True. However, LDS folks also believe in upholding, honoring, and sustaining the law.Which means that when push came to shove and every appeal through the courts had been exhausted, the choice was given to the one person who had the authority to make the decision -- the president of the LDS church at that time -- a man named Wilford Woodruff. According to his journals, he saw in "a vision" what would happen if the church continued to follow and defend polygamy, vs. what would happen if the practice were abandoned.
The point is, according to his writings, (and in LDS doctrine being the sole person authorized to give/withhold the authority to perform plural marriages), he was given knowledge by God, and the right to make the decision, which he did, ending the practice. He also stated that if God had said "continue", he would have obeyed God even knowing he was in violation of the law.
Anyway, once the decision was made, no-one automatically retained the authority to perform plural marriages. (The doctrinal reference is that the right to "perform sealings" is only given under the permission of the President of the Church, and that permission can be revoked at any time just on his say so.) Thus, anybody attempting to perform a plural marriage after he said "stop" would be violating their sacred covenants.
Which, for an LDS priesthood holder, can be (depending on severity) grounds for excommunication. BTW, not only would the "plural husband" be excommunicated, (because without the authority, once there was a second wife he would be living in adultery), so would the church leader who attempted to perform the marriage.
Well, that should take a while...finding an old pentium box -- that still works.
Don't believe me? Think about it most old pentium boxes that were sold run M$ operating systems. And everybody knows that the best use for an old M$ operating system based computer is still Minesweeper. Which is a game, not work.
At least until copyright law is changed, I will stay a firm supporter of traditional publishing for one reason and one reason only: E-publishing and what is known as "printing on demand" favor the publishing corporations more than the authors.
Current copyright law says that if a book goes out of print, the author can reclaim the copyright, and take it to another publisher. With these newer forms of publishing, all a corporate publisher has to do is sell one copy occasionally -- printed on demand -- for the book to be legally be considered not "out of print" indefinitely.
An example of this: right now there are seven books (psychology related texts -- which I won't name for the same reasons) that I would order in a second if they were in print. But would I rather keep them in print at a publisher who let them sit there for years, or wait another year or two for the author to regain control?
I'll wait. And when the author regains that control, I hope they use electronic publishing and print on demand to keep control of their works until the copyright expires.
(Somewhat related side note: I think that the Sonny Bono extensions to the period of time a copyright is issued for are wrong, BTW. And that corporations shouldn't be able to pass around (sell) their collection of copyrights like stocks unless the original contributors are somehow compensated, but that is even further off-topic).
you'd have trouble putting that label on Intel, the mother of the Linux community's cheap, powerful commodity hardware.
True to a very very small extent. Can't find type that small. Picture this: way back at about the time that Windows 9x first appeared, what if Intel had basically said, "we won't sell CPU's to PC manufacturers unless they agree to give users the opportunity to choose which OS will be installed (Options would have included WinNT, Dos, BSD's, Linux, Solaris, SCO-Unix, and Beos). How long do you think Microsoft's monopoly would have lasted if Dell, Gateway, Micron, Compaq, Toshiba, and IBM et. al were contractually obligated to require purchasers a choice?
It was only after M$ started trying to twist the screws on Intel that Intel basically told them to f--- off, and started supporting other platforms in a big way.
No, my main reason is that I have to use it on an M$ operating system. With all of their associated FUD, poor programming, etc.
IMHO without Netscape to compete with IE would have started out and stayed a huge joke. By the way, I do use IE5 at work (stuck on an NT box) so I'm not completely against it, but the moment Mozilla stabilizes and is considered not alpha, not beta, but production I will be forever and irrevocably getting rid of all Microsoft software on my home machine.
Part of the reason we are so hyped about chips like the Athlon and Crusoe is that for years their have been essentially two partners in the near monopoly 'x86 game -- Microsoft and Intel.
So along comes {AMD and Transmeta and Linux and Apache, etc.} who essentially shout "freedom for the masses" from the tyranny of the unholy duo's ability to control and profit from our needs for ever more useful and powerful technologies.
Short answer: dirt cheap -- under a dollar a gallon. A home processor can make biodiesel for little more than the cost of the alchohol and the lye, because alot of restaurants throw away used cooking oil every day.
Commercially, it's not so good. The government tacks on alot of requirements (some of which are good, many are (IMHO) simply protections for the petroleum industries) and taxes such that it becomes quite expensive to build and operate what is essentially a "biodiesel" refinery. I've heard fuel price figures from $2.00 to $4.00 per gallon as being reasonable prices.
I guess my main point is, if there is a consumer move to embrace biodiesel and government essentially gets out of the way or even actively promotes it -- we'd all benefit -- and the fuel prices would come down.
Same link as in a previous response but here's the best story I've heard: Two students who developed their own biodiesel processor hooked it on a trailer to the back of a diesel Winnebago, and took off across the country. The Veggie Van went back and forth across the country on biodiesel fuel made from used oil which they obtained from fast food restaurants. (Side note: approximately three million gallons of vegetable oil are discarded by restaurants every year in the US)
What's that? I'll take a big mac and four gallons of peanut oil to go...
Well, more like French Fries actually. (read about 2/3 of the way down the page.)
By the way, you are 100% correct about what biodiesel is and how it is produced: roughly four parts oil, one part methanol, or three parts oil one part ethanol, plus just enough sodium hydroxide to catalyze the reaction. (too much and you get soap.)
The "trans-esterification" reaction (spelling?) splits the oil into a glycerin component and the more useful "biodiesel" which can be used as is in virtually any modern diesel engine, with less pollutants (translated: no sulfur in the fuel to get burned into S02) and some nice handling qualities (higher flash point, lower jelling temperature).
Okay. I'll bite. Modern diesel engines already are. Because they are built to handle higher compression, they are inherently longer lasting --a useful lifespan of 200,000 to 300,000 miles is expected. Problem is, because it takes more to make a diesel -- the engines tend to cost more, so the auto manufacturers have very little incentive to use them. [Imagine a company CEO saying to the company stock holders "sure, now our cars last three times as long -- but that's okay, we made a one time $500 extra profit..."]
As far as the economic viability, try this on for size: if these diatom algae were available to growers nationwide, enough farm land lies fallow (unplanted) every year to provide oil which can be refined to supply all of the US's diesel requirements. Also consider -- milk how milk is economically viable for smaller farmers --they work together in huge dairy co-ops -- why not an algae-oil co-op? on the fallow land.
Finally, some of the concept cars now being tested marry the proven diesel technologies to electrical engines -- giving the electrical cars essentially unlimited range and overcoming the horsepower problem. The difference is -- instead of that engine being forced to pollute while you wait at that next red light, once the batteries are charged, the diesel side of the engine shuts down.
Perhaps I am in the minority here, but I still read newspapers on a regular basis. However, because of the availability of quality news and a more "free for all" atmosphere of outside verification, I tend to be much more selective in which papers I will read.
What I have observed is that "lazy" and "corporate" (definitions to follow) don't attract any of my attention - and none of my money, similar to how "lazy" and corporate websites don't get any of my time.
What I look for in papers is true in-depth coverage, with incisive, analytical thinking that goes beyond the flit-of-the-moment reporting. I want to exercise a part of my brain that calls on me to not just digest the news of the day, but make my own decisions as to what of it matters -- where I will invest my energies, my support, and most of all, the limited amount of time each day I have to try to make a difference in.
Definitions: my definition of lazy and corporate newspapers are those who simply pass on the "flavor of the day" news. Any reporter can sit and wait for his pampered sources to provide something deemed newsworthy -- however, these news reporters can't do much more than "spin" what is related to them -- they are not digging below the surface to uncover the truth. Similarly, corporate sources tend to not offer a real view of the world -- imagine if the Microsoft web site admitted that Active Directory sucked bigtime compared to NDS 8.
What I want to read (web or paper) is the truth -- however good, bad, or ugly it may be. [side note: notice that in the Open Source world this tends to happen -- Linux freely admits that Linux got handed its arse in certain areas -- thanked the benchmark companies and said in essence "thanks for showing us where we can improve.]
" Research conducted in these labs is aimed at producing biodiesel fuel from microalgae and other plants. Biodiesel fuel is made from oils and fats found in microalgae. It can be substituted for diesel fuel or used as an additive. Biodiesel generates fewer pollutants than typical diesel fuels.
Quoting what I found to be the more interesting part of the page:
Typically, microalgae are grown in ponds, harvested and the oils extracted. The extracted oils are chemically reacted with alcohols to produce diesel fuels. Research in the laboratory is directed towards genetic enhancement of the fat and oil content of the algae to make the biodiesel fuel product more cost-competitive by 2010."
My opinion? to hell waiting until the researches pronounce the technology to be "cost-competitive", if you build it we will come. (And because of competition, the costs will come down anyway.) Secondarily -- will these algae be patented like Monsanto's new seed crops such that only big businesses can benefit from the research that our tax dollars pay for?
Having studied the so-called "hydrogen economy" for a few years right now, I applaud these researchers, but I still tell my engineering "work associates" not to get excited yet, because so far there is not a low cost, safe method of transporting "average consumer" quantities of the finished fuel.
That said, I also have read of research (sorry, I haven't found a good web link yet) into diatom algae that grow readily in warm climates and that are 50% oil by weight. The cool thing about the oil produced by processing this particular type of algae is that it can be quickly converted into biodiesel and run in existing diesel engines -- from home generators, to trucks, all the way up to large marine diesels and diesel power generating plants.
Equally significant, the algae removes as much CO2 from the atmosphere as can be burned in the fuel-- so there is no net gain in the so-called "greenhouse effect".
So what I am looking forward to are the so-called hybrid diesel electric engines, and for someone to develop turbine engines using biodiesel or biodiesel like fuels. Then maybe we can at last grow our own fuels and leave the environmentally damaging, old-earth fuels alone.
I have read that the processor overhead associated with objects keeps C++ from being "speed competitive" with tightly coded C or more especially with Fortran.
What is your opinion on this alleged "speed penalty", and do you think future versions of the language and/or compiler technology will be able to reduce or eliminate it?
The main thing that I see here is that we really have a quality opportunity to define how the DCMA will be interpreted, and that we must do so in a reasonable fashion.
The movie industry has attempted to paint the DeCSS source code as a violation of the DCMA -- we must create the awareness that code which allows us to play DVD's on players of our own creation is a legal fair use, and not some type of piracy. I make this point specifically to highlight the fact that some of the web sites which pointed to the DeCSS code had lines like "copy and share your dvd's, etc., which would be against the law whether or not the DCMA existed.
We must not allow the war over "free code" to get tied into a battle with "the law", without our voices being heard as to how the law will be interpreted.
Re:Obfuscated DeCSS programming contest
on
A New DeCSS
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· Score: 3
By the way, one (not sure if it is "the")"Obfuscated DeCSS Contest" (related to the DVD decoder) is going to get kicked off around March 1st, from what the web page says.
I went through all of this work to set up my wonderful-est web site, with beautiful copyrighted content, with region coding so that you viewers in France see one version, which I charge more for by the way, and one in Australia which implements filter eluding porn links (this one's real expensive), and the regular cheap page for 'Mericans with all the banners you could ask for, doubleclick.com cookies in all the images, etc. My revenue needs to be protected by all of this CSS coding.
I send these pages encrypted in SSL, and now you're running this decryption program that removes my region encoding, and displays my copyrighted text in plain HTML for the world to see. Why, you reverse engineered a device which removes the encoding from my copyrighted web site content and are distributing it.
I'm gonna sue under the DCMA.;-)
(Would somebody please explain this to the judge in the real deCSS case in New York, just in case he doesn't already get it?)
After reading the Register article, I'm not sure that KeyLabs was "lazy" as much as they were answering the question put to them by the person paying them to perform the test. AFAICT Microsoft said "set up NDS8 like this..." and "test it against AD", and certify the result. Of course, MS had preset the conditions to favor AD before they asked the question.
So Novell says, hey, that can't be correct, we'll pay for you to do another test. Set the "SET DSTRACE=" parameter to a real world value, and report back the results. And as suspected, NDS8 absolutely kills AD in terms of performance.
That's sort of like saying "test if my old Ford Pinto can go from zero to 100 mph per hour faster than a Y2k Corvette..." and the lab certifying it to be correct, without also including the rest of the test conditions: "...when the Corvette has four flat tires, we poured sugar in the fuel supply, and put 500 lbs of concrete in the trunk".
Bottom line? It looks alot more like Microsoft again performing the fine art of FUD warfare, and paying labs to give them results using test conditions they already know will make them look good.
As a longtime Novell administrator, I was tempted to shout "hooray for the good guys."
As a longtime/. reader, however, I say "before we slam anyone (Microsoft, Novell, the test lab, etc.) let folks familiar with Win2k post information about the test parameters to show any biases toward Novell in how the test was set up -- a la the accusations against Mindcraft which IIRC were mostly proven to be false in the 3rd run of that particular benchmark.
What I like about this particular study as published is that they were very up front about the tuning parameters, such as they are. My hope would be that Microsoft will respond with their "ideal tuning parameters", and then the benchmark can be run again, with the results posted here.
I think you mean "Hirohito was not a noble man."because the double negative implies that you agree with me. However, you are still wrong, because
Hirohito did not politic his way into power for the express purpose of totalitarian government and world domination, he was the hereditary ruler. Much as the English monarchy today, he actually had very little political power.
Although the Japanese troops had a well deserved ugly reputation for brutality (especially in Nanking China), the Japanese never embarked on a Hirohito-led genocide.
When Hirohito's message went out over the radio, it went over the most politically powerful group in his nation, directly to the people -- who in turn made the changes that took the power back from the military to the people. With the help of the Americans -- In the process the Japanese people went in a few short years from a people with a history of seven to eight hundred years of being an oppressed majority under military dictatorship (called shoguns -- the emperor was essentially a figurehead) to being a fairly robust democracy.
If Hirohito was as bad as Hitler, then why did he never stand trial as a war criminal, a la Nurenberg?
A final point. When Hirohito died in 1989, why did the U.S. send dignitaries to the funeral if he was as bad as Hitler?
Lastly, although I have been harsh in my criticism of your points, I also recognize and agree with you that war (including atomic and nuclear weapons) is a horrendous thing -- and that I am not just on the side of the Japanese, Hirohito, the U.S. military, or anybody in all of this.
What I am on the side of is accuracy in history, without the bias of our current pessimism or political correctness to change the how actual historical events are portrayed.
You wonder that my dad has to do with the credibility of what I said? Well, how about a) the fact that if the war had gone on longer, he would have been fighting in the invasion forces as a machine gunner, and b) he was in areas relatively not touched by the war, yet the Japanese people were starving. So I know directly from a family member what things were like in late 1945 to mid 1947 what the conditions were like.
"It's a bit hard to believe more American would die than died while fighting in Europe, when the US was fighting on two fronts." Nice try, but I didn't make up the figures, they are a matter of military history. Look into the history books about the U.S. casualties on Okinawa and Iwo Jima, and consider that the Japanese people were preparing to fight a Vietnam style guerilla war if the U.S. invaded. Then decide if the wartime estimate of a quarter million casualties was realistic.
"In 1945, the people who decided to drop the bombs didn't give a rat's ass for the lives of the Japanese." Sorry, wrong again. The U.S. warned Japan repeatedly of exactly how bad this new weapon would be, all in the interest of stopping the bloodshed. Secondarily, in Japanese terms, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were relatively smaller cities than some of the other available targets. If the powers that be didn't care, the first bomb would have exploded just over the edge of Tokyo Bay, and probably would have killed well over a million people between the explosion, the resulting tsunami (tidal wave), and the radiation poisoning that would have followed. This would have been followed by bombs in Osaka, not Nagasaki, then Kyoto, and for all intents and purposes, the Japanese national heritage would have been pretty well obliterated.
"He (Hirohito) might as well done that if the bombs had not been dropped - it's something we will never know." Strike three, and you're out. The history of the matter as recorded at the time (in Japanese and later translated into English) is that Hirohito realized that he was facing the imminent destruction of his people if he personally did not tell them to NOT fight, because there was no one else all of the people would have followed. I have also read that at the time of his decision, it was not even sure whether or not Hirohito would even survive, whether his own military leaders or the Americans would do him in. I don't call that saving one's backside. I call it pretty damn noble.
"And the allied forces defeated the Nazi's without the use of atomic weapons." Well, at least, you got one right, having previously struck out. But in the process you totally overlooked the reason for my post, which will follow.
--flame mode off--
The whole point of my original post is that as horrible as the atomic weapons were, they were not used without thinking about the consequences before hand, and not just to send a message to the USSR.
--Flame mode back on--
Oh, and by the way -- if you don't know what you are talking about, don't try to frag the comments of those that do. [sometimes I've even been known to be one of them]. It won't work and you only look stupid in the process.
anyone with any insight will know that they weren't at all necessary to end WW2....the main reason the bombs were dropped was to impress the Soviets, and to prevent them from joining the war in Asia and them claiming some of the booty. The cold war had already started.
--Truth Mode On--
Wrong. But before I say why (although I also claim to be an an avid WW2 history buff), you should listen to what I have to say:let me offer a couple of credentials:
my father was part of the Occupation forces in Southern Japan at the end of WWII.
I lived in Japan in an area where there just aren't many Americans, speak, read and write Japanese with decent fluency, and have read the histories in both languages, which also leads to my next point
I have met and talked to survivors of the Hiroshima bomb in their native tongue.
The atomic bombs [nukes weren't invented until 1948] made it unnecessary for a ground invasion of the main Japanese islands. Military estimates are that as many as 250,000 Americans would probably have lost their lives, and Japanese casualties from the American invasion would have topped 1,000,000. Estimates are that if the Soviet Union had invaded from the north (where I lived), casualties would have tripled over those expected in the American invasion. From what elderly Japanese people told me when I lived there, the deaths from starvation and disease would probably have pushed the death toll much higher.
When Emporer Hirohito saw the damage of these bombs (which they had been warned about), he overruled his military advisors and told the Japanese people to lay down their arms and welcome the Americans, something he could not have done if the Russians had been the invaders.
A secondary point. The real reason atomic weapons were invented in the United States was because the government realized that they were in an arms race with the Nazi's, and that they absolutely had to win.
Finally, the main influence on the Russians was that the US Gov't basically said "hey, Japan has surrendered, and any further aggression is unjustified, therefore we will oppose it, militarily if need be". In diplomatic terms, it also didn't hurt that the U.S. had the atomic ace in their hand, and noone else did. So the U.S. could (Teddy Roosevelt's actual quote is the bold lettered words) "speak softly and still be heard because they were carrying a very big, very dangerous stick."
Am I surprised by this news? No. Do I believe it? No. Why not?
IMHO Intel had to release some big news, because lately the press has been portraying Intel as in severe trouble because their key 64 bit chip (code named 'Itanium') isn't measuring up to expectations, and AMDs chips are out there in quantity and making customers extremely happy. Transmeta releases specs for a viable x86 threat to the low end processor line (Crusoe vs. Celeron), so Intel has to push the edge up for the Pentium lines to remain marketable. Tom's hardware does a review of the Athlon, and low and behold, the chip measures up to expectations.
Trouble is, the Intel press release/party, etc. and the C/Net article are long on hype and extremely low on independently verifiable specs. Perhaps they can clock a Willamette at 1.5 GHz now, but the key question is when will the yield rates (number of processors per silicon batch) be high enough to compete economically with the Athlon?
Slashdot Mirror
The point is, according to his writings, (and in LDS doctrine being the sole person authorized to give/withhold the authority to perform plural marriages), he was given knowledge by God, and the right to make the decision, which he did, ending the practice. He also stated that if God had said "continue", he would have obeyed God even knowing he was in violation of the law.
Anyway, once the decision was made, no-one automatically retained the authority to perform plural marriages. (The doctrinal reference is that the right to "perform sealings" is only given under the permission of the President of the Church, and that permission can be revoked at any time just on his say so.) Thus, anybody attempting to perform a plural marriage after he said "stop" would be violating their sacred covenants.
Which, for an LDS priesthood holder, can be (depending on severity) grounds for excommunication. BTW, not only would the "plural husband" be excommunicated, (because without the authority, once there was a second wife he would be living in adultery), so would the church leader who attempted to perform the marriage.
Well, that should take a while...finding an old pentium box -- that still works.
Don't believe me? Think about it most old pentium boxes that were sold run M$ operating systems. And everybody knows that the best use for an old M$ operating system based computer is still Minesweeper. Which is a game, not work.
--pathetic attempt at humor mode off--
Current copyright law says that if a book goes out of print, the author can reclaim the copyright, and take it to another publisher. With these newer forms of publishing, all a corporate publisher has to do is sell one copy occasionally -- printed on demand -- for the book to be legally be considered not "out of print" indefinitely.
An example of this: right now there are seven books (psychology related texts -- which I won't name for the same reasons) that I would order in a second if they were in print. But would I rather keep them in print at a publisher who let them sit there for years, or wait another year or two for the author to regain control?
I'll wait. And when the author regains that control, I hope they use electronic publishing and print on demand to keep control of their works until the copyright expires.
(Somewhat related side note: I think that the Sonny Bono extensions to the period of time a copyright is issued for are wrong, BTW. And that corporations shouldn't be able to pass around (sell) their collection of copyrights like stocks unless the original contributors are somehow compensated, but that is even further off-topic).
RLL==RUN-LENGTH LIMITED
Source: the Maxtor Hard Disk Glossary
True to a very very small extent. Can't find type that small. Picture this: way back at about the time that Windows 9x first appeared, what if Intel had basically said, "we won't sell CPU's to PC manufacturers unless they agree to give users the opportunity to choose which OS will be installed (Options would have included WinNT, Dos, BSD's, Linux, Solaris, SCO-Unix, and Beos). How long do you think Microsoft's monopoly would have lasted if Dell, Gateway, Micron, Compaq, Toshiba, and IBM et. al were contractually obligated to require purchasers a choice?
It was only after M$ started trying to twist the screws on Intel that Intel basically told them to f--- off, and started supporting other platforms in a big way.
It's one out of ten events in that thingy in the Old Retired Minicomputer Oo-Lympics.
Ya'know? the DEC-Athalon? ;-)
IMHO without Netscape to compete with IE would have started out and stayed a huge joke. By the way, I do use IE5 at work (stuck on an NT box) so I'm not completely against it, but the moment Mozilla stabilizes and is considered not alpha, not beta, but production I will be forever and irrevocably getting rid of all Microsoft software on my home machine.
Part of the reason we are so hyped about chips like the Athlon and Crusoe is that for years their have been essentially two partners in the near monopoly 'x86 game -- Microsoft and Intel.
So along comes {AMD and Transmeta and Linux and Apache, etc.} who essentially shout "freedom for the masses" from the tyranny of the unholy duo's ability to control and profit from our needs for ever more useful and powerful technologies.
Commercially, it's not so good. The government tacks on alot of requirements (some of which are good, many are (IMHO) simply protections for the petroleum industries) and taxes such that it becomes quite expensive to build and operate what is essentially a "biodiesel" refinery. I've heard fuel price figures from $2.00 to $4.00 per gallon as being reasonable prices.
I guess my main point is, if there is a consumer move to embrace biodiesel and government essentially gets out of the way or even actively promotes it -- we'd all benefit -- and the fuel prices would come down.
What's that? I'll take a big mac and four gallons of peanut oil to go...
By the way, you are 100% correct about what biodiesel is and how it is produced: roughly four parts oil, one part methanol, or three parts oil one part ethanol, plus just enough sodium hydroxide to catalyze the reaction. (too much and you get soap.)
The "trans-esterification" reaction (spelling?) splits the oil into a glycerin component and the more useful "biodiesel" which can be used as is in virtually any modern diesel engine, with less pollutants (translated: no sulfur in the fuel to get burned into S02) and some nice handling qualities (higher flash point, lower jelling temperature).
As far as the economic viability, try this on for size: if these diatom algae were available to growers nationwide, enough farm land lies fallow (unplanted) every year to provide oil which can be refined to supply all of the US's diesel requirements. Also consider -- milk how milk is economically viable for smaller farmers --they work together in huge dairy co-ops -- why not an algae-oil co-op? on the fallow land.
Finally, some of the concept cars now being tested marry the proven diesel technologies to electrical engines -- giving the electrical cars essentially unlimited range and overcoming the horsepower problem. The difference is -- instead of that engine being forced to pollute while you wait at that next red light, once the batteries are charged, the diesel side of the engine shuts down.
What I have observed is that "lazy" and "corporate" (definitions to follow) don't attract any of my attention - and none of my money, similar to how "lazy" and corporate websites don't get any of my time.
What I look for in papers is true in-depth coverage, with incisive, analytical thinking that goes beyond the flit-of-the-moment reporting. I want to exercise a part of my brain that calls on me to not just digest the news of the day, but make my own decisions as to what of it matters -- where I will invest my energies, my support, and most of all, the limited amount of time each day I have to try to make a difference in.
Definitions: my definition of lazy and corporate newspapers are those who simply pass on the "flavor of the day" news. Any reporter can sit and wait for his pampered sources to provide something deemed newsworthy -- however, these news reporters can't do much more than "spin" what is related to them -- they are not digging below the surface to uncover the truth. Similarly, corporate sources tend to not offer a real view of the world -- imagine if the Microsoft web site admitted that Active Directory sucked bigtime compared to NDS 8.
What I want to read (web or paper) is the truth -- however good, bad, or ugly it may be. [side note: notice that in the Open Source world this tends to happen -- Linux freely admits that Linux got handed its arse in certain areas -- thanked the benchmark companies and said in essence "thanks for showing us where we can improve.]
" Research conducted in these labs is aimed at producing biodiesel fuel from microalgae and other plants. Biodiesel fuel is made from oils and fats found in microalgae. It can be substituted for diesel fuel or used as an additive. Biodiesel generates fewer pollutants than typical diesel fuels.
Quoting what I found to be the more interesting part of the page:
- Typically, microalgae are grown in ponds, harvested and the oils extracted. The extracted oils are chemically reacted with alcohols to produce diesel fuels. Research in the laboratory is directed towards genetic enhancement of the fat and oil content of the algae to make the biodiesel fuel product more cost-competitive by 2010."
My opinion? to hell waiting until the researches pronounce the technology to be "cost-competitive", if you build it we will come. (And because of competition, the costs will come down anyway.) Secondarily -- will these algae be patented like Monsanto's new seed crops such that only big businesses can benefit from the research that our tax dollars pay for?That said, I also have read of research (sorry, I haven't found a good web link yet) into diatom algae that grow readily in warm climates and that are 50% oil by weight. The cool thing about the oil produced by processing this particular type of algae is that it can be quickly converted into biodiesel and run in existing diesel engines -- from home generators, to trucks, all the way up to large marine diesels and diesel power generating plants.
Equally significant, the algae removes as much CO2 from the atmosphere as can be burned in the fuel-- so there is no net gain in the so-called "greenhouse effect".
So what I am looking forward to are the so-called hybrid diesel electric engines, and for someone to develop turbine engines using biodiesel or biodiesel like fuels. Then maybe we can at last grow our own fuels and leave the environmentally damaging, old-earth fuels alone.
What is your opinion on this alleged "speed penalty", and do you think future versions of the language and/or compiler technology will be able to reduce or eliminate it?
The movie industry has attempted to paint the DeCSS source code as a violation of the DCMA -- we must create the awareness that code which allows us to play DVD's on players of our own creation is a legal fair use, and not some type of piracy. I make this point specifically to highlight the fact that some of the web sites which pointed to the DeCSS code had lines like "copy and share your dvd's, etc., which would be against the law whether or not the DCMA existed.
We must not allow the war over "free code" to get tied into a battle with "the law", without our voices being heard as to how the law will be interpreted.
By the way, one (not sure if it is "the")"Obfuscated DeCSS Contest" (related to the DVD decoder) is going to get kicked off around March 1st, from what the web page says.
Now I'm mad...
;-)
I went through all of this work to set up my wonderful-est web site, with beautiful copyrighted content, with region coding so that you viewers in France see one version, which I charge more for by the way, and one in Australia which implements filter eluding porn links (this one's real expensive), and the regular cheap page for 'Mericans with all the banners you could ask for, doubleclick.com cookies in all the images, etc. My revenue needs to be protected by all of this CSS coding.
I send these pages encrypted in SSL, and now you're running this decryption program that removes my region encoding, and displays my copyrighted text in plain HTML for the world to see. Why, you reverse engineered a device which removes the encoding from my copyrighted web site content and are distributing it.
I'm gonna sue under the DCMA.
(Would somebody please explain this to the judge in the real deCSS case in New York, just in case he doesn't already get it?)
So Novell says, hey, that can't be correct, we'll pay for you to do another test. Set the "SET DSTRACE=" parameter to a real world value, and report back the results. And as suspected, NDS8 absolutely kills AD in terms of performance.
That's sort of like saying "test if my old Ford Pinto can go from zero to 100 mph per hour faster than a Y2k Corvette..." and the lab certifying it to be correct, without also including the rest of the test conditions: "...when the Corvette has four flat tires, we poured sugar in the fuel supply, and put 500 lbs of concrete in the trunk".
Bottom line? It looks alot more like Microsoft again performing the fine art of FUD warfare, and paying labs to give them results using test conditions they already know will make them look good.
As a longtime /. reader, however, I say "before we slam anyone (Microsoft, Novell, the test lab, etc.) let folks familiar with Win2k post information about the test parameters to show any biases toward Novell in how the test was set up -- a la the accusations against Mindcraft which IIRC were mostly proven to be false in the 3rd run of that particular benchmark.
What I like about this particular study as published is that they were very up front about the tuning parameters, such as they are. My hope would be that Microsoft will respond with their "ideal tuning parameters", and then the benchmark can be run again, with the results posted here.
- Hirohito did not politic his way into power for the express purpose of totalitarian government and world domination, he was the hereditary ruler. Much as the English monarchy today, he actually had very little political power.
- Although the Japanese troops had a well deserved ugly reputation for brutality (especially in Nanking China), the Japanese never embarked on a Hirohito-led genocide.
- When Hirohito's message went out over the radio, it went over the most politically powerful group in his nation, directly to the people -- who in turn made the changes that took the power back from the military to the people. With the help of the Americans -- In the process the Japanese people went in a few short years from a people with a history of seven to eight hundred years of being an oppressed majority under military dictatorship (called shoguns -- the emperor was essentially a figurehead) to being a fairly robust democracy.
- If Hirohito was as bad as Hitler, then why did he never stand trial as a war criminal, a la Nurenberg?
A final point. When Hirohito died in 1989, why did the U.S. send dignitaries to the funeral if he was as bad as Hitler?Lastly, although I have been harsh in my criticism of your points, I also recognize and agree with you that war (including atomic and nuclear weapons) is a horrendous thing -- and that I am not just on the side of the Japanese, Hirohito, the U.S. military, or anybody in all of this.
What I am on the side of is accuracy in history, without the bias of our current pessimism or political correctness to change the how actual historical events are portrayed.
- You wonder that my dad has to do with the credibility of what I said? Well, how about a) the fact that if the war had gone on longer, he would have been fighting in the invasion forces as a machine gunner, and b) he was in areas relatively not touched by the war, yet the Japanese people were starving. So I know directly from a family member what things were like in late 1945 to mid 1947 what the conditions were like.
- "It's a bit hard to believe more American would die than died while fighting in Europe, when the US was fighting on two fronts." Nice try, but I didn't make up the figures, they are a matter of military history. Look into the history books about the U.S. casualties on Okinawa and Iwo Jima, and consider that the Japanese people were preparing to fight a Vietnam style guerilla war if the U.S. invaded. Then decide if the wartime estimate of a quarter million casualties was realistic.
- "In 1945, the people who decided to drop the bombs didn't give a rat's ass for the lives of the Japanese." Sorry, wrong again. The U.S. warned Japan repeatedly of exactly how bad this new weapon would be, all in the interest of stopping the bloodshed. Secondarily, in Japanese terms, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were relatively smaller cities than some of the other available targets. If the powers that be didn't care, the first bomb would have exploded just over the edge of Tokyo Bay, and probably would have killed well over a million people between the explosion, the resulting tsunami (tidal wave), and the radiation poisoning that would have followed. This would have been followed by bombs in Osaka, not Nagasaki, then Kyoto, and for all intents and purposes, the Japanese national heritage would have been pretty well obliterated.
- "He (Hirohito) might as well done that if the bombs had not been dropped - it's something we will never know." Strike three, and you're out. The history of the matter as recorded at the time (in Japanese and later translated into English) is that Hirohito realized that he was facing the imminent destruction of his people if he personally did not tell them to NOT fight, because there was no one else all of the people would have followed. I have also read that at the time of his decision, it was not even sure whether or not Hirohito would even survive, whether his own military leaders or the Americans would do him in. I don't call that saving one's backside. I call it pretty damn noble.
- "And the allied forces defeated the Nazi's without the use of atomic weapons." Well, at least, you got one right, having previously struck out. But in the process you totally overlooked the reason for my post, which will follow.
--flame mode off--The whole point of my original post is that as horrible as the atomic weapons were, they were not used without thinking about the consequences before hand, and not just to send a message to the USSR.
--Flame mode back on--
Oh, and by the way -- if you don't know what you are talking about, don't try to frag the comments of those that do. [sometimes I've even been known to be one of them]. It won't work and you only look stupid in the process.
--flame mode off--
--Truth Mode On--
Wrong. But before I say why (although I also claim to be an an avid WW2 history buff), you should listen to what I have to say:let me offer a couple of credentials:- my father was part of the Occupation forces in Southern Japan at the end of WWII.
- I lived in Japan in an area where there just aren't many Americans, speak, read and write Japanese with decent fluency, and have read the histories in both languages, which also leads to my next point
- I have met and talked to survivors of the Hiroshima bomb in their native tongue.
The atomic bombs [nukes weren't invented until 1948] made it unnecessary for a ground invasion of the main Japanese islands. Military estimates are that as many as 250,000 Americans would probably have lost their lives, and Japanese casualties from the American invasion would have topped 1,000,000. Estimates are that if the Soviet Union had invaded from the north (where I lived), casualties would have tripled over those expected in the American invasion. From what elderly Japanese people told me when I lived there, the deaths from starvation and disease would probably have pushed the death toll much higher.When Emporer Hirohito saw the damage of these bombs (which they had been warned about), he overruled his military advisors and told the Japanese people to lay down their arms and welcome the Americans, something he could not have done if the Russians had been the invaders.
A secondary point. The real reason atomic weapons were invented in the United States was because the government realized that they were in an arms race with the Nazi's, and that they absolutely had to win.
Finally, the main influence on the Russians was that the US Gov't basically said "hey, Japan has surrendered, and any further aggression is unjustified, therefore we will oppose it, militarily if need be". In diplomatic terms, it also didn't hurt that the U.S. had the atomic ace in their hand, and noone else did. So the U.S. could (Teddy Roosevelt's actual quote is the bold lettered words) "speak softly and still be heard because they were carrying a very big, very dangerous stick."
IMHO Intel had to release some big news, because lately the press has been portraying Intel as in severe trouble because their key 64 bit chip (code named 'Itanium') isn't measuring up to expectations, and AMDs chips are out there in quantity and making customers extremely happy. Transmeta releases specs for a viable x86 threat to the low end processor line (Crusoe vs. Celeron), so Intel has to push the edge up for the Pentium lines to remain marketable. Tom's hardware does a review of the Athlon, and low and behold, the chip measures up to expectations.
Trouble is, the Intel press release/party, etc. and the C/Net article are long on hype and extremely low on independently verifiable specs. Perhaps they can clock a Willamette at 1.5 GHz now, but the key question is when will the yield rates (number of processors per silicon batch) be high enough to compete economically with the Athlon?