Give us a compelling reason why we should SWITCH to an OS that REQUIRES (as you state) 4x more ram and has a "few little extra features" with no "great incentive to upgrade".
And why talk about it on here? Because that is what the god damned article is about!
A full 1/4 of Alberta has been completely deformed and raped to get what little oil there is there. We're already at peak production. We've been in serious rape mode for all of 5 years TOPS.
We're already grasping at straws. I have no doubt that we're at the top of the curve already.
You obviously know absolutely NOTHING about crop farming. That is the most asinine statement I've heard in this thread yet.
Do some research on the nile delta for starters. That will give you a brief introduction into the problem. Then research something closer to our time, like arable land depletion of the southern US over the past 500 years.
I'll be one of the first to tout the virtues of Hemp for textiles and other uses, HOWEVER...those 3 extra crops come at a VERY high cost to the earth it is grown in. That energy has to come from somewhere. Plants aren't magical energy generators. People really need to start to get a handle on this. Corn is already highly draining on farmland, which is why most of the stalks and shells are left in the field, the field is usually left to rest the next year, and then a couple years of other cycled crops before growing corn again. (beans one year, wheat the next, back to corn)
Hemp is even worse.
Remember: Nothing is free. Current ethanol production is WAY more damaging and energy draining than our use of fossil fuels, we just choose to ignore that part of the equation. Or did you not know that it takes MORE energy to produce a litre of ethanol from bio sources than that litre itself provides?
Major problem: Crop farming is a cycle. If you continuously grow corn on a plot year after year, and take the entire plant year after year, you will have a desert in but a few years. You have to return something to the soil. Further, you can't even just grow one crop over and over, even if you do leave everything but the fruit or seed behind, key nutrient deprecation. You have to rotate crops AND return waste material to the soil AND fertilize AND allow rest periods.
That is the problem with all biofuels, NOTHING comes for free. All that energy has a cost. We'd be wise to remember this.
South America is already suffering from topsoil based ethanol production, and we're hardly using ANY of what would be required to replace fossil fuels. Food grade corn is now subsidized in Mexico because the ethanol market has driven up the price so much that people were having a REALLY hard time affording to buy staple food products. I believe what I'd heard was that the price of corn tortillas had doubled over 5 years.
The big energy cartels won't change the way they do business though, cheapest, easiest, quickest way to a buck Right Now, Always. They don't care about the effects, all they care is that they can buy corn up on the world market and quickly turn it into fuel. That's the ONLY part of the equation they look at. Unfortunately, that's just a tiny fraction of the overall equation...the rest of that particular equation is WAY more damaging to our future than running out of fossil fuels would be. No fossil fuels? So what, at least we can still grow crops. Fuck up our ability to grow and sustain crops?
NASA won't be producing a practical super efficient car for every day use. There's pretty much zero chance of that ever happening. HOWEVER, they very likely will produce technologies that will be used in said cars.
Detroit isn't going to do it first either. Just not going to happen. Though they'll fall in line as soon as someone else does the hard bits first. Detroit has forgotten how to innovate, but not how to emulate. They'll end up doing it bigger and cheaper than whomever does it first. The biggest problem is that the big 3 truly believe that the combustion engine is it, that there are no radical alternatives that will ever work, and that the only efficiencies left to be had are small and incremental. (This is already what has been hurting the big 3 so much over the past 20 years.)
I kind of doubt China will be the one to do it first, but you never know...where there's a will and a need things can happen.
It will happen though. Actually, it already has, numerous times. The biggest problem with revolutionizing the car industry is with the fuel infrastructure...big oil has it by the balls and will NOT let go of their own accord. Jurisdictions like California with their braindead hydrogen schemes etc are not helping either. How many major attempts at new fuel infrastructures has California mandated in the past 10 years alone? Not ONE of which actually lowers environmental impact, and the ONLY way they can justify it is by legally requiring companies to sell cars that use these new infrastructures...doomed to failure. Government can not force these things to happen, the free market makes or breaks these kinds of changes, not governments trying to force these things.
I too am sick of the gun slant being thrown in everywhere.
Off topic and unrelated, but here it is at it's base. By your statements, I'd expect that if someone suggested handing guns out to all students it would be OK. And that we shouldn't worry about what might happen, rather, just put the kids that inevitably do commit murder in jail.
Maybe we should do the same with drugs, make them freely available to all, throw the abusers in jail or let them wither away in the streets, they made a choice and get their just deserts.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not in favor of the current British police state...way too Orwellian for comfort...however, give it up already. Gun control is not inherently a bad thing. On the contrary, unrestricted access to firearms is definitely a problem.
No, guns don't kill people. People kill people...with guns. How many people have died in bar fights because a gun was pulled when what SHOULD have happened if anything were for the parties to drag their beaten asses home and live to learn from their mistakes. Just one simple example. I don't give a shit if you want to hunt, target shoot, whatever, go nuts. But if your motives are purely such, how can you possibly argue against doing so with proper legal controls in place? Why must you insist on being able to buy a concealable handgun with no other merits other than to kill?
Irregardless of how you live where you do, why must you further condemn every other country that disagrees? Other countries that have much MUCH lower death and injury rates due to firearms? Psychopath actually is a very fitting term for people that do.
I have one major problem with your diatribe, while I do feel for you on the initial frustrations, you did not HAVE to put up with any of that. You chose to continue to put up with it. While doing so you were merely feeding the loop.
Don't do business with companies that aren't worth doing business with. It's really that simple.
That's not that bad really...it's all about context.
The households bringing in less than 80k per year, pay for a land line w/long distance packages, high speed internet, full blown cable package, 4 cells etc...THAT is freaking insane. And a TON of people do so. All the things people paid for 20 years ago, PLUS a whole bunch more. Why? Haven't a clue.
Me, I've got a cell phone and cable internet. That is it. Nothing more, and I won't pay for more. Even still, I'm spending just over 100 a month. My ex of course always insisted on all the rest...before we separated, we were spending ~350 a month. WTF? Insanity. And for no need.
But to keep it directly on topic, I haven't the foggiest WHY anyone would pay that kind of money for more television channels than you could ever dream of watching. There simply is no justification for it that makes sense.
Oh yeah, and what about the commercials?
Once upon a time, broadcast content paid for itself. It still does, we just pay the broadcast companies on top of that now. Why? Because as a collective, we're gullible and stupid.
Stop it already!!!
Look at it another way: I can easily go and rent a high-def movie every day of the week and STILL spend less than a ton of people pay for their television.
You make good points, but you make it sound like there is no alternative, like they wouldn't exist without broadband...which they don't even have.
Farming has been around for a long time. I'd suggest that just maybe they've been farming there longer than the internet has existed...just maybe.
Aside from that bit of sarcasm...there is still nothing you mention that would indicate it being economically feasible to run fiber all over hells half acre. That would be a total and complete waste. Satellite can more than cover the uses you mention above, and for a remote and dispersed population, it probably makes the most sense by far. Sure, it's not 10 Meg broadband, but is that really necessary?
And if it really is deemed necessary, the fact is, it will NOT be cheap, it simply CAN'T be cheap. Fiber is not cheap, and unless you're sharing it with a lot of people, you're going to be paying a lot of money to use it.
Then start up a local telco in your town. Build it yourself. Unless of course there aren't enough people to make it cost effective. If that's the case, can you really expect someone else to do it for you?
It doesn't take much to set this kind of thing up for a small suburban centre, it really doesn't.
It appears if you are suggesting that the entirety of australia should be carpeted with fiber, have you ever looked at the size of AU, and the distribution of it's population?
That'd be like running fiber to every community in the arctic. Doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
Ehh, they really just bit off way more than they could chew for the time, and WAY overshot the target hardware specs. Thus it really turned into just a physics sandbox that wouldn't run worth crap on anyones machine at the time. Playing it since on hardware that could actually handle it was much less painful, and kind of fun to play with the physics in the world.
I drove Honda Civic's for 10 years. Having a kid and a dog, and being an avid outdoorsman, mountainbiker, camper etc...yeah, definitely grown out of the civic.
So I was pretty sure I was going to get myself a CRV...until I test drove a couple. On the exterior, they are much bigger than a civic...but they're freaking TINY inside!!! I was actually kind of pissed off after getting in one...all of the downsides of an SUV, and no more space!!!
Most SUV's are sold for some perceived benefit, not for the actual utility that a truck CAN provide if designed to do so.
I ended up with a Honda Element instead. A whole foot shorter than a civic, WAY more room and utility, and much better fuel economy than most SUV's. Ah, and the most legroom, front AND back, that I have seen in any vehicle in a very very long time. It's actually a very pleasurable vehicle to be in the back seat in, whereas the backseat in the civic, or crv for that matter, is really not good for anything more than a dog bench.
I still scratch my head about that CRV though...I just don't get it.
For your definition of suffer, OK. But you're being semantic, not addressing my actual question. (One problem with science that has always irked me)
Let me ask you this: Can you kill a plant? Of course.
Can you inflict a mortal wound on a plant? Yes, definitely.
Do you know beyond a doubt that there is no mechanism in a plant for it to suffer in the interim while it dies? No, you do not. All you know is that they do not have the same mechanism that we have. That does not mean there is NO mechanism.
Not satisfied? Ok, two more questions: Can plants heal themselves? Yes indeed.
Would they not need to have some mechanism for knowing they are injured in order to heal themselves? Quite likely.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying plants have feelings. I'm saying you have no definitive proof that they don't.
Personally, I'd be inclined to take the perspective that if it can bleed, it can suffer. Besides, what's the harm in that?
"Well, if Billy won't play nice, than there's no way I will either."
NOTHING will ever change with attitudes like that. Not One Bloody Thing.
Worse, by allowing it to continue in NA, we completely remove any persuasive power we could have to convince others in the world to stop as well. Why should they listen to us when we're doing the same thing?
Do what's right, not what your neighbor is doing. If we could just figure this out, we might have a chance.
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So we should live every day like it could be any of a thousand days from history past? Just in case right.
Nice world you want us to live in, thanks for thinking of us all.
No, why should we?
Give us a compelling reason why we should SWITCH to an OS that REQUIRES (as you state) 4x more ram and has a "few little extra features" with no "great incentive to upgrade".
And why talk about it on here? Because that is what the god damned article is about!
Oh, Hi Bill, how you doin?
Too true.
A full 1/4 of Alberta has been completely deformed and raped to get what little oil there is there. We're already at peak production. We've been in serious rape mode for all of 5 years TOPS.
We're already grasping at straws. I have no doubt that we're at the top of the curve already.
Say WHAT?
You obviously know absolutely NOTHING about crop farming. That is the most asinine statement I've heard in this thread yet.
Do some research on the nile delta for starters. That will give you a brief introduction into the problem. Then research something closer to our time, like arable land depletion of the southern US over the past 500 years.
My GOD people need to get educated.
Oh don't be stupid.
I've got poppies galore in my back yard. Anyone worried about whether their neighbor has slipped in some opium-grade plants in there?
Of all the bloody arguments, sheesh.
Careful there, you're oversimplifying again.
I'll be one of the first to tout the virtues of Hemp for textiles and other uses, HOWEVER...those 3 extra crops come at a VERY high cost to the earth it is grown in. That energy has to come from somewhere. Plants aren't magical energy generators. People really need to start to get a handle on this. Corn is already highly draining on farmland, which is why most of the stalks and shells are left in the field, the field is usually left to rest the next year, and then a couple years of other cycled crops before growing corn again. (beans one year, wheat the next, back to corn)
Hemp is even worse.
Remember: Nothing is free. Current ethanol production is WAY more damaging and energy draining than our use of fossil fuels, we just choose to ignore that part of the equation. Or did you not know that it takes MORE energy to produce a litre of ethanol from bio sources than that litre itself provides?
Major problem: Crop farming is a cycle. If you continuously grow corn on a plot year after year, and take the entire plant year after year, you will have a desert in but a few years. You have to return something to the soil. Further, you can't even just grow one crop over and over, even if you do leave everything but the fruit or seed behind, key nutrient deprecation. You have to rotate crops AND return waste material to the soil AND fertilize AND allow rest periods.
That is the problem with all biofuels, NOTHING comes for free. All that energy has a cost. We'd be wise to remember this.
South America is already suffering from topsoil based ethanol production, and we're hardly using ANY of what would be required to replace fossil fuels. Food grade corn is now subsidized in Mexico because the ethanol market has driven up the price so much that people were having a REALLY hard time affording to buy staple food products. I believe what I'd heard was that the price of corn tortillas had doubled over 5 years.
The big energy cartels won't change the way they do business though, cheapest, easiest, quickest way to a buck Right Now, Always. They don't care about the effects, all they care is that they can buy corn up on the world market and quickly turn it into fuel. That's the ONLY part of the equation they look at. Unfortunately, that's just a tiny fraction of the overall equation...the rest of that particular equation is WAY more damaging to our future than running out of fossil fuels would be. No fossil fuels? So what, at least we can still grow crops. Fuck up our ability to grow and sustain crops?
That wasn't a troll mods, sheesh.
It does oversimplify things a lot though.
NASA won't be producing a practical super efficient car for every day use. There's pretty much zero chance of that ever happening. HOWEVER, they very likely will produce technologies that will be used in said cars.
Detroit isn't going to do it first either. Just not going to happen. Though they'll fall in line as soon as someone else does the hard bits first. Detroit has forgotten how to innovate, but not how to emulate. They'll end up doing it bigger and cheaper than whomever does it first. The biggest problem is that the big 3 truly believe that the combustion engine is it, that there are no radical alternatives that will ever work, and that the only efficiencies left to be had are small and incremental. (This is already what has been hurting the big 3 so much over the past 20 years.)
I kind of doubt China will be the one to do it first, but you never know...where there's a will and a need things can happen.
It will happen though. Actually, it already has, numerous times. The biggest problem with revolutionizing the car industry is with the fuel infrastructure...big oil has it by the balls and will NOT let go of their own accord. Jurisdictions like California with their braindead hydrogen schemes etc are not helping either. How many major attempts at new fuel infrastructures has California mandated in the past 10 years alone? Not ONE of which actually lowers environmental impact, and the ONLY way they can justify it is by legally requiring companies to sell cars that use these new infrastructures...doomed to failure. Government can not force these things to happen, the free market makes or breaks these kinds of changes, not governments trying to force these things.
So there's no way that that is a tongue in cheek poke at gerrymandering in Florida as well?
Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it appears to be a nice little poke to me.
I too am sick of the gun slant being thrown in everywhere.
Off topic and unrelated, but here it is at it's base. By your statements, I'd expect that if someone suggested handing guns out to all students it would be OK. And that we shouldn't worry about what might happen, rather, just put the kids that inevitably do commit murder in jail.
Maybe we should do the same with drugs, make them freely available to all, throw the abusers in jail or let them wither away in the streets, they made a choice and get their just deserts.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not in favor of the current British police state...way too Orwellian for comfort...however, give it up already. Gun control is not inherently a bad thing. On the contrary, unrestricted access to firearms is definitely a problem.
No, guns don't kill people. People kill people...with guns. How many people have died in bar fights because a gun was pulled when what SHOULD have happened if anything were for the parties to drag their beaten asses home and live to learn from their mistakes. Just one simple example. I don't give a shit if you want to hunt, target shoot, whatever, go nuts. But if your motives are purely such, how can you possibly argue against doing so with proper legal controls in place? Why must you insist on being able to buy a concealable handgun with no other merits other than to kill?
Irregardless of how you live where you do, why must you further condemn every other country that disagrees? Other countries that have much MUCH lower death and injury rates due to firearms? Psychopath actually is a very fitting term for people that do.
Hmm, except salamanders don't have teeth or attack things quite like that...though I agree that's probably the 'obvious' correlation to be found.
;)
The tongue in cheek correlation I see is that of an alligator. Gerrymandering...alligator...swing state...surely not
Hmm, I immediately thought it was an alligator, and immediately thought that was definitely by intent.
Just note that there is a difference between 'you' and 'your community'.
You alone likely can not do much. Your community can very likely do much.
Or you can wait around for a government handout that may never come.
Just pointing out that despite what is being said, there most certainly are other options available, there are always other options available.
I have one major problem with your diatribe, while I do feel for you on the initial frustrations, you did not HAVE to put up with any of that. You chose to continue to put up with it. While doing so you were merely feeding the loop.
Don't do business with companies that aren't worth doing business with. It's really that simple.
That's not that bad really...it's all about context.
The households bringing in less than 80k per year, pay for a land line w/long distance packages, high speed internet, full blown cable package, 4 cells etc...THAT is freaking insane. And a TON of people do so. All the things people paid for 20 years ago, PLUS a whole bunch more. Why? Haven't a clue.
Me, I've got a cell phone and cable internet. That is it. Nothing more, and I won't pay for more. Even still, I'm spending just over 100 a month. My ex of course always insisted on all the rest...before we separated, we were spending ~350 a month. WTF? Insanity. And for no need.
But to keep it directly on topic, I haven't the foggiest WHY anyone would pay that kind of money for more television channels than you could ever dream of watching. There simply is no justification for it that makes sense.
Oh yeah, and what about the commercials?
Once upon a time, broadcast content paid for itself. It still does, we just pay the broadcast companies on top of that now. Why? Because as a collective, we're gullible and stupid.
Stop it already!!!
Look at it another way: I can easily go and rent a high-def movie every day of the week and STILL spend less than a ton of people pay for their television.
You make good points, but you make it sound like there is no alternative, like they wouldn't exist without broadband...which they don't even have.
Farming has been around for a long time. I'd suggest that just maybe they've been farming there longer than the internet has existed...just maybe.
Aside from that bit of sarcasm...there is still nothing you mention that would indicate it being economically feasible to run fiber all over hells half acre. That would be a total and complete waste. Satellite can more than cover the uses you mention above, and for a remote and dispersed population, it probably makes the most sense by far. Sure, it's not 10 Meg broadband, but is that really necessary?
And if it really is deemed necessary, the fact is, it will NOT be cheap, it simply CAN'T be cheap. Fiber is not cheap, and unless you're sharing it with a lot of people, you're going to be paying a lot of money to use it.
Then start up a local telco in your town. Build it yourself. Unless of course there aren't enough people to make it cost effective. If that's the case, can you really expect someone else to do it for you?
It doesn't take much to set this kind of thing up for a small suburban centre, it really doesn't.
To where pray-tell?
It appears if you are suggesting that the entirety of australia should be carpeted with fiber, have you ever looked at the size of AU, and the distribution of it's population?
That'd be like running fiber to every community in the arctic. Doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
Ehh, they really just bit off way more than they could chew for the time, and WAY overshot the target hardware specs. Thus it really turned into just a physics sandbox that wouldn't run worth crap on anyones machine at the time. Playing it since on hardware that could actually handle it was much less painful, and kind of fun to play with the physics in the world.
;)
Way better than Daikatana anyways
So true in a lot of cases.
I drove Honda Civic's for 10 years. Having a kid and a dog, and being an avid outdoorsman, mountainbiker, camper etc...yeah, definitely grown out of the civic.
So I was pretty sure I was going to get myself a CRV...until I test drove a couple. On the exterior, they are much bigger than a civic...but they're freaking TINY inside!!! I was actually kind of pissed off after getting in one...all of the downsides of an SUV, and no more space!!!
Most SUV's are sold for some perceived benefit, not for the actual utility that a truck CAN provide if designed to do so.
I ended up with a Honda Element instead. A whole foot shorter than a civic, WAY more room and utility, and much better fuel economy than most SUV's. Ah, and the most legroom, front AND back, that I have seen in any vehicle in a very very long time. It's actually a very pleasurable vehicle to be in the back seat in, whereas the backseat in the civic, or crv for that matter, is really not good for anything more than a dog bench.
I still scratch my head about that CRV though...I just don't get it.
For your definition of suffer, OK.
But you're being semantic, not addressing my actual question. (One problem with science that has always irked me)
Let me ask you this: Can you kill a plant?
Of course.
Can you inflict a mortal wound on a plant?
Yes, definitely.
Do you know beyond a doubt that there is no mechanism in a plant for it to suffer in the interim while it dies?
No, you do not. All you know is that they do not have the same mechanism that we have. That does not mean there is NO mechanism.
Not satisfied? Ok, two more questions: Can plants heal themselves?
Yes indeed.
Would they not need to have some mechanism for knowing they are injured in order to heal themselves?
Quite likely.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying plants have feelings. I'm saying you have no definitive proof that they don't.
Personally, I'd be inclined to take the perspective that if it can bleed, it can suffer. Besides, what's the harm in that?
Now THAT is an utter steaming pile of bullshit. Can't you be more creative than that in your defense of this particular issue?
WE are the whales only natural predator...but we've gone well beyond 'natural' in our predation of whales.
Seals...why you brought that up...they still HAVE other natural predators...well, as long as we don't kill all the killer whales that is.
What a sick and preposterous argument. Maybe people like you need a natural predator to step in.
Did you really just say that?
No wonder we're completely and utterly fucked.
"Well, if Billy won't play nice, than there's no way I will either."
NOTHING will ever change with attitudes like that. Not One Bloody Thing.
Worse, by allowing it to continue in NA, we completely remove any persuasive power we could have to convince others in the world to stop as well. Why should they listen to us when we're doing the same thing?
Do what's right, not what your neighbor is doing. If we could just figure this out, we might have a chance.
Completely unproven.
A distinct possibility, of which there are many.
But again, completely unproven.