The point is, those solar lights at the dollar store? Yea... Make millions of them, throw them out in the desert, viola, carbon sink. You need to do something more with it beyond the acid, but this is the sort of idea we need to reduce already emitted CO2 after we've stopped creating all the extra.
And how much greenhouse gas are you going to add to the atmosphere when you make 'millions' of those 'solar lights'? That manufacturing process had better have a very small carbon footprint if you're going to come out ahead with only a 2% conversion efficiency...
The "Internet of Things" offers very few tangible benefits. Normal people just don't care if they can control their toaster using their smartphone. Most people aren't going to waste money on automatic curtains that they can control from their fridge, either.
This attitude reminds me of how I felt when cell phones started incorporating cameras. I didn't want one, thought it was a stupid idea, and couldn't see how the idea would ever take off. Now I use mine all the time. It was a similar story with 'the cloud', except I saw the attraction and the utility - I just don't like giving up that much control over my data.
The point is that new technologies, (and new uses for/integrations of them), have a way of becoming wildly popular and successful, even when their usefulness or appeal isn't immediately evident to most of us. Smart companies realize that and gamble on new tech and new uses for existing tech; these gambles often pay off big time.
I'm still not happy with MS getting into bed with Open Source though. My first thought was best expressed by an earlier commenter talking about 'embrace, extend, eliminate'. My second thought is 'who's fucking whom here', and I'm afraid I already know the answer.
And who says they build their binaries from those sources? The backdoors are probably kept in a separate branch and merged with the release branch at build time...
This, exactly. Now if Microsoft allowed governments to build their own binaries from the source they had just finished reviewing, there might be some reassurance that this isn't just a smoke-and-mirrors act. Then again, the toolchain might be compromised. Somehow I don't think MS will allow governments to have access to the toolchain sources as well. And even if they did, I suspect most governments don't have the resources to conduct such a comprehensive review.
Man, this has to be the most blatant Slashvertisement I've ever read. The summary even sounds as though it was written by a professional ad copy writer. Gimme a break, Dicedot!
It really annoys me that these things are made this way. It's not even cost-cutting, because the faults were not due to reducing costs of materials or construction, it was designed that way. In other words designed to fail. And the problem is people are now brainwashed into believing that five years lifespan for goods like this is OK, even 'doing well'. It's NOT! These things should last 20 years or more.
It's worse than annoying. I'm not exaggerating when I say this kind of thing should be treated as a crime against humanity. The cost of the resulting resource depletion and environmental damage that we're passing on to future generations may well mean the difference between our survival as a species and our extinction, or at least our decimation. And it's not as though the things we're producing as throwaway items are even essential; in many cases they actually reduce our quality of life, (although they raise our 'standard of living', which is a metric we ought to abolish).
Don't get me wrong - I love tech toys and modern conveniences, and the technology and manufacturing sectors have much to be proud of in the area of making human lives better and more fulfilling. But we really need to band together as a species, separate the good from the bad, and stop committing slow suicide.
instead of adding a bunch of features I don't need, didn't ask for, and make the product more complex, expensive, and likely to fail?
My good sir, how dare you besmirch the efforts of those who are trying to make our economy grow ever larger and ever faster? Don't you WANT a booming business environment? Is buying overpriced junk that fails early and often, and leaves our planet an empty husk, REALLY too high a price to pay for petty amusements and diversions that further line the pockets of the already-wealthy? How selfish of you!
...and I'm generally not interested in games. But this could turn me into a convert - the concept seems really awesome, and the sample video looked very cool.
Just now I've slipped off my armour of techno-jadedness, and I'm amazed at the wonders we humans are capable of creating when we're not busy engaging in pillaging, war, and petty bickering. Off-topic perhaps, but what the hell.
But computer scientist Charlie Catlett said the planners have taken precautions to design their sensors to observe mobile devices and count contact with the signal rather than record the digital address of every device.
That may be how it is designed now, but without (actually enforced) laws about the data collected and the legal uses thereof, tracking phone addresses and individuals is only a firmware update away.
That "every device" phrase sounds like a loophole to me. So long as they DON'T record the digital address of even ONE device that crosses their path, they're technically telling the truth, even as they're lying.
We need to keep the heat on this kind of thing just like SOPA only much, much more....
True. The thing that concernes me is the number of such initiatives that are flying under our radar. It may be the case, (and IMHO probably is), that there is a huge amount of this kind of crap going on that we only find out about when it's way too late, or never find out about at all.
The real solution here is NOT to fight these fires as we see them crop up. The real solution is to stop the corporations and governments from lighting the damned fires in the first place, before they burn our collective home to the ground. We need to find a way to restore the accountability they once had to us, their customers and citizens, their meal ticket - otherwise we'll continue to become more and more like animals in factory farms, and less and less like the autonomous geings we were born as.
I'll leave it to your creativity and imagination to figure out how this might best be done - there are lots and lots of approaches, and we propbably need to use most of them if we're to reverse this inexorable march toward irreversible feudal serfdom. We're already a LONG way down that road...
The planned obsolescence fad has done nothing in the past 50 years except transfer wealth from the middle class to the top 1%, essentially by committing mass fraud by forcing engineers to use their skills to produce products that fail on purpose for no reason.
+5 - Insightful. Too bad I have no mod points left.:(
"The Economy" is indeed a kind of giant Ponzi scheme.
That's not cosmonaut, it's confidant. None of the gals was Russian AFAIK, and probably none of them had been higher than a commercial airliner normally flies.
If the best-case outcome is just 0.03% extra growth per year, is TAFTA/TTIP worth the massive upheavals it will require to both US and EU regulatory systems to achieve that?"
Those "massive upheavals" are precisely what makes the effort worthwile in the minds of the legislators and negotiators responsible. Just think of how much opportunity there is here for consultants, contractors, family members, and other corporate and governmental parasites and hangers-on. No, it's not going to boost the overall economy - probably quite the opposite. And no, it's not going to result in jobs where they're needed - it's going to result in extra money and bigger power bases for people who already have too big a slice of the pie. Make no mistake, it's the globalization of nepotism - only in this case, the 'family' is 'the 0.1%' It probably isn't that way by design, (though maybe it is), but you can bet the people who are and will be involved see the opportunity and are happy about it.
Amen to that! The 'slashvertisement' thought occurred to me about half way through reading TFS. Talking about technical innovations, production problems, bugs, or relevant regulations would be appropriate. Talking about how Tesla is engaging in the sleazy practices that have been the hallmark of its entire industry for decades? Not so much...
...if they also gave everybody access to the feeds from the cameras that will likely be pointed at Earth. But I bet various governments won't let that happen. Might be possible for citizens to break the encryption on the camera video data though.
... So at some point the capabilities that the NSA now has, may be available to the average citizen. Then it will be time to lift the rocks under which the watchers live, and report publicly on their every move. Payback's a bitch.
I agree with much of what you've said, and you stated it reasonably and eloquently. However, there is one part I would change:
As it stands, their rejection of the principles behind that license is shared by the politicians for whom they paid, the judges who were appointed by said politicians, and a large enough percentage of the anaesthetized-and-spell-bound-by-bread-and-circuses voting population that their concept of data ownership continues to be the way things are done.
I think it's important to recognize that things are the way they are at least in part because politicians and laws are sold to the highest bidder, and because a large portion of the electorate is too clueless, uncritical, self-absorbed, or otherwise distracted to care.
This sounds so prohibitively expensive to build and maintain that I don't see how any energy gained from the solar panels makes it worth it, especially since they are going to be covered by cars for a large portion of the time.
Please explain how this is better than asphalt?
From the Solar Roadways FAQ:
Since our system is modular, repair will be much quicker and easier than our current maintenance system for asphalt roads. We've learned that in the U.S., over $160 billion is lost each year in lost productivity from people sitting in traffic due to road maintenance.
What they're saying is that between reduced cost of paving, filling potholes, etc, and the reduced loss of productivity that results from less construction/maintenance, the system should pretty much pay for itself. (Also, it might make sens to factor in reduced healthcare costs and legal costs from fewer accidents as a result of better nighttime visibility, etc).
Initially the cost will probably be huge, especially accounting for the 'things they don't know they don't know' that will bite them during initial deployments. But I think in the end it will be a net economic benefit, especially since it's also an opportunity in many cases to bury vulnerable overhead lines, install additional data communications backbones, and possibly even reduce carbon footprints significantly. Besides 'nothing ventured, nothing gained' - big ideas like this are how civilization advances.
We designed our prototype to use 'virtual storage', meaning that any excess energy is placed back to the grid during daylight hours and then can be drawn back out of the grid at night. This is important as solar energy is only available during the day, but our heating elements need to have power at night in the wintertime in northern climates for snowy weather. However, we can add any current or future energy storage devices to our system. For instance, batteries and flywheels can be placed in the Cable Corridor for easy access, if customers wish to incorporate them. We chose to not use batteries in our prototype system. We fear that, if we make that the norm, our environmental project could leave mountains of lead acid battery in its wake."
Because solar roads will be on the electrical grid as both producers and consumers, the net effect is that roads and parking lots that aren't under snow cover, (because they've been plowed already, or because they're in a snowless region), provide power to offset that used to melt snow on roads that do have snow falling on them. Yes, this means that the snow melting capability will only be significant when the total road surface area 'paved' with these cells reaches a certain critical point - as with so many things economy of scale plays a role.
If we're really serious about this, governments and health agencies need to offer a variety of vaccines for a given disease, with different adjuvants, egg-free versions, etc, to accomodate those who have a nasty reaction to the most popular formulations. Then, offer people the choice between vaccine and quarantine.
Then again, this world is getting awfully overpopulated, and maybe we're due for another major culling, cold-hearted and horrible as that may sound...
The more important question is: Why would you develop for FirefoxOS in the first place?
I dunno - maybe because you want to see a more free, more open mobile OS that you have more control over? One that Google doesn't have a zillion hooks into? One that offers the user more control over the permissions that apps are granted?
Asking "why would you develop for firefox", (as opposed to Android, Apple, or whatever), is kind of like asking why one would develop for Linux as opposed to Windows.
I think advertisers are shooting themselves in the foot with this, I have recently noticed just don't believe a word any of them say anymore...
What I think a lot of people are missing is that individual advertisments don't need to work, (in the way that they are no longer working on you), in order for advertising itself to work.
Advertising establishes its own culture and its own set of expectations. It creates its own zeitgeist, one in which consumerism is the 'ism' of the century. One only needs to hear about young women starving themselves to death to be fashionable, or obese people eating themselves to death on fast food, or people ending up bankrupt buying shit they patently don't need in order to be happy and fulfilled, to realize that advertising works big time.
Advertising is the umbrella propaganda organization under which all consumer-oriented corporations operate. If one advertiser's ads fail for him, chances are they are working for some other company, (perhaps even a nominal competitor), and vice versa. If one ad doesn't getcha, another probably will - if it doesn't induce you to buy a specific product, it probably at least makes you more likely to buy something at some point in time. The conspiracy theorist in me thinks this was the plan all along, while my rational side says that things just evolved this way.
In either case, if advertising didn't work, it would have died out long ago.
Slashdot Mirror
The point is, those solar lights at the dollar store? Yea... Make millions of them, throw them out in the desert, viola, carbon sink. You need to do something more with it beyond the acid, but this is the sort of idea we need to reduce already emitted CO2 after we've stopped creating all the extra.
And how much greenhouse gas are you going to add to the atmosphere when you make 'millions' of those 'solar lights'? That manufacturing process had better have a very small carbon footprint if you're going to come out ahead with only a 2% conversion efficiency...
The "Internet of Things" offers very few tangible benefits. Normal people just don't care if they can control their toaster using their smartphone. Most people aren't going to waste money on automatic curtains that they can control from their fridge, either.
This attitude reminds me of how I felt when cell phones started incorporating cameras. I didn't want one, thought it was a stupid idea, and couldn't see how the idea would ever take off. Now I use mine all the time. It was a similar story with 'the cloud', except I saw the attraction and the utility - I just don't like giving up that much control over my data.
The point is that new technologies, (and new uses for/integrations of them), have a way of becoming wildly popular and successful, even when their usefulness or appeal isn't immediately evident to most of us. Smart companies realize that and gamble on new tech and new uses for existing tech; these gambles often pay off big time.
I'm still not happy with MS getting into bed with Open Source though. My first thought was best expressed by an earlier commenter talking about 'embrace, extend, eliminate'. My second thought is 'who's fucking whom here', and I'm afraid I already know the answer.
And who says they build their binaries from those sources? The backdoors are probably kept in a separate branch and merged with the release branch at build time...
This, exactly. Now if Microsoft allowed governments to build their own binaries from the source they had just finished reviewing, there might be some reassurance that this isn't just a smoke-and-mirrors act. Then again, the toolchain might be compromised. Somehow I don't think MS will allow governments to have access to the toolchain sources as well. And even if they did, I suspect most governments don't have the resources to conduct such a comprehensive review.
Man, this has to be the most blatant Slashvertisement I've ever read. The summary even sounds as though it was written by a professional ad copy writer. Gimme a break, Dicedot!
It really annoys me that these things are made this way. It's not even cost-cutting, because the faults were not due to reducing costs of materials or construction, it was designed that way. In other words designed to fail. And the problem is people are now brainwashed into believing that five years lifespan for goods like this is OK, even 'doing well'. It's NOT! These things should last 20 years or more.
It's worse than annoying. I'm not exaggerating when I say this kind of thing should be treated as a crime against humanity. The cost of the resulting resource depletion and environmental damage that we're passing on to future generations may well mean the difference between our survival as a species and our extinction, or at least our decimation. And it's not as though the things we're producing as throwaway items are even essential; in many cases they actually reduce our quality of life, (although they raise our 'standard of living', which is a metric we ought to abolish).
Don't get me wrong - I love tech toys and modern conveniences, and the technology and manufacturing sectors have much to be proud of in the area of making human lives better and more fulfilling. But we really need to band together as a species, separate the good from the bad, and stop committing slow suicide.
instead of adding a bunch of features I don't need, didn't ask for, and make the product more complex, expensive, and likely to fail?
My good sir, how dare you besmirch the efforts of those who are trying to make our economy grow ever larger and ever faster? Don't you WANT a booming business environment? Is buying overpriced junk that fails early and often, and leaves our planet an empty husk, REALLY too high a price to pay for petty amusements and diversions that further line the pockets of the already-wealthy? How selfish of you!
...and I'm generally not interested in games. But this could turn me into a convert - the concept seems really awesome, and the sample video looked very cool.
Just now I've slipped off my armour of techno-jadedness, and I'm amazed at the wonders we humans are capable of creating when we're not busy engaging in pillaging, war, and petty bickering. Off-topic perhaps, but what the hell.
But computer scientist Charlie Catlett said the planners have taken precautions to design their sensors to observe mobile devices and count contact with the signal rather than record the digital address of every device.
That may be how it is designed now, but without (actually enforced) laws about the data collected and the legal uses thereof, tracking phone addresses and individuals is only a firmware update away.
That "every device" phrase sounds like a loophole to me. So long as they DON'T record the digital address of even ONE device that crosses their path, they're technically telling the truth, even as they're lying.
We need to keep the heat on this kind of thing just like SOPA only much, much more....
True. The thing that concernes me is the number of such initiatives that are flying under our radar. It may be the case, (and IMHO probably is), that there is a huge amount of this kind of crap going on that we only find out about when it's way too late, or never find out about at all.
The real solution here is NOT to fight these fires as we see them crop up. The real solution is to stop the corporations and governments from lighting the damned fires in the first place, before they burn our collective home to the ground. We need to find a way to restore the accountability they once had to us, their customers and citizens, their meal ticket - otherwise we'll continue to become more and more like animals in factory farms, and less and less like the autonomous geings we were born as.
I'll leave it to your creativity and imagination to figure out how this might best be done - there are lots and lots of approaches, and we propbably need to use most of them if we're to reverse this inexorable march toward irreversible feudal serfdom. We're already a LONG way down that road...
The planned obsolescence fad has done nothing in the past 50 years except transfer wealth from the middle class to the top 1%, essentially by committing mass fraud by forcing engineers to use their skills to produce products that fail on purpose for no reason.
+5 - Insightful. Too bad I have no mod points left. :(
"The Economy" is indeed a kind of giant Ponzi scheme.
"Getting upset on other people's behalves" - isn't that called 'empathy'?
...But it does convince one that the television is watching them, the government is make-believe and the closet has an entrance to hell.
Except for the 'closet' part, that sounds like a disturbingly accurate description of today's reality...
That's not cosmonaut, it's confidant. None of the gals was Russian AFAIK, and probably none of them had been higher than a commercial airliner normally flies.
FTA:
If the best-case outcome is just 0.03% extra growth per year, is TAFTA/TTIP worth the massive upheavals it will require to both US and EU regulatory systems to achieve that?"
Those "massive upheavals" are precisely what makes the effort worthwile in the minds of the legislators and negotiators responsible. Just think of how much opportunity there is here for consultants, contractors, family members, and other corporate and governmental parasites and hangers-on. No, it's not going to boost the overall economy - probably quite the opposite. And no, it's not going to result in jobs where they're needed - it's going to result in extra money and bigger power bases for people who already have too big a slice of the pie. Make no mistake, it's the globalization of nepotism - only in this case, the 'family' is 'the 0.1%' It probably isn't that way by design, (though maybe it is), but you can bet the people who are and will be involved see the opportunity and are happy about it.
FIle under underwhelming slashvertisment?
Amen to that! The 'slashvertisement' thought occurred to me about half way through reading TFS. Talking about technical innovations, production problems, bugs, or relevant regulations would be appropriate. Talking about how Tesla is engaging in the sleazy practices that have been the hallmark of its entire industry for decades? Not so much...
Thank for that nospam007 - you just brightened my day!
...if they also gave everybody access to the feeds from the cameras that will likely be pointed at Earth. But I bet various governments won't let that happen. Might be possible for citizens to break the encryption on the camera video data though.
and what is the latest news in the prenda soap series ?...
This seems to be the latest: http://www.jdjournal.com/2014/...
... So at some point the capabilities that the NSA now has, may be available to the average citizen. Then it will be time to lift the rocks under which the watchers live, and report publicly on their every move. Payback's a bitch.
I agree with much of what you've said, and you stated it reasonably and eloquently. However, there is one part I would change:
As it stands, their rejection of the principles behind that license is shared by the politicians for whom they paid, the judges who were appointed by said politicians, and a large enough percentage of the anaesthetized-and-spell-bound-by-bread-and-circuses voting population that their concept of data ownership continues to be the way things are done.
I think it's important to recognize that things are the way they are at least in part because politicians and laws are sold to the highest bidder, and because a large portion of the electorate is too clueless, uncritical, self-absorbed, or otherwise distracted to care.
This sounds so prohibitively expensive to build and maintain that I don't see how any energy gained from the solar panels makes it worth it, especially since they are going to be covered by cars for a large portion of the time.
Please explain how this is better than asphalt?
From the Solar Roadways FAQ:
Since our system is modular, repair will be much quicker and easier than our current maintenance system for asphalt roads. We've learned that in the U.S., over $160 billion is lost each year in lost productivity from people sitting in traffic due to road maintenance.
What they're saying is that between reduced cost of paving, filling potholes, etc, and the reduced loss of productivity that results from less construction/maintenance, the system should pretty much pay for itself. (Also, it might make sens to factor in reduced healthcare costs and legal costs from fewer accidents as a result of better nighttime visibility, etc).
Initially the cost will probably be huge, especially accounting for the 'things they don't know they don't know' that will bite them during initial deployments. But I think in the end it will be a net economic benefit, especially since it's also an opportunity in many cases to bury vulnerable overhead lines, install additional data communications backbones, and possibly even reduce carbon footprints significantly. Besides 'nothing ventured, nothing gained' - big ideas like this are how civilization advances.
From the Solar Roadways FAQ:
We designed our prototype to use 'virtual storage', meaning that any excess energy is placed back to the grid during daylight hours and then can be drawn back out of the grid at night. This is important as solar energy is only available during the day, but our heating elements need to have power at night in the wintertime in northern climates for snowy weather. However, we can add any current or future energy storage devices to our system. For instance, batteries and flywheels can be placed in the Cable Corridor for easy access, if customers wish to incorporate them. We chose to not use batteries in our prototype system. We fear that, if we make that the norm, our environmental project could leave mountains of lead acid battery in its wake."
Because solar roads will be on the electrical grid as both producers and consumers, the net effect is that roads and parking lots that aren't under snow cover, (because they've been plowed already, or because they're in a snowless region), provide power to offset that used to melt snow on roads that do have snow falling on them. Yes, this means that the snow melting capability will only be significant when the total road surface area 'paved' with these cells reaches a certain critical point - as with so many things economy of scale plays a role.
If we're really serious about this, governments and health agencies need to offer a variety of vaccines for a given disease, with different adjuvants, egg-free versions, etc, to accomodate those who have a nasty reaction to the most popular formulations. Then, offer people the choice between vaccine and quarantine.
Then again, this world is getting awfully overpopulated, and maybe we're due for another major culling, cold-hearted and horrible as that may sound...
The more important question is: Why would you develop for FirefoxOS in the first place?
I dunno - maybe because you want to see a more free, more open mobile OS that you have more control over? One that Google doesn't have a zillion hooks into? One that offers the user more control over the permissions that apps are granted?
Asking "why would you develop for firefox", (as opposed to Android, Apple, or whatever), is kind of like asking why one would develop for Linux as opposed to Windows.
I think advertisers are shooting themselves in the foot with this, I have recently noticed just don't believe a word any of them say anymore...
What I think a lot of people are missing is that individual advertisments don't need to work, (in the way that they are no longer working on you), in order for advertising itself to work.
Advertising establishes its own culture and its own set of expectations. It creates its own zeitgeist, one in which consumerism is the 'ism' of the century. One only needs to hear about young women starving themselves to death to be fashionable, or obese people eating themselves to death on fast food, or people ending up bankrupt buying shit they patently don't need in order to be happy and fulfilled, to realize that advertising works big time.
Advertising is the umbrella propaganda organization under which all consumer-oriented corporations operate. If one advertiser's ads fail for him, chances are they are working for some other company, (perhaps even a nominal competitor), and vice versa. If one ad doesn't getcha, another probably will - if it doesn't induce you to buy a specific product, it probably at least makes you more likely to buy something at some point in time. The conspiracy theorist in me thinks this was the plan all along, while my rational side says that things just evolved this way.
In either case, if advertising didn't work, it would have died out long ago.