Sort of tangential but interesting. If you seed a tank full of water with the bacteria, wouldnt they simply reproduce in fairly short order? Why would it be necessary to even filter out the algae? Just pump the cellulose rich fluid into a reactor along with whatever bug you're going to use to to ferment the cellulose & sugar into ethanol then somehow (distillation?) separate the ethanol. The remaining sludge would probably have some value, too.
Heh. Waste cellulosic material isn't always waste. The cyanobacteria idea is the first I've heard that starts to make sense. As I understand it, all you basically have to do is put some of the soup out in the sun and it produces cellulose gel. Cellulose is a carbohydrate chain; does this mean that it sucks CO2 out of the air in the process? Although this would be a net zero gain/loss on CO2, at least it could reduce the whole sucking carbon out of the ground and spewing it into the air problem we have now.
Remember that the point of attending a university is to get a *well rounded* education. A university is not a technical school and (surprise!) most of life is not programming. One of the most valuable skills you can gain is the ability to express yourself clearly, something that will serve you well regardless of your eventual choice of career.
There is a strong possibility, even a probability that you will not be programming for your entire life and you will need a skill set that serves you far beyond the technical focus of your major. As someone with some (limited) experience interviewing job candidates, IMO the ability to be thoughtful and articulate will serve better than narrow technical skill.
You have the rest of your life to gain technical skills, which in CS are constantly changing. Don't train yourself to be a specific cog in a machine, instead try to gain the ability to handle a wider variety of tasks.
These guys have the manufacturing capability to make anything; what's lacking is official will to enforce IP. Ironic isn't it? The Chinese government's official line is that they won't do anything to jeopardize economic growth. The fact is the government is rolling in cash - over $1 TRILLION in foreign reserves (the exact opposite of a national debt) and hold big chunks of US Gov't debt. Probably because of this, there also seems to be no real will among western governments to call them on it, despite increasing industry opposition.
Basically the Chinese have the world by the balls and they know it. I for one welcome our new Chinese overlords, provided I can has pork fried rice.
BTW I'm not racist and certainly the Chinese have the right to economic development. I just think it's time they started playing by the rules.
If farmers that choose not to use the engineered seed can't produce enough per acre to profit at market prices, their only option is to use the patented products. This in and of itself isn't a bad thing in a truly free and competitive market. The trouble is, monsanto and others have been very heavy handed about protecting their IP. Again this isnt a problem in a free and competitive market. The problem is that monsanto is using tactics to insure that this is never the case.
Truth is, the debate over net neutrality has glossed over the fact that we never really had it. You pay to play and for cost, FIOS>cable>dsl>dialup. How fast do you want your data? Pay up. Netzero offered free dialup for years.
We need to stop ranting and instead start discussing ways to protect freedom of information and privacy. ISP's have a very real problem in that bandwidth is not free and a small percentage of users do in fact use the majority of bandwidth. The real problem is more about truth in advertising. We share bandwidth and the routers can only handle so much traffic.
A simple scheme like throttling my connection by default while allowing me to temporarily increase it for large downloads would be fine. I don't want my downloads constantly slowed to a crawl because of my neighbors addiction to hi rez video porn. I could get my linux ISO's quickly while he would just have to wait for his constant bittorrent of flesh.
Monsanto and others have been pursuing this type of policy for years. The farmers get caught because the yields really are better and can't compete as well if they don't buy the patented products. Although I think Monsanto ought to be able to profit from their research, the tactics they use are questionable at best. The trouble is that if congress ever does seriously consider patent reform, they'll do it in a half assed manner that compounds rather than solved the problems.
actually, my specific complaint is more about the lack of an internal ide or sata interface; then you could slap in any size HDD you wanted. I would have used an EEE for storing music and picture files, as well as web surfing/email. Great size for carrying around and everyday use.
Um, no. Supply and demand sets the price. We have plenty of *oil reserves* worldwide at least, but since the cartels controlling supply keeps production artificially low, oil prices stay artificially high. There's no real reason why this would ever change.
As was previously pointed out, US gasoline production capacity is exceeded by demand. The oil companies like this because they like high prices. Demand is not all that flexible so it virtually guarantees big profits. Additionally, the risk and cost associated with new refinery construction is a big disincentive. Nobody really wants a new refinery built in their neighborhood, guaranteeing endless litigation,environmental studies, etc..
While it's true that your average politician doesn't give a damn where the oil comes from if it's cheap, nobody really wants to try getting re-elected during a recession. Besides, why should the other countries care about anything but a good price for their exports? Certainly if we *could* find some technology that would allow us to "eliminate dependence of foreign oil", politicians would jump on it. Your blanket statement that politicians don't want to reduce this dependence doesn't make any sense; they predictably do whatever will help reelection. As the recent stock market fluctuations have shown, market value is in large part psychological. Sometimes mouthing all the right words is what needs to happen in order to prevent irrational price changes.
In any case, we weren't discussing political posturing but the reasons for high oil and gasoline prices. Not that the politics aren't interesting, but you're changing topics midstream.
I can actually *remember* the lines to fill up . All the arguments about energy policy here are bunk except for one; cost, pure and simple. With oil, you stick a big straw in the ground and suck it out, then boil it to break it down into gas and stuff. Then you put it in your car and burn it. Nothing else is that cheap or simple and has as much energy per gallon.
The hidden advantage of the current prices is that other technologies become economically viable for development. Besides, there's plenty of OIL right now - current high gas prices are due to a relative lack of refining capacity. I'd bet that when gas hits $5 a gallon in the US, suddenly new refineries will spring up, but also more alternate energy sources will become competitive. THIS IS THE KEY. Once it's really worth it to try out new technologies (a prius does not yet save you money in terms of total cost of ownership), we hit critical mass for research and funding and the market takes care of the rest. Economies of scale will reduce the costs and after a while oil isn't all that profitable, especially when the easily pumped deposits dwindle and it's more expensive to suck it out of the ground.
The darkly comedic stumblings of ICANN just make a better case for continued government oversight. The simple fact is that the purpose of any business is to make a profit. The methods used to do so vary, but generally stay within reason when real market competition exists. ICANN has no competition and plays an important role in regulating the registrar market. It's actual functioning has been less like a regulatory agency and more like an enabler of abuse. Privatization will solve nothing.
Even if they start flexing a little muscle I sincerely doubt they can be counted on in the long run.
Same here, except I have comcast now and cant wait to ditch them. A very simple solution would be to make throttling default, with some very easy way of turning it temporarily off. I'd be fine with this.
Heh. Carly was a complete idiot. Didn't one of the Hewletts (or maybe it was a Packard) fight her tooth and nail from the board or directors? She practically kills the R&D dept - one of HP's crown jewels, then she wanted to sell cross branded Ipods. Perhaps she thought she was running Walmart?
I think the reason these numbskulls get the big packages is because they are slick enough to be able to legally prove they did their jobs carrying out the will of the majority of the board of directors. Pass the blame, collect the buck. In the few instances where I had inside information on the departure of upper management, the concensus was that it was cheaper to pay them to leave than to force them out. A protracted legal battle airing the dirty laundry is bad for stock value.
Well, if you believe the fluff coming out of Redmond, this might be a reasonable way to proceed. There have been countless articles over the years on how best to break from the old x86 legacy base. Processors are at a point where they can run legacy apps on VM's with reasonable performance. However, that's probably not the biggest issue they face.
Vista did so many things wrong - focus on looks (aero) rather than functionality, catering to the DRM crowd, poor driver support and general bloat. MS has a built in market advantage in terms of the established user base. If they focus on pleasing the corporate users by creating a stable, secure and slim OS that takes advantage of the capabilities of the newer hardware, they ought to do ok in the home user market as well. Just focus on getting the best performance out of the hardware, make it stable, secure, easy to use, administer and to code for. The corporate base doesn't WANT to change unless they have a clear cut reason to do so and neither does the average home user.
MS won't need to worry about Apple or Linux stealing their pie if they stop trying to screw their user base and cater to it instead. Forget DRM, forget forced upgrades. Build it and they will come, because windows is what most people already know. Competing ought to be easy.
Quality of life is a valid reason for drinking coffee, etc.. There are a bunch of poor saps out there starving themselves because of some study showing that mice on a severely calorie restricted diet live 50% longer. Personally I'd prefer laughing from my deathbed while eating an ice cream sundae, but that's just me. Seriously, do these nitwits really believe this finding is directly transferrable from mice to humans? How about at least waiting for a study involving actual primates? How about enjoying your life? Scallops wrapped in bacon anyone?
Coffee is a great example: a while back someone did a meta analysis and found the studies were basically a wash. Do what you want in moderation. I like to roast my own coffee, grind it immediately prior to brewing, french press it nice and strong and drink it with a lot of cream but no sugar. I don't drink every day but when I do I want to really enjoy it.
Besides, whats the point of indulging if you dont indulge? Diet ice cream? Give me a break!
You comments have been noted. In fact I have 10 shiny new mod points just waiting for you, "zsau" and it will be easy to find you on another thread....MUAHAHAHAHA!!!
This is so unfortunately true. Health fads are all about misinterpretation of the available data, and incomplete data for that matter. Every time there's some news item about the supposed health benefits of something, some idiot takes it to an extreme. Shortly thereafter conflicting data is released and suddenly everything we thought we knew was wrong. Eggs used to be heathy, then they were poisonous, now they're healthy again.
Nobody is going to live forever because of some nutritional change. If you eat a wide variety of fresh unprocessed foods you'll do fine. Everything in moderation.
Slashdot Mirror
Sort of tangential but interesting. If you seed a tank full of water with the bacteria, wouldnt they simply reproduce in fairly short order? Why would it be necessary to even filter out the algae? Just pump the cellulose rich fluid into a reactor along with whatever bug you're going to use to to ferment the cellulose & sugar into ethanol then somehow (distillation?) separate the ethanol. The remaining sludge would probably have some value, too.
Um, no...Cyan is a COLOR, the color your face will turn if you ingest *cyanide*.
Heh. Waste cellulosic material isn't always waste. The cyanobacteria idea is the first I've heard that starts to make sense. As I understand it, all you basically have to do is put some of the soup out in the sun and it produces cellulose gel. Cellulose is a carbohydrate chain; does this mean that it sucks CO2 out of the air in the process? Although this would be a net zero gain/loss on CO2, at least it could reduce the whole sucking carbon out of the ground and spewing it into the air problem we have now.
Agree. And don't forget the chinese have been the beacons of freedom for the last 60 years, spreading democracy and human rights at every turn.
Remember that the point of attending a university is to get a *well rounded* education. A university is not a technical school and (surprise!) most of life is not programming. One of the most valuable skills you can gain is the ability to express yourself clearly, something that will serve you well regardless of your eventual choice of career.
There is a strong possibility, even a probability that you will not be programming for your entire life and you will need a skill set that serves you far beyond the technical focus of your major. As someone with some (limited) experience interviewing job candidates, IMO the ability to be thoughtful and articulate will serve better than narrow technical skill.
You have the rest of your life to gain technical skills, which in CS are constantly changing. Don't train yourself to be a specific cog in a machine, instead try to gain the ability to handle a wider variety of tasks.
These guys have the manufacturing capability to make anything; what's lacking is official will to enforce IP. Ironic isn't it? The Chinese government's official line is that they won't do anything to jeopardize economic growth. The fact is the government is rolling in cash - over $1 TRILLION in foreign reserves (the exact opposite of a national debt) and hold big chunks of US Gov't debt. Probably because of this, there also seems to be no real will among western governments to call them on it, despite increasing industry opposition.
Basically the Chinese have the world by the balls and they know it. I for one welcome our new Chinese overlords, provided I can has pork fried rice.
BTW I'm not racist and certainly the Chinese have the right to economic development. I just think it's time they started playing by the rules.
you mean web 2.0?
If farmers that choose not to use the engineered seed can't produce enough per acre to profit at market prices, their only option is to use the patented products. This in and of itself isn't a bad thing in a truly free and competitive market. The trouble is, monsanto and others have been very heavy handed about protecting their IP. Again this isnt a problem in a free and competitive market. The problem is that monsanto is using tactics to insure that this is never the case.
I should have said "packet privacy". The prior discussion seemed to be focussing on bandwidth issues and I was trying to address that aspect.
Truth is, the debate over net neutrality has glossed over the fact that we never really had it. You pay to play and for cost, FIOS>cable>dsl>dialup. How fast do you want your data? Pay up. Netzero offered free dialup for years.
We need to stop ranting and instead start discussing ways to protect freedom of information and privacy. ISP's have a very real problem in that bandwidth is not free and a small percentage of users do in fact use the majority of bandwidth. The real problem is more about truth in advertising. We share bandwidth and the routers can only handle so much traffic.
A simple scheme like throttling my connection by default while allowing me to temporarily increase it for large downloads would be fine. I don't want my downloads constantly slowed to a crawl because of my neighbors addiction to hi rez video porn. I could get my linux ISO's quickly while he would just have to wait for his constant bittorrent of flesh.
Mmmmm, no.
Monsanto and others have been pursuing this type of policy for years. The farmers get caught because the yields really are better and can't compete as well if they don't buy the patented products. Although I think Monsanto ought to be able to profit from their research, the tactics they use are questionable at best. The trouble is that if congress ever does seriously consider patent reform, they'll do it in a half assed manner that compounds rather than solved the problems.
actually, my specific complaint is more about the lack of an internal ide or sata interface; then you could slap in any size HDD you wanted. I would have used an EEE for storing music and picture files, as well as web surfing/email. Great size for carrying around and everyday use.
I thought they came darned close with the EEE. I'd buy one in a heartbeat if it had an actual hard drive. My only complaint was the lack of storage.
Roger Zelazny would turn over in his grave if he was dead. Oh, wait...
Um, no. Supply and demand sets the price. We have plenty of *oil reserves* worldwide at least, but since the cartels controlling supply keeps production artificially low, oil prices stay artificially high. There's no real reason why this would ever change.
As was previously pointed out, US gasoline production capacity is exceeded by demand. The oil companies like this because they like high prices. Demand is not all that flexible so it virtually guarantees big profits. Additionally, the risk and cost associated with new refinery construction is a big disincentive. Nobody really wants a new refinery built in their neighborhood, guaranteeing endless litigation,environmental studies, etc..
While it's true that your average politician doesn't give a damn where the oil comes from if it's cheap, nobody really wants to try getting re-elected during a recession. Besides, why should the other countries care about anything but a good price for their exports? Certainly if we *could* find some technology that would allow us to "eliminate dependence of foreign oil", politicians would jump on it. Your blanket statement that politicians don't want to reduce this dependence doesn't make any sense; they predictably do whatever will help reelection. As the recent stock market fluctuations have shown, market value is in large part psychological. Sometimes mouthing all the right words is what needs to happen in order to prevent irrational price changes.
In any case, we weren't discussing political posturing but the reasons for high oil and gasoline prices. Not that the politics aren't interesting, but you're changing topics midstream.
I can actually *remember* the lines to fill up . All the arguments about energy policy here are bunk except for one; cost, pure and simple. With oil, you stick a big straw in the ground and suck it out, then boil it to break it down into gas and stuff. Then you put it in your car and burn it. Nothing else is that cheap or simple and has as much energy per gallon.
The hidden advantage of the current prices is that other technologies become economically viable for development. Besides, there's plenty of OIL right now - current high gas prices are due to a relative lack of refining capacity. I'd bet that when gas hits $5 a gallon in the US, suddenly new refineries will spring up, but also more alternate energy sources will become competitive. THIS IS THE KEY. Once it's really worth it to try out new technologies (a prius does not yet save you money in terms of total cost of ownership), we hit critical mass for research and funding and the market takes care of the rest. Economies of scale will reduce the costs and after a while oil isn't all that profitable, especially when the easily pumped deposits dwindle and it's more expensive to suck it out of the ground.
Just remember - we have to start *somewhere*. Handheld blasters are just around the corner...
The darkly comedic stumblings of ICANN just make a better case for continued government oversight. The simple fact is that the purpose of any business is to make a profit. The methods used to do so vary, but generally stay within reason when real market competition exists. ICANN has no competition and plays an important role in regulating the registrar market. It's actual functioning has been less like a regulatory agency and more like an enabler of abuse. Privatization will solve nothing.
Even if they start flexing a little muscle I sincerely doubt they can be counted on in the long run.
I asked the dude stringing FIOS line up on my street.
Same here, except I have comcast now and cant wait to ditch them. A very simple solution would be to make throttling default, with some very easy way of turning it temporarily off. I'd be fine with this.
Heh. Carly was a complete idiot. Didn't one of the Hewletts (or maybe it was a Packard) fight her tooth and nail from the board or directors? She practically kills the R&D dept - one of HP's crown jewels, then she wanted to sell cross branded Ipods. Perhaps she thought she was running Walmart?
I think the reason these numbskulls get the big packages is because they are slick enough to be able to legally prove they did their jobs carrying out the will of the majority of the board of directors. Pass the blame, collect the buck. In the few instances where I had inside information on the departure of upper management, the concensus was that it was cheaper to pay them to leave than to force them out. A protracted legal battle airing the dirty laundry is bad for stock value.
Well, if you believe the fluff coming out of Redmond, this might be a reasonable way to proceed. There have been countless articles over the years on how best to break from the old x86 legacy base. Processors are at a point where they can run legacy apps on VM's with reasonable performance. However, that's probably not the biggest issue they face.
Vista did so many things wrong - focus on looks (aero) rather than functionality, catering to the DRM crowd, poor driver support and general bloat. MS has a built in market advantage in terms of the established user base. If they focus on pleasing the corporate users by creating a stable, secure and slim OS that takes advantage of the capabilities of the newer hardware, they ought to do ok in the home user market as well. Just focus on getting the best performance out of the hardware, make it stable, secure, easy to use, administer and to code for. The corporate base doesn't WANT to change unless they have a clear cut reason to do so and neither does the average home user.
MS won't need to worry about Apple or Linux stealing their pie if they stop trying to screw their user base and cater to it instead. Forget DRM, forget forced upgrades. Build it and they will come, because windows is what most people already know. Competing ought to be easy.
Quality of life is a valid reason for drinking coffee, etc.. There are a bunch of poor saps out there starving themselves because of some study showing that mice on a severely calorie restricted diet live 50% longer. Personally I'd prefer laughing from my deathbed while eating an ice cream sundae, but that's just me. Seriously, do these nitwits really believe this finding is directly transferrable from mice to humans? How about at least waiting for a study involving actual primates? How about enjoying your life? Scallops wrapped in bacon anyone?
Coffee is a great example: a while back someone did a meta analysis and found the studies were basically a wash. Do what you want in moderation. I like to roast my own coffee, grind it immediately prior to brewing, french press it nice and strong and drink it with a lot of cream but no sugar. I don't drink every day but when I do I want to really enjoy it.
Besides, whats the point of indulging if you dont indulge? Diet ice cream? Give me a break!
You comments have been noted. In fact I have 10 shiny new mod points just waiting for you, "zsau" and it will be easy to find you on another thread....MUAHAHAHAHA!!!
This is so unfortunately true. Health fads are all about misinterpretation of the available data, and incomplete data for that matter. Every time there's some news item about the supposed health benefits of something, some idiot takes it to an extreme. Shortly thereafter conflicting data is released and suddenly everything we thought we knew was wrong. Eggs used to be heathy, then they were poisonous, now they're healthy again.
Nobody is going to live forever because of some nutritional change. If you eat a wide variety of fresh unprocessed foods you'll do fine. Everything in moderation.