Its relatively low in the US, but much more prevalent abroad. You also are not factoring in the massive amounts of oil required to build and maintain these energy sources. Also, you're original sentiment was that, well the Internet doesn't need oil because it runs on electricity, which is stupid.
I never advocated a strategy, nor did I say that we should not invest in research and alternative sources (of course we should). All I am trying to get across is the simple fact that oil is a one of a kind resource that _cannot_ be replaced by any alternative to drive the world economy at current speeds. An alternative that costs 4 times as much is NOT an alternative. A prohibitably expensive alternative, isn't. Because of the massive and self-multiplying trickle effects the world economy would grind to a halt. Which is exactly why saying that using oil is "univerally bad" is completely MEANINGLESS.
Is true that oil is a limited resource and cannot continue to serve our energy needs at current levels forever (most likely very much longer) true and important? Yes. Should we invest in alternative sources of energy? Yes. Should we stop pumping oil out of New Orleans? NO. Oil running out != oil is "universally bad"
Perhaps lets try an analogy: You are stuck in a desert and you have only a few days of water left. You should certainly be actively looking for alternative sources of water. Should you stop drinking the water you have with you? Is the water that you are drinking "universally bad"?
We can debate the exact extent to which a combination of alternative sources of energy can replace oil, which in fact is relatively limited (read the article I linked), but I was ultimately I was responding to things you said that ranged from blantantly wrong ("Oil isn't used to generate electricity.") to meaningless ( "The other option is a simple recognition that use of fossil fuels is almost universally bad." ).
If you want to actually seriously address or understand the energy situation you have to take a look at the economics and logistical issues involved, not fall back on, if I may, foolish, knee-jerk reactions.
The last paragraph doesn't make sense either, I'm pointing out that there is no viable alterantive to oil, period. The fact that its not renewable and is running out has no bearing whatsoever on this fact.
ok, here you go: Oooo, your smart. The Internet runs on electricity. Oil isn't used to generate electricity. Electrity is produced from coal, natural gas, nuclear and hydroelectric. Louisiana's contribution to generating electricity is natural gas, not oil.
The global economy is utterly dependent on a constant supply of oil. everything we do requires tons of oil: transportaion, food production, manufactoring, pesticides, the production of plastics, and computers and other high tech devices. The production of the average desktop computer consumes 10 times its weight in fossil fuels.
And you might note we could get electricity from hydroelectric, nuclear, solar or wind just as easily as coal or natural gas, then we could still have our Internet and not keep dumping CO2, Mercury, Sulfur and other assorted pollutants in to the air.
As you might note, this is also complete absurdity, we can't get our electricity "as easily" from other sources, not even close. Barring a major technological breakthrough, these are currently not viable alternatives to oil. In fact our best chance is producing better technology for mining more out of known oil fields and minding non-standard oil reserves out of new locations.
from http://egj.lib.uidaho.edu/egj09/youngqu1.html: "Oil is a unique energy source that has no complete replacement in all its varied end uses. The British scientist Sir Crispin Tickell concludes, "...we have done remarkably little to reduce our dependence on a fuel [oil] which is a limited resource, and for which there is no comprehensive substitute in prospect." [Emphasis mine]
Coming to realize that oil is finite, any and all suggestions of means to replace oil are welcomed. Cheerful myths are enthusiastically embraced. These include: that there are two trillion barrels of economically recoverable oil in the Colorado Plateau oil shales; that dams and their reservoirs are a source of indefinitely renewable energy and that they are environmentally benign; that solar, wind, geothermal, and hydro-electric power can supply the electrical needs, from the Arctic to the tropics, of the Earth's nearly six billion people (likely to become at least 10 billion in the next fifty years); that coal, oil from oil sands, and biofuels can replace the 72 million barrels of oil the world now uses daily; and that somehow electricity produced from various alternative energy sources can readily provide the great mobility which oil now gives to the more than 600 million vehicles worldwide. Regrettably, none of these cheerful myths appear to be valid.
The US is so wrapped up in whipping themselves into a fearmongered bunch of people hiding under the bed with every sensationalist news headline that Al-Quaeda can just sit back and enjoy the show for years to come. They wanted fear and terror. Well, they've got it, on a scale they never imagined. Not a day goes by that a major news organization doesn't spread fear by using sensationalist headlines like this Washington Post one.
Al Qaeda's ultimate goal is not fear and terror, what they want is for the US to withdraw from Saudi Arabia, to stop supporting Israeli aggression against Palestine along with other grievances some of which are legitimate some of which are not. The Administration wants fear and terror and has very carefully cultivated it for some time now (hence the sensationlism) so as to point it in directions which are useful. I imagine Al-Qaeda is sitting back stunned at how completely oblivious Americans are to the issues at stake. In this sense we have been very good at subverting terrorism. Perhaps in some preverse way this a good thing, I don't know.
The Daily Show is good comedy and helps one see through the bullshit, but unfortunately it doesn't provide any alternative (namely the truth).
Google today also launched World Wide Web Search Beta, which Google claims allows you to search over 8 billion web pages and provides more relevant results based on their new PageRank algorithm.
I use a plotting device on my client, so you'll have to take care of the plotting yourself (you can use an online plot service: http://www.softintegration.com/chhtml/lang/lib/lib ch/plot/cgi_data.html). This script will aggregate the data for you and spit out the current contents everytime:
#!/usr/bin/python import urllib import cPickle as c import time
s = urllib.urlopen("http://www.aimfight.com/getFight.p hp?name1=ashot&name2=%s"%sn).read() sc = int(s.split("score2=")[1].split('&')[0]) scores.a ppend((sc,time.time())) c.dump(scores, open("scores.pickle",'w')) print "Content-type: text/plain\n\n" print "\n".join([str(x[0]) for x in scores])
remember to remove the space from the url that slashdot inserts
It was so tiring carefully printing out the satellite views and then cutting out the roadmaps in thin slivers to fit over my printouts. man, what a godsend..
you are right, I am wrong.. we'll, I'm partly right, but yea.. this is more interesting. I'm going to write a script that will keep track of a screename and generate a plot, showing daily/seasonal popularity fluctuations. =]
no, it has nothing to do with who is online, the difference is its owned by AOL and they have all the data whereas buddy zoo only has the data of people who have registered with them (fraction)
Slashdot Mirror
Thats irrelavant. What they are doing is not illegal, even if they didn't have a copyright.
http://www.tug.org/applications/pdftex/
touche, sir
Firefox is Opera's baby
no thats not similar, you aren't paiting with the image that you captured.
Its relatively low in the US, but much more prevalent abroad. You also are not factoring in the massive amounts of oil required to build and maintain these energy sources. Also, you're original sentiment was that, well the Internet doesn't need oil because it runs on electricity, which is stupid.
I never advocated a strategy, nor did I say that we should not invest in research and alternative sources (of course we should). All I am trying to get across is the simple fact that oil is a one of a kind resource that _cannot_ be replaced by any alternative to drive the world economy at current speeds. An alternative that costs 4 times as much is NOT an alternative. A prohibitably expensive alternative, isn't. Because of the massive and self-multiplying trickle effects the world economy would grind to a halt. Which is exactly why saying that using oil is "univerally bad" is completely MEANINGLESS.
Is true that oil is a limited resource and cannot continue to serve our energy needs at current levels forever (most likely very much longer) true and important? Yes. Should we invest in alternative sources of energy? Yes. Should we stop pumping oil out of New Orleans? NO. Oil running out != oil is "universally bad"
Perhaps lets try an analogy: You are stuck in a desert and you have only a few days of water left. You should certainly be actively looking for alternative sources of water. Should you stop drinking the water you have with you? Is the water that you are drinking "universally bad"?
We can debate the exact extent to which a combination of alternative sources of energy can replace oil, which in fact is relatively limited (read the article I linked), but I was ultimately I was responding to things you said that ranged from blantantly wrong ("Oil isn't used to generate electricity.") to meaningless ( "The other option is a simple recognition that use of fossil fuels is almost universally bad." ).
If you want to actually seriously address or understand the energy situation you have to take a look at the economics and logistical issues involved, not fall back on, if I may, foolish, knee-jerk reactions.
The last paragraph doesn't make sense either, I'm pointing out that there is no viable alterantive to oil, period. The fact that its not renewable and is running out has no bearing whatsoever on this fact.
ok, here you go:
Oooo, your smart. The Internet runs on electricity. Oil isn't used to generate electricity. Electrity is produced from coal, natural gas, nuclear and hydroelectric. Louisiana's contribution to generating electricity is natural gas, not oil.
The global economy is utterly dependent on a constant supply of oil. everything we do requires tons of oil: transportaion, food production, manufactoring, pesticides, the production of plastics, and computers and other high tech devices. The production of the average desktop computer consumes 10 times its weight in fossil fuels.
And you might note we could get electricity from hydroelectric, nuclear, solar or wind just as easily as coal or natural gas, then we could still have our Internet and not keep dumping CO2, Mercury, Sulfur and other assorted pollutants in to the air.
As you might note, this is also complete absurdity, we can't get our electricity "as easily" from other sources, not even close. Barring a major technological breakthrough, these are currently not viable alternatives to oil. In fact our best chance is producing better technology for mining more out of known oil fields and minding non-standard oil reserves out of new locations.
from http://egj.lib.uidaho.edu/egj09/youngqu1.html:
"Oil is a unique energy source that has no complete replacement in all its varied end uses. The British scientist Sir Crispin Tickell concludes, "...we have done remarkably little to reduce our dependence on a fuel [oil] which is a limited resource, and for which there is no comprehensive substitute in prospect." [Emphasis mine]
Coming to realize that oil is finite, any and all suggestions of means to replace oil are welcomed. Cheerful myths are enthusiastically embraced. These include: that there are two trillion barrels of economically recoverable oil in the Colorado Plateau oil shales; that dams and their reservoirs are a source of indefinitely renewable energy and that they are environmentally benign; that solar, wind, geothermal, and hydro-electric power can supply the electrical needs, from the Arctic to the tropics, of the Earth's nearly six billion people (likely to become at least 10 billion in the next fifty years); that coal, oil from oil sands, and biofuels can replace the 72 million barrels of oil the world now uses daily; and that somehow electricity produced from various alternative energy sources can readily provide the great mobility which oil now gives to the more than 600 million vehicles worldwide. Regrettably, none of these cheerful myths appear to be valid.
better?
you sir are a fool.
well thats cool. what about reinsurers, do they subsidize the risk to someone else? or is it some continuous heiarchy of riskiness?
no.
you've hit the nail on the head
mmm.. I could go for a big mac.
whoa, sweet!
The US is so wrapped up in whipping themselves into a fearmongered bunch of people hiding under the bed with every sensationalist news headline that Al-Quaeda can just sit back and enjoy the show for years to come. They wanted fear and terror. Well, they've got it, on a scale they never imagined. Not a day goes by that a major news organization doesn't spread fear by using sensationalist headlines like this Washington Post one.
Al Qaeda's ultimate goal is not fear and terror, what they want is for the US to withdraw from Saudi Arabia, to stop supporting Israeli aggression against Palestine along with other grievances some of which are legitimate some of which are not. The Administration wants fear and terror and has very carefully cultivated it for some time now (hence the sensationlism) so as to point it in directions which are useful. I imagine Al-Qaeda is sitting back stunned at how completely oblivious Americans are to the issues at stake. In this sense we have been very good at subverting terrorism. Perhaps in some preverse way this a good thing, I don't know.
The Daily Show is good comedy and helps one see through the bullshit, but unfortunately it doesn't provide any alternative (namely the truth).
the market decides
Google today also launched World Wide Web Search Beta, which Google claims allows you to search over 8 billion web pages and provides more relevant results based on their new PageRank algorithm.
It was so tiring carefully printing out the satellite views and then cutting out the roadmaps in thin slivers to fit over my printouts.
man, what a godsend..
you are right, I am wrong.. we'll, I'm partly right, but yea..
this is more interesting. I'm going to write a script that will keep track of a screename and generate a plot, showing daily/seasonal popularity fluctuations. =]
fucken awesome
no, but now one can call the service from another (possibly flash) web application (until they release their API anyway).
no, it has nothing to do with who is online, the difference is its owned by AOL and they have all the data whereas buddy zoo only has the data of people who have registered with them (fraction)
I figured it out too, but what was with that actionscript assembly? Is that some sort of tool they are using to prevent code stealing?
they didn't copy the one layout that matters, line breaks in the search blobs_ en%7Clang_ru&safe=off&c2coff=1&q=shorter+justifica tion&btnG=Search&lr=lang_en%7Clang_ru
- web-t&p=longer+justification
http://www.google.com/search?num=50&hl=en&lr=lang
The fact that the google result blobs are squished means that I can scan across them, and do so carefully that I don't veer off into the result above or below:
http://search.yahoo.com/search?ei=UTF-8&fr=FP-tab
That may sound silly, but this is of utmost importance.