Yeah, I know people who like to make that argument. They don't know the first thing about how much resources they consume and how much land is required to maintain that lifestyle.
The thing is, I rather enjoy being able to eat a steak now and then and having air-conditioning when it's 100 degrees outside. I know that most of the world's population don't have these things, but there isn't any practical reason that they couldn't, other than overpopulation.
It used to be that having lots of brats was a *good* thing: more people to herd the sheep and tend to the crops. Now that all of that has been automated, more kids just means having more mouths to feed and ends up meaning lower standard of living for everyone.
You're right. That sucks. Companies that have that attitude suck to work for.
The reality in IT is that often times the 'user' is the enemy, though. I've seen enough people download and install 'Windows Scripting Host' in order to goof off on some interactive website, and end up getting a virus a week later, to know that people should be locked out of most things.
I don't mind people having access to eBay or Solitaire, but when goofing off causes me to have to ghost your machine or search the network for the instance of Kaaza that is taking up all the internet bandwidth, that's when it goes beyond a matter of employee morale.
Why do you think they won't work very well? In my neighborhood, at least, I can compare the African-American-run McDonalds down the street to the McDonalds downtown run by robots and Mexicans.
It's like night and day. The robots and Mexicans make *much* better food. They fuck-up my order more often, but I'm guessing that this has more to do with the Mexicans not speaking English than the robots. In fact, I think automated ordering systems would do a *much* better job than the Mexicans.
What's more, the prices at the automated McDonalds are *lower*, even though it's in a higher-rent district. I say "bring on the robots!" and "get rid of the Mexicans!"
Conceptual Guerilla is a great site with a decidedly leftist political bent that attempts to expose and digest some of the consequences of this new reality. I suggest anyone who's interested in discussing this further to head over to the forums there. I'd also like to thank the Slashdotter who put this link in their sig.
That was my understanding of the way he explained it to me, at least. It looks like you're right; most landfills don't currently purchase natural gas to run flares. I don't know why I thought that, because it sounds stupid now that I think about it.
What they're doing is even dumber than I thought, though; they already have collection systems in place and burn the landfill gas in flares instead of putting it to better use.
what is wrong with people who own oil selling it to the folks who wish to purchase it?
Absolutely nothing. In this case, though, they don't just own oil. They also seem to own lots of natural gas that they waste because it gets in the way of their search for oil.
I've generally noticed that businesses waste a *lot* of resources because of their insistence on specializing in one particular area of expertise. This just seems to be a perfect example: natural gas is useless to an oil company, so they burn it. Landfill gas is useless to a landfill, so they burn it also.
They were probably looking for something that Hydrogen wouldn't leak right through. I think that would be Aluminum (Aluminium:) since that's what modern solid rocket boosters are made of.
This is the dumbest thing that I've heard in a long time. This is the reason we need to work to get rid of the oil oligarchy.
Did you also know that large waste dumps are required to burn off the gases produced as their contents decompose? Currently, most sites *pay* to burn a natural gas flare on-site. I know a guy who goes around installing collection systems so that they can capture and *sell* that gas instead of paying for more gas just to burn it off.
The sad thing is that he wouldn't be able to make a living doing this if it weren't for gov't subsidies.
This is a gasifier. It doesn't burn the biomass directly. It converts the biomass into clean gas fuel just like it would naturally decompose. It's actually more enviromnentally responsible because it supposedly makes use of excess materials that would otherwise be left to decompose into the atmosphere.
The gasifier, along with the engine's coolant and exhaust, produces thermal energy, which can be used to heat water or dry grain.
This is a cogeneration unit that uses the excess thermal energy to heat your home or whatever. Such systems can be very efficient when designed as heaters, with the side benefit of producing electricity.
All we need now is a residential ammonia-absorption cooling system so that it can be used in the summer as well.
It's become obvious to anyone who has studied the issue that those who deny and disparage the right to keep and bear arms do so under either extreme ignorance or outright dishonesty. I don't know which category you fall under, but you obviously haven't studied the issue.
In Colonial times "arms" usually meant weapons that could be carried. This included knives, swords, rifles and pistols. Dictionaries of the time had a separate definition for "ordinance" (as it was spelled then) meaning cannon. Any hand held, non-ordnance type weapons, are theoretically constitutionally protected. Obviously nuclear weapons, tanks, rockets, fighter planes, and submarines are not.
The proposal finally passed the House in its present form: "A well regulated militia, being necessary for the preservation of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed." In this form it was submitted into the Senate, which passed it the following day. The Senate in the process indicated its intent that the right be an individual one, for private purposes, by rejecting an amendment which would have limited the keeping and bearing of arms to bearing "For the common defense".
The speech in question in this case is not 'threats and extortion'. The NOW didn't sue the people who threatened the child-killers. They sued the political organization that motivated the protests to begin with.
I'm sure if someone committed a crime in the name of the ACLU, and the ACLU got sued under Federal racketeering laws, they would be screaming 'freedom of speech'. In this case, though, they're screaming 'right to abortion'.
They aren't protecting political speech; they're protecting their leftist political ideology. As I mentioned in another thread, though, their argument wasn't exactly successful.
That would be Natural Rights to which you refer. Human Rights are a product of modern liberalism, and preclude the existence of a Higher Power.
Since, under Natural Law, human existence is dependent upon a Higher Power, the common feature of both Natural and Human rights is existence, from whatever source derived.
I don't necessarily aim to present a historical depiction of the evolution of rights; rather a modern, self-consistent description of those rights.
Sure, but they didn't sue the people who 'waved the knife'. They sued the people who encouraged them to 'wave the knife'. By that logic, Greenpeace would be the largest racketeer in the US.
They've tried it again and again since, accusing anti-abortion website operators of murder and suing them under RICO as well.
If you look into it deep enough, and actually understand the laws they are suing these people under, you'd quickly realize that this is nothing more than a politically-motivated campaign to silence those who oppose 'abortion rights'.
If you're talking webserver, then, yes, I have it backwards. But, if it's just an internal fileserver, my experience is that managers are against upgrades unless it comes with significant new features. For a small business, upgrading the OS on an internal fileserver can almost never give endusers any significant new features.
I'm going to take this opportunity to respond to you and the grandparent at the same time.
This is the reason for the Hydrogen economy. Instead of designing power-control electronics that throttle supply to meet demand, we can just design everything to provide for much more than peak and create Hydrogen with the excess during off-peak periods.
All of the curves fit together nicely, too. People need more gas for heating in the winter, but they need more gas for transportation in the summer. Using Hydrogen as that gas lessens the differences in peak demand. Even when it doesn't, fuel-cells are fairly responsive to changes in demand and the process for storing Hydrogen for extended periods is straightforward, if not very efficient.
But the best reason for Hydrogen is that it is already being used in small-scale co-generation units that create electricity and heat at something like 80% total efficiency, on-site and without transmission losses of a power grid. So, even if Hydrogen isn't the best fuel choice for automobiles, it does have it's benefits in a 'comprehensive' energy plan.
I set up a server/firewall... Red Hat made a liar out of me.
First off, that's the reason the number one most important rule even in a small business is that the *firewall* is not the *server*. I really hate the fact that a certain company in Redmond likes to advertise that their small business offering can perform this dual role adequately. I usually put Gibraltar, which is a Debian-based run-from-cd firewall distro, on whatever spare computer is lying around that can handle it.
The firewall can (and should) be updated frequently; an internal server should not. I just use RH 7.3 on internal servers that don't provide outside access and reside on fairly small, trusted networks. I'm guessing that you run some sort of web hosting provider, though, from the fact that you say it's a 'small business' yet have more than 12 RH servers.
If that's the case, well, I don't know what to tell you. I think RH should have a webserver edition. The WS version of RH Enterprise says it comes with Apache, so maybe that's what it's targeted for. It can be had for as little as $180.
I can certainly say I feel for people who in this sort of situation. I started concentrating on deploying nothing but Debian a little over a year ago. It's by no means a difficult leap to go from RH to Debian, but, depending on the amount of help and support for commercial apps you require, sticking with RH might be worthwhile.
Slashdot Mirror
fit all 6 billion people on the planet in Texas
Yeah, I know people who like to make that argument. They don't know the first thing about how much resources they consume and how much land is required to maintain that lifestyle.
The thing is, I rather enjoy being able to eat a steak now and then and having air-conditioning when it's 100 degrees outside. I know that most of the world's population don't have these things, but there isn't any practical reason that they couldn't, other than overpopulation.
It used to be that having lots of brats was a *good* thing: more people to herd the sheep and tend to the crops. Now that all of that has been automated, more kids just means having more mouths to feed and ends up meaning lower standard of living for everyone.
"employee is the enemy" managerial mindset
You're right. That sucks. Companies that have that attitude suck to work for.
The reality in IT is that often times the 'user' is the enemy, though. I've seen enough people download and install 'Windows Scripting Host' in order to goof off on some interactive website, and end up getting a virus a week later, to know that people should be locked out of most things.
I don't mind people having access to eBay or Solitaire, but when goofing off causes me to have to ghost your machine or search the network for the instance of Kaaza that is taking up all the internet bandwidth, that's when it goes beyond a matter of employee morale.
Why do you think they won't work very well? In my neighborhood, at least, I can compare the African-American-run McDonalds down the street to the McDonalds downtown run by robots and Mexicans.
It's like night and day. The robots and Mexicans make *much* better food. They fuck-up my order more often, but I'm guessing that this has more to do with the Mexicans not speaking English than the robots. In fact, I think automated ordering systems would do a *much* better job than the Mexicans.
What's more, the prices at the automated McDonalds are *lower*, even though it's in a higher-rent district. I say "bring on the robots!" and "get rid of the Mexicans!"
Our children should do nothing for a living.
There isn't any reason to concoct something for them to do.
They should simply be educated on the dangers of over-population and the use of contraceptives and how to operate the robots.
That's it.
Conceptual Guerilla is a great site with a decidedly leftist political bent that attempts to expose and digest some of the consequences of this new reality. I suggest anyone who's interested in discussing this further to head over to the forums there. I'd also like to thank the Slashdotter who put this link in their sig.
That was my understanding of the way he explained it to me, at least. It looks like you're right; most landfills don't currently purchase natural gas to run flares. I don't know why I thought that, because it sounds stupid now that I think about it.
What they're doing is even dumber than I thought, though; they already have collection systems in place and burn the landfill gas in flares instead of putting it to better use.
what is wrong with people who own oil selling it to the folks who wish to purchase it?
Absolutely nothing. In this case, though, they don't just own oil. They also seem to own lots of natural gas that they waste because it gets in the way of their search for oil.
I've generally noticed that businesses waste a *lot* of resources because of their insistence on specializing in one particular area of expertise. This just seems to be a perfect example: natural gas is useless to an oil company, so they burn it. Landfill gas is useless to a landfill, so they burn it also.
the properties they were looking for in the paint
:) since that's what modern solid rocket boosters are made of.
They were probably looking for something that Hydrogen wouldn't leak right through. I think that would be Aluminum (Aluminium
This is the dumbest thing that I've heard in a long time. This is the reason we need to work to get rid of the oil oligarchy.
Did you also know that large waste dumps are required to burn off the gases produced as their contents decompose? Currently, most sites *pay* to burn a natural gas flare on-site. I know a guy who goes around installing collection systems so that they can capture and *sell* that gas instead of paying for more gas just to burn it off.
The sad thing is that he wouldn't be able to make a living doing this if it weren't for gov't subsidies.
is the only treasonable thing to do
.sig!
Ha! Ha! How's that for a Freudian slip. I guess you forgot to add 'idiot' to your
Or even the summary?
This is a gasifier. It doesn't burn the biomass directly. It converts the biomass into clean gas fuel just like it would naturally decompose. It's actually more enviromnentally responsible because it supposedly makes use of excess materials that would otherwise be left to decompose into the atmosphere.
The gasifier, along with the engine's coolant and exhaust, produces thermal energy, which can be used to heat water or dry grain.
This is a cogeneration unit that uses the excess thermal energy to heat your home or whatever. Such systems can be very efficient when designed as heaters, with the side benefit of producing electricity.
All we need now is a residential ammonia-absorption cooling system so that it can be used in the summer as well.
nuclear weapons are not 'arms':
It is an individual right:
God, it's like I'm arguing with a brick...
The speech in question in this case is not 'threats and extortion'. The NOW didn't sue the people who threatened the child-killers. They sued the political organization that motivated the protests to begin with.
I'm sure if someone committed a crime in the name of the ACLU, and the ACLU got sued under Federal racketeering laws, they would be screaming 'freedom of speech'. In this case, though, they're screaming 'right to abortion'.
They aren't protecting political speech; they're protecting their leftist political ideology. As I mentioned in another thread, though, their argument wasn't exactly successful.
That would be Natural Rights to which you refer. Human Rights are a product of modern liberalism, and preclude the existence of a Higher Power.
Since, under Natural Law, human existence is dependent upon a Higher Power, the common feature of both Natural and Human rights is existence, from whatever source derived.
I don't necessarily aim to present a historical depiction of the evolution of rights; rather a modern, self-consistent description of those rights.
Oh, did Locke and Hobbes talk about affirmative action? Did they say that everyone has a 'right to clean air' or 'affordable housing'?
I must have missed those chapters. Feel free to cite...
Sure, but they didn't sue the people who 'waved the knife'. They sued the people who encouraged them to 'wave the knife'. By that logic, Greenpeace would be the largest racketeer in the US.
They've tried it again and again since, accusing anti-abortion website operators of murder and suing them under RICO as well.
If you look into it deep enough, and actually understand the laws they are suing these people under, you'd quickly realize that this is nothing more than a politically-motivated campaign to silence those who oppose 'abortion rights'.
Too bad the Supreme Court doesn't agree with you or these idiotic politically-inspired claims.
they really do believe that everybody has the right to say anything, no matter what it is and what might be done with that information.
don't
I'm sorry, did you say that states have rights?
Natural Rights/Human Rights- Rights granted by virtue of existence
Civil Rights- Rights granted by virtue of citizenship
Civil Liberties- Rights granted by virtue of legislative fiat
If you're talking webserver, then, yes, I have it backwards. But, if it's just an internal fileserver, my experience is that managers are against upgrades unless it comes with significant new features. For a small business, upgrading the OS on an internal fileserver can almost never give endusers any significant new features.
I'm going to take this opportunity to respond to you and the grandparent at the same time.
This is the reason for the Hydrogen economy. Instead of designing power-control electronics that throttle supply to meet demand, we can just design everything to provide for much more than peak and create Hydrogen with the excess during off-peak periods.
All of the curves fit together nicely, too. People need more gas for heating in the winter, but they need more gas for transportation in the summer. Using Hydrogen as that gas lessens the differences in peak demand. Even when it doesn't, fuel-cells are fairly responsive to changes in demand and the process for storing Hydrogen for extended periods is straightforward, if not very efficient.
But the best reason for Hydrogen is that it is already being used in small-scale co-generation units that create electricity and heat at something like 80% total efficiency, on-site and without transmission losses of a power grid. So, even if Hydrogen isn't the best fuel choice for automobiles, it does have it's benefits in a 'comprehensive' energy plan.
here
Wikipedia Definition of WPS Office
Article about Kingsoft
I set up a server/firewall... Red Hat made a liar out of me.
First off, that's the reason the number one most important rule even in a small business is that the *firewall* is not the *server*. I really hate the fact that a certain company in Redmond likes to advertise that their small business offering can perform this dual role adequately. I usually put Gibraltar, which is a Debian-based run-from-cd firewall distro, on whatever spare computer is lying around that can handle it.
The firewall can (and should) be updated frequently; an internal server should not. I just use RH 7.3 on internal servers that don't provide outside access and reside on fairly small, trusted networks. I'm guessing that you run some sort of web hosting provider, though, from the fact that you say it's a 'small business' yet have more than 12 RH servers.
If that's the case, well, I don't know what to tell you. I think RH should have a webserver edition. The WS version of RH Enterprise says it comes with Apache, so maybe that's what it's targeted for. It can be had for as little as $180.
I can certainly say I feel for people who in this sort of situation. I started concentrating on deploying nothing but Debian a little over a year ago. It's by no means a difficult leap to go from RH to Debian, but, depending on the amount of help and support for commercial apps you require, sticking with RH might be worthwhile.