Essentially, it all boils down to economics and infrastructure. For any fuel to replace gasoline, you'd have to build an entire new distribution system, essentially replacing every gas station in the country.
Methanol: Poor energy density and even more poisonous than gasoline, plus it mixes with water, making cleanup of spills *much* more difficult. Also, correct me if I'm wrong about this, but wouldn't it necessitate a hell of a lot of logging? Is that methanol they're burning in Brazil coming from the rainforests?
Ethanol: I've heard it claimed that the push for ethanol is coming from Archer-Daniels-Midland and nobody else. Dunno if I believe that, but it would certainly require a lot of land to produce enough grain to meet current demand. I think its energy density is even lower than that of methanol's.
Natural gas: Clean-burning, but hard to store and transport (and energy density is *really low; it *is* a gas, after all). And, it's still a fossil fuel.
Conventional electric cars: The battery technology just isn't there, and I don't think there's much of anything on the horizon, either. The idea of battery exchanges has been floated many times, but think about it: There would have to be an incredible amount of standardization in order for it to work at all: only one or two form factors to cover every size of car and truck. Also, the battery-exchange stations would have to maintain an enormous inventory in order to have charged batteries available at all times. Since the energy density of batteries is *much* less than that of gasoline, the inventory would take up much more space than the underground tanks of a gas station, and be much more expensive to build and maintain.
Hybrid electrics: I think these are the best short-term bet. I sat in a friend's Honda hybrid recently, and was quite impressed. It, however, amounts to a conventional drivetrain with a very small engine and an electric-motor assist, and i think the Toyota hybrid works the same way. I think of hybrids as basically being electric cars with a small engine keeping the batteries charged. I'm surprised nobody seems to be working on a gas-turbine hybrid; properly designed, you'd eliminate the part-throttle inefficiency and narrow power band problems that make turbines otherwise a poor choice for automotive propulsion. Problem is, I think people are reluctant to sink a lot of R&D money into these, because they're waiting for...
Fuel cells: Probably the best long-term bet. The biggest problem is the storage and distribution of hydrogen. There has been some progress in on-board refinement of H2 from methanol, but that has all of the same problems methanol has, and negates the big advantage of fuel cells, that being a complete lack of emissions.
I don't see where this problem is unique to IDE's... makefile incomaptibilities are nothing new in the *nix world either. And Visual C++, at least, can be set to automatically generate makefiles along with the project file. I wouldn't use an IDE that *didn't* have this capability, for precisely this reason.
I'm not creative enough to be a UI hacker (though I've read the Human Interface Guidelines from Apple and used several different types of GUI/CLIs, and I have a built-in aesthetic of what seems "right" about an interface)
Sounds like you'd make an excellent UI hacker; that built-in aesthetic is essential for building good UIs. Creativity in UI design is not always a good thing. See the Interface Hall of Shame if you don't believe me.
29? You're way too young to be bitter and disenchanted. Don't let those hordes of 22-year-old millionaire dot-commies try to persuade you otherwise. I was once in very nearly your position, except that I did finish school (with a History degree, which is not much more useful than having not graduated). Did my time in tech support and took a bunch of classes, and was able to hang up my headset for good and go into development when I was, well, 29. Making that transition was greatly facilitated by finding a position that combined my support and development skills, supporting a commercial API library. This is more or less the standard route from support into development, at least in my experience.
And the advantage of getting older is that people pay less attention to the Education section of your resume (which belongs at the bottom, incidentally).
My overall goal is simple: To never stop learning.
My current goal is to be better able to understand complex systems at a deep level with less study than it takes now. I often feel like I'm only scratching the surface of a lot of things I do, and it's a rare and wonderful feeling to truly master something. I'd like to be able to have that feeling more often.
Oh, and to learn to touch type. Hunt-and-peck, even really fast hunt-and-peck, just does not cut it in this line of work.
I actually originally read F451 because it was assigned reading in junior high English (in, like, 1982 or so). This review reminds me I really should reread it someday and pick up all the stuff my hormone-crazed 9th-grade brain missed.
The movie is definitely worth a rental, too. (directed by François Truffaut, starring Oskar Werner, Julie Christie and Cyril Cusack); it features some spectacular acting, vaguely surreal visuals (in classic mid-60s European style) and the opening credits are spoken, which makes perfect sense when you think about it.
Hey, you're really close to my work. So why aren't I getting instantaneous page updates?
$ traceroute slashdot.org [elided] 3 s1.dtn3.bos.ma.verio.net (199.103.133.29) 7.687 ms 8.224 ms 21.261 ms 4 d1-11-1-3.a00.bstnma04.us.ra.verio.net (129.250.118.41) 10.619 ms 9.470 ms 14.682 ms 5 d3-4-0.a00.bstnma05.us.ra.verio.net (129.250.118.29) 10.126 ms 10.057 ms 10.147 ms 6 fa-6-1-0.r00.bstnma05.us.bb.verio.net (129.250.30.113) 27.626 ms 10.447 ms 9.927 ms 7 p1-7-1-2.r01.nycmny01.us.bb.verio.net (129.250.3.177) 15.872 ms 16.028 ms 16.352 ms 8 nyc1-1.nyc2-1.verio.net (129.250.3.146) 156.702 ms 225.416 ms 188.964 ms 9 p1-1-0-1.r02.chcgil02.us.bb.verio.net (129.250.3.133) 55.075 ms 38.290 ms 39.869 ms 10 ibr01-s3-1-0.okbr01.exodus.net (216.32.132.185) 94.520 ms 39.250 ms 53.993 ms 11 bbr02-g1-0.okbr01.exodus.net (216.34.183.66) 47.932 ms 39.246 ms 39.315 ms 12 bbr01-p5-0.wlhm01.exodus.net (216.32.132.210) 51.079 ms 48.565 ms 48.641 ms 13 dcr03-g2-0.wlhm01.exodus.net (64.14.70.65) 74.841 ms 48.817 ms 50.115 ms 14 64.14.80.130 (64.14.80.130) 50.918 ms 50.388 ms 51.669 ms 15 64.28.66.204 (64.28.66.204) 51.335 ms 49.552 ms 51.074 ms 16 64.28.67.48 (64.28.67.48) 57.524 ms 53.040 ms 48.873 ms
Pity it doesn't actually work that way. All the way out to frickin' Chicago (at least) to go half a mile up the street?! I bet we have line-of-sight; think Exodus would be willing to set up an IR link?:-)
Wow. My first real job was in Number Nine's tech support department, back in '92-93. This was when they were still very heavily into the CAD market and moving into the Windows market; their products were still based on the TI 34020 graphics processor chip (#9GXi, #9GXiTC). Going into the Windows market was a difficult corporate shift: "Games? People want to use our cards for *games*?!"
I'm actually not very surprised they went under; the video card business was insanely fast-paced and competitive even then, and it's only gotten worse since. I well remember the flap about people optimizing their drivers for high Winmark numbers; #9 was one of the worse offenders in that regard, although to be fair they only did that after ZD Labs ignored their complaints about ATI doing it.
The minsmanagement when I was there got pretty staggering at times. I left after one of our other support people left and they wouldn't let my manager hire a replacement-- which meant the department consisted of her, me and the receptionist, and we were getting utterly swamped even before that other person left. The manager and I quit on the same day, purely by coincidence. The receptionist became the department manager shortly thereafter (which was a much better use of her skills anyway).
Um, read the UDP FAQ, item 10 in particular. In short: It's not DOS, it's simply an organized boycott, which is perfectly legal. UUNet threatened legal action when they got UDP'ed, and the Justice Dept. and the FBI just laughed at them.
If I was hosting a New Year's Eve party this year, the first thing I'd do would be to put a big padlock on my apartment's breaker panel with a note reading "Very funny, buster."
Problem is, many of my friends are serious lock geeks.
When I was at FTP Software, back before the suits took over, routers were named for toxic waste (methy-ethyl-ketone etc.), servers were lubricants (wd40, babyoil, ky, vaxeline(!)), and printers were fabrics (wool, leather, lycra).
My next company used towns in Massachusetts, mostly North Shore since that's where they were located: topsfield, danvers, boxford etc. So I named one "enfield", that being one of the towns in central MA that was drowned by the construction of the Quabbin Reservoir in the 1930s.
I've usually given my personal workstations names from favorite sf novels; usually "anarres", from LeGuin's The Dispossessed, and "chanur", from the CJ Cherryh series of the same name. My home machine has always been named "servetus", after the 16th-century religious reformer, and I was going to use a religious-reformer theme for future machines (pelagius, socinius, priestley), but the only addition thus far has been a work machine I took home and named "eruditorum" (from Stephenson's Cryptonomicon), sort-of combining the home and work themes.
Some friends have a "generic" theme for their house network, so the main server is "server", the Windows laptop is "laptop", etc. This kinda falls down in scalability terms, though.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, I didn't think that was the case; otherwise the environmentalists would be having two cows and a goat about it (as well they should).
Essentially, it all boils down to economics and infrastructure. For any fuel to replace gasoline, you'd have to build an entire new distribution system, essentially replacing every gas station in the country.
Methanol: Poor energy density and even more poisonous than gasoline, plus it mixes with water, making cleanup of spills *much* more difficult. Also, correct me if I'm wrong about this, but wouldn't it necessitate a hell of a lot of logging? Is that methanol they're burning in Brazil coming from the rainforests?
Ethanol: I've heard it claimed that the push for ethanol is coming from Archer-Daniels-Midland and nobody else. Dunno if I believe that, but it would certainly require a lot of land to produce enough grain to meet current demand. I think its energy density is even lower than that of methanol's.
Natural gas: Clean-burning, but hard to store and transport (and energy density is *really low; it *is* a gas, after all). And, it's still a fossil fuel.
Conventional electric cars: The battery technology just isn't there, and I don't think there's much of anything on the horizon, either. The idea of battery exchanges has been floated many times, but think about it: There would have to be an incredible amount of standardization in order for it to work at all: only one or two form factors to cover every size of car and truck. Also, the battery-exchange stations would have to maintain an enormous inventory in order to have charged batteries available at all times. Since the energy density of batteries is *much* less than that of gasoline, the inventory would take up much more space than the underground tanks of a gas station, and be much more expensive to build and maintain.
Hybrid electrics: I think these are the best short-term bet. I sat in a friend's Honda hybrid recently, and was quite impressed. It, however, amounts to a conventional drivetrain with a very small engine and an electric-motor assist, and i think the Toyota hybrid works the same way. I think of hybrids as basically being electric cars with a small engine keeping the batteries charged. I'm surprised nobody seems to be working on a gas-turbine hybrid; properly designed, you'd eliminate the part-throttle inefficiency and narrow power band problems that make turbines otherwise a poor choice for automotive propulsion. Problem is, I think people are reluctant to sink a lot of R&D money into these, because they're waiting for...
Fuel cells: Probably the best long-term bet. The biggest problem is the storage and distribution of hydrogen. There has been some progress in on-board refinement of H2 from methanol, but that has all of the same problems methanol has, and negates the big advantage of fuel cells, that being a complete lack of emissions.
I don't see where this problem is unique to IDE's... makefile incomaptibilities are nothing new in the *nix world either. And Visual C++, at least, can be set to automatically generate makefiles along with the project file. I wouldn't use an IDE that *didn't* have this capability, for precisely this reason.
I'm not creative enough to be a UI hacker (though I've read the Human Interface Guidelines from Apple and used several different types of GUI/CLIs, and I have a built-in aesthetic of what seems "right" about an interface)
Sounds like you'd make an excellent UI hacker; that built-in aesthetic is essential for building good UIs. Creativity in UI design is not always a good thing. See the Interface Hall of Shame if you don't believe me.
29? You're way too young to be bitter and disenchanted. Don't let those hordes of 22-year-old millionaire dot-commies try to persuade you otherwise. I was once in very nearly your position, except that I did finish school (with a History degree, which is not much more useful than having not graduated). Did my time in tech support and took a bunch of classes, and was able to hang up my headset for good and go into development when I was, well, 29. Making that transition was greatly facilitated by finding a position that combined my support and development skills, supporting a commercial API library. This is more or less the standard route from support into development, at least in my experience.
And the advantage of getting older is that people pay less attention to the Education section of your resume (which belongs at the bottom, incidentally).
My overall goal is simple: To never stop learning.
My current goal is to be better able to understand complex systems at a deep level with less study than it takes now. I often feel like I'm only scratching the surface of a lot of things I do, and it's a rare and wonderful feeling to truly master something. I'd like to be able to have that feeling more often.
Oh, and to learn to touch type. Hunt-and-peck, even really fast hunt-and-peck, just does not cut it in this line of work.
I actually originally read F451 because it was assigned reading in junior high English (in, like, 1982 or so). This review reminds me I really should reread it someday and pick up all the stuff my hormone-crazed 9th-grade brain missed.
The movie is definitely worth a rental, too. (directed by François Truffaut, starring Oskar Werner, Julie Christie and Cyril Cusack); it features some spectacular acting, vaguely surreal visuals (in classic mid-60s European style) and the opening credits are spoken, which makes perfect sense when you think about it.
Hey, you're really close to my work. So why aren't I getting instantaneous page updates?
:-)
$ traceroute slashdot.org
[elided]
3 s1.dtn3.bos.ma.verio.net (199.103.133.29) 7.687 ms 8.224 ms 21.261 ms
4 d1-11-1-3.a00.bstnma04.us.ra.verio.net (129.250.118.41) 10.619 ms 9.470 ms 14.682 ms
5 d3-4-0.a00.bstnma05.us.ra.verio.net (129.250.118.29) 10.126 ms 10.057 ms 10.147 ms
6 fa-6-1-0.r00.bstnma05.us.bb.verio.net (129.250.30.113) 27.626 ms 10.447 ms 9.927 ms
7 p1-7-1-2.r01.nycmny01.us.bb.verio.net (129.250.3.177) 15.872 ms 16.028 ms 16.352 ms
8 nyc1-1.nyc2-1.verio.net (129.250.3.146) 156.702 ms 225.416 ms 188.964 ms
9 p1-1-0-1.r02.chcgil02.us.bb.verio.net (129.250.3.133) 55.075 ms 38.290 ms 39.869 ms
10 ibr01-s3-1-0.okbr01.exodus.net (216.32.132.185) 94.520 ms 39.250 ms 53.993 ms
11 bbr02-g1-0.okbr01.exodus.net (216.34.183.66) 47.932 ms 39.246 ms 39.315 ms
12 bbr01-p5-0.wlhm01.exodus.net (216.32.132.210) 51.079 ms 48.565 ms 48.641 ms
13 dcr03-g2-0.wlhm01.exodus.net (64.14.70.65) 74.841 ms 48.817 ms 50.115 ms
14 64.14.80.130 (64.14.80.130) 50.918 ms 50.388 ms 51.669 ms
15 64.28.66.204 (64.28.66.204) 51.335 ms 49.552 ms 51.074 ms
16 64.28.67.48 (64.28.67.48) 57.524 ms 53.040 ms 48.873 ms
Pity it doesn't actually work that way. All the way out to frickin' Chicago (at least) to go half a mile up the street?! I bet we have line-of-sight; think Exodus would be willing to set up an IR link?
Wow. My first real job was in Number Nine's tech support department, back in '92-93. This was when they were still very heavily into the CAD market and moving into the Windows market; their products were still based on the TI 34020 graphics processor chip (#9GXi, #9GXiTC). Going into the Windows market was a difficult corporate shift: "Games? People want to use our cards for *games*?!"
I'm actually not very surprised they went under; the video card business was insanely fast-paced and competitive even then, and it's only gotten worse since. I well remember the flap about people optimizing their drivers for high Winmark numbers; #9 was one of the worse offenders in that regard, although to be fair they only did that after ZD Labs ignored their complaints about ATI doing it.
The minsmanagement when I was there got pretty staggering at times. I left after one of our other support people left and they wouldn't let my manager hire a replacement-- which meant the department consisted of her, me and the receptionist, and we were getting utterly swamped even before that other person left. The manager and I quit on the same day, purely by coincidence. The receptionist became the department manager shortly thereafter (which was a much better use of her skills anyway).
No mention either of a silly little thing called Unix, ferchrissake...
I saw it too, and the "movement" was indeed called "The Wave". Only thing I can find about it is the IMDB entry, though.
:-)
I suppose it could be a coincidence...
Ya know, there's this thing called a search engine... :-)
t ml
http://www.satellite.eu.org/sat/vsohp/iridium.h
Um, read the UDP FAQ, item 10 in particular. In short: It's not DOS, it's simply an organized boycott, which is perfectly legal. UUNet threatened legal action when they got UDP'ed, and the Justice Dept. and the FBI just laughed at them.
If I was hosting a New Year's Eve party this year, the first thing I'd do would be to put a big padlock on my apartment's breaker panel with a note reading "Very funny, buster."
Problem is, many of my friends are serious lock geeks.
When I was at FTP Software, back before the suits took over, routers were named for toxic waste (methy-ethyl-ketone etc.), servers were lubricants (wd40, babyoil, ky, vaxeline(!)), and printers were fabrics (wool, leather, lycra).
My next company used towns in Massachusetts, mostly North Shore since that's where they were located: topsfield, danvers, boxford etc. So I named one "enfield", that being one of the towns in central MA that was drowned by the construction of the Quabbin Reservoir in the 1930s.
I've usually given my personal workstations names from favorite sf novels; usually "anarres", from LeGuin's The Dispossessed, and "chanur", from the CJ Cherryh series of the same name. My home machine has always been named "servetus", after the 16th-century religious reformer, and I was going to use a religious-reformer theme for future machines (pelagius, socinius, priestley), but the only addition thus far has been a work machine I took home and named "eruditorum" (from Stephenson's Cryptonomicon), sort-of combining the home and work themes.
Some friends have a "generic" theme for their house network, so the main server is "server", the Windows laptop is "laptop", etc. This kinda falls down in scalability terms, though.
--