I would never give my credit report to a prospective employer...
I don't recall that you are being asked to give the information. I don't recall that it requires your consent at all. (If I'm mistaken, please correct me.)
What makes Vista better than XP besides more eye candy and sane default security settings?
Very little. Yet. The trouble is that after MS releases Vista, they'll stop putting so much effort into supporting XP. Every time a new XP "upgrade" automagically installs itself, it will either slow your machine down or some function will be broken (or a flavorful combination of the two). MS will release statements that they're working hard to fix the bugs, but the number of unfixed bugs will keep increasing. Eventually, you'll get so disgusted you'll just buy the Vista upgrade. We've all seen this before. It's the new version of the Microsoft upgrade cycle, motivated not by improving the quality of the new software, but by degrading the quality of the old stuff until the new software looks better by comparison.
To prevent similar incidents, Chase said it is strengthening its security procedures and is conducting a review of all data storage and protection processes.
How in the world would they just now find out that they threw such a thing away if they weren't already conducting some kind of review like that? The truth must be that they were already conducting the review, found the prior mistake, and then used the review as a way of atoning for the mistake.
I suspect you don't understand humor itself. Read Stranger in a Strange Land. Funny events are never good events, the good is in our ability to laugh about it. I don't think the phrase "defense mechanism" is quite right, but it is a way of thinking about a bad event and integrating it into your consciousness without being overcome by emotions. It's my observation that people who can laugh when bad shit happens are more emotionally stable in general.
Okay, now all you contrarian pop psychologists can contradict me.
...use products that rely on algorithms that are open, widely tested and reviewed, and known secure.
Just because the algorithm is widely tested and known to be secure doesn't make the software based on it secure. It's very easy to take a secure algorithm like AES and make a totally insecure program by, for example, not encrypting all of the data it should, or by selecting the encryption key poorly so that it's easy to "guess",meaning you might only have to check 2^20 keys to decrypt that email of yours instead of 2^128, like you're supposed to have to. So instead of being secure against years of hard cracking, your data is compromised in seconds. Besides that, there are other ways to build a crappy program that I'm not a good enough cryptographer to know.
Check out this story over at Economist.com. For some reason they insist on calling it "synthetic biology" rather than just the more advanced forms of genetic engineering around, but the topics are amazing. One guy is putting together a set of standard genes to be inserted into anything, and with universal connectors at each end. Another group is making a "minimal bacterium" that has the absolute shortest genome possible to still survive in the lab. There are other projects mentioned too, but the potential of just those two is amazing.
...and the DVDs have a far shorter shelf life than hard drives...
Where did this myth that CD-R's and DVD (+/-)R's have a short shelf life come from? I can assert that it IS a myth, since I have a stack of about 30 CD-R's that I burned in 1999 that are still perfectly readable. Since then I've been burning about 100 CDs a year and last fall I backed up the whole collection onto hard drives. Every single one was readable.
Are you people storing your discs in sandpaper-envelopes or using them as frisbees in the meantime? What's the failure mode of these discs with the "short shelf life"?
Umm....doesn't it? That seems to be the reason why it's got so many genes.
It uses them to be able to adapt to it's environment. Which makes it more advanced, and better off than other single-celled organisms with fewer genes.
That's about like arguing that a larger program is better than a smaller one. The truth is that sometimes bigger is better, sometimes smaller is better; It all depends on the content of the code (computer or genetic). If the larger program does more and does it better, it may well be better for a particular purpose than the smaller one was. Remember that all that genetic overhead is a major burden for an organism. Every time a cell divides it has to make a complete copy of the DNA (two copies in this case, I guess). That takes a whole lot (in cell terms) of energy and materials to do. I'm no biologist, but I'd guess that cells with smaller genomes are almost always able to replicate faster, meaning that they're more able to quickly take advantage of good circumstances. I've heard that some (most?) strains of E. Coli can replicate in about 15 minutes with optimum conditions. If you put one bacterium that replicates slowly and one that replicates quickly into a dish of agar together, after a few days almost all you have is the quick replicator. Of course, the versatile "Tetrahymena thermophila" might well be able to turn on some kind of a "eat E. Coli" and turn its workings around so that it can win anyway.
But behind a dam, the water spends more _time_ exposed to the air. If there were no dam there, it would either have been consumed or flowed into the ocean much sooner. I'm not saying dams definately consume water on net, only that there are effects both increasing and decreasing evaporative loss due to adding a dam to a river system.
Actually, Niagra falls is dammed up. They just let some of the water flow over the waterfall, most goes through the turbines. The waterfall used to have three times as much water flowing over it than it does now.
...the most optimistic estimates are for around 2035, with most realistic estimates coming in at about 2010.
And there are pessimistic estimates that it has already happened. If you look at oil produciton graphs (see page 16 of http://www.evworld.com/library/Oil_Shale_Stategic_ Significant.pdf), it hasn't actually gone up in the last few years. Naysayers will argue that the recent decrease in production is only due to temporary production difficulties, and the trouble with getting new production on line fast enough. That, however, is exactly the point. The Hubbert peak idea implies that as production reaches its peak, the new produciton will be progressively more difficult to get online or keep online, and therefore more expensive, and therefore that it will be impossible to get new produciton online faster than old production runs out. You can get a better explanation than I am currently writing here.
Jeez, do I have to think of everything for those environmentalists?:P
Old-school environmentalists, the kind who like to ignore that something is uneconomical and say we should all do it anyway, aren't really terribly bright on average. So yeah, you might have to.
Of course, the net energy balance of ethanol production is negative, but only when you include the sunlight input, since the amount of sunlight over a field for the whole growing season is enormous. Thermodynamics says that no process will be more than 100% efficient, after all.
But this thread is about getting net energy out of biofuels.
Who says? You're the first one who's brought the net-energy question up. Let me rephrase the problem so you might get it: biofuels are _not_ an energy source, they are an energy conversion. All of the recent studies show that ethanol production (one biofuel, but not the only one. This argument should be approximately right for biodiesel from plant oils.) produces more energy from burning the ethanol than it takes to (1) grow and harvest the corn, and (2) convert that corn into the ethanol. The trouble is that there's another energy input: the sunlight used to grow the plants. If you consider the sunlight input into producing ethanol, the process cannot be more than about 10% efficient, probably much less (and I cannot be bothered to even try to do the math).
That being said, why in the world are we even considering it? Why don't we just build solar panels there and forget ethanol (or other biofuel) production? Because biofuels are valuable not for their net energy storage, but because they are a compact energy storage mechanism. We're already putting far more energy/effort into the process than the net energy output would justify, it's the conversion of (some of) the energy into a form we really want that makes the whole process worthwhile.
That is also why using nuclear or coal or whatever else to desalinate water to irrigate the crop for growing biofuel is not a net-energy output question. We wouldn't burn oil or diesel fuel or any transportation fuel to run a desalination plant. Those fuels have more value elsewhere. We would use a low-portability energy solution like nuclear or wind or coal because we are essentially upgrading a (small) portion of the energy output of those facilities into a more valuable energy storage form, the biofuel. Using an externally powered desalination plant might decrease the net efficiency of the sunlight-to-biofuel conversion from 10% to 5%, or whatever, but if the whole process is still economical, then it is appropriate. Until the technology is developed for a more direct electricity-to-transportation fuel conversion is in place, that high-inefficiency conversion of electricity-and-sunlight to biofuel is still worthwhile. (And don't go spouting "hydrogen" at me, because while the technology for hydrogen _production_ is available, the technology for its distribution and consumer use is still pretty green, if you'll pardon the pun.)
...and in the long run may even help to find a cure.
In the long run, a vaccine is a cure. Oh, did you mean the 20 year projected lifespan of those now infected? I'm not sure I'd call 20 years long run as far as scientific progress goes.
The media publishing industry has to be full of retards, there really isn't any other explanation.
No, the media publishers aren't dumb. They just underestimate the honesty of the average person. My observation has been that most people are more willing to pay for content (movies, music, etc.) than they are to spend the effort required to pirate it. The difference comes when, like with music, it actually becomes more convenient (less mental effort, less time invested) to download the content illegally than it was to just go out and buy it. I think that's why iTunes has been so successful: they've made it so that pirating a song and downloading it legally are about the same amount of work again.
That's not to say that some folks won't pirate just because they can. Most people, however, actually prefer to pay.
Scheduling is very hard. Very few managers can do it reliably. I'd take a machine that's well designed over about 90% of the people that I have had write my schedules before.
I'll second that. My roomate in college worked at K-Mart. At the beginning of each semester he'd carefully explain to the lady who did the scheduling which days and times he had classes, and that he couldn't work those times. It never failed: at least once a month (more often once a week) she would schedule him to work right through a class. Going in and explaining it to her got the schedule changed that time, but she was completely incapable of learning from her mistakes. She would just do it again. A well designed computer program for scheduling would at least do a better job than she did. Just have each employee enter a list of "excluded times" when they can't work, and it'll schedule around those. Of course, a human with an IQ over 80 should be able to handle this too... but this is K-Mart I'm talking about. Anybody with an IQ over 80 probably realized that they can increase their salary by going to Wal-Mart or, well, almost any other retailer.
Several parts of GWT are actually open source. The trouble is that the Java to JavaScript converter is proprietary, and the rest is pretty much useless without that part. So while GWT technically is largely open source, for practical purposes it might as well be proprietary.
Slashdot Mirror
I would never give my credit report to a prospective employer...
I don't recall that you are being asked to give the information. I don't recall that it requires your consent at all. (If I'm mistaken, please correct me.)
What makes Vista better than XP besides more eye candy and sane default security settings?
Very little. Yet. The trouble is that after MS releases Vista, they'll stop putting so much effort into supporting XP. Every time a new XP "upgrade" automagically installs itself, it will either slow your machine down or some function will be broken (or a flavorful combination of the two). MS will release statements that they're working hard to fix the bugs, but the number of unfixed bugs will keep increasing. Eventually, you'll get so disgusted you'll just buy the Vista upgrade. We've all seen this before. It's the new version of the Microsoft upgrade cycle, motivated not by improving the quality of the new software, but by degrading the quality of the old stuff until the new software looks better by comparison.
To prevent similar incidents, Chase said it is strengthening its security procedures and is conducting a review of all data storage and protection processes.
How in the world would they just now find out that they threw such a thing away if they weren't already conducting some kind of review like that? The truth must be that they were already conducting the review, found the prior mistake, and then used the review as a way of atoning for the mistake.
How the fuck is that funny? You pieces of shit.
I suspect you don't understand humor itself. Read Stranger in a Strange Land. Funny events are never good events, the good is in our ability to laugh about it. I don't think the phrase "defense mechanism" is quite right, but it is a way of thinking about a bad event and integrating it into your consciousness without being overcome by emotions. It's my observation that people who can laugh when bad shit happens are more emotionally stable in general.
Okay, now all you contrarian pop psychologists can contradict me.
A good point. If we're to punish confidence schemes, then haven't most MMORPG players committed "murder"? Surely that's a worse crime than mere theft.
...use products that rely on algorithms that are open, widely tested and reviewed, and known secure.
Just because the algorithm is widely tested and known to be secure doesn't make the software based on it secure. It's very easy to take a secure algorithm like AES and make a totally insecure program by, for example, not encrypting all of the data it should, or by selecting the encryption key poorly so that it's easy to "guess",meaning you might only have to check 2^20 keys to decrypt that email of yours instead of 2^128, like you're supposed to have to. So instead of being secure against years of hard cracking, your data is compromised in seconds. Besides that, there are other ways to build a crappy program that I'm not a good enough cryptographer to know.
Use ROT-12 to decrypt. Well, either that, or use ROT-14 twenty-five more times. It depends how much your time is worth to you.
I came up with lots of funny answers.
Such as? Let's hear the jokes. This is a joke thread, after all.
Check out this story over at Economist.com. For some reason they insist on calling it "synthetic biology" rather than just the more advanced forms of genetic engineering around, but the topics are amazing. One guy is putting together a set of standard genes to be inserted into anything, and with universal connectors at each end. Another group is making a "minimal bacterium" that has the absolute shortest genome possible to still survive in the lab. There are other projects mentioned too, but the potential of just those two is amazing.
Somebody's reply to a previous comment is relevant here.
...and the DVDs have a far shorter shelf life than hard drives...
Where did this myth that CD-R's and DVD (+/-)R's have a short shelf life come from? I can assert that it IS a myth, since I have a stack of about 30 CD-R's that I burned in 1999 that are still perfectly readable. Since then I've been burning about 100 CDs a year and last fall I backed up the whole collection onto hard drives. Every single one was readable.
Are you people storing your discs in sandpaper-envelopes or using them as frisbees in the meantime? What's the failure mode of these discs with the "short shelf life"?
Umm....doesn't it? That seems to be the reason why it's got so many genes.
It uses them to be able to adapt to it's environment. Which makes it more advanced, and better off than other single-celled organisms with fewer genes.
That's about like arguing that a larger program is better than a smaller one. The truth is that sometimes bigger is better, sometimes smaller is better; It all depends on the content of the code (computer or genetic). If the larger program does more and does it better, it may well be better for a particular purpose than the smaller one was. Remember that all that genetic overhead is a major burden for an organism. Every time a cell divides it has to make a complete copy of the DNA (two copies in this case, I guess). That takes a whole lot (in cell terms) of energy and materials to do. I'm no biologist, but I'd guess that cells with smaller genomes are almost always able to replicate faster, meaning that they're more able to quickly take advantage of good circumstances. I've heard that some (most?) strains of E. Coli can replicate in about 15 minutes with optimum conditions. If you put one bacterium that replicates slowly and one that replicates quickly into a dish of agar together, after a few days almost all you have is the quick replicator. Of course, the versatile "Tetrahymena thermophila" might well be able to turn on some kind of a "eat E. Coli" and turn its workings around so that it can win anyway.
I've forgotten. What was my point again?
The AMD he's talking about is Acute Macular Degeneration, not to be confused with Advanced Micro Devices, which is a completely different disease.
.....biofuels are _not_ an energy source.....
Fossil fuels are biofuels made from solar energy that came down on earth a long time ago and was captured by the plants that made the fossils.
That's true. Good point.
But behind a dam, the water spends more _time_ exposed to the air. If there were no dam there, it would either have been consumed or flowed into the ocean much sooner. I'm not saying dams definately consume water on net, only that there are effects both increasing and decreasing evaporative loss due to adding a dam to a river system.
Actually, Niagra falls is dammed up. They just let some of the water flow over the waterfall, most goes through the turbines. The waterfall used to have three times as much water flowing over it than it does now.
...the most optimistic estimates are for around 2035, with most realistic estimates coming in at about 2010.
_ Significant.pdf), it hasn't actually gone up in the last few years. Naysayers will argue that the recent decrease in production is only due to temporary production difficulties, and the trouble with getting new production on line fast enough. That, however, is exactly the point. The Hubbert peak idea implies that as production reaches its peak, the new produciton will be progressively more difficult to get online or keep online, and therefore more expensive, and therefore that it will be impossible to get new produciton online faster than old production runs out. You can get a better explanation than I am currently writing here.
And there are pessimistic estimates that it has already happened. If you look at oil produciton graphs (see page 16 of http://www.evworld.com/library/Oil_Shale_Stategic
Jeez, do I have to think of everything for those environmentalists? :P
Old-school environmentalists, the kind who like to ignore that something is uneconomical and say we should all do it anyway, aren't really terribly bright on average. So yeah, you might have to.
Right now we can't even get breakeven with just harvesting the biofuel.
i ssuebrief_000.pdf#search=%22ethanol%20production%2 0efficiency%22 or http://www.ncga.com/ethanol/main/energy.htm or http://journeytoforever.org/ethanol_energy.html. Sure, there are folks who say the net energy balance is negative, but the reputable ones say positive. My guess (which I don't have the resources to prove or disprove, could anyone help?) is that the ones who say the net balance is negative have a political axe to grind.
Bull. Look at http://www.ethanol.org/documents/NetEnergyBalance
Of course, the net energy balance of ethanol production is negative, but only when you include the sunlight input, since the amount of sunlight over a field for the whole growing season is enormous. Thermodynamics says that no process will be more than 100% efficient, after all.
But this thread is about getting net energy out of biofuels.
Who says? You're the first one who's brought the net-energy question up. Let me rephrase the problem so you might get it: biofuels are _not_ an energy source, they are an energy conversion. All of the recent studies show that ethanol production (one biofuel, but not the only one. This argument should be approximately right for biodiesel from plant oils.) produces more energy from burning the ethanol than it takes to (1) grow and harvest the corn, and (2) convert that corn into the ethanol. The trouble is that there's another energy input: the sunlight used to grow the plants. If you consider the sunlight input into producing ethanol, the process cannot be more than about 10% efficient, probably much less (and I cannot be bothered to even try to do the math).
That being said, why in the world are we even considering it? Why don't we just build solar panels there and forget ethanol (or other biofuel) production? Because biofuels are valuable not for their net energy storage, but because they are a compact energy storage mechanism. We're already putting far more energy/effort into the process than the net energy output would justify, it's the conversion of (some of) the energy into a form we really want that makes the whole process worthwhile.
That is also why using nuclear or coal or whatever else to desalinate water to irrigate the crop for growing biofuel is not a net-energy output question. We wouldn't burn oil or diesel fuel or any transportation fuel to run a desalination plant. Those fuels have more value elsewhere. We would use a low-portability energy solution like nuclear or wind or coal because we are essentially upgrading a (small) portion of the energy output of those facilities into a more valuable energy storage form, the biofuel. Using an externally powered desalination plant might decrease the net efficiency of the sunlight-to-biofuel conversion from 10% to 5%, or whatever, but if the whole process is still economical, then it is appropriate. Until the technology is developed for a more direct electricity-to-transportation fuel conversion is in place, that high-inefficiency conversion of electricity-and-sunlight to biofuel is still worthwhile. (And don't go spouting "hydrogen" at me, because while the technology for hydrogen _production_ is available, the technology for its distribution and consumer use is still pretty green, if you'll pardon the pun.)
...and in the long run may even help to find a cure.
In the long run, a vaccine is a cure. Oh, did you mean the 20 year projected lifespan of those now infected? I'm not sure I'd call 20 years long run as far as scientific progress goes.
In other news....Microsoft changes Web Standards to comply with IE7.
Didn't you read the post? Microsoft improves standards to comply with IE7. Get it right.
The media publishing industry has to be full of retards, there really isn't any other explanation.
No, the media publishers aren't dumb. They just underestimate the honesty of the average person. My observation has been that most people are more willing to pay for content (movies, music, etc.) than they are to spend the effort required to pirate it. The difference comes when, like with music, it actually becomes more convenient (less mental effort, less time invested) to download the content illegally than it was to just go out and buy it. I think that's why iTunes has been so successful: they've made it so that pirating a song and downloading it legally are about the same amount of work again.
That's not to say that some folks won't pirate just because they can. Most people, however, actually prefer to pay.
Scheduling is very hard. Very few managers can do it reliably. I'd take a machine that's well designed over about 90% of the people that I have had write my schedules before.
I'll second that. My roomate in college worked at K-Mart. At the beginning of each semester he'd carefully explain to the lady who did the scheduling which days and times he had classes, and that he couldn't work those times. It never failed: at least once a month (more often once a week) she would schedule him to work right through a class. Going in and explaining it to her got the schedule changed that time, but she was completely incapable of learning from her mistakes. She would just do it again. A well designed computer program for scheduling would at least do a better job than she did. Just have each employee enter a list of "excluded times" when they can't work, and it'll schedule around those. Of course, a human with an IQ over 80 should be able to handle this too... but this is K-Mart I'm talking about. Anybody with an IQ over 80 probably realized that they can increase their salary by going to Wal-Mart or, well, almost any other retailer.
Several parts of GWT are actually open source. The trouble is that the Java to JavaScript converter is proprietary, and the rest is pretty much useless without that part. So while GWT technically is largely open source, for practical purposes it might as well be proprietary.