Basically, you have a car and you want to remove the defects from it. So you melt it down and let it cool. It turns into a big smooth lump of metal, and is more functional than it was before. This, of course, is only true for certain types of cars, such as Ford.
A good analogy is with solder. You are trying to solder two pieces of metal, and the solder comes out wrong and does not provide a good connection. Usually the best fix is to simply re-heat the solder; it will melt, and through surface tension alone, it will probably take on a more ideal shape and provide a better connection than before.
"Things just aren't simple enough or accessible enough anymore..."
So that was Diebold's plan all along! They heard about the upcoming MacGyver film, and being huge fans, decided to do their part to maintain the 80s status quo with low-tech, easily-hacked technology. It finally makes sense now!!!
It is also pretty funny that Hansen proceeded to commit an ad hominem immediately after mischaracterizing your reply as an ad hominem... Unless of course he thinks that saying, "you're desperate" is somehow a counterargument to your support of the law.
What I cannot believe is that this guy was the moderator! I have never heard such comments from an individual charged with the responsibility of being a neutral party. It's just unbelievable and intellectually dishonest!
Maybe he is playing a game, trying to see how many times he can get away with blatant contradictions - calling himself the intellectually elite, and in the next moment being intellectually dishonest; and, claiming someone has committed an ad hominem and proceeding to make one himself. If so, bravo!
This made me think about whether it would currently be possible to argue against laws that require ratings on movies, music, and games, if someone was willing to make a movie or audiobook with the title "Will they have sex?" where the movie is about two people and whether or not they will ever have sex. Then if the movie gets rated "Mature: Sexual Content", and that label is stamped on the cover, the publisher could argue that the law is affecting sales of their product, because the answer to the question is right on the cover. The same could be done for a movie titled "Will there be violence?", for example.
Would they have a valid legal defense if such a case ever went to court?
First movies, then video games, now books will need to have a big ugly "E" stamped on their cover before they can be sold to minors. And on the back cover there will be spoilers like "Warning! Graphic content: main character murdered at the end"
Unless those blades are razor sharp, they just found a way to make each cut 5 times as difficult as a normal cut. I'm sure the handle or hinge would be the first to break.
If only they could invent some sort of electronic device that acts like a hundred small scissors and cuts up your documents into little strips, making it really difficult to figure out the contents of the original document.... I'd call it The Scissorator.
Better yet, maybe, would be some sort of fantastical sci-fi method of applying an energy to the document in such a way that the very atoms of the paper disassociate from eachother, and combine with oxygen in the atmosphere to form carbon dioxide and liquid water. Of course, we'd probably need tiny nanomachines to do this atom-by-atom. It's still hundreds of years off, I'm sure...
"Yeah, sometimes a new venture needs a leg up to get started"
Unfortunately, it's much easier to talk a congressman into forcing the public to hand over a larger portion of their income at gunpoint, than it is to talk people who have actually earned their income into investing that income in a startup business. Maybe if we weren't so worried every 2-4 years about what the next idiot legislator is going to do with our hard-earned money, we'd be more willing to invest in innovation.
As long as this is done without any government subsidization, go for it. Once the government starts offering more money, loopholes will be found to get at that money, and the only ones who will be hit hardest by this will be... the farmers, and the impoverished. The rest of the world will get slightly cheaper gas in exchange for much more expensive food and beer, food shortages, etc, all for no reduction to the carbon footprint.
When governments such as the United States' starts offering farmers subsidies if they switch over to growing switchgrass and corn for ethanol, those farmers stop making food. This is the reason for the rise in price of flour, bread, beer, etc.
There's a little miscommunication going on here... I was referring to the roles of the police and military to catch those who have violated our rights and stop those who are actively committing rights violations, and the role of the courts to assign punishment for rights violations.
Of course, it has become the norm today for Congressmen to legislate away our rights - as ridiculous as it sounds, that is the only way for them to ensure their reelection.
I am partially in agreement. Please try tracing the history of how it got this way. Insurance used to be only for emergencies where the patient could not afford it but needed help right away. Then the government subsidized a couple special insurance companies - Blue Cross / Blue Shield. With that unfair advantage, BCBS was able to eliminate the competition, and expanded their business to cover not only emergencies, but also normal visits. Other insurance companies had to keep up and do the same. And thus we have our current situation. The solution, once again, is to get the government out of the economy. People will slowly move back to the emergency-only insurance offered at a lower cost, and the economy will eventually heal itself. However, for emergencies, people will still want services like health insurance, and companies will spring into existence to fill this demand. It's no different from any other emergency - fires, for example, used to be handled by private fire brigades, paid in much the same way as health insurance coverage. Now the local government feels the need to steal the funding at gunpoint.
"It's a protection racket, under guise of a protection racket."
Remind me again what part of this "protection racket" involves forcing someone to do something against their will? You freely choose to pay for insurance.
And what would you replace it with? Universal health care, paid for with money forcibly taken by the government from the people whose rights it had been charged with protecting? And if I choose to pay the government for this program, I can be held against my will and/or deported at gun point. Remind me again which of these scenarios is a "protection racket".
While it's a nice idea to be able to snap your fingers and suddenly "provide drinking water for the world's population", in reality this would require too much (non-existent) infrastructure to maintain. The only real solution is for the local communities to develop this infrastructure, and if corrupt government stand in their way, those governments should be overthrown.
"Also, on a more general note, who says the farmers owe you or anyone else cheap food?"
Hopefully, nobody. It is not the farmers that have done anything wrong. It is the government for sticking its fingers into the economy to support an idea that would not stand on its own. The economy is founded on the world's needs, and when congressmen supplant those needs with their fundraisers' wants - using taxpayer dollars - the economy no longer functions according to the world's needs.
"Many people here feel virtuous about paying extra for organic or "whole" foods. But now they are complaining about high food prices?
What a joke! I am not talking about rich people's complaints. I am talking about those in poverty who are getting less and less access to food, not only because the food is becoming more expensive, but because less of it is getting to them. I try to buy produce from local farmers, and I know it costs more than the canned crap at Walmart, but I like supporting local producers and think the food is fresher and tastes better.
"If the farmers can finally make money, so much the better."
They were making money before, it's just that now, the money is being stolen from the people by the government and distributed to selected individuals, rather than being freely exchanged at an agreed-upon price.
"So your options for now, as in today, are to do nothing at all, or build the corn-ethanol plants."
Again, you're assuming ethanol will reduce the carbon footprint, which it will not. The only option is to reject the idea as useless and unsustainable. As far as my options - I can start riding a bike more, try to carpool, use public transportation, etc. Why must the only option always be that the government forcibly manipulate the economy to force consumers to make a change that they can be motivated to do on their own if gas was at the actual price it really is, not at the fantasy price that the government supports.
I can't believe such clueless posts get modded informative/insightful. IT'S VERY SIMPLE: food crop farmers are now being offered more money for non-food (cellulose) crops, because of government subsidation (ie, manipulation of the economy). So, because they need to make a living, they are switching over their food crops to cellulose crops. So less food is produced.
Nowhere did I say cellulose = food or that cellulose crops could be used for food.
Are you clueless? Did you read my post? Do you know what's going on in the world? I am not saying that plants that would be used for ethanol could eaten, I am saying that farmers are switching over their food crops to non-food (cellulose) crops because the government is giving them more money...
The minute the government stops subsidizing the production of ethanol, not only will farmers start moving back to wheat and other foods that the world needs, but ethanol will be forced to survive on its own next to gasoline, and it will vanish in the puff of bad logic that brought it into existence. Let's not forget the recent story about increases in beer cost as farmers switch over to corn for ethanol. Also informative is this recent Time magazine article debunking the benefits of ethanol. This is just another political stunt at the expense of the world's food crops and my inebriation. When will Congress learn that manipulating the economy never has the desired effects.
Slashdot Mirror
"Could you re-explain this with a car analogy?"
Basically, you have a car and you want to remove the defects from it. So you melt it down and let it cool. It turns into a big smooth lump of metal, and is more functional than it was before. This, of course, is only true for certain types of cars, such as Ford.
A good analogy is with solder. You are trying to solder two pieces of metal, and the solder comes out wrong and does not provide a good connection. Usually the best fix is to simply re-heat the solder; it will melt, and through surface tension alone, it will probably take on a more ideal shape and provide a better connection than before.
"Things just aren't simple enough or accessible enough anymore..."
So that was Diebold's plan all along! They heard about the upcoming MacGyver film, and being huge fans, decided to do their part to maintain the 80s status quo with low-tech, easily-hacked technology. It finally makes sense now!!!
It is also pretty funny that Hansen proceeded to commit an ad hominem immediately after mischaracterizing your reply as an ad hominem... Unless of course he thinks that saying, "you're desperate" is somehow a counterargument to your support of the law.
What I cannot believe is that this guy was the moderator! I have never heard such comments from an individual charged with the responsibility of being a neutral party. It's just unbelievable and intellectually dishonest!
Maybe he is playing a game, trying to see how many times he can get away with blatant contradictions - calling himself the intellectually elite, and in the next moment being intellectually dishonest; and, claiming someone has committed an ad hominem and proceeding to make one himself. If so, bravo!
This made me think about whether it would currently be possible to argue against laws that require ratings on movies, music, and games, if someone was willing to make a movie or audiobook with the title "Will they have sex?" where the movie is about two people and whether or not they will ever have sex. Then if the movie gets rated "Mature: Sexual Content", and that label is stamped on the cover, the publisher could argue that the law is affecting sales of their product, because the answer to the question is right on the cover. The same could be done for a movie titled "Will there be violence?", for example.
Would they have a valid legal defense if such a case ever went to court?
First movies, then video games, now books will need to have a big ugly "E" stamped on their cover before they can be sold to minors. And on the back cover there will be spoilers like "Warning! Graphic content: main character murdered at the end"
I was using the Old English sense of the phrase "away from", which actually means "toward".
"If the market wants to move away from GPU integration, let it, but we're not going to help it along..."
Unless those blades are razor sharp, they just found a way to make each cut 5 times as difficult as a normal cut. I'm sure the handle or hinge would be the first to break.
I have just realized that my fantastical idea would be less fantastical if the by-products were carbon dioxide and water vapor, not liquid water.
If only they could invent some sort of electronic device that acts like a hundred small scissors and cuts up your documents into little strips, making it really difficult to figure out the contents of the original document.... I'd call it The Scissorator.
Better yet, maybe, would be some sort of fantastical sci-fi method of applying an energy to the document in such a way that the very atoms of the paper disassociate from eachother, and combine with oxygen in the atmosphere to form carbon dioxide and liquid water. Of course, we'd probably need tiny nanomachines to do this atom-by-atom. It's still hundreds of years off, I'm sure...
"Yeah, sometimes a new venture needs a leg up to get started"
Unfortunately, it's much easier to talk a congressman into forcing the public to hand over a larger portion of their income at gunpoint, than it is to talk people who have actually earned their income into investing that income in a startup business. Maybe if we weren't so worried every 2-4 years about what the next idiot legislator is going to do with our hard-earned money, we'd be more willing to invest in innovation.
As long as this is done without any government subsidization, go for it. Once the government starts offering more money, loopholes will be found to get at that money, and the only ones who will be hit hardest by this will be... the farmers, and the impoverished. The rest of the world will get slightly cheaper gas in exchange for much more expensive food and beer, food shortages, etc, all for no reduction to the carbon footprint.
When governments such as the United States' starts offering farmers subsidies if they switch over to growing switchgrass and corn for ethanol, those farmers stop making food. This is the reason for the rise in price of flour, bread, beer, etc.
There's a little miscommunication going on here... I was referring to the roles of the police and military to catch those who have violated our rights and stop those who are actively committing rights violations, and the role of the courts to assign punishment for rights violations.
Of course, it has become the norm today for Congressmen to legislate away our rights - as ridiculous as it sounds, that is the only way for them to ensure their reelection.
Remind me again how any of this falls under the umbrella of rights protection with which the government was originally charged.
I am partially in agreement. Please try tracing the history of how it got this way. Insurance used to be only for emergencies where the patient could not afford it but needed help right away. Then the government subsidized a couple special insurance companies - Blue Cross / Blue Shield. With that unfair advantage, BCBS was able to eliminate the competition, and expanded their business to cover not only emergencies, but also normal visits. Other insurance companies had to keep up and do the same. And thus we have our current situation. The solution, once again, is to get the government out of the economy. People will slowly move back to the emergency-only insurance offered at a lower cost, and the economy will eventually heal itself. However, for emergencies, people will still want services like health insurance, and companies will spring into existence to fill this demand. It's no different from any other emergency - fires, for example, used to be handled by private fire brigades, paid in much the same way as health insurance coverage. Now the local government feels the need to steal the funding at gunpoint.
"And if I choose NOT to pay the government for this program, I can be held against my will and/or deported at gun point."
"It's a protection racket, under guise of a protection racket."
Remind me again what part of this "protection racket" involves forcing someone to do something against their will? You freely choose to pay for insurance.
And what would you replace it with? Universal health care, paid for with money forcibly taken by the government from the people whose rights it had been charged with protecting? And if I choose to pay the government for this program, I can be held against my will and/or deported at gun point. Remind me again which of these scenarios is a "protection racket".
While it's a nice idea to be able to snap your fingers and suddenly "provide drinking water for the world's population", in reality this would require too much (non-existent) infrastructure to maintain. The only real solution is for the local communities to develop this infrastructure, and if corrupt government stand in their way, those governments should be overthrown.
I was thinking "AIDS" but I typed "cancer"... no really, I was....
Also I realized it was a false analogy before I typed the post.... ok, fine I didn't...
Isn't this the same guy who says that when they cure cancer, he'll buy enough of the cure to distribute it to everyone in the world for free?
"Also, on a more general note, who says the farmers owe you or anyone else cheap food?"
Hopefully, nobody. It is not the farmers that have done anything wrong. It is the government for sticking its fingers into the economy to support an idea that would not stand on its own. The economy is founded on the world's needs, and when congressmen supplant those needs with their fundraisers' wants - using taxpayer dollars - the economy no longer functions according to the world's needs.
"Many people here feel virtuous about paying extra for organic or "whole" foods. But now they are complaining about high food prices?
What a joke! I am not talking about rich people's complaints. I am talking about those in poverty who are getting less and less access to food, not only because the food is becoming more expensive, but because less of it is getting to them. I try to buy produce from local farmers, and I know it costs more than the canned crap at Walmart, but I like supporting local producers and think the food is fresher and tastes better.
"If the farmers can finally make money, so much the better."
They were making money before, it's just that now, the money is being stolen from the people by the government and distributed to selected individuals, rather than being freely exchanged at an agreed-upon price.
"So your options for now, as in today, are to do nothing at all, or build the corn-ethanol plants."
Again, you're assuming ethanol will reduce the carbon footprint, which it will not. The only option is to reject the idea as useless and unsustainable. As far as my options - I can start riding a bike more, try to carpool, use public transportation, etc. Why must the only option always be that the government forcibly manipulate the economy to force consumers to make a change that they can be motivated to do on their own if gas was at the actual price it really is, not at the fantasy price that the government supports.
I can't believe such clueless posts get modded informative/insightful. IT'S VERY SIMPLE: food crop farmers are now being offered more money for non-food (cellulose) crops, because of government subsidation (ie, manipulation of the economy). So, because they need to make a living, they are switching over their food crops to cellulose crops. So less food is produced.
Nowhere did I say cellulose = food or that cellulose crops could be used for food.
Complete idiot.
Are you clueless? Did you read my post? Do you know what's going on in the world? I am not saying that plants that would be used for ethanol could eaten, I am saying that farmers are switching over their food crops to non-food (cellulose) crops because the government is giving them more money...
Yeeesh...
The minute the government stops subsidizing the production of ethanol, not only will farmers start moving back to wheat and other foods that the world needs, but ethanol will be forced to survive on its own next to gasoline, and it will vanish in the puff of bad logic that brought it into existence. Let's not forget the recent story about increases in beer cost as farmers switch over to corn for ethanol. Also informative is this recent Time magazine article debunking the benefits of ethanol. This is just another political stunt at the expense of the world's food crops and my inebriation. When will Congress learn that manipulating the economy never has the desired effects.