The question the author is answering is, "is it possible to to meet the world's energy needs using renewables, assuming continued exponential growth forever?"
Especially considering that many Western countries are hovering just around the replacement level in terms of population. All evidence shows that after the standard of living reaches a certain point, birthrates drop off substantially. Places like India are experiencing massive population booms because they're in that sweet spot where technology and infrastructure has developed to the point where life expectancy has sky-rocketed, but haven't become so prosperous yet as to drop the birth-rate down to compensate.
My country (Australia) is having the opposite problem - with fewer people in successive generations, there's not going to be enough of a tax base to support the greater number of people (proportionately) consuming government resources without contributing much in taxation (retirees).
Free trade has never been a thing. Sure, companies are allowed to outsource labour and buy widgets from the cheapest manufacturer slavery can buy, but consumers aren't allowed to buy DVDs from outside their assigned region, and licensing agreements basically let the corporations screw you for as much as they can get out of you, instead of offering an equitable price to everybody.
Put simply, free trade was always a hypocritical motto. It was "free trade for us, what we're willing to give for you".
The USA has a 140 year history of regular banking panics and collapses, inspite of the institution of regulations.
You say in spite, I say because of.
The industry is over-regulated - it's regulated in favour of the industry. If you want to see a free-market solution, then stop propping them up with tax dollars, stop letting them use LLCs to avoid personal responsibility for their actions, and hang a bunch of them out to dry.
The problem is, the graft has been going on so long now that letting that happen will be extremely painful.
You're not properly accounting for all externalities there - chance of disease, loss of reputation, actual distaste for the act itself, etc. Besides, it's not like banks would expose themselves to million-dollar potential fines for $10 either.
The quote, like most quotes, is an over-simplification. Banks, like companies, like people, make decisions based on the potential payout versus the potential risk by the chance of the risk being actualized, whether those risk/rewards are monetary, reputational, emotional, whatever. So while someone might not blow a guy for $10, raise that to $10 million and see how many would say no. It's just a case of thresholds.
From the article: "When a company can benefit financially from doing the wrong thing, it generally will,"
FTFY. Hell, I'd even go as far to say, when a person can benefit financially from doing the wrong thing, they generally will. Especially when it comes to legislation and regulation - you need to take a worst-case perspective, same as security for a computer system. A legislative approach that relies on the entities it regulates "doing the right thing" is useless - it regulates the honest, who don't need it, and ignores the dishonest, who do.
It's also the reason python devs aren't allowed to have nice things - like multi-line lambdas.
I use python professionally every day. I like lots of things about it. But it does seem like it can't have any new features until Guido's figured out some way to implement them differently than anyone else.
Compared to the alternatives the author suggests? Ruby and Python combined are doing less than Perl. PHP is the runaway favorite [w3techs.com], but if you dig into the numbers, you'll find that most of the change is due to Content Management Systems which by and far have been developed on PHP. So these massive zomfg numbers PHP is pulling in isn't due to people programming with it as much as they are copy-pasting it en masse.
In the article, the author posits that PHP/Python/Ruby are nibbling away at Perl on the web front, and that bash is, for some reason, eating Perl's lunch in the sysadmin/code-glue areas. Besides, the article author is looking at the TIOBE index. TIOBE is based on search hits regarding a particular language, not looking at web-facing systems. That methodology has its own flaws, but it shouldn't be skewed towards public-facing websites or people passively using a CMS like your link is - and TIOBE lists PHP and Python as above Perl, and Ruby not far behind.
So let me get this straight: A programming language that found a niche, became massively popular, and is now widely used... is a failure in your eyes because it's not in a constant state of change?
Uh, no, that'd be you putting words into the writer's mouth. How about this:
As more time goes by, Perl will likely continue to decline in popularity and cement its growing status as a somewhat arcane and archaic language, especially as compared to newer, more lithe options.
It's not failing because it's not changing, it's failing because less people are using it. The lack of it integrating shiny new features may be one of the factors contributing to this.
He actually had a fourth choice, which Americans have increasingly taken up over the last couple of decades - go postal and shoot a bunch of people. I'm sort of surprised he didn't try and take the prosecutors with him. If you want to look at reasons for those sort of things, maybe you need to pay attention to the pressure corrupt systems like these place on individuals.
What is it with all you free market anti-nerds?? Your solution isn't "use your brain to hack out a solution," It's "SPEND MONEY! WE LOVE MONEY! WE WORSHIP MONEY!"
What on earth does consumerism have to do with the free market? It's quite possible to support a free market without being a consumerist, and it's very possible to be against a free market and still be a consumerist.
All you need for excessive consumption is a market - whether it's free or not is irrelevant.
Something doesn't have to be scientific to be truth. Philosophy, history, mathematics - all have means of determining "truth" without relying on the scientific method. The problem is that "science" is increasingly taken to mean "rational", when that is not true - science is a subset of rationality. Stating something is not scientific is not necessarily an attack against it; it's purely descriptive.
With studies like this, along with Kurzweil-ish woo-woo of extrapolating growth, can we talk an amusing guess at how long until heat waste renders the Earth, or at least certain parts of it uninhabitable?
Probably not. You've got to remember, that all this carbon we're currently emitting used to be a part of the carbon cycle. The Cretaceous period had half again as much atmospheric carbon as we do currently. A warming world might inconvenience humanity, and probably a bunch of other species, but it will advantage a whole bunch more. For the world as a whole, it's pretty much unimportant - it's been through such changes before.
This is part of the problem with the semi-religious zeal of the lunatic fringe of the green movement. Climate change isn't some moral problem with the plague of humanity destroying Gaia; it's a climactic shift, which the world has seen many of before. It needs to be looked at as basically an engineering problem that needs to be solved for humanity's well-being, not as a lash to flagellate ourselves with over our evil ways.
Are people able to do physically demanding work less valuable then other kinds?
Depends what you mean by valuable. They're more plentiful than people who can do high skilled work, so they don't get paid as well. That has no bearing on their inherent value as a person.
There's two variables that I think you're conflating: skill, and energy.
Research is a high-skill, low-energy job. Gladiola bulb planting is (I imagine) a low-skill, high-energy job. The amount a job pays is basically proportional to how many people are willing and able to do it. A low-skill, low-energy job is basically the bottom of the barrel. A low-skill, high-energy job is the next step up - there are fewer people willing to put up with the physical demands of the job, so they'll get a slightly higher pay. So on and so forth for high-skill, high-energy and high-skill, low-energy.
You say your jobs have been getting harder, but what you seem to mean is that they've been getting less physically demanding. Of course, at the same time, they've been getting more skill-intensive. Your reward isn't for the low-energy, it's for the high-skill.
As long as there actually are numerous reports. Newspapers do that all the time - the word they like to use is "alleged". Here you go - "Berlusconi’s Alleged Ties To Mafia Again Resurface". Newspapers have been reporting on rumour for a long time. As long as they ensure that they're reporting on other people making the allegations, instead of making the allegations themselves, they're fine.
Probably because most game developers are Americans, catering to a primarily-American audience. Their aren't many games with Pakistani protagonists because Pakistanis don't write many games, and any they do write probably aren't localized for English.
The United States (geographical area) is relatively peaceful. The politicians who control the United States (political entity) are far from peaceful. GP was referring to the former as evidenced by his "war actually on the soil".
The summary leaves out that Hingston's bankruptcy was subsequently annulled.
Google is only reporting on the associated between "Hingston" and "bankrupt" because other people have made that association, either by typing it into Google, or by publishing it on sites that Google indexes. Personally, I think this sort of activity should be protected - "other people have typed "Hingston bankrupt" into Google" is a fact, regardless of whether Hingston is, or ever was, bankrupt.
I mean if it's not actively mining an asteroid, is it still an asteroid mining satellite?
Is a car door really a car door if it has no involvement in the drive train? Mining is more than extraction.
An asteroid may have precious substances, but we could spend more resources by far trying to tap them. Does that seem right to you?
Yep. Because like most technological developments, it's an initial investment. Getting the first kilo of iron ore from a satellite will cost billions of dollars. Getting the next 5 million tonnes down will cost a fraction.
That's true, but his point still stands. If a creator isn't offering their creation for sale, then they aren't contributing to the progress of science or useful arts, and copyright should not apply.
If it had a snowball's chance in hell of being accomplished, I'd be advocating for changing my countries laws such that it only applies to works available within my country: let a work go out of print, or refuse to sell it in one location, and your work becomes free game.
Previously, this would be far too onerous, but with digital distribution being what it is, the cost of making a digital copy of pretty much any creative work available is trivial.
Slashdot Mirror
The question the author is answering is, "is it possible to to meet the world's energy needs using renewables, assuming continued exponential growth forever?"
Especially considering that many Western countries are hovering just around the replacement level in terms of population. All evidence shows that after the standard of living reaches a certain point, birthrates drop off substantially. Places like India are experiencing massive population booms because they're in that sweet spot where technology and infrastructure has developed to the point where life expectancy has sky-rocketed, but haven't become so prosperous yet as to drop the birth-rate down to compensate.
My country (Australia) is having the opposite problem - with fewer people in successive generations, there's not going to be enough of a tax base to support the greater number of people (proportionately) consuming government resources without contributing much in taxation (retirees).
Free trade has never been a thing. Sure, companies are allowed to outsource labour and buy widgets from the cheapest manufacturer slavery can buy, but consumers aren't allowed to buy DVDs from outside their assigned region, and licensing agreements basically let the corporations screw you for as much as they can get out of you, instead of offering an equitable price to everybody.
Put simply, free trade was always a hypocritical motto. It was "free trade for us, what we're willing to give for you".
Did you even read my post, or did you just see "regulation" and spit out your rote response?
The USA has a 140 year history of regular banking panics and collapses, inspite of the institution of regulations.
You say in spite, I say because of.
The industry is over-regulated - it's regulated in favour of the industry. If you want to see a free-market solution, then stop propping them up with tax dollars, stop letting them use LLCs to avoid personal responsibility for their actions, and hang a bunch of them out to dry.
The problem is, the graft has been going on so long now that letting that happen will be extremely painful.
You're not properly accounting for all externalities there - chance of disease, loss of reputation, actual distaste for the act itself, etc. Besides, it's not like banks would expose themselves to million-dollar potential fines for $10 either.
The quote, like most quotes, is an over-simplification. Banks, like companies, like people, make decisions based on the potential payout versus the potential risk by the chance of the risk being actualized, whether those risk/rewards are monetary, reputational, emotional, whatever. So while someone might not blow a guy for $10, raise that to $10 million and see how many would say no. It's just a case of thresholds.
From the article: "When a company can benefit financially from doing the wrong thing, it generally will,"
FTFY. Hell, I'd even go as far to say, when a person can benefit financially from doing the wrong thing, they generally will. Especially when it comes to legislation and regulation - you need to take a worst-case perspective, same as security for a computer system. A legislative approach that relies on the entities it regulates "doing the right thing" is useless - it regulates the honest, who don't need it, and ignores the dishonest, who do.
Yeah. Hence:
That methodology has its own flaws
It's also the reason python devs aren't allowed to have nice things - like multi-line lambdas.
I use python professionally every day. I like lots of things about it. But it does seem like it can't have any new features until Guido's figured out some way to implement them differently than anyone else.
Compared to the alternatives the author suggests? Ruby and Python combined are doing less than Perl. PHP is the runaway favorite [w3techs.com], but if you dig into the numbers, you'll find that most of the change is due to Content Management Systems which by and far have been developed on PHP. So these massive zomfg numbers PHP is pulling in isn't due to people programming with it as much as they are copy-pasting it en masse.
In the article, the author posits that PHP/Python/Ruby are nibbling away at Perl on the web front, and that bash is, for some reason, eating Perl's lunch in the sysadmin/code-glue areas. Besides, the article author is looking at the TIOBE index. TIOBE is based on search hits regarding a particular language, not looking at web-facing systems. That methodology has its own flaws, but it shouldn't be skewed towards public-facing websites or people passively using a CMS like your link is - and TIOBE lists PHP and Python as above Perl, and Ruby not far behind.
So let me get this straight: A programming language that found a niche, became massively popular, and is now widely used... is a failure in your eyes because it's not in a constant state of change?
Uh, no, that'd be you putting words into the writer's mouth. How about this:
As more time goes by, Perl will likely continue to decline in popularity and cement its growing status as a somewhat arcane and archaic language, especially as compared to newer, more lithe options.
It's not failing because it's not changing, it's failing because less people are using it. The lack of it integrating shiny new features may be one of the factors contributing to this.
He actually had a fourth choice, which Americans have increasingly taken up over the last couple of decades - go postal and shoot a bunch of people. I'm sort of surprised he didn't try and take the prosecutors with him. If you want to look at reasons for those sort of things, maybe you need to pay attention to the pressure corrupt systems like these place on individuals.
You're going to play NES while driving? You did imply that you are in the US, so not surprising.
Not necessarily the US - just not whatever podunk little country you're from that only has cars with a single seat.
What is it with all you free market anti-nerds?? Your solution isn't "use your brain to hack out a solution," It's "SPEND MONEY! WE LOVE MONEY! WE WORSHIP MONEY!"
What on earth does consumerism have to do with the free market? It's quite possible to support a free market without being a consumerist, and it's very possible to be against a free market and still be a consumerist.
All you need for excessive consumption is a market - whether it's free or not is irrelevant.
Something doesn't have to be scientific to be truth. Philosophy, history, mathematics - all have means of determining "truth" without relying on the scientific method. The problem is that "science" is increasingly taken to mean "rational", when that is not true - science is a subset of rationality. Stating something is not scientific is not necessarily an attack against it; it's purely descriptive.
With studies like this, along with Kurzweil-ish woo-woo of extrapolating growth, can we talk an amusing guess at how long until heat waste renders the Earth, or at least certain parts of it uninhabitable?
Probably not. You've got to remember, that all this carbon we're currently emitting used to be a part of the carbon cycle. The Cretaceous period had half again as much atmospheric carbon as we do currently. A warming world might inconvenience humanity, and probably a bunch of other species, but it will advantage a whole bunch more. For the world as a whole, it's pretty much unimportant - it's been through such changes before.
This is part of the problem with the semi-religious zeal of the lunatic fringe of the green movement. Climate change isn't some moral problem with the plague of humanity destroying Gaia; it's a climactic shift, which the world has seen many of before. It needs to be looked at as basically an engineering problem that needs to be solved for humanity's well-being, not as a lash to flagellate ourselves with over our evil ways.
Are people able to do physically demanding work less valuable then other kinds?
Depends what you mean by valuable. They're more plentiful than people who can do high skilled work, so they don't get paid as well. That has no bearing on their inherent value as a person.
There's two variables that I think you're conflating: skill, and energy.
Research is a high-skill, low-energy job. Gladiola bulb planting is (I imagine) a low-skill, high-energy job. The amount a job pays is basically proportional to how many people are willing and able to do it. A low-skill, low-energy job is basically the bottom of the barrel. A low-skill, high-energy job is the next step up - there are fewer people willing to put up with the physical demands of the job, so they'll get a slightly higher pay. So on and so forth for high-skill, high-energy and high-skill, low-energy.
You say your jobs have been getting harder, but what you seem to mean is that they've been getting less physically demanding. Of course, at the same time, they've been getting more skill-intensive. Your reward isn't for the low-energy, it's for the high-skill.
They're not Muslim good guys; they're colonial sidekicks. It's the British pair and the plucky American who save the day.
I guess you're currently hiding under your desk, desperately worried that a jumbo jet's about to land on your forehead.
As long as there actually are numerous reports. Newspapers do that all the time - the word they like to use is "alleged". Here you go - "Berlusconi’s Alleged Ties To Mafia Again Resurface". Newspapers have been reporting on rumour for a long time. As long as they ensure that they're reporting on other people making the allegations, instead of making the allegations themselves, they're fine.
Probably because most game developers are Americans, catering to a primarily-American audience. Their aren't many games with Pakistani protagonists because Pakistanis don't write many games, and any they do write probably aren't localized for English.
The United States (geographical area) is relatively peaceful. The politicians who control the United States (political entity) are far from peaceful. GP was referring to the former as evidenced by his "war actually on the soil".
The summary leaves out that Hingston's bankruptcy was subsequently annulled.
Google is only reporting on the associated between "Hingston" and "bankrupt" because other people have made that association, either by typing it into Google, or by publishing it on sites that Google indexes. Personally, I think this sort of activity should be protected - "other people have typed "Hingston bankrupt" into Google" is a fact, regardless of whether Hingston is, or ever was, bankrupt.
I mean if it's not actively mining an asteroid, is it still an asteroid mining satellite?
Is a car door really a car door if it has no involvement in the drive train? Mining is more than extraction.
An asteroid may have precious substances, but we could spend more resources by far trying to tap them. Does that seem right to you?
Yep. Because like most technological developments, it's an initial investment. Getting the first kilo of iron ore from a satellite will cost billions of dollars. Getting the next 5 million tonnes down will cost a fraction.
That's true, but his point still stands. If a creator isn't offering their creation for sale, then they aren't contributing to the progress of science or useful arts, and copyright should not apply.
If it had a snowball's chance in hell of being accomplished, I'd be advocating for changing my countries laws such that it only applies to works available within my country: let a work go out of print, or refuse to sell it in one location, and your work becomes free game.
Previously, this would be far too onerous, but with digital distribution being what it is, the cost of making a digital copy of pretty much any creative work available is trivial.