Paper, plastics, and glass will decay if they are not recycled, so it makes good sense to do them right away. But metals are a different issue.
Plastic won't decay for the next millennium. Glass, to my knowledge, doesn't really decay either, and if it does, it just gets ground up to sand again. Paper certainly decays, but it may be less resource-intensive to plant and cut down trees than to recycle used paper...
Metals, however, certainly do decay. Rust, oxidization, etc., etc.
It struck me that we might wish to consider simply putting them in a dump for future use. The reason is that somewhere down the road, a number of metals will be very expensive. One example is copper. A number of mines will be used up (much sooner rather than later).
The more copper is recycled now, the longer into the future it will be before it becomes scarce. Locking it all up, unused, will only serve to hasten the problem of scarcity. Sure, maybe 50 years from now we'll have better extraction techniques, that can get 10% more of the copper out of the used material, but getting the other 90% recycled immediately is much more important, and the last 10% isn't going anywhere, should it be needed that badly...
Not a Chinese story, but an Indian one.;-) IIRC, there was PBS/Frontline type of special not too long on the subject.
You probably mean 60 Minutes... "The Shipbreakers" by Michael Gavshon aired on 2006/Nov/05.
The supertanker dismantling was featured, but so was a program run by an Indian scientist of some sort that involved the disassembly and salvage of computers and computer parts.
That, however, was not in the program, and I don't remember it anything quite like it, so it's unlikely whatever you're remembering aired on 60 Minutes, Frontline, or NOVA in the past 4 years.
I don't see why this cannot be a cheap, reliable and reusable source of energy for it.
The supply of electricity is fixed. When more aluminum is needed, new dams aren't going to spring-up on their own.
The investment to build a dam is huge, and there is limited flowing water on this planet that is practical for powering a dam, and we've harnessed the significant majority of it already.
Even with the somewhat inexpensive electricity from dams, it's still not cheap enough to bring aluminum down to the level necessary.
Iceland, with it's extensive and extremely cheap geothermal electricity is an even better option, but there's limited expansion possible, and the electricity still isn't cheap enough to lower the price of aluminum on the world market.
If you had that cheap electricity, you'd just make it directly into hydrogen, sell it to residential customers or other industrial uses, not lose extra energy to convert it to aluminum and transport the aluminum around the country.
Hydrogen cars are junk science. Sorry folks, but hydrogen takes MORE energy to make than you get back.
Name one situation, ANYWHERE, that you get more energy out, than was put in. That would be called PERPETUAL MOTION or perhaps COLD FUSION.
The fact that hydrogen doesn't violates all known laws of the universe is a good thing, IMHO.
And Hydrogen is energy poor.
No, it certainly isn't.
Burning gas is cheaper, cleaner and more efficent in a hummer or any SUV.
Gasoline is currently cheaper, no question, but it's going up all the time, and the idea is that developing better and newer methods of hydrogen production will lower prices.
Internal combustion sure as hell isn't anywhere near as efficient as a hydrogen fuel cell.
I just changed ink in my printer and it seemed a little bit of a hassle though less so than fueling my car.
I really don't see your point.
Changing the ink in your printer doesn't involve removing 300 pounds of aluminum oxide, and replacing it with (fresh) aluminum alloy, as well as water.
Well, if you're simply going to say "No, I'm not interested"... there's not much point, is there?
Blanket refusing to accept alternatives pretty well ends any conversation. You could say the same about Linux as a whole if you wanted to. It would be any more rational, but you could.
I can walk into Wal-mart/Best Buy/Circuit City/etc right now and practically guarantee that I will not find one that was designed to run under Linux.
Unlikely. Anything from ID, and anything based on one of ID's engines.
And even with that, it's quite stupid to talk about software in brick and mortar stores. You aren't likely to find OpenOffice or Firefox in Wal-Mart stores either, but they're still two incredibly popular pieces of software. The software world is changing, and Linux has been at the forefront. With people getting their music online, whether legally or illegally, it's very clear people are willing to embrace online distribution, especially when they're getting something for free, which is the case with most Linux software.
The majority of Linux games aren't commercial, but derivitives, or otherwise free open source efforts, which often produce quite good products. And should Linux gain even a little popularity, yes, you'll see game developers developing ports using Wine, in the same way Corel did, and only natively writing/optimizing the performance-critical parts. In the mean time, Wine is only a stop-gap measure, and certainly not important to the capability of Linux gaming.
If I search online, every game for Linux I see out there is dated.
You're not very good at searching. Not my problem, or Linux's.
Games, like many other things are designed to grab and keep your attention for a short period of time.
Not even remotely true. 100 years from now you'll see clones of pac-man and Tetris doing quite well in the market. Mame and other emulators seem to be incredibly popular, despite the fact that all the games it supports are several years old. And even more, small arcades all over the country have games that are more than a DECADE old, still making plenty of money. Street Fighter 2, Mortal Kombat, and Cruisin' USA come to mind immediately, though there are hundreds of others.
Incidentally, the idea that games are a killer app for an operating system is ludicrous in itself. Apple has plenty of desktop market share, with far, far fewer games than Linux supports. Millions upon millions of videogame consoles are being sold, which makes a lot of people who really aren't using their PCs for much gaming at all. Plenty of PCs more than a couple years old are still in-use, and haven't been upgraded to play the latest and greatest games released this year...
I could go on, but if you haven't got the point by now, I don't think you ever will...
Now I suppose it's possible everything got resolved in the last year, but I kind of doubt it.
No, everything worked perfectly SEVERAL years ago.
You simply didn't bother to tell the system what to do when it got the ACPI notification that the lid was closed, or some other button was pushed. Adding two lines to a config file and my laptop works exactly as it should. Perhaps some distro GUI config tool can be used instead.
Windows doesn't magically do the right thing, either. Usually it's just that a driver CD contains the proper config options. Obviously, any company providing Linux on it's Laptops would pre-configure Linux the same way.
The problem is, you're comparing pre-installed Windows with user-installed (and un-configured) Linux.
Many games run fine. The fact that people will have to stick to Linux-compatible games instead of Windows-based games is not a serious limitation for 99% of people. Just as Linux users may use OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office, there are numerous games for Linux that are mostly equivalent to their Windows counterparts.
Because it's so easy to install drivers for ATI and Nvidia video cards?
It sure is! They come installed with any X11 distro.
If you want 3D/OpenGL support, then usually you need to visit the company website (like any Windows drivers), and type a couple commands they tell you to. Not trivial, but quite easy just following their directions verbatim, and a one-time hassle.
If that's the best complaint you've got, I'd say Linux must be ready for the masses.
Because it's easy to play HD-DVD?
...because HD-DVD is the real killer-app on PCs... Huh?
Kind of shows the pointlessness of 2 Letter country code TLD's, if major corporations get them, and the US doesn't use the.us domain.
Tiny countries get money out of it. Large corporations get "clever" and unique new domain names to use. What's the problem?.us is certainly a strange case, that hasn't entirely been worked out... Other countries put universities, government, etc. basically everything under their country TLD, but the US has.edu.mil and really,.com as well. It's only non-federal government sites, non-university schools, etc. that use it. So, it actually has quite a bit of use, but it's very localized, and not to many globally-significant high-traffic sites. It's not as widely used as other large country TLDs, and they only fairly recently allowed free-form, commercial registration of them.
Sharing copyrighted material is a legal matter, it's not like debating the ethics of euthanasia.
You could say euthanasia is just a legal matter, as well. Not like debating the merits of the current copyright system...
Also, since the PirateBay is outside the US, it's really NOT a legal matter. More than copyright, I suspect they were talking about censorship for violence, sex, or other offensive material.
I'd personally think that doing something that actually matters to us beyond on an emotional level would be a nicer thing to do, such as helping fund e.g. Alzheimer research in his honor.
What you're advocating is the old "Isn't there anything more important?" logical fallacy.
We should, therefore, stop all human activity that doesn't directly involve keeping people alive and basically healthy. Which, incidentally, means artists and specifically actors like Mr. Doohan would be out of work, and a complete unknown.
Doing the "emotional" stuff is actually quite important. What's the point of living 150 years with no art, no entertainment, nothing fun or enjoyable at all?
I like using ClamAV on mail servers, but for general antivirus, it doesn't do anything automatic very well, so it's better for diagnostic when fixing some Windows boxen.
ClamWin doesn't do on-access scanning, but that's really not the problem... There are 3rd party add-ons like WinPooch that can add that, but it's overkill.
Scanning files when they are downloaded, along with a weekly full-scan, would be more than enough protection for just about everybody. Unfortunately, the problem is ClamWin and ClamAV/win32's terrible performance. It takes about 4X longer than any native Win32 antivirus scanner, and all while using up significantly more RAM, and far more CPU time.
Until some dramatic performance improvements happen, free.grisoft.com and freeav.com are available.
Perhaps it would be better to re-write the scanner completely for win32, and merely use the clamav virus signature database...
Fiber-optic is a non-starter. It has to be carefully routed, as any even remotely sharp-bends will render it useless. In just about any media cabinet, that's exactly what you'll see. You'd need some major wire management systems to prevent that kind of pulling 90 degree turns, through the nearest hole.
HDMI/DVI cables are very simple, and very cheap. Figure about $1/foot. It's cheaper than any fiber-optic cables +connectors you'll find. Of course there will always be stores that will rip you off every way they can. But switching to fiber optic wouldn't change that. If anything, it would make matters worse, since there's fewer manufacturers of fiber vs copper, and easier to monopolize the market.
Setting a definition for broadband will reduce misleading "broadband" offers from cable and dsl companies. Either they raise their data rates or they have to call it something else.
Nope. They'll just have "DSL!" "DSL!" all over the place, and nobody will notice they didn't mention that it uses broadband signaling methods.
If you required them to LIST THE ACTUAL SPEED, you might have something.
Take the resulting ICE, scale it down another 20%, and add a hybrid system to beef it back up... and suddenly you've got an equivalent car that's more fuel efficient again.
In city driving, that would be okay, though it would allow people to be more of a jackrabbit driver at the expense of more gasoline consumption.
On the freeways, however, I can't imagine it would still be able to sustain 75MPH, with a 52HP engine. Let alone in the worst case... on an extended 5% incline (see: I-40w across Texas), into 30MPH winds, with 60MPH gusts, etc. The electric motor and batteries can't help, so they become purely a liability.
The (equally light and tiny) Geo Metro was in the same boat. It had a 55HP engine, and really couldn't exceed about 60MPH. Incidentally, it was also rated at 66/52 MPG with 15+ year-old vehicle tech, and certainly without an electric motor, low rolling-resistance tires, a battery pack, etc.
Firefox was only leaner than Mozilla back when it was called Phoenix and had only the bare minimum UI necessary to be a web browser.
I did several benchmarks at the time, and even way back then it was only nominally faster or lighter on RAM. The myth of Firefox being lean and fast is complete marketing.
If Mozilla had just made a theme that blended in to the OS (Classic doesn't do a good enough job of it) and put a link on the download page to an installer that only had the browser included, there never would have been a need for Firefox.
IMHO, Firefox has only ever had two things going for it beyond Mozilla and Seamonkey... More customizable interface, and per-user extensions/Add-ons. And that's traded-off in things like a horrible user-preferences page that's only getting worse with time, lack of an editor, etc., etc.
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Plastic won't decay for the next millennium. Glass, to my knowledge, doesn't really decay either, and if it does, it just gets ground up to sand again. Paper certainly decays, but it may be less resource-intensive to plant and cut down trees than to recycle used paper...
Metals, however, certainly do decay. Rust, oxidization, etc., etc.
The more copper is recycled now, the longer into the future it will be before it becomes scarce. Locking it all up, unused, will only serve to hasten the problem of scarcity. Sure, maybe 50 years from now we'll have better extraction techniques, that can get 10% more of the copper out of the used material, but getting the other 90% recycled immediately is much more important, and the last 10% isn't going anywhere, should it be needed that badly...
You probably mean 60 Minutes... "The Shipbreakers" by Michael Gavshon aired on 2006/Nov/05.
That, however, was not in the program, and I don't remember it anything quite like it, so it's unlikely whatever you're remembering aired on 60 Minutes, Frontline, or NOVA in the past 4 years.
The supply of electricity is fixed. When more aluminum is needed, new dams aren't going to spring-up on their own.
The investment to build a dam is huge, and there is limited flowing water on this planet that is practical for powering a dam, and we've harnessed the significant majority of it already.
Even with the somewhat inexpensive electricity from dams, it's still not cheap enough to bring aluminum down to the level necessary.
Iceland, with it's extensive and extremely cheap geothermal electricity is an even better option, but there's limited expansion possible, and the electricity still isn't cheap enough to lower the price of aluminum on the world market.
If you had that cheap electricity, you'd just make it directly into hydrogen, sell it to residential customers or other industrial uses, not lose extra energy to convert it to aluminum and transport the aluminum around the country.
Name one situation, ANYWHERE, that you get more energy out, than was put in. That would be called PERPETUAL MOTION or perhaps COLD FUSION.
The fact that hydrogen doesn't violates all known laws of the universe is a good thing, IMHO.
No, it certainly isn't.
Gasoline is currently cheaper, no question, but it's going up all the time, and the idea is that developing better and newer methods of hydrogen production will lower prices.
Internal combustion sure as hell isn't anywhere near as efficient as a hydrogen fuel cell.
I really don't see your point.
Changing the ink in your printer doesn't involve removing 300 pounds of aluminum oxide, and replacing it with (fresh) aluminum alloy, as well as water.
Well, if you're simply going to say "No, I'm not interested"... there's not much point, is there?
Blanket refusing to accept alternatives pretty well ends any conversation. You could say the same about Linux as a whole if you wanted to. It would be any more rational, but you could.
Unlikely. Anything from ID, and anything based on one of ID's engines.
And even with that, it's quite stupid to talk about software in brick and mortar stores. You aren't likely to find OpenOffice or Firefox in Wal-Mart stores either, but they're still two incredibly popular pieces of software. The software world is changing, and Linux has been at the forefront. With people getting their music online, whether legally or illegally, it's very clear people are willing to embrace online distribution, especially when they're getting something for free, which is the case with most Linux software.
The majority of Linux games aren't commercial, but derivitives, or otherwise free open source efforts, which often produce quite good products. And should Linux gain even a little popularity, yes, you'll see game developers developing ports using Wine, in the same way Corel did, and only natively writing/optimizing the performance-critical parts. In the mean time, Wine is only a stop-gap measure, and certainly not important to the capability of Linux gaming.
You're not very good at searching. Not my problem, or Linux's.
Not even remotely true. 100 years from now you'll see clones of pac-man and Tetris doing quite well in the market. Mame and other emulators seem to be incredibly popular, despite the fact that all the games it supports are several years old. And even more, small arcades all over the country have games that are more than a DECADE old, still making plenty of money. Street Fighter 2, Mortal Kombat, and Cruisin' USA come to mind immediately, though there are hundreds of others.
Incidentally, the idea that games are a killer app for an operating system is ludicrous in itself. Apple has plenty of desktop market share, with far, far fewer games than Linux supports. Millions upon millions of videogame consoles are being sold, which makes a lot of people who really aren't using their PCs for much gaming at all. Plenty of PCs more than a couple years old are still in-use, and haven't been upgraded to play the latest and greatest games released this year...
I could go on, but if you haven't got the point by now, I don't think you ever will...
No, everything worked perfectly SEVERAL years ago.
You simply didn't bother to tell the system what to do when it got the ACPI notification that the lid was closed, or some other button was pushed. Adding two lines to a config file and my laptop works exactly as it should. Perhaps some distro GUI config tool can be used instead.
Windows doesn't magically do the right thing, either. Usually it's just that a driver CD contains the proper config options. Obviously, any company providing Linux on it's Laptops would pre-configure Linux the same way.
The problem is, you're comparing pre-installed Windows with user-installed (and un-configured) Linux.
There are perfectly good hydrogen storage methods. They aren't cheap, but neither is aluminum.
300 pounds of aluminum, plus large amounts of water? Quite a bit heavier than a tank of gasoline. Not to mention the complexity involved in refueling.
Many games run fine. The fact that people will have to stick to Linux-compatible games instead of Windows-based games is not a serious limitation for 99% of people. Just as Linux users may use OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office, there are numerous games for Linux that are mostly equivalent to their Windows counterparts.
It sure is! They come installed with any X11 distro.
If you want 3D/OpenGL support, then usually you need to visit the company website (like any Windows drivers), and type a couple commands they tell you to. Not trivial, but quite easy just following their directions verbatim, and a one-time hassle.
If that's the best complaint you've got, I'd say Linux must be ready for the masses.
In which case, direct electrolysis of water would be simpler.
I prefer:
aneurys.ms
ar.ms
bathroo.ms
chas.ms
clai.ms
condo.ms
cra.ms
criticis.ms
darkroo.ms
db.ms
doldru.ms
doo.ms
fanto.ms
flimfla.ms
ger.ms
googleis.ms
mosle.ms
oh.ms
sca.ms
screa.ms
scrotu.ms
sha.ms
slu.ms
squir.ms
stor.ms
swar.ms
syste.ms
underperfor.ms
v.ms
victi.ms
wor.ms
and, of course: acrony.ms
Tiny countries get money out of it. Large corporations get "clever" and unique new domain names to use. What's the problem?
You could say euthanasia is just a legal matter, as well. Not like debating the merits of the current copyright system...
Also, since the PirateBay is outside the US, it's really NOT a legal matter. More than copyright, I suspect they were talking about censorship for violence, sex, or other offensive material.
What you're advocating is the old "Isn't there anything more important?" logical fallacy.
We should, therefore, stop all human activity that doesn't directly involve keeping people alive and basically healthy. Which, incidentally, means artists and specifically actors like Mr. Doohan would be out of work, and a complete unknown.
Doing the "emotional" stuff is actually quite important. What's the point of living 150 years with no art, no entertainment, nothing fun or enjoyable at all?
ClamWin doesn't do on-access scanning, but that's really not the problem... There are 3rd party add-ons like WinPooch that can add that, but it's overkill.
Scanning files when they are downloaded, along with a weekly full-scan, would be more than enough protection for just about everybody. Unfortunately, the problem is ClamWin and ClamAV/win32's terrible performance. It takes about 4X longer than any native Win32 antivirus scanner, and all while using up significantly more RAM, and far more CPU time.
Until some dramatic performance improvements happen, free.grisoft.com and freeav.com are available.
Perhaps it would be better to re-write the scanner completely for win32, and merely use the clamav virus signature database...
Nothing to add, but it just had to be mentioned: http://www.lechatnoirboutique.com/prodimages/Coffe e%20Mug%20-%20Far%20Side%20Rocket%20Scientists-sm. jpg
That's idiotic.
They aren't adding a new usage to the word, they're completely co-opting a technical term and redefining it to something nonsensical.
Baseband connections above 2Mbps? Now "broadband"
Broadband connections slower than 2Mbps? No longer "broadband"... In fact, it's nothing at all. You've got to invent some other term now.
Fiber-optic is a non-starter. It has to be carefully routed, as any even remotely sharp-bends will render it useless. In just about any media cabinet, that's exactly what you'll see. You'd need some major wire management systems to prevent that kind of pulling 90 degree turns, through the nearest hole.
HDMI/DVI cables are very simple, and very cheap. Figure about $1/foot. It's cheaper than any fiber-optic cables +connectors you'll find. Of course there will always be stores that will rip you off every way they can. But switching to fiber optic wouldn't change that. If anything, it would make matters worse, since there's fewer manufacturers of fiber vs copper, and easier to monopolize the market.
Not really. "Organic" has various meanings to begin with. Broadband has just exactly one, and it has nothing to do with speed.
Nope. They'll just have "DSL!" "DSL!" all over the place, and nobody will notice they didn't mention that it uses broadband signaling methods.
If you required them to LIST THE ACTUAL SPEED, you might have something.
How about the fact that the government is redefining a signaling method (baseband/broadband), into an idiotic throughput benchmark?
I can't wait until they redefine a "TV" as anything with a 50" screen or larger... And a "computer" as a system with a 2GHz CPU or better...
In city driving, that would be okay, though it would allow people to be more of a jackrabbit driver at the expense of more gasoline consumption.
On the freeways, however, I can't imagine it would still be able to sustain 75MPH, with a 52HP engine. Let alone in the worst case... on an extended 5% incline (see: I-40w across Texas), into 30MPH winds, with 60MPH gusts, etc. The electric motor and batteries can't help, so they become purely a liability.
The (equally light and tiny) Geo Metro was in the same boat. It had a 55HP engine, and really couldn't exceed about 60MPH. Incidentally, it was also rated at 66/52 MPG with 15+ year-old vehicle tech, and certainly without an electric motor, low rolling-resistance tires, a battery pack, etc.
Don't try to invent a new notation to make-up for corporate marketing corrupting established and well-understood notation.
I did several benchmarks at the time, and even way back then it was only nominally faster or lighter on RAM. The myth of Firefox being lean and fast is complete marketing.
IMHO, Firefox has only ever had two things going for it beyond Mozilla and Seamonkey... More customizable interface, and per-user extensions/Add-ons. And that's traded-off in things like a horrible user-preferences page that's only getting worse with time, lack of an editor, etc., etc.