I don't think you could do it with just geothermal extraction, but as a somewhat more mad-scientist oriented approach, might it be possible to drill a pressure-release valve? Obviously you'd have to use an unmanned machine for such a venture, because you will lose it once the lava begins to flow, but if you could get to the right point before the pressure gets too high, might you be able to drain it off in a reasonably controlled manner?
Yeah, this. One of the limitations of geothermal is that the power plant must remain stationary. That's not a problem for buildings and devices that can get their power from outlets, so it's still quite useful, but a different technology will be needed to deal with vehicles and other devices that can move (or be moved while still operating).
In any case, yes; geothermal energy is likely be be regionally appropriate for the western half of North America, and apparently West Virginia as well. Presumably Hawaii works too, though it's not on the map. However, this leaves the eastern half of North America out in the cold, so to speak: geothermal isn't appropriate for that region, because there just isn't enough heat at feasible levels.
The big advantage of fossil fuels is that they are portable. Carrying fuel is a solved problem, and so you can build a plant anywhere you can carry fuel. This is most likely the biggest reason they became standard worldwide (yeah, yeah, Big Energy looking for profits, but portability is what makes it profitable). Most renewables, on the other hand, aren't: they work well in places with sufficient amounts of whatever resource is being exploited (wind, geothermal, hydro, solar, etc) but a place without enough of that resource can't use that kind of plant.
This is why, for the US, it doesn't make sense to go with any single solution for the entire country. As a nation it is too large, and the climates too varied, for any one technology to be appropriate everywhere. It would make considerably more sense for a range of technologies to be used where they are determined to be most appropriate, but because these determinations are best done within those regions (i.e. states), there are certain political elements that you'll never be able to get on board for that. People want a magic bullet, but even bullets have limited range.
At the time of Jobs' ouster, there was a lot that the man still had to learn about running a business. Clearly he learned it in the intervening time before his return, but that doesn't change that he really wasn't ready for that role at the time Sculley came along.
Strictly speaking, IPv6 addresses don't include MAC addresses. Some developers tie it in because it's an easy easy way to get a unique host address, but it's not actually a requirement. Developers who do this should indeed be taken to task for a lazy solution that compromises user privacy, but the problem isn't inherent in the protocol.
I've had good luck with my Pangolin laptop from them (panp5: an earlier iteration of the model with the same name that they now sell). Highly recommended.
As implemented by Gaddafi, Libya was about as democratic as the old Soviet Union, which is to say that it had all the trappings of democracy but none of the substance. It was in not a free nation in any meaningful way, as shown by its repeated and brutal crackdowns on dissent.
I already told you: the reason to have a justice system is to fairly and impartially judge the guilt of people in the ordinary case: namely, when gathering evidence and finding witnesses is not a trivial task. It's a good system, nice and consistent, and for most people, the concept works most of the time. Implementations can and do fall short in their own ways, but that's a topic for another thread; the concepts remain sound.
But every system has its limitations. For example, the validity of justice systems as we currently know them are absolutely predicated on the impartiality of the triers, both of law (the judge) and of fact (the jury in systems that use them, otherwise the judge). For that to be possible, they must be exposed to the facts in a carefully controlled manner, and for that to be possible they have to come into the case without significant prior knowledge of the case or its defendant. Yet in systems that use juries, it is also considered vital that the jury be of the defendant's "peers"; the exact meaning of this is a matter of some debate, but the agreed-upon theme is that the people filling it, despite their lack of knowledge of the case, must be relevant to it in some way.
That's not a problem for most people: in fact, it's not a problem for almost anyone. Even for most famous people, although the search can become rather difficult, you can generally find enough such people to fill out a jury. But there's a degree of infamy -which isn't just fame itself, but a specific type of fame that generates highly-polarized opinions- where this becomes truly impossible: there are not enough people to be found within any remotely relevant groups to fill out a jury pool. You often can't even find an appropriate judge in these cases. This makes a fair trial impossible. Fortunately, as I pointed out earlier, that same infamy also resolves the very same problems that the justice system itself was created to resolve: we are all witnesses, and the evidence is trivial to glean from the public record.
This kind of infamy is almost impossible to achieve in the absence of global media, and even then it's usually reserved for heads of state. Gaddafi is one such case. Osama bin Laden managed it without being a head of state -a remarkable feat- but whole decades pass between such people even with a global media present to speed up the process.
Bottom line: any system has its weaknesses, and so to do justice systems as we currently know it. Rather than trying to nail this square peg into a round hole, we should acknowledge the mismatch and deal with it on its own terms.
Terminal velocity for a bullet is easily lethal (if it weren't, guns would be nonlethal weapons), as are velocities considerably lower than that for something of that size, shape, and mass. A bullet dropped from a great enough height would be quite dangerous to people below.
The bullet is, of course, traveling at a lethal velocity when it comes out of the gun. From that point on, gravity is the main force acting on it, first to slow its ascent and then to accelerate its descent. As a result, just before it hits the ground it should be going about as fast as it was when it was fired: in other words, a lethal velocity. Air resistance has to be taken into account, of course, but even over that much distance, is it really enough to slow the bullet to nonlethal levels?
They can't pull the license from older versions: there's no revocation clause in the old license to allow for that. But as long as they hold the copyright to all of the code, they can close versions going forward. Even if they only hold the copyright on some of the code, they could close it if they got permission from the copyright holders for the rest of the code.
If someone forks it, they'll have to start based on one of the versions that is under the old license.
How do you fairly try one of the most infamous and polarizing figures in the world?
In a courtroom, with a judge and jury.
That's not a trial. At best it's a scripted courtroom drama: something that looks similar on the surface, but has a predetermined outcome regardless of what actually happens. It cannot be otherwise, because the opinions of the judge and jury are tainted before the trial ever occurs.
I would say a pointless illusion at worst. At best it could be reasonably fair.
Not without an impartial judge and jury, it can't, and neither of those could ever be found.
I'm not sure why you think a trial would be harmful.
Because it legitimizes sham trials.
Then the case should be really simple, no? Present some of that bountiful evidence, show the world what he did, and demonstrate the rule of law, instead of mob justice.
In the end it's still mob justice, because of the inevitably-tainted judge and jury. To give that sort of thing the same weight as a proper trial, or any weight at all, is far worse than admitting the impossibility of a trial, also admitting the man's clear guilt beyond doubt, and dealing with him accordingly, demonstrating that becoming untriable doesn't mean you escape justice.
That's pretty much what I said in the last paragraph. Metaphorically speaking, Ghadaffi while in power could be compared to a dragon: immensely powerful, maliciously whimsical, and given to terrorizing the people below him using that power. But now the dragon has been slain, and the people celebrate in a way they wouldn't dare to do if there were any chance that it could come back.
The point is that a fair trial for this man is not possible. It might be possible to cook up a cheap-looking imitation, but the underpinnings -among them, impartial triers of fact and of law- wouldn't be there: they do not exist for people such as this. Barring major evolutionary changes to the human condition -in particular, overcoming the limitations imposed by individual perspective- they will never exist. Trying to prop up such a sham for cases like this is harmful, because it propagates the destructive meme that the justice system is inescapable and infallible. Better to acknowledge that it can be escaped by people such as these, and deal with that problem rather than pretending it's not there.
Still, the justice system was created for a reason: to fairly determine whether or not a person is guilty before either setting them free or rendering whatever punishment is deemed appropriate. Any attempt at a fallback mechanism for "untriable" figures needs to take this problem into account and resolve it in some way. People do have a right to this, as you say.
Fortunately, however, this particular means of escape also provides such a fallback. The same infamy that strips the world of impartial triers also provides it literally millions of witnesses and hard evidence in the public record: all that would be needed to convict such a person at trial. Between these, there can still be no doubt of the things this man has done: if impartial triers could be found, successfully prosecuting the man would be trivial. And thus, a trial as we know it ceases to be necessary to determine the man's guilt.
Like OBL, it wasn't possible. How do you fairly try one of the most infamous and polarizing figures in the world? The only way to scrape together enough people for an impartial jury would be to go way outside any group that could possibly be considered his peers, so you still don't have validity. Any attempt to do so would be at best a pointless illusion, if not actually harmful.
Besides, the purpose of a trial is to determine whether or not someone committed a crime. With witnesses numbering in the millions and evidence as simple public record, there is no reasonable doubt as to his guilt.
A trial would have been a farce. How can you try a dictator in the heat of battle, especially in a nation where the very same dictator had destroyed civil society?
This. I do still think it would have been better to capture him alive, because a man like him deserves to watch as everything he built crumbles around him, and despair. But there was no possibility of a fair trial; any attempt would have been a pointless illusion at best, and more likely would have been actively harmful.
And really, this outcome isn't so bad. He still gets removed, and the people can better rest assured that there is absolutely no possibility of his return. There's something to be said for that.
Iran doesn't appear to be reusing old American or Russian vehicles (though they do seem to be using a Russian rocket), but actually building one of their own. A new vehicle needs to be tested; although there may not be "space vapors" or "vacuum leeches", there are still plenty of hazards in space that a vehicle needs to be able to handle.
Using a monkey is a basic safety check: can the vehicle deal with said hazards well enough that something with very similar physiology to a human can survive a trip to space in it? If so, then an actual human will probably also be able to survive, and so you can proceed to that stage.
Places with a "state religion" (which particular religion doesn't matter) are, by definition, shit holes.
Most places actually have a state religion, including some that I'd question if you actually intended to call them shit holes. I'll leave the naming of them to the other replies in this thread. Some even have several state religions going at once. American-style separation of Church and State is, relatively speaking, actually quite an unusual state of affairs.
That said, many of these places have both a state religion and religious freedom. These are not incompatible.
I've been trying Lubuntu out recently, and it's very nice. Simple and light, with a desktop interface by default and a netbook interface if you want it (I think it's the same one used in the original eee, actually). Xubuntu also works well, though it's not as light.
There are some government powers for which safeguards against abuse simply are not sufficient. The power itself must be taken away, because the eventual abuse cannot be worth any beneficial uses it might have.
The researchers are totally off base here. These aren't self-portraits; they're writing. When transliterated into the Roman alphabet, they read "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn"
Being loyal does indeed pay, but only when both sides act in good faith. Allowing yourself to be taken advantage of is another matter entirely.
In other words, it sounds like you need more information. If your current employer acting in good faith, or merely taking advantage of you? Find this out -there are many posts in this thread already detailing how you might go about this- and then make your choice.
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I don't think you could do it with just geothermal extraction, but as a somewhat more mad-scientist oriented approach, might it be possible to drill a pressure-release valve? Obviously you'd have to use an unmanned machine for such a venture, because you will lose it once the lava begins to flow, but if you could get to the right point before the pressure gets too high, might you be able to drain it off in a reasonably controlled manner?
Yeah, this. One of the limitations of geothermal is that the power plant must remain stationary. That's not a problem for buildings and devices that can get their power from outlets, so it's still quite useful, but a different technology will be needed to deal with vehicles and other devices that can move (or be moved while still operating).
In any case, yes; geothermal energy is likely be be regionally appropriate for the western half of North America, and apparently West Virginia as well. Presumably Hawaii works too, though it's not on the map. However, this leaves the eastern half of North America out in the cold, so to speak: geothermal isn't appropriate for that region, because there just isn't enough heat at feasible levels.
The big advantage of fossil fuels is that they are portable. Carrying fuel is a solved problem, and so you can build a plant anywhere you can carry fuel. This is most likely the biggest reason they became standard worldwide (yeah, yeah, Big Energy looking for profits, but portability is what makes it profitable). Most renewables, on the other hand, aren't: they work well in places with sufficient amounts of whatever resource is being exploited (wind, geothermal, hydro, solar, etc) but a place without enough of that resource can't use that kind of plant.
This is why, for the US, it doesn't make sense to go with any single solution for the entire country. As a nation it is too large, and the climates too varied, for any one technology to be appropriate everywhere. It would make considerably more sense for a range of technologies to be used where they are determined to be most appropriate, but because these determinations are best done within those regions (i.e. states), there are certain political elements that you'll never be able to get on board for that. People want a magic bullet, but even bullets have limited range.
At the time of Jobs' ouster, there was a lot that the man still had to learn about running a business. Clearly he learned it in the intervening time before his return, but that doesn't change that he really wasn't ready for that role at the time Sculley came along.
Strictly speaking, IPv6 addresses don't include MAC addresses. Some developers tie it in because it's an easy easy way to get a unique host address, but it's not actually a requirement. Developers who do this should indeed be taken to task for a lazy solution that compromises user privacy, but the problem isn't inherent in the protocol.
I've had good luck with my Pangolin laptop from them (panp5: an earlier iteration of the model with the same name that they now sell). Highly recommended.
It's spelled "OLIGARHY".
What? Libya was one of the most free countries in the world, have you ever head of direct democracy? I think that only Switzerland and Finland come close:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamahiriya#Transition_to_the_Jamahiriya
As implemented by Gaddafi, Libya was about as democratic as the old Soviet Union, which is to say that it had all the trappings of democracy but none of the substance. It was in not a free nation in any meaningful way, as shown by its repeated and brutal crackdowns on dissent.
I already told you: the reason to have a justice system is to fairly and impartially judge the guilt of people in the ordinary case: namely, when gathering evidence and finding witnesses is not a trivial task. It's a good system, nice and consistent, and for most people, the concept works most of the time. Implementations can and do fall short in their own ways, but that's a topic for another thread; the concepts remain sound.
But every system has its limitations. For example, the validity of justice systems as we currently know them are absolutely predicated on the impartiality of the triers, both of law (the judge) and of fact (the jury in systems that use them, otherwise the judge). For that to be possible, they must be exposed to the facts in a carefully controlled manner, and for that to be possible they have to come into the case without significant prior knowledge of the case or its defendant. Yet in systems that use juries, it is also considered vital that the jury be of the defendant's "peers"; the exact meaning of this is a matter of some debate, but the agreed-upon theme is that the people filling it, despite their lack of knowledge of the case, must be relevant to it in some way.
That's not a problem for most people: in fact, it's not a problem for almost anyone. Even for most famous people, although the search can become rather difficult, you can generally find enough such people to fill out a jury. But there's a degree of infamy -which isn't just fame itself, but a specific type of fame that generates highly-polarized opinions- where this becomes truly impossible: there are not enough people to be found within any remotely relevant groups to fill out a jury pool. You often can't even find an appropriate judge in these cases. This makes a fair trial impossible. Fortunately, as I pointed out earlier, that same infamy also resolves the very same problems that the justice system itself was created to resolve: we are all witnesses, and the evidence is trivial to glean from the public record.
This kind of infamy is almost impossible to achieve in the absence of global media, and even then it's usually reserved for heads of state. Gaddafi is one such case. Osama bin Laden managed it without being a head of state -a remarkable feat- but whole decades pass between such people even with a global media present to speed up the process.
Bottom line: any system has its weaknesses, and so to do justice systems as we currently know it. Rather than trying to nail this square peg into a round hole, we should acknowledge the mismatch and deal with it on its own terms.
I'm not quite sure how the physics of that works.
Terminal velocity for a bullet is easily lethal (if it weren't, guns would be nonlethal weapons), as are velocities considerably lower than that for something of that size, shape, and mass. A bullet dropped from a great enough height would be quite dangerous to people below.
The bullet is, of course, traveling at a lethal velocity when it comes out of the gun. From that point on, gravity is the main force acting on it, first to slow its ascent and then to accelerate its descent. As a result, just before it hits the ground it should be going about as fast as it was when it was fired: in other words, a lethal velocity. Air resistance has to be taken into account, of course, but even over that much distance, is it really enough to slow the bullet to nonlethal levels?
Or have I got my mechanics wrong?
They can't pull the license from older versions: there's no revocation clause in the old license to allow for that. But as long as they hold the copyright to all of the code, they can close versions going forward. Even if they only hold the copyright on some of the code, they could close it if they got permission from the copyright holders for the rest of the code.
If someone forks it, they'll have to start based on one of the versions that is under the old license.
How do you fairly try one of the most infamous and polarizing figures in the world?
In a courtroom, with a judge and jury.
That's not a trial. At best it's a scripted courtroom drama: something that looks similar on the surface, but has a predetermined outcome regardless of what actually happens. It cannot be otherwise, because the opinions of the judge and jury are tainted before the trial ever occurs.
I would say a pointless illusion at worst. At best it could be reasonably fair.
Not without an impartial judge and jury, it can't, and neither of those could ever be found.
I'm not sure why you think a trial would be harmful.
Because it legitimizes sham trials.
Then the case should be really simple, no? Present some of that bountiful evidence, show the world what he did, and demonstrate the rule of law, instead of mob justice.
In the end it's still mob justice, because of the inevitably-tainted judge and jury. To give that sort of thing the same weight as a proper trial, or any weight at all, is far worse than admitting the impossibility of a trial, also admitting the man's clear guilt beyond doubt, and dealing with him accordingly, demonstrating that becoming untriable doesn't mean you escape justice.
That's pretty much what I said in the last paragraph. Metaphorically speaking, Ghadaffi while in power could be compared to a dragon: immensely powerful, maliciously whimsical, and given to terrorizing the people below him using that power. But now the dragon has been slain, and the people celebrate in a way they wouldn't dare to do if there were any chance that it could come back.
The point is that a fair trial for this man is not possible. It might be possible to cook up a cheap-looking imitation, but the underpinnings -among them, impartial triers of fact and of law- wouldn't be there: they do not exist for people such as this. Barring major evolutionary changes to the human condition -in particular, overcoming the limitations imposed by individual perspective- they will never exist. Trying to prop up such a sham for cases like this is harmful, because it propagates the destructive meme that the justice system is inescapable and infallible. Better to acknowledge that it can be escaped by people such as these, and deal with that problem rather than pretending it's not there.
Still, the justice system was created for a reason: to fairly determine whether or not a person is guilty before either setting them free or rendering whatever punishment is deemed appropriate. Any attempt at a fallback mechanism for "untriable" figures needs to take this problem into account and resolve it in some way. People do have a right to this, as you say.
Fortunately, however, this particular means of escape also provides such a fallback. The same infamy that strips the world of impartial triers also provides it literally millions of witnesses and hard evidence in the public record: all that would be needed to convict such a person at trial. Between these, there can still be no doubt of the things this man has done: if impartial triers could be found, successfully prosecuting the man would be trivial. And thus, a trial as we know it ceases to be necessary to determine the man's guilt.
Like OBL, it wasn't possible. How do you fairly try one of the most infamous and polarizing figures in the world? The only way to scrape together enough people for an impartial jury would be to go way outside any group that could possibly be considered his peers, so you still don't have validity. Any attempt to do so would be at best a pointless illusion, if not actually harmful.
Besides, the purpose of a trial is to determine whether or not someone committed a crime. With witnesses numbering in the millions and evidence as simple public record, there is no reasonable doubt as to his guilt.
This. I do still think it would have been better to capture him alive, because a man like him deserves to watch as everything he built crumbles around him, and despair. But there was no possibility of a fair trial; any attempt would have been a pointless illusion at best, and more likely would have been actively harmful.
And really, this outcome isn't so bad. He still gets removed, and the people can better rest assured that there is absolutely no possibility of his return. There's something to be said for that.
So that each one can hang a banner outside the front door that says "DEVELOPERS".
Iran doesn't appear to be reusing old American or Russian vehicles (though they do seem to be using a Russian rocket), but actually building one of their own. A new vehicle needs to be tested; although there may not be "space vapors" or "vacuum leeches", there are still plenty of hazards in space that a vehicle needs to be able to handle.
Using a monkey is a basic safety check: can the vehicle deal with said hazards well enough that something with very similar physiology to a human can survive a trip to space in it? If so, then an actual human will probably also be able to survive, and so you can proceed to that stage.
Places with a "state religion" (which particular religion doesn't matter) are, by definition, shit holes.
Most places actually have a state religion, including some that I'd question if you actually intended to call them shit holes. I'll leave the naming of them to the other replies in this thread. Some even have several state religions going at once. American-style separation of Church and State is, relatively speaking, actually quite an unusual state of affairs.
That said, many of these places have both a state religion and religious freedom. These are not incompatible.
As evidenced by the licenses they were released under, yes.
I've been trying Lubuntu out recently, and it's very nice. Simple and light, with a desktop interface by default and a netbook interface if you want it (I think it's the same one used in the original eee, actually). Xubuntu also works well, though it's not as light.
There are some government powers for which safeguards against abuse simply are not sufficient. The power itself must be taken away, because the eventual abuse cannot be worth any beneficial uses it might have.
The researchers are totally off base here. These aren't self-portraits; they're writing. When transliterated into the Roman alphabet, they read "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn"
Being loyal does indeed pay, but only when both sides act in good faith. Allowing yourself to be taken advantage of is another matter entirely.
In other words, it sounds like you need more information. If your current employer acting in good faith, or merely taking advantage of you? Find this out -there are many posts in this thread already detailing how you might go about this- and then make your choice.
No, I am Spartacu... I mean Anonymous Coward!
It might still generate income. Especially in the tech industry, a surprising number of free online books have paid dead-tree versions.