The reason shitty tech firms NEED H1-B's is that all the good AMERCIAN CS/Eng are already working in posh, government contractor jobs with good wages, congjugual visits, and good pensions.
And now that Bush is increasing military spending thru 2040, it's a better place than ever to be. Too bad you'll never get the chance.
In fact, one might call the Personal Computer tech boom of the 90's a result of Bush I and Clinton's military downsizing: Lots of smart AMERICAN CS/Eng get laid off from government contractors, need jobs. As they are among the smartest and most resourceful in the world, they create a new industry based on "personal computers" and the internet, milk it for all it's worth, become management and then hire a bunch of cheap foreign help. Then Bush II starts a war just in time for the bumper crop of green AMERICAN CS/eng grads who got into the biz to capitalize on the Internet boom. Too late, but there's jobs. Go talk to Lockheed or Boeing.
Have you applied for every job you can find, or just ones that seem "interesting" to you? Shit, we are in a recession, you aren't going to work your "dream job". Sorry folks, sometimes you don't always get what you pay for. Life is a gamble.
You could be doing shit work for a "demeaning" $12/hour instead of watching TV and complaining. It's better than nothing and it's what 90% of America does.
Stop to think: Maybe Arabs hate us because we pretty much stole a bunch of land from Arabs and gave it to a bunch of rich white people, and now give these white people millions of dollars a year and weapons and a shooting license to kill at will.
Maybe they hate us because they see the arrogant Israelis as the embodiment of America, packaged up into a little fort placed in a Holy Land. They are serious about their religion.
Maybe they hate us because the average Israeli makes $20k+/year whereas the average Gaza Arab has an annual income of more like $600!
Add to this a lot of oil money from other Arabs, and you have a problem. But the problem is not the Arabs, the terrorists. They would not exist without Israel being there; they would not hate us if we hadn't stolen their land and given it to a bunch of rich white people. Israel is the problem. I would be pissed too.
You represent the majority of America; believing the media (which supports Israel, maybe because a lot of media execs/power elite are Jewish? I don't want to get into that, but it's possible [and no I am not anti-Semetic, just anti-Israel]) that these poor Israelis live in fear and this is SOOOOOOOOOOooooooooo unjust. But everyone forgets the other side of the story. These terrorists are not all whackos. They are just tired of being fucking poor.
So, then one of them gets smart enough to realize that America is the cause of Israel, so maybe they should attack the cause of the problem. So they do. And we take offense.
Now before you freak out, I am looking at this from a sociological perspective. Sometimes it is necessary to see the truth. The truth: This is all our fucking fault, and we are finally getting punished for our past mistakes we've gotten away with for so long. But America has a hard time admitting it was wrong (ie: the Drug War), so we just cover it up with more bombs.
Don't go spouting off about military this and that when you don't know the history of the matter, and the economics of the problem. You have every right to your opinion that all Arabs are scum, etc., and we should bomb the hell out of them but understand that we brought this upon ourselves, and while it's no excuse, I hardly think the way to solve this problem is more bombs. Perhaps it is too late, and you are right, more killing is the only solution, killing every last Arab will solve the problem of terrorism, and while we're at it, let's kill some Iraqis and Iranis and, hey, why not, all the Phillipinos too. This will help solve the problem of terrorism. And let's forget the REAL reasons, the TRUTH, because that would mean, shit, CHANGING *OUR* LIVES, AND WE AMERICANS CHANGE FOR *NO ONE* AND *NO THING*. Bah, white trash ethics.
BTW, I bet in 10-20 years, Israel will invade the persian gulf and we will support them. Just a silly prediction.
Don't get me wrong, I wholly agree with your entire post; Americans need to be more conscious about conservation, and not just energy. The availible free clean water supply of the world is waning rapidly. We burn and bury trash, yet everyday a new product is released which uses more packaging for "convenience". And supposedly this waste is forcing America to depend on foreign sources of materials?
I beg to differ. I think what is really happening is that someone (Big Oil) thinks we need to use up all of the resources of the other countries, specifically the middle east. If you remove all the oil from the middle east, it ceases to be a problem. If we leave it there, some other country (like China) will get involved. Sure, it's a hotbed of religious fighting, but without billions of $ in oil money, where will they get money for weapons? We are funding their wars, we fund these terrorists. A good parallel example is South America and drugs. Without drug money, Columbia is just another 3rd world jungle. With, it is a giant civil war. We, the drug users of America (and the Drug War, which keeps supplies low, and therefore prices high) fund those terrorists.
So the problem isn't really oil, or drugs, in these cases. It's money, greed, and the need to protect that money with weapons. Guess what, Bush just signed the largest defense spending budget EVER. Greed is a problem in America, as well.
Basically, I think the goal is to get all the money and stuff away from polically (religiously) unstable regions and move it into America/UK/(eu?)other stable regions, and then kill everyone else, or let them go on their merry way killing each other. Sickening, but going from a divided to global economy (then currency, then finally, government [~2020-2030]) is going to require some sacrifices, in the form of human lives.
We are over populated, and the best way to get rid of excess people is to kill them in a war. This is the truth of the matter, and most people cannot accept it. But I say, better them than me.
The world you envision would be a world of insanity. I'm amused to death with entertainment as it is. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing.
Don't get me wrong; I think that we work TOO much nowadays (40 hours a week is too much, because of all the extraneous culture crap involved in labor these days. You have to get up, make yourself look a certain way, which takes an hour, ignoring the additional time it takes to have clean clothes, etc., then you drive to work for 30 minutes, get there, work your 8 or 9 hours, come home (30 minutes), make dinner, and then get ready to sleep. Shit, being a "normal" human is a full time job, because we make it that way. Society makes it that way.), but robots wouldn't save us work. Our work would just be something else. And it would still suck just as much.
If you want a robot, take an ordinary human, get them to take 300-500mg of Prozac per day so they will be happy doing whatever they are doing, and then give them tasks to do as you see fit.
I would never want a robot exactly like a human. Why?:
1. Humans are pretty much useless. All we do is think.
2. Humans try to do as little as possible.
3. Making a tool (which is what a "robot" is, a tool that does work for us) that strives to do as little as possible is pointless.
qed
What is the human use of humans? What are we good for? Really, all we do is live, then die. The best thing we could do is create a lot of robots that are exactly like us, but can't die, and then let them replace us and do the living for us. There is no point for us to continue to exist when something superior comes along who will work for the same goals in the universe as we do. But, since WE are not sure what the goal of our existance is, we can never create a robot that will attempt to fulfill these goals.
I guess the point is that there is no point. So we should work on extending the human life, since all we are trying to do is have more time to do "something else". We will eventually all get bored and depressed because the robots will do everything. Even today, you see the effects manifest themselves. Depressed people, millions. And so what do we do? Give them drugs to turn them into robots themselves. Everyone will be that one day.
So I say: Down with technology. It will be the end of us. Or maybe not. But, a good question, yes?
See, the problem is that your "Robot Washer/Dryer" has ceased to become merely a Washer/Dryer. It is an integrated Laundry Basket/Clothing Refresher and Managment System. No more of a "robot" than a washer and dryer, it just has more features.
It just goes to show, robots are machines. I think that is what the author was saying: These little automated tools with a few rules to guide them act remarkably life-like. One might extrapolate that we humans are merely machines with more rules, and more features.
Luckly, we have the ability to save what we know, and pass it on to future generations, and we are also blessed with a certain amount of random noise that our mind filters into something useful sometimes.
No no, no metals involved. I'm talking about PURE H+ ions and PURE OH- ions. Without the other consituents. You are thinking of chemicals, I am talking about a battery, sort of, made by splitting water. H+ and H20 is just positvely charged water. OH- and H20 is negatively charged water. You mix the two and get H20 + heat. You have stored potential energy by separating each and applying a charge. Contrary to popular belief, you don't need a salt or an electrolyte to perform electrolysis on water. It's the unique catalyst PL**INUM that makes it possible. This is distilled water. I shouldn'y go into details but.. what the fuck, I'm getting the patent.
Try this:
1.Take pure distilled H20. 2.Add a pH indicator (thymol blue) 3.Add 2 electrodes of platinum. 4.Apply a charge to the electrodes (~100VDC)
notice that the ph around each electrode is changed! yet this is only water. here is what happens:
Around the negative electrode, the polar water molucule spreads apart, and then pops off an OH-, which wants to get as far away as possible from the negative electrode (goes over to the Positive, actually). This means there is an abundence of H+ ions around the negative electrode. Any high school chemistry student knows that pH is the log10 concentration of H+ ions (protons) in a solution. This means that around the negative electrode, there is a pure acid (pure H+ in H20). The platinum is important, because H+ will not react with it, yet it still conducts electricity.
Likewise, around the positive electrode, there is a high concetration of OH- ions (negatively charged oxygen in H20).
If you perform the test with the thymol blue, you can see it for yourself--regions of color around the electrodes.
What we've done is found a way to separate water this way, and package it separately. Then, no electricy is required to keep it as H+ and OH- ions--the walls of the packaging do that. When we need to release the energy (in the form of elecricity) we break the packaging and mix the separated water. It mixes with the flavoring which is an electrolyte, basically turning the whole beverage into a shorted out battery.
This releases heat, as everyone knows, and since it releases it into itself, it is ~100% efficient. It works on a larger scale also. The only problem is that it requires absolutely pure pH 7 distilled water, but we are working on that.
"I care - thats who. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 21, @05:37AM (#3199466) You, sir, are either:
1) A troll 2) A good example of the eventual demise of the evolutionary tree we call homo sapiens. 3) Someone who genuinely believes that magic happens when you put something in the trash that turns stable and/or toxic compounds into handy environmentally friendly ones as it hits then landfill site.
Mod me up, mod me down, it doesn't matter, its our kids that will find out who was right, not other/.'rs
And if this were to become a mainstream consumer item (although I can't imagine a world where it would), can you recycle the can inexpensively?
Also, I have a much better idea for self-heating water:
A strong water based acid (H+ ions made with electricity) and a strong water based base (OH- ions made with electricity) are stored in separate non-reactive plastic bladders. In the center, you have the powdered flavoring or concentrate of the beverage/food/whatever. Button is pressed, acid water and base water mix, (H+ joins with OH-) releasing tons of heat (I beleive this is one of the most exothermic reactions known, by weight of reactants) and water. A twirl of the wrist to mix, and pop the top and injoy.
It's fucks like Enron that exploit things like the California Power Crisis who make electricity expensive. Most energy in the US comes from Hydro, at least in the West, from plants and dams built 50+ years ago. They are a sunk cost, long ago paid for. The reason power costs a lot is that the market is fucked up. There are monopolies involved, corrupt (read: Enron) "distributors", ancient transmission methods, etc. ad nauseam.
We are in a very strange time. I think too many Americans think that everything is "well enough." If you look into the past, technology was something that needed to be driven forward, not for the sake of driving it forward, but the pursuit of something better. Take the railroad industry in the 1800's, always pushing forward with faster trains, smoother cars, etc. Or the space program, pushing towards the moon and eventually succeeding.
And then what happened? 1970, all innovation in the traditional sectors stopped. No amazing new ideas in transportation, energy, or agriculture have come about in the last 30 years! Surely we haven't reached the pinnacle of technology in these areas! It is possible to have trains which go 400mph between cities for 1/10 the cost of AIRPLANES, which are highly inefficient. AIRPLANES are a stupid idea, when it is cheaper and easier to build something on the ground that moves more stuff/people as fast with less fuel. Not to mention safer. And as in this article, there are plenty of new ways to generate electricity.
So what is stifling innovation? What happened in the 1970's that is preventing progress? Well, the biggest corporations of 1970 received control of the US Government. The big automakers, big airlines, big industry (who makes airplanes and road equipment and tractors and stuff), big OIL all started getting stuff back from the government for donations they made. And now, 30 years later, everything in America is EXACTLY the same as is was then (with the possible exception of computer/communications technology), which is just what they wanted.
Before 1970, America was always the "young" country in the world, never afraid to try out new ideas, always on the cutting edge, happy. Now we are consumers only, bored robots, practically a fascist state in our apathy.
What happened? Where did the hippies go? I thought they were trying to change things. Nope, all they did was give the corrupt government power because average America began to fear the more intelligent members of society, college students (there were more than ever then, due to a little thing called the BABY BOOM, the GI Bill, etc.), so they empowered the government to stop them from changing anything to much. Well, they gave the government too much power and while the hippies won the battle, right-wing, conservative, Christian, drug-war-fighting, prision-system expanding America won the war and since 1970, we have been suffering the consequences.
Shit like Sept. 11th just helps matters out for them, because people are more conservative when they fear for their lives, and EVERYONE is SCARED right now even though it wasn't a huge threat to most people's existance. I mean, America is a HUGE country, and even 1000 terrorists couldn't kill 1% of us. And I'll be the first to admit, fuck yes I was afraid. For about a month. Until I realized that the media was blowing this out of proportion. What was once 30,000 deaths became 10,000, then 5,000, then 3,000, and now barely 2,000 people dead. Yet we are afraid, still, because the government won't let us forget, and move on with our lifes, live liberally.
So here we go again giving the conservative military-industrial complex MORE POWER *AGAIN*! We are digging ourselves into a hole and it's all based on us not wanting to give up a single thing because we think everything is as good as it's ever going to get, and if we start to change stuff we are going to fuck everything up.
Fuck that. What happened to the leaders in America? Where did they go? They are all overshadowed now by the culture of Advertising the complex has created. Kids used to worship artists and musicians and writers, now they worship advertisments. Before it was about thinking, now it's about style.
All you old farts reading this, take note. I am 22 years old. I don't know shit about shit. But looking at the kids today, who are younger than me, brainwashed, I feel a slight loss of hope. I am starting to realize that my generation and those a little older than me (the kids of the baby boomers), are the LAST hope. Either we do something, or we choose to ignore it and complain on slashdot the rest of our miserable lives.
NO ONE ELSE WILL EVER CARE. If we give up, it will be too late. It's already set in stone. Kids age 10-16 will not care about progress 6 years from now. They will care about some product that hasn't been advertised yet.
Of course, hey, I don't have any solutions, not yet. I need more time and wisdom. But this won't be my last post. But seriously folks, the fact that we are still subscribing to the same basic sociological ideas we did in the 70s is a bad thing. Especially when Germany, England, Austrailia, hell all of Europe is moving forward. We had a big head start, but this is 30 FUCKING YEARS, and they are beginning to pull ahead. Mark my words, a huge military and industrial economy will not be important forever. We need to stop fighting wars, stealing people's oil and money, being big Conservative bullies and streamline. Or America is going to fall like the Roman empire 2000 years ago. Big, old, and lazy is what we are; changes in computers and communications are not doing enough; we need *REAL* CHANGE in *REAL* PLACES.
Firstly, to debunk a common myth, there is no leadership in the US. Everyone just does what is in their own best interests, and damn the consequences.
The portion of US energy policy I object the most to is not the pollution. It's the fact that we *BURN* OIL. Petroleum is perhaps one of the most useful and versatile chemical in existance, yet we are wasting millions of barrels a day by simply BURNING it. Why? So every soccer mom in the US can drive around by herself in her new Excursion.
Imagine for a second how much better life would be if we had used all the oil we've burned in the last ten years making useful stuff. Everyone could have a padded toilet seat, plastic stuff would be beyond cheap, and and and... ok, look, the point I'm trying to make is that OIL is useful beyond just burning it. And while that may not be very important now, while we have tons of it buried underground, someday we WILL run out.
As crazy as it sounds, oil is NONRENEWABLE. Each and every ounce took thousands, even millions of years to form underground from plant matter from the last great tropical period. Yes, that's right folks, the earth was a giant jungle once, there were oceans in the middle of the US; in fact, most of the land people live on today was UNDER WATER then. What caused it to change? How did the earth change from a tropical paradise to a cold dirty planet like it is now?
Well, a lot of plants grew, and then died, and then more plants grew, and died, and so on, building up into layers miles thick. After a while, most of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere got fixed into sugars and other carbohydrates in the plants and stored in great masses under the ground. Volcanoes erupted, a few asteroids hit, oxygen breathing life appeared, and the Earth got DAMN cold. Glaciers formed and everything got covered up and then luckly, CO2 levels began to rise on Earth again, and it warmed back up.
Then we enter the period of about 2000 years ago, when we found out about coal and started burning it. Then the industrial revolution happened a hundred or so years ago and we started burning oil. Now we burn a shit ton. CO2 levels are rising faster than ever before, and since it's uncontrolled, unnatural, ie: we are burning the shit as fast as we can so everyone can own an Excursion, plants are not growing fast enough to keep up, they are not sucking the CO2 up as fast as we are releasing it.
So the Earth is going to warm significantly soon. It already is--see the/. story a few days ago about 3700 sq. km of Antarctica turning into water. Hell, that's fine with me. I'd like more of the earth to be like California. Keep doing what you are doing folks, enjoy it while it lasts. We haven't even begun to experience the consequences of our grandparent's actions, let alone our own present mistakes. I'm heading for the hills.
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, look at me: I'm just a caveman. I was frozen 5000 years ago and was found by scientists and thawed. My "primative mind" can't grasp your complex "hacking laws", I have never even used a "computer" but I do know this: my client deserves to be set free..
When something is moving, it has a larger mass than when it is stationary. General theory of relativity. This energy mass must come from somewhere. So, of course a pure impulse drive is impossible. Mass must be lost by something and given to the object you want to move in the form of energy. Energy does not weigh much, so if they could develop a 99.99% efficient reaction drive, it would begin to function almost like an impulse drive.
This looks like a subversive attempt to backdoor recent efforts to deem source code "speech" by way of a legal precedent. If this thing goes through, code becomes a product, and begins to fall under regulations by the US Dept. of Commerce, among other entities. It will no longer be protected by the First Amendment of the constitution.
India is a second world nation. They do not have enough food to feed their population, and their birthrates are exploding. There will be a massive famine and a very bloody war near India before they will ever be a superpower. They do have a massive army, however (~200 million able bodied men). If they could get water into their arable land and somehow get 300 million people to die, they might have a fighting chance. It's not going to be pretty.
The media is the thing that enables the government to do what it wants. The media can spin anything into something which "makes sense" to the majority of Americans, not because Americans are stupid and ignorant, just that they rely on the media and trust the media. This is not just about media companies making money. It is about control, power; when all communications end to end are controlled by a government standard, they have the power to control what information the people recieve. And when you control what input people receive, you can control their behavior, their thoughts.
They are scared of the internet because of open forums like Slashdot, where smart people get together and share ideas. But you have it all wrong if you think this is about money. It's about silencing people like you and me, who care about our freedom of speech, and are intelligent enough to learn from other sources besides TV and other corporate information sources.
There is never such a thing as being too paranoid when it comes to regulation of communications. Without communications, we can never be sure of the whole of reality.
What the power elite/corporations see is humanity, especially Americans, getting an increasingly CORRECT view of reality. In the past, reality to most people was whatever the media or books or whatever they heard from other people. Of course the media is used to shape the way we think. Look at Sept. 11th; we now have a unified border patrol and "emergency management" agency (The Homeland Security Agency, aka the Secret Police). The president has a veritable shooting license to attack any country he wishes under some false guise. People can be detained for 60 days without trial or even charges, if deemed a terrorist. We are building a missile defense system in violation of a treaty. We are going to start drilling for oil in protected areas in Alaska. The list goes on. But America never really COMPREHENDED any of these changes because the top stories on CNN are all they see, they have no wish to dig deeper.
This is partially their own fault, and maybe we can do something to help them by spreading the word to everyone you know that we are being had on all fronts. The rich have 99% of the money now, and we work for them. It's that simple.
The point I'm trying to make is that there are those of us who wish to have an accurate picture of the real world, who wish to be free-thinkers, who do not want their thoughts influenced by any 3rd party. There are also people in this world who want to be that 3rd party, and influence the thoughts of others. It is they who wish to deny me of my right to think what I want.
That is why this shit is evil. You can whine all day about money and big corportations, correctly, even, but middle America will dismiss you as over liberal. Consider changing your description to something everyone can understand: They want to control what you think. You will continue to think what you want until the day you die, and if they ever try to take away your right to think, you will fight.
The 'net really is about communism. In trade for taking, everyone has to throw something in for it to be as good as it can possibly be. Of course, in an ideal world, everyone would have equal access to connection and other hardware resources also, so here again it is the person with the most money that wins. But, as the author pointed out, a good part of having a successful or popular website is respect. Respect translates into word of mouth advertising, which is the only way that a site can become more popular. Anyway, then he went into some details about translating respect into the resources needed to continue running a site. Not as a business, but as a Web Artist. (and really, if you aren't offering some SERVICE, you are a web artist).
I like an idea like this: 1. Everyone pays a tax on their internet connection. Say 1% of the total cost per year. On a 20/month line, it would be.20 per month in tax.
2. All the tax money goes into a large pool. Think National Endowment for the Arts.
3. Here's the tricky part, distributing the money to those who deserve it most (because they are respected): First, although businesses and for profit sites have to pay the tax, they don't get to decide where any of the money goes. After all, they are already making money. Second, anyone who is not contributing in some way to the community can't decide either. This is a little harsh, but necessary.
So, follow me here, EVERYONE/THING on the internet pays the tax, but only people who contribute not-for-profit can get money back. Ok, now into distribution: The total amount of money is evenly divided by the number of sites. Each site gets to handle their share. Now, the people who run the sites have to "donate" their share to other sites. This can be done using a point system (like Slashdot). Any unused money goes back into the coffer and is evenly distributed for real to all the sites. Those sites which got more donations recieve that much more of the money.
Of course, there are issues with this like slackers putting up one line and claiming to be a contributer, but those can be cleared up with intelligent webcrawlers and the like. It must be as unbureaucratic and as community oriented as possible. The organizing body would have to run some sort of website ranking sites by how many donations they have and in categories, and then at the end of the month, they all get rewarded for their command of respect by getting real money which can help cover their costs. It's really fair, encourages participation in the community, and separates commercial enterprise from the community as much as possible. It might even be cool to have a separate TLD for those sites (.nonprofit or.art or something). I'm sure there's other things you could do also, but this is just another one of my stream of consciousness posts so I won't start down that path now.
Slashdot Mirror
Hey wait.. That's the combination on MY luggage.
The reason shitty tech firms NEED H1-B's is that all the good AMERCIAN CS/Eng are already working in posh, government contractor jobs with good wages, congjugual visits, and good pensions.
And now that Bush is increasing military spending thru 2040, it's a better place than ever to be. Too bad you'll never get the chance.
In fact, one might call the Personal Computer tech boom of the 90's a result of Bush I and Clinton's military downsizing: Lots of smart AMERICAN CS/Eng get laid off from government contractors, need jobs. As they are among the smartest and most resourceful in the world, they create a new industry based on "personal computers" and the internet, milk it for all it's worth, become management and then hire a bunch of cheap foreign help. Then Bush II starts a war just in time for the bumper crop of green AMERICAN CS/eng grads who got into the biz to capitalize on the Internet boom. Too late, but there's jobs. Go talk to Lockheed or Boeing.
Have you applied for every job you can find, or just ones that seem "interesting" to you? Shit, we are in a recession, you aren't going to work your "dream job". Sorry folks, sometimes you don't always get what you pay for. Life is a gamble.
You could be doing shit work for a "demeaning" $12/hour instead of watching TV and complaining. It's better than nothing and it's what 90% of America does.
Cry me a fucking river.
Stop to think: Maybe Arabs hate us because we pretty much stole a bunch of land from Arabs and gave it to a bunch of rich white people, and now give these white people millions of dollars a year and weapons and a shooting license to kill at will.
Maybe they hate us because they see the arrogant Israelis as the embodiment of America, packaged up into a little fort placed in a Holy Land. They are serious about their religion.
Maybe they hate us because the average Israeli makes $20k+/year whereas the average Gaza Arab has an annual income of more like $600!
Add to this a lot of oil money from other Arabs, and you have a problem. But the problem is not the Arabs, the terrorists. They would not exist without Israel being there; they would not hate us if we hadn't stolen their land and given it to a bunch of rich white people. Israel is the problem. I would be pissed too.
You represent the majority of America; believing the media (which supports Israel, maybe because a lot of media execs/power elite are Jewish? I don't want to get into that, but it's possible [and no I am not anti-Semetic, just anti-Israel]) that these poor Israelis live in fear and this is SOOOOOOOOOOooooooooo unjust. But everyone forgets the other side of the story. These terrorists are not all whackos. They are just tired of being fucking poor.
So, then one of them gets smart enough to realize that America is the cause of Israel, so maybe they should attack the cause of the problem. So they do. And we take offense.
Now before you freak out, I am looking at this from a sociological perspective. Sometimes it is necessary to see the truth. The truth: This is all our fucking fault, and we are finally getting punished for our past mistakes we've gotten away with for so long. But America has a hard time admitting it was wrong (ie: the Drug War), so we just cover it up with more bombs.
Don't go spouting off about military this and that when you don't know the history of the matter, and the economics of the problem. You have every right to your opinion that all Arabs are scum, etc., and we should bomb the hell out of them but understand that we brought this upon ourselves, and while it's no excuse, I hardly think the way to solve this problem is more bombs. Perhaps it is too late, and you are right, more killing is the only solution, killing every last Arab will solve the problem of terrorism, and while we're at it, let's kill some Iraqis and Iranis and, hey, why not, all the Phillipinos too. This will help solve the problem of terrorism. And let's forget the REAL reasons, the TRUTH, because that would mean, shit, CHANGING *OUR* LIVES, AND WE AMERICANS CHANGE FOR *NO ONE* AND *NO THING*. Bah, white trash ethics.
BTW, I bet in 10-20 years, Israel will invade the persian gulf and we will support them. Just a silly prediction.
Cheers
Don't get me wrong, I wholly agree with your entire post; Americans need to be more conscious about conservation, and not just energy. The availible free clean water supply of the world is waning rapidly. We burn and bury trash, yet everyday a new product is released which uses more packaging for "convenience". And supposedly this waste is forcing America to depend on foreign sources of materials?
I beg to differ. I think what is really happening is that someone (Big Oil) thinks we need to use up all of the resources of the other countries, specifically the middle east. If you remove all the oil from the middle east, it ceases to be a problem. If we leave it there, some other country (like China) will get involved. Sure, it's a hotbed of religious fighting, but without billions of $ in oil money, where will they get money for weapons? We are funding their wars, we fund these terrorists. A good parallel example is South America and drugs. Without drug money, Columbia is just another 3rd world jungle. With, it is a giant civil war. We, the drug users of America (and the Drug War, which keeps supplies low, and therefore prices high) fund those terrorists.
So the problem isn't really oil, or drugs, in these cases. It's money, greed, and the need to protect that money with weapons. Guess what, Bush just signed the largest defense spending budget EVER. Greed is a problem in America, as well.
Basically, I think the goal is to get all the money and stuff away from polically (religiously) unstable regions and move it into America/UK/(eu?)other stable regions, and then kill everyone else, or let them go on their merry way killing each other. Sickening, but going from a divided to global economy (then currency, then finally, government [~2020-2030]) is going to require some sacrifices, in the form of human lives.
We are over populated, and the best way to get rid of excess people is to kill them in a war. This is the truth of the matter, and most people cannot accept it. But I say, better them than me.
Cheers.
will probably compare this movie to the enjoyable experience of having a glass rod shoved up your urethra and then shattered.
Funny, but not when it costs you 8.25. Save this one for the home theather...
Oh God, Not Again
Cheers
The world you envision would be a world of insanity. I'm amused to death with entertainment as it is. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing.
Don't get me wrong; I think that we work TOO much nowadays (40 hours a week is too much, because of all the extraneous culture crap involved in labor these days. You have to get up, make yourself look a certain way, which takes an hour, ignoring the additional time it takes to have clean clothes, etc., then you drive to work for 30 minutes, get there, work your 8 or 9 hours, come home (30 minutes), make dinner, and then get ready to sleep. Shit, being a "normal" human is a full time job, because we make it that way. Society makes it that way.), but robots wouldn't save us work. Our work would just be something else. And it would still suck just as much.
If you want a robot, take an ordinary human, get them to take 300-500mg of Prozac per day so they will be happy doing whatever they are doing, and then give them tasks to do as you see fit.
Oh wait, we already do that.
I would never want a robot exactly like a human. Why?:
1. Humans are pretty much useless. All we do is think.
2. Humans try to do as little as possible.
3. Making a tool (which is what a "robot" is, a tool that does work for us) that strives to do as little as possible is pointless.
qed
What is the human use of humans? What are we good for? Really, all we do is live, then die. The best thing we could do is create a lot of robots that are exactly like us, but can't die, and then let them replace us and do the living for us. There is no point for us to continue to exist when something superior comes along who will work for the same goals in the universe as we do. But, since WE are not sure what the goal of our existance is, we can never create a robot that will attempt to fulfill these goals.
I guess the point is that there is no point. So we should work on extending the human life, since all we are trying to do is have more time to do "something else". We will eventually all get bored and depressed because the robots will do everything. Even today, you see the effects manifest themselves. Depressed people, millions. And so what do we do? Give them drugs to turn them into robots themselves. Everyone will be that one day.
So I say: Down with technology. It will be the end of us. Or maybe not. But, a good question, yes?
See, the problem is that your "Robot Washer/Dryer" has ceased to become merely a Washer/Dryer. It is an integrated Laundry Basket/Clothing Refresher and Managment System. No more of a "robot" than a washer and dryer, it just has more features.
It just goes to show, robots are machines. I think that is what the author was saying: These little automated tools with a few rules to guide them act remarkably life-like. One might extrapolate that we humans are merely machines with more rules, and more features.
Luckly, we have the ability to save what we know, and pass it on to future generations, and we are also blessed with a certain amount of random noise that our mind filters into something useful sometimes.
I think it's safe to say that if you see the acronym "IIRC" in a Slashdot post, assume anything that follows is total bullshit.
Cheers
If you are truely interested, why not obtain some Lysergic Acid Diethylamide and see what it's like?
No no, no metals involved. I'm talking about PURE H+ ions and PURE OH- ions. Without the other consituents. You are thinking of chemicals, I am talking about a battery, sort of, made by splitting water. H+ and H20 is just positvely charged water. OH- and H20 is negatively charged water. You mix the two and get H20 + heat. You have stored potential energy by separating each and applying a charge. Contrary to popular belief, you don't need a salt or an electrolyte to perform electrolysis on water. It's the unique catalyst PL**INUM that makes it possible. This is distilled water. I shouldn'y go into details but.. what the fuck, I'm getting the patent.
Try this:
1.Take pure distilled H20.
2.Add a pH indicator (thymol blue)
3.Add 2 electrodes of platinum.
4.Apply a charge to the electrodes (~100VDC)
notice that the ph around each electrode is changed! yet this is only water. here is what happens:
Around the negative electrode, the polar water molucule spreads apart, and then pops off an OH-, which wants to get as far away as possible from the negative electrode (goes over to the Positive, actually). This means there is an abundence of H+ ions around the negative electrode. Any high school chemistry student knows that pH is the log10 concentration of H+ ions (protons) in a solution. This means that around the negative electrode, there is a pure acid (pure H+ in H20). The platinum is important, because H+ will not react with it, yet it still conducts electricity.
Likewise, around the positive electrode, there is a high concetration of OH- ions (negatively charged oxygen in H20).
If you perform the test with the thymol blue, you can see it for yourself--regions of color around the electrodes.
What we've done is found a way to separate water this way, and package it separately. Then, no electricy is required to keep it as H+ and OH- ions--the walls of the packaging do that. When we need to release the energy (in the form of elecricity) we break the packaging and mix the separated water. It mixes with the flavoring which is an electrolyte, basically turning the whole beverage into a shorted out battery.
This releases heat, as everyone knows, and since it releases it into itself, it is ~100% efficient. It works on a larger scale also. The only problem is that it requires absolutely pure pH 7 distilled water, but we are working on that.
Cheers
I think this reply replies for me adaquately:
/.'rs
"I care - thats who. (Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 21, @05:37AM (#3199466)
You, sir, are either:
1) A troll
2) A good example of the eventual demise of the evolutionary tree we call homo sapiens.
3) Someone who genuinely believes that magic happens when you put something in the trash that turns stable and/or toxic compounds into handy environmentally friendly ones as it hits then landfill site.
Mod me up, mod me down, it doesn't matter, its our kids that will find out who was right, not other
:)"
And if this were to become a mainstream consumer item (although I can't imagine a world where it would), can you recycle the can inexpensively?
Also, I have a much better idea for self-heating water:
A strong water based acid (H+ ions made with electricity) and a strong water based base (OH- ions made with electricity) are stored in separate non-reactive plastic bladders. In the center, you have the powdered flavoring or concentrate of the beverage/food/whatever. Button is pressed, acid water and base water mix, (H+ joins with OH-) releasing tons of heat (I beleive this is one of the most exothermic reactions known, by weight of reactants) and water. A twirl of the wrist to mix, and pop the top and injoy.
I still have some R&D but the patent is pending.
It's fucks like Enron that exploit things like the California Power Crisis who make electricity expensive. Most energy in the US comes from Hydro, at least in the West, from plants and dams built 50+ years ago. They are a sunk cost, long ago paid for. The reason power costs a lot is that the market is fucked up. There are monopolies involved, corrupt (read: Enron) "distributors", ancient transmission methods, etc. ad nauseam.
We are in a very strange time. I think too many Americans think that everything is "well enough." If you look into the past, technology was something that needed to be driven forward, not for the sake of driving it forward, but the pursuit of something better. Take the railroad industry in the 1800's, always pushing forward with faster trains, smoother cars, etc. Or the space program, pushing towards the moon and eventually succeeding.
And then what happened? 1970, all innovation in the traditional sectors stopped. No amazing new ideas in transportation, energy, or agriculture have come about in the last 30 years! Surely we haven't reached the pinnacle of technology in these areas! It is possible to have trains which go 400mph between cities for 1/10 the cost of AIRPLANES, which are highly inefficient. AIRPLANES are a stupid idea, when it is cheaper and easier to build something on the ground that moves more stuff/people as fast with less fuel. Not to mention safer. And as in this article, there are plenty of new ways to generate electricity.
So what is stifling innovation? What happened in the 1970's that is preventing progress? Well, the biggest corporations of 1970 received control of the US Government. The big automakers, big airlines, big industry (who makes airplanes and road equipment and tractors and stuff), big OIL all started getting stuff back from the government for donations they made. And now, 30 years later, everything in America is EXACTLY the same as is was then (with the possible exception of computer/communications technology), which is just what they wanted.
Before 1970, America was always the "young" country in the world, never afraid to try out new ideas, always on the cutting edge, happy. Now we are consumers only, bored robots, practically a fascist state in our apathy.
What happened? Where did the hippies go? I thought they were trying to change things. Nope, all they did was give the corrupt government power because average America began to fear the more intelligent members of society, college students (there were more than ever then, due to a little thing called the BABY BOOM, the GI Bill, etc.), so they empowered the government to stop them from changing anything to much. Well, they gave the government too much power and while the hippies won the battle, right-wing, conservative, Christian, drug-war-fighting, prision-system expanding America won the war and since 1970, we have been suffering the consequences.
Shit like Sept. 11th just helps matters out for them, because people are more conservative when they fear for their lives, and EVERYONE is SCARED right now even though it wasn't a huge threat to most people's existance. I mean, America is a HUGE country, and even 1000 terrorists couldn't kill 1% of us. And I'll be the first to admit, fuck yes I was afraid. For about a month. Until I realized that the media was blowing this out of proportion. What was once 30,000 deaths became 10,000, then 5,000, then 3,000, and now barely 2,000 people dead. Yet we are afraid, still, because the government won't let us forget, and move on with our lifes, live liberally.
So here we go again giving the conservative military-industrial complex MORE POWER *AGAIN*! We are digging ourselves into a hole and it's all based on us not wanting to give up a single thing because we think everything is as good as it's ever going to get, and if we start to change stuff we are going to fuck everything up.
Fuck that. What happened to the leaders in America? Where did they go? They are all overshadowed now by the culture of Advertising the complex has created. Kids used to worship artists and musicians and writers, now they worship advertisments. Before it was about thinking, now it's about style.
All you old farts reading this, take note. I am 22 years old. I don't know shit about shit. But looking at the kids today, who are younger than me, brainwashed, I feel a slight loss of hope. I am starting to realize that my generation and those a little older than me (the kids of the baby boomers), are the LAST hope. Either we do something, or we choose to ignore it and complain on slashdot the rest of our miserable lives.
NO ONE ELSE WILL EVER CARE. If we give up, it will be too late. It's already set in stone. Kids age 10-16 will not care about progress 6 years from now. They will care about some product that hasn't been advertised yet.
Of course, hey, I don't have any solutions, not yet. I need more time and wisdom. But this won't be my last post. But seriously folks, the fact that we are still subscribing to the same basic sociological ideas we did in the 70s is a bad thing. Especially when Germany, England, Austrailia, hell all of Europe is moving forward. We had a big head start, but this is 30 FUCKING YEARS, and they are beginning to pull ahead. Mark my words, a huge military and industrial economy will not be important forever. We need to stop fighting wars, stealing people's oil and money, being big Conservative bullies and streamline. Or America is going to fall like the Roman empire 2000 years ago. Big, old, and lazy is what we are; changes in computers and communications are not doing enough; we need *REAL* CHANGE in *REAL* PLACES.
Good Luck
Firstly, to debunk a common myth, there is no leadership in the US. Everyone just does what is in their own best interests, and damn the consequences.
/. story a few days ago about 3700 sq. km of Antarctica turning into water. Hell, that's fine with me. I'd like more of the earth to be like California. Keep doing what you are doing folks, enjoy it while it lasts. We haven't even begun to experience the consequences of our grandparent's actions, let alone our own present mistakes. I'm heading for the hills.
The portion of US energy policy I object the most to is not the pollution. It's the fact that we *BURN* OIL. Petroleum is perhaps one of the most useful and versatile chemical in existance, yet we are wasting millions of barrels a day by simply BURNING it. Why? So every soccer mom in the US can drive around by herself in her new Excursion.
Imagine for a second how much better life would be if we had used all the oil we've burned in the last ten years making useful stuff. Everyone could have a padded toilet seat, plastic stuff would be beyond cheap, and and and... ok, look, the point I'm trying to make is that OIL is useful beyond just burning it. And while that may not be very important now, while we have tons of it buried underground, someday we WILL run out.
As crazy as it sounds, oil is NONRENEWABLE. Each and every ounce took thousands, even millions of years to form underground from plant matter from the last great tropical period. Yes, that's right folks, the earth was a giant jungle once, there were oceans in the middle of the US; in fact, most of the land people live on today was UNDER WATER then. What caused it to change? How did the earth change from a tropical paradise to a cold dirty planet like it is now?
Well, a lot of plants grew, and then died, and then more plants grew, and died, and so on, building up into layers miles thick. After a while, most of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere got fixed into sugars and other carbohydrates in the plants and stored in great masses under the ground. Volcanoes erupted, a few asteroids hit, oxygen breathing life appeared, and the Earth got DAMN cold. Glaciers formed and everything got covered up and then luckly, CO2 levels began to rise on Earth again, and it warmed back up.
Then we enter the period of about 2000 years ago, when we found out about coal and started burning it. Then the industrial revolution happened a hundred or so years ago and we started burning oil. Now we burn a shit ton. CO2 levels are rising faster than ever before, and since it's uncontrolled, unnatural, ie: we are burning the shit as fast as we can so everyone can own an Excursion, plants are not growing fast enough to keep up, they are not sucking the CO2 up as fast as we are releasing it.
So the Earth is going to warm significantly soon. It already is--see the
Mom always said I would go blind if I kept playing with that thing. Come (no pun intended) to find out it's TRUE!
Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, look at me: I'm just a caveman. I was frozen 5000 years ago and was found by scientists and thawed. My "primative mind" can't grasp your complex "hacking laws", I have never even used a "computer" but I do know this: my client deserves to be set free ..
Remember? Phil Hartman, Saturday Night Live?
When something is moving, it has a larger mass than when it is stationary. General theory of relativity. This energy mass must come from somewhere. So, of course a pure impulse drive is impossible. Mass must be lost by something and given to the object you want to move in the form of energy. Energy does not weigh much, so if they could develop a 99.99% efficient reaction drive, it would begin to function almost like an impulse drive.
This looks like a subversive attempt to backdoor recent efforts to deem source code "speech" by way of a legal precedent. If this thing goes through, code becomes a product, and begins to fall under regulations by the US Dept. of Commerce, among other entities. It will no longer be protected by the First Amendment of the constitution.
India is a second world nation. They do not have enough food to feed their population, and their birthrates are exploding. There will be a massive famine and a very bloody war near India before they will ever be a superpower. They do have a massive army, however (~200 million able bodied men). If they could get water into their arable land and somehow get 300 million people to die, they might have a fighting chance. It's not going to be pretty.
Sen. Hollings #1 contributor. You might have something there. You know, the world would be a much nicer place without lawyers.
The media is the thing that enables the government to do what it wants. The media can spin anything into something which "makes sense" to the majority of Americans, not because Americans are stupid and ignorant, just that they rely on the media and trust the media. This is not just about media companies making money. It is about control, power; when all communications end to end are controlled by a government standard, they have the power to control what information the people recieve. And when you control what input people receive, you can control their behavior, their thoughts.
They are scared of the internet because of open forums like Slashdot, where smart people get together and share ideas. But you have it all wrong if you think this is about money. It's about silencing people like you and me, who care about our freedom of speech, and are intelligent enough to learn from other sources besides TV and other corporate information sources.
There is never such a thing as being too paranoid when it comes to regulation of communications. Without communications, we can never be sure of the whole of reality.
What the power elite/corporations see is humanity, especially Americans, getting an increasingly CORRECT view of reality. In the past, reality to most people was whatever the media or books or whatever they heard from other people. Of course the media is used to shape the way we think. Look at Sept. 11th; we now have a unified border patrol and "emergency management" agency (The Homeland Security Agency, aka the Secret Police). The president has a veritable shooting license to attack any country he wishes under some false guise. People can be detained for 60 days without trial or even charges, if deemed a terrorist. We are building a missile defense system in violation of a treaty. We are going to start drilling for oil in protected areas in Alaska. The list goes on. But America never really COMPREHENDED any of these changes because the top stories on CNN are all they see, they have no wish to dig deeper.
This is partially their own fault, and maybe we can do something to help them by spreading the word to everyone you know that we are being had on all fronts. The rich have 99% of the money now, and we work for them. It's that simple.
The point I'm trying to make is that there are those of us who wish to have an accurate picture of the real world, who wish to be free-thinkers, who do not want their thoughts influenced by any 3rd party. There are also people in this world who want to be that 3rd party, and influence the thoughts of others. It is they who wish to deny me of my right to think what I want.
That is why this shit is evil. You can whine all day about money and big corportations, correctly, even, but middle America will dismiss you as over liberal. Consider changing your description to something everyone can understand: They want to control what you think. You will continue to think what you want until the day you die, and if they ever try to take away your right to think, you will fight.
The 'net really is about communism. In trade for taking, everyone has to throw something in for it to be as good as it can possibly be. Of course, in an ideal world, everyone would have equal access to connection and other hardware resources also, so here again it is the person with the most money that wins. But, as the author pointed out, a good part of having a successful or popular website is respect. Respect translates into word of mouth advertising, which is the only way that a site can become more popular. Anyway, then he went into some details about translating respect into the resources needed to continue running a site. Not as a business, but as a Web Artist. (and really, if you aren't offering some SERVICE, you are a web artist).
.20 per month in tax.
.art or something). I'm sure there's other things you could do also, but this is just another one of my stream of consciousness posts so I won't start down that path now.
I like an idea like this:
1. Everyone pays a tax on their internet connection. Say 1% of the total cost per year. On a 20/month line, it would be
2. All the tax money goes into a large pool. Think National Endowment for the Arts.
3. Here's the tricky part, distributing the money to those who deserve it most (because they are respected): First, although businesses and for profit sites have to pay the tax, they don't get to decide where any of the money goes. After all, they are already making money. Second, anyone who is not contributing in some way to the community can't decide either. This is a little harsh, but necessary.
So, follow me here, EVERYONE/THING on the internet pays the tax, but only people who contribute not-for-profit can get money back. Ok, now into distribution: The total amount of money is evenly divided by the number of sites. Each site gets to handle their share. Now, the people who run the sites have to "donate" their share to other sites. This can be done using a point system (like Slashdot). Any unused money goes back into the coffer and is evenly distributed for real to all the sites. Those sites which got more donations recieve that much more of the money.
Of course, there are issues with this like slackers putting up one line and claiming to be a contributer, but those can be cleared up with intelligent webcrawlers and the like. It must be as unbureaucratic and as community oriented as possible. The organizing body would have to run some sort of website ranking sites by how many donations they have and in categories, and then at the end of the month, they all get rewarded for their command of respect by getting real money which can help cover their costs. It's really fair, encourages participation in the community, and separates commercial enterprise from the community as much as possible. It might even be cool to have a separate TLD for those sites (.nonprofit or