"No technological breakthrough at all"? Battery technology has been getting quite a lot better recent years.
"there is ample evidence that this will occur considerably sooner than non-hybrid (and non-electric) vehicles, just due to the higher maintenance and repair costs of hybrid vehicles that poor people won't be able to pay"? Again, really? I would rather expect there is/less/ that can break on an electric car, as they are quite a lot simpler (not so sure about hybrids due to the complex transmission systems). But if you say "ample evidence", I say "citation needed"...
Yup - here in Oslo, an abandoned monastery (and many other old buildings) got picked to pieces for the stone - it was easier to go there and pick the materials you needed, than to quary new materials. There are probably tons of similar examples in every old city.
This means we can to a certain degree simulate simpler systems, such as pions (composed as an up and an anti-up OR down+anti-down pluss all the gluons and "sea" quarks) using lattice QCD numerical simulations. But for a whole proton, the theory and our computers just aren't up to scratch. For a whole nuclei (which is simplified by "grouping" the quarks into protons and nucleons) it quickly gets VERY hairy as you move up the mass scale. Many-particle quantum dynamics is tough stuff, especially when the interactions get powerfull - and QCD is as powerfull as it gets...
The problem is that the strong force (QCD) is behaving really weirdly - in effect a proton is composed of an infinite amount of particles: Two up quarks an a down, together carrying most of the momentum (as measured in deep inelastic scattering experiments), a bunch of gluons which, well, glues everything together, and an infinite amount of quark-antiquark pairs.
Electric energy isn't exactly expensive in Norway - due to huge amounts of hydropower, its probably the cheapest in Europe, and probably cheaper than California. Most homes are heated by electricity - and it can get *COLD* in the winter. Prices have risen a bit lately, mostly due to stronger connections to the common EU grid, making export more viable. OTOH, we now avoid having huge peaks in price / availability problems some winters.
The case here is that Oslo invested in a huge garbage burner, which would deliver hot water for heating houses. A few years later they started a quite successfull recycling program, which drastically reduced the ammount of garbage to be burned.
By the way: I used to see the pipes from this plant from my living room window.
Let some guy/gal working at a university or similar, with a big fat pipe connected to the workstation, seed it. They are going to want it, and they might just leave it running overnight.
And yes, i've been that guy. Downloading/uploading torrents on gigabit link is good geek fun (especially since IT is OK with it, as it's legal:) ). A bit like petrolheads who like to see fast cars I guess:)
Why should he/she come up with a new solution (and the one you propose honestly sounds more complex), which requires different HW (migth be problematic if all the HW isn't in his control), if he/she already have a working solution?
About the cold thing: A huge fraction (about 50% i think) of new cars sold in Norway are diesels (cuz the fuel is cheaper AND you get better mileage...). During the winter (which can be quite cold), they put an additive at the pump which makes it work in the cold as well - its called "winter diesel". Most consumers won't know the difference.
Completely agree on the manual transmission tough - I rented a huge new fancy SUV in California ~1 year ago (got upgraded a few times), which was my first time driving automatic. The thing drove me crazy - it had tons of power, but no way of getting the torque I wanted for acceleration when I needed it. On a manual I'm used to being able to downshift in the preparation phase of overtaking someone, not *as* I'm doing it (with an invitable intermittent drop in power). But it (4WD) was a lot of fun on dirt roads at lower speed (when I could use it in "manual" mode)
US is anyway a funny country when it comes to transportation - no-one *ever* asks you if you've driven an automatic before when you rent a car with an european driving lisence, but you get a *VERY* lengthy explanation when you rent a bicycle...
Definitively. I have a few years old Logitech bluetooth mouse with BOTH wheel (mechanical switch between free-scroll and click-click mode) and (admittedly small) 3rd button. Works extremely well, after heavy (ab)use for a few years.
There are countries, such as parts (maybe whole) of Scandinavia, which has quite more ma-/paternity leave - in Norway its approximately 1 yr, must be shared between the parents. This is mandated through regulation, and the parents recieve 100% of their normal salary from the social security system while on leave.
"The rich" might loose their valuable beachfront property, but many poor in Bangladesh and other places will drown.
A small sadistic part of me is looking forward to see what our right-wing politicians who argue that (a) climate change is a conspiracy and (b) immigrants are evil once the people-flood sets in - hundreds of millions of people are not going to sit quietly on their hands and drown, no matter how much right-wing western politicians wish that is true... Lets just hope there are no mayor shortages before the worlds food production can adjust - but on the other hand, "someone else" will probably get the pointy end of that problem, too...
Well, despite of your "name of Scandinavian origin", you forgot one of the main countries in the region (*). Also, while most people of Norwegian decent in the US seems to be pickup-wielding Romniators, Obama is far-right compared to most of the people living in the country today (but admittedly, a bit more likable than most of our own outer right politicians). And while there are differences in culture and policy between the countries of Scandinavia, some of which might be the deeper reason for the historical facts you point to, the similarities are larger. Its all social democracy over here, and even the supposedly right-wing parties would never ever challenge that (with the exception of small groups of often somewhat crazy people, which are about as popular here as communists in the US...) - just how its organized.
(*) Denmark - I'll leave it up to you to explain their culture based on WW2/Napoleonic war allegiances.
Exactly what I was thinking as well: With only 100$, you can't possibly pay someone to give 1:1 feedback to the students on their work, discuss matters related to the subject, tutoring, and advising which directions a student that the tutor KNOWS could take etc. Especially, you can't write a thesis this way - its quite dependent on a lot of interaction with your supervisor(s)!
I did my BSc and MSc in Physics at a european public* university (Oslo), and from the beginning we had a lot of opportunity to discuss with our tutors, who where sometimes professors, sometimes PhD-students or good MSc students hired to do the tutoring. As a MSc-student, I also spent a lot of time with my supervisors, traveling multiple times to CERN, including staying there for two whole summers to work with people there and doing experimental work. The final MSc thesis work took a year to write (two full semesters) - something you can't really do all on your own. And then it had to be graded, meaning that three professors had to read all the 170-something dense pages of physics, maths, and computing, and finally grill me on it.
Additionally, I was TA'ing fresher students, learning them the basics of computational and experimental physics, probably bringing in quite a bit more than 100$ per student per course...
And then one thing you can't really replace in an on-line program: Counless hours discussing the subjects (and many other things) with my fellow students. Sometimes on a whiteboard filled with equations and diagrams in the physics student association kitchen/reading hall/party room, sometimes at a TA session, sometimes over a coffe or beer, and often into the late hours...
*=> It's payed by the governement - all the good universities here are. And I'm shure I cost a lot more than 100$ just in expenses - I wouldn't be surprised if it was more like 100'000$ at the end of the two progams. And then you can add that you automatically get good-terms loans, parts of which gets converted into stipends when you pass the exams...
Except that the motivation to remove the occupying force might be a bit stronger than whatever motivation exist in this case, don't you think? It might also have attracted a bit different set of people than it would in this case...
For the cases you are quoting, do you notice that the intruders are also carrying guns? Many other places where guns are harder to get, you don't need to expect a burgular to have a gun. And in some of your citations, such as the one from Fox, it would likely have been a non-story if there was no guns involved - instead it turned into a shootout which could easily have left all the three involved dead - plus innocent bystanders.
And then you have cases like the one which was all over the news in Louisiana (and maybe nationwide - I don't follow US news that closely) recently (sometime in the week before memorial day), where a unarmed, quite intoxicated and not exactly big and scary college girl got into two guys house. They where so scared that instead of calling the cops to mop her up, restraining her if neccessary (or just literally throwing her out and then locking the door), they decided to shoot her...
And then there is the thing about attacking the causes of crime, not just fighting the symptoms - but that is another discussion entirely. But comming from the outside, it seems that the problem is too many guns, making people feel they need guns to protect themselves. Can't you see the problem with that "solution"?
Yes, to remove them entirely is hard to impossible, but to reduce them to the insignificant is possible.
A few questions about your examples: - How many do you think will take the risk of making/owning illegal guns, if its heavily punished? Unlike drugs, you don't get a "gun habbit" (I hope?). - How many times is the guy holding the gun, and not the woman? I would guess that there are relevant statistics to be found. Or are you fantasizing about bedroom shootouts?
Except that he bought the gun legally - so actually *tighter* gun control, not less, may have prevented this massacre (which by the killed quite a few friends/siblings of friends of me, and where damn close to killing other people I know quite well). Who the *** needs a semi-automatic rifle/pistol for anything legit, except law enforcement and military?
Oh, and while its true that our police don't carry a gun regularly, and during normal operations need to call the central and ask for permission to break it out - they can also break the seal on their own initiative in an emergency situation, its just a bit more paperwork to do afterwards. Make it hard enough to get a "bad" gun, and its less likely that the bad guys get it.
Why he didn't get stopped? - The island is quite far from anywhere, ~1-1½ hours drive from the closest big city (where you have the equivalent of SWAT teams) - Its an island in a lake. Kind of hard to get to, especially when some of the leaders panicked and escaped in the ferry, and it being a lake, its not that easy to get another big boat quickly. - Lack of coordination between police and military - Mostly everything was a big disorganized mess, as the centre of the capital was just hit by a huge explosion. But then we all remember the extremely well coordinated response in the US to the attacks at 11/9, or the well thought out strategy in the aftermath?
Oh, and in the US, its customary to place armed guards at youth camp? You know, there was a off-duty police on the island. Guess who was shot ~first, in the back, by the terrorist who pretended to be a SWAT-equivalent armed policeman sent there to guard the kids?
Sorry to give you nightmares about reality, but you may watch Fox until bedtime, and remember that education is bad for God-fearing rednecks...
Oh. You have terrible terrible misconceptions there. If you resist the unarmed police in an effort not to pay your taxes, I guarantee you that police with guns will show up no matter which country on this planet you live on. LOL the QOTD is "The British are coming! The British are coming!"
Just making a point. And yes, if you resist them *with guns or something similar*, you are of course right.
... unless you happen to live in a country where the police doesn't carry guns in normal service. Oh, an we have high taxes too. Which buys us all the basic infrastructure stuff, pluss free as in progressive taxes healthcare and education (hey, we actually *get payed* by our gov't to get a degree - including BSc and MSc. Just love to tell that to americans, especially in the soon-having-three-kids-in-college age, just to see their jaw contact the ground.), and then some more stuff.
But as a lot of people on/. know is the absolute and holy truth, social democracies are of course scary hell incarnated, complete with death panels and everything, and the only good man is the one who starts with nothing but the latest in finance-fashion pinstriped shirt on his back and a 100M$ from dad.
Slashdot Mirror
"No technological breakthrough at all"? Battery technology has been getting quite a lot better recent years.
"there is ample evidence that this will occur considerably sooner than non-hybrid (and non-electric) vehicles, just due to the higher maintenance and repair costs of hybrid vehicles that poor people won't be able to pay"? Again, really? I would rather expect there is /less/ that can break on an electric car, as they are quite a lot simpler (not so sure about hybrids due to the complex transmission systems). But if you say "ample evidence", I say "citation needed"...
Yup - here in Oslo, an abandoned monastery (and many other old buildings) got picked to pieces for the stone - it was easier to go there and pick the materials you needed, than to quary new materials. There are probably tons of similar examples in every old city.
This means we can to a certain degree simulate simpler systems, such as pions (composed as an up and an anti-up OR down+anti-down pluss all the gluons and "sea" quarks) using lattice QCD numerical simulations. But for a whole proton, the theory and our computers just aren't up to scratch. For a whole nuclei (which is simplified by "grouping" the quarks into protons and nucleons) it quickly gets VERY hairy as you move up the mass scale. Many-particle quantum dynamics is tough stuff, especially when the interactions get powerfull - and QCD is as powerfull as it gets...
The problem is that the strong force (QCD) is behaving really weirdly - in effect a proton is composed of an infinite amount of particles: Two up quarks an a down, together carrying most of the momentum (as measured in deep inelastic scattering experiments), a bunch of gluons which, well, glues everything together, and an infinite amount of quark-antiquark pairs.
Electric energy isn't exactly expensive in Norway - due to huge amounts of hydropower, its probably the cheapest in Europe, and probably cheaper than California. Most homes are heated by electricity - and it can get *COLD* in the winter. Prices have risen a bit lately, mostly due to stronger connections to the common EU grid, making export more viable. OTOH, we now avoid having huge peaks in price / availability problems some winters.
The case here is that Oslo invested in a huge garbage burner, which would deliver hot water for heating houses. A few years later they started a quite successfull recycling program, which drastically reduced the ammount of garbage to be burned.
By the way: I used to see the pipes from this plant from my living room window.
Let some guy/gal working at a university or similar, with a big fat pipe connected to the workstation, seed it. They are going to want it, and they might just leave it running overnight.
And yes, i've been that guy. Downloading/uploading torrents on gigabit link is good geek fun (especially since IT is OK with it, as it's legal :) ). A bit like petrolheads who like to see fast cars I guess :)
Why should he/she come up with a new solution (and the one you propose honestly sounds more complex), which requires different HW (migth be problematic if all the HW isn't in his control), if he/she already have a working solution?
About the cold thing: A huge fraction (about 50% i think) of new cars sold in Norway are diesels (cuz the fuel is cheaper AND you get better mileage...). During the winter (which can be quite cold), they put an additive at the pump which makes it work in the cold as well - its called "winter diesel". Most consumers won't know the difference.
Completely agree on the manual transmission tough - I rented a huge new fancy SUV in California ~1 year ago (got upgraded a few times), which was my first time driving automatic. The thing drove me crazy - it had tons of power, but no way of getting the torque I wanted for acceleration when I needed it. On a manual I'm used to being able to downshift in the preparation phase of overtaking someone, not *as* I'm doing it (with an invitable intermittent drop in power). But it (4WD) was a lot of fun on dirt roads at lower speed (when I could use it in "manual" mode)
US is anyway a funny country when it comes to transportation - no-one *ever* asks you if you've driven an automatic before when you rent a car with an european driving lisence, but you get a *VERY* lengthy explanation when you rent a bicycle...
I know a Norwegian guy named Kim (first name, no asian relatives).
But the survival and procreation probability for a newborn in the industrialized world is way higher than in the countries with higher birth rates.
Honest? Isn't raising prices when demand is bigger than supply just capitalism?
... and especially when you can just pirate it.
Definitively. I have a few years old Logitech bluetooth mouse with BOTH wheel (mechanical switch between free-scroll and click-click mode) and (admittedly small) 3rd button. Works extremely well, after heavy (ab)use for a few years.
There are countries, such as parts (maybe whole) of Scandinavia, which has quite more ma-/paternity leave - in Norway its approximately 1 yr, must be shared between the parents. This is mandated through regulation, and the parents recieve 100% of their normal salary from the social security system while on leave.
The radiation from the blast itself and just after it can be very intense, much more intense than from the fallout.
"The rich" might loose their valuable beachfront property, but many poor in Bangladesh and other places will drown.
A small sadistic part of me is looking forward to see what our right-wing politicians who argue that (a) climate change is a conspiracy and (b) immigrants are evil once the people-flood sets in - hundreds of millions of people are not going to sit quietly on their hands and drown, no matter how much right-wing western politicians wish that is true... Lets just hope there are no mayor shortages before the worlds food production can adjust - but on the other hand, "someone else" will probably get the pointy end of that problem, too...
Well, despite of your "name of Scandinavian origin", you forgot one of the main countries in the region (*). Also, while most people of Norwegian decent in the US seems to be pickup-wielding Romniators, Obama is far-right compared to most of the people living in the country today (but admittedly, a bit more likable than most of our own outer right politicians). And while there are differences in culture and policy between the countries of Scandinavia, some of which might be the deeper reason for the historical facts you point to, the similarities are larger. Its all social democracy over here, and even the supposedly right-wing parties would never ever challenge that (with the exception of small groups of often somewhat crazy people, which are about as popular here as communists in the US...) - just how its organized.
(*) Denmark - I'll leave it up to you to explain their culture based on WW2/Napoleonic war allegiances.
So shockingly enough, republicans voted in favor of dumping a ton of money on Texas?
--- CERN PhD student / accelerator physics
Exactly what I was thinking as well: With only 100$, you can't possibly pay someone to give 1:1 feedback to the students on their work, discuss matters related to the subject, tutoring, and advising which directions a student that the tutor KNOWS could take etc. Especially, you can't write a thesis this way - its quite dependent on a lot of interaction with your supervisor(s)!
I did my BSc and MSc in Physics at a european public* university (Oslo), and from the beginning we had a lot of opportunity to discuss with our tutors, who where sometimes professors, sometimes PhD-students or good MSc students hired to do the tutoring. As a MSc-student, I also spent a lot of time with my supervisors, traveling multiple times to CERN, including staying there for two whole summers to work with people there and doing experimental work. The final MSc thesis work took a year to write (two full semesters) - something you can't really do all on your own. And then it had to be graded, meaning that three professors had to read all the 170-something dense pages of physics, maths, and computing, and finally grill me on it.
Additionally, I was TA'ing fresher students, learning them the basics of computational and experimental physics, probably bringing in quite a bit more than 100$ per student per course...
And then one thing you can't really replace in an on-line program: Counless hours discussing the subjects (and many other things) with my fellow students. Sometimes on a whiteboard filled with equations and diagrams in the physics student association kitchen/reading hall/party room, sometimes at a TA session, sometimes over a coffe or beer, and often into the late hours...
*=> It's payed by the governement - all the good universities here are. And I'm shure I cost a lot more than 100$ just in expenses - I wouldn't be surprised if it was more like 100'000$ at the end of the two progams. And then you can add that you automatically get good-terms loans, parts of which gets converted into stipends when you pass the exams...
Except that the motivation to remove the occupying force might be a bit stronger than whatever motivation exist in this case, don't you think? It might also have attracted a bit different set of people than it would in this case...
For the cases you are quoting, do you notice that the intruders are also carrying guns? Many other places where guns are harder to get, you don't need to expect a burgular to have a gun. And in some of your citations, such as the one from Fox, it would likely have been a non-story if there was no guns involved - instead it turned into a shootout which could easily have left all the three involved dead - plus innocent bystanders.
And then you have cases like the one which was all over the news in Louisiana (and maybe nationwide - I don't follow US news that closely) recently (sometime in the week before memorial day), where a unarmed, quite intoxicated and not exactly big and scary college girl got into two guys house. They where so scared that instead of calling the cops to mop her up, restraining her if neccessary (or just literally throwing her out and then locking the door), they decided to shoot her...
And then there is the thing about attacking the causes of crime, not just fighting the symptoms - but that is another discussion entirely. But comming from the outside, it seems that the problem is too many guns, making people feel they need guns to protect themselves. Can't you see the problem with that "solution"?
Yes, to remove them entirely is hard to impossible, but to reduce them to the insignificant is possible.
A few questions about your examples:
- How many do you think will take the risk of making/owning illegal guns, if its heavily punished? Unlike drugs, you don't get a "gun habbit" (I hope?).
- How many times is the guy holding the gun, and not the woman? I would guess that there are relevant statistics to be found. Or are you fantasizing about bedroom shootouts?
Except that he bought the gun legally - so actually *tighter* gun control, not less, may have prevented this massacre (which by the killed quite a few friends/siblings of friends of me, and where damn close to killing other people I know quite well). Who the *** needs a semi-automatic rifle/pistol for anything legit, except law enforcement and military?
Oh, and while its true that our police don't carry a gun regularly, and during normal operations need to call the central and ask for permission to break it out - they can also break the seal on their own initiative in an emergency situation, its just a bit more paperwork to do afterwards. Make it hard enough to get a "bad" gun, and its less likely that the bad guys get it.
Why he didn't get stopped?
- The island is quite far from anywhere, ~1-1½ hours drive from the closest big city (where you have the equivalent of SWAT teams)
- Its an island in a lake. Kind of hard to get to, especially when some of the leaders panicked and escaped in the ferry, and it being a lake, its not that easy to get another big boat quickly.
- Lack of coordination between police and military
- Mostly everything was a big disorganized mess, as the centre of the capital was just hit by a huge explosion. But then we all remember the extremely well coordinated response in the US to the attacks at 11/9, or the well thought out strategy in the aftermath?
Oh, and in the US, its customary to place armed guards at youth camp? You know, there was a off-duty police on the island. Guess who was shot ~first, in the back, by the terrorist who pretended to be a SWAT-equivalent armed policeman sent there to guard the kids?
Sorry to give you nightmares about reality, but you may watch Fox until bedtime, and remember that education is bad for God-fearing rednecks...
Sincerely,
One of your treehugging commies
The only situation it doesn't work well (no hearing aid does) is a large party with loud chatter.
That isn't strictly limited to the electronic stuff. Wetware also doesn't work so well then.
Oh. You have terrible terrible misconceptions there. If you resist the unarmed police in an effort not to pay your taxes, I guarantee you that police with guns will show up no matter which country on this planet you live on. LOL the QOTD is "The British are coming! The British are coming!"
Just making a point. And yes, if you resist them *with guns or something similar*, you are of course right.
... unless you happen to live in a country where the police doesn't carry guns in normal service. Oh, an we have high taxes too. Which buys us all the basic infrastructure stuff, pluss free as in progressive taxes healthcare and education (hey, we actually *get payed* by our gov't to get a degree - including BSc and MSc. Just love to tell that to americans, especially in the soon-having-three-kids-in-college age, just to see their jaw contact the ground.), and then some more stuff.
But as a lot of people on /. know is the absolute and holy truth, social democracies are of course scary hell incarnated, complete with death panels and everything, and the only good man is the one who starts with nothing but the latest in finance-fashion pinstriped shirt on his back and a 100M$ from dad.