Typical of one without an argument, you use wild allusions instead of dealing with the substance. This in an argument about substance.
To your assertion that the world except for "radical libertarians" has decided government is for and should be doing everything from deciding what type of vehicle you should use to what you should be able to do with your CDs or computer, whether or not you should be allowed to keep your private data well, private, how you spend your money, etc. is laughable.
The fact of the matter is that the world has not made that decision anymore than than the people of the US made the decision that the only three people worth holding the POTUS seat are McCain, Hillary, and Obama. I bet even you haven't decided that, you just assume it.
Question: If someone gave you 100 million dollars (after taxes) and you wanted to help "the poor" or "the homeless", or "the sick", would you give 50 millions USD to the government to do it, or directly to the people or private charities and groups that help people?
If I ask if you would choose Evil A or Evil B, it is invalid for me to then, upon getting your answer of A or B) to say that you prefer evil. Yet that is what you are doing.
The fact is that I've not said all government power is the same, but your argument is obviously ignorant of what reality, instead relying on your own biases. The fact is that some government power is valid and other power is not. But unable to actually draw the distinction you opted yo instead label anyone who disagrees with your position as an extremist. You conducted an ad hominem attack instead of pointing to specific instances.
You made the assertion and failed to back it up.
When you look at the policies the three media candidates espouse, the substance of them is virtually the same, despite the rhetoric. When you look at the voting record, the similarities are still present, and the differences are indeed minor.
Let's see... Increase taxes on "the rich" Increase protection from political movements unseating incumbents? check. Increase welfare expenditures without accountability? Check. Tell citizens how to spend their money or how to invest/save it? Check. Increase "gun control" restrictions? Check. Increase government spending? Check. Increase government control of the financial markets through government "investment"? Check. Increase government control over private contracts? Check. Mandate what type of fuel people use? Check. Play games about what type of "science" is funded and what isn't? Check. Talk about "Global Warming", but avoid "the small stuff" that makes significant changes? Check. Government should be the arbiter on what marriage is? Check. Let the RIAA and MPAA continue to have unwarranted power over music and video? Check. Extend that power? Check. Claim to want to "end earmarks" yet continue to seek them? Check. Continue the class warfare? Check.
Not all similarities are bad, something you clearly miss out on in your zeal to demonize opponents. For example, both sides (H&O), McCain) are against Kyoto, and rightly so. Kyoto would cost trillions for a paltry ephemeral savings of less than a billion, and in comparison to other things that could be done, is an even worse choice. This is reflective of another area they all share: they talk about not doing things that make no financial sense, but then advocate things that do not make financial sense, live spending 1 trillion to save (as in prevent payout of) 100M.
On the rhetoric side, every time one side says "we will do this", what is the response from the other? "It isn't enough". It never is. When was the last time you saw one side, or even a "bipartisan panel" put forth a bill and the other side said "yup that's just right"?
One of the few examples substantive differences is a part of the immigration debate. Virtually the only difference there is one side says "no form of amnesty" and the other side wants it. That is a
Locally we have many bands that you won't know about 500 miles away. Are they locally known? Yes. Therefore by some definition they are not unknown. But could they pull off something like this? Yes.
If a local band has 5000 "hardcore" fans, defined as "willing to pay 300 bucks for a 'special' album", then this could be quite lucrative, more so than playing local clubs can over that amount of time. If you could go back in time and had this opportunity for say, Queensryche, AC-DC, Garth Brooks, or Metallica (for example) before they were nationally known, would you? Some people would (myself included).
Locally one could produce a quality album with say two dozen tracks, nice cover art, etc. for say 3-5000 plus production costs. At $300/set your production costs are virtually irrelevant. If you sell 5000 that's a tidy chunk of money ($1,500,000). If you sell 1000 that's still pretty decent money ($300,000). And that is just the big package. Add in the smaller packages and you've got a pretty good recipe.
h, and their policies. You know, little things like health care, social security, abortion, welfare, environmental and industry regulations, taxes, teaching religion in schools... those things matter, at least to most of us.
Yes, looking at their policies, there is virtually no difference. They both have their preferred groups among those listed, but they both want to do the exact same thing: use government to favor their benefactors while suppressing those who do not side with them.
They both want to use the threat of bodily harm, incarceration, and death to force you to do they things they want done with other people's money, or to not do the things they don't want you to do (though they exempt themselves and their friends).
The topical differences you allege are not substantive differences. A mugger using a gun or a mugger using a knife is not substantively different from each other. In either case the person is taking the results of your efforts in life to do the things they want to do.
It used to be that you could say that Democrats wanted to cut off your right hand while Republicans want to cut your left off. Now they've mostly merged: they each want some fingers off of each hand removed.
The ultimate question that should be asked in the areas you mentioned is whether federal government should be operating monopolies on these things, whether the government should be doing those to begin with.
To mix another metaphor, Republican vs. Democrat policy is like two wolves and a sheep discussing HOW they are going to eat the sheep. Note they aren't deciding WHAT to eat, but HOW to eat the subject.
Where do you draw the line for survival though? Is it your species, your nation, your state, your county, town or neighborhood? I could understand these issues at the macro level, i.e. survival of the species. And it's absurd at the micro level, i.e. I will kill everyone in the next town over even though we live in the same county. Where is the line in the middle though? What if the US was in a war against China to the bitter end?
Well given the scenario, the line was easy. In BSG the Cylons attacked a civilization of billions and nuked them into, what a few hundred thousand? That's a pretty obvious and crossed line, don't you think?
A key difference is the nature of Cylons. In your scenario you don't specify if the whole of China is doing it, or just the leaders. In BSG the whole of the Cylons with rare exception are out to destroy the whole of humanity. Even to the point of "boxing" those who might not be in full agreement with the plan.
The refusal of Adama to unleash the weapon was a plot point to keep the story alive. Just as the Prime Directive was a plot point to avoid dealing with the reality of a highly advanced group having easy victory over lesser advanced groups. The basic mechanic is not specific to sci-fi either. At their heart nearly all stories, and all epic stories, have conflict. That conflict may be couched in a larger open war type conflict such as man vs. monster, man. vs alien, or even man. vs evil man. But in all compelling stories the rot is the inner conflict that usually only the "good" side has.
Consider SW Episode One. Where was the internal conflict? It pretty much wasn't there. As such it lacked in it's ability to compel. The main characters did as they pleased without concern for the nature of their actions. In BSG had Adama lacked any concern over genocide, there would have been no tension to compelling virtue. And the series would pretty much have ended, there being no real reason to urgently find Earth.
BSG is totemic sci-fi when it presents that conflict, and lesser drama when it dominates to the point of nauseum.
However given the nature of writers you can not analyze BSG politics and law without viewing it through the lens of relation to current or past human experience.
I'm sure of it. Despite the media portrayal of it, real world investigations of *organized crime* (not the same thing as "all criminals") over the last decade plus has shown them to be eager to adopt technology that furthers their interest.
It's no suprise really. One could even say it is eminently logical. Organized crime is the black market version of the corporation, indeed they are often "fronted" via legal corporations. If you think industrial espionage is something in the legal world, you should see what goes on in the underworld. I would suggest that most of the drive to higher technology among organized crime is to counter each other more so than to avoid government visibility. One could argue that the mafia's use of odd physical items to "send a message" is a form of message hiding.
The government (US and others) has been talking about this at least as far back as 1993, remember Clipper?
Do all "mobs" use encryption and/or have IT? No. But the larger more successful among them certainly do. This is increasingly so with former KGB members becoming more common in the global organized crime environment. Those guys, however, are more likely to extend their capabilities with dead drops and steganography.
Rosalind is a believer but is not above using religious posturing for her own political ends.
Which of course does not actually sit opposite being "deeply religious". What you want real-world examples? How about gay marriage, polygamy, infidelity, Sundays off, Religious holidays, proscriptions on what can be worn or how your hair must be cut or not cut; just for starters? How about religious groups of virtually all stripes (though none more so than monetheist ones) trying to get their gospels encoded into human law?
Perhaps you don't set up an automated watering system is because of the trouble of running piping to plants scattered around the house? If you opt for a local reservior to avoid the water piping then you'll need something to let you know the water level is too low. That means back to square one with getting notified.
Let us know how "intrusive" having water pipes/lines running to all your houseplants is. Especially for people in apartments.
I design and install computer systems for a living. People pay for my time. Let's say I set up the network for some small startup operation called "Facebook." (I didn't, purely hypothetical) That operation takes off using the backbone that I set up, becoming one of the fastest growing and most successful business on the Internet. Guess how much of that $15 billion I'd see. (Or expect to see) ZERO. Never mind that it was my genius design that enabled them to do what it was they were trying to do. I went in, did a service, and I was done. Why is photography inherently different?
Why, indeed? Why is music any different? How about "imaginary worlds"? Initially government got into copyright because it saw it's use as a tool to suppress political dissent; aka. censorship.
Why should anyone get "lifetime income" from one "job"?
There are companies that are not subject to SOx than are. SOX, contrary to popular belief, only applies to publicly held companies that trade on U.S. exchanges. Just as small business collectively employ more people and have greater total revenue than large companies, it would not suprise me to see there being far more available funding, albeit in much smaller doses, from those that do not have to worry about SOX.
Therefore, there is a definite and good sized market for those who don't have to worry about SOX.
Re:Yeah, we know about sourceforge and freshmeat!!
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Linux At the Point of Sale
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· Score: 2, Insightful
One of the biggest problems of SF is that you can't easily get rid of projects. If you create a project but then wind up not adding anything you still can't delete it. SF needs at a minimum an "archive" system that allows owners to archive the project and then use a separate search flag/filter to include them.
It also needs a rating/quality system that considers such items as age of open bugs, last update, etc.. Not to mention time of project still listed as alpha/beta/planning.
People start projects often for good intention, and often for school work as you noted. That isn't a problem. It's a problem the SF doesn't handle those in a reasonable fashion thus polluting the space.
An excellent analysis, but the lawsuit is about the board not agreeing to a normal offer, not actions taken during a hostile takeover so the BJR is the appropriate context.
Because that is the the position of the majority of important influential republican politicians, and the position of the majorty of their voter supporters.
No, what you really mean is "they don't support funding the science *I* want them to, they want to fund other sciences". Because you can no point to a single prominent Republican officeholder opposing science. Not funding the Hydrogen pipe dream is not the same thing. For example, if I had to choose where to spend tax dollars in the case of energy science it would be in fusion and fission, not solar or wind for example.
I would not choose to fund stem cell research either. Yet I am not only not opposed to stem cell research I am very much in favor of it. However, I do not labor under the belief that the government should be funding it period. I don't thing they should be funding any particular science really.
I could easily say that Democrats oppose science. How? They oppose missile defense research. If you don't think there is no science in that effort you have no clue what science is. They traditionally oppose manned exploration of space, wanting instead to spent the paltry portion of the federal budget that NASA gets on theoretical welfare programs. Space exploration, especially manned exploration, is very scientific.
The Republicans are traditionally pro-nuclear research and the Democrats are traditionally anti-nuclear research. Based on your claim above I could easily conclude that Democrats are anti-Science, for the same reasons those who say Republicans are anti-Science.
However, just as you are unable to find any proof (such as quotes, not your beliefs or inferences and assumptions; nor those of a blogger) of Republicans that "oppose science", you won't find that from Democrats. It would be just as incorrect and deceitful to make such a claim as it is for you and others to make that claim of Republicans.
If you want to counter you have to support your position with facts, nor mere assertions. Show us specifically and with references which "important influential republican politicians" are specifically "opposing science", not just opposing some particular portion of science endeavor or opposing federal funding of pet projects.
Anything short of that is mere spin.
I would only grudgingly accept two endeavors to be federally funded: Manned exploration of space, and fusion research. Very grudgingly. However, to label me anti-science would be wrong. Virtually everything the government tries to take over it destroys. One could argue that putting science into the hands of the government is anti-science as a result. Remember, Eisenhower warned us of that one, too.
Excuse me, but citing Fox News of committing Liberal Bias.... wow... just wow. Bill O'Reilly and Ann Coulter were made into national media personalities BY conservatives FOR conservatives.
You completely missed his/her point and further distorted it. The PP did not claim that Fox *committed* liberal bias, instead that the popularity of these individuals is a *result* of liberal bias. I'll put this in geek terms. In The Matrix movie series Agent Smith was the Matrix trying to balance itself against Neo. No I'm not saying the Liberals are Neo. I'm saying that the rise of popular conservatives is a natural result of the perception of bias. Note that the bias is not required to actually exist, merely the perception of it. it may exist, it may not exist, or it may partially exist. However there was and is a clear perception of it existing and thus when someone sounds opposite to the perceived bias they will immediately rise to popularity. As more people meet this criteria the (perception) equation will balance out and fewer will rise to prominence - the bar will be raised.
You then went on to state that the viewers are what provide/keep the power these people have. In that you are mostly correct. however there is an implicat
What he's not saying is MS wanted to buy market Yahoo has. Critical mass is the most important thing in the search space. You don't spend $46B for strategic hires.
You see, in a buyout they get *access*. Not just to employees but strategic planning. It is a simple process. Start a buyout, get the other side to agree, then go through th emotions to get what you want then bail. Now use that information you just got to develop counter products/campaigns as well as hire the engineers away.
While hot air is less efficient than helium, between politicians, the media, and pundits we have a surplus of that they could look into harnessing. I'm sure Google engineers could come up with algorithms to figure out who provides the most and tap those ummm resources... first.
As noted elsewhere: affordable is relative. Let oil hit some arbitrarily high price, and solar power suddenly looks cheap.
Nuclear is cheaper than oil, and has a higher land density. According to the 2007 survey of prices (EIA), the typical cost in cents/kW-hour for solar is 50. Oil is 6. To make oil and solar competitive on price would require oil at roughly $1,000/bbl. Sure you said "arbitrarily high", but one would hope for a reasonable expectation. Solar won't "suddenly look cheap" without an fundamental breakthrough or change in the laws of physics as we know them.
However, nuclear (fission) comes in at 5 cents. Yes, nuclear (fission) is cheaper than oil as of 2007. All of the other current sources, such as biomass, are single-digits. ONLY solar has double digits, and is more than an order of magnitude more expensive than the cheapest (2 cents for hydroelectric) and an order of magnitude above the average (excluding coal).
No, it isn't solved by economies of scale. The delta is far too great. You might make the case that solar still has much research ahead of it. So, too, does fission. Indeed much of the energy generated by fission is left on the table as heat. Research is being done to increase "yield" by coupling thermal conversion systems such as Sterling engines with the steam generation.
Historically, oil prices and fusion research go in similar directions. That means that high oil prices has been followed historically by increased funding of fusion research. Maybe we'll see that happen again.
The most immediate result of higher oil prices may be increased funding (not necessarily by government) for clean coal conversion. Take coal, covert it to syngas (and alcohols) and burn it. It's actually very clean, and most of the CO2 (for those that care) is easily captured. Furthermore the US alone has enough coal to do this for well over a thousand years. Long enough to finally achieve (controlled) fusion ignition.
Perhaps because there are fundamental problems to be addressed, and the likes of Bloomberg, Gates, and Buffet are nowhere near being like say, Howard Hughes?
It's one thing to appear to be solving problems, and donating money does that nicely. It's another to attempt to make money doing something that is actually hard and expensive.
Solar is very expensive. No, oil at 120 bucks/bbl ain't going to make it competitive. Remember (or find) all those posts from the anti-nuclear people about how nuclear power is just too damned expensive. Now know that solar is more expensive than nuclear.
An additional major factor is government regulation. If you've even looked at half, nay a quarter, of what it takes to get started in the power business you'd understand the staggering barrier this is. Donating money is much easier. Not that it really makes a difference in advancing the state of the art.
The third major barrier is the inculcated belief that the government should be doing this. People generally like to spout "Military-industrial complex" as a bad thing (it is), and some even understand they are referencing a speech by Eisenhower. However, most are entirely ignorant of the fact that he mentioned two specific threats. The second was a scientific-government complex.
Today we are reaping the "benefits" of failing to address BOTH/EITHER of his stated looming threats.
Why should anyone invest million or indeed billions into research that the government may suddenly take up the mantle of and give that money to someone other than you, someone with political connections (which happens under both Democrats and Republicans), that will then undercut you since they have a) government funding and b) government protection? Why, indeed.
The closest we have to people of the Howard Hughes caliber are people like Elon Musk (SpaceX) or... crap spaced is name - the guy in charge of Virgin, or even perhaps Bigelow (not Bam-Bam). I'd list Rutan but he doesn't have the money behind him - he needs OPM.
Yet, like Hughes, their interests are not in the "mundane" such as terrestrial power generation using "alternative" means. It's in going new places.
Most "alternative energy"[1] advocates are saddles with ideological and political beefs combined with a seeming inability to stifle their expression of those long enough to get real work done. Thus would-be backers tend to shy away and people in general want to back away from such extremism. It boils down to: Those who can't and have money give money so they can feel/appear like they've done something. Those who can't and don't have the money bitch and thus feel like they are "making a difference".
What we need are those who CAN and HAVE the money. Unfortunately, they will run into two major barriers, the hard and the harder one: the laws of physics and the government respectively.
1. The phrase "alternative energy" is itself indicative of and suffering from the ideological slant. Solar and wind are in use, but they have their limits (in particular their sporadic, non-const nature), so they aren't necessarily an "alternative" since they are incomplete solutions yet in place. As a result, "alternative energy" has begun to wear the mantle of "impractical".
Sorry but your assertion that the DoD said they "nailed" the tank is inaccurate. The link you gave provides the following:
"We have a high degree of confidence we got the tank," Marine Gen. James Cartwright said at a Pentagon briefing Thursday morning.
A fireball and a vapor cloud seen after the strike appeared to indicate the toxic hydrazine fuel had been destroyed, he said. The missile that struck the satellite did not carry an explosive warhead.
A high degree of confidence they "got the tank" is not the same as saying "nailed" it. Regardless, they claimed they were after the tank thus they had to comment on the status of the tank.
Not that you have to rely on CNN, you can go to http://dodvclips.mil/ and see the actual briefing. That said, the CNN quote is accurate, yours is not.
I'd say it's insightful because a. there are a lot of scientists interested in this sort of thing, and b. the calculation has been around for quite some time with noone challenging it.
That doesn't qualify as insightful. You said it yourself, the tag should be "interesting". If it is interesting, it is interesting. Insightful requires more than interest. Insightful is not for something that is commonplace or interesting. It has to display a level of insight, which this does not. It's like thinking your house is 1000 square foot of living space but when you measure it you find it is larger. You had no insight. You found out you were wrong.
Finding out you were wrong is an essential part of performing scientific exploration and thus can not be considered as insightful. Serendipitous might be an appropriate adjective, as they did not have a belief that the consensus was wrong and set out to prove it. They happened to discover it.
As a result, saying that "it took long to figure this out" is far from insightful. At best it is hindsight. If the poster knew it was wrong then they should have done something. I suspect the OP did not know this, as clearly not even the researchers involved "knew" it, but discovered that the numbers differed. Again it is not that different from measuring your house's square footage, or the population of a large metropolitan area. In fact it's more like the latter in that it is an estimation, not a precise measurement.
What we need however, is access to our existing energy meters in a far greater detail than we currently get.
We need real-time information. Free and open access to our energy consumption on a real time basis can be quite useful in lowering household energy consumption.
Imagine the things we could do. Just some ideas....
* Set a limit of how much we want to use this month. Have alerts when we reach certain thresholds to let us know how we are doing.
* Get real-time feedback on what changes we make. Add a new big screen TV and see the changes immediately. Turn off the desktop PC and see the changes immediately.
* See our own peak usage times, provide us the ability to analyze our usage for areas to reduce our energy use.
* Make cool graphs for our personal websites on our usage.
* See how our usage spikes when the HVAC kicks on.
The addition of MPG tracking in cars has IME lead to many people improving their MPG by adapting their driving behavior using the real time and average indicators. Most people I've met claim an improvement of 2-5 MPG. Even on trucks and SUVs. On a truck platform getting 14MPG, that's a significant improvement - no tech, no laws, no regulations; free improvement. Now if we could start getting similar gains (and they are there to be had) in HVAC and home energy costs (dollar for dollar you get more reduction in pollution by reducing HVAC expenditures than you do automotive transport) we'd see soem excellent changes.
Once you put a resistance mechanism in your greywater pipes from upstairs you will find a lot more backups. Especially once the screw drive or other resistance mechanisms start accumulating soap residue. Most water turbine (or similar) generators such as you describe would require a high rotational speed, which would not be provided by your morning shower or bath as there isn't enough pressure/velocity in there.
As far as the buffered ride down mechanism, it costs more energy than it recovers. First, it would be in addition to stairs. This means taking up more floor space which means a slightly larger house to acommodate it. That means more area to heat/cool. Second, risk of the mechanism breaking leading to a free fall would require significant additional safety mechanisms that add to the cost and the manufacturing requirements (energy).
It is a neat idea, and I'd encourage you to continue thinking of things like this, unfortunately it isn't practical.
No, CNN is not "in the business of free speech". CNN is in the business of making money. Just as all the cable and network news shows are. As I have pointed out before there is no money in news.
Go ahead, watch any of them (Fox, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, whatever Fox's "business channel" is). Add up the amount of actual *news* reporting per day. Not commentary on the news, or commentary on anything, but actual reporting. You really only need to watch for about 10 minutes at the top and bottom of the hour though. Step two, subtract out all the duplicates (/. editors are excused from this portion of the exercise as clearly that would be too difficult for them;) )
Blogs have become popular and "competition" for the news channels for the same reason: they generally are not news, but commentary. The main difference being that generally bloggers don't assert their work is"news", they acknowledge it is just commentary.
Suprisingly,/. actually comes close in reporting news. It lets we the people develop the commentary. Really, IMO, that's as it should be. Sure the summaries are biased more than necessary and certainly there is some sensationalism in many of the titles. But at least the focus is on providing news stories for us to discuss. Sometimes we get a second or third chance to discuss them.
Please point out the reasonable Republicans. Moreover, please point out those "less government is better conservatives" who haven't spent the last 8 years supporting George W. Bush's rampant expansion of the federal government.
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Typical of one without an argument, you use wild allusions instead of dealing with the substance. This in an argument about substance.
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To your assertion that the world except for "radical libertarians" has decided government is for and should be doing everything from deciding what type of vehicle you should use to what you should be able to do with your CDs or computer, whether or not you should be allowed to keep your private data well, private, how you spend your money, etc. is laughable.
The fact of the matter is that the world has not made that decision anymore than than the people of the US made the decision that the only three people worth holding the POTUS seat are McCain, Hillary, and Obama. I bet even you haven't decided that, you just assume it.
Question: If someone gave you 100 million dollars (after taxes) and you wanted to help "the poor" or "the homeless", or "the sick", would you give 50 millions USD to the government to do it, or directly to the people or private charities and groups that help people?
If I ask if you would choose Evil A or Evil B, it is invalid for me to then, upon getting your answer of A or B) to say that you prefer evil. Yet that is what you are doing.
The fact is that I've not said all government power is the same, but your argument is obviously ignorant of what reality, instead relying on your own biases. The fact is that some government power is valid and other power is not. But unable to actually draw the distinction you opted yo instead label anyone who disagrees with your position as an extremist. You conducted an ad hominem attack instead of pointing to specific instances.
You made the assertion and failed to back it up.
When you look at the policies the three media candidates espouse, the substance of them is virtually the same, despite the rhetoric. When you look at the voting record, the similarities are still present, and the differences are indeed minor.
Let's see
Increase taxes on "the rich"
Increase protection from political movements unseating incumbents? check.
Increase welfare expenditures without accountability? Check.
Tell citizens how to spend their money or how to invest/save it? Check.
Increase "gun control" restrictions? Check.
Increase government spending? Check.
Increase government control of the financial markets through government "investment"? Check.
Increase government control over private contracts? Check.
Mandate what type of fuel people use? Check.
Play games about what type of "science" is funded and what isn't? Check.
Talk about "Global Warming", but avoid "the small stuff" that makes significant changes? Check.
Government should be the arbiter on what marriage is? Check.
Let the RIAA and MPAA continue to have unwarranted power over music and video? Check.
Extend that power? Check.
Claim to want to "end earmarks" yet continue to seek them? Check.
Continue the class warfare? Check.
Not all similarities are bad, something you clearly miss out on in your zeal to demonize opponents. For example, both sides (H&O), McCain) are against Kyoto, and rightly so. Kyoto would cost trillions for a paltry ephemeral savings of less than a billion, and in comparison to other things that could be done, is an even worse choice. This is reflective of another area they all share: they talk about not doing things that make no financial sense, but then advocate things that do not make financial sense, live spending 1 trillion to save (as in prevent payout of) 100M.
On the rhetoric side, every time one side says "we will do this", what is the response from the other? "It isn't enough". It never is. When was the last time you saw one side, or even a "bipartisan panel" put forth a bill and the other side said "yup that's just right"?
One of the few examples substantive differences is a part of the immigration debate. Virtually the only difference there is one side says "no form of amnesty" and the other side wants it. That is a
Define "unknown".
Locally we have many bands that you won't know about 500 miles away. Are they locally known? Yes. Therefore by some definition they are not unknown. But could they pull off something like this? Yes.
If a local band has 5000 "hardcore" fans, defined as "willing to pay 300 bucks for a 'special' album", then this could be quite lucrative, more so than playing local clubs can over that amount of time. If you could go back in time and had this opportunity for say, Queensryche, AC-DC, Garth Brooks, or Metallica (for example) before they were nationally known, would you? Some people would (myself included).
Locally one could produce a quality album with say two dozen tracks, nice cover art, etc. for say 3-5000 plus production costs. At $300/set your production costs are virtually irrelevant. If you sell 5000 that's a tidy chunk of money ($1,500,000). If you sell 1000 that's still pretty decent money ($300,000). And that is just the big package. Add in the smaller packages and you've got a pretty good recipe.
h, and their policies. You know, little things like health care, social security, abortion, welfare, environmental and industry regulations, taxes, teaching religion in schools... those things matter, at least to most of us.
Yes, looking at their policies, there is virtually no difference. They both have their preferred groups among those listed, but they both want to do the exact same thing: use government to favor their benefactors while suppressing those who do not side with them.
They both want to use the threat of bodily harm, incarceration, and death to force you to do they things they want done with other people's money, or to not do the things they don't want you to do (though they exempt themselves and their friends).
The topical differences you allege are not substantive differences. A mugger using a gun or a mugger using a knife is not substantively different from each other. In either case the person is taking the results of your efforts in life to do the things they want to do.
It used to be that you could say that Democrats wanted to cut off your right hand while Republicans want to cut your left off. Now they've mostly merged: they each want some fingers off of each hand removed.
The ultimate question that should be asked in the areas you mentioned is whether federal government should be operating monopolies on these things, whether the government should be doing those to begin with.
To mix another metaphor, Republican vs. Democrat policy is like two wolves and a sheep discussing HOW they are going to eat the sheep. Note they aren't deciding WHAT to eat, but HOW to eat the subject.
Where do you draw the line for survival though? Is it your species, your nation, your state, your county, town or neighborhood? I could understand these issues at the macro level, i.e. survival of the species. And it's absurd at the micro level, i.e. I will kill everyone in the next town over even though we live in the same county. Where is the line in the middle though? What if the US was in a war against China to the bitter end?
Well given the scenario, the line was easy. In BSG the Cylons attacked a civilization of billions and nuked them into, what a few hundred thousand? That's a pretty obvious and crossed line, don't you think?
A key difference is the nature of Cylons. In your scenario you don't specify if the whole of China is doing it, or just the leaders. In BSG the whole of the Cylons with rare exception are out to destroy the whole of humanity. Even to the point of "boxing" those who might not be in full agreement with the plan.
The refusal of Adama to unleash the weapon was a plot point to keep the story alive. Just as the Prime Directive was a plot point to avoid dealing with the reality of a highly advanced group having easy victory over lesser advanced groups. The basic mechanic is not specific to sci-fi either. At their heart nearly all stories, and all epic stories, have conflict. That conflict may be couched in a larger open war type conflict such as man vs. monster, man. vs alien, or even man. vs evil man. But in all compelling stories the rot is the inner conflict that usually only the "good" side has.
Consider SW Episode One. Where was the internal conflict? It pretty much wasn't there. As such it lacked in it's ability to compel. The main characters did as they pleased without concern for the nature of their actions. In BSG had Adama lacked any concern over genocide, there would have been no tension to compelling virtue. And the series would pretty much have ended, there being no real reason to urgently find Earth.
BSG is totemic sci-fi when it presents that conflict, and lesser drama when it dominates to the point of nauseum.
However given the nature of writers you can not analyze BSG politics and law without viewing it through the lens of relation to current or past human experience.
I'm sure of it. Despite the media portrayal of it, real world investigations of *organized crime* (not the same thing as "all criminals") over the last decade plus has shown them to be eager to adopt technology that furthers their interest.
It's no suprise really. One could even say it is eminently logical. Organized crime is the black market version of the corporation, indeed they are often "fronted" via legal corporations. If you think industrial espionage is something in the legal world, you should see what goes on in the underworld. I would suggest that most of the drive to higher technology among organized crime is to counter each other more so than to avoid government visibility. One could argue that the mafia's use of odd physical items to "send a message" is a form of message hiding.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.12/mafia_pr.html is one example.
The government (US and others) has been talking about this at least as far back as 1993, remember Clipper?
Do all "mobs" use encryption and/or have IT? No. But the larger more successful among them certainly do. This is increasingly so with former KGB members becoming more common in the global organized crime environment. Those guys, however, are more likely to extend their capabilities with dead drops and steganography.
Rosalind is a believer but is not above using religious posturing for her own political ends.
Which of course does not actually sit opposite being "deeply religious".
What you want real-world examples? How about gay marriage, polygamy, infidelity, Sundays off, Religious holidays, proscriptions on what can be worn or how your hair must be cut or not cut; just for starters? How about religious groups of virtually all stripes (though none more so than monetheist ones) trying to get their gospels encoded into human law?
Dammit that isn't water! I hate it when you come home drunk. 2:30 AM
Perhaps you don't set up an automated watering system is because of the trouble of running piping to plants scattered around the house? If you opt for a local reservior to avoid the water piping then you'll need something to let you know the water level is too low. That means back to square one with getting notified.
Let us know how "intrusive" having water pipes/lines running to all your houseplants is. Especially for people in apartments.
Why, indeed? Why is music any different? How about "imaginary worlds"? Initially government got into copyright because it saw it's use as a tool to suppress political dissent; aka. censorship.
Why should anyone get "lifetime income" from one "job"?
There are companies that are not subject to SOx than are. SOX, contrary to popular belief, only applies to publicly held companies that trade on U.S. exchanges. Just as small business collectively employ more people and have greater total revenue than large companies, it would not suprise me to see there being far more available funding, albeit in much smaller doses, from those that do not have to worry about SOX.
Therefore, there is a definite and good sized market for those who don't have to worry about SOX.
One of the biggest problems of SF is that you can't easily get rid of projects. If you create a project but then wind up not adding anything you still can't delete it. SF needs at a minimum an "archive" system that allows owners to archive the project and then use a separate search flag/filter to include them.
It also needs a rating/quality system that considers such items as age of open bugs, last update, etc.. Not to mention time of project still listed as alpha/beta/planning.
People start projects often for good intention, and often for school work as you noted. That isn't a problem. It's a problem the SF doesn't handle those in a reasonable fashion thus polluting the space.
An excellent analysis, but the lawsuit is about the board not agreeing to a normal offer, not actions taken during a hostile takeover so the BJR is the appropriate context.
No, what you really mean is "they don't support funding the science *I* want them to, they want to fund other sciences". Because you can no point to a single prominent Republican officeholder opposing science. Not funding the Hydrogen pipe dream is not the same thing. For example, if I had to choose where to spend tax dollars in the case of energy science it would be in fusion and fission, not solar or wind for example.
I would not choose to fund stem cell research either. Yet I am not only not opposed to stem cell research I am very much in favor of it. However, I do not labor under the belief that the government should be funding it period. I don't thing they should be funding any particular science really.
I could easily say that Democrats oppose science. How? They oppose missile defense research. If you don't think there is no science in that effort you have no clue what science is. They traditionally oppose manned exploration of space, wanting instead to spent the paltry portion of the federal budget that NASA gets on theoretical welfare programs. Space exploration, especially manned exploration, is very scientific.
The Republicans are traditionally pro-nuclear research and the Democrats are traditionally anti-nuclear research. Based on your claim above I could easily conclude that Democrats are anti-Science, for the same reasons those who say Republicans are anti-Science.
However, just as you are unable to find any proof (such as quotes, not your beliefs or inferences and assumptions; nor those of a blogger) of Republicans that "oppose science", you won't find that from Democrats. It would be just as incorrect and deceitful to make such a claim as it is for you and others to make that claim of Republicans.
If you want to counter you have to support your position with facts, nor mere assertions. Show us specifically and with references which "important influential republican politicians" are specifically "opposing science", not just opposing some particular portion of science endeavor or opposing federal funding of pet projects.
Anything short of that is mere spin.
I would only grudgingly accept two endeavors to be federally funded: Manned exploration of space, and fusion research. Very grudgingly. However, to label me anti-science would be wrong. Virtually everything the government tries to take over it destroys. One could argue that putting science into the hands of the government is anti-science as a result. Remember, Eisenhower warned us of that one, too.
You completely missed his/her point and further distorted it. The PP did not claim that Fox *committed* liberal bias, instead that the popularity of these individuals is a *result* of liberal bias. I'll put this in geek terms. In The Matrix movie series Agent Smith was the Matrix trying to balance itself against Neo. No I'm not saying the Liberals are Neo. I'm saying that the rise of popular conservatives is a natural result of the perception of bias. Note that the bias is not required to actually exist, merely the perception of it. it may exist, it may not exist, or it may partially exist. However there was and is a clear perception of it existing and thus when someone sounds opposite to the perceived bias they will immediately rise to popularity. As more people meet this criteria the (perception) equation will balance out and fewer will rise to prominence - the bar will be raised.
You then went on to state that the viewers are what provide/keep the power these people have. In that you are mostly correct. however there is an implicat
What he's not saying is MS wanted to buy market Yahoo has. Critical mass is the most important thing in the search space. You don't spend $46B for strategic hires.
You see, in a buyout they get *access*. Not just to employees but strategic planning. It is a simple process. Start a buyout, get the other side to agree, then go through th emotions to get what you want then bail. Now use that information you just got to develop counter products/campaigns as well as hire the engineers away.
It wouldn't be the first time they did this.
While hot air is less efficient than helium, between politicians, the media, and pundits we have a surplus of that they could look into harnessing. I'm sure Google engineers could come up with algorithms to figure out who provides the most and tap those ummm resources... first.
Nuclear is cheaper than oil, and has a higher land density. According to the 2007 survey of prices (EIA), the typical cost in cents/kW-hour for solar is 50. Oil is 6. To make oil and solar competitive on price would require oil at roughly $1,000/bbl. Sure you said "arbitrarily high", but one would hope for a reasonable expectation. Solar won't "suddenly look cheap" without an fundamental breakthrough or change in the laws of physics as we know them.
However, nuclear (fission) comes in at 5 cents. Yes, nuclear (fission) is cheaper than oil as of 2007. All of the other current sources, such as biomass, are single-digits. ONLY solar has double digits, and is more than an order of magnitude more expensive than the cheapest (2 cents for hydroelectric) and an order of magnitude above the average (excluding coal).
No, it isn't solved by economies of scale. The delta is far too great. You might make the case that solar still has much research ahead of it. So, too, does fission. Indeed much of the energy generated by fission is left on the table as heat. Research is being done to increase "yield" by coupling thermal conversion systems such as Sterling engines with the steam generation.
Historically, oil prices and fusion research go in similar directions. That means that high oil prices has been followed historically by increased funding of fusion research. Maybe we'll see that happen again.
The most immediate result of higher oil prices may be increased funding (not necessarily by government) for clean coal conversion. Take coal, covert it to syngas (and alcohols) and burn it. It's actually very clean, and most of the CO2 (for those that care) is easily captured. Furthermore the US alone has enough coal to do this for well over a thousand years. Long enough to finally achieve (controlled) fusion ignition.
Perhaps because there are fundamental problems to be addressed, and the likes of Bloomberg, Gates, and Buffet are nowhere near being like say, Howard Hughes?
... crap spaced is name - the guy in charge of Virgin, or even perhaps Bigelow (not Bam-Bam). I'd list Rutan but he doesn't have the money behind him - he needs OPM.
It's one thing to appear to be solving problems, and donating money does that nicely. It's another to attempt to make money doing something that is actually hard and expensive.
Solar is very expensive. No, oil at 120 bucks/bbl ain't going to make it competitive. Remember (or find) all those posts from the anti-nuclear people about how nuclear power is just too damned expensive. Now know that solar is more expensive than nuclear.
An additional major factor is government regulation. If you've even looked at half, nay a quarter, of what it takes to get started in the power business you'd understand the staggering barrier this is. Donating money is much easier. Not that it really makes a difference in advancing the state of the art.
The third major barrier is the inculcated belief that the government should be doing this. People generally like to spout "Military-industrial complex" as a bad thing (it is), and some even understand they are referencing a speech by Eisenhower. However, most are entirely ignorant of the fact that he mentioned two specific threats. The second was a scientific-government complex.
Today we are reaping the "benefits" of failing to address BOTH/EITHER of his stated looming threats.
Why should anyone invest million or indeed billions into research that the government may suddenly take up the mantle of and give that money to someone other than you, someone with political connections (which happens under both Democrats and Republicans), that will then undercut you since they have a) government funding and b) government protection? Why, indeed.
The closest we have to people of the Howard Hughes caliber are people like Elon Musk (SpaceX) or
Yet, like Hughes, their interests are not in the "mundane" such as terrestrial power generation using "alternative" means. It's in going new places.
Most "alternative energy"[1] advocates are saddles with ideological and political beefs combined with a seeming inability to stifle their expression of those long enough to get real work done. Thus would-be backers tend to shy away and people in general want to back away from such extremism. It boils down to: Those who can't and have money give money so they can feel/appear like they've done something. Those who can't and don't have the money bitch and thus feel like they are "making a difference".
What we need are those who CAN and HAVE the money. Unfortunately, they will run into two major barriers, the hard and the harder one: the laws of physics and the government respectively.
1. The phrase "alternative energy" is itself indicative of and suffering from the ideological slant. Solar and wind are in use, but they have their limits (in particular their sporadic, non-const nature), so they aren't necessarily an "alternative" since they are incomplete solutions yet in place. As a result, "alternative energy" has begun to wear the mantle of "impractical".
A high degree of confidence they "got the tank" is not the same as saying "nailed" it. Regardless, they claimed they were after the tank thus they had to comment on the status of the tank.
Not that you have to rely on CNN, you can go to http://dodvclips.mil/ and see the actual briefing. That said, the CNN quote is accurate, yours is not.
I'd say it's insightful because a. there are a lot of scientists interested in this sort of thing, and b. the calculation has been around for quite some time with noone challenging it.
That doesn't qualify as insightful. You said it yourself, the tag should be "interesting". If it is interesting, it is interesting. Insightful requires more than interest. Insightful is not for something that is commonplace or interesting. It has to display a level of insight, which this does not. It's like thinking your house is 1000 square foot of living space but when you measure it you find it is larger. You had no insight. You found out you were wrong.
Finding out you were wrong is an essential part of performing scientific exploration and thus can not be considered as insightful. Serendipitous might be an appropriate adjective, as they did not have a belief that the consensus was wrong and set out to prove it. They happened to discover it.
As a result, saying that "it took long to figure this out" is far from insightful. At best it is hindsight. If the poster knew it was wrong then they should have done something. I suspect the OP did not know this, as clearly not even the researchers involved "knew" it, but discovered that the numbers differed. Again it is not that different from measuring your house's square footage, or the population of a large metropolitan area. In fact it's more like the latter in that it is an estimation, not a precise measurement.
Complete agreement here.
What we need however, is access to our existing energy meters in a far greater detail than we currently get.
We need real-time information. Free and open access to our energy consumption on a real time basis can be quite useful in lowering household energy consumption.
Imagine the things we could do. Just some ideas....
* Set a limit of how much we want to use this month. Have alerts when we reach certain thresholds to let us know how we are doing.
* Get real-time feedback on what changes we make. Add a new big screen TV and see the changes immediately. Turn off the desktop PC and see the changes immediately.
* See our own peak usage times, provide us the ability to analyze our usage for areas to reduce our energy use.
* Make cool graphs for our personal websites on our usage.
* See how our usage spikes when the HVAC kicks on.
The addition of MPG tracking in cars has IME lead to many people improving their MPG by adapting their driving behavior using the real time and average indicators. Most people I've met claim an improvement of 2-5 MPG. Even on trucks and SUVs. On a truck platform getting 14MPG, that's a significant improvement - no tech, no laws, no regulations; free improvement. Now if we could start getting similar gains (and they are there to be had) in HVAC and home energy costs (dollar for dollar you get more reduction in pollution by reducing HVAC expenditures than you do automotive transport) we'd see soem excellent changes.
Once you put a resistance mechanism in your greywater pipes from upstairs you will find a lot more backups. Especially once the screw drive or other resistance mechanisms start accumulating soap residue. Most water turbine (or similar) generators such as you describe would require a high rotational speed, which would not be provided by your morning shower or bath as there isn't enough pressure/velocity in there.
As far as the buffered ride down mechanism, it costs more energy than it recovers. First, it would be in addition to stairs. This means taking up more floor space which means a slightly larger house to acommodate it. That means more area to heat/cool. Second, risk of the mechanism breaking leading to a free fall would require significant additional safety mechanisms that add to the cost and the manufacturing requirements (energy).
It is a neat idea, and I'd encourage you to continue thinking of things like this, unfortunately it isn't practical.
No, CNN is not "in the business of free speech". CNN is in the business of making money. Just as all the cable and network news shows are. As I have pointed out before there is no money in news.
;) )
/. actually comes close in reporting news. It lets we the people develop the commentary. Really, IMO, that's as it should be. Sure the summaries are biased more than necessary and certainly there is some sensationalism in many of the titles. But at least the focus is on providing news stories for us to discuss. Sometimes we get a second or third chance to discuss them.
Go ahead, watch any of them (Fox, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, whatever Fox's "business channel" is). Add up the amount of actual *news* reporting per day. Not commentary on the news, or commentary on anything, but actual reporting. You really only need to watch for about 10 minutes at the top and bottom of the hour though. Step two, subtract out all the duplicates (/. editors are excused from this portion of the exercise as clearly that would be too difficult for them
Blogs have become popular and "competition" for the news channels for the same reason: they generally are not news, but commentary. The main difference being that generally bloggers don't assert their work is"news", they acknowledge it is just commentary.
Suprisingly,
Please point out the reasonable Republicans. Moreover, please point out those "less government is better conservatives" who haven't spent the last 8 years supporting George W. Bush's rampant expansion of the federal government.
Ron Paul. Duh.
nope, according to Mythbusters, the cockroaches won't make it.
That means only Twinkies will be left.
We've already done this. We did it a long time ago. So we've already proven we CAN do it, and we already KNOW we can.
So those two motives are off the table.
I'm sure the safety concerns are valid. Particularly if it came down somewhere with tense conditions and was confused with an attack.
However, don't think for a moment that this isn't also about REMINDING everyone we can. See this in the context of the recent political maneuvering of China and Russia regarding space.