Edison's original plan worked, for the scale of electricity distribution that was around then.
The economics of power plant construction and operation (construction and operating expenses grew less quickly than plant size. Double the output for less than double the cost) drove us to the current scheme with large, centralized electricity generating plants servicing nearby metropolitan areas.
My wife's TiVo has missed recording shows after the power flips off and on again. TiVo comes back up, but the cable box stays off. So TiVo records blackness.
Now, the only UPS in the house protects TiVo and the cable box. Its surge suppressors protect the TiVo modem line, the Teevee, the VCR, and the DVD player.
As far as accomplishing "wasting money and lives in an attempt to appear competent", the current resident of the White House wins that competition hands down.
The result of Clinton's "Failed" policy was that the DPRK's nuclear program was frozen. No plutonium was produced or turned into weapons. Carrot and stick.
The result of Bush's "Successful" policy was that the DPRK's nuclear program was un-frozen. Enough plutonium was reprocessed for 6 to 10 weapons. More plutonium is being produced.
Those who claim that Clinton's policy failed or that Bush's policy succeeded are obviously pro communist dictator.
And Microsoft domintated the software industry by violating the "that doesn't quite work yet" part of rule 1. Windows 1 and 2 clearly were products that didn't quite work yet. Windows NT 3.0 and 3.1 didn't quite work yet.
Rule #2 could also be stated "follow the trail that someone else blazes". Microsoft is very good at that. Microsoft had plenty of mail servers to copy when it was creating Exchange. They started by implementing other people's computer languages. They purchased a clone of CP/M to sell as DOS. They copied the Macintosh when creating Windows. They copied VisiCalc when making MultiPlan, and MacWrite when making Microsoft Word.
Rule #3 is good, but it's not at all surprising. What kind of business success would one have shipping a non-functional product, or shipping a functional product and then not refining it?
Economics holds, as a tentative conculsion, that people react to price signals.
Observations of human economic interactions back up this conclusion.
It isn't new techonolgies that will reduce usage of oil when the price goes up, it is the individual's self interest.
It is much harder to predict the extent to which production will decline. The extent to which the price will rise. The extent to which the rising price of oil slows down overall economic activity, relieving some of the pressure lifting the price of oil. These are all the known unknowns (to borrow from Rumsfeld) that make predicting the exact future very, very hard.
It's not just crazy talk; it's basic supply and demand. Price is the critical balancing factor.
Supply and Demand are not fixed numbers; they are functions of price. Curves. At a low price, supply is low and demand is high. At a high price, supply is high and demand is low. Somewhere in the middle, the curves cross. There is a balance.
The supply curve for oil is moving out, while the demand curve is moving up. The world cannot produce as much oil as it used to at a given price, while the consumers of the world want more oil today (at yesterday's price) than they bought yesterday. So the supply equals demand intersection is going to occur at a higher price. Whether total quantities increase or not depends on the details.
Hubbert predicted when U.S. Oil production would peak. He looked 15 or so years into the future, and reality has accorded to his vision. Technological innovation and the ebb and flow of the global economy did not "totally change the entire equation" at all.
More recent geologists have done the same thing for oil on a global basis. Their predictions are that peak oil is now. Technological innovation and the ebb and flow of the global economy are unlikely to "totally change the entire equation". Oil will become much more expensive, and fairly quickly. The economy will react to expensive oil by discouraging its use, and increasing the incentives to produce alternatives. Farmers may realize that it just isn't economical to use as much fertilizer and pesticides as they do today. Seed drills instead of plows for planting.
If I had any spare money, I'd bet it on another Recession in the US before Shrub leaves office. And $100/bbl oil by election day (first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, i.e. week of Nov 2-8), 2008.
CIA World Fact Book: United Kingdom Area:
total: 244,820 sq km
land: 241,590 sq km
water: 3,230 sq km
note: includes Rockall and Shetland Islands Area - comparative:
slightly smaller than Oregon
241,590 sq km = 93,280 sq mi.
The 11th largest US state is Michigan, with 96,810 sq mi. The 12th largest US state is Minnesota, with 86,943 sq mi. So the UK is larger than 39 of the 50 US states.
Population-wise, the UK's 60,609,153 (July, 2006 est) is more than the US's two most populous states combined, California (34 million) and Texas (21 million).
AJAX is a better technology for creating interactive web sites than Java EE's servlet post/get and response model. It's not just marketing buzz, it's real.
I'm getting paid to develop a web site. In Java EE. We're using Ajax when it makes sense.
1,000,000 rpm = 16,667 cycles/second. Within hearing range for young adult humans. Late middle-aged male engineers might not be able to hear this noise, but many others can.
1,000,000 rpm = 16,666 & 2/3rds revolutions per cycle. So the whine will bother teenagers, not just dogs. It's at a frequency just a bit above the 15.7 kHz whine of a (US) television set. About 10 years ago that scream stopped annoying me...
I'm a non-smoker. Shortly after I started dating the woman who is now my wife, I told her that I would have a problem with the relationship if she kept on smoking. Before I met her for our third date, she smoked her last cigarette. It was a while after that that she told me she quit... better for both of us. That was six years ago.
Good thing, too. Her heart surgery was two years ago. Had she kept on smoking, it might have been a heart attack...
The problem with trying to understand why the Republican leadership in the Bush White House launched the Invasion of Iraq is that they have repudiated their own stated reasons for the war. They said it was a war to disarm Iraq of its nuclear weapons. Then Cheney says that even knowing what we know now -- that Iraq had no nuclear program, no chemical weapons, and no biological weapons, he still would have invaded Iraq. Launched a war in violation of the charter of the U.N.
That's why it was so important to stop the inspections and start the war in 2003, as the inspectors would have discovered that there were no banned weapons, that Iraq was not violating UN resolutions, that there was no loin-cloth of excuse to cover the naked aggression of the United States.
Exactly. Auto Insurance companies had to do this calculus a while back. Someone files a claim for pain and suffering after an accident. Settle for $20,000 or litigate for $50,000 plus more if they lose. By choosing to settle, they stimulated a whole bunch more frivolous suits. So they have to fight.
It's harder to quantify how much is saved by fighting one lawsuit so you don't have to settle 10 or 20 or 50 others, as a critic of ones argument can claim that the number is pulled out of a bodily oriface.
Slashdot Mirror
Edison's original plan worked, for the scale of electricity distribution that was around then.
The economics of power plant construction and operation (construction and operating expenses grew less quickly than plant size. Double the output for less than double the cost) drove us to the current scheme with large, centralized electricity generating plants servicing nearby metropolitan areas.
Scientific American has equations? I hadn't noticed...
My wife's TiVo has missed recording shows after the power flips off and on again. TiVo comes back up, but the cable box stays off. So TiVo records blackness.
Now, the only UPS in the house protects TiVo and the cable box. Its surge suppressors protect the TiVo modem line, the Teevee, the VCR, and the DVD player.
What color is the sky on your planet?
As far as accomplishing "wasting money and lives in an attempt to appear competent", the current resident of the White House wins that competition hands down.
The result of Clinton's "Failed" policy was that the DPRK's nuclear program was frozen. No plutonium was produced or turned into weapons. Carrot and stick.
The result of Bush's "Successful" policy was that the DPRK's nuclear program was un-frozen. Enough plutonium was reprocessed for 6 to 10 weapons. More plutonium is being produced.
Those who claim that Clinton's policy failed or that Bush's policy succeeded are obviously pro communist dictator.
And Microsoft domintated the software industry by violating the "that doesn't quite work yet" part of rule 1. Windows 1 and 2 clearly were products that didn't quite work yet. Windows NT 3.0 and 3.1 didn't quite work yet.
Rule #2 could also be stated "follow the trail that someone else blazes". Microsoft is very good at that. Microsoft had plenty of mail servers to copy when it was creating Exchange. They started by implementing other people's computer languages. They purchased a clone of CP/M to sell as DOS. They copied the Macintosh when creating Windows. They copied VisiCalc when making MultiPlan, and MacWrite when making Microsoft Word.
Rule #3 is good, but it's not at all surprising. What kind of business success would one have shipping a non-functional product, or shipping a functional product and then not refining it?
Squalish nails it. Karma to him.
Economics holds, as a tentative conculsion, that people react to price signals.
Observations of human economic interactions back up this conclusion.
It isn't new techonolgies that will reduce usage of oil when the price goes up, it is the individual's self interest.
It is much harder to predict the extent to which production will decline. The extent to which the price will rise. The extent to which the rising price of oil slows down overall economic activity, relieving some of the pressure lifting the price of oil. These are all the known unknowns (to borrow from Rumsfeld) that make predicting the exact future very, very hard.
Saying "Oil production will peak in 2007" means that current rates of production will not continue.
It's not just crazy talk; it's basic supply and demand. Price is the critical balancing factor.
Supply and Demand are not fixed numbers; they are functions of price. Curves. At a low price, supply is low and demand is high. At a high price, supply is high and demand is low. Somewhere in the middle, the curves cross. There is a balance.
The supply curve for oil is moving out, while the demand curve is moving up. The world cannot produce as much oil as it used to at a given price, while the consumers of the world want more oil today (at yesterday's price) than they bought yesterday. So the supply equals demand intersection is going to occur at a higher price. Whether total quantities increase or not depends on the details.
Hubbert predicted when U.S. Oil production would peak. He looked 15 or so years into the future, and reality has accorded to his vision. Technological innovation and the ebb and flow of the global economy did not "totally change the entire equation" at all.
More recent geologists have done the same thing for oil on a global basis. Their predictions are that peak oil is now. Technological innovation and the ebb and flow of the global economy are unlikely to "totally change the entire equation". Oil will become much more expensive, and fairly quickly. The economy will react to expensive oil by discouraging its use, and increasing the incentives to produce alternatives. Farmers may realize that it just isn't economical to use as much fertilizer and pesticides as they do today. Seed drills instead of plows for planting.
If I had any spare money, I'd bet it on another Recession in the US before Shrub leaves office. And $100/bbl oil by election day (first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, i.e. week of Nov 2-8), 2008.
Cleveland has CWRU (my alma mater), and John Carroll. And Cleveland State and Cuyahoga Community College.
Substitute 38 for 39. The UK is larger than 38 of the 50 US States.
Sigh.
CIA World Fact Book: United Kingdom
Area:
total: 244,820 sq km
land: 241,590 sq km
water: 3,230 sq km
note: includes Rockall and Shetland Islands
Area - comparative:
slightly smaller than Oregon
241,590 sq km = 93,280 sq mi.
The 11th largest US state is Michigan, with 96,810 sq mi. The 12th largest US state is Minnesota, with 86,943 sq mi. So the UK is larger than 39 of the 50 US states.
Population-wise, the UK's 60,609,153 (July, 2006 est) is more than the US's two most populous states combined, California (34 million) and Texas (21 million).
AJAX is a better technology for creating interactive web sites than Java EE's servlet post/get and response model. It's not just marketing buzz, it's real.
I'm getting paid to develop a web site. In Java EE. We're using Ajax when it makes sense.
Is it really that hard to divide by 60?
1,000,000 rpm = 16,667 cycles/second. Within hearing range for young adult humans. Late middle-aged male engineers might not be able to hear this noise, but many others can.
I'm too lazy to calculate the hot temperature that pairs with a cool temperature of 20 degrees C and a 95% efficiency rating.
Oh, I'm such a nerd...
scribble, calculate...
That can't be right!
google...
Ahhh, that's it. 5,860 degrees K. Or 5,587 degrees C. Around Surface-of-the-sun temperature.
I don't think the inside of their turbine is that hot. And if it's not, they can't run the turbine at 95% efficiency.
I bet they meant that the power electronics are 95% efficient in converting mechanical output of the turbine to electricity.
1,000,000 rpm = 16,666 & 2/3rds revolutions per cycle. So the whine will bother teenagers, not just dogs. It's at a frequency just a bit above the 15.7 kHz whine of a (US) television set. About 10 years ago that scream stopped annoying me...
Apple _bought_ the rights to use whatever technology they saw on Xerox's Alto and Star systems.
MS stole it. Not the first time. Not the last.
So much of that comes from eastern Europe or Russia these days...
According to the CIA World Fact Book, when measured by purchasing power parity, China is already the second largest economy in the world.
So it's not a matter of decades. In a decade or two (shorter if the US keeps electing Republicans), China will become the world's largest economy.
And, speaking of the World Fact Book, I have to put this link in. It explains a lot about the run-up to the Iraq war.
http://www.irregularwebcomic.net/1281.html/
The Wright Brothers took the revenues from a single small business in a competitive field, and used that to fund their aeronautical adventure.
They never targeted their airplane business at very expensive, short, rides.
I'm a non-smoker. Shortly after I started dating the woman who is now my wife, I told her that I would have a problem with the relationship if she kept on smoking. Before I met her for our third date, she smoked her last cigarette. It was a while after that that she told me she quit... better for both of us. That was six years ago.
Good thing, too. Her heart surgery was two years ago. Had she kept on smoking, it might have been a heart attack...
The problem with trying to understand why the Republican leadership in the Bush White House launched the Invasion of Iraq is that they have repudiated their own stated reasons for the war. They said it was a war to disarm Iraq of its nuclear weapons. Then Cheney says that even knowing what we know now -- that Iraq had no nuclear program, no chemical weapons, and no biological weapons, he still would have invaded Iraq. Launched a war in violation of the charter of the U.N.
That's why it was so important to stop the inspections and start the war in 2003, as the inspectors would have discovered that there were no banned weapons, that Iraq was not violating UN resolutions, that there was no loin-cloth of excuse to cover the naked aggression of the United States.
Exactly. Auto Insurance companies had to do this calculus a while back. Someone files a claim for pain and suffering after an accident. Settle for $20,000 or litigate for $50,000 plus more if they lose. By choosing to settle, they stimulated a whole bunch more frivolous suits. So they have to fight.
It's harder to quantify how much is saved by fighting one lawsuit so you don't have to settle 10 or 20 or 50 others, as a critic of ones argument can claim that the number is pulled out of a bodily oriface.