We definitely need new ideas. The two party system as it stands has just resulted in progressive extremism. Maybe it's time to switch to a primary/runoff system like that used in France? That is, the first round is a many-candidate ballot, and the top two vote-getters go to the runoff to decide who wins. That would greatly increase the chances for a third party candidate. Unfortunately, the entrenched politicians would have to approve of such an idea by enacting appropriate laws, so it will never happen.
I lived in Atlanta, Georgia from 1998-2004, and moved to Augusta, GA a couple months ago. To say that the Georgia election was "stolen" neglects that Georgia has heeled way to the right politically over the last 5 years or so, to the point where the teachers' union did not endorse the Democrats in 2002 (I do not think they went so far as to endorse Republican candidates, but the damage was done). To say that Democrats should always win traditionally Democratic districts (or groups, e.g. teachers) neglects harsh reality: as long as they rest on their laurels, thinking they will always win the traditional districts (e.g., downtown Atlanta), they will be very vulnerable to the intense Republican smear machine that is grinding away here. This, more than anything, is why Republicans are gaining ground. To blame election rigging smacks of desparation: we used punch cards in 1998 and 2000, and look how well those worked in Florida! It's just as easy to rig punch cards as electronic voting machines, just the former is slightly more labor intensive. Plus, gas prices are down again, and there have been few military casualties in Iraq lately, so unless the Democratic party starts hammering on their traditional domestic issues (labor, education, health care), they will lose again, at least in Georgia.
Still, several Georgia counties were experimenting with ScanTron ballots prior to the statewide Diebold deal. This system has several advantages; notbaly, there is a paper trail. On the whole, I'd feel a little better if that is the system they had gone with for statewide electronic voting.
Agreed, nuclear is the way to go; fixed, large-scale operations are the biggest problem anyways, in my opinion. Coal power contributes something like 50% of CO2 emissions anyways, as well as substantial nitrogen oxide and sulfur oxide emissions, not to mention mercury and other heavy metal waste (including uranium and thorium!), so why not go after them? I think a big part of the problem is that the modern environmental movement is largely derived from the anti-nuclear movement of the 70's, and rolling back their earliest success is the worst possible option to the current eco-leadership. Nobody likes to admit they are wrong, so we will all pay the price for it at the gas pump (increased fuel taxes to decrease consumption are the most likely outcome, IMO) and in terms of overall environmental quality. I would like to see the construction of new nuclear reactors (preferably passive designs like CANDU), but it will be years before there is enough turnover in the environmental movement and government for a new generation with new ideas to address the problem.
Oh, for the record, one US gallon of gas yields roughly 35 kWh, which costs about $3 at the electric utility price in my area. Nuclear would probably bring this cost down somewhat, and efficiendy would improve with new designs that result in a lighter car (work being a function of mass, and all that). Materials research would also give us the storage capacity needed to efficiently power an electric car -- Google or search Slashdot for NessCap and read about new "ultracapacitors", which will probably be the wave of the future for stored power systems.
Shouldn't we focus on building cleaner, safer atomic power for civilian use? I'm shocked there was the potilical willpower to build more weapons when we can't build a CANDU electric plant or develop reprocessing or other waste reduction technology. But why fight global warming when you can start a second global arms race?
IIRC ethanol can be blended into regular fuel up to 15% and be used in cars already on the road in the USA, while an 85% ethanol/15% gasoline (E85) can be used in "flex-fuel" vehicles that can be purchased from most manufacturers on request. It's only a stopgap, because ethanol is currently expensive to produce. This may change with biotech to improve fermentation, as well as a shift in US trade policy to facilitate the import of sugar cane, a much better starting material for fermentation (or just import the ethanol!)
Still, I believe the biggest limitation is, even assuming moderate improvements in conservation and efficiency, there isn't enough land available to produce the corn/beets/sugarcane needed. Plus, the biggest consumers are commercial (i.e., diesel) vehicles -- we might be better off investing in carbon-neutral catalytic solutions like Changing World Technologies or AlphaKat, which can use a wide variety of biomass as input and produce diesel fuel.
This is the same UN that holds a forum on Internet governance in a country that has secret police who arrest people who use the Internet to criticize the government.
What you say is completely true. You are leaving out several other important factors. Notably, when do you use most of the electricity? As I type this, it's dark outside. The shortcoming of solar for home use is having to store it for when you need it, which requires (currently) costly and environmentally unfriendly lead-acid or nickel cells. There is the initial startup cost, but as you note, you can pay for it by selling back power during the day when you are likely not home. It might take a long time unless electricity costs in your area are really high. The company cited here might make it work, though, as their product page claims manufacturing costs less than $2/watt (see http://www.daystartech.com/product.htm, bottom of page), which would be competitive with large-scale sources.
The issue with alternatives is commercial use. It takes a lot of energy to make stuff, and the energy supply must be consistent. Wind, solar, and lately hydroelectric have considerable shortcomings, and coal and natural gas are the path of least resistance in most jurisdictions. Considering the relative risk of asthma from particulates, acid rain from NOx and SOx emissions, radiation from ash residue from coal -- not to mention the enormous amount of diesel fuel spent moving around fossil fuels -- on the whole, I'd go with nuclear. Cheap fission is here; see, for example, http://www.nuclearfaq.ca/; the issue is the cost of dealing with legal objections raised by "concerned" environmentalists, which delay and prevent siting, construction, fueling, operation, all of which drive up cost.
Circling back to home use, don't forget to switch off the heat/AC on your way to work, and replace your incandescent and halogen bulbs with compact fluorescent light bulbs -- I did, they have improved considerably in terms of price and light quality.
We wouldn't have to worry as much about global warming if the USA would build more nuclear power plants, and allow Westinghouse (or was it GE?) to build some in China. But Bush can't (even though it is part of his official platform this year!), thanks to Democrats, and Kerry won't, because he is a Democrat. Further, we could use ethanol for fuel, but even Bill Clinton lacked the political karma to impose that, though at least he did get Congress to mandate the development of E85 and M85 vehicles that run on 85% alcohol (Ethanol or Methanol) as part of the 1993 Energy Policy Act. Unfortunately, "development" and "widespread mandatory deployment" are quite different things...
I can see how this would be a convenient way to steal credit card info -- especially coupled with a card printer like you see at Sam's Club. Even the name, "Chameleon", implies some level of shadiness.
Come now, everyone knows that "Anheuser" changed his name to "Ashcroft" so news anchors would be able to pronounce it correctly, and "Busch" is just a clever misspelling to throw off the SEC.:)
But seriously, all that's new here is that the manufacturer is taking a more active role in tracking distribution. This is particularly important because, quality aside, beer is a perishable product, and Budweiser runs quite a few breweries and distribution centers and would therefore benefit from good knowledge on when and where to produce and distribute beer.
As previously and repeatedly noted, it's the grocery stores that are tracking YOU. Inventory control down to individual item on the store shelf is nothing new; Target and Wal-Mart/Sam's Club have no doubt been tracking exact item stock and quantity sales per store for years.
I would like to see space exploration undertaken by the private sector by projects like X-Prize. They will have more incentive to build "smaller, faster, cheaper, better", as they say. My input will be to request reduced restriction on people and companies who want to get into space.
NASA is no longer so interested in "big science" as "big bureaucracy" and maintaining a certain bottom line for employees and contractors. I think this is why the space shuttle has not been replaced and ISS has not been abandoned, I mean, outsourced to the international community.
I am particularly opposed to continued government investment in space until they can get working high-speed passenger rail from Washington, DC to Boston!!!
From the C&D, their case appears to have one invalid point and valid point:
"Your web site improperly duplicates the distinctive and proprietary overall look and feel of Google's website"
Invalid. Cases based on "look and feel" alone have been shot down, stemming back to Borland vs. Lotus. It might be a different story if they are running Google search code.
including Google's trade dress and the GOOGLE logo.
Logos and names are legitimately protected by copyright and trademark, and Google has a right to defend their name and logo.
It's hardly a parody, but an attempt to capitalize on a play on Google's name. However, they should be able to get off the hook just by changing name and logo.
"...an unauthorized version of UNIX that is structured, assembled and designed to be technologically indistinguishable from UNIX..."
Technologically indistinguishable? Does SCO own POSIX and other standards now? Linux looks like UNIX by complying with the same standards with which UNIX complies.
If they are arguing because Linux is based on the same design and standards as UNIX, and therefore "looks and feels" like UNIX, then they are right, Linux does look and feel like UNIX. However, Borland's QuattroPro looked like and worked like Lotus 1-2-3, and look how that case turned out. Granted, C library functions and kernel routines run a little deeper than UI, but I think the principle is similar. They cannot win unless they can show some copied source code, something they have not done and probably cannot do.
There are new designs out there. Check out, for example, the pebble bed modular reactor (PBMR). A Web search on CANDU will turn up another design. Unfortunately, for political and economic reasons stated in a parent post, these will probably never be developed in the USA, even if the above-mentioned PBMR is built in South Africa as planned. We're going in the wrong direction; a program at Argonne National Laboratory to reduce atomic waste by transmutation was scrapped by Al Gore and company in 1995, and G.W.Bush's energy plan revolves almost entirely on developing natural gas and oil resources with only token mention of atomic, solar and wind energy.
Why jump ship? This article is misleading, as the September 2003 Netcraft survey shows an increase in the number of Apache sites, and decrease in IIS sites. So a few Linux sites migrated; not all managers will support Linux. Overall, Apache on UNIX is going strong.
Judges are appointed to interpret the US Constitution, the United States Code, and the Code of Federal Regulations as currently written in the books, not the "will" of a mob, regardless how large. If you're one of the 50 million people who really want this (yes, I'm one of them), look up your congresspersons and senators and ask that the law be changed; fax or call your rep, this will have more impact than e-mail.
Now, it would be nice if the FCC would use (rather, relax) their police power over the airwaves and allocate more bandwidth for wireless networks, and also relax power limits so we could build high-speed wireless networks (something like the coast-to-coast net mentioned here earlier, or just to share a connection in the local area). But that would allow more competition in the communications and media markets so don't expect it to happen anytime soon.
I'm impressed. I wonder if this company also entered the X-Prize contest.
The TransOrbital web site doesn't state what the total weight of their spacecraft. It's interesting that they chose to work with the former Soviet space program (which is probably why they really needed permission. We do have rules about technology export). They say it's a "microspacecraft" -- wonder why they're not launching using a Pegasus rocket? Is it just cheaper (or perhaps less paperwork!) to use a Russian rocket? Hopefully this will open up new interest in space, better launch vehicles, etc.
BTW, regarding proof of past Moon shots and this one, just watch at night for the rocket flares during orbital maneuvers. You can triangulate the distance this way. Someone out there did this for a later Apoolo mission -- I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to visit Google and learn more.:)
Remember folks who are US citizens, Berman (D-CA) and Coble (R-NC) are up for election, as are the other 433 members of the House. Send a message if you're in their district. Berman, in particular, is owned by the entertainment industry, with over $100K from Disney, AOL-TW, Sony, DreamWorks, etc.
Coble, on the other hand, sold out for $5734 from the RIAA, according to www.opensecrets.org. I would've thought my rights would cost more than that.
There has been talk about locating a semiconductor research center for years. Land is cheap, it's an easy drive to Boston and NYC (and IBM's HQ in Armonk, as noted). Plus, you have a reliable supply of labor (full-time and co-op) from nearby engineering school RPI (wonder why they're not involved?)
Slashdot Mirror
We definitely need new ideas. The two party system as it stands has just resulted in progressive extremism. Maybe it's time to switch to a primary/runoff system like that used in France? That is, the first round is a many-candidate ballot, and the top two vote-getters go to the runoff to decide who wins. That would greatly increase the chances for a third party candidate. Unfortunately, the entrenched politicians would have to approve of such an idea by enacting appropriate laws, so it will never happen.
I lived in Atlanta, Georgia from 1998-2004, and moved to Augusta, GA a couple months ago. To say that the Georgia election was "stolen" neglects that Georgia has heeled way to the right politically over the last 5 years or so, to the point where the teachers' union did not endorse the Democrats in 2002 (I do not think they went so far as to endorse Republican candidates, but the damage was done). To say that Democrats should always win traditionally Democratic districts (or groups, e.g. teachers) neglects harsh reality: as long as they rest on their laurels, thinking they will always win the traditional districts (e.g., downtown Atlanta), they will be very vulnerable to the intense Republican smear machine that is grinding away here. This, more than anything, is why Republicans are gaining ground. To blame election rigging smacks of desparation: we used punch cards in 1998 and 2000, and look how well those worked in Florida! It's just as easy to rig punch cards as electronic voting machines, just the former is slightly more labor intensive. Plus, gas prices are down again, and there have been few military casualties in Iraq lately, so unless the Democratic party starts hammering on their traditional domestic issues (labor, education, health care), they will lose again, at least in Georgia.
Still, several Georgia counties were experimenting with ScanTron ballots prior to the statewide Diebold deal. This system has several advantages; notbaly, there is a paper trail. On the whole, I'd feel a little better if that is the system they had gone with for statewide electronic voting.
Agreed, nuclear is the way to go; fixed, large-scale operations are the biggest problem anyways, in my opinion. Coal power contributes something like 50% of CO2 emissions anyways, as well as substantial nitrogen oxide and sulfur oxide emissions, not to mention mercury and other heavy metal waste (including uranium and thorium!), so why not go after them? I think a big part of the problem is that the modern environmental movement is largely derived from the anti-nuclear movement of the 70's, and rolling back their earliest success is the worst possible option to the current eco-leadership. Nobody likes to admit they are wrong, so we will all pay the price for it at the gas pump (increased fuel taxes to decrease consumption are the most likely outcome, IMO) and in terms of overall environmental quality. I would like to see the construction of new nuclear reactors (preferably passive designs like CANDU), but it will be years before there is enough turnover in the environmental movement and government for a new generation with new ideas to address the problem.
Oh, for the record, one US gallon of gas yields roughly 35 kWh, which costs about $3 at the electric utility price in my area. Nuclear would probably bring this cost down somewhat, and efficiendy would improve with new designs that result in a lighter car (work being a function of mass, and all that). Materials research would also give us the storage capacity needed to efficiently power an electric car -- Google or search Slashdot for NessCap and read about new "ultracapacitors", which will probably be the wave of the future for stored power systems.
Shouldn't we focus on building cleaner, safer atomic power for civilian use? I'm shocked there was the potilical willpower to build more weapons when we can't build a CANDU electric plant or develop reprocessing or other waste reduction technology. But why fight global warming when you can start a second global arms race?
IIRC ethanol can be blended into regular fuel up to 15% and be used in cars already on the road in the USA, while an 85% ethanol/15% gasoline (E85) can be used in "flex-fuel" vehicles that can be purchased from most manufacturers on request. It's only a stopgap, because ethanol is currently expensive to produce. This may change with biotech to improve fermentation, as well as a shift in US trade policy to facilitate the import of sugar cane, a much better starting material for fermentation (or just import the ethanol!)
Still, I believe the biggest limitation is, even assuming moderate improvements in conservation and efficiency, there isn't enough land available to produce the corn/beets/sugarcane needed. Plus, the biggest consumers are commercial (i.e., diesel) vehicles -- we might be better off investing in carbon-neutral catalytic solutions like Changing World Technologies or AlphaKat, which can use a wide variety of biomass as input and produce diesel fuel.
This is the same UN that holds a forum on Internet governance in a country that has secret police who arrest people who use the Internet to criticize the government.
I suppose this is to be expected, then...
What you say is completely true. You are leaving out several other important factors. Notably, when do you use most of the electricity? As I type this, it's dark outside. The shortcoming of solar for home use is having to store it for when you need it, which requires (currently) costly and environmentally unfriendly lead-acid or nickel cells. There is the initial startup cost, but as you note, you can pay for it by selling back power during the day when you are likely not home. It might take a long time unless electricity costs in your area are really high. The company cited here might make it work, though, as their product page claims manufacturing costs less than $2/watt (see http://www.daystartech.com/product.htm, bottom of page), which would be competitive with large-scale sources.
The issue with alternatives is commercial use. It takes a lot of energy to make stuff, and the energy supply must be consistent. Wind, solar, and lately hydroelectric have considerable shortcomings, and coal and natural gas are the path of least resistance in most jurisdictions. Considering the relative risk of asthma from particulates, acid rain from NOx and SOx emissions, radiation from ash residue from coal -- not to mention the enormous amount of diesel fuel spent moving around fossil fuels -- on the whole, I'd go with nuclear. Cheap fission is here; see, for example, http://www.nuclearfaq.ca/; the issue is the cost of dealing with legal objections raised by "concerned" environmentalists, which delay and prevent siting, construction, fueling, operation, all of which drive up cost.
Circling back to home use, don't forget to switch off the heat/AC on your way to work, and replace your incandescent and halogen bulbs with compact fluorescent light bulbs -- I did, they have improved considerably in terms of price and light quality.
We wouldn't have to worry as much about global warming if the USA would build more nuclear power plants, and allow Westinghouse (or was it GE?) to build some in China. But Bush can't (even though it is part of his official platform this year!), thanks to Democrats, and Kerry won't, because he is a Democrat. Further, we could use ethanol for fuel, but even Bill Clinton lacked the political karma to impose that, though at least he did get Congress to mandate the development of E85 and M85 vehicles that run on 85% alcohol (Ethanol or Methanol) as part of the 1993 Energy Policy Act. Unfortunately, "development" and "widespread mandatory deployment" are quite different things...
I can see how this would be a convenient way to steal credit card info -- especially coupled with a card printer like you see at Sam's Club. Even the name, "Chameleon", implies some level of shadiness.
Come now, everyone knows that "Anheuser" changed his name to "Ashcroft" so news anchors would be able to pronounce it correctly, and "Busch" is just a clever misspelling to throw off the SEC. :)
But seriously, all that's new here is that the manufacturer is taking a more active role in tracking distribution. This is particularly important because, quality aside, beer is a perishable product, and Budweiser runs quite a few breweries and distribution centers and would therefore benefit from good knowledge on when and where to produce and distribute beer.
As previously and repeatedly noted, it's the grocery stores that are tracking YOU. Inventory control down to individual item on the store shelf is nothing new; Target and Wal-Mart/Sam's Club have no doubt been tracking exact item stock and quantity sales per store for years.
I would like to see space exploration undertaken by the private sector by projects like X-Prize. They will have more incentive to build "smaller, faster, cheaper, better", as they say. My input will be to request reduced restriction on people and companies who want to get into space.
NASA is no longer so interested in "big science" as "big bureaucracy" and maintaining a certain bottom line for employees and contractors. I think this is why the space shuttle has not been replaced and ISS has not been abandoned, I mean, outsourced to the international community.
I am particularly opposed to continued government investment in space until they can get working high-speed passenger rail from Washington, DC to Boston!!!
From the C&D, their case appears to have one invalid point and valid point:
"Your web site improperly duplicates the distinctive and proprietary overall look and feel of Google's website"
Invalid. Cases based on "look and feel" alone have been shot down, stemming back to Borland vs. Lotus. It might be a different story if they are running Google search code.
including Google's trade dress and the GOOGLE logo.
Logos and names are legitimately protected by copyright and trademark, and Google has a right to defend their name and logo.
It's hardly a parody, but an attempt to capitalize on a play on Google's name. However, they should be able to get off the hook just by changing name and logo.
Gordon Moore, as in Moore's law, was co-founder of Intel. So one might say they are staying true to their roots...
"...an unauthorized version of UNIX that is structured, assembled and designed to be technologically indistinguishable from UNIX..."
Technologically indistinguishable? Does SCO own POSIX and other standards now? Linux looks like UNIX by complying with the same standards with which UNIX complies.
If they are arguing because Linux is based on the same design and standards as UNIX, and therefore "looks and feels" like UNIX, then they are right, Linux does look and feel like UNIX. However, Borland's QuattroPro looked like and worked like Lotus 1-2-3, and look how that case turned out. Granted, C library functions and kernel routines run a little deeper than UI, but I think the principle is similar. They cannot win unless they can show some copied source code, something they have not done and probably cannot do.
There are new designs out there. Check out, for example, the pebble bed modular reactor (PBMR). A Web search on CANDU will turn up another design. Unfortunately, for political and economic reasons stated in a parent post, these will probably never be developed in the USA, even if the above-mentioned PBMR is built in South Africa as planned. We're going in the wrong direction; a program at Argonne National Laboratory to reduce atomic waste by transmutation was scrapped by Al Gore and company in 1995, and G.W.Bush's energy plan revolves almost entirely on developing natural gas and oil resources with only token mention of atomic, solar and wind energy.
Why jump ship? This article is misleading, as the September 2003 Netcraft survey shows an increase in the number of Apache sites, and decrease in IIS sites. So a few Linux sites migrated; not all managers will support Linux. Overall, Apache on UNIX is going strong.
Judges are appointed to interpret the US Constitution, the United States Code, and the Code of Federal Regulations as currently written in the books, not the "will" of a mob, regardless how large. If you're one of the 50 million people who really want this (yes, I'm one of them), look up your congresspersons and senators and ask that the law be changed; fax or call your rep, this will have more impact than e-mail.
Now, it would be nice if the FCC would use (rather, relax) their police power over the airwaves and allocate more bandwidth for wireless networks, and also relax power limits so we could build high-speed wireless networks (something like the coast-to-coast net mentioned here earlier, or just to share a connection in the local area). But that would allow more competition in the communications and media markets so don't expect it to happen anytime soon.
I think the goal for this is to be above the horizon.
It's an interesting idea though.
The CEO even showed off the old school NV1 with 1MB of ram!
:)
1 MB RAM is "old school" now? Gosh, I'm old... when I started working, we still supported CGA and EGA cards.
I bet some of you out there remember before then.
I'm impressed. I wonder if this company also entered the X-Prize contest.
:)
The TransOrbital web site doesn't state what the total weight of their spacecraft. It's interesting that they chose to work with the former Soviet space program (which is probably why they really needed permission. We do have rules about technology export). They say it's a "microspacecraft" -- wonder why they're not launching using a Pegasus rocket? Is it just cheaper (or perhaps less paperwork!) to use a Russian rocket?
Hopefully this will open up new interest in space, better launch vehicles, etc.
BTW, regarding proof of past Moon shots and this one, just watch at night for the rocket flares during orbital maneuvers. You can triangulate the distance this way. Someone out there did this for a later Apoolo mission -- I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to visit Google and learn more.
Remember folks who are US citizens, Berman (D-CA) and Coble (R-NC) are up for election, as are the other 433 members of the House. Send a message if you're in their district. Berman, in particular, is owned by the entertainment industry, with over $100K from Disney, AOL-TW, Sony, DreamWorks, etc.
Coble, on the other hand, sold out for $5734 from the RIAA, according to www.opensecrets.org. I would've thought my rights would cost more than that.
There has been talk about locating a semiconductor research center for years. Land is cheap, it's an easy drive to Boston and NYC (and IBM's HQ in Armonk, as noted). Plus, you have a reliable supply of labor (full-time and co-op) from nearby engineering school RPI (wonder why they're not involved?)
Microsoft's patent on DRM technology will prevent anyone else from developing a similar scheme.
Just have to keep this one bogged down in the courts...
How long will it be before people start calling it "Nevercrack Nights" or similar :)
Congratulations to Bioware on a job (hopefully!) well done. I'm looking forward for it.