We've managed to cover well over 1% of Europe in buildings and asphalt... How difficult can it be to cover a desert with a micrometer thin layer of silicon (solar cells) or glass (mirrors)? Both use sand as the main raw material.
Also, the Sahara is mostly rocky, not sand dunes. If the Americans can build skyscrapers in the Nevada desert, then we can place lightweight thin semiconductors or mirrors on a similar surface with much less effort.
And no, we're just gonna transport electrons, not liquid hydrogen. Firstly because the conversion to hydrogen, and then back to electricity is a far bigger loss than the resistance in thousands of kilometers of cable. Secondly, we already have cables of nearly a thousand kilometers in the North Sea - those only lose 1% of the energy squeezed through because of resistance.
-- I'm surprised nobody whines about the energy storage. Hint: hydropower in Pyrenees and Alps already stores French Nuclear electricity at Gigawatt scale.
Yeah I mean I would never travel to California, Venezuela is just far too much of a political hotbed.
Indeed.
To suggest that all of North Africa is unstable is just retarded. Morocco, Tunesia, Egypt are all stable countries. Ok, perhaps their democracy is about as fair as the American one (you get only 1 choice) but for the rest they're peaceful countries with a smaller average prison population than the USA and fantastic tourist attractions and destinations... and a very friendly and hospitable population.
The Algerian and Lybian governments are perhaps not too popular with the Western countries - but those countries are also peaceful and stable... And they will probably remain stable unless the West decides to go for a 'regime change' or something ridiculous like that.
I already watch HQ streaming for entire evenings (there are many websites that have series, documentaries). I pay 20 euro / month for my internet. And I don't see why I would have to pay more for the same service in the next 10-15 years. Downloading from torrents probably reduces the traffic rather than increases it compared to streaming, because the downloads will be spread out over the entire 24 hrs of a day rather than just the evening.
Someone will want to count the amount of viewers anyway. (If this type of distribution becomes popular with the industry, someone will want to find out how much money can be made from product placements in the series, or other advertising.)
And the number of viewers probably demonstrates the public interest sufficiently to IMBD.
So, you have a country in turmoil. There is a government now. There are many people who strongly disagree, and who recently used violence to change the situation.
What would you do to restore order to be able to come to terms with the opposition? First you must have peace. So, you shut down all the websites and mute all the opposition's voices except for a small number of spokespersons. Then, and only then, do you do communicate with the opposition. Thousands of websites which urge people to use violence are not helping.
Free internet is very important - but peace in the streets may just be a little more important than free internet. And in the case of Thailand, this was no scaremongering. There were actual riots and more than just 1 person died there.
Mod me -1 for playing the devil's advocate, and I will sue you:-)
No... probably more in the order of 5-10 euro. A very decent payback time. All it is, is a bunch of amp-meters, a number of switches, a display and a wireless system. I can find phones that can do a lot more for 20 euro.
Re:Employee monitoring is not really new
on
Employee Monitoring
·
· Score: 1
The main issue here is:
At work, my ass basically belongs to my boss. I do work, he pays me. He can check if I do my work. I would prefer that he informs me if our IT guys also monitor me - but I am aware that this is possible.
At home, my ass belongs to me. And I don't need to have a government that checks me. I pay them (tax), I vote for them, and I will check them rather than them spying on me.
It's vitally important to differentiate between the two situations, or you may end up either without a job or without any privacy.
In my defense, I promoted Luna to a "sort of kinda planet"... and as far as I am concerned, Pluto is allowed to compete with the great lakes as much as it wants.
Actually, I think this is more complicated than it seems. Planets, moons, oceans and lakes. And then the water may be solid, liquid, gaseous. Bloody hell! We should install a committee to investigate the matter! It will report its findings around March 2017.
Whereas the lakes are, well, lakes... the moon is a sort of kinda planet. Planets tend to be bigger than lakes, and therefore I call this cheating.
Obviously, there are planets that are also a giant lake... the earth itself for example is quite wet. But those lakes we shall call oceans. So, oceans can compete with planets, but lakes can't. Ok?
Agreed. ICQ is nice technology. I certainly prefer it to MSN.
However (this is a big "however"), the quality of social software is NOT its most important feature. The most important feature is popularity. And MSN and Skype are simply more popular. Unless that decrease in popularity is reversed, the ICQ ship is sinking. It may sink slowly, but it's inevitably sinking. It may be a wise decision to sell it for about 200 million. Another company that is better at marketing may now attempt to either find a niche for ICQ, or to turn mainstream chat focus back to ICQ. It's got a catchy name already, it could work.
I never really understood why people preferred MSN over ICQ.
752 possible planets! W00t! That's very cool. And the planets with an orbit of well over 1 year are probably not even found, so the number will shoot up even more. Awesome.
I don't care whether NASA keeps some data for themselves. They don't plan to occupy/invade/colonize anyway (too far away). So, they must simply want to publish the data themselves after looking at it a bit more. Let them. I'm not gonna do it myself anyway.
Physicist here (not an astro-, but good enough for these purposes).
Solar activity generally occurs in cycles. As far as we know and have observed, these cycles are fairly regular and predictable in a "big-picture" sort of way.
Although I might not trust the weatherman's forecast for this Friday, I will trust his assertion that it's going to start getting cold around November.
This is more a case of the weatherman saying that "January is the coldest month".
They say that in 2013 the solar 11 year cycle coincides with the 22 year cycle, (which I think it does every 22 years, always, but nevermind). That simply makes the year 2013 the most likely year for a big solar storm. To me, it seems to be a matter of statistics - which was then taken out of context by some stupid journalist.
Some other comments in the article (although far more subjective) seem to suggest that the Solar Super Storm is going to be extra super heavy because the sun is sleeping a little longer now.... and that seems to me like predicting that November will be extra cold because September and October are quite warm.
Use the right methods, and you will turn kids into engineers at a young age. LEGO for example is a good tool for learning basic engineering skills.
The thing is: for engineering you do need a little background in physics and perhaps maths... otherwise it's not engineering, but merely tinkering. But then again, the most simple physics can easily be explained to kids - of course, at first only quantitatively.
So how long before Aussies figure out that "encrypt everything" is a great idea?
No. The real question is: "So, how long before the Aussies figure out that enough is enough, and they tell their government to stop being so damned paranoid?"
There is an optimum in every climate. Here's how it works:
You choose a certain period. Say, 30 years.
You check the price of the energy. You check the price of different kinds of insulation.
Insulation is a one-time investment, energy costs money all the time. You check which is the cheapest after 30 years.
In many houses an investment in insulation is worth the money and will pay itself back. But in some cases, the quality of the insulation is already such that it's just too expensive to add even more insulation to save those few euros/dollars/whatevers in energy.
As a Finnish taxpayer, I'm happy that my government is once again giving my tax money to foreigners, rather than keeping Finnish hospitals going. No, really, I'm sure that photovoltaic cells will do a lot of good to us here in the Arctic Circle where the Sun shines a few hours a day most of the year. Really, it's better to spend money on useless shit like this than to treat rheumatic children.
Your government has spent loads to subsidize innovation. The Espoo campus (near Helsinki) is brand new, and produces a lot of knowledge which in turn keeps the Finnish knowledge-economy running. Finland is doing quite well because of these investments (it attracts companies).
However, science is an international effort, and it's only fair to award a prize to whoever is the best... And why wouldn't you have some research on solar cells in Finland? It's not like you are actually investing in the production and implementation. It's just research. You can do solar cell research in the basement or any other place where the sun never shines, as long as you have the right equipment.
Of course, healthcare is important. Finnish healthcare is among the best in the world... and already heavily subsidized. Perhaps you found that 1 single example where something went wrong, but the tone of your reply is in contrast with the Finnish reality.
He was anonymous again. Took him 8 years. His 15 minutes of fame were finally forgotten. He could continue with his life.
Now Slashdot and that other website (rtfa) put up his picture, location, job/study... which will show up in every google search for the "Star Wars Kid", forever linking his new life to that old one.
It's quite disappointing to see that his address, email, phone number, and the name of his friends and girlfriend (if any) are missing. Can we all have that too please, so that it's easier to ruin the rest of his life too?:-)
We're paying up to 30% - 50% income tax in some cases. In addition, the VAT is 20%, several other taxes also need to be paid (road tax, cigarette, alcohol, pollution, recycling and whatever). We're paying a shitload of tax.
Yet anyone who has ever visited both North America and Europe would probably agree that the system isn't much worse than the US system of minimal taxes.
It's just that in Europe we're brainwashed to think that paying tax is good. You're similarly brainwashed into thinking that it's bad unless it's money spent to defeat the commies.
This is once again one of those numbers that will be thrown around by IP holders to get attention from the politicians. And yet the study does the same idiotic assumption as all the other ones.
Saying one download is one lost sale is idiotic. It has never been true and never will be. It's probably off by at least a factor of 10. And haven't many studies already shown (well, at least with music) that the people who pirate are also the people who buy the most?
Compare it to free newspapers. Taking a train or bus, I sometimes get up to 3 free newspapers. Does that mean that the newspapers lose out 3 sales each day? NO.
The same goes for all the streaming stuff I watch on the internet (some series and perhaps a movie). Would I buy the whole lot if it wasn't available for free? NO.
The same again for the mp3's I deny to have. No way that I will pay up to 1 euro for 1 song. With the amount of music I deny to have, that would be absolutely unaffordable. If there was not other way than paying for it, I wouldn't have this much... and radio would be a lot more popular again.
And the same would go for games, if I would be playing them. But I don't play many games anymore.
--- Sunlight is lost revenue for the electricity company.
I love how people justify taxation based on spreading it out over time. How many of these "little" projects can politicians contrive before your tax burden or government debt is unreasonable? Is that per person in NZ, or per ISP customer, per tax payer, BTW? Money would be better invested elsewhere.
Personally, I think that you can afford a whole lot of such small projects. Really, loads. We're talking about $355 in 10 yrs. That equals about $1.50 per month. In many European countries, the average tax payer will pay up to 1500 euro in tax. So, you can have 1000 such small projects. Or a number of big ones (such as a war or proper healthcare) and still some small ones.
I see your point that money eventually runs out... But contrary to popular belief, fast internet is not only used for gaming and facebook - it can also boost the economy, make working from home more popular, educate people, etc. Hell, it may actually be worth the small price to pay... It may actually pay itself back within those 10 years, turning this into a proper investment rather than a simple government expense...
ZOMG! These are all Commies! In Soviet Russia, the government spends you!
I think it is because there are remote installations that need to be operated from a single location.
The power grid is a lot of generators (scaling from enormous powerplants to small scale wind/solar and other types of production, including stuff that can be switched on and off all the time such as gas engines). Someone has to control the whole lot of it in order to balance power production and consumption.
I see no way that we can do that without actually connecting the whole lot to a network. It would be awesome if it was a completely independent network - but the internet is there anyway... why no use it in a secure way?
(Note: I am no expert - I just expressed my opinion, which happens to contain a lot of technical assumptions)
First of all, RIAA is American - we're discussing the EU here. Obviously, there are similar institutions in Europe, so the remark is still relevant.
Who says that we are not going to a situation where both the government and the record industry and all kinds of other organizations will control internet logs of everyone? ISP will log it, and distribute it. They all will find a valid reason to protect the very important interests of something really important (like "Children" or "The Economy" or "Safety"). Anyone who will object to this monitoring of the internet is obviously either a Terrorist, a Child Molester or a Communist. (I strongly believe that you can't argue with such points, which is why the discussion should be shifted away from single problems, and should instead be about the internet or even information in general).
On a side note, this is an initiative by some members of the European parliament. They sell it to the public as a urgent thing to stop child abuse. The word privacy isn't mentioned anywhere.
This seems strange to me, making beer so strong. What are they trying to achieve with this? A 50% beer means you can only have a few measures of it before you will get sick. Where is the enjoyment? A pint of cold, crisp draught surely beats a shot of this stuff?
It's the same reason some people wait half a day, then strap themselves into a jet powered bomb on wheels to do a quarter mile really really fast. It's not the most practical or the most comfortable way of traveling... but I guess it's just really really cool.
I can completely understand why they make this beer.
However, I would not understand why someone would drink more than a shot glass of it though. I fully agree that there are few (perhaps none at all) drinks that are better than a simple cold normal beer. And the best part of a simple cold normal beer is that you can have more than one. Yay.
It's whisky. Just because it's distilled by freezing instead of heating the principle is the same hence the term 'distilling'. Temperature differences are being used to remove water.
Distillation is a separation by difference in volatility (or vapor pressure). The more volatile component will be present in the vapor phase in a higher concentration than the other stuff when you boil the liquid.
The process here is called crystallization, and has very little to do with distillation, except that it also is used in a separation. Also, there is no temperature difference - it's just cold. The temperature of the entire barrel of beer-like-booze will gradually drop, but there is no temperature difference like in a distillation process where the temperature of the boiling liquid differs from the condensing vapors. While you scoop out more ice, the temperature drops (as a function of alcohol content in the liquid). So, the liquid will cool down more over time... but there is no requirement to have a temperature difference unless you're afraid that the ice won't melt and go down the sink.
Whiskey is the condensed gas phase of the beer and you throw away the liquid residue. In this process the good stuff never left the liquid phase. You throw away the ice.
Anyway, we've entered a discussion where we disagree on definitions. I'll give you the point that this may not be beer, but it certainly isn't whiskey either.
If you disagree with me on the distillation part, you can also change the text on wikipedia (types of distillation, subsection "other types", subsubsection "stuff that isn't really distillation").
Freeze distillation is an analogous method of purification using freezing instead of evaporation. It is not truly distillation, but a recrystallization where the product is the mother liquor, and does not produce products equivalent to distillation. This process is used in the production of ice beer and ice wine to increase ethanol and sugar content, respectively. It is also used to produce applejack. Unlike distillation, freeze distillation concentrates poisonous congeners rather than removing them.
Slashdot Mirror
We've managed to cover well over 1% of Europe in buildings and asphalt... How difficult can it be to cover a desert with a micrometer thin layer of silicon (solar cells) or glass (mirrors)? Both use sand as the main raw material.
Also, the Sahara is mostly rocky, not sand dunes. If the Americans can build skyscrapers in the Nevada desert, then we can place lightweight thin semiconductors or mirrors on a similar surface with much less effort.
And no, we're just gonna transport electrons, not liquid hydrogen. Firstly because the conversion to hydrogen, and then back to electricity is a far bigger loss than the resistance in thousands of kilometers of cable. Secondly, we already have cables of nearly a thousand kilometers in the North Sea - those only lose 1% of the energy squeezed through because of resistance.
-- I'm surprised nobody whines about the energy storage. Hint: hydropower in Pyrenees and Alps already stores French Nuclear electricity at Gigawatt scale.
Yeah I mean I would never travel to California, Venezuela is just far too much of a political hotbed.
Indeed.
To suggest that all of North Africa is unstable is just retarded. Morocco, Tunesia, Egypt are all stable countries. Ok, perhaps their democracy is about as fair as the American one (you get only 1 choice) but for the rest they're peaceful countries with a smaller average prison population than the USA and fantastic tourist attractions and destinations... and a very friendly and hospitable population.
The Algerian and Lybian governments are perhaps not too popular with the Western countries - but those countries are also peaceful and stable... And they will probably remain stable unless the West decides to go for a 'regime change' or something ridiculous like that.
I already watch HQ streaming for entire evenings (there are many websites that have series, documentaries).
I pay 20 euro / month for my internet. And I don't see why I would have to pay more for the same service in the next 10-15 years.
Downloading from torrents probably reduces the traffic rather than increases it compared to streaming, because the downloads will be spread out over the entire 24 hrs of a day rather than just the evening.
Someone will want to count the amount of viewers anyway.
(If this type of distribution becomes popular with the industry, someone will want to find out how much money can be made from product placements in the series, or other advertising.)
And the number of viewers probably demonstrates the public interest sufficiently to IMBD.
So, you have a country in turmoil. There is a government now. There are many people who strongly disagree, and who recently used violence to change the situation.
What would you do to restore order to be able to come to terms with the opposition? First you must have peace. So, you shut down all the websites and mute all the opposition's voices except for a small number of spokespersons.
Then, and only then, do you do communicate with the opposition. Thousands of websites which urge people to use violence are not helping.
Free internet is very important - but peace in the streets may just be a little more important than free internet. And in the case of Thailand, this was no scaremongering. There were actual riots and more than just 1 person died there.
Mod me -1 for playing the devil's advocate, and I will sue you :-)
No... probably more in the order of 5-10 euro.
A very decent payback time. All it is, is a bunch of amp-meters, a number of switches, a display and a wireless system. I can find phones that can do a lot more for 20 euro.
The main issue here is:
At work, my ass basically belongs to my boss. I do work, he pays me. He can check if I do my work. I would prefer that he informs me if our IT guys also monitor me - but I am aware that this is possible.
At home, my ass belongs to me. And I don't need to have a government that checks me. I pay them (tax), I vote for them, and I will check them rather than them spying on me.
It's vitally important to differentiate between the two situations, or you may end up either without a job or without any privacy.
In my defense, I promoted Luna to a "sort of kinda planet"... and as far as I am concerned, Pluto is allowed to compete with the great lakes as much as it wants.
Actually, I think this is more complicated than it seems. Planets, moons, oceans and lakes. And then the water may be solid, liquid, gaseous. Bloody hell! We should install a committee to investigate the matter! It will report its findings around March 2017.
-- All your water are belong to us.
Whereas the lakes are, well, lakes... the moon is a sort of kinda planet. Planets tend to be bigger than lakes, and therefore I call this cheating.
Obviously, there are planets that are also a giant lake... the earth itself for example is quite wet. But those lakes we shall call oceans. So, oceans can compete with planets, but lakes can't. Ok?
-- wait, that's no moon!
Agreed. ICQ is nice technology. I certainly prefer it to MSN.
However (this is a big "however"), the quality of social software is NOT its most important feature. The most important feature is popularity. And MSN and Skype are simply more popular. Unless that decrease in popularity is reversed, the ICQ ship is sinking. It may sink slowly, but it's inevitably sinking.
It may be a wise decision to sell it for about 200 million. Another company that is better at marketing may now attempt to either find a niche for ICQ, or to turn mainstream chat focus back to ICQ. It's got a catchy name already, it could work.
I never really understood why people preferred MSN over ICQ.
752 possible planets! W00t! That's very cool. And the planets with an orbit of well over 1 year are probably not even found, so the number will shoot up even more. Awesome.
I don't care whether NASA keeps some data for themselves. They don't plan to occupy/invade/colonize anyway (too far away). So, they must simply want to publish the data themselves after looking at it a bit more. Let them. I'm not gonna do it myself anyway.
Physicist here (not an astro-, but good enough for these purposes).
Solar activity generally occurs in cycles. As far as we know and have observed, these cycles are fairly regular and predictable in a "big-picture" sort of way.
Although I might not trust the weatherman's forecast for this Friday, I will trust his assertion that it's going to start getting cold around November.
This is more a case of the weatherman saying that "January is the coldest month".
They say that in 2013 the solar 11 year cycle coincides with the 22 year cycle, (which I think it does every 22 years, always, but nevermind). That simply makes the year 2013 the most likely year for a big solar storm. To me, it seems to be a matter of statistics - which was then taken out of context by some stupid journalist.
Some other comments in the article (although far more subjective) seem to suggest that the Solar Super Storm is going to be extra super heavy because the sun is sleeping a little longer now. ... and that seems to me like predicting that November will be extra cold because September and October are quite warm.
Use the right methods, and you will turn kids into engineers at a young age.
LEGO for example is a good tool for learning basic engineering skills.
The thing is: for engineering you do need a little background in physics and perhaps maths... otherwise it's not engineering, but merely tinkering.
But then again, the most simple physics can easily be explained to kids - of course, at first only quantitatively.
So how long before Aussies figure out that "encrypt everything" is a great idea?
No. The real question is: "So, how long before the Aussies figure out that enough is enough, and they tell their government to stop being so damned paranoid?"
You're over-simplifying things.
There is an optimum in every climate. Here's how it works:
You choose a certain period. Say, 30 years.
You check the price of the energy. You check the price of different kinds of insulation.
Insulation is a one-time investment, energy costs money all the time. You check which is the cheapest after 30 years.
In many houses an investment in insulation is worth the money and will pay itself back. But in some cases, the quality of the insulation is already such that it's just too expensive to add even more insulation to save those few euros/dollars/whatevers in energy.
As a Finnish taxpayer, I'm happy that my government is once again giving my tax money to foreigners, rather than keeping Finnish hospitals going. No, really, I'm sure that photovoltaic cells will do a lot of good to us here in the Arctic Circle where the Sun shines a few hours a day most of the year. Really, it's better to spend money on useless shit like this than to treat rheumatic children.
Your government has spent loads to subsidize innovation. The Espoo campus (near Helsinki) is brand new, and produces a lot of knowledge which in turn keeps the Finnish knowledge-economy running. Finland is doing quite well because of these investments (it attracts companies).
However, science is an international effort, and it's only fair to award a prize to whoever is the best... And why wouldn't you have some research on solar cells in Finland? It's not like you are actually investing in the production and implementation. It's just research. You can do solar cell research in the basement or any other place where the sun never shines, as long as you have the right equipment.
Of course, healthcare is important. Finnish healthcare is among the best in the world... and already heavily subsidized. Perhaps you found that 1 single example where something went wrong, but the tone of your reply is in contrast with the Finnish reality.
He was anonymous again. Took him 8 years. His 15 minutes of fame were finally forgotten. He could continue with his life.
Now Slashdot and that other website (rtfa) put up his picture, location, job/study... which will show up in every google search for the "Star Wars Kid", forever linking his new life to that old one.
It's quite disappointing to see that his address, email, phone number, and the name of his friends and girlfriend (if any) are missing. Can we all have that too please, so that it's easier to ruin the rest of his life too? :-)
You're saying Europe is an ultra fail?
We're paying up to 30% - 50% income tax in some cases. In addition, the VAT is 20%, several other taxes also need to be paid (road tax, cigarette, alcohol, pollution, recycling and whatever). We're paying a shitload of tax.
Yet anyone who has ever visited both North America and Europe would probably agree that the system isn't much worse than the US system of minimal taxes.
It's just that in Europe we're brainwashed to think that paying tax is good. You're similarly brainwashed into thinking that it's bad unless it's money spent to defeat the commies.
This is once again one of those numbers that will be thrown around by IP holders to get attention from the politicians. And yet the study does the same idiotic assumption as all the other ones.
Saying one download is one lost sale is idiotic. It has never been true and never will be. It's probably off by at least a factor of 10. And haven't many studies already shown (well, at least with music) that the people who pirate are also the people who buy the most?
Compare it to free newspapers.
Taking a train or bus, I sometimes get up to 3 free newspapers. Does that mean that the newspapers lose out 3 sales each day? NO.
The same goes for all the streaming stuff I watch on the internet (some series and perhaps a movie). Would I buy the whole lot if it wasn't available for free? NO.
The same again for the mp3's I deny to have. No way that I will pay up to 1 euro for 1 song. With the amount of music I deny to have, that would be absolutely unaffordable. If there was not other way than paying for it, I wouldn't have this much... and radio would be a lot more popular again.
And the same would go for games, if I would be playing them. But I don't play many games anymore.
--- Sunlight is lost revenue for the electricity company.
I love how people justify taxation based on spreading it out over time. How many of these "little" projects can politicians contrive before your tax burden or government debt is unreasonable? Is that per person in NZ, or per ISP customer, per tax payer, BTW? Money would be better invested elsewhere.
Personally, I think that you can afford a whole lot of such small projects. Really, loads.
We're talking about $355 in 10 yrs. That equals about $1.50 per month. In many European countries, the average tax payer will pay up to 1500 euro in tax. So, you can have 1000 such small projects. Or a number of big ones (such as a war or proper healthcare) and still some small ones.
I see your point that money eventually runs out...
But contrary to popular belief, fast internet is not only used for gaming and facebook - it can also boost the economy, make working from home more popular, educate people, etc. Hell, it may actually be worth the small price to pay... It may actually pay itself back within those 10 years, turning this into a proper investment rather than a simple government expense...
ZOMG! These are all Commies! In Soviet Russia, the government spends you!
I think it is because there are remote installations that need to be operated from a single location.
The power grid is a lot of generators (scaling from enormous powerplants to small scale wind/solar and other types of production, including stuff that can be switched on and off all the time such as gas engines).
Someone has to control the whole lot of it in order to balance power production and consumption.
I see no way that we can do that without actually connecting the whole lot to a network. It would be awesome if it was a completely independent network - but the internet is there anyway... why no use it in a secure way?
(Note: I am no expert - I just expressed my opinion, which happens to contain a lot of technical assumptions)
It's the only way to actually do much of anything about child sexual abuse.
Exactly... and I don't think that many of those old men in the Vatican use the internet.
So, what is this monitoring going to solve anyway?
First of all, RIAA is American - we're discussing the EU here. Obviously, there are similar institutions in Europe, so the remark is still relevant.
Who says that we are not going to a situation where both the government and the record industry and all kinds of other organizations will control internet logs of everyone? ISP will log it, and distribute it.
They all will find a valid reason to protect the very important interests of something really important (like "Children" or "The Economy" or "Safety").
Anyone who will object to this monitoring of the internet is obviously either a Terrorist, a Child Molester or a Communist.
(I strongly believe that you can't argue with such points, which is why the discussion should be shifted away from single problems, and should instead be about the internet or even information in general).
On a side note, this is an initiative by some members of the European parliament. They sell it to the public as a urgent thing to stop child abuse. The word privacy isn't mentioned anywhere.
This seems strange to me, making beer so strong. What are they trying to achieve with this? A 50% beer means you can only have a few measures of it before you will get sick. Where is the enjoyment? A pint of cold, crisp draught surely beats a shot of this stuff?
It's the same reason some people wait half a day, then strap themselves into a jet powered bomb on wheels to do a quarter mile really really fast.
It's not the most practical or the most comfortable way of traveling... but I guess it's just really really cool.
I can completely understand why they make this beer.
However, I would not understand why someone would drink more than a shot glass of it though. I fully agree that there are few (perhaps none at all) drinks that are better than a simple cold normal beer. And the best part of a simple cold normal beer is that you can have more than one. Yay.
It's whisky. Just because it's distilled by freezing instead of heating the principle is the same hence the term 'distilling'. Temperature differences are being used to remove water.
Distillation is a separation by difference in volatility (or vapor pressure). The more volatile component will be present in the vapor phase in a higher concentration than the other stuff when you boil the liquid.
The process here is called crystallization, and has very little to do with distillation, except that it also is used in a separation. Also, there is no temperature difference - it's just cold. The temperature of the entire barrel of beer-like-booze will gradually drop, but there is no temperature difference like in a distillation process where the temperature of the boiling liquid differs from the condensing vapors.
While you scoop out more ice, the temperature drops (as a function of alcohol content in the liquid). So, the liquid will cool down more over time... but there is no requirement to have a temperature difference unless you're afraid that the ice won't melt and go down the sink.
Whiskey is the condensed gas phase of the beer and you throw away the liquid residue.
In this process the good stuff never left the liquid phase. You throw away the ice.
Anyway, we've entered a discussion where we disagree on definitions. I'll give you the point that this may not be beer, but it certainly isn't whiskey either.
If you disagree with me on the distillation part, you can also change the text on wikipedia (types of distillation, subsection "other types", subsubsection "stuff that isn't really distillation").
Freeze distillation is an analogous method of purification using freezing instead of evaporation. It is not truly distillation, but a recrystallization where the product is the mother liquor, and does not produce products equivalent to distillation. This process is used in the production of ice beer and ice wine to increase ethanol and sugar content, respectively. It is also used to produce applejack. Unlike distillation, freeze distillation concentrates poisonous congeners rather than removing them.
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distillation#Other_types )