4.75 TONS of carbon sure sounds like a lot... Based on my best guesses from the Internet (Thanks Wolfram-Alpha), The weight of the Atmosphere is ~5.1 x 10^18 Kg, C02 is approx 395ppm. CO2 fraction is then 2.00 x 10^17 Kg or ~4.7 x 10^13 TONS One percent of that is ~4.7 x 10^11 TONS. So we need approx 10^11 cars to make up 1% of the CO2 fraction. My point, (and I do have one) is that TONS sound like a lot, but the Atmosphere is really BIG. Also 395ppm is not really a lot of CO2 as compared with historical evidence.
Of course the benefits trickle down, just look at the cost curve of something complicated like a computer. If it wasn't for standardization and automation, the price would have never been cheap enough to be widely used. Walmart (for example) may not be liked but they have saved the average consumer quite a lot of money on their purchases based on their efficiencies of scale and automation. You can also argue that Walmart also encourages the disposable economy, and I agree.
In my opinion, problems in the poorest areas of the US inner city are a direct result of no incentive to get a(n) (better) education, a (better) job, etc... when housing is subsidized, food is subsidized, Internet and phone is subsidized, etc... Vote for the people who will keep the gravy train rolling, and in turn they will give you just enough stuff not to starve.
You don't need water, oxygen, etc... if you don't send humans. Private enterprise will do the cost analysis, and I bet they will send very sophisticated robots first. Go to the Asteroid belt to mine for things, go into low/medium orbit to develop new materials and manufacturing processes, etc... All with a focus on what is the best return on investment, not what political whims are fashionable.
I agree with others that Kennedy's speech about going to the moon was brilliant, but we were developing heavy lift capability anyway for the military, and maybe starting a 'space program' deflected some of the criticism that would have come about of we had developed the heavy lift capability, etc... with only military interests in mind.
Maybe we watch so much TV because we start to watch before our interested show is on, and then absentmindedly continue to watch after its over. Or how about channels that alternate reruns between two different shows during the late afternoon. To watch two reruns of a show you want to watch you sit through one episode of a show you don't really want to watch. Or how about that of the 157 hours of TV watching about 1/5-1/3 of that was sitting through / ignoring commercials.
I watch Netflix / Hulu / Amazon, etc... because of a few things. The ability to watch the shows I want, when I want. The ability to catch up on shows by watching a whole season, if necessary. The ability to watch old shows on my terms. And also less commercials. I'm not opposed to commercials, but they all seem to be either cars, car insurance, or feminine hygiene products.
I think Hulu only shows two 30 second commercials before or after a TV episode. Compare this to interrupting the show every 10 minutes for 2 minutes or so of commercials on cable / broadcast TV. And this is with me paying $60-$100 every month for the 'privilege' of cable TV.
I don't remember any commercials on Amazon Prime, but I may be wrong.
I have a similar situation with American football. I'm a Chicago Bears fan living in SW Pennsylvania. Sometimes I don't get any games at all on Sundays!. I now listen to the NFL and NASCAR on SIRIUS radio.
PS: When will the broadcasters learn that we may want to watch other sports too like Rugby, Irish hurling, and Aussie football.
I agree. That is why I bought a used Fujitsu C-500. Tablet computer, docking station, external CD-rom, IR keyboard, Windows Pro 2K, etc... on e-bay for US$250. Is is only a 500 Mhz Celeron, but its also a pretty decent machine, well built. Add a cardbus wi-fi card and you are ready to go. It even does a good job with my CAD apps at 800x600 or 1024x768. There seem to be a lot of these machines available. Check it out.
You don't just waste a few trillion dollars. You affect the developed world's ability to produce goods and services for the ENTIRE PLANET. Look at what is happening to Mexico just because the US wants to use more methanol (a cleaner, renewable fuel ?).
Developing countries can afford coal and nuclear plants but they are being sold a bill of goods with respect to 'renewable' resources such as wind and solar that they can't afford. Meanwhile their people starve.
The humble approach is to COLLECT MORE DATA. The egocentric approach is to believe that we are doing such a huge amount of irreversible damage to the planet, AND that we know the PERFECT solution.
What is he actually purchasing with those credits.
According to the TVA the 'GREEN POWER SWITCH' requires you to purchase power in blocks that is supposed to come from more friendly sources, such as wind farms. They freely admit though, that the green power sites are connected to the general grid and are supplying power to the grid whether you buy the 'green' power blocks or not.
Also when the wind doesn't blow, your 'green' power blocks buy nothing, because the power not supplied from the wind farms has to be made up from conventional power plants. I think they should be upfront with this and say that they are going to raise everyones rates to pay for wind farms, etc...
Lately the conservative media have regarded these carbon credits similar the the indulgences that the Catholic Church was issuing about the time of Martin Luther. This is an interesting analogy (and imperfect) but in both cases the indulgence or carbon credit does more to make one feel less guilty about their lifestyle than does any measurable good.
What is the reason for this change? As another poster has said, if you want to use the metric system, just use it.
Most, if not all of the problems I deal with (mechanical engineering) have systems and specifications that are in metric units now. Most (nearly all) national standards I deal with are already in metric units. CAD and analysis systems can switch units without problems.
What use is it to change units for the general population? Is there a need to buy apples in Kg? Or gasoline in Liters? Medicine is specified in Mg. Engine displacement is shown in Liters. Should 2x4's be 50x100's?
This is the policy of most CAD vendors. PTC (Pro-Engineer) for example, encrypted their file format partly because Solidworks was able to read the text-based part files directly and recreate the geometry without paying a royalty for a 'pro-engineer' converter. Also new file versions are not backward compatible. Once someone in the chain updates their CAD seats, all those using their files are forced to also.
PTC will also charge you for 'back maintenance', but if you know when in their fiscal quarter/year to make your deal, you can negotiate this down.
It should be the aim of every engineering department to re-evaluate their CAD systems and vendors every five years. I find that I rarely re-use designs more than 5 years old, and most components, etc... can be converted and/or redesigned better from scratch in new software if need be.
The problem in buying $300B in homeless shelters is what do you do next year? Another $300B?. Its the 'give a man a fish' vs. 'teach a man to fish' problem. What is the $300B vs. GDP? What is $300B vs. the total budget?
The 'flaw' in the process can be traced back to initiatives such as ISO9000 or similar that makes it impossible to purchase the item without requirements and specifications being met that are measurable and verifiable. A purchasing agent can't just 'buy' silly string. He/she needs exact specifications, supplier review, approved suppliers, etc... The best thing you can do is allow individual commanders to 'go around' the system in a temporary manner, and on an individual basis.
Who is president at the time is not the issue. Corporations are politically 'amoral' and will give their 'friends' money no matter what their political affiliation. 'Leveling' the playing field in their favor is smart business. I imagine that political contributions in large corporations are at approx. the same as marketing costs and until the voice of the people complains, (which isn't going to happen soon) no action will be taken.
The last time I looked, school was supposed to be play with a purpose. Remove all of the dumb games like solitare and pinball, and install programming languages with decent interfaces, and see what happens.
Your job is not like in an industrial setting, but is something much more important. And yes, it may take more work than in an industrial setting.
A 'desktop' machine is not necessary anymore for scientific computing due to the fact that quite a few scientific applications (CFD, FEA, etc...)are now compiled for clusters and are accessed through terminal services. The terminal services client can run on anything from an Apple to a Zaurus (!) I personally would like a wi-fi clamshell Zaurus-type machine that can 'dock' to a large enough CRT, keyboard, and mouse when necessary. Except for CAD/CAM apps, this would be nearly ideal.
How exactly would you get the entire world to stop using all carbon-based fuels by....(Pick a date)
If only one of the major industrialized countries (China, India, USA) does not sign on, the whole thing goes into the toilet. Enforceable is the key word here. Would you go to war because China is causing too much CO2? How about India, or Brazil? The cheapest thing the third world can do is use 'carbon-based' fuels (wood, peat, coal, oil, etc...) and they use a lot of it.
The USA for example, may be one of the most efficient users and the least polluting per capita (or BTU or ERG, whatever...) than any other nation on the planet.
You cannot legislate energy use for the planet. The only thing that works is: pleasure, pain, or payoff. Make non 'carbon-based' energy sources payoff, and the world will beat a path to your door.
I think Roscoe has probably never used BeOS, much less Zeta.
Although I will sound like a fanboy of BeOS (or Zeta), I encourage everyone to experience this OS. Other posts and the article talk about low latency, but you need see the OS first hand to understand what this really means.
Secondly, with millions of PII '440BX' or similar based systems out there being tossed in the trash pile for no good reason other than they won't run XP very well, they should sing running this OS.
Your post is entirely the point. All analagies aside, the AP is granting access to the network, basically inviting you in. You did nothing but ask for permission to enter.
Case closed.
Without getting into a flamewar about OS's, I always thought that BeOS was 'Good Enough' for most of the tasks people use a computer for, and just 'felt right' when using.
If this OS can run well on 1Ghz hardware with Firefox and AOL IM support, it might be just what I am looking for...
And lastly, please keep the Haiku error messages!
True you can put together your own mixes, but for how long? How do you stay up on the latest music genres without some type of broadcasting? I don't use iTunes, but do they recommend music? Can you sample without buying? What about the rest of the Artist's album?
I don't have time to read many music fan sites to keep up with the new stuff. I tend to listen to one station via the internet (WXRT, Chicago) they play the types of music I like, and use them as my first source for new music.
Satellite radio reminds me of FM radio in the 70's. Lots of diverse content, and minimum commercials. In a free market sometimes you have to pay for something that has features you find desirable.
As it has been said before, memory was much more expensive than now and those 2-3 bits per entry had a real cost (although using signed ints for a counter is puzzling). During normal operations the number of scheduling changes probably never approched 16K.
The real question is how the number of schedule changes not be checked for overflow. Major Mistake.
But, what was the software QA like 15 years ago?
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4.75 TONS of carbon sure sounds like a lot...
Based on my best guesses from the Internet (Thanks Wolfram-Alpha), The weight of the Atmosphere is ~5.1 x 10^18 Kg, C02 is approx 395ppm. CO2 fraction is then 2.00 x 10^17 Kg or ~4.7 x 10^13 TONS One percent of that is ~4.7 x 10^11 TONS. So we need approx 10^11 cars to make up 1% of the CO2 fraction. My point, (and I do have one) is that TONS sound like a lot, but the Atmosphere is really BIG. Also 395ppm is not really a lot of CO2 as compared with historical evidence.
Of course the benefits trickle down, just look at the cost curve of something complicated like a computer.
If it wasn't for standardization and automation, the price would have never been cheap enough to be widely used.
Walmart (for example) may not be liked but they have saved the average consumer quite a lot of money on their purchases based on their efficiencies of scale and automation.
You can also argue that Walmart also encourages the disposable economy, and I agree.
In my opinion, problems in the poorest areas of the US inner city are a direct result of no incentive to get a(n) (better) education, a (better) job, etc... when housing is subsidized, food is subsidized, Internet and phone is subsidized, etc... Vote for the people who will keep the gravy train rolling, and in turn they will give you just enough stuff not to starve.
Change the paradigm.
You don't need water, oxygen, etc... if you don't send humans. Private enterprise will do the cost analysis, and I bet they will send very sophisticated robots first. Go to the Asteroid belt to mine for things, go into low/medium orbit to develop new materials and manufacturing processes, etc... All with a focus on what is the best return on investment, not what political whims are fashionable.
I agree with others that Kennedy's speech about going to the moon was brilliant, but we were developing heavy lift capability anyway for the military, and maybe starting a 'space program' deflected some of the criticism that would have come about of we had developed the heavy lift capability, etc... with only military interests in mind.
Maybe we watch so much TV because we start to watch before our interested show is on, and then absentmindedly continue to watch after its over. Or how about channels that alternate reruns between two different shows during the late afternoon. To watch two reruns of a show you want to watch you sit through one episode of a show you don't really want to watch. Or how about that of the 157 hours of TV watching about 1/5-1/3 of that was sitting through / ignoring commercials.
I watch Netflix / Hulu / Amazon, etc... because of a few things. The ability to watch the shows I want, when I want. The ability to catch up on shows by watching a whole season, if necessary. The ability to watch old shows on my terms. And also less commercials. I'm not opposed to commercials, but they all seem to be either cars, car insurance, or feminine hygiene products.
I think Hulu only shows two 30 second commercials before or after a TV episode. Compare this to interrupting the show every 10 minutes for 2 minutes or so of commercials on cable / broadcast TV. And this is with me paying $60-$100 every month for the 'privilege' of cable TV.
I don't remember any commercials on Amazon Prime, but I may be wrong.
I have a similar situation with American football. I'm a Chicago Bears fan living in SW Pennsylvania. Sometimes I don't get any games at all on Sundays!. I now listen to the NFL and NASCAR on SIRIUS radio.
PS: When will the broadcasters learn that we may want to watch other sports too like Rugby, Irish hurling, and Aussie football.
I agree. That is why I bought a used Fujitsu C-500. Tablet computer, docking station, external CD-rom, IR keyboard, Windows Pro 2K, etc... on e-bay for US$250. Is is only a 500 Mhz Celeron, but its also a pretty decent machine, well built. Add a cardbus wi-fi card and you are ready to go. It even does a good job with my CAD apps at 800x600 or 1024x768. There seem to be a lot of these machines available. Check it out.
You don't just waste a few trillion dollars. You affect the developed world's ability to produce goods and services for the ENTIRE PLANET. Look at what is happening to Mexico just because the US wants to use more methanol (a cleaner, renewable fuel ?).
Developing countries can afford coal and nuclear plants but they are being sold a bill of goods with respect to 'renewable' resources such as wind and solar that they can't afford. Meanwhile their people starve.
The humble approach is to COLLECT MORE DATA. The egocentric approach is to believe that we are doing such a huge amount of irreversible damage to the planet, AND that we know the PERFECT solution.
What is he actually purchasing with those credits.
According to the TVA the 'GREEN POWER SWITCH' requires you to purchase power in blocks that is supposed to come from more friendly sources, such as wind farms. They freely admit though, that the green power sites are connected to the general grid and are supplying power to the grid whether you buy the 'green' power blocks or not.
Also when the wind doesn't blow, your 'green' power blocks buy nothing, because the power not supplied from the wind farms has to be made up from conventional power plants. I think they should be upfront with this and say that they are going to raise everyones rates to pay for wind farms, etc...
Lately the conservative media have regarded these carbon credits similar the the indulgences that the Catholic Church was issuing about the time of Martin Luther. This is an interesting analogy (and imperfect) but in both cases the indulgence or carbon credit does more to make one feel less guilty about their lifestyle than does any measurable good.
What is the reason for this change? As another poster has said, if you want to use the metric system, just use it.
Most, if not all of the problems I deal with (mechanical engineering) have systems and specifications that are in metric units now. Most (nearly all) national standards I deal with are already in metric units. CAD and analysis systems can switch units without problems.
What use is it to change units for the general population? Is there a need to buy apples in Kg? Or gasoline in Liters? Medicine is specified in Mg. Engine displacement is shown in Liters. Should 2x4's be 50x100's?
Could this have been an eight-port serial board? check out: http://www.digi.com/products/serialcards/pcx.jsp
This is the policy of most CAD vendors. PTC (Pro-Engineer) for example, encrypted their file format partly because Solidworks was able to read the text-based part files directly and recreate the geometry without paying a royalty for a 'pro-engineer' converter. Also new file versions are not backward compatible. Once someone in the chain updates their CAD seats, all those using their files are forced to also.
PTC will also charge you for 'back maintenance', but if you know when in their fiscal quarter/year to make your deal, you can negotiate this down.
It should be the aim of every engineering department to re-evaluate their CAD systems and vendors every five years. I find that I rarely re-use designs more than 5 years old, and most components, etc... can be converted and/or redesigned better from scratch in new software if need be.
The problem in buying $300B in homeless shelters is what do you do next year? Another $300B?.
Its the 'give a man a fish' vs. 'teach a man to fish' problem.
What is the $300B vs. GDP? What is $300B vs. the total budget?
The 'open source' car is already available. it is called the locost. This is a lotus 7 clone. Too much info out there to list here.
The 'flaw' in the process can be traced back to initiatives such as ISO9000 or similar that makes it impossible to purchase the item without requirements and specifications being met that are measurable and verifiable. A purchasing agent can't just 'buy' silly string. He/she needs exact specifications, supplier review, approved suppliers, etc... The best thing you can do is allow individual commanders to 'go around' the system in a temporary manner, and on an individual basis.
Who is president at the time is not the issue. Corporations are politically 'amoral' and will give their 'friends' money no matter what their political affiliation. 'Leveling' the playing field in their favor is smart business. I imagine that political contributions in large corporations are at approx. the same as marketing costs and until the voice of the people complains, (which isn't going to happen soon) no action will be taken.
The last time I looked, school was supposed to be play with a purpose. Remove all of the dumb games like solitare and pinball, and install programming languages with decent interfaces, and see what happens.
Your job is not like in an industrial setting, but is something much more important. And yes, it may take more work than in an industrial setting.
...and another Thinkgeek T-shirt slogan is born...
A 'desktop' machine is not necessary anymore for scientific computing due to the fact that quite a few scientific applications (CFD, FEA, etc...)are now compiled for clusters and are accessed through terminal services. The terminal services client can run on anything from an Apple to a Zaurus (!) I personally would like a wi-fi clamshell Zaurus-type machine that can 'dock' to a large enough CRT, keyboard, and mouse when necessary. Except for CAD/CAM apps, this would be nearly ideal.
How exactly would you get the entire world to stop using all carbon-based fuels by ....(Pick a date)
If only one of the major industrialized countries (China, India, USA) does not sign on, the whole thing goes into the toilet. Enforceable is the key word here. Would you go to war because China is causing too much CO2? How about India, or Brazil? The cheapest thing the third world can do is use 'carbon-based' fuels (wood, peat, coal, oil, etc...) and they use a lot of it.
The USA for example, may be one of the most efficient users and the least polluting per capita (or BTU or ERG, whatever...) than any other nation on the planet.
You cannot legislate energy use for the planet. The only thing that works is: pleasure, pain, or payoff. Make non 'carbon-based' energy sources payoff, and the world will beat a path to your door.
Or hit one with my car...
I think Roscoe has probably never used BeOS, much less Zeta. Although I will sound like a fanboy of BeOS (or Zeta), I encourage everyone to experience this OS. Other posts and the article talk about low latency, but you need see the OS first hand to understand what this really means. Secondly, with millions of PII '440BX' or similar based systems out there being tossed in the trash pile for no good reason other than they won't run XP very well, they should sing running this OS.
Your post is entirely the point. All analagies aside, the AP is granting access to the network, basically inviting you in. You did nothing but ask for permission to enter. Case closed.
Without getting into a flamewar about OS's, I always thought that BeOS was 'Good Enough' for most of the tasks people use a computer for, and just 'felt right' when using. If this OS can run well on 1Ghz hardware with Firefox and AOL IM support, it might be just what I am looking for... And lastly, please keep the Haiku error messages!
True you can put together your own mixes, but for how long? How do you stay up on the latest music genres without some type of broadcasting? I don't use iTunes, but do they recommend music? Can you sample without buying? What about the rest of the Artist's album?
I don't have time to read many music fan sites to keep up with the new stuff. I tend to listen to one station via the internet (WXRT, Chicago) they play the types of music I like, and use them as my first source for new music.
Satellite radio reminds me of FM radio in the 70's. Lots of diverse content, and minimum commercials. In a free market sometimes you have to pay for something that has features you find desirable.
As it has been said before, memory was much more expensive than now and those 2-3 bits per entry had a real cost (although using signed ints for a counter is puzzling). During normal operations the number of scheduling changes probably never approched 16K. The real question is how the number of schedule changes not be checked for overflow. Major Mistake. But, what was the software QA like 15 years ago?