Point out one thing that I mentioned that would send us to the dark ages now. Point out one thing that involves conservation/efficiency that has a negative affect on our society. None of those involve forcing unready forms of power generation upon our society, they just rely on minor modifications to our consumer products.
For instance, suppose you burn 2 tons of coal each winter to run household machinery and heat. Suppose further that you can save 10% of that, and it will only cost you 40 tons of coal to manufacture and install the insulation that will accomplish it. Is it worth it?
Well, if we're just making up numbers. Suppose that it will cost $1/kWh to produce energy from coal fired plants then does it make any sense not to use solar, wind and nuclear. (FYI, it costs something like $0.04/kWh to produce energy from coal, about $0.09/kWh for nuclear, $0.15/kWh for wind and solar has anywhere between $0.25-$0.80/kWh). I can guarantee you that it does not take 40 tons of coal to manufacture one house's worth of insulation (unless you're MC Hammer from the early 90s).
You do realize that if those companies weren't given the ability to make a profit there would be two outcomes.
A) Nobody would deliver because it would be to expensive.
B) There would be tens or even hundreds of sets of electrical lines in the sky with that increased competition.
Utilities are called regulated natural monopolies for a reason. The latter part means that the most cost effective way for the service to be delivered is through one company. The first part means that the government keeps them from gouging customers. You might feel like you're being ripped off but imagine if they weren't regulated. Heating gas is pretty much an essential product with nearly 0 demand elasticity. Therefore they could charge up to the point that you could literally no longer afford to pay for it and you'd still buy.
Just because politicians and environmentalists fucked up in the UK doesn't mean that the idea is flawed, just the implementation in that area's case. Seriously, a double-paned window isn't a bad idea because an installer decides to drop and crack it while installing, it's just a shitty installer.
What if I already am? What if I take public transportation whenever possible? What if I tell that person not to leave the light on in their bathroom when they're not using the bathroom? What if I ask you to wait 5 seconds for your TV to turn on? Seriously, there are a lot of energy savings available through conservation if people would just learn to accept minor (nearly imperceptible) changes to their lives. Are a few seconds of your time today worth potentially sending future generations to the dark ages?
Tidal would require plants to grow, essentially, semi-submerged along open coast, vulnerable to things like crashing waves and migrating sand... even seaweed has trouble growing along beaches because the habitat is so turbulent and marginal.
It's called a tide pool, and those organisms seem to be doing just fine. I guess the big point to make here is that pretty much all natural sources of energy are used by some organism. Wind by the birds, solar and wind (how do you think seeds disperse) by plants, tidal by fish and plants. Hydro-carbons are decayed plants so it's simply a stored collection of other natural energy sources.
IMO it doesn't have much to do with availability of guns either- my dad talks about how he used to go hunting in the morning, throw his shotgun in the car, and then drive to school. Guns have been readily available for a long time.
What I was trying to say (now that I've reread it, quite poorly) was that you can pick up two pistols and have 20+ rounds out in under 10 seconds (even more if you have a more powerful weapon). You couldn't do that back in the day.
The four-color map was proved over 30 years ago, with computers, and still today no one has found a way to prove it by hand.
I seriously doubt that. There is nothing a computer can do without the input of a human. Whoever proved that idea with a computer had the understanding of the math to know what the equations were that governed it. The benefit of the computer is that sometimes doing the number crunching is prohibitively difficult and prone to error. This does not mean it can't be done by hand but that there is no point to do it by hand after you've got the fundamentals (I use this term lightly because this proof probably involved some impressive math) down.
Regarding the use of computers in math, they should be prohibited until you've gotten beyond a certain level of math. There is no need to use a computer until, at the earliest, vector calculus. I don't use a calculator to do basic maths (through calculus) other than to multiply numbers and take roots, etc. If you train yourself to do your math without a calculator you will strengthen the basic concepts to the level where you are capable of writing the complex programs that will solve the really difficult math.
As for the teaching of science and math without computers, I seriously beg to differ. Computers definitely make it easier but we've gotten pretty far before computers were used to do those subjects. You should learn your basic mechanics and electromagnetism without a computer so that you can actually understand the first principles. It's no good to know which matlab program to use to calculate the B and E fields around an object without understanding Maxwell's equations. If you don't really understand those principles then you won't know which questions to ask when you're systems start faulting.
Also, relativity and quantum mechanics are not the reason why we know the world is round.
I don't get why Jack is so intent on attacking video games for violence. He should be attacking them for the ample chested women in games. I mean, we all know that boobies are far worse for children than violence. It wasn't until Hot Coffee came out that people really got in an uproar about San Andreas.
But the puritans lived over a millennium later than the romans. There's a reason that we don't have humans fighting to the death in giant amphitheaters, we've become more civilized. I know this gets into moral relativism but the GP post has some validity in saying that the puritans might have enjoyed violence more so than the romans.
simply reflecting our current society where violence appears to be more prevalent than in the past?
That's the funny thing about the argument. If you look to the past you will see that we are no more violent than we were then. Half a century ago there was no uproar over two boys having a fist fight at school, it was simply "boys will be boys" now move along. Now if you punch someone in school you have to go to therapy to deal with it. I'm not condoning hitting people but back in the day violence was tolerated much more. I think the difference from back then and now is the expression of violence. There weren't guns readily available that could cause such a vast amount of carnage as there are now.
Resistive heating works well for contact heating (like your blanket) but for space heating, like you would need in a car, it just isn't that effective (something like 10% efficiency, I think). But then again we could just use blankets/something like a blanket instead of the traditional HVAC in a car and that might actually prove to be quite effective (at least for heating, not sure about cooling).
it's preferable if a car meant for day to day activities didn't practically have "I'm worth a shitload of money" printed on it.
It's also preferable if a car meant for day to day activities didn't have a 1000HP engine. This car is not something you buy for everyday activities, this is a car you buy so you can say, "I'm worth a shitload of money."
There's no reason to think that things have fundamentally changed.
Actually, there is an amazing good reason to believe things have changed. All the previous spikes in gas prices have been caused by supply shocks. This means that various oil producing conglomerates have decided they would or could not provide the amount of oil because they didn't like the cost of it. This past years price shock was caused by a demand spike that could not be met. With the rapidly growing economies of China and India (~1/3 of the world's population) there are going to be more and more demand shocks on resources that have never been seen before. I'm not upset at China or anything but the game has changed with their growth and that means that there need to be real changes in how we view our resources.
Considering if CO2 keeps heat in, shouldn't it reflect an equal amount of heat?
Nope. The wavelength of radiation entering the Earth's atmosphere is not the same as that being reflected by the Earth. Basically, the greenhouse effect allows the entering wavelength to come in but traps the reflected wavelength back to the earth.
most charging of electric vehicles would be at night
Or during the middle of the work day when everyone is recharging for their return commute. Do you know what that would do, it would take a bad problem and make it even worse. I am 100% for electric vehicles, but don't kid yourself, anything approaching a 10% adoption rate of EVs could easily crush the grid. We need a serious overhaul of means and delivery of producing electricity. Our system is dated (70 years dated to be exact) and it needs an upgrade.
Nope. Let's face it, the Big 3 have spent the past 40 years advertising that bigger is better and not to worry about fuel consumption or consumer safety. They abandoned most of their electric research in the 1990's and now they're playing a terrible game a catch-up. I'm not saying I want the American auto industry to go under but I'm not going to support them until they start making some reliable cars. Currently, if you're looking for a reliable car you look to Japan or Germany, and then Korea, then maybe you move onto the US. It's a shame but no, there is no love for Detroit because they royally screwed up and in a market economy you don't get any free love.
If you want to get down to it, all SI units are retarded, since the universe is quantum (it is). All measurements are merely inaccurate tools of convenience, and everything should be counted in universal quantums of space (Planck Length? I doubt it, unless it really is tortoises all the way down), time, etc.
To sum it up - SI is not right because it's "official". SI is WRONG for computer science. And if the universe is quantum, SI is technically wrong for everything. Calculus, too.
Okay, you go and do your designs with your special quantum system and some math other than calculus and I'll go and do my calculations with good old Newton and calculus. Let's see who gets those bridge/building/car/whatever designs done first, cheaper and just as effectively. SI units weren't chosen because they are the be all, end all of describing the universe. They were chosen for, oh God here it comes, the convenience that they provided to nearly everything in everyday life. Now if you work in a field where you should be measuring in Planks lengths then by all means, do that, but don't be trying to tell me that calculus and SI units and their prefixes have no use to everyone else.
And if you think SI is so wrong then why would you be using the same prefixes for something that is oh so right in it's binary essence. Why not just describe date as a 10-byte instead of kilobyte, or a 20-byte instead of megabyte. Ever think of that, just as easy to understand if you understand that in base two going from 10 to 20 is a factor of 1024.
According to experts 30 years ago, the was simply no way we could produce enough food for 5 billion people. Now we're doing it for 7.
By all accounts I would say that we are not, in fact, providing enough food for 7 billion people. But I could be wrong about all those starvation numbers.
I think I need a clarification. Why would anyone need a suppressor. I barely understand the reasons for someone needing a gun, but a suppressor. Do you want to be able to get the baddies out of your house without them hearing you.
Slashdot Mirror
Point out one thing that I mentioned that would send us to the dark ages now. Point out one thing that involves conservation/efficiency that has a negative affect on our society. None of those involve forcing unready forms of power generation upon our society, they just rely on minor modifications to our consumer products.
For instance, suppose you burn 2 tons of coal each winter to run household machinery and heat. Suppose further that you can save 10% of that, and it will only cost you 40 tons of coal to manufacture and install the insulation that will accomplish it. Is it worth it?
Well, if we're just making up numbers. Suppose that it will cost $1/kWh to produce energy from coal fired plants then does it make any sense not to use solar, wind and nuclear. (FYI, it costs something like $0.04/kWh to produce energy from coal, about $0.09/kWh for nuclear, $0.15/kWh for wind and solar has anywhere between $0.25-$0.80/kWh). I can guarantee you that it does not take 40 tons of coal to manufacture one house's worth of insulation (unless you're MC Hammer from the early 90s).
You do realize that if those companies weren't given the ability to make a profit there would be two outcomes.
A) Nobody would deliver because it would be to expensive.
B) There would be tens or even hundreds of sets of electrical lines in the sky with that increased competition.
Utilities are called regulated natural monopolies for a reason. The latter part means that the most cost effective way for the service to be delivered is through one company. The first part means that the government keeps them from gouging customers. You might feel like you're being ripped off but imagine if they weren't regulated. Heating gas is pretty much an essential product with nearly 0 demand elasticity. Therefore they could charge up to the point that you could literally no longer afford to pay for it and you'd still buy.
Just because politicians and environmentalists fucked up in the UK doesn't mean that the idea is flawed, just the implementation in that area's case. Seriously, a double-paned window isn't a bad idea because an installer decides to drop and crack it while installing, it's just a shitty installer.
What if I already am? What if I take public transportation whenever possible? What if I tell that person not to leave the light on in their bathroom when they're not using the bathroom? What if I ask you to wait 5 seconds for your TV to turn on? Seriously, there are a lot of energy savings available through conservation if people would just learn to accept minor (nearly imperceptible) changes to their lives. Are a few seconds of your time today worth potentially sending future generations to the dark ages?
Tidal would require plants to grow, essentially, semi-submerged along open coast, vulnerable to things like crashing waves and migrating sand... even seaweed has trouble growing along beaches because the habitat is so turbulent and marginal.
It's called a tide pool, and those organisms seem to be doing just fine. I guess the big point to make here is that pretty much all natural sources of energy are used by some organism. Wind by the birds, solar and wind (how do you think seeds disperse) by plants, tidal by fish and plants. Hydro-carbons are decayed plants so it's simply a stored collection of other natural energy sources.
IMO it doesn't have much to do with availability of guns either- my dad talks about how he used to go hunting in the morning, throw his shotgun in the car, and then drive to school. Guns have been readily available for a long time.
What I was trying to say (now that I've reread it, quite poorly) was that you can pick up two pistols and have 20+ rounds out in under 10 seconds (even more if you have a more powerful weapon). You couldn't do that back in the day.
The four-color map was proved over 30 years ago, with computers, and still today no one has found a way to prove it by hand.
I seriously doubt that. There is nothing a computer can do without the input of a human. Whoever proved that idea with a computer had the understanding of the math to know what the equations were that governed it. The benefit of the computer is that sometimes doing the number crunching is prohibitively difficult and prone to error. This does not mean it can't be done by hand but that there is no point to do it by hand after you've got the fundamentals (I use this term lightly because this proof probably involved some impressive math) down.
Regarding the use of computers in math, they should be prohibited until you've gotten beyond a certain level of math. There is no need to use a computer until, at the earliest, vector calculus. I don't use a calculator to do basic maths (through calculus) other than to multiply numbers and take roots, etc. If you train yourself to do your math without a calculator you will strengthen the basic concepts to the level where you are capable of writing the complex programs that will solve the really difficult math.
As for the teaching of science and math without computers, I seriously beg to differ. Computers definitely make it easier but we've gotten pretty far before computers were used to do those subjects. You should learn your basic mechanics and electromagnetism without a computer so that you can actually understand the first principles. It's no good to know which matlab program to use to calculate the B and E fields around an object without understanding Maxwell's equations. If you don't really understand those principles then you won't know which questions to ask when you're systems start faulting.
Also, relativity and quantum mechanics are not the reason why we know the world is round.
I don't get why Jack is so intent on attacking video games for violence. He should be attacking them for the ample chested women in games. I mean, we all know that boobies are far worse for children than violence. It wasn't until Hot Coffee came out that people really got in an uproar about San Andreas.
But the puritans lived over a millennium later than the romans. There's a reason that we don't have humans fighting to the death in giant amphitheaters, we've become more civilized. I know this gets into moral relativism but the GP post has some validity in saying that the puritans might have enjoyed violence more so than the romans.
simply reflecting our current society where violence appears to be more prevalent than in the past?
That's the funny thing about the argument. If you look to the past you will see that we are no more violent than we were then. Half a century ago there was no uproar over two boys having a fist fight at school, it was simply "boys will be boys" now move along. Now if you punch someone in school you have to go to therapy to deal with it. I'm not condoning hitting people but back in the day violence was tolerated much more. I think the difference from back then and now is the expression of violence. There weren't guns readily available that could cause such a vast amount of carnage as there are now.
Resistive heating works well for contact heating (like your blanket) but for space heating, like you would need in a car, it just isn't that effective (something like 10% efficiency, I think). But then again we could just use blankets/something like a blanket instead of the traditional HVAC in a car and that might actually prove to be quite effective (at least for heating, not sure about cooling).
ANYTHING is likely to be more efficient than resistive heating,
There, fixed that for you.
the technology is already worked out
Um, that's not entirely true. I haven't seen many hydrogen vehicles for sale recently.
it's preferable if a car meant for day to day activities didn't practically have "I'm worth a shitload of money" printed on it.
It's also preferable if a car meant for day to day activities didn't have a 1000HP engine. This car is not something you buy for everyday activities, this is a car you buy so you can say, "I'm worth a shitload of money."
There's no reason to think that things have fundamentally changed.
Actually, there is an amazing good reason to believe things have changed. All the previous spikes in gas prices have been caused by supply shocks. This means that various oil producing conglomerates have decided they would or could not provide the amount of oil because they didn't like the cost of it. This past years price shock was caused by a demand spike that could not be met. With the rapidly growing economies of China and India (~1/3 of the world's population) there are going to be more and more demand shocks on resources that have never been seen before. I'm not upset at China or anything but the game has changed with their growth and that means that there need to be real changes in how we view our resources.
The bird thing is largely a myth.
As I've said previously, There are a lot of reasons why birds die.
Considering if CO2 keeps heat in, shouldn't it reflect an equal amount of heat?
Nope. The wavelength of radiation entering the Earth's atmosphere is not the same as that being reflected by the Earth. Basically, the greenhouse effect allows the entering wavelength to come in but traps the reflected wavelength back to the earth.
My Cobalt can't handle rain very well
Really. I usually try to be polite but seriously, you need to learn to drive. It's not like Cobalts are known for their tremendous power.
most charging of electric vehicles would be at night
Or during the middle of the work day when everyone is recharging for their return commute. Do you know what that would do, it would take a bad problem and make it even worse. I am 100% for electric vehicles, but don't kid yourself, anything approaching a 10% adoption rate of EVs could easily crush the grid. We need a serious overhaul of means and delivery of producing electricity. Our system is dated (70 years dated to be exact) and it needs an upgrade.
What, no love for the Big 3?
Nope. Let's face it, the Big 3 have spent the past 40 years advertising that bigger is better and not to worry about fuel consumption or consumer safety. They abandoned most of their electric research in the 1990's and now they're playing a terrible game a catch-up. I'm not saying I want the American auto industry to go under but I'm not going to support them until they start making some reliable cars. Currently, if you're looking for a reliable car you look to Japan or Germany, and then Korea, then maybe you move onto the US. It's a shame but no, there is no love for Detroit because they royally screwed up and in a market economy you don't get any free love.
If you want to get down to it, all SI units are retarded, since the universe is quantum (it is). All measurements are merely inaccurate tools of convenience, and everything should be counted in universal quantums of space (Planck Length? I doubt it, unless it really is tortoises all the way down), time, etc.
To sum it up - SI is not right because it's "official". SI is WRONG for computer science. And if the universe is quantum, SI is technically wrong for everything. Calculus, too.
Okay, you go and do your designs with your special quantum system and some math other than calculus and I'll go and do my calculations with good old Newton and calculus. Let's see who gets those bridge/building/car/whatever designs done first, cheaper and just as effectively. SI units weren't chosen because they are the be all, end all of describing the universe. They were chosen for, oh God here it comes, the convenience that they provided to nearly everything in everyday life. Now if you work in a field where you should be measuring in Planks lengths then by all means, do that, but don't be trying to tell me that calculus and SI units and their prefixes have no use to everyone else.
And if you think SI is so wrong then why would you be using the same prefixes for something that is oh so right in it's binary essence. Why not just describe date as a 10-byte instead of kilobyte, or a 20-byte instead of megabyte. Ever think of that, just as easy to understand if you understand that in base two going from 10 to 20 is a factor of 1024.
According to experts 30 years ago, the was simply no way we could produce enough food for 5 billion people. Now we're doing it for 7.
By all accounts I would say that we are not, in fact, providing enough food for 7 billion people. But I could be wrong about all those starvation numbers.
I believe you are not allowed to publicly disclose a technology before filing for a patent if you want protection in most cases.
Nope, it's just a dangerous practice because once your technology becomes public anyone can try to get a patent in before you.
I think I need a clarification. Why would anyone need a suppressor. I barely understand the reasons for someone needing a gun, but a suppressor. Do you want to be able to get the baddies out of your house without them hearing you.