I guess it has been...
on
IE7 Leaked
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· Score: 2, Insightful
...blown out of proportion a lot...well.. except for the TENS OF MILLIONS of machines that have gotten infected and owned over the years because of it. And let's look at the BILLIONS of dollars in basically lost productivity and resources wasted on "fixing" malwarez once folks get nailed. It doesn't matter if theoretically 1% (whatever, a small number) of the computer using population can keep a windows box secure, what matters is, for whatever reasons exist today, 99% (again, whatever, a very large number) CAN'T. That's an example of "broken" in any practical true sense, as opposed to academic theory.
Most large news media outfits now offer some sort of on demand video clips now and are expanidng those services. If their customers notice a dramatic slowdown in use or they get complaints about extra fees, etc, they'll cover it in some stories their customers will see. Then maybe some legislative acdtion will happen.Bellsouth won't be able to pull this off in a vacuum. Even if a simple google search had some text to it with referencing information, that's enough to get the matter noticed. Or how about if one morning several million people couldn't get a google search at all, instead just the "news" on the extra fees? Google is popular, they could generate a lot of grass roots lobbying action and hit a lot more eyeballs than bell south could in one day.
...in the agriculture (poultry houses for instance) and greenhouse industry. You'll need to research there for it I don't recall brand names off the top of my head right this second, but should be easy enough to find examples of. They have systems that are both automatic programmable there at the dedicated computer and remote controlled over the internet for monitoring and adjusting, heating,cooling, humidity, etc. Warning: it's spendy stuff, but will do what you want. I also really doubt any of the software is FOSS, although it should be.
...let the little guy get into the energy production business. From single house size on up. It's not that far from going from producing what you need yourself to being a commercial supplier, it's as easy as having a grid tie and a backwards running meter, and you can scale up from there to serious wholesale amounts. it's a good deal for those farmers who have put them in already out in the midwest. The only people who benefit financially from nuke plants are the already-billionaires crowd. Don't they have enough money and economic and political control now? Solar and wind decentralize the input radically,they create many more installations, thereby increasing security and the robustness of the grid. You don't have to have squads of armed guards with surface to air missiles 24/7 guarding your solar panels or wind towers. Solar adds peak power exactly when peak air conditioning demand is needed. Wind towers can make use of marginal land, maybe not suitable for efficient farming, but great for capturing some energy, like hilltops. Wind picks up a lot in the winter months when more lighting electricity is needed from shorter days, so wind and solar together are a great year round hybrid system. Wind towers and solar can create many more jobs, *useful* jobs, and give employment to people in rural areas, something desperately needed in this age of blue collar outsourcing to overseas plants. If the US switched bigtime,merely as an adjunct to what we have now for grid production, maybe we could put a million dudes to work, actual productive work, wealth creating work. These alternatives create service and installation work as well as in the manufacturing. You as a small biz guy or homeowner can actually pay off and *own* your own power, eliminating the "rent the infrastructure" at no guaranteed price that a normal monthly "bill" represents. Initial installation costs are much lower, and much simpler, and much cheaper than any nuke plant. Solar or wind plants can be setup and running very quickly in areas devastated by natural disasters and provide immediate emergency power, without requiring allocation of expensive fuel resources that conventional emergency generators need and might not be available (see last years hurricanes examples).
and etc. There are a lot of advantages to going with the simpler and greener alternatives. Not as an immediate total replacement, but to add to the mix we already have. We need a balance, we ALREADY have a lot of coal and natgas and nuke plants and large scale hydro,so let's add in an equivalent balance of some greener stuff, the solar and wind, see how that works out. I would bet once true economies of scale kick in, we'd see some significant price drops and it would get pretty competetive. wind is darn close now to coal in some places as it stands. It is not a magic silver bullet, but the tech is here now and it works and just keeps getting better. The wind and sunlight are *free*, we aren't going to "run out" anytime soon, and no one can "embargo" the fuel, we aren't going to hit "peak sun" or "peak wind" soon, and there's nothing all that dangerous about it, for the most part.
Compared to all the other strange stuff joe government and joe consumers drop cash on, it just makes sense to dig in and do some of this on a really big scale now, while it's still cheap to build it.
I still get some crashes, and it is invariably because of flash heavy or scripting heavy web pages. I *try* to surf with JS and Flash off, but some sites insist on it. Combine that with many tabs open and you get your problems. The devs seem to think this is still the olden days with one page/browser window open at a time or something, and their page is the only page people might be using. While just having one tab with some flash on it isn't bad, having a couple dozen adds up quickly, and it's easy to have a couple dozen tabs if you are a fast browser type. I know you can get various plugins to deal with this, I just think they shouldn't use it as much...well, because flash just sucks for most purposes.
I don't know what the various moz devs can do about it, to make the browser more stable and be able to deal with so much work being required from a lot of tabs open, but I sure wish web site devs would just layoff so much scripting, especially the Flash. there has to be some sort of middle ground compromise eventually. I know they are shooting themselves in the economic foot, flash based ads have forced millions to just start blocking ads in general, along with the thoroughly bogus JS called popups and popunders. I don't see it as being in any companies best interest to immediately annoy a potential customer. sort of like the music and movie biz with their various DRM schemes. The first rule of business, don't piss off the customer the second they walk in the door to your shop.
Might have been a good idea, then on top of that they should have grabbed VIA, then they could have had all the normal bases covered, small low watt tech for various mobile computing, mid range consumer and office hardware of the best quality, then larger enterprise class machines. Not saying it's a perfect idea, but it might have worked. Heck, SGI is sitting there right now, there has got to be some salvageable tech and good people there as well.
yes, I did, see the smiley there in my post? heh. Seamonkey is the original idea for what mozilla used to offer, and it's still the best idea, an integrated solution. When the official moz emphasis switched to stand alone apps, I distinctly remember people bringing up the "uncoordinated versions" potential problem, and they were told it was a minimal problem. Now we can see it is a problem, and it will continue to be a problem, especially with all the extensions and plug ins and trying to get them to work across different applications since the "great breakup".
Anyway, yes, I use seamonkey and encourage others to do so as well. I want one app that works for the most common web surfing uses. Choice is good here.
Maybe Mozilla should look into offering some sort of all in one solution, like web browsing, email and a calendar function in an all together coordinated release? Maybe that would work, keep those apps most folks use all the time anyway in sync with each other and be one good quality app people could use for those common functions. I think it's a good idea,I wish they would try it, seems like a potentially great solution;)
The *point* was the completely erroneous claim that people didn't have to pay for MS software if they didn't want to,and that's all.
I proved they did.
The other stuff is tangential and completely besides the point. People pay for MS every time their taxes are taken from their check, and a huge amount of the time when they conduct other business transactions, even if they don't want to do business with MS. It's a direct-taxes- or indirect by one step-other business use, sum of money that goes to MS, multipled by millions of people besides the people who consciously choose to support MS by a direct purchase.
...taxes, and how much various governments (federal/state/local) have taken from people to pay for their use of Microsoft stuff. Now add in the extra cost incured on most everything from MS products being broken or insecure, in terms of lost productivity and wasted productivity to the economy as a whole, where MS stuff still runs a lot of things and is factored in to costs we all endure on various goods and services, even if we don't want to spend our money on MS.
There is a huge cost involved, directly by a lot of people, indirectly by almost everyone who is a consumer and/or tax payer. I cannot fill out my taxes and tell the IRS I refuse to pay for any microsoft products that government is using. I can't demand so much off of various products I buy from companies if they use microsoft in their business, those costs and taxes are just passed on to me with no recourse other than to pay them.
....just get two of them, keep one in the charger and be using the other...although I don't know if this would confuse the bluetooth receiver in the laptop itself. It would solve the dilemma though if it worked.
me, no wireless*, I never minded cords/cables at all, even with the laptop. I hardly ever use the builtin keyboard or track device anyway, always just stuck a normal keyboard and mouse on to use them.
...an opportunity for an enterprising person with a video camera to shoot a lot of the offending instances of crosswalk violations then see if the local news channel might carry some of the footage. Getting license plate closeups might be a plus + 1 bonus. Often, local governments won't act on anything until they are embarrassed into it.
I haven't said the "end of all good things", just a credible probability or high level possibility (even odds I gave it) of an expanded middle eastern war right gob smack in the middle of the planet's largest oil reserves. There's already a rather large one going on,perhaps you've noticed?? It just might *expand*. Check the headlines, it's not just me saying it. I hope it doesn't happen of course, just looking at the newzzzz.
Of course, if you have secret insider info that it 100% positively won't happen, let's see it! I'm open for good news all the time! I'm a glass half-full guy by nature, it doesn't bother me at all when things go well.
Instead of looking at the economics of installing a large wind farm for the sole purposes of bulk wholesale sales, to a customer who doesn't want to deal with you, to instead plan on using your produced electricity for a specific industry/factory/large agco concern set upright near the wind farm. Two businesses that compliment each other. Plenty of potential businesses that need lots of electrical power, the cheaper the better, and if you (your sister) corporation supplies the power from the wind plants, you sell it to yourself (the manufacturing facility, or etc), a common and legal business tactic.
...easy enough to check that. 30 years ago was the Arctic melting at a fast rate? y/N
I don't recall that being a topic of conversation back then, not much anyway, they were talking about it possibly becoming MORE frozen, but it might have been, I honestly don't remember. Seems to me it was more or less like it has been, all frozen, not changing fast. They were still working out ramifications of increased aerosols, something we are still contending with, and near as I can see they were all partially correct, greenhouse gasses will trap heat, and particulate matter will reflect solar gain. We've gotten a better handle on solar gain because of reductions in particulate matter since then, but greenhouse gas emissions are way up... hmmm..gets complicated fast
Some climatologist here might have a good reference to go look and see what was actually going on then. I'd be interested in knowing as well, because of the recent evidence that Mars is undergoing severe climactic changes, most likely from solar activity.
"The transition from oil to other energy sources will occur naturally, through normal market forces, and without any extreme shocks"
I think we'll get to test your theory of just a slow reduction and gradual changes and no shocks, etc., this spring. I'd given even odds now about a greatly expanded war in the mideast involving NATO and Israel vs Iran and possibly Syria, followed by katy-bar-the-door. And who knows, this might be the war that we see the re-introduction of nuclear weapons again. I think if that occurs it might cause a sum-total lowering of global production, and not slowly, either, into the "sudden shock" realm. It's really at best a SWAG though, as those sorts of things are incredibly difficult to predict. I wouldn't *discount* it though, nor would I count on Saudi Arabia to immediately pick up the global slack. Something might happen there as well. This is the age of cheap missiles and suicide commandos and various and diverse flavors of political and religious extremism, most anything could happen that might disrupt "normalcy".
I distinctly remember having a non-slow and non-gradual "option" a few decades back now of ten dollars/gallon gas during the OPEC embargo, the two choices presented were pay it, or no gas, and only 2 gallons per customer sold. I paid it, just to be able to get home. We didn't get much notice either, and it caused some profound changes immediately. Stuff happens sometimes...
Then there's South America, in particular Venezuela, another potential flashpoint where oil supplies could be disrupted with little notice.
We still don't have Iraq back producing at pre war levels, AFAIK, and that's been 2 years now since the latest invasion.
In short, no time in human history can be considered "abnormal", it is what it was, but today we are so highly dependent on petroleum fuels, basically just the last century in all of our existence as humans, and we also have such a proliferation of advanced weaponry completely beyond the ken of any dictator or warlord in the past, that these times we are in now might be considered extremely experimental and out of any sort of "norm". There are too many potentially devastating wild cards present to hold a totally rosy view of future events. Not to say we should be pessimistic, but I think it's prudent to cover your prognostication bets with a dash of modern political realism.
We have a saying that fits in the Preparedness community:P "Pray for the best, prepare for the worst"
A collection of strawdog arguments at best. I follow this subject a lot, the techniques being developed now are outstanding and are working well, and all the indications are it will be getting better. You propose to tell some nation "sorry, you can't have farmland and grow crops"? You are telling farmers, "sorry, I have determined that you shouldn't grow XYZ, only ABC? You insist that everything remain in stasis? How are humans around the planet supposed to live? We're humans, we will be altering the environment, this is justa gimmee, there's zero argument there, it has, does and will happen, so taking that, the best we can do is study on it and do it gracefully. We can't ignore the realities of increased demand over the next generation combined with lessening of conventional petroleum/natgas supplies, combined with external and unforseen geopolitics. I mean, just check world population stats and trends. We have to use everything we can think of in the next generation to pull this off, and then some. We can see *today*, right this second, go check your favorite general news source, exactly what can happen when you put a lot of your energy eggs into one basket, witness Russia shutting off natgas supplies to the Ukraine. Stuff happens. We have aacdemic theory and on the ground in your face realities, two different things there.
It is MUCH, MUCH better to be well diversified and to have backups. This is good for data, and it's good for "energy" as well.
It's all fine and dandy from someone's POV who already has access to energy products and running vehicles, etc, and lives a first world experience, but you want to limit those who currently *aren't* so well off to remain like they are. How the heck is some poor family making 200 bucks a year ever supposed to be able to even come close to a western styled middle class existence without more and cheaper energy sources? You want to limit the way the economies are running now to just making the current energy suppliers more wealthy and have even more influence over politics? What's a viable solution right now? Hydrogen? What can be done *today* right now as an alternative to petroleum products? Not 20 or 50 years from now, but today? To ME, biofuels are certainly one answer. Need fuel for your tractor and truck in order to get more efficient and be able to feed more people? A) shell out half your monthly pay for conventional diesel or gasoline that is sold at world prices, or B) "grow your own fuel" on your own land.
Now GUESS what will actually happen.
To me, the alternative energy "silver bullet" isn't one particular tech, it's the combination of techs we have that are getting better and better daily. Biofuels are just one of them, and the bulk of the rest of the planet agrees, because we ARE putting in wind farms and solar PV and solar thermal and biofuel facilities, and geothermal, and etc, in all the nations.
And guess what? It's WORKING. slow but sure, it's working, despite the critics insistence it won't, daily now people are driving around with full or partially fueled bio-derived fuels, from Canada to the US to Europe to south america to Asia. And it hasn't become "ghastly". Just because immediately right this second it can't "replace" all the petroleum is a weak argument, we as humans are working both ends to the middle, developing more fuel efficient devices and increasing sources of supply of fruel, and near as I can see that's all we CAN do for this problem. We can't just sit back and go "well, it might not work so let's don't try". That mindset GUARANTEES failure.
Alternative energy in general is a lot like Linux, it is the ability to adapt and create a solution that exactly fits your particular needs and resources. There is no "one size fits all" energy solution,the proverbial Mr. Fusion reactor, it doesn't exist, nor is it likely for the forseeable future, so we need to develop the "many sizes for many needs" sets of solutions in the meantime, else we as hoo-mannz will become en-screwed.
Why would it be a "disaster"? Really, expound on this a bit. All the proposed methods and techniques and crops are "wrong"? It is not useful to use the sun and photosynthesis (our only practical fusion power at this point) to make biodiesel and other bio-derived fuels? What's wrong with using some of the huge quantities of biowaste produced every year to make fuel? What's wrong with putting more farmers to work and expanding crops? Using permaculture and low till ag techniques combined with some solar and perennial and self seeding annual crops, seems to me it could be quite a viable alternative, plus tend to spread out the jobs and money involved in the whole energy business, rather than have it remain in the hands of the current cartels. It's somehow wrong for joe third world farmer who's nation has little to no natural oil in the ground to also help grow the fuel his nation needs, rather than exporting precious hard currency to go purchase expensive petroleum on the world market? It's wrong for a first world farmer to expand his operations and produce fuel as well as food crops? Why?
Sorry, overall I would have to completely disagree, bio derived fuels are here now and they work ( I've made and used ethanol fuel before, incredibly easy), they aren't energy sinks, you get a gain with the newer processes, they use a closed carbon cycle that is neutral, unlike petroleum from the ground or liquid fuels derived from coal, they require very little if any infrastructure changes for either the vehicles or the fuel delivery process to the end user, (unlike the "hydrogen" schemes currently being pushed where most everything has to change radically and expensively) and there are a raft of techniques and crops out there that could be used, something for every climate and level of technology around the planet basically. You can take most any vehicle already out there and run it on either ethanol or biodiesel with very little changes, and the fuel stations are already set-up to handle and dispense liquid fuels into "normal" fuel tanks. It's an outstanding energy transition option while we are waiting for the universal backyard Mr. Fusion reactor and the pie in the sky "hydrogen economy" which is still a long ways off.
Anyway, the point is moot, it's *being done now on a large scale* all over the world and we aren't seeing much if any "disasters" associated with it.
I would think it would be much easier to analyse the pics thery captured and stored once they coordinated it with your cellphone location and your auto location, etc. And who knows, your credit cards locations might become locatable at some practical distance as well once they are chipped. So yes, after you have already come under scrutiny would be more probable for this tech. Seems like we are almost at that now..
Almost forgot, the RFID that will be in your clothes.
This is government, they'll capture and store all the data they can, even if it isn't very useful right now, eventually it will beome much easier to search it. Governments number one job is to grow larger and become more powerful, so that's what happens.
and thankyou for the next tip! I will look into it. Guess I never thought about it considering all the compiling, etc needed. But I'll check it out. The other options I was considering was one of the mini distros, which I have been playing with. Some are quite nice, very small, contain "enough" for joe home surfer needs.
I think you are correct in 2006. Geopolitical events will be severely influencing all the markets,with a lot of changes coming, and most of them not good. But... all of them will have opportunities for those that are nimble.
Slashdot Mirror
...blown out of proportion a lot...well.. except for the TENS OF MILLIONS of machines that have gotten infected and owned over the years because of it. And let's look at the BILLIONS of dollars in basically lost productivity and resources wasted on "fixing" malwarez once folks get nailed. It doesn't matter if theoretically 1% (whatever, a small number) of the computer using population can keep a windows box secure, what matters is, for whatever reasons exist today, 99% (again, whatever, a very large number) CAN'T. That's an example of "broken" in any practical true sense, as opposed to academic theory.
Most large news media outfits now offer some sort of on demand video clips now and are expanidng those services. If their customers notice a dramatic slowdown in use or they get complaints about extra fees, etc, they'll cover it in some stories their customers will see. Then maybe some legislative acdtion will happen.Bellsouth won't be able to pull this off in a vacuum. Even if a simple google search had some text to it with referencing information, that's enough to get the matter noticed. Or how about if one morning several million people couldn't get a google search at all, instead just the "news" on the extra fees? Google is popular, they could generate a lot of grass roots lobbying action and hit a lot more eyeballs than bell south could in one day.
...in the agriculture (poultry houses for instance) and greenhouse industry. You'll need to research there for it I don't recall brand names off the top of my head right this second, but should be easy enough to find examples of. They have systems that are both automatic programmable there at the dedicated computer and remote controlled over the internet for monitoring and adjusting, heating,cooling, humidity, etc. Warning: it's spendy stuff, but will do what you want. I also really doubt any of the software is FOSS, although it should be.
...let the little guy get into the energy production business. From single house size on up. It's not that far from going from producing what you need yourself to being a commercial supplier, it's as easy as having a grid tie and a backwards running meter, and you can scale up from there to serious wholesale amounts. it's a good deal for those farmers who have put them in already out in the midwest. The only people who benefit financially from nuke plants are the already-billionaires crowd. Don't they have enough money and economic and political control now? Solar and wind decentralize the input radically,they create many more installations, thereby increasing security and the robustness of the grid. You don't have to have squads of armed guards with surface to air missiles 24/7 guarding your solar panels or wind towers. Solar adds peak power exactly when peak air conditioning demand is needed. Wind towers can make use of marginal land, maybe not suitable for efficient farming, but great for capturing some energy, like hilltops. Wind picks up a lot in the winter months when more lighting electricity is needed from shorter days, so wind and solar together are a great year round hybrid system. Wind towers and solar can create many more jobs, *useful* jobs, and give employment to people in rural areas, something desperately needed in this age of blue collar outsourcing to overseas plants. If the US switched bigtime,merely as an adjunct to what we have now for grid production, maybe we could put a million dudes to work, actual productive work, wealth creating work. These alternatives create service and installation work as well as in the manufacturing. You as a small biz guy or homeowner can actually pay off and *own* your own power, eliminating the "rent the infrastructure" at no guaranteed price that a normal monthly "bill" represents. Initial installation costs are much lower, and much simpler, and much cheaper than any nuke plant. Solar or wind plants can be setup and running very quickly in areas devastated by natural disasters and provide immediate emergency power, without requiring allocation of expensive fuel resources that conventional emergency generators need and might not be available (see last years hurricanes examples).
and etc. There are a lot of advantages to going with the simpler and greener alternatives. Not as an immediate total replacement, but to add to the mix we already have. We need a balance, we ALREADY have a lot of coal and natgas and nuke plants and large scale hydro,so let's add in an equivalent balance of some greener stuff, the solar and wind, see how that works out. I would bet once true economies of scale kick in, we'd see some significant price drops and it would get pretty competetive. wind is darn close now to coal in some places as it stands. It is not a magic silver bullet, but the tech is here now and it works and just keeps getting better. The wind and sunlight are *free*, we aren't going to "run out" anytime soon, and no one can "embargo" the fuel, we aren't going to hit "peak sun" or "peak wind" soon, and there's nothing all that dangerous about it, for the most part.
Compared to all the other strange stuff joe government and joe consumers drop cash on, it just makes sense to dig in and do some of this on a really big scale now, while it's still cheap to build it.
The Federal energy bill that was signed into law and went into effect Jan 1 has some nifty tax credits. Maybe your boss might be interested. And if you are in California it just got even more interesting. Not totally free, but some dineros to be saved there on installs. HTH
I still get some crashes, and it is invariably because of flash heavy or scripting heavy web pages. I *try* to surf with JS and Flash off, but some sites insist on it. Combine that with many tabs open and you get your problems. The devs seem to think this is still the olden days with one page/browser window open at a time or something, and their page is the only page people might be using. While just having one tab with some flash on it isn't bad, having a couple dozen adds up quickly, and it's easy to have a couple dozen tabs if you are a fast browser type. I know you can get various plugins to deal with this, I just think they shouldn't use it as much...well, because flash just sucks for most purposes.
I don't know what the various moz devs can do about it, to make the browser more stable and be able to deal with so much work being required from a lot of tabs open, but I sure wish web site devs would just layoff so much scripting, especially the Flash. there has to be some sort of middle ground compromise eventually. I know they are shooting themselves in the economic foot, flash based ads have forced millions to just start blocking ads in general, along with the thoroughly bogus JS called popups and popunders. I don't see it as being in any companies best interest to immediately annoy a potential customer. sort of like the music and movie biz with their various DRM schemes. The first rule of business, don't piss off the customer the second they walk in the door to your shop.
Might have been a good idea, then on top of that they should have grabbed VIA, then they could have had all the normal bases covered, small low watt tech for various mobile computing, mid range consumer and office hardware of the best quality, then larger enterprise class machines. Not saying it's a perfect idea, but it might have worked. Heck, SGI is sitting there right now, there has got to be some salvageable tech and good people there as well.
yes, I did, see the smiley there in my post? heh. Seamonkey is the original idea for what mozilla used to offer, and it's still the best idea, an integrated solution. When the official moz emphasis switched to stand alone apps, I distinctly remember people bringing up the "uncoordinated versions" potential problem, and they were told it was a minimal problem. Now we can see it is a problem, and it will continue to be a problem, especially with all the extensions and plug ins and trying to get them to work across different applications since the "great breakup".
Anyway, yes, I use seamonkey and encourage others to do so as well. I want one app that works for the most common web surfing uses. Choice is good here.
Maybe Mozilla should look into offering some sort of all in one solution, like web browsing, email and a calendar function in an all together coordinated release? Maybe that would work, keep those apps most folks use all the time anyway in sync with each other and be one good quality app people could use for those common functions. I think it's a good idea,I wish they would try it, seems like a potentially great solution;)
The *point* was the completely erroneous claim that people didn't have to pay for MS software if they didn't want to,and that's all.
I proved they did.
The other stuff is tangential and completely besides the point. People pay for MS every time their taxes are taken from their check, and a huge amount of the time when they conduct other business transactions, even if they don't want to do business with MS. It's a direct-taxes- or indirect by one step-other business use, sum of money that goes to MS, multipled by millions of people besides the people who consciously choose to support MS by a direct purchase.
...taxes, and how much various governments (federal/state/local) have taken from people to pay for their use of Microsoft stuff. Now add in the extra cost incured on most everything from MS products being broken or insecure, in terms of lost productivity and wasted productivity to the economy as a whole, where MS stuff still runs a lot of things and is factored in to costs we all endure on various goods and services, even if we don't want to spend our money on MS.
There is a huge cost involved, directly by a lot of people, indirectly by almost everyone who is a consumer and/or tax payer. I cannot fill out my taxes and tell the IRS I refuse to pay for any microsoft products that government is using. I can't demand so much off of various products I buy from companies if they use microsoft in their business, those costs and taxes are just passed on to me with no recourse other than to pay them.
have at it
http://www.us-cert.gov/contact.html
....just get two of them, keep one in the charger and be using the other...although I don't know if this would confuse the bluetooth receiver in the laptop itself. It would solve the dilemma though if it worked.
me, no wireless*, I never minded cords/cables at all, even with the laptop. I hardly ever use the builtin keyboard or track device anyway, always just stuck a normal keyboard and mouse on to use them.
*although I am a radio freak, so go figger
...an opportunity for an enterprising person with a video camera to shoot a lot of the offending instances of crosswalk violations then see if the local news channel might carry some of the footage. Getting license plate closeups might be a plus + 1 bonus. Often, local governments won't act on anything until they are embarrassed into it.
...shareholders and their lawyers think about that little disaster? Was in reported in the quarterlies?
I haven't said the "end of all good things", just a credible probability or high level possibility (even odds I gave it) of an expanded middle eastern war right gob smack in the middle of the planet's largest oil reserves. There's already a rather large one going on,perhaps you've noticed?? It just might *expand*. Check the headlines, it's not just me saying it. I hope it doesn't happen of course, just looking at the newzzzz.
Of course, if you have secret insider info that it 100% positively won't happen, let's see it! I'm open for good news all the time! I'm a glass half-full guy by nature, it doesn't bother me at all when things go well.
Instead of looking at the economics of installing a large wind farm for the sole purposes of bulk wholesale sales, to a customer who doesn't want to deal with you, to instead plan on using your produced electricity for a specific industry/factory/large agco concern set upright near the wind farm. Two businesses that compliment each other. Plenty of potential businesses that need lots of electrical power, the cheaper the better, and if you (your sister) corporation supplies the power from the wind plants, you sell it to yourself (the manufacturing facility, or etc), a common and legal business tactic.
...easy enough to check that. 30 years ago was the Arctic melting at a fast rate? y/N
I don't recall that being a topic of conversation back then, not much anyway, they were talking about it possibly becoming MORE frozen, but it might have been, I honestly don't remember. Seems to me it was more or less like it has been, all frozen, not changing fast. They were still working out ramifications of increased aerosols, something we are still contending with, and near as I can see they were all partially correct, greenhouse gasses will trap heat, and particulate matter will reflect solar gain. We've gotten a better handle on solar gain because of reductions in particulate matter since then, but greenhouse gas emissions are way up... hmmm..gets complicated fast
Some climatologist here might have a good reference to go look and see what was actually going on then. I'd be interested in knowing as well, because of the recent evidence that Mars is undergoing severe climactic changes, most likely from solar activity.
"The transition from oil to other energy sources will occur naturally, through normal market forces, and without any extreme shocks"
I think we'll get to test your theory of just a slow reduction and gradual changes and no shocks, etc., this spring. I'd given even odds now about a greatly expanded war in the mideast involving NATO and Israel vs Iran and possibly Syria, followed by katy-bar-the-door. And who knows, this might be the war that we see the re-introduction of nuclear weapons again. I think if that occurs it might cause a sum-total lowering of global production, and not slowly, either, into the "sudden shock" realm. It's really at best a SWAG though, as those sorts of things are incredibly difficult to predict. I wouldn't *discount* it though, nor would I count on Saudi Arabia to immediately pick up the global slack. Something might happen there as well. This is the age of cheap missiles and suicide commandos and various and diverse flavors of political and religious extremism, most anything could happen that might disrupt "normalcy".
I distinctly remember having a non-slow and non-gradual "option" a few decades back now of ten dollars/gallon gas during the OPEC embargo, the two choices presented were pay it, or no gas, and only 2 gallons per customer sold. I paid it, just to be able to get home. We didn't get much notice either, and it caused some profound changes immediately. Stuff happens sometimes...
Then there's South America, in particular Venezuela, another potential flashpoint where oil supplies could be disrupted with little notice.
We still don't have Iraq back producing at pre war levels, AFAIK, and that's been 2 years now since the latest invasion.
In short, no time in human history can be considered "abnormal", it is what it was, but today we are so highly dependent on petroleum fuels, basically just the last century in all of our existence as humans, and we also have such a proliferation of advanced weaponry completely beyond the ken of any dictator or warlord in the past, that these times we are in now might be considered extremely experimental and out of any sort of "norm". There are too many potentially devastating wild cards present to hold a totally rosy view of future events. Not to say we should be pessimistic, but I think it's prudent to cover your prognostication bets with a dash of modern political realism.
We have a saying that fits in the Preparedness community:P "Pray for the best, prepare for the worst"
A collection of strawdog arguments at best. I follow this subject a lot, the techniques being developed now are outstanding and are working well, and all the indications are it will be getting better. You propose to tell some nation "sorry, you can't have farmland and grow crops"? You are telling farmers, "sorry, I have determined that you shouldn't grow XYZ, only ABC? You insist that everything remain in stasis? How are humans around the planet supposed to live? We're humans, we will be altering the environment, this is justa gimmee, there's zero argument there, it has, does and will happen, so taking that, the best we can do is study on it and do it gracefully. We can't ignore the realities of increased demand over the next generation combined with lessening of conventional petroleum/natgas supplies, combined with external and unforseen geopolitics. I mean, just check world population stats and trends. We have to use everything we can think of in the next generation to pull this off, and then some. We can see *today*, right this second, go check your favorite general news source, exactly what can happen when you put a lot of your energy eggs into one basket, witness Russia shutting off natgas supplies to the Ukraine. Stuff happens. We have aacdemic theory and on the ground in your face realities, two different things there.
It is MUCH, MUCH better to be well diversified and to have backups. This is good for data, and it's good for "energy" as well.
It's all fine and dandy from someone's POV who already has access to energy products and running vehicles, etc, and lives a first world experience, but you want to limit those who currently *aren't* so well off to remain like they are. How the heck is some poor family making 200 bucks a year ever supposed to be able to even come close to a western styled middle class existence without more and cheaper energy sources? You want to limit the way the economies are running now to just making the current energy suppliers more wealthy and have even more influence over politics? What's a viable solution right now? Hydrogen? What can be done *today* right now as an alternative to petroleum products? Not 20 or 50 years from now, but today? To ME, biofuels are certainly one answer. Need fuel for your tractor and truck in order to get more efficient and be able to feed more people? A) shell out half your monthly pay for conventional diesel or gasoline that is sold at world prices, or B) "grow your own fuel" on your own land.
Now GUESS what will actually happen.
To me, the alternative energy "silver bullet" isn't one particular tech, it's the combination of techs we have that are getting better and better daily. Biofuels are just one of them, and the bulk of the rest of the planet agrees, because we ARE putting in wind farms and solar PV and solar thermal and biofuel facilities, and geothermal, and etc, in all the nations.
And guess what? It's WORKING. slow but sure, it's working, despite the critics insistence it won't, daily now people are driving around with full or partially fueled bio-derived fuels, from Canada to the US to Europe to south america to Asia. And it hasn't become "ghastly". Just because immediately right this second it can't "replace" all the petroleum is a weak argument, we as humans are working both ends to the middle, developing more fuel efficient devices and increasing sources of supply of fruel, and near as I can see that's all we CAN do for this problem. We can't just sit back and go "well, it might not work so let's don't try". That mindset GUARANTEES failure.
Alternative energy in general is a lot like Linux, it is the ability to adapt and create a solution that exactly fits your particular needs and resources. There is no "one size fits all" energy solution,the proverbial Mr. Fusion reactor, it doesn't exist, nor is it likely for the forseeable future, so we need to develop the "many sizes for many needs" sets of solutions in the meantime, else we as hoo-mannz will become en-screwed.
Why would it be a "disaster"? Really, expound on this a bit. All the proposed methods and techniques and crops are "wrong"? It is not useful to use the sun and photosynthesis (our only practical fusion power at this point) to make biodiesel and other bio-derived fuels? What's wrong with using some of the huge quantities of biowaste produced every year to make fuel? What's wrong with putting more farmers to work and expanding crops? Using permaculture and low till ag techniques combined with some solar and perennial and self seeding annual crops, seems to me it could be quite a viable alternative, plus tend to spread out the jobs and money involved in the whole energy business, rather than have it remain in the hands of the current cartels. It's somehow wrong for joe third world farmer who's nation has little to no natural oil in the ground to also help grow the fuel his nation needs, rather than exporting precious hard currency to go purchase expensive petroleum on the world market? It's wrong for a first world farmer to expand his operations and produce fuel as well as food crops? Why?
Sorry, overall I would have to completely disagree, bio derived fuels are here now and they work ( I've made and used ethanol fuel before, incredibly easy), they aren't energy sinks, you get a gain with the newer processes, they use a closed carbon cycle that is neutral, unlike petroleum from the ground or liquid fuels derived from coal, they require very little if any infrastructure changes for either the vehicles or the fuel delivery process to the end user, (unlike the "hydrogen" schemes currently being pushed where most everything has to change radically and expensively) and there are a raft of techniques and crops out there that could be used, something for every climate and level of technology around the planet basically. You can take most any vehicle already out there and run it on either ethanol or biodiesel with very little changes, and the fuel stations are already set-up to handle and dispense liquid fuels into "normal" fuel tanks. It's an outstanding energy transition option while we are waiting for the universal backyard Mr. Fusion reactor and the pie in the sky "hydrogen economy" which is still a long ways off.
Anyway, the point is moot, it's *being done now on a large scale* all over the world and we aren't seeing much if any "disasters" associated with it.
I would think it would be much easier to analyse the pics thery captured and stored once they coordinated it with your cellphone location and your auto location, etc. And who knows, your credit cards locations might become locatable at some practical distance as well once they are chipped. So yes, after you have already come under scrutiny would be more probable for this tech. Seems like we are almost at that now..
Almost forgot, the RFID that will be in your clothes.
This is government, they'll capture and store all the data they can, even if it isn't very useful right now, eventually it will beome much easier to search it. Governments number one job is to grow larger and become more powerful, so that's what happens.
and thankyou for the next tip! I will look into it. Guess I never thought about it considering all the compiling, etc needed. But I'll check it out. The other options I was considering was one of the mini distros, which I have been playing with. Some are quite nice, very small, contain "enough" for joe home surfer needs.
I think you are correct in 2006. Geopolitical events will be severely influencing all the markets,with a lot of changes coming, and most of them not good. But... all of them will have opportunities for those that are nimble.
thanks for the tip, didn't know that!