There is, however, one obstacle that the Open Ministry and the entire citizens’ initiative law is already facing.
The Ministry of Justice should have a website where people can sign the initiatives. To be legally valid, the signing of an initiative requires a bank identifier code or some other form of accepted online signature to prove the signee is who he or she says he is.
The Ministry of Justice has not even commenced the constructing of such a system. It will not be up and running before the end of the year at the earliest.
New Hubble observations confirm the atmosphere of the exoplanet is rich in water, comprising up to 50% of the atmosphere's mass.
Actually, they do nothing of the sort. They just make water a more probable explanation for the observations. It says as much in the article.
Theseabstracts both state that the data indicates an atmosphere high in hydrogen and helium, but (taken from the second abstract):
Our observations disfavour a water-world composition, but such a composition will remain a possibility until observations reconfirm our deeper Ks-band transit depth or detect features at other wavelengths.
Sadly it was the same ability to send messages to large numbers of people in near real time that contributed to the carnage of the post-election violence in 2008.
The stoves were rejected by the communities, mainly because they were useless when they were wanted most: for the evening meal sometimes after the sun goes down, and for breakfast before the sun has risen.
I agree that being able to cook morning/evening meals would be handy, but strongly disagree that this is sufficient reason to reject them.
I have a small home-made panel cooker that I use to boil drinking water (here in Kenya, tap water is not safe to drink). It takes about 5 hours to boil 5 litres of water. I just leave it out in the morning and by the time I get back from work it's done. For me this represents a pretty substantial energy saving. In fact I'm pretty sure that on most days I use more energy to prepare drinking water than to cook meals.
The sun is not our only asset. Already a significant proportion of our power comes from hydroelectric and geothermal plants, and there is scope for (and investment happening in) much more.
The biggest problem we face is not sourcing energy, but in dealing with the huge inefficiencies and rickety infrastructure that we currently have. Here in Nairobi have power cuts several times a week (not because of lack of supply, but because of regular failures in the poorly maintained grid). As it happens, the transformer right outside my home has exploded (literally) and been replaced four times in the last three months. Most businesses in Nairobi have invested in back up generators because the supply is so unreliable.
One major obstacle to real improvement is the fact that the Kenya Power and Lighting Company operates a monopoly on electricity sales in Kenya, and there is no incentive for it to reduce costs and improve infrastructure. They posted record profits in 2011, at the same time as electricity prices in the country reached record highs.
My primary internet access is through mobile broadband which is charged according to how much data I use. For that reason I need to be able to decide when I download updates. One of the things I hate about Chrome and Google products in general is that they do not even give you the option to defer updates or turn off automatic updating, and just assume you are happy for the updater to run in the background and download updates whenever it sees fit.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for staying updated, I just want some control over when it happens. And until that changes I'm not prepared to touch Chrome.
Slashdot Mirror
Like I said, we're talking probabilities, not certainties.
Actually, they do nothing of the sort. They just make water a more probable explanation for the observations. It says as much in the article.
These abstracts both state that the data indicates an atmosphere high in hydrogen and helium, but (taken from the second abstract):
They already have.
I wonder if it will involve giving the user random selections from Shakespeare.
Sadly it was the same ability to send messages to large numbers of people in near real time that contributed to the carnage of the post-election violence in 2008.
I agree that being able to cook morning/evening meals would be handy, but strongly disagree that this is sufficient reason to reject them.
I have a small home-made panel cooker that I use to boil drinking water (here in Kenya, tap water is not safe to drink). It takes about 5 hours to boil 5 litres of water. I just leave it out in the morning and by the time I get back from work it's done. For me this represents a pretty substantial energy saving. In fact I'm pretty sure that on most days I use more energy to prepare drinking water than to cook meals.
I hope you meant "screw principles!" Screwing principals is generally not recommended.
The sun is not our only asset. Already a significant proportion of our power comes from hydroelectric and geothermal plants, and there is scope for (and investment happening in) much more.
The biggest problem we face is not sourcing energy, but in dealing with the huge inefficiencies and rickety infrastructure that we currently have. Here in Nairobi have power cuts several times a week (not because of lack of supply, but because of regular failures in the poorly maintained grid). As it happens, the transformer right outside my home has exploded (literally) and been replaced four times in the last three months. Most businesses in Nairobi have invested in back up generators because the supply is so unreliable.
One major obstacle to real improvement is the fact that the Kenya Power and Lighting Company operates a monopoly on electricity sales in Kenya, and there is no incentive for it to reduce costs and improve infrastructure. They posted record profits in 2011, at the same time as electricity prices in the country reached record highs.
My primary internet access is through mobile broadband which is charged according to how much data I use. For that reason I need to be able to decide when I download updates. One of the things I hate about Chrome and Google products in general is that they do not even give you the option to defer updates or turn off automatic updating, and just assume you are happy for the updater to run in the background and download updates whenever it sees fit. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for staying updated, I just want some control over when it happens. And until that changes I'm not prepared to touch Chrome.