Quite true, but one thing that Hydrogen will allow us to do is decide where the air pollution accumulates. If we build H2 plants in the middle of the desert where we can cause as little health risk as possible (or in areas where the CO2 emissions can be reabsorbed by vegetation), it might actually help us to be able to see our hands in front of our faces in LA again. The sooner we stop emitting all of that vehicle exhaust into the air around our major cities the better off we'll be.
Sorry, but you're mistaken on America's commitment to Biodiesel. Your comment on Biodiesel giving American farms a reason to exist again is well heeded by the powers that be, who are sick of providing subsidies to farmers so they'll stop growing. For more info, go here.
The US Ethanol effort is a lot bigger than you imagine, especially here in the midwest, where the corn that is fermented to produce ethanol is grown. All of our gasoline fuels are now blended at 10% ethanol, and the major auto makers are making cars that will run on 85% ethanol, which is provided at various fueling stations.
I'll tell you one thing Windows doesn't do that Mac OS, Linux, etc. do well...
Windows doesn't cause all of my users to bitch that they have to rethink everything they've ever learned about computers.
I work at a media company where my desktop publishers and other media gurus use Macs, my DBA's use Solaris, and my business people use Windows. The most important thing I've learned from this is to give my people what they want, otherwise they won't be able to do their jobs efficiently enough. If I tell a Solaris admin to use Exceed or Reflections on Windows, he'll be impacted by windows stability. If I tell a designer to use Windows, he'll laugh at me as he's handing in his resignation. If I tell a business person to use Linux or a Mac, they'll make me pay to retrain them on everything they've ever known how to do, which means lost productivity and increased training cost, not to mention the support calls from users who don't know that you're supposed to click the little Foot instead of the Start button.
Windows may suck, but you have to stick with what your users work best on. It's too expensive to do otherwise.
Flamebait? How is this flamebait? This is one of the funniest posts I've seen in a while! For those who don't get it, look up the numbers in an ASCII table.
Same here. I used to have to use this little 'hack' on a certain phone I had where the 5 button no longer worked properly... Anytime I needed to dial a number with a five in it, it was "'Damn it!' tap-tap-tap-tap-tap"
Yeah, it's under appeal, but the bnetd guys lost big on this one, because the EULA was violated in the creation of a competing product. The lower court ruled that the EULA was absolutely enforceable, and that the bnetd guys were absolutely bound by it.
For side work, I have a couple of small business customers -- a real estate brokerage with 3 employees and an online presence, a law office with four employees, and a desktop publishing firm run out of some guy's basement -- who hire me to clean a virus here or put in a new server there or something similar. I charge $30-60 an hour, and it usually puts an extra hundred bucks or so in my pocket for a saturday afternoon.
It appears you might have some cultural confusion. For most Americans (party A), being told to think, feel, react, or otherwise behave by another person (party B) who has no personal connection with party A or credibility in party A's mind is a sure way to get party A to behave otherwise. It's considered quite insulting, especially when party B is seen as an outsider ("It's none of your business" would be the appropriate phrase). See the abortion debate as a cross-reference (the argument "You have no business dictating what a woman can or cannot do with her body" holds more weight than simply defining life as beginning at birth).
The letters from the Guardian readership were seen as meddling by outsiders who, frankly, had no business telling the residents of Clark County how to vote. As a result of this percieved insult, Clark County went for Bush by a larger than expected margin, and not, as you put it, "xenophobia and acute isolationism."
Re:New addition to the Patriot Act?
on
Nuclear Batteries
·
· Score: 1
My concern isn't when a terrorist gets just one of these batteries, but when he buys them by the truckload, strips out the plastic covering, combines the radioactive material into about 500lbs of the stuff, and turns it into a dirty bomb.
Anyone here know if this is possible or not?
Re:What if someone made a worm that just........
on
New Worm Installs Sniffer
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
It's been done. See this writeup for the Welchia virus.
This thing actually caused more problems at my site in the form of network saturation than the blaster worm it was written to eradicate!
What I spoke of here is called the "multiplier effect", which is a Keynesian concept. John Maynard Keynes's work is what all modern liberal economic theory (since the Great Depression) is based on. He also came up with tax-and-spend economics, and argued that the multiplier effect combined with tax-and-spend policy would do a lot of good.
Wikipedia has a very informative section on Keynesian economics here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics
Yet another Slashdot 'expert'! You get your doctorate out of a cracker jack box?
Point by point:
I don't know what country you're from, but around here, multimillionaire corporate executives are not in the habit of buying groceries at the corner store, shopping with the plebeians at Wal-Mart, or hunkering down in a common park.
No, they buy Ralph Lauren clothes from local stores, Cadillac or Lincoln limousines (or an occasional Mercedes built in Arkansas), build fabulous houses using local labor, have local design firms decorate them with furniture from the Carolinas, have hired servants shop at the local market for them, et cetera -- all of which requires spending money in the US. Sure they import things, but American importers, shipping companies, brokers, et cetera manage to make a buck there, and the cycle continues. Even flying to Europe keeps US pilots, air traffic controllers, flight attendants, cab drivers, janitors, toll takers, road workers, aircraft mechanics, airport vendors, and aircraft companies with their myriad employees in business.
they very much tend to horde the majority of their money
IIRC, hoarding is illegal (I assume you mean 'hoard ' and not 'horde'). The only way to actually hoard your money would be to buy a giant vault Scrooge McDuck style. In actuality, the incredibly wealthy wind up investing in companies or venture capital firms, where it goes to pay salaries at internet startups, or at the very least, by putting their money in the bank, which then gets invested by the bank in home mortgages, which buy houses built by local labor, or business loans which pay salaries. Either way, someone winds up with that money. The only thing the rich people get is more stuff, which had to be paid for, which allowed someone to pay the rent.
all payed for by tax dollars that are shouldered largely not by this highly strange executive of yours
You really need to get your facts straight. The top 1% of wage earners pay out over 30% of the total tax burden. The top 20% of wage earners pay over 80% of the total tax burden. Link here. Often, due to the Earned Income Tax Credit, the poorest tax payers actually have a negative tax rate due to the Earned Income Tax Credit (that one came in handy when I was in college).
I'd suggest, then, that you spend less time idealizing things in terms of this poor approximation of macroeconomics that is the 'trickle-down' theory, and more time thinking about how things tend to play out in the real world.
And I'd suggest learning something about a subject before you go spewing out flawed pseudo-academic dreck. To Wikipedia with you!
In the USA, the center of the political spectrum is a bit more averse to change than the rest of the world, and it always has been. Britain is similar in this regard, though they've moved a bit more than we have. In countries where the center has shifted significantly in one direction or another, communism(far left), fascism(far right), theocracy, socialism, or other such undesirable government has been the result, and the majority of Americans want no part in anything like that. Despite arguments between the left and the right, the center is usually where the correct course of action is, and that's where our leaders usually take us. And as I've said, that center doesn't move much.
From the American point of view, the rest of the world has been drifting leftward steadliy since World War II. Heavy socialist programs such as national health care and welfare (I believe you brits call it 'the dole') have become the norm in Europe and Canada due to weakness on the right and the need for social programs to rebuild from World War II. Here, those early leftist programs were resisted because we didn't need to rebuild as much as the rest of the world. We needed to demobilize and build up our Military-industrial infrastructure to combat the future war with the Soviets that never happend. As a result, where the rest of the world took a step left, we stepped right -- traditionally stronger than the left. The only way Kennedy got elected in the early 60's was because he was so rightward leaning in this regard. He ran on being tough on communism. That (and Richard J. Daley) won him the election.
The most significant leftward movement in the US over the last century has, ironically, not been due to our legislative or executive branches of government, but due to our activist judiciary. Abortion rights, desegregation, women's rights, have all been leftward movements imposed on the US by the courts(not that this is a bad thing!).
Many view the problem here as where our lawmakers come from. Our senatorial elections have become a contest between millionaires to see who can buy themselves a seat. Our presidential elections have become less "who do we want to have the job," and more "I'm going to vote for the guy I dislike the least". The result is an elected official who noone really likes, and who does a pretty lousy job. Jimmy Carter was elected the same way that GWB was elected: because too many people disliked the alternative.
In response to your question, the Democratic party is the further left of the two. Some of their planks include abortion rights, healthcare reform, pro-labor legislation, larger government entitlements (the Republicans criticize them for "tax and spend" legislation), redistribution of wealth from the upper classes to the lower, greater attention to social issues, and opposing anything that comes from the Republicans. The Republican party is the further right of the two. Their planks include the rights of the unborn, lower taxes, degregulation of business and other pro-business legislation (including stricter copyright legislation), smaller government through shrinking social services, and opposing anything that comes from the Democrats.
The interesting thing today is that, because of the disaster that the Bush presidency has been, we're looking at a large-scale leftward movement of the country, similar to the rightward movement when Reagan replaced Carter. (But I must say that John Kerry is no Ronald Reagan. He's just not charismatic enough. He's not winning this election as much as Bush is losing it.) Though this leftward movement will happen, look for it to reverse in two years for the congressional elections, as it did after Clinton was elected. Conservatives will wake up and realize that they're conservatives again, because Bush will no longer be there to hate.
The reason that non-Americans see so little difference is that the one area where the American political parties have little disagreement in is foriegn policy. Whatever else happens in November, remember this: US foriegn policy will not change much, regardless of who is elected.
Slashdot Mirror
Quite true, but one thing that Hydrogen will allow us to do is decide where the air pollution accumulates. If we build H2 plants in the middle of the desert where we can cause as little health risk as possible (or in areas where the CO2 emissions can be reabsorbed by vegetation), it might actually help us to be able to see our hands in front of our faces in LA again. The sooner we stop emitting all of that vehicle exhaust into the air around our major cities the better off we'll be.
Sorry, but you're mistaken on America's commitment to Biodiesel. Your comment on Biodiesel giving American farms a reason to exist again is well heeded by the powers that be, who are sick of providing subsidies to farmers so they'll stop growing. For more info, go here.
The US Ethanol effort is a lot bigger than you imagine, especially here in the midwest, where the corn that is fermented to produce ethanol is grown. All of our gasoline fuels are now blended at 10% ethanol, and the major auto makers are making cars that will run on 85% ethanol, which is provided at various fueling stations.
Like one of these?
Or this?
How about one of these?
I'll tell you one thing Windows doesn't do that Mac OS, Linux, etc. do well...
Windows doesn't cause all of my users to bitch that they have to rethink everything they've ever learned about computers.
I work at a media company where my desktop publishers and other media gurus use Macs, my DBA's use Solaris, and my business people use Windows. The most important thing I've learned from this is to give my people what they want, otherwise they won't be able to do their jobs efficiently enough. If I tell a Solaris admin to use Exceed or Reflections on Windows, he'll be impacted by windows stability. If I tell a designer to use Windows, he'll laugh at me as he's handing in his resignation. If I tell a business person to use Linux or a Mac, they'll make me pay to retrain them on everything they've ever known how to do, which means lost productivity and increased training cost, not to mention the support calls from users who don't know that you're supposed to click the little Foot instead of the Start button.
Windows may suck, but you have to stick with what your users work best on. It's too expensive to do otherwise.
For those, like me, who have no idea what this guy is talking about, see this.
Flamebait? How is this flamebait? This is one of the funniest posts I've seen in a while! For those who don't get it, look up the numbers in an ASCII table.
Same here. I used to have to use this little 'hack' on a certain phone I had where the 5 button no longer worked properly... Anytime I needed to dial a number with a five in it, it was "'Damn it!' tap-tap-tap-tap-tap"
At least, it worked this way in 708 land....
Is Microsoft's Single Sign-On vision edging towards oblivion?"
I sincerely hope so.
How many court cases have there been to seek damages from someone who didn't uphold the EULA?
Forgot about this one?
Yeah, it's under appeal, but the bnetd guys lost big on this one, because the EULA was violated in the creation of a competing product. The lower court ruled that the EULA was absolutely enforceable, and that the bnetd guys were absolutely bound by it.
For side work, I have a couple of small business customers -- a real estate brokerage with 3 employees and an online presence, a law office with four employees, and a desktop publishing firm run out of some guy's basement -- who hire me to clean a virus here or put in a new server there or something similar. I charge $30-60 an hour, and it usually puts an extra hundred bucks or so in my pocket for a saturday afternoon.
Nah. I think he wants to take dental impressions.
It appears you might have some cultural confusion. For most Americans (party A), being told to think, feel, react, or otherwise behave by another person (party B) who has no personal connection with party A or credibility in party A's mind is a sure way to get party A to behave otherwise. It's considered quite insulting, especially when party B is seen as an outsider ("It's none of your business" would be the appropriate phrase). See the abortion debate as a cross-reference (the argument "You have no business dictating what a woman can or cannot do with her body" holds more weight than simply defining life as beginning at birth).
The letters from the Guardian readership were seen as meddling by outsiders who, frankly, had no business telling the residents of Clark County how to vote. As a result of this percieved insult, Clark County went for Bush by a larger than expected margin, and not, as you put it, "xenophobia and acute isolationism."
Where I come from, it's "Shit On Again". As in "Did you hear about the latest round of layoffs? Sounds like we're SOA."
Are we talking these Sox or these Sox?
My concern isn't when a terrorist gets just one of these batteries, but when he buys them by the truckload, strips out the plastic covering, combines the radioactive material into about 500lbs of the stuff, and turns it into a dirty bomb.
Anyone here know if this is possible or not?
It's been done. See this writeup for the Welchia virus.
This thing actually caused more problems at my site in the form of network saturation than the blaster worm it was written to eradicate!
... But you're not bitter.
What I spoke of here is called the "multiplier effect", which is a Keynesian concept. John Maynard Keynes's work is what all modern liberal economic theory (since the Great Depression) is based on. He also came up with tax-and-spend economics, and argued that the multiplier effect combined with tax-and-spend policy would do a lot of good.
Wikipedia has a very informative section on Keynesian economics here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keynesian_economics
Yet another Slashdot 'expert'! You get your doctorate out of a cracker jack box?
Point by point:
I don't know what country you're from, but around here, multimillionaire corporate executives are not in the habit of buying groceries at the corner store, shopping with the plebeians at Wal-Mart, or hunkering down in a common park.
No, they buy Ralph Lauren clothes from local stores, Cadillac or Lincoln limousines (or an occasional Mercedes built in Arkansas), build fabulous houses using local labor, have local design firms decorate them with furniture from the Carolinas, have hired servants shop at the local market for them, et cetera -- all of which requires spending money in the US. Sure they import things, but American importers, shipping companies, brokers, et cetera manage to make a buck there, and the cycle continues. Even flying to Europe keeps US pilots, air traffic controllers, flight attendants, cab drivers, janitors, toll takers, road workers, aircraft mechanics, airport vendors, and aircraft companies with their myriad employees in business.
they very much tend to horde the majority of their money
IIRC, hoarding is illegal (I assume you mean 'hoard ' and not 'horde'). The only way to actually hoard your money would be to buy a giant vault Scrooge McDuck style. In actuality, the incredibly wealthy wind up investing in companies or venture capital firms, where it goes to pay salaries at internet startups, or at the very least, by putting their money in the bank, which then gets invested by the bank in home mortgages, which buy houses built by local labor, or business loans which pay salaries. Either way, someone winds up with that money. The only thing the rich people get is more stuff, which had to be paid for, which allowed someone to pay the rent.
all payed for by tax dollars that are shouldered largely not by this highly strange executive of yours
You really need to get your facts straight. The top 1% of wage earners pay out over 30% of the total tax burden. The top 20% of wage earners pay over 80% of the total tax burden. Link here. Often, due to the Earned Income Tax Credit, the poorest tax payers actually have a negative tax rate due to the Earned Income Tax Credit (that one came in handy when I was in college).
I'd suggest, then, that you spend less time idealizing things in terms of this poor approximation of macroeconomics that is the 'trickle-down' theory, and more time thinking about how things tend to play out in the real world.
And I'd suggest learning something about a subject before you go spewing out flawed pseudo-academic dreck. To Wikipedia with you!
The parent is most certainly *not* informative.
Hmmm... Do we have a pot/kettle thing going on here?
Sure.
In the USA, the center of the political spectrum is a bit more averse to change than the rest of the world, and it always has been. Britain is similar in this regard, though they've moved a bit more than we have. In countries where the center has shifted significantly in one direction or another, communism(far left), fascism(far right), theocracy, socialism, or other such undesirable government has been the result, and the majority of Americans want no part in anything like that. Despite arguments between the left and the right, the center is usually where the correct course of action is, and that's where our leaders usually take us. And as I've said, that center doesn't move much.
From the American point of view, the rest of the world has been drifting leftward steadliy since World War II. Heavy socialist programs such as national health care and welfare (I believe you brits call it 'the dole') have become the norm in Europe and Canada due to weakness on the right and the need for social programs to rebuild from World War II. Here, those early leftist programs were resisted because we didn't need to rebuild as much as the rest of the world. We needed to demobilize and build up our Military-industrial infrastructure to combat the future war with the Soviets that never happend. As a result, where the rest of the world took a step left, we stepped right -- traditionally stronger than the left. The only way Kennedy got elected in the early 60's was because he was so rightward leaning in this regard. He ran on being tough on communism. That (and Richard J. Daley) won him the election.
The most significant leftward movement in the US over the last century has, ironically, not been due to our legislative or executive branches of government, but due to our activist judiciary. Abortion rights, desegregation, women's rights, have all been leftward movements imposed on the US by the courts(not that this is a bad thing!).
Many view the problem here as where our lawmakers come from. Our senatorial elections have become a contest between millionaires to see who can buy themselves a seat. Our presidential elections have become less "who do we want to have the job," and more "I'm going to vote for the guy I dislike the least". The result is an elected official who noone really likes, and who does a pretty lousy job. Jimmy Carter was elected the same way that GWB was elected: because too many people disliked the alternative.
In response to your question, the Democratic party is the further left of the two. Some of their planks include abortion rights, healthcare reform, pro-labor legislation, larger government entitlements (the Republicans criticize them for "tax and spend" legislation), redistribution of wealth from the upper classes to the lower, greater attention to social issues, and opposing anything that comes from the Republicans. The Republican party is the further right of the two. Their planks include the rights of the unborn, lower taxes, degregulation of business and other pro-business legislation (including stricter copyright legislation), smaller government through shrinking social services, and opposing anything that comes from the Democrats.
The interesting thing today is that, because of the disaster that the Bush presidency has been, we're looking at a large-scale leftward movement of the country, similar to the rightward movement when Reagan replaced Carter. (But I must say that John Kerry is no Ronald Reagan. He's just not charismatic enough. He's not winning this election as much as Bush is losing it.) Though this leftward movement will happen, look for it to reverse in two years for the congressional elections, as it did after Clinton was elected. Conservatives will wake up and realize that they're conservatives again, because Bush will no longer be there to hate.
The reason that non-Americans see so little difference is that the one area where the American political parties have little disagreement in is foriegn policy. Whatever else happens in November, remember this: US foriegn policy will not change much, regardless of who is elected.
I just happen to think that the elderly should be treated as a resource
Soylent green?
How about a new form of fossil fuel?
We could plug them into the Near Death Star...
Let's just hope the terrorists agree with you.
Interesting pic of this beastie on the Chicago Tribune's website here.
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