I often use IRC. Sometimes I talk with people from the UK. Sometimes I don't address the comments. How are they going to track that?
I can imagine the burden this will create for the ISP's. The large telco's should love it because they can spread these costs over large numbers of customers. In addition when they lose the data or screw it up there are more faceless employees to point fingers at.
I expect small ISP's will shudder.
Next, what about TLS and tunneling? What about proxies?
This creates a burden but as far as a tool to fight terrorism, it comes up way short. It merely shows that the turkeys in Britain think they should be running the farm because they are in the majority. It shows those in charge understand very little about technology and security.
Any terrorist organization worth its salt will probably be using relatively secure communications.
I am reminded of Richard Feynman and his issues with security at Los Alamos during the Manhattan project. Anyone interested should read "surely you're joking Mr. Feynman".
Their attempts at security at many times was as abysmal as it was funny. One example was when some workmen cut a hole in the fence because they found it too time consuming to go back and forth through the front gate. There were guards at the front gate but none at the hole. So Feynman decided to leave through the front gate. Then he walked over to the hole and went over to the front gate again. This went on for quite some time until the sargent at the front gate started to wonder about the man who always went out but never came in.
The use of safes by the brass was another embarrassment. They often never changed the combinations from what was set at the factory. So Feynman use to take joy in opening the safe and placing his reports in the safe ready for the brass to fetch.
Maybe 50 years ago Monte Python's successor will make a movie.
I read some of the posts and saw the negative reactions. People just do not understand. Most, I'm sure, do not run a business.
The thing is if you run a business then you may need to add a wrinkle in order to exploit an opportunity. Being able to do this can make the difference between success and failure of the business. So even if it costs more, rolling your own can make sense.
This is not so true of services which are more standardized. An example is an accounting service. I see no issue with farming that sort of thing out.
Let me give an example.
Years ago my business handled high end data storage and data capture devices. Many of these had warranties that ran 5 years. So we needed an accounting package that would track individual items by serial number and tie it to the customer and the invoicing from our suppliers. There was no closed source software that I could find which could do this. There were no services either which could do this. With a roll your own solution the problem was solved.
I can offer many other examples. The point is that in some cases it makes sense to use closed source and sometimes it makes sense to use a service. However RMS makes the point that you lose your freedom when you do this and I say he is correct.
Which makes more sense? Hand your mail services for instance over to hotmaile or gmail or set up a server and and your own IP address and roll your own?
I suppose if you are a retail user then using a service makes sense. If you need to switch to someone else you only have a few friends to advise. But what if you are a business with 100's or 1000's of customers?
How would it look if Sears for instance had an email addresses like this:
Solar Cycle #24 is about 2 years late and the sun is unusually quiet. We really don't need to worry much about solar flares. The thing is when solar cycles are late this means the next solar cycle typically is very quiet. Solar Cycle #25 has already been predicted to also be very quiet.
So for the next 20 years solar flares may be practically non-existent.
What this means is that we can expect an increase in high energy cosmic radiation.
Expect more bit flips in circuitry.
Expect shorted and cooler summers and longer more intense winters. This is due to the increased cosmic radiation creating nucleation points for water vapor condensation which will increase cloud cover. Increased cloud cover reflects more energy into space so the surface cools.
Anyone who is perceptive might note this is the opposite of global warming.
The real issue is how few know about open source codecs like Ogg Theora.
I live in Canada and CTV for instance has both Discovery Channel material and BNN material online. However their websites are so broken that its not worth the trouble to even try to access the material.
Calling them and sending emails doesn't help. They are really thick.
Maybe if more people get on the phone and start demanding support for Ogg Theora then things will get better. Another option is to contact their advertisers and tell them they are wasting their money.
What of the ISP's that host these botnets. Many of these botnets are used to spew spam. If they do then this is easily detected and IMHO the ISP uplink in question should simply pull the plug and advise their client that it looks as if their toilet is broken because there sure seems to be a lot of sh*t coming from them.
I know my ISP does this. I know because they have phoned me and I had to advise them its not my OpenBSD servers generating spew, but another of their clients on the subnet. We found it fairly quickly.
I've heard so many excuses. Some involve excuses it would breach service agreements. So lets look at that one. How many end users write service agreement contracts? How many end users even read them? I think the answer here is obvious. Pretty much anything reasonable can be written into the contracts so that sort of excuse doesn't hold much water.
The obvious answer is the ISP's in question actually might make money carrying this spew. They certainly made money when they provided connectivity to known spammers. They also make money when they charge extra for static IP's. Note that a static IP makes it much easier to trace and quarantine a bot.
If we want these problems to go away then one way to address the issue is to look at issues of an accessory either before or after the fact.
Let me provide an example. If someone digs a big hole in the road and someone else drives in and wreaks their car and many kills some people in the process, then the excuse of "I didn't know a car could fall into a hole" or "I didn't think anyone would drive their car down this road at night" or any other excuse that might be dreamed up is not likely going to carry much weight. If someone sees the hole and ignores it using the excuse that "Well, its not my hole", then that excuse also is not likely to hold much weight.
An ISP hosting infected machines should be just as liable as the client who owns it. Many of these botnets reveal themselves. We need to start asking for accountability.
Consider people like Conrad Black. Last I heard he's in jail. That is accountability. Any excuses he and his lawyers might have dreamed up didn't carry much weight.
Here is another example. In the movie called "Nuremburg", Alec Baldwin asks in one scene if "anyone in this country accepts responsibility for anything?". I think this says an awful lot. Only one person seemed to be responsible for the killing of millions.
So in this story we have over 1 million bots discovered and apparently 6 perpetrators and how many are responsible? These bots are identified, now what? I've had more than 50,000 bots attack my servers. Can I call the cops? If I provide IP addresses does anyone pull a plug?
This comes from the country that burns 1/4 of the oil the world "produces".
People who read on slashdot should consider making a trip to SE Asia and while in the Hotel they should turn on the TV and watch say CNN. Its like being in a whole new world.
The USA should start dealing with reality. There is NO global warming. There is NO nuclear waste problem. There is NO USA universal health care.
I pursued my career as a software developer and I did it from home. I looked after two kids and their dying mother. After she died things became easier. My kids were 6 & 10 when she died and I looked after things for 10 years before she died.
There are many solutions for child care including a part or full time nanny. As I recall Scarlett Johanson was available a few years ago and I figure she would be a pretty good Nanny, especially for a single guy like me! If only I'd known.:-(
Stats like this are inflammatory and a distortion of reality at the best of times. The truth is that many of us work too hard and we work too dumb. Many tasks simply don't need to be done. My grandfather was a pioneer and he farmed with horses. He cut his own lumber and built his own house and all the other buildings on the farm. I grew up in the house he built. If my grandfather could handle that sort of work load then with our modern technology I fail to see why we need to work so hard to enjoy a decent standard of living... unless I consider the amount to paper that gets pushed around which serves little purpose other than filling a recycling bin.
My point is not to roll back the clock to the time of my grandfather. My point is to ask why it is that so much work needs to be done and why people figure they need to spend 60 hours per week doing it. Job sharing, rotating child supervision, hubby at home actually making dinner and doing the dishes... part time nanny, baby sitting while mom and dad are home - so mom and dad can focus on a project if need be. There are MANY MANY solutions.
I didn't get help when I did it. But I still was able to do it and I will point out that since my office was at home I managed to skip out on a commute to down town in the morning, a commute from down town in the afternoon, and basically a wasted lunch hour. That gave me about 2 1/2 to 3 hours that most single parents didn't have.
Next I was there when the kids left for school and there when they arrived home from school. If one of the kids was sick I was there. I had no baby sitting fees, no child care fees, and I was able to write off the cost of my office in my house and all the equipment I needed to buy for that office... which I might add was considerable. For instance I bought my first computer the day the space shuttle exploded and I reckon the cost was something in the order of about 1/6th the value of my house at the time. Included in that cost was a 300 LPM line printer and a 36" plotter. My modem at the time cost over $600. Those were 1986 dollars too.
In my opinion its about drive and commitment. If someone wants to make it happen then they can.
Any Pentium I which is 200 mHz and up can do this.
Whether FTP or HTTP, this is still just file sharing. A Pentium I can fill a 10 Base-T Lan with no issues at all. In fact they can probably get close to filling a 100 Mbit/second Lan. One needs to test this of course in the application at hand. This is easy to do.
T3 runs about 45 Mbits/second and this corresponds to DS3 (Digital service level 3) In North America this is equivalent to 672 DS0 channels each of which is 64 Kbits/second (8192 Bytes/second) not counting stolen bits.
So a T3 is "about" 1/2 of a 100 bit/second ethernet LAN connection.
Carrier pricing for a DS3 will be about $5,000 per month.
The rest of this picture is dependent on how good or how badly the server side is set up. My point is that even a 10 year old Pentium I can handle the load.
The funniest ATM theft I've heard of took place in Saskatchewan, Canada. This took place on a long weekend in a sleepy little rural town.
4:00 AM sees our thieves breaking into the local gravel contractor. After breaking through the gate they steal a gravel truck and an oxy-acetelene torch. Next stop is the post treating plant about 1/2 mile (1 km) down the highway. They steal a loader. This is what is used to load poles and posts onto semi-trailors.
By now its about 4:15 or so. Did they make noise? Well - a diesel truck and 350 HP diesel loader will make some noise I suppose. It woke some of the locals up.
Around the corner from the bank about one (1) block away is the local police station which is manned 24x7. The police are at their desks thinking the gravel contractor must be getting an early start this morning.
So the thieves drive the loader over to the bank. The reach in through the roof totally demolishing the building and grab the ATM which is firmly bolted to the concrete floor and footings. Seems the concrete wasn't much of a match for the 350 HP loader because the ATM was cleanly plucked through the gapping hole and dropped into the back of the dump truck.
By now the cops were heading for their cars thinking there must have been a big accident on Main Street.
Our thieves meanwhile shut off the loader and hopped into the dump truck and took off.
A few miles south of town they stopped at an abandoned farm yard and took their time with the oxy-acetelene torch and chopped the ATM apart.
Having done this they took the money and casually left the scene of the crime. So far no one has been caught! So far apparently these thieves are keeping their mouths closed. Apparently there are no leads.
The best part of this story is the locals still laugh about their bank robbery! When you live in a sleepy Saskatchewan rural town then once in a while a little excitement spices up an otherwise dreary life.
Let me explain how stupid this is. For each ton of coal you burn you get about 3.5 tons of CO2. The reason for this is that coal is about C(n)H(0.6n). C=12, O=16, 12+16+16 = 44. 44/12.6 = 3.49. What to change this chemistry? Go ask GOD.
Power plants are about 50% efficient. At 100 kWh / tonne they need 350 kWh. In order to get this much power they will need to burn close to a ton of coal. This is unless they plan on using Natural Gas to produce the power. Think on that one while you are inventing the next perpetual motion machine.
I'm not an electrician and I'm not an electrical engineer. I also have not been electrocuted which should be obvious since I'm writing this note.
When I was a teenager I worked a summer in construction building Telephone lines. Lord the contractor made money!
He also pulled the telephone wires into an overhead power line running about 18,000 volts and I and a co-worker were pulling the wires in front of the pickup truck. When the voltage hit our muscles contracted and I was told we both jumped more than 10 feet (3 meters) through the air. I was told we set an olympic record in high jump and long jump. Damn - I want the medal!
But - we didn't die.
When I was a kid at about 14 I fixed my grandfather's electric frying pan cord. Unfortunately I didn't notice it was plugged in at the time. When I put my index and next-door fingers on the tines to hold them down while I placed the cover on I noticed there was a tingling running up my arm. So I reached over and unplugged the cord.
Again I didn't die.
Electricity should be respected but its not as bad as you portray.
1) Waste energy from lamps serves as space heating. Pretty much all houses need space heating for the winter months. Winter is when we need lights the most.
2) I happen to use CFL's in my office. These are on 24x7 because I'm in and out a lot. Three (3)x15 = 45 watts x 24 hours = 1080 watt.hours = 1.080 kWh. At 10 cents this is about $3.00 per month and the waste heat goes into space heating and is therefor not wasted.
I happen to know how long my CFL's last. I got 7 years from the last ones. 7x25x365 = 60,000 hours. The model was a Panasonic EFT 15E28. These have been replaced with 14 watt Philips model 152-744 lamps.
Currently there are about 9,000 hours on the Philips lamps.
Since #1 is in effect for about 7 months of the year here in Calgary where I live, the savings are mostly in the replacement costs of the lamps. At 50,000 hours this is a capital cost of CDN$18 for the CFL lamps from Home Depot. It would be a capital cost of $84.50 for at least 100 bulbs @ 100 watts each.
The electricity costs for the three (3) CFL lamps over 50,000 hours is CDN$210. The electricity costs for the incandescent lamps is CDN$1,008. Total costs are CDN$230 verses CDN$1,092.50 and of course this is for almost 6 years.
Brilliant. You hit some very large nails straight on the head there.
We can add to this: People cannot properly update the docs. When people file trouble reports and fixes they are often not distributed. Here is an example.
Several years ago there was a Debian configuration issue with Grip. I managed to get it installed and posted on source forge a documentation update request. In this request I put complete instructions on how to diagnose and how to fix the problems... largely they had to do with virtual SCSI configuration issues and permissions. Now clearly the GRIP developers had not tested their software against some major platforms. How difficult would it be to get up a testing group for instance that actually does quality assurance verifications on all major distros and platforms? Surely it can't be that hard and its not rocket science to realize how badly this is needed.
The issue is that a year later in the IRC channels another person was trying to install and sure enough.. the docs had still not been updated. 18 months later the situation had still not changed.
This is painfully ridiculous folks.
To the list in the parent post I would suggest training is a major issue. We need teachers who can package the knowledge in our Guru's heads and distribute it. It simply takes forever to weed through the terrible docs that we currently have and learn how to do things. Furthermore its not fun.
If you are successful bringing out a product then you are WIDE OPEN to spending the next MAJOR part of your life in court.
The thing about copyright law is that the holder of the copyright owns all derived works as well. There are a number of other laws which apply as well.
With these threats hanging over your collective heads I doubt any of your would be customers will touch your products. Next.. consider that its pre-meditated because you posted this story in slashdot!
I may be paranoid but I think the real reason for this technology is to "shape" VOIP and related services to thwart the competition. I don't think this is about limiting download volumes at all. Most of us don't use even close to what the lines can carry and who cares if the download speeds are "lumpy".
However, consider that if we have a high speed line then all telecommunication services including what is now done on phone lines and our television services can run over the same link instead of three separate lines each being billed by possibly separate organizations.
No longer will we need cable TV or satellite TV service siting right beside an old POTS (plain old telephone service) line sitting right beside a hopefully brand spanking new fiber optic cable.
Without shaping the ISP and others can run whatever communications services they wish over a fast smooth high speed link. As I see it, this is a preemptive strike. Better to get the "shaping" technology into place before the masses figure out how badly they get screwed. If the carrier can make the communications link "lumpy" then VOIP services and Television services might not run so smoothly unless offered by guess who is "shaping" the line.
We can already use say an Asterisk server to provide PBX services but this is only if we can be sure the time delay between packet transmission is small and predictable. Think of how much competition this technology can create for the phone company! http://www.asterisk.org/
Another thing to consider is the profit margins on cell phone services. Once we have the digital link in place then we can run these services over wifi if we wish. Many libraries, some coffee shops and even city hall in some locations offer wifi for free. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotspot_(Wi-Fi) Again "shaping" can be used to detune the system. Its probably a stop gap attempt but I'm paranoid enough to expect them to try it.
Mortierella spp such as M. isabellina will also produce oils. The issue is the biological efficiency and robustness of the bug.
We have many cellulose digesters and and indeed many very robust fungus which can handle the lignans and pentosans found in many agricultural wastes. So there is a very good chance we can biologically turn these wastes into liquid fuels. However we can also use destructive pyrolysis and this is a well known very rapid and robust technique which will not require very stringent pharmaceutical level biological controls in order to be successful.
Further more as stated at the outset, the biological efficiency has to be considered.
The next issue is how much oil we can expect to produce from fermentation processes. The answer is not nearly enough. The world uses about 86 million barrels of crude oil per day. The USA as an example uses in the vicinity of about 22 million barrels of oil per day. If the USA were to convert 100% of their corn crop into ethanol (which is a very dumb thing to do) then they would produce enough liquid fuels to run their auto fleet for about 2 weeks. IE... its a drop in the bucket.
Note that the ethanol production converts the starches. Once can look at the rest of the plant as well of course.
We still don't have enough biomass but it will help.
What we can also look at is a combined fermentation / photosynthesis process where we use the fermentation to break down organic matter and meanwhile use algae for instance in an attached green house environment to capture sunlight. The fermentation process produces massive amounts of CO2. The photosynthesis will convert this CO2 back into biomass. We have a perfect system it would seem. In fact there are species of algae which will produce 45% oil by dry weight and species of fungus which will ferment the waste biomass from the pressed algae and also produce 45% oil on a dry weight basis.
The issue with this idea is the cost per square meter. The maximum solar constant in space is 1300 watts per square meter. The maximum we get on planet earth is about 1000 watts per square meter. The average we can expect over the planet is under 200 watts per square meter... but we don't need to worry about the majority of the planet which is below average.
If we assume a kilowatt hour of electricity is worth 10 cents then if we assume we can get say 500 watts of power per square meter then the maximum return works out to be about 5 cents per square meter per hour. We can assume a maximum of say 12 hours so that is $0.60 per square meter per day maximum return if everything runs at 100%
Of course we have to multiply this by some fudge factor which represents attainable efficiency.
Most likely in the near term we would be lucky to get say 10%. Give or take we can expect to get about 5 cents per square meter per day.
If it costs $50 bux to fill up the car then one would need about 1000 square meters of collector area to get things in the right ball park. I'm not saying this is not doable. I'm just saying that it will be bloody expensive to do. Furthermore a collector like this will not fit on the average city lot.
There are so many stupid stories posted by Kdawson that I cannot count them.
The fusor has been around since the 1960's. When someone gets it to energy out greater than energy in then we have a story. When someone even gets it close to break even then maybe we have a story. What we have now is nothing worth reading about.
You accomplish more - as I pointed out in my post earlier.
You waste energy. It takes energy to mine the limestone (chemical feedstock) and it takes energy to burn off the CO2. This presently will come from our non-renewable natural resources. Then you need to use liquid fuels in order to run at least _some_ of the mining equipment and this is a net contributor of CO2 to the atmosphere.
None of these processes run 100% anyways so CO2 gets added all over the place.
But wait! We have more. Mountain building and lots of land at high elevations are associated with global cooling. If we push our mountains into the ocean then we will lose land at high elevation. This should warm the planet all by itself. One can look back into the Cretaceaous for instance and ask a) what the climate was like and b) where were the mountains and high alpine plateaus like the Tibetian and Colorado. Answer: For the most part they were not there. Here in Alberta for instance many of the local Rockie Mountains such as in the Banff area are made from marine Cretaceous sediments. This means this part of the world was underwater 60 million years ago. But this is just one example. Many of our mountain chains are actually quite young.
So removing our mountains should have the effect of warming the planet.
But wait! We are not done.
Filling in the oceans will raise sea level. Land reflects more energy into space than water does. Also water vapour is the most important green house gas and if we increase the planetary area of the oceans we should expect warming to come both from the greater ability of the oceans to absorb energy as well as the greater water vapour levels we would expect with greater oceanic surface area.
So on how many fronts is this just plain insanity?
But wait! We are still not done.
We will have to pay people to do this work. Presumably they will spend the money and many people like to improve their standard of living by buying another car or many a boat and maybe going on a holiday. These things require energy. In fact a great deal of the money that is paid to people results in an increased demand for energy.
This can be seen as well from the standpoint that the USA for instance has a high standard of living and is an energy glutton. Now that their economy is in trouble their use of energy is dropping slightly. Meanwhile China for instance is looking at economic growth rates in the 10% range and predictably we expect the Chinese to want more cars and to increase their consumption of energy.
Well, personally I prefer for people to have a high standard of living but the issue is that in the past this was always associated with greater energy consumption. Even with our tree huggers this is an issue. Most of them drive to the protests. How about Mr. Gore? How much fuel has he consumed as he flies all over the place telling us to use less?
Its takes energy to make lime (CaO). You need to start with limestone (CaCO3) and drive off the CO2. Eventually the CaO added to the water will become limestone and precipitate out. There is no magic here.
So where will this energy come from? Ans: Presumably the great new oil finds that Shell has been announcing on a regular basis for the last 30 years. Folks - oil prices might be down a little bit now but they won't stay down. And if you actually check the numbers you'll find that Shell has NOT been making much progress in replacing the oil we burn. So how about Natural Gas? More insanity.
Methane is a chemical source of hydrogen. Alkanes are C(n)H(2n+2) and for octane n=8. For methane n=1. The issue is that our liquid fuels have n>=7 so they are much closer to a 2:1 ratio of hydrogen to carbon. Now consider that coal is C(0.6n)H(n) so coal is hydrogen poor. Bitumin is about C(n)H(n). Its actually a little hydrogen rich but the issue is that if we want to produce liquid fuels via coal->liquids or via bitumin->liquids or for that matter from oil shales then we are desperately short of hydrogen and without it we leave about 1/2 the carbon we mine sitting around in piles which we call COKE. And the only other option is if we try to get energy from it and create copious amounts of CO2.
This would have to be the most INSANE use of our non-renewable natural resources that I can possibly imagine. It will result in more carbon in the atmosphere and not less.
Its a very good thing that CO2 is not responsible for global warming. It hasn't been responsible in the geological record other than back in the precambrian when CO2 concentrations reached 130,000 PPM. The levels are now about 370-380 PPM which is a rise of about 100 PPM over the last 100 years or so. Meanwhile water vapour is anywhere from under 1% (10,000 PPM) to over 10% (100,000 PPM). The issue is that water vapour acts closer to the surface of the planet and that its a stronger green house gas than CO2 and we have no idea if there has been a net positive change or a net negative change in average water vapour levels over the planet in the last say 100 years. We don't know the sign and we certainly don't know the magnitude but a 100 PPM change gets swallowed up very quickly when one considers the uncertainties involved here.
There is a high correlation between climate and sun spot activities. CERN is undertaking experiments soon to confirm this linkage. We are fortunate that solar cycle #24 is looking to be about 2 years late and if so will probably be very weak and this will provide us with the opportunity to actually do some measurement.
Rather than go berzerk with crazy ideas it will probably make more sense to see what influence solar cycle #24 has.
Where does KDawson get this tripe and why can't he do even the simplest verifications before he posts it as a story?
One (1) ton of any biomass (not plant oils mind you) has the energy equivalent of about 2 barrels of oil if you can do the conversion for free. We can see this from the chemistry of cellulose, lignans and pentosans.
The issue is that a plant is (CH2O)n while our liquid fuels are C(n)H(2n+2).
That oxygen is heavy and it breaks two (2) bonds.
There is simply NO WAY the guy can get 6 gallons of gas from a bushel of plant waste. The max he could get is about 84 gallons per ton which is 60/2000*84 = 2.5 gallons. So we know the claim is crap before we even read the article. If the company cannot even do the basic chemistry then we can regard their claims as crap as well.
Here is a more detailed calculation if they want octane;
Octane is C8H18O8, its an alkane with n=8
(CH2O)13 = C13H26O13 so we have a little more than 2 simple sugars. Sucrose is C12H22O11. Sucrose is the sugar we buy in the store.
C13H26O13 -> C8H18 5(CO2) 4(H2O) - O so we have some energy in
This is just approximate anyways because we lose OH radiacals when we use sugars to create sugar polymers.
This is assuming there is enough energy supplied by that one (1) oxygen to drive the reactions. One must balance the energy as well and account for inefficiencies.
I simply do not know why people can not do high school chemistry.
In fact the yield in a real plant will be about 1 ton of fuel for 5 tons of biomass if that. This would be 400 lbs per ton and about 1.5 gallons per bushel.
Ya gotta love the comments. These comments illustrate why oil will be over $350 per barrel as Mathew Simmons suggested a few years back. I personally have anecdotally tested this because in the city I live in lots of guys drive around in big pickup trucks. When asked who is going to use less gas, they look over their shoulder at the next guy.
One comment "save you money". So how many people are of the opinion that if gas prices cost them an extra $100 or so per month then they'll just skip going to the restaurant once or twice a month? Is this what its about? I thought if gas prices go up then people should think of using less gas.
VW is looking to produce a vehicle which actually provides the transportation people need and which addresses the issue of dwindling liquid fuel supplies.
They are not forecasting prices, only supplies. The issue is that the supply side looks bleak from 2010 onwards and the price side is already starting to look bleak.
One thing I'll add is that these analysis do not consider the possibility of oil production from the Ghawar field keeling over. This will happen and it will happen abruptly and without much warning just as it did for the North Sea fields. The UK for instance switched from being an oil exporter to an oil importer in 2005. In 1998 the North Sea production peaked and that that time very few people saw the peak coming.
My feeling is Ghawar is peaking now but the real issue is the water cut at Ghawar. When production at Ghawar keels over its going to be ugly. Robert Hirsch figures $500 per barrel is not out of line.
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I often use IRC. Sometimes I talk with people from the UK. Sometimes I don't address the comments. How are they going to track that?
I can imagine the burden this will create for the ISP's. The large telco's should love it because they can spread these costs over large numbers of customers. In addition when they lose the data or screw it up there are more faceless employees to point fingers at.
I expect small ISP's will shudder.
Next, what about TLS and tunneling? What about proxies?
This creates a burden but as far as a tool to fight terrorism, it comes up way short. It merely shows that the turkeys in Britain think they should be running the farm because they are in the majority. It shows those in charge understand very little about technology and security.
Any terrorist organization worth its salt will probably be using relatively secure communications.
I am reminded of Richard Feynman and his issues with security at Los Alamos during the Manhattan project. Anyone interested should read "surely you're joking Mr. Feynman".
Their attempts at security at many times was as abysmal as it was funny. One example was when some workmen cut a hole in the fence because they found it too time consuming to go back and forth through the front gate. There were guards at the front gate but none at the hole. So Feynman decided to leave through the front gate. Then he walked over to the hole and went over to the front gate again. This went on for quite some time until the sargent at the front gate started to wonder about the man who always went out but never came in.
The use of safes by the brass was another embarrassment. They often never changed the combinations from what was set at the factory. So Feynman use to take joy in opening the safe and placing his reports in the safe ready for the brass to fetch.
Maybe 50 years ago Monte Python's successor will make a movie.
I read some of the posts and saw the negative reactions. People just do not understand. Most, I'm sure, do not run a business.
The thing is if you run a business then you may need to add a wrinkle in order to exploit an opportunity. Being able to do this can make the difference between success and failure of the business. So even if it costs more, rolling your own can make sense.
This is not so true of services which are more standardized. An example is an accounting service. I see no issue with farming that sort of thing out.
Let me give an example.
Years ago my business handled high end data storage and data capture devices. Many of these had warranties that ran 5 years. So we needed an accounting package that would track individual items by serial number and tie it to the customer and the invoicing from our suppliers. There was no closed source software that I could find which could do this. There were no services either which could do this. With a roll your own solution the problem was solved.
I can offer many other examples. The point is that in some cases it makes sense to use closed source and sometimes it makes sense to use a service. However RMS makes the point that you lose your freedom when you do this and I say he is correct.
Which makes more sense? Hand your mail services for instance over to hotmaile or gmail or set up a server and and your own IP address and roll your own?
I suppose if you are a retail user then using a service makes sense. If you need to switch to someone else you only have a few friends to advise. But what if you are a business with 100's or 1000's of customers?
How would it look if Sears for instance had an email addresses like this:
Sears-sales@gamil.com
Sears-ar@gmail.com
Its there now.
Solar Cycle #24 is about 2 years late and the sun is unusually quiet. We really don't need to worry much about solar flares. The thing is when solar cycles are late this means the next solar cycle typically is very quiet. Solar Cycle #25 has already been predicted to also be very quiet.
So for the next 20 years solar flares may be practically non-existent.
What this means is that we can expect an increase in high energy cosmic radiation.
Expect more bit flips in circuitry.
Expect shorted and cooler summers and longer more intense winters. This is due to the increased cosmic radiation creating nucleation points for water vapor condensation which will increase cloud cover. Increased cloud cover reflects more energy into space so the surface cools.
Anyone who is perceptive might note this is the opposite of global warming.
The real issue is how few know about open source codecs like Ogg Theora.
I live in Canada and CTV for instance has both Discovery Channel material and BNN material online. However their websites are so broken that its not worth the trouble to even try to access the material.
Calling them and sending emails doesn't help. They are really thick.
Maybe if more people get on the phone and start demanding support for Ogg Theora then things will get better. Another option is to contact their advertisers and tell them they are wasting their money.
What of the ISP's that host these botnets. Many of these botnets are used to spew spam. If they do then this is easily detected and IMHO the ISP uplink in question should simply pull the plug and advise their client that it looks as if their toilet is broken because there sure seems to be a lot of sh*t coming from them.
I know my ISP does this. I know because they have phoned me and I had to advise them its not my OpenBSD servers generating spew, but another of their clients on the subnet. We found it fairly quickly.
I've heard so many excuses. Some involve excuses it would breach service agreements. So lets look at that one. How many end users write service agreement contracts? How many end users even read them? I think the answer here is obvious. Pretty much anything reasonable can be written into the contracts so that sort of excuse doesn't hold much water.
The obvious answer is the ISP's in question actually might make money carrying this spew. They certainly made money when they provided connectivity to known spammers. They also make money when they charge extra for static IP's. Note that a static IP makes it much easier to trace and quarantine a bot.
If we want these problems to go away then one way to address the issue is to look at issues of an accessory either before or after the fact.
Let me provide an example. If someone digs a big hole in the road and someone else drives in and wreaks their car and many kills some people in the process, then the excuse of "I didn't know a car could fall into a hole" or "I didn't think anyone would drive their car down this road at night" or any other excuse that might be dreamed up is not likely going to carry much weight. If someone sees the hole and ignores it using the excuse that "Well, its not my hole", then that excuse also is not likely to hold much weight.
An ISP hosting infected machines should be just as liable as the client who owns it. Many of these botnets reveal themselves. We need to start asking for accountability.
Consider people like Conrad Black. Last I heard he's in jail. That is accountability. Any excuses he and his lawyers might have dreamed up didn't carry much weight.
Here is another example. In the movie called "Nuremburg", Alec Baldwin asks in one scene if "anyone in this country accepts responsibility for anything?". I think this says an awful lot. Only one person seemed to be responsible for the killing of millions.
So in this story we have over 1 million bots discovered and apparently 6 perpetrators and how many are responsible? These bots are identified, now what? I've had more than 50,000 bots attack my servers. Can I call the cops? If I provide IP addresses does anyone pull a plug?
We need to think on this.
This comes from the only nation that "used" them?
This comes from the country that burns 1/4 of the oil the world "produces".
People who read on slashdot should consider making a trip to SE Asia and while in the Hotel they should turn on the TV and watch say CNN. Its like being in a whole new world.
The USA should start dealing with reality. There is NO global warming. There is NO nuclear waste problem. There is NO USA universal health care.
Give me a break.
Will any of these drives run as network attached storage? If so can they run OpenBSD?
This sounds like a lame excuse.
I pursued my career as a software developer and I did it from home. I looked after two kids and their dying mother. After she died things became easier. My kids were 6 & 10 when she died and I looked after things for 10 years before she died.
There are many solutions for child care including a part or full time nanny. As I recall Scarlett Johanson was available a few years ago and I figure she would be a pretty good Nanny, especially for a single guy like me! If only I'd known. :-(
Stats like this are inflammatory and a distortion of reality at the best of times. The truth is that many of us work too hard and we work too dumb. Many tasks simply don't need to be done. My grandfather was a pioneer and he farmed with horses. He cut his own lumber and built his own house and all the other buildings on the farm. I grew up in the house he built. If my grandfather could handle that sort of work load then with our modern technology I fail to see why we need to work so hard to enjoy a decent standard of living... unless I consider the amount to paper that gets pushed around which serves little purpose other than filling a recycling bin.
My point is not to roll back the clock to the time of my grandfather. My point is to ask why it is that so much work needs to be done and why people figure they need to spend 60 hours per week doing it. Job sharing, rotating child supervision, hubby at home actually making dinner and doing the dishes... part time nanny, baby sitting while mom and dad are home - so mom and dad can focus on a project if need be. There are MANY MANY solutions.
I didn't get help when I did it. But I still was able to do it and I will point out that since my office was at home I managed to skip out on a commute to down town in the morning, a commute from down town in the afternoon, and basically a wasted lunch hour. That gave me about 2 1/2 to 3 hours that most single parents didn't have.
Next I was there when the kids left for school and there when they arrived home from school. If one of the kids was sick I was there. I had no baby sitting fees, no child care fees, and I was able to write off the cost of my office in my house and all the equipment I needed to buy for that office... which I might add was considerable. For instance I bought my first computer the day the space shuttle exploded and I reckon the cost was something in the order of about 1/6th the value of my house at the time. Included in that cost was a 300 LPM line printer and a 36" plotter. My modem at the time cost over $600. Those were 1986 dollars too.
In my opinion its about drive and commitment. If someone wants to make it happen then they can.
I agree. Get competent help.
Lets get real and put this into perspective.
Any Pentium I which is 200 mHz and up can do this.
Whether FTP or HTTP, this is still just file sharing. A Pentium I can fill a 10 Base-T Lan with no issues at all. In fact they can probably get close to filling a 100 Mbit/second Lan. One needs to test this of course in the application at hand. This is easy to do.
T3 runs about 45 Mbits/second and this corresponds to DS3 (Digital service level 3) In North America this is equivalent to 672 DS0 channels each of which is 64 Kbits/second (8192 Bytes/second) not counting stolen bits.
So a T3 is "about" 1/2 of a 100 bit/second ethernet LAN connection.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-carrier
Carrier pricing for a DS3 will be about $5,000 per month.
The rest of this picture is dependent on how good or how badly the server side is set up. My point is that even a 10 year old Pentium I can handle the load.
Whats the big deal? DOS was limited to one!
And their motto? See colon enter>
The funniest ATM theft I've heard of took place in Saskatchewan, Canada. This took place on a long weekend in a sleepy little rural town.
4:00 AM sees our thieves breaking into the local gravel contractor. After breaking through the gate they steal a gravel truck and an oxy-acetelene torch. Next stop is the post treating plant about 1/2 mile (1 km) down the highway. They steal a loader. This is what is used to load poles and posts onto semi-trailors.
By now its about 4:15 or so. Did they make noise? Well - a diesel truck and 350 HP diesel loader will make some noise I suppose. It woke some of the locals up.
Around the corner from the bank about one (1) block away is the local police station which is manned 24x7. The police are at their desks thinking the gravel contractor must be getting an early start this morning.
So the thieves drive the loader over to the bank. The reach in through the roof totally demolishing the building and grab the ATM which is firmly bolted to the concrete floor and footings. Seems the concrete wasn't much of a match for the 350 HP loader because the ATM was cleanly plucked through the gapping hole and dropped into the back of the dump truck.
By now the cops were heading for their cars thinking there must have been a big accident on Main Street.
Our thieves meanwhile shut off the loader and hopped into the dump truck and took off.
A few miles south of town they stopped at an abandoned farm yard and took their time with the oxy-acetelene torch and chopped the ATM apart.
Having done this they took the money and casually left the scene of the crime. So far no one has been caught! So far apparently these thieves are keeping their mouths closed. Apparently there are no leads.
The best part of this story is the locals still laugh about their bank robbery! When you live in a sleepy Saskatchewan rural town then once in a while a little excitement spices up an otherwise dreary life.
Let me explain how stupid this is. For each ton of coal you burn you get about 3.5 tons of CO2. The reason for this is that coal is about C(n)H(0.6n). C=12, O=16, 12+16+16 = 44. 44/12.6 = 3.49. What to change this chemistry? Go ask GOD.
Power plants are about 50% efficient. At 100 kWh / tonne they need 350 kWh. In order to get this much power they will need to burn close to a ton of coal. This is unless they plan on using Natural Gas to produce the power. Think on that one while you are inventing the next perpetual motion machine.
Jesh! We need to get science taught in schools.
You make a point but you are ranting!
I'm not an electrician and I'm not an electrical engineer. I also have not been electrocuted which should be obvious since I'm writing this note.
When I was a teenager I worked a summer in construction building Telephone lines. Lord the contractor made money!
He also pulled the telephone wires into an overhead power line running about 18,000 volts and I and a co-worker were pulling the wires in front of the pickup truck. When the voltage hit our muscles contracted and I was told we both jumped more than 10 feet (3 meters) through the air. I was told we set an olympic record in high jump and long jump. Damn - I want the medal!
But - we didn't die.
When I was a kid at about 14 I fixed my grandfather's electric frying pan cord. Unfortunately I didn't notice it was plugged in at the time. When I put my index and next-door fingers on the tines to hold them down while I placed the cover on I noticed there was a tingling running up my arm. So I reached over and unplugged the cord.
Again I didn't die.
Electricity should be respected but its not as bad as you portray.
The information presented is really bad.
1) Waste energy from lamps serves as space heating. Pretty much all houses need space heating for the winter months. Winter is when we need lights the most.
2) I happen to use CFL's in my office. These are on 24x7 because I'm in and out a lot. Three (3)x15 = 45 watts x 24 hours = 1080 watt.hours = 1.080 kWh. At 10 cents this is about $3.00 per month and the waste heat goes into space heating and is therefor not wasted.
I happen to know how long my CFL's last. I got 7 years from the last ones. 7x25x365 = 60,000 hours. The model was a Panasonic EFT 15E28. These have been replaced with 14 watt Philips model 152-744 lamps.
Currently there are about 9,000 hours on the Philips lamps.
Since #1 is in effect for about 7 months of the year here in Calgary where I live, the savings are mostly in the replacement costs of the lamps. At 50,000 hours this is a capital cost of CDN$18 for the CFL lamps from Home Depot. It would be a capital cost of $84.50 for at least 100 bulbs @ 100 watts each.
The electricity costs for the three (3) CFL lamps over 50,000 hours is CDN$210. The electricity costs for the incandescent lamps is CDN$1,008. Total costs are CDN$230 verses CDN$1,092.50 and of course this is for almost 6 years.
Brilliant. You hit some very large nails straight on the head there.
We can add to this: People cannot properly update the docs. When people file trouble reports and fixes they are often not distributed. Here is an example.
Several years ago there was a Debian configuration issue with Grip. I managed to get it installed and posted on source forge a documentation update request. In this request I put complete instructions on how to diagnose and how to fix the problems... largely they had to do with virtual SCSI configuration issues and permissions. Now clearly the GRIP developers had not tested their software against some major platforms. How difficult would it be to get up a testing group for instance that actually does quality assurance verifications on all major distros and platforms? Surely it can't be that hard and its not rocket science to realize how badly this is needed.
The issue is that a year later in the IRC channels another person was trying to install and sure enough.. the docs had still not been updated. 18 months later the situation had still not changed.
This is painfully ridiculous folks.
To the list in the parent post I would suggest training is a major issue. We need teachers who can package the knowledge in our Guru's heads and distribute it. It simply takes forever to weed through the terrible docs that we currently have and learn how to do things. Furthermore its not fun.
If you are successful bringing out a product then you are WIDE OPEN to spending the next MAJOR part of your life in court.
The thing about copyright law is that the holder of the copyright owns all derived works as well. There are a number of other laws which apply as well.
With these threats hanging over your collective heads I doubt any of your would be customers will touch your products. Next.. consider that its pre-meditated because you posted this story in slashdot!
I may be paranoid but I think the real reason for this technology is to "shape" VOIP and related services to thwart the competition. I don't think this is about limiting download volumes at all. Most of us don't use even close to what the lines can carry and who cares if the download speeds are "lumpy".
However, consider that if we have a high speed line then all telecommunication services including what is now done on phone lines and our television services can run over the same link instead of three separate lines each being billed by possibly separate organizations.
No longer will we need cable TV or satellite TV service siting right beside an old POTS (plain old telephone service) line sitting right beside a hopefully brand spanking new fiber optic cable.
Without shaping the ISP and others can run whatever communications services they wish over a fast smooth high speed link. As I see it, this is a preemptive strike. Better to get the "shaping" technology into place before the masses figure out how badly they get screwed. If the carrier can make the communications link "lumpy" then VOIP services and Television services might not run so smoothly unless offered by guess who is "shaping" the line.
We can already use say an Asterisk server to provide PBX services but this is only if we can be sure the time delay between packet transmission is small and predictable. Think of how much competition this technology can create for the phone company! http://www.asterisk.org/
Another thing to consider is the profit margins on cell phone services. Once we have the digital link in place then we can run these services over wifi if we wish. Many libraries, some coffee shops and even city hall in some locations offer wifi for free. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotspot_(Wi-Fi) Again "shaping" can be used to detune the system. Its probably a stop gap attempt but I'm paranoid enough to expect them to try it.
Mortierella spp such as M. isabellina will also produce oils. The issue is the biological efficiency and robustness of the bug.
We have many cellulose digesters and and indeed many very robust fungus which can handle the lignans and pentosans found in many agricultural wastes. So there is a very good chance we can biologically turn these wastes into liquid fuels. However we can also use destructive pyrolysis and this is a well known very rapid and robust technique which will not require very stringent pharmaceutical level biological controls in order to be successful.
Further more as stated at the outset, the biological efficiency has to be considered.
The next issue is how much oil we can expect to produce from fermentation processes. The answer is not nearly enough. The world uses about 86 million barrels of crude oil per day. The USA as an example uses in the vicinity of about 22 million barrels of oil per day. If the USA were to convert 100% of their corn crop into ethanol (which is a very dumb thing to do) then they would produce enough liquid fuels to run their auto fleet for about 2 weeks. IE... its a drop in the bucket.
Note that the ethanol production converts the starches. Once can look at the rest of the plant as well of course.
We still don't have enough biomass but it will help.
What we can also look at is a combined fermentation / photosynthesis process where we use the fermentation to break down organic matter and meanwhile use algae for instance in an attached green house environment to capture sunlight. The fermentation process produces massive amounts of CO2. The photosynthesis will convert this CO2 back into biomass. We have a perfect system it would seem. In fact there are species of algae which will produce 45% oil by dry weight and species of fungus which will ferment the waste biomass from the pressed algae and also produce 45% oil on a dry weight basis.
The issue with this idea is the cost per square meter. The maximum solar constant in space is 1300 watts per square meter. The maximum we get on planet earth is about 1000 watts per square meter. The average we can expect over the planet is under 200 watts per square meter... but we don't need to worry about the majority of the planet which is below average.
If we assume a kilowatt hour of electricity is worth 10 cents then if we assume we can get say 500 watts of power per square meter then the maximum return works out to be about 5 cents per square meter per hour. We can assume a maximum of say 12 hours so that is $0.60 per square meter per day maximum return if everything runs at 100%
Of course we have to multiply this by some fudge factor which represents attainable efficiency.
Most likely in the near term we would be lucky to get say 10%. Give or take we can expect to get about 5 cents per square meter per day.
If it costs $50 bux to fill up the car then one would need about 1000 square meters of collector area to get things in the right ball park. I'm not saying this is not doable. I'm just saying that it will be bloody expensive to do. Furthermore a collector like this will not fit on the average city lot.
There are so many stupid stories posted by Kdawson that I cannot count them.
The fusor has been around since the 1960's. When someone gets it to energy out greater than energy in then we have a story. When someone even gets it close to break even then maybe we have a story. What we have now is nothing worth reading about.
You accomplish more - as I pointed out in my post earlier.
You waste energy. It takes energy to mine the limestone (chemical feedstock) and it takes energy to burn off the CO2. This presently will come from our non-renewable natural resources. Then you need to use liquid fuels in order to run at least _some_ of the mining equipment and this is a net contributor of CO2 to the atmosphere.
None of these processes run 100% anyways so CO2 gets added all over the place.
But wait! We have more. Mountain building and lots of land at high elevations are associated with global cooling. If we push our mountains into the ocean then we will lose land at high elevation. This should warm the planet all by itself. One can look back into the Cretaceaous for instance and ask a) what the climate was like and b) where were the mountains and high alpine plateaus like the Tibetian and Colorado. Answer: For the most part they were not there. Here in Alberta for instance many of the local Rockie Mountains such as in the Banff area are made from marine Cretaceous sediments. This means this part of the world was underwater 60 million years ago. But this is just one example. Many of our mountain chains are actually quite young.
So removing our mountains should have the effect of warming the planet.
But wait! We are not done.
Filling in the oceans will raise sea level. Land reflects more energy into space than water does. Also water vapour is the most important green house gas and if we increase the planetary area of the oceans we should expect warming to come both from the greater ability of the oceans to absorb energy as well as the greater water vapour levels we would expect with greater oceanic surface area.
So on how many fronts is this just plain insanity?
But wait! We are still not done.
We will have to pay people to do this work. Presumably they will spend the money and many people like to improve their standard of living by buying another car or many a boat and maybe going on a holiday. These things require energy. In fact a great deal of the money that is paid to people results in an increased demand for energy.
This can be seen as well from the standpoint that the USA for instance has a high standard of living and is an energy glutton. Now that their economy is in trouble their use of energy is dropping slightly. Meanwhile China for instance is looking at economic growth rates in the 10% range and predictably we expect the Chinese to want more cars and to increase their consumption of energy.
Well, personally I prefer for people to have a high standard of living but the issue is that in the past this was always associated with greater energy consumption. Even with our tree huggers this is an issue. Most of them drive to the protests. How about Mr. Gore? How much fuel has he consumed as he flies all over the place telling us to use less?
Its takes energy to make lime (CaO). You need to start with limestone (CaCO3) and drive off the CO2. Eventually the CaO added to the water will become limestone and precipitate out. There is no magic here.
So where will this energy come from? Ans: Presumably the great new oil finds that Shell has been announcing on a regular basis for the last 30 years. Folks - oil prices might be down a little bit now but they won't stay down. And if you actually check the numbers you'll find that Shell has NOT been making much progress in replacing the oil we burn. So how about Natural Gas? More insanity.
Methane is a chemical source of hydrogen. Alkanes are C(n)H(2n+2) and for octane n=8. For methane n=1. The issue is that our liquid fuels have n>=7 so they are much closer to a 2:1 ratio of hydrogen to carbon. Now consider that coal is C(0.6n)H(n) so coal is hydrogen poor. Bitumin is about C(n)H(n). Its actually a little hydrogen rich but the issue is that if we want to produce liquid fuels via coal->liquids or via bitumin->liquids or for that matter from oil shales then we are desperately short of hydrogen and without it we leave about 1/2 the carbon we mine sitting around in piles which we call COKE. And the only other option is if we try to get energy from it and create copious amounts of CO2.
This would have to be the most INSANE use of our non-renewable natural resources that I can possibly imagine. It will result in more carbon in the atmosphere and not less.
Its a very good thing that CO2 is not responsible for global warming. It hasn't been responsible in the geological record other than back in the precambrian when CO2 concentrations reached 130,000 PPM. The levels are now about 370-380 PPM which is a rise of about 100 PPM over the last 100 years or so. Meanwhile water vapour is anywhere from under 1% (10,000 PPM) to over 10% (100,000 PPM). The issue is that water vapour acts closer to the surface of the planet and that its a stronger green house gas than CO2 and we have no idea if there has been a net positive change or a net negative change in average water vapour levels over the planet in the last say 100 years. We don't know the sign and we certainly don't know the magnitude but a 100 PPM change gets swallowed up very quickly when one considers the uncertainties involved here.
Read this: http://www.sciencebits.com/CO2orSolar
There is a high correlation between climate and sun spot activities. CERN is undertaking experiments soon to confirm this linkage. We are fortunate that solar cycle #24 is looking to be about 2 years late and if so will probably be very weak and this will provide us with the opportunity to actually do some measurement.
Rather than go berzerk with crazy ideas it will probably make more sense to see what influence solar cycle #24 has.
Where does KDawson get this tripe and why can't he do even the simplest verifications before he posts it as a story?
One (1) ton of any biomass (not plant oils mind you) has the energy equivalent of about 2 barrels of oil if you can do the conversion for free. We can see this from the chemistry of cellulose, lignans and pentosans.
The issue is that a plant is (CH2O)n while our liquid fuels are C(n)H(2n+2).
That oxygen is heavy and it breaks two (2) bonds.
There is simply NO WAY the guy can get 6 gallons of gas from a bushel of plant waste. The max he could get is about 84 gallons per ton which is 60/2000*84 = 2.5 gallons. So we know the claim is crap before we even read the article. If the company cannot even do the basic chemistry then we can regard their claims as crap as well.
Here is a more detailed calculation if they want octane;
Octane is C8H18O8, its an alkane with n=8
(CH2O)13 = C13H26O13 so we have a little more than 2 simple sugars. Sucrose is C12H22O11. Sucrose is the sugar we buy in the store.
C13H26O13 -> C8H18 5(CO2) 4(H2O) - O so we have some energy in
This is just approximate anyways because we lose OH radiacals when we use sugars to create sugar polymers.
12*13 + 26 + 16*13 = 390
12*8 + 18 = 144
144/390 = 29.23%
23.23% of 2000 = 584 lbs octane.
584/8 = 73 gallons per ton
60/2000 * 73 = 2.2 gallons per bushel.
This is assuming there is enough energy supplied by that one (1) oxygen to drive the reactions. One must balance the energy as well and account for inefficiencies.
I simply do not know why people can not do high school chemistry.
In fact the yield in a real plant will be about 1 ton of fuel for 5 tons of biomass if that. This would be 400 lbs per ton and about 1.5 gallons per bushel.
Ya gotta love the comments. These comments illustrate why oil will be over $350 per barrel as Mathew Simmons suggested a few years back. I personally have anecdotally tested this because in the city I live in lots of guys drive around in big pickup trucks. When asked who is going to use less gas, they look over their shoulder at the next guy.
One comment "save you money". So how many people are of the opinion that if gas prices cost them an extra $100 or so per month then they'll just skip going to the restaurant once or twice a month? Is this what its about? I thought if gas prices go up then people should think of using less gas.
VW is looking to produce a vehicle which actually provides the transportation people need and which addresses the issue of dwindling liquid fuel supplies.
A really good article to read can be found here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_megaprojects
They are not forecasting prices, only supplies. The issue is that the supply side looks bleak from 2010 onwards and the price side is already starting to look bleak.
One thing I'll add is that these analysis do not consider the possibility of oil production from the Ghawar field keeling over. This will happen and it will happen abruptly and without much warning just as it did for the North Sea fields. The UK for instance switched from being an oil exporter to an oil importer in 2005. In 1998 the North Sea production peaked and that that time very few people saw the peak coming.
My feeling is Ghawar is peaking now but the real issue is the water cut at Ghawar. When production at Ghawar keels over its going to be ugly. Robert Hirsch figures $500 per barrel is not out of line.