Finally. Someone other than me has a brain. People need to stop voluntarily bugging their websites. Maybe Google isn't evil today. I suppose that, at one point, Microsoft wasn't either. And suppose Google never becomes evil... the recent subpoena attempt made by an increasingly-nosy government highlights the danger of inviting even the most innocent corporation to share your visitors' most intimate secrets.
(On a side note, ethanol is a known net-energy-loser: it requires more energy to grow the corn than is harnessed by using the ethanol)
But your post really strikes to the heart of my concerns: "There's trouble, but then again, there's plenty of potential."
I don't see any world leaders jumping to harness that potential to any appreciable degree. Political fragmentation is leaving the entire world too fatigued to worry about bigger problems. When was the last time that the rulers of this world pulled it together and tackled a solution to its full potential?
The problem here is not of insufficient energy, but insufficient government, and mismanagement thereby.
Your country takes a realistic approach, then, and that's commendable. Some people talk like switching an energy infrastructure can happen overnight. The truth is it would take about 30 years, or 50, as your report estimates.
Remember, though, in that gap between the beginning of the world economic crisis (5-10 years) and the implementation of your solution (50 years) there will be rather rough waters.
Also, your country's level of responsibility is not the only one that matters to you. Globalization has increased dependency on other nations. Do you use any imported resources - food, clothing, merchandise? These will become increasingly expensive, and eventually stop arriving as the cargo ships and trucks run out of fuel.
You bring up good points, the problem is that there is no combination of alternative solutions on the table that can replace the current deluge of demand. Even if we dreamed one up today - cold fusion, for instance - it would take 30 years to implement. We have roughly 10, or less.
And it takes money. TONS of money. Think of all the money that has been dumped into creating our current energy infrastructure over a century of time. A comparable amount, perhaps even double that, would have to be spent again in order to have a reasonably comfortable transition into the post-oil era. Except now, we don't have a century. We have maybe five years to accomplish a greater feat. And then there's manpower...
There's no question about it, man's shortsightedness and greed have earned him a rough ride indeed.
50 years... The world has enough viable hydrocarbon energy left for only 5 or 10 more years. It's amazing but true, the Internet was, indeed, just a passing fad... as were computers themselves, and electricity, and the horseless carriage, etc.
On a side note, here's something that tickled my brain the other day:
What I find fascinating is that in 150 years time, from as far back as Jules Verne, science fiction writers have explored almost every imaginable type of high technology, computer, robot, and space ship, as well as every concievable plot and story...
...except the one which has become our eventuality - a world who put every ounce of faith in its almighty petroleum god and woke up one morning to find it expended with a vital infrastructure which couldn't exist without it. Now THAT'S a plot!
I have yet to find one that suits my needs, yes, even the all-holy Google Calendar.
Here's what I demand:
AJAX - Without it, a web calendar is as ineffective and nasty as creating ASCII art in VI.
Easy recurrence settings - I want to easily set an appointment for every wednesday without filling out a three-page questionnaire on the topic.
Right-click support - When I want to do something, I often look for a right-click context menu to do it in. Google, I'm ashamed of you. I really thought you'd be ahead of the game on this one.
Custom increments - My day-view and appointment setup can be displayed in hours or in 30-second increments, it's completely up to me how granular my scheduling will be. Google, again, I really hope you're listening.
Recurrence Deletion - When I delete an instance of a recurring appointment, I want the default action to be "delete just this one" instead of "delete all occurrences," and I don't even want to be prompted to delete all. I'm a big boy, and I can "delete all occurrences" from a context menu if I so desire.
A "current time" bar - A line running across my day-view, showing the current time.
Dynamic Updates - I want to be able to leave my calendar open ALL DAY without any reloading nonsense, and I want to be able to watch my appointments slide up the day-view, and past the "current time" bar.
Audio Event Notification - Using a simple Macromedia Flash SWF as an engine, a sound could be played to notify me of events. This is vital for me, since I'm usually in front of the computer, so SMS notification is a bit ridiculous.
Location Awareness - This is a big one. The calendar will keep a list of locations I've used in the past. It knows where they are geographically. When it sees two concurrent appointments in different locations, then it calculates the driving time between them, adds in a user-determined amount of "slack time" (10 minutes?) and sends my notification THEN. Basically, it knows when I have to leave and alerts me to the appointment WHEN I MUST BEGIN MY COMMUTE, not 10 minutes before it starts. The calendar should keep one location as "home," and assume that I must be there if I haven't had any appointments for a few hours, and calculates commute time from that location accordingly. A nice side effect of this features is that the calendar can easily display driving directions for you, or a list of routes for the day.
Smart text parser - Google got it right on, here, although theirs could use some smartening-up. I want to be able to say "dinner at parent's house this friday"
Countdown - I'm mathematically disadvantaged, so I especially have trouble figuring out how soon I'm supposed to leave for an appointment, with the AM/PM shuffle and the strange 60-based (instead of 100-based) numbers. I want a running countdown to my next appointment, seconds included. I also want to be able to mouseover any event and see a countdown to it. I've already written a greasemonkey script to supplement Planzo.com's calendar with this functionality; but Planzo is a disaster, calendarwise, and I abandoned it for my own sanity.
Aside from this, general ease-of-use and intuitive GUI would be great - I haven't seen a web calendar yet which had successfully tackled those simple concepts.
AWESOME! Now, all I have to do is create a network of websites which make positive reference to me, and how I've saved the lives of hundreds of projects for thousands of companies, how I once single-handedly wrote a program that ended the cold war, and how I have to beat off NASA/Pentagon/Sun Microsystems recruiters with a stick.
I get the feeling that my next prospective employer will be offering me a less-than-demeaning salary.
It's not just pressure - it's a mutation that gives a survival advantage BEFORE reproduction occurs. In 11 million years, I'd expect SOMETHING to happen to make it easier for those guys to survive!
After 11 million years, I'd expect the descendants of those fossils to have evolved considerably... and yet, apparently, they haven't. It's like 11 million years of relative evolutionary stasis.
"What made people think that [human] evolution stopped with the modern era?"
The fact that humans no longer mate based on survival characteristics, that's what! People mate now because they shoot up together and accidentally get pregnant. They mate because the female is anorexic and the male has a lot of money. They mate to add another notch to the bedpost. They mate out of sympathy. They mate out of a fraternity initiation mandate. Some mate with the first available person out of a strong urge to reproduce, regardless of the mate used in the process.
Cosmetic surgery has provided individuals who have flawed genes to hide their defects and attract mates on the basis of that deception.
The strong social influence which urges that imperfections such as slight deformations and congenital disease must be ignored has caused those genes to remain in circulation, contrary to instincts portrayed in the animal kingdom.
The social habit of homosexuality has emerged as a distinctly non-darwinistic trait, preventing reproduction and thereby "killing" the participants from an evolutionary standpoint, removing their genes from circulation.
Medicine has caused those with severe defects to survive longer, providing them with more opportunity to reproduce. Even those who may have died shortly after birth see greatly extended lifespans - wonderful from a social perspective, but pollutant from a darwinistic standpoint.
The modern era has done much to derail the natural course of natural selection in humans.
Doesn't the DMCA make it illegal to make tools for breaking encryption or even to discuss how encryption may be broken? Aren't those among us who are americans all conspiring to break federal law by attempting or discussing the possibility of attempting to break these enigma messages?
You're all terrorists. Off to Guantanamo with you.
One can make a living playing video games? I know you can sell junk from MMOGs on ebay, but nowhere near enough to earn a LIVING worth mentioning. And I've never heard of money coming from counterstrike... so I'm confused.
I'm not sure which I'd rather have... a 100% chance of cancer on the right side of my head and zero on the left; or a 50% chance of cancer on either side. I think I'd prefer the option that leaves a chance of no cancer on either side.
Am I the only person who sees danger here? I've never heard it mentioned before, but Google gradually amassing the ability to track your every movement on the web.
Now, web servers have long been capable of logging every move that you make ON THEIR SERVER, but once you go to another server, they lose you. What Google is doing is (intentionally or not) bugging millions of web pages with Javascripts which are loaded from their own server.
For those who don't understand web technology, every time a resource is loaded from a server, your browser tells that server who you are (IP and any applicable cookies) and also what page sent you to fetch this resource (referer header). So, every time your browser loads an "Ads By Gooooooooogle" advertisement script, or a creative usage of the Google Maps API, or now a "Google Analytics" image/script; your browser checks in with Google's server and says "Hi! I'm browser #2j823 and I've just visited this URL."
As more Google resources are dumped onto web pages by enthusiastic webmasters, their "surveillance coverage" of the web grows, and, even now, it's considerable enough to give a good outline of each user's general habits and usual haunts.
So, Slashdot, is it a good thing that a private company is taking on an ability that would be terribly controversial for the government to take on; especially when the government is just a phone call away from requisitioning that data?
Slashdot Mirror
This makes me want to vomit with rage!!!
Finally. Someone other than me has a brain. People need to stop voluntarily bugging their websites. Maybe Google isn't evil today. I suppose that, at one point, Microsoft wasn't either. And suppose Google never becomes evil... the recent subpoena attempt made by an increasingly-nosy government highlights the danger of inviting even the most innocent corporation to share your visitors' most intimate secrets.
It's important to know how to patch paper tape.
I was tempted to quote that one as well. Good call.
Ah, ah ah.... Free SSL certificates are available here, and browsers trust them.
http://www.cacert.org/
You're missing the point.
"They" are far less likely to want your data in the first place, if they don't see some interesting plaintext in the ether and trace it to you.
That would be fun. We SHOULD bring back the VOC.
:)
Changing your sig all the time doesn't keep people from replying to it. It just gives them something new to reply to all the time. See?
I've considered this type of thing in the past. I'd like that warm, fuzzy, union feeling. So, how do we go about starting one?
(On a side note, ethanol is a known net-energy-loser: it requires more energy to grow the corn than is harnessed by using the ethanol)
But your post really strikes to the heart of my concerns: "There's trouble, but then again, there's plenty of potential."
I don't see any world leaders jumping to harness that potential to any appreciable degree. Political fragmentation is leaving the entire world too fatigued to worry about bigger problems. When was the last time that the rulers of this world pulled it together and tackled a solution to its full potential?
The problem here is not of insufficient energy, but insufficient government, and mismanagement thereby.
(I'm afraid I don't understand the VOC reference)
Your country takes a realistic approach, then, and that's commendable. Some people talk like switching an energy infrastructure can happen overnight. The truth is it would take about 30 years, or 50, as your report estimates.
Remember, though, in that gap between the beginning of the world economic crisis (5-10 years) and the implementation of your solution (50 years) there will be rather rough waters.
Also, your country's level of responsibility is not the only one that matters to you. Globalization has increased dependency on other nations. Do you use any imported resources - food, clothing, merchandise? These will become increasingly expensive, and eventually stop arriving as the cargo ships and trucks run out of fuel.
Hmm, I thought Mad Max was about life after a nuclear war... but it looks like you're right!
You bring up good points, the problem is that there is no combination of alternative solutions on the table that can replace the current deluge of demand. Even if we dreamed one up today - cold fusion, for instance - it would take 30 years to implement. We have roughly 10, or less.
And it takes money. TONS of money. Think of all the money that has been dumped into creating our current energy infrastructure over a century of time. A comparable amount, perhaps even double that, would have to be spent again in order to have a reasonably comfortable transition into the post-oil era. Except now, we don't have a century. We have maybe five years to accomplish a greater feat. And then there's manpower...
There's no question about it, man's shortsightedness and greed have earned him a rough ride indeed.
50 years... The world has enough viable hydrocarbon energy left for only 5 or 10 more years. It's amazing but true, the Internet was, indeed, just a passing fad... as were computers themselves, and electricity, and the horseless carriage, etc.
On a side note, here's something that tickled my brain the other day:
What I find fascinating is that in 150 years time, from as far back as Jules Verne, science fiction writers have explored almost every imaginable type of high technology, computer, robot, and space ship, as well as every concievable plot and story...
...except the one which has become our eventuality - a world who put every ounce of faith in its almighty petroleum god and woke up one morning to find it expended with a vital infrastructure which couldn't exist without it. Now THAT'S a plot!
I have yet to find one that suits my needs, yes, even the all-holy Google Calendar.
Here's what I demand:
AJAX - Without it, a web calendar is as ineffective and nasty as creating ASCII art in VI.
Easy recurrence settings - I want to easily set an appointment for every wednesday without filling out a three-page questionnaire on the topic.
Right-click support - When I want to do something, I often look for a right-click context menu to do it in. Google, I'm ashamed of you. I really thought you'd be ahead of the game on this one.
Custom increments - My day-view and appointment setup can be displayed in hours or in 30-second increments, it's completely up to me how granular my scheduling will be. Google, again, I really hope you're listening.
Recurrence Deletion - When I delete an instance of a recurring appointment, I want the default action to be "delete just this one" instead of "delete all occurrences," and I don't even want to be prompted to delete all. I'm a big boy, and I can "delete all occurrences" from a context menu if I so desire.
A "current time" bar - A line running across my day-view, showing the current time.
Dynamic Updates - I want to be able to leave my calendar open ALL DAY without any reloading nonsense, and I want to be able to watch my appointments slide up the day-view, and past the "current time" bar.
Audio Event Notification - Using a simple Macromedia Flash SWF as an engine, a sound could be played to notify me of events. This is vital for me, since I'm usually in front of the computer, so SMS notification is a bit ridiculous.
Location Awareness - This is a big one. The calendar will keep a list of locations I've used in the past. It knows where they are geographically. When it sees two concurrent appointments in different locations, then it calculates the driving time between them, adds in a user-determined amount of "slack time" (10 minutes?) and sends my notification THEN. Basically, it knows when I have to leave and alerts me to the appointment WHEN I MUST BEGIN MY COMMUTE, not 10 minutes before it starts. The calendar should keep one location as "home," and assume that I must be there if I haven't had any appointments for a few hours, and calculates commute time from that location accordingly. A nice side effect of this features is that the calendar can easily display driving directions for you, or a list of routes for the day.
Smart text parser - Google got it right on, here, although theirs could use some smartening-up. I want to be able to say "dinner at parent's house this friday"
Countdown - I'm mathematically disadvantaged, so I especially have trouble figuring out how soon I'm supposed to leave for an appointment, with the AM/PM shuffle and the strange 60-based (instead of 100-based) numbers. I want a running countdown to my next appointment, seconds included. I also want to be able to mouseover any event and see a countdown to it. I've already written a greasemonkey script to supplement Planzo.com's calendar with this functionality; but Planzo is a disaster, calendarwise, and I abandoned it for my own sanity.
Aside from this, general ease-of-use and intuitive GUI would be great - I haven't seen a web calendar yet which had successfully tackled those simple concepts.
How did the they manage to contact a human at PayPal!? It's frightening to imagine that the IRS has that kind of power.
Didn't they just tie Windows explorer and Internet Explorer together so they'd win that antitrust battle?
AWESOME! Now, all I have to do is create a network of websites which make positive reference to me, and how I've saved the lives of hundreds of projects for thousands of companies, how I once single-handedly wrote a program that ended the cold war, and how I have to beat off NASA/Pentagon/Sun Microsystems recruiters with a stick.
I get the feeling that my next prospective employer will be offering me a less-than-demeaning salary.
It's not just pressure - it's a mutation that gives a survival advantage BEFORE reproduction occurs. In 11 million years, I'd expect SOMETHING to happen to make it easier for those guys to survive!
After 11 million years, I'd expect the descendants of those fossils to have evolved considerably... and yet, apparently, they haven't. It's like 11 million years of relative evolutionary stasis.
"What made people think that [human] evolution stopped with the modern era?"
The fact that humans no longer mate based on survival characteristics, that's what! People mate now because they shoot up together and accidentally get pregnant. They mate because the female is anorexic and the male has a lot of money. They mate to add another notch to the bedpost. They mate out of sympathy. They mate out of a fraternity initiation mandate. Some mate with the first available person out of a strong urge to reproduce, regardless of the mate used in the process.
Cosmetic surgery has provided individuals who have flawed genes to hide their defects and attract mates on the basis of that deception.
The strong social influence which urges that imperfections such as slight deformations and congenital disease must be ignored has caused those genes to remain in circulation, contrary to instincts portrayed in the animal kingdom.
The social habit of homosexuality has emerged as a distinctly non-darwinistic trait, preventing reproduction and thereby "killing" the participants from an evolutionary standpoint, removing their genes from circulation.
Medicine has caused those with severe defects to survive longer, providing them with more opportunity to reproduce. Even those who may have died shortly after birth see greatly extended lifespans - wonderful from a social perspective, but pollutant from a darwinistic standpoint.
The modern era has done much to derail the natural course of natural selection in humans.
Doesn't the DMCA make it illegal to make tools for breaking encryption or even to discuss how encryption may be broken? Aren't those among us who are americans all conspiring to break federal law by attempting or discussing the possibility of attempting to break these enigma messages?
You're all terrorists. Off to Guantanamo with you.
One can make a living playing video games? I know you can sell junk from MMOGs on ebay, but nowhere near enough to earn a LIVING worth mentioning. And I've never heard of money coming from counterstrike... so I'm confused.
In Soviet Russia, personal live maintains YOU!
I'm not sure which I'd rather have... a 100% chance of cancer on the right side of my head and zero on the left; or a 50% chance of cancer on either side. I think I'd prefer the option that leaves a chance of no cancer on either side.
Am I the only person who sees danger here? I've never heard it mentioned before, but Google gradually amassing the ability to track your every movement on the web.
Now, web servers have long been capable of logging every move that you make ON THEIR SERVER, but once you go to another server, they lose you. What Google is doing is (intentionally or not) bugging millions of web pages with Javascripts which are loaded from their own server.
For those who don't understand web technology, every time a resource is loaded from a server, your browser tells that server who you are (IP and any applicable cookies) and also what page sent you to fetch this resource (referer header). So, every time your browser loads an "Ads By Gooooooooogle" advertisement script, or a creative usage of the Google Maps API, or now a "Google Analytics" image/script; your browser checks in with Google's server and says "Hi! I'm browser #2j823 and I've just visited this URL."
As more Google resources are dumped onto web pages by enthusiastic webmasters, their "surveillance coverage" of the web grows, and, even now, it's considerable enough to give a good outline of each user's general habits and usual haunts.
So, Slashdot, is it a good thing that a private company is taking on an ability that would be terribly controversial for the government to take on; especially when the government is just a phone call away from requisitioning that data?