So, were not burning any fossil fuels to charge these things?
Irrelevant. The point is not to burn zero fossil fuels (an impossible goal at this point, unless you can go by bike). The point is to burn less fossil fuels, and also add flexibility to the nation's fleet. Just because an electric car uses fossil-based electricity today doesn't mean it can't use renewable electricity tomorrow.
And most Americans have really long commutes, more than 50 miles per day.
Wrong. The average commute is 16 miles each way. A modern electric car (like the Nissan Leaf) can go 100 miles on a charge. Not a problem for commuting.
Sounds like the right mentality to go to Mars/ Asteroids/ or anywhere else off this planet.
If you want a preview of what living off planet would be like, build yourself a water-tight metal cocoon, lock yourself inside, have it dropped to the bottom of the ocoean, and live inside it for the rest of your life -- no, you can't ever come back. Oh yeah, and for complete realism, you're not allowed to examine any fish or other lifeforms or collect any to eat, because off-planet, there won't be any.
Sorry to be a luddite flat-lander, and a bubble-burster on top of that, but after the first few weeks/months, living off-planet would be a hellish claustrophobic monotony punctuated only by the occasional crisis. By the time the first critical life-support system gave out and killed everyone, it's likely that most of the population wouldn't mind dying.
Perhaps someday terraforming or (less likely) discovery of human-friendly habitats will change that, but for now just there's no "there" there, and the costs for keeping humans alive indefinitely outside of Earth are incredibly high. We'd be much better off sending robots to explore until we develop the heavy-lift systems and/or automated-manufacturing technology to properly support an off-world colony.
You have to admit this does provide the basis for a pretty good movie plot... I predict that Jason Bourne (or Robert Langdon, or Richard Stallman) will be trying to save at least 5 of these people on screen within a few years.
but usually default to megabytes per thread, so if you have thousands of concurrent clients, you will soak up memory in fairly large quantities.
There's an important distinction to make here: a thread's stack will reserve (so many) kilobytes/megabytes of address space, but it won't actually use up very much RAM unless/until the thread starts to actually use a lot of stack space (e.g. by doing a lot of recursion).
On a 32-bit machine, starting too many threads can allocate all of your process's 2-4 gigabytes of address space, which can cause problems even though you have plenty of RAM still free.
On a 64-bit machine, on the other hand, the amount of available address space is mind-bogglingly huge, so running out of address space isn't a problem you're likely to run into, even if you run a gazillion threads at once.
There does seem to be a pattern to the way it does fantastic things but with non-usable properties. It seems rigged against "utility".
It kind of makes sense though... if everyday life is built from quantum mechanics, and quantum mechanics has Amazing Property X that can be applied on everyday scales, then chances are the consequences of Property X have already been observed at everyday scales, aeons ago, and therefore would not be considered Amazing at all, but rather taken for granted. Any remaining-to-be-discovered properties will naturally be the ones that don't apply to everyday life, and that's why they seem so odd/amazing to us.
Large corporations are profit generating machines. That's it. They don't try to do good (for its own sake). They don't try to do evil (for its own sake). Everything they do is based on the (perceived) impact on the bottom line
Okay, if that's always the case, how do you explain things like this? Is that the exception that proves the rule? Or is it really just a very sneaky and roundabout way of (eventually) generating more profit by generating good will? And if it is the latter, does it make any difference? After all, one could argue (and some do) that even individual acts of altruism are nothing more than disguised self-interest... but in all cases, either some good is done, or not, and any secret underlying intentions are irrelevant to the result.
In a potentially lethal situation reevaluating everything takes time and you still don't have all the facts
It's not just potentially lethal situations where a fast decision is rewarded. Any time there is any kind of competition for a resource, the person who acts first (and doesn't completely choose wrong) will most likely end up getting the lion's share. So in many (most?) social situations, quick intuition is preferred over thorough logic.
the friend's simple lack of intent to deceive is a significant factor in deciding who to trust.
Not really... unless the friend actually knows something about the subject he is talking about, he is just as likely to have been deceived himself. The fact that he (allegedly) has good intentions doesn't make them any less wrong.
Don't forget that most people feel validated when others accept and emulate their own world view. That doesn't necessarily make them dishonest, but on the other hand it means they aren't any more impartial than anyone else. They are more likely to pass on facts that reinforce their views, and ignore facts that contradict them.
We have to convert natural gas to hydrogen (might as well run vehicles on natural gas) or crack H20 into hydrogen with electricity (which is horribly inefficient).
There is always option (c): find another, more efficient way to produce hydrogen (e.g. bioengineered bacteria, or something). I still wouldn't necessarily bet on hydrogen, but it's not impossible that someone might come up with something practical.
They ought to use hydrogen, hot-air, or, heck, even nitrogen.
I've determined that the most efficient way to fill an airship is to evacuate it... a vacuum-filled airship would be much lighter than air, non-flammable, and vacuum is available in abundance throughout the universe.
All I need is a sufficiently rigid balloon body...
Actually, that is exactly how it works. Solar power customers can predict with very high certainty what their future electric bills will be, because the costs are known. Coal generated or natural gas generated power customers, OTOH, can only hope that their electric bill won't skyrocket due to fuel scarcity or carbon emissions laws.
So no, solar power isn't free. But it is reliably priced.
What have we spent since? What have we "gained" in the war of terror? In terms of dollars to outcome; we have lost. Terribly.
I generally agree, but on the other hand it's impossible to say for sure what would have happened if we hadn't spent all of that money and effort. Would there have been more attacks? Were there terrorists who would have attacked, but were intimidated by all the "security theater"? (after all, if security theater is primarily done for its psychological impact, then there's not reason to think it wouldn't affect the psychology of the 'bad guys' as well) We'll probably never know.
Robots are known as Robots. ROV's are known as Remotely Operated Vehicles. This is a human's fault, not a machine's.
Even if BP's vehicles were fully autonomous, it would still be a human's fault -- the programmer's. Until AI advances to the point where machines are sentient and can take on moral responsibilities, anyway...
Obviously, you're right. I mean, what would Apple have to gain from locking down the MacOS anyway...aside from a huge *shitload* of money?
Seems to me that Apple would lose 95% of its market share on the Desktop, as all the traditional Mac users realized their computers could no longer do the things they wanted them to do, and abandoned ship.
Desktop computing in general, and MacOS(X) in particular, have many years of expectation built up about what they should be capable of doing. If Apple were to try to remove features from MacOS/X to reduce traditional Macs to the level of an iPhone/iPad, the backlash would be severe.
Let me illustrate why this isnt a point. Our Sun is eventually going to kill all life on earth, therefore nuclear war will just speed up the inevitable.
The Sun example is different, in that things that will happen in a billion years are indistinguishable from things that will never happen, as far as our society is concerned. Running low/out of oil and having to transition to something else, OTOH, is something we can reasonably expect to happen within our lifetimes. Given that, the point is that we'll definitely be making the transition away from oil soon enough in any case -- the only question is whether it's better to do it sooner, or later.
These things happen naturally as well. There is a 100% chance that it will happen again without drilling.
Is there really an example of a Deepwater Horizon-scale leak occurring naturally? From what I read, the natural oil emissions are in the form of 'seepage' which is not environmentally harmful because the oil is released very slowly.
hmm.. I thought you were going to give a pros vs cons list. feh
If you don't like my list, feel free to write up your own; I won't mind.
This administration is going to kill the drilling industry in America. Literally kill it
Let's say for the sake of argument that you're right, and this does kill the USA's deep-water drilling industry. Who is to say that's a bad thing? Let's weigh the pros and cons:
One cost would be the loss of oil-industry jobs, and the secondary jobs that depend on them. The thing is, all of those jobs would have gone away in any case, once the supply of available oil had been exhausted. So this would just be speeding up the inevitable.
The second cost would be the loss of the profit that would have been made on the oil that was retrieved. On the hand, the risk of another disastrous oil leak would drop to zero as well. Is that a net gain or a net loss? It's hard to say, since we can't predict when the next leak would occur, or how bad it would be.
My feeling is that we need to face the inevitable: oil-based jobs are going to go away when we stop drilling for oil, and we will stop drilling for oil at some point -- either because the risk and/or expense is too great, or because there simply isn't any oil left to drill for. Either way, we should start preparing for that inevitability by transitioning towards alternative energy sources. A job collecting clean energy can pay just as well as a job collecting oil, and it serves our national interest better.
How many years ago was the last deep sea blowout? What is the real probability of it happening again in the next six months?
I don't think it's that simple -- you can't assume a random distribution. You might as well have asked a Toyota driver two years ago what the chances of another runaway accelerator problem would be, given that it had only happened once so far. If there is some sort of new systemic problem, then the risks will be characterized by that problem, not by history, and until they can rule that possibility out they should err on the side of caution.
And does anyone believe that the Obama administration would be able to complete a study or make meaningful changes (or even suggestions for changes) in six months?
Dunno, but perhaps in 6 months the current disaster will be largely dealt with, which means that most of the resources that are currently going towards fixing the spill could then (theoretically) be redirected towards a second spill if it were to occur.
At the moment, if we had a second spill, what equipment would we use to contain it? There's probably some available, but we wouldn't be able to use any of the equipment that's currently being used for spill #1.
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So, were not burning any fossil fuels to charge these things?
Irrelevant. The point is not to burn zero fossil fuels (an impossible goal at this point, unless you can go by bike). The point is to burn less fossil fuels, and also add flexibility to the nation's fleet. Just because an electric car uses fossil-based electricity today doesn't mean it can't use renewable electricity tomorrow.
And most Americans have really long commutes, more than 50 miles per day.
Wrong. The average commute is 16 miles each way. A modern electric car (like the Nissan Leaf) can go 100 miles on a charge. Not a problem for commuting.
Sounds like the right mentality to go to Mars/ Asteroids/ or anywhere else off this planet.
If you want a preview of what living off planet would be like, build yourself a water-tight metal cocoon, lock yourself inside, have it dropped to the bottom of the ocoean, and live inside it for the rest of your life -- no, you can't ever come back. Oh yeah, and for complete realism, you're not allowed to examine any fish or other lifeforms or collect any to eat, because off-planet, there won't be any.
Sorry to be a luddite flat-lander, and a bubble-burster on top of that, but after the first few weeks/months, living off-planet would be a hellish claustrophobic monotony punctuated only by the occasional crisis. By the time the first critical life-support system gave out and killed everyone, it's likely that most of the population wouldn't mind dying.
Perhaps someday terraforming or (less likely) discovery of human-friendly habitats will change that, but for now just there's no "there" there, and the costs for keeping humans alive indefinitely outside of Earth are incredibly high. We'd be much better off sending robots to explore until we develop the heavy-lift systems and/or automated-manufacturing technology to properly support an off-world colony.
So please, stop with the paranoid movie plots.
You have to admit this does provide the basis for a pretty good movie plot... I predict that Jason Bourne (or Robert Langdon, or Richard Stallman) will be trying to save at least 5 of these people on screen within a few years.
but usually default to megabytes per thread, so if you have thousands of concurrent clients, you will soak up memory in fairly large quantities.
There's an important distinction to make here: a thread's stack will reserve (so many) kilobytes/megabytes of address space, but it won't actually use up very much RAM unless/until the thread starts to actually use a lot of stack space (e.g. by doing a lot of recursion).
On a 32-bit machine, starting too many threads can allocate all of your process's 2-4 gigabytes of address space, which can cause problems even though you have plenty of RAM still free.
On a 64-bit machine, on the other hand, the amount of available address space is mind-bogglingly huge, so running out of address space isn't a problem you're likely to run into, even if you run a gazillion threads at once.
There does seem to be a pattern to the way it does fantastic things but with non-usable properties. It seems rigged against "utility".
It kind of makes sense though... if everyday life is built from quantum mechanics, and quantum mechanics has Amazing Property X that can be applied on everyday scales, then chances are the consequences of Property X have already been observed at everyday scales, aeons ago, and therefore would not be considered Amazing at all, but rather taken for granted. Any remaining-to-be-discovered properties will naturally be the ones that don't apply to everyday life, and that's why they seem so odd/amazing to us.
The universe with its one-dimensional timeline is pretty clear to have had an origin (with the big bang)
Is that an origin point, or just the point before which we are no longer able to see?
And they'll still charge us $3 a gallon for it.
If you don't like the price, don't pay it. Nobody forces you to buy gas.
Large corporations are profit generating machines. That's it. They don't try to do good (for its own sake). They don't try to do evil (for its own sake). Everything they do is based on the (perceived) impact on the bottom line
Okay, if that's always the case, how do you explain things like this? Is that the exception that proves the rule? Or is it really just a very sneaky and roundabout way of (eventually) generating more profit by generating good will? And if it is the latter, does it make any difference? After all, one could argue (and some do) that even individual acts of altruism are nothing more than disguised self-interest... but in all cases, either some good is done, or not, and any secret underlying intentions are irrelevant to the result.
In a potentially lethal situation reevaluating everything takes time and you still don't have all the facts
It's not just potentially lethal situations where a fast decision is rewarded. Any time there is any kind of competition for a resource, the person who acts first (and doesn't completely choose wrong) will most likely end up getting the lion's share. So in many (most?) social situations, quick intuition is preferred over thorough logic.
the friend's simple lack of intent to deceive is a significant factor in deciding who to trust.
Not really... unless the friend actually knows something about the subject he is talking about, he is just as likely to have been deceived himself. The fact that he (allegedly) has good intentions doesn't make them any less wrong.
Don't forget that most people feel validated when others accept and emulate their own world view. That doesn't necessarily make them dishonest, but on the other hand it means they aren't any more impartial than anyone else. They are more likely to pass on facts that reinforce their views, and ignore facts that contradict them.
We have to convert natural gas to hydrogen (might as well run vehicles on natural gas) or crack H20 into hydrogen with electricity (which is horribly inefficient).
There is always option (c): find another, more efficient way to produce hydrogen (e.g. bioengineered bacteria, or something). I still wouldn't necessarily bet on hydrogen, but it's not impossible that someone might come up with something practical.
How the heck do you do that if your primary source of energy if a battery?
You could plug the car in... or carry around a spare container of electricity (aka a battery), or a generator and some gasoline, I suppose.
They ought to use hydrogen, hot-air, or, heck, even nitrogen.
I've determined that the most efficient way to fill an airship is to evacuate it... a vacuum-filled airship would be much lighter than air, non-flammable, and vacuum is available in abundance throughout the universe.
All I need is a sufficiently rigid balloon body...
Actually, that is exactly how it works. Solar power customers can predict with very high certainty what their future electric bills will be, because the costs are known. Coal generated or natural gas generated power customers, OTOH, can only hope that their electric bill won't skyrocket due to fuel scarcity or carbon emissions laws.
So no, solar power isn't free. But it is reliably priced.
the same definition of "bomb" that applies to popping bubble wrap or balloons, or a rectum - "A vessel which contains compressed gases."
Oh great. Now they're going to close down all the Taco Bells in the airports. Thanks a lot!
What have we spent since? What have we "gained" in the war of terror? In terms of dollars to outcome; we have lost. Terribly.
I generally agree, but on the other hand it's impossible to say for sure what would have happened if we hadn't spent all of that money and effort. Would there have been more attacks? Were there terrorists who would have attacked, but were intimidated by all the "security theater"? (after all, if security theater is primarily done for its psychological impact, then there's not reason to think it wouldn't affect the psychology of the 'bad guys' as well) We'll probably never know.
Anyone else would have less reason to lie about the severity and hide the evidence.
In that case they've done a pretty lousy job of that as well, as the evidence is washing up on beaches all over the gulf.
Robots are known as Robots. ROV's are known as Remotely Operated Vehicles. This is a human's fault, not a machine's.
Even if BP's vehicles were fully autonomous, it would still be a human's fault -- the programmer's. Until AI advances to the point where machines are sentient and can take on moral responsibilities, anyway...
Obviously, you're right. I mean, what would Apple have to gain from locking down the MacOS anyway...aside from a huge *shitload* of money?
Seems to me that Apple would lose 95% of its market share on the Desktop, as all the traditional Mac users realized their computers could no longer do the things they wanted them to do, and abandoned ship.
Desktop computing in general, and MacOS(X) in particular, have many years of expectation built up about what they should be capable of doing. If Apple were to try to remove features from MacOS/X to reduce traditional Macs to the level of an iPhone/iPad, the backlash would be severe.
Who cares if the system is secure if all you are doing is browsing for blinking sheep screensavers?
All the people who have to deal with the resulting spam from your botnet node care....
And those are only the ones I can come up with out of my head.
Don't forget Zorro I, Zorro II, and Zorro III -- all dead as a doornail now. :^)
Let me illustrate why this isnt a point. Our Sun is eventually going to kill all life on earth, therefore nuclear war will just speed up the inevitable.
The Sun example is different, in that things that will happen in a billion years are indistinguishable from things that will never happen, as far as our society is concerned. Running low/out of oil and having to transition to something else, OTOH, is something we can reasonably expect to happen within our lifetimes. Given that, the point is that we'll definitely be making the transition away from oil soon enough in any case -- the only question is whether it's better to do it sooner, or later.
These things happen naturally as well. There is a 100% chance that it will happen again without drilling.
Is there really an example of a Deepwater Horizon-scale leak occurring naturally? From what I read, the natural oil emissions are in the form of 'seepage' which is not environmentally harmful because the oil is released very slowly.
hmm.. I thought you were going to give a pros vs cons list. feh
If you don't like my list, feel free to write up your own; I won't mind.
This administration is going to kill the drilling industry in America. Literally kill it
Let's say for the sake of argument that you're right, and this does kill the USA's deep-water drilling industry. Who is to say that's a bad thing? Let's weigh the pros and cons:
One cost would be the loss of oil-industry jobs, and the secondary jobs that depend on them. The thing is, all of those jobs would have gone away in any case, once the supply of available oil had been exhausted. So this would just be speeding up the inevitable.
The second cost would be the loss of the profit that would have been made on the oil that was retrieved. On the hand, the risk of another disastrous oil leak would drop to zero as well. Is that a net gain or a net loss? It's hard to say, since we can't predict when the next leak would occur, or how bad it would be.
My feeling is that we need to face the inevitable: oil-based jobs are going to go away when we stop drilling for oil, and we will stop drilling for oil at some point -- either because the risk and/or expense is too great, or because there simply isn't any oil left to drill for. Either way, we should start preparing for that inevitability by transitioning towards alternative energy sources. A job collecting clean energy can pay just as well as a job collecting oil, and it serves our national interest better.
How many years ago was the last deep sea blowout? What is the real probability of it happening again in the next six months?
I don't think it's that simple -- you can't assume a random distribution. You might as well have asked a Toyota driver two years ago what the chances of another runaway accelerator problem would be, given that it had only happened once so far. If there is some sort of new systemic problem, then the risks will be characterized by that problem, not by history, and until they can rule that possibility out they should err on the side of caution.
And does anyone believe that the Obama administration would be able to complete a study or make meaningful changes (or even suggestions for changes) in six months?
Dunno, but perhaps in 6 months the current disaster will be largely dealt with, which means that most of the resources that are currently going towards fixing the spill could then (theoretically) be redirected towards a second spill if it were to occur.
At the moment, if we had a second spill, what equipment would we use to contain it? There's probably some available, but we wouldn't be able to use any of the equipment that's currently being used for spill #1.