If there was only some system where all of the users could post comments on the changes they wanted, and then the users themselves could rate the requests up or down, and the highest modded comments could get the most visibility.
Warmer earth = more icecap melt = more freshwater. Warmer earth = larger temperate zones = more food production. More CO2 = more vegetation growth = more food production.
The only thing stopping food production and access to drinking water is militaristic governmental controls. Free societies don't seem to have these problems.
Also, this year there is a proportional assignment of delegates based on the percent of vote received. Iowa has a total of 26 delegates, and 1,144 are needed to win the party nomination. At 1/26, there can be as much as 4% error in the vote and it shouldn't affect the delegate ratios.
80 percent of the earth's crust is underwater, and animal/vegetable live exists everywhere in the ocean at all depths. There may be more hydrocarbons under the ocean floor than all the oil ever drilled to date, it's just out of reach with current tech. As the tech improves, so does the oil supply, and that's why we won't run out of oil, period. Besides, the US is rapidly converting to natural gas, which used to be burned as waste from oil production. In 10 years, solar wind and storage will have matured to be cost competitive. We will be ok.
These people need to understand the technological revolution of the last 20 years has changed the value equation for content creators. When anyone can blog, the value of a journalist drops. When anyone can film on their phone and post it to YouTube, a studio has to work harder (competition), and the value of a movie distribution system drops. When anyone can write a story, make an ebook and sell it on Amazon or the Apple Store, then the value of a writer goes down.
"Everyone can be super! And when everyone's super, no-one will be." -- The Incredibles
No, they don't "leak" like transistor gate current or capacitor voltage. Googling around, NiCad batteries have a charge decay of over 2 months (full to empty), but my experience is that almost all electric car batteries are now lithium based, which doesn't appear to have this issue. The Chevy Volt, Toyota Prius, Toyota Highlander all use lithium-ion. Bulk-electric batteries that I've seen are lithium titanate, sodium sulfur, and some weird lead variants.
Battery charge is usually measured by efficiency, which for lithium-ion is about 90%. For every 1 W that you draw from the grid to charge the battery, on average 0.9 W can be discharged to do work (this ratio is actually temperature dependent, cooler = more efficient). The rate of charge (& discharge) / minute does decay over time because of impurities in the anodes, and the total capacity to hold charge decays over time.
The Free Market *always* works when all of the externalities are accounted for, i.e. how do you make the price of energy from coal and other forms of power include the "phantom" effects of pollution? Today, those costs are not priced into production, because noone knows how to value the impacts of putting CO2, SOX, NOX into the atmosphere... However, Solyndra noted there is a cost to production (cheaper to make them in China), and not enough demand (over-supply of solar panels).
Society is still arguing over what the "value to society" is for green energy production. If the value of green is "nothing", i.e. that global warming is heliocentric, then Solyndra and companies like them are peddling expensive products that noone wants to buy, and noone needs to buy. If the value of green energy is "nationalistic", then the value is getting off of foreign oil to local production, then the argument is still about what energy source is the cheapest, and solar loses. If the value of green energy is "lower polution", then you can get a lot more bang for the buck by getting rid of coal and moving to cheaper natural gas. If the value of green energy is "no polution", then we should be investing more money in battery technologies.
The information I have is that they did bring mobile generators to the site. * Fukushima Dai-ichi units 1, 2 & 3 successfully shut down when the plant lost off-site power during the earthquake. Units 4, 5 & 6 were already offline for maintenance. * On-site diesel backups successfully engaged to continue the cooling process, but the diesels were knocked offline when seawater from the tsunami flooded the fuel tanks. They got about an hour of cooling before these diesels were ruined. * At that point, an backup battery supply engaged, and ran for about 8 hours before it was depleted. This is 2x the average capacity of the battery backup system at an American nuclear power plant. * Meanwhile, they did get mobile diesels brought in, but the were only able to generate enough power to stabilize units 2 & 3. Unit 1 lost cooling water, and in 4 hours they were forced to vent the built up hydrogen gas. * I found some discussion that the coolant pumps require 5 MW to power, which a generator at 100,000 lbs is above what even a US chopper could airlift. This is why the helicopters were focusing on transporting coolant (seawater). * The issue then was they were physically leaking coolant water, and the rods were exposed at units 1 & 4. The exposed rods resulted in hydrogen explosions (which is what all the videos show). * The transco's goal was to get off-site power restored, which was basically rebuilding the transmission line to a neighboring plant. It took 6 days to get it restrung. Yes, it was that cut off.
Yes, and the combustion engine automobile was invented in 1862, but wasn't available to the general public at a low price point until 1903. Do we remember Lenoir, or Carhart, or the Duryea brothers? No, we remember Ford, who built the assembly line process that standardized and cheapened the production of automobiles.
The robotics field needs this jump to standardization of components, APIs and functionality. Yes, academia is coming up with designs all of the time, but each one is custom hardware & software, akin to Professor Carhart's steam-powered automobile in 1871. After that, it needs to move into the consumer markets, where the masses can tinker, hack and tweak the designs to add functionality, and truly innovate.
They were trying to fast-track the approval of the bill in the House, which required a 2/3rds vote. However, a handful of the Tea Party Republicans actually listened to their constituents and voted no. Now the bill goes back to the committee, where it will return to the floor for deliberations (which means actually discussing what's in the bill) then a simple majority (1/2 approves) vote to pass.
What's sad is that there was early indication (2009) that they were going to specifically target the office environment with the "Microsoft Courier" tablet. Then their internal management cancelled it, and now not only is Microsoft 2 years behind, I doubt they can roll out anything in enough time in the near to capture any market share. The market segment is about to be saturated with iPad & other 3rd parties, and Microsoft missed the boat.
I think the biggest difference is that MSFT has transitioned from a Growth stock (where earnings are translated to increase in price over time) to a Value stock (where price is stable but earnings are returned as dividends). You can see the transition in 1999-2000 as the dot-com bust occurred. There is a strategy in targeting a lower price per share (of $25 it seems), as it enables smaller sized investors to acquire more shares, which gives MSFT a larger capital pool. Their dividend has grown over time (from $0.08 to $0.13) and increased in frequency, which translates that MSFT is still showing strong revenues and growth.
Someone at Intel needs to read Christensen's "The Innovator's Dilemma".
CompanyA is the leader in the high-end market. They see upstart CompanyB, who has a new (disruptive) technology that is targeting a new sub-market with lower profit margins. CompanyA says "Why do I want to compete with B at lower margins in an untested market, my customers don't want that product, and I am already in competition in my existing market. They can have those customers".
So CompanyB takes the new market with the new technology with ProductB and CompanyA keeps making ProductA. But over time, process improvements in B begin to outpace A; Intel's CISC are too much for hand-helds, but an ARM may someday become powerful enough (multicore perhaps) to become a desktop processor. Technology A is already at the height of it's S-curve, while B climbs and intersects the capabilities of A. At that point, products A & B are equal in the eyes of the customer, but B is cheaper and soon nibbles at A's customers. CompanyA is non-existent in the new market which is now growing at unforseen rates. CompanyA is now in a position where it *must* switch to technology B, but it is years behind, and making B's canibalizes CompanyA's existing customers. History has shown that the CompanyAs soon hopelessly fall behind and thus die off.
Yeah, but the utility companies are paid to design the network to handle the worst-case load scenario. It's the one thing they are totally allowed to pass the cost on to the consumers.. reliability. If the whole neighborhood upgrades to electric vehicles, the distribution company puts in a larger transformer and ups their rates.
There is a mineral called redstone in the game that can be placed like circuitry, albeit with a 15-block activation distance. Redstone torches act like NOT gates, but can be combined into more complex logic gates.
This was my gripe too, that minerals are so hard to find. But then I created a new world recently... it looks like the iron probability was increased a lot, but only shows up in new worlds, or when new map chunks are generated in old worlds.
The gist is, Science(tm) has invented a machine that can view backwards in time, scientist finds society under the Red Sea. Cue up ancient barbarian, who leaves his crocodile worshiping village in a right of manhood, goes to the Indian Ocean, finds that the ancient floodwall is about to break in the monsoon, returns to his village warning everyone, builds a Super-boat, he and a small group survive while the city sinks beneath the waves. Amalgamation of Gilgamesh, Noah's Ark, and Atlantis all rolled into one mythos.
The "problem" is that a lot of stock slides were just automation related, with the triggering event being the initial faulty trade:
Person X sells Billion instead of Million
Without matching buyers, PG price goes to $0.01, and since PG is part of dozens of indices, the value of those indices also drops
Secondary systems that own Indexed ETFs (mutual fund-like products that trade in realtime) see that their values drop, triggers stop limits to sell
Since the ETF is composed of hundreds of stocks besides PG, there is now a surplus of sold stock, and those stock prices go down.
Person X goes, "Oh Crap" and buys back their position at the old price. But, the damage is done, because the trigger is still rolling through fast automated systems, and "slow" human traders.
This is just one example where an "impulse" shock of a single event can destabilize the system.
I'll let you in on a secret, since I'm in a Management of Information Systems class right now as part of our MBA curriculum... We're being told not to worry about being intricately familiar with XYZ technology, since XYZ tends to have a useful lifespan of 3-5 years... we're there to learn how to focus IT to best provide a service to the other parts of the business, and how to manage people. We learn what relational databases are, not how to do an installation of SQL Server 2008. What SOA represents to standardization and business intelligence, not how to set up the ESB, write adapters, etc.
It is interesting that in the "business side", the knowledge tree is inverted relative to IT, in that the business managers are expected to know every detail of their underlings workflow. Bank managers can step in and be tellers, loan officers, or just help you open a line of credit. But in IT, the higher up you go in management, the less technical knowledge exists (or at the least, skills have been depreciated) such that the managers truely lack the ability to drop in and fill the position. Be honest, how many.Net-programming, router configuring, DBA managers are there? IT has become comfortable with "niches", and the delegation mindset drives productivity... IT managers exist to coordinate, not implement.
In a way, it's specialization at it's finest, but compartmentalization comes at the price of becoming interchangable... Hense, a company's IT's service becomes replacable, and the managers don't pay it any mind. A help desk service could be in-house, or outsourced. Internal programming staff could just be a consulting company hired for a one-off job. It's the way that IT has been evolving, so it's not a stretch to see that competition is forcing costs (i.e. salaries) down.
... Fundamentally transform how health care insurance is managed in the United States
... Probably result in lower standards of health care service, as businesses are forced into tightening their budgets. We already see that Walgreens has decided to drop Medicaid patients because the government is reimbursing them a fraction of wholesale.
... Allows the federal government to provide funds for abortions. This is the political sticking point that is fracturing the Democrat party at the moment.
... Allows the Republicans to sit on the sidelines and nit-pick, since the House is Democrat controlled, and Senate is 59/100 (but their bill passed already).
The bill will probably pass. There is an indication that many Democrats will vote Yes in a "scorched earth" fashion, as many are already polling to lose their positions in November. The Republicans will probably sweep in the fall elections, akin to 1994, stalling Obama's progressive run of the last year and a half. Since his administration has shown no inkling of actually being "bi-partisan", unless he fundamentally changes his approach to politics, Obama will probably be remembered as Jimmy Carter II.
I can attest that in a Prius, you can shift it into neutral at high rates of speed. For those that don't know, the Prius is entirely drive-by-wire, there is a remote key and a big button to push to start.
I was driving down the highway at about 65 mph, and I don't know what the hell I was doing, I think trying to adjust the little vent that is to the right of the start button, and I poked the button instead. Immediately, the car shifted into neutral, and began to lose speed. I pushed the joystick back to Drive and the automatic engine shifted right back, no harm done.
I am told that to shut the engine truely off while moving, you push and hold the start button for 5 seconds. Same results as turning off an engine with the key, not recommended, but you will stop. You will lose your power-steering, and probably take a few years off the life of the engine.
I also know that if the car is moving in the forward direction, and you hit the shift joystick to Reverse, it will instead shift to neutral. I've hit the joystick once or twice a little early to shift to R when I'm backing into a spot.
I totally agree. The reason that nuclear waste is a problem at all is self-imposed, thanks to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Unfortunately, the process that takes "waste" and removes the spent material is the same proces that could be used to refine material for nuclear weaponry. If we can get society to move past the weaponization issue, and frame the spent fuel processing on "recycling", "renewable fuel" or some such, we might be able to get nuclear energy out of its rut.
Slashdot Mirror
If there was only some system where all of the users could post comments on the changes they wanted, and then the users themselves could rate the requests up or down, and the highest modded comments could get the most visibility.
Nah, a system like that could never work...
Warmer earth = more icecap melt = more freshwater. Warmer earth = larger temperate zones = more food production. More CO2 = more vegetation growth = more food production.
The only thing stopping food production and access to drinking water is militaristic governmental controls. Free societies don't seem to have these problems.
Also, this year there is a proportional assignment of delegates based on the percent of vote received. Iowa has a total of 26 delegates, and 1,144 are needed to win the party nomination. At 1/26, there can be as much as 4% error in the vote and it shouldn't affect the delegate ratios.
CNN lists the following delegate votes:
80 percent of the earth's crust is underwater, and animal/vegetable live exists everywhere in the ocean at all depths. There may be more hydrocarbons under the ocean floor than all the oil ever drilled to date, it's just out of reach with current tech. As the tech improves, so does the oil supply, and that's why we won't run out of oil, period. Besides, the US is rapidly converting to natural gas, which used to be burned as waste from oil production. In 10 years, solar wind and storage will have matured to be cost competitive. We will be ok.
These people need to understand the technological revolution of the last 20 years has changed the value equation for content creators. When anyone can blog, the value of a journalist drops. When anyone can film on their phone and post it to YouTube, a studio has to work harder (competition), and the value of a movie distribution system drops. When anyone can write a story, make an ebook and sell it on Amazon or the Apple Store, then the value of a writer goes down.
"Everyone can be super! And when everyone's super, no-one will be." -- The Incredibles
No, they don't "leak" like transistor gate current or capacitor voltage. Googling around, NiCad batteries have a charge decay of over 2 months (full to empty), but my experience is that almost all electric car batteries are now lithium based, which doesn't appear to have this issue. The Chevy Volt, Toyota Prius, Toyota Highlander all use lithium-ion. Bulk-electric batteries that I've seen are lithium titanate, sodium sulfur, and some weird lead variants.
Battery charge is usually measured by efficiency, which for lithium-ion is about 90%. For every 1 W that you draw from the grid to charge the battery, on average 0.9 W can be discharged to do work (this ratio is actually temperature dependent, cooler = more efficient). The rate of charge (& discharge) / minute does decay over time because of impurities in the anodes, and the total capacity to hold charge decays over time.
The Free Market *always* works when all of the externalities are accounted for, i.e. how do you make the price of energy from coal and other forms of power include the "phantom" effects of pollution? Today, those costs are not priced into production, because noone knows how to value the impacts of putting CO2, SOX, NOX into the atmosphere... However, Solyndra noted there is a cost to production (cheaper to make them in China), and not enough demand (over-supply of solar panels).
Society is still arguing over what the "value to society" is for green energy production. If the value of green is "nothing", i.e. that global warming is heliocentric, then Solyndra and companies like them are peddling expensive products that noone wants to buy, and noone needs to buy. If the value of green energy is "nationalistic", then the value is getting off of foreign oil to local production, then the argument is still about what energy source is the cheapest, and solar loses. If the value of green energy is "lower polution", then you can get a lot more bang for the buck by getting rid of coal and moving to cheaper natural gas. If the value of green energy is "no polution", then we should be investing more money in battery technologies.
The information I have is that they did bring mobile generators to the site.
* Fukushima Dai-ichi units 1, 2 & 3 successfully shut down when the plant lost off-site power during the earthquake. Units 4, 5 & 6 were already offline for maintenance.
* On-site diesel backups successfully engaged to continue the cooling process, but the diesels were knocked offline when seawater from the tsunami flooded the fuel tanks. They got about an hour of cooling before these diesels were ruined.
* At that point, an backup battery supply engaged, and ran for about 8 hours before it was depleted. This is 2x the average capacity of the battery backup system at an American nuclear power plant.
* Meanwhile, they did get mobile diesels brought in, but the were only able to generate enough power to stabilize units 2 & 3. Unit 1 lost cooling water, and in 4 hours they were forced to vent the built up hydrogen gas.
* I found some discussion that the coolant pumps require 5 MW to power, which a generator at 100,000 lbs is above what even a US chopper could airlift. This is why the helicopters were focusing on transporting coolant (seawater).
* The issue then was they were physically leaking coolant water, and the rods were exposed at units 1 & 4. The exposed rods resulted in hydrogen explosions (which is what all the videos show).
* The transco's goal was to get off-site power restored, which was basically rebuilding the transmission line to a neighboring plant. It took 6 days to get it restrung.
Yes, it was that cut off.
This appears to be a very informative article. I did not know that the batteries were actually the 4th backup system:
http://www.backsidesmack.com/2011/03/explaining-the-fukushima-1-incident/
Larry Ellison of Oracle once told Netscape's board that his cat could write a web browser. Microsoft popped out Internet Explorer later that year.
Yes, and the combustion engine automobile was invented in 1862, but wasn't available to the general public at a low price point until 1903. Do we remember Lenoir, or Carhart, or the Duryea brothers? No, we remember Ford, who built the assembly line process that standardized and cheapened the production of automobiles.
The robotics field needs this jump to standardization of components, APIs and functionality. Yes, academia is coming up with designs all of the time, but each one is custom hardware & software, akin to Professor Carhart's steam-powered automobile in 1871. After that, it needs to move into the consumer markets, where the masses can tinker, hack and tweak the designs to add functionality, and truly innovate.
They were trying to fast-track the approval of the bill in the House, which required a 2/3rds vote. However, a handful of the Tea Party Republicans actually listened to their constituents and voted no. Now the bill goes back to the committee, where it will return to the floor for deliberations (which means actually discussing what's in the bill) then a simple majority (1/2 approves) vote to pass.
What's sad is that there was early indication (2009) that they were going to specifically target the office environment with the "Microsoft Courier" tablet. Then their internal management cancelled it, and now not only is Microsoft 2 years behind, I doubt they can roll out anything in enough time in the near to capture any market share. The market segment is about to be saturated with iPad & other 3rd parties, and Microsoft missed the boat.
I think the biggest difference is that MSFT has transitioned from a Growth stock (where earnings are translated to increase in price over time) to a Value stock (where price is stable but earnings are returned as dividends). You can see the transition in 1999-2000 as the dot-com bust occurred. There is a strategy in targeting a lower price per share (of $25 it seems), as it enables smaller sized investors to acquire more shares, which gives MSFT a larger capital pool. Their dividend has grown over time (from $0.08 to $0.13) and increased in frequency, which translates that MSFT is still showing strong revenues and growth.
Protected Overrides Sub Finalize()
MyBase.Finalize()
End Sub
Someone at Intel needs to read Christensen's "The Innovator's Dilemma".
CompanyA is the leader in the high-end market. They see upstart CompanyB, who has a new (disruptive) technology that is targeting a new sub-market with lower profit margins. CompanyA says "Why do I want to compete with B at lower margins in an untested market, my customers don't want that product, and I am already in competition in my existing market. They can have those customers".
So CompanyB takes the new market with the new technology with ProductB and CompanyA keeps making ProductA. But over time, process improvements in B begin to outpace A; Intel's CISC are too much for hand-helds, but an ARM may someday become powerful enough (multicore perhaps) to become a desktop processor. Technology A is already at the height of it's S-curve, while B climbs and intersects the capabilities of A. At that point, products A & B are equal in the eyes of the customer, but B is cheaper and soon nibbles at A's customers. CompanyA is non-existent in the new market which is now growing at unforseen rates. CompanyA is now in a position where it *must* switch to technology B, but it is years behind, and making B's canibalizes CompanyA's existing customers. History has shown that the CompanyAs soon hopelessly fall behind and thus die off.
Yeah, but the utility companies are paid to design the network to handle the worst-case load scenario. It's the one thing they are totally allowed to pass the cost on to the consumers .. reliability. If the whole neighborhood upgrades to electric vehicles, the distribution company puts in a larger transformer and ups their rates.
Well, the bulk electric system is designed to "one event in 10 years", which works out to about 99.95% uptime.
There is a mineral called redstone in the game that can be placed like circuitry, albeit with a 15-block activation distance. Redstone torches act like NOT gates, but can be combined into more complex logic gates.
Youtube is now littered with demos, but I think this is one of the better ones: Working 16-bit computer built inside Minecraft.
This was my gripe too, that minerals are so hard to find. But then I created a new world recently... it looks like the iron probability was increased a lot, but only shows up in new worlds, or when new map chunks are generated in old worlds.
Atlantis, by Orson Scott Card.
The gist is, Science(tm) has invented a machine that can view backwards in time, scientist finds society under the Red Sea. Cue up ancient barbarian, who leaves his crocodile worshiping village in a right of manhood, goes to the Indian Ocean, finds that the ancient floodwall is about to break in the monsoon, returns to his village warning everyone, builds a Super-boat, he and a small group survive while the city sinks beneath the waves. Amalgamation of Gilgamesh, Noah's Ark, and Atlantis all rolled into one mythos.
The "problem" is that a lot of stock slides were just automation related, with the triggering event being the initial faulty trade:
This is just one example where an "impulse" shock of a single event can destabilize the system.
I'll let you in on a secret, since I'm in a Management of Information Systems class right now as part of our MBA curriculum... We're being told not to worry about being intricately familiar with XYZ technology, since XYZ tends to have a useful lifespan of 3-5 years... we're there to learn how to focus IT to best provide a service to the other parts of the business, and how to manage people. We learn what relational databases are, not how to do an installation of SQL Server 2008. What SOA represents to standardization and business intelligence, not how to set up the ESB, write adapters, etc.
It is interesting that in the "business side", the knowledge tree is inverted relative to IT, in that the business managers are expected to know every detail of their underlings workflow. Bank managers can step in and be tellers, loan officers, or just help you open a line of credit. But in IT, the higher up you go in management, the less technical knowledge exists (or at the least, skills have been depreciated) such that the managers truely lack the ability to drop in and fill the position. Be honest, how many .Net-programming, router configuring, DBA managers are there? IT has become comfortable with "niches", and the delegation mindset drives productivity... IT managers exist to coordinate, not implement.
In a way, it's specialization at it's finest, but compartmentalization comes at the price of becoming interchangable... Hense, a company's IT's service becomes replacable, and the managers don't pay it any mind. A help desk service could be in-house, or outsourced. Internal programming staff could just be a consulting company hired for a one-off job. It's the way that IT has been evolving, so it's not a stretch to see that competition is forcing costs (i.e. salaries) down.
This bill will
The bill will probably pass. There is an indication that many Democrats will vote Yes in a "scorched earth" fashion, as many are already polling to lose their positions in November. The Republicans will probably sweep in the fall elections, akin to 1994, stalling Obama's progressive run of the last year and a half. Since his administration has shown no inkling of actually being "bi-partisan", unless he fundamentally changes his approach to politics, Obama will probably be remembered as Jimmy Carter II.
I can attest that in a Prius, you can shift it into neutral at high rates of speed. For those that don't know, the Prius is entirely drive-by-wire, there is a remote key and a big button to push to start.
I was driving down the highway at about 65 mph, and I don't know what the hell I was doing, I think trying to adjust the little vent that is to the right of the start button, and I poked the button instead. Immediately, the car shifted into neutral, and began to lose speed. I pushed the joystick back to Drive and the automatic engine shifted right back, no harm done.
I am told that to shut the engine truely off while moving, you push and hold the start button for 5 seconds. Same results as turning off an engine with the key, not recommended, but you will stop. You will lose your power-steering, and probably take a few years off the life of the engine.
I also know that if the car is moving in the forward direction, and you hit the shift joystick to Reverse, it will instead shift to neutral. I've hit the joystick once or twice a little early to shift to R when I'm backing into a spot.
I totally agree. The reason that nuclear waste is a problem at all is self-imposed, thanks to the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. Unfortunately, the process that takes "waste" and removes the spent material is the same proces that could be used to refine material for nuclear weaponry. If we can get society to move past the weaponization issue, and frame the spent fuel processing on "recycling", "renewable fuel" or some such, we might be able to get nuclear energy out of its rut.