For example, "goop" gets fed to a cracker (catalytic or thermal) which (oddly enough) cracks the C20's into smaller pieces. While one typically aims for the the gasoline range as the max product out of cracking units (assuming that's where the money is), going down to C1-C2 is not difficult - you just have longer catalyst contact times or higher temperatures.
If you want more info on "goop" & light, sweet, yummy oil, go here for details!
I'm not sure how far you can reduce the goop... that is, can you eliminate all your C20 into ethylene et al? I'm not sure you can, because the c20 goop is sold as coke, which I daresay is cheaper than gasoline. Why do they do that if they don't have to?
They certainly don't care what KIND of fuel they have to sell you. What doesn't exist, however, is any incentive for them to encourage efficiency. In fact, quite the opposite is true. The more efficient stuff gets, the less people have to buy their products.
That's why the energy companies don't make cars and toasters. Someone else makes the energy-consuming devices, and that someone has a very large vested interest in efficiency, at least efficiency w.r.t. the competition's device.
The problem with the world going over to some alternate source of energy is twofold:
1). The first-mover problem. The first corp switching to methane/gerbil/whatever power on a large scale will make all the costly mistakes, much to the delight and edification of their competition, so I can imagine a... reluctance... to be the first one.
2). Don't forget that we need a source for PLASTIC. Right now our enormous chemical industries guzzle down oil like you wouldn't believe, and we still need to find an alternative for that. And with the way fractional distillation works, if you separate enough oil to get gloop to make plastic out of, you get as a side effect lots and lots of, well, gasoline. What are they supposed to do with it?
I do favor alternate energy sources (heck, alternate plastic sources too, if any) but let's not forget that it will take really hard work to cut over, and that it's not as simple as tossing up a couple of windmills. The energy corps today aren't using oil just because they like polluting. Here's some guy's take on the problem.
But I agree on the debt - everything I buy is either cash, or if I feel like it, on the credit card (destined to be paid off every month). It's great not having any "real" debt (beyond the aforementioned credit card, which I am in debt in for like 10-20 days max, at a time).
When I got out of college my old man made me get an American Express card. He told me, "In two months you will curse my name. Next year you will thank me."
Well, great wheel turns, the billing cycle heaves into view, and I get a letter from Amex, dripping with sneering disdain ("... would like to remind you that American Express is a charge card, not a credit card... or we'll send several husky Italo-American youths to your house... you damn deadbeat.... ")
Suffice it to say I learned my lesson. And now I treat all plastic as one should: as a charge card. Mad props to my old man and Amex.
TS: Hierakonopolis Software, may I help you? User: I'm having problems with In-the-beginning-was-the-Word 5.0 TS: What is your problem? User: I type for a little while then the screen locks up. TS: Did you try to hit ctrl-alt-eye-of-horus? User: Yes, I keep getting the lapis-lazuli screen of passing-to-eternal-reward. TS: Maybe you're short on RAMses. User: I'm not a newbian! I think there's a main system chariot interrupt conflict. TS: Reinstall and pray.
So what happens to your competitive edge if you're forced to give out the secrets behind your product?
You lose market-share to competitors. Something Linksys should have known before they developed a GPL-based OS for that router.
Y'see, there is a need for BSD-type licenses, for people who don't want to redistribute their source. GPL software is fine, but not for the purposes that Linksys et al seem to be using it. BSD is essentially public domain, in the truest sense of the word.
This does bring up one concern I have with the GPL. Not the GPL per se, but that the GPL creates a second, separate "public domain" distinct from the BSD/default public domain.
The New York Times is the newspaper of record for the American empire. Words appear there in order to be read, by the citizens of the empire and its subjects.
Y'know, if America is an empire, it's a pretty namby-pamby empire. Not nearly as hard core as the Roman Empire. If we were reading "Tempore Yorki Novi" or something, now *that* would be a proper imperialist rag.
Of the lesser known, if you asked me which distribution to install for my aunt, I'd look toward Lycoris. If she was the youngest of my aunts, I might recommend Red Hat since I have had too many installation problems with SuSE.
This displays two of the problems of widespread desktop linux acceptance:
-- There are so many alternatives that it is hard and frightening for managers to pick one. Sounds silly, but Microsoft offers, for better or for worse, a de-facto standard on many fronts. Picking a linux, an open office-like suite, etc. introduces a huge set of choices which are perceived to have been already made.
-- Dippy analogies like the above. Youngest aunt, indeed.
But dropping something insecure out in the open with full knowledge that it will probably be compromised and then likely used for undesireable activities isn't responsible.
The ethical question is a good one... I for one would hesitate to drop an knowlingly-insecure machine out there. However, mightn't it be possible to have a machine with software firewall that allows anything incoming, but blocks all *outgoing* traffic? That would leave the one machine open to any degradation, but will (should, heh heh) keep any contagion from spreading.
a lot of other sci-fi authors have clued in to the fact that exposure sells books.
The Baen Free Library offers a ton of books from sci-fi/fantasy publisher Baen Books for free in a variety of electronic formats. [...] Many people (myself included) put the CDs up on their web server for convenience.
Try scanning in some Baen book that they haven't released in that fashion and put that on your website. Wait, and let the hilarity ensue.
Point being, these Baen CDs are released, shared if you will, in an orderly fashion, controlled by the publisher. This is light-years away from the "file-sharing" crowd, who seem to be asserting that it is the consumer who gets to decide what gets released free to the world.
Maybe the Baen library will end up a huge success and make them scads of money. Shouldn't it be their choice to release it? After all, it's their risk.
Going to mars will not reveal exciting new facts about space to the general public.
How bout:
How to live in low-G without your body turning into jello
Is there any value to having a space factory? Anything that's hard to do on Earth, but would work better on Mars or in zero-G?
That said, I must concede two things:
1) Space did seem to have more urgency when we were trying to "beat the Soviets".
2) Practicality be damned, I'm on that first colony ship to Mars, even if they have to duct-tape me to the hood. By God I'll hold my breath till we get there.
Just so you know, in an unsigned 32bit integer, you can fit around "4 000 000 000". So that problem techincally won't happen for another 50 to 60 years or so after 2038.
Most Unixes require that a date value must be signed so that you can do arithmetic on it, find out which came first, etc. Hence 2038.
Currently we're all hoping that the move to 64-bit computing will automagically solve this problem for us, at least till 2^63 seconds past $#%$#$%# 1970.
Related note, in Vernor Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky" (a great read) the space gypsies still calculate dates as an offset from 1970.
Yes, but the FSF owns the copyright on all those programs. The FSF cannot tell someone violating the GNU copyright (by violating the GPL) that they cannot use Linux (even though Linux is GPLed) because they do not own the copyright, and can therefor neither license, nor revoke the license of Linux.
Doesn't the FSF own the copyright on a lot of little utilities (ls, cp, etc) which ship with linux?
I haven't even gotten into the fact that every now and then it's healthy to go back through all the scripts you've written to find errors, omissions, etc. I wrote a bunch of scripts about 6 months ago, and just went back through them this week to make sure everything was running as well as it could be. Re-writing scripts is one step of optimizing your system. If you never revisit the work you did 10 years ago, you never know if it could be simplified.
I'm afraid I'll have to disagree with you here. In my world scripts that Work Just Fine never, ever need to be reviewed for tinkering or just for the heck of it. Unless one unaccountably has scads of free time on one's hands.
I think the distinction I'm trying to make here is that many people's scriptbases are working scripts, whose job is to save time and effort, freeing up bandwidth for other uses. A good script library should be managed like a commercial product -- after a strict test cycle, leave the source alone. These are not hobby scripts, or fun scripts. They are grim workaday scripts which ardently want to be left alone to do their work in peace.
Over the past 10 years I've accumulated a massive library of scripts which I carry from job to job. Back to the original point, about "fixing" unix tools for ease-of-use, where is my benefit in breaking my whole library by redefining how "ls" works? If you don't like "ls", create a new command with a different name.
Better hope your home address isn't easy to find you'll find him dangling from the roof tied up in Cat-5 cable and a line of geeks wating to woo you.;)
That was about the most disturbing comment I've read in a while. [...]
Yeah, I mean cat-5 cable? You'd get way, way better holding power with coax. Jesus!
I think any "product" of open development that is sufficiently successful will eventually be killed by competing anti-open interests (software companies, adjacent industries, governments, etc.)
I'll suggest that it is actually the other way around. Eventually any non-open product will be killed by a good-enough free competitor. This
a) sucks for the non-open product people, who want to get paid
b) is great for other developers who can build from a higher starting point.
Which factor you weigh more heavily is a matter of preference.
It could be worse, people could be learning Basic instead of Pascal and Java. At least they are slightly similar to C. I start programming with Basic and it's haunted me ever since.
I have to weigh in here... it is my sincere belief that it is a huge mistake to start students in on high-level languages. If you start by learning that the JVM or the interpreter will "take care of it for you", it gives poor incentive to write carefully, with the real machine limits in mind.
I suggest that all students be forced to learn C and assembler first, to get an idea of what's really, really going on under the hood. Students need to build moral fiber by implementing Yet Another Linked List, by tracking down memory leaks, and going through the agony of allocating a multi-dimensional array.
After this experience, they will:
a) Appreciate the glories of Java, Perl & co.
b) Realize that even with memory-managed platforms memory is still a limited resource, and that leaks can still happen.
c) Be able to harrumph at the next generation for forgetting what programming to the bare metal is all about.
Hey I've gotta run, my dad is waving some IBM punch-cards and a soldering iron at me.
F**k Pavlov, use Skinnerian Conditioning
on
Reiser4 Benchmarks
·
· Score: 2, Funny
So, just fix it so that doing Bad Things (like power-cycling)
doesn't achieve perceived positive results.
None of this namby-pamby "fail to reward unpositive behavior" stuff. You are the sysadmin, and it is better to be feared than loved.
User: Um, I rebooted the box. Er, was that, like, okay?
You: Und so... Ve haff earned ourzelfs ein timeout in "The Box", hein?
User: Aiiieieieieeeie!
You: Mua-ha-ha!
[Fade to black]
The BSD license lets people apply almost any license to my software, including most non-free licenses. If I wrote work under the BSD license, someone could modify it and sell the result with no source code, and I'd have no recourse at all.
Why would you want recourse? How have they wronged you? You released your code under a free license, and people are using your code. Hooray! Wasn't that the point of releasing your code?
Here's the way I've always thought of this:
BSD License: Essentially public domain.
GPL: Creates a completely separate public domain; stuff goes in but never comes out.
LGPL: They had to maket this one so that people wouldn't all go BSD.;)
Personally, I think that people who hate Sonny Bono & friends' perpetual copyright games ought to prefer BSD to GPL. The whole point of public domain is that anyone can use it, for any purpose. GPL seems more like an attempt to make sure that no code, ever, anywhere can be proprietary.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure how far you can reduce the goop
Please enlighten!
The problem with the world going over to some alternate source of energy is twofold:
1). The first-mover problem. The first corp switching to methane/gerbil/whatever power on a large scale will make all the costly mistakes, much to the delight and edification of their competition, so I can imagine a
2). Don't forget that we need a source for PLASTIC. Right now our enormous chemical industries guzzle down oil like you wouldn't believe, and we still need to find an alternative for that. And with the way fractional distillation works, if you separate enough oil to get gloop to make plastic out of, you get as a side effect lots and lots of, well, gasoline. What are they supposed to do with it?
I do favor alternate energy sources (heck, alternate plastic sources too, if any) but let's not forget that it will take really hard work to cut over, and that it's not as simple as tossing up a couple of windmills. The energy corps today aren't using oil just because they like polluting. Here's some guy's take on the problem.
Well, great wheel turns, the billing cycle heaves into view, and I get a letter from Amex, dripping with sneering disdain ("... would like to remind you that American Express is a charge card, not a credit card
Suffice it to say I learned my lesson. And now I treat all plastic as one should: as a charge card. Mad props to my old man and Amex.
TS: Hierakonopolis Software, may I help you?
User: I'm having problems with In-the-beginning-was-the-Word 5.0
TS: What is your problem?
User: I type for a little while then the screen locks up.
TS: Did you try to hit ctrl-alt-eye-of-horus?
User: Yes, I keep getting the lapis-lazuli screen of passing-to-eternal-reward.
TS: Maybe you're short on RAMses.
User: I'm not a newbian! I think there's a main system chariot interrupt conflict.
TS: Reinstall and pray.
Y'see, there is a need for BSD-type licenses, for people who don't want to redistribute their source. GPL software is fine, but not for the purposes that Linksys et al seem to be using it. BSD is essentially public domain, in the truest sense of the word.
This does bring up one concern I have with the GPL. Not the GPL per se, but that the GPL creates a second, separate "public domain" distinct from the BSD/default public domain.
And, of course,
This displays two of the problems of widespread desktop linux acceptance:
-- There are so many alternatives that it is hard and frightening for managers to pick one. Sounds silly, but Microsoft offers, for better or for worse, a de-facto standard on many fronts. Picking a linux, an open office-like suite, etc. introduces a huge set of choices which are perceived to have been already made.
-- Dippy analogies like the above. Youngest aunt, indeed.
Just a thought.
Point being, these Baen CDs are released, shared if you will, in an orderly fashion, controlled by the publisher. This is light-years away from the "file-sharing" crowd, who seem to be asserting that it is the consumer who gets to decide what gets released free to the world.
Maybe the Baen library will end up a huge success and make them scads of money. Shouldn't it be their choice to release it? After all, it's their risk.
- How to live in low-G without your body turning into jello
- Is there any value to having a space factory? Anything that's hard to do on Earth, but would work better on Mars or in zero-G?
That said, I must concede two things:1) Space did seem to have more urgency when we were trying to "beat the Soviets".
2) Practicality be damned, I'm on that first colony ship to Mars, even if they have to duct-tape me to the hood. By God I'll hold my breath till we get there.
Currently we're all hoping that the move to 64-bit computing will automagically solve this problem for us, at least till 2^63 seconds past $#%$#$%# 1970.
Related note, in Vernor Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky" (a great read) the space gypsies still calculate dates as an offset from 1970.
... to say goodbye to the South Africans and welcome our new German and Japanese diamond overlords.
And get all huffy about geek sex innuendos? Sheesh. At least the rest of us are honest about it.
I think the distinction I'm trying to make here is that many people's scriptbases are working scripts, whose job is to save time and effort, freeing up bandwidth for other uses. A good script library should be managed like a commercial product -- after a strict test cycle, leave the source alone. These are not hobby scripts, or fun scripts. They are grim workaday scripts which ardently want to be left alone to do their work in peace.
Over the past 10 years I've accumulated a massive library of scripts which I carry from job to job. Back to the original point, about "fixing" unix tools for ease-of-use, where is my benefit in breaking my whole library by redefining how "ls" works? If you don't like "ls", create a new command with a different name.
a) sucks for the non-open product people, who want to get paid
b) is great for other developers who can build from a higher starting point.
Which factor you weigh more heavily is a matter of preference.
I suggest that all students be forced to learn C and assembler first, to get an idea of what's really, really going on under the hood. Students need to build moral fiber by implementing Yet Another Linked List, by tracking down memory leaks, and going through the agony of allocating a multi-dimensional array.
After this experience, they will:
a) Appreciate the glories of Java, Perl & co.
b) Realize that even with memory-managed platforms memory is still a limited resource, and that leaks can still happen.
c) Be able to harrumph at the next generation for forgetting what programming to the bare metal is all about.
Hey I've gotta run, my dad is waving some IBM punch-cards and a soldering iron at me.
User: Um, I rebooted the box. Er, was that, like, okay?
You: Und so... Ve haff earned ourzelfs ein timeout in "The Box", hein?
User: Aiiieieieieeeie!
You: Mua-ha-ha!
[Fade to black]
BSD License: Essentially public domain.
GPL: Creates a completely separate public domain; stuff goes in but never comes out.
LGPL: They had to maket this one so that people wouldn't all go BSD.
Personally, I think that people who hate Sonny Bono & friends' perpetual copyright games ought to prefer BSD to GPL. The whole point of public domain is that anyone can use it, for any purpose. GPL seems more like an attempt to make sure that no code, ever, anywhere can be proprietary.