Oil was produced by dead biomass accmumulated over several million years; it's like hoarding money for a few years and then spending it all in two minutes.
In order to get the same energy output for a year from plants than you get from oil, it will need several hundred Earths to be cultivated.
Numbers, please.
No, really. I don't really have a dog in this fight, but its nice to know the facts anyway (perhaps moreso as I don't take sides). The production of oil seems to be terribly inefficient, as are most natural processes (how long does it take to produce a pound of diamonds by the earth, on average, vs in an industrial facility?)
Most farming operations are fairly energy intensive. Take ethonol as an example - it's is a lousy fuel. Expensive to produce (both in dollars and energy), and has horrible efficiency when compared to gasoline. E85 vehicles typically see a 30-35% reduction in mileage per gallon when running on E85, according to the EPA (no I don't have the link handy, but theres a PDF showing all the alt-fuel vehicles. A Ford pickup that gets 14/18 on gas gets 10/14 on E85).
So, is biodeisel really that inefficient per acre planted? Could we use corn? Would this mean Americans might get Coke with real sugar once again? The world wants to know!
When you say "the next era where new thoughts, science and knowledge progress get some value back," do you mean some era several displaced from our current one, or are you making the irrational asumption that the next era will be just such a time. Me? I'm expecting holy wars and inquisition-style persecution in the near future.
I'm guessing that this is embeded in the Know what you're doing line, but the first rule of Dell is to format and reinstall the os after you verify that it boots up out of the box. Even the SB versions are filled with crap when you get them, but there's no rule saying you have to keep all that crap in place.
My God! It's like the callerID swindle game. I pay if I want it, and somebody else can pay an extra fee to block it, and I can pay a special fee to get the blocked number unblocked.
You know, I've not really thought about it this way, but a video iTMS box with a write to DVD-R option (or perpetual download rights, like audible) might be a viable alternative to DTV for me.
It occurs to me that I'm dropping a good $750 on DTV every year. I have access to broadcast programming from all but ABC digital, and for under $300 I could get all the majors over the air in digital (new antenna and splitter/combiner electronics). There are, at most, three shows (no...four, almost forgot the occasional Daily Show). I watch on an ongoing basis. The kid might see four shows, and she mostly watches from the library we have on TiVo or DVDs 've burned from TiVo. The wife...well she has more eclectic taste, so that would be the wildcard. I suspect we could have quite a media library built up on $750/yr from an online store, assuming we could get the live - or nearly live - feeds of NFL and NCAA football for a reasonable fee (no, direcTV, $300/yr for Sunday Ticket is not reasonable). Come to think of it, most of the football I watch is on network, with the exception of ESPN NCAA games.
Hmmmm...by the time DTV cuts the line to TiVo, there might be real options out there for me.
Oddly enough, I don't have much call for the folders on my HD TiVo. I've hacked it and I download all the shows on a weekly basis and reformat them to mpg for a little MviX box I got a while ago. I only watch about one show a week on the HD box itself, and the occasional classic on HDnet Movies. The main reason I have HD is for football (NFL & NCAA) season.
I suppose if it had folders I might bea able to convince the wife to let go of her box and we could reduce the costof our monthly sub to DTV, but then she'd be able to train my box to look for the mind numbing programming she enjoys (ghost stuff, archeology, 18th century history, *blech*).
Anyway, your tagging works great, except for the "suggestions" folder, which would just sprinkle the suggestions throught the alphabetical listing.
Good idea about the keyword Pilot. I've never thought of that. That's be worth a mod point in itself (though, of course, I've already posted to this thread, even if I did have mod points, which I don't;-)
No, seriously. The parent may well be trolling, but the point is actually insightful in a roundabout way. I don't think the format will take off until you can make a copy for yourself. Do you really think Netfix would be where it is today if you couldn't rip and burn DVDs? Of course not. A cracked format will be the doorway to universal accptance of the new format. Otherwise, it will just sit next to DAT on the shelf of technology that could have been big.
I thought Netflix was around so that people could rip and archive the DVDs they didn't have the money to buy. I think good decryption software and HD-DVD writers will have to get here before the format really takes off.
The pause feature is the easist to market. The folders are very nice (my HDtivo doesn't have them, and it sux), but with a stock TiVo, they can fill up fast. Not everybody hacks their box for 150+ hours, though I don't know why not. Heck, for TiVo, it would seem a bonus to offer plug-n-play expandability with PATA or SATA drives - they only sell the service, and the more programming features, the better their position.
For my wife, the best part of the whole thing are the suggestions. It's likely the reason that we will jump from DTV when they pull the plug on TiVo. She doesn't want to surf around for shows to record, she wants to pick and choose from shows that are similar to a few select genres. Her tivo has gotten pretty good after some training, and now she has 20-30 hours of programming that shes interested in when she grabs the remote. I'm not aware of any other DVR box with that functionality.
Of course, TiVo, being cash strapped, can't fling themselves against the litigation wall to put all the really good features into their boxes. Replay tried and died. I just wish TiVo would play quite as nice with the content police.
Oh, come on now. You could record stuff just like usual, but there'd be a popup for each show that said "you can view this recorded show only once. To keep this show, you can buy it without commercials for just $x from iTMS by pressing the thumbs up button now." They'll give you a second chance to buy it when the show ends, while the unit self-deletes the program.
And, yes, you'll be able to download it to your iPod, but only with purchase of the iTMS content version.
You've missed that part about human nature that turns your statement into:
The penalty for getting caught using a cell phone while driving is worse then the cost of a hands free set.
You see, that little "getting caught" part is the real wild card. Do you pay up the $$$ up front, or take your chances that you won't be snagged by law enforcement? Here in the US, most people exceed the speed limit - some by a large amount, but on an infrequent basis. Despite the knowledge that an extra 15 or 20 mph might only get them to a local destination minutes or seconds faster, and getting pulled over will cost them at least 10 minutes (and lots of $$$), they exceed the speed limit. If I only talk on the phone once in a while, why spring for a handsfree system - I probably won't get caught.
To many dumb-ass automatic drivers forgetting that you have to push in the clutch if the car is in gear when you start it. I hate to admit it, but I drive an auto, and have for long enough that when I get into a stick, the first stop I come to usually results in a bit of a jar!
No to be picky, but as you hit smooth steel, I'm guessing that you haven't stopped quickly enough;-)
As for me, I'm bummed that my car is an automatic (manual isn't even an option in this model, afaik). It means that if I'm on the RR tracks and the car stalls, I can't just put it in 1st gear and crank the engine with the starter and roll off the tracks. Now _that's_ what I call dangerous. (Yes, that was tongue in cheek) (Yes, I've use that trick in the past, but not to get off RR tracks - I used it to get uphill the last 50' into a gas station).
I think the final buffing of the utilitarian, squared off case using $100 bills might be the thing that gets you. As you've read, IBMs line the boardroom table, but Dells populate the cubespace. Grace and Beauty are not terms that often get used in conjunction with the Hummer H1, but executives who dropped 100k on theirs will be very proud indeed. Most people who pay a premium are enamoured with the looks. Even if it looks ugly, it promotes envy if there's a big price tag stuck to it (and hence, improves its desirability).
Given a durable, fast machine - would the "typical consumer" purchase the one that looks like a thinkpad, or the one that looks like a powerbook? We already know what all those yuppy executives have in their pockets...and it's got white earphones.;-)
What if a manager read the human readable EULA for let's say microsoft office?
A: He or she wouldn't give a shit.
Why? You're either not in compliance and don't care (because the chances of getting caught are so small), or you're in compliance for the moment and when you decide to stray from it you won't care (because the chances of getting caught are so small). More to the point, you use the software because you need to interoperate with the rest of your business peers, and your peers use Microsoft Office. There is no reasonable way for you, the lowly manager, to enact a software format change at all of your peer shops. Therefore, you play the game, because you play or you learn to play the 5 gallon bucket with a couple of dowel rods for the coins people throw at you to try and make you shut up. And people just don't want to shut you up badly enough to put your kids through college.
I would disagree. I would instead say that we are a culture who blindly purchases brand names with very little actual research into performance. Sytle is everything. IBM has style. Lenovo doesn't. Nobody want's a middling performance, ugly laptop/ Lets' face it - IBM thinkpads have never been speed demons, and they are the butt-ugliest, clunky-looking laptops out there. But IBM - I B M - now that's a name that means confidence and performance. And premium prices mean premium goods.
Lenovo. Well, this "new" (to American ears) Chinese company may have bought the ThinkPad name, but there no IBM. Nosireebob. We need something that stands for quality. A company that would never cut corners. A solid performer that believes in quality over raw profits. Those boys at Hewlett Packard have been around forever and I know that name. It must stand for a good product. So now that IBM, the venerable old company, is not producing laptops, we'll go with HP. Rock solid, I tell you. (Yes everything about HP is tongue in cheek...Thanks, Carly).
This has very little to do with xenophobia, and much to do with brand recognition.
I think you sum up my point well, "... I challenge anyone to find a laptop that isn't made primarily overseas." And yet, we buy them by the landfill-load. It's not about where they're made, it's about what name is on the cover. It's no different than the way be buy cars, clothes, appliances, and consumer electronics. Nobody would buy Lenovo bought Nike people woudn't buy Lenovo athletic shoes - even if they made them in the same Chinese factory.
Ah, but what you've missed is that many humans seem not to have this capability for analytical thought you would like to teach. I'm not sure whether its been beaten out of kids by their brainless parents, or whether they were born that way, but a large proportion of the current adult population really can't think analytically at all. Moreover, it's a very hard thing to test for in a standardized way. How can you leave no child behind, if you don't have a standard by which to determine if they are behind? Facts, on the other hand, are very easy to test for.
Put another way, offer to pose a word problem to most adults and you'll see pupils dilating in fear. Now, you and I and the rest of the "smart" people know damned well that all a word problem is is a way to test if you can actually connect phyical conditions to a static, rules based concept (typically arithmetic or algebra). It's coming up with 2+3=? instead of a teacher asking you what 2+3 is. The latter is easy, the former is more complex.
This problem is continued at higher levels, even through the graduate degrees. During my masters work, most of the courses (in strucutral engineering) focused on applying the proper techniques to solve for stresses and stains in materials based on a set of given loads. Well, sad to say, that is the easy part of any task. I didn't have a single class that was focused on determining how to figure out what loads were actually going to be acting on the materials. And that happens to be where the real work is. I can teach a high school graduate how to find the right table and apply a simple formula to get an answer. It's much more difficult to figure out where the loads are coming from in a complex load path.
So, yes, we need more focus on critical thought. Unfortunately, I don't see things getting better from either the political or practical side.
So how come it won't just render a "back" gesture instaed of trying repost the !$%% data to have the server regenerate the page? That's what the !@#$#@$ reload button is for.
Sorry 'bout that. Its just that the "instant" back (w/o re-post) is one of the things I miss from opera. I'm sure all of my other annoyances could be fixed with plugins in ff, but I don't have time to find them (mozilla.org is terribly unorganized, imho).
You can make that as a medical assistant anywhere. Hell, they're thowing cash bonses at med techs around here, too. Nobody wants to do those lousy jobs. Bad hours, nasty assignments, have to deal with doctors all the time (there are few managers worse than engineers - doctors are in that class).
This job only requires a HS education. And I'm nowhere near a large city.
I didn't advertise the salary, just experience range. I could have been offering $40k for all they knew. Think of your C++ as analogous to the "extra" training I have to do anyway for someone who already knows how to run basic AutoCAD (I'll train them in the vertical apps, addons and custom progrmas we use that they'd never get in high school or college). Would you hire someone who had never programmed before? Would you hire someone who knew Fortran and Basic for a job doing embedded machine code? (sorry, age showing on that one)
Right now, most jobs in this field with benefits are paying under $25k for freshouts with HS or AA degrees. But everybody wants to make $100k. *shrug* Looks like I'll just return that email from the guy in New Delhi (I'm kidding!)
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Oil was produced by dead biomass accmumulated over several million years; it's like hoarding money for a few years and then spending it all in two minutes.
In order to get the same energy output for a year from plants than you get from oil, it will need several hundred Earths to be cultivated.
Numbers, please.
No, really. I don't really have a dog in this fight, but its nice to know the facts anyway (perhaps moreso as I don't take sides). The production of oil seems to be terribly inefficient, as are most natural processes (how long does it take to produce a pound of diamonds by the earth, on average, vs in an industrial facility?)
Most farming operations are fairly energy intensive. Take ethonol as an example - it's is a lousy fuel. Expensive to produce (both in dollars and energy), and has horrible efficiency when compared to gasoline. E85 vehicles typically see a 30-35% reduction in mileage per gallon when running on E85, according to the EPA (no I don't have the link handy, but theres a PDF showing all the alt-fuel vehicles. A Ford pickup that gets 14/18 on gas gets 10/14 on E85).
So, is biodeisel really that inefficient per acre planted? Could we use corn? Would this mean Americans might get Coke with real sugar once again? The world wants to know!
When you say "the next era where new thoughts, science and knowledge progress get some value back," do you mean some era several displaced from our current one, or are you making the irrational asumption that the next era will be just such a time. Me? I'm expecting holy wars and inquisition-style persecution in the near future.
What beef do you have with grouse hunters?
I'm guessing that this is embeded in the Know what you're doing line, but the first rule of Dell is to format and reinstall the os after you verify that it boots up out of the box. Even the SB versions are filled with crap when you get them, but there's no rule saying you have to keep all that crap in place.
My God! It's like the callerID swindle game. I pay if I want it, and somebody else can pay an extra fee to block it, and I can pay a special fee to get the blocked number unblocked.
;-)
Damn, these guys are good.
You know, I've not really thought about it this way, but a video iTMS box with a write to DVD-R option (or perpetual download rights, like audible) might be a viable alternative to DTV for me.
It occurs to me that I'm dropping a good $750 on DTV every year. I have access to broadcast programming from all but ABC digital, and for under $300 I could get all the majors over the air in digital (new antenna and splitter/combiner electronics). There are, at most, three shows (no...four, almost forgot the occasional Daily Show). I watch on an ongoing basis. The kid might see four shows, and she mostly watches from the library we have on TiVo or DVDs 've burned from TiVo. The wife...well she has more eclectic taste, so that would be the wildcard. I suspect we could have quite a media library built up on $750/yr from an online store, assuming we could get the live - or nearly live - feeds of NFL and NCAA football for a reasonable fee (no, direcTV, $300/yr for Sunday Ticket is not reasonable). Come to think of it, most of the football I watch is on network, with the exception of ESPN NCAA games.
Hmmmm...by the time DTV cuts the line to TiVo, there might be real options out there for me.
Oddly enough, I don't have much call for the folders on my HD TiVo. I've hacked it and I download all the shows on a weekly basis and reformat them to mpg for a little MviX box I got a while ago. I only watch about one show a week on the HD box itself, and the occasional classic on HDnet Movies. The main reason I have HD is for football (NFL & NCAA) season.
;-)
I suppose if it had folders I might bea able to convince the wife to let go of her box and we could reduce the costof our monthly sub to DTV, but then she'd be able to train my box to look for the mind numbing programming she enjoys (ghost stuff, archeology, 18th century history, *blech*).
Anyway, your tagging works great, except for the "suggestions" folder, which would just sprinkle the suggestions throught the alphabetical listing.
Good idea about the keyword Pilot. I've never thought of that. That's be worth a mod point in itself (though, of course, I've already posted to this thread, even if I did have mod points, which I don't
No, seriously. The parent may well be trolling, but the point is actually insightful in a roundabout way. I don't think the format will take off until you can make a copy for yourself. Do you really think Netfix would be where it is today if you couldn't rip and burn DVDs? Of course not. A cracked format will be the doorway to universal accptance of the new format. Otherwise, it will just sit next to DAT on the shelf of technology that could have been big.
I thought Netflix was around so that people could rip and archive the DVDs they didn't have the money to buy. I think good decryption software and HD-DVD writers will have to get here before the format really takes off.
The pause feature is the easist to market. The folders are very nice (my HDtivo doesn't have them, and it sux), but with a stock TiVo, they can fill up fast. Not everybody hacks their box for 150+ hours, though I don't know why not. Heck, for TiVo, it would seem a bonus to offer plug-n-play expandability with PATA or SATA drives - they only sell the service, and the more programming features, the better their position.
For my wife, the best part of the whole thing are the suggestions. It's likely the reason that we will jump from DTV when they pull the plug on TiVo. She doesn't want to surf around for shows to record, she wants to pick and choose from shows that are similar to a few select genres. Her tivo has gotten pretty good after some training, and now she has 20-30 hours of programming that shes interested in when she grabs the remote. I'm not aware of any other DVR box with that functionality.
Of course, TiVo, being cash strapped, can't fling themselves against the litigation wall to put all the really good features into their boxes. Replay tried and died. I just wish TiVo would play quite as nice with the content police.
Oh, come on now. You could record stuff just like usual, but there'd be a popup for each show that said "you can view this recorded show only once. To keep this show, you can buy it without commercials for just $x from iTMS by pressing the thumbs up button now." They'll give you a second chance to buy it when the show ends, while the unit self-deletes the program.
And, yes, you'll be able to download it to your iPod, but only with purchase of the iTMS content version.
You've missed that part about human nature that turns your statement into:
The penalty for getting caught using a cell phone while driving is worse then the cost of a hands free set.
You see, that little "getting caught" part is the real wild card. Do you pay up the $$$ up front, or take your chances that you won't be snagged by law enforcement? Here in the US, most people exceed the speed limit - some by a large amount, but on an infrequent basis. Despite the knowledge that an extra 15 or 20 mph might only get them to a local destination minutes or seconds faster, and getting pulled over will cost them at least 10 minutes (and lots of $$$), they exceed the speed limit. If I only talk on the phone once in a while, why spring for a handsfree system - I probably won't get caught.
To many dumb-ass automatic drivers forgetting that you have to push in the clutch if the car is in gear when you start it. I hate to admit it, but I drive an auto, and have for long enough that when I get into a stick, the first stop I come to usually results in a bit of a jar!
No to be picky, but as you hit smooth steel, I'm guessing that you haven't stopped quickly enough ;-)
As for me, I'm bummed that my car is an automatic (manual isn't even an option in this model, afaik). It means that if I'm on the RR tracks and the car stalls, I can't just put it in 1st gear and crank the engine with the starter and roll off the tracks. Now _that's_ what I call dangerous. (Yes, that was tongue in cheek) (Yes, I've use that trick in the past, but not to get off RR tracks - I used it to get uphill the last 50' into a gas station).
I think the final buffing of the utilitarian, squared off case using $100 bills might be the thing that gets you. As you've read, IBMs line the boardroom table, but Dells populate the cubespace. Grace and Beauty are not terms that often get used in conjunction with the Hummer H1, but executives who dropped 100k on theirs will be very proud indeed. Most people who pay a premium are enamoured with the looks. Even if it looks ugly, it promotes envy if there's a big price tag stuck to it (and hence, improves its desirability).
;-)
Given a durable, fast machine - would the "typical consumer" purchase the one that looks like a thinkpad, or the one that looks like a powerbook? We already know what all those yuppy executives have in their pockets...and it's got white earphones.
What if a manager read the human readable EULA for let's say microsoft office?
A: He or she wouldn't give a shit.
Why? You're either not in compliance and don't care (because the chances of getting caught are so small), or you're in compliance for the moment and when you decide to stray from it you won't care (because the chances of getting caught are so small). More to the point, you use the software because you need to interoperate with the rest of your business peers, and your peers use Microsoft Office. There is no reasonable way for you, the lowly manager, to enact a software format change at all of your peer shops. Therefore, you play the game, because you play or you learn to play the 5 gallon bucket with a couple of dowel rods for the coins people throw at you to try and make you shut up. And people just don't want to shut you up badly enough to put your kids through college.
I would disagree. I would instead say that we are a culture who blindly purchases brand names with very little actual research into performance. Sytle is everything. IBM has style. Lenovo doesn't. Nobody want's a middling performance, ugly laptop/ Lets' face it - IBM thinkpads have never been speed demons, and they are the butt-ugliest, clunky-looking laptops out there. But IBM - I B M - now that's a name that means confidence and performance. And premium prices mean premium goods.
Lenovo. Well, this "new" (to American ears) Chinese company may have bought the ThinkPad name, but there no IBM. Nosireebob. We need something that stands for quality. A company that would never cut corners. A solid performer that believes in quality over raw profits. Those boys at Hewlett Packard have been around forever and I know that name. It must stand for a good product. So now that IBM, the venerable old company, is not producing laptops, we'll go with HP. Rock solid, I tell you. (Yes everything about HP is tongue in cheek...Thanks, Carly).
This has very little to do with xenophobia, and much to do with brand recognition.
I think you sum up my point well, "... I challenge anyone to find a laptop that isn't made primarily overseas." And yet, we buy them by the landfill-load. It's not about where they're made, it's about what name is on the cover. It's no different than the way be buy cars, clothes, appliances, and consumer electronics. Nobody would buy Lenovo bought Nike people woudn't buy Lenovo athletic shoes - even if they made them in the same Chinese factory.
Ah, but what you've missed is that many humans seem not to have this capability for analytical thought you would like to teach. I'm not sure whether its been beaten out of kids by their brainless parents, or whether they were born that way, but a large proportion of the current adult population really can't think analytically at all. Moreover, it's a very hard thing to test for in a standardized way. How can you leave no child behind, if you don't have a standard by which to determine if they are behind? Facts, on the other hand, are very easy to test for.
Put another way, offer to pose a word problem to most adults and you'll see pupils dilating in fear. Now, you and I and the rest of the "smart" people know damned well that all a word problem is is a way to test if you can actually connect phyical conditions to a static, rules based concept (typically arithmetic or algebra). It's coming up with 2+3=? instead of a teacher asking you what 2+3 is. The latter is easy, the former is more complex.
This problem is continued at higher levels, even through the graduate degrees. During my masters work, most of the courses (in strucutral engineering) focused on applying the proper techniques to solve for stresses and stains in materials based on a set of given loads. Well, sad to say, that is the easy part of any task. I didn't have a single class that was focused on determining how to figure out what loads were actually going to be acting on the materials. And that happens to be where the real work is. I can teach a high school graduate how to find the right table and apply a simple formula to get an answer. It's much more difficult to figure out where the loads are coming from in a complex load path.
So, yes, we need more focus on critical thought. Unfortunately, I don't see things getting better from either the political or practical side.
So...you want a Newton that's a little smaller and has modern electronics.
That's because the founders knew that the electorate couldn't really be trusted to vote directly for high offices. Who would have suspected the irony.
No, it's a very cheap vodka which is useful only for small fires and watermelons (so I've heard).
So how come it won't just render a "back" gesture instaed of trying repost the !$%% data to have the server regenerate the page? That's what the !@#$#@$ reload button is for.
Sorry 'bout that. Its just that the "instant" back (w/o re-post) is one of the things I miss from opera. I'm sure all of my other annoyances could be fixed with plugins in ff, but I don't have time to find them (mozilla.org is terribly unorganized, imho).
You can make that as a medical assistant anywhere. Hell, they're thowing cash bonses at med techs around here, too. Nobody wants to do those lousy jobs. Bad hours, nasty assignments, have to deal with doctors all the time (there are few managers worse than engineers - doctors are in that class).
This job only requires a HS education. And I'm nowhere near a large city.
I didn't advertise the salary, just experience range. I could have been offering $40k for all they knew. Think of your C++ as analogous to the "extra" training I have to do anyway for someone who already knows how to run basic AutoCAD (I'll train them in the vertical apps, addons and custom progrmas we use that they'd never get in high school or college). Would you hire someone who had never programmed before? Would you hire someone who knew Fortran and Basic for a job doing embedded machine code? (sorry, age showing on that one)
Right now, most jobs in this field with benefits are paying under $25k for freshouts with HS or AA degrees. But everybody wants to make $100k. *shrug* Looks like I'll just return that email from the guy in New Delhi (I'm kidding!)
True, but hanging sheet rock doesn't put you in a office with benefits. (around here, rockers get $7-10/hr with no benefits)
An electrician will make even more - $15-20/hr isn't unheard of for an employee with good skills.
Hell, if you really want to make money, invest your college tuition in a front end loader and go solo. You can push dirt all year for $85/hr.