Finally, it is clear that the Open Source community needs a business model that is sustainable, if it is to grow beyond a part-time avocation into an enterprise-trusted development model. Free Open Source software primarily benefits large vendors, which sell hardware and expensive services that support Linux, but not Linux itself.
By providing Open Source software without a warranty, these largest vendors avoid significant costs while increasing their services revenue
Emphasis mine. Notice the deft way he manages to imply, without ever saying so openly, that propriatary software does have warranties. In fact if you look at any propriatary software package it contains a disclaimer of warranty, meaning that they are explicitly denying that any warranty exists.
By prefacing his "no warranty" line with a patronizing "Open Source must become more mature" statement he gets two for one. We, of course, recognize this to be yet another of the blatiantly false bits of tripe that McBride has come to be known for. Despite its misleading "Open letter to the Open Source Community" title we are not the target audience for this; the target audience is the managers who make the financial decisions, but don't actually know what is going on. His careful implication that propriatary software is warranted may be effective with them...
Finally, we have his implication, again never explicitly stated, that Open Source is nothing more than a bunch of neo-hippies. Since most managerial types are politically conservative, and old enough to remember and dislike hippies, this implication is intended to strike at the average manager's prejudices. If he can get "Open Source == Damn Hippies" into many people's heads he believes, possibly rightly, that this will create a more hostile environment towards Open Source (much like the current "Open Souce == Communist" line of BS).
On a related note, I'll also point out a bit of his tripe that is aimed at us. His repeated implications that the Open Source concept were fine as long as we were working with toy systems, but now that we want to be grown ups we must adapt to the prevailing (propriatary) business model. This is intended specifically to cause doubt and fear in the Open Source community. Those who haven't given the isssue much thought may agree with this. It is nonesense. The Open Source model is a competitor to the Propriatary model. It is not inferior, and it may be superior. When Henry Ford invented the assembly line he did not think to himself "Well, I guess the Assembly Line was OK as a toy system, but now that I want to be a big boy I'd better switch over to the way everyone else does it." So too, must we refuse to be tricked into believing that the Open Source development model is for children. It is not. It is new, it is different, and it must compete in order to prove its superiority.
So what's to stop them from buying other governments as well? They might have problems in China, but I doubt most of Europe would be a problem. I hope France continues to think independently...
What stops them from buying other governemnts is that most first world, non-US, are multi-party (versus two party) systems. The redundancy tends to reduce the sort of abuse we see in the US.
Also, while bribery is far from eleminated in the rest of the first world, it is hardly as rampant as it is in the US. The "campaign contribution" scam is killing democracy in the US. MS can buy a senator or congressman pretty easily here simply by making "campaign contributions". In most of the first world that is, properly, treated as bribery and quite illegal.
To the "Money is speech" crowd: Money is not speech. If it were than *all* laws against bribery would be prohibited by the First Ammendment. The pathetic exucses of those bribing our officials are rediculous. "He didn't vote to give me special privilages because I gave him money. He was going to do that anyway, and I was simply expressing my support for his pro-me position financially." Sure. And if that line of BS is acceptable why not: "I didn't bribe the policeman to let me escape. He simply has a policy of letting murderers go, and I was supporting that policy financially." Bribery is bribery.
It was my understanding that most of the world's hydrogen was produced by cracking it out of natural gas, which requires energy. So you end up using fuel to convert one type of fuel into another type of fuel at a net energy loss.
I may have been misinformed but that's how I remember it.
You're misinformed:)
Partially what you say is true: most hydrogen is processed out of natural gas. The major drawback here is that this releases CO2 and other hydrocarbons, and is essentially as bad (environmentally speaking) as simply burning the natural gas directly.
However, it isn't done at a net energy loss. The conversion process takes remarkably little energy, and the efficiency of the hydrogen/oxygen reaction (versus the methane/oxygen reaction) more than makes up for it. Remember, it takes energy to extract oil from the ground, but the oil we extract produces more energy than it took to extract. Same thing applies to the methane -> hydrogen conversion.
Which still doesn't address the original issues that hydrogen is supposed to: the reality that fossil fuels can't last forever. "Natural gas" is as much a fossil fuel as oil is. Ultimately we'll have to switch to something else (wind? solar? fusion (I hold hope yet)).
Are methane and natural gas the same things? I was under the impression they aren't because methane has a smell, and natural gas doesn't (at least until the gas companies add it themselves).
Methane and natural gas are the same. Methane is a colorless, odourless gas. The gas companies add smell for safety. The methane generated by decay (landfills, farting, etc) has smell added as a side effect of other biological processes.
And what is the problem with diesel derived from rapeseed oil - or any vegetable oil for that matter (or filling your tank with Mazola when the Revenue are looking the other way)
In theory its a good solution. In practice we run into the simple fact that it takes a full growing season for the plants to absob the solar energy, convert it into chemical form, then we convert to a different form, and finally burn it for a fraction of the original solar energy input.
You can get about 290 gallons of ethanol per acre per year. That will convert to around 9,483 killowatt hours per acre. Todays solar panels are horribly inefficient, yet when we assume six hours of light per day an acre of solar panels produces 886,261 kilowatt hours in a year. The solar panels, of course, have a much higher initial cost, but overall I'd rather use them than run things through plants...
Ultimately of course, we need to be using fusion, or even properly done fission. I'll point out that one acre of solar panels doesn't even produce a single megawatt of power, which is pathetic. We need better.
Put simply, bio-fuels just aren't all that useful, take crop space away from food. And also require that more crop space be dedicated to them.
Irritating as I find the "out of store check", I dislike shoplifting even more. The stores wouldn't do it if it didn't keep down their costs. I'd rather go through such a check than pay a 10% premium on everything, you know?
You are making an invalid assumption here. Just because many business do it does not mean it works. It just means that its the prevailing wisdom that it works. Actual performance is rarely measured.
Don't assume that the "trade" you envision (checks for less shoplifting) is real. People often try to convert liberty/freedom/convenience for security and they don't often get more security.
Shoplifting is a problem, no doubt. But I don't think that security checks actually work that well. At my local Sams the 80+ woman paws through my stuff, treating me as if I were a thief, but I doubt that they ever catch anyone. I've asked them: "have you ever caught someone shoplifting?" They always look kind of surprised that I'd ask. Often they don't even know that they're supposed to be checking for shoplifters. None has ever claimed to have caught anyone.
Out of 100 drives, running for five years, two fail.
Assume the period for this failure is two days, since that was the shortest life of any experimental sample (Brand X drives). So, out of 100 drives, running for 913.125 periods, 2% fail. However, out of two drives, in one period, 100% fail.
Its a matter of percentages. In Population's example he was assumeing that OVERALL the IBM drives and the offbrand drives had the same failure rate, but due to the vagueries of fate you happened to get two that burned out very quickly.
If person Foo plays a slot machine for hours without any payback, then person Bar plays for two minutes and hits the jackpot that doesn't mean much of anything. Each person had exactly the same odds of winning.
what benifit do they think they would have screwing their customers out of trying to recoup some of their costs?
Some managerial types have some very odd ideas about money. I knew a person who ran a motel back in the 1980's. He was charging $50/room in an area where the standard price was around $40/room. Needless to say he didn't rent very many rooms. A friend of mine was his accountant, and he suggested that the motel owner drop his prices to rent out more rooms. Mr. Idiot was horrified at the idea: "If I did that, I'd be loosing $10 on ever room I rented!" Apparently he had the fixed idea that when a room was rented he somehow deserved $50, so it was preferable to him to rent very few rooms at a higher price than to rent more rooms at a somewhat lower price. Eventually he went out of business.
Doubtless the same sort of idiocy is going on here.
The hardware manufacturers have always hated sale of used hardware. Using software licensing this way is just a club to try and smash the used hardware market, it has nothing to do with them worrying about their precious little software license being violated. One copy of software was bought, one copy of software exists. In this situation they have been paid for every copy of the software being used; no piracy is taking place. The entire "You bought a software license from us, and you can't sell that" line is total tripe. It may be legal, but it damn sure isn't right. The law needs to be changed to prohibit that sort of crap.
I agree with you, but we need to clearly define what these liberties are. For example, during WWII coastal cities like Miami (for example) did not like the idea of a black out. And at the beginning of the war, they did not turn off their lights. However, the city lights perfectly silhouetted the merchant ships for the U-Boats. Easy pickings. I believe that congress had to mandate that the coastal cities go to a total blackout. My point behind this? Some people may declare that being FORCED to turn off their lights was a violation of their civil liberties!
The cases aren't parallel. Enforced blackouts are something akin to drunk driving laws. In both cases the actions of one individual harm other individuals. The only difference between drunk driving laws, and WWII's enforced blackouts is that in one case the harm was transitory, and thus so were the rules.
A better parallel to Hawash's case is the secret trials for the Nazi sabatuers. They were caught by the FBI after blowing up a factory, and the government insisted that in the interests of national security the general population couldn't be allowed to know what happened at the trials. When the expiration date on the secrecy came up some people investigated and discovered (surprise!) that national security wasn't the reason for secrecy. Covering up the FBI's criminal neglagance was. It seems that one of the sabatuers had decided to defect to the US, called the FBI to blow himself and his fellows in, and was dismissed as a crank. It wasn't until they successfully blew up a building that the FBI believed him.
Which makes me wonder: what blunders, and criminal negligance are the current round of secret trials intended to cover up?
How the hell do you know he wasn't told what he was arrested for? In any case, he is admittedly guilty, and so I'm pretty sure he had an idea of what he was being arrested for even if they didn't tell him.
The AC who did such a lousy job of defending my original post was the one who defined "secret warrent" that way. It is possible that Hawash was told, at the time of arrest, what he was being arrested for. That isn't the issue. The issue is that the police did not tell us what he was arrested for. For that matter, it wasn't until eleven days after the arrest that they even told his family that he was arrested. It wasn't until two months after the arrest that the police told us (the American people) what the charges were.
That's a secret arrest, and secret charges. That isn't the way the USA is supposed to work. When the police arrest a person they tell us who they arrested, why they arrested him, and so forth. They have to, or else we wouldn't know what our government is doing. Since we're a democracy (Representative Federal Republic) we have to know what the government is doing, otherwise we can't know if we want to vote against those who currently hold office. Kinda the very basis of our government here.
Do not let your love of your country blind you to the fact that the current government is undermining the whole reason why this country is worth loving. I am a patriot, for that reason I am opposed to the way Hawash was arrested. The fact that he was guilty in no way removes the fact that he was not arrested properly. As a patriot I am both frightened and angered by the way the current government is working to kill my country.
Whether you know it or not, we (The USA) is in a state of WAR, and some things done in times of War to protect National Security are better-off than the bleeding-heart liberal/pinko demands of "full disclosure".
I'm not the guy you were replying to, but you seem to have some facts wrong. The USA is not in a state of war; no war has been declared by Congress since WWII, so we haven't been in a state of war for nearly 60 years.
Moreover your basic argument is completely wrong. In times of war, in times of danger, that is when we MOST need our civil liberties defended. These are the times when a free and open government is most essential to our very survival. Freedom is not a luxury that we cast aside when times get tough, it is the very thing that allows our country to live at all. Freedom is not an impediment to our society, our survival, or our government, it is the very basis of all three.
If soviet style government works so well, why is the Soviet Union now vanished, while we stand strong? The truth is that secret police, hidden trials, and so forth simply don't work. If they did we'd have been the government that fell, not the Soviet Union. Do not fool yourself. The "pinkos" aren't those demanding that the US government obey the law, but those in the government trying to destroy our civil liberties.
but wait its about someone we feel should be free. I guess the freedom thing wins out. Even though this guy is gulity.
The problem with the Hawash case was never his guilt or innosence, but the whole issue of how he was arrested in the first place.
Hawash was secretly arrested. With a secret warrent. Based on secret evidence. The feds wouldn't even admit that they had arrested him until eleven days had passed. He was not charged with a crime until he had been held for more than two months.
The Constitution specifically states that people get speedy trials. The police are not allowed to arrest people and hold them without pressing charges. That is one of the main things that's wrong with communist nations like China and Cuba. The whole idea of "find charges, then arrest" is central to real justice. "Arrest, then make up charges" is a sure sign of Stalin and his ilk.
Always someone out there looking to steal I suppose. Would not life be easier for the society as a whole if people voted with their earned dollars rather than stealing? Seriously, it's sad that this is the first thing that some folks think of when a product like this comes out. "how can we steal this thing?".
Nonsense. They are advertising this as a disposable camera. When I buy a disposable camera at a store I am under absolutely no obligation to return the camera. I can keep it, or develop the film myself, or any number of other things.
The article didn't say that the cameras were rented (meaning a rental agreement, a promise to return the camera, etc) though it may be an ommission on the writer's part. If they are sold like disposable cameras than I see nothing either illegal or immoral about buying one and using it in a manner the seller didn't intend me to.
If I rent a digital camera (which sounds like a pretty good thing to try actually) I'd be under obligtaitons to return it, not to mess with its innards, and so forth.
This is exactly like MS selling the X-Box below production price and then whining when people use their legally purchased hardware in a way that MS doesn't like. There is absolutely no legal or moral obligation to support a business model that doesn't work.
If its a purchase, not a rental, than it can't be stealing to use it any way I want to.
My ignorance is showing. Why does it take vastly less time for a wafer rejected for chip manufacture to recoup the energy spent on its production, compared to the 'typical' solar panel? 3 months versus three years? Wouldn't the rejected panel take just as much energy to produce, and probably be less efficient?
The reason is because the most expensive (in terms of energy) part of manufacturing anything based on a silicon wafer is growing the initial crystal.
The crystal must be perfect, a single bubble, crack, or deformity, makes the whole bloody thing worthless (as an aside: this is why some chip makers drool at the prospect of an orbital chip fabber, growing crystals is much easier in microgravity).
After you have your perfect crystal you turn it into wafers and "print" the microchip circutry on the wafer. The problem is that there is a fairly high chance of the printing process going wrong, which results in a rejected wafer. This is where the cheap solar panels come in. They buy the rejected wafers, scrub the failed chip off, and print the solar panel on the scrubbed wafer. Solar panels are more durable and less picky than chips, being printed on a scrubbed wafer doesn't bother them at all.
The resultant solar cell is just as good as one made on a fresh wafer. Since they didn't grow the wafer (and it would have been scrapped anyway) they count only the energy cost of scrubbing and printing the panel on the recycled wafer. I suppose if you want to get picky you could claim it costs the same as a normal panel, since energy was spent growing the crystal in the first palce, but I think its fair to discount that since the energy would have been wasted (bad wafer).
(and it'll be for a microdrive, as sony won't use the memory stick on the psp even tho they invented it:-@)
Look at the bottom of the linked article. Under "I/O", it lists both USB 2.0 and memory stick. Not saying that it will necessarially be in the finished product, just pointing out that the specs do call for it.
How much would it cost to fit an existing house with a solar panel - and how long would it take to recoup that cost in electricity savings? What kind of running costs do these solar panels have?
Very good questions, as it happens, I have answers!
In California it costs around $15-$20K to refit a house with solar panels. Due to recent legislation the power company MUST pay the wholesale price to any of their customers who generate power. It takes around 20 years for the cost of the panels to be recouped.
Note that these numbers assume that the cost of power stays stable, which is fairly unlikely. If the cost per kilowatthour increases then it will take proprotionately less time for the panels to pay for themselves. A long term investment, but ultimately worthwhile.
In terms of pure energy costs (neverminding money) it takes a typical solar panel about three years to generate the amount of energy it took to produce. Some panels are made from recycled wafers (typically wafers which were rejected for chip manufacture) these take about 3 months to make the electricity that went into their production.
I really get tired of moderators who "troll" opinions they don't like.
Agree with you here. I disagree completely with your viewpoint, so I wrote a reply. Moderating you down was uncalled for.
I will note, however, that your rather pointlessly aggressive language is doubtless what caused the people to mod you as a troll. Tossing about terms like cult and suchlike isn't really the best way to make points.
You know what? These people are a disgrace. They're little more than cultists, and to quote Contact, "Yep, looking for little green men".
Er, um, you are aware that "Contact" is a work of fiction, right?
More seriously your post seems ill thought out. Yes, the odds of finding anyting are rather slim, especially considering that our only sensors are inside the sun's area of interference. However you seem to be underestimating the importance of finding evidence of non-human sentience. Carrying on a conversation is nice, don't misunderstand me, but I'd be happy just knowing for sure that we aren't the only ones out here. Sure, the odds are that there's other people in the universe, but I'd like to know for sure.
The cost is quite low, really, and its spin off effects are already prooving to be of benefit in the short run. The truth is that "pointless" research has paid off time and again. Maybe SETI won't pay off, but the fact is that it might.
Oddly enough, you didn't mention the single biggest problem facing the SETI program: the likelyhood that use of omnidirectional radio is not long lived. Here on Earth we're already tending to move away from powerful omnidirectional signals. Increasing use of laser, microwave, fiberoptic, etc is slowly killing off true broadcast radio. Some people suspect that within another thrity years or so the only omnidirecitonal broadcasts will be quite weak and short ranged (equivalant to cordless phones).
Still, even given that, I'd say that the potential benefit of SETI vastly outweighs its miniscule cost. You've got to take chances sometimes...
Clear Channel's profitibility is suspect. Why? I'm not quite sure.
I am. Executive compensation packages. They're what is killing our wages and lots of companies. They're the reason why stockholders have been suing various corporations (Judge Group, Disney, etc) lately. If Clear Channel fired its CEO (L. Lowry Mays) his reward for being fired would amount to $28 million, not counting stock benefits. (source: CNN Money)
Multiply that by all the upper level executives and you see the problem. They parasite huge amounts of cash from the corporation when they run it, if they do badly and get fired they get even MORE cash, and then everyone askes "Gee, why is this company doing so badly?"
Hmmm, could it be because they're giving too damn much money to their executives?
so if the senate votes for it with similar margins, the president would be a fool o veto it as it will diminish his political power on the hill.
no, he will sign it.
Yup. He doubtless will. And he will doubtless claim that he supported the idea all along. Mr. Bush has a history of opposing popular measures, then claiming that he supported (or invented) them when they are inevitable.
For example, while he was the Governer of Texas he fought tooth and nail against the Patient's Bill of Rights. Vetoed it once, and allowed it to pass without his signature when it went through the Ledge with a veto-proof majority. Later, during his Presidential campaign, he claimed credit for the bill and listed it was one of his accomplishments as Governer...
Typical of the man, and typical of the media that not a single reporter called him on it.
Or are you one of those people who labors under the pathetic delusion that unions are interested in and represent the rights of workers?
Nope, I'm one of those pathetic people who actually studied history and learned how bad it was before unions formed.
Are unions perfect? Absolutely not. They can, and must, be improved. However a bad union is infinitely superior to no union.
Go read up on what life was like pre-union. It sucked damn hard. The Rockerfellers of the world were able to pretty much do what they wanted to and no one could stop them. Unions are the only thing that has a proven track record of putting a check on corporate power. Come up with a better idea and I'll back it, but unless you can I'll keep trying to improve unions, not destroy them.
I will definately agree that *some*, not all, unions have been failing in their primary duty to serve their members. This can be corrected fairly simply through regulation and oversight, it is not necessary to dismantle unions in general.
My main argument in favor of unions is simple: Where I live (Texas) unions don't have much clout, and wages here are around 20%-30% lower than they are in the average union state. It doesn't get much simpler than that.
Working hard != being taken advantage of. True enough, but working 12/7 == being taken advantage of, especially since they're pulling the old "You're salaried so no overtime for you" BS.
Hard work is not the same thing as working insane shifts for people who take all the profits and give you diddly. That's called being a sucker. We're looking at an economy where CEOs of businesses that loose billions get huge bonuses and those who actually work are given less money and more work.
Middle management is occasionally intelligent and worthwhile. In my experience upper management has no concept of treating hard working employees as a "company investment", but sees people like you as a great way to get bigger bonuses by cutting your paycheck. And the worst part is that the Randian side of you seems to see this as being just fine. Do yourself a favor, toss the Rynd novels in the "free books" box at your local used bookstore and start demanding better pay. Better, start demanding performance based salaries for CEOs.
Re:Go for it anyway...
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A Mighty Wind
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· Score: 4, Informative
Actually, most wind plants don't kill any birds. The whole "wind power kills birds" came from a single installation done in California. It was, through incredible lack of foresight and foolishness, right in the middle of a migratory path. Birds, bless their hardwired little brains, don't much change their migration paths. As long as we leave the generators out of the migratory paths its really no problem.
The installations in Denmark and Germany, for example, were placed with more care and don't kill birds. Right now Denmark is getting 20% of its power from wind farms.
I don't think you can put Linux and MacOS in the same boat here. MS develops software for the Mac, they are not really direct competitors in the OS world.
Granted. Still, if Apple went out of business the Mac users would have to switch, and MS wouldn't be sheding any tears. OTOH, you do have a point. MS is developing for Mac, and the fact that hardware differences keep direct competition to a minimum do keep MS from being as violently anti-Mac as they are anti-Linux.
Still, they do have a financial interest in Mac failing too, just not as direct and immediate.
Slashdot Mirror
By prefacing his "no warranty" line with a patronizing "Open Source must become more mature" statement he gets two for one. We, of course, recognize this to be yet another of the blatiantly false bits of tripe that McBride has come to be known for. Despite its misleading "Open letter to the Open Source Community" title we are not the target audience for this; the target audience is the managers who make the financial decisions, but don't actually know what is going on. His careful implication that propriatary software is warranted may be effective with them...
Finally, we have his implication, again never explicitly stated, that Open Source is nothing more than a bunch of neo-hippies. Since most managerial types are politically conservative, and old enough to remember and dislike hippies, this implication is intended to strike at the average manager's prejudices. If he can get "Open Source == Damn Hippies" into many people's heads he believes, possibly rightly, that this will create a more hostile environment towards Open Source (much like the current "Open Souce == Communist" line of BS).
On a related note, I'll also point out a bit of his tripe that is aimed at us. His repeated implications that the Open Source concept were fine as long as we were working with toy systems, but now that we want to be grown ups we must adapt to the prevailing (propriatary) business model. This is intended specifically to cause doubt and fear in the Open Source community. Those who haven't given the isssue much thought may agree with this. It is nonesense. The Open Source model is a competitor to the Propriatary model. It is not inferior, and it may be superior. When Henry Ford invented the assembly line he did not think to himself "Well, I guess the Assembly Line was OK as a toy system, but now that I want to be a big boy I'd better switch over to the way everyone else does it." So too, must we refuse to be tricked into believing that the Open Source development model is for children. It is not. It is new, it is different, and it must compete in order to prove its superiority.
What stops them from buying other governemnts is that most first world, non-US, are multi-party (versus two party) systems. The redundancy tends to reduce the sort of abuse we see in the US.
Also, while bribery is far from eleminated in the rest of the first world, it is hardly as rampant as it is in the US. The "campaign contribution" scam is killing democracy in the US. MS can buy a senator or congressman pretty easily here simply by making "campaign contributions". In most of the first world that is, properly, treated as bribery and quite illegal.
To the "Money is speech" crowd: Money is not speech. If it were than *all* laws against bribery would be prohibited by the First Ammendment. The pathetic exucses of those bribing our officials are rediculous. "He didn't vote to give me special privilages because I gave him money. He was going to do that anyway, and I was simply expressing my support for his pro-me position financially."
Sure. And if that line of BS is acceptable why not: "I didn't bribe the policeman to let me escape. He simply has a policy of letting murderers go, and I was supporting that policy financially." Bribery is bribery.
You're misinformed :)
Partially what you say is true: most hydrogen is processed out of natural gas. The major drawback here is that this releases CO2 and other hydrocarbons, and is essentially as bad (environmentally speaking) as simply burning the natural gas directly.
However, it isn't done at a net energy loss. The conversion process takes remarkably little energy, and the efficiency of the hydrogen/oxygen reaction (versus the methane/oxygen reaction) more than makes up for it. Remember, it takes energy to extract oil from the ground, but the oil we extract produces more energy than it took to extract. Same thing applies to the methane -> hydrogen conversion.
Which still doesn't address the original issues that hydrogen is supposed to: the reality that fossil fuels can't last forever. "Natural gas" is as much a fossil fuel as oil is. Ultimately we'll have to switch to something else (wind? solar? fusion (I hold hope yet)).
Methane and natural gas are the same. Methane is a colorless, odourless gas. The gas companies add smell for safety. The methane generated by decay (landfills, farting, etc) has smell added as a side effect of other biological processes.
In theory its a good solution. In practice we run into the simple fact that it takes a full growing season for the plants to absob the solar energy, convert it into chemical form, then we convert to a different form, and finally burn it for a fraction of the original solar energy input.
You can get about 290 gallons of ethanol per acre per year. That will convert to around 9,483 killowatt hours per acre. Todays solar panels are horribly inefficient, yet when we assume six hours of light per day an acre of solar panels produces 886,261 kilowatt hours in a year. The solar panels, of course, have a much higher initial cost, but overall I'd rather use them than run things through plants...
Ultimately of course, we need to be using fusion, or even properly done fission. I'll point out that one acre of solar panels doesn't even produce a single megawatt of power, which is pathetic. We need better.
Put simply, bio-fuels just aren't all that useful, take crop space away from food. And also require that more crop space be dedicated to them.
Don't assume that the "trade" you envision (checks for less shoplifting) is real. People often try to convert liberty/freedom/convenience for security and they don't often get more security.
Shoplifting is a problem, no doubt. But I don't think that security checks actually work that well. At my local Sams the 80+ woman paws through my stuff, treating me as if I were a thief, but I doubt that they ever catch anyone. I've asked them: "have you ever caught someone shoplifting?" They always look kind of surprised that I'd ask. Often they don't even know that they're supposed to be checking for shoplifters. None has ever claimed to have caught anyone.
Its a matter of percentages. In Population's example he was assumeing that OVERALL the IBM drives and the offbrand drives had the same failure rate, but due to the vagueries of fate you happened to get two that burned out very quickly.
If person Foo plays a slot machine for hours without any payback, then person Bar plays for two minutes and hits the jackpot that doesn't mean much of anything. Each person had exactly the same odds of winning.
Some managerial types have some very odd ideas about money. I knew a person who ran a motel back in the 1980's. He was charging $50/room in an area where the standard price was around $40/room. Needless to say he didn't rent very many rooms. A friend of mine was his accountant, and he suggested that the motel owner drop his prices to rent out more rooms. Mr. Idiot was horrified at the idea: "If I did that, I'd be loosing $10 on ever room I rented!" Apparently he had the fixed idea that when a room was rented he somehow deserved $50, so it was preferable to him to rent very few rooms at a higher price than to rent more rooms at a somewhat lower price. Eventually he went out of business.
Doubtless the same sort of idiocy is going on here.
The hardware manufacturers have always hated sale of used hardware. Using software licensing this way is just a club to try and smash the used hardware market, it has nothing to do with them worrying about their precious little software license being violated. One copy of software was bought, one copy of software exists. In this situation they have been paid for every copy of the software being used; no piracy is taking place. The entire "You bought a software license from us, and you can't sell that" line is total tripe. It may be legal, but it damn sure isn't right. The law needs to be changed to prohibit that sort of crap.
The cases aren't parallel. Enforced blackouts are something akin to drunk driving laws. In both cases the actions of one individual harm other individuals. The only difference between drunk driving laws, and WWII's enforced blackouts is that in one case the harm was transitory, and thus so were the rules.
A better parallel to Hawash's case is the secret trials for the Nazi sabatuers. They were caught by the FBI after blowing up a factory, and the government insisted that in the interests of national security the general population couldn't be allowed to know what happened at the trials. When the expiration date on the secrecy came up some people investigated and discovered (surprise!) that national security wasn't the reason for secrecy. Covering up the FBI's criminal neglagance was. It seems that one of the sabatuers had decided to defect to the US, called the FBI to blow himself and his fellows in, and was dismissed as a crank. It wasn't until they successfully blew up a building that the FBI believed him.
Which makes me wonder: what blunders, and criminal negligance are the current round of secret trials intended to cover up?
The AC who did such a lousy job of defending my original post was the one who defined "secret warrent" that way. It is possible that Hawash was told, at the time of arrest, what he was being arrested for. That isn't the issue. The issue is that the police did not tell us what he was arrested for. For that matter, it wasn't until eleven days after the arrest that they even told his family that he was arrested. It wasn't until two months after the arrest that the police told us (the American people) what the charges were.
That's a secret arrest, and secret charges. That isn't the way the USA is supposed to work. When the police arrest a person they tell us who they arrested, why they arrested him, and so forth. They have to, or else we wouldn't know what our government is doing. Since we're a democracy (Representative Federal Republic) we have to know what the government is doing, otherwise we can't know if we want to vote against those who currently hold office. Kinda the very basis of our government here.
Do not let your love of your country blind you to the fact that the current government is undermining the whole reason why this country is worth loving. I am a patriot, for that reason I am opposed to the way Hawash was arrested. The fact that he was guilty in no way removes the fact that he was not arrested properly. As a patriot I am both frightened and angered by the way the current government is working to kill my country.
I'm not the guy you were replying to, but you seem to have some facts wrong. The USA is not in a state of war; no war has been declared by Congress since WWII, so we haven't been in a state of war for nearly 60 years.
Moreover your basic argument is completely wrong. In times of war, in times of danger, that is when we MOST need our civil liberties defended. These are the times when a free and open government is most essential to our very survival. Freedom is not a luxury that we cast aside when times get tough, it is the very thing that allows our country to live at all. Freedom is not an impediment to our society, our survival, or our government, it is the very basis of all three.
If soviet style government works so well, why is the Soviet Union now vanished, while we stand strong? The truth is that secret police, hidden trials, and so forth simply don't work. If they did we'd have been the government that fell, not the Soviet Union. Do not fool yourself. The "pinkos" aren't those demanding that the US government obey the law, but those in the government trying to destroy our civil liberties.
The problem with the Hawash case was never his guilt or innosence, but the whole issue of how he was arrested in the first place.
Hawash was secretly arrested. With a secret warrent. Based on secret evidence. The feds wouldn't even admit that they had arrested him until eleven days had passed. He was not charged with a crime until he had been held for more than two months.
The Constitution specifically states that people get speedy trials. The police are not allowed to arrest people and hold them without pressing charges. That is one of the main things that's wrong with communist nations like China and Cuba. The whole idea of "find charges, then arrest" is central to real justice. "Arrest, then make up charges" is a sure sign of Stalin and his ilk.
Nonsense. They are advertising this as a disposable camera. When I buy a disposable camera at a store I am under absolutely no obligation to return the camera. I can keep it, or develop the film myself, or any number of other things.
The article didn't say that the cameras were rented (meaning a rental agreement, a promise to return the camera, etc) though it may be an ommission on the writer's part. If they are sold like disposable cameras than I see nothing either illegal or immoral about buying one and using it in a manner the seller didn't intend me to.
If I rent a digital camera (which sounds like a pretty good thing to try actually) I'd be under obligtaitons to return it, not to mess with its innards, and so forth.
This is exactly like MS selling the X-Box below production price and then whining when people use their legally purchased hardware in a way that MS doesn't like. There is absolutely no legal or moral obligation to support a business model that doesn't work.
If its a purchase, not a rental, than it can't be stealing to use it any way I want to.
The reason is because the most expensive (in terms of energy) part of manufacturing anything based on a silicon wafer is growing the initial crystal.
The crystal must be perfect, a single bubble, crack, or deformity, makes the whole bloody thing worthless (as an aside: this is why some chip makers drool at the prospect of an orbital chip fabber, growing crystals is much easier in microgravity).
After you have your perfect crystal you turn it into wafers and "print" the microchip circutry on the wafer. The problem is that there is a fairly high chance of the printing process going wrong, which results in a rejected wafer. This is where the cheap solar panels come in. They buy the rejected wafers, scrub the failed chip off, and print the solar panel on the scrubbed wafer. Solar panels are more durable and less picky than chips, being printed on a scrubbed wafer doesn't bother them at all.
The resultant solar cell is just as good as one made on a fresh wafer. Since they didn't grow the wafer (and it would have been scrapped anyway) they count only the energy cost of scrubbing and printing the panel on the recycled wafer. I suppose if you want to get picky you could claim it costs the same as a normal panel, since energy was spent growing the crystal in the first palce, but I think its fair to discount that since the energy would have been wasted (bad wafer).
Look at the bottom of the linked article. Under "I/O", it lists both USB 2.0 and memory stick. Not saying that it will necessarially be in the finished product, just pointing out that the specs do call for it.
Very good questions, as it happens, I have answers!
In California it costs around $15-$20K to refit a house with solar panels. Due to recent legislation the power company MUST pay the wholesale price to any of their customers who generate power. It takes around 20 years for the cost of the panels to be recouped.
Note that these numbers assume that the cost of power stays stable, which is fairly unlikely. If the cost per kilowatthour increases then it will take proprotionately less time for the panels to pay for themselves. A long term investment, but ultimately worthwhile.
In terms of pure energy costs (neverminding money) it takes a typical solar panel about three years to generate the amount of energy it took to produce. Some panels are made from recycled wafers (typically wafers which were rejected for chip manufacture) these take about 3 months to make the electricity that went into their production.
Agree with you here. I disagree completely with your viewpoint, so I wrote a reply. Moderating you down was uncalled for.
I will note, however, that your rather pointlessly aggressive language is doubtless what caused the people to mod you as a troll. Tossing about terms like cult and suchlike isn't really the best way to make points.
Er, um, you are aware that "Contact" is a work of fiction, right?
More seriously your post seems ill thought out. Yes, the odds of finding anyting are rather slim, especially considering that our only sensors are inside the sun's area of interference. However you seem to be underestimating the importance of finding evidence of non-human sentience. Carrying on a conversation is nice, don't misunderstand me, but I'd be happy just knowing for sure that we aren't the only ones out here. Sure, the odds are that there's other people in the universe, but I'd like to know for sure.
The cost is quite low, really, and its spin off effects are already prooving to be of benefit in the short run. The truth is that "pointless" research has paid off time and again. Maybe SETI won't pay off, but the fact is that it might.
Oddly enough, you didn't mention the single biggest problem facing the SETI program: the likelyhood that use of omnidirectional radio is not long lived. Here on Earth we're already tending to move away from powerful omnidirectional signals. Increasing use of laser, microwave, fiberoptic, etc is slowly killing off true broadcast radio. Some people suspect that within another thrity years or so the only omnidirecitonal broadcasts will be quite weak and short ranged (equivalant to cordless phones).
Still, even given that, I'd say that the potential benefit of SETI vastly outweighs its miniscule cost. You've got to take chances sometimes...
I am. Executive compensation packages. They're what is killing our wages and lots of companies. They're the reason why stockholders have been suing various corporations (Judge Group, Disney, etc) lately. If Clear Channel fired its CEO (L. Lowry Mays) his reward for being fired would amount to $28 million, not counting stock benefits. (source: CNN Money)
Multiply that by all the upper level executives and you see the problem. They parasite huge amounts of cash from the corporation when they run it, if they do badly and get fired they get even MORE cash, and then everyone askes "Gee, why is this company doing so badly?"
Hmmm, could it be because they're giving too damn much money to their executives?
Yup. He doubtless will. And he will doubtless claim that he supported the idea all along. Mr. Bush has a history of opposing popular measures, then claiming that he supported (or invented) them when they are inevitable.
For example, while he was the Governer of Texas he fought tooth and nail against the Patient's Bill of Rights. Vetoed it once, and allowed it to pass without his signature when it went through the Ledge with a veto-proof majority. Later, during his Presidential campaign, he claimed credit for the bill and listed it was one of his accomplishments as Governer...
Typical of the man, and typical of the media that not a single reporter called him on it.
Nope, I'm one of those pathetic people who actually studied history and learned how bad it was before unions formed.
Are unions perfect? Absolutely not. They can, and must, be improved. However a bad union is infinitely superior to no union.
Go read up on what life was like pre-union. It sucked damn hard. The Rockerfellers of the world were able to pretty much do what they wanted to and no one could stop them. Unions are the only thing that has a proven track record of putting a check on corporate power. Come up with a better idea and I'll back it, but unless you can I'll keep trying to improve unions, not destroy them.
I will definately agree that *some*, not all, unions have been failing in their primary duty to serve their members. This can be corrected fairly simply through regulation and oversight, it is not necessary to dismantle unions in general.
My main argument in favor of unions is simple: Where I live (Texas) unions don't have much clout, and wages here are around 20%-30% lower than they are in the average union state. It doesn't get much simpler than that.
Hard work is not the same thing as working insane shifts for people who take all the profits and give you diddly. That's called being a sucker. We're looking at an economy where CEOs of businesses that loose billions get huge bonuses and those who actually work are given less money and more work.
Middle management is occasionally intelligent and worthwhile. In my experience upper management has no concept of treating hard working employees as a "company investment", but sees people like you as a great way to get bigger bonuses by cutting your paycheck. And the worst part is that the Randian side of you seems to see this as being just fine. Do yourself a favor, toss the Rynd novels in the "free books" box at your local used bookstore and start demanding better pay. Better, start demanding performance based salaries for CEOs.
The installations in Denmark and Germany, for example, were placed with more care and don't kill birds. Right now Denmark is getting 20% of its power from wind farms.
I thought he got a presidential pardon?
Granted. Still, if Apple went out of business the Mac users would have to switch, and MS wouldn't be sheding any tears. OTOH, you do have a point. MS is developing for Mac, and the fact that hardware differences keep direct competition to a minimum do keep MS from being as violently anti-Mac as they are anti-Linux.
Still, they do have a financial interest in Mac failing too, just not as direct and immediate.