Hold on there, mein freund. I quoth the all-powerful Wikipedia:
A run-on sentence is a sentence in which two or more independent clauses (that is, complete sentences) are joined with no punctuation or conjunction at all. It is generally considered to be a grammatical error. Some grammarians also include a comma splice, in which two independent clauses are joined with only a comma, as a type of run-on sentence [1], while others exclude comma splices from the definition of a run-on sentence. [2] [3]
A run-on sentence is not merely any very long sentence: A properly constructed sentence can be extended almost indefinitely. However, writing such an extended sentence is poor writing style and should be avoided.[citation needed] A recommended rule of thumb would be a maximum of 3 independent clauses contained in one sentence, on the grounds that anything beyond that can cause the reader to lose interest or become frustrated.
At the very least, the fellow is guilty of enough comma splices to be considered a murder. He meets enough of the definition to warrant arrest for Egregious Abuse Of A Sentence Structure.
Lawyers figuring that they could make a lot of money found a weak, struggling Linux company, bought rights to other products and a name from another company, and tried to claim infringement specifically looking for a quick settlement from companies like IBM and Novell, and unfortunately for them, the companies that they targetted had invested enough in Linux and had cojones enough that they fought back. Holy run-on sentence, Batman! But grammar aside, you bring up something so ironic it's side-splittingly funny.
Everything you say is true. SCO started this whole thing thinking it could extort money out of IBM. The funny part is this: they probably would've had a good chance of getting a settlement had they not asked for an absolutely insane dollar figure in the first place. IBM might've coughed up several million, perhaps even a hundred million, to settle the case. But no! SCO wanted a billion or more. When faced with that, IBM almost had no choice but to gear up for war.
So, in a venture founded on greed, SCO's greed was undone by...SCO's even more egregious greed! Any lawyer who could fog up a mirror should've known that IBM might settle for a hefty-but-reasonable amount just to avoid legal costs and possible bad publicity. SCO's mistake was letting its greed exceed its grasp. IBM would've won no matter what, but SCO could've received a very nice check as go-away-and-don't-bother-us money had it been more reasonable in the first place.
See what would have hit them where it is really painful is if IBM or Novell had gone after Canopy. You raise an interesting point. I wonder why IBM never tried to do so. Further, I wonder why Novell isn't going after Canopy to get the settlement awarded to it by the court some months ago.
The above isn't a rhetorical question. Does anyone know why IBM never pursued this beyond obliterating SCO? Is there some legal reason Canopy was sheltered from action despite it being the holding company for SCO? Novell doesn't stand much of a chance of collecting what it's owed from the now-bankrupt SCO, so why doesn't it go after Canopy?
I'm sure there's a perfectly good reason why this isn't occurring, because in this lawyer-happy world people are sued for far less. I'd just like to know what the legal principle is that shields a holding company from financial responsibility incurred by one of the companies it holds. Might come in handy one day;-)
They've stated they're using lithium phosphate in news articles (example here [usatoday.com]). Lithium phosphate batteries have a 10-20 year lifespan in normal use. I'd like to see that data backed up somewhere, because all the links I've been able to find say LiP batteries are very new technology and have yet to see any widespread use. The best example of deployment on a "massive" scale is the OLPC project, and that's not particularly massive.
Additionally, LiP batteries suffer from lower charge densities than typical Li-ion batteries present in your common laptop. One of the most touted benefits of LiP is not recharge cycles, it's the (relative) inability of the battery to cause a fire due to thermal runaway. LiP costs are also much higher than Li-ion, although this is likely due to the relative immaturity of the technology vis-a-vis Li-ion.
Says who? Aptera has only said that it's not initially going to be *tested* in cold climates. And did you stop to consider why? Sure the cells themselves are rated to perform at the temperature range you specify, but performance will be degraded nonetheless. You also have a heater to consider which, while present in the car's current design, creates an additional load on the cells. Somehow I doubt waste heat from the electric motor is being used to heat the cabin.
Availability *is* non-existant because it's pre-production; only the prototypes exist. Yet you speak of the car as if you already had one in your garage and you use it for daily transportation. If it's a prototype them stop referring to all its abilities as if they're all going to make it into the production vehicle.
The site explicitly says, "The details of our financing and warranty are still being defined" and "We will announce further information regarding the battery lifespan and warranty policy well before we begin manufacturing the Typ-1 next October.", not "There will be no warranty". Much like you should be doing, I'm speaking of the "here and now" Aptera, not the "what it might be at some indeterminate point in the future if all goes well." You're putting forth a mix of what's here now (the prototype) and the yet-to-come (full production) and taking the best case of both. Reasoned objectivity would say that's very unlikely to occur.
For example, my Aptera is to use lithium phosphate batteries. A quick Google search yields the following website: http://www.aptera.com/. I'm assuming that's the source of the car you're referring to. Digging around in it a bit, I find the following:
What will be the battery life and cost replacement?
This depends largely on usage and if you have an "All Electric" or an "Electric Plug-in Hybrid" version of the Aptera. We will share these exact numbers when they become available closer to the start of Aptera production.
So your 10-20 year lifespan of the battery isn't documented on the website anywhere that I can find.
To its credit, Aptera does say its car will cost between $26,900 and $29,900. I wonder how much of that is subsidized, though. And paying $30K for a car that does 0-60 in 10 seconds, carries two passengers, and practically no cargo isn't exactly a screaming bargain. You'd be far better off buying a more conventional gas/electric hybrid like the ones currently available.
I also note on the Aptera site that the car isn't designed for cold climates. Availability is almost non-existent as well. Last, and perhaps most distressing, Aptera offers no warranty on the vehicle. Sure, they're working on something, but as of now you get nothing. Remind me again why anyone except the most die-hard tree hugger with deep pockets and no family would ever want to buy this thing?
Electricity is a practical solution that is here NOW, not some future time which may or may not ever arrive. Well, if you consider "practical" to mean a car that has a third of the range of a gasoline powered car, needs hours to "refill", costs twice as much (when you consider the federal subsidies), needs battery replacements every 18-24 months (if you want to maintain range), and can't tow anything to be "practical" then you're right on the money! I'm sure people are flocking to electric cars because they're so darn practical! They are flying off the showroom floors, aren't they? Aren't they? Hello?
Practicality is only one of the issues facing your "practical solution." Electric cars need to be plugged in to something called "utility power" in order to recharge. Where do those magical electrons come from? I'll take "power plants" for $500, Alex. California already has a utility power shortage crisis, with rolling blackouts and brownouts thrown in for fun. Suppose the entire state went electric with their cars tomorrow? Just where do you think all that juice would come from? Pixie dust? Nano-solar isn't going to save you anytime soon, either.
Electric cars are neat. For some people they fit the bill. For the vast majority of people they do not. You've got a lot of learning to do about what the meaning of the word "practical" is for folks who aren't clones of you.
You see, this is what's commonly called a "straw man" argument. You take things I never said (or even implied) and proceed to demolish them. Then, you claim some sort of victory over it even though it was not my position in the first place. It's so sad that you find your position so untenable that you are forced to resort to this tactic. I was hoping you'd offer more of a challenge.
To put it succinctly, I never stated all terrorists are (or were) Muslim. However, the vast majority of those in the last forty years have been. When was the last time you heard of a Hindu blowing himself up in a crowded market? A Buddhist? A Sikh? A Jew? A Christian? You might find isolated cases of this here and there if you go back four decades (or more, since you brought up the Crusades that took place roughly 1,000 years ago -- some grudge you've got there, bub) but you'd have to be blind not to see the thousands of other incidents of Islamist-based terrorism. You would have to purposefully steer around those incidents in order to find even a scattering of non-Muslim terrorist incidents. The fact that you're already doing this by engaging in the argument in the manner of your previous post speaks volumes about your true mindset on these matters. You're more interested in finding ways to blame those you disagree with than you are in finding facts staring you in the face.
Are all Muslims terrorists? Nope. But most terrorists are Muslims. And a significant portion of the non-terrorist Muslims refuse to condemn or speak out against those who are terrorists, which speaks volumes about their mindset on the subject. But you go right on and ignore all that. I'm sure there were folks just like you on the planes that hit the WTC, or the bus in London, or the trains in Spain. They're all dead now, but I'm sure they held onto their idealism until the last possible moment when a Muslim killed them.
You go right on thinking there's no threat out there, that this is all some conspiracy against peace-loving folk by global power mongers. That seems to be the position you're advocating, is it not?
Oh, I know. These same morons who preach "free speech" and "freedom of expression" are the same ones who eagerly brand anything they don't like as "flamebait." It's just their way of imposing censorship on those they don't like. They are all hypocrites.
How can you travel to anywhere in the US without taking a plane? We have these marvelous inventions called cars. Perhaps you've heard of them. But just in case you cannot understand sarcasm, please point to me the place in the Constitution that guarantees you the right to fly from point A to point B. You won't find it, but please waste as much time as you can while trying.
I see you quoted two terrorist events. Could you give a number that will show how it is more likely than winning the lottery? This line of reasoning is idiotic, tantamount to saying "I don't know why there are so many people in jail since crime is so low." Have you ever stopped to consider the concept of cause and effect? Maybe, just maybe, these events aren't commonplace because we have security in place. Maybe the above referenced events would never have happened had additional security been in place. You seem to think that none of it is needed because you haven't been blow up or hijacked yet. Pity you can't experience the results of your absurd suggestion without endangering others, otherwise I'd be all in favor of it.
And explain to me how it is constitutional that "eastern looking" people systematicaly spend twice the time boarding their plane (when they can). Apocryphal. You show me hard statistics proving it and I'll listen. Until then, you're full of it.
Well that answers my question about your fear of racial discrimination I guess. Let's see: Pan Am 103 blown up by...hmmm...Muslims? 9/11 orchestrated by...Muslims? Achille Lauro, the Israeli Olympic athletes, the Beslan school massacres, ethnic cleansing, and many more too numerous to list, all done by...Muslims? Gosh, one must be insane to draw any conclusions from this. Idiot. You ignore reality at your peril.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people. Something I saw someplace once... Saw, but apparently didn't read. You have a right to a reasonable expectation of privacy and against unreasonable search or seizure. Reading comprehension is not only fun, it might actually improve your intellect! I can say this with a great deal of confidence since you're so obviously deficient in the aforementioned category. You've nowhere to go but up!
Screening someone for bombs, guns, and knives before boarding a speeding, pressurized metal tube full of defenseless people -- six vertical miles from any kind of law enforcement or lawful protection -- is unreasonable in your view? What kind of loon are you, anyway?
I hereby state you've lost the argument, citing Godwin's Law as the relevant rule being violated. Go look it up, if you're not too busy wondering who's got a copy of Mein Kampf handy.
I generally make it a habit not to bother replying to AC's like yourself, but since you're going to quote the Rt. Hon. Srinivasa Sastri, I felt compelled to reply.
The Rowlatt Bill was "passed on the recommendations of the Rowlatt commission, named for its chairman, British judge Sir Sidney Rowlatt, this act effectively authorized the government to imprison, without trial, any person suspected of terrorism living in the Raj." This is taken from the Wikipedia article on the Rowlatt Act, which is what the Bill became when it passed into law.
The Rowlatt Act was intended to put down political unrest by imprisoning those who acted against the government's wishes. Now, are you actually going to try and draw a parallel between being searched for dangerous items before boarding an airplane and being imprisoned without a trial for supposed anti-government activities? Do you not realize the absolute stupidity of what you're trying to conjoin? Try picking an analogy that's sensible next time.
I'll quote a small bit from the Wikipedia article that you cited but apparently failed to read:
The Fourth Amendment guards against unreasonable searches and seizures... So, in your eyes, asking someone to submit to a thorough search of their person and belongings in order to guard against the possession of bombs (see Pan Am Flight 103), boxcutters (see 9/11) or guns (more than I can easily cite), is...unreasonable. Yeah...right...Okaaay. Perhaps one day you'll get your wish. Maybe it'll be the day Abdullah and Hassan decide to blow up the plane you're riding in. For you I'd shed no tears as it would be no great loss, but it would be a tragedy for the rest of the passengers and crew.
As for your other locations, a nightclub is a private business. It can do whatever it wants with regards to entrance requirements for patronage, subject to certain civil rights criteria such as sex, race, and so forth. Security is not included in these criteria. Political rallies and schools are again cases where large numbers of people are gathered in an uncontrolled setting. Requiring searches for dangerous weapons (knives, guns, etc) is prudent, not unreasonable. Courts both liberal and conservative have upheld this tenet since the founding of the country.
I get the feeling you're one of those fools who thinks the entire Bill of Rights is carte blanche to do pretty much whatever you want. I'll remind you that yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater is illegal, prudently banned in the interests of public safety. Your rights are not absolute. They are subject to the test of reasonability. For you to suggest that a pre-boarding search is unreasonable is to suggest otherwise, and you're both wrong and foolish to do so.
Ballmer Calls Vista 'A Work In Progress' Seriously, folks...this is news? Every piece of complex software is a work in progress. Correct me if I'm wrong, but right this very second there are hundreds -- perhaps thousands -- of coders worldwide who are working on Linux to make it better, faster, stronger...whatever. Doesn't that qualify as a "work in progress" as well? And don't say that MS is in a special category by itself because it charges for Windows. Red Hat is only one of many commercial distros out there. If RHEL is consistently being worked on by Red Hat to make it better -- adding features, squishing bugs, improving performance -- isn't that a "work in progress?" Would we prefer that software makers just sit back after a release and say "it's done and we'll never make any improvements to it?"
Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot I'm at Slashdot, where no story about Windows or Microsoft is complete without finding some way to bash it.
The easy path is one that leads to losing all your rights. Point out to me precisely where you derive this "right" to getting on an airplane without being searched? Go on, show me. I'm sure you know exactly what paragraph and clause in the Constitution says you have the right to board an airplane without having to comply with security regulations. You have to know because you're so damned sure you've got this "right."
Of course, you have no such right because the law makes no provision for one. If you do not wish to submit to being scanned/searched/whatever, you can take a bus, a cab, or your own personal transportation. No one is restricting your ability to get from point A to point B, there are no traffic control points with Gestapo'd brownshirts saying "papers please." You're making a mountain out of a molehill because it suits your agenda. The bare facts are this: if you wish to travel via air, you are traveling in a collective manner, and the safety of everyone on board -- include your thin-skinned self -- outweighs your individual right to be a paranoid, the-government-is-out-to-get-me-all-the-time passenger. If the above security measures offend you so much, put your moral fortitude where your mouth is and don't travel by air. Or, if you must, charter your own flight and skip security altogether. Yes, it's expensive, or time consuming, or annoying depending upon what alternate mode of travel you chose, but if you're so terrified of losing your "right to privacy," it's a small price to pay...right?
I don't trust the government any further than I can throw it, but I don't trust you either. That's why I'm happy as hell people are screened before they get on a plane with me, and I wish like hell they'd scan more of them and more thoroughly.
Might as well just march into the gas chambers peaceably. Are you seriously going to sit there and say that getting scanned by airport security is the equivalent of Nazi gas chambers? Do you even realize the utter absurdity you've just promulgated? Were you attempting a joke?
If we were talking about photovoltaics (which we're not, see below), you'd have a number of options of getting the price down. You could try to improve cell efficiency (while trying to keep cell price in check - this is mainly a function of how expensive land is where you want to build your plan), cell longevity, or cell price (again, how effective this approach is depends on the cost of land). You make it sound like "improv[ing] cell efficiency" is just a trivial exercise, something to be done over a lunch break by two guys with a calculator. In fact, what you propose has consumed nearly four decades of research and untold hundreds of millions of dollars of funding...all to just get to where we are right now. If improving efficiency is the key to keeping costs down, you've (once again) made my point for me: the lack of efficiency is why solar has not made any meaningful impact on the energy grid. Mass-produced PV cells have increased from roughly 8% to 12% efficiency in forty years! Do you honestly think that something magical is going to happen in the next forty that'll quadruple this trend? Because that's what would be needed in order to make solar break-even with existing nuclear and fossil energy technology.
As for your "this isn't about PV, it's solar-thermal" argument, yes, I'm well aware of that. What you aren't well aware of is that solar-thermal is even less efficient than PV. Spain just finished a 50MW solar-thermal plant, and it's conversion efficiency is only 2.6%. So I was cutting you a break by going with a solar technology that was more cost efficient that what you're actually arguing about. However, since you've torpedoed your last, best hope for winning your argument by pointing out we're talking about a technology that makes your argument weaker, I'll leave you to ponder exactly why you started this debate in the first place.
Did you RTFA ? I would guess you didn't. It talked about possible improvements in the next five to ten years. Who's missing the point ? It's not that the technology isn't available, You seem to have something of a reading comprehension problem, so I'll go real slow for you in the hopes that it'll actually sink in this time: I've never once stated that solar technology "isn't available." You made that up out of whole cloth to bolster your indefensible argument. What I stated (repeated for your non-comprehending benefit) is that the technology is not economically feasible. It cannot produce power at a cost competitive with other sources of energy, specifically nuclear and fossil fuels. Solar power has received immense funding since the early 1970's (which is nearly four decades ago just in case your math is as bad as your reading skills). During those 40 years, solar efficiency for typical mass-produced cells hasn't even doubled. It's gone from about 8% to about 12%. Exotic cells made of rare, expensive materials in small quantities have reached 20%, but their cost hurts the kW/hr figures so much that they're even less competitive than the mass-produced panels. Far from speeding up, research is yielding slower results with solar. Short of a breakthrough of unexpected dimensions, solar isn't going to magically increase in cost efficiency anytime soon. You can cling to wishful thinking that says otherwise, but the odds are not on your side.
And you'll bet how much that this will still be the case in, say, five years from now? Ten years from now? If you assume a linear progression of increases in efficiency and decreases in cost commensurate with the progress we've seen in the last 5-10 years, solar will still be at least 50% more expensive than nuclear or fossil fuels. The truth, however, is solar is progressing at a less than linear rate. Honestly, wind power turbines are moving ahead faster than solar is right now. If you actually knew anything about what you're trying to argue, you'd know that by now. What a pity you engaged your mouth (or your hands, as the case may be) before engaging your critical thinking skills, otherwise you'd not find yourself trying to defend a point that is completely fallacious.
The big difference of course, is that there are commercially operating solar/thermal power plants running - with a cost of ~15cents/KWh. Nobody has an operating fusion plant dumping electricity into the grid - dito with antimatter. And yet another one misses the point entirely, all while making my point for me. It's not that solar power doesn't exist; any fool can see that. It's that you can't make it work (economically) for 6 to 8 cents per kW/hr. You yourself state it works right now at ~15cents/kW/hr. You'd have to make it at a minimum twice as efficient as it is now in order to hit (or slightly exceed) the 8cents/kW/hr figure. That is not a trivial task, even though hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent working towards that goal.
Given that the existing plants are experimental, it is entirely possible that future plants can improve efficiency - through improved design/scale - to drop the price to between 6 & 8 cents. And it's entirely possible that pigs may fly as well, but it's very unlikely. You act as if it's just a matter of redesigning a widget here and scaling a widget there and POOF! The problem is solved! Have you no grasp whatsoever of how long people have been hammering at solar power efficiency scaling? Untold sums have been spent getting solar cell efficiency out of the single-digit percentages, and that was considered a fantasmically amazing feat at the time. Typical modern panels have a 12% efficiency, and the best available panels -- you know, those that cost several times that of the "typical" panels -- gets you to 20% efficiency. This is not a recipe for scaling well, nor is it something that can be easily "designed" away as you claim.
Radical breakthroughs in cell efficiency are needed to make solar a viable contender against nuclear and fossil fuels. I'd wager that we're more likely to make a breakthrough in fusion power than we are to double the efficiency of mass-produced, affordable solar cells in the next several decades. In the meantime, we're ignoring a practical, affordable, well-known power source that's abundant, clean, and reliable: nuclear fission.
I'll show you some working, power-producing solar-thermal power plants. Show me a working, power-producing solar-thermal power plant selling power at 6 to 8 cents per kilowatt hour without any Federal subsidies and I'll retract my prior statement. You missed my point entirely, bub. It's not that the technology isn't available, it's that it isn't economically practical right now when compared with alternatives.
Geez. Heating water with solar power really isn't rocket science. The improvements proposed for these power plants are mainly in engineering. On the other hand, we're still working on the science for fusion and antimatter. And I'll again direct you to the prior established point: efficient, economical solar power -- ones that can compete directly with nuclear and fossil fuel power sources -- are just as fanciful (for now) as fusion and antimatter. If you're too dense to grasp that...well, reference my sig below.
'Improvements in manufacturing and design, along with the possibility of higher temperature operation, could easily bring the price down to 6 to 8 cents per kilowatt hour.' And improvements in magnetic confinement could easily bring fusion power down to 6 to 8 cents per kilowatt hour...and advances in the production of antimatter could yield power too cheap to meter...assuming it's even possible to do any of the above at all. I love how pundits can wave a magic wand at substantial engineering obstacles and make them all go away when trying to push their new pet gadget or cause on the rest of us. And when pigs fly, we can use them to power our flying cars!
Solar thermal plants covering the equivalent of a 92-by-92-mile square grid in the Southwest could generate electricity for the entire United States. Mexico has an equally enormous solar resource. China, India, southern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Australia also have huge resources. Brushing aside the question of what to do when the weather doesn't cooperate, exactly how does this fellow expect us to efficiently distribute the power harvested by this "enormous solar resource"? It's not feasible to power the entire United States from a 92x92 mile square in the middle of a southwestern U.S. desert because transmission losses to, say, the entire East Coast would be horrendous.
All of this handwaving about does an injustice to a real, clean, abundant power-generating resource that we have virtually ignored: nuclear fission. Every coal plant in the U.S. could be replaced in a few decades if we chose to do so. Japan and France have excellent safety records with this technology and power most of their country via splitting atoms. Ignoring this technology while betting on pie-in-the-sky stuff that's unproven, undeveloped, and unknown to "save our species" is just silly.
I think the mistake you made was in assuming I and every other American are fucking idiots. No, not every other American, just you.
Claiming "That's not fair! It was taken out of context" and then going into a two paragraph rant about how we have to stay in Iraq no matter what the cost really doesn't make for a good argument. My God! With one completely empty sentence, devoid of any meaning or even a suggestion of action, you have destroyed my well-reasoned, fact-based argument! Surely, you are profound! My big toe quivers in your presence!
All of which is another way of saying that simply stating I don't have a good argument whilst simultaneously providing no proof of such "doesn't make for a good argument" for your point. Would you like a do-over?
Besides, you do realize the Marshall Plan came from the Democrats. It's clear Republicans don't know a single thing about the foundations of Democracy, much less Capitalism. I don't give a rat's ass where it came from, the fact is it worked rather well. Furthermore, if you examine the platform of the post WWII Democrats, you'd find they're far more aligned with 21st-century Republicans than Democrats. Today's Democrat is much more aligned with an early 20th-century Socialist.
Oh, and before you get your knickers all in a wad, this country is not a democracy. We are a Constitutional Republic. The Founding Fathers went out of their way to not create a democracy, which they likened to mob rule.
Time to hand this over to the Democrats, so they can clean up your mess. Yes, because the Democrats have done such a good job in the past of cleaning up "messy" wars like Korea, Vietnam, Somalia, and...shall I go on? Nah, I won't bother. You're cranial density is obviously somewhere north of depleted uranium, rendering you absolutely impenetrable by any rational thought. You have my pity and my contempt.
Ohwell, at least Gore didn't say he'd be happy if we were in Iraq for another 100 years.
Yep! And I'm sure glad John McCain didn't say that, either. That is, of course, what you were attempting to allude to, wasn't it? Or are you engaging in a little bit of the putting-words-in-my-opponents-mouth mudslinging that you were so busy condemning a few posts ago?
For the record, John McCain's comments about U.S. troops being in Iraq 100 years from now in no way implied "he'd be happy" with such a situation. He pointed out that about half a century ago we were in Germany and Japan and we're still there today. Surely the time has passed from us being occupiers to being allies, as in NATO and similar setups, but it doesn't change the fact that U.S. troops are still on Germany and Japanese soil. We have an obligation to them since we pretty much wrote their postwar constitutions, forcing them into a pacifist stance with relatively weak militaries. How long do you think Berlin would've lasted had we not engaged in the Berlin Airlift?
It's entirely possible that U.S. troops could be on Iraqi soil 100 years hence, but it's ludicrous folly to suppose that our mission will be that of an occupying army of a defeated foe. The goal we're all working towards is a stable, functioning democracy in the Middle East. It's never been done before (outside of Israel, that is), and it's going to take a while. Ducking out because things haven't been wrapped up in time for the last commercial break is the most stupid thing we could do. Instant gratification might be neat at a mall when picking out clothes, but it has no place on the world stage. Go look up the Marshall Plan and you'll see what I mean.
Having a 40Gbps connection is just dandy, but here's a question that's going completely unanswered:
She's surfing this on what kind of PC?
Last time I checked, your typical PC doesn't come with a 40Gbps NIC in it. It's usually GigE, with 10/100 for the cheap ones. Nevermind that most folks can't afford GigE switches to plug into in the first place, which means most folks are using 10/100 anyway.
40Gbps NIC's can't exactly be cheap since they're only found in the high-end server space. In fact, I couldn't find pricing on a separate 40Gbps NIC in a quick and casual Google search. The only 40Gbps stuff I've run into is either on the switch itself or came with the server. I have a funny feeling that, if you can actually buy one of these things separately, it would cost several times more than any PC this lady is likely to own.
Next, even if you get one of these NIC's, what exactly are you going to plug it into? The craziest PCI-X slot available (2.0, 533MHz) tops out at 4.3GByte/sec, which is 34.4Gbit/sec -- too slow! PCI-E 2.0 32x (not that you'll find this kind of connector on anything common, if you can find it at all) maxes out at 16GByte/sec, which is 128Gbit/sec -- fast enough, but again I don't think anyone makes anything with this kind of a connector yet. Your more-common PCI-E 1.1e 16x connector tops out at 4GByte/sec, or 32GBit/sec -- too slow for 40Gbps feeds.
And then there's the issue of actually saving this wonderful content she's so busily downloading. Saving a full-length DVD-9 (9GB) in two seconds would require a bandwidth of 4.5GByte/sec. Most hard drives today have a max sustained write speed of 20-30MByte/sec. Some SAN's have a hard time with the bandwidth being tossed around here. Does grandma have an EMC array in the basement next to this magical fiber link?
Lastly, exactly who is grandma doing to download stuff from that can actually provide her 40Gbps of bandwidth? Most small companies have DS-1's. Medium-sized folks have multiple DS-1's, fractional DS-3's, or full DS-3's. Your larger organizations have OC-3's and OC-12's, but it starts to get really, really rarefied if you go up above that. Suffice to say, unless grandma is getting stuff from the likes of Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, or Akamai, she's not going to be able to actually keep that 40Gbps pipe busy.
Now, a good bit of the above takes a sarcastic tone, but there's a lesson in it: you're only as fast as the slowest part of the chain. There's a helluva lot of work that needs to be done on the entire information interchange infrastructure -- from the server to the PC and everything in between -- before stuff like this even begins to make sense for the average Joe. Data centers? Sure. Home 40Gbps? Not so useful.
sure, just as soon as someone justify evicting 30 or more families to build a mall or walmart. You do have a point here, but I think you're exaggerating some figures and it's hurting your argument. You claim "30 or more families" are "evict[ed]" from their homes every six months to build a Wal-Mart or a mall. Somehow I doubt this is true for a number of reasons.
First, the "big box" stores like Wal-Mart, Target, Home Depot, etc. try to find unoccupied land when they can because it's cheaper. Sure, in urbanized areas that's difficult or impossible, which is why their second choice is demolishing/renovating older shopping centers, warehouses, and so forth. There's several of these going on within ten miles of my home right now. Again, this is cheaper (and easier on the PR) than going after residential areas. The absolute last choice is a residential area because it's more expensive, more time consuming, and -- as you've noted in your argument -- it pisses people off sometimes.
Second, I question your use of the term "evict." Evict means they're forcibly parted from their property. This does happen from time to time, and when it does it makes news. There have been documented cases of eminent domain abuse centered around these types of stores, and you're quite right to complain about them. That is your argument: the encroachment on private property rights by local city zoning councils (which are after sales tax dollars) and the businesses they "work" for (who want your sales dollars and pay politicians with campaign contributions). You hurt yourself, though, by claiming it happens "almost every 6 months" to 30 families. The aforementioned abuses are inexcusable, but they are much rarer than you claim.
Third, you attempt to draw some equivalence between China displacing 1.5M people and our eminent domain abuses. That is a poor analogy for many reasons, not the least of which is that the Chinese have much more limited property rights than Americans do to begin with. Also, using your very own numbers, you claim 30 families are uprooted every six months in the U.S., and you claim it's been going on "for decades." By my calculations on your numbers (numbers I disagree with, BTW), the "fuckers in the USA" displace a maximum of 60 families a year. Assuming 3 people constitutes a family, that's 180 people per year. At this rate it would take over eight thousand years for the "fuckers in the USA" to displace 1.5M people, something the Chinese are doing in far less than a decade. Even that number pales when compared to the relocation required for the Three Gorges Dam project. Yet you seem to have a problem determining the difference in scale, morally equivocating one to the other.
Like I said, your argument against eminent domain abuses are quite valid, but your exaggeration and hyperbole degenerates your argument into frothing at the mouth. What we're doing with eminent domain abuse in this country is bad, but what's going on in places like China is much, much worse...so much so that it really diminishes the more egregious abuse by trying to link it with the lesser abuse.
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Hold on there, mein freund. I quoth the all-powerful Wikipedia:
A run-on sentence is a sentence in which two or more independent clauses (that is, complete sentences) are joined with no punctuation or conjunction at all. It is generally considered to be a grammatical error. Some grammarians also include a comma splice, in which two independent clauses are joined with only a comma, as a type of run-on sentence [1], while others exclude comma splices from the definition of a run-on sentence. [2] [3]
A run-on sentence is not merely any very long sentence: A properly constructed sentence can be extended almost indefinitely. However, writing such an extended sentence is poor writing style and should be avoided.[citation needed] A recommended rule of thumb would be a maximum of 3 independent clauses contained in one sentence, on the grounds that anything beyond that can cause the reader to lose interest or become frustrated.
At the very least, the fellow is guilty of enough comma splices to be considered a murder. He meets enough of the definition to warrant arrest for Egregious Abuse Of A Sentence Structure.
Lawyers figuring that they could make a lot of money found a weak, struggling Linux company, bought rights to other products and a name from another company, and tried to claim infringement specifically looking for a quick settlement from companies like IBM and Novell, and unfortunately for them, the companies that they targetted had invested enough in Linux and had cojones enough that they fought back. Holy run-on sentence, Batman! But grammar aside, you bring up something so ironic it's side-splittingly funny.
Everything you say is true. SCO started this whole thing thinking it could extort money out of IBM. The funny part is this: they probably would've had a good chance of getting a settlement had they not asked for an absolutely insane dollar figure in the first place. IBM might've coughed up several million, perhaps even a hundred million, to settle the case. But no! SCO wanted a billion or more. When faced with that, IBM almost had no choice but to gear up for war.
So, in a venture founded on greed, SCO's greed was undone by...SCO's even more egregious greed! Any lawyer who could fog up a mirror should've known that IBM might settle for a hefty-but-reasonable amount just to avoid legal costs and possible bad publicity. SCO's mistake was letting its greed exceed its grasp. IBM would've won no matter what, but SCO could've received a very nice check as go-away-and-don't-bother-us money had it been more reasonable in the first place.
See what would have hit them where it is really painful is if IBM or Novell had gone after Canopy. You raise an interesting point. I wonder why IBM never tried to do so. Further, I wonder why Novell isn't going after Canopy to get the settlement awarded to it by the court some months ago.
;-)
The above isn't a rhetorical question. Does anyone know why IBM never pursued this beyond obliterating SCO? Is there some legal reason Canopy was sheltered from action despite it being the holding company for SCO? Novell doesn't stand much of a chance of collecting what it's owed from the now-bankrupt SCO, so why doesn't it go after Canopy?
I'm sure there's a perfectly good reason why this isn't occurring, because in this lawyer-happy world people are sued for far less. I'd just like to know what the legal principle is that shields a holding company from financial responsibility incurred by one of the companies it holds. Might come in handy one day
They've stated they're using lithium phosphate in news articles (example here [usatoday.com]). Lithium phosphate batteries have a 10-20 year lifespan in normal use. I'd like to see that data backed up somewhere, because all the links I've been able to find say LiP batteries are very new technology and have yet to see any widespread use. The best example of deployment on a "massive" scale is the OLPC project, and that's not particularly massive.
Additionally, LiP batteries suffer from lower charge densities than typical Li-ion batteries present in your common laptop. One of the most touted benefits of LiP is not recharge cycles, it's the (relative) inability of the battery to cause a fire due to thermal runaway. LiP costs are also much higher than Li-ion, although this is likely due to the relative immaturity of the technology vis-a-vis Li-ion.
Says who? Aptera has only said that it's not initially going to be *tested* in cold climates. And did you stop to consider why? Sure the cells themselves are rated to perform at the temperature range you specify, but performance will be degraded nonetheless. You also have a heater to consider which, while present in the car's current design, creates an additional load on the cells. Somehow I doubt waste heat from the electric motor is being used to heat the cabin.
Availability *is* non-existant because it's pre-production; only the prototypes exist. Yet you speak of the car as if you already had one in your garage and you use it for daily transportation. If it's a prototype them stop referring to all its abilities as if they're all going to make it into the production vehicle.
The site explicitly says, "The details of our financing and warranty are still being defined" and "We will announce further information regarding the battery lifespan and warranty policy well before we begin manufacturing the Typ-1 next October.", not "There will be no warranty". Much like you should be doing, I'm speaking of the "here and now" Aptera, not the "what it might be at some indeterminate point in the future if all goes well." You're putting forth a mix of what's here now (the prototype) and the yet-to-come (full production) and taking the best case of both. Reasoned objectivity would say that's very unlikely to occur.
For example, my Aptera is to use lithium phosphate batteries. A quick Google search yields the following website: http://www.aptera.com/. I'm assuming that's the source of the car you're referring to. Digging around in it a bit, I find the following:
What will be the battery life and cost replacement?
This depends largely on usage and if you have an "All Electric" or an "Electric Plug-in Hybrid" version of the Aptera. We will share these exact numbers when they become available closer to the start of Aptera production.
So your 10-20 year lifespan of the battery isn't documented on the website anywhere that I can find.
To its credit, Aptera does say its car will cost between $26,900 and $29,900. I wonder how much of that is subsidized, though. And paying $30K for a car that does 0-60 in 10 seconds, carries two passengers, and practically no cargo isn't exactly a screaming bargain. You'd be far better off buying a more conventional gas/electric hybrid like the ones currently available.
I also note on the Aptera site that the car isn't designed for cold climates. Availability is almost non-existent as well. Last, and perhaps most distressing, Aptera offers no warranty on the vehicle. Sure, they're working on something, but as of now you get nothing. Remind me again why anyone except the most die-hard tree hugger with deep pockets and no family would ever want to buy this thing?
Electricity is a practical solution that is here NOW, not some future time which may or may not ever arrive. Well, if you consider "practical" to mean a car that has a third of the range of a gasoline powered car, needs hours to "refill", costs twice as much (when you consider the federal subsidies), needs battery replacements every 18-24 months (if you want to maintain range), and can't tow anything to be "practical" then you're right on the money! I'm sure people are flocking to electric cars because they're so darn practical! They are flying off the showroom floors, aren't they? Aren't they? Hello?
Practicality is only one of the issues facing your "practical solution." Electric cars need to be plugged in to something called "utility power" in order to recharge. Where do those magical electrons come from? I'll take "power plants" for $500, Alex. California already has a utility power shortage crisis, with rolling blackouts and brownouts thrown in for fun. Suppose the entire state went electric with their cars tomorrow? Just where do you think all that juice would come from? Pixie dust? Nano-solar isn't going to save you anytime soon, either.
Electric cars are neat. For some people they fit the bill. For the vast majority of people they do not. You've got a lot of learning to do about what the meaning of the word "practical" is for folks who aren't clones of you.
You see, this is what's commonly called a "straw man" argument. You take things I never said (or even implied) and proceed to demolish them. Then, you claim some sort of victory over it even though it was not my position in the first place. It's so sad that you find your position so untenable that you are forced to resort to this tactic. I was hoping you'd offer more of a challenge.
To put it succinctly, I never stated all terrorists are (or were) Muslim. However, the vast majority of those in the last forty years have been. When was the last time you heard of a Hindu blowing himself up in a crowded market? A Buddhist? A Sikh? A Jew? A Christian? You might find isolated cases of this here and there if you go back four decades (or more, since you brought up the Crusades that took place roughly 1,000 years ago -- some grudge you've got there, bub) but you'd have to be blind not to see the thousands of other incidents of Islamist-based terrorism. You would have to purposefully steer around those incidents in order to find even a scattering of non-Muslim terrorist incidents. The fact that you're already doing this by engaging in the argument in the manner of your previous post speaks volumes about your true mindset on these matters. You're more interested in finding ways to blame those you disagree with than you are in finding facts staring you in the face.
Are all Muslims terrorists? Nope. But most terrorists are Muslims. And a significant portion of the non-terrorist Muslims refuse to condemn or speak out against those who are terrorists, which speaks volumes about their mindset on the subject. But you go right on and ignore all that. I'm sure there were folks just like you on the planes that hit the WTC, or the bus in London, or the trains in Spain. They're all dead now, but I'm sure they held onto their idealism until the last possible moment when a Muslim killed them.
You go right on thinking there's no threat out there, that this is all some conspiracy against peace-loving folk by global power mongers. That seems to be the position you're advocating, is it not?
Oh, I know. These same morons who preach "free speech" and "freedom of expression" are the same ones who eagerly brand anything they don't like as "flamebait." It's just their way of imposing censorship on those they don't like. They are all hypocrites.
I don't care. I've got Karma to burn.
How can you travel to anywhere in the US without taking a plane? We have these marvelous inventions called cars. Perhaps you've heard of them. But just in case you cannot understand sarcasm, please point to me the place in the Constitution that guarantees you the right to fly from point A to point B. You won't find it, but please waste as much time as you can while trying.
I see you quoted two terrorist events. Could you give a number that will show how it is more likely than winning the lottery? This line of reasoning is idiotic, tantamount to saying "I don't know why there are so many people in jail since crime is so low." Have you ever stopped to consider the concept of cause and effect? Maybe, just maybe, these events aren't commonplace because we have security in place. Maybe the above referenced events would never have happened had additional security been in place. You seem to think that none of it is needed because you haven't been blow up or hijacked yet. Pity you can't experience the results of your absurd suggestion without endangering others, otherwise I'd be all in favor of it.
And explain to me how it is constitutional that "eastern looking" people systematicaly spend twice the time boarding their plane (when they can). Apocryphal. You show me hard statistics proving it and I'll listen. Until then, you're full of it.
Well that answers my question about your fear of racial discrimination I guess. Let's see: Pan Am 103 blown up by...hmmm...Muslims? 9/11 orchestrated by...Muslims? Achille Lauro, the Israeli Olympic athletes, the Beslan school massacres, ethnic cleansing, and many more too numerous to list, all done by...Muslims? Gosh, one must be insane to draw any conclusions from this. Idiot. You ignore reality at your peril.
Screening someone for bombs, guns, and knives before boarding a speeding, pressurized metal tube full of defenseless people -- six vertical miles from any kind of law enforcement or lawful protection -- is unreasonable in your view? What kind of loon are you, anyway?
I hereby state you've lost the argument, citing Godwin's Law as the relevant rule being violated. Go look it up, if you're not too busy wondering who's got a copy of Mein Kampf handy.
I generally make it a habit not to bother replying to AC's like yourself, but since you're going to quote the Rt. Hon. Srinivasa Sastri, I felt compelled to reply.
The Rowlatt Bill was "passed on the recommendations of the Rowlatt commission, named for its chairman, British judge Sir Sidney Rowlatt, this act effectively authorized the government to imprison, without trial, any person suspected of terrorism living in the Raj." This is taken from the Wikipedia article on the Rowlatt Act, which is what the Bill became when it passed into law.
The Rowlatt Act was intended to put down political unrest by imprisoning those who acted against the government's wishes. Now, are you actually going to try and draw a parallel between being searched for dangerous items before boarding an airplane and being imprisoned without a trial for supposed anti-government activities? Do you not realize the absolute stupidity of what you're trying to conjoin? Try picking an analogy that's sensible next time.
As for your other locations, a nightclub is a private business. It can do whatever it wants with regards to entrance requirements for patronage, subject to certain civil rights criteria such as sex, race, and so forth. Security is not included in these criteria. Political rallies and schools are again cases where large numbers of people are gathered in an uncontrolled setting. Requiring searches for dangerous weapons (knives, guns, etc) is prudent, not unreasonable. Courts both liberal and conservative have upheld this tenet since the founding of the country.
I get the feeling you're one of those fools who thinks the entire Bill of Rights is carte blanche to do pretty much whatever you want. I'll remind you that yelling "Fire!" in a crowded theater is illegal, prudently banned in the interests of public safety. Your rights are not absolute. They are subject to the test of reasonability. For you to suggest that a pre-boarding search is unreasonable is to suggest otherwise, and you're both wrong and foolish to do so.
Ballmer Calls Vista 'A Work In Progress' Seriously, folks...this is news? Every piece of complex software is a work in progress. Correct me if I'm wrong, but right this very second there are hundreds -- perhaps thousands -- of coders worldwide who are working on Linux to make it better, faster, stronger...whatever. Doesn't that qualify as a "work in progress" as well? And don't say that MS is in a special category by itself because it charges for Windows. Red Hat is only one of many commercial distros out there. If RHEL is consistently being worked on by Red Hat to make it better -- adding features, squishing bugs, improving performance -- isn't that a "work in progress?" Would we prefer that software makers just sit back after a release and say "it's done and we'll never make any improvements to it?"
Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot I'm at Slashdot, where no story about Windows or Microsoft is complete without finding some way to bash it.
The easy path is one that leads to losing all your rights. Point out to me precisely where you derive this "right" to getting on an airplane without being searched? Go on, show me. I'm sure you know exactly what paragraph and clause in the Constitution says you have the right to board an airplane without having to comply with security regulations. You have to know because you're so damned sure you've got this "right."
Of course, you have no such right because the law makes no provision for one. If you do not wish to submit to being scanned/searched/whatever, you can take a bus, a cab, or your own personal transportation. No one is restricting your ability to get from point A to point B, there are no traffic control points with Gestapo'd brownshirts saying "papers please." You're making a mountain out of a molehill because it suits your agenda. The bare facts are this: if you wish to travel via air, you are traveling in a collective manner, and the safety of everyone on board -- include your thin-skinned self -- outweighs your individual right to be a paranoid, the-government-is-out-to-get-me-all-the-time passenger. If the above security measures offend you so much, put your moral fortitude where your mouth is and don't travel by air. Or, if you must, charter your own flight and skip security altogether. Yes, it's expensive, or time consuming, or annoying depending upon what alternate mode of travel you chose, but if you're so terrified of losing your "right to privacy," it's a small price to pay...right?
I don't trust the government any further than I can throw it, but I don't trust you either. That's why I'm happy as hell people are screened before they get on a plane with me, and I wish like hell they'd scan more of them and more thoroughly.
Might as well just march into the gas chambers peaceably. Are you seriously going to sit there and say that getting scanned by airport security is the equivalent of Nazi gas chambers? Do you even realize the utter absurdity you've just promulgated? Were you attempting a joke?
If we were talking about photovoltaics (which we're not, see below), you'd have a number of options of getting the price down. You could try to improve cell efficiency (while trying to keep cell price in check - this is mainly a function of how expensive land is where you want to build your plan), cell longevity, or cell price (again, how effective this approach is depends on the cost of land). You make it sound like "improv[ing] cell efficiency" is just a trivial exercise, something to be done over a lunch break by two guys with a calculator. In fact, what you propose has consumed nearly four decades of research and untold hundreds of millions of dollars of funding...all to just get to where we are right now. If improving efficiency is the key to keeping costs down, you've (once again) made my point for me: the lack of efficiency is why solar has not made any meaningful impact on the energy grid. Mass-produced PV cells have increased from roughly 8% to 12% efficiency in forty years! Do you honestly think that something magical is going to happen in the next forty that'll quadruple this trend? Because that's what would be needed in order to make solar break-even with existing nuclear and fossil energy technology.
As for your "this isn't about PV, it's solar-thermal" argument, yes, I'm well aware of that. What you aren't well aware of is that solar-thermal is even less efficient than PV. Spain just finished a 50MW solar-thermal plant, and it's conversion efficiency is only 2.6%. So I was cutting you a break by going with a solar technology that was more cost efficient that what you're actually arguing about. However, since you've torpedoed your last, best hope for winning your argument by pointing out we're talking about a technology that makes your argument weaker, I'll leave you to ponder exactly why you started this debate in the first place.
Did you RTFA ? I would guess you didn't. It talked about possible improvements in the next five to ten years. Who's missing the point ? It's not that the technology isn't available, You seem to have something of a reading comprehension problem, so I'll go real slow for you in the hopes that it'll actually sink in this time: I've never once stated that solar technology "isn't available." You made that up out of whole cloth to bolster your indefensible argument. What I stated (repeated for your non-comprehending benefit) is that the technology is not economically feasible. It cannot produce power at a cost competitive with other sources of energy, specifically nuclear and fossil fuels. Solar power has received immense funding since the early 1970's (which is nearly four decades ago just in case your math is as bad as your reading skills). During those 40 years, solar efficiency for typical mass-produced cells hasn't even doubled. It's gone from about 8% to about 12%. Exotic cells made of rare, expensive materials in small quantities have reached 20%, but their cost hurts the kW/hr figures so much that they're even less competitive than the mass-produced panels. Far from speeding up, research is yielding slower results with solar. Short of a breakthrough of unexpected dimensions, solar isn't going to magically increase in cost efficiency anytime soon. You can cling to wishful thinking that says otherwise, but the odds are not on your side.
And you'll bet how much that this will still be the case in, say, five years from now? Ten years from now? If you assume a linear progression of increases in efficiency and decreases in cost commensurate with the progress we've seen in the last 5-10 years, solar will still be at least 50% more expensive than nuclear or fossil fuels. The truth, however, is solar is progressing at a less than linear rate. Honestly, wind power turbines are moving ahead faster than solar is right now. If you actually knew anything about what you're trying to argue, you'd know that by now. What a pity you engaged your mouth (or your hands, as the case may be) before engaging your critical thinking skills, otherwise you'd not find yourself trying to defend a point that is completely fallacious.
The big difference of course, is that there are commercially operating solar/thermal power plants running - with a cost of ~15cents/KWh. Nobody has an operating fusion plant dumping electricity into the grid - dito with antimatter. And yet another one misses the point entirely, all while making my point for me. It's not that solar power doesn't exist; any fool can see that. It's that you can't make it work (economically) for 6 to 8 cents per kW/hr. You yourself state it works right now at ~15cents/kW/hr. You'd have to make it at a minimum twice as efficient as it is now in order to hit (or slightly exceed) the 8cents/kW/hr figure. That is not a trivial task, even though hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent working towards that goal.
Given that the existing plants are experimental, it is entirely possible that future plants can improve efficiency - through improved design/scale - to drop the price to between 6 & 8 cents. And it's entirely possible that pigs may fly as well, but it's very unlikely. You act as if it's just a matter of redesigning a widget here and scaling a widget there and POOF! The problem is solved! Have you no grasp whatsoever of how long people have been hammering at solar power efficiency scaling? Untold sums have been spent getting solar cell efficiency out of the single-digit percentages, and that was considered a fantasmically amazing feat at the time. Typical modern panels have a 12% efficiency, and the best available panels -- you know, those that cost several times that of the "typical" panels -- gets you to 20% efficiency. This is not a recipe for scaling well, nor is it something that can be easily "designed" away as you claim.
Radical breakthroughs in cell efficiency are needed to make solar a viable contender against nuclear and fossil fuels. I'd wager that we're more likely to make a breakthrough in fusion power than we are to double the efficiency of mass-produced, affordable solar cells in the next several decades. In the meantime, we're ignoring a practical, affordable, well-known power source that's abundant, clean, and reliable: nuclear fission.
I'll show you some working, power-producing solar-thermal power plants. Show me a working, power-producing solar-thermal power plant selling power at 6 to 8 cents per kilowatt hour without any Federal subsidies and I'll retract my prior statement. You missed my point entirely, bub. It's not that the technology isn't available, it's that it isn't economically practical right now when compared with alternatives.
Geez. Heating water with solar power really isn't rocket science. The improvements proposed for these power plants are mainly in engineering. On the other hand, we're still working on the science for fusion and antimatter. And I'll again direct you to the prior established point: efficient, economical solar power -- ones that can compete directly with nuclear and fossil fuel power sources -- are just as fanciful (for now) as fusion and antimatter. If you're too dense to grasp that...well, reference my sig below.
'Improvements in manufacturing and design, along with the possibility of higher temperature operation, could easily bring the price down to 6 to 8 cents per kilowatt hour.' And improvements in magnetic confinement could easily bring fusion power down to 6 to 8 cents per kilowatt hour...and advances in the production of antimatter could yield power too cheap to meter...assuming it's even possible to do any of the above at all. I love how pundits can wave a magic wand at substantial engineering obstacles and make them all go away when trying to push their new pet gadget or cause on the rest of us. And when pigs fly, we can use them to power our flying cars!
Solar thermal plants covering the equivalent of a 92-by-92-mile square grid in the Southwest could generate electricity for the entire United States. Mexico has an equally enormous solar resource. China, India, southern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Australia also have huge resources. Brushing aside the question of what to do when the weather doesn't cooperate, exactly how does this fellow expect us to efficiently distribute the power harvested by this "enormous solar resource"? It's not feasible to power the entire United States from a 92x92 mile square in the middle of a southwestern U.S. desert because transmission losses to, say, the entire East Coast would be horrendous.
All of this handwaving about does an injustice to a real, clean, abundant power-generating resource that we have virtually ignored: nuclear fission. Every coal plant in the U.S. could be replaced in a few decades if we chose to do so. Japan and France have excellent safety records with this technology and power most of their country via splitting atoms. Ignoring this technology while betting on pie-in-the-sky stuff that's unproven, undeveloped, and unknown to "save our species" is just silly.
I think the mistake you made was in assuming I and every other American are fucking idiots. No, not every other American, just you.
Claiming "That's not fair! It was taken out of context" and then going into a two paragraph rant about how we have to stay in Iraq no matter what the cost really doesn't make for a good argument. My God! With one completely empty sentence, devoid of any meaning or even a suggestion of action, you have destroyed my well-reasoned, fact-based argument! Surely, you are profound! My big toe quivers in your presence!
All of which is another way of saying that simply stating I don't have a good argument whilst simultaneously providing no proof of such "doesn't make for a good argument" for your point. Would you like a do-over?
Besides, you do realize the Marshall Plan came from the Democrats. It's clear Republicans don't know a single thing about the foundations of Democracy, much less Capitalism. I don't give a rat's ass where it came from, the fact is it worked rather well. Furthermore, if you examine the platform of the post WWII Democrats, you'd find they're far more aligned with 21st-century Republicans than Democrats. Today's Democrat is much more aligned with an early 20th-century Socialist.
Oh, and before you get your knickers all in a wad, this country is not a democracy. We are a Constitutional Republic. The Founding Fathers went out of their way to not create a democracy, which they likened to mob rule.
Time to hand this over to the Democrats, so they can clean up your mess. Yes, because the Democrats have done such a good job in the past of cleaning up "messy" wars like Korea, Vietnam, Somalia, and...shall I go on? Nah, I won't bother. You're cranial density is obviously somewhere north of depleted uranium, rendering you absolutely impenetrable by any rational thought. You have my pity and my contempt.
Ohwell, at least Gore didn't say he'd be happy if we were in Iraq for another 100 years.
Yep! And I'm sure glad John McCain didn't say that, either. That is, of course, what you were attempting to allude to, wasn't it? Or are you engaging in a little bit of the putting-words-in-my-opponents-mouth mudslinging that you were so busy condemning a few posts ago?
For the record, John McCain's comments about U.S. troops being in Iraq 100 years from now in no way implied "he'd be happy" with such a situation. He pointed out that about half a century ago we were in Germany and Japan and we're still there today. Surely the time has passed from us being occupiers to being allies, as in NATO and similar setups, but it doesn't change the fact that U.S. troops are still on Germany and Japanese soil. We have an obligation to them since we pretty much wrote their postwar constitutions, forcing them into a pacifist stance with relatively weak militaries. How long do you think Berlin would've lasted had we not engaged in the Berlin Airlift?
It's entirely possible that U.S. troops could be on Iraqi soil 100 years hence, but it's ludicrous folly to suppose that our mission will be that of an occupying army of a defeated foe. The goal we're all working towards is a stable, functioning democracy in the Middle East. It's never been done before (outside of Israel, that is), and it's going to take a while. Ducking out because things haven't been wrapped up in time for the last commercial break is the most stupid thing we could do. Instant gratification might be neat at a mall when picking out clothes, but it has no place on the world stage. Go look up the Marshall Plan and you'll see what I mean.
Having a 40Gbps connection is just dandy, but here's a question that's going completely unanswered:
She's surfing this on what kind of PC?
Last time I checked, your typical PC doesn't come with a 40Gbps NIC in it. It's usually GigE, with 10/100 for the cheap ones. Nevermind that most folks can't afford GigE switches to plug into in the first place, which means most folks are using 10/100 anyway.
40Gbps NIC's can't exactly be cheap since they're only found in the high-end server space. In fact, I couldn't find pricing on a separate 40Gbps NIC in a quick and casual Google search. The only 40Gbps stuff I've run into is either on the switch itself or came with the server. I have a funny feeling that, if you can actually buy one of these things separately, it would cost several times more than any PC this lady is likely to own.
Next, even if you get one of these NIC's, what exactly are you going to plug it into? The craziest PCI-X slot available (2.0, 533MHz) tops out at 4.3GByte/sec, which is 34.4Gbit/sec -- too slow! PCI-E 2.0 32x (not that you'll find this kind of connector on anything common, if you can find it at all) maxes out at 16GByte/sec, which is 128Gbit/sec -- fast enough, but again I don't think anyone makes anything with this kind of a connector yet. Your more-common PCI-E 1.1e 16x connector tops out at 4GByte/sec, or 32GBit/sec -- too slow for 40Gbps feeds.
And then there's the issue of actually saving this wonderful content she's so busily downloading. Saving a full-length DVD-9 (9GB) in two seconds would require a bandwidth of 4.5GByte/sec. Most hard drives today have a max sustained write speed of 20-30MByte/sec. Some SAN's have a hard time with the bandwidth being tossed around here. Does grandma have an EMC array in the basement next to this magical fiber link?
Lastly, exactly who is grandma doing to download stuff from that can actually provide her 40Gbps of bandwidth? Most small companies have DS-1's. Medium-sized folks have multiple DS-1's, fractional DS-3's, or full DS-3's. Your larger organizations have OC-3's and OC-12's, but it starts to get really, really rarefied if you go up above that. Suffice to say, unless grandma is getting stuff from the likes of Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, or Akamai, she's not going to be able to actually keep that 40Gbps pipe busy.
Now, a good bit of the above takes a sarcastic tone, but there's a lesson in it: you're only as fast as the slowest part of the chain. There's a helluva lot of work that needs to be done on the entire information interchange infrastructure -- from the server to the PC and everything in between -- before stuff like this even begins to make sense for the average Joe. Data centers? Sure. Home 40Gbps? Not so useful.
sure, just as soon as someone justify evicting 30 or more families to build a mall or walmart. You do have a point here, but I think you're exaggerating some figures and it's hurting your argument. You claim "30 or more families" are "evict[ed]" from their homes every six months to build a Wal-Mart or a mall. Somehow I doubt this is true for a number of reasons.
First, the "big box" stores like Wal-Mart, Target, Home Depot, etc. try to find unoccupied land when they can because it's cheaper. Sure, in urbanized areas that's difficult or impossible, which is why their second choice is demolishing/renovating older shopping centers, warehouses, and so forth. There's several of these going on within ten miles of my home right now. Again, this is cheaper (and easier on the PR) than going after residential areas. The absolute last choice is a residential area because it's more expensive, more time consuming, and -- as you've noted in your argument -- it pisses people off sometimes.
Second, I question your use of the term "evict." Evict means they're forcibly parted from their property. This does happen from time to time, and when it does it makes news. There have been documented cases of eminent domain abuse centered around these types of stores, and you're quite right to complain about them. That is your argument: the encroachment on private property rights by local city zoning councils (which are after sales tax dollars) and the businesses they "work" for (who want your sales dollars and pay politicians with campaign contributions). You hurt yourself, though, by claiming it happens "almost every 6 months" to 30 families. The aforementioned abuses are inexcusable, but they are much rarer than you claim.
Third, you attempt to draw some equivalence between China displacing 1.5M people and our eminent domain abuses. That is a poor analogy for many reasons, not the least of which is that the Chinese have much more limited property rights than Americans do to begin with. Also, using your very own numbers, you claim 30 families are uprooted every six months in the U.S., and you claim it's been going on "for decades." By my calculations on your numbers (numbers I disagree with, BTW), the "fuckers in the USA" displace a maximum of 60 families a year. Assuming 3 people constitutes a family, that's 180 people per year. At this rate it would take over eight thousand years for the "fuckers in the USA" to displace 1.5M people, something the Chinese are doing in far less than a decade. Even that number pales when compared to the relocation required for the Three Gorges Dam project. Yet you seem to have a problem determining the difference in scale, morally equivocating one to the other.
Like I said, your argument against eminent domain abuses are quite valid, but your exaggeration and hyperbole degenerates your argument into frothing at the mouth. What we're doing with eminent domain abuse in this country is bad, but what's going on in places like China is much, much worse...so much so that it really diminishes the more egregious abuse by trying to link it with the lesser abuse.