You're making 58k for 186 work days. Most people work ~260 work days.
As a maths person, you should be able to deduce fairly easily that you make 'wage equivalency' to someone making $80k or so a year. So OP was a little off but your flat rejection is a bit more off than his misstatement...
There are no viable alternative energy investments, currently. Solar is as close as it comes, and that's really not a viable alternative for oil.
Oh, did you mean research? Research money is entirely different than investment money; investment money expects at least a close to parity return. Research money is a sunk cost; it's completely unknown.
Let's not be disingenious.
Truth be told you've got a lot to do in physical research before anything for energy storage becomes viable as an oil replacement. Your best bet is something which fits into existing infrastructure: either a liquid or gas that can substitute petrolium (eg. LP for instance), or something using electricity (eg. batteries).
There's nothing even approaching viable here, unfortunately, especially with California electricity costs.
We're talking about hills which are more like plateaus, in accessible from their perimeter by grazing cattle. It levels out the perimeter (and dents the center) if you bury it a good 5' down...
I'm personally terribly interested in hearing the AAR on the West, TX explosion... I've seen no likely explanation for why AN would explode so catastrophically on its own, yet.
AN doesn't explode all that readily. That's why it gets mixed with diesel.
If you've ever been to a small time farm or ranch, you'd see how the conditions there might be conductive to an "accidential explosion". You'd hear of farmers getting blowed up all the damn time while out having a smoke in the barn. It's easier to make diesel light on its own, or make gasoline 'explode' like in the movies. Sorry, but no: it doesn't explode all too easily on its own. Since West didn't have diesel in the explosion, one has to wonder what the catalyst was.
As someone who leveled hills with AN explosives as a child (to increase grazable land, of course), I heartily agree with this sentiment.
Sorry, decreasing the availability of AN will only do one significant thing: it will make farming and ranching (by proxy) more expensive and even less "profitable". For ag, there is no significant incentive to switching, particularly since it is likely to cost more (you'll need amendments to counteract the acidity) and/or it will have limited applicability (increasing soil acidity is not a common problem - it's usually the other way around). No doubt it'll be less effective for its intended purpose, too.
Make a fertilizer that will neutralize soil acidity and then we're starting to talk.
I, for one, am curious how the West, Texas fertilizer plant exploded.
There are rules and regulations for the storage of diesel fuel. Likewise for fertilizer. They don't get stored in close proximity. How did they combine in a sufficiently high ratio to create an explosion of the magnitude seen without some additional catalyst? That was a huuuuuge explosion!
No, target demographic for this is late teens, early 20s: people with more money than sense, an expendable income and few actual expenses.
Sorry, $1000 will buy a lot, still. I'm at the lower end of that demographic and make really good money. I used to spend a fair amount - a decade ago - on stuff like this. But today? No way, I'm too busy. And as an investment, unless I can make, oh, $3 a day bitcoin mining with it, there's absolutely no point - because that's about how fast it depreciates in resale value, if not faster.
We've given up that's because that dream was unrealistic. It wasn't even so much a dream as it was a marketing campaign from Apple and Microsoft, and it was long before the concept of a global computer network accessible from every device was even a glimmer in the conceivers' eyes.
You also seem to be missing the point that pretty much everyone has a smartphone and/or a computer these days, and that they use them and do things with them which were wildly impossible when that dream was commonplace. That dream was based on the concept of everyone being a creator; not everyone has that capability, most people are simply consumers.
You seem to miss the crucial reason why things are the way they are: it's because users DO NOT want to know how things work. They want the software and devices to work and do the work they need to do for them as much as possible so they can get on with their day, on with their lives.
The reasons why people don't 'hack' their stuff anymore is because:
* They're working 60+ hour weeks and don't have the time * The people who used to are now adults, with responsibilities outside of work, and don't have the time * Kids these days aren't really all that interested, unless we're talking about mobile handsets (aka smartphones), which DO get 'hacked' a lot. * There's usually no point in making small scale changes. Shit is fast enough now; you don't see a 20% increase in performance by 'tweaking' things, usually - like you used to. * People who are still hacking things have server closets (whatever) at their house and have learned how to do a lot more with their time than 'hacking' settings would allow for (allowing them to be more productive at work).
It doesn't matter if the Lintel/Wintel/etc. machines can't do 256 DMA transfers sym.
Chances are your vaunted NetApp or whatever Enterprise SAN storage can't do half that, either.:)
Cool feature and all, and yes, the hardware is impressive as hell. But that's not the problem, this is:
* Support cost (in both equipment, staffing, research, etc.) * Vendor dependence * Overall equipment cost
Run the numbers however you like to justify it. Nobody knows mainframes anymore, not anyone with non-legacy-support resumes. And, arguably, the people who do know z are fucking idiots when it comes to anything but zOS (and so the comparision to Linux? Fairly inconsequential). You may be different, I'm not arguing against that.
Sorry, not going to happen. The Quran/Koran is inherrently political - the same way the Torah is. Unfortunately unlike the Torah, the Koran is also inherrently violent.
Islam aka "Religion of Submission" would have to be something other than Islam before it would happen.
I think Russia has the right idea at this point, ironically.
Unfortunately, it's culturally impossible. It won't be something the West will attempt until it's too late to do so effectively or completely, and by then we'll be in a state of total ideological war - balkanized warfare on a global scale.
Islam, defined to a few small 'races', as you call them?
Yeah, how about:
* Africans (ie the entire northern 2/3 of Africa at this point) * Persians (ie Iran and surrounding areas) * Arabs (from North Africa across the middle east) * Caucasians (ie those in the Caucus region) * Rus (ie Serbians and Russians) * Asians (stretching across the SE Pacific) * Indians (aka "people who were Indian but are now Pakistani")
The majority are Arab, and yes, most of them have dark skin - meaning, they're not Northern European.
So which 'few, distinct races' are you referring to? That's over (at least) half the world's population, not "a few distinct races". Sounds like you're the one who racially distinguishes.
What part of drones in the US is not explicitly military? I'm pretty sure "is it inside the US?" pretty clearly rules it out as being off limits for military action of any sort...
1) Fox News had a talking head expert short moments after the bombing occurred (an hour or two?) who said almost immediately that it's likely/probably a home grown terrorism attack, likely white supremacists. 2) Done. 3) Probably.
You realize that if we were to effectively fight jihadist terrorism, Dearborn, MI, as well as various other locations in the US, would have to be depopulated with most of the inhabitants shot, deported, or jailed, right?
(There is Sharia by majority rule in Dearborn.)
I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying it will never happen, short of a no-punches-pulled Balkanized civil war.
In a police state, you are only preventing repeated acts of violence against the populace by the same individual or non-government organization.
You still have the one-off acts of terror, such as suicide bombers.
You still have governmental abuses and 'lack of oversight', such as drone bombings of children or plutocratic rape of the system and individuals. (And you will have a lot more of these.)
You will still have organized crime - and, in fact, a lot more of it, because it's demand goes up and it can only operate with the covert 'blessing' of the system.
You will also have things like a lot more unreported crime (fear of reporting the wrong person, or simple government involvement in your life - see people reporting burglaries in the UK and getting fines, sued and jail time for things like building code violations or 'hostile work environment').
The only people who benefit from a police state (also known as a totalitarian regime) are the people who are in power. Just ask anyone who's lived in a small town/county before (where there are fewer than 2k people within 30 miles of you, small). If you're not in power and with the cops, you're on the outside, regardless.
Don't worry, son. You live in a Democracy. In Democracy, herd mentality protects you from anything egregious that a runaway government which listens not to its constituents or the Constitution might do.
You know, we used to call it simply, "engineering" - back before business school type managers stuck their dicks into the soup and soured the pot for everyone.
Things I've noticed as a sysadmin, for 'scalable' apps:
* Java? Do not use it. Sorry. Just don't. It's shit and nobody seems to be able to write it worth half a damn to scale out. * That goes double for Java running on Tomcat. * That Java framework you know? It's expounded shit and will consume all available system resources with only a handful of users. * It doesn't matter how good a developer you are if you're a Java developer: your application will be CPU and memory intensive. (See the first three points.) * Whatever you do should use heavy use of in-browser processing via javascript. * Use MVC, or preferably, MVP concepts in development.
Aside from a front-heavy application, your concerns will be database access. Design the database so that it will scale broadly; preferably pull someone in who knows a thing or two more about normalization than you do to do this, if only to have a second set of eyes.
Microsoft HAS to migrate their customers away from Windows to survive.
They might have to now, but that's only because of the decisions they've made to release legacy-breaking but undesirable products.
The Windows UI was something people desired; it was like warm chicken soup on a warm day. Yes, it had its foibles and the platform as a whole certainly has/had its shortcomings (XP, Vista, 7 - take your pick) but there's no denying that people understood how it worked and it was a stable point of reference for people. People know it.
So why not do a rewrite that keeps the beneficial legacy components? They didn't do that. They burned their ace and released Windows 8.
2GB for a 'full install'? Heh, maybe the full install you use...
In terms of vetting and QC, I think I'd rather use FreeBSD. That at least has a decent software repository (albeit one ill maintained) and a sizable user base.
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You're making 58k for 186 work days. Most people work ~260 work days.
As a maths person, you should be able to deduce fairly easily that you make 'wage equivalency' to someone making $80k or so a year. So OP was a little off but your flat rejection is a bit more off than his misstatement...
I've never even heard of the two you list.
There are no viable alternative energy investments, currently. Solar is as close as it comes, and that's really not a viable alternative for oil.
Oh, did you mean research? Research money is entirely different than investment money; investment money expects at least a close to parity return. Research money is a sunk cost; it's completely unknown.
Let's not be disingenious.
Truth be told you've got a lot to do in physical research before anything for energy storage becomes viable as an oil replacement. Your best bet is something which fits into existing infrastructure: either a liquid or gas that can substitute petrolium (eg. LP for instance), or something using electricity (eg. batteries).
There's nothing even approaching viable here, unfortunately, especially with California electricity costs.
We're talking about hills which are more like plateaus, in accessible from their perimeter by grazing cattle. It levels out the perimeter (and dents the center) if you bury it a good 5' down...
No, it was a spontaneous act of God...
I'm personally terribly interested in hearing the AAR on the West, TX explosion... I've seen no likely explanation for why AN would explode so catastrophically on its own, yet.
AN doesn't explode all that readily. That's why it gets mixed with diesel.
If you've ever been to a small time farm or ranch, you'd see how the conditions there might be conductive to an "accidential explosion". You'd hear of farmers getting blowed up all the damn time while out having a smoke in the barn. It's easier to make diesel light on its own, or make gasoline 'explode' like in the movies. Sorry, but no: it doesn't explode all too easily on its own. Since West didn't have diesel in the explosion, one has to wonder what the catalyst was.
As someone who leveled hills with AN explosives as a child (to increase grazable land, of course), I heartily agree with this sentiment.
Sorry, decreasing the availability of AN will only do one significant thing: it will make farming and ranching (by proxy) more expensive and even less "profitable". For ag, there is no significant incentive to switching, particularly since it is likely to cost more (you'll need amendments to counteract the acidity) and/or it will have limited applicability (increasing soil acidity is not a common problem - it's usually the other way around). No doubt it'll be less effective for its intended purpose, too.
Make a fertilizer that will neutralize soil acidity and then we're starting to talk.
I, for one, am curious how the West, Texas fertilizer plant exploded.
There are rules and regulations for the storage of diesel fuel. Likewise for fertilizer. They don't get stored in close proximity. How did they combine in a sufficiently high ratio to create an explosion of the magnitude seen without some additional catalyst? That was a huuuuuge explosion!
No, target demographic for this is late teens, early 20s: people with more money than sense, an expendable income and few actual expenses.
Sorry, $1000 will buy a lot, still. I'm at the lower end of that demographic and make really good money. I used to spend a fair amount - a decade ago - on stuff like this. But today? No way, I'm too busy. And as an investment, unless I can make, oh, $3 a day bitcoin mining with it, there's absolutely no point - because that's about how fast it depreciates in resale value, if not faster.
We've given up that's because that dream was unrealistic. It wasn't even so much a dream as it was a marketing campaign from Apple and Microsoft, and it was long before the concept of a global computer network accessible from every device was even a glimmer in the conceivers' eyes.
You also seem to be missing the point that pretty much everyone has a smartphone and/or a computer these days, and that they use them and do things with them which were wildly impossible when that dream was commonplace. That dream was based on the concept of everyone being a creator; not everyone has that capability, most people are simply consumers.
You seem to miss the crucial reason why things are the way they are: it's because users DO NOT want to know how things work. They want the software and devices to work and do the work they need to do for them as much as possible so they can get on with their day, on with their lives.
Not everyone is a geek.
The reasons why people don't 'hack' their stuff anymore is because:
* They're working 60+ hour weeks and don't have the time
* The people who used to are now adults, with responsibilities outside of work, and don't have the time
* Kids these days aren't really all that interested, unless we're talking about mobile handsets (aka smartphones), which DO get 'hacked' a lot.
* There's usually no point in making small scale changes. Shit is fast enough now; you don't see a 20% increase in performance by 'tweaking' things, usually - like you used to.
* People who are still hacking things have server closets (whatever) at their house and have learned how to do a lot more with their time than 'hacking' settings would allow for (allowing them to be more productive at work).
It doesn't matter if the Lintel/Wintel/etc. machines can't do 256 DMA transfers sym.
Chances are your vaunted NetApp or whatever Enterprise SAN storage can't do half that, either. :)
Cool feature and all, and yes, the hardware is impressive as hell. But that's not the problem, this is:
* Support cost (in both equipment, staffing, research, etc.)
* Vendor dependence
* Overall equipment cost
Run the numbers however you like to justify it. Nobody knows mainframes anymore, not anyone with non-legacy-support resumes. And, arguably, the people who do know z are fucking idiots when it comes to anything but zOS (and so the comparision to Linux? Fairly inconsequential). You may be different, I'm not arguing against that.
Sorry, not going to happen. The Quran/Koran is inherrently political - the same way the Torah is. Unfortunately unlike the Torah, the Koran is also inherrently violent.
Islam aka "Religion of Submission" would have to be something other than Islam before it would happen.
I think Russia has the right idea at this point, ironically.
Good list.
Unfortunately, it's culturally impossible. It won't be something the West will attempt until it's too late to do so effectively or completely, and by then we'll be in a state of total ideological war - balkanized warfare on a global scale.
Islam, defined to a few small 'races', as you call them?
Yeah, how about:
* Africans (ie the entire northern 2/3 of Africa at this point)
* Persians (ie Iran and surrounding areas)
* Arabs (from North Africa across the middle east)
* Caucasians (ie those in the Caucus region)
* Rus (ie Serbians and Russians)
* Asians (stretching across the SE Pacific)
* Indians (aka "people who were Indian but are now Pakistani")
The majority are Arab, and yes, most of them have dark skin - meaning, they're not Northern European.
So which 'few, distinct races' are you referring to? That's over (at least) half the world's population, not "a few distinct races". Sounds like you're the one who racially distinguishes.
What part of drones in the US is not explicitly military? I'm pretty sure "is it inside the US?" pretty clearly rules it out as being off limits for military action of any sort...
it happened right where lots of people are and lots of cameras (terrorists love bodies and media attention).
So do politicians.
1) Fox News had a talking head expert short moments after the bombing occurred (an hour or two?) who said almost immediately that it's likely/probably a home grown terrorism attack, likely white supremacists.
2) Done.
3) Probably.
You realize that if we were to effectively fight jihadist terrorism, Dearborn, MI, as well as various other locations in the US, would have to be depopulated with most of the inhabitants shot, deported, or jailed, right?
(There is Sharia by majority rule in Dearborn.)
I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying it will never happen, short of a no-punches-pulled Balkanized civil war.
No. You're quite wrong.
In a police state, you are only preventing repeated acts of violence against the populace by the same individual or non-government organization.
You still have the one-off acts of terror, such as suicide bombers.
You still have governmental abuses and 'lack of oversight', such as drone bombings of children or plutocratic rape of the system and individuals. (And you will have a lot more of these.)
You will still have organized crime - and, in fact, a lot more of it, because it's demand goes up and it can only operate with the covert 'blessing' of the system.
You will also have things like a lot more unreported crime (fear of reporting the wrong person, or simple government involvement in your life - see people reporting burglaries in the UK and getting fines, sued and jail time for things like building code violations or 'hostile work environment').
The only people who benefit from a police state (also known as a totalitarian regime) are the people who are in power. Just ask anyone who's lived in a small town/county before (where there are fewer than 2k people within 30 miles of you, small). If you're not in power and with the cops, you're on the outside, regardless.
Don't worry, son. You live in a Democracy. In Democracy, herd mentality protects you from anything egregious that a runaway government which listens not to its constituents or the Constitution might do.
You know, we used to call it simply, "engineering" - back before business school type managers stuck their dicks into the soup and soured the pot for everyone.
Things I've noticed as a sysadmin, for 'scalable' apps:
* Java? Do not use it. Sorry. Just don't. It's shit and nobody seems to be able to write it worth half a damn to scale out.
* That goes double for Java running on Tomcat.
* That Java framework you know? It's expounded shit and will consume all available system resources with only a handful of users.
* It doesn't matter how good a developer you are if you're a Java developer: your application will be CPU and memory intensive. (See the first three points.)
* Whatever you do should use heavy use of in-browser processing via javascript.
* Use MVC, or preferably, MVP concepts in development.
Aside from a front-heavy application, your concerns will be database access. Design the database so that it will scale broadly; preferably pull someone in who knows a thing or two more about normalization than you do to do this, if only to have a second set of eyes.
Microsoft HAS to migrate their customers away from Windows to survive.
They might have to now, but that's only because of the decisions they've made to release legacy-breaking but undesirable products.
The Windows UI was something people desired; it was like warm chicken soup on a warm day. Yes, it had its foibles and the platform as a whole certainly has/had its shortcomings (XP, Vista, 7 - take your pick) but there's no denying that people understood how it worked and it was a stable point of reference for people. People know it.
So why not do a rewrite that keeps the beneficial legacy components? They didn't do that. They burned their ace and released Windows 8.
2GB for a 'full install'? Heh, maybe the full install you use...
In terms of vetting and QC, I think I'd rather use FreeBSD. That at least has a decent software repository (albeit one ill maintained) and a sizable user base.