That, and their massive manufacturing capability (done at the expense of untold numbers of oppressed people) were the primary status symbols that allowed them to be ranked as a near-equal to the USA.
As an American, it's not comfortable to recognize this, but if you go back a hundred years earlier, you'll find that the unpaid work of oppressed people was responsible for much of the growth that enabled the US to become a world power. There was also the taking of resources of the western half of the continent from the indigenous people, and using the technology of other countries (Eli Whitney didn't INVENT the cotton gin - he copied someone else's and PATENTED it).
So, I suppose the US is looking even more like the old USSR as our leaders call for the right to imprison people as enemy combatants, and want to require national ID systems.
Maybe one empire resembles another because of the nature of being an empire.
Sometimes meetings are needed. But there are a few good ways to keep them good and short.
1) remove all chairs from the room 2) no snacks, water, coffee or anything else (and forbid people from bringing them in) 3) schedule all meetings at 4:30pm. Anyone who talks after 5:00pm has to pay overtime to everyone out of their own salary 4) each person can have 2 minutes to talk. Any time over that costs them $5/minute/person in attendance 5) each person can have 3 slides. Any slides over that costs $5/slide/person in attendance
My understanding is that tidal waves are seismic events that travel along the seafloor. They raise the water level only a few feet, and are essentially invisible until they hit shore and start climbing. Since icebergs float, it's not clear how they would suppress a shockwave happening below and around them.
I'm not a specialist in this in any way at all. But maybe this is a good analogy:
Smooth out 2 big comforters on your bed. Kneel on the side of the bed, and sweep your arm under the comforters from one end to the other. It's fairly easy because you only have to displace the comforters right around your arm.
Now put a piece of cardboard as big as your bed between the two comforters. This simulates iceburgs. Now slide your arm through. It will be harder because your arm has to displace a larger amount of comforter as it moves along - the cardboard kind of spreads out the force/displacement that your arm is causing.
And what if the impact was during the time antartica wasn't covered by ice?
That can't be! It was covered with ice when humans discovered it. Don't you know that the Earth never changed at all until humans came along and caused global warming? Geesh, geeks these days!
Some animals use the magnetic field for navigation.
I was listening to a "Living on Earth" episode recently where some scientists were studying a certain migratory bird (can't recall which (maybe terns?). Apparently this bird calibrates what it senses as the magnetic field with where the sun sets each night.
For the experiment, the birds were kept exposed at sunset to a magnetic field that was 90 degree off what it's supposed to be. When they let the birds out after dark, they flew the wrong direction by 90 degrees. The next night (after not being exposed to the artificial magnetic field), though, they flew the correct direction.
So, some animals will probably do okay during the flip.
Reminds me of a stupid joke about researches doing narcotics research on arctic birds... they left no tern unstoned.
I know it's off-topic, but THANK YOU! In my mind, that was a great compliment!
I try all the time to get the people at work to think long term about what they are doing. If we kludge the network together, or keep doing quick fixes, we'll be forever doing that.
many bidders will cash out early (a scenario they were hoping to limit via the Dutch Auction process)
I'm just beginning to study these things. So, given that they're just making their IPO, does it really matter if there are big fluxuations in their share price now?
I mean, suppose there are a bunch of people who try to reap the profits by selling their shares. It's not as if Google has to buy them back, so they're not out any money.
Now sure, this dumping will push the price down, and therefore the book value of the company. But, since they JUST did their IPO, would it be normal for them to go back and do another issue so soon? I would assume they have the cash they need and won't be hitting the capital markets any time terribly soon. By the time they do, the price should have stabilized some.
Am I missing something important?
Maybe I'm just wanting to believe "good things" about my favorite search engine, but I thought they were doing the Dutch Auction to try and spread the wealth and prevent a few connected CEOs from getting all the rewards of the IPO. That, rather than a concern about the value of their stock and the company.
Don't you know? The USA is the only country that matters. All the rest are there to serve our whim.
And if you get too uppity, we'll come bomb your ass and take out your government. Because we know all you stinky foreign-language speaking terrorists are hiding weapons of mass distruction under your matresses. But don't worry, when we've finally gotten rid of all the terrorists and made your country happy and peaceful, we'll give you a new government with sovereignty. I promise, you'll really like it!
And I know we're in the right because the one and only true God talks to George Bush and tells him what to do.
It's only free if you're sick or injured at 6:00am. Otherwise, you can just do your job and wait until tomorrow.
I was sick once while in the Army. I was nautious and feverish, but decided to "suck it up" and go to PT (Physical Training) in the morning rather than go to sick call. During that, I vomited and had diarreah (not very nice sight for the person holding my feet during situps). But, I couldn't go to sick call because it was already after 6:00am. I had to wait until the next day.
The fever had broken, but I was still having diarreah and nausea. They decided I was dehydrated and gave me an IV (saline solution, I think). They finally stopped after 4 units. Normally after one or two, you're supposed to have a nearly irrestable urge to pee as your body tries to expell the excess fluid. It never did happen. So they checked the sound of my lungs because sometimes it will leak into the lungs. Nope. I was just REALLy dehydrated. They sent me home to drink orange juice and then go back to work after lunch.
If that's free healthcare, then I really don't want much to do with it.
Oh yeah, I forgot when I first got there.. there's the Private who's been in the army for 3 months with a huge book. It's like one of those adventure books.... do you have a fever? Turn to page 329. Have you vomitted? turn to page 79. Have you had diarrhea? Hmmm... was it competely liquid or did it have little chunks? Chunks? Okay, that's page 512. Hmmm... it looks like you could be feeling sick. Fill out these forms and go wait until your name is called.
This guy ate nothing but supersize McDonald's for a month. He was sick, threw up a lot, gained tons of weight, and after he quit was never able to quite recover back to his normal athletic self.
that'll completely lose their non-corporate (personal user) interests and much of their corporate interest
I'm not so sure. Look at things like defrag. Sure, it works in windows and pretty much gets the job done. But, windows defrag has very few features compared to the norton utilities tool.
My guess is that MS anti-virus and firewalls will be pretty simple to use, but very feature-poor. Symantec and others will still have a market of the people who want better tools. The people happy with MS firewall/av probably would not have paid for a better product anyway.
I'm sure we'll probably find that the industrial revolution has been a terrible mistake and a misguided experiment.
It would be a great way if us westerners could figure out how to live comfortably with less energy, then find better ways to get that energy. I doubt that solar panels are the way - except maybe the ones that heat water for a house - not a bad idea. Our bodies are good at taking plants, who have captured solar energy, and turning into heat and motion. It would be great if we could somehow take advantage of these processes on a larger scale - without just burning plants.
If we survive ourselves, I imagine that the earth's population will actually shrink and people will live closer to the land. Somehow, we'll keep some good transportation technology and energy conversion technology. We won't have to burn things to get heat and light, and we'll have communications technology that doesn't require vast energy resources and toxic chemical to use.
The real problem we will have to address is greed. When is enough enough? Growing food using natural techniques and animals is not exciting, but is sitting in an office writing TPS reports exciting? Just because we CAN grow tons more food using lots of chemicals and pumping water into the desert, should we? Sure, someone makes a lot of money at this, but at what cost?
Now please, don't think I'm a luddite. I'm hoping that somehow we are able to keep the best - the ways we can communicate around the world, while getting rid of the worst: congestion, polution, etc.
Part of the problem is that humans like predictability. Look at battered women. Part of the reason they stay is that they know what to expect, and while it's shitty, getting out and getting away is scary because of the huge unknowns. Maybe it's the same thing as a society. We're comfortable with the predicatable polution and even gloabl warming. It's scary to think about giving up what we think we have, even the bad part of it, in exchange for what we don't know.
Most of the world's population lives off the land in relative poverty. It may be possible that this boom of "western civilization" is just a blip in human history - and we'll all dissolve back into living off our now polluted land.
It's sad to think that even without all the petrochemicals and GMO that there is enough food to feed the world, yet there are still people in famine. Is it a logistics problem? A political problem? I don't know.
I think part of the solution is to find a way to establish an equilibrium population for humankind that is not dependant on the simple abundance of the earth. That's frought with population booms and busts and is not a very comfortable way to live. But, then who decides how many people there should be? Who enforces it?
Maybe this is why SETI has been unsuccessful so far... maybe this is the big hurdle that civilizations have to overcome and not many can do it (assuming they're out there/have been out there). Maybe humans themselves will be a blip in earth history.
The answer eventually comes, I think, from figuring out what we, as a species, is supposed to accomplish (or should accomplish). There's got to be more than just acquiring wealth and power for whoever can get it. Religion tries to give us the "superordinate goal", but there's a lot of religions and conflicting goals.
Few people have faith that the people driving around them on their morning commute won't do stupid things and get them killed... so how do you expect them to have faith that humankind will find the right goals and the right ways to pursue them.
The pessimist in me says, "we're fucked". The optimist says, "I hope not."
While I am inclined to agree with you, who is the authority for this? Is there really one that can enforce it? If not, it's pretty much a moot point.
"Web" is appropriate in one sense as we are all interconnected via things like http, aim, ftp, irc, etc. Someone using the word "web" does not necessarily have to be shortening "world wide web". And even so, a majority of people using "web" interchangeably with "internet" pretty much makes it a defacto standard.
The world is full of dumb and ignorant people, and it sucks!
Hey, I liked Moulin Rouge... but I also liked Star Trek Insurrection... well, parts of it.
I think Moulin Rouge appeals to a limited set of people. I actually enjoyed the vivid overload of colors and wished I had seen that in the theatre. The story... well, is a typical Bohemian story of impossible love ending badly. Sure, it was cheesy at times, but overall I felt is was welldone. I found the use of pop music interesting - particularly the Tango Roxanne. That was probably one of songs that was truly improved by the movie over the original (and I like the Police).
Now a *bad* movie would be any of the Death Stalker movies - particularly the one with Queen Kong.
I'm definitely not arguing for continued use of petroleum as our fuel source. But I do question if burning things is the best way to get our fuel.
Essentially, we on earth have 2 ways of getting energy. We can either use up limited resources - fossil fuels, nuclear materials, etc. Or we can use the only source of energy that from the perspective of the earth is truely renewable - the sun.
The sun keeps pouring energy on the earth and it's ultimately the source of all of our energy. Coal and oil are simply captured sunlight from millions of ago (carbon and its chemical bonds are the storage device). As a planet, if we consume any more energy than is delivered by the sun, then we are on the path of ruin because it cannot be sustained.
So, what we really need to ask is this. Is taking the sunlight we have (a limited resource at any given time), converting it to plants that we then process into oil and then burn for heat energy the best way to get sunlight into a useable energy form?
Burning plant products is just one way of using this energy. There are several ways that tap recent energy sent by the sun:
hydroelectric - the sun's energy provides most of the energy needed to drive the evaporation part of the water cycle
wind power - again, the wind is powered by the sun's energy
plants - through photosynthesis, plants take the sun's energy and make chemical bonds
photoelectric cells... to name a few
Using each one has its own side effects and compromises. But we really need to pick the one that gives us the most efficient way of taking the sunlight we get and converting it into energy we can use.
In any case, if we as a planet cannot find a way to live within the daily energy budget of the sun (we have current "cash flows" and our capital resources (minerals, oil, etc). We cannot sustain ourselves by eating our capital for daily operations. So, we have to find the best way to make use of that daily cashflow. Otherwise we go bankrupt and the cockroaches get their chance.
And as for things like "long hot spells in the summer, forest fires, dead fish, water shortages, freak weather, etc", shit happens. These kinds of things can happen whether we cause them or not. Yes, our actions can contribute, and probably are right now. But humans are really whiney and get bitchy when things aren't what they expect. People go nuts just when traffic is bad. We need to suck it up and realize that the biosphere is a self-regulating system. And if we're not careful, we'll be self-regulated right off it.
In the grand scheme of things, it's all going to be incinerated when the sun expands anyway - and everything will be gone. So, if there's any point to anything, hopefully we'll see that there is benefit in making this world a nice place to live while it lasts. We're not doing very well, but we're only just now starting to see that we are not just individuals but an integral part of a living system.
with the number of fast food places, we should be able to get our fuel for next to nothing
That works right at this moment. But as soon as you add new valuable uses for both new and used vegetable oil, its value and its price will increase.
Places with used oil will start selling it, and producers of new oil will start producing fuel-grade oil. Until the overall amount of oil production is increased, its price will be pushed up. Everything using vegetable oil will cost more. Eventually vegetable oil production will increase, but at what cost? More fertilizer (made from petroleum?)? Less land used for food crops (raising price of food)? An equilibrium will eventually be found, but even then, the price for vegetable oil will be higher.
Even in economics, you can't get something for nothing.
The long term question becomes "is it better to burn vegetable oil for fuel when compared to petroleum?" One advantage is that the carbon released into the atmosphere from burning was only recently trapped out of the atmosphere (where petroleum was trapped millions of years ago).
One should also ask if there are more efficient ways to take today's sunlight and turn it into locomtion?
You really only hear on the news about the cars that crashed the people who were injured and killed. You rarely hear about the thousands or millions who managed to drive to and from work safely.
I think it's the same here. Sure there might be people who think SP2 did the best thing for their computer ever. But I imagine it's either... "it didn't break anything", or the range from "slowed me down" to "crashed everything".
Sure, I'm interested to know how many people had more problems, but I'm much more interested to hear what problems there were.
So I guess we shouldn't teach our kids that stealing is wrong. Right? Wrong.
No, we SHOULD teach our children in schools that stealing is wrong. But it should be a part of the approved curriculum and school guidelines. It should NOT be through some political group coming in and spewing their own agenda. If you let the BSA in, who else might you have to let in?
School districts and state boards of eduction pay highly trained people to develop curriculum by which the children are taught. Let them do their jobs. If you don't think copyright is being covered, take it up with your school board.
If you don't trust the board and curriculum developers, then you have bigger problems. But letting private political organizations into schools to push their agenda is not the solution.
The problem is that we (as a public) pay people to develop curriculum and establish benchmarks and goals for our students to learn from and achieve. This is basically allowing a political group to come in and teach their own program, interrupting what the teachers may need to be teaching.
Maybe learning about copyright law is a good thing, but it should be a part of the developed curriculum and part of what students are held accountable for. What other groups are you willing to let force their way into a school with a cute cartoon character? The republican party? The democrats? Christian Scientists? Skinheads? The North Carolina Quilting Association?
This kind of thing simply does not belong in the classroom because outside parties should not be pushing their agendas in the classroom. If they want their lessons taught, they should present them to the bodies involved in developing curriculumm, which through school boards, represent the people.
Slashdot Mirror
That, and their massive manufacturing capability (done at the expense of untold numbers of oppressed people) were the primary status symbols that allowed them to be ranked as a near-equal to the USA.
As an American, it's not comfortable to recognize this, but if you go back a hundred years earlier, you'll find that the unpaid work of oppressed people was responsible for much of the growth that enabled the US to become a world power. There was also the taking of resources of the western half of the continent from the indigenous people, and using the technology of other countries (Eli Whitney didn't INVENT the cotton gin - he copied someone else's and PATENTED it).
So, I suppose the US is looking even more like the old USSR as our leaders call for the right to imprison people as enemy combatants, and want to require national ID systems.
Maybe one empire resembles another because of the nature of being an empire.
Actually, my suggestions were really more of a joke than anything. I can't believe people gave it "interesting" mods!
I'll admit, it's not a very funny joke... but it was late and I was tired.
Sometimes meetings are needed. But there are a few good ways to keep them good and short.
1) remove all chairs from the room
2) no snacks, water, coffee or anything else (and forbid people from bringing them in)
3) schedule all meetings at 4:30pm. Anyone who talks after 5:00pm has to pay overtime to everyone out of their own salary
4) each person can have 2 minutes to talk. Any time over that costs them $5/minute/person in attendance
5) each person can have 3 slides. Any slides over that costs $5/slide/person in attendance
My understanding is that tidal waves are seismic events that travel along the seafloor. They raise the water level only a few feet, and are essentially invisible until they hit shore and start climbing. Since icebergs float, it's not clear how they would suppress a shockwave happening below and around them.
I'm not a specialist in this in any way at all. But maybe this is a good analogy:
Smooth out 2 big comforters on your bed. Kneel on the side of the bed, and sweep your arm under the comforters from one end to the other. It's fairly easy because you only have to displace the comforters right around your arm.
Now put a piece of cardboard as big as your bed between the two comforters. This simulates iceburgs. Now slide your arm through. It will be harder because your arm has to displace a larger amount of comforter as it moves along - the cardboard kind of spreads out the force/displacement that your arm is causing.
That's the only thing I can think of.
And what if the impact was during the time antartica wasn't covered by ice?
That can't be! It was covered with ice when humans discovered it. Don't you know that the Earth never changed at all until humans came along and caused global warming? Geesh, geeks these days!
Some animals use the magnetic field for navigation.
I was listening to a "Living on Earth" episode recently where some scientists were studying a certain migratory bird (can't recall which (maybe terns?). Apparently this bird calibrates what it senses as the magnetic field with where the sun sets each night.
For the experiment, the birds were kept exposed at sunset to a magnetic field that was 90 degree off what it's supposed to be. When they let the birds out after dark, they flew the wrong direction by 90 degrees. The next night (after not being exposed to the artificial magnetic field), though, they flew the correct direction.
So, some animals will probably do okay during the flip.
Reminds me of a stupid joke about researches doing narcotics research on arctic birds... they left no tern unstoned.
How do you know what direction the pottery was facing when it was in the kiln? Wouldn't this only work for kilns found with pottery in them?
You're thinking in the long run.
I know it's off-topic, but THANK YOU! In my mind, that was a great compliment!
I try all the time to get the people at work to think long term about what they are doing. If we kludge the network together, or keep doing quick fixes, we'll be forever doing that.
many bidders will cash out early (a scenario they were hoping to limit via the Dutch Auction process)
I'm just beginning to study these things. So, given that they're just making their IPO, does it really matter if there are big fluxuations in their share price now?
I mean, suppose there are a bunch of people who try to reap the profits by selling their shares. It's not as if Google has to buy them back, so they're not out any money.
Now sure, this dumping will push the price down, and therefore the book value of the company. But, since they JUST did their IPO, would it be normal for them to go back and do another issue so soon? I would assume they have the cash they need and won't be hitting the capital markets any time terribly soon. By the time they do, the price should have stabilized some.
Am I missing something important?
Maybe I'm just wanting to believe "good things" about my favorite search engine, but I thought they were doing the Dutch Auction to try and spread the wealth and prevent a few connected CEOs from getting all the rewards of the IPO. That, rather than a concern about the value of their stock and the company.
I say we take them for the beer! I'll bet we could convert a few oil tankers...
Don't you know? The USA is the only country that matters. All the rest are there to serve our whim.
And if you get too uppity, we'll come bomb your ass and take out your government. Because we know all you stinky foreign-language speaking terrorists are hiding weapons of mass distruction under your matresses. But don't worry, when we've finally gotten rid of all the terrorists and made your country happy and peaceful, we'll give you a new government with sovereignty. I promise, you'll really like it!
And I know we're in the right because the one and only true God talks to George Bush and tells him what to do.
It's only free if you're sick or injured at 6:00am. Otherwise, you can just do your job and wait until tomorrow.
I was sick once while in the Army. I was nautious and feverish, but decided to "suck it up" and go to PT (Physical Training) in the morning rather than go to sick call. During that, I vomited and had diarreah (not very nice sight for the person holding my feet during situps). But, I couldn't go to sick call because it was already after 6:00am. I had to wait until the next day.
The fever had broken, but I was still having diarreah and nausea. They decided I was dehydrated and gave me an IV (saline solution, I think). They finally stopped after 4 units. Normally after one or two, you're supposed to have a nearly irrestable urge to pee as your body tries to expell the excess fluid. It never did happen. So they checked the sound of my lungs because sometimes it will leak into the lungs. Nope. I was just REALLy dehydrated. They sent me home to drink orange juice and then go back to work after lunch.
If that's free healthcare, then I really don't want much to do with it.
Oh yeah, I forgot when I first got there.. there's the Private who's been in the army for 3 months with a huge book. It's like one of those adventure books.... do you have a fever? Turn to page 329. Have you vomitted? turn to page 79. Have you had diarrhea? Hmmm... was it competely liquid or did it have little chunks? Chunks? Okay, that's page 512. Hmmm... it looks like you could be feeling sick. Fill out these forms and go wait until your name is called.
You should check out this movie: Supersize Me.
This guy ate nothing but supersize McDonald's for a month. He was sick, threw up a lot, gained tons of weight, and after he quit was never able to quite recover back to his normal athletic self.
that'll completely lose their non-corporate (personal user) interests and much of their corporate interest
I'm not so sure. Look at things like defrag. Sure, it works in windows and pretty much gets the job done. But, windows defrag has very few features compared to the norton utilities tool.
My guess is that MS anti-virus and firewalls will be pretty simple to use, but very feature-poor. Symantec and others will still have a market of the people who want better tools. The people happy with MS firewall/av probably would not have paid for a better product anyway.
I'm sure we'll probably find that the industrial revolution has been a terrible mistake and a misguided experiment.
It would be a great way if us westerners could figure out how to live comfortably with less energy, then find better ways to get that energy. I doubt that solar panels are the way - except maybe the ones that heat water for a house - not a bad idea. Our bodies are good at taking plants, who have captured solar energy, and turning into heat and motion. It would be great if we could somehow take advantage of these processes on a larger scale - without just burning plants.
If we survive ourselves, I imagine that the earth's population will actually shrink and people will live closer to the land. Somehow, we'll keep some good transportation technology and energy conversion technology. We won't have to burn things to get heat and light, and we'll have communications technology that doesn't require vast energy resources and toxic chemical to use.
The real problem we will have to address is greed. When is enough enough? Growing food using natural techniques and animals is not exciting, but is sitting in an office writing TPS reports exciting? Just because we CAN grow tons more food using lots of chemicals and pumping water into the desert, should we? Sure, someone makes a lot of money at this, but at what cost?
Now please, don't think I'm a luddite. I'm hoping that somehow we are able to keep the best - the ways we can communicate around the world, while getting rid of the worst: congestion, polution, etc.
Part of the problem is that humans like predictability. Look at battered women. Part of the reason they stay is that they know what to expect, and while it's shitty, getting out and getting away is scary because of the huge unknowns. Maybe it's the same thing as a society. We're comfortable with the predicatable polution and even gloabl warming. It's scary to think about giving up what we think we have, even the bad part of it, in exchange for what we don't know.
Most of the world's population lives off the land in relative poverty. It may be possible that this boom of "western civilization" is just a blip in human history - and we'll all dissolve back into living off our now polluted land.
It's sad to think that even without all the petrochemicals and GMO that there is enough food to feed the world, yet there are still people in famine. Is it a logistics problem? A political problem? I don't know.
I think part of the solution is to find a way to establish an equilibrium population for humankind that is not dependant on the simple abundance of the earth. That's frought with population booms and busts and is not a very comfortable way to live. But, then who decides how many people there should be? Who enforces it?
Maybe this is why SETI has been unsuccessful so far... maybe this is the big hurdle that civilizations have to overcome and not many can do it (assuming they're out there/have been out there). Maybe humans themselves will be a blip in earth history.
The answer eventually comes, I think, from figuring out what we, as a species, is supposed to accomplish (or should accomplish). There's got to be more than just acquiring wealth and power for whoever can get it. Religion tries to give us the "superordinate goal", but there's a lot of religions and conflicting goals.
Few people have faith that the people driving around them on their morning commute won't do stupid things and get them killed... so how do you expect them to have faith that humankind will find the right goals and the right ways to pursue them.
The pessimist in me says, "we're fucked". The optimist says, "I hope not."
While I am inclined to agree with you, who is the authority for this? Is there really one that can enforce it? If not, it's pretty much a moot point.
"Web" is appropriate in one sense as we are all interconnected via things like http, aim, ftp, irc, etc. Someone using the word "web" does not necessarily have to be shortening "world wide web". And even so, a majority of people using "web" interchangeably with "internet" pretty much makes it a defacto standard.
The world is full of dumb and ignorant people, and it sucks!
here was actually more depth to it than commonly perceived
Yeah, like co-ed showers!
Hey, I liked Moulin Rouge... but I also liked Star Trek Insurrection... well, parts of it.
... well, is a typical Bohemian story of impossible love ending badly. Sure, it was cheesy at times, but overall I felt is was welldone. I found the use of pop music interesting - particularly the Tango Roxanne. That was probably one of songs that was truly improved by the movie over the original (and I like the Police).
I think Moulin Rouge appeals to a limited set of people. I actually enjoyed the vivid overload of colors and wished I had seen that in the theatre. The story
Now a *bad* movie would be any of the Death Stalker movies - particularly the one with Queen Kong.
I'm definitely not arguing for continued use of petroleum as our fuel source. But I do question if burning things is the best way to get our fuel.
Essentially, we on earth have 2 ways of getting energy. We can either use up limited resources - fossil fuels, nuclear materials, etc. Or we can use the only source of energy that from the perspective of the earth is truely renewable - the sun.
The sun keeps pouring energy on the earth and it's ultimately the source of all of our energy. Coal and oil are simply captured sunlight from millions of ago (carbon and its chemical bonds are the storage device). As a planet, if we consume any more energy than is delivered by the sun, then we are on the path of ruin because it cannot be sustained.
So, what we really need to ask is this. Is taking the sunlight we have (a limited resource at any given time), converting it to plants that we then process into oil and then burn for heat energy the best way to get sunlight into a useable energy form?
Burning plant products is just one way of using this energy. There are several ways that tap recent energy sent by the sun:
hydroelectric - the sun's energy provides most of the energy needed to drive the evaporation part of the water cycle
wind power - again, the wind is powered by the sun's energy
plants - through photosynthesis, plants take the sun's energy and make chemical bonds
photoelectric cells... to name a few
Using each one has its own side effects and compromises. But we really need to pick the one that gives us the most efficient way of taking the sunlight we get and converting it into energy we can use.
In any case, if we as a planet cannot find a way to live within the daily energy budget of the sun (we have current "cash flows" and our capital resources (minerals, oil, etc). We cannot sustain ourselves by eating our capital for daily operations. So, we have to find the best way to make use of that daily cashflow. Otherwise we go bankrupt and the cockroaches get their chance.
And as for things like "long hot spells in the summer, forest fires, dead fish, water shortages, freak weather, etc", shit happens. These kinds of things can happen whether we cause them or not. Yes, our actions can contribute, and probably are right now. But humans are really whiney and get bitchy when things aren't what they expect. People go nuts just when traffic is bad. We need to suck it up and realize that the biosphere is a self-regulating system. And if we're not careful, we'll be self-regulated right off it.
In the grand scheme of things, it's all going to be incinerated when the sun expands anyway - and everything will be gone. So, if there's any point to anything, hopefully we'll see that there is benefit in making this world a nice place to live while it lasts. We're not doing very well, but we're only just now starting to see that we are not just individuals but an integral part of a living system.
with the number of fast food places, we should be able to get our fuel for next to nothing
That works right at this moment. But as soon as you add new valuable uses for both new and used vegetable oil, its value and its price will increase.
Places with used oil will start selling it, and producers of new oil will start producing fuel-grade oil. Until the overall amount of oil production is increased, its price will be pushed up. Everything using vegetable oil will cost more. Eventually vegetable oil production will increase, but at what cost? More fertilizer (made from petroleum?)? Less land used for food crops (raising price of food)? An equilibrium will eventually be found, but even then, the price for vegetable oil will be higher.
Even in economics, you can't get something for nothing.
The long term question becomes "is it better to burn vegetable oil for fuel when compared to petroleum?" One advantage is that the carbon released into the atmosphere from burning was only recently trapped out of the atmosphere (where petroleum was trapped millions of years ago).
One should also ask if there are more efficient ways to take today's sunlight and turn it into locomtion?
You really only hear on the news about the cars that crashed the people who were injured and killed. You rarely hear about the thousands or millions who managed to drive to and from work safely.
I think it's the same here. Sure there might be people who think SP2 did the best thing for their computer ever. But I imagine it's either... "it didn't break anything", or the range from "slowed me down" to "crashed everything".
Sure, I'm interested to know how many people had more problems, but I'm much more interested to hear what problems there were.
The irony would be amusing if it weren't so sad.
So I guess we shouldn't teach our kids that stealing is wrong. Right? Wrong.
No, we SHOULD teach our children in schools that stealing is wrong. But it should be a part of the approved curriculum and school guidelines. It should NOT be through some political group coming in and spewing their own agenda. If you let the BSA in, who else might you have to let in?
School districts and state boards of eduction pay highly trained people to develop curriculum by which the children are taught. Let them do their jobs. If you don't think copyright is being covered, take it up with your school board.
If you don't trust the board and curriculum developers, then you have bigger problems. But letting private political organizations into schools to push their agenda is not the solution.
The problem is that we (as a public) pay people to develop curriculum and establish benchmarks and goals for our students to learn from and achieve. This is basically allowing a political group to come in and teach their own program, interrupting what the teachers may need to be teaching.
Maybe learning about copyright law is a good thing, but it should be a part of the developed curriculum and part of what students are held accountable for. What other groups are you willing to let force their way into a school with a cute cartoon character? The republican party? The democrats? Christian Scientists? Skinheads? The North Carolina Quilting Association?
This kind of thing simply does not belong in the classroom because outside parties should not be pushing their agendas in the classroom. If they want their lessons taught, they should present them to the bodies involved in developing curriculumm, which through school boards, represent the people.
I may be blowing smoke, but don't some unix systems only take the first 8 characters to generate the password hash? If so, then:
I borrowed all the books from the library! and red them both
would be the same as:
I borrow
It seems like I was once on a system like that. It would accept longer passwords, but it was only the first x characters that were relevant.