Despite the massive sizes of the profits, keep in mind that the $10B quarterly numbers come on gross revenues of more than $100B, with income taxes alone totaling several billion dollars. The profits are 10% or less, and if you look at the history of the companies, you'll see that they jump around a lot, going into loss every so often. No one expected $10 oil prices in the 1990s, and it's quite possible that the oil companies will get bitten again as they go looking ever deeper for new oil deposits.
There are subsidies for solar power. However, traditional solar mechanisms are simply very expensive to operate. They require significant tracts of land, they use equipment that requires specialized knowledge to repair, and the output varies dramatically.
Don't we spend about that much per day in Iraq? I think we can spare a bit to remove our reason for being there.
A bit? At 200MW for 38km^2 (a 4km diameter), it would require (50000MW/200MW) * 38km^2 = 9500km^2 just to cover California's summertime requirements, and that doesn't account for the land in between. Winds may be an issue in the area, and anyone who has tried to build in California knows just how sensitive environmentalists are in this state. If you tried to cover up that much land, you'd have a major fight on your hands.
And what if it costs more than $200M? What if it costs double? When you factor in land costs in California, that starts to get very ugly. The output isn't proven, either; it may be 200MW, it may be 100MW actual output. Nothing has ever been done at that scale, and it's taking a lot longer than expected to get things in motion. I'm all for a trial spot, and if Australia wants it to be in their backyard, that's fine by me. In the meantime, if solar is a preferred route, I'd rather see more efficient means pursued, such as the Stirling generators.
Not without tax breaks, it's not, at least for older tech. The Stirling generators that are intended for the SDG&E project (and which are also planned for a 500MW facility near Victorville) may change that, but we'll have to see how they handle the weather conditions here (as opposed to New Mexico) over the long term. And while the deal may be huge in terms of solar, it's really not that large when put in perspective with other plants, where 500MW-600MW plant construction is not terribly uncommon.
The solar tower is interesting, but it's been years since they announced it, and they don't even have all of the permits yet. I question the efficiency of land use as well -- 9400 acres for 200MW, compared to 4500 acres for 500MW for the Victor Valley project I mentioned above and between 2500 and 1600 acres for 1000MW for the setup in TFA. They claim a construction cost of less than US$200M, but I would not be at all surprised if they miss their mark significantly.
But it shows that the market may be succeeding in getting people to move to other sources -- hopefully those closer to home. I believe that was the point.
The failure of one or more companies to accurately predict supply does not mean that the market itself has failed.
Microsoft is testing their update, I imagine most Linux distros will have one soon if they don't already, and I'm sure Apple will have caught up with it in time, too (again, if not already). Cellphones will sync with the local clock and be up to date relatively quickly. There should be minimal trouble with it.
While I appreciate your follow-up work, you could easily have included the links since you were already copying the excerpts over.
Note also how he mentions that "very nearly all of the world's 160,000+ glaciers... have never been visited by humankind or measured in detail."....so how does he know they are growing?
He doesn't, and I don't think he said that they were (although there may have been an implication). However, since there is little or no data to show that they're growing, you seem to be taking that to be evidence that they are shrinking, which is just as bad.
I did some math recently about the loss of the Greenland ice sheet. According to Wikipedia, it covers 1.71 million km^2, and totals some 2.85 million km^3. According to the BBC, in 2005 it had shed 220km^3 that year, or about 0.000077%, which is a fairly tiny fraction. It's not clear if that accounts for or ignores accumulation, but going back to Wikipedia's article, there is this mention:
"IPCC [IPCC, 2001] estimates the accumulation to 520 ± 26 Gigatonnes of ice per year, runoff and bottom melting to 297±32 Gt/yr and 32±3 Gt/yr, respectively, and iceberg production to 235±33 Gt/yr. On balance, they estimate -44 ± 53 Gt/yr, which means that on average the ice sheet may currently be melting, though it can't be determined for sure."
It could be gaining up to 9Gt/yr, or losing 97Gt/yr. The middle ground may not be a good thing, but this is not the easiest thing to measure, as suggested by the relatively significant uncertainty.
How does the announcement of Saddam's verdict give a boost to Republicans? Most people figured that it was a foregone conclusion (whether by conspiracy or simple weight of facts is up to the individual) that he would be found guilty, and the only real question was how much of a chance there would be of him getting life in prison instead of the death penalty.
Minds are already made up over Iraq; Saddam's verdict will not muster or change enough votes (if any at all) to sway a single election.
"The death sentences handed down Sunday against former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and two of his co-defendants triggers an automatic appeal to the Iraqi Criminal Tribunal....
"There is no time limit for the appeals court to make its decision, but a court official told The Associated Press that the process would likely take three or four weeks after formal paperwork is submitted."
On the contrary, the military campaign was incredibly successful, with almost all of North Korea in the hands of UN forces a mere two months after it seemed that Pusan might become an Alamo. Then ChiCom troops began to pour over the border. The UN mandate for the war did not cover dealing with China, and Truman and Eisenhower had no desire to turn it into a pan-Asia war, possibly involving the Soviets more directly, and leading to World War III less than a decade after the last great war had been concluded. In the end, of course, everyone agreed to return to the status quo. Not a pure success in total, but certainly not a failure.
The gyros have always been the major weak point of the Hubble, and IIRC, they have been replaced on every mission. I would be astonished if the new group lasted much past 2013.
The JWST is significantly different from the HST, in that the former is purely an infrared telescope. It will not be serviceable or upgradable, either, as its orbit will be at the L2 Lagrange point -- nearly a million miles from Earth.
Vista, FWIW, is apparently beginning a (probably slow) move away from drive letters by having them hidden by default and using the partition labels to figure out where you're going. This is good in the long run, as I much prefer descriptive labels for locations (although I do admit to dropping a lot of things accessed across users in/opt/common, which isn't terribly descriptive), and probably not much faster than many Windows users will want to go.
No, life isn't fair, but this does have a bit of a feel of ex post facto to it, even if it's not technically so. I would much prefer to see such things grandfathered in.
It's not difficult to apply the higher rates to only those people who buy SUVs after a certain date, especially if it applies only to the model year. Even if not, the date of transfer is usually recorded with registration. I'm not sure exactly how it's done in the UK, but if the fees are collected based on registration records, it would be a simple check of the model year or registration date combined with the residence to see what the proper rate would be. Within a few years, this would catch up with the owners as people buy new cars, and be approximately the same end-result, minus a few years of taxes.
Are they not in some cases, such as with the proposed increases in parking fees, being punished later for a decision that may have been made before they were aware of potential consequences to others? Is that fair to them?
It could be argued that they are better, though, in that the earthquakes may be triggered when there is less energy pent up in them, resulting in less destructive quakes.
Same here. Three jobs now which were almost exclusively Dell for the users (until a recent switch of new desktop units to HP due to better pricing, but still largely Dell in place), and the failure rate has always been low. The only exception was a small rash of motherboard replacements on some Latitudes (all same model), where about six had to have them replaced by a tech, and that was back around 2001. Those few visits were the only times that I have ever met Dell techs.
Meanwhile, I hear many complaints about the HP notebooks used by friends and former colleagues elsewhere, and of the few people I know who have or use Apples, about half have had some kind of hardware problem, from failing fans to flaky memory to a bad logic board. I still recommend people get Apples if they're interested, because my personal experience has been largely good, but Dell has, in my anecdotal experience, the better record.
That makes me wonder if swimming in colder water burns more calories than swimming in warmer water. Would it worth the initial shock if it burns more energy?
The Navy is working on moving from steam cats to EM cats -- essentially low-powered railguns. They're mechanically simpler and reset faster, but reportedly require far more energy to use.
Maybe they're looking for extreme examples of the population. Hawking represents some of the best, while King represents... the other end of the spectrum.
Typical Larry King interview:
Larry: Bob, did you kill your wife as the prosecution claims? Bob: (covered in blood, holding an axe still dripping from the night's first guest, whose head has been chopped into an unrecognizable blob) No, Larry, of course not. I could never hurt a fly. Larry: There you have it, folks!
Now, if they'd been going for the extreme end, they'd have asked for Geraldo's genome, but you have to set the minimum standards somewhere.
And an interface that requires varying amounts of getting used to, especially if you're already coming from an Adobe/Macromedia background.
I don't come from an Adobe background, and I found that The GIMP was not just counterintuitive. It was downright infuriating. Nothing made any sense for me except for basic file operations. The next day, I went to one of the graphics guys at work to look at Photoshop, and it was beautifully easy to get the basic things that I wanted. Eventually I found GIMPshop, which helped, but it took a long time from my initial experience to lose the grudge of a horribly broken interface. The basic functionality of any program should be clear to a new user, even if it takes time to master those functions.
Butanol's energy content is 105,000 BTU per gallon, which is 38% more than ethanol -- a lot lower than double -- and about 8% lower than gasoline. At the moment, there are some possible methods of conversion, including one using an algae or a bacterium, but it has not been tested in large-scale use, so far as I can tell.
Slashdot Mirror
Despite the massive sizes of the profits, keep in mind that the $10B quarterly numbers come on gross revenues of more than $100B, with income taxes alone totaling several billion dollars. The profits are 10% or less, and if you look at the history of the companies, you'll see that they jump around a lot, going into loss every so often. No one expected $10 oil prices in the 1990s, and it's quite possible that the oil companies will get bitten again as they go looking ever deeper for new oil deposits.
There are subsidies for solar power. However, traditional solar mechanisms are simply very expensive to operate. They require significant tracts of land, they use equipment that requires specialized knowledge to repair, and the output varies dramatically.
Don't we spend about that much per day in Iraq? I think we can spare a bit to remove our reason for being there.
A bit? At 200MW for 38km^2 (a 4km diameter), it would require (50000MW/200MW) * 38km^2 = 9500km^2 just to cover California's summertime requirements, and that doesn't account for the land in between. Winds may be an issue in the area, and anyone who has tried to build in California knows just how sensitive environmentalists are in this state. If you tried to cover up that much land, you'd have a major fight on your hands.
And what if it costs more than $200M? What if it costs double? When you factor in land costs in California, that starts to get very ugly. The output isn't proven, either; it may be 200MW, it may be 100MW actual output. Nothing has ever been done at that scale, and it's taking a lot longer than expected to get things in motion. I'm all for a trial spot, and if Australia wants it to be in their backyard, that's fine by me. In the meantime, if solar is a preferred route, I'd rather see more efficient means pursued, such as the Stirling generators.
The solar electricity is simply profitable.
Not without tax breaks, it's not, at least for older tech. The Stirling generators that are intended for the SDG&E project (and which are also planned for a 500MW facility near Victorville) may change that, but we'll have to see how they handle the weather conditions here (as opposed to New Mexico) over the long term. And while the deal may be huge in terms of solar, it's really not that large when put in perspective with other plants, where 500MW-600MW plant construction is not terribly uncommon.
The solar tower is interesting, but it's been years since they announced it, and they don't even have all of the permits yet. I question the efficiency of land use as well -- 9400 acres for 200MW, compared to 4500 acres for 500MW for the Victor Valley project I mentioned above and between 2500 and 1600 acres for 1000MW for the setup in TFA. They claim a construction cost of less than US$200M, but I would not be at all surprised if they miss their mark significantly.
But it shows that the market may be succeeding in getting people to move to other sources -- hopefully those closer to home. I believe that was the point.
The failure of one or more companies to accurately predict supply does not mean that the market itself has failed.
Microsoft is testing their update, I imagine most Linux distros will have one soon if they don't already, and I'm sure Apple will have caught up with it in time, too (again, if not already). Cellphones will sync with the local clock and be up to date relatively quickly. There should be minimal trouble with it.
While I appreciate your follow-up work, you could easily have included the links since you were already copying the excerpts over.
He doesn't, and I don't think he said that they were (although there may have been an implication). However, since there is little or no data to show that they're growing, you seem to be taking that to be evidence that they are shrinking, which is just as bad.
Argued in true Slashdot fashion.
Which part isn't true? And why is it not true?
I did some math recently about the loss of the Greenland ice sheet. According to Wikipedia, it covers 1.71 million km^2, and totals some 2.85 million km^3. According to the BBC, in 2005 it had shed 220km^3 that year, or about 0.000077%, which is a fairly tiny fraction. It's not clear if that accounts for or ignores accumulation, but going back to Wikipedia's article, there is this mention:
"IPCC [IPCC, 2001] estimates the accumulation to 520 ± 26 Gigatonnes of ice per year, runoff and bottom melting to 297±32 Gt/yr and 32±3 Gt/yr, respectively, and iceberg production to 235±33 Gt/yr. On balance, they estimate -44 ± 53 Gt/yr, which means that on average the ice sheet may currently be melting, though it can't be determined for sure."
It could be gaining up to 9Gt/yr, or losing 97Gt/yr. The middle ground may not be a good thing, but this is not the easiest thing to measure, as suggested by the relatively significant uncertainty.
How does the announcement of Saddam's verdict give a boost to Republicans? Most people figured that it was a foregone conclusion (whether by conspiracy or simple weight of facts is up to the individual) that he would be found guilty, and the only real question was how much of a chance there would be of him getting life in prison instead of the death penalty.
Minds are already made up over Iraq; Saddam's verdict will not muster or change enough votes (if any at all) to sway a single election.
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/11/05/hussein. next/
...
"The death sentences handed down Sunday against former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and two of his co-defendants triggers an automatic appeal to the Iraqi Criminal Tribunal.
"There is no time limit for the appeals court to make its decision, but a court official told The Associated Press that the process would likely take three or four weeks after formal paperwork is submitted."
Serious question for those familiar with the technology:
Is this similar to the electronic credit card signature systems that display my signature half an inch below where I put the stylus?
On the contrary, the military campaign was incredibly successful, with almost all of North Korea in the hands of UN forces a mere two months after it seemed that Pusan might become an Alamo. Then ChiCom troops began to pour over the border. The UN mandate for the war did not cover dealing with China, and Truman and Eisenhower had no desire to turn it into a pan-Asia war, possibly involving the Soviets more directly, and leading to World War III less than a decade after the last great war had been concluded. In the end, of course, everyone agreed to return to the status quo. Not a pure success in total, but certainly not a failure.
The gyros have always been the major weak point of the Hubble, and IIRC, they have been replaced on every mission. I would be astonished if the new group lasted much past 2013.
The JWST is significantly different from the HST, in that the former is purely an infrared telescope. It will not be serviceable or upgradable, either, as its orbit will be at the L2 Lagrange point -- nearly a million miles from Earth.
...hence why I said that I would be able to record it. :\
I understand why they're there, but much of what I listen to is on AM, and carrying around a Radio Shark just isn't always convenient.
Still, I'd be able to listen to/record Car Talk and Fresh Air from NPR, and maybe the occasional show from Pacifica, so it's not entirely bad.
Vista, FWIW, is apparently beginning a (probably slow) move away from drive letters by having them hidden by default and using the partition labels to figure out where you're going. This is good in the long run, as I much prefer descriptive labels for locations (although I do admit to dropping a lot of things accessed across users in /opt/common, which isn't terribly descriptive), and probably not much faster than many Windows users will want to go.
No, life isn't fair, but this does have a bit of a feel of ex post facto to it, even if it's not technically so. I would much prefer to see such things grandfathered in.
It's not difficult to apply the higher rates to only those people who buy SUVs after a certain date, especially if it applies only to the model year. Even if not, the date of transfer is usually recorded with registration. I'm not sure exactly how it's done in the UK, but if the fees are collected based on registration records, it would be a simple check of the model year or registration date combined with the residence to see what the proper rate would be. Within a few years, this would catch up with the owners as people buy new cars, and be approximately the same end-result, minus a few years of taxes.
Are they not in some cases, such as with the proposed increases in parking fees, being punished later for a decision that may have been made before they were aware of potential consequences to others? Is that fair to them?
It could be argued that they are better, though, in that the earthquakes may be triggered when there is less energy pent up in them, resulting in less destructive quakes.
Same here. Three jobs now which were almost exclusively Dell for the users (until a recent switch of new desktop units to HP due to better pricing, but still largely Dell in place), and the failure rate has always been low. The only exception was a small rash of motherboard replacements on some Latitudes (all same model), where about six had to have them replaced by a tech, and that was back around 2001. Those few visits were the only times that I have ever met Dell techs.
Meanwhile, I hear many complaints about the HP notebooks used by friends and former colleagues elsewhere, and of the few people I know who have or use Apples, about half have had some kind of hardware problem, from failing fans to flaky memory to a bad logic board. I still recommend people get Apples if they're interested, because my personal experience has been largely good, but Dell has, in my anecdotal experience, the better record.
That makes me wonder if swimming in colder water burns more calories than swimming in warmer water. Would it worth the initial shock if it burns more energy?
Aw, and I was looking forward to being launched while attached to a hang-glider...
The Navy is working on moving from steam cats to EM cats -- essentially low-powered railguns. They're mechanically simpler and reset faster, but reportedly require far more energy to use.
Maybe they're looking for extreme examples of the population. Hawking represents some of the best, while King represents... the other end of the spectrum.
Typical Larry King interview:
Larry: Bob, did you kill your wife as the prosecution claims?
Bob: (covered in blood, holding an axe still dripping from the night's first guest, whose head has been chopped into an unrecognizable blob) No, Larry, of course not. I could never hurt a fly.
Larry: There you have it, folks!
Now, if they'd been going for the extreme end, they'd have asked for Geraldo's genome, but you have to set the minimum standards somewhere.
I don't come from an Adobe background, and I found that The GIMP was not just counterintuitive. It was downright infuriating. Nothing made any sense for me except for basic file operations. The next day, I went to one of the graphics guys at work to look at Photoshop, and it was beautifully easy to get the basic things that I wanted. Eventually I found GIMPshop, which helped, but it took a long time from my initial experience to lose the grudge of a horribly broken interface. The basic functionality of any program should be clear to a new user, even if it takes time to master those functions.
Butanol's energy content is 105,000 BTU per gallon, which is 38% more than ethanol -- a lot lower than double -- and about 8% lower than gasoline. At the moment, there are some possible methods of conversion, including one using an algae or a bacterium, but it has not been tested in large-scale use, so far as I can tell.