If you find this idea interesting at all, please keep in mind that you have to burn limestone at 1000 degrees just to get the lime. Limestone is not a renewable resource any more than hydrocarbons are anyway. And that only indicates a tiny part of the resources that have to go into this.]
As you might imagine, lime has a lot of other uses. If you want all those other things to be drastically more expensive (we're not also talking about spending billions of dollars and carbon fuels in building new infrastructure are we???) due to the increased demand, then I'd say you're not thinking straight.
Maybe this can make sense in terms of dollars, I dunno. I'm sure construction companies and other parts of industry would stand to make oodles of money from such a project. I do know it doesn't make sense if you look at it rationally. Reducing our CO2 input to the atmosphere is much more sensible.
Also, google the term kalkwasser (aka limewater) if you want to see discussions of actual use of lime in saltwater in laymen's terms. People who keep hobby-sized coral reefs in aquariums use this chemical, but for a slightly different purpose. Still pollution control in a way though.
My analysis: No surprise this plan comes from a management consultant. Perhaps there are environmentalists behind this as others in this thread have inferred or stated directly, but at least from their own promotional material Corven Group doesn't appear to be so - they're primarily into manufacturing and engineering (per them, not me). Please RTFA and tell me it doesn't say they're the ones behind this plan, along with Shell Oil. I have a hard time imagining anyone who does consider themselves an environmentalist advocating dumping a bunch of chemicals (on top of the waste discharges we already make into the ocean) into the ocean to fix the problems created by us pumping chemicals into the atmosphere.
Check out the PDF's in my reply above. The first link is to one of Uni-Solar's technical papers which seems to address all of the good and valid points you bring up, including specifics on the shingle product. The second is promotional info specific to their shingles.
There's no indication they've been discontinued on their website. They still have a PDF brochure for them and their distributors still talk about the shingles on their websites. However, there's not a lot of info out there though and virtually no promotion of them on their website.
Speculators are a part of every emerging market or trend and are almost never healthy but oddly may be necessary to an extent. I think our economy may actually count on the "almost never" faction...nice for the gamblers out there, eh? I suppose most of those end up getting taken by bigger speculators, and only a scant few of the big ones turn out to be legitimate and/or successful businesses -- almost everyone loses. This trend goes waaaay back and is very broad.
Been all over this story with nary a mention of TFA.
Between the announcement of this Tesla pure EV shipping and VW's announcement of their upcoming 235mpg (internal combustion!) one-seater, I'm hoping these are omens of a wave of positive change coming to the auto industry!:-)
It's been stagnant at least since the oilcrises of the 70's. (That's when we got out first crop of remotely energy efficient cars...several outperfomed the "economy cars" that are considered "new" today and which - even relatively - cost a lot more.) Harumph.
...the patents were only purchased AFTER the EV1 failed. The reason it failed was primarily market pressure not some vast conspiracy.
Eh...to be as clearly decided about the EV1's story as you are would suggest you haven't read up much on the history of the EV1. It was a lot more complicated than that. It's not even clear that "market pressure" was a significant factor, let alone the only one or predominant one.
To reinforce the OP's point, there's nothing to have kept GM from staying in the market by getting into bed with a Lithium battery producer, just as they'd done with the folks making the NiMH batteries.
Lithium ion batteries were commercially available (from Sony) starting in 1991. The EV1 came out (with NiMH) in 1996. By the time GM would have been ready to market an EV2, they could have been able to develop lithium technology for a decade and been prepared for now with an EV2-LIION(tm).
That's not what happened though.:)
For a picture of where GM is today, let me quote the top 3 new stories from their website as I type this:
2008-07-14 GM Achieves All-Time Quarterly Sales Record in Latin America, Africa and Middle East
2008-07-13 GM, National Governors Association Team Up on E85
2008-07-11 HUMMER Announces Pricing for All-New H3T"
So they're ramping up operations overseas, finding new ways to get in bed with the political leaders and coming out with a new giant SUV!
..speaking of hype. Yeah, we're all in danger from the hippies because they are brainless. A group who can't organize themselves out of a paper bag because there are so few things they agree on. They are going to be the sole reason we don't go solar nuclear whatever. Right. Gotcha.
A rational mind would be able to place these people aside and find something real to worry about.
(And I don't really mean to single you out - seems there's a fleet of people out there who seem to cling to these irrational fears of some monster Left that's composed of Brainless Hippies and other "bad people". This is really for all of you.)
That is plainly your opinion...enjoy it, but don't assume it's everyone else's or even majority view.
I know a lot more people who dig the way the Prius looks...only a couple people I know have said they didn't like it.
YMMV and that's my point. (punnish ref. intended)
-Matt
P.S. Performance is another issue....you will be unpleasantly surprised by the Pruis if you're expecting anything in range of "sporty". It's a flat cargo-carrier (as one "should" expect IMO).
P.P.S. The GM EV1 was also quite attractive...in a more traditional way than the Prius so you may have liked it. A lot of people did. FWIW.
P.P.P.S. I don't own an EV1 or a Prius. (never have)
Not sure what you're contending....that there have been patents bought and buried, but you think it's five or less?
Are you contending that you believe within 50 years of operations that Big Oil (meaning all the biggest oil companies, duh!) hasn't even bought and buried even 5 patents?
Either you have no clue how business works, or you have no idea how many patents there are. It's statistically unlikely that what the OP is saying hasn't happened - at least on the scale of 5 patetents or less that you seem to be contending.
It's likely that in their strategic efforts any patents so buried would not have been insignificant either - they wouldn't be browsing for them on the USPTO website like you - they find inventors or labs with ideas they're looking to sell, and buy only the ones that are worth a hoot or have a chance at achieving the tipping point into popularity.
These inventors or labs are by and large out there trying to sell or get backing for these ideas anyway, so there's no particular "smoke and mirrors" about the affair. It's ordinary business practice, and human nature on both sides.
OTOH, none of it has to do with the laws of thermodynamics (nobody was focusing on internal combustion or anything else particularly), or Slashdot conspiracies. (???) The price of oil does figure in however, as does the basely conservative attitude (historically speaking) of the American Auto Industry.
Please get a clue.
Thanks! -Matt
P.S. I'd be more interested to hear the theory that would support the idea that these huge companies with nearly unlimited resources would go through 50 years or more without looking out for their own interests in the manner described. Cosmically unlikely in my book, just given human nature, but even moreso given the known history of the auto industry.
Find me an independent candidate and an active people and we'll be in business then!;-)
-Matt
P.S. Seriously folks, the two-party system (and its extensive range of funders) has this wrapped up -- they pick your candidates. You want change you really have to change the two-party system - there's no way around this at this stage.
"The last cable-laying boom was a scam; the last cable-laying boom was an enourmous scam. Who is Worldcom now?"
Yes, Qwest, Global Crossing (which is/was based in Bermuda - shock!) and others were involved as well, but Worldcom was my personal favorite of the bunch.
I'm not sure Peak Oil is so much about the finality in our supply of oil as it is about the process of our running out of it. I think all we can say reliably is that Oil prices will continue to approach infinity until we either find something new to use for portable power (etc) or find a renewable way to make oil. (You a believer?)
What we should be focusing on is what effect this rising cost is going to have on the cost of plastics, chemicals and transportation.
We're rapidly approaching $5/gallon for standard grade gasoline in my neck of the woods and I'm doubtful if we'll see a decline in price even after election season. I know it costs $50 now to gas up a small auto. What are the network effects of that?
-Matt
P.S. To make this vaguely OT, the rare earth scene is likely to be a microcosm of the Peak Oil scene. Those things will continue to get more and more expensive, but it's unlikely that most of them with "run out". The question is how do we deal with that?
My advice is to shut down your existing installation, install the latest FreeNAS rev. natively to a VMware Server instance, then try mounting up your old space to it and see if it works any better. (Or maybe you'll at least have better luck trouble shooting from a later model install.)
Your old install remains untouched if it doesn't work out and you've already completed your upgrade if it does.:-) I've been running a FreeNAS for years in this config.
6MB-8MB/s on a lo-fi 100MB network with a 100-year-old NIC, Highpoint RAID5 w/4x250GB BarracudaES SATA drives, running FreeNAS via VMware running on XP on a 1.6GHz AMD homebrew with about 4 other VMware servers running at the same time. (Windows doesn't do much but host the VMware Server instance and "be windows" on the occasions I need that.) Not knocking anyone else, but FreeNAS rocks.
You've put your own bias on it so it reads weird, but that's their business model: Make great software so you buy their hardware.
It's no secret (for pity's sake they used to give away their OS), it makes them competitive not anticompetitive, and it's (obviously) worked out pretty well for them so far.
I don't mean to dog cellular/wireless as a backup, but anything based on the POTS network is going to be more reliable in terms of being strong against blackouts and disaster. Latter day technologies are less likely so because generally the legal requirements for that strength are not there or are significantly less.
High-speed cable and DSL aren't that cheap (~$100/month and up) and T1's are cheap as hell nowadays (~$400/month is not uncommon, can be less) and you've got a 4 hour repair guarantee - if you're CO is online (they are built like bunkers), you'll be back up in 4 hours from almost any outage. Check with Speakeasy.net first as I think they have about the best service going, but there are other providers as well.
So, if your goal is primarily to gain additional uptime, go with a T1 - back that up with some kind of "unregulated" connection (cable/DSL) or wireless.
Another tack to pursue if cost-efficiency has a higher priority is using wi-fi to link to a neighbor. Using some simple technology expands the range of potential connectees considerably. Find someone with a different ISP than you (different Layer 1, that is) and get them to share with you - share both ways and you both get a reliable backup (as long as your network gear is on a nice big battery) for $0/month. Make sure neither of you scrimps on that battery equipment though! (Speakeasy encourages connection sharing and would even facilitate billing if desired even on their lower-end DSL connections if that becomes a problem/need.)
-Matt
P.S. Both of those links are step-by-steps, not theoretical articles. P.P.S. I'm not connected to Speakeasy in any way other than as a very satisfied former (for now) customer.:-)
In addition, did you happen to check how much malware/cruft your PC picked up while visiting those sites? I *hate* even looking for software for Windows (for both technical and aesthetic reasons), let alone actual use of it.
This is almost true in general, but especially when I'm on Windows: if the [non commercial] software I'm looking for doesn't come from Sourceforge, there's a significant chance I won't even look at it.
I'll say that I do really like shareware/PD-ware/etc, but I'm come from a history of Atari computers (mostly PD), then Mac (mostly share).....those scenes always were higher grade (and much higher S/N ratio) than the relative offerings for Windows. (Quality has gone downhill on this in the last several years, but IMO that's true of most things computer related in she same timeframe.)
-Matt
P.S. At the risk of overstating things, SF.net (especially, but also their related sites and people) is a large measure of what's "saving" the internet these days in my book.
Your beef is with Best Buy. If precedent is anything you would have no problem getting your money back from the manufacturer if the license was not to your liking after purchase (as in your scenario).
Not really trying to disagree with you - knowing before you buy would be nice (but aren't these EULA docs posted online somewhere for the truly curious?) - but that's a bad example to use.
Give me a break. TFA is about a memoir written by a former Reagan official, not a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request or something that could be believable.
"5, Interesting" sounds more like six Reagan fanboys to me.;)
What Senator/General is going to want to back a RL mule program tho? Only the one that wants to ba laughed back to the Agrarian Age.
Every Senator could be seen endorsing the Big Dog.
Actual utility is a secondary question anyway....perhaps not even relevant given then "right" buyer. Also don't forget that costs aren't really a concern - in our system, the taxpayers will (and do!) fund damn near anything.
I won't stretch to say it was perfect or that it was crap like others here else seems to be.
It was, however, a really good show with lousy theme music (country?? hello??? a little better by the end tho). It was sorely missed in this household - nothing at all was left to replace it, so the advertisers lost our eyeballs altogether. (BSG was all DVR or DVD rentals.....sorry again advertisers)
Highly recommended to catch Enterprise on DVD if you haven't seen it and are a fan of ST at all.
For those moaning about it, please go re-watch DS9 and STFU. I never bitched about it at the time since even DS9 was better than 90% of everything else that was on the air, but DS9 was booooooring until the last season or so when it was (drum-roll) cancelled.
Slashdot Mirror
This sounds kooky to me.
If you find this idea interesting at all, please keep in mind that you have to burn limestone at 1000 degrees just to get the lime. Limestone is not a renewable resource any more than hydrocarbons are anyway. And that only indicates a tiny part of the resources that have to go into this.]
As you might imagine, lime has a lot of other uses. If you want all those other things to be drastically more expensive (we're not also talking about spending billions of dollars and carbon fuels in building new infrastructure are we???) due to the increased demand, then I'd say you're not thinking straight.
Maybe this can make sense in terms of dollars, I dunno. I'm sure construction companies and other parts of industry would stand to make oodles of money from such a project. I do know it doesn't make sense if you look at it rationally. Reducing our CO2 input to the atmosphere is much more sensible.
Also, google the term kalkwasser (aka limewater) if you want to see discussions of actual use of lime in saltwater in laymen's terms. People who keep hobby-sized coral reefs in aquariums use this chemical, but for a slightly different purpose. Still pollution control in a way though.
My analysis: No surprise this plan comes from a management consultant. Perhaps there are environmentalists behind this as others in this thread have inferred or stated directly, but at least from their own promotional material Corven Group doesn't appear to be so - they're primarily into manufacturing and engineering (per them, not me). Please RTFA and tell me it doesn't say they're the ones behind this plan, along with Shell Oil. I have a hard time imagining anyone who does consider themselves an environmentalist advocating dumping a bunch of chemicals (on top of the waste discharges we already make into the ocean) into the ocean to fix the problems created by us pumping chemicals into the atmosphere.
Absurd. Next idea.
-Matt
Check out the PDF's in my reply above. The first link is to one of Uni-Solar's technical papers which seems to address all of the good and valid points you bring up, including specifics on the shingle product. The second is promotional info specific to their shingles.
-Matt
There's no indication they've been discontinued on their website. They still have a PDF brochure for them and their distributors still talk about the shingles on their websites. However, there's not a lot of info out there though and virtually no promotion of them on their website.
FWIW.
-Matt
Links:
http://www.uni-solar.com/uploadedFiles/AA53606-02Technical%20Report120706small.pdf
http://www.uni-solar.com/uploadedFiles/Shingle%20Systems%20Sell%20Sheet.pdf
Speculators are a part of every emerging market or trend and are almost never healthy but oddly may be necessary to an extent. I think our economy may actually count on the "almost never" faction...nice for the gamblers out there, eh? I suppose most of those end up getting taken by bigger speculators, and only a scant few of the big ones turn out to be legitimate and/or successful businesses -- almost everyone loses. This trend goes waaaay back and is very broad.
-Matt
Been all over this story with nary a mention of TFA.
Between the announcement of this Tesla pure EV shipping and VW's announcement of their upcoming 235mpg (internal combustion!) one-seater, I'm hoping these are omens of a wave of positive change coming to the auto industry! :-)
It's been stagnant at least since the oil crises of the 70's. (That's when we got out first crop of remotely energy efficient cars...several outperfomed the "economy cars" that are considered "new" today and which - even relatively - cost a lot more.) Harumph.
-Matt
...the patents were only purchased AFTER the EV1 failed. The reason it failed was primarily market pressure not some vast conspiracy.
Eh...to be as clearly decided about the EV1's story as you are would suggest you haven't read up much on the history of the EV1. It was a lot more complicated than that. It's not even clear that "market pressure" was a significant factor, let alone the only one or predominant one.
To reinforce the OP's point, there's nothing to have kept GM from staying in the market by getting into bed with a Lithium battery producer, just as they'd done with the folks making the NiMH batteries.
Lithium ion batteries were commercially available (from Sony) starting in 1991. The EV1 came out (with NiMH) in 1996. By the time GM would have been ready to market an EV2, they could have been able to develop lithium technology for a decade and been prepared for now with an EV2-LIION(tm).
That's not what happened though. :)
For a picture of where GM is today, let me quote the top 3 new stories from their website as I type this:
2008-07-14 GM Achieves All-Time Quarterly Sales Record in Latin America, Africa and Middle East
2008-07-13 GM, National Governors Association Team Up on E85
2008-07-11 HUMMER Announces Pricing for All-New H3T"
So they're ramping up operations overseas, finding new ways to get in bed with the political leaders and coming out with a new giant SUV!
Sounds like just what we need.
-Matt
..speaking of hype. Yeah, we're all in danger from the hippies because they are brainless. A group who can't organize themselves out of a paper bag because there are so few things they agree on. They are going to be the sole reason we don't go solar nuclear whatever. Right. Gotcha.
A rational mind would be able to place these people aside and find something real to worry about.
(And I don't really mean to single you out - seems there's a fleet of people out there who seem to cling to these irrational fears of some monster Left that's composed of Brainless Hippies and other "bad people". This is really for all of you.)
Good luck!
-Matt
I dunno about the other stuff but are you saying the Hemi was from the 90's?
-Matt
That is plainly your opinion...enjoy it, but don't assume it's everyone else's or even majority view.
I know a lot more people who dig the way the Prius looks...only a couple people I know have said they didn't like it.
YMMV and that's my point. (punnish ref. intended)
-Matt
P.S. Performance is another issue....you will be unpleasantly surprised by the Pruis if you're expecting anything in range of "sporty". It's a flat cargo-carrier (as one "should" expect IMO).
P.P.S. The GM EV1 was also quite attractive...in a more traditional way than the Prius so you may have liked it. A lot of people did. FWIW.
P.P.P.S. I don't own an EV1 or a Prius. (never have)
Not sure what you're contending....that there have been patents bought and buried, but you think it's five or less?
Are you contending that you believe within 50 years of operations that Big Oil (meaning all the biggest oil companies, duh!) hasn't even bought and buried even 5 patents?
Either you have no clue how business works, or you have no idea how many patents there are. It's statistically unlikely that what the OP is saying hasn't happened - at least on the scale of 5 patetents or less that you seem to be contending.
It's likely that in their strategic efforts any patents so buried would not have been insignificant either - they wouldn't be browsing for them on the USPTO website like you - they find inventors or labs with ideas they're looking to sell, and buy only the ones that are worth a hoot or have a chance at achieving the tipping point into popularity.
These inventors or labs are by and large out there trying to sell or get backing for these ideas anyway, so there's no particular "smoke and mirrors" about the affair. It's ordinary business practice, and human nature on both sides.
OTOH, none of it has to do with the laws of thermodynamics (nobody was focusing on internal combustion or anything else particularly), or Slashdot conspiracies. (???) The price of oil does figure in however, as does the basely conservative attitude (historically speaking) of the American Auto Industry.
Please get a clue.
Thanks!
-Matt
P.S. I'd be more interested to hear the theory that would support the idea that these huge companies with nearly unlimited resources would go through 50 years or more without looking out for their own interests in the manner described. Cosmically unlikely in my book, just given human nature, but even moreso given the known history of the auto industry.
Find me an independent candidate and an active people and we'll be in business then! ;-)
-Matt
P.S. Seriously folks, the two-party system (and its extensive range of funders) has this wrapped up -- they pick your candidates. You want change you really have to change the two-party system - there's no way around this at this stage.
Let's all sing together:
"The last cable-laying boom was a scam; the last cable-laying boom was an enourmous scam. Who is Worldcom now?"
Yes, Qwest, Global Crossing (which is/was based in Bermuda - shock!) and others were involved as well, but Worldcom was my personal favorite of the bunch.
-Matt
I'm not sure Peak Oil is so much about the finality in our supply of oil as it is about the process of our running out of it. I think all we can say reliably is that Oil prices will continue to approach infinity until we either find something new to use for portable power (etc) or find a renewable way to make oil. (You a believer?)
What we should be focusing on is what effect this rising cost is going to have on the cost of plastics, chemicals and transportation.
We're rapidly approaching $5/gallon for standard grade gasoline in my neck of the woods and I'm doubtful if we'll see a decline in price even after election season. I know it costs $50 now to gas up a small auto. What are the network effects of that?
-Matt
P.S. To make this vaguely OT, the rare earth scene is likely to be a microcosm of the Peak Oil scene. Those things will continue to get more and more expensive, but it's unlikely that most of them with "run out". The question is how do we deal with that?
As with seemingly everything, it's already been done.
Unisolar has been making these shingles for years. Maybe others are too now. I don't know much about them, just read about em online.
-Matt
My advice is to shut down your existing installation, install the latest FreeNAS rev. natively to a VMware Server instance, then try mounting up your old space to it and see if it works any better. (Or maybe you'll at least have better luck trouble shooting from a later model install.)
Your old install remains untouched if it doesn't work out and you've already completed your upgrade if it does. :-) I've been running a FreeNAS for years in this config.
-Matt
6MB-8MB/s on a lo-fi 100MB network with a 100-year-old NIC, Highpoint RAID5 w/4x250GB BarracudaES SATA drives, running FreeNAS via VMware running on XP on a 1.6GHz AMD homebrew with about 4 other VMware servers running at the same time. (Windows doesn't do much but host the VMware Server instance and "be windows" on the occasions I need that.) Not knocking anyone else, but FreeNAS rocks.
-Matt
You've put your own bias on it so it reads weird, but that's their business model: Make great software so you buy their hardware.
It's no secret (for pity's sake they used to give away their OS), it makes them competitive not anticompetitive, and it's (obviously) worked out pretty well for them so far.
Sorry to revert to 5th grade, but "Duh!"
-Matt
I don't mean to dog cellular/wireless as a backup, but anything based on the POTS network is going to be more reliable in terms of being strong against blackouts and disaster. Latter day technologies are less likely so because generally the legal requirements for that strength are not there or are significantly less.
High-speed cable and DSL aren't that cheap (~$100/month and up) and T1's are cheap as hell nowadays (~$400/month is not uncommon, can be less) and you've got a 4 hour repair guarantee - if you're CO is online (they are built like bunkers), you'll be back up in 4 hours from almost any outage. Check with Speakeasy.net first as I think they have about the best service going, but there are other providers as well.
So, if your goal is primarily to gain additional uptime, go with a T1 - back that up with some kind of "unregulated" connection (cable/DSL) or wireless.
Another tack to pursue if cost-efficiency has a higher priority is using wi-fi to link to a neighbor. Using some simple technology expands the range of potential connectees considerably. Find someone with a different ISP than you (different Layer 1, that is) and get them to share with you - share both ways and you both get a reliable backup (as long as your network gear is on a nice big battery) for $0/month. Make sure neither of you scrimps on that battery equipment though! (Speakeasy encourages connection sharing and would even facilitate billing if desired even on their lower-end DSL connections if that becomes a problem/need.)
-Matt
P.S. Both of those links are step-by-steps, not theoretical articles. :-)
P.P.S. I'm not connected to Speakeasy in any way other than as a very satisfied former (for now) customer.
In addition, did you happen to check how much malware/cruft your PC picked up while visiting those sites? I *hate* even looking for software for Windows (for both technical and aesthetic reasons), let alone actual use of it.
This is almost true in general, but especially when I'm on Windows: if the [non commercial] software I'm looking for doesn't come from Sourceforge, there's a significant chance I won't even look at it.
I'll say that I do really like shareware/PD-ware/etc, but I'm come from a history of Atari computers (mostly PD), then Mac (mostly share).....those scenes always were higher grade (and much higher S/N ratio) than the relative offerings for Windows. (Quality has gone downhill on this in the last several years, but IMO that's true of most things computer related in she same timeframe.)
-Matt
P.S. At the risk of overstating things, SF.net (especially, but also their related sites and people) is a large measure of what's "saving" the internet these days in my book.
Links people?
From their website, "We do not sell the MicroServer series directly to consumers."
Your beef is with Best Buy. If precedent is anything you would have no problem getting your money back from the manufacturer if the license was not to your liking after purchase (as in your scenario).
Not really trying to disagree with you - knowing before you buy would be nice (but aren't these EULA docs posted online somewhere for the truly curious?) - but that's a bad example to use.
-Matt
"5, Interesting"?? "Back in Reagan's day.."??
;)
Give me a break. TFA is about a memoir written by a former Reagan official, not a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request or something that could be believable.
"5, Interesting" sounds more like six Reagan fanboys to me.
-Matt
What Senator/General is going to want to back a RL mule program tho? Only the one that wants to ba laughed back to the Agrarian Age.
Every Senator could be seen endorsing the Big Dog.
Actual utility is a secondary question anyway....perhaps not even relevant given then "right" buyer. Also don't forget that costs aren't really a concern - in our system, the taxpayers will (and do!) fund damn near anything.
-Matt
Indeed.
I won't stretch to say it was perfect or that it was crap like others here else seems to be.
It was, however, a really good show with lousy theme music (country?? hello??? a little better by the end tho). It was sorely missed in this household - nothing at all was left to replace it, so the advertisers lost our eyeballs altogether. (BSG was all DVR or DVD rentals.....sorry again advertisers)
Highly recommended to catch Enterprise on DVD if you haven't seen it and are a fan of ST at all.
For those moaning about it, please go re-watch DS9 and STFU. I never bitched about it at the time since even DS9 was better than 90% of everything else that was on the air, but DS9 was booooooring until the last season or so when it was (drum-roll) cancelled.
-Matt