If you're the slightest bit savvy and behind a consumer router, you can get by a completely unpatched pirated copy of Windows XP running SP 2. How do I know this? This describes my wife's computer, and she has never once been infected, though it's virtually unchanged since the release of SP2 (it can't get updates because it fails the WGA test). Of course, she knows enough not to download and run "extra special good happy screensaver plugin.exe" - and she can SEE the extensions of attachments because the default switching-off of extension display has itself been switched off. I think AV software is the biggest swindle in the history of computers, at least the stuff you pay for. I run AVG because I like to download warez, but that's a different story.
I'm thinking perhaps our Congress can vote to give our telcos retroactive research & development to go along with that retroactive immunity for their law breaking, thereby allowing them to give us better stuff here in the present - stuff like usable phone interfaces, good customer service, and open standards to communicate with our other gadgets.
I'm so fucking sick of the new airforce ads that blacken out my screen that I'm seriously considering taking up with the Iraqi insurgents or at least writing them a tax deductible check today.
Yeah I learned about power when I started work on VisualBasic Script ASP back in 1998. I used it a couple of years and then discovered PHP - where all sorts of things that had been impossible (or required clunky plugins and server tsuris) were effortless: things like file uploads, dynamic image creation, and even mail. By that point Microsoft was selling.NET which required completely relearning everything you used to know. "No thanks," I said, and I learned PHP. And the great thing about PHP is that it changes incrementally, with no one completely redoing it from scratch so I have to go back for a complete (and infuriating) re-education every couple of years.
parent is a proposal for a perpetual motion machine.
Why would it be weird if they could use the crystal to separate CO2 into carbon and oxygen? because that requires HUGE AMOUNTS OF ENERGY! The reason CO2 is the result of combustion is because it is a very low energy state - carbon just LOVE oxygen. So no crystal is going to separate the two - not without lots of energy. Anyone expecting a crystal to solve our energy problems failed Chemistry 101.
oh yeah, CO2 recycled as fuel. kinda like water recycled as fuel. neither has any energy value in the earth's oxidating environment, so to give it energy requires, wait for it, ENERGY!!!!
"as long as the government doesn't get too carried away with politically-motivated subsidies"
Sure, if all costs (including those to future generations) were taken into account, pure economics could rule the day. But there are all sorts of distortions to this system, including subsidies, variable transmission costs, and the perpetual desire of a utility to grow into a monopoly or join a cartel. In this case, a regulation that required such crystals would throw a monkey wrench into the economics of the system.
I agree with you, but usually people stop adding up the energy costs of some new technology at some arbitrarily-premature place in the process. For example, once these crystals are soaked with CO2, where do you put them? How toxic are they? (CO2 is acidic and can be toxic when concentrated). How bulky are they? If I was Dictator, I would want to see the complete ledger of energy costs for this before I signed off on it. My guess is that conservation is cheaper, but conservation is always just TOO HARD because the betties just aren't attracted to guys driving cars with small engines.
I hate to be the grumpy old man throwing the wet blanket of thermodynamic skepticism on this fancy new idea, but since these are new crystals, I have to imagine they are not present in nature, and thus take lots of energy to make. Thus, to soak up a lot of CO2 takes a lot of energy - but using lots of energy is why we have CO2 to begin with. All the CO2 sequestration ideas I've read about so far don't make any sense from a macro-ecological perspective, since their use actually drives up energy usage, precisely the opposite of the response we should be making to the problem. "Oh, but we can make the crystals with clean nuclear power!" Really? If that's case, you can just not make the crystals and use that clean power instead! It doesn't take much of a puzzle for even smart people to fall for plans which, at their root, are just perpetual motion machines.
Here's why: hydrogen takes enormous amounts of energy to make. Stop saying that when you burn it all you get is water; in the case of a hydrogen economy, all the polluting happens in the supply chain, although it can also manifest in more direct forms such as a hydrogen car plowing into a container full of pesticides.
Another thing: hydrogen cars are just a distraction to allow car manufacturers to keep kicking the ball down the road on producing a truly fuel-efficient car, one far more modest than the one you're presently driving. Get used to it people; when peak oil rolls through, that moped that was "fun to ride until your friends saw you" (much like a fat chick) is going to look like Fonzie cool.
Rent "Who Killed the Electric Car" to learn more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F
It's a great compact notebook with a solid titanium body. It's a few years old now - but it's perfectly good for the things one does when traveling: web browsing, ftp, blog maintenance, picture editing, etc. Why buy a new laptop when this one isn't even a huge loss if it's stolen.
Imagine if musicians had to pay out of pocket for every song that was distributed, say one cent per track. On the one hand, they'd be angry because it would mean that they would have to pay a lot if their songs reached a lot of people. But on the other, it would also be an indication of their popularity and the money to be made on concerts and schwag. This is analogous to what a web author has to deal with when his site hits the big time. And yet, web authors can usually figure out how to monetize the publicity and pay for the traffic. The fact that music could even make musicians money if they had to pay people to take their music sheds some light on the outdated nature of the industry.
I expect that new faith-based engineering techniques are going to be what it will require to do the things Bush has proposed with respect to manned space flight. In the past we used to worry about interplanetary radiation, food supplies for a six year voyage, and reliable rocket engines. But the advances in faith-based engineering (mostly spinoffs of the faith-based Iraq war) have made it possible to seal up a couple of dudes in a steampunk diving bell and fire them at Mars from a cannon, confident of their eventual return.
It takes energy to sequester carbon dioxide, and if the energy that this takes is as great as the energy to unsequester it (that is, to release it from coal), then there is no point in burning it because the effect of burning and sequestering it yields a net energy return of zero. So far I've seen no presentations of the efficiency of sequestration. Seeing as how corn ethanol has a net energy yield of less than zero, I'm dubious about sequestration and, until I learn otherwise, will assume it's a big "kick the ball down the road" diversion, like hydrogen cars. I really wish there were more writers familiar with thermodynamics writing about these things. When it comes to energy schemes, it's not just the thought that counts.
Their comeuppance is happening at the same time, so (when I'm not thinking consciously) I have trouble distinguishing in my mind the feeling of schadenfreude I feel for Microsoft (particularly the Vista OS) from the one I feel for Giuliani.
There's no way Microsoft can catch Google just like there was no way anyone could catch Microsoft. That train has already left. The only way to catch Google is for someone to develop something entirely new that can be dominated with new network effects. Something new like Facebook or Ebay.
In 1997 there was a totally awesomeburger organization for the rudneness-offended called
Netizens Against Rudeness in Cyberspace. It was founded by Elly Jordaan
(http://www.asecular.com/musings/others/classicelly.htm) but seems to have fallen by the wayside.
Here's a link to Elly talking about NARC:
http://www.asecular.com/musings/others/elly/022097.htm
I know it's new and it's got some user interface changes, but for the stuff I do with a computer, is there a reason I should be running Vista, or that I shouldn't uninstall Vista from my next computer and upgrade to the light, fast, relatively DRM-free OS known as Windows XP? So far no one has presented a compelling case for using a OS that runs slower and requires twice the memory of XP. It could be I'm missing something really really super important here. Is it that we're just supposed to run whatever is newest? Because by that logic we should vote for whatever presidential candidate is youngest.
Microsoft doesn't really believe in evolution when it comes to development environments and UIs, preferring radical departures from the past. I'm not surprised that instead of adding features to Javascript, they'd prefer a whole new language. It fits their model, since radical changes require radical reeducation, a service in which they make money. This is why they didn't add the features ASP needed but instead blew it away with.NET. This is why Vista fucks with things that worked fine in XP - just so they could cause feature churn and sell more instruction. Contrast this to open source environments, which change gradually and incrementally. If you knew Unix in 1978, chances are you'll do okay on Linux's command line. If you knew PHP in 1998, you also know it today.
Seriously, once we're allowed to blow our own fucking minds with any chemical we choose, then maybe we'll be free. Right-wing second amendment morons talk about how fucking American it is to monotonously blow holes in a tree and walk around drunk in the forest with a gun shooting songbirds, but it's equally American to shut your door and get loaded on whatever chemical you choose - and doing so causes considerably less annoyance to your neighbors.
Hydrogen! Yay! It's everywhere - heck, water is 2/3rds Hydrogen - meaning it is safe and plentiful and when you burn it all you get is water!
But then the question becomes: how does one go about making Hydrogen from water?
At this point the answer is based soundly in the same thermodynamics that condemns us all to a second stone age:
LOTS AND LOTS of energy, my friend, meaning hydrogen solves nothing. Hell, it's not even easy to store the corrosive stuff.
The crude animal impulses present in the vast bulk of humanity are masked by the accumulation of accomplishments by extremely rare geniuses. Skim off the top 1% of creative freethinkers, and humanity wouldn't be all that different from any other species on this planet. Our feelings about what is or is not secure are easy to game with scary stories and special effects. Our desire to live peacefully in a democracy can quickly be overwhelmed by a relatively small threat, such as by a group of underfunded Islamic crazies living in a cave with a shoebox full of box cutters and 19 airplane tickets. It wouldn't take much of a jujitsu move for an effective terrorist to scare the bulk of the American people to quickly decide that fascist rule was in their interest. Humanity's easily-meddled-with irrationality is our Achilles Heel. For example, since 9Eleven America has turned away many brainy and creative people who used to contribute to our greatness. Now those people go elsewhere, making other places great.
Make clothing from this material and see what it does to fashion! I'm a tech guy and shouldn't be allowing my brain to go here, but imagine: as with your dumb-ass you-paid-$2.99-for-what? ringtones, you'll be able to download patterns for your shirts, slacks and skirts! Hooked up to your cameraphone, hell, you could even be invisible!
Dude like the man wants to all like totally stick like videocameras
in like, dude, like, the trees, all around my house.
Now, like, even when I'm totally baked
and like get one of those like
"I am so baked and like I think I'm going to take a crap and wipe my ass with a whole roll of toilet paper, dude!" moment
there will be the man
with his camera on me.
Dude! I just want to be feeling nice and clean
When I saddle back up the machine.
Woz needs to figure out how to combine epigenetics with peer-to-peer file sharing - and then not only will he have a cure for cancer and a consequent Nobel Prize (which he'll share with me for having given him this idea now), but he'll have that whole cutting edge running-around-the-lab-like-a-turdorken-with-his-head-cut-off thing goin' on.
Slashdot Mirror
If you're the slightest bit savvy and behind a consumer router, you can get by a completely unpatched pirated copy of Windows XP running SP 2. How do I know this? This describes my wife's computer, and she has never once been infected, though it's virtually unchanged since the release of SP2 (it can't get updates because it fails the WGA test). Of course, she knows enough not to download and run "extra special good happy screensaver plugin.exe" - and she can SEE the extensions of attachments because the default switching-off of extension display has itself been switched off. I think AV software is the biggest swindle in the history of computers, at least the stuff you pay for. I run AVG because I like to download warez, but that's a different story.
I'm thinking perhaps our Congress can vote to give our telcos retroactive research & development to go along with that retroactive immunity for their law breaking, thereby allowing them to give us better stuff here in the present - stuff like usable phone interfaces, good customer service, and open standards to communicate with our other gadgets.
I'm so fucking sick of the new airforce ads that blacken out my screen that I'm seriously considering taking up with the Iraqi insurgents or at least writing them a tax deductible check today.
Yeah I learned about power when I started work on VisualBasic Script ASP back in 1998. I used it a couple of years and then discovered PHP - where all sorts of things that had been impossible (or required clunky plugins and server tsuris) were effortless: things like file uploads, dynamic image creation, and even mail. By that point Microsoft was selling .NET which required completely relearning everything you used to know. "No thanks," I said, and I learned PHP. And the great thing about PHP is that it changes incrementally, with no one completely redoing it from scratch so I have to go back for a complete (and infuriating) re-education every couple of years.
parent is a proposal for a perpetual motion machine. Why would it be weird if they could use the crystal to separate CO2 into carbon and oxygen? because that requires HUGE AMOUNTS OF ENERGY! The reason CO2 is the result of combustion is because it is a very low energy state - carbon just LOVE oxygen. So no crystal is going to separate the two - not without lots of energy. Anyone expecting a crystal to solve our energy problems failed Chemistry 101.
oh yeah, CO2 recycled as fuel. kinda like water recycled as fuel. neither has any energy value in the earth's oxidating environment, so to give it energy requires, wait for it, ENERGY!!!!
"as long as the government doesn't get too carried away with politically-motivated subsidies" Sure, if all costs (including those to future generations) were taken into account, pure economics could rule the day. But there are all sorts of distortions to this system, including subsidies, variable transmission costs, and the perpetual desire of a utility to grow into a monopoly or join a cartel. In this case, a regulation that required such crystals would throw a monkey wrench into the economics of the system.
I agree with you, but usually people stop adding up the energy costs of some new technology at some arbitrarily-premature place in the process. For example, once these crystals are soaked with CO2, where do you put them? How toxic are they? (CO2 is acidic and can be toxic when concentrated). How bulky are they? If I was Dictator, I would want to see the complete ledger of energy costs for this before I signed off on it. My guess is that conservation is cheaper, but conservation is always just TOO HARD because the betties just aren't attracted to guys driving cars with small engines.
I hate to be the grumpy old man throwing the wet blanket of thermodynamic skepticism on this fancy new idea, but since these are new crystals, I have to imagine they are not present in nature, and thus take lots of energy to make. Thus, to soak up a lot of CO2 takes a lot of energy - but using lots of energy is why we have CO2 to begin with. All the CO2 sequestration ideas I've read about so far don't make any sense from a macro-ecological perspective, since their use actually drives up energy usage, precisely the opposite of the response we should be making to the problem. "Oh, but we can make the crystals with clean nuclear power!" Really? If that's case, you can just not make the crystals and use that clean power instead! It doesn't take much of a puzzle for even smart people to fall for plans which, at their root, are just perpetual motion machines.
It looks like one of the last acts of America's finest faith-based regime is going to be the creation of an asteroid belt around Earth. Lovely.
Here's why: hydrogen takes enormous amounts of energy to make. Stop saying that when you burn it all you get is water; in the case of a hydrogen economy, all the polluting happens in the supply chain, although it can also manifest in more direct forms such as a hydrogen car plowing into a container full of pesticides. Another thing: hydrogen cars are just a distraction to allow car manufacturers to keep kicking the ball down the road on producing a truly fuel-efficient car, one far more modest than the one you're presently driving. Get used to it people; when peak oil rolls through, that moped that was "fun to ride until your friends saw you" (much like a fat chick) is going to look like Fonzie cool. Rent "Who Killed the Electric Car" to learn more. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Killed_the_Electric_Car%3F
It's a great compact notebook with a solid titanium body. It's a few years old now - but it's perfectly good for the things one does when traveling: web browsing, ftp, blog maintenance, picture editing, etc. Why buy a new laptop when this one isn't even a huge loss if it's stolen.
Imagine if musicians had to pay out of pocket for every song that was distributed, say one cent per track. On the one hand, they'd be angry because it would mean that they would have to pay a lot if their songs reached a lot of people. But on the other, it would also be an indication of their popularity and the money to be made on concerts and schwag. This is analogous to what a web author has to deal with when his site hits the big time. And yet, web authors can usually figure out how to monetize the publicity and pay for the traffic. The fact that music could even make musicians money if they had to pay people to take their music sheds some light on the outdated nature of the industry.
I expect that new faith-based engineering techniques are going to be what it will require to do the things Bush has proposed with respect to manned space flight. In the past we used to worry about interplanetary radiation, food supplies for a six year voyage, and reliable rocket engines. But the advances in faith-based engineering (mostly spinoffs of the faith-based Iraq war) have made it possible to seal up a couple of dudes in a steampunk diving bell and fire them at Mars from a cannon, confident of their eventual return.
It takes energy to sequester carbon dioxide, and if the energy that this takes is as great as the energy to unsequester it (that is, to release it from coal), then there is no point in burning it because the effect of burning and sequestering it yields a net energy return of zero. So far I've seen no presentations of the efficiency of sequestration. Seeing as how corn ethanol has a net energy yield of less than zero, I'm dubious about sequestration and, until I learn otherwise, will assume it's a big "kick the ball down the road" diversion, like hydrogen cars. I really wish there were more writers familiar with thermodynamics writing about these things. When it comes to energy schemes, it's not just the thought that counts.
There's no way Microsoft can catch Google just like there was no way anyone could catch Microsoft. That train has already left. The only way to catch Google is for someone to develop something entirely new that can be dominated with new network effects. Something new like Facebook or Ebay.
In 1997 there was a totally awesomeburger organization for the rudneness-offended called Netizens Against Rudeness in Cyberspace. It was founded by Elly Jordaan (http://www.asecular.com/musings/others/classicelly.htm) but seems to have fallen by the wayside. Here's a link to Elly talking about NARC: http://www.asecular.com/musings/others/elly/022097.htm
I know it's new and it's got some user interface changes, but for the stuff I do with a computer, is there a reason I should be running Vista, or that I shouldn't uninstall Vista from my next computer and upgrade to the light, fast, relatively DRM-free OS known as Windows XP? So far no one has presented a compelling case for using a OS that runs slower and requires twice the memory of XP. It could be I'm missing something really really super important here. Is it that we're just supposed to run whatever is newest? Because by that logic we should vote for whatever presidential candidate is youngest.
Microsoft doesn't really believe in evolution when it comes to development environments and UIs, preferring radical departures from the past. I'm not surprised that instead of adding features to Javascript, they'd prefer a whole new language. It fits their model, since radical changes require radical reeducation, a service in which they make money. This is why they didn't add the features ASP needed but instead blew it away with .NET. This is why Vista fucks with things that worked fine in XP - just so they could cause feature churn and sell more instruction. Contrast this to open source environments, which change gradually and incrementally. If you knew Unix in 1978, chances are you'll do okay on Linux's command line. If you knew PHP in 1998, you also know it today.
Seriously, once we're allowed to blow our own fucking minds with any chemical we choose, then maybe we'll be free. Right-wing second amendment morons talk about how fucking American it is to monotonously blow holes in a tree and walk around drunk in the forest with a gun shooting songbirds, but it's equally American to shut your door and get loaded on whatever chemical you choose - and doing so causes considerably less annoyance to your neighbors.
Hydrogen! Yay! It's everywhere - heck, water is 2/3rds Hydrogen - meaning it is safe and plentiful and when you burn it all you get is water! But then the question becomes: how does one go about making Hydrogen from water? At this point the answer is based soundly in the same thermodynamics that condemns us all to a second stone age: LOTS AND LOTS of energy, my friend, meaning hydrogen solves nothing. Hell, it's not even easy to store the corrosive stuff.
The crude animal impulses present in the vast bulk of humanity are masked by the accumulation of accomplishments by extremely rare geniuses. Skim off the top 1% of creative freethinkers, and humanity wouldn't be all that different from any other species on this planet. Our feelings about what is or is not secure are easy to game with scary stories and special effects. Our desire to live peacefully in a democracy can quickly be overwhelmed by a relatively small threat, such as by a group of underfunded Islamic crazies living in a cave with a shoebox full of box cutters and 19 airplane tickets. It wouldn't take much of a jujitsu move for an effective terrorist to scare the bulk of the American people to quickly decide that fascist rule was in their interest. Humanity's easily-meddled-with irrationality is our Achilles Heel. For example, since 9Eleven America has turned away many brainy and creative people who used to contribute to our greatness. Now those people go elsewhere, making other places great.
Make clothing from this material and see what it does to fashion! I'm a tech guy and shouldn't be allowing my brain to go here, but imagine: as with your dumb-ass you-paid-$2.99-for-what? ringtones, you'll be able to download patterns for your shirts, slacks and skirts! Hooked up to your cameraphone, hell, you could even be invisible!
Dude like the man wants to all like totally stick like videocameras in like, dude, like, the trees, all around my house. Now, like, even when I'm totally baked and like get one of those like "I am so baked and like I think I'm going to take a crap and wipe my ass with a whole roll of toilet paper, dude!" moment there will be the man with his camera on me. Dude! I just want to be feeling nice and clean When I saddle back up the machine.
Woz needs to figure out how to combine epigenetics with peer-to-peer file sharing - and then not only will he have a cure for cancer and a consequent Nobel Prize (which he'll share with me for having given him this idea now), but he'll have that whole cutting edge running-around-the-lab-like-a-turdorken-with-his-head-cut-off thing goin' on.