Right. My point was that "zero net carbon emissions" is something of a red herring, because, for example, differences in NOx emissions when burning a particular fuel may (or may not; I don't know) outweigh the benefits of "zero net carbon emissions".
Personally, I put local pollutants like NOx farther down the list of priorities than global pollutants such as CO2. When it comes down to it, NOx is considered bad simply because humans don't like to breathe it. Whereas CO2 has significant, long term affects across the entire planet. But this is only my opinion.
Nay-say away. Without the critics we'd just end up in fantasy land.
Do you operate a small fueling station? Or how do you distribute your biodiesel?
This is an interesting topic for us. Currently, we do not fuel vehicles directly. Right now there are a few customers who buy in units of 55 gallons, and some people even buy single gallons (stored in plastic juice jugs). I want to be clear that this is still a very small operation. Last week, we "flipped" 6,000 gallons of fuel (i.e., we bought it and immediately resold it) to a local farming operation. It should power his farm vehicles for a couple of years. We're quite literally buying the stuff on RAIL CARS, as well as making it ourselves. Nuts, huh?
Being in Oregon (to answer another of your questions), we thought we would be faced with some issues at the pump. In Oregon, it is illegal to pump your own gas. However, we've discovered a loophole. Pure biodiesel is not a "petroleum fuel" and is therefore not covered under the Oregon pump law. We have several ideas in development for small scale fueling facilities but nothing concrete yet.
Also, are you price competitive with regular diesel?
We are neck-and-neck with it. Diesel prices range from $3.07 to maybe $3.25 across the region. If it weren't for the tax, we could make a profit selling the stuff at $2.30, but alas, the government wants their cut, so our price is around $3.00. The oil recycler we buy the stock oil from charges $1.00 per gallon. If we could cut him out and go directly to the restaurants, we could cut that cost nearly in half, but we don't have the infrastructure to do something like that.
What I do for a day job is software development. But you're probably referring to my biodiesel work. Since our facility is currently very small, each of us pretty much knows how to do everything. The basic steps are to acquire the oil, pump it into a 330 gallon stainless vessel, add a certain quantity of sulfuric acid and methanol, which esterifies the free fatty acids (our oil is particularly nasty and has a high FFA content). This takes a few days.
Once the acid esterification completes (or nearly so) the fuel is pumped into smaller reaction vessels. We take samples and titrate to determine pH levels and the amount of catalyst which will be necessary. The catalyst is sodium methoxide, which we make by combining methanol and lye. The methoxide it added to the reactors and the material recirculates for about an hour. At this point, you have honest to God biodiesel.
Over time, the waste products (glycerin, a small amount of soap, and water) settle out. The fuel is pumped to washing tanks where it is purified and the water is removed. Then it goes into 55 gallon drums. That's it, really.
You may be interested to know that we are forming an Open Source biodiesel conglomerate, which will hopefully help us accumulate knowledge and techniques from other producers and as a benefit, we will provide distribution and marketing services. This is all still quite up in the air, but we are currently doing real production and selling real fuel to real customers. I'm extremely excited about it.
They make it sounds like an "8 hour coding session" is some kind of monstrous abuse of your body. Uhhh... Don't many of us do this EVERY DAY? Just get out of the damn chair every once in a while! Was this guy pissing in a bottle or something?
So, in order to get better fuel economy, one of two things must happen.
Who cares about fuel economy when the fuels are renewable? SUV owners are already accustomed to paying out the nose at the pump. With ethanol/biodiesel, these fuel-hungry vehicles will still suck the juice like mad but at least there will be no net carbon emission. Personally, that's all I care about.
I have heard the statistic many times here, that it is not effective to grow bio fuels. Here on Slashdot biofuels = knee-jerk reaction = nice green thought but the math doesn't work. It is often posted that these fuels do not produce more energy than they require to grow.
The per-acre yield of oil producing crops for the purpose of biodiesel production is, in truth, low. At the biodiesel facility I unofficially work for, we produce thousands of gallons of high-quality fuel from recycled cooking oils. This is oil that would have been produced, harvested and used with or without the biodiesel market.
The facility is in the country, and we've got a "back 40" which currently is leased to farmers. This year, they're growing clover. I've whined incessantly that we should be growing vegetable oil crops, but when you really work the numbers it's not worth it. Yet.
Recycled waste oil, for the near term, is really the only thing that makes sense for biodiesel production. Unfortunately, the supply is not nearly enough to maintain a fuel supply if even a significant FRACTION of Americans switched to biodiesel vehicles. This is a real problem. There are dreams of using oil-producing algaes to get massive yields, but this has yet to be perfected.
Biodiesel is no pipe dream, but there are complex economic and industrial considerations which will be evolving as the years go by. I'm excited to see where we go in the future. At any rate, I feel better knowing that the exhaust from our diesel vehicles at the farm is net 0 as far as carbon emissions.
Oh yeah, I keep forgetting, smart people are a bad thing. Whatever, I'll continue to happily point and laugh loudly and publicly at people who after more than a decade still don't know what a hard drive is. Cruel? Yes. but in the end I find that the people who actually want to know this stuff will remember the info.
Whoa, whoa whoa. Too much coffee? Little arrogant, are we? So by all means, go forth and educate the world about technology, I'm with you on that. But what we're talking about here is what is, and is not appropriate in the NAME of a technology product.
We can debate all day over the particular level of "technicality" that various processor aspects, including FSB speed, fall under, but I continue to assert that the bus speed as well as most of the other stuff you listed makes about as much sense to list in the name of a processor, as it does to indicate the cylinder firing order in the name of a motor vehicle.
This stuff is only hard for them to get when no one tells them what it means.
Assuming that the person cares or wants to hear the explanation is often the first mistake. By naming products based on technical details, people are forced to understand (or at least feign comprehension) in order to make an informed decision. Not that "Core Duo 2" or whatever is any clearer, but at least it doesn't pretend to convey useful information when in fact it doesn't.
How is a crack illegal, exactly? It is the unlicensed USE of the software that is against the law. Since you're a legally licensed user, you can apply whatever modifications you might want to it, including a crack. Forget what the EULA says -- it's your copy of the program and you can do what you want with it.
Assholes, just name the thing "2 cores @ 3.8 ghz with 2 MB Cache 800 FSB."
But then you get to explain to your mom what a core is, what a gigahertz is, what a megabyte is, what a cache is, and what a front side bus is. Have fun.
every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
The meaning of that statements depends on the binding of the clause "any State." There are two possible parenthesizations:
"every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in (the Constitution or Laws) of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."
vs.
"every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in (the Constitution) or (Laws of any State) to the Contrary notwithstanding."
The first meaning implies that a treaty can overrule a State's constitution. The second meaning implies that a treaty can overrule the UNITED STATES Constitution. So which interpretation is correct?
Despite its tendency to dry into a hard, nearly impossible to remove mass in your carpet (or your kid's hair)
Or packed tightly into the back seat of a toy car, then left to dry. I'd say nearly half of me and my brother's toy vehicles were carrying a permanent load of dry, rock-hard home made playdough in the back.
You wanted to use the word "bullshit," you spelled it such that it looks quite like "bullshit," and we all KNOW you mean to say "bullshit," so there's no point censoring yourself.
SQL was originally called SEQUEL, but the name was changed due to a trademark issue. Although ANSI has decreed that the official pronunciation is to spell it out, there *is* historical precedent for calling it "Sequel."
If you were using a standard password and were hit by a bus, you quite possibly could forget your password in that case as well... And there's nothing stopping you from having a system that can be unlocked by a standard password as an alternate method of access. You could create a random, 32 character password (you'll normally be logging in by brain wave so no need to make it small and memorable) and lock it in a deposit box. If you die, your attorney can unlock the box and log in using the password.
The argument that somebody could record your thought patterns and play them back is, of course, a valid one.
Like pretty much everyone here, I spend 8 hours a day on a keyboard. On particularly productive days, I probably hit the keys over 100,000 times. But I've never showed any symptoms of carpal tunnel, or even soreness in my hands, forearms or fingers. I don't take any specific ergonomic precautions other than taking a break when I feel tired.
Am I heading for disaster, or am I anatomically resistant to the problem?
Blocking outbound by default is mostly going to protect the rest of the internet from your owned box spamming/ddosing/etc them. (I guess you're outbound connection could get hosed too).
It can also protect the user. Consider a virus which tries to connect to a server somewhere to download its next set of instructions. Of course, if I were designing such a virus, I'd make it use port 80...
Given the vast number of home users MS has, this would seem to make sense. Really, how many *average* home users know what ports their programs use? Further, how many of those customers will want to fight with their firewall to get things working before they get frustrated and just turn it off?
The solution is obvious. When an app tries to connect on some outgoing port, the firewall could pop a dialog saying "Application XYZ is attempting to connect to the Internet. Do you wish to allow this?" With buttons "Yes, this time only," "Yes, always," and "No." The entire concept of a port doesn't even have to be mentioned to the user.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I put local pollutants like NOx farther down the list of priorities than global pollutants such as CO2. When it comes down to it, NOx is considered bad simply because humans don't like to breathe it. Whereas CO2 has significant, long term affects across the entire planet. But this is only my opinion.
Nay-say away. Without the critics we'd just end up in fantasy land.
This is an interesting topic for us. Currently, we do not fuel vehicles directly. Right now there are a few customers who buy in units of 55 gallons, and some people even buy single gallons (stored in plastic juice jugs). I want to be clear that this is still a very small operation. Last week, we "flipped" 6,000 gallons of fuel (i.e., we bought it and immediately resold it) to a local farming operation. It should power his farm vehicles for a couple of years. We're quite literally buying the stuff on RAIL CARS, as well as making it ourselves. Nuts, huh?
Being in Oregon (to answer another of your questions), we thought we would be faced with some issues at the pump. In Oregon, it is illegal to pump your own gas. However, we've discovered a loophole. Pure biodiesel is not a "petroleum fuel" and is therefore not covered under the Oregon pump law. We have several ideas in development for small scale fueling facilities but nothing concrete yet.
Also, are you price competitive with regular diesel?
We are neck-and-neck with it. Diesel prices range from $3.07 to maybe $3.25 across the region. If it weren't for the tax, we could make a profit selling the stuff at $2.30, but alas, the government wants their cut, so our price is around $3.00. The oil recycler we buy the stock oil from charges $1.00 per gallon. If we could cut him out and go directly to the restaurants, we could cut that cost nearly in half, but we don't have the infrastructure to do something like that.
What I do for a day job is software development. But you're probably referring to my biodiesel work. Since our facility is currently very small, each of us pretty much knows how to do everything. The basic steps are to acquire the oil, pump it into a 330 gallon stainless vessel, add a certain quantity of sulfuric acid and methanol, which esterifies the free fatty acids (our oil is particularly nasty and has a high FFA content). This takes a few days.
Once the acid esterification completes (or nearly so) the fuel is pumped into smaller reaction vessels. We take samples and titrate to determine pH levels and the amount of catalyst which will be necessary. The catalyst is sodium methoxide, which we make by combining methanol and lye. The methoxide it added to the reactors and the material recirculates for about an hour. At this point, you have honest to God biodiesel.
Over time, the waste products (glycerin, a small amount of soap, and water) settle out. The fuel is pumped to washing tanks where it is purified and the water is removed. Then it goes into 55 gallon drums. That's it, really.
You may be interested to know that we are forming an Open Source biodiesel conglomerate, which will hopefully help us accumulate knowledge and techniques from other producers and as a benefit, we will provide distribution and marketing services. This is all still quite up in the air, but we are currently doing real production and selling real fuel to real customers. I'm extremely excited about it.
They make it sounds like an "8 hour coding session" is some kind of monstrous abuse of your body. Uhhh... Don't many of us do this EVERY DAY? Just get out of the damn chair every once in a while! Was this guy pissing in a bottle or something?
You're right, but my vehicles emit CO2, not CH4, last I checked. I was a bit sloppy with the terminology.
Who cares about fuel economy when the fuels are renewable? SUV owners are already accustomed to paying out the nose at the pump. With ethanol/biodiesel, these fuel-hungry vehicles will still suck the juice like mad but at least there will be no net carbon emission. Personally, that's all I care about.
The per-acre yield of oil producing crops for the purpose of biodiesel production is, in truth, low. At the biodiesel facility I unofficially work for, we produce thousands of gallons of high-quality fuel from recycled cooking oils. This is oil that would have been produced, harvested and used with or without the biodiesel market.
The facility is in the country, and we've got a "back 40" which currently is leased to farmers. This year, they're growing clover. I've whined incessantly that we should be growing vegetable oil crops, but when you really work the numbers it's not worth it. Yet.
Recycled waste oil, for the near term, is really the only thing that makes sense for biodiesel production. Unfortunately, the supply is not nearly enough to maintain a fuel supply if even a significant FRACTION of Americans switched to biodiesel vehicles. This is a real problem. There are dreams of using oil-producing algaes to get massive yields, but this has yet to be perfected.
Biodiesel is no pipe dream, but there are complex economic and industrial considerations which will be evolving as the years go by. I'm excited to see where we go in the future. At any rate, I feel better knowing that the exhaust from our diesel vehicles at the farm is net 0 as far as carbon emissions.
Whoa, whoa whoa. Too much coffee? Little arrogant, are we? So by all means, go forth and educate the world about technology, I'm with you on that. But what we're talking about here is what is, and is not appropriate in the NAME of a technology product.
We can debate all day over the particular level of "technicality" that various processor aspects, including FSB speed, fall under, but I continue to assert that the bus speed as well as most of the other stuff you listed makes about as much sense to list in the name of a processor, as it does to indicate the cylinder firing order in the name of a motor vehicle.
Assuming that the person cares or wants to hear the explanation is often the first mistake. By naming products based on technical details, people are forced to understand (or at least feign comprehension) in order to make an informed decision. Not that "Core Duo 2" or whatever is any clearer, but at least it doesn't pretend to convey useful information when in fact it doesn't.
Water heat exchangers belong on cars, not microchips. This is insane.
How is a crack illegal, exactly? It is the unlicensed USE of the software that is against the law. Since you're a legally licensed user, you can apply whatever modifications you might want to it, including a crack. Forget what the EULA says -- it's your copy of the program and you can do what you want with it.
But then you get to explain to your mom what a core is, what a gigahertz is, what a megabyte is, what a cache is, and what a front side bus is. Have fun.
Yep. All coders, smash your keyboards! Everything that can be invented already has been.
The meaning of that statements depends on the binding of the clause "any State." There are two possible parenthesizations:
"every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in (the Constitution or Laws) of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding."
vs.
"every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in (the Constitution) or (Laws of any State) to the Contrary notwithstanding."
The first meaning implies that a treaty can overrule a State's constitution. The second meaning implies that a treaty can overrule the UNITED STATES Constitution. So which interpretation is correct?
Or packed tightly into the back seat of a toy car, then left to dry. I'd say nearly half of me and my brother's toy vehicles were carrying a permanent load of dry, rock-hard home made playdough in the back.
You wanted to use the word "bullshit," you spelled it such that it looks quite like "bullshit," and we all KNOW you mean to say "bullshit," so there's no point censoring yourself.
SQL was originally called SEQUEL, but the name was changed due to a trademark issue. Although ANSI has decreed that the official pronunciation is to spell it out, there *is* historical precedent for calling it "Sequel."
Scan what? Normally when a person's head is cut off they DIE. Dead people have brain waves?
The argument that somebody could record your thought patterns and play them back is, of course, a valid one.
This sounds like the voice of experience...
I fail to see how software subterfuge is related to questions of user interface, which is what I was talking about.
You've obviously never been around military people. Pellet gun wars == fun.
Am I heading for disaster, or am I anatomically resistant to the problem?
It can also protect the user. Consider a virus which tries to connect to a server somewhere to download its next set of instructions. Of course, if I were designing such a virus, I'd make it use port 80...
The solution is obvious. When an app tries to connect on some outgoing port, the firewall could pop a dialog saying "Application XYZ is attempting to connect to the Internet. Do you wish to allow this?" With buttons "Yes, this time only," "Yes, always," and "No." The entire concept of a port doesn't even have to be mentioned to the user.