"On par" in what sense? Wind power can already be generated in some areas at $.05/kwh, even without the economies of scale that would come from greater adoption.
On par in the sense of density. How many thousands of acres of "wind farm" does it take to equal the 6 million cubic feet per second of water they use for power generation at Niagara?
If you factor in the environmental problems caused by coal, hydro, and nuclear, plus the security risks posed by fission byproducts (costs which aren't being factored into the sticker price), the wind power that is being produced now looks like a great deal.
Great deal or not, there's not enough of it.
Don't give me this, "Y' kanna cheat the laws o' physics, Cap'n!" It's obvious that some amount of wind power is already being produced at economically competitive prices, so something in your analysis is fishy to say the least.
Whether you understand the physics of it is laregely irrelevant (and you obviously don't). There aren't many places where the wind is consistent enough and strong enough to make economically feasible. Even then, it's purely supplementary because it's too dilute and unpredictable to depend on for all power.
Wind isn't a concentrated energy source, but it doesn't have to be. You overcome the dispersed nature of it by putting up large numbers of them and by making the rotors really big.
Again, there aren't enough places where the wind is both reliable enough, and strong enough to provide anything more than a small supplementary power source.
Anyhow, all mass has the same energy density, including air: 9.0x10^16 joules / kg. Even Einstein knows this, and he's dead. Take that, Mister "I know physics!"
Yes, very droll. I eagerly await your proposal for how we can extract this energy in a controlled and economical manner.
Perhaps you fail to see the point of this assertion. Now you know how I felt when I read your post. One clear misapplication of a single scientific principle deserves another. If wind power is so obviously rendered impractical by the physics, where are the legions of physicists protesting it as a dead end?
It's not a dead end. There just aren't enough places with winds consistent and strong enough to generate a meaningful amount of power. I don't understand why you're having trouble with this. Building more and bigger windmills doesn't make it more windy.
But, I've gotta say, I think this approach favors... programmers who tend to think at an abstract level, whereas what I've found to be a more typically useful skill is the ability to translate business requirements (ie, what the customer wants) into code. Christ Almighty, mod parent up so that more people might see and understand this! In my line of work I deal with many kinds of microcontroller based systems which are configured via serial cable with one-off PC-based "front ends". As a result, I end up working with all manner of shoddy crap cobbled together in Visual Basic by electronic engineers whose idea of a "logical interface" is (apparently) to model the GUI after the layout of the parts on the circuit board. They're all whizzes at coding the devices, but they can't seem to grasp that whole "usability" thing. To set a device to turn off at 9pm and turn on at 8am M-F, first you define an event type to 0800-2100 and remember the number the app assigns that event as. Then you go to the day-type table and define a day as consisting of one or more events (again this is given a number). Then you create a schedule type, which consists of 7 days, each assigned a number as defined by the day-type table. This schedule type (a number!) is then filled in in a box on the device configuration screen. None of these screens are easily accessible from one another, and each screen must be exited back to the top menu to get to the others. We quit buying from that vendor solely because they never improved their front end-- their controller hardware was outstanding. I actually got ahold of the engineer who wrote the software for another such product once, and he practically hung up on me when I offered to send him the improved front end *I* wrote to crib from-- or even steal, if he wanted. They still send out the latest updates to that turd, which I promptly integrate into my vastly superior in-house version. I'm not even bragging here. I'm no coding wizard, I'm a just a process engineer. My version is only just OK. The "official" version is simply horrifyingly bad. Imagine a window full of list boxes that can't be resized beyond 640x480 because all the objects are of fixed size. If you maximize the window, all the contents remain crammed into a 640x480 box in the center, surrounded by empty gray space Why? The engineer's excuse: "Because many customers are working at 640x480 resolution on older hardware". I tried to explain that list boxes can be resized to fit arbitrary window dimensions, but he just didn't get it.
$string = "this is a sentence."; print join ' ', reverse split/[ \.]/, $string; print '.';
Okay, now do it without using a built-in split, join, or reverse function. Oh, yeah, and make sure the result ends up in the same initial string variable (or string buffer object, if you're working in a language with immutable strings) without using any extra storage space beyond a single character.
It's not as easy as just splitting, reversing the resulting array, and joining it back together. This is a test to see how you handle string and array manipulation, not whether or not you happen to know the language or standard library. My base assumption is that you can do most "simple" interview questions in three lines of code or less if I allowed you to use built-in structures or methods.:)
Are you hiring coders or puzzle makers? Do you also ask them to write the code left handed?
And that isn't even a very hard puzzle-- it just weeds out those who can't think under pressure. Move characters one at a time from the end to the beginning, shifting the remaining characters right and keeping count of what you've moved. When you hit a space, start shoe-horning the characters in offset by the length of the words already moved. The only varibles needed outside the string array are a single character, the offset, and the count. By "without using any extra storage space beyond a single character" I presume you only mean "no extra string storage", as stepping through a string is impossible without a reference count.
Wired is an overrated collection of BS. I read it for a while during the bubble extasia, found it was crap, stopped reading it. I picked up an issue (that one with the atheists) a few weeks ago to see if it had matured : in my opinion it has not. People who write for Wired should get out and do something useful. Same here. I read it Way Back When, and now (unfortunately) we ended up with a subscription when my wife was forced to chose something as part of subscribing to Salon.com. I tried to read the first issue last night. You can't tell where the ads start and the over-graphic-ized articles begin. There's still too few words, too much "artsy" blank space. The only difference is that now there they have more ads than they used to. It's pretty much all crap. Plus the stink of the ink fumes gave me a headache after 20-odd pages.
THe orchard-lexus metaphor is one of many literary constructs in its time-honored genre:
"Is there anything more beautiful than a beautiful, beautiful flamingo, flying across in front of a beautiful sunset? And he's carrying a beautiful rose in his beak, and also he's carrying a very beautiful painting with his feet. And also, you're drunk."
-- Jack Handey
"Love is like racing across the frozen tundra on a snowmobile which flips over, trapping you underneath. At night, the ice-weasels come."
-- Matt Groening
Unfortunately, I don't think Mr Sterling was trying to be funny.
Why impose additional constraints on new solutions to old problems? Hydroelectric power also won't work outside a very few areas where there is enough water and elevation difference, coal thermoelectric plants are impractical outside areas where you can strip mine coal, nuclear fission power plant is not feasible where you don't have uranium available (or water for cooling for that matter, or where it is IMBY). All this "downsides" didn't stop us from building and using each one of them. Why should we now suddenly make such an exception for wind power plants only? It's not simply pessimism, it's basic freakin' physics. 12 million cubic feet of water falling from 170 feet is a concentrated energy source. Coal, at 24 megajoules per kilogram, is a concentrated energy source. Uranium, at 560 gigajoules per kilogram, is a very concentrated energy source. Wind isn't even in the same class. It's not transportable, and it's highly dilute. There is no super-efficient windmill design waiting in the wings for some visionary designer that will revolutionize wind power generation and put it on par wit hydro, coal, or nuclear. The energy simply isn't there!.
I suggest studying a little physics. It really helps in cases like this.
How many of you clowns pooh-poohing this guy's composition because it's "just editing" would bee messing your drawers in awe if the music in question was (say) the original 1963 theme to Doctor Who? You know, the one Delia Derbyshire composed and "recorded" by physically cutting and splicing (in some cases) individual notes recorded on magnetic tape?
This feedback loop, and the greenhouse gas/temperature feedback loop, make me wonder something: How does such a self-perpetuating mechanism ever get canceled/reversed? At the risk of stating the painfully obvious, this particular feedback loop would clearly stop once the ice melted. In a broader view, such feedback systems generally end when they produce enough of a secondary effect in other systems to cause them to disrupt the loop. In this case, there is some speculation that melting ice would disrupt certain warm ocean currents, thus causing a cooling trend. Or maybe something else would happen. Point is, the system is such a mind bogglingly complex array of variables that no one has the slightest idea how what will really happen when the ice melts.
Robert X. Cringely says they are almost singlehandedly responsible for the death of the major newspapers. His point is that the highest margin activity at news papers is the classified ads. Even the circulation department is a net loss. And you can't compete with Free. There is one giant, glaringly obvious flaw in this whole line of reasoning. It assumes nothing has arisen to replace that leftover from the 18th century, the printed newpaper. You need to ask why craigslist has been able to undercut newspapers so effectively. Has some new, less expensive form of communication arisen? Something that perhaps doesn't rely on physically moving a massive amount of rolled wood pulp around every day? I quote Dr Egon Spengler: "Print is dead."
And double wrong.
Artists do get paid for used disc sales actually. By what mechanism? I just sold a stack of Motorhead CDs to a friend last month. I have yet to see anyone show up demanding Lemmy's cut of the $10.
I find real humor in the people that want things but think that they just should not have to pay for them. You're basically on Television Welfare. You feel that it's the responsibility of others to pay for the things that you want.
Grow up. How much do you pay for TV shows when you watch them on television? Oh, that's right, it's free, paid for by sponsors who insert ads that no one who's tech savvy sees because they skip over them with [tivo|mythTV|replayTV], or regular folks miss because they're out of the room taking a piss or making a sandwich.
It's pretty obvious what's going on. Most of the people who want an iPod have already bought one. Most of those people have already bought all their favorite songs. I think what we've been seeing up till now is simply "upgrade" activity: people switching over to "MP3" from CD, and RE-buying the hardware and media to replicate what they had before.
James Kim is a good proof of the observation:
"If you are not winter-weather savvy enough to avoid getting stuck in the snow on a deserted mountain road, you are probably not not equipped to hike more than a quarter mile or so to get help. Stay with your car."
Arson science is so advanced; it can tell the difference between a cigarette inadvertantly thrown in the trash and one purposefully thrown in. I heard they get psychic investigators to do the actual analysis. You know, it's funny, but if there's one thing I've learned from watch all those true crime shows on A&E over the years, it's that most police investigators don't solve crimes by collecting evidence until they have enough to point to the guilty party. On the contrary, they frequently "have a hunch" or "follow their gut" and then badger the suspects until somebody 'fesses up, or someone with a beef with the perpetrator drops a dime on them. Sure, they have all sorts of ways of justifying their "hunches"; my favorite is the reversible combination of "his alibi just didn't make sense" and "his alibi was a little too good". By the end of the show, though, I find myself wondering are there of these cops following their hunches down the wrong path? Obviously the in the cases they made into episodes of American Justice or City Confidential the "hunches" turned out correct... but what about the dozens of others in these cops' careers? For example, I wonder how many borderline retarded folks they've put away by "interrogating" them using the method of "are you sure you didn't kill him? Maybe you don't remember. Sometimes people forget things. Sign this paper and we'll let you go to the bathroom."
The authors of the Federalist Papers were half of a debate that goes all the way back to the beginning of the country. The other half included people like Thomas Jefferson.
The point is, the "Founding Fathers" thought differently from each other. Arguably, that's why the 2nd Amendment is so vague in the first place. (Mind you, "vague" in this place means "absolutely clear", except that there are two diametrically opposed sides who each feel that it absolutely and clearly supports their point of view.)
So I appreciate the illustrative quotations, but this is a difficult debate that goes way back. You're not going to find an absolute answer in looking at the Founding Fathers. You're not seriously suggesting that there actually was a debate back then about whether the people should keep and bear arms, are you? There wasn't any debate at all on that issue. They had just won a difficult war of independence that was only possible because the people were armed. Whether or not that would continue was considered a foregone conclusion. The debate around which the Federalist Papers were written was whether or not we should have a federal government or not. There simply was no "anti-gun" position back then except from tyrants who would prefer their subjects disarmed and docile.
Furthermore, the 2nd Amendment is only "vague" to those who do not know its history; and though there are some that claim it clearly outlines only a collective right are absolutely wrong--- they are ignorant of its history as well, choosing instead to interpret it according to their personal biases, instead of its actual content and the explanations of its writers of how they decided upon that content. The 2nd covers two subjects: the right of the states to have their own militias, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms. This is documented quite clearly in historical texts. Anyone claiming the "well regulated militia" clause has or was intended to have any bearing on the right of the individual to bear arms, is willfully ignoring the known facts of the constitutional debate 220 years ago.
You'll have a 500 lb bomb dropped from 20,000 feet.
Or a missile fired from an unmanned drone. Idiot. If it gets to the point where they're ordering the military to bomb civilian areas within the US, I guaran-fucking-tee that much of the military will switch sides. The military is not full of mindless drones. It's full of people with friends and families here. Police are a different matter. Police are indoctrinated with a adversarial relationship to the public.
Unorganized fails the "well regulated" test. You are wrong. Not being on active duty doesn't mean you can't shoot straight or march in formation. That's all "well regulated" means. Part of becoming and staying well regulated in times of peace involves being practiced and familiar with firearms. When only the government has weapons, such practice and familiarity is impossible.
What if your town decided to create a militia? I'm not talking about a police force (which performs the local security duties of the militia), but force that is armed for battle. Could the state or federal government step in and intervene? I don't think so. They shouldn't be able to, but they certainly would--- and have. In the late 60's and early 70's Black Panther Party members formed their own community militias and started patrolling under arms as a check on rampant, unpunished abuse of power by racist, all-white police forces. Since this was not illegal, many jurisdictions decided (since it was NEGROES doing it) it ought to be, constitution be damned. As a result, it is now essentially illegal to walk around openly armed in public in most municipalities. While the politics of the BPP were highly questionable, their right to openly arm themselves publicly in defense of self and community absolutely should not have been infringed.
I find most vocal gun rights advocates leave out the "well regulated militia" clause if the second amendment. "Well regulated" means "practiced and capable". It has nothing to do with control or restriction. In the context of military forces of the time, it's the difference between regulars and irregulars. The former are men who can be counted on to shoot straight, obey commands, and not hide or run at the first volley of musket fire. The latter are random folks pulled off the street, handed firearms, then sent to the fight--- usually with little or no training.
I've always been amazed at how poorly that amendment parses. The perceived awkwardness stems from its attempt to address two issues that were of great concern at the time of drafting. Some delegates were more concerned with the possibility that the federal government would usurp the states' rights to call up the militia. Others were more concerned with the right of the individual to keep and bear arms. Both concerns are addressed in the 2nd Amendment; the former with the "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state" part, and the latter with the "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" part. The fact that the right of the states to call up militias is largely a non-issue now has led many people ignorant of history to think the first half is intended to modify the second. They're simply wrong. The Bill of Rights may have only ten original amendments, but they shoe-horned in far more than one right per amendment wherever they could.They were trying to strike a balance between covering as much as they could while not having it be so long that it would be mistaken for an exhaustive list of all rights.
So, a memo by the AJ explaining why they don't consider certain interrogation methods to be torture is proof that they engage in torture? I think you don't understand how this works. See, in a debate you need to show support for your assertion, not provide links to documents supporting your opponent's assertion.
in a country where you have millions of people who live in cities with substantial police forces Part of the purpose of an armed populace is to keep the police in their place. Police need to have some level of fear every time they kick in a door that it will escalate into a high profile gunfight that will highlight their disdain for the 4th amendment. Being able to arrest people easily because they have no means of resistance is a bad thing.
except that if the ruling entity--or those on its payroll--is the only one with weapons of war, Actually, the ones who physically have those weapons (the folks in the military) are "commoners" themselves, charged with defending the people. It's pretty difficult to turn a military like that against the populace, as they will have a tendency to switch sides. Really the only group that the government has trained as opposition to the people is law enforcement. We only need to be able to resist the police for a revolution to work. Police aren't really any better armed than the populace at large-- which is as it should be.
If you ignore the first part of the sentence you get: "The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
But why would they add the first part of the sentence if they didn't mean anything by it? The 2nd Amendment actually addresses two issues that were hotly debated at the time of the writing of the Bill of Rights. Some delegates were primarily concerned that the federal government would usurp the states' authority to organize state militias. Others were more concerned with the specific individual right to keep and bear arms. In an effort to keep the Bill of Rights as short as possible, they grouped as much stuff together as they could--- witness the 1st, which covers the press, speech, and religion. The first part of the 2nd is simply an acknowledgment that states retain the right to form militias.
And while I'm sadly not related (or perhaps just not very closely related) to Grace Hopper, it's still neat that someone else with that somewhat unusual last name is in computing.
There are 10742 "Hopper" entries in the white pages in the United States. You do not have an unusual last name-- it's just not common like Johnson or Smith. It ranks 827th out of over 88,000 names in the US, more common than Stein, Fitzpatrick, and Nielsen. My last name shows 314 matches, and I know a dozen of them as relatives. I don't even show up in most name databases. I have an unusual last name.
There is no such thing as a 6 hour tape, it is a 3 hour tape using low quality mode moving the tape slowly past the recorder's heads to extend recording time. The longest tape using media of reliable thickness is the T-120. Tape length is measured in number of minutes at SP speed. Therefore, the tape capable of recording 6 hours at EP speed is 120 minutes long--- 2 hours. There are 3 modes on a VCR: SP, LP, and EP. These correspond to three speeds of the motor: 1x, 2x, and 3x. They make T-180 tapes, which record 3,6, and 9 hours respectively, but quality is often poor. Now, while it's technically true that there is "no such thing" as a 6 hour tape by the standard of the industry (minutes at SP), in practice most companies market the T-120 as a "6 hour" tape because EP is the most commonly used mode by consumers.
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On par in the sense of density. How many thousands of acres of "wind farm" does it take to equal the 6 million cubic feet per second of water they use for power generation at Niagara?
If you factor in the environmental problems caused by coal, hydro, and nuclear, plus the security risks posed by fission byproducts (costs which aren't being factored into the sticker price), the wind power that is being produced now looks like a great deal.
Great deal or not, there's not enough of it.
Don't give me this, "Y' kanna cheat the laws o' physics, Cap'n!" It's obvious that some amount of wind power is already being produced at economically competitive prices, so something in your analysis is fishy to say the least.
Whether you understand the physics of it is laregely irrelevant (and you obviously don't). There aren't many places where the wind is consistent enough and strong enough to make economically feasible. Even then, it's purely supplementary because it's too dilute and unpredictable to depend on for all power.
Wind isn't a concentrated energy source, but it doesn't have to be. You overcome the dispersed nature of it by putting up large numbers of them and by making the rotors really big.
Again, there aren't enough places where the wind is both reliable enough, and strong enough to provide anything more than a small supplementary power source.
Anyhow, all mass has the same energy density, including air: 9.0x10^16 joules / kg. Even Einstein knows this, and he's dead. Take that, Mister "I know physics!"
Yes, very droll. I eagerly await your proposal for how we can extract this energy in a controlled and economical manner.
Perhaps you fail to see the point of this assertion. Now you know how I felt when I read your post. One clear misapplication of a single scientific principle deserves another. If wind power is so obviously rendered impractical by the physics, where are the legions of physicists protesting it as a dead end?
It's not a dead end. There just aren't enough places with winds consistent and strong enough to generate a meaningful amount of power. I don't understand why you're having trouble with this. Building more and bigger windmills doesn't make it more windy.
Okay, now do it without using a built-in split, join, or reverse function. Oh, yeah, and make sure the result ends up in the same initial string variable (or string buffer object, if you're working in a language with immutable strings) without using any extra storage space beyond a single character.
It's not as easy as just splitting, reversing the resulting array, and joining it back together. This is a test to see how you handle string and array manipulation, not whether or not you happen to know the language or standard library. My base assumption is that you can do most "simple" interview questions in three lines of code or less if I allowed you to use built-in structures or methods. :)
Are you hiring coders or puzzle makers? Do you also ask them to write the code left handed?And that isn't even a very hard puzzle-- it just weeds out those who can't think under pressure. Move characters one at a time from the end to the beginning, shifting the remaining characters right and keeping count of what you've moved. When you hit a space, start shoe-horning the characters in offset by the length of the words already moved. The only varibles needed outside the string array are a single character, the offset, and the count. By "without using any extra storage space beyond a single character" I presume you only mean "no extra string storage", as stepping through a string is impossible without a reference count.
THe orchard-lexus metaphor is one of many literary constructs in its time-honored genre:
"Is there anything more beautiful than a beautiful, beautiful flamingo, flying across in front of a beautiful sunset? And he's carrying a beautiful rose in his beak, and also he's carrying a very beautiful painting with his feet. And also, you're drunk."
-- Jack Handey
"Love is like racing across the frozen tundra on a snowmobile which flips over, trapping you underneath. At night, the ice-weasels come."
-- Matt Groening
Unfortunately, I don't think Mr Sterling was trying to be funny.
I suggest studying a little physics. It really helps in cases like this.
How many of you clowns pooh-poohing this guy's composition because it's "just editing" would bee messing your drawers in awe if the music in question was (say) the original 1963 theme to Doctor Who? You know, the one Delia Derbyshire composed and "recorded" by physically cutting and splicing (in some cases) individual notes recorded on magnetic tape?
It's pretty obvious what's going on. Most of the people who want an iPod have already bought one. Most of those people have already bought all their favorite songs. I think what we've been seeing up till now is simply "upgrade" activity: people switching over to "MP3" from CD, and RE-buying the hardware and media to replicate what they had before.
James Kim is a good proof of the observation:
"If you are not winter-weather savvy enough to avoid getting stuck in the snow on a deserted mountain road, you are probably not not equipped to hike more than a quarter mile or so to get help. Stay with your car."
The point is, the "Founding Fathers" thought differently from each other. Arguably, that's why the 2nd Amendment is so vague in the first place. (Mind you, "vague" in this place means "absolutely clear", except that there are two diametrically opposed sides who each feel that it absolutely and clearly supports their point of view.)
So I appreciate the illustrative quotations, but this is a difficult debate that goes way back. You're not going to find an absolute answer in looking at the Founding Fathers. You're not seriously suggesting that there actually was a debate back then about whether the people should keep and bear arms, are you? There wasn't any debate at all on that issue. They had just won a difficult war of independence that was only possible because the people were armed. Whether or not that would continue was considered a foregone conclusion. The debate around which the Federalist Papers were written was whether or not we should have a federal government or not. There simply was no "anti-gun" position back then except from tyrants who would prefer their subjects disarmed and docile.
Furthermore, the 2nd Amendment is only "vague" to those who do not know its history; and though there are some that claim it clearly outlines only a collective right are absolutely wrong--- they are ignorant of its history as well, choosing instead to interpret it according to their personal biases, instead of its actual content and the explanations of its writers of how they decided upon that content. The 2nd covers two subjects: the right of the states to have their own militias, and the right of the people to keep and bear arms. This is documented quite clearly in historical texts. Anyone claiming the "well regulated militia" clause has or was intended to have any bearing on the right of the individual to bear arms, is willfully ignoring the known facts of the constitutional debate 220 years ago.
I've always been amazed at how poorly that amendment parses. The perceived awkwardness stems from its attempt to address two issues that were of great concern at the time of drafting. Some delegates were more concerned with the possibility that the federal government would usurp the states' rights to call up the militia. Others were more concerned with the right of the individual to keep and bear arms. Both concerns are addressed in the 2nd Amendment; the former with the "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state" part, and the latter with the "the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed" part. The fact that the right of the states to call up militias is largely a non-issue now has led many people ignorant of history to think the first half is intended to modify the second. They're simply wrong. The Bill of Rights may have only ten original amendments, but they shoe-horned in far more than one right per amendment wherever they could.They were trying to strike a balance between covering as much as they could while not having it be so long that it would be mistaken for an exhaustive list of all rights.
So, a memo by the AJ explaining why they don't consider certain interrogation methods to be torture is proof that they engage in torture? I think you don't understand how this works. See, in a debate you need to show support for your assertion, not provide links to documents supporting your opponent's assertion.
And while I'm sadly not related (or perhaps just not very closely related) to Grace Hopper, it's still neat that someone else with that somewhat unusual last name is in computing.
There are 10742 "Hopper" entries in the white pages in the United States. You do not have an unusual last name-- it's just not common like Johnson or Smith. It ranks 827th out of over 88,000 names in the US, more common than Stein, Fitzpatrick, and Nielsen. My last name shows 314 matches, and I know a dozen of them as relatives. I don't even show up in most name databases. I have an unusual last name.