Could you give me even one reason why a drug company should spend the ~$250 million over 8-10 years it takes to get a drug approved, only to see a generic maker clone the drug the day it comes out at half the price?
That's only one example. There are tons of others. Without patent, you'll see huge sectors of R&D collapse overnight
No, you're thinking well and truly inside the box of current (bad) habits. Someone looking into that box from the outside might be shocked at how much R&D money is wasted by having patents, and thus how many drugs are never invented. How so? Because if it costs $1M to solve a problem, it is insanely inefficient to have 10 companies seperately spending $1M each in a race to solve that problem, when one tenth of that expenditure would solve the problem. 90% of the R&D money is being wasted because the patent system rewards secracy and punishes cooperation.
You ask why a drug compnay would spend so much if the results weren't protected by patents, the answer is simply "the company would not have to spent anything even close to that amount to develope the drug without patents. Problem not so much "solved" as "never really existed except in the limits of people's thinking".
Does no one remember times when institutions of R&D, funded by governments as well as by commerce, developed knowledge, and that knowledge was shared, so that new technologies allowed the creation of yet more technologies?
As opposed to today, where every time you try to develope something, you can be assured that 90% of your money is being wasted on solving problems that have already been solved a hundred different ways by a thousand different people, but the solutions kept secret due to an insane patent system that only nominally requires disclosure of patented tech, yet effectively puts the brakes on all attempts to avoid re-inventing the wheel over and over and over and over...
It's mostly subjective whether a software patent is obvious or not, and what's obvious to a technical employee may not be to a patent worker.
I think you misunderstand how the patent process works. The patent office pretty much bypasses the issue of obvious being subjective by replacing it with an objective measure instead via insane reasoning along the lines of "if there is no prior art, it can't be obvious".
This works just fine with the sort of things a garage inventer might come up with - a new type of child-safe latch f'instance, but in computer tech, the result is an economic disaster. it's obvious to all that when technology X achieves speed Y, then it can be used in conjuction with technology A to make product B. Yet obvious as this is, there usually won't be any prior art until X is about to achieve Y, at which point, a bunch of companies start working on the idea (it's obvious to all, eg one-click shopping) but the first to the patent office gets to strangle competition, because as there is no prior art, there is no "objective" proof that it's not obvious and without that objective proof, you better have something absolutely amazing up your sleeve to get the patent office to do anything about the damper they've just imposed on the eonomy, but of course, you don't. Thus one-click shopping is not obvious.
All water cooling solutions require a fan for the radiator device.
Not so. I've seen low-end water cooling systems that simply use a 10 litre water resevour. With the heat from the computer spread out over that volume, convection cooling is sufficient.
The only reason most water coolers use fans is so they can get away with tiny radiators.
If you wanted to make a more portable system (unlikely in an office), and still lose the fan, you could use a bigger radiator - it can be much smaller than the 10 litre tank due to greater exchange surface area, but will be much bigger than the little exchangers that people put inside the case - you'd want to attach it to the top or sides.
Besides, large fans are much quieter and push more air, so watercooling still beats a CPU fan.
Grommit-mounting your HDDs makes a huge difference too.
You could have saved yourself a lot of trouble if you let the police come in and see that you weren't growing any pot, stupid.
Or caused a lot of trouble for himself when they nabbed him for something else. Police will quite happily tell you that if they want to nab you on something, they can easily find something - no-one is 100% compliant with all laws. Letting a cop into your house who is highly suspicious of you is asking for a trip downtown.
And the bottom line is, in a free society, the police should not stop you in the street and ask to see your "papers" like the SS. A house search is even worse. And being harrassed because you dared to use your civil rights is unforgivable.
I'm disgusted by people who think that it is right and proper that the police should be able to harrass people, and have the gall to blame the victim for their "stupid" refusal to throw away their rights. People have civil rights for a reason, and if failing to waive your rights (at the unjustified request of the authorities) is as good as actually commiting a crime, you're right back in Nazi Germany. Is this so difficult to grasp?
Iraq's problems are entirely of their own doing. Anytime they wish to allow UN weapon inspectors, the sanctions are gone
Unfortunately, the world is not as black and white as that. I do not dispute that the inspectors felt thwarted, and that they were being constantly mislead, but Iraq was fully justified in doing this because the USA was illegally using the inspections to spy on Iraq.
The premise was that Iraq would open itself to impartial inspections, and was guarenteed said inspections would not be used for US spying. In a sense, the US broke the arrangement first.
Now with that in mind, consider that Iraq did, for over a decade, allow the inspectors almost complete access to anything they wanted to see. Perhaps Iraq was obstinate over requests to see things that (in its view) had little to do with weapons and a lot to do with internal affairs (ie "while we're here, Saddam, mind if we do a little spying?").
So for ten years, Iraq suffered under sunctions while waiting for the inspectors to finish their inspection. Ten years and there was no sign the end of sanctions was even close. "We've been had!" Iraq concludes "They ain't ever going to say they're satisfied - they're going to keep sanctions in place until Saddam is gone. The dirty lying bastards!".
Can't say I blame them actually.
To claim that Iraq's problems are entirely of their own doing is verging on ridiculous IMHO. The USA has done a whole lot behind the scenes, and it sounds like you're overlooking quite a bit of it. Of course, it's not like US media puts much effort into covering that sort of thing:-)
I firmly believe that the only reason that the US has not had a nuclear explosion on the mainland from a small nuclear bomb is because the intelligence community is running some hellacious interference that we never hear about.
This would all be fine and dandy, except that the only reason the USA is at risk of a nuclear explosion in the first place is because it's intelligence community pulls the kind of shit in other countries that makes people willing to sacrifice their own lives just for some slight payback. Not sick twisted people, normal healthy people like you or me.
If your wife, the light of your life, angel of innocence, is killed by the operations of foreign terrorists (the CIA) who are acting not for "national security" but to secure the flow of dirty money (which they think is the same thing) to their country, normal people develope a pretty big, and entirely justified grievance. And they sometimes have little left in their now-empty lives except to act on it.
In the Big Picture, salvation from bombs is not in winning an intelligence agency arms race, but in a foreign policy that doesn't create the need to bomb us in the first place. There are many countries or blocs of nations as big and/or powerful as the USA. Very few, if any, have the terrorist fears of the US. Why? Because very few act as if making lifelong enemies is inconsequential next to making money and playing power games.
We reap what we sow. Unlike a missile defence shield, a change in foreign policy can actually stop a nuke in a suitcase. And it won't cost billions. (unless you count the lost earnings from illegal arms trade and the like:-).
The fact of the matter is that the fans have been moved one or two steps aways from their original locations. At some point the exchanged heat will need to be dissipated - and as of yet, I haven't seen a solution that doesn't produce noise.
You're assuming that because there are still fans, the noise is pretty much the same. There are several reasons why this is not the case.
A good PSU can be so silent you can barely hear it with your head next to it, yet it has a fan. How can this be?
Fan noise is the product of many things, speed, and air turbulence over edges being the worst offenders. A larger fan, spinning slower, will pump more air, yet be much quieter than a small fast fan. This is why CPU fans are so noisy, while good PSU fans are silent. The design of the cpu heatsink obviously also affects the noise.
In other words, fans don't preclude a silent computer, excellent engineering can overcome the problem. The case is question seems to be well engineered, and people say it is silent because when they power it up, they notice that they don't hear it.
For the record, a cooling solution that doesn't produce noise is convection cooling. And this is possible to do with modern computers via a water cooling and a Big Fucking heatsink, or simply a 10 litre water reseviour:)
Re:Security for Mac Users
on
Cracking OSX
·
· Score: 2
but the majority of the Mac world is clueless about security.
Even though I'm not an OSX user myself, I can categorically state that I am clueless about security.
On the other hand, I don't run Outlook, which means I stop most viruses dead in their tracks without even realising it...
Obviously, these transparent boxes are going to suck if you have your computer and TV on at the same time (or if anyone else in the general area has their TV on).
AFAIK, the transparent qualities could be retained, but shielding added via a grounded crosshatch of wire or metal mesh, making a faraday cage. Question is - how big can the holes be? Are we talking chicken-wire or reinforced-glass kind of mesh, or more like microwave-oven window mesh?
Does anyone have any links to DIY shielding info that would cover this sort of thing?
I've also heard that a transparent metal layer (such as on anti-static bags, one-way mirrors, etc) can be used, but some info on DIY mesh would be good...
What we need is a law that would allow courts to punitively strip intellectual property protections from individuals, companies, and organizations that use those protections in bad faith.
It's already in place, been in place for a long time - using copyrights for anti-competitive behaviour can result in the loss of those copyrights. Some people were talking about trying to use this in the lastest anti-competitive lawsuit against the music publishers, but I think there is pretty much zero chance of it.
No court would dare relieve the music industry of each piece of IP that it has used to abuse the market - it would be like telling MS that Windows, Office, etc are all now public domain. No chance in hell, regardless of justice.
Go into business and create and/or distribute digital content and devices to play it back that do *not* have any encryption or copy protection in them.
You underestimate the problem. You can make open devices to your heart's content, but not a single movie will ever play on them, and so not a single box will sell. (Well, maybe one or two:)
The MPAA will only release movies on formats it approves. VHS is still mostly open due to its age, but is crappy for the same reason, and so will be ignored here. That leaves DVDs. You cannot make a device that plays DVDs unless you either
a) license CSS from the industry, or
b) break the law.
c) reverse engineer CSS
If you choose (b), your company gets shut down. Game Over. If you choose (a) then you either agree to the licensing conditions (ie you build your box to their spec with their cripples) or you don't get a license. Game over either way.
We have yet to see if reverse engineering CSS is a legal way to create an open player. Judging by what we've seen so far, it isn't. So while I'm not sure, I suspect that that is game over also.
IOW, it is illegal to create a DVD player that maintains consumers rights, unless the industry decides to let you, and they won't. End of story.
However, when it comes to HDTV recording, you _might_ be on to something, but I imagine the new format also needs to be licensed - any product based on reverse engineering (better known as that evil hacking thing) will probably be illegal, despite the token clause in the DMCA.
It sounds like much, if not most of your suspicion is simply the result of you not knowing much about electric cars. I've thought they were a cool idea for a long time, but even then didn't think they would be anything more than novelties for at least 15-20 years, but in the last few months, I stumbled on a few things that opened my eyes - electric vehicles are already _way_ ahead of what I thought they were, and it definitely sounds like they're way ahead of your perception of what they offer.
Be suspicious, that's fine. But continue to be hopeful rather than spread suspicion and naysaying.
You say they're all novelty, but the advantages over gas engines are so immense that should the energy storage problem be solved, even the tillion-dollar subsidy on gas engines won't save them. Gas engines are utterly dependant on a myriad of expensive inefficient kludges like clutches. They are 0% efficient when waiting at the stop light right up to a staggering 15% efficiency under ideal conditions, divided by every time you use the brakes and so waste your energy instead of putting it back into the tank. That's right up there with the steam engine, and likely to go the same way. On the topic, virtually all trains today are electric (they bypass the storage problem by using a diesel generator) basically because electric motors are better in pretty much every way compared to gas. The problem is building a car that can run an electric motor. Electric motors are not novelty.
If novelty cars are the only way to gain the experience to solve the design problems, so be it. Don't be fooled into thinking that because novelty cars are being used as testing and solving grounds, that the electric motor is a novelty. The storage problem is not trivial however.
You note you're very suspicious of battery cars. I don't like them much either, but it sounds like you're not up to speed on battery technology. Lead-acid is the stuff of the 70's.
Talking of batteries, have you heard much about the new polimer battery technology? I don't know anything about it myself, but I hear things like "light as plastic" "cheap" "high energy density" and stuff like that, even though it's not to market yet, but you can imagine the possible ramifications - cars where the body panels are the batteries, etc. So while I too am suspicious of batteries, it sounds like that approach to storage might be capible of bearing interesting fruit:-)
Be suspicious, but be aware that the novelty show cars and expo demos are just the sillier tip of a largely silent iceberg:)
And yet what would happen if you tried to criminalize alcohol?
I buy into the line that overall, crime etc, during probation was much lower than before and after, people were safer overall as a result. Of course, a huge drop in domestic violence is not as newsworthy or noticable as new gang rivalries, not to mention the vast and sucessful financial investments of the alcohol industry in politicans and marketing to ensure that probation is never considered again. Today, everyone believes without question that prohibition actually increased crime. What a mindjob!:-)
Strangely perhaps, I think pot would be the opposite - illegal it creates just as much crime as alchol did, but if legal, it would be highly unlikely to create the even-greater-than-when-illegal amount of crime that alcohol does.
As for Yucca, I seriously doubt it would have any radioactive leakage problems for, oh, a few thousand years. Glass is pretty stable stuff. If, by then, we haven't figured out how to deal with it (nanotech!), we deserve to glow in the dark.
That's not really an acceptable soltuion to me. I guess it comes down to cash or credit - some people like to buy with money they don't have, and pay it off over time. I prefer to buy with money I do have. Locking waste into glass is a bit like buying a flash computer on your child's credit card when you know you're going to die in two days time - you're passing the buck for immediate gratification.
You can argue that there is unlikely to be any "interest" to pay (clean up costs if there is contamination), but I look to the legacy of wonder left us by the ancient egyptions, and wonder if we will be despised and hated for our greed and immoral gratification at the expense of others. It is not a legacy that I want to leave, and I am prepared to pay more for power generation to achieve it. I don't know whether the heavy-but-short-term pollution of coal outweights the low-but-long-term pollution of nuclear, but it feels fairer that I should have to suffer my own pollution, not pass it on to future generations.
For the same reason, CA's actions, or attempts to dump US nuclear waste in other countries, also strike me as irresponsible.
A reason we've got such a pollution problem is because people are so used to inflicting their products on others and never having to deal witht he consequences of their own actions (until you reach the bottom of the heap, usually in the third world, where everyone is utterly screwed).
Who knows, just because we have no use for the underside of a mountain now doesn't mean we won't ever have a use for that, and I'd prefer not to place shackles on the options of future generations merely to get slightly cheaper power.
As demonstrated in CA, "green" energy production does not cost much more than dirty.
Are there any links to web pages on easy DIY tempest shielding for those who don't know much about it? I have an idea of the difficulty involved, but not all the details (eg how big can the holes in a faraday cage be? What are some recommended materials to use?)
Actually, I've been waiting for a post like this for some time, as it presents an opportunity to brainstorm solutions with other/. users.
The point is not to find a foolproof system, but talk and ingeniously devise new techniques that lower the effort vs security tradeoff. What potential (if any) do the new USB keyring drives offer? What risks?
Even though I have little need for security, it's an interesting game. (And on some days I consider it almost a duty to encrypt unimportant email, to help maintain the right to privacy).
Lead-acid batteries (used in electric cars) don't last forever.
Lead-acid batteries are not used in modern electrics AFAIK, because, well, they're crap. (And heavy messy crap at that).
Personally, I prefer hydrolysing water and storing the hydrogen instead of a battery, but fuel cells are still somewhat costly (though AFAIK they run indefinitey if kept unclogged, and have no adverse environmental effect if dumped)
Furthermore, I'd should also point out that many countries don't just dump their lead-acid batteries as you assume everyone will, but use the waste. (Mind you, we were talking about the USA, so might have a point:-)
As to being more enviromentally damaging if they were dumped, I suspect you might be wrong there:
Say the useful life of a battery is two years. If I were to eat, over the course of 2 years, the entire battery, I would not be healthy, but my (limited) understanding of the toxicity suggests I would be very much alive. If I were to inhale, over the course of 2 years, the fumes from a gas car, I would be dead very quickly.
Perhaps this is an unfair example, because of the different way the toxins affect the body, but I think you under-estimate gas emmissions, (or are possibly confusing lead-acid rechargables with ni-cd rechargables).
Regardless, there is no excuse for just dumping toxic waste.
Why haven't those places developed these kick-ass electric cars that are so obviously superior to gas cars?
A lot of reasons. You seem to be thinking "since electric is being adopted slowly, it can't be as clean as claimed". Clearly, it is as clean as claimed, but there are other drawbacks slowing it's adoption. The big one is storage - electricity is easy to generate and easy to use but incredibly difficult to store. This means that to compete on price with gas cars, the electric car needs either cheap batteries (ie shorter driving range than a gas car) or some other storage system (liquid hydrogen for fuel cells for example).
Electric car manufacturers also seem to have under-estimated demand, and they generally sell very quickly, but that will presumably change in a year or so.
What it comes down to is basically that,
1) Electric cars are a technology that is currently being adopted, not a technology that has finished being adopted. (You argument almost sounds a bit like "If the latest CPUs are so much better than old ones, how come no-one in my hi-tech office already has them?") And
2) It is a technology that has to compete with billions of dollars of existing gas infrastructure, that means that in order to offer competitive value per dollar, it has to far more efficient and cheaper, because gas is operating via economies of scale, which is a huge "subsidy" if you are trying to evaluate technological merit via market performance, as you seem to be doing.
3) In a sense, it is still a maturing technology. Currently, when weighing up the choice between a gas or electric car, there are still advantages and disadvantages to both. The electric technology is still quite a few years away from the time when electric cars are superior to gas cars in every useful way. Example: I note that there are now electric cars that, at the fraction of the price* of a Ferrari 550, can out-drag the Ferrari, (0-60 quicker) though the top speed is lower. Still, it sounds like a fair amount bang for your buck:-)
like in this case the major problems our nations power grid is going to be facing in the next 20 years
The problems you cite don't really exist to the extend that they are a problem.
The power consumption of electric cars even when their numbers reaches CA target (which are higher than any other state AFAIK) is inconsequential - 0.02% of the power normally consumed via the grid.
It might be 0.06% - I can't remember but the "there won't be enough energy for people to switch" is another part of GM's lobbying package that is now widely and rightfully ignored.
The money saved on petroleum infrastructure would easily cover any expansion of electrical infrastructure - and the bottom line is that the grid needs to be (and will be) expanded, regardless of whether electric cars are adopted or not. Electric cars are a drop in the puddle. If people are worried about energy conservation, turning the lights off, etc when they're not in use will dwarf the energy needed to run cars, and as running an electric car obviously requires far less net energy than gas ones, even if they did strain the grid (which they won't) it would clearly be worth it.
That said, yeah, driving SUVs to the gym is stupid. IMO, using a gym at all is stupid if commuting to work each day by bike is feasible (and you'd probably be surprised at how much faster a bike usually gets you there - people think that cars are fast because on the open road they are, but in a city like where I live, even a half hour commute tends to be quicker by bike, as bikes don't get slowed by the traffic).
(Statistic suggest that biking is safer too, but I suspect they are heavily skewed by open road car crashes, which are frequently lethal. Statistics for city-only travel safety would be interesting)
The stuff came out of the ground, for godsake, we're just putting it back
Do you not understand the basic principles of nuclear fission, or have I been snared by a troll?
The elements mined from the ground are not the elements that are "just" being put back, and they have very different properties from the elements that were taken out of the ground.
This stuff is so basic, and your logic so bizarre that no rational, dissinterested person could be serious, so I guess I'm the sucker then.
Ah well. It was a worthy example of the art of the troll. That's my excuse:-)
Like electric cars... sure, they may be 100% emissions free, but what about all the coal/oil/uranium that must be consumed to produce that energy.
In case you're not aware, only General Motors still tries to make out that that has any relevance, and only because they're trying to dissuade CA from requiring emissionless cars.
You note that powerplant filters make a difference, but there is more to it than that. Even an electric car that is recharged entirely from dirty coal power plants still produces ten to a hundred times less pollutants than a modern car at the end of the day.
You are probably forgetting how mind-numbingly crude and innefficient the combustion-engine vehicle is - every time the light goes green, you rip huge amounts of energy from storage and turn it into vast kinetic energy, then when the next light goes red you dump all of that energy, then burn up (ie waste) heaps more when the light goes green. Insane! Most technologies, including electric, allow two-way transfer of energy - when you stop for the red light, you do so by converting your kinetic energy back into storage.
Testiment to this is that many hybrid cars never need charging - the electric engine is powered entirely by the staggering wastage of the combustion engine.
Conbustion contraptions truly are a Victorian-age technology - wasteful and crude, requiring you to burn through ten times the energy you actually need to get from A to B. Hence another reason why electric cars powered by dirty generators are a non-issue. As I mentioned, General Motors still seems to be clinging to the line, but it's looking increasinly like this is because they have lagged behind other car makers in these technologies, and now don't want the consequences of a fair playing field, knowing they'll probably get their butts kicked:)
The real solution will come when an efficient, non impacting form of electrical generation is perfected.
Nope. No need to wait. The dirtiest of current electrical generation are still more than sufficiently clean to solve the pollution problems. Which is not to say they shouldn't be cleaned up, just that you shouldn't be distracted by the red-herring that GM is still trying to wave (a red-herring that has been largely discredited by the car industry itself).
Hemp, a renewable resource that enriches the land it grows on, unlike cotton. Can be used to make cloth better than cotton, oil for various uses and even paper.
Unfortunately, those idiots who smoke pot continue to prevent us from being able to use hemp, due to the camoflage it gives to their illegal plants.
(And some of them then turn around and whine about how hemp shouldn't be illegal!)
All up, I think decriminalisation of pot is probably the way to go (thus also reducing the reason for banning hemp), but it's going to be a hard sell to society while pot (ab)use is so high in some areas that it sometimes seems almost as socially disasterous as alcohol.
Slashdot Mirror
Could you give me even one reason why a drug company should spend the ~$250 million over 8-10 years it takes to get a drug approved, only to see a generic maker clone the drug the day it comes out at half the price?
That's only one example. There are tons of others. Without patent, you'll see huge sectors of R&D collapse overnight
No, you're thinking well and truly inside the box of current (bad) habits. Someone looking into that box from the outside might be shocked at how much R&D money is wasted by having patents, and thus how many drugs are never invented. How so? Because if it costs $1M to solve a problem, it is insanely inefficient to have 10 companies seperately spending $1M each in a race to solve that problem, when one tenth of that expenditure would solve the problem. 90% of the R&D money is being wasted because the patent system rewards secracy and punishes cooperation.
You ask why a drug compnay would spend so much if the results weren't protected by patents, the answer is simply "the company would not have to spent anything even close to that amount to develope the drug without patents. Problem not so much "solved" as "never really existed except in the limits of people's thinking".
Does no one remember times when institutions of R&D, funded by governments as well as by commerce, developed knowledge, and that knowledge was shared, so that new technologies allowed the creation of yet more technologies?
As opposed to today, where every time you try to develope something, you can be assured that 90% of your money is being wasted on solving problems that have already been solved a hundred different ways by a thousand different people, but the solutions kept secret due to an insane patent system that only nominally requires disclosure of patented tech, yet effectively puts the brakes on all attempts to avoid re-inventing the wheel over and over and over and over...
It's mostly subjective whether a software patent is obvious or not, and what's obvious to a technical employee may not be to a patent worker.
I think you misunderstand how the patent process works. The patent office pretty much bypasses the issue of obvious being subjective by replacing it with an objective measure instead via insane reasoning along the lines of "if there is no prior art, it can't be obvious".
This works just fine with the sort of things a garage inventer might come up with - a new type of child-safe latch f'instance, but in computer tech, the result is an economic disaster. it's obvious to all that when technology X achieves speed Y, then it can be used in conjuction with technology A to make product B. Yet obvious as this is, there usually won't be any prior art until X is about to achieve Y, at which point, a bunch of companies start working on the idea (it's obvious to all, eg one-click shopping) but the first to the patent office gets to strangle competition, because as there is no prior art, there is no "objective" proof that it's not obvious and without that objective proof, you better have something absolutely amazing up your sleeve to get the patent office to do anything about the damper they've just imposed on the eonomy, but of course, you don't. Thus one-click shopping is not obvious.
All water cooling solutions require a fan for the radiator device.
Not so. I've seen low-end water cooling systems that simply use a 10 litre water resevour. With the heat from the computer spread out over that volume, convection cooling is sufficient.
The only reason most water coolers use fans is so they can get away with tiny radiators.
If you wanted to make a more portable system (unlikely in an office), and still lose the fan, you could use a bigger radiator - it can be much smaller than the 10 litre tank due to greater exchange surface area, but will be much bigger than the little exchangers that people put inside the case - you'd want to attach it to the top or sides.
Besides, large fans are much quieter and push more air, so watercooling still beats a CPU fan.
Grommit-mounting your HDDs makes a huge difference too.
You could have saved yourself a lot of trouble if you let the police come in and see that you weren't growing any pot, stupid.
Or caused a lot of trouble for himself when they nabbed him for something else. Police will quite happily tell you that if they want to nab you on something, they can easily find something - no-one is 100% compliant with all laws. Letting a cop into your house who is highly suspicious of you is asking for a trip downtown.
And the bottom line is, in a free society, the police should not stop you in the street and ask to see your "papers" like the SS. A house search is even worse. And being harrassed because you dared to use your civil rights is unforgivable.
I'm disgusted by people who think that it is right and proper that the police should be able to harrass people, and have the gall to blame the victim for their "stupid" refusal to throw away their rights. People have civil rights for a reason, and if failing to waive your rights (at the unjustified request of the authorities) is as good as actually commiting a crime, you're right back in Nazi Germany. Is this so difficult to grasp?
Iraq's problems are entirely of their own doing. Anytime they wish to allow UN weapon inspectors, the sanctions are gone
:-)
Unfortunately, the world is not as black and white as that. I do not dispute that the inspectors felt thwarted, and that they were being constantly mislead, but Iraq was fully justified in doing this because the USA was illegally using the inspections to spy on Iraq.
The premise was that Iraq would open itself to impartial inspections, and was guarenteed said inspections would not be used for US spying. In a sense, the US broke the arrangement first.
Now with that in mind, consider that Iraq did, for over a decade, allow the inspectors almost complete access to anything they wanted to see. Perhaps Iraq was obstinate over requests to see things that (in its view) had little to do with weapons and a lot to do with internal affairs (ie "while we're here, Saddam, mind if we do a little spying?").
So for ten years, Iraq suffered under sunctions while waiting for the inspectors to finish their inspection. Ten years and there was no sign the end of sanctions was even close. "We've been had!" Iraq concludes "They ain't ever going to say they're satisfied - they're going to keep sanctions in place until Saddam is gone. The dirty lying bastards!".
Can't say I blame them actually.
To claim that Iraq's problems are entirely of their own doing is verging on ridiculous IMHO. The USA has done a whole lot behind the scenes, and it sounds like you're overlooking quite a bit of it. Of course, it's not like US media puts much effort into covering that sort of thing
I firmly believe that the only reason that the US has not had a nuclear explosion on the mainland from a small nuclear bomb is because the intelligence community is running some hellacious interference that we never hear about.
:-).
This would all be fine and dandy, except that the only reason the USA is at risk of a nuclear explosion in the first place is because it's intelligence community pulls the kind of shit in other countries that makes people willing to sacrifice their own lives just for some slight payback. Not sick twisted people, normal healthy people like you or me.
If your wife, the light of your life, angel of innocence, is killed by the operations of foreign terrorists (the CIA) who are acting not for "national security" but to secure the flow of dirty money (which they think is the same thing) to their country, normal people develope a pretty big, and entirely justified grievance. And they sometimes have little left in their now-empty lives except to act on it.
In the Big Picture, salvation from bombs is not in winning an intelligence agency arms race, but in a foreign policy that doesn't create the need to bomb us in the first place. There are many countries or blocs of nations as big and/or powerful as the USA. Very few, if any, have the terrorist fears of the US. Why? Because very few act as if making lifelong enemies is inconsequential next to making money and playing power games.
We reap what we sow. Unlike a missile defence shield, a change in foreign policy can actually stop a nuke in a suitcase. And it won't cost billions. (unless you count the lost earnings from illegal arms trade and the like
The fact of the matter is that the fans have been moved one or two steps aways from their original locations. At some point the exchanged heat will need to be dissipated - and as of yet, I haven't seen a solution that doesn't produce noise. You're assuming that because there are still fans, the noise is pretty much the same. There are several reasons why this is not the case. A good PSU can be so silent you can barely hear it with your head next to it, yet it has a fan. How can this be? Fan noise is the product of many things, speed, and air turbulence over edges being the worst offenders. A larger fan, spinning slower, will pump more air, yet be much quieter than a small fast fan. This is why CPU fans are so noisy, while good PSU fans are silent. The design of the cpu heatsink obviously also affects the noise. In other words, fans don't preclude a silent computer, excellent engineering can overcome the problem. The case is question seems to be well engineered, and people say it is silent because when they power it up, they notice that they don't hear it. For the record, a cooling solution that doesn't produce noise is convection cooling. And this is possible to do with modern computers via a water cooling and a Big Fucking heatsink, or simply a 10 litre water reseviour :)
but the majority of the Mac world is clueless about security.
Even though I'm not an OSX user myself, I can categorically state that I am clueless about security.
On the other hand, I don't run Outlook, which means I stop most viruses dead in their tracks without even realising it...
Hmmm, maybe I'm a security guru after all.
Obviously, these transparent boxes are going to suck if you have your computer and TV on at the same time (or if anyone else in the general area has their TV on).
AFAIK, the transparent qualities could be retained, but shielding added via a grounded crosshatch of wire or metal mesh, making a faraday cage. Question is - how big can the holes be? Are we talking chicken-wire or reinforced-glass kind of mesh, or more like microwave-oven window mesh?
Does anyone have any links to DIY shielding info that would cover this sort of thing?
I've also heard that a transparent metal layer (such as on anti-static bags, one-way mirrors, etc) can be used, but some info on DIY mesh would be good...
What we need is a law that would allow courts to punitively strip intellectual property protections from individuals, companies, and organizations that use those protections in bad faith.
It's already in place, been in place for a long time - using copyrights for anti-competitive behaviour can result in the loss of those copyrights. Some people were talking about trying to use this in the lastest anti-competitive lawsuit against the music publishers, but I think there is pretty much zero chance of it.
No court would dare relieve the music industry of each piece of IP that it has used to abuse the market - it would be like telling MS that Windows, Office, etc are all now public domain. No chance in hell, regardless of justice.
Go into business and create and/or distribute digital content and devices to play it back that do *not* have any encryption or copy protection in them.
:)
You underestimate the problem. You can make open devices to your heart's content, but not a single movie will ever play on them, and so not a single box will sell. (Well, maybe one or two
The MPAA will only release movies on formats it approves. VHS is still mostly open due to its age, but is crappy for the same reason, and so will be ignored here. That leaves DVDs. You cannot make a device that plays DVDs unless you either
a) license CSS from the industry, or
b) break the law.
c) reverse engineer CSS
If you choose (b), your company gets shut down. Game Over. If you choose (a) then you either agree to the licensing conditions (ie you build your box to their spec with their cripples) or you don't get a license. Game over either way.
We have yet to see if reverse engineering CSS is a legal way to create an open player. Judging by what we've seen so far, it isn't. So while I'm not sure, I suspect that that is game over also.
IOW, it is illegal to create a DVD player that maintains consumers rights, unless the industry decides to let you, and they won't. End of story.
However, when it comes to HDTV recording, you _might_ be on to something, but I imagine the new format also needs to be licensed - any product based on reverse engineering (better known as that evil hacking thing) will probably be illegal, despite the token clause in the DMCA.
I'd suggest the Europeans revolt, but they're a disarmed sheeple, and the massacre would be horrible.
oh well, at leat I'm an American.
Yep, good ol' armed americans and their guns sure showed those legislators where to stick the DMCA, didn't they.
Or maybe, as the Euro's are aware, Hollywood-fueled fantasies about how your can use your guns to protect your rights are, well, fantasies...
Those disarmed sheeple maintained their rights longer than the armed americans, if only by circumstance. Lay the gun myth to rest, ok?
It sounds like much, if not most of your suspicion is simply the result of you not knowing much about electric cars. I've thought they were a cool idea for a long time, but even then didn't think they would be anything more than novelties for at least 15-20 years, but in the last few months, I stumbled on a few things that opened my eyes - electric vehicles are already _way_ ahead of what I thought they were, and it definitely sounds like they're way ahead of your perception of what they offer.
:-)
:)
Be suspicious, that's fine. But continue to be hopeful rather than spread suspicion and naysaying.
You say they're all novelty, but the advantages over gas engines are so immense that should the energy storage problem be solved, even the tillion-dollar subsidy on gas engines won't save them. Gas engines are utterly dependant on a myriad of expensive inefficient kludges like clutches. They are 0% efficient when waiting at the stop light right up to a staggering 15% efficiency under ideal conditions, divided by every time you use the brakes and so waste your energy instead of putting it back into the tank. That's right up there with the steam engine, and likely to go the same way. On the topic, virtually all trains today are electric (they bypass the storage problem by using a diesel generator) basically because electric motors are better in pretty much every way compared to gas. The problem is building a car that can run an electric motor. Electric motors are not novelty.
If novelty cars are the only way to gain the experience to solve the design problems, so be it. Don't be fooled into thinking that because novelty cars are being used as testing and solving grounds, that the electric motor is a novelty. The storage problem is not trivial however.
You note you're very suspicious of battery cars. I don't like them much either, but it sounds like you're not up to speed on battery technology. Lead-acid is the stuff of the 70's.
Talking of batteries, have you heard much about the new polimer battery technology? I don't know anything about it myself, but I hear things like "light as plastic" "cheap" "high energy density" and stuff like that, even though it's not to market yet, but you can imagine the possible ramifications - cars where the body panels are the batteries, etc. So while I too am suspicious of batteries, it sounds like that approach to storage might be capible of bearing interesting fruit
Be suspicious, but be aware that the novelty show cars and expo demos are just the sillier tip of a largely silent iceberg
And yet what would happen if you tried to criminalize alcohol?
:-)
I buy into the line that overall, crime etc, during probation was much lower than before and after, people were safer overall as a result. Of course, a huge drop in domestic violence is not as newsworthy or noticable as new gang rivalries, not to mention the vast and sucessful financial investments of the alcohol industry in politicans and marketing to ensure that probation is never considered again. Today, everyone believes without question that prohibition actually increased crime. What a mindjob!
Strangely perhaps, I think pot would be the opposite - illegal it creates just as much crime as alchol did, but if legal, it would be highly unlikely to create the even-greater-than-when-illegal amount of crime that alcohol does.
As for Yucca, I seriously doubt it would have any radioactive leakage problems for, oh, a few thousand years. Glass is pretty stable stuff. If, by then, we haven't figured out how to deal with it (nanotech!), we deserve to glow in the dark.
That's not really an acceptable soltuion to me. I guess it comes down to cash or credit - some people like to buy with money they don't have, and pay it off over time. I prefer to buy with money I do have. Locking waste into glass is a bit like buying a flash computer on your child's credit card when you know you're going to die in two days time - you're passing the buck for immediate gratification.
You can argue that there is unlikely to be any "interest" to pay (clean up costs if there is contamination), but I look to the legacy of wonder left us by the ancient egyptions, and wonder if we will be despised and hated for our greed and immoral gratification at the expense of others. It is not a legacy that I want to leave, and I am prepared to pay more for power generation to achieve it. I don't know whether the heavy-but-short-term pollution of coal outweights the low-but-long-term pollution of nuclear, but it feels fairer that I should have to suffer my own pollution, not pass it on to future generations.
For the same reason, CA's actions, or attempts to dump US nuclear waste in other countries, also strike me as irresponsible.
A reason we've got such a pollution problem is because people are so used to inflicting their products on others and never having to deal witht he consequences of their own actions (until you reach the bottom of the heap, usually in the third world, where everyone is utterly screwed).
Who knows, just because we have no use for the underside of a mountain now doesn't mean we won't ever have a use for that, and I'd prefer not to place shackles on the options of future generations merely to get slightly cheaper power.
As demonstrated in CA, "green" energy production does not cost much more than dirty.
Are there any links to web pages on easy DIY tempest shielding for those who don't know much about it? I have an idea of the difficulty involved, but not all the details (eg how big can the holes in a faraday cage be? What are some recommended materials to use?)
Anyone have any good links?
Actually, I've been waiting for a post like this for some time, as it presents an opportunity to brainstorm solutions with other /. users.
The point is not to find a foolproof system, but talk and ingeniously devise new techniques that lower the effort vs security tradeoff. What potential (if any) do the new USB keyring drives offer? What risks?
Even though I have little need for security, it's an interesting game. (And on some days I consider it almost a duty to encrypt unimportant email, to help maintain the right to privacy).
Lead-acid batteries (used in electric cars) don't last forever.
:-)
Lead-acid batteries are not used in modern electrics AFAIK, because, well, they're crap. (And heavy messy crap at that).
Personally, I prefer hydrolysing water and storing the hydrogen instead of a battery, but fuel cells are still somewhat costly (though AFAIK they run indefinitey if kept unclogged, and have no adverse environmental effect if dumped)
Furthermore, I'd should also point out that many countries don't just dump their lead-acid batteries as you assume everyone will, but use the waste. (Mind you, we were talking about the USA, so might have a point
As to being more enviromentally damaging if they were dumped, I suspect you might be wrong there:
Say the useful life of a battery is two years. If I were to eat, over the course of 2 years, the entire battery, I would not be healthy, but my (limited) understanding of the toxicity suggests I would be very much alive. If I were to inhale, over the course of 2 years, the fumes from a gas car, I would be dead very quickly.
Perhaps this is an unfair example, because of the different way the toxins affect the body, but I think you under-estimate gas emmissions, (or are possibly confusing lead-acid rechargables with ni-cd rechargables).
Regardless, there is no excuse for just dumping toxic waste.
Why haven't those places developed these kick-ass electric cars that are so obviously superior to gas cars?
:-)
A lot of reasons. You seem to be thinking "since electric is being adopted slowly, it can't be as clean as claimed". Clearly, it is as clean as claimed, but there are other drawbacks slowing it's adoption. The big one is storage - electricity is easy to generate and easy to use but incredibly difficult to store. This means that to compete on price with gas cars, the electric car needs either cheap batteries (ie shorter driving range than a gas car) or some other storage system (liquid hydrogen for fuel cells for example).
Electric car manufacturers also seem to have under-estimated demand, and they generally sell very quickly, but that will presumably change in a year or so.
What it comes down to is basically that,
1) Electric cars are a technology that is currently being adopted, not a technology that has finished being adopted. (You argument almost sounds a bit like "If the latest CPUs are so much better than old ones, how come no-one in my hi-tech office already has them?") And
2) It is a technology that has to compete with billions of dollars of existing gas infrastructure, that means that in order to offer competitive value per dollar, it has to far more efficient and cheaper, because gas is operating via economies of scale, which is a huge "subsidy" if you are trying to evaluate technological merit via market performance, as you seem to be doing.
3) In a sense, it is still a maturing technology. Currently, when weighing up the choice between a gas or electric car, there are still advantages and disadvantages to both. The electric technology is still quite a few years away from the time when electric cars are superior to gas cars in every useful way. Example: I note that there are now electric cars that, at the fraction of the price* of a Ferrari 550, can out-drag the Ferrari, (0-60 quicker) though the top speed is lower. Still, it sounds like a fair amount bang for your buck
*Not yet in mass production unfortunately.
like in this case the major problems our nations power grid is going to be facing in the next 20 years
The problems you cite don't really exist to the extend that they are a problem.
The power consumption of electric cars even when their numbers reaches CA target (which are higher than any other state AFAIK) is inconsequential - 0.02% of the power normally consumed via the grid.
It might be 0.06% - I can't remember but the "there won't be enough energy for people to switch" is another part of GM's lobbying package that is now widely and rightfully ignored.
The money saved on petroleum infrastructure would easily cover any expansion of electrical infrastructure - and the bottom line is that the grid needs to be (and will be) expanded, regardless of whether electric cars are adopted or not. Electric cars are a drop in the puddle. If people are worried about energy conservation, turning the lights off, etc when they're not in use will dwarf the energy needed to run cars, and as running an electric car obviously requires far less net energy than gas ones, even if they did strain the grid (which they won't) it would clearly be worth it.
That said, yeah, driving SUVs to the gym is stupid. IMO, using a gym at all is stupid if commuting to work each day by bike is feasible (and you'd probably be surprised at how much faster a bike usually gets you there - people think that cars are fast because on the open road they are, but in a city like where I live, even a half hour commute tends to be quicker by bike, as bikes don't get slowed by the traffic).
(Statistic suggest that biking is safer too, but I suspect they are heavily skewed by open road car crashes, which are frequently lethal. Statistics for city-only travel safety would be interesting)
The stuff came out of the ground, for godsake, we're just putting it back
:-)
Do you not understand the basic principles of nuclear fission, or have I been snared by a troll?
The elements mined from the ground are not the elements that are "just" being put back, and they have very different properties from the elements that were taken out of the ground.
This stuff is so basic, and your logic so bizarre that no rational, dissinterested person could be serious, so I guess I'm the sucker then.
Ah well. It was a worthy example of the art of the troll. That's my excuse
Like electric cars... sure, they may be 100% emissions free, but what about all the coal/oil/uranium that must be consumed to produce that energy.
:)
In case you're not aware, only General Motors still tries to make out that that has any relevance, and only because they're trying to dissuade CA from requiring emissionless cars.
You note that powerplant filters make a difference, but there is more to it than that. Even an electric car that is recharged entirely from dirty coal power plants still produces ten to a hundred times less pollutants than a modern car at the end of the day.
You are probably forgetting how mind-numbingly crude and innefficient the combustion-engine vehicle is - every time the light goes green, you rip huge amounts of energy from storage and turn it into vast kinetic energy, then when the next light goes red you dump all of that energy, then burn up (ie waste) heaps more when the light goes green. Insane! Most technologies, including electric, allow two-way transfer of energy - when you stop for the red light, you do so by converting your kinetic energy back into storage.
Testiment to this is that many hybrid cars never need charging - the electric engine is powered entirely by the staggering wastage of the combustion engine.
Conbustion contraptions truly are a Victorian-age technology - wasteful and crude, requiring you to burn through ten times the energy you actually need to get from A to B. Hence another reason why electric cars powered by dirty generators are a non-issue. As I mentioned, General Motors still seems to be clinging to the line, but it's looking increasinly like this is because they have lagged behind other car makers in these technologies, and now don't want the consequences of a fair playing field, knowing they'll probably get their butts kicked
The real solution will come when an efficient, non impacting form of electrical generation is perfected.
Nope. No need to wait. The dirtiest of current electrical generation are still more than sufficiently clean to solve the pollution problems. Which is not to say they shouldn't be cleaned up, just that you shouldn't be distracted by the red-herring that GM is still trying to wave (a red-herring that has been largely discredited by the car industry itself).
Like electric cars... sure, they may be 100% emissions free, but what about all the coal/oil/uranium that must be consumed to produce that energy.
Granted I wouldn't want to smell french fries all day
Infinitely better the stink of normal cars!
Hemp, a renewable resource that enriches the land it grows on, unlike cotton. Can be used to make cloth better than cotton, oil for various uses and even paper.
Unfortunately, those idiots who smoke pot continue to prevent us from being able to use hemp, due to the camoflage it gives to their illegal plants.
(And some of them then turn around and whine about how hemp shouldn't be illegal!)
All up, I think decriminalisation of pot is probably the way to go (thus also reducing the reason for banning hemp), but it's going to be a hard sell to society while pot (ab)use is so high in some areas that it sometimes seems almost as socially disasterous as alcohol.