Nuclear fission waste has to be guarded for millenia, because you can build dirty bombs from it, or unscrupulous companies will smelt it (metals) into other products. In addition, we, everyone we on the planet, get to enjoy all the threats of war that surround access and development of nuclear fission technology. And they already are poisoning vast areas because of the weapons they make from so called and only partially "depleted" uranium. In the headlines all the time, threats of war over who can have nuclear fission tech or who can't. This sucks, it's a new type of cold war that can turn hot overnight and really bork things up *bad*. All nations want it mostly, but they have to be "approved" by the first adopters, and that pisses them off so they go sneaky and develop it anyway, which makes other nations think they should too, etc.. And that is definitely part of nuclear fission technology, you simply cannot ignore that aspect of it, all the parts make the whole, but it apparently is common to do so, people tend to fixate on just cost of producing electricity, and ignore threats of war over access to the tech and long term storage of the waste and guarding it, etc.. It is extremely contentious and dangerous technology because of those reasons. I don't like that, it would be real nice if it could be used safely and safer and developed better, but it is reality so we shouldn't ignore it.
Coal waste and smoke sucks too, for all the normal reasons. That's why I am in favor of using our only practical nuclear *fusion* technology, which is solar, both PV and thermal. All the other laser magnetic plasma bubble containment whatever fusion tech is still decades/generations away (I mean when I was a kid in the 50s they were talking about it and promising it..let us check the calendar...), we shouldn't wait for that to be developed to switch to fusion power. We *have* fusion power right now, let's use it, make it better/faster/cheaper. Sure, more research in those other areas, but solar just needs economies of scale now more than anything else to get loads cheaper.
And if we had 100% tax credits for it now, you couldn't stop the deluge of new companies and jobs getting it out there working. Not ten percent or even thirty, but a full 100% credit, say extended for five or ten years up to a practical amount, like 25 to 50 grand.
I know I would *much* rather see a trillion dollars going out into direct solar deployment, rather than a trillion dollars sucked out of the economy for wall street's dream ticket, the universal carbon tax and cap and trade conjob.
It's going to be the same trillion dollars, so I'd rather it went to tens of millions of new panels and whatnot everywhere than to keep funding goldman sachs and those other billionaire thieves in the wall street thieves guild. They are just drooling over carbon cap and trade, which should say something about how practical that is(n't).
I think it would be loads better to push telecommuting over all this expensive rube goldberg computer controlled meatsack commuting. These are wild ass schemes that are ignoring the basic problem of physical commuting, which is the "necessity" thereof. How much is *really* necessary, and how much is just archaic holdover from the 1800s and 1900s office? Yes, people HAD to travel to the office then, because all the data was physical hard copy, all the communication was speaking directly to people or sending a snail mail or real high tech, a courier to the telegraph office. But *now*? WTF? Why are we still doing this by the millions and millions when it is all digital and can be done over wires and fiber? Why are we still insisting that people who sit in front of a computer screen have to commute daily to "the office" to do this? Aren't we past that quill pen era yet? And if they don't have to physically commute, shazzam, we don't have to waste money on these billion dollar massive corporate ego office towers either, another huge savings. Wouldn't it be cheaper to push better connectivity, run a lot more fiber, than to build more whizzbang commuter trains and computerized self aware vehicles and all that stuff just to sit in front of a computer? Isn't this the whole point of the internet in the first place, to allow communication of any type to be accomplished without having to physically move a human or a courier sack?
...charge a normal goods sales tax on the transaction. Why should stock sales be different from selling anything else? That will slam the kabosh on these fast computer trades.
JFK held the bombers back because last minute intel had it that Castro was wise to the invasion and had already dispersed his fighters, meaning the bombers would have been sitting ducks. The plan was to catch them on the ground at the airfields and destroy them there. That the spooks went ahead with the invasion, then got creamed, was their doing, not JFKs. I know this because I used to know one of those bomber pilots. He said that was the smartest of all possible tactical moves. If you lose the "surprise" part of a surprise invasion, it is better to call it off.
Carter may have been sorta goofy on a lot of things, but if we had stuck to his energy goals and policies, it would be a lot different and better (and cleaner) world by now with regards to at least that issue.
The rest, I agree with you...meh. LBJ..hey, let's elect the texas oil mafia! grumble... Noxon put us on the road to economic ruin when he started bribing off China with our manufacturing, in order to play them off against the USSR. Dumb. He was an alky, typical stupid alky move, along with trusting that idiot kissinger and surrounding himself with doofuses like cheney and rumsfeld. Ford, meh, JFK whack coverup king. Carter I mentioned. Reagan, believed his own nonsense. Bush one, hey, let's elect the corrupt head of the secret police! stoopid...klinton...geez, you could see slimey grease dripping off of him, but like reagan, photogenic and a good talker, very good at the smooth fakeout. Bush the lesser..hey, let's elect the idiot son of the secret police chief! OMG...Ike I just don't remember all that much, some, but not enough to have a good handle on him. His retirement speech is a classic though and I absolutely do remember watching it live.
Hay has been used as a sponge in other oil spills to soak it up, then it can be removed easier*. Hay we got, and can get more of. Perhaps not "the" total solution, but as part of all the solutions, it might help. I'll swap BP 100 big round old timey heavy bales (3/4 ton size) for say....1500 gallons refined off road diesel and 500 on-road diesel right now if they want it....;) They deliver the oil, and show up with the tractor trailers, I'll load them up as high as they want.... This time of year I am hay rich, the barn is slap full and I am stacking outside and still only half done with the first cut. We'll call this the new commodity trading....
*What to do with the oil soaked hay then, no idea, perhaps it can be mixed with coal in generating plants? I mean, hay burns and the soaked up oil will burn, seems like it might be valuable once it is concentrated like that. Either way, getting it out of the marshes is the main idea and goal. Speaking of that, what *are* they doing with the oil globs people pick up on the beaches, etc? Is it going to refineries, or what?
That's why we need corporate death penalties, combined with making their existing stock worthless. Yes, worthless, from something to zero market cap in one second.
And I'll tell you why, and I have read it numerous times here right on this forum from "investors". Too many times have we read the mindset of stock holders, that the corporations only interest is and should be "making money". Nonsense, they should also be of the public interest and benefit, making money is not necessarily always in the public interest, as this latest massive ongoing oil spill proves. There's no amount of money in the world that can clean an ocean, it doesn't exist. Shortcuts taken, questionable practices, all in the name of "making money" in the fastest way possible. We the public who live in the environment are MORE interested in tactics that would make corporations "not do that" before they screw up, not really offer them some fine to pay for that which can't even be fixed. No, you can't "fix" an environmental screwup this big, not even your "100 billion" can fix it.
The stockholders are supposed to be closely supervising their employees so stuff like this doesn't happen in the first place, and time and again, it is proven they are not, in fact I think it is safe to say that corporations and their practices are the *last* thing most stockholders are concerned with, as long as that monthly statement comes in and they see "positive results". This is what is wrong and broken and needs to change. Most stockholders spend more time watching TV or other pursuits than they do watching their corporate employees. And they won't until such a time as they all realize that THEY are responsible and can't just pass it off saying "well, we hire the board to do this for us". Nope, stockholders need to monitor their boards closer, and they haven't been, and neither have the government "regulators" who are just in and out again corporate shills.
The only way to get stock holders attention in the market, and get real effective market and investment reforms and practices as a whole is for a few million of them to wake up one morning and find out they "invested" in short sighted greedy incompetent jerks, and that that was a bad idea. The corporate death penalty would do this. If they can use "three strikes" to throw an individual in jail for life, they can use "three strikes" against corporations, no matter how big they get. Three screwups, that's it, dissolved instantly, and at the first inkling of the third screwup, the stock is frozen, no more trading, and if they are found guilty of negligence or other crime, tough noogies, instant dissolution and the stock declared worthless.
This will make stockholders pay closer attention, like maybe that "big game" or "american idol" or the "trip to the bar" might be postponed as they study the books closer if they want to "make money". And this would also make lower ranking employees more amenable to saying NO, I AM NOT GOING TO DO THAT to stupid orders from their "superiors" in the organization, like if they are ordered to "cut corners" or anything like that.
The generator is on a small spring that keeps it away from the wheel until you apply the brakes. The brakes are cable operated. You add an additional cable that pulls the generator hub to the wheel simultaneously with the braking action. Just a lever and a pivot. It would be a typical idler/simple clutch looking arrangement.
It's actually a good idea, combined with rechargeable batteries. Of course I am also in favor or just having an integrated small solar panel someplace to keep the batts topped off while the bike is parked. The dang thing with bikes and accessories though is thieves. They are relentless, and cops don't give a flip about bicycle thievery. I know back when I was really a fanatic and riding a lot, I just took my bike in almost everyplace, until I got kicked out. It's amazing how many places you can get away with it, just by being bold. I even ran my bike into office buildings and up elevators and so on, rather than leave it parked and cabled outside.
I seriously doubt that you get appointed a judge someplace, supreme or not, without you already being a bought and paid for party shill of one political gang or the other. You aren't even considered for the nomination unless you have been compromised.
In other words, I ain't buying that independent bit. They are bought off or black-mailable, or both. The system is rotten and corrupt, from the top down, from the bottom up, and sideways in every direction. Appointed for life is a nice theory to try and control corruption, I just don't think it works in real life, they get corrupted well before this appointment/nomination/confirmation.
And that is how it "appears" to me after watching politics fairly closely for around 4.5 decades now.
That's a zillion buck idea he had up and running! He should have told them to stuff it. That would have made the site even more popular as word of his telling "the man" to f off spread around his users and their friends. Plenty of time later to go get all the degrees ya want once you are rolling in dough.
There are some more ways to tweak those two methods. There is patronage, then release as a freebie bit torrent, so no one entity has to eat the whole cost. Patronage say the first episode free, released as a torrent/teaser, you (all of "yous") like it and want more, the creator sets up a pool and takes donations until his minimum price is met for the next one or two episodes, then the next is released as a free torrent. That's not quite subscription, but a variant that could work if the content is good enough. The big thing once you have content to move is bandwith and server costs, with bit torrent that is shared so the price per episode doesn't have to be as high for the content creator to still make money and keep it cheaper to offer. Sure tons of leeches, but who cares, eventually if your price is met, even the leeches can serve as word of mouth advertising for you. If it isn't costing you another penny, and you got your loot, who cares then...
A variation on the ad model is let the consumer pick the ads! At least give some option to look at ads that might be relevant to your tastes and shopping interests, not one size fits all forced ads. Like I watch the TV news sometimes OTA, but have no interest in "little purple pills" I should ask some actor-quack about, I just mentally tune those things out for the most part.
On the net, this could be different. How about a check box with like 20 different types of ads? That and the content issuers vett the ads so they aren't malware or take too much bandwith, etc. I block ads now and also a default javascript block because of security and bandwith issues. I am on a slow connection, pulling ads from five other servers, any one of which could be spewing malware, makes the net *really* slow and is also a legitimate security issue all the time, which all these various sites like to plp;ay make believe doesn't happen/. BS, all of them it seems get nailed with spewing bad ads sometimes, plus, they assume everyone is on some whizzbang ten core machine with a ten meg a second connection. maybe *they* are at big website.com or bigadsite.com, but joe sixpack ain't all the time. They just don't grok this. Like we just saw the best place to get fast cellphone data from ATT is on the Apple campus. So all those devs and execs there get this totally skewed notion of how the net works on their iDevice.
And now, you combine the two tweaks above, for an even different model, as long as there is at most only one or two ads per show/movie/video whatever, not every five/ten minutes. A slight donation in advance, plus somewhat ad supported with the user picking ads they might be interested in, plus the user agrees to upload at least to parity.(I can't do streaming at all except just low bitrate voice, so have to pass on any model for that, I have to download any vid first to view it)
After that right now I got bupkis. The big problem is this expectation of every content creator wants to be a millionaire. Just ain't gonna happen with the way content gets made today, too many people like doing it and it is getting easier and easier to do, it isn't locked in to a few big players anymore.
Raised on TV over the air, so paying directly for shows..I don't do cable or satellite now, think it is a rip, mostly because there do not have a la carte models,(I hate "plans", make it a la carte, I'll think about getting a dish..) so it would have to be good and with an easy micropayment method. I am not interested in signing up in advance for a whole season for some show over the internet. too much stuff out there to look at. Show by show..that's a possibility, but it has to be cheap. Also perfectly willing to seed a torrent to at least parity to help keep costs down for the producer so they can offer their stuff cheaper.
This is an interesting subject because digital content is such a profound game changer in eliminating scarcity, it is our first real replicator technology. The price of copies is so absurdly low to reproduce that legitimate c
Well, that is pretty cool, that universal virus destroyer. I mean really, it is. But you could have put all that up as an article instead of dumping on a space thread. Both have their place.
If you did and it was rejected, no probs. Wait a week, re-write it, try it again.
The only crisis we are in is the derivatives and casino derivatives gambling "industry" crisis, combined with the crony insider way we have of getting new currency into circulation via bank loans of some sort or another. Ya know, that isn't the only way currency can get into circulation....
If this elaborate conjob been allowed to fail, and not have their corporate insiders inside of government demand and receive a bailout, the real market would have adjusted already, the worst would be behind us, not in front of us, and everyone would have seen that those quadrillions in "worth" of all those derivative contracts were really worth about 12 cents or so tops, their weight in scrap paper value.
They used a massive FUD campaign and the threat of "crashing the economy" to railroad those bailouts through. It was pure extortion. A real free market would have been one where they were allowed to crash and burn like they deserve, and other industries that are relying on derivatives contracts-and governments-would have learned to "not do that" anymore.
Of all the big governments out there, at least one "gets it" and that's Germany, and kudos to them for standing up to those skunks and for telling timmy boy to F off the other day when he tried to buffalo them. They are making illegal a lot of the more stupid and obnoxious derivative trades and other bogus practices, like naked short selling poof created "contracts" of theoretical tranches of muni bonds, etc. Simple common sense stuff like you can't short what you do not possess in the first place. Ya, parts of the market there "crashed" when the new rules went into place, or the news hit, and good riddance to them as well, and that bloated bubble scene we have more than enough leeches and parasites siphoning off huge sums from everyone else for rather dubious "services" to the economy and society as a whole.
In other words, describing what we have now as an unregulated "free market" is erroneous, we have a globalist and fascist corporatacracy controlled and heavily regulated in favor of some really powerful fatcats who do indeed make sure we have regulations that mostly go to insure their skimming profits no matter what. In a *real* free market that wouldn't exist very much at all, we wouldn't be letting conman crooks dictate national economic policy and engage in what is in essence counterfeiting (creating financial products out of thin air then assigning taxpayer backed worth to them so they can keep gambling) and extortion (give us a bailout or we will crash your economy) and insider trading/market manipulation (microsecond fast trades, skewed towards those with the closest fastest computers to the trading floor, buying and selling within one second massive amounts of this or that *without* paying the same sort of transaction sales tax fee all other "products" are subject to, etc),
Sure, in a "free market" they could still try to play this big stakes casino gambling, but very few people would hand their loot to them to do it with, and no taxpayer would be guaranteeing their business model and profits. The stock market would settle back down into "investing" like it is supposed to.
Hopefully Germany will keep going further and eventually ban most of that crooked scene. They are in no mood to bailout all of Europe, and all these hedge fund and investment bank gamblers, and they still understand deep down that modern day wealth is made from manufacturing, not "financial products" gambling.
If you rely on the mainstream news, you are *already* getting your news based on governmental and corporate press releases, and "word of mouth" from some doofus flown in reporter who somehow magically knows more within five minutes of disembarking off the plane about what is going on in some local area than the people who live there all the time do.
I guess if it has shiny white teeth and heavily laquered hair, it just must be uttering the truth, with no hidden agendas or biases....
Being smart is taking your innovation and actually doing something with it, in this case, manufacturing. This is called "value added" in economics. Ya, they might get a quarter to a full billion from a settlement, but the people who *use* that tech and build with it make umpteen billions, over and over again.
That's smart(er).
Mideast oil producing nations sell their raw resources..then did nothing with it beyond splurging and blowing it mostly. They failed to develop any heavy industry of note, or any sort of trans-oil-selling sustainable economy despite generations of serious cashflow in...they failed the next step and didn't use that surplus windfall in any "value added" manner.
I can sell my spiffy new invented hammer and saw design one time, or I can use this innovation in the market place directly and build a lot of furniture and houses with my new hammer and saw, beating my competition handily, and make a lot more. This gives me ten times the potential budget to play with for more R&D and then manufacturing gains.
CSIRO does some good research, but in the end after all is said and done, once you follow the economic breadcrumbs around, manufacturing is the big kahuna on making loot, and China still gets it for free or chump change and makes the real serious moolah from that same research (same as they are doing with every other nation's R&D now). Selling raw R&D-failing to use it yourself- is no different at all from selling any other "raw" natural resource, like mideast oil. Ya, you can make some money, sometimes big money, but never the ultimate serious money.
Ideas are cheap on the global scale, implementation of those ideas makes the hugemongous national trade surpluses. CSIRO does implement their ag research domestically, but the other..not sure what they do with it other than try to sell it cheap, and even then they are forced to sue to get a little. And frankly, a billion dollars for wifi? That's chump change on the international scene. Better than nothing, but still just selling off raw resources (oz brains in this case) cheap.
I wouldn't feel bad about it, and don't take it as a dig against Australia (sort of a joke there..) because most nations are doing that now, they have more or less conceded world economic dominance to China for short term profits and some cheap consumer trinkets, a couple generations worth, then..that stuff won't be all that cheap anymore. China will reach a point they can demand more, they won't have to sell cheap, once they have more or less completely squashed manufacturing elsewhere, and also built up their own R&D establishment.
Ruminants are fairly good at converting grass/forage to meat, and they also produce a food that suits the palate to billions of people. Does not much good to produce some superfood if it tastes rank and no one likes it.
As to the water needs for processing, I addressed that in my post, saying locally grown/consumed or self processed directly on the farm, along with being grass fed, can result in much lower water consumption.
You are throwing out theoretical highest possible figures,(pure corn fed, corn grown on pure irrigated land in a near desert situation, then processed through the most water wasteful plant out there, etc, plus physical transport of everything involved back and forth numerous times and over long distances, all of that thing)). I am just countering by saying there are modalities in place that can result in a huge variable in outcome. "Thousands of liters of water per kg weight delivered" is by far the highest possible outcome there, makes for a short PR soundbite, but isn't exactly always accurate either. That's a worst most extreme case, not a norm or even a median most likely. I am guessing there but it's just too much of a variable to accept a one size fits all situation.
As to how much meat people eat, etc, again too much of a variable. I would agree a lot of folks just eat way too much, meat included, I see the roly poly waddlers same as you do. And a lot of people sure don't get enough, of anything, meat or veggies. That's why I like farming, to feed people, even though I could "make more money", a lot more, doing something else. Most people just want to "make more money" no matter what, so that's my personal tradeoff. I just don't give much of a crap about "making money", I never have either, as opposed to doing what I like and what I think is at least half way righteous. People who fixate on "making more money", which is probably most people here I would guess, wind up spending it as well, and their total resource use, water included, goes straight into the stratosphere compared to a simpler life.
Example, people who fly all over the planet on vacation or those ridiculous business trips when we have the internet now, but then are vegans and will say they don't use as much resources. Well that's nonsense. People who "need" to use ten times the electricity I use, just by choosing to live in the megatropolises with their huge advertising signs running 24/7 and every room lit up, etc, constantly artificially climate controlled, etc. but because they walk to the subway claim they use less resources, water included. Nuts, just ain't so. They use them, it is just removed from direct use, but they still use them. What they might save on being vegan is more than offset on just the transportation and infrastructure needed to keep them living where there are *no* resources locally and everything about their lives has to be shipped in to them. They live in concrete and steel buildings that used tons of resources, I live in an old cabin that was made from locally cut timber a hundred years ago. No comparison on resource use square foot to square foot for living area, mine is significantly lower. I don't own or use a big screen Tv or a "gaming rig" right there my total water resource requirement drops severely compared to some vegan who has a large TV and wastes electricity to own such a computer and runit just for games. I mean, that's the point of the article, computer chip fabs suck it down, bigtime. If you avoid the constant upgrade cycle, especially with "having" to have the latest triple throw down cross fired mega blaster 4-d rig...you save the use of thousands of gallons of water that was used in that manufacture, not to mention how much other water was contaminated from the factory outflow..and we can agree I hope that in most lands, there is shall we say not as much oversight on sewage and waste disposal. Another reason these corporations love to outsource, no pesky enviro regs..
Anyway, you can blame evil cows for wasting too much water, I'll blame people who insi
That's probably a pretty high figure most likely from some estimates using 100% artificially irrigated land and pure corn fed in a feedlot. I know I have put some larger feeder calves in a barn (just temporarily, under a week) where they were only getting some richer/better quality hay with just a small scoop each of corn, mostly hay fed in other words, and during their growth stage where they were slapping on a pound a day, and no way in heck were they drinking a hundred gallons apiece a day, not even close to that, more like around 5-7 gallons a day (IIRC didn't exactly measure it, but didn't need to fill the hundred gallon tank except every third day for around five calves). How much water for the hay..sorta immaterial, it falls from the sky anyway. We don't irrigate here, and a lot of places don't need to irrigate.
If it is grass fed, and locally/self processed, you can knock those water requirements way way down from that high figure in order to get a steak to the plate.
And seeing as how we have a lot of slopes, it makes way more sense to grow turf, that feeds the cattle, than to open it up to massive erosion and try to grow row crops there. It's a conversion principle and economics plus looking at the terrain that dictates the type of farming. Yes, gallon for gallon, you can get more generic food feeding straight veggies to the humans, but it also won't ever be as nutrient dense a food either, no matter which veggie you are talking about. In other words you can't compare a bite of lean beef to a bite of cabbage. Both are good, both take water, but bite for bite the beef just has a lot more nutrients, so is that water really all that wasted? The humans just cannot eat that grass, it must be converted. You can go all the way to nutrient light veggies like spuds, a grown man living entirely on spuds like back during the Irish potato famine was eating 10-14 lbs a day to get enough energy and nutrient requirements to stay barely functional and working (working as in outside hard physical labor working, not diddly bopping around from city apartment to ultra light duty office or retail work, etc).
There are a lot of tradeoffs and considerations when doing resource analysis.
We used to make our own distilled water for topping off the lead acid batteries for the solar PV arrays. Just a watertight box with a clear sheet of glass on top and a place to pour water in and a place to get the distilled out basically. The glass is at a slight slope so the water droplets run down into the gutter-collector, then out to the collection jug. You can get at least two gallons a day in georgia during the summer from a 3x6 foot collector box. (that was a commercial unit, they can be built easily enough though)
We have the tech to do solar fusion power distilled, it's pretty low tech really, just takes a lot of space for mass quantities, but it *is* quite doable. You can get enough to at least cover minimum drinking and cooking requirements as long as you have a source of not suitable water to start with.
A pure EV using even (relatively) cheap batteries today can suffice for your day to day commuter, recharging at night at home. For long trips trips, there is this concept, the range extending generator trailer.
If you need to do that sort of hundreds a mile a day driving, no, EVs are not for you. Under one hundred miles a day, which hits like 90% of most folk's driving, the tech is here now and a number of places have after market kits to convert cars and light trucks. Run you around 20 grand or so plus the donor vehicle you get used, then you decide what flavor of batteries you want to invest in first. Kits for like a ford ranger or chevy s-10 or some sedan, all sorts have been made so far. And you can put together your own generator trailer for that trip to see the relatives, etc., just stop and fillerup like normal at any gas station.
Waiting for the three hundred mile range on batteries and five minute recharge option, that I see people saying all the time, means they really aren't interested in them unless they are a millionaire or close to it and can get like a tesla or something with their toy budget, and you still won't get a five minute recharge. But, 50 -100 mile range and falling into the normal joe sixpack range of cost for a new midrange normal vehicle, you can do it now. You can't do it brand new from some dealer, it will be years and years before they get that cheap, but you *can* do it with the kits.
Scientists are people as well - "choose not to accept scientific data because it conflicts with their predefined beliefs". They can have the same problem, and I would bet it happens a lot once careers, huge grants and academic prestige and huge egos get into play. A white lab coat does not make you a super-people, a god, infallible, incapable of being wrong, or corrupt, or bribe-able, or blackmail-able, or otherwise influenced adversely.
The "scientific community" has been seriously wrong down through the ages on any number of subjects, the "consensus", the predetermined "beliefs" lead to rote conformity, a herd mentality, and the inability to admit facts and data that where staring them in the face.
I am fully aware of this or that production costs, was around that scene for quite a few years. I guess I'll pass on name dropping right now, just assume I am telling you straight.
Here's the deal..you don't want to hear the truth, your mind is made up in advance. You are talking to someone who supports the idea you should get paid. I am telling you *why* this keeps being difficult, and why this whole article is posted here in the first place.
The article is about this huge segment of the global population that fully realizes that what the collective "you" want to charge for your intellectual property copies is ludicrously too high, obnoxiously so, so they choose to not pay anything to you. I am perfectly willing to meet content providers half way, drop those ludicrous prices down to something more reasonable, a price that truly reflects what your per unit production costs are better today, because of astounding tech advances that we have had, and I go back to being a paid customer for new product. I was in the past for decades, but not now. You getting it yet? You pissed off the bulk of your customers years ago, and now wonder why your stuff ain't selling like you think it should.
I don't download and copy for free, but I refuse to pay price gougers prices either, when I know full well what copies cost. And I don't care about your upfront costs, because that's set,(and I also know full well at least with music that production cost has dropped dramatically over the past thirty years, huge cost drops) your copies for sale costs could be loads cheaper, and again, you have six billion with a B potential customers out there. Fairer price, plus volume sales is what you should be looking at.
In other words, you are arguing with the wrong guy, argue with the people who just stopped even considering giving you a single penny instead, ask them why they refuse, and just download for free. I don't refuse to pay you, I just will not be taken advantage of and seriously overpay based on last century's per unit cost of copies for sale. I'm not paying 50 bucks for a loaf of bread, that's obvious price gouging. I am not paying 100 bucks for a gallon of gas today, that is price gouging. I am not paying 400 bucks for a pair of jeans, that's obvious price gouging. And I am not paying 20 bucks for a ten cent stamped disk, that's price gouging. I know you can see it with my other examples, just..think about it some more. To your customers, and the bulk of the planet (again, see article), your twenty buck a disk product is as much price gouging as my other examples, you just ain't seeing that yet. This fixation on making thousands of percent markup "per unit" is the problem. think lower prices, move many more units instead.
You have over six billion humans as potential customers. If you can't price and sell your product enough within that size pool to make it attractive to most of those folks, make them willing to purchase from you..well, stay stuck wondering why this is so, and when people tell you directly, keep refusing to listen.
Use your work and the other several billion bucks worth of open source work you are allowed to use freely in some business that "makes money". Use it
I suggest for hints on "what business" start on page one of the yellow pages, A to Z, most business today uses software and computers. Just peruse around, see what interests you.
We produce food here on this farm, poultry and beef. We don't get paid for every skill set and work hour directly, there's no direct pay for picking up a tool and using it. We use these developed skills in an overall "business". OK, this week I am haying. Yesterday the magic smoke wafted out of my primary disk mower...grumble. Oh ya, had *two* flats on a tedder as well, one of which required me changing out a shredded tire, using tire irons and a lot of sweat. So, because I need to hay *now* and can't wait on parts and the time to fix the newer big mower, I had to dig out the older like thirty year old mower and make it work. It's satup and rusted out like a long time. This involved machining a driveshaft to fit, to make it suitable for purpose, among other things. Took some hours, but got a good piece cut today, I'll finish up tomorrow.
I don't get paid for tire changing, I don't get paid for machining and repairing directly, I don't submit an invoice for tractor jockeying..none of that do I get directly paid for. I *do* get paid for doing all these various things when product gets sold, and *if* there is a profit. This is "business", we use a ton of tools and skillsets that have to be developed in "business" and offer a real tangible product for sale. Other folks have service businesses that they do the same at. I can't just sit around and wait for flats to fix, and just that, or wait for something to break then dig out the wrenches, and charge just for that and insist that is all I am going to do. I can't just say to joe farm boss I am only going to operate a tractor, nothing else. I'd get bounced and wouldn't make any money, none.
Anyway, that's how you "make money" with tools and the developed skills to use them, you *use* the tools in some *other* real business. Having to custom make tools and parts, etc, think outside the box, come up with solutions and innovations, that haven't been done before, whatever, is quite common outside of the software "tool" business, that is how people keep going with their jobs that pay the rent, etc.
This stuff you expect to sell..your customers must use it, what do they do for a business, how do they use these tools to make money? Your solution might be just looking what they do to make cash. If they can make profit off of your work, you might be able to make double that profit if you did that sort of work yourself, with your custom designed software tools.
Either used and real cheap at pawnshops or yardsales, etc, or hitting the severe mark down bin at megamart.** I never pay first run prices for a cheap disk, I don't care what bits are on them, because I don't want to feed the price gouger trolls and encourage that behavior.
**note: I don't download or pirate, never, but I also won't pay their bloated prices. If I can't get it at a closer to fair reality price, I just don't bother. They just lost a somewhat regular and long standing customer who bought their stuff since the late 50s. No more. I follow tech advances, the prices they charge do *not* reflect cost savings being passed on to the consumer any more, not even close. It's freakin cartel price fixing.
Ain't a piece of entertainment on a disk out there that's worth going to either extreme of pirating or paying bloat prices for it to acquire it, IMO, I don't care what star/special effects/bellowing band is represented on that disk or download. I'll get entertained some other way before I do that.
If some "star" and production house is already a millionaire or a billion dollar company...they got enough and can drop prices and not lobby to get laws and practices carved in stone to reflect their business model and last century's "per unit" pricing they want to keep. "Units" are *cheap* now.
Digital products are not scarce, so the prices should reflect that. Even digital products on plastic disks are cheap to make. If they aren't happy with a 100% markup for their "products"...screw 'em. Just tons of other businesses manage to stay in business and make a good profit at less than 100% markup, sometimes much much less than that. If the clone makers can charge $1.25 and still make a profit over their costs, then the official joints could charge two bucks even and proly come real dang close to 100% markup. If they claim it costs more than that, they are getting copies made for resale where it is way too expensive, they should shop around better.
As to pure digital download products, this is replicator tech we are talking about. The people, the consumers, need a "law" on our side, a 21st century law, that reflects the reality of our first near free replicator tech and make it so all download products can't be priced more than 100% markup over server/hosting/processing/bandwith costs.
If we don't, we are gonna get royally screwed in the future when tangible replicator "tea, earl grey, hot" styled replicator tech hits. Legalized buggywhip pricing. Buy a car, you still have to pay the buggywhip and horseshoe guy expected profits. Screw that. Tech advances, so prices should reflect these advances then.
We don't pay monks hand scribing a book prices anymore for dead tree products, but that's what the digital resellers want. No...just no, that's too dang greedy and lame for society as a whole, looking forward, and that's my concern, for future generations and this nutso pricing precedent they have now with our first really ubiquitous replicator technology.
I'm in food production, and I am not hypocritical about this. I encourage everyone to grow as much of their own food as possible, use open pollinated non patented seeds, share seeds with your friends, "make copies" as much as you can and share them around, share the knowledge of how to grow stuff, and all that et cetera there. Just do it. I am not trying to "get rich" off of food production, I never expect or even desire to become a millionaire from making food, I just think ending hunger is a worthy goal, and the cheaper and easier we can make it the better. That's the best I can do with that sort of tech level society has now at this time. If that means eventually that food gets so cheap and easy to get for everyone that I go out of business, I *don't care*, I'd be the happiest dude on the planet if that was to happen. I'll go do something else then, you never run out of ideas or projects, never.
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Nuclear fission waste has to be guarded for millenia, because you can build dirty bombs from it, or unscrupulous companies will smelt it (metals) into other products. In addition, we, everyone we on the planet, get to enjoy all the threats of war that surround access and development of nuclear fission technology. And they already are poisoning vast areas because of the weapons they make from so called and only partially "depleted" uranium. In the headlines all the time, threats of war over who can have nuclear fission tech or who can't. This sucks, it's a new type of cold war that can turn hot overnight and really bork things up *bad*. All nations want it mostly, but they have to be "approved" by the first adopters, and that pisses them off so they go sneaky and develop it anyway, which makes other nations think they should too, etc.. And that is definitely part of nuclear fission technology, you simply cannot ignore that aspect of it, all the parts make the whole, but it apparently is common to do so, people tend to fixate on just cost of producing electricity, and ignore threats of war over access to the tech and long term storage of the waste and guarding it, etc.. It is extremely contentious and dangerous technology because of those reasons. I don't like that, it would be real nice if it could be used safely and safer and developed better, but it is reality so we shouldn't ignore it.
Coal waste and smoke sucks too, for all the normal reasons. That's why I am in favor of using our only practical nuclear *fusion* technology, which is solar, both PV and thermal. All the other laser magnetic plasma bubble containment whatever fusion tech is still decades/generations away (I mean when I was a kid in the 50s they were talking about it and promising it..let us check the calendar...), we shouldn't wait for that to be developed to switch to fusion power. We *have* fusion power right now, let's use it, make it better/faster/cheaper. Sure, more research in those other areas, but solar just needs economies of scale now more than anything else to get loads cheaper.
And if we had 100% tax credits for it now, you couldn't stop the deluge of new companies and jobs getting it out there working. Not ten percent or even thirty, but a full 100% credit, say extended for five or ten years up to a practical amount, like 25 to 50 grand.
I know I would *much* rather see a trillion dollars going out into direct solar deployment, rather than a trillion dollars sucked out of the economy for wall street's dream ticket, the universal carbon tax and cap and trade conjob.
It's going to be the same trillion dollars, so I'd rather it went to tens of millions of new panels and whatnot everywhere than to keep funding goldman sachs and those other billionaire thieves in the wall street thieves guild. They are just drooling over carbon cap and trade, which should say something about how practical that is(n't).
I think it would be loads better to push telecommuting over all this expensive rube goldberg computer controlled meatsack commuting. These are wild ass schemes that are ignoring the basic problem of physical commuting, which is the "necessity" thereof. How much is *really* necessary, and how much is just archaic holdover from the 1800s and 1900s office? Yes, people HAD to travel to the office then, because all the data was physical hard copy, all the communication was speaking directly to people or sending a snail mail or real high tech, a courier to the telegraph office. But *now*? WTF? Why are we still doing this by the millions and millions when it is all digital and can be done over wires and fiber? Why are we still insisting that people who sit in front of a computer screen have to commute daily to "the office" to do this? Aren't we past that quill pen era yet? And if they don't have to physically commute, shazzam, we don't have to waste money on these billion dollar massive corporate ego office towers either, another huge savings. Wouldn't it be cheaper to push better connectivity, run a lot more fiber, than to build more whizzbang commuter trains and computerized self aware vehicles and all that stuff just to sit in front of a computer? Isn't this the whole point of the internet in the first place, to allow communication of any type to be accomplished without having to physically move a human or a courier sack?
...charge a normal goods sales tax on the transaction. Why should stock sales be different from selling anything else? That will slam the kabosh on these fast computer trades.
Every single thing about that is incorrect.
wealth
currency
money
those are three different things..you are equating them.
You can't create wealth out of thin air. Your idea about thin air wealth creation is the perpetual motion of economics, it just doesn't work that way.
They'd be better off requiring Mandarin for all the students, to provide for their future when they need to talk to their bosses.
JFK held the bombers back because last minute intel had it that Castro was wise to the invasion and had already dispersed his fighters, meaning the bombers would have been sitting ducks. The plan was to catch them on the ground at the airfields and destroy them there. That the spooks went ahead with the invasion, then got creamed, was their doing, not JFKs. I know this because I used to know one of those bomber pilots. He said that was the smartest of all possible tactical moves. If you lose the "surprise" part of a surprise invasion, it is better to call it off.
Carter may have been sorta goofy on a lot of things, but if we had stuck to his energy goals and policies, it would be a lot different and better (and cleaner) world by now with regards to at least that issue.
The rest, I agree with you...meh. LBJ..hey, let's elect the texas oil mafia! grumble... Noxon put us on the road to economic ruin when he started bribing off China with our manufacturing, in order to play them off against the USSR. Dumb. He was an alky, typical stupid alky move, along with trusting that idiot kissinger and surrounding himself with doofuses like cheney and rumsfeld. Ford, meh, JFK whack coverup king. Carter I mentioned. Reagan, believed his own nonsense. Bush one, hey, let's elect the corrupt head of the secret police! stoopid...klinton...geez, you could see slimey grease dripping off of him, but like reagan, photogenic and a good talker, very good at the smooth fakeout. Bush the lesser..hey, let's elect the idiot son of the secret police chief! OMG...Ike I just don't remember all that much, some, but not enough to have a good handle on him. His retirement speech is a classic though and I absolutely do remember watching it live.
Hay has been used as a sponge in other oil spills to soak it up, then it can be removed easier*. Hay we got, and can get more of. Perhaps not "the" total solution, but as part of all the solutions, it might help. I'll swap BP 100 big round old timey heavy bales (3/4 ton size) for say....1500 gallons refined off road diesel and 500 on-road diesel right now if they want it.... ;) They deliver the oil, and show up with the tractor trailers, I'll load them up as high as they want.... This time of year I am hay rich, the barn is slap full and I am stacking outside and still only half done with the first cut. We'll call this the new commodity trading....
*What to do with the oil soaked hay then, no idea, perhaps it can be mixed with coal in generating plants? I mean, hay burns and the soaked up oil will burn, seems like it might be valuable once it is concentrated like that. Either way, getting it out of the marshes is the main idea and goal. Speaking of that, what *are* they doing with the oil globs people pick up on the beaches, etc? Is it going to refineries, or what?
That's why we need corporate death penalties, combined with making their existing stock worthless. Yes, worthless, from something to zero market cap in one second.
And I'll tell you why, and I have read it numerous times here right on this forum from "investors". Too many times have we read the mindset of stock holders, that the corporations only interest is and should be "making money". Nonsense, they should also be of the public interest and benefit, making money is not necessarily always in the public interest, as this latest massive ongoing oil spill proves. There's no amount of money in the world that can clean an ocean, it doesn't exist. Shortcuts taken, questionable practices, all in the name of "making money" in the fastest way possible. We the public who live in the environment are MORE interested in tactics that would make corporations "not do that" before they screw up, not really offer them some fine to pay for that which can't even be fixed. No, you can't "fix" an environmental screwup this big, not even your "100 billion" can fix it.
The stockholders are supposed to be closely supervising their employees so stuff like this doesn't happen in the first place, and time and again, it is proven they are not, in fact I think it is safe to say that corporations and their practices are the *last* thing most stockholders are concerned with, as long as that monthly statement comes in and they see "positive results". This is what is wrong and broken and needs to change. Most stockholders spend more time watching TV or other pursuits than they do watching their corporate employees. And they won't until such a time as they all realize that THEY are responsible and can't just pass it off saying "well, we hire the board to do this for us". Nope, stockholders need to monitor their boards closer, and they haven't been, and neither have the government "regulators" who are just in and out again corporate shills.
The only way to get stock holders attention in the market, and get real effective market and investment reforms and practices as a whole is for a few million of them to wake up one morning and find out they "invested" in short sighted greedy incompetent jerks, and that that was a bad idea. The corporate death penalty would do this. If they can use "three strikes" to throw an individual in jail for life, they can use "three strikes" against corporations, no matter how big they get. Three screwups, that's it, dissolved instantly, and at the first inkling of the third screwup, the stock is frozen, no more trading, and if they are found guilty of negligence or other crime, tough noogies, instant dissolution and the stock declared worthless.
This will make stockholders pay closer attention, like maybe that "big game" or "american idol" or the "trip to the bar" might be postponed as they study the books closer if they want to "make money". And this would also make lower ranking employees more amenable to saying NO, I AM NOT GOING TO DO THAT to stupid orders from their "superiors" in the organization, like if they are ordered to "cut corners" or anything like that.
The generator is on a small spring that keeps it away from the wheel until you apply the brakes. The brakes are cable operated. You add an additional cable that pulls the generator hub to the wheel simultaneously with the braking action. Just a lever and a pivot. It would be a typical idler/simple clutch looking arrangement.
It's actually a good idea, combined with rechargeable batteries. Of course I am also in favor or just having an integrated small solar panel someplace to keep the batts topped off while the bike is parked. The dang thing with bikes and accessories though is thieves. They are relentless, and cops don't give a flip about bicycle thievery. I know back when I was really a fanatic and riding a lot, I just took my bike in almost everyplace, until I got kicked out. It's amazing how many places you can get away with it, just by being bold. I even ran my bike into office buildings and up elevators and so on, rather than leave it parked and cabled outside.
I seriously doubt that you get appointed a judge someplace, supreme or not, without you already being a bought and paid for party shill of one political gang or the other. You aren't even considered for the nomination unless you have been compromised.
In other words, I ain't buying that independent bit. They are bought off or black-mailable, or both. The system is rotten and corrupt, from the top down, from the bottom up, and sideways in every direction. Appointed for life is a nice theory to try and control corruption, I just don't think it works in real life, they get corrupted well before this appointment/nomination/confirmation.
And that is how it "appears" to me after watching politics fairly closely for around 4.5 decades now.
That's a zillion buck idea he had up and running! He should have told them to stuff it. That would have made the site even more popular as word of his telling "the man" to f off spread around his users and their friends. Plenty of time later to go get all the degrees ya want once you are rolling in dough.
There are some more ways to tweak those two methods. There is patronage, then release as a freebie bit torrent, so no one entity has to eat the whole cost. Patronage say the first episode free, released as a torrent/teaser, you (all of "yous") like it and want more, the creator sets up a pool and takes donations until his minimum price is met for the next one or two episodes, then the next is released as a free torrent. That's not quite subscription, but a variant that could work if the content is good enough. The big thing once you have content to move is bandwith and server costs, with bit torrent that is shared so the price per episode doesn't have to be as high for the content creator to still make money and keep it cheaper to offer. Sure tons of leeches, but who cares, eventually if your price is met, even the leeches can serve as word of mouth advertising for you. If it isn't costing you another penny, and you got your loot, who cares then...
A variation on the ad model is let the consumer pick the ads! At least give some option to look at ads that might be relevant to your tastes and shopping interests, not one size fits all forced ads. Like I watch the TV news sometimes OTA, but have no interest in "little purple pills" I should ask some actor-quack about, I just mentally tune those things out for the most part.
On the net, this could be different. How about a check box with like 20 different types of ads? That and the content issuers vett the ads so they aren't malware or take too much bandwith, etc. I block ads now and also a default javascript block because of security and bandwith issues. I am on a slow connection, pulling ads from five other servers, any one of which could be spewing malware, makes the net *really* slow and is also a legitimate security issue all the time, which all these various sites like to plp;ay make believe doesn't happen/. BS, all of them it seems get nailed with spewing bad ads sometimes, plus, they assume everyone is on some whizzbang ten core machine with a ten meg a second connection. maybe *they* are at big website.com or bigadsite.com, but joe sixpack ain't all the time. They just don't grok this. Like we just saw the best place to get fast cellphone data from ATT is on the Apple campus. So all those devs and execs there get this totally skewed notion of how the net works on their iDevice.
And now, you combine the two tweaks above, for an even different model, as long as there is at most only one or two ads per show/movie/video whatever, not every five/ten minutes. A slight donation in advance, plus somewhat ad supported with the user picking ads they might be interested in, plus the user agrees to upload at least to parity.(I can't do streaming at all except just low bitrate voice, so have to pass on any model for that, I have to download any vid first to view it)
After that right now I got bupkis. The big problem is this expectation of every content creator wants to be a millionaire. Just ain't gonna happen with the way content gets made today, too many people like doing it and it is getting easier and easier to do, it isn't locked in to a few big players anymore.
Raised on TV over the air, so paying directly for shows..I don't do cable or satellite now, think it is a rip, mostly because there do not have a la carte models,(I hate "plans", make it a la carte, I'll think about getting a dish..) so it would have to be good and with an easy micropayment method. I am not interested in signing up in advance for a whole season for some show over the internet. too much stuff out there to look at. Show by show..that's a possibility, but it has to be cheap. Also perfectly willing to seed a torrent to at least parity to help keep costs down for the producer so they can offer their stuff cheaper.
This is an interesting subject because digital content is such a profound game changer in eliminating scarcity, it is our first real replicator technology. The price of copies is so absurdly low to reproduce that legitimate c
Well, that is pretty cool, that universal virus destroyer. I mean really, it is. But you could have put all that up as an article instead of dumping on a space thread. Both have their place.
If you did and it was rejected, no probs. Wait a week, re-write it, try it again.
The only crisis we are in is the derivatives and casino derivatives gambling "industry" crisis, combined with the crony insider way we have of getting new currency into circulation via bank loans of some sort or another. Ya know, that isn't the only way currency can get into circulation....
If this elaborate conjob been allowed to fail, and not have their corporate insiders inside of government demand and receive a bailout, the real market would have adjusted already, the worst would be behind us, not in front of us, and everyone would have seen that those quadrillions in "worth" of all those derivative contracts were really worth about 12 cents or so tops, their weight in scrap paper value.
They used a massive FUD campaign and the threat of "crashing the economy" to railroad those bailouts through. It was pure extortion. A real free market would have been one where they were allowed to crash and burn like they deserve, and other industries that are relying on derivatives contracts-and governments-would have learned to "not do that" anymore.
Of all the big governments out there, at least one "gets it" and that's Germany, and kudos to them for standing up to those skunks and for telling timmy boy to F off the other day when he tried to buffalo them. They are making illegal a lot of the more stupid and obnoxious derivative trades and other bogus practices, like naked short selling poof created "contracts" of theoretical tranches of muni bonds, etc. Simple common sense stuff like you can't short what you do not possess in the first place. Ya, parts of the market there "crashed" when the new rules went into place, or the news hit, and good riddance to them as well, and that bloated bubble scene we have more than enough leeches and parasites siphoning off huge sums from everyone else for rather dubious "services" to the economy and society as a whole.
In other words, describing what we have now as an unregulated "free market" is erroneous, we have a globalist and fascist corporatacracy controlled and heavily regulated in favor of some really powerful fatcats who do indeed make sure we have regulations that mostly go to insure their skimming profits no matter what. In a *real* free market that wouldn't exist very much at all, we wouldn't be letting conman crooks dictate national economic policy and engage in what is in essence counterfeiting (creating financial products out of thin air then assigning taxpayer backed worth to them so they can keep gambling) and extortion (give us a bailout or we will crash your economy) and insider trading/market manipulation (microsecond fast trades, skewed towards those with the closest fastest computers to the trading floor, buying and selling within one second massive amounts of this or that *without* paying the same sort of transaction sales tax fee all other "products" are subject to, etc),
Sure, in a "free market" they could still try to play this big stakes casino gambling, but very few people would hand their loot to them to do it with, and no taxpayer would be guaranteeing their business model and profits. The stock market would settle back down into "investing" like it is supposed to.
Hopefully Germany will keep going further and eventually ban most of that crooked scene. They are in no mood to bailout all of Europe, and all these hedge fund and investment bank gamblers, and they still understand deep down that modern day wealth is made from manufacturing, not "financial products" gambling.
If you rely on the mainstream news, you are *already* getting your news based on governmental and corporate press releases, and "word of mouth" from some doofus flown in reporter who somehow magically knows more within five minutes of disembarking off the plane about what is going on in some local area than the people who live there all the time do.
I guess if it has shiny white teeth and heavily laquered hair, it just must be uttering the truth, with no hidden agendas or biases....
many options for those obnoxious supercookies
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/6623/
Being smart is taking your innovation and actually doing something with it, in this case, manufacturing. This is called "value added" in economics. Ya, they might get a quarter to a full billion from a settlement, but the people who *use* that tech and build with it make umpteen billions, over and over again.
That's smart(er).
Mideast oil producing nations sell their raw resources..then did nothing with it beyond splurging and blowing it mostly. They failed to develop any heavy industry of note, or any sort of trans-oil-selling sustainable economy despite generations of serious cashflow in...they failed the next step and didn't use that surplus windfall in any "value added" manner.
I can sell my spiffy new invented hammer and saw design one time, or I can use this innovation in the market place directly and build a lot of furniture and houses with my new hammer and saw, beating my competition handily, and make a lot more. This gives me ten times the potential budget to play with for more R&D and then manufacturing gains.
CSIRO does some good research, but in the end after all is said and done, once you follow the economic breadcrumbs around, manufacturing is the big kahuna on making loot, and China still gets it for free or chump change and makes the real serious moolah from that same research (same as they are doing with every other nation's R&D now). Selling raw R&D-failing to use it yourself- is no different at all from selling any other "raw" natural resource, like mideast oil. Ya, you can make some money, sometimes big money, but never the ultimate serious money.
Ideas are cheap on the global scale, implementation of those ideas makes the hugemongous national trade surpluses. CSIRO does implement their ag research domestically, but the other..not sure what they do with it other than try to sell it cheap, and even then they are forced to sue to get a little. And frankly, a billion dollars for wifi? That's chump change on the international scene. Better than nothing, but still just selling off raw resources (oz brains in this case) cheap.
I wouldn't feel bad about it, and don't take it as a dig against Australia (sort of a joke there..) because most nations are doing that now, they have more or less conceded world economic dominance to China for short term profits and some cheap consumer trinkets, a couple generations worth, then..that stuff won't be all that cheap anymore. China will reach a point they can demand more, they won't have to sell cheap, once they have more or less completely squashed manufacturing elsewhere, and also built up their own R&D establishment.
Ruminants are fairly good at converting grass/forage to meat, and they also produce a food that suits the palate to billions of people. Does not much good to produce some superfood if it tastes rank and no one likes it.
As to the water needs for processing, I addressed that in my post, saying locally grown/consumed or self processed directly on the farm, along with being grass fed, can result in much lower water consumption.
You are throwing out theoretical highest possible figures,(pure corn fed, corn grown on pure irrigated land in a near desert situation, then processed through the most water wasteful plant out there, etc, plus physical transport of everything involved back and forth numerous times and over long distances, all of that thing)). I am just countering by saying there are modalities in place that can result in a huge variable in outcome. "Thousands of liters of water per kg weight delivered" is by far the highest possible outcome there, makes for a short PR soundbite, but isn't exactly always accurate either. That's a worst most extreme case, not a norm or even a median most likely. I am guessing there but it's just too much of a variable to accept a one size fits all situation.
As to how much meat people eat, etc, again too much of a variable. I would agree a lot of folks just eat way too much, meat included, I see the roly poly waddlers same as you do. And a lot of people sure don't get enough, of anything, meat or veggies. That's why I like farming, to feed people, even though I could "make more money", a lot more, doing something else. Most people just want to "make more money" no matter what, so that's my personal tradeoff. I just don't give much of a crap about "making money", I never have either, as opposed to doing what I like and what I think is at least half way righteous. People who fixate on "making more money", which is probably most people here I would guess, wind up spending it as well, and their total resource use, water included, goes straight into the stratosphere compared to a simpler life.
Example, people who fly all over the planet on vacation or those ridiculous business trips when we have the internet now, but then are vegans and will say they don't use as much resources. Well that's nonsense. People who "need" to use ten times the electricity I use, just by choosing to live in the megatropolises with their huge advertising signs running 24/7 and every room lit up, etc, constantly artificially climate controlled, etc. but because they walk to the subway claim they use less resources, water included. Nuts, just ain't so. They use them, it is just removed from direct use, but they still use them. What they might save on being vegan is more than offset on just the transportation and infrastructure needed to keep them living where there are *no* resources locally and everything about their lives has to be shipped in to them. They live in concrete and steel buildings that used tons of resources, I live in an old cabin that was made from locally cut timber a hundred years ago. No comparison on resource use square foot to square foot for living area, mine is significantly lower. I don't own or use a big screen Tv or a "gaming rig" right there my total water resource requirement drops severely compared to some vegan who has a large TV and wastes electricity to own such a computer and runit just for games. I mean, that's the point of the article, computer chip fabs suck it down, bigtime. If you avoid the constant upgrade cycle, especially with "having" to have the latest triple throw down cross fired mega blaster 4-d rig...you save the use of thousands of gallons of water that was used in that manufacture, not to mention how much other water was contaminated from the factory outflow..and we can agree I hope that in most lands, there is shall we say not as much oversight on sewage and waste disposal. Another reason these corporations love to outsource, no pesky enviro regs..
Anyway, you can blame evil cows for wasting too much water, I'll blame people who insi
That's probably a pretty high figure most likely from some estimates using 100% artificially irrigated land and pure corn fed in a feedlot. I know I have put some larger feeder calves in a barn (just temporarily, under a week) where they were only getting some richer/better quality hay with just a small scoop each of corn, mostly hay fed in other words, and during their growth stage where they were slapping on a pound a day, and no way in heck were they drinking a hundred gallons apiece a day, not even close to that, more like around 5-7 gallons a day (IIRC didn't exactly measure it, but didn't need to fill the hundred gallon tank except every third day for around five calves). How much water for the hay..sorta immaterial, it falls from the sky anyway. We don't irrigate here, and a lot of places don't need to irrigate.
If it is grass fed, and locally/self processed, you can knock those water requirements way way down from that high figure in order to get a steak to the plate.
And seeing as how we have a lot of slopes, it makes way more sense to grow turf, that feeds the cattle, than to open it up to massive erosion and try to grow row crops there. It's a conversion principle and economics plus looking at the terrain that dictates the type of farming. Yes, gallon for gallon, you can get more generic food feeding straight veggies to the humans, but it also won't ever be as nutrient dense a food either, no matter which veggie you are talking about. In other words you can't compare a bite of lean beef to a bite of cabbage. Both are good, both take water, but bite for bite the beef just has a lot more nutrients, so is that water really all that wasted? The humans just cannot eat that grass, it must be converted. You can go all the way to nutrient light veggies like spuds, a grown man living entirely on spuds like back during the Irish potato famine was eating 10-14 lbs a day to get enough energy and nutrient requirements to stay barely functional and working (working as in outside hard physical labor working, not diddly bopping around from city apartment to ultra light duty office or retail work, etc).
There are a lot of tradeoffs and considerations when doing resource analysis.
We used to make our own distilled water for topping off the lead acid batteries for the solar PV arrays. Just a watertight box with a clear sheet of glass on top and a place to pour water in and a place to get the distilled out basically. The glass is at a slight slope so the water droplets run down into the gutter-collector, then out to the collection jug. You can get at least two gallons a day in georgia during the summer from a 3x6 foot collector box. (that was a commercial unit, they can be built easily enough though)
We have the tech to do solar fusion power distilled, it's pretty low tech really, just takes a lot of space for mass quantities, but it *is* quite doable. You can get enough to at least cover minimum drinking and cooking requirements as long as you have a source of not suitable water to start with.
A pure EV using even (relatively) cheap batteries today can suffice for your day to day commuter, recharging at night at home. For long trips trips, there is this concept, the range extending generator trailer.
If you need to do that sort of hundreds a mile a day driving, no, EVs are not for you. Under one hundred miles a day, which hits like 90% of most folk's driving, the tech is here now and a number of places have after market kits to convert cars and light trucks. Run you around 20 grand or so plus the donor vehicle you get used, then you decide what flavor of batteries you want to invest in first. Kits for like a ford ranger or chevy s-10 or some sedan, all sorts have been made so far. And you can put together your own generator trailer for that trip to see the relatives, etc., just stop and fillerup like normal at any gas station.
Waiting for the three hundred mile range on batteries and five minute recharge option, that I see people saying all the time, means they really aren't interested in them unless they are a millionaire or close to it and can get like a tesla or something with their toy budget, and you still won't get a five minute recharge.
But, 50 -100 mile range and falling into the normal joe sixpack range of cost for a new midrange normal vehicle, you can do it now. You can't do it brand new from some dealer, it will be years and years before they get that cheap, but you *can* do it with the kits.
http://www.google.com/search?electric+conversion+kits
Scientists are people as well - "choose not to accept scientific data because it conflicts with their predefined beliefs". They can have the same problem, and I would bet it happens a lot once careers, huge grants and academic prestige and huge egos get into play. A white lab coat does not make you a super-people, a god, infallible, incapable of being wrong, or corrupt, or bribe-able, or blackmail-able, or otherwise influenced adversely.
The "scientific community" has been seriously wrong down through the ages on any number of subjects, the "consensus", the predetermined "beliefs" lead to rote conformity, a herd mentality, and the inability to admit facts and data that where staring them in the face.
I am fully aware of this or that production costs, was around that scene for quite a few years. I guess I'll pass on name dropping right now, just assume I am telling you straight.
Here's the deal..you don't want to hear the truth, your mind is made up in advance. You are talking to someone who supports the idea you should get paid. I am telling you *why* this keeps being difficult, and why this whole article is posted here in the first place.
The article is about this huge segment of the global population that fully realizes that what the collective "you" want to charge for your intellectual property copies is ludicrously too high, obnoxiously so, so they choose to not pay anything to you. I am perfectly willing to meet content providers half way, drop those ludicrous prices down to something more reasonable, a price that truly reflects what your per unit production costs are better today, because of astounding tech advances that we have had, and I go back to being a paid customer for new product. I was in the past for decades, but not now. You getting it yet? You pissed off the bulk of your customers years ago, and now wonder why your stuff ain't selling like you think it should.
I don't download and copy for free, but I refuse to pay price gougers prices either, when I know full well what copies cost. And I don't care about your upfront costs, because that's set,(and I also know full well at least with music that production cost has dropped dramatically over the past thirty years, huge cost drops) your copies for sale costs could be loads cheaper, and again, you have six billion with a B potential customers out there. Fairer price, plus volume sales is what you should be looking at.
In other words, you are arguing with the wrong guy, argue with the people who just stopped even considering giving you a single penny instead, ask them why they refuse, and just download for free. I don't refuse to pay you, I just will not be taken advantage of and seriously overpay based on last century's per unit cost of copies for sale. I'm not paying 50 bucks for a loaf of bread, that's obvious price gouging. I am not paying 100 bucks for a gallon of gas today, that is price gouging. I am not paying 400 bucks for a pair of jeans, that's obvious price gouging. And I am not paying 20 bucks for a ten cent stamped disk, that's price gouging. I know you can see it with my other examples, just..think about it some more. To your customers, and the bulk of the planet (again, see article), your twenty buck a disk product is as much price gouging as my other examples, you just ain't seeing that yet. This fixation on making thousands of percent markup "per unit" is the problem. think lower prices, move many more units instead.
You have over six billion humans as potential customers. If you can't price and sell your product enough within that size pool to make it attractive to most of those folks, make them willing to purchase from you..well, stay stuck wondering why this is so, and when people tell you directly, keep refusing to listen.
Use your work and the other several billion bucks worth of open source work you are allowed to use freely in some business that "makes money". Use it
I suggest for hints on "what business" start on page one of the yellow pages, A to Z, most business today uses software and computers. Just peruse around, see what interests you.
We produce food here on this farm, poultry and beef. We don't get paid for every skill set and work hour directly, there's no direct pay for picking up a tool and using it. We use these developed skills in an overall "business". OK, this week I am haying. Yesterday the magic smoke wafted out of my primary disk mower...grumble. Oh ya, had *two* flats on a tedder as well, one of which required me changing out a shredded tire, using tire irons and a lot of sweat. So, because I need to hay *now* and can't wait on parts and the time to fix the newer big mower, I had to dig out the older like thirty year old mower and make it work. It's satup and rusted out like a long time. This involved machining a driveshaft to fit, to make it suitable for purpose, among other things. Took some hours, but got a good piece cut today, I'll finish up tomorrow.
I don't get paid for tire changing, I don't get paid for machining and repairing directly, I don't submit an invoice for tractor jockeying..none of that do I get directly paid for. I *do* get paid for doing all these various things when product gets sold, and *if* there is a profit. This is "business", we use a ton of tools and skillsets that have to be developed in "business" and offer a real tangible product for sale. Other folks have service businesses that they do the same at. I can't just sit around and wait for flats to fix, and just that, or wait for something to break then dig out the wrenches, and charge just for that and insist that is all I am going to do. I can't just say to joe farm boss I am only going to operate a tractor, nothing else. I'd get bounced and wouldn't make any money, none.
Anyway, that's how you "make money" with tools and the developed skills to use them, you *use* the tools in some *other* real business. Having to custom make tools and parts, etc, think outside the box, come up with solutions and innovations, that haven't been done before, whatever, is quite common outside of the software "tool" business, that is how people keep going with their jobs that pay the rent, etc.
This stuff you expect to sell..your customers must use it, what do they do for a business, how do they use these tools to make money? Your solution might be just looking what they do to make cash. If they can make profit off of your work, you might be able to make double that profit if you did that sort of work yourself, with your custom designed software tools.
Either used and real cheap at pawnshops or yardsales, etc, or hitting the severe mark down bin at megamart.** I never pay first run prices for a cheap disk, I don't care what bits are on them, because I don't want to feed the price gouger trolls and encourage that behavior.
**note: I don't download or pirate, never, but I also won't pay their bloated prices. If I can't get it at a closer to fair reality price, I just don't bother. They just lost a somewhat regular and long standing customer who bought their stuff since the late 50s. No more. I follow tech advances, the prices they charge do *not* reflect cost savings being passed on to the consumer any more, not even close. It's freakin cartel price fixing.
Ain't a piece of entertainment on a disk out there that's worth going to either extreme of pirating or paying bloat prices for it to acquire it, IMO, I don't care what star/special effects/bellowing band is represented on that disk or download. I'll get entertained some other way before I do that.
If some "star" and production house is already a millionaire or a billion dollar company...they got enough and can drop prices and not lobby to get laws and practices carved in stone to reflect their business model and last century's "per unit" pricing they want to keep. "Units" are *cheap* now.
Digital products are not scarce, so the prices should reflect that. Even digital products on plastic disks are cheap to make. If they aren't happy with a 100% markup for their "products"...screw 'em. Just tons of other businesses manage to stay in business and make a good profit at less than 100% markup, sometimes much much less than that. If the clone makers can charge $1.25 and still make a profit over their costs, then the official joints could charge two bucks even and proly come real dang close to 100% markup. If they claim it costs more than that, they are getting copies made for resale where it is way too expensive, they should shop around better.
As to pure digital download products, this is replicator tech we are talking about. The people, the consumers, need a "law" on our side, a 21st century law, that reflects the reality of our first near free replicator tech and make it so all download products can't be priced more than 100% markup over server/hosting/processing/bandwith costs.
If we don't, we are gonna get royally screwed in the future when tangible replicator "tea, earl grey, hot" styled replicator tech hits. Legalized buggywhip pricing. Buy a car, you still have to pay the buggywhip and horseshoe guy expected profits. Screw that. Tech advances, so prices should reflect these advances then.
We don't pay monks hand scribing a book prices anymore for dead tree products, but that's what the digital resellers want. No...just no, that's too dang greedy and lame for society as a whole, looking forward, and that's my concern, for future generations and this nutso pricing precedent they have now with our first really ubiquitous replicator technology.
I'm in food production, and I am not hypocritical about this. I encourage everyone to grow as much of their own food as possible, use open pollinated non patented seeds, share seeds with your friends, "make copies" as much as you can and share them around, share the knowledge of how to grow stuff, and all that et cetera there. Just do it. I am not trying to "get rich" off of food production, I never expect or even desire to become a millionaire from making food, I just think ending hunger is a worthy goal, and the cheaper and easier we can make it the better. That's the best I can do with that sort of tech level society has now at this time. If that means eventually that food gets so cheap and easy to get for everyone that I go out of business, I *don't care*, I'd be the happiest dude on the planet if that was to happen. I'll go do something else then, you never run out of ideas or projects, never.