It may be clean and efficient, but is it practical?
whoa! efficient maybe, but clean? read the section of the article below:
So how does Community Power's BioMax work? In one end you pour a sack of wood chips, nut shells or pellets (considered the optimal fuel because they are small and dense) into an oxygen-starved tank- shaped gasifier, which heats the solid fuel until it forms a combustible gas (up to 800 degrees Celsius, or 1,472 degrees Fahrenheit).
they're talking about ch4 - aka methane (please, leave the roadwarrior jokes for later). when it comes to climate change this is a Bad Thing. burn oil and you get yr carbon as c02 which is a greenhouse gas... but molecule for molecule, methan is way worse than co2. don't trust me, trust the epa:
Methane traps over 21 times more heat per molecule than carbon dioxide
the epa from this site
this is not about the environment. it's about energy self-sufficiency and the whole middle-easter instability thang. read the article, 9/11 comes up every third paragraph.
i live in alberta. a few years ago, the provinicial government - which has an ideologicl committment to fiscal ultraconservatism - deregulated the power industry.
the results have generally been regarded as disasterous - most notably a rise in power bills for both domestic and industrial consumers that topped out at well over double. the power rate increase resulted in less disposable consumer income and increased cost of doing business in the province and was regarded as an election-killer by the current administration.
so they spent their way out of it to the the tune of $2.3 billion. that was direct subsidies to rate payers. of course the whole subsidy was a charade since those same rate payers were going to pay for their "subsidies" in income tax increases or reduced social spending in other areas. clearly a case of cutting you a cheque with your own money.
so who got rich? the power companies. same service, same power, more money.
bottom line: electricity is a necessity. like water, or the police service. it is a completely inelastic commodity and privatizing it is only encouraging the new power overlord (since there is, really, only one major power provider... a monopoly) to charge the maximum the market will bear and damn the consequences.
however, sco is unlikely to sue you since a court case is likely to force them to identify the code in question, and they don't want to do that since, once the code is identified, linus and co. will start working on linux lite (to steal a phrase from bsd). they'll probably only tip their hat in a high stakes suit.
guns bought by individuals are the same as any other hobby.
if your government is indulging in "hobbies" you need another government. i think ike was referring to the military, not private gun owners. in which case, the purchase of armaments takes tax dollars which could be used for:
more or better programs
tax reduction
or some combination thereof. you obviously, would prefer the later - but that does not invalidate the original statement.
you look at the "social" programs that work, they are the programs where volunteers or workers take the time to form a relationship with those they help and simply love and care for them.
ah, yes, the "thousand points of light". remember that? great. let's give those people some tax assistance or direct funding to buy materials or specialized services.
that would be a better use of cash than coming up with more efficient ways to kill people in countries where the "elite guard" means "soldiers with shoes". dontcha think?
every bomb, whether dropped or not, has collaterol damage: the citizens of the nation that decided to spend tax dollars on weapons of mass destruction rather than on meaningful social programs.
don't take it from me. eisenhower said it first:
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed." president eisenhower
this is awesome. i've been using omniweb since when openstep was a valid os and continued with it through os x because ie was such a beast. but safari is so much faster and better at rendering. if omni keeps their feature list (notably page change notification) this will make them the 800 lb gorilla of mac browsers.
apparently hamas has already used radio-controlled model planes to carry explosives and the british, for some time, were "concerned" that the ira could used model helicopters to deliver chemical weaponry.
hey! there's some perl that's actually quite readable (and even poetic). witness the "black perl" script:
BEFOREHAND: close door, each window & exit; wait until time.
open spell book, study, read ( scan, select, tell us );
write it, print the hex while each watches,
reverse its length, write again;
kill spiders, pop them, chop, split, kill them.
unlink arms, shift, wait & listen ( listening, wait ),
sort the flock ( then, warn the "goats" & kill the "sheep" );
kill them, dump qualms, shift moralities,
values aside, each one;
die sheep ! die to reverse the system
you accept ( reject, respect );
next step,
kill the next sacrifice, each sacrifice,
wait, redo ritual until "all the spirits are pleased";
do it ( "as they say" ).
do it ( *everyone***must***participate***in***forbidden**s *e*x*).
return last victim; package body;
exit crypt ( time, times & "half a time" ) & close it,
select ( quickly ) & warn your next victim;
AFTERWARDS: tell nobody.
wait, wait until time;
wait until next year, next decade;
sleep, sleep, die yourself,
die at last
and it actually parses.
note: this script is for entertainment purposes only and is not meant as an endoresement of human sacrafise, real or virtual.
at the source: make it unprofitable for the spam to be sent in the first place. this can be done by either:
fines or other state sanctions.
lack of market.
1. is faster in the short term - but as long as spam is profitable, there will be those willing to risk sanctions. 2. takes longer and is a bit pie-in-the-sky, but eliminating the market is the only permanent solution.
at the tansmissionn level: get rid of those relays! if it is technically too difficult to send spam, the amount will drop accordingly.
at the recipient level: this is where filtering fits. really this is just a subset of 1.1 - removing the market. if no one sees the spam because of the filter, they won't buy and spam becomes unprofitable.
looking at this analysis, it seems that 3. is the best option because it helps acheive a lack of market and profitiablity which is the only permananent solution...
however, an imperfect filtering system defeats this formula. consider: if a filtering system can be bypassed with some effort on behalf of the spammer then those spammers who have the kung fu to get their mail through acheive a distinct competitive advantage over their competitors. if there are 10 spammers sending you 10 messages a week, you have 100 spams. that's a lot of "noise". if you filter these spams but one spammer can get through the filter, you are only getting 10 spams. that's "good" but - and this is a big but - that spammer now has way less competition. the signal to noise ratio goes way up for that one spammer and his/her individual messages become more effective because there are no competitors in the inbox!
the result is that imperfect filtering may put nine spammers out of business, but the one remaining will make a killing. eventually that one spammer will pick up the other nine's contracts and, boom, you're back to 100 spams. new spam agencies will rise to the new level to cash in on this profitable venture and the cycle starts all over again.
What would actually happen is that if your device happened to be in range of someone's receiver and interfered with the channel they were trying to listen to...
the whole point of a lot of british broadcasting law isn't to protect the listener/consumer, it was originally designed to protect the broadcaster - the bbc. you have to understand that in the uk, unlike the us or europe, the legal tradition has been firmly against private broadcasting.
originally, the bbc was the only broadcaster allowed in the uk - radio being "too powerful" a tool to be left to private interests. but, of course, the bbc sucked and by the '30s most of the uk was listening to european stations - most notably radio luxembourg - with bad reception but better programming. many of the broadcasting laws from the 40s were designed to discourage these "foreign" stations.
by the 60s there were a lot of private broadcasters targeting britain, though, by setting up shop on boats outside the three mile limit in international waters. the notable one here is radio caroline of course. the labour government at the time was simply balistic about this movement but couldn't legally squealch it because of that pesky maritime law thing.
of course, it all came to a grinding halt when a guy called major smedly (who was a bit of a nut job in the first place) pulled a piracy job on a competing station called radio city. eventually, the battle took to dry land and smedly shot and killed calvert. the result was the marine broadcasting offenses act of 1967 which was pretty draconian and the pirate broadcasters were shut donw.
How about we mock the geeks that are still crying over this?
feel free. but the exercise actually has touched on an important issue: the "value" of "virtual" items.
let's look at two theories of value, shall we?
labour theory of value: both adam smith and karl marx agree on how to assess value (whoda thunk?) value is represented by labour. (marx's theory is here, adam smith here)
the bottom line is that the value of an object is the labour that goes into making it. raw materials are "just there" and only have value because of the labour expended to extract and refine them. add up the work hours to make something and you have its value.
now, with virtual items this is tricky. baboo the barbarian "worked" for several hundred hours to win the +12 shears of torpiary. so, to baboo, thos shears have a "value" of 100 hours. however, some programmer wrote up those shears in 2 minutes and created a dozen of them with a keystroke. so, to the authors of the game, the shears are worth 2.01 minutes of labour.
the bottom line is: the labour value of virtual items depend on who you are. this is totally unlike "hard" items (ie, real shears). labour value theory fails us.
the scarcity theory of value: this is the supply and demand stuff everyone seems enamoured with these days. you know it. now, we'll ignore things like elasticity and fungibility to keep it simple.
to baboo, there are only 12 shears in "existance". since they are highly sought after (demand) and there are very few (supply) the value of the shears is high. however, the authors of the game can create, destroy, modify and, most importantly, duplicate these shears with near-zero effort. the supply can be upped instantly. the shears can be modified to become useless, thus reducing the demand. the authors can make as many shears for themselves as they wish...
so, once again, the value depends on who you are. totally unlike real shears. the scarcity theory breaks down with virtual things.
so. do virtual items have value? no matter how you calculate value, the answer depends on who you are. this is a major readjustment of the whole concept of value and will need to be addressed by governments and the law as the distribution and use of virtual items (not just in the gaming world, but everywhere) becomes more prevalent.
we don't need a digital millenium copyright act, we need a digital millenium value theory. of course, coming up with that will require some knowledge of economic theory and some hard thinking - so don't expect one from your politicians anytime soon.
at my previous job (many moons ago) we would install linux on machines in plain view of our boss whose anti-linux stance was legendary (he called it the "hippy os").
the key was to install cde and tcsh and say it was solaris x86 (which he disapproved of too.. but less). since he never actually used the machines, this was easy.
that's for you. "disposable" camera's have valid uses. ie, if yr getting married, throw one on or two on each table and have guests hand the camera's back in on their way out. free (usually crappy) wedding snaps.
Our government is incapible of becoming like Orwell's 1984. They cant even keep their system straight.
whoa. that's a big leap. just because the gov't does a lousy job funding the bia does not mean it is not capable and willing of building surveillence state!
here's the real message: the government does a good job on stuff it cares about. they care about homeland security... so it gets funded out the wazoo and real talent is brought in to work on it. the bia gets the sort end of the stick because the gov't doesn't care about native americans. they're not "sexy" like homeland security. besides, we already got all their land.
what does it matter what you did for them, if the Tibetans don't want you?
1. as i stated, my post was to make no point. the sole objective was to get some cards on the table because in many cases of national liberation struggle, and espescially in the tibet issue, there is a lot misunderstanding and ignorance of history. your point, however, is pretty much spot on.
2. the "whiner" thing is a mild exercise in irony.
3. for the record, i think the occupation of tibet is Bad Thing. i am most definitely not an apologist for mao. when i say left wing i refer more to something along the lines of this.
Slashdot Mirror
whoa! efficient maybe, but clean? read the section of the article below:
So how does Community Power's BioMax work? In one end you pour a sack of wood chips, nut shells or pellets (considered the optimal fuel because they are small and dense) into an oxygen-starved tank- shaped gasifier, which heats the solid fuel until it forms a combustible gas (up to 800 degrees Celsius, or 1,472 degrees Fahrenheit).
they're talking about ch4 - aka methane (please, leave the roadwarrior jokes for later). when it comes to climate change this is a Bad Thing. burn oil and you get yr carbon as c02 which is a greenhouse gas... but molecule for molecule, methan is way worse than co2. don't trust me, trust the epa:
Methane traps over 21 times more heat per molecule than carbon dioxide
the epa from this site
this is not about the environment. it's about energy self-sufficiency and the whole middle-easter instability thang. read the article, 9/11 comes up every third paragraph.
now. where are my damn solar panels?
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Shadowlands/9654/t esla/projecttesla.html
and the argument would be wrong.
does that sound even faintly like the united states in 1969?
source: the cia
which is why you should use latex! nobody understands that stuff. security through obscurity!
the results have generally been regarded as disasterous - most notably a rise in power bills for both domestic and industrial consumers that topped out at well over double. the power rate increase resulted in less disposable consumer income and increased cost of doing business in the province and was regarded as an election-killer by the current administration.
so they spent their way out of it to the the tune of $2.3 billion. that was direct subsidies to rate payers. of course the whole subsidy was a charade since those same rate payers were going to pay for their "subsidies" in income tax increases or reduced social spending in other areas. clearly a case of cutting you a cheque with your own money.
so who got rich? the power companies. same service, same power, more money.
bottom line: electricity is a necessity. like water, or the police service. it is a completely inelastic commodity and privatizing it is only encouraging the new power overlord (since there is, really, only one major power provider... a monopoly) to charge the maximum the market will bear and damn the consequences.
source here: here
however, sco is unlikely to sue you since a court case is likely to force them to identify the code in question, and they don't want to do that since, once the code is identified, linus and co. will start working on linux lite (to steal a phrase from bsd). they'll probably only tip their hat in a high stakes suit.
of course! tools are value-neutral - it's intent that makes something good or evil. a gun can be used to do good, a pillow can be a weapon of murder.
now what we really need is /dev/intent
An error occured while loading http://212.192.128.76:4444:
Could not connect to host 212.192.128.76 (port 4444)
yes. it's just like on a boat - the captain can marry you legally and the register is signed on land at a later date.
if your government is indulging in "hobbies" you need another government. i think ike was referring to the military, not private gun owners. in which case, the purchase of armaments takes tax dollars which could be used for:
- more or better programs
- tax reduction
or some combination thereof. you obviously, would prefer the later - but that does not invalidate the original statement.you look at the "social" programs that work, they are the programs where volunteers or workers take the time to form a relationship with those they help and simply love and care for them.
ah, yes, the "thousand points of light". remember that? great. let's give those people some tax assistance or direct funding to buy materials or specialized services.
that would be a better use of cash than coming up with more efficient ways to kill people in countries where the "elite guard" means "soldiers with shoes". dontcha think?
don't take it from me. eisenhower said it first:
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."
president eisenhower
this is awesome. i've been using omniweb since when openstep was a valid os and continued with it through os x because ie was such a beast. but safari is so much faster and better at rendering. if omni keeps their feature list (notably page change notification) this will make them the 800 lb gorilla of mac browsers.
apparently hamas has already used radio-controlled model planes to carry explosives and the british, for some time, were "concerned" that the ira could used model helicopters to deliver chemical weaponry.
source is here
really, somebody should call tom ridge and get him to stop these people from exporting this weapons technology to a foreign power!
they're in america. the "f" stands for "federal".
ah yes. violent revolution has no place in america.
BEFOREHAND: close door, each window & exit; wait until time.s *e*x*).
return last victim; package body;
open spell book, study, read ( scan, select, tell us );
write it, print the hex while each watches, reverse its length, write again;
kill spiders, pop them, chop, split, kill them.
unlink arms, shift, wait & listen ( listening, wait ),
sort the flock ( then, warn the "goats" & kill the "sheep" );
kill them, dump qualms, shift moralities, values aside, each one; die sheep ! die to reverse the system you accept ( reject, respect );
next step, kill the next sacrifice, each sacrifice, wait, redo ritual until "all the spirits are pleased";
do it ( "as they say" ).
do it ( *everyone***must***participate***in***forbidden**
exit crypt ( time, times & "half a time" ) & close it, select ( quickly ) & warn your next victim;
AFTERWARDS: tell nobody.
wait, wait until time;
wait until next year, next decade;
sleep, sleep, die yourself,
die at last
and it actually parses.
note: this script is for entertainment purposes only and is not meant as an endoresement of human sacrafise, real or virtual.
is there a secret message here? should tom ridge be called?
- at the source: make it unprofitable for the spam to be sent in the first place. this can be done by either:
- at the tansmissionn level: get rid of those relays! if it is technically too difficult to send spam, the amount will drop accordingly.
- at the recipient level: this is where filtering fits. really this is just a subset of 1.1 - removing the market. if no one sees the spam because of the filter, they won't buy and spam becomes unprofitable.
looking at this analysis, it seems that 3. is the best option because it helps acheive a lack of market and profitiablity which is the only permananent solution...- fines or other state sanctions.
- lack of market.
1. is faster in the short term - but as long as spam is profitable, there will be those willing to risk sanctions. 2. takes longer and is a bit pie-in-the-sky, but eliminating the market is the only permanent solution.however, an imperfect filtering system defeats this formula. consider: if a filtering system can be bypassed with some effort on behalf of the spammer then those spammers who have the kung fu to get their mail through acheive a distinct competitive advantage over their competitors. if there are 10 spammers sending you 10 messages a week, you have 100 spams. that's a lot of "noise". if you filter these spams but one spammer can get through the filter, you are only getting 10 spams. that's "good" but - and this is a big but - that spammer now has way less competition. the signal to noise ratio goes way up for that one spammer and his/her individual messages become more effective because there are no competitors in the inbox!
the result is that imperfect filtering may put nine spammers out of business, but the one remaining will make a killing. eventually that one spammer will pick up the other nine's contracts and, boom, you're back to 100 spams. new spam agencies will rise to the new level to cash in on this profitable venture and the cycle starts all over again.
and that's bad.
the whole point of a lot of british broadcasting law isn't to protect the listener/consumer, it was originally designed to protect the broadcaster - the bbc. you have to understand that in the uk, unlike the us or europe, the legal tradition has been firmly against private broadcasting.
originally, the bbc was the only broadcaster allowed in the uk - radio being "too powerful" a tool to be left to private interests. but, of course, the bbc sucked and by the '30s most of the uk was listening to european stations - most notably radio luxembourg - with bad reception but better programming. many of the broadcasting laws from the 40s were designed to discourage these "foreign" stations.
by the 60s there were a lot of private broadcasters targeting britain, though, by setting up shop on boats outside the three mile limit in international waters. the notable one here is radio caroline of course. the labour government at the time was simply balistic about this movement but couldn't legally squealch it because of that pesky maritime law thing.
of course, it all came to a grinding halt when a guy called major smedly (who was a bit of a nut job in the first place) pulled a piracy job on a competing station called radio city. eventually, the battle took to dry land and smedly shot and killed calvert. the result was the marine broadcasting offenses act of 1967 which was pretty draconian and the pirate broadcasters were shut donw.
feel free. but the exercise actually has touched on an important issue: the "value" of "virtual" items.
let's look at two theories of value, shall we?
now, with virtual items this is tricky. baboo the barbarian "worked" for several hundred hours to win the +12 shears of torpiary. so, to baboo, thos shears have a "value" of 100 hours. however, some programmer wrote up those shears in 2 minutes and created a dozen of them with a keystroke. so, to the authors of the game, the shears are worth 2.01 minutes of labour.
the bottom line is: the labour value of virtual items depend on who you are. this is totally unlike "hard" items (ie, real shears). labour value theory fails us.
to baboo, there are only 12 shears in "existance". since they are highly sought after (demand) and there are very few (supply) the value of the shears is high. however, the authors of the game can create, destroy, modify and, most importantly, duplicate these shears with near-zero effort. the supply can be upped instantly. the shears can be modified to become useless, thus reducing the demand. the authors can make as many shears for themselves as they wish...
so, once again, the value depends on who you are. totally unlike real shears. the scarcity theory breaks down with virtual things.
so. do virtual items have value? no matter how you calculate value, the answer depends on who you are. this is a major readjustment of the whole concept of value and will need to be addressed by governments and the law as the distribution and use of virtual items (not just in the gaming world, but everywhere) becomes more prevalent.
we don't need a digital millenium copyright act, we need a digital millenium value theory. of course, coming up with that will require some knowledge of economic theory and some hard thinking - so don't expect one from your politicians anytime soon.
the key was to install cde and tcsh and say it was solaris x86 (which he disapproved of too.. but less). since he never actually used the machines, this was easy.
that's for you. "disposable" camera's have valid uses. ie, if yr getting married, throw one on or two on each table and have guests hand the camera's back in on their way out. free (usually crappy) wedding snaps.
of course i have section on my site for bash scripts... and it has an index page. looks like someone got dissappointed.
whoa. that's a big leap. just because the gov't does a lousy job funding the bia does not mean it is not capable and willing of building surveillence state!
here's the real message: the government does a good job on stuff it cares about. they care about homeland security... so it gets funded out the wazoo and real talent is brought in to work on it. the bia gets the sort end of the stick because the gov't doesn't care about native americans. they're not "sexy" like homeland security. besides, we already got all their land.
1. as i stated, my post was to make no point. the sole objective was to get some cards on the table because in many cases of national liberation struggle, and espescially in the tibet issue, there is a lot misunderstanding and ignorance of history. your point, however, is pretty much spot on.
2. the "whiner" thing is a mild exercise in irony.
3. for the record, i think the occupation of tibet is Bad Thing. i am most definitely not an apologist for mao. when i say left wing i refer more to something along the lines of this.