Ahhh you terrify me! Oh evil socialist go away! Bring back my conservative drug addicated pundit! Or my president who lets America get bombed. Or the domestic enemies of the constituation who overthrew the fouth admendment! Anything but socialism. Please G-d save me.
But... they just improved the model. Toyota is a profit machine for a few reasons. They took Deming's statistical process control ideas and were able to get error rates into the parts per billion. Then they took lean manufacturing to eliminate waste and delay in their production. Then they went to target cost accounting where they fixed the price of the cost of the car before production ensuring that failures could not balloon in cost. But they still are following the same basic plan. Sell a car in order to sell financing, service, and parts. GMAC was the only profit center in GM for years. IT was no different than the Xbox sold at a loss to sell games.
No MAJOR CAR MAKER makes an electric car. The hybrid was the height of brilliance by Toyota, an electric car that needs oil changes and all the other maintenance. Toyotas still don't go a MILLION miles on a single engine 250K sure easy with maintenance and you think you're getting a great deal. Toyota could make a car that would never ever die for a tiny fraction more in cost.
I was told a story at one degree of separation (so take as much salt as you would like) about guy who worked for Merrill shoes as intern. He made a pair of shoe that would last twenty years by using different mid-sole and leather combinations. They were all recalled when his boss found out. Why wouldn't they be? People have to make a living.
I am saying drop the bullshit. Just say as a company we want X dollars per year from you and in return you will always have a working car. The market for customization licensing would be the cream on top. GM's skateboard car design was perfect for this. They lease you the drive train and you go to the dealer to get a different body depending on what you want to do.
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Wind and solar are a load of shit. They require huge upfront costs, have low reliability, and are hard to transport. Bio fuels, esp. cellulose, TDP, and algaculture are efficient, require low or lower upfront cost and can use existing infrastructure owned by the company.
PGE, Marlborough New Zeland, and some companies in Texas are working with algae. What is algae but the product of billions of years of technical development to be the most efficient solar power device on the planet. It is self replicating and can turn our shit into oil. It can also be used for carbon sequestration (if you burn the oil on site you can vent the exhust through the growing algea to speed up production and capture CO2.) Algae in a best case scenario can create 20,000 gallons of bio fuel per acre of land vs. 18 gallon per acre by corn. It doesn't use up the soil resources, it doesn't need chemical fertilizers created with fossil fuels, and it can per pumped around in pipelines that we already own. When combined with TDP you don't even need to worry about having the most efficient producer of oil or getting contaminated with other strains or bacteria. You can just run the system on whatever green goo grows and then render it down into shorter carbon chains. If another better strain that is more efficient comes along later just inoculate with that one. Don't fucking wait for perfection, just get going.
Thinking you can produce a cost efficient solar system that completes with a primary biological producer shows a painful level of hubris. Want nano-tech power? Wow mother nature already does that.
Oh yeah and another thing. Oil companies are not 'energy companies' they are 'resource extraction companies' there's a difference.
This relates to an argument about making furnaces better. The furnace company has very little incentive to make a more efficient furnace because they do not have to pay for the consumables and they make a profit off of parts and service. One idea to make HVAC more efficient is to make vertical monopolies within the industry that provide the server of heating or cooling. If the manufacturer has to pay capital costs and variable reoccurring costs then they will make a machine that lasts forever and uses as little resources per unit of heating or cooling as possible. This is why GM killed the EV because they want you to consume parts and service for the (short) life of the car. If GM gave you the service of having a car and had to pay for gas, parts and service you would have 100mpg cars in 10 years that would last a million miles without service. Don't think a million mile per engine car is possible? Look at the Volvo PS-1800, 2 million miles on single engine made in the 1960s.
Oil companies have generated more super wealthy people on this planet than any other human activity; don't underestimate people's ability to do evil when it comes to trillions of dollars.
People like to vilify Shell because they are total assholes. Do some research on what they did to the women of a Nigerian village who objected to having oil tar poured on their fields. Shell is one of the most evil companies on the planet bar none. You can be an oil company without having people murdered.
Micro-Four Thirds is what I'm interested in. I am amateur for sure, and have no direct love or hate for the mirror box. I think that a tiny compact camera with a standard replaceable lens sounds like the most important innovation in the sub-pro camera field since the DSLR. The first one out the Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 seems to have no advantage over the tiny Olympus E410 which when fitted with a pancake lens is just freaking tiny.
I live in the Gulf and everyday I wonder why this places sucks as hard as it does. Chapter 6 explained clearly why no matter what you do the middle east and south Asia will always be deeply fucked. It depressing but if you have ever driven in the gulf and wondered what was wrong with all these people now you know.
I don't dismiss economics, I just admit that it is not a science. I understand that the best economics models does not do a very good job of predicting future events because the models are flawed and the complexity of the system defies prediction. If you read the Economist's 14 page report on finance in the last week of January you will notice they talk a great deal about the economist going back to revise their models to fit what happened. When the next shit storm hits they will all do the same thing again. Why? Because, like climate, economics is and art based on intuition built up by observation of past events. Basically you can't model any of this stuff as a complete model no matter what, all you can do is gather data and make a guess. Some economists saw what was coming, other didn't. So climatologists see what coming others don't. But if you really look the numbers that think (and that's all this really boils down to anyway) that things are going to worse due to global climate change you will find that there are far greater and far more respected. Could the curmudgeons be right and that to quote the Postal Service "...we just being rewarded... now we can swim any day in November" or is the majority right and we are deeply fucked.
Irrationality IS NOT what damages economic models, the butterfly effect is what damages economic models. Economics even flawed is just a place to stand when trying to view the world, without a place to stand and look at the system you can't even begin to process it, but it is a flawed place built on a flawed principal. At least climate is based on science and is placed firmly in the physical, testable, and verifiable realm. Climate models are far better than economic models by an order of magnitude if not more. How often is the 3 day forecast deeply, deeply WRONG? If you had 3 day economic forecast that was as good as the weather you'd be rich as Creases. So why do you attack climate change models and defend economic models? Because it fits your preconceptions about the world and reinforces your beliefs. Now as a statistician you know that when they say 3 degrees in 50 years (or whatever) they really mean the true mean temperature will be bracketed by this range with a 95.6% certainty, bla bla bla. Now is that true, of course not its just one digital slice of a huge analog system predicted out far beyond any range that is realistic but it is a place to stand and look. It is one point to add to your internal hologram of the universe and judge, "try to fix, or keep going as is."
I am right to dismiss economics because I have studied it and I have seen that they do a fucking terrible job of seeing what will happen. I have called the last 3 stock market crashes to within 1 week to 1 year. In 2001 I saw the Rambus deal with intel and knew instantly and clearly that the party was over. For the last 5 years I have seen no reason for the rest of the world to loan us anymore money, this summer I couldn't believe that the market could possible go up any longer and sold a crap load of stock. That a pretty damn good record and if I was a banking CEO I would be getting a foot rub from Hank Paulson right now for it. Did the quants see it? No. Did Ben B. see it? G-d I hope not. I had the same data why did I see it and not them? Because as sickening as it is most business is in the end is not irrational but subliminal analog and messy.
I would agree that psychology, anthropology, and sociology are soft sciences for the most part. There is some hard science in psychology and anthropology. Most of psychology and sociology are in fact just statistics not really a since unto themselves. But economics is not a science at all. Give me proof that the basis of economics has been fully exorcised of is misbegotten roots and I still don't believe that individuals will always act to maximize their "utility." Either way you have answered by question. You believe what you want to and don't believe what you don't, facts be damned.
Ok, so its bad if we selectively kill people but we should encourage conditions that speed up evolution despite the fact that it may kill us all. I seriously do not understand how that's better. Why not maximize our chances of living for a long time in current conditions? If you really want people to evolve faster just release some top level predators into the neighborhood.
Ok... I'm not going to bother to refute your points this time just a simple dichotomy.
You say "we don't know what will happen" but "total purity of our science is more important than the unknown effects of climate change" therefore "we shouldn't act because we can't know for sure what will happen"
I say we don't "we don't know what will happen" but "global climate change is a risk because of its unknown effects" therefore "we should act to keep the status quo."
How is your position defendable? Why do we need to know if it will be good bad or genocidal before we make a decision to stop a set of behaviors that are causing changes that NOAA thinks could last for a thousand years even if we acted forcefully now? Who cares if it a causal or leading indicator? Discuss it later, over a not **possibly** totally broken world. You present the most conservative view of skepticism but the most LSD liberal view of the possible effects. Read Collapse by Jared Diamond about what happens when you cut down the last tree. We live on a very small island in the middle of ocean light years wide. What happens if you're wrong? What happens if like the Easter Islanders an American insult of the next century is "I have a piece of your mother stuck in my teeth."
Look at sea level vs. c02 for the last 500 million years. Yes we are in an ice age right now, but it works for us. Lets keep things the way they are not risk everything becasue you want a flawless model of a unmodelablely complex system.
Slashdot Mirror
A slut sleeps with everyone, a bitch sleeps with everyone but you.
Oh... you mean like when shell stole all of Changing World Technologies tax credits?
http://www.shell.com/home/content/aboutshell/our_business/oil_products/fuels/biofuels/biofuels.html
Ahhh you terrify me! Oh evil socialist go away! Bring back my conservative drug addicated pundit! Or my president who lets America get bombed. Or the domestic enemies of the constituation who overthrew the fouth admendment! Anything but socialism. Please G-d save me.
http://members.chello.at/theodor.lauppert/games/wolf.htm
But... they just improved the model. Toyota is a profit machine for a few reasons. They took Deming's statistical process control ideas and were able to get error rates into the parts per billion. Then they took lean manufacturing to eliminate waste and delay in their production. Then they went to target cost accounting where they fixed the price of the cost of the car before production ensuring that failures could not balloon in cost. But they still are following the same basic plan. Sell a car in order to sell financing, service, and parts. GMAC was the only profit center in GM for years. IT was no different than the Xbox sold at a loss to sell games.
No MAJOR CAR MAKER makes an electric car. The hybrid was the height of brilliance by Toyota, an electric car that needs oil changes and all the other maintenance. Toyotas still don't go a MILLION miles on a single engine 250K sure easy with maintenance and you think you're getting a great deal. Toyota could make a car that would never ever die for a tiny fraction more in cost.
I was told a story at one degree of separation (so take as much salt as you would like) about guy who worked for Merrill shoes as intern. He made a pair of shoe that would last twenty years by using different mid-sole and leather combinations. They were all recalled when his boss found out. Why wouldn't they be? People have to make a living.
I am saying drop the bullshit. Just say as a company we want X dollars per year from you and in return you will always have a working car. The market for customization licensing would be the cream on top. GM's skateboard car design was perfect for this. They lease you the drive train and you go to the dealer to get a different body depending on what you want to do.
This AC had no idea what I was saying, but I support your rage oh nameless zombie of the intertubes! Rage rage against the logic of the night!
On the Insert tab, the galleries include items that are designed to coordinate with the overall look of your document. You can use these galleries to insert tables, headers, footers, lists, cover pages, and other document building blocks. When you create pictures, charts, or diagrams, they also coordinate with your current document look.
This post was created in Word with the command =rand(1)
Wind and solar are a load of shit. They require huge upfront costs, have low reliability, and are hard to transport. Bio fuels, esp. cellulose, TDP, and algaculture are efficient, require low or lower upfront cost and can use existing infrastructure owned by the company.
PGE, Marlborough New Zeland, and some companies in Texas are working with algae. What is algae but the product of billions of years of technical development to be the most efficient solar power device on the planet. It is self replicating and can turn our shit into oil. It can also be used for carbon sequestration (if you burn the oil on site you can vent the exhust through the growing algea to speed up production and capture CO2.) Algae in a best case scenario can create 20,000 gallons of bio fuel per acre of land vs. 18 gallon per acre by corn. It doesn't use up the soil resources, it doesn't need chemical fertilizers created with fossil fuels, and it can per pumped around in pipelines that we already own. When combined with TDP you don't even need to worry about having the most efficient producer of oil or getting contaminated with other strains or bacteria. You can just run the system on whatever green goo grows and then render it down into shorter carbon chains. If another better strain that is more efficient comes along later just inoculate with that one. Don't fucking wait for perfection, just get going.
Thinking you can produce a cost efficient solar system that completes with a primary biological producer shows a painful level of hubris. Want nano-tech power? Wow mother nature already does that.
Oh yeah and another thing. Oil companies are not 'energy companies' they are 'resource extraction companies' there's a difference.
This relates to an argument about making furnaces better. The furnace company has very little incentive to make a more efficient furnace because they do not have to pay for the consumables and they make a profit off of parts and service. One idea to make HVAC more efficient is to make vertical monopolies within the industry that provide the server of heating or cooling. If the manufacturer has to pay capital costs and variable reoccurring costs then they will make a machine that lasts forever and uses as little resources per unit of heating or cooling as possible. This is why GM killed the EV because they want you to consume parts and service for the (short) life of the car. If GM gave you the service of having a car and had to pay for gas, parts and service you would have 100mpg cars in 10 years that would last a million miles without service. Don't think a million mile per engine car is possible? Look at the Volvo PS-1800, 2 million miles on single engine made in the 1960s.
Oil companies have generated more super wealthy people on this planet than any other human activity; don't underestimate people's ability to do evil when it comes to trillions of dollars.
People like to vilify Shell because they are total assholes. Do some research on what they did to the women of a Nigerian village who objected to having oil tar poured on their fields. Shell is one of the most evil companies on the planet bar none. You can be an oil company without having people murdered.
Micro-Four Thirds is what I'm interested in. I am amateur for sure, and have no direct love or hate for the mirror box. I think that a tiny compact camera with a standard replaceable lens sounds like the most important innovation in the sub-pro camera field since the DSLR. The first one out the Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1 seems to have no advantage over the tiny Olympus E410 which when fitted with a pancake lens is just freaking tiny.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micro_Four_Thirds
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1022&message=28850462
http://www.photokina-show.com/news_images/0593_micro-four-thirds-system.jpg
I live in the Gulf and everyday I wonder why this places sucks as hard as it does. Chapter 6 explained clearly why no matter what you do the middle east and south Asia will always be deeply fucked. It depressing but if you have ever driven in the gulf and wondered what was wrong with all these people now you know.
Why do you think it was such a popular game? The best part is that it is easy to cheat too.
I loved my Dreamcast. VOOT, Jetgrind Radio, and Tony Hawk with a PS controller adapter. You could even get it with a mouse and keyboard.
Did IQs just drop sharply while I was away?
Bob unfortunately does not rule the Universe; the Ur-Quan rule the universe, and even Bob is to fully able to stop them, but he still makes good choices.
http://www.angryflower.com/urquan.gif
http://www.angryflower.com/loving.gif
http://sc2.sourceforge.net/
http://www.angryflower.com/mahfel.html
The cars could sell back power at a profit if they weren't being used that day.
This looks way better http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_fountain
I don't dismiss economics, I just admit that it is not a science. I understand that the best economics models does not do a very good job of predicting future events because the models are flawed and the complexity of the system defies prediction. If you read the Economist's 14 page report on finance in the last week of January you will notice they talk a great deal about the economist going back to revise their models to fit what happened. When the next shit storm hits they will all do the same thing again. Why? Because, like climate, economics is and art based on intuition built up by observation of past events. Basically you can't model any of this stuff as a complete model no matter what, all you can do is gather data and make a guess. Some economists saw what was coming, other didn't. So climatologists see what coming others don't. But if you really look the numbers that think (and that's all this really boils down to anyway) that things are going to worse due to global climate change you will find that there are far greater and far more respected. Could the curmudgeons be right and that to quote the Postal Service "...we just being rewarded... now we can swim any day in November" or is the majority right and we are deeply fucked.
Irrationality IS NOT what damages economic models, the butterfly effect is what damages economic models. Economics even flawed is just a place to stand when trying to view the world, without a place to stand and look at the system you can't even begin to process it, but it is a flawed place built on a flawed principal. At least climate is based on science and is placed firmly in the physical, testable, and verifiable realm. Climate models are far better than economic models by an order of magnitude if not more. How often is the 3 day forecast deeply, deeply WRONG? If you had 3 day economic forecast that was as good as the weather you'd be rich as Creases. So why do you attack climate change models and defend economic models? Because it fits your preconceptions about the world and reinforces your beliefs. Now as a statistician you know that when they say 3 degrees in 50 years (or whatever) they really mean the true mean temperature will be bracketed by this range with a 95.6% certainty, bla bla bla. Now is that true, of course not its just one digital slice of a huge analog system predicted out far beyond any range that is realistic but it is a place to stand and look. It is one point to add to your internal hologram of the universe and judge, "try to fix, or keep going as is."
I am right to dismiss economics because I have studied it and I have seen that they do a fucking terrible job of seeing what will happen. I have called the last 3 stock market crashes to within 1 week to 1 year. In 2001 I saw the Rambus deal with intel and knew instantly and clearly that the party was over. For the last 5 years I have seen no reason for the rest of the world to loan us anymore money, this summer I couldn't believe that the market could possible go up any longer and sold a crap load of stock. That a pretty damn good record and if I was a banking CEO I would be getting a foot rub from Hank Paulson right now for it. Did the quants see it? No. Did Ben B. see it? G-d I hope not. I had the same data why did I see it and not them? Because as sickening as it is most business is in the end is not irrational but subliminal analog and messy.
I would agree that psychology, anthropology, and sociology are soft sciences for the most part. There is some hard science in psychology and anthropology. Most of psychology and sociology are in fact just statistics not really a since unto themselves. But economics is not a science at all. Give me proof that the basis of economics has been fully exorcised of is misbegotten roots and I still don't believe that individuals will always act to maximize their "utility." Either way you have answered by question. You believe what you want to and don't believe what you don't, facts be damned.
Sorry economics is not even close to being a science.
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-economist-has-no-clothes
Ok, so its bad if we selectively kill people but we should encourage conditions that speed up evolution despite the fact that it may kill us all. I seriously do not understand how that's better. Why not maximize our chances of living for a long time in current conditions? If you really want people to evolve faster just release some top level predators into the neighborhood.
Is this http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/technical-papers/climate-change-water-en.pdf really pseudoscience? I mean really? If so is economics a science in your opinion?
Ok... I'm not going to bother to refute your points this time just a simple dichotomy.
You say "we don't know what will happen" but "total purity of our science is more important than the unknown effects of climate change" therefore "we shouldn't act because we can't know for sure what will happen"
I say we don't "we don't know what will happen" but "global climate change is a risk because of its unknown effects" therefore "we should act to keep the status quo."
How is your position defendable? Why do we need to know if it will be good bad or genocidal before we make a decision to stop a set of behaviors that are causing changes that NOAA thinks could last for a thousand years even if we acted forcefully now? Who cares if it a causal or leading indicator? Discuss it later, over a not **possibly** totally broken world. You present the most conservative view of skepticism but the most LSD liberal view of the possible effects. Read Collapse by Jared Diamond about what happens when you cut down the last tree. We live on a very small island in the middle of ocean light years wide. What happens if you're wrong? What happens if like the Easter Islanders an American insult of the next century is "I have a piece of your mother stuck in my teeth."
Look at sea level vs. c02 for the last 500 million years. Yes we are in an ice age right now, but it works for us. Lets keep things the way they are not risk everything becasue you want a flawless model of a unmodelablely complex system.
Now this is a real windmill... cheap, efficient, and it harness high speed constant winds unlike the surface variety.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1248068.stm