That's why all the 'complexity' requirements that get shoved into login systems are so inane. A 9 letter dictionary word (fantastic!) is a perfectly reasonable password in a situation where the attacker is forced to use the official authentication system.
I'm just glad there is enough interest in paying for the performance to keep the development moving at a decent clip, flash really does look like it will have a big advantage for laptop users that are not obsessed with storing weeks worth of video.
Being an absolute, this statement: "The cost of power from solar will not get cheaper." is almost certainly incorrect. Hopefully it is incorrect by hundreds of percent, and not 1%. Inflation is fun, it doesn't actually increase the cost of anything, it simply decreases the attainability. That sounds like a crazy thing to say, but the dollar price of corn or a car has nothing to do with what it takes to produce either one (the dollar price of energy affects those things, but it doesn't actually affect the amount of energy that it takes to obtain energy...).
I understood you were saying that solar gets relatively cheaper as the cost of fossil fuels rises, and I was pointing out that it also gets relatively cheaper when manufacturing processes improve, and when the efficiency of a given surface area is improved (process improvements can happen separately from technological improvements). Current cells probably aren't something that we can run a civilization on, but I don't think we need to make them 10 times better to do that, only 2 or 3 to make a go of it.
There are plenty of economic issues, but life in these United States is a poor lens to look at global conditions through; if you look elsewhere in the world, the last 25 years have brought nearly continuous progress and improvements in quality of life (there are lots of areas where this is not true, but billions of people have increased their quality of life, and only hundreds of millions have faced further hardship. That can be reason for hope or despair...).
I'm hopeful for a solar tipping point, where it becomes obviously cheaper and investment explodes, driving costs even lower. It's only hope, but every manufacturing improvement, efficiency improvement and increase in the price of oil brings it closer. Carrots are a pretty good demonstration that it is possible to do solar in a way that is super energy positive (the seeds are *tiny*), I'm not familiar with how current cells compare to photosynthesis though (I would presume that there is a good bit of head room). So yeah, I should probably say that I am waiting for solar to make sense compared to burning stuff, not that I am waiting for efficiency.
As far as agriculture, do you mean that overall agricultural output will peak soon, or that the productivity of a given area of land is going to begin to decrease? I am under the impression that it will take more than a few years to run out of land (quite a lot less is lying fallow due to corn ethanol) and that a lot of land could be put to more productive use.
Water is scary, but I live in Michigan, so it is only scary in the sense that everybody wants to take my clean, hyper-abundant fresh water away. I'm not sure that human projects will affect the general amount of rainfall received here inside of 50 years (we get a great deal of our weather from the Pacific Ocean), but I can see a big chunk of Lake Michigan getting drained away, which would suck.
"I will carefully examine all federal spending and look for ways to reduce the budget without impacting the quality of programs or services provided. Hopefully some programs can simply be ended, if they have accomplished the goal that they were established to accomplish, or if they have been demonstrated to be less effective than other measures."
But that's true for almost any candidate and for almost any position, people don't differ that much on general positions, they differ on specific things.
For example, people aren't against better health care for everyone, they are against government programs for better health care for everyone. Or, they aren't against lower taxes, they are against lower taxes for people that aren't them.
Yeah, I think the age thing is going to be a bigger and bigger deal. I think McCain is probably doing about as well as he is going to right now, and that whatever candidate the Democrats pick will gather strength towards the election as people give more careful consideration to a (3 years in) 74 year old president that has had tumors removed 3 times.
The numbers on that site boil down to "Clinton does better in Florida and Ohio".
If Clinton got nominated, McCain would poison Florida, and I don't think she would do as well as she is polling. Obama will improve in Florida as he convinces them that it was the old guard of the party, not him, that was responsible for the rule shenanigans.
People answer polls based on how they are feeling; lots of things cause people to have dramatic changes of feeling over 5 months. I would love it if that site had a reconstruction of the 2000 or 2004 election indicating how accurate the poll based prediction was 5 months before the election (of course, I didn't look very hard, so maybe there is one).
The 2 parties are not nearly as ideologically united as parties in smaller countries though, and the national candidates are not always from the same ideological houses.
Non advantageous mutations can persist and spread in a population. Two mutations that are not advantageous could combine to create an advantage dozens of generations after they first arose. A simple "fitness" model is not adequate to model evolution.
There have been about 2 dozen posts about these discs being available in truck stops. If they can sell them for $5 to truckers, rather than $10, and the trucker doesn't care about having The Zany Adventures of Billy the Mailman in a permanent format, who is society to step in and make the trucker pay $5 extra?
I mean, figure the diesel a long haul truck burns in a day and you aren't going to care so much about consuming 5 ounces of plastic and a non amount of landfill space.
The only issue with landfills (outside of megacities) is NIMBY. There is plenty of space, but not necessarily space that people are happy to have a landfill on. Inside of megacities, it is still NIMBY, but the population makes the backyard in that statement rather large. The landfill in a county near here is probably going to shut down soon, as they aren't receiving enough trash to charge competitive rates. The largest town in the county is currently paying 3 times the out of county disposal fee in order to keep their trash in county.
With any luck, one of the crackpot trash-to-energy inventors will be legit, and landfills will become valuable sources of energy, and then go away completely.
There are eventual physical limits given our current understanding, but part of what makes progress different is that our current understanding can change, obliterating what we thought the limits were. The amount of energy utilized today would be unthinkable 100 years ago, and the amount of energy used 100 years ago would be unthinkable 1,000 years ago. Still, there are real measurable energy inputs for growing and maintaining a human, so upper limits on that kind of thing are more reasonable than arbitrary upper limits on what is 'possible'.
I don't expect things to improve forever, but we have a long ways to go, and your "pish posh" is probably as far off as the singularity folks' "Gee willikers".
Slashdot Mirror
Try eating more vegetables.
Tuesdays and Thursdays?
That's why all the 'complexity' requirements that get shoved into login systems are so inane. A 9 letter dictionary word (fantastic!) is a perfectly reasonable password in a situation where the attacker is forced to use the official authentication system.
He didn't fail to get his website link right at the top of the page.
I'm just glad there is enough interest in paying for the performance to keep the development moving at a decent clip, flash really does look like it will have a big advantage for laptop users that are not obsessed with storing weeks worth of video.
Being an absolute, this statement: "The cost of power from solar will not get cheaper." is almost certainly incorrect. Hopefully it is incorrect by hundreds of percent, and not 1%. Inflation is fun, it doesn't actually increase the cost of anything, it simply decreases the attainability. That sounds like a crazy thing to say, but the dollar price of corn or a car has nothing to do with what it takes to produce either one (the dollar price of energy affects those things, but it doesn't actually affect the amount of energy that it takes to obtain energy...).
I understood you were saying that solar gets relatively cheaper as the cost of fossil fuels rises, and I was pointing out that it also gets relatively cheaper when manufacturing processes improve, and when the efficiency of a given surface area is improved (process improvements can happen separately from technological improvements). Current cells probably aren't something that we can run a civilization on, but I don't think we need to make them 10 times better to do that, only 2 or 3 to make a go of it.
There are plenty of economic issues, but life in these United States is a poor lens to look at global conditions through; if you look elsewhere in the world, the last 25 years have brought nearly continuous progress and improvements in quality of life (there are lots of areas where this is not true, but billions of people have increased their quality of life, and only hundreds of millions have faced further hardship. That can be reason for hope or despair...).
I'm hopeful for a solar tipping point, where it becomes obviously cheaper and investment explodes, driving costs even lower. It's only hope, but every manufacturing improvement, efficiency improvement and increase in the price of oil brings it closer. Carrots are a pretty good demonstration that it is possible to do solar in a way that is super energy positive (the seeds are *tiny*), I'm not familiar with how current cells compare to photosynthesis though (I would presume that there is a good bit of head room). So yeah, I should probably say that I am waiting for solar to make sense compared to burning stuff, not that I am waiting for efficiency.
As far as agriculture, do you mean that overall agricultural output will peak soon, or that the productivity of a given area of land is going to begin to decrease? I am under the impression that it will take more than a few years to run out of land (quite a lot less is lying fallow due to corn ethanol) and that a lot of land could be put to more productive use.
Water is scary, but I live in Michigan, so it is only scary in the sense that everybody wants to take my clean, hyper-abundant fresh water away. I'm not sure that human projects will affect the general amount of rainfall received here inside of 50 years (we get a great deal of our weather from the Pacific Ocean), but I can see a big chunk of Lake Michigan getting drained away, which would suck.
Right.
He needed to say:
"I will carefully examine all federal spending and look for ways to reduce the budget without impacting the quality of programs or services provided. Hopefully some programs can simply be ended, if they have accomplished the goal that they were established to accomplish, or if they have been demonstrated to be less effective than other measures."
but he said things like:
"I will abolish the department of Education."
and people stopped listening.
Either your math is more awesome than normal math, or you are making quite the comment on Reagan's second term.
Do you fear the broom that speaks?
But that's true for almost any candidate and for almost any position, people don't differ that much on general positions, they differ on specific things.
For example, people aren't against better health care for everyone, they are against government programs for better health care for everyone. Or, they aren't against lower taxes, they are against lower taxes for people that aren't them.
If I am remembering what I heard correctly, they have each received more votes in the primary than anyone in any previous primary.
That could still be indifference, but if it is, it is the least amount of indifference in a long time.
Isn't one of the things he is running on improved international relations?
The real interesting thing will be to see what Bill does on January 21st, 2009. Does he file for divorce? Does she? Etc...
Yeah, I think the age thing is going to be a bigger and bigger deal. I think McCain is probably doing about as well as he is going to right now, and that whatever candidate the Democrats pick will gather strength towards the election as people give more careful consideration to a (3 years in) 74 year old president that has had tumors removed 3 times.
The numbers on that site boil down to "Clinton does better in Florida and Ohio".
If Clinton got nominated, McCain would poison Florida, and I don't think she would do as well as she is polling. Obama will improve in Florida as he convinces them that it was the old guard of the party, not him, that was responsible for the rule shenanigans.
People answer polls based on how they are feeling; lots of things cause people to have dramatic changes of feeling over 5 months. I would love it if that site had a reconstruction of the 2000 or 2004 election indicating how accurate the poll based prediction was 5 months before the election (of course, I didn't look very hard, so maybe there is one).
The 2 parties are not nearly as ideologically united as parties in smaller countries though, and the national candidates are not always from the same ideological houses.
Non advantageous mutations can persist and spread in a population. Two mutations that are not advantageous could combine to create an advantage dozens of generations after they first arose. A simple "fitness" model is not adequate to model evolution.
No, no, IndustrialComplex can agree with Ron Paul, and most people are just like IndustrialComplex, so most people can agree with Ron Paul.
I'm confused. You managed to post a comment, but you apparently have no idea what the internet is.
It is very perplexing.
Sweet Zombie Jesus.
There have been about 2 dozen posts about these discs being available in truck stops. If they can sell them for $5 to truckers, rather than $10, and the trucker doesn't care about having The Zany Adventures of Billy the Mailman in a permanent format, who is society to step in and make the trucker pay $5 extra?
I mean, figure the diesel a long haul truck burns in a day and you aren't going to care so much about consuming 5 ounces of plastic and a non amount of landfill space.
The only issue with landfills (outside of megacities) is NIMBY. There is plenty of space, but not necessarily space that people are happy to have a landfill on. Inside of megacities, it is still NIMBY, but the population makes the backyard in that statement rather large. The landfill in a county near here is probably going to shut down soon, as they aren't receiving enough trash to charge competitive rates. The largest town in the county is currently paying 3 times the out of county disposal fee in order to keep their trash in county.
With any luck, one of the crackpot trash-to-energy inventors will be legit, and landfills will become valuable sources of energy, and then go away completely.
Sanctimonious much? Or maybe you maintain a twenty foot petrocarbon free zone around your person?
Screaming "Stay away from me, that coats made of plastic, stay away from me" would be hilarious.
There are eventual physical limits given our current understanding, but part of what makes progress different is that our current understanding can change, obliterating what we thought the limits were. The amount of energy utilized today would be unthinkable 100 years ago, and the amount of energy used 100 years ago would be unthinkable 1,000 years ago. Still, there are real measurable energy inputs for growing and maintaining a human, so upper limits on that kind of thing are more reasonable than arbitrary upper limits on what is 'possible'.
I don't expect things to improve forever, but we have a long ways to go, and your "pish posh" is probably as far off as the singularity folks' "Gee willikers".
http://gizmodo.com/391736/steve-ballmer-egged-in-hungary