I agree with you, too (also agree with the parent). Windmills are individually beautiful, and I think the modern sleek ones look even better than the old-school Danish-style ones. And a whole farm of them is, as you say, quite beautiful.
But, to be clear, the parent was talking about transmission lines, which are ugly; not windmills, which are not ugly.
I agree with you. Transmission lines don't need to be ugly, they could be graceful and pretty. In fact that's pretty insightful, I'm surprised that issue isn't brought up more.
As such the price they can offer power is much lower than renewable sources likely ever will be able to achieve.
That's rather pessimistic. I think wind power could certainly be cheaper than coal or nuclear. Consider that wind doesn't have to be mined or refined or disposed of. I imagine it is a technology problem to solve, to make construction of a windmill cheaper than extraction of uranium or coal.
And as you say, external costs and scarcity might make the technological question moot anyway. So, I mostly agree with you, but I'm a bit more optimistic for wind (and solar, too, if we can get that tech to be a little more efficient).
The Bible might not have much to say about windmills, but it DOES specifically say that perfect circles have exactly a three-to-one circumference-to-diameter ratio, and thus that pi equals exactly three.
That doesn't have much to do with your point, but it does something something something blah blah blah believing everything in the Bible is stupid.
You must know people in Illinois or something. If you knew people in rural Africa and India, you'd have a different impression. In many places, cell phones are the only widespread technology, and access to phones far exceeds access to medicine.
There was a time when all agreed that a machine playing a credible game of chess would constitute proof that AI had arrived
When was that? In my college CS education we were taught that the Turing Test has always been the standard set for artificial intelligence. To me, being able to select the probably best chess move out of hundreds of millions of moves is, in fact, "mere" computation. (Really impressive computation, but not intelligence.) But I don't want to be painted as anti-AI.
You only use BluTooth or iTunes? That's a restrictive set of options. There are lots and lots of other options. In fact I don't even like either of those options: I don't use BluTooth because I decided sometime in the first GWBush administration that physical media was dead. I don't use iTunes Music Store because the costs are somewhere between 10 and 100 times too expensive. I like to rip from DVDs (via Netflix), watch Netflix streaming, watch Hulu streaming, download stuff on bittorrent, borrow movies from friends...
None of this is a criticism of you or your ways. If they work for you, that's super; but if you look you might be able to find a better way. Good luck.
Uh... yeah... it's aimed at people in the 21st century. We've all had USB peripherals for longer than there has been a War on Terror. What, are you still clinging to parallel cables or something? Maybe a token ring network? Are you angry that the Mac Mini won't work with your 2400 baud modem? Or is it that you can't buy new gear from your Compuserv account? maybe you insist on using the "real" name for the Internet: ARPA Net? Did you lose trick of computing after keyboards replaced dip switches? Do you rant about how bloated operating systems got after you upgraded from 4 to 8 megs of memory?
If your premise is correct (gas taxes pay for a "miniscule" amount of road costs) then I concede the point. But, in my ignorance of the topic, I am skeptical of that premise. We need not argue: if you are sure of the premise, then you can be sure of my concession, even if I ain't.
Seriously. Nobody ever seems to mis-spell "ridicule". Who would ever write "The first little boy rediculed the other one". That would be absurd. You might say it would be ridiculous.
I also think that once people link "ridicule" to "ridiculous", it's more difficult to use the word "ridiculous" in a context which does not imply actual ridicule. Take the present example: is America's education ridiculously expensive? It is very expensive, but is America receiving ridicule for that? Maybe criticism, but not ridicule.
Yeah, but to be fair the janitors really appreciate the six-figure income with top-of-the-line health benefits. Also, boy oh boy the lawns on the main green sure look good. You know, you gotta have priorities.
Can it really be true that he had no say in it? I mean, not directly in normal circumstances, but the copyright belonged to him, right? Was it legal for him to tell you to copy it? If so, couldn't he have put that on the first page?
I'm not nitpicking, I'm actually curious how all that shit happens. If one publisher refused to publish it, surely another would be willing.
Anyway, today we are past that. We can have individual copies of books printed for low cost. Any professor who tries to make a similar excuse since, oh, about three or four years ago (which single-print technology became feasible) isn't telling the truth. Simply email the students the PDF of the document and they can print it themselves; or pay a website to print a nice bound edition for a few tens of dollars.
It's especially bad because it doesn't support your argument, it supports mine. Your ability to control the vehicle doesn't suddenly and complete disappear in one moment, you lose it over the course of the accident, even if the accident happens quickly. Societal change, of course, doesn't happen in seconds but in decades, so we can see the control change veeeeeery slowly, instead of having to watch carefully for it to slip away over a few seconds.
If you try harder you will be able to come up with an example of when control DOES change instantaneously. Say, uh, when your keyboard comes unplugged from its USB port. But that, along with your F1 story, is also a terrible analogy for democratic control, where control changes slowly.
Anyway here we are on a tangent when we could be discussing your primary point, which is that China is "doing fine". I think that's a pretty good point. They could certainly be doing better, especially so far as freedom is concerned, but I'd certainly say they are "doing fine", from my perspective. (But, I still assert that democracy has a real, inextricable, and positive causative relationship with freedom.)
Where do you get the nonsensical notion that something like "control" is a binary on/off measure? It is plainly a sliding scale, along with almost everything else in life. Democracy is a highly effective tool, a means to an end, even if imperfect.
Sheesh knock it off with the black-and-white thinking already. Get some perspective.
Slashdot Mirror
Congratulations, you win the pedantic cookie.
Good call. I didn't even know about that. Here's the Slashdot article.
How the hell did this article get published without a link to the software described? Seriously? How? How could that possibly happen?
I agree with you, too (also agree with the parent). Windmills are individually beautiful, and I think the modern sleek ones look even better than the old-school Danish-style ones. And a whole farm of them is, as you say, quite beautiful.
But, to be clear, the parent was talking about transmission lines, which are ugly; not windmills, which are not ugly.
I agree with you. Transmission lines don't need to be ugly, they could be graceful and pretty. In fact that's pretty insightful, I'm surprised that issue isn't brought up more.
As such the price they can offer power is much lower than renewable sources likely ever will be able to achieve.
That's rather pessimistic. I think wind power could certainly be cheaper than coal or nuclear. Consider that wind doesn't have to be mined or refined or disposed of. I imagine it is a technology problem to solve, to make construction of a windmill cheaper than extraction of uranium or coal.
And as you say, external costs and scarcity might make the technological question moot anyway. So, I mostly agree with you, but I'm a bit more optimistic for wind (and solar, too, if we can get that tech to be a little more efficient).
The Bible might not have much to say about windmills, but it DOES specifically say that perfect circles have exactly a three-to-one circumference-to-diameter ratio, and thus that pi equals exactly three.
That doesn't have much to do with your point, but it does something something something blah blah blah believing everything in the Bible is stupid.
Fair enough, but it's pretty difficult to drive a submarine up to the Hoover Dam and torpedo it.
PS awesome use of "unsafer".
Was the question "is this guy a loser"? I've had to answer that question in similar circumstances.
Apparently the achievement of UK students in language composition is similar to that of USA students. That gives me a wry sort of satisfaction.
You must know people in Illinois or something. If you knew people in rural Africa and India, you'd have a different impression. In many places, cell phones are the only widespread technology, and access to phones far exceeds access to medicine.
People on this thread keep saying that, which is confusing.
To be clear, YES, there are huge numbers of people who have access to cell phones but not doctors.
There was a time when all agreed that a machine playing a credible game of chess would constitute proof that AI had arrived
When was that? In my college CS education we were taught that the Turing Test has always been the standard set for artificial intelligence. To me, being able to select the probably best chess move out of hundreds of millions of moves is, in fact, "mere" computation. (Really impressive computation, but not intelligence.) But I don't want to be painted as anti-AI.
You only use BluTooth or iTunes? That's a restrictive set of options. There are lots and lots of other options. In fact I don't even like either of those options: I don't use BluTooth because I decided sometime in the first GWBush administration that physical media was dead. I don't use iTunes Music Store because the costs are somewhere between 10 and 100 times too expensive. I like to rip from DVDs (via Netflix), watch Netflix streaming, watch Hulu streaming, download stuff on bittorrent, borrow movies from friends...
None of this is a criticism of you or your ways. If they work for you, that's super; but if you look you might be able to find a better way. Good luck.
Uh... yeah... it's aimed at people in the 21st century. We've all had USB peripherals for longer than there has been a War on Terror. What, are you still clinging to parallel cables or something? Maybe a token ring network? Are you angry that the Mac Mini won't work with your 2400 baud modem? Or is it that you can't buy new gear from your Compuserv account? maybe you insist on using the "real" name for the Internet: ARPA Net? Did you lose trick of computing after keyboards replaced dip switches? Do you rant about how bloated operating systems got after you upgraded from 4 to 8 megs of memory?
If your premise is correct (gas taxes pay for a "miniscule" amount of road costs) then I concede the point. But, in my ignorance of the topic, I am skeptical of that premise. We need not argue: if you are sure of the premise, then you can be sure of my concession, even if I ain't.
It didn't work for me in either FF or IE on XP. Dunno if it's just my machine or not.
Seriously. Nobody ever seems to mis-spell "ridicule". Who would ever write "The first little boy rediculed the other one". That would be absurd. You might say it would be ridiculous.
I also think that once people link "ridicule" to "ridiculous", it's more difficult to use the word "ridiculous" in a context which does not imply actual ridicule. Take the present example: is America's education ridiculously expensive? It is very expensive, but is America receiving ridicule for that? Maybe criticism, but not ridicule.
Yeah, but to be fair the janitors really appreciate the six-figure income with top-of-the-line health benefits. Also, boy oh boy the lawns on the main green sure look good. You know, you gotta have priorities.
Can it really be true that he had no say in it? I mean, not directly in normal circumstances, but the copyright belonged to him, right? Was it legal for him to tell you to copy it? If so, couldn't he have put that on the first page?
I'm not nitpicking, I'm actually curious how all that shit happens. If one publisher refused to publish it, surely another would be willing.
Anyway, today we are past that. We can have individual copies of books printed for low cost. Any professor who tries to make a similar excuse since, oh, about three or four years ago (which single-print technology became feasible) isn't telling the truth. Simply email the students the PDF of the document and they can print it themselves; or pay a website to print a nice bound edition for a few tens of dollars.
Hmmm. I think that's a false dichotomy. I think it's a lot of both of those things.
Good points. Agreed on all you said (but perhaps not in all you implied). Be well.
Good story. Bad analogy.
It's especially bad because it doesn't support your argument, it supports mine. Your ability to control the vehicle doesn't suddenly and complete disappear in one moment, you lose it over the course of the accident, even if the accident happens quickly. Societal change, of course, doesn't happen in seconds but in decades, so we can see the control change veeeeeery slowly, instead of having to watch carefully for it to slip away over a few seconds.
If you try harder you will be able to come up with an example of when control DOES change instantaneously. Say, uh, when your keyboard comes unplugged from its USB port. But that, along with your F1 story, is also a terrible analogy for democratic control, where control changes slowly.
Anyway here we are on a tangent when we could be discussing your primary point, which is that China is "doing fine". I think that's a pretty good point. They could certainly be doing better, especially so far as freedom is concerned, but I'd certainly say they are "doing fine", from my perspective. (But, I still assert that democracy has a real, inextricable, and positive causative relationship with freedom.)
Where do you get the nonsensical notion that something like "control" is a binary on/off measure? It is plainly a sliding scale, along with almost everything else in life. Democracy is a highly effective tool, a means to an end, even if imperfect.
Sheesh knock it off with the black-and-white thinking already. Get some perspective.
It might be 'to' pricey, but you can buy 'to' of them if you want 'to'.