1) it is a vocublary test. If you don't have power over your own words, and if you don't possess the understanding of the words of others, you will simply and completely fail.
Now, see, that's what I *love* about Slashdot. No editing. Vocublary, indeed. A startling display of power over one's own words...
Not ready for drugstore heroin? Did you know that heroin was originally an over-the-counter medication developed by Bayer?
For the fascinating history, read "Opium: A History", by Martin Booth. Morphine was developed to cure opium addiction, and heroin was developed to cure morphine addiction...
It's my understanding that heroin is considered so powerful a pain reliever that it is not considered medically useful. Morphine sulphate is difficult enough to control.
Anyway, I very much agree with you about the need for decriminalization of some drugs, but I disagree that interdiction is entirely ineffective. I think it's only that our pathetic efforts thus far to interdict the drug supply have failed. Napalm is cheap. I bet we can make napalm faster than they can grow coca or opium poppies, or cannabis (which isn't really in the same category as the first two).
There's only so much land to grow the crop on. It wouldn't really be all that difficult to nearly eliminate the production of these crops, but it would mean resorting to the sorts of unilateral, "damn the sovereignity of the rest of the world" tactics that have gotten us into so much hot water already.
Chasing boats and planes, or posting drug sniffing dogs at airports, or other "horse has already left the barn" efforts are not going to stop the flow of drugs, but plants need sunlight and land to grow.
Anyway, like I said, interdiction *can* be effective--but do we really want to deal with the consequences? Probably not. It's probably less damaging in the long run to simply decriminalize the problem and look at it as more of a social medicine problem.
Cannabis, on the other hand, is too useful to destroy. We should be actively promoting the cultivation of cannabis.
It seems fairly obvious that the fundamental flaws in our voting system (and indeed, our government and society) have been rather dramatically exposed by the last few election cycles in this country. Unfortunately, the main impediment to election reform in this country is the fact that the very institution that is designed to represent the interests of the people, the government, is comprised of the very people who stand to benefit the most from disallowing any election reform methods, and furthermore, cannot be considered as impartial auditors of the processes involved.
There are many things we need to do in this country to improve our democracy.
1. We need a drastic overhaul of election finance. Our current system is simply too opaque, and many political "contributions" (both monetary and rhetorical) are made by groups whose bias is indeterminate, or whose power to influence overwhelms large numbers of the electorate.
All overt contributions (especially those made by non-individuals) to political campaigns should be forced to reveal their true sources and not be allowed to hide behind names like "The Center for American Democracy", or such. (NB: There may in fact be a "Center for American Democracy", but I do not mean to single out any particular group) Unfortunately, this aspect of our system has traditionally been left to the press, an institution that is increasingly becoming corrupted by conflicts of interest.
This also has implications that reach far beyond electoral practices, but that's another argument for another day...
2. We need to move away from "winner takes all" elections. The two-party system that has evolved in this country has resulted in vast swaths of the electorate being disenfranchised and unrepresented. Choosing between the lesser of two evils or voting "against" one or another candidate or party does not tend to produce an effective form of goverment.
3. We need to ensure our vote-tallying methods are made as tamper-proof as possible by instituting a system by which all interested parties can have a transparently, independently verifiable, repeatable audit of the tally, and we need to do this without losing anonymity in the system.
4. To quote the estimable "speechwriters" for President Josiah Bartlet, "Education is the silver bullet." Only an informed electorate can make responsible electoral decisions.
I propose that we enact legislation to ensure that public education spending must equal defense spending in this country. I also believe that our education system should move to a year-round system and the age requirements for attendence be increased to 18 years of age, the age of voting majority.
I also believe that basic education standards and funding need to be controlled by the federal government, not at a state or municipal level, and that access to all levels of educations, including college-level education, and continuing education should be provided for with public monies. (Note that this would not disallow state or municipal enactment of even higher standards, nor would it disallow private education, provided that it meets federal minimum requirements). And those basic standards need to be raised to a higher bar.
The basic idea of NCLB was admirable, but the reality of that law is a disaster (and if we want no child left behind, then we need to ensure no teacher is left behind, as well as no parent).
As far as Number Three, above, is concerned--clearly, we need to enact an amendment to the Constitution that will provide that all election methods must be "open source". We simply must apply the "many eyes" doctrine to our elections. Only through transparent, independent, repeatably verifiable means can we ensure the validity of our elections. This clearly requires open source methods and rigorous accounting and auditing standards. As this is a fundamental aspect of our government, it must be codifi
Echelon is a necessary evil - it probably has already saved your life more than once.
This is exactly the sort of thinking that leads to the implementation of freedom-crushing systems like Echelon.
Our forefathers understood that there are some things in life than are more important than life itself. I don't need or want my life to be saved by deluded do-gooders like you who seem to think that a false sense of safety and security justifies severe restrictions on my freedom.
Here's a couple of well-worn quotes for you to digest:
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
From An Historical Review of the Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania, Anonymous, London, 1759
and,
What country before ever existed a century & a half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it's natural manure.
Letter from Thomas Jefferson to William Smith, 1787
I don't really have that much to hide but I do value my rights and my privacy so that bothers me.
I think it's unfortunate that you felt it necessary to make this statement. Whether or not you (or I, or anyone else, for that matter) have anything to hide is irrelevant to this discussion. The Constitution of the United States of America codifies the primacy of individual freedom that was expressed in the Declaration of Independence and should not be abridged. The Constitution is the Law of the Land. Period. End of discussion.
also,
Some people probably say: "What's the big deal if it is also used to catch drug dealers anyway? They are just criminals." I can understand that position but have to say that it is a pretty narrow view.
I do not understand that position at all. "Just criminals"?The basis of all freedom is the freedom to break the law. The true horror of Echelon is that it is yet another attempt by weak-minded, fear-filled fools who do not understand this to drag us further down the path of Tyranny in the name of Security. Echelon makes the assumption that we are all criminals.
When we have effectively legislated all thought in a misguided attempt to prevent ThoughtCrime, we have ceased to be a free society. The idea that the interests of the State take primacy over the interests of individuals has a name...it's called Fascism. .
What you're describing is a complete and utter waste of time and energy.
Get yourself either a brand-spankin' new $799 eMac, or pick up a used iMac DV and toss on a copy of Mac OS X. If you can't put the Mac next to the stereo, pick up an AirPort Express setup and stream the stuff over 802.11g...
You and your parents will be much happier than either of you would be mucking about with Linux.
Then, you can get them an iPod and the Alpine setup so they can listen to all their favorite tunes in the car, as well.
I'm all for OSS, but when somebody already makes what you're trying to do at a reasonable price (and a hell of lot better integrated than anything you can cook up), it's worth the money to drop the skish...
What concerns me though is that Prof. McCarthy makes the statements:
In 1993 there were 109 licensed power reactors in the U.S. and about 400 in the world. They generate about 20 percent of the U.S. electricity. (There are also a large number of naval power reactors.)
Note that 20% of US electrical generating capacity is approximately 0.75 trillion KWh. This, of course, would not include the naval reactors.
and:
For how long will nuclear power be available? Present reactors that use only the U-235 in natural uranium are very likely good for some hundreds of years.
While Prof. Hoffert is making the claim:
If we look at the estimates of the available uranium ore around the world, at cost effective prices, and we ask the question, if we were to burn it in light-water reactors (conventional nuclear reactors used in the United States and Western Europe), how long would the reserves of uranium last if we were to extract energy at the rate of ten terawatts? Well, it turns out that you only have about ten years of U-235 power from all of the cost-effective uranium reserves.
From this, it would appear the Prof. McCarthy is predicating only running the existing reactors, while the statement Prof. Hoffert is making concerns generating all of the current demand of 10 trillion KWh with nuclear reactors. This is about 13.5 times the amount of electricity that we currently generate with nuclear power in the US.
So, if these numbers are correct, if 10 TWh would burn up the U-235 in about ten years, then US usage would burn through the same amount of U-235 in about 135 years, which seems to be at least somewhat in line with what Prof. McCarthy is saying.
Of course, I'm sure the rest of the world would like to use some of the uranium, as well, so mileage may vary...
Keep in mind that Prof. Hoffert is only accounting for U-235 that is currently "easily accesible"/"cost-effective". New technologies and new proven reserves could change that figure.
But as for your comment about other fissonable materials...as far as I am aware, we only know how to use uranium and plutonium. If we could fission other elements, that would of course open up a whole new pile of stuff to burn. I noticed by following to link discussing Cohen's article that thorium is also usable in breeder reactors.
But then, there's that breeder reactor problem, again. We know we can breed uranium into plutonium, but what does thorium breed into? And do we really want to have large stocks of plutonium, etc. in circulation? .
Some things to think about, courtesy of the CIA World Factbook
US population (2004/07 est.): 293,027,571 China population (2004/07 est.): 1,298,847,624
US population growth (2004 est.): 0.92% China population growth (2004 est.): 0.57%
US industrial production growth (2003 est.): 0.3% China industrial production growth (2003 est.): 30.4%
US GDP per-capita (2003 est.): 37,800 USD China GDP per-capita (2003 est.): 5,000 USD
US GDP real growth rate (2003 est.): 3.1% China GDP real growth rate (2003 est. official data): 9.1%
US electricity consumption (2001): 3.602 trillion kWh China electricity consumption (2001): 1.312 trillion kWh
US oil consumption (2001 est.): 19.65 million bbl/day China oil consumption (2001 est.): 4.57 million bbl/day
US natural gas consumption (2001 est.): 640.9 billion m^3 China natural gas consumption (2001 est.): 27.4 billion m^3
How long do you think it will take China to catch up with the US?How much energy will China be using then? How much pollution will China be creating then?
And, as an aside:
US GDP (2003 est.): 10.99 trillion USD China GDP (2003 est.): 6.449 trillion USD
US current trade account balance (2003): -541.8 billion USD China current trade account balance (2003): 31.17 billion USD
How long will it take the US to go totally bankrupt?
Well, that, as you know, has been a very contentious issue in the United States and in other parts of the world. Since the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl nuclear accidents, no nuclear power plants have been built, and there are many, many sets of issues having to do with the disposal of radioactive materials and the proliferation of weapons-grade material and so forth.
But leaving those safety issues aside for the moment, how does nuclear compare with renewables?
Well, in contrast to renewable energy, nuclear power is a very high-density source of energy. Biomass energy per unit area can produce a few watts per square meter. By contrast, the boiler of a nuclear power plant, where the nuclear energy is being converted into steam, produces tens or hundreds of thousands of watts per square meter.
But like renewables, it's a limited source of energy, too.
Yes, there is a limited amount of uranium around the world, at least that we've been able to find. There's actually a lot of uranium in the Earth's crust, but you have to find uranium ore that's very concentrated. (And there's only a very minute fraction of fissionable uranium in natural uranium -- only about 0.3 percent.) If we look at the estimates of the available uranium ore around the world, at cost effective prices, and we ask the question, if we were to burn it in light-water reactors (conventional nuclear reactors used in the United States and Western Europe), how long would the reserves of uranium last if we were to extract energy at the rate of ten terawatts? Well, it turns out that you only have about ten years of U-235 power from all of the cost-effective uranium reserves. (U-235 is the isotope of uranium that undergoes nuclear fission.)
What about breeder reactors?
Well, breeder reactors could extend the amount of natural uranium by a factor of 100. That is, if you took the rest of the uranium, the isotope U-238, and irradiated it with neutrons in a breeder reactor, you could convert it to a burnable nuclear fuel. But it takes a long time to do this. It takes about 20 years to create the same amount of energy in the U-238. The other bitter pill about this is that, with breeders, you're making weapons-grade plutonium, which presents a whole other problem: having enormous inventories of plutonium around the world.
But, that 150W/m^2 would still be here even if the human race was not.
Air-con, on the other hand, wouldn't exist without humans. Nor would the internal-combustion engine, or any number of other industrial goodies we've cooked up.
Might I inquire as to the nation in which you reside?
I never said that the US was unwilling to conserve (though certainly many US citizens are not so willing), but that the energy usage of the developing world will very shortly outpace that of the US. After all, we do only have about 300 million people here...as compared to 2 billion plus for China and India combined--two countries who are well on the way to consuming more energy than the US, even if their per-capita rate is currently far below ours.
Imagine what would happen if those two countries were to use energy at the same rate the US does today (as they are well on their way to doing)? How would you feel about the US increasing it's energy consumption seven-fold? I suspect you'd be a bit unhappy about that (as would I). Are you suggesting that it's OK for the rest of the world, but not for the US? Is this some sort of revenge fantasy you have?
We've got a pretty comfortable standard of living here in the US, and don't have any problem understanding that other peoples might want the same. However, they (and we) need to understand that our standard of living is supported by an extremely profligate use of energy, and this is not a healthy thing, nor should any other nation aspire to such profligate heights.
President Clinton took a lot of criticism for suggesting this very thing to the Chinese. Those of us in the US who are of somewhat greatr than average understanding can accept that there is a certain amount of hypocrisy in suggesting this, but remember, this *is* a democratic republic of 300 million or so people, and policy doesn't change here at the drop of a hat. It takes time to get enough people to realize that there's a problem and even more time to motivate them to do something about it. .
No, actually I *did* mean "stop using so much energy". Energy that is easily available is a finite resource, and no conversion of energy from one form to another will ever be 100% efficient (thank you Sir Issac), so any energy use will inevitably cause some amount of waste.
As the industrialized poulation of the world grows larger, energy usage will grow. We need to bring the per-capita usage down to a managable level. The US is the prime example--our per-capita usage is grossly higher than the per-capita of the rest of the world, and that's not particularly easy to justify.
I will agree that as the biggest consumers, we need to lead the charge toward conservation--but not at the expense of global stability. Hey, I don't oppose the *idea* of the Kyoto Treaty, just that particular implementation. .
Sorry, but Bush hasn't manipulated *me* into thinking anything...perhaps you've missed my signature on these posts? It seems to me that Bush has manipulated you into losing your faculties.
And, BTW, you've invalidated your own point about fuel cells. Fuel cells don't spontaneously appear, or spontaneously fill themselves with hydrogen. We have to free the hydrogen from other sources, like water or fossil fuels--which takes energy and will never be 100% efficient. Which brings up the point--why not just burn the fossil fuels directly? Assuming that mass conversion of hydrogen can be done more efficiently than individual usage of fossil fuels, and assuming that the storage/transport issues are contained, then hey, I'm all for it.
In the meantime, it looks like forced-induction, direct injection diesel engines are the wave of the future, now that we can construct efficient particulate filters to deal with the soot. I wonder if all those people out there driving Toyota and Honda hybrids realize that VW has been selling a Lupo in the EU that gets even better mileage...and I wonder why we don't have anything better than a 1.9L TDI here.
And no, my reasoning doesn't state "that in 20 years the world will be cooked anyways, so why the hell should anyone do anything", what it states is that if we don't *all* stop using/wasting so much energy, the world *will* eventually cook. We can do something to prevent this and we should--but I think that global disruption is a more immediate danger.
You want to start solving the problem? Stop wasting energy on pointless rhetoric and:
1. Use less energy. 2. Vote your conscience. 3. Convince other people to do the same. 4. Be prepared.
I wish I had more quantitative information on this, but I sincerely doubt that our heat output is "minor".
The point is that solar output has remained more or less (for the puposes of this discussion) constant, while the heat output of humans, which was nearly non-existent from a statistical standpoint just 250 years ago, has increased at an alarming rate.
I suspect that our heat output, coupled with the additional problem of the CO2 blanket that our energy consumption is creating, has caused a major imbalance in the environment--but I don't see any one studying this issue.
Let's just make some wild-ass assumptions here. I have a 15,000 BTU air-con unit in my house, which runs at 15 amps/120V, or 1.8 KW/hr. During the summer it runs 24 hours a day, let's say that makes 120 days out of the year times 24 hours times 1.8KW/hr. That means I've not only consumed about 5.2 MegaWatts of energy, I've also moved over that time 43.2 million BTU's of heat from my house into the atmosphere.
And that's just *my* house. What about the other 130 million households in the US plus all the commerical buildings?
What about heating systems in the winter? Lighting? Other electrical consumption? Heat loss from the generating plants? Heat loss from cars, trucks, planes, boats, etc? Manufacturing?
Do you really think this effect is minor?
Next summer take a trip to New York City--check the temperature in Times Square versus the temperature of the outer boroughs. Manhattan is invariably hotter by several degrees due to the level of energy consumption and the shift of all that heat from inside buildings to the outside (also exacerbated by the giant thermal sink of all that concrete and asphalt). The same is true of all urban areas.
Take a look at a satellite photo of the eastern US or western Europe at night. Most of us can't even see the stars anymore because of the light pollution. Where do you think all that energy goes? Not all of it goes off to deep space...
Remember, all this heat output is over and above the normal solar gain. If we weren't here, the energy wouldn't have been used!
Most of the energy we're using would normally have existed in a bound state deep underground. Very little of our generating capacity comes from sources which actually take energy out of the environment (solar, wind, water, etc).
The CO2 problem is a side effect, not a cause, though certainly, it's a contributing factor. However, the environment can cope with a hell of lot of excess CO2. The world, for lack of a better term, has "evolved" around this fact (OK, so there's entropy, but we're talking geologic cycles, not cosmic). The environment has no short-term defense against human energy consumption. Long-term, the environment will kill us if the temperature keeps rising, thus lowering the temperature again, but that's not a comforting thought for a human. .
I really hate to burst your bubble here, but you seem to have pidgeon-holed me as a Bush supporter.
In fact, I despise what George W. Bush and his so-called "administration" have done to our nation, with about 50% of the voting populace as willing accomplices.
Check your facts--it wasn't Bush who let Kyoto die. Al Gore was naive in believing that US participation in Kyoto would ever be effective without considering the much greater import of the long-term effects of industrialization in the developing world. You did notice that the populations of India and China both exceed 1 billion, didn't you?
The two of those countries combined have a population about 7 times that of the US. You think things are bad now? Wait 20-40 years. The rest of the world would very much like to enjoy the same standard of living we have here in the US, and they are not going to let a little thing like Kyoto stop them from acheiving it.
That's what killed Kyoto.
You say:
Kyoto may not have been a solution, but it was a start. The USA DID NOT stay out because Kyoto was lacking in effectiveness, they stayed out purely to take advantage of not being restricted by it while other countries actually tried to do something positive.... as an economic advantage to the USA while the rest of the world took a hit to try to improve things.
But in fact, the "rest of the world" was not willing to "take a hit". Look, we've been through this before--would the world have been better off if the US had unilaterally disarmed in the 20th Century? Somehow, I doubt it. You may like the idea of Maoist China running the show or maybe even India (what with it's internal religious conflicts, not to mention the Kashmiri problem with Pakistan that threatens to turn a large portion of the subcontinent into a radioactive glass bowl) having the upper hand. I don't.
The US isn't perfect. Far from it! I'll be the first to admit we have some critical problems to solve here, not least of which is energy policy, but the US is a damn sight better than anything that's come before or anything else on the horizon.
We need to stop focusing so much on Bush and his neo-con insane clown posse and start thinking seriously about how to change our lives on a fundamental basis in a responsible manner without upsetting the apple cart so much that we create a power vacuum.
The very fact that you place so much emphasis on "hydrogen research" shows, IMO, that you have very little understanding of energy science. Hydrogen is not a source of energy--it may make a halfway-decent battery system, but that's about it.
There is only one correct answer. Stop using so much energy. This goes for everyone, not just the US. I'm fairly confident that future history will bear this out. .
Is that no one who seems to be speaking out about the rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the possible effects on the "global warming" phenomenon seems to think about the issue in a truly critical manner.
For one thing, I personally don't believe that the rising concentration of carbon dioxide is really having all that much effect. I think the CO2 issue is merely a symptom of what is actually causing the average temperature to rise.
Here's the kicker--why is it that no one really seems to be talking about all the waste heat that the human species tosses into the environment as a direct result of our ever-increasing consumption of energy in all its forms?
The Kyoto Treaty was *not* the answer. That's why the US effectively pulled out. No long term solution to global warming can be effective if the rapidly expaning economies of countries like China and India do not accept the same committments we do. Yes, right now the US consumes more. That will not be true for very much longer. While the US does, indeed, need to reduce it's per capita consumption, we all need to make sure that no other country ever even approaches current US levels of consumption. This, of course, does not sit well with developing nations, but perhaps they should be more concerned about learning lessons from American failures than trying to duplicate American excesses.
Look, a modern Hummer engine puts out less emissions than much smaller engines of yesteryear. But it still produces an amazing amount of waste heat!
We cannot ignore this issue any longer. The only answer is, we need to stop using so much damned energy!
Yes, right now, the US is the biggest problem--and the US's problem will be particularly difficult to solve, given the profligate nature of most US citizens. It is sad to see that in a time when the US needs the help of the global community the most, the Bush Administration has chosen to erode our moral position even further by squandering much of the trust we have been able to build in the world.
None of this is to say that carbon dioxide does not contribute to global warming by trapping heat in the environment--but CO2 is not a source of heat, and the environment's ability to cope with increased levels of CO2 is very great. The real problem is that we've created a positive feedback loop here--more energy consumption causes more heat and more CO2, more CO2 helps trap more heat, especially from a heat source which we cannot control. Reducing consumption *will* reduce CO2. Reducing CO2 without reducing consumption will not have enough of an effect to matter.
Technology cannot solve this problem. Conservation is the only answer.
PS: I apologize for my lack of ability to produce a subscript...but there's only so many times I can type "carbon dioxide" without getting bored, and you know what I mean... .
when any of the code developed/enhanced by Netscape would ever see the light of day. As a old-time Netscape Solution Expert, I think this could very possibly turn out to be one of the most important events in computing history.
Still it makes me sad that Apple did not see it's way to buying up Netscape before they got chewed-up, swallowed, and spit out by AOL and Sun. I was saying this way back when Apple was still shipping Apple Network Servers running AIX...well, maybe now we'll see Netscape server products finally running on Mac OS X!
It never ceases to amaze me how shortsighted the technology industry can be.
This is somewhat misleading. The fact is, LDAP was originally conceived/promoted by people at the University of Michigan, who eventually went on to work for Netscape. Being as Netscape was one of the earliest (and possibly most visible and productive) supporters of LDAP, it's easy to see how one might assume that Netscape "invented" LDAP.
My main Internet server is a 400MHz iMac DV running Mac OS X 10.3.x, the Cyrus IMAP server, Sendmail (10.3 has Postfix by default, not Sendmail), SquirrelMail, etc, etc.
The iMac DV's with their FireWire ports, are ideal little server boxes and very easy to support. The truly paranoid can run OpenBSD on them, and the Linux fanatics can join in the fun, too.
Right now, the server is off-site, and I manage it mostly with ssh and the occasional VNC session, but soon it will be moved back to my house now that I have a 3072/768 ADSL line installed with a slash-29 subnet.
Once the monitor goes into sleep mode, the whole machine doesn't consume a lot of power. The best part is, I got the machine for free from a client!
I'd also look into getting a Sun/Cobalt Qube. I just rebuilt one for a client, and it's a rockin' little box--I believe Sun is committed to support for them until 2008.
Well, when *I* went to CMU (apparently even further back in the days before the WWW), NeXT didn't really even exist yet, because Avi Tevanian was still a grad student at CMU writing the Mach microkernel, if my memory serves me correctly...
There were lots of labs full of Mac SE's (upon which I dutifully typed many papers), not so many IBM PC's (on Token Ring, no less), plenty of Sun workstations, and a strange thing cooked up by CMU and IBM called the Andrew System, which ran primarily on an odd little device called the IBM PC RT...which was the forerunner of the RS/6000 series.
Ah, sometimes I wonder whatever happened to my old ma1s+@andrew.cmu.edu account...and the little Andrew console program I wrote called Fenchurch...I wasn't much of a coder (really, I was a Technical Production student in the Theatre Department, but much of what I was trying to do at the time involved integration of computer automation technologies into the theatre lighting and sound systems--sadly, none of the faculty understood what it was I was trying to do), but I was fond of the little markup language that was used at the time to cook up those little dashboards.
Among other things, we also have that time period to thank for the Andrew File System (which turned into probably the first globally-available distributed file system) and the forerunner of the Cyrus IMAP software, the Andrew Mail System (without which email would be quite a bit different today--many well-known commercial email systems are based on Cyrus).
I spent way too many hours in the flash cube...the Internet was cool even back in the mid-80's...some would say even cooler than it is now.
Oh, and the TOPS-20 systems were still on-line back then!
Wait a minute...they TORE DOWN Skibo?!!!? When did that happen? Man I should really take a trip back to ol' Picksburg...
Re:Apple and Mozilla are both missing the point...
on
Mozilla's Sunbird Reviewed
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· Score: 3, Informative
BTW, Netscape also wrote some fairly insightful white papers and such on what the requirement were for a successful C&S solution. Much of it is still available at:
What we really need is a replacement for the amazing CS&T/Netscape/Steltor/Oracle "CorporateTime" (nee Calendar Server).
Woo hoo. WebDAV. Could I be any *less* excited? WebDAV calendars are not going to replace a *real* calendaring/scheduling system any time soon...
Unfortunately, even open-source project I've seen that has attempted to tackle this problem has very quickly fallen apart.
Please, somebody, take a look at Corporate Time or the older Netscape Calendar Server. *That's* what we need. An LDAP-integrated, replicable, multi-user calendaring/scheduling system with a web client that was pretty much the equal of the full client application and integrated quite nicely with the email client.
Netscape SuiteSpot is what made Netscape Communicator Pro make sense. If anyone out there in a development team would like it, I would be more than happy to provide a copy of my my old SuiteSpot CD for reference/testing purposes...
Slashdot Mirror
Now, see, that's what I *love* about Slashdot. No editing. Vocublary, indeed. A startling display of power over one's own words...
Who was your proofreader? George W. Bush?
Come on, laugh. It's a +5 Vorpal Funny.
Not ready for drugstore heroin? Did you know that heroin was originally an over-the-counter medication developed by Bayer?
For the fascinating history, read "Opium: A History", by Martin Booth. Morphine was developed to cure opium addiction, and heroin was developed to cure morphine addiction...
It's my understanding that heroin is considered so powerful a pain reliever that it is not considered medically useful. Morphine sulphate is difficult enough to control.
Anyway, I very much agree with you about the need for decriminalization of some drugs, but I disagree that interdiction is entirely ineffective. I think it's only that our pathetic efforts thus far to interdict the drug supply have failed. Napalm is cheap. I bet we can make napalm faster than they can grow coca or opium poppies, or cannabis (which isn't really in the same category as the first two).
There's only so much land to grow the crop on. It wouldn't really be all that difficult to nearly eliminate the production of these crops, but it would mean resorting to the sorts of unilateral, "damn the sovereignity of the rest of the world" tactics that have gotten us into so much hot water already.
Chasing boats and planes, or posting drug sniffing dogs at airports, or other "horse has already left the barn" efforts are not going to stop the flow of drugs, but plants need sunlight and land to grow.
Anyway, like I said, interdiction *can* be effective--but do we really want to deal with the consequences? Probably not. It's probably less damaging in the long run to simply decriminalize the problem and look at it as more of a social medicine problem.
Cannabis, on the other hand, is too useful to destroy. We should be actively promoting the cultivation of cannabis.
There are many things we need to do in this country to improve our democracy.
As far as Number Three, above, is concerned--clearly, we need to enact an amendment to the Constitution that will provide that all election methods must be "open source". We simply must apply the "many eyes" doctrine to our elections. Only through transparent, independent, repeatably verifiable means can we ensure the validity of our elections. This clearly requires open source methods and rigorous accounting and auditing standards. As this is a fundamental aspect of our government, it must be codifi
This is exactly the sort of thinking that leads to the implementation of freedom-crushing systems like Echelon.
Our forefathers understood that there are some things in life than are more important than life itself. I don't need or want my life to be saved by deluded do-gooders like you who seem to think that a false sense of safety and security justifies severe restrictions on my freedom.
Here's a couple of well-worn quotes for you to digest:
and,
I think it's unfortunate that you felt it necessary to make this statement. Whether or not you (or I, or anyone else, for that matter) have anything to hide is irrelevant to this discussion. The Constitution of the United States of America codifies the primacy of individual freedom that was expressed in the Declaration of Independence and should not be abridged. The Constitution is the Law of the Land. Period. End of discussion.
also,
I do not understand that position at all. "Just criminals"? The basis of all freedom is the freedom to break the law. The true horror of Echelon is that it is yet another attempt by weak-minded, fear-filled fools who do not understand this to drag us further down the path of Tyranny in the name of Security. Echelon makes the assumption that we are all criminals.
When we have effectively legislated all thought in a misguided attempt to prevent ThoughtCrime, we have ceased to be a free society. The idea that the interests of the State take primacy over the interests of individuals has a name...it's called Fascism.
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What you're describing is a complete and utter waste of time and energy.
Get yourself either a brand-spankin' new $799 eMac, or pick up a used iMac DV and toss on a copy of Mac OS X. If you can't put the Mac next to the stereo, pick up an AirPort Express setup and stream the stuff over 802.11g...
You and your parents will be much happier than either of you would be mucking about with Linux.
Then, you can get them an iPod and the Alpine setup so they can listen to all their favorite tunes in the car, as well.
I'm all for OSS, but when somebody already makes what you're trying to do at a reasonable price (and a hell of lot better integrated than anything you can cook up), it's worth the money to drop the skish...
What concerns me though is that Prof. McCarthy makes the statements:
Note that 20% of US electrical generating capacity is approximately 0.75 trillion KWh. This, of course, would not include the naval reactors.
and:
While Prof. Hoffert is making the claim:
From this, it would appear the Prof. McCarthy is predicating only running the existing reactors, while the statement Prof. Hoffert is making concerns generating all of the current demand of 10 trillion KWh with nuclear reactors. This is about 13.5 times the amount of electricity that we currently generate with nuclear power in the US.
So, if these numbers are correct, if 10 TWh would burn up the U-235 in about ten years, then US usage would burn through the same amount of U-235 in about 135 years, which seems to be at least somewhat in line with what Prof. McCarthy is saying.
Of course, I'm sure the rest of the world would like to use some of the uranium, as well, so mileage may vary...
Keep in mind that Prof. Hoffert is only accounting for U-235 that is currently "easily accesible"/"cost-effective". New technologies and new proven reserves could change that figure.
But as for your comment about other fissonable materials...as far as I am aware, we only know how to use uranium and plutonium. If we could fission other elements, that would of course open up a whole new pile of stuff to burn. I noticed by following to link discussing Cohen's article that thorium is also usable in breeder reactors.
But then, there's that breeder reactor problem, again. We know we can breed uranium into plutonium, but what does thorium breed into? And do we really want to have large stocks of plutonium, etc. in circulation?
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Some things to think about, courtesy of the CIA World Factbook
US population (2004/07 est.): 293,027,571
China population (2004/07 est.): 1,298,847,624
US population growth (2004 est.): 0.92%
China population growth (2004 est.): 0.57%
US industrial production growth (2003 est.): 0.3%
China industrial production growth (2003 est.): 30.4%
US GDP per-capita (2003 est.): 37,800 USD
China GDP per-capita (2003 est.): 5,000 USD
US GDP real growth rate (2003 est.): 3.1%
China GDP real growth rate (2003 est. official data): 9.1%
US electricity consumption (2001): 3.602 trillion kWh
China electricity consumption (2001): 1.312 trillion kWh
US oil consumption (2001 est.): 19.65 million bbl/day
China oil consumption (2001 est.): 4.57 million bbl/day
US natural gas consumption (2001 est.): 640.9 billion m^3
China natural gas consumption (2001 est.): 27.4 billion m^3
How long do you think it will take China to catch up with the US? How much energy will China be using then? How much pollution will China be creating then?
And, as an aside:
US GDP (2003 est.): 10.99 trillion USD
China GDP (2003 est.): 6.449 trillion USD
US current trade account balance (2003): -541.8 billion USD
China current trade account balance (2003): 31.17 billion USD
How long will it take the US to go totally bankrupt?
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/warming/beyond/
Excerpted:
Whoops, I forgot the /h.
But, that 150W/m^2 would still be here even if the human race was not.
Air-con, on the other hand, wouldn't exist without humans. Nor would the internal-combustion engine, or any number of other industrial goodies we've cooked up.
The numbers are simply staggering.
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Might I inquire as to the nation in which you reside?
I never said that the US was unwilling to conserve (though certainly many US citizens are not so willing), but that the energy usage of the developing world will very shortly outpace that of the US. After all, we do only have about 300 million people here...as compared to 2 billion plus for China and India combined--two countries who are well on the way to consuming more energy than the US, even if their per-capita rate is currently far below ours.
Imagine what would happen if those two countries were to use energy at the same rate the US does today (as they are well on their way to doing)? How would you feel about the US increasing it's energy consumption seven-fold? I suspect you'd be a bit unhappy about that (as would I). Are you suggesting that it's OK for the rest of the world, but not for the US? Is this some sort of revenge fantasy you have?
We've got a pretty comfortable standard of living here in the US, and don't have any problem understanding that other peoples might want the same. However, they (and we) need to understand that our standard of living is supported by an extremely profligate use of energy, and this is not a healthy thing, nor should any other nation aspire to such profligate heights.
President Clinton took a lot of criticism for suggesting this very thing to the Chinese. Those of us in the US who are of somewhat greatr than average understanding can accept that there is a certain amount of hypocrisy in suggesting this, but remember, this *is* a democratic republic of 300 million or so people, and policy doesn't change here at the drop of a hat. It takes time to get enough people to realize that there's a problem and even more time to motivate them to do something about it.
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No, actually I *did* mean "stop using so much energy". Energy that is easily available is a finite resource, and no conversion of energy from one form to another will ever be 100% efficient (thank you Sir Issac), so any energy use will inevitably cause some amount of waste.
As the industrialized poulation of the world grows larger, energy usage will grow. We need to bring the per-capita usage down to a managable level. The US is the prime example--our per-capita usage is grossly higher than the per-capita of the rest of the world, and that's not particularly easy to justify.
I will agree that as the biggest consumers, we need to lead the charge toward conservation--but not at the expense of global stability. Hey, I don't oppose the *idea* of the Kyoto Treaty, just that particular implementation.
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Sorry, but Bush hasn't manipulated *me* into thinking anything...perhaps you've missed my signature on these posts? It seems to me that Bush has manipulated you into losing your faculties.
And, BTW, you've invalidated your own point about fuel cells. Fuel cells don't spontaneously appear, or spontaneously fill themselves with hydrogen. We have to free the hydrogen from other sources, like water or fossil fuels--which takes energy and will never be 100% efficient. Which brings up the point--why not just burn the fossil fuels directly? Assuming that mass conversion of hydrogen can be done more efficiently than individual usage of fossil fuels, and assuming that the storage/transport issues are contained, then hey, I'm all for it.
In the meantime, it looks like forced-induction, direct injection diesel engines are the wave of the future, now that we can construct efficient particulate filters to deal with the soot. I wonder if all those people out there driving Toyota and Honda hybrids realize that VW has been selling a Lupo in the EU that gets even better mileage...and I wonder why we don't have anything better than a 1.9L TDI here.
And no, my reasoning doesn't state "that in 20 years the world will be cooked anyways, so why the hell should anyone do anything", what it states is that if we don't *all* stop using/wasting so much energy, the world *will* eventually cook. We can do something to prevent this and we should--but I think that global disruption is a more immediate danger.
You want to start solving the problem? Stop wasting energy on pointless rhetoric and:
1. Use less energy.
2. Vote your conscience.
3. Convince other people to do the same.
4. Be prepared.
Have a nice day.
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I wish I had more quantitative information on this, but I sincerely doubt that our heat output is "minor".
The point is that solar output has remained more or less (for the puposes of this discussion) constant, while the heat output of humans, which was nearly non-existent from a statistical standpoint just 250 years ago, has increased at an alarming rate.
I suspect that our heat output, coupled with the additional problem of the CO2 blanket that our energy consumption is creating, has caused a major imbalance in the environment--but I don't see any one studying this issue.
Let's just make some wild-ass assumptions here. I have a 15,000 BTU air-con unit in my house, which runs at 15 amps/120V, or 1.8 KW/hr. During the summer it runs 24 hours a day, let's say that makes 120 days out of the year times 24 hours times 1.8KW/hr. That means I've not only consumed about 5.2 MegaWatts of energy, I've also moved over that time 43.2 million BTU's of heat from my house into the atmosphere.
And that's just *my* house. What about the other 130 million households in the US plus all the commerical buildings?
What about heating systems in the winter? Lighting? Other electrical consumption? Heat loss from the generating plants? Heat loss from cars, trucks, planes, boats, etc? Manufacturing?
Do you really think this effect is minor?
Next summer take a trip to New York City--check the temperature in Times Square versus the temperature of the outer boroughs. Manhattan is invariably hotter by several degrees due to the level of energy consumption and the shift of all that heat from inside buildings to the outside (also exacerbated by the giant thermal sink of all that concrete and asphalt). The same is true of all urban areas.
Take a look at a satellite photo of the eastern US or western Europe at night. Most of us can't even see the stars anymore because of the light pollution. Where do you think all that energy goes? Not all of it goes off to deep space...
Remember, all this heat output is over and above the normal solar gain. If we weren't here, the energy wouldn't have been used!
Most of the energy we're using would normally have existed in a bound state deep underground. Very little of our generating capacity comes from sources which actually take energy out of the environment (solar, wind, water, etc).
The CO2 problem is a side effect, not a cause, though certainly, it's a contributing factor. However, the environment can cope with a hell of lot of excess CO2. The world, for lack of a better term, has "evolved" around this fact (OK, so there's entropy, but we're talking geologic cycles, not cosmic). The environment has no short-term defense against human energy consumption. Long-term, the environment will kill us if the temperature keeps rising, thus lowering the temperature again, but that's not a comforting thought for a human.
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In fact, I despise what George W. Bush and his so-called "administration" have done to our nation, with about 50% of the voting populace as willing accomplices.
Check your facts--it wasn't Bush who let Kyoto die. Al Gore was naive in believing that US participation in Kyoto would ever be effective without considering the much greater import of the long-term effects of industrialization in the developing world. You did notice that the populations of India and China both exceed 1 billion, didn't you?
The two of those countries combined have a population about 7 times that of the US. You think things are bad now? Wait 20-40 years. The rest of the world would very much like to enjoy the same standard of living we have here in the US, and they are not going to let a little thing like Kyoto stop them from acheiving it.
That's what killed Kyoto.
You say:
But in fact, the "rest of the world" was not willing to "take a hit". Look, we've been through this before--would the world have been better off if the US had unilaterally disarmed in the 20th Century? Somehow, I doubt it. You may like the idea of Maoist China running the show or maybe even India (what with it's internal religious conflicts, not to mention the Kashmiri problem with Pakistan that threatens to turn a large portion of the subcontinent into a radioactive glass bowl) having the upper hand. I don't.
The US isn't perfect. Far from it! I'll be the first to admit we have some critical problems to solve here, not least of which is energy policy, but the US is a damn sight better than anything that's come before or anything else on the horizon.
We need to stop focusing so much on Bush and his neo-con insane clown posse and start thinking seriously about how to change our lives on a fundamental basis in a responsible manner without upsetting the apple cart so much that we create a power vacuum.
The very fact that you place so much emphasis on "hydrogen research" shows, IMO, that you have very little understanding of energy science. Hydrogen is not a source of energy--it may make a halfway-decent battery system, but that's about it.
There is only one correct answer. Stop using so much energy. This goes for everyone, not just the US. I'm fairly confident that future history will bear this out.
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Is that no one who seems to be speaking out about the rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the possible effects on the "global warming" phenomenon seems to think about the issue in a truly critical manner.
For one thing, I personally don't believe that the rising concentration of carbon dioxide is really having all that much effect. I think the CO2 issue is merely a symptom of what is actually causing the average temperature to rise.
Here's the kicker--why is it that no one really seems to be talking about all the waste heat that the human species tosses into the environment as a direct result of our ever-increasing consumption of energy in all its forms?
The Kyoto Treaty was *not* the answer. That's why the US effectively pulled out. No long term solution to global warming can be effective if the rapidly expaning economies of countries like China and India do not accept the same committments we do. Yes, right now the US consumes more. That will not be true for very much longer. While the US does, indeed, need to reduce it's per capita consumption, we all need to make sure that no other country ever even approaches current US levels of consumption. This, of course, does not sit well with developing nations, but perhaps they should be more concerned about learning lessons from American failures than trying to duplicate American excesses.
Look, a modern Hummer engine puts out less emissions than much smaller engines of yesteryear. But it still produces an amazing amount of waste heat!
We cannot ignore this issue any longer. The only answer is, we need to stop using so much damned energy!
Yes, right now, the US is the biggest problem--and the US's problem will be particularly difficult to solve, given the profligate nature of most US citizens. It is sad to see that in a time when the US needs the help of the global community the most, the Bush Administration has chosen to erode our moral position even further by squandering much of the trust we have been able to build in the world.
None of this is to say that carbon dioxide does not contribute to global warming by trapping heat in the environment--but CO2 is not a source of heat, and the environment's ability to cope with increased levels of CO2 is very great. The real problem is that we've created a positive feedback loop here--more energy consumption causes more heat and more CO2, more CO2 helps trap more heat, especially from a heat source which we cannot control. Reducing consumption *will* reduce CO2. Reducing CO2 without reducing consumption will not have enough of an effect to matter.
Technology cannot solve this problem. Conservation is the only answer.
PS: I apologize for my lack of ability to produce a subscript...but there's only so many times I can type "carbon dioxide" without getting bored, and you know what I mean...
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It should be mentioned that most of Netscape's products started out as free software:
1. Netscape Directory Server was derived from the UMich LDAP implementation.
2. Netscape Messaging Server started life as Cyrus and Post.Office hacked together.
3. Netscape Collabra Server was an enhanced INN.
4. etc. and of course, let's not forget NCSA Mosaic...
when any of the code developed/enhanced by Netscape would ever see the light of day. As a old-time Netscape Solution Expert, I think this could very possibly turn out to be one of the most important events in computing history.
Still it makes me sad that Apple did not see it's way to buying up Netscape before they got chewed-up, swallowed, and spit out by AOL and Sun. I was saying this way back when Apple was still shipping Apple Network Servers running AIX...well, maybe now we'll see Netscape server products finally running on Mac OS X!
It never ceases to amaze me how shortsighted the technology industry can be.
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This is somewhat misleading. The fact is, LDAP was originally conceived/promoted by people at the University of Michigan, who eventually went on to work for Netscape. Being as Netscape was one of the earliest (and possibly most visible and productive) supporters of LDAP, it's easy to see how one might assume that Netscape "invented" LDAP.
And let's not forget Roland's "Alpha-Dial" that appears on many of their musical instrument products...
My main Internet server is a 400MHz iMac DV running Mac OS X 10.3.x, the Cyrus IMAP server, Sendmail (10.3 has Postfix by default, not Sendmail), SquirrelMail, etc, etc.
The iMac DV's with their FireWire ports, are ideal little server boxes and very easy to support. The truly paranoid can run OpenBSD on them, and the Linux fanatics can join in the fun, too.
Right now, the server is off-site, and I manage it mostly with ssh and the occasional VNC session, but soon it will be moved back to my house now that I have a 3072/768 ADSL line installed with a slash-29 subnet.
Once the monitor goes into sleep mode, the whole machine doesn't consume a lot of power. The best part is, I got the machine for free from a client!
I'd also look into getting a Sun/Cobalt Qube. I just rebuilt one for a client, and it's a rockin' little box--I believe Sun is committed to support for them until 2008.
Well, when *I* went to CMU (apparently even further back in the days before the WWW), NeXT didn't really even exist yet, because Avi Tevanian was still a grad student at CMU writing the Mach microkernel, if my memory serves me correctly...
There were lots of labs full of Mac SE's (upon which I dutifully typed many papers), not so many IBM PC's (on Token Ring, no less), plenty of Sun workstations, and a strange thing cooked up by CMU and IBM called the Andrew System, which ran primarily on an odd little device called the IBM PC RT...which was the forerunner of the RS/6000 series.
Ah, sometimes I wonder whatever happened to my old ma1s+@andrew.cmu.edu account...and the little Andrew console program I wrote called Fenchurch...I wasn't much of a coder (really, I was a Technical Production student in the Theatre Department, but much of what I was trying to do at the time involved integration of computer automation technologies into the theatre lighting and sound systems--sadly, none of the faculty understood what it was I was trying to do), but I was fond of the little markup language that was used at the time to cook up those little dashboards.
Among other things, we also have that time period to thank for the Andrew File System (which turned into probably the first globally-available distributed file system) and the forerunner of the Cyrus IMAP software, the Andrew Mail System (without which email would be quite a bit different today--many well-known commercial email systems are based on Cyrus).
I spent way too many hours in the flash cube...the Internet was cool even back in the mid-80's...some would say even cooler than it is now.
Oh, and the TOPS-20 systems were still on-line back then!
Wait a minute...they TORE DOWN Skibo?!!!? When did that happen? Man I should really take a trip back to ol' Picksburg...
BTW, Netscape also wrote some fairly insightful white papers and such on what the requirement were for a successful C&S solution. Much of it is still available at:
http://wp.netscape.com/calendar/v3.5/
What we really need is a replacement for the amazing CS&T/Netscape/Steltor/Oracle "CorporateTime" (nee Calendar Server).
Woo hoo. WebDAV. Could I be any *less* excited? WebDAV calendars are not going to replace a *real* calendaring/scheduling system any time soon...
Unfortunately, even open-source project I've seen that has attempted to tackle this problem has very quickly fallen apart.
Please, somebody, take a look at Corporate Time or the older Netscape Calendar Server. *That's* what we need. An LDAP-integrated, replicable, multi-user calendaring/scheduling system with a web client that was pretty much the equal of the full client application and integrated quite nicely with the email client.
Netscape SuiteSpot is what made Netscape Communicator Pro make sense. If anyone out there in a development team would like it, I would be more than happy to provide a copy of my my old SuiteSpot CD for reference/testing purposes...