I never proposed using solar panels on a vehicle. Solar panels are still very inefficient (of course, if the billions of dollars pouring into research on how to extract more oil and how to burn it more efficiently were spent on improving solar panels, I have no doubt they would perform much better).
I don't know how much corn would be needed to power everything. But I would bet that there is plenty enough energy falling on just a few hundred square miles to power all of our needs. It powers the weather and winds globally after all. It's just a matter of finding a way to collect the energy and then store it. I think storing the energy as hydrogen to be used in a fuel cell is a good way to go, whether you generate the hydrogen via corn or nuclear power.
Speaking of nuclear, I assume you are talking about fusion not generating tons of radioactive material? I'm all for fusion power and hope it becomes viable some day. But I don't think you'll see a fusion power plant in the trunk of everyone's car. I think the fusion power will have to be used to create an intermediate form. Power for electric cars? Hydrogen for fuel cell powered electric cars? Who knows?
I saw a good writeup the other day (probably on slashdot) about how we could change from an oil based economy to a hydrogen based economy. If the current oil companies were "encouraged" to be the producers and distributors of hydrogen as they are now for oil products, they wouldn't see it as a threat to their existence. Then they wouldn't be exerting their considerable political influence to try to stop alternate plans.
Corn is solar powered. Just because it is not efficent (yet) to convert light directly to electricity, don't forget how much energy falls on every acre of land from the sun. It's just the storage method you use that may be inefficient or polluting.
As for needing a nuclear reactor to power a tractor, bullshit! See my post below where I point out that the big mining dump trucks as well as trains are all electric. They use the diesel motor to power a generator which in turn powers the electric motors. All you need to do is replace the diesel motor and generator with something like a big hydrogen powered fuel cell...
You ever seen those monster dump trucks used at mines? Those are electric! They have a big diesel motor that powers a generator that in turn powers electric motors. You don't have to have a transmission that way. Same for diesel electric trains. So, if you have a fuel cell big enough, you can push that 5 ton tractor anywhere you want to go.
Actually they mention that burning hydrogen (or using it to power a fuel cell) may not release greenhouse gasses, but when you convert ethanol to hydrogen, the carbon in the ethanol has to go somewhere. Is it released as CO2? The article was too sketchy on details to know...
I think that was for the "services for Unix" tools. They probably didn't even need to do that, but it was an easy way to slip SCO some money to fuel the FUD. And that's even if you don't believe all the conspiracy theories about MS being behind SCO.
Yeah, I remember back during the Microsoft vs. Apple "Look-and-feel" lawsuit, I was rooting for Microsoft. 'Course, I guess I still would today because Microsoft was in the right on that argument.
Yeah, but you can violate a patent without seeing the code. Remember a patent covers a method, not a particular implementation. (Which is why software patents are a horrible idea, IMHO.)
That's what I've always found so bone-headed about Darl's arguments that it's hard to keep other's intellectual property out of Open Source. On the contrary, it's there for everyone to see. Only in closed software can someone insert someone else's code and have a reasonable chance of getting away with it.
When this is all over and everyone is picking over the bones of SCO's corpse, I hope IBM or Novell or someone who might open source most of UNIX will wind up with it.
At least this blows a hole in the security-through-obscurity theory Microsoft has been claiming. One leak and "poof!" all your "security" is gone. Open source code is there for the world to see. One would think all the easy exploits get fixed quickly in open source.
Well, that's true to a degree. I have several Windoze boxes (on VMWare virtual machines) that I'm responsible for. However, I've noticed that if I do a fresh install with the Win2K disk on a new VM the damn thing gets the Blaster worm (or even Code Red or Nimda) before I can even install the latest service pack. Yeah, I know I should disconnect it from the net until I get the SP installed, but that's a pain in the ass too because that means I have to keep a CD around with all the SPs. As I understand it, all service ports on a Mac are off by default. If Windows came this way, I wouldn't have to worry about this. Also, it's not a problem when installing Linux because I can choose to leave the services off before I ever boot it for the first time.
Ok, the original poster has my story beat. But I'll tell it anyway. The area where my cubical resides is very noisy. Mostly it's rude people having full volume conversations, laughing, or yelling into phones (or speakerphones!) in cubes nearby. But the guy in the next cubicle takes the cake. He sleeps regularly in his chair. A few times his snoring has been so loud as to cause the "prairy-dog effect". He used to smoke a lot so he spends a lot of time trying to cough up his lungs. We're talking real gross sounding coughs here, with a "loogie hawk" thrown in. (To his credit, he's quit smoking now.) He regularly gets phone calles from his mother and has loud conversations with her ("Well, hello Mudder!"). But the strangest noise he makes is whenever he "does something" like successfully compile a program or edit a file or whatever. At that point he makes this strange sound that I can only describe as a loud "quack". I have no idea why he does this, but it sure makes me wish it were duck season....
Yeah, Microsoft OS's are the only ones I've ever seen that actually degrade over time, even without installing new software. What's up with that? Does the software actually evaporate off the disk ?!?!
I'm going to stay away from Maxtor drives. I've a greater than 50% failure rate with them. Several were replaced under warranty. The others I managed to "fix" by letting their diagnostic floppy low-level format it (or whatever it does). I have four of their 60 GB drives set up as RAID-5. I'm constantly having to reconstruct the array because one or another of the drives gets kicked off due to spurious errors.
I've never had any trouble with any of the Western Digital drives I've had, although I've heard some people have had trouble with them. I've even got some old 420 MB WD drives that came with my old 486 in '93 that are still running in my firewall box.
Ok, I'll agree with most of that. The owners or stockholders do have risk in that they can lose their stock value if they put idiots (or criminals) on the board or as management. The poor bastards holding Enron stock at the end come to mind...
I own rental property and set my company up as an LLC. That gives me the tax advantage of a sole proprietorship, but some of the liability protection of a corporation. I will gladly take responsibility for actions I do that endanger my tenants (which I try not to do, of course). But I don't want to be wiped out because some idiot decides to trim his bushes with a lawn mower and cuts his foot off and decides to sue me because I didn't warn him not to...
You obviously don't run a business. How can a person be held personally liable in this litigious society we live in? No one would want to risk runing a company, that's for sure. Besides, a person *can* be held personally responsible for cases of willful negligence.
I'm not saying his reason for voting against it was based in freedom of speech. He usually votes no becuase it something the federal government is not authorized to regulate. It's a state issue.
Also, when you start talking about the "spirit" of the Constitution, it's up to whoever is reading it to determine what the "spirit" is. Then you no longer have rule of law, you have rule of man.
Congressman Ron Paul (aka Dr. No) specifically votes against anything that he thinks is unconstitutional. You *might* be able to make the argument that regulating telemarketers falls under the interstate commerce clause, but not in instances where the caller and callee are in the same state. Ron Paul would probably say this is an issue for the state legislatures to ban (as he did when he voted against an anti-spam bill.
While I certainly wouldn't complain if the do not call list were to be implemented, I have to say I wish we had more congress critters with the strict understanding of the constitution as Dr. Paul has.
The problem is that the same "problem" of accepting code exists in proprietary code too, so Darl's argument that this is somehow a flaw only present in the Open Source world is false. Developers who work for company XYZ will use code obtained from company ABC (either because he/she worked at ABC in the past or "borrowed" it from a friend at ABC). They probably know this is wrong, but who would ever know? The key difference is that since the code is proprietary, no one ever knows. Since open source is open for the world to see, you get vultures like McBride swooping in. Hell, there's probably a lot more GNU code improperly placed into proprietary code than the other way around!
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I never proposed using solar panels on a vehicle. Solar panels are still very inefficient (of course, if the billions of dollars pouring into research on how to extract more oil and how to burn it more efficiently were spent on improving solar panels, I have no doubt they would perform much better).
I don't know how much corn would be needed to power everything. But I would bet that there is plenty enough energy falling on just a few hundred square miles to power all of our needs. It powers the weather and winds globally after all. It's just a matter of finding a way to collect the energy and then store it. I think storing the energy as hydrogen to be used in a fuel cell is a good way to go, whether you generate the hydrogen via corn or nuclear power.
Speaking of nuclear, I assume you are talking about fusion not generating tons of radioactive material? I'm all for fusion power and hope it becomes viable some day. But I don't think you'll see a fusion power plant in the trunk of everyone's car. I think the fusion power will have to be used to create an intermediate form. Power for electric cars? Hydrogen for fuel cell powered electric cars? Who knows?
I saw a good writeup the other day (probably on slashdot) about how we could change from an oil based economy to a hydrogen based economy. If the current oil companies were "encouraged" to be the producers and distributors of hydrogen as they are now for oil products, they wouldn't see it as a threat to their existence. Then they wouldn't be exerting their considerable political influence to try to stop alternate plans.
Just my $0.02 worth ($0.01 after tax)...
I don't think the earth's orbit is *that* eliptical.
Corn is solar powered. Just because it is not efficent (yet) to convert light directly to electricity, don't forget how much energy falls on every acre of land from the sun. It's just the storage method you use that may be inefficient or polluting.
As for needing a nuclear reactor to power a tractor, bullshit! See my post below where I point out that the big mining dump trucks as well as trains are all electric. They use the diesel motor to power a generator which in turn powers the electric motors. All you need to do is replace the diesel motor and generator with something like a big hydrogen powered fuel cell...
You ever seen those monster dump trucks used at mines? Those are electric! They have a big diesel motor that powers a generator that in turn powers electric motors. You don't have to have a transmission that way. Same for diesel electric trains. So, if you have a fuel cell big enough, you can push that 5 ton tractor anywhere you want to go.
I liked it. I predict the show will do well, everyone will be hooked, then get killed by the Sci-Fi channel just like Farscape.
Ummm... hydrogen powered tractors???
Actually they mention that burning hydrogen (or using it to power a fuel cell) may not release greenhouse gasses, but when you convert ethanol to hydrogen, the carbon in the ethanol has to go somewhere. Is it released as CO2? The article was too sketchy on details to know...
I think that was for the "services for Unix" tools. They probably didn't even need to do that, but it was an easy way to slip SCO some money to fuel the FUD. And that's even if you don't believe all the conspiracy theories about MS being behind SCO.
Yeah, I remember back during the Microsoft vs. Apple "Look-and-feel" lawsuit, I was rooting for Microsoft. 'Course, I guess I still would today because Microsoft was in the right on that argument.
Because Microsoft depends on "security through obscurity". Now the holes are allegedly there for the world to see.
Hehehe... tell all that to SCO...
Yeah, but you can violate a patent without seeing the code. Remember a patent covers a method, not a particular implementation. (Which is why software patents are a horrible idea, IMHO.)
That's what I've always found so bone-headed about Darl's arguments that it's hard to keep other's intellectual property out of Open Source. On the contrary, it's there for everyone to see. Only in closed software can someone insert someone else's code and have a reasonable chance of getting away with it.
MS could buy them up with a month's revenue
Oh goody, then MicroShaft would own UNIX
When this is all over and everyone is picking over the bones of SCO's corpse, I hope IBM or Novell or someone who might open source most of UNIX will wind up with it.
(Sorry for the OT post. [-- no I'm not!])
At least this blows a hole in the security-through-obscurity theory Microsoft has been claiming. One leak and "poof!" all your "security" is gone. Open source code is there for the world to see. One would think all the easy exploits get fixed quickly in open source.
Well, that's true to a degree. I have several Windoze boxes (on VMWare virtual machines) that I'm responsible for. However, I've noticed that if I do a fresh install with the Win2K disk on a new VM the damn thing gets the Blaster worm (or even Code Red or Nimda) before I can even install the latest service pack. Yeah, I know I should disconnect it from the net until I get the SP installed, but that's a pain in the ass too because that means I have to keep a CD around with all the SPs. As I understand it, all service ports on a Mac are off by default. If Windows came this way, I wouldn't have to worry about this. Also, it's not a problem when installing Linux because I can choose to leave the services off before I ever boot it for the first time.
Ok, the original poster has my story beat. But I'll tell it anyway. The area where my cubical resides is very noisy. Mostly it's rude people having full volume conversations, laughing, or yelling into phones (or speakerphones!) in cubes nearby. But the guy in the next cubicle takes the cake. He sleeps regularly in his chair. A few times his snoring has been so loud as to cause the "prairy-dog effect". He used to smoke a lot so he spends a lot of time trying to cough up his lungs. We're talking real gross sounding coughs here, with a "loogie hawk" thrown in. (To his credit, he's quit smoking now.) He regularly gets phone calles from his mother and has loud conversations with her ("Well, hello Mudder!"). But the strangest noise he makes is whenever he "does something" like successfully compile a program or edit a file or whatever. At that point he makes this strange sound that I can only describe as a loud "quack". I have no idea why he does this, but it sure makes me wish it were duck season....
I'd always heard of him referred to as "Xenu". After doing a google search to be sure, I see him referred to as both "Xenu" and "Xemu". Go figure...
Yeah, Microsoft OS's are the only ones I've ever seen that actually degrade over time, even without installing new software. What's up with that? Does the software actually evaporate off the disk ?!?!
I'm going to stay away from Maxtor drives. I've a greater than 50% failure rate with them. Several were replaced under warranty. The others I managed to "fix" by letting their diagnostic floppy low-level format it (or whatever it does). I have four of their 60 GB drives set up as RAID-5. I'm constantly having to reconstruct the array because one or another of the drives gets kicked off due to spurious errors.
I've never had any trouble with any of the Western Digital drives I've had, although I've heard some people have had trouble with them. I've even got some old 420 MB WD drives that came with my old 486 in '93 that are still running in my firewall box.
Ok, I'll agree with most of that. The owners or stockholders do have risk in that they can lose their stock value if they put idiots (or criminals) on the board or as management. The poor bastards holding Enron stock at the end come to mind...
I own rental property and set my company up as an LLC. That gives me the tax advantage of a sole proprietorship, but some of the liability protection of a corporation. I will gladly take responsibility for actions I do that endanger my tenants (which I try not to do, of course). But I don't want to be wiped out because some idiot decides to trim his bushes with a lawn mower and cuts his foot off and decides to sue me because I didn't warn him not to...
You obviously don't run a business. How can a person be held personally liable in this litigious society we live in? No one would want to risk runing a company, that's for sure. Besides, a person *can* be held personally responsible for cases of willful negligence.
I'm not saying his reason for voting against it was based in freedom of speech. He usually votes no becuase it something the federal government is not authorized to regulate. It's a state issue.
Also, when you start talking about the "spirit" of the Constitution, it's up to whoever is reading it to determine what the "spirit" is. Then you no longer have rule of law, you have rule of man.
Congressman Ron Paul (aka Dr. No) specifically votes against anything that he thinks is unconstitutional. You *might* be able to make the argument that regulating telemarketers falls under the interstate commerce clause, but not in instances where the caller and callee are in the same state. Ron Paul would probably say this is an issue for the state legislatures to ban (as he did when he voted against an anti-spam bill.
While I certainly wouldn't complain if the do not call list were to be implemented, I have to say I wish we had more congress critters with the strict understanding of the constitution as Dr. Paul has.
Too bad SCOX isn't optionable. I've already checked. I'd love to buy some puts that expire just after April 2005...
The problem is that the same "problem" of accepting code exists in proprietary code too, so Darl's argument that this is somehow a flaw only present in the Open Source world is false. Developers who work for company XYZ will use code obtained from company ABC (either because he/she worked at ABC in the past or "borrowed" it from a friend at ABC). They probably know this is wrong, but who would ever know? The key difference is that since the code is proprietary, no one ever knows. Since open source is open for the world to see, you get vultures like McBride swooping in. Hell, there's probably a lot more GNU code improperly placed into proprietary code than the other way around!