I've been saying over and over that our enviromental problems can be solved by technology, rather than by painful asceticism, and things like this are constantly proving me right. A perfect example of how robots are working behind the scenes to ensure that we remain protected and healthy. One of the best things about this system is its ability to track pollution as it occurs, letting scientists manage it and make informed, on-the-spot decisions. Though from what I understand, it's not quite ready as an early warning system.
You can actually get to really high speeds on recumbant bicycles. Probably not 90MPH, but easily enough to crack open your head. Anyways, I'd be riding one if they didn't happen to cost more than the average moped. Idea; recumbant motorcycle! (or moped, for insurance)
Metric paper is cool. When I ran across another original article (about a year ago) about it, I went right out and bought some. Well, actually I didn't. Staples didn't carry it, and neither did WalMart or Office Max. The local stationers and office supply stores didn't even know what it was.
So then I tried the web. Not much luck there.
Called the 1-800-staples number. Asked the customer assistant for a ream of A4 paper (I'd order a box if necessary).
"A4 paper, hmmm, is that the big 11x17 stuff?" "No, its metric size." "Is that some kind of drafting paper?" "No, its about the same size as letter paper." "Oh, why don't you just use that?"
After making up some excuse about needed to product a document for a european customer, and international standards, I was transferred over to their "special needs" department, and then escalated through three levels of help there, where I finally found someone who knows more about paper than I do.
Tada, one ream of 8.27" by 11.69" paper. Hammermill part number 10303-6. UPC 10199 00303
Elections in India are generally marvellous exercises in democracy. In national elections, hundreds of millions of people of many different kinds cast their votes and elect their representatives. Many people doubted whether democracy would flourish in India, but they are proved wrong after every election. However, the fact still remains that there are still a lot of irregularities in the electoral process.
The bulk of the states have generally free and fair elections. The poorest states, especially those in the North, do not. There, the local strongmen actively use force to swing voted to their side and in a lot of constituencies it is not the most popular candidate who wins, but the most popular. In the poorest of the poor states, this fraud happens on a very large scale.
Today, vote rigging is a very simple exercise. All you have to do is get a bunch of very strong men with weapons of some kind and visit each polling station one by one, threaten the officers there and stamp the ballot papers in your favor. The more organized efforts include printing fake ballot papers and having them counted.
Now that EVMs have been introduced, the potential for localized fraud will be several restricted in some ways. Fake ballot papers cannot be printed, votes cannot be changed or removed. However, the local strong men and criminalized parties will still be around. They will still be able to threaten/cajole/buy people and subvert the democratic process. These problems are more systemic and will solve themselves with the passage of time.
Centralized election fraud is a very different matter. On paper, it looks like EVMs can take care of it. The results of "electronic" elections can be easily verified repeatedly and it should be somewhat difficult to systematically rig EVMS. I'm sure that people will find some way of manipulating EVMs, but it shouldn't knew the results much.
Finally, EVMs have delivered a lot of tangible results in India already. For example, results have been tabulated almost instantly, considerably shortening the political and economic uncertainty associated with elections. They definitely help democracy at every level in India.
Collecting methane at sewer plants and from city dumps is being done on a large scale at over 200 US municipalities. It works quite well.
World wide there are literally hundreds of thousands of them (methane digesters using arobic digestion), most of them being single family sized units where the collected gas is burned in small cookers and for lighting.
I built a digester in the mid 70's, was EXTEREMELY easy to make. I worked on a large dairy then, despite running the digester for all summer and collecting gas, just a small display size prootype unit, I could NOT get the farmer to drive over one mile to my cabin to look at it. His stock question was "why aren't THEY doing it if it is so good?" The gas collected was great, basically burned like propane. I tried other farmers over the years,I have yet to get one to take the plunge and actually do anything different, alwatys the same, it ain't in their propaganda magazines for their particular niche for farming. You can NOT get those guys to do anything practical until they get "permission" from the agribiz cartels, and right now, the agribiz cartels want the farmers to buy expensive petroleum and chemical products from them or their country club buddies. and the farmers WONDER why they keep going broke....and they TEACH going broke in the ag colleges, which is AMAZING to me they can suck young guys into doing that.
At least this one dairy farmer in the article gets it, it's probably only one in a thousand or less that can actually think for themselves. Work hard, 7 days a week, YEP! They do, been there done that meself. think outside the box? Hardly ever happens, so petrified of their buddies at the co-op and the feed store thinking they are "enviros" or something near as I can tell.
Flash forward almost 30 years now, I get the same thing today, I work part time on a large poultry farm, besides methane digestion I have also asked why they don't use sprouted grains instead of the dismal dried up crap they call "feed" that barely keeps the cluckers clucking. SAME ANSWER, because "they" don't do it, this "they" guy who tells them what to do, it's not in the trade mags so "it doesn't work, it's hippie pie in the sky stuff enviro whackos".
I LAUGH every time I hear of a farmer going broke, because if they only thought just a smidgen outside the box and stepped back from being brainwashed by archerdanielsdowmonsantoexxon, they could make money, and easily. But no, they'll defend practices that they follow that produce for them a lower profit return than their grand daddys got in world war two. Sure, they can grow huger volumes of much crappier food off an acre, deal is, it IS crappier food and they hand over their cash to the big companies, then the bank takes their property eventually. Lead around by the nose don't even begin to describe it.
And I get the same thing from urban internet engineering "experts" who have constantly told me over the years my solar panels don't work, they "aren't practical". Funny, my electric bill is PAID OFF, I don't get a "monthly" bill with no idea what it will be if there's any political or middleman trading shenanigans. but, "solar isn't practical".
Right.
The 21st century will belong to those who can think out of the box and stop making money for THE MAN, who work FOR THEMSELVES, and stop supporting those brane dead politicians and political parties who are in THE MAN's pockets.
Yes, this does work with human waste. In fact, it's probably being used at your local wastewater treatment plant now to power their pumps and such. It's as very common way to reduce -or eliminate - electricity costs at treatment plants.
It also works at landfills. Methane is extracted from the landfill, and used to turn generators. The electricity is fed into the power grid, and the power company pays the landfill operator (usually the county) for the juice. Here in Northern California, the power company (Pacific Graft & Extortion - AKA PG&E) is legally required to purchase the power.
I still think that converting the Fresh Kills landfill to a facility that captures methane emissions, generates hydrogen from garbage compost, and burns the rest in a euro-style plasma furnace could really help SI, as well as NYC (and probably the country at large)..
SI would get cleaner air and jobs in a good local high-tech industry (we'd be HAPPY to import garbage;); NYC would get more tax revenue from the sale of power, hydrogen and methane to power generators and municipal vehicles/facilities and taxes from jobs and industry, as well as additional independence from out-of-city power generation and some relief from peak periods of use. NYC would also reduce its payments for handling trash, thus reducing its budget problems. Talk about a win-win-win-win-win!
I've been using cow dung as fuel for bonfires for quite a while. Once it's dried (which is when I'd be using it) it doesn't smell bad, and carries a lot of methane. A better use of it may be fertilizer, though my compost bin is full of other organic material.
If you expect companies to follow the copyright of the GPL, you should support the RIAA going after infringers of its copyright. If not, you're a hypocrite.
As seen on this google cache of an older version of the webmin documentation, it's kind of ambiguous to whether and how you can redistribute it. We should consider this incident apart from SCO's recent doings, to be fair.
I'm familiar with Ayn Rand and her followers. I was referencing the RAND Corporation, which is considered to be (or have? I'm sure they do a good bit more than just release papers) a right-wing think tank.
WTL up to this point, has been done by a single guy at MS. It's a lot nicer to use compared to MFC, and regular ATL, in that it follows the "KISS" aphorism
Slashdot Mirror
I think that now that their IP is spread all over the Internet, they'll have no choice but to open source it. This is a victory for all of humanity!
I mean, an ounce of prevention, pound of cure
Sony is going to be demonstrating ASIMO, their humanoid robot (much better than Aibo!)
I have a few of those solar panel+LED combinations around my lot, and even after a sunny day, they only seem to last for a few hours
I've been saying over and over that our enviromental problems can be solved by technology, rather than by painful asceticism, and things like this are constantly proving me right. A perfect example of how robots are working behind the scenes to ensure that we remain protected and healthy.
One of the best things about this system is its ability to track pollution as it occurs, letting scientists manage it and make informed, on-the-spot decisions. Though from what I understand, it's not quite ready as an early warning system.
You can actually get to really high speeds on recumbant bicycles. Probably not 90MPH, but easily enough to crack open your head.
Anyways, I'd be riding one if they didn't happen to cost more than the average moped.
Idea; recumbant motorcycle! (or moped, for insurance)
Oh come off it.
Windows NT is a fine operating system. It's had difficulties but so have all of the rest. I'm really tired of this kind of hyperbole.
And "M$"? Mods, please mod the parent down. This is just childish.
Metric paper is cool. When I ran across another original article (about a year ago) about it, I went right out and bought some. Well, actually I didn't. Staples didn't carry it, and neither did WalMart or Office Max. The local stationers and office supply stores didn't even know what it was.
So then I tried the web. Not much luck there.
Called the 1-800-staples number. Asked the customer assistant for a ream of A4 paper (I'd order a box if necessary).
"A4 paper, hmmm, is that the big 11x17 stuff?"
"No, its metric size."
"Is that some kind of drafting paper?"
"No, its about the same size as letter paper."
"Oh, why don't you just use that?"
After making up some excuse about needed to product a document for a european customer, and international standards, I was transferred over to their "special needs" department, and then escalated through three levels of help there, where I finally found someone who knows more about paper than I do.
Tada, one ream of 8.27" by 11.69" paper.
Hammermill part number 10303-6. UPC 10199 00303
Elections in India are generally marvellous exercises in democracy. In national elections, hundreds of millions of people of many different kinds cast their votes and elect their representatives. Many people doubted whether democracy would flourish in India, but they are proved wrong after every election. However, the fact still remains that there are still a lot of irregularities in the electoral process.
The bulk of the states have generally free and fair elections. The poorest states, especially those in the North, do not. There, the local strongmen actively use force to swing voted to their side and in a lot of constituencies it is not the most popular candidate who wins, but the most popular. In the poorest of the poor states, this fraud happens on a very large scale.
Today, vote rigging is a very simple exercise. All you have to do is get a bunch of very strong men with weapons of some kind and visit each polling station one by one, threaten the officers there and stamp the ballot papers in your favor. The more organized efforts include printing fake ballot papers and having them counted.
Now that EVMs have been introduced, the potential for localized fraud will be several restricted in some ways. Fake ballot papers cannot be printed, votes cannot be changed or removed. However, the local strong men and criminalized parties will still be around. They will still be able to threaten/cajole/buy people and subvert the democratic process. These problems are more systemic and will solve themselves with the passage of time.
Centralized election fraud is a very different matter. On paper, it looks like EVMs can take care of it. The results of "electronic" elections can be easily verified repeatedly and it should be somewhat difficult to systematically rig EVMS. I'm sure that people will find some way of manipulating EVMs, but it shouldn't knew the results much.
Finally, EVMs have delivered a lot of tangible results in India already. For example, results have been tabulated almost instantly, considerably shortening the political and economic uncertainty associated with elections. They definitely help democracy at every level in India.
Yep, we have something like 80,000 of them in operation.
Collecting methane at sewer plants and from city dumps is being done on a large scale at over 200 US municipalities. It works quite well.
World wide there are literally hundreds of thousands of them (methane digesters using arobic digestion), most of them being single family sized units where the collected gas is burned in small cookers and for lighting.
I built a digester in the mid 70's, was EXTEREMELY easy to make. I worked on a large dairy then, despite running the digester for all summer and collecting gas, just a small display size prootype unit, I could NOT get the farmer to drive over one mile to my cabin to look at it. His stock question was "why aren't THEY doing it if it is so good?" The gas collected was great, basically burned like propane. I tried other farmers over the years,I have yet to get one to take the plunge and actually do anything different, alwatys the same, it ain't in their propaganda magazines for their particular niche for farming. You can NOT get those guys to do anything practical until they get "permission" from the agribiz cartels, and right now, the agribiz cartels want the farmers to buy expensive petroleum and chemical products from them or their country club buddies. and the farmers WONDER why they keep going broke....and they TEACH going broke in the ag colleges, which is AMAZING to me they can suck young guys into doing that.
At least this one dairy farmer in the article gets it, it's probably only one in a thousand or less that can actually think for themselves. Work hard, 7 days a week, YEP! They do, been there done that meself. think outside the box? Hardly ever happens, so petrified of their buddies at the co-op and the feed store thinking they are "enviros" or something near as I can tell.
Flash forward almost 30 years now, I get the same thing today, I work part time on a large poultry farm, besides methane digestion I have also asked why they don't use sprouted grains instead of the dismal dried up crap they call "feed" that barely keeps the cluckers clucking. SAME ANSWER, because "they" don't do it, this "they" guy who tells them what to do, it's not in the trade mags so "it doesn't work, it's hippie pie in the sky stuff enviro whackos".
I LAUGH every time I hear of a farmer going broke, because if they only thought just a smidgen outside the box and stepped back from being brainwashed by archerdanielsdowmonsantoexxon, they could make money, and easily. But no, they'll defend practices that they follow that produce for them a lower profit return than their grand daddys got in world war two. Sure, they can grow huger volumes of much crappier food off an acre, deal is, it IS crappier food and they hand over their cash to the big companies, then the bank takes their property eventually. Lead around by the nose don't even begin to describe it.
And I get the same thing from urban internet engineering "experts" who have constantly told me over the years my solar panels don't work, they "aren't practical". Funny, my electric bill is PAID OFF, I don't get a "monthly" bill with no idea what it will be if there's any political or middleman trading shenanigans. but, "solar isn't practical".
Right.
The 21st century will belong to those who can think out of the box and stop making money for THE MAN, who work FOR THEMSELVES, and stop supporting those brane dead politicians and political parties who are in THE MAN's pockets.
Yes, this does work with human waste. In fact, it's probably being used at your local wastewater treatment plant now to power their pumps and such. It's as very common way to reduce -or eliminate - electricity costs at treatment plants.
It also works at landfills. Methane is extracted from the landfill, and used to turn generators. The electricity is fed into the power grid, and the power company pays the landfill operator (usually the county) for the juice. Here in Northern California, the power company (Pacific Graft & Extortion - AKA PG&E) is legally required to purchase the power.
I still think that converting the Fresh Kills landfill to a facility that captures methane emissions, generates hydrogen from garbage compost, and burns the rest in a euro-style plasma furnace could really help SI, as well as NYC (and probably the country at large)..
;); NYC would get more tax revenue from the sale of power, hydrogen and methane to power generators and municipal vehicles/facilities and taxes from jobs and industry, as well as additional independence from out-of-city power generation and some relief from peak periods of use. NYC would also reduce its payments for handling trash, thus reducing its budget problems. Talk about a win-win-win-win-win!
;)
SI would get cleaner air and jobs in a good local high-tech industry (we'd be HAPPY to import garbage
Just keep Tony Soprano's hands off it
I've been using cow dung as fuel for bonfires for quite a while. Once it's dried (which is when I'd be using it) it doesn't smell bad, and carries a lot of methane. A better use of it may be fertilizer, though my compost bin is full of other organic material.
If you expect companies to follow the copyright of the GPL, you should support the RIAA going after infringers of its copyright. If not, you're a hypocrite.
As seen on this google cache of an older version of the webmin documentation, it's kind of ambiguous to whether and how you can redistribute it. We should consider this incident apart from SCO's recent doings, to be fair.
I'm not sure how exactly acceptance of open source software relates to "[my] rights online"
This is libelous. My account was hacked and I have made amends with the webmaster of this site.
I can't afford to learn how to read!
I'm familiar with Ayn Rand and her followers. I was referencing the RAND Corporation, which is considered to be (or have? I'm sure they do a good bit more than just release papers) a right-wing think tank.
Can we really trust anything that RAND (FAR right think tank) says? They advocate privatizing our EDUCATION system, for chrissakes.
but not one that is easily addressed. There's a balance that has to be maintained, and hopefully we're going in the right direction.
By "single" I mean't that he worked on it alone. He's happily married (chicks dig coders!) ;-)
WTL up to this point, has been done by a single guy at MS. It's a lot nicer to use compared to MFC, and regular ATL, in that it follows the "KISS" aphorism
The only thing Flash is good for are comics, games, and blogs