. Then, GoogleNet (mmm... Terminator reference) could use it's index on you to determine more accurately what you are actually interested, weigh that with what you specifically searched for and get disturbingly accurate results. If you were looking to expand your horizons, look into things you've not looked into before, a checkbox/option to say along the lines "this is a new thing for me" where it would invert the index and possibly try to avoid things you already seem to know about or simply ignore your "personal db".
When you consider the immense informational store of people with similar interests, the accuracy of even "basic web searches" would be greatly improved. (When does google come self-aware, I forgot?). Provided they could reasonably secure the information store, and provided they kept the actual information from advertisers, it could work really well.
Back to the idea of idea of advertisers knowing what I would/might be interested in. If they know what I am interested in, they what I am not interested in, so I'd expect less of that generic crap from them. Advertisements are far less intrusive if the content is something you are interested in. Think about the commercials you like to watch; not because you like their product but because you are entertained. The basis is very similar. There are many times I've found a particular advert and thought "damn, how come I couldn't find this last (week|month|year) when I was looking for this?!".
And after all... I can always just say no, even if it is something I'd really like to have.
No I don't mean to sponsor GnuCash, I mean to build up a cross-platform solution which is able to compete against Quickbooks on all platform (including Windows)
If Novell were to put significant development resources behind GnuCash, it certainly could be runnable and usable and competitive on Linux, OSX, and Windows. Why start from scratch?
is a serious disadvantage. We "burn" a crapload of energy just in power line loss. 10% is nothing to sneeze at here. Decentralized systems are indeed a better, safer route. The less distance involved in trasnmission the lower the losses in transmission. The less congestion (yes, power grids get congested ) the lower the power loss. Not to mention the whole security thing of multiple smaller power generation plants versus large centralized Soviet Style distribution systems.
I was away from my apartment for a couple of months. I turned everything off. My electric bill was insanely low, less than 100KHh -- 1/10 of my usual usage. Guess what? My electric bill went down only a third... Still paid $25/month for not using anything. In other words, using 10x the electricity only costs 3x as much -- a bargain! Where's the incentive?
Ahh the joys of all them taxes and regulatory fees simply for being hooked up. And being hooked up is mandatory in most places. Go figure.
Forget environmental concerns... When oil becomes scarce [Or when people think it has], what will happen? Nothing. It'll be a page 45 blurb in the NYT. Why? By the time that happens pretty much nobody will be using it. i twill be a footnote in history.
There is more oil in North America than most ever people dream of.
Worldwide, the oil shale resource base is conservatively estimated to be 2.6 trillion bbl and is located in about 26 countries.6 About 2 trillion bbl, including both eastern and western deposits, is located within the US.
That is a damned lot of oil. And yes, it can be economically "produced" at today's rates, enough for several hundred years of oil use. It's politics that prevent it.
Reads like one too. I belive it was Chalk River (Ontario) that had the incident(s). I figure if anyone would list a "Quebec's Chernobyl" incident it would be listed here. Yet no mention of a meltdown at Charlemagne.
And even in the Chalk River incident in the 1950's, nobody was killed. hardly rising the the level of the big one: Chernobyl. How many people die per year due to coal mining and coal plant operations? How many people have died as a result of working in or living near a nuclear power plant since they were first built? Go ahead, do some research on that one.
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Actually there is a difference, and it is not insignificant.
Bullying by an authority figure is worse as it carries the implication that it is acceptable. A schoolyard tough bully is just using his force of muscle and/or threat of it to accomplish his goals. A member of the staff/faculty is using the authority of their position to do it - in addition to any other means they have. While they may be fundamentally the same concept, the effects are drastically different.
You expect the school yard bully to do it. You should not have to expect the staff/faculty to do it as well.
To make a long story short, the suspension was cut in half as a compromise.
So you are saying you still got fucked, they just lubed you up after you protested?
...
You install and configure Asterix.
You "greylist" unknown numbers.
You blacklist any numbers known to come from phonespammers or anyone else you don't want calls from.
Phonespammer company can't bypass your system, phone company doesn't control it, you don't get the annoying calls.
* Some traffic lights found to periodically turn red almost 50% of the time; transportation system grinds to a halt.
Solution: Add the "yellow" light to them. Then they will only turn red what, 25% of the time? Boom, instant improvement.
IMHO, the line should be drawn at tangible media, such as CDs and floppies (it's funny, laugh). If that forces these ways of distribution into nonexistence, then so be it.
... ;)
Sure just because YOU don't use floppies
In my 8 months, working on hundreds of machines, I can count the number of machines I've reformatted on my fingers.
I can believe that. Then again, as my t-shirt says:
"I can count to 1023 on my fingers. Can you?"
After all, many such things if done by postal service are yet another crime.
If this goes through I say quit fighting spam. Let it start clogging up the archive mechanisms. When the pain is large enough these privacy violations go away. I'd rather get spam I can filter than have my traffic/email/etc. mandated to be stored where it is rapidly available and providing a big-ass target for crackers and bureaucrats looking for a cause to raise their pay or get votes on.
A large percentage of the bandwidth of site such as slashdot is created by people who want to limit what other people do, and the parent poster here is no different. Indeed several in this very thread talk about taxing other people.
Yet another major portion are about educating government types about technical details or getting technically literate people into office. The thinking being that this will solve the problem.
The problem is the entitlement society. From the parent poster who obviously believes he/she has some sort of right or entitlement to restrict me and what I own/drive/do, to the person who wants to instead tax cigarettes to pay for their own "entitlements". I call it Bill's Correllary to NIMBY: NFMW (Not From My Wallet).
Neither one will.
Ultimately the problem is the notion that the government should be providing all these so-called services. An old "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" episode had Hillary getting her first paycheck. She was immediately incensed that the government and "this FICA guy" was taking her money. It was pointed out to her that somebody had to pay for all the programs in government she was in favor of. Her response? "I thought that was supposed to be paid for by the government!"
Cut the alleged "services", move to a fee-based system for every "service" that can, stop preventing people from making a living starting at the bottom, stop electing statists. Only then will the voracious appetite for your money stand any chance at abatement. We should not have to have technically literate people in office if they don't have any authority over technical issues or if they aren't under any pressing need to pay for their campaign promises.
Otherwise it's like applying a finger bandage to a gaping chest wound.
The same way you or I do, by having one served on us.
President Bush doesn't obtain subpoenas. The "Justice" department issues subpoenas, not the President.
It's seems odd that a president can compel the private sector to divulge information in the pursuit of political policy.
It should appear odd. But remember it is not the President who does this but the "Justice Department". Then it won't seem so odd.
Plus this is from the Executive branch which doesn't even make the law.
The executive branch executes the laws. The DoJ is part of the executive branch. The DoJ therefore issues subpoenas. Follow?
The Constitution gives the president authority over the military and cabinet; the power to grant pardons and make appointments. And thats about it.
You forgot several things
If you don't fixate on the POTUS, you'll figure out how the federal goverment can issue subpoenas.
And fixating on the POTUS is the source of the problem as to why abuses continue. It isn't Bush, it isn't Clinton, it isn't the next person. When you perpetuate the myth that the President does these things, you find yourself suprised all over again when the next one does it. The DoJ largely remains the same and remains unaffected when you blame the POTUS. It is like blaming Brown when it was Chertoff who needed to be canned for his actions. You leave the problem in place and employ a scapegoat.
It is also like the Democratic reaction to the DoJ's abuse of the so-called Patriot Act. They didn't object to it and it's abusive powers, they objected to who had control of said powers. As long as you blame the current figurehead, the problem will only get worse.
Shipping it off to Congress is no solution either. Where in the Constitution does it say Congress is an investigative body? It doesn't. And it merely clouds the underlying issue. The DoJ was/is trying to defend an unconstitutional law not by arguing that it really is constitutional, but that it works and as such should essentially be exempt from constitutionality requirements.
And that is the greatest danger in this whole mess. It isn't about privacy, or who is President, or forcing a "private" company (IMO you are no longer private when you apply for special protections and priviliges from the government, and they grant them) to hand over what may be trade secrets, and it isn't about who should be fighting for a law's existence or issuing subpooenas (it is the executive's job to defend laws).
It is about the DoJ arguing that a law that for some level does what it was designed to do should be allowed even if unconstitutional. The danger of that precedent is one of the most grave threats to the rule of constitutional law there is.
So to sum up, if some programmer doesn't do his/her job, ... must I go on? It could be argued (quite well IMO) that some programmer not doing their job is part and parcel of most security vulnerabilities and code bugs.
;)
we could see SQL Injection attacks, or buffer overflow vulnerabilities, or
But once it hits as you describe, the black eye will be irrelevant. By then the tech will be "crucial to the actions" of first responders, airport security, etc.. Then what happens? Congress bloviates in a "special hearing" for a week or two, the pundits speak of it a litte with each of the two media sides saying that the other side is responsible. Then maybe a scandal of the week when some Senator who voted for it is discovered to have taken money from someone who may or may not have been involved in any RFID development companies. Maybe, just maybe, there might be some RFID "security regulations" passed, but as usual the government (DHS, FBI, CIA, airport (in)security systems contractors, Congress) will exempt itself from these regulations.
And that's pretty much it.
Bonus question: how much of that was involved in the Blackberry thing? At least the exemptions part at a minimum. Obviously neither RIM nor NTP(?) donated much to the Republican party.
I knew I had it here somewhere. Six times as much petroleum (oil) goes into making a gallon of gasoline as goes into even Pimental's invalid claim of how much goes into a gallon of ethanol. Is this why you fail to account for the Prius side of that equation? or were you under the faulty impression that gasoline had a positive balance on that account?
And therin you bump into the main failure of socialism. It works only for small groups that are doing so voluntarily and under the notion to limit themselves while continuing to produce for others. When you start adding in anyone who doesn't follow those rules the foundation crumbles under the weight of them.
/real/ Anarchy (note this applies to lack of formal government not the "anarchy==chaos" crap). The same conditions/requirements apply. I've seen both socialism and anarchy work in small groups of people who all understood the basic principle and (usually/mostly) abided by it.
However, a key aspect that is often missed is you can say the same thing for
Indeed, in economic systems the same can be said of uninhibited by government capitalism. As long as people recognize their value and do not try to take undue advantage of the others, true capitalism has no flaws or pitfalls. Again, the underlying problem is generaly size of the body in question and how well each member adheres to the "don't harm others" maxim.
Where capitalism pulls ahead is that it can survive less than ideal even far less than ideal situations without collapsing. Socialism, however, can not. As you hint at we see this failure occurring in Europe, and we see it to a certain extent in the US as well. Socialism does not scale, partly because of increasing inefficiencies in higher population densities as well as increasing inefficiencies in ever growing bureaucracies for redistribution of resources. Capitalism's advantage in these cases is an increasing need for better efficiency and inherent ability to respond to changing conditions.
Nukes are the quick fix.
;) ...
/. editors. Then again, maybe in general /. nerds aren't interested in real solutions as opposed to "quick fix" hyped toys. I honestly don't know. I know some are at least, and that's a better ratio than in the mainstream press.
The more you use the quicker the problem of energy consumption goes away. We could solve the world's energy problems in about 30 minutes. That's about the time it would take to launch a full-scale first strike and trigger a full-scale retaliation strike and have them both hit their targets. Eliminate 90% of the population and infrastructure and *boom*, no more massive demand for energy and oil.
And most of us wouldn't feel a thing.
Obviously that's a whole lotta sarcasm up there. Obviously there is no quick fix that doesn't involve an event of such magnitude. But there are a lot of *solutions*, as those of us who work on these things know. In a way it's sad that most of the real science and good stuff in this field generally doesn't or wouldn't get approved by by the
I've travelled the US a lot (all but three states), as well as foreign countries (German, France, England, Scotland, Greenland, Iceland ... a few others I've forgotten), and I've not seen homeless "on the level of the US" anywhere, not in the US or out of it. There are pockets, but almost always in areas of high population density.
Population density is often noted as the single largest factor in crime rates. Yes, more so than poverty. As I recall, some of the highest density in Sweden is Stockholm, w/something like 4,000 per square kilometer, right? It may be a bit more or less now, I'm not sure. But you can't discount the effects of lower density on crime rates. That said, AIUI, crime is on the rise in Sweden and the victimization rate is on par with that of the US. I'd bet it is in the more densely populated areas.
Another major factor in crime rates is defensive capability of would be targets. While Sweden seems to have some rather restrictive laws, they are also very high in gun ownership rates. Another factor known to decrease person to person crime. High gun ownership rates nearly always shifts crime from muggings, assaults, rapes, and murders to larceny and burglary type crimes. Here, weather plays a factor. Colder weather tends to emphasize the opposite types of crime: person to person crimes. The resulting combination of generally cold weather and high gun ownership, in a generally lowe-density area is a powerful decrease in crime rates regardless of governmental type and laws.
Meanwhile, here in the US we have the Democrats and so-called "environmentalists" pushing against "urban sprawl", which actually produces lower population density. Why? I suspect the fact that the higher the population density the greater the likelihood of voting Democrat has a significant factor here.
Overall I'd suspect that if you compare Sweden to areas in the US of comparable crime rates you'd find them much closes than you might think.
Add into this the fact the the higher the population density the higher the homeless rate and more things will start to make sense. As that parent poster said, Sweden has them. Note where he said they would be expected to be seen. The higher density areas. Most of America is not high-density. As such, comparatively you won't see the "US level" of homeless everyone likes to believe exists. I'd bet that in Northern Sweden there is no or practically no homelessness.
If you want to make the most major (positive) impact in crime and homeless levels, and you believe government is the way to do it, then you should push for population density limits. Good luck though. Oddly enough, if you want a smaller government, putting in place population density limits will acheive much toward that goal. The lower the density, the less people turn to goverment as the solution.
Or you are ignorant. It's called basic math.
... the only way to mass usage of biodiesel is algae farms.
My Suburban runs E85. Say I only get 10MPGf (MPG of fuel). Since only 15% of that is gasoline, how much gasoline am I burning? How many miles per gallon of gasoline(MPGg) am I getting?
Answer: about 67.
What is the Prius' MPGg rating? According to the EPA 60. According to friends who drive it, more like 50. Either way which is burning more: a vehicle getting 67MPGg or one getting 50-60MPGg?
On the highway the difference is even larger. A Prius is rated by the EPA at 51MPGg on the highway (as I noted earlier, the hybrids get their main advantage by decreasing the work of getting a vehicle moving). In practical use my E85 powered Suburban is getting about 15MPGf at 75 MPH through the mountains, a 50% increase. Thus, on the interstate here my E85 powered Suburban is getting oh yeah about 100MPGg (100 miles of travel 6.67 gallons of E85. 6.67*.15=1. 1 gallon gasoline per hundred miles = 100MPG). Compared to the EPA rating of 51 for the Prius on the highway. So you see, I am neither lying nor deluded, it is merely the case that you are biased and ignorant. Now you should not be ignorant as you have been shown the details, but your bias may well remain.
But hey while we're banterign back and forth, I guess it's my turn to pick apart your biodeisel. Personally, I think we shoudl use more of it. Indeed, I've a couple that are converting their two gasoline powered vehicels to run on it, and I've convinced my neighbor down the street to convert his existing diesel (he's also going to convert one of his Vettes to E85, and I'm converting mine. Given I'm starting at 22MPG+ in town in the Vette it will burn very little gasoline).
That said
Consider this from the Department of Biological and Agricultural Engineering:
It is a touch of irony for you to rail against US ethanol production while promoting biodeisel. Ethanol production in the US well exceeds biodiesel. On a per-acre basis we get more ethanol from an acre of farmland than we do oils for biodeisel. If you don't think ethanol can cut it, than there isn't a snowballs chance for biodeisel.
According to the agriculture census in 2002 harvested cropland in the US consisted of 363.3 million acres. There is additionally 71 million acres idle. If you planted soybeans or corn on ALL 363.3 million acres you would get about 74/73 billion gallons of vegetable oil. Using slightly out of fate production figures that same amount of land would produce 127 billion gallons of non-cellulosic ethanol.
But we don't need to, nor should we seriously consider such an idea. I merely used to it demonstrate some data regarding biodeisel. It clearly demonstrates that as an alternative ethanol in it's
Which source? The product of oil sands is solid at room temperature, and requires both cracking and desulfurization IIRC.
/. are that a V8 engine (for example) converted to run E85, non-flex, will acheive approximately a 15% increase in fuel economy over straight gasoline. And this is the other side of the issue. By 2050 it is estimated that at current rates, and assuming no significant increases in fuel economy, the US will consume approximately 290 Billion gal/year of gasoline. The combination of switchgrass and agri/bio waste above would provide approximately 190 billion gallons of that, and with a 15% increase over gasoline in fuel economy, that is well over two thirds of the expected demand. The remaining piece is economy.
I'm not talking about oil sands in Canada. Try to keep posts straight, EP, as that wasn't me. It harms your credibility to rail against strawmen.
Let's see, the US burns 140 billion gallons of gasoline per year but will produce only 5 billion gallons of ethanol
Hogwash. Do some research to at least validate part of your namesake.
Cellulosic ethanol has so much resource available to it only someone ignorant of the reality would make such a statement. Apparently this includes you. Cellulosic ethanol utilizes paper sludge, grasses, agricultural waste (of which we produce about one billion tons/year) that currently is generally burned or dumped into landfills. Waste biomass along can produce approximately 25-30 billion gallons of ethanol per year at current level of conversion technology. Advancements in the pipeline can increase that by anywhere from 2.8 to 12%. Energy specific crops can produce, again at current technology, another approximately 30 billion gallons of ethanol per year - with no impact on food croppage. With today's technology ethanol can on a straight replacement basis replace more than a third of your gal/year total above. Diesel should be replaced w/biodiesel - if there is enough supply for it.
Further, the conversion of paper sludge and agricultural waste provides a financial benefit to these "products" and would thus provide additional economic benefits. Regarding paper sludge it would provide a financially viable and even profitable resource for paper recycling - which currently is subsidized ebcuase current uses are not financially sensible outside of small demand niches. Ramping up production on these require the plant construction and collection processes.
By using industry standard breeding and cropping practices, by 2050 using switchgrass alone grown on 114 million acres to produce 165 billion gallons of ethanol per year. Switchgrass is also a better protein source for animal feed than the 70 million acres we currently dedicate to soybeans grown for the sole purpose of providing protein for animal feed.
The results of work that some of us who are actually doing these things instead of typing away ancient information on
On the economy side the single largest factor is weight of the vehicle. Lightweight SUV class vehicles have been demonstrated using plain gasoline to acheive fuel economy beating today's compact and subcompact cars. By 2025 it is estimated that light trucks and cars (i.e. average Joe vehicles) will account for 45% of the US oil consumption. By moving to lightweight modern materials in ground up designs (not merely replacing a panel here or there with carbon fiber) these vehicles can reduce their consumption their current counterparts by 2/3rds. About 17% of the energy in the fuel of a vehicle is used to move it (most of it gets converted to heat, vibration, consumed by accessories and pollution controls, etc.). Reducing the work required reduces the energy required reduces the fuel required. There are two routes to fuel economy: work more efficiently and do less work.
On average about 7 or 8 units of fuel are used to put one unit of power to the wheels in modern vehicles. Thus, reducing each unit reduction of tractive load decreases fuel consumption by about 7 or 8 u
You miss several things which invalidate your position.
First, most of the newer plants and ethanol "farmers" are using ethanol powered equipment. Further, more and more of the ethanol is not coming from specifically grown crops, but agricultural waste and "garbage". (Yes this is personal knowledge here). Cellulosic ethanol is reaching the 4-6:1 energy range. Indeed, it does much of this by producing the necessary gasses used in the process (think of in-process recycling).
There are already farms that burn either E85 or are running on pure biodiesel and thus have no petroleum portions. Not to mention the cellulosic ethanol which produces the needed "gas" products for it's manufacture. Thus your claims above are becoming further and further incorrect. A situation that will only increase over time.
How does the Prius do on this account? Poorly at best. A Prius or other hybrid does nothing to increase a shift away from "gas guzzling". And it does so at a serious risk to future problems.
For example, currently most of the transportation infrastructure such as roads and bridges are paid for by gasoline taxes at the pump. Governments have already started increasing these taxes and considering raising them in accordance with better fuel economy. Why? Simple: as fuel economy improves dramatically, revenues will decrease. We all know that no government likes decreasing revenues. As a result, significantly better fuel economy will produce incentives for the government to eliminate or reduce incentives to get better fuel economy. It isn't the auto companies wanting to keep fuel economy down.
Another problem with the hybrid approach is that there is little in the way of future improvement. Hybrids get their fuel economy by shutting off or not using the ICE in stop and go, city traffic. Any additional improvements will be minor as a result.
On the other hand, E85 offers increased fuel economy over gasoline. We don't se eit in consumer vehicles right now because the current E85 vehicle is essentially a form of hybrid: it has to burn everything from plain gasoline to E85. However, an engine that is run on *only* E85 and designed such (for example: it has increased compression) will achieve better fuel economy than straight gasoline. Which means if I were to only run E85 (and wanted to void my warranty of course) I could make certain changes including bumping the engine compression and get mileag of approximately 18-20 in town, pure E85.
Hybrids don't build a market for alternates to petroleum fuels. A hybrid builds no additional markets. As a result it is nothing more than a bandaid containing nothing to clean the wound. E85 vehicles, however, build a market for a viable proven alternative, renewable fuel.
Hybrids don't (currently) scale. Looking at the largert hybrid vehicles, the MPG increase is neglible at that. E85 is largely proven at the larger vehicle level and only get better at smaller levels: the opposite of the hybrids.
Further, pollution-wise, the E85 Suburban pollutes less than the Prius, despite burning more fuel. E85 burns significantly cleaner. This results in the ability to go longe rbetween oil changes (cleaner oil), and less maintenance required on the engines. Cleaner, better maintained engines will pollute less over the long term particularly as they last longer. This also results in less petroleum use through reduced parts replacement and engine failures.
That said, I'd like to see E85 hybrids. Best of both worlds. A Prius that could run E85 would be quite potent in reduction of gasoline use and emissions. Sadly, I don't think Toyota will ever do it, at least not until the US companies have been producing E85 hybrids (word is GM is working on them). The Prius largely sells to people who are doing it for the transient prestige factor, and have the money to pay the premium. That factor will stop selling them very shortly. Much like Apple has been appealing to those who want to be different, eventually you are either stuck with a small mark
And what makes you think we can't? The crude that comes out of this source is actually easier to refine. In at least two of the processes natural gas is a suprluss product. Water usage isn't the issue for this source, power is. Hence part of the political roadblock. Indeed, if used intelligently, this process can be used to produce surpluss *clean* water, as well as power for the electrical grid.
In the method Shell has pionered recently, and in methods dating back to 1967, the work happens in ground through heating resulting in a pumpable oil source. Pumping oil is a pretty well known(read: old) and stable technology which we can do at the same speed as err uhh current oil pumping. Actually the crude that results from the above mentioned processes is easier to pump so we could pump it faster than heavy crude if we needed to.
The refining of said oil source requiring less steps (think of it as a few steps are already done) means that the refining process won't be slower than it is now. The processs of going from pumped crude to gasoline is limited by regulation, not technology. Surely you are aware of this EP.
As far as economically producing this oil, Shell's latest method brings it down into the $20/bbl range.
As far as eventually replacing oil, you are focusing on the wrong issue. Whether or not we eventually need to replace oil in a hundred, two hundred, or three hundred years is entirely irrelevant to the switching of oil sources. Indeed, we've demonstrated the ability to take today's trash and make light crude out of it. Light crude can be refined into gasoline. There is enough trash put out by Americans to handle more than today's requirements for gasoline and heating oil. Combine this, for example, ethanol and you have a recipe for elimination of the US importing oil. Indeed, many easy to obtain scenarios would lead to the US being the major exporter.
When you mix in:
* North American shale oil reserves at a starting price of about 35USD/bbl dropping over the course of about 5 years to under 20USD/bbl
* Efficient conversion of "waste" to light crude which can be used for heating oil and gasoline (at ~35USD/bbl initially eventually dropping to sub-20USD/bbl in mass usage)
* Ability to convert agricultural waste to ethanol for automotive use (we have enough agricultural waste to power the US' automtive needs entirely on ethanol)
* The growing availability of E85 vehicles and fuel stations
You have a recipe for success. With this recipe there would be no need to replace oil due to "dwindling supplies". Indeed, consider that each of those three items alone can solve the problem. Add them together and it is clear there is no looming crash of oil driven industry/economy.
And that isn't all. For a good read consult "Winning the Oil Endgame". Several additional advancements listed there will contribute, if used, to elimination of oil importation and dependence without the above three listed points.
A far as an eventual replacement of gas (gasoline/ethanol/E85) powered private vehicles (cars, SUV, lt. trucks, etc.) E85 provides a transition to ethanol driven fuel cells. Ethanol driven fuel cells are showing the best potential as far as infrastructure requirements. Hydrogen is a non-starter. Natural gas is considered non-renewable yet is widely held (in the public eye anyway) as the prime source of fuel for fuel cells. Ethanol is proving excellent as a fuel for fuel cells. It is renewable, and it you follow the above listed sequence is a natural extension of an E85 based fuel economy. Hydrated ethanol can produced for approximately 75-85 cents/gallon. Add in the usual 75 cents of taxes, about 15-25 cents for profit at the various levels and you get your ethanol cheaper than you get straight gasoline t
...notification about a new brand of tampon (the sorts of adverts that I always see on TV for some reason)
Dude, seriously if you don't like it quit watching the Lifetime Network for Women. I don't think PlayboyTV has ever had tampon commercials on. Not that I would know of course.
Why would I want to give all my very personal information to a potential advertiser? It makes me cringe all of the suckers out there that will store their private word, excel or other docs and have no idea how insecure it is.
... Terminator reference) could use it's index on you to determine more accurately what you are actually interested, weigh that with what you specifically searched for and get disturbingly accurate results. If you were looking to expand your horizons, look into things you've not looked into before, a checkbox/option to say along the lines "this is a new thing for me" where it would invert the index and possibly try to avoid things you already seem to know about or simply ignore your "personal db".
... I can always just say no, even if it is something I'd really like to have.
Since I may ruffle a few feathers I'll get a few things out front here:
I hate getting spam
I hate getting phone spam even more
I hate getting postal spam, but it's lowest on the list.
Now that said, what *exactly* is it you are afraid of? That someone might market information to you that you might actually be interested in?? I'd certainly be leary of just anyone getting my personal information. But you specifically targeted "a potential advertiser". In other words someone who would want to sell you something you might actually be interested in.
For years we nerds have been clamoring for "agent" type systems. Where we specify what we are after and some clever AI or near-AI finds us just what we are looking for w/o a bunch of fluff and useless results. It has always been a user initiated crawler type system. And we are apparently not much closer to it's reality.
But if you think about it, Google may inadvertently accomplish it from the opposite angle. If you store documents about what you like and don't like, and if Google is smart enough to discern between them, you could see little textual ads regarding what you are really interested in. Can anyone say "time saver"? What if they had a service similar to Amazon's recommendations, but tailored much more personally and more broadly based as well?
Add in a lightweight "agent" piece where you could make specific requests. Then, GoogleNet (mmm
When you consider the immense informational store of people with similar interests, the accuracy of even "basic web searches" would be greatly improved. (When does google come self-aware, I forgot?). Provided they could reasonably secure the information store, and provided they kept the actual information from advertisers, it could work really well.
Back to the idea of idea of advertisers knowing what I would/might be interested in. If they know what I am interested in, they what I am not interested in, so I'd expect less of that generic crap from them. Advertisements are far less intrusive if the content is something you are interested in. Think about the commercials you like to watch; not because you like their product but because you are entertained. The basis is very similar. There are many times I've found a particular advert and thought "damn, how come I couldn't find this last (week|month|year) when I was looking for this?!".
And after all
No I don't mean to sponsor GnuCash, I mean to build up a cross-platform solution which is able to compete against Quickbooks on all platform (including Windows)
If Novell were to put significant development resources behind GnuCash, it certainly could be runnable and usable and competitive on Linux, OSX, and Windows. Why start from scratch?
3) Centralized distribution system
is a serious disadvantage. We "burn" a crapload of energy just in power line loss. 10% is nothing to sneeze at here. Decentralized systems are indeed a better, safer route. The less distance involved in trasnmission the lower the losses in transmission. The less congestion (yes, power grids get congested ) the lower the power loss. Not to mention the whole security thing of multiple smaller power generation plants versus large centralized Soviet Style distribution systems.
And personally, I think that Nukes is about the only good choice left.
Ok, but who do you drop them on?
Ahh the joys of all them taxes and regulatory fees simply for being hooked up. And being hooked up is mandatory in most places. Go figure.
Forget environmental concerns... When oil becomes scarce [Or when people think it has], what will happen?
Nothing. It'll be a page 45 blurb in the NYT. Why? By the time that happens pretty much nobody will be using it. i twill be a footnote in history.
There is more oil in North America than most ever people dream of.
That is a damned lot of oil. And yes, it can be economically "produced" at today's rates, enough for several hundred years of oil use. It's politics that prevent it.
Reads like one too. I belive it was Chalk River (Ontario) that had the incident(s). I figure if anyone would list a "Quebec's Chernobyl" incident it would be listed here. Yet no mention of a meltdown at Charlemagne.
And even in the Chalk River incident in the 1950's, nobody was killed. hardly rising the the level of the big one: Chernobyl. How many people die per year due to coal mining and coal plant operations? How many people have died as a result of working in or living near a nuclear power plant since they were first built? Go ahead, do some research on that one.