I agree with your post but there is an interesting detail there worth discussing...
"your food from a local Farmer's Market rather than the mega-mart to avoid 'fresh' food from Argentina or some other place 4,000 miles away in refrigerated containers."
It's possibe for the "carbon footprint" of your goods from local producers to be worse than the alternative.
Many small producers transporting many small quantities of produce shortish distances can add up to more carbon per kilo of produce emmited.
Hypothetical example with silly numbers, someone more informed than me might be able to do better....
100kg of fruit is transported a long way in a single efficient vehicle emiting 100kg of CO2.
That's 1kg of C02 per kg of fruit.
10 farmers transport 10kg of fruit each a short way in small but mostly empty possibly inefficient vans and emit 11kg of CO2 each in the process. That's 1.1kg of CO2 per kg of fruit.
I'm not saying this is really what happens, only that it's possible and that the distance travelled by our goods isn't really the root problem.
(I was banned for 20 days on a VERY stupid and pedantic Aussie forum for arguing the same thing with someone who insisted 7 is faster than XP)
NO VERSION OF WINDOWS HAS EVER BEEN FASTER THAN THE PREVIOUS ONE, IT'S SIMPLY FUCKING BULLSHIT.
PERIOD!
The extensions are wonderful aren't they? But have you ever looked into coding an extension for FF? It's horrid horrid stuff....and then you'd be constantly having to change it to keep it up to date with the latest version since they constantly break backward compatibility.
I've written plugins for IE and an extension for Firefox. Gimmie Firefox extensions any time. The upgrade from 2.x to 3.x wasn't too bad at all.
Sadly, Opera widgets can't modify page html so it's of limited use. Safari has the most annoying APi/extention system IMO.
This post comes to you via Opera web browser on a Mac.
We have learned a lot from experience about how to handle some of the ways we fool ourselves. One example: Millikan measured the charge on an electron by an experiment with falling oil drops, and got an answer which we now know not to be quite right. It's a little bit off because he had the incorrect value for the viscosity of air. It's interesting to look at the history of measurements of the charge of an electron, after Millikan. If you plot them as a function of time, you find that one is a little bit bigger than Millikan's, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, until finally they settle down to a number which is higher.
Why didn't they discover the new number was higher right away? It's a thing that scientists are ashamed of - this history - because it's apparent that people did things like this: When they got a number that was too high above Millikan's, they thought something must be wrong - and they would look for and find a reason why something might be wrong. When they got a number close to Millikan's value they didn't look so hard. And so they eliminated the numbers that were too far off, and did other things like that. We've learned those tricks nowadays, and now we don't have that kind of a disease.
, but the thought of something like MatLab, number-crunching or large spreadsheets using Javascript makes me cringe
Why? It's perfectly feasable already. I doubt the thought of remotely running apps on a high spec machine but running the GUI on a local X server makes you cringe.
Myth: Wind farms are noisy
Fact: The evolution of wind farm technology over the past decade has rendered mechanical noise from turbines almost undetectable with the main sound being the aerodynamic swoosh of the blades passing the tower. There are strict guidelines on wind turbines and noise emissions to ensure the protection of residential amenity. These are contained in the scientifically informed ETSU Working Group guidelines 199617 and must be followed by wind farm developers, as referenced in national planning policy for renewables18. The best advice for any doubter is to go and hear for yourself!
"Actually Limerick's at least as much of a poverty-stricken dump as many places in Poland"
I think you are mistaken there. Sure there are parts of Limerick that aren't so nice (what city doesn't have that?) but on the whole it's a long way from being a dump or for that matter "poverty-stricken". Irish GNP per captia is about US$35000 where Poland is about half that.
The old stereotypes of Limerick are well out of step with reality.
Slashdot Mirror
If I were to get pulled over, and knew I was over the now ridiculously LOW limit of .08...
That's not a "ridiculously LOW" limit. Indeed, for most of the world it's _over_ the limit.
US or Imperial Gallons?
Use nice http://linux.die.net/man/1/nice
and/or taskset http://linux.die.net/man/1/taskset
I'm sure more desktop user friendly concepts or utilities will follow as soon as it becomes an issue for less technical users.
Pineapples grow on the ground.
http://www.pineapplenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/pineapple-plant-grow-at-home.jpg
"your food from a local Farmer's Market rather than the mega-mart to avoid 'fresh' food from Argentina or some other place 4,000 miles away in refrigerated containers."
It's possibe for the "carbon footprint" of your goods from local producers to be worse than the alternative. Many small producers transporting many small quantities of produce shortish distances can add up to more carbon per kilo of produce emmited.
Hypothetical example with silly numbers, someone more informed than me might be able to do better....
100kg of fruit is transported a long way in a single efficient vehicle emiting 100kg of CO2. That's 1kg of C02 per kg of fruit.
10 farmers transport 10kg of fruit each a short way in small but mostly empty possibly inefficient vans and emit 11kg of CO2 each in the process. That's 1.1kg of CO2 per kg of fruit.
I'm not saying this is really what happens, only that it's possible and that the distance travelled by our goods isn't really the root problem.
(I was banned for 20 days on a VERY stupid and pedantic Aussie forum for arguing the same thing with someone who insisted 7 is faster than XP) NO VERSION OF WINDOWS HAS EVER BEEN FASTER THAN THE PREVIOUS ONE, IT'S SIMPLY FUCKING BULLSHIT. PERIOD!
Maybe you shouldn't be so AbRASiVE
Why the hell is this insightful?
It's a meaningless anecdote. In my experience the opposite is true but it's not insightful to point that out.
Sorry.... but as a Slashdot discussion grows longer, the probability of a complaint about moderation approaches 1.
Problem? The development tools aren't available and research is only starting.
Nonsense. Here are a few couple of portable tools and libraries that will solve many developers problems.
http://www.threadingbuildingblocks.org/ (c++)
http://developers.sun.com/sunstudio/downloads/ssx/tha/tha_getting_started.html
Research is mature and ongoing.
Education, however, is only starting to reach the mainstream.
The extensions are wonderful aren't they? But have you ever looked into coding an extension for FF? It's horrid horrid stuff....and then you'd be constantly having to change it to keep it up to date with the latest version since they constantly break backward compatibility.
I've written plugins for IE and an extension for Firefox. Gimmie Firefox extensions any time. The upgrade from 2.x to 3.x wasn't too bad at all.
Sadly, Opera widgets can't modify page html so it's of limited use. Safari has the most annoying APi/extention system IMO.
This post comes to you via Opera web browser on a Mac.
We have learned a lot from experience about how to handle some of the ways we fool ourselves. One example: Millikan measured the charge on an electron by an experiment with falling oil drops, and got an answer which we now know not to be quite right. It's a little bit off because he had the incorrect value for the viscosity of air. It's interesting to look at the history of measurements of the charge of an electron, after Millikan. If you plot them as a function of time, you find that one is a little bit bigger than Millikan's, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, and the next one's a little bit bigger than that, until finally they settle down to a number which is higher. Why didn't they discover the new number was higher right away? It's a thing that scientists are ashamed of - this history - because it's apparent that people did things like this: When they got a number that was too high above Millikan's, they thought something must be wrong - and they would look for and find a reason why something might be wrong. When they got a number close to Millikan's value they didn't look so hard. And so they eliminated the numbers that were too far off, and did other things like that. We've learned those tricks nowadays, and now we don't have that kind of a disease.
, but the thought of something like MatLab, number-crunching or large spreadsheets using Javascript makes me cringe
Why? It's perfectly feasable already. I doubt the thought of remotely running apps on a high spec machine but running the GUI on a local X server makes you cringe.
I have a crane that runs on gravity!
(as they can be quite loud)
From http://www.bwea.com/energy/myths.html
Myth: Wind farms are noisy Fact: The evolution of wind farm technology over the past decade has rendered mechanical noise from turbines almost undetectable with the main sound being the aerodynamic swoosh of the blades passing the tower. There are strict guidelines on wind turbines and noise emissions to ensure the protection of residential amenity. These are contained in the scientifically informed ETSU Working Group guidelines 199617 and must be followed by wind farm developers, as referenced in national planning policy for renewables18. The best advice for any doubter is to go and hear for yourself!
Brings new meaning to RTFA and Slashvertizement!
http://www.techfresh.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/02/2-26-08-usb-brick.jpg
*confused*
Almost, you merely have to be right too.
You have to give your index finger prints upon arrival in Japan now.
One of the weakest elements of the OSX GUI, in my experience is the dock.
And now we'll be forced to use it in Windows too.
Damn
"Actually Limerick's at least as much of a poverty-stricken dump as many places in Poland"
I think you are mistaken there. Sure there are parts of Limerick that aren't so nice (what city doesn't have that?) but on the whole it's a long way from being a dump or for that matter "poverty-stricken". Irish GNP per captia is about US$35000 where Poland is about half that.
The old stereotypes of Limerick are well out of step with reality.
Better yet, just accuse those who supported the idea.
If you know that you're doing nothing wrong you should most definitely stand up for your right to do it.
How do you "Post Anonymously" in real life?
Which Chinese language?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_language#Spoken_Chinese
No idea how to do it but I'm seeing a pattern in these arguments.
nothing - repeat nothing - comes remotely close to matching the energy density AND cost of fossil fuels.
Short term costs, yeah. But the long term costs are potentially very expensive.
What are you mad!? I'm in Australia. I'd get beaten with a dingo's kidney if I mentioned him on a Tuesday!
Maybe they will though. Freeing your code can be the software equivalent of an economic stimulus package.