miserable jobs exist (partly) because people are willing to take them. if it's that bad, threaten to leave if changes don't happen. if you don't get what you want, go somewhere else (maybe even DO something else). start something with some friends or former co-workers. good jobs do exist, espically if you make them. the alternative is to have a simmering hatred of 1/3 of your day for the rest of your life. ya know, it's your call.
that didn't really convince me that it's not viable. i mean, what that article says is true but it also leaves out a lot of stuff. like that there are types of algae which can be filtered. and the author is referring to open ponds which loose heat and are prone to contamination. i'm not sure why he's limiting himself to open ponds, closed systems are inexpensive, stay warm and don't get contaminated.
as for the CO2 issues, yeah, it's a problem. but we've only barely started looking into solutions. i'm generally not a fan of large scale genetic engineering (since it's applications in comercial agriculture are, generally, to make destructive agricultural practices cheaper) but i'd probably support a closed pond system with GM algae that couldn't survive in the wild if it meant acceptable growth in an earth atmosphere. is there no hope for getting acceptable yields in cooler climates? what about agricultural residue, yard waste and wood or paper pulp as a carbon source? magic bullets are for warewolves, complex problems require a variety of solutions.
over time biodiesel will corode rubber (just like veggie oil will). but the ultra low sulpher diesel (required in europe, soon required in cali) vulcanizes rubber (also bad). so, as of 1993, all diesels made in europe have no rubber (i HOPE us car makers kept up but i havn't been paying attention to 'em). a friend drives an '81 mercedes which he found to have no rubber parts so even used cars can be safe. another drives a '91 ford truck which had some pump seals a-splode. YMMV.
so, if you buy something older than 10 years, make sure there are no rubber parts or they'll corrode... eventually.
They're probably using the high-oil algaes investigated by the University of New Hampshire here. UNH says some algae are made of over 50% oil. algae are some of the most efficient photosynthesis machines around. once you've got the oil, it's just a matter of standard transesterification, a normal part of biodiesel production (and really, the only step necessary when you have clean oil).
my favorite sake (because i can find it for $4 a bottle) is best at room temperature. there are many variaties of sake which are best cold. point is, careful with that microwave. you might ruin a sake by warming it.
there is no satisfying consumption of Krispy Kreme, Twinkies, etc etc.
myself and my cycling-as-transportation friends will disagree strongly with that statement... riding 20 miles a day burns a lot of calories. i usually eat 3500 calories, lots of cyclists consume 4000 or more. and i prefer real doughnuts made by real people (that is, no krispy kreme).
And even if they did have a negative effect on the ocean and life in general, it would be almost imperceptible compared to the effect that the coal plants they would replace have.
how about we test it first and make sure it's safe, okay? i wouldn't want to invest heavily in tidal energy to then find out that their rocking motion and proximity to shore hypnotizes whales, attracts sharks and causes giant squid to sling tentacles on shore to eat children. or more realistically, change (for better or worse) tidal zone ecosystems. see, it's just that so many energy sources claim "i'm clean, i swear" but then they go and fart methane like hydroelectric or piss radioactivity about when we forget to set a timer or kill birds. each generation of the source gets better so let's just learn what we can and in the mean time turn off the extra lights.
i think most people know that wind (from solar heating of the atmosphere) and waves (from wind and the tidal energy generated by gravitational pull of the moon) aren't energy sources that we can suck dry.
free access to textual information, video/audio entertainment, etc.?
next thing you know municipalities all over the country will start filling buildings with books, videos and music so people can share these resources. awww, man.
for a long time i thought apple's one button mouse was the most stupid thing ever. then i borrowed a powerbook. it didn't take long to discover that "option + click" is the same as "right click". on a PC my left hand never leaves the keyboard -- always ready to click shift or ctrl or alt. now, with a mac, it's there to press shift or ctrl, option (alt) or the apple key.
i think the only REAL reason to have more than one button is to play video games. 3D modleing needs a special mouse but that's not what most of us are doing.
actually, i'm not even a fan of the mouse -- i've got keyboard shortcuts for everything (and they're easier to setup on mac than any other default system i've used). i only use a mouse for graphics or web browsing which is nothing but click and apple+click (for new tab).
manufacturers will always sew more buttons on the mouse but i'm convinced i only need one (plus all keys my left hand can reach on the keyboard).
uh, how did you draw the conclusion that i was endorsing corn as a fuel source? i'm saying that in america, we use corn as a source of ethanol. it's not efficient but the corn agribusiness gets propped up and ethanol users can think they are being conservationists.
d'oh! i forgot to add this link: http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/mm1296.04.ht ml#corp1 it's a reference to Archer Daniels Midland who are pretty fucking evil. i learned about them because they always sponsored PBS shows like nova. but then i learned more about them. they do some insane amounts of lobbying and fixed a bunch of prices on things that they produced. some call it smart business, i call it mother fucking.
i'm told (yes, be skeptical) that the energy produced by ethanol does not equal the energy used to produce it. i'd imagine that's because we use a ton of petroleum fertilizer for corn production.
that doesn't mean a closed carbon cycle fuel is DOA, it just means we chose the wrong crop. why did we choose corn when there are hundreds of other options? see: pork barrel and ADM
did you know an automobile can run on wood? you won't drive terribly fast (yay, says the cyclist!) but it works (link and link). using crops such as willow trees (for gassification) or alge to make biodiesel is totally feasable and results in a very positive net energy gain.
well, i only work to pay rent and eat. i don't waste my time earning it -- i work about 2 months a year. i've had a regular job. i spent so much money on lunch and transportation and proper clothes and other who-knows-what. back then i didn't have time to enjoy my hobbies so i would "compensate" by going to movies or indulging in my vices. by making less money i have more time for what i enjoy -- living. sometimes it's hard to make rent but (for me) it's better than a commute, a boss, or justifying to myself a life at a desk in exchange for money.
A penny saved, is a penny earned!
while we're spouting trite sayings, let me add "money can't buy happiness"
as someone who has met sherman, allow me to defend him little -- as part of his parole, he's only allowed to use computers whose logs are subject to search by his parole officer.
it's true that he plead guilty to the charges, it's what is called a plea bargin. he was facing 20 years if convicted and going to trial in a climate of "terrorists are everywhere." his attorney wasn't the greatest and the prosecutors offered one year in jail if he pleaded guilty. rather than risk spending the next 20 years in prison, he took the "safe" way out.
but what gets missed most of the time is that he wasn't the one who authored OR EVEN POSTED the reclaim guide (which is 1 part high school science, 1 part fantasy and 1 part pathetic attempt to be hard). he simply ran an explicitly political (anarchistic) website, raisethefist.com. the reclaim guide was actually posted there by someone who had an account on the site (much like you do on slashdot). that someone was a wealthy white kid from orange county. he was never charged. race and class might not have anything to do with why this was pinned on sherman (though my opinion is that the prosecutors didn't want to deal with the negative publicity associated with having to arrest a white kid from OC and ship him to prison for 20 years for posting info on a website).
the point is, just as Hemos or CmdrTaco shouldn't end up in jail for what you post on slashdot, sherman shouldn't have gone to jail for providing a tech resource and open publishing site. if the government had anyone to go after it was that kid in OC, not sherman.
there are lots of well-informed articles on the subject from major news organizations, i remember reading this one in spin magazine.
considering the fact that you could build a well equipped asterisk server with dual processors, raid, ups, redundant power supplies, etc. for around $3,000, you could set it up and see how things go. if it doesn't work out, then go with the expensive proprietary stuff and sell your server or use it for something else....or take it home for "testing!"
i believe if you parse my sentence correctly you will realize that i subtly said that perhaps America is not civilized and, therefore, might not view turkey's actions as wrong. however, civilized people would find turkey's actions disturbing and therefore i will consider myself civilized, rather than american.
as a side note, my first thought was to say "western eyes" but then i remembered ghandi's quote about "western civilization" being a good idea. if you parse that correctly, he is saying the west is not civilized but it would be a good idea for it to become civilized. so instead, i wrote civilized eyes.
i think the most arrogant thing i ever heard was barbara bush (W's overbearing mother) on good morning america: "why should we hear about body bags and deaths, oh, i mean, it's not relevant. so why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"
dude, did you even bother to check the links? i can't read turkish but even i can tell from the category he posted in (Top: World: Türkçe: Toplum: Sorunlar: Terörizm: Terör Örgütleri) that he is calling this group a terror organization and is therefore agreeing with you. he has provided an appropriate categorization of the information.
it seems to me that if you are agreeing with the sentence then you agree with the Turkish government -- that information should be censored. he didn't post anything new or even a radical opinion of the group. he called them terrorists and provided information. in my American eyes (perhaps Civilized eyes would be more appropriate considering...), this is not a crime.
where do you live? i get the impression that california is serious about ULSD. though i don't have a diesel vehicle (actually, no automobile of any kind), i saw it at arco stations all over los angeles and it's hyped on arco's front page too. i don't know if i agree with your theory that this will be a quick transition. well, maybe, if you consider 5 years quick. i guess i do.
i'm really interested in (commercially non-existant) diesel hybrids whose engines run at a constant speed, producing electricity which powers an all electric drivetrain (this is how locomotives have been built for years). by running the engine at a constant speed, the engine can be tuned for maximum efficiency without need for fancy add-ons like turbo chargers which are needed to improve diesel's otherwise sluggish acceleration. give me an efficient diesel power generator, fewer batteries, and high output electric motors. i know i'm an eception tho, i ride a bike (in LA no less!) for local transportation. i want a car for road trips.
ultra low sulpher diesel is already available at many gas stations (most arco stations) in california.
maybe i'm a rouge environmentalist (or maybe i don't fit a box) -- i think diesel technology is great. the problem is the fuel. removing sulpher from petro diesel allows catalitic converters to be used while biodiesel closes the carbon cycle -- it doesn't put any more carbon into the air than was removed from the air by the organisims that created the fuel.
traditionally, biodiesel has focused on waste oils from the food industry, waste tallow from the meat industry and food oils such as canola (AKA rape seed [yes, there are differences]) and palm oil when the prices are low. the problem is that producing enough oil to fuel even a relatively efficient country would require enormous amounts of land (the entire country of england would have to be covered in rape/canola to produce enough diesel to meet their current demand). but new ideas have emerged, placing oil producing algae at the cutting edge of bio-fuel oil production. some algae are well over 50% oil. farming these algae would drastically reduce the area needed to produce oil and could be produced using waste water from sewage, crop runoff or sea water. this paper on biodiesel from algae, published at the university of new hampshire, claims that the vehicle energy requirements of the US could be met by flooding 12.5 percent of the sonora desert with sea water and producing algae (the article doesn't advocate this -- production should be distributed, it's just a measurement demonstration of the possibilities).
AFAIK, the only reason sulpher is still in diesel is for it's lubrication properties. the same properties can be achieved by using B20 -- a blend of 80% petrodiesel with 20% biodiesel. biodiesel has much better lubrication properties than petrodiesel with none of the catalitic converter destroying sulpher. i'm told that in 2006 california will require all diesel to be of the ultra low sulfer variety thus paving way cleaner, catalitic convert using, diesel vehicles. i expect B20 to be the standard choice for older engines requiring additional lubrication.
the sulpher content of american petrodiesel is one of the main reasons european diesel vehicles aren't sold here. diesel vehicles sold in america don't have catalitic converters because they would be destroyed by the sulpher. but as the US (slowly) converts to cleaner diesel fuels catalitic converters will become common and required. it seems to be a change similar to the removal of lead from gasoline. considering that the technology has been around for years, i wish it would happen faster.
Slashdot Mirror
miserable jobs exist (partly) because people are willing to take them. if it's that bad, threaten to leave if changes don't happen. if you don't get what you want, go somewhere else (maybe even DO something else). start something with some friends or former co-workers. good jobs do exist, espically if you make them. the alternative is to have a simmering hatred of 1/3 of your day for the rest of your life. ya know, it's your call.
that didn't really convince me that it's not viable. i mean, what that article says is true but it also leaves out a lot of stuff. like that there are types of algae which can be filtered. and the author is referring to open ponds which loose heat and are prone to contamination. i'm not sure why he's limiting himself to open ponds, closed systems are inexpensive, stay warm and don't get contaminated.
as for the CO2 issues, yeah, it's a problem. but we've only barely started looking into solutions. i'm generally not a fan of large scale genetic engineering (since it's applications in comercial agriculture are, generally, to make destructive agricultural practices cheaper) but i'd probably support a closed pond system with GM algae that couldn't survive in the wild if it meant acceptable growth in an earth atmosphere. is there no hope for getting acceptable yields in cooler climates? what about agricultural residue, yard waste and wood or paper pulp as a carbon source? magic bullets are for warewolves, complex problems require a variety of solutions.
over time biodiesel will corode rubber (just like veggie oil will). but the ultra low sulpher diesel (required in europe, soon required in cali) vulcanizes rubber (also bad). so, as of 1993, all diesels made in europe have no rubber (i HOPE us car makers kept up but i havn't been paying attention to 'em). a friend drives an '81 mercedes which he found to have no rubber parts so even used cars can be safe. another drives a '91 ford truck which had some pump seals a-splode. YMMV.
so, if you buy something older than 10 years, make sure there are no rubber parts or they'll corrode... eventually.
They're probably using the high-oil algaes investigated by the University of New Hampshire here. UNH says some algae are made of over 50% oil. algae are some of the most efficient photosynthesis machines around. once you've got the oil, it's just a matter of standard transesterification, a normal part of biodiesel production (and really, the only step necessary when you have clean oil).
my favorite sake (because i can find it for $4 a bottle) is best at room temperature. there are many variaties of sake which are best cold. point is, careful with that microwave. you might ruin a sake by warming it.
i can eat glass, it does not hurt me
(adopted from the original which can be found on the wayback machine)
there is no satisfying consumption of Krispy Kreme, Twinkies, etc etc.
myself and my cycling-as-transportation friends will disagree strongly with that statement... riding 20 miles a day burns a lot of calories. i usually eat 3500 calories, lots of cyclists consume 4000 or more. and i prefer real doughnuts made by real people (that is, no krispy kreme).
And even if they did have a negative effect on the ocean and life in general, it would be almost imperceptible compared to the effect that the coal plants they would replace have.
how about we test it first and make sure it's safe, okay? i wouldn't want to invest heavily in tidal energy to then find out that their rocking motion and proximity to shore hypnotizes whales, attracts sharks and causes giant squid to sling tentacles on shore to eat children. or more realistically, change (for better or worse) tidal zone ecosystems. see, it's just that so many energy sources claim "i'm clean, i swear" but then they go and fart methane like hydroelectric or piss radioactivity about when we forget to set a timer or kill birds. each generation of the source gets better so let's just learn what we can and in the mean time turn off the extra lights.
i think most people know that wind (from solar heating of the atmosphere) and waves (from wind and the tidal energy generated by gravitational pull of the moon) aren't energy sources that we can suck dry.
free access to textual information, video/audio entertainment, etc.?
next thing you know municipalities all over the country will start filling buildings with books, videos and music so people can share these resources. awww, man.
for a long time i thought apple's one button mouse was the most stupid thing ever. then i borrowed a powerbook. it didn't take long to discover that "option + click" is the same as "right click". on a PC my left hand never leaves the keyboard -- always ready to click shift or ctrl or alt. now, with a mac, it's there to press shift or ctrl, option (alt) or the apple key.
i think the only REAL reason to have more than one button is to play video games. 3D modleing needs a special mouse but that's not what most of us are doing.
actually, i'm not even a fan of the mouse -- i've got keyboard shortcuts for everything (and they're easier to setup on mac than any other default system i've used). i only use a mouse for graphics or web browsing which is nothing but click and apple+click (for new tab).
manufacturers will always sew more buttons on the mouse but i'm convinced i only need one (plus all keys my left hand can reach on the keyboard).
Could you back up those "conservative estimates" with some links? because thats a lot of people.
(you do realize that, in this context, "conservative estimates" means the low estimate, not estimates by conservatives.)
hehe, plants don't need O2 -- we can grow weed in there!
why did you bother to write two paragraphs which say "yeah, uh, corn is not a good fuel source. there's gotta be something better. dunno what it is. humm, maybe there's nothing better." next time hows about doing some reading before hitting 'submit'. i guess i wasn't blunt enough with my links, here's a good place to start: energy sufficient to fuel the entire US is available from the sun and it doesn't take radical technology and it doesn't take crazy amounts of cropland. all it takes is waste water in oversized kiddie pools, oily alge and the replacement of gasoline engines with diesel engines. (this link was in the grandparent too).
uh, how did you draw the conclusion that i was endorsing corn as a fuel source? i'm saying that in america, we use corn as a source of ethanol. it's not efficient but the corn agribusiness gets propped up and ethanol users can think they are being conservationists.
what i said was gassify wood.
d'oh! i forgot to add this link: http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/mm1296.04.ht ml#corp1 it's a reference to Archer Daniels Midland who are pretty fucking evil. i learned about them because they always sponsored PBS shows like nova. but then i learned more about them. they do some insane amounts of lobbying and fixed a bunch of prices on things that they produced. some call it smart business, i call it mother fucking.
i'm told (yes, be skeptical) that the energy produced by ethanol does not equal the energy used to produce it. i'd imagine that's because we use a ton of petroleum fertilizer for corn production.
that doesn't mean a closed carbon cycle fuel is DOA, it just means we chose the wrong crop. why did we choose corn when there are hundreds of other options? see: pork barrel and ADM
did you know an automobile can run on wood? you won't drive terribly fast (yay, says the cyclist!) but it works (link and link). using crops such as willow trees (for gassification) or alge to make biodiesel is totally feasable and results in a very positive net energy gain.
well, i only work to pay rent and eat. i don't waste my time earning it -- i work about 2 months a year. i've had a regular job. i spent so much money on lunch and transportation and proper clothes and other who-knows-what. back then i didn't have time to enjoy my hobbies so i would "compensate" by going to movies or indulging in my vices. by making less money i have more time for what i enjoy -- living. sometimes it's hard to make rent but (for me) it's better than a commute, a boss, or justifying to myself a life at a desk in exchange for money.
A penny saved, is a penny earned!
while we're spouting trite sayings, let me add "money can't buy happiness"
as someone who has met sherman, allow me to defend him little -- as part of his parole, he's only allowed to use computers whose logs are subject to search by his parole officer.
it's true that he plead guilty to the charges, it's what is called a plea bargin. he was facing 20 years if convicted and going to trial in a climate of "terrorists are everywhere." his attorney wasn't the greatest and the prosecutors offered one year in jail if he pleaded guilty. rather than risk spending the next 20 years in prison, he took the "safe" way out.
but what gets missed most of the time is that he wasn't the one who authored OR EVEN POSTED the reclaim guide (which is 1 part high school science, 1 part fantasy and 1 part pathetic attempt to be hard). he simply ran an explicitly political (anarchistic) website, raisethefist.com. the reclaim guide was actually posted there by someone who had an account on the site (much like you do on slashdot). that someone was a wealthy white kid from orange county. he was never charged. race and class might not have anything to do with why this was pinned on sherman (though my opinion is that the prosecutors didn't want to deal with the negative publicity associated with having to arrest a white kid from OC and ship him to prison for 20 years for posting info on a website).
the point is, just as Hemos or CmdrTaco shouldn't end up in jail for what you post on slashdot, sherman shouldn't have gone to jail for providing a tech resource and open publishing site. if the government had anyone to go after it was that kid in OC, not sherman.
there are lots of well-informed articles on the subject from major news organizations, i remember reading this one in spin magazine.
my $0.02
...or take it home for "testing!"
considering the fact that you could build a well equipped asterisk server with dual processors, raid, ups, redundant power supplies, etc. for around $3,000, you could set it up and see how things go. if it doesn't work out, then go with the expensive proprietary stuff and sell your server or use it for something else.
i believe if you parse my sentence correctly you will realize that i subtly said that perhaps America is not civilized and, therefore, might not view turkey's actions as wrong. however, civilized people would find turkey's actions disturbing and therefore i will consider myself civilized, rather than american.
as a side note, my first thought was to say "western eyes" but then i remembered ghandi's quote about "western civilization" being a good idea. if you parse that correctly, he is saying the west is not civilized but it would be a good idea for it to become civilized. so instead, i wrote civilized eyes.
i think the most arrogant thing i ever heard was barbara bush (W's overbearing mother) on good morning america: "why should we hear about body bags and deaths, oh, i mean, it's not relevant. so why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"
dude, did you even bother to check the links? i can't read turkish but even i can tell from the category he posted in (Top: World: Türkçe: Toplum: Sorunlar: Terörizm: Terör Örgütleri) that he is calling this group a terror organization and is therefore agreeing with you. he has provided an appropriate categorization of the information.
it seems to me that if you are agreeing with the sentence then you agree with the Turkish government -- that information should be censored. he didn't post anything new or even a radical opinion of the group. he called them terrorists and provided information. in my American eyes (perhaps Civilized eyes would be more appropriate considering...), this is not a crime.
where do you live? i get the impression that california is serious about ULSD. though i don't have a diesel vehicle (actually, no automobile of any kind), i saw it at arco stations all over los angeles and it's hyped on arco's front page too. i don't know if i agree with your theory that this will be a quick transition. well, maybe, if you consider 5 years quick. i guess i do.
i'm really interested in (commercially non-existant) diesel hybrids whose engines run at a constant speed, producing electricity which powers an all electric drivetrain (this is how locomotives have been built for years). by running the engine at a constant speed, the engine can be tuned for maximum efficiency without need for fancy add-ons like turbo chargers which are needed to improve diesel's otherwise sluggish acceleration. give me an efficient diesel power generator, fewer batteries, and high output electric motors. i know i'm an eception tho, i ride a bike (in LA no less!) for local transportation. i want a car for road trips.
ultra low sulpher diesel is already available at many gas stations (most arco stations) in california.
maybe i'm a rouge environmentalist (or maybe i don't fit a box) -- i think diesel technology is great. the problem is the fuel. removing sulpher from petro diesel allows catalitic converters to be used while biodiesel closes the carbon cycle -- it doesn't put any more carbon into the air than was removed from the air by the organisims that created the fuel.
traditionally, biodiesel has focused on waste oils from the food industry, waste tallow from the meat industry and food oils such as canola (AKA rape seed [yes, there are differences]) and palm oil when the prices are low. the problem is that producing enough oil to fuel even a relatively efficient country would require enormous amounts of land (the entire country of england would have to be covered in rape/canola to produce enough diesel to meet their current demand). but new ideas have emerged, placing oil producing algae at the cutting edge of bio-fuel oil production. some algae are well over 50% oil. farming these algae would drastically reduce the area needed to produce oil and could be produced using waste water from sewage, crop runoff or sea water. this paper on biodiesel from algae, published at the university of new hampshire, claims that the vehicle energy requirements of the US could be met by flooding 12.5 percent of the sonora desert with sea water and producing algae (the article doesn't advocate this -- production should be distributed, it's just a measurement demonstration of the possibilities).
AFAIK, the only reason sulpher is still in diesel is for it's lubrication properties. the same properties can be achieved by using B20 -- a blend of 80% petrodiesel with 20% biodiesel. biodiesel has much better lubrication properties than petrodiesel with none of the catalitic converter destroying sulpher. i'm told that in 2006 california will require all diesel to be of the ultra low sulfer variety thus paving way cleaner, catalitic convert using, diesel vehicles. i expect B20 to be the standard choice for older engines requiring additional lubrication.
the sulpher content of american petrodiesel is one of the main reasons european diesel vehicles aren't sold here. diesel vehicles sold in america don't have catalitic converters because they would be destroyed by the sulpher. but as the US (slowly) converts to cleaner diesel fuels catalitic converters will become common and required. it seems to be a change similar to the removal of lead from gasoline. considering that the technology has been around for years, i wish it would happen faster.