Good call. The energy price spike in 2007-2008 caused a global food crisis; modern agriculture provides food as a function of how much energy is put into each unit area of land, so there is much more at stake than whether you can have incandescent light bulbs and leave your TV on standby.
No, modern agriculture provides food as a function of how much energy and petrochemicals are put into each unit area of land. The oil price spike caused a global food crisis because not only did it increase the costs of fuel (for farm operation as well as transport) it also increased the cost of the oil derived chemical feedstocks used in fertilizer. It also increased the demand for ethanol, which meant cereal crops were shifted to ethanol production rather than being used as food. (Aided by increased government subsidies for such diversion.)
Even if humanity ceased to output excess CO2 tomorrow, that's the planetary equivalent of celebrating the cutting off of a cancerous mole from your skin, while ignoring the cancer eating away at your liver, lungs, and brain. We're still dumping tons of toxins, plastics, and other wastes and runoffs into the environment yearly. Switching to chemical processes that don't use petrochemicals won't change that.
That all said...I thought we were against kill-switches, and certainly wasn't aware that there were any built into Firefox...
I love the [highly rated] responses to your question, which amount to "fuck Microsoft, fuck Microsoft, fuck Microsoft", without actually addressing the issue you raise. It just highlights once again how the majority of Slashdot is two faced when it comes to... just about any issue. Mozilla is in the same category as Google, they simply cannot do wrong in the eyes of Slashdot. "Two legs bad, for legs good".
It makes the whole process of enforcement and monitoring more complicated, more expensive and prone to corruption.
Evidence of corruption please?
The logical and simpler solution is to increase the price of electricity and/or gasoline, to reflect the real cost of the commodity, through taxes.
Everytime I hear this, I shudder - because 'real cost' is actually code meaning 'make it expensive, really expensive' as there is no universally recognized method of ascertaining 'real costs', only a bewildering thicket of politically motivated ones.
What does open access to laws have to do with operating systems or open source?
There's a reason why they call it a "legal code", and not just because of Dr. Lessig's book.
Nope. They call it a "legal code" by derivation from "codification", which ultimately derives from "codex" - I.E. a book of law that present and organized system of law. Computer "code" on the other hand derives it's name from the definition of code that means to translate information from one form of representation to another - E.G. to and from native binary.
For reference - that's 5%, essentially 5% profit. In most places in the business world, that would be considered screamingly successful. Doubly so since he's making an ongoing profit for work he did only once and isn't responsible for the ongoing work of marketing and stocking.
1. 5% is not a screaming success. My employer has had quarters where the net margin was *only* 18% and these led to managerial changes due to the failure to meet expectations.
Then you were in one of the few areas of the business world where 5% isn't considered a success. (Assuming, since 'margin' is an undefined word in accounting, that what you actually mean is '18% net profit'.)
You can't say he's making 5% profit. He's making some unknown amount of income (based upon to-date and future sales), in exchange for the time spent, his knowledge, and his writing ability.
He's making 5% of the sale price of the book, he's making 5% profit.
Also, why would he use a publisher that gave him only $2 per sale? You'd think that royalties would be driven up as competing publishers offer more per sale..
What on earth would lead you to think so? There's only so many sales to be had, and a fairly hard (though rising with inflation over time) cap on what customers will pay for a given class of book - and the publishers revenue comes out of the difference.
Why doesn't a publisher just offer 40% royalties or something and annihilate the competition?
That being said, this is a great blog post for everyone who ever wondered how tech book deals work. He is making about $2 per sale of a $40 book!
For reference - that's 5%, essentially 5% profit. In most places in the business world, that would be considered screamingly successful. Doubly so since he's making an ongoing profit for work he did only once and isn't responsible for the ongoing work of marketing and stocking.
Many folks who didn't serve in the USN or USCG are often surprised are the level of responsibility handed over to PO's (Petty Officers, not NCO) in those services. Even as an E4, when I had the underway watch I was directly responsible for a quarter of a billion (mid 1980's) dollars worth of weapons system - 16 missiles, their nuclear warheads, fire control and launcher systems, and miscellaneous support equipment. My buddy was an E5 in the USAF at the same time, and the most he was ever responsible for was a handful of long guns and radios.
Or the one where humanity deployed robots against the Antichrist on the plains of Armageddon... Only to have the robots taken to heaven after their victory.
I've heard UAV pilots refered to more than once as the ChAir Force.
That's the Air Force as a whole not just the drone pilots.
Indeed. When I was is the Navy, we regarded the Coasties as more of a military service than the USAF. We often called the latter 'Boeing with a dress code'.
And don't even get me started on the USAF officer who tried to put 24 hour stretches hiding in a hole in the prairie and going home to mama on the same footing as my doing 90 days under the North Atlantic on an SSBN.
Nothing new there - the USN's list was like that back in late 80's, short on low level stuff and long on strategic stuff.
Which makes sense, as low level jobs are (relatively speaking) easy - go to location x and hit target y with weapon z. It's all covered in doctrine, and the appropriate pubs [1] are easily available to the appropriate people. But somebody has to come up with the priorities, compare priorities with the forces available, and as you work through the staff and a touch lower in the chain - decide between between targets y or y'. (Then you go lower down, and they haul the appropriate doctrine pub off the shelf (if they haven't memorized it) and decide which weapon or tactic is appropriate.)
That high level stuff is much harder, and the guys with talent for it rarer and harder to locate. So that start 'em off reading that stuff early, the better to prepare for those higher level roles.
[1] This is the (in)famous Book you hear so much about in fiction, ours was the NWP (Naval Warfare Publication) series. If we'd had 'em collected all we carried onboard in one place they would have filled a bookshelf about five feet long, ranging from from general Navy stuff then drilling down to submarine stuff and finally SSBN specific stuff.
If they're not afraid that something they cannot see, but is likely to be present, isn't about to bring in an air strike or an armed patrol... They either ain't too bright, or bullshitting.
While open brute intimidation is a valuable facet of the psychological side of warfare (which is different from psychological warfare), so is increasing the uncertainty and thickening the fog of war. There are different levels to the game... Open intimidation and shows of force are aimed at the tactical level, the proles and the grunts on the ground. More subtle forms of increasing friction and uncertainty are aimed at the higher levels, the leadership and the strategic planners.
My point is, that's kinda like having a cassette player as the biggest feature of your new 2009 model car... (I.E. my original 'too little, too late'.) Sure, you don't have any competitors, but you're also in a weird and backwards niche. The world has moved on, the norm is wireless connections and color screens, not a device that looks and acts like it was 1989.
Yeah, it's very novel to see a spider nomming on plant matter, but rushing to call it vegetarian is as inane as calling anyone wearing all black goth. They might just be wearing all black... or they might be a juggalo or Marylin Manson fan... or....
In other words you don't think McDonald's has any competitors because they don't serve Big Mac's, and Coke doesn't have any competitors because Pepsi has *blue* in it's logo.
When you have to make up weird definitions and exclusions in order to define competitors, it's a sure sign your argument is weak beyond usefulness.
The time this would be really useful to me is when I get into arguments at bars or restaurants with friends.
My friends would laugh at me citing Wikipedia. Real Geeks use authoritative references.
You know you're in a Real Geek argument when the geek in question has a better library on the topic than any library within 100 miles (except maybe a college specializing in the topic), and half the books are on the table, floor, and any other handy horizontal surface during the debate.
Since the cost of the cable is huge compared to the cost of the station gear, it makes sense to double your capacity by using DC.
Assuming you can economically perform the AC->DC->AC conversion on 5GW without excessive capital investment, without excessive operating costs, and without excessive losses.
An armchair engineer looks at the equations and says "Dude! DC!". Real engineers are as much accountants as they are academics and look at the dollar costs too.
In other words, because you built a toy rocket from a kit - you can't see why going to the moon is such a big deal. But you're willing to share your ideas anyhow.
Just maybe your idea hasn't taken over the world because it isn't that simple. But you're too stupid to realize that.
Yeah, the Simpson's had their fifteen minutes over fifteen years ago - they've been hanging on since by sheer force of habit.
And what is it with 7-11? Wasn't it just a couple of years back (during another yawnfest Simpson's anniversary) that they decorated some of them as Quik-E Marts?
I wrote a detailed reply - but it's simpler to say, you haven't a clue what you are nattering on about.
For example - the G's lasting only 1/3 of a second don't make the problem easier, they make it harder because now you're dealing with shock loads rather than straight G forces.
The cost of a Shuttle or Progress launch is roughly as relevant as the color of the shirt I'm wearing. What matters is whether or not you can deliver sufficient payloads annually to keep costs down
I never said it couldn't be done - I said I think it can't be done economically.
The acceleration is an artillery piece runs to the thousands of Gs. Artillery shells are full of explosives, electronics, and machinery.
Very, very expensive electronics and machinery as it must be made to withstand high shock and high G's.
This gun should be able to handle pretty much all of the consumables and many of the parts and materials needed by the space station.
So long as you handwave away the expense and difficulty of manufacturing containers that hold those consumables, parts, and materials and protect them from the shock and g loading orders of magnitude greater than they currently experience.
Actually, it solves a LOT of current issues. Maneuvering fuel, food, water, and medicines for example are quite durable under G-force.
But the containers holding those materials - aren't. So you'll need to considerably increase the structure containing and supporting them, which means your parasitic weight goes up (way up). (Them if you take those containers onboard the station, you make it heavier and increase the amount of reboost fuel required.) The electronics (for guiding and controlling the packages) and their power supplies will be a significant design problem because of the G forces. (Yes, I know they design packages 1/1000th the size to put inside artillery shells. Bigger packages mean bigger problems.) The RCS systems (for guiding and controlling the packages) will be a significant problem because of the G forces. Nothing in this package will be off the shelf or directly derivable from existing experience.
This all adds up to quite an expensive package.
Not to mention that the low launch costs he promises depend on handwaving away the overhead involved in servicing the debt of a half billion dollar of construction costs.
Slashdot Mirror
No, modern agriculture provides food as a function of how much energy and petrochemicals are put into each unit area of land. The oil price spike caused a global food crisis because not only did it increase the costs of fuel (for farm operation as well as transport) it also increased the cost of the oil derived chemical feedstocks used in fertilizer. It also increased the demand for ethanol, which meant cereal crops were shifted to ethanol production rather than being used as food. (Aided by increased government subsidies for such diversion.)
Even if humanity ceased to output excess CO2 tomorrow, that's the planetary equivalent of celebrating the cutting off of a cancerous mole from your skin, while ignoring the cancer eating away at your liver, lungs, and brain. We're still dumping tons of toxins, plastics, and other wastes and runoffs into the environment yearly. Switching to chemical processes that don't use petrochemicals won't change that.
I love the [highly rated] responses to your question, which amount to "fuck Microsoft, fuck Microsoft, fuck Microsoft", without actually addressing the issue you raise. It just highlights once again how the majority of Slashdot is two faced when it comes to... just about any issue. Mozilla is in the same category as Google, they simply cannot do wrong in the eyes of Slashdot. "Two legs bad, for legs good".
Evidence of corruption please?
Everytime I hear this, I shudder - because 'real cost' is actually code meaning 'make it expensive, really expensive' as there is no universally recognized method of ascertaining 'real costs', only a bewildering thicket of politically motivated ones.
Nope. They call it a "legal code" by derivation from "codification", which ultimately derives from "codex" - I.E. a book of law that present and organized system of law. Computer "code" on the other hand derives it's name from the definition of code that means to translate information from one form of representation to another - E.G. to and from native binary.
Then you were in one of the few areas of the business world where 5% isn't considered a success. (Assuming, since 'margin' is an undefined word in accounting, that what you actually mean is '18% net profit'.)
He's making 5% of the sale price of the book, he's making 5% profit.
What on earth would lead you to think so? There's only so many sales to be had, and a fairly hard (though rising with inflation over time) cap on what customers will pay for a given class of book - and the publishers revenue comes out of the difference.
Because publishers can do math.
For reference - that's 5%, essentially 5% profit. In most places in the business world, that would be considered screamingly successful. Doubly so since he's making an ongoing profit for work he did only once and isn't responsible for the ongoing work of marketing and stocking.
Many folks who didn't serve in the USN or USCG are often surprised are the level of responsibility handed over to PO's (Petty Officers, not NCO) in those services. Even as an E4, when I had the underway watch I was directly responsible for a quarter of a billion (mid 1980's) dollars worth of weapons system - 16 missiles, their nuclear warheads, fire control and launcher systems, and miscellaneous support equipment. My buddy was an E5 in the USAF at the same time, and the most he was ever responsible for was a handful of long guns and radios.
I don't recall the title - it's in one of Pournelle's anthologies. I'll do a YASID on rasfw and get back to you.
Or the one where humanity deployed robots against the Antichrist on the plains of Armageddon... Only to have the robots taken to heaven after their victory.
Indeed. When I was is the Navy, we regarded the Coasties as more of a military service than the USAF. We often called the latter 'Boeing with a dress code'.
And don't even get me started on the USAF officer who tried to put 24 hour stretches hiding in a hole in the prairie and going home to mama on the same footing as my doing 90 days under the North Atlantic on an SSBN.
Nothing new there - the USN's list was like that back in late 80's, short on low level stuff and long on strategic stuff.
Which makes sense, as low level jobs are (relatively speaking) easy - go to location x and hit target y with weapon z. It's all covered in doctrine, and the appropriate pubs [1] are easily available to the appropriate people. But somebody has to come up with the priorities, compare priorities with the forces available, and as you work through the staff and a touch lower in the chain - decide between between targets y or y'. (Then you go lower down, and they haul the appropriate doctrine pub off the shelf (if they haven't memorized it) and decide which weapon or tactic is appropriate.)
That high level stuff is much harder, and the guys with talent for it rarer and harder to locate. So that start 'em off reading that stuff early, the better to prepare for those higher level roles.
[1] This is the (in)famous Book you hear so much about in fiction, ours was the NWP (Naval Warfare Publication) series. If we'd had 'em collected all we carried onboard in one place they would have filled a bookshelf about five feet long, ranging from from general Navy stuff then drilling down to submarine stuff and finally SSBN specific stuff.
If they're not afraid that something they cannot see, but is likely to be present, isn't about to bring in an air strike or an armed patrol... They either ain't too bright, or bullshitting.
While open brute intimidation is a valuable facet of the psychological side of warfare (which is different from psychological warfare), so is increasing the uncertainty and thickening the fog of war. There are different levels to the game... Open intimidation and shows of force are aimed at the tactical level, the proles and the grunts on the ground. More subtle forms of increasing friction and uncertainty are aimed at the higher levels, the leadership and the strategic planners.
My point is, that's kinda like having a cassette player as the biggest feature of your new 2009 model car... (I.E. my original 'too little, too late'.) Sure, you don't have any competitors, but you're also in a weird and backwards niche. The world has moved on, the norm is wireless connections and color screens, not a device that looks and acts like it was 1989.
Sounds suspicious to me - more like the same "this can't be my fault, its [my parent|my spouse|society]'s fault" bullshit.
Or as a tribute to the original Man In Black.
In other words you don't think McDonald's has any competitors because they don't serve Big Mac's, and Coke doesn't have any competitors because Pepsi has *blue* in it's logo.
When you have to make up weird definitions and exclusions in order to define competitors, it's a sure sign your argument is weak beyond usefulness.
Too little, too late, too expensive.
My friends would laugh at me citing Wikipedia. Real Geeks use authoritative references.
You know you're in a Real Geek argument when the geek in question has a better library on the topic than any library within 100 miles (except maybe a college specializing in the topic), and half the books are on the table, floor, and any other handy horizontal surface during the debate.
Assuming you can economically perform the AC->DC->AC conversion on 5GW without excessive capital investment, without excessive operating costs, and without excessive losses.
An armchair engineer looks at the equations and says "Dude! DC!". Real engineers are as much accountants as they are academics and look at the dollar costs too.
In other words, because you built a toy rocket from a kit - you can't see why going to the moon is such a big deal. But you're willing to share your ideas anyhow.
Just maybe your idea hasn't taken over the world because it isn't that simple. But you're too stupid to realize that.
Yeah, the Simpson's had their fifteen minutes over fifteen years ago - they've been hanging on since by sheer force of habit.
And what is it with 7-11? Wasn't it just a couple of years back (during another yawnfest Simpson's anniversary) that they decorated some of them as Quik-E Marts?
I wrote a detailed reply - but it's simpler to say, you haven't a clue what you are nattering on about.
For example - the G's lasting only 1/3 of a second don't make the problem easier, they make it harder because now you're dealing with shock loads rather than straight G forces.
The cost of a Shuttle or Progress launch is roughly as relevant as the color of the shirt I'm wearing. What matters is whether or not you can deliver sufficient payloads annually to keep costs down
I never said it couldn't be done - I said I think it can't be done economically.
Very, very expensive electronics and machinery as it must be made to withstand high shock and high G's.
So long as you handwave away the expense and difficulty of manufacturing containers that hold those consumables, parts, and materials and protect them from the shock and g loading orders of magnitude greater than they currently experience.
But the containers holding those materials - aren't. So you'll need to considerably increase the structure containing and supporting them, which means your parasitic weight goes up (way up). (Them if you take those containers onboard the station, you make it heavier and increase the amount of reboost fuel required.) The electronics (for guiding and controlling the packages) and their power supplies will be a significant design problem because of the G forces. (Yes, I know they design packages 1/1000th the size to put inside artillery shells. Bigger packages mean bigger problems.) The RCS systems (for guiding and controlling the packages) will be a significant problem because of the G forces. Nothing in this package will be off the shelf or directly derivable from existing experience.
This all adds up to quite an expensive package.
Not to mention that the low launch costs he promises depend on handwaving away the overhead involved in servicing the debt of a half billion dollar of construction costs.