Society doesn't necessarily demand oil, what they want is affordable transportation. If it was electric and good enough, and reasonably price competitive, they would adopt it, at least in some real decent numbers. Oil for plastics could be gotten from plant sources etc.
Now there are some niches where diesel rules, and there's no way to carry enough batteries, our tractors here for instance, but for zillions of cars on the road now..we already have the tech, they have just been real slow on getting it out there. GM and Ford both had viable electric vehicles, then they refused to sell them to the people who leased them and loved them, crushed them outright. Now, finally, with China sneaking up on them with cheap electric cars, and India not far behind, finally they will be making some. Again.
It has really not been so much an engineering problem with electric vehicles (average US commute is reportedly 33 miles round trip..no three hundred mile range needed for millions and millions of people) as it has been political mixed with old big money having huge influence.
I agree with you that oil is our cheapest energy dense fuel, but a lot of the costs are hidden, and are forced on us. If there was an exact extra tax on a gallon of fuel that reflected the decades long heavy US military presence in the mideast... and let's be adults and just admit that oil is 90% of the reason we have been there this long....you might have found a scosh more interest in the electrics. But that actual tax is hidden inside of "general income taxes", but we sure pay for it anyway.
If there is an all out no holds bar war against Iran, and it spirals out of control when China, Russia and Japan get real antsy about things, plus losing one third of the planet's oil supplies within a few days...we might not have the time to do much of anything, plus the expense would be huge.
We can do it now, but not later, the changeover costs would be un-doable. Make sub prime so called crisis look like a 7-11 stickup. There are too many potential planet impacting black swan type events that could really screw the pooch on a smooth peaceful and economical transition to alternatives to petroleum. And once something bad happens like that, the race to own the remaining supplies could further exacerbate potential bad news situations, ie, major resource wars. Real wars, not little teeny wars like we have now.
I agree with Ratzo, we needed a huge push starting back right after the OPEC embargo, and we dropped the ball bad. It stagnated after the tax credits ran out in the mid 80s, and weren't renewed until very recently (and I think they should come back at a full 100% to stimulate alternatives), and the oil industry all of a sudden flooded the planet with cheap oil as well back then, real cheap. That worked, killed off solar and the push for electric cars, etc for two decades more or less. They did not want any alternatives to their products to succeed. They *like* having energy monopolies and cartels, makes big money constantly with vendor lockin.
We had electric cars a century ago. Heck, jay leno owns one, and the original batteries still work! This BS that electric vehicle aren't practical until they can go 300 miles with an onboard charge is nuts. We've had that "solution" for a long time now, it is called the 50 mile, they could build it today relatively cheaply, electric car, then the generator trailer, for those occasional long trips where you need to go that far. Most people just do not need a 300 mile range day to day to day vehicle, they just don't drive that far except once in awhile. The generator trailer could be rented for longer trips, or owned by the driver and used as an emergency whole house generator as well, for those times it is needed. This would work until such a time as they really do improve the batteries, and the battery pack doesn't cost more than the rest of the vehicle. We have boutique car builders now with examples, and home DIY guys have proven that the tech exists just swell for an electric commuter car.but no majors have them forsale yet. "coming soon" and in the meantime, look at these hydrogen million dollar prototypes we have...nuts. Or they want to push hybrids, the most rube goldberg of designs.
As to a wild ass way for heavy lift cargo, using no petroleum fuels, how about huge lighter than air craft, with those thin film printable photovoltaics (the "new amazing breakthrough" ones that appear here weekly, like today, then disappear the next week...) all over the lifting bag shell, and then electric motors and props? Just a thought, in a popular science cover story way..... Most likely they would have to follow the old clipper ships model of following the "trade winds" and currents, just at a higher altitude....
Or just not ship as much stuff in the air, cargo or people. Build and grow more local, slow down this globalism a little, eat local, vacation more local, etc. Business travel..dang, work on better teleconferencing. Commuters, leave a place (the home) with a computer on a desk, travel to another place with a computer on a desk, then go home again, forever... because....I have no idea why this hasn't completely stopped yet.. Physically moving meatbags, twice a day, by the millions and millions, to sit in front of a computer screen is IMO the biggest failure of the computer information age, bar none.
Slowing down wars, dropping such a huge demand for petroleum there as well..that could help. "War" in general, pun intended, is just too profitable. Ike warned against it, said they would accumulate too much control over policy, because the profits are obscenely huge, including this artificially enhanced demand for more petroleum fuels.
This latest leak in the Gulf..the ultimate cost isn't calculated yet, but if it is less than tens of billions I'd be surprised. Now say they had spent those same billions actually constructing plants for manufacturing of those weekly amazing solar breakthrough products, the ones that disappear all the time...
What was bogus back then was my dad was the local radio and TV fixit guy (as his side hobby, he was a big iron guy during the day, mainframes repair and troubleshooting), so we always had a real decent shop at the house. But, try as I might, I just could never get beyond the simple stuff from not being able to read wires and resistors.
I do some work with electronics, but it is limited to just repairs on equipment, etc and I can run the ohm meter OK, hip to that at least. Most of my semi innovative work is just base mechanical for the most part, I just like building and repairing stuff I need to work with, a little basic welding, etc. My alternate energy stuff is all basic wiring so that isn't hard, serial or parallel, positive or ground, choose. That's easy. I'll let the more extreme hobbyists and devs come up with the new exotic gadgets, then I'll get one once they have been on the market long enough to get cheap..heh.
There's another aspect to colorblindness that has to do with extreme short term memory as well. And I just cannot recall the exact name of it, it is a somewhat recent discovery. But it fits the situation you, and to a lesser extent, I have as well. If you get a separate distinct color and it is named for you, you can see it, but a few minutes later, if it is mixed in with other colors, your brain forgets exactly what it looks like so it goes back to the grayscale memory of it you had developed previously.
~~~Once upon a time, a long time ago, in the land known as FreakingFarkedUpLand...a tool company was formed. They made tools. They designed tools and sold tools. They never used tools all that much, a teeny bit..but they wanted to "make money", and they decided since the upcoming "modern civilization" that everyone was talking about was coming soon, that by selling tools to build civilization, they could all be rich. Well, they was just one guy to start with, but he had some "investors" who needed to get rich quick and easy too....
That was the plan, man...
One of their first mastermind inventions was the "three headed hammer". See, since most hammers only have one head on them, one weight and one size, well gosh darn it, a carpenter might need several, to pound different size nails into different hardness and thicknesses of wood. Little tacks to huge spikes.but you needed different hammers usually. So..they decided that their new invention would have three hammer heads instead of just one, on the same hammer handle shaft. Amazing! Three different sized heads, sticking out at angles. Just flip it around, a new hammer! They would get rich, everyone would buy..err, "license"... their hammer. The inventor and investors sat around gloating over their huge profits to come...
Unfortunately, back in the real world ->>>
"Yo, Sparky..about this new hammer I got from you.."
YES, YES, WHAT ABOUT MY MOST EXCELLENT HAMMER THAT IS GOING TO MAKE ME RICH?
"Well, you see..these extra heads..when you go to swing at a nail, the heads sticking out to the side smash your hand and.."
WHAT, YOU DARE TO CRITICIZE MY HAMMER! PLUS, YOU HAVE VIOLATED MY HAMMERING LICENSE!
"Ya, but...and this handle..it is freaking 30 inches long, so I decided to cut half of it off and..."
YOU WHAT!!??!! MY LAWYERS WILL BE ONTO YOU SHORTLY, FOR DISASSEMBLING *MY* HAMMER. THAT'S ILLEGAL YOU KNOW, AND I NEED TO MAKE MONEY BY LICENSING MY HAMMERS!
"Ya, but Sparky..check this out..just come work with us carpenters, you can still fool around with new hammer designs, and we can all make money by building new "civilization" houses, and we'll just share ideas on what works and what doesn't and..."
NO, NO, NO A THOUSAND TIMES NO! I AM ONLY IN THE HAMMER DESIGN BUSINESS, THAT IS THE ONLY WAY TO MAKE MONEY, LA LA LA, I CAN'T HEAR YOU, AND I DON'T NEED TO LEARN TO BUILD ANYTHING AS LONG AS I HAVE MY THREE HEADED HAMMER. RICH I SAY, NOW PAY ME LOTS AND OODLES, ALWAYS AND FOREVER.
"Sparky..that just ain't gonna work. There's plenty of work for civilization builders..but not so much for hammer designers...I mean, it's a rock on the end of a stick, man, check it out, excuse me, three rocks in your case..whoopedy zing. The real work that pays good is over here in the sweat zone where all this building is going on. Good honest work, needed, and.."
NOPE! THE ONLIEST WAY TO "MAKE MONEY" IS BY LICENSING THREE HEADED HAMMERS, FULL TIME! BEGONE! AND BE WARNED! OUR NEXT PRODUCT OUT IS THE AUTOMATIC SCRIBE! AND IF YOU USE IT, YOU WILL HAVE TO PAY US A ROYAL PERCENTAGE ON EVERYTHING YOU SCRIBE WITH IT!
I have the exact same situation. Even down to the not learning as much about electronics back in the day because I would miss on wire colors and resistor color bands etc. The other thing you mention, in seeing detail in the field is also correct. I can see animals and oddball stuff hidden in the bushes etc quite well. Even beat my dogs a lot when we are out walking around, because my brain doesn't think in color so much as it does shapes/lines, etc. I only see some very "loud" and brilliant basic colors, shades, etc..nope. Miss a lot. The docs said I was red green deficient. Well, heck ya! That's why I got tested in the first place...
Anyway, I'll see the rabbit or squirrel or deer or wild turkey, etc well before they do, even close by. And other oddball things like that..for instance I can walk into a room and if a pin is on the floor, dropped accidentally, I will see it almost immediately, it just jumps out as a "wrongness" to the over all expected patterns. Coins on the sidewalk, freaking lots of them over the years. Even just the roundness of a copper penny will stand out to me laying in a green lawn.
If all that oil leaks out, eventually it will spread to all the oceans. We get most of our oxygen from the oceans. And that is a large field, but I haven't read any exact figures yet, just some hand waving numbers.
It could really suck, depending on how much is down there.
Here's the deal with me. I don't buy new cars, so those ads are out. I buy used based on years of seeing what is a good ride and what isn't, etc, and shop used from that viewpoint, look for deals. Those "little purple pill" big pharmco ads on the news...doesn't apply. Car insurance I just shop for and get quotes, although I admit I liked the geico geckp commercials..but they didn't make the cut on price. I don't drink although for sure I remember the sludgeweiser frog commercials. Subliminal indoctrination on how they slant the news always towards the government/statist point of view..way over that, decades ago. I have a _strong_ default to take any initial claims by government or big business as lies until overwhelmingly and independently proven otherwise. The more important the issue, the higher the probability they are outright lying. I am an extremist in that regard. So their ads or stealth ads posing as "news" have a reverse reaction to me, if I get any reaction at all.
And...geez..I watch so little of TV, I mean I really don't, not anymore, not for years and years. My GF does some but my back is to the TV and I don't pay any overt attention to it except catch some local news and weather. Occasionally she will bug me to chime in on Jeopardy questions, which I can usually get as long as it isn't silver screen/entertainment or obscure old european literature or whatnot. And right now I can't tell you who sponsors jeopardy lately, so those ads..maybe subliminal but I don't recall them.
I really don't make that much, under ten grand a year, so buying anything brand new is just out almost always, so all those commercials are a waste of time, so I tune them out..as much as possible. Some must slip in, but it doesn't lead to much sales for them all that much. So I will give you some points, sure, it can be hard to ignore, but if you are in a physical position were you really *can't* buy much brand new stuff..makes it a lot easier.
All right, I did think of one ad lately, that lead to me buying something, but with a twist. I have a bad back, goes out severely once in awhile. Last month was one of those times, stuck inside, not much to do, sat and watched some old westerns, an infomercial came on for those gravity inversion hang bed things. Looked interesting...and I was getting real tired of being crippled up and in serious pain....but I didn't buy that brand, I shopped online and read reviews and bought one at one third the price and it works great. I think that's about it for the last several years for being influenced by ads where it actually lead to a sale. Still thinking....that's about it.
I mostly use the net, and run noscript and ABP to speed up pages, my connection is slow and I am not going to wait-literally- five minutes for some page to load, and to avoid possible bad security issues, plus I don't want flash ads seizing up my machine, which they will do I found out. Webmasters build pages now thinking their viewers are all on real high speed connections with real new powerful computers, neither of those attributes apply to me, so I block their ads. So I don't see many ads at all on the net either. I am not *adverse* to ad sponsored at all, but it is a waste of time for those folks, I really probably will not click on one or buy their stuff. If I really need something, I just lookup reviews, and then take those with a grain of salt anyway.
So yes, I think I can be influenced like anyone else, but I go out of my way to not let that happen as well, so perhaps it balances out.
Some times to get laws and attitudes changed, mass civil disobedience comes into play. Some laws get on the books that are just so freaking lame, stupid and unfair that they invite mass disobedience. An example would be alcohol prohibition, where so many people disobeyed the law willingly that eventually it was changed. Another example would be racial discrimination. Mass marches and protests and willingly breaking the law obviously and in public, inviting arrest or worse, eventually worked to a large degree.
This is a situation where something like a mass "commercial photoshoot" might work. Thousands of camera owners all get together in a planned protest, video each other, exchange copies of the videos with each other for one dollar, with a big "neener, neener, do your worse" pronouncement. Lather, rinse, repeat. Keep doing it until these software patents are eliminated as just being too stupid and unfair and harmful. They certainly are not advancing the useful arts and sciences, so they fail on that critical aspect of the law.
I mean, this is complete bullshit. Analogy, in ye olden days with mechanical typewriters, if you used brand X, that had some patents on it, you could be an amateur or commercial author according to some writing guide "license to type", but if you used brands Y or Z, that had some other patents, with another variant on the "license to type", you had to pay a fee to the typewriter manufacturers cartel with the Y or Z patents if you wanted to sell your work? Or your publisher had to pay or..what??? Boooolll sheeet.
Actually thought of that, use some drums of old crankcase oil mixed with the diesel. It's just the sheer scale of it that is daunting. It spread like crazy from last year to this year, just starting to show up in the hot weather and man..everywhere. Cows won't eat it and it's toxic anyway, crowds other stuff out. Thankfully it is not cogon grass, but it still sucks.
Anyway, I have to find out sometime soon, I need 100% positive ID one way or the other, makes a diff what we are going to do about it. Some persistent crabgrass I think we can deal with it (that is one of the two expert opinions we have gotten so far), but if it is nutsedge (the other opinion, but only based on pictures and descriptions, etc., that's why I want to take it to the state main brains)..mostly out of the beefer biz for a few years, because we would have to nuke the pastures. Supposedly it takes 4-5 years of multiple heavy treatments to control it once it is well established in pastures. It's even in my gardens and lawn now. The underground nodes can be dormant that long, and there's a lot. Supposedly, the mass underground of those nodes can equal or surpass the mass of a well grown corn crop above ground!
What I am doing for my gardens this year is first tear out all the half rotten raised bed logs, the stuff grew right through them, then rototill sections heavy, once I have a large enough area I am burning those logs in the center, then rototilling again. Next is establish a "cordon sanitaire" around the garden where I will keep a clean dirt strip that gets sprayed as well. (I also went to some virgin areas to get stuff in, those are planted almost all now) I won't spray my main garden area directly, but around it, sure. I still want veggies and with enough cultivation I can get some, I did last year when the stuff hit, but just spring and summer veggies this year, come fall I will keep deep tilling like every three days in the heat, say in september onwards. We can hit 90-100 degree days then, drying the stuff out kills it, you just have to go deep and keep exhausting the nodes as they try to resprout. In a pinch, and I will probably do that, I'll go 100% container gardening in the greenhouse. I have a lot of 100 gallon tubs to use. I've used a few so far, but I have access to a coupla dozen, so that would be enough for a goodly greenhouse crop of various veggies. I will probably build some sort of soil sterilizer to go with that project, perhaps just a solar heated thing made from scrap glass, etc. something to ultrabake the dirt first, then reintroduce soil microbes and worms, etc..
Mr. Fancy pants rich fatcat insensitive clod with his high speed connection! A lot of us use FREE over the air TV signals. Works great, and since the digital changeover, we get a lot more stations.
I have been watching TV since we were the first family on the block to have a television. Yes, that long ago, and I will never pay anything more for it then my eyeballs looking at it, and I learned to ignore commercials decades ago, they don't even register anymore. Of course I don't watch that much either, but we have it, the same old 19 inch color CRT we have had for years and years that I paid 50 bucks for and "upgraded" with my socialist TV digital perverter box. That's all TV is worth to me.
You want to know why I won't pay for TV? Because I can remember going to the county board meeting long ago when those cable TV doofuses promised that if you paid for it, no commercials. Freaking liars. Once they got their monopolies, back to commercials. Screw 'em. had cable for a short time back then, then dropped it when they showed they were liars, never again. I boycott companies when they are dinks or liars, same as I started boycotting (new, I will snag heavily discounted used) the **AA members over priced DRM infested "products" once it was obvious they were never going to offer fair prices or stop being cartel jerks. Despite going through several alleged Federal "busts", they never stopped being jerks.
As to watching "internet TV" ain't happening outside of the dense/urban (mostly, I know there are some exceptions)low hanging fruit areas served with high speed connections. If you are stuck on low speed or dialup, forget it, even youtube won't stream easily.
The same way that MS makes a few bucks..coming preinstalled on PCs. The consumer pays for the software, but never really sees it either the way it is packaged. I have no idea why red hat and canonical don't just sell computers, with their software preinstalled, guaranteed to "just work". Both companies are large enough to fund production runs of computers and get good wholesale prices over in asia, so they could be cost competitive. Heck, they could gauge interest in advance just by running a poll on their support forums to see if people might be interested, what types of hardware, what they thought would be a fair price, etc.
I have hand dug out hundreds or even thousands of them over the past five years now. Mul;tiflora rose I spray first, then yank out the clumps with a heavy chain and a tractor. Privet I spray and mow close. A heavy blast of glyphosate works on poke, too, just I started out with zillions here, and finally had to admit defeat on my mechaincal physical weeding, I am just one guy, it was too much, so went to spray (reluctantly). Starting to get under control, but it has taken some years. Latest nasty weeds are corn buttercups, that multiple hits with 2,4-d seem to manage, and what I *think* is nutsedge and man I hope we don't have that. According to the charts I should be a tad too far north, it's a subtropical invasive species from India, but it sure looks like it. Even heavy spray just bounces off, they have deep creeper roots and just keep coming back. Heavy multiple deep cultivation/rototilling sessions, then sit in the hot sun..a week later..it comes back. I mean..dang...never seen anything like it. I have had two samples looked at so far at the county level, plus all my online research, going for a third right to the main brains at the state ag college soon, I am going to physically drive several live samples stuck into big containers over there. This stuff is like underground kudzu. Poke is easy in comparison.
You can't get rid of it. We have truckloads here I spray, they still come back here and there, from the birds eating the berries I guess. I really *do* wish we had some good uses/ a ready market for some of the more common weeds, poke, multiflora rose, privet, stuff like that. Poke has to be one of the easiest things to grow.
With that said, OK, I looked at their page. Chump change as far as big business goes to set up mass quantities production facilities. Let's see what happens, if this is yet another amazing solar breakthrough that just disappears. We've had dozens, freaking dozens, over the last decade. Breakthrough after breakthrough..poof..disappears.
Just what they are spending daily to try and clean up one leaky oil well would build several big factories with this new solar tech a week. We've got a billion roofs out there sitting rotting shingles in the hot sun, they should be covered with solar panels by now, not just in the "developing" world, I mean all over.
When I first got into solar power in the late sixties I thought for sure by now this would be as common as anything..nope..same old centralized power monopolies. Some advances with commercial windpower, but solar is the tech that allows joe homeowner to actually own the means of production in a reasonable fashion, get independent or dang close, because all you need is the roof, which you already have, no giant wind tower needed.
To be more accurate, mostly unused, and that is recycling of *anything* that needs to be hauled up there. They should be exploring repurposing/reuse of any of that thousand$ a kilo stuff they haul up. All of it, no exceptions. I know they recycle astrowhizz now, but they should be doing it with everything. "Trash runs" back are silly. Space faring people will be recycling everything, so the sooner they develop the tech, the better, and that won't happen until they get a mindset change. There really should be no such thing as "space trash", it should be "temporarily not needed valuable materials which we will need later". Once it is launched, it gets used forever, one way or the other.
Heck, I am in favor of them leaving the last shuttle up there as well, see if they can keep it running and rebuild it for a real space ship. Not needing to do re-entry and expensive launch anymore, that cuts down on a ton of the maintenance already.
We do something like this on the farm with older trucks. Once they aren't really road worthy, but still driveable, they just get used exclusively on the farm. The dump truck I use hasn't been road registered for years, but will still crank and run and dump. Why waste a still functioning truck? And when a piece of gear *really* isn't functional anymore, we still scrounge parts and stuff from it to build into something else or reuse it somehow. No waste. If it is steel and cost loot in the past, it is kept and reused somehow, like a little torch and welder action, got another useful trailer. Will=way
So, why waste a still functioning shuttle spaceship, especially once it is already up there? We have enough old aero-crap sitting in museums, or tech morgues like I like to think of them, plenty to "inspire the next generation of sci-nerd-youths", whereas a space based working environment and functional space ship in orbit is more useful, or has more potential, put it that way.
They need a mindset change more than anything else to start this experiment. Too many decades of easy money methinks.
We already are if you can term wall street computerized front running/loading flash trading as being robotic. We work so that they can skim the megaprofits and control the economy and our alleged government./shotgun wielding neogeezer;)
I am well aware of Dell selling a few examples of Ubuntu based computers. And if you go to Dell's mainpage, not knowing they sold Ubuntu, you wouldn't know it, it is hidden. It's there on the site, but joe sixpack wouldn't see it. OK, so say I am joe sixpack, go to their main page, click over to desktops http://www.dell.com/home/desktops. On the side there they list "operating systems". I see windows, vista and 7. So this theoretical purchaser would have to know in advance they even sold Ubuntu to start searching around for it. That isn't support, it's a hidden in the back of the warehouse few examples of some old cruft they got kicking around, it isn't being pushed, not even close to equal billing. And that's the *best* they have in five years effort so far.
So, this is still *not the same* as a Canonical labeled and supported integrated hardware and software product, that's the point. With Dell labeling, they only have two of those things, and Dell obviously doesn't push it or you would see the choice/option right off the bat when you start shopping on their site. And the whole thread is about Ubuntu becoming something worth buying, for anyone, making them mo' money. They want to sell "the cloud", how about just selling a computer that works and is price competitive as well as "the cloud"? I bet if they tried, it just might work. Heck, start with the cheapest netbooks, maybe ARM based, work up from there. Dip a toe in that water.
If Canonical wants to make some desktop money, they should sell desktops with their software pre-installed and guaranteed to work, as in no hoop jumping for wifi support, whatever video is there, sound really works, etc.. They can still offer the freebie download version to all comers, but desktop purchasers get priority in the forums and support, etc. Just make it reasonably price competitive and it could work, no offering a $300 machine for $800 in other words just because it says official Ubuntu on it, because it won't sell then. Maybe $350 in that case would be reasonable (examples only), and stick the long term release candidates *only* on there, none of those six month beta quality things.
Ya, Dell and some others offer preinstalled..but that isn't Canonical offering it. It needs to be *their* machines with their software that they know will work. They target that hardware first with the developer action, all the time.
Sort of like the Apple idea, but using FOSS, sell the whole stack, and you know it will work with no hassles. Another aspect would be "legal in the USA" DVD and other media playback, if you buy the hardware, part of the money goes to pay the fees required for that. Purists have a thousand other options, so I wouldn't worry about that part if 1% or less on the machine is "non free". People mostly want their media to work, and that's it.
If local mom and pop whitebox shops can do business and make profits building systems from parts at low volume purchasing levels, one would think Ubuntu could get better deals from the Asian wholesalers buying thousands of untis at a time and just make sure what they get "just works". How about one netbook, one laptop, one desktop, one server? Four basic machines, that should cover a ton of normal usages. Ya, it might not fill every niche, but for a lot of people it might work and they could make some hard cash.
There is another broadband-like tech out there that gives a lot better than dialup, and isn't tied to real laggy and limited transfer satellite or cellphone telcos, and that is motorola canopy wireless tech. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Canopy
I am using it from a local mom and pop ISP outfit and it works OK, and is cheaper than a landline and dialup account. And man, I am grateful too, there was no way that the cable company or the local wired phone monopoly would ever bring broadband here. And it's different from wifi, you can be many miles away easily (I am around seven or eight miles from the main broadcast antenna) and still get service, you just need your home antenna aimed correctly. It's not blazing cable fast or anything, but it is a huge step up from dialup, and because no cables or wires are needed, doesn't have the same sort of giant huge upfront costs for deployment for the ISPs.
It all boils down to pricing for non scarce products. Digital replication is disruptive technology and as such made it so copies were as close to free to "manufacture" as you can get, yet the music and movie industry insists on charging as much as an old durable goods copy from decades ago. Nuts. If they made copies insanely cheap, people wouldn't be so inclined to file share. With six going on seven billion people on this planet, that is enough of a potential market to sell a lot more copies legitimately..if the prices were low enough. And even stuff on plastic disks is way over priced, there is no credible reason to charge 15 dollars for some bits on five cents worth of plastic. Make copies impulse buying priced, you'd sell more. How about two bucks for a dvd movie and a buck for an album on disk instead of the prices they charge now? And download should be even cheaper. If I was to see disks like that at various stores, even gas station/quickee marts, I would be more inclined to pick up some. At fifteen dollars..well, I never will pay that much for a dvd. That's nuts to pay that much. I don't care what their upfront costs are or what salaries and profits "have" to be made for those folks who live in expensive areas, that's just too much.
I hold out and get them used for a couple bucks, that's it. Or I just won't buy them, and no, I don't pirate either, I just boycott, and I started paying for my media entertainment in the 50s, but their cartel price gouging drove me away eventually. They lost a loyal customer, because I just hate being obviously price gouged. They are *nuts* with what they think copies are worth, pure nuts. Your various entertainment unions should have already been going on strike over this situation, napster and street clone disk sellers proved that the prices they wanted were out to lunch, and this is ten years ago now, and it hasn't been noticed or fixed yet, just more DRM and now they want spyware? *&&^%^ those people! It's the legit price they demand that is and has been the largest problem.
And I bet I am not alone there either, I see people pawing through the marked down bargain bins looking for titles at like 4 dollars, and not near as many browsing the "full price" aisle whenever I am at importmart. This should be a clue to these execs, especially in this economy.
Speaking of which..these pricing decisions are made by millionaire execs to whom 10 or 20 bucks is chump change, what they leave for a tip for a bagel and coffee in some ultra expensive urban setting. They have no idea how the economy has impacted people's discretionary spending. It just hasn't sunk in yet, they "don't get it". We have people still desperately looking for a job and hoping their now extended four times unemployment checks will keep coming in. And even people working, when the decision is buy some entertainment for fifteen bucks or put fuel in the car or pay down some CC bill or a utility bill..guess what wins.
They just *have* to stop applying LA and NYC pricing models on their products to the rest of the nation, it just isn't going to work, ever. Most of us DON'T live there, and all of us realize those are really expensive places to live, so salaries and such are much higher. That's why 15 bucks for a movie seems cheap to those execs, but to most everyone else it is expensive. Here's an analogy with something else, food, and pricing differences from one of the two big media cities and everywhere else: GF's son recently moved to NYC and works as a waiter in one of Trump's places. They charge *25 bucks* for a basic cheap spaghetti lunch. If you tried to charge that around here, you wouldn't get one single customer, ever.
But..that's NYC pricing for ya. So...would you please impart that upstream to your union folks then on to those execs? The tech exists to make your copies for sale *much* cheaper, either on disk or download, just do that and make your loot on *much* higher volume sales. Really, it's that simple and that basic. You won't need any weird DRM or spyware/deleteware then. And BTW, will you guys stop with making watching a frakking movie illegal on Linux machines in the US? That's nuts as well. All of that crap is nuts, "regions" for viewing?? WTF?
Sure, if it gets ultra bad wherever they are at some time, even with their tame armed lackey protectors, official badged or private, they go to their other mansion in nation x,y or z. They are internationalists, not particularly loyal to any nation or people, they just don't care, psychopathic. Other humans to them are *prey animals", they go to where the human hunting and exploitation is the easiest, and they have the most "legal" protection, as in, the local warlord/governmental goofball/some authority figure is in their pocket, etc. And that's what helos and business jets are for, just in case they need to flee someplace else. "Laws" mostly apply to serfs and slaves after all.
Well, I am a full time ag worker, so I can speak on that a little,(I also live OK on less than ten grand a year) and the first rule there is you can't generalize too much, as it is such a varied "job". I've worked from subtropical citrus harvesting to sub arctic almost dairy farming, and it can be really different.
As to some aspects being seasonal, sure, and yes, people used to travel to do them, and also, we used to have it that people who only cared or needed a part time job could do them. We used to get by OK with just domestic part time help, before wall street started raping the profits away and the farmers had to look to wherever they could to cut corners.
And for some reason, this last generation or two...they don't seem to need part time jobs as much (very generally speaking). I hate to be a cranky old curmudgeon, but "back in the day" all kids worked part time. I am racking me pea brane here trying to think of *any* of my friends who didn't work a lot growing up, starting in young teen years or even earlier (I started at nine years old working part time, I mowed lawns and harvested fruit) For example, growing up I always worked every summer harvesting/working, then back to school in the fall, with sometimes work after school and on weekends. Off summer/fall season was leaf raking and then snow shoveling in the winter. I used to hand shovel driveways before catching the bus to school. How many kids do stuff like that now? A lot of housewives with kids at school worked with us on the farms as well sometimes, they would show up a little later, leave a little earlier, but every season, they would be back, and they were grateful for the extra cash. College kids working the summer, etc.
It's doable, honest work, and it could pay better, with only very marginal cost increases. Here's an example, an increase at the store/retail level of only five cents per entire chicken, if the poultry farmer was to receive that, it would double our net, and get it back to being profitable, and really make it easier for the owners to pay much better wages. Just a nickle.
About 40-50 years ago, farmers received close to 40% of the retail food products dollar, now it is 5-10%, and the high end there is rare, it is usually much lower, which has really impacted some of our "flyover" states drastically, such as Mississippi. I feel sorry for them,it is about exactly like an example of old time colonialism, pure exploitation, with dismal wages and a perpetual bad economy, despite some of the hardest work, useful and necessary work, in the nastiest climate there is. They get exploited badly, their labor almost stolen and returned at pennies on the dollar, and people rank them because they need economic help. Blaming the victime mentality, seen it a lot too in political debates "blue states versus red states" etc. Nuts, they would be better off if they could just keep somewhat more of what they produce.
Ag could pay, we would have to severely restrict speculators access and profits though, and skew the laws back more toward the actual producers and not the middlemen and big cartel operators. That would bring it back to being doable and desirable for a lot more people, even just part time, and we wouldn't need as many "guest" workers, and maybe they could stay home and make something of their own nation instead.
Guest workers come here because where they come from their fatcats are even *worse*-almost unimaginable but true- and screw them over terribly. They don't come here because they really want to, it is driven by refugee/necessity aspects, they are fleeing where they are rather than jumping for joy to come here (worked with hundreds of them, so asked them about it, that is more their stance than not, get away from the local corruption and violence and severe badness)(example: worked with some Guatemalan Indians who fled their nation, because their bogus corporate fatcat army there-the technofeudalist elites' mercenaries- used them as live fire
Slashdot Mirror
Society doesn't necessarily demand oil, what they want is affordable transportation. If it was electric and good enough, and reasonably price competitive, they would adopt it, at least in some real decent numbers. Oil for plastics could be gotten from plant sources etc.
Now there are some niches where diesel rules, and there's no way to carry enough batteries, our tractors here for instance, but for zillions of cars on the road now..we already have the tech, they have just been real slow on getting it out there. GM and Ford both had viable electric vehicles, then they refused to sell them to the people who leased them and loved them, crushed them outright. Now, finally, with China sneaking up on them with cheap electric cars, and India not far behind, finally they will be making some. Again.
It has really not been so much an engineering problem with electric vehicles (average US commute is reportedly 33 miles round trip..no three hundred mile range needed for millions and millions of people) as it has been political mixed with old big money having huge influence.
I agree with you that oil is our cheapest energy dense fuel, but a lot of the costs are hidden, and are forced on us. If there was an exact extra tax on a gallon of fuel that reflected the decades long heavy US military presence in the mideast... and let's be adults and just admit that oil is 90% of the reason we have been there this long....you might have found a scosh more interest in the electrics. But that actual tax is hidden inside of "general income taxes", but we sure pay for it anyway.
If there is an all out no holds bar war against Iran, and it spirals out of control when China, Russia and Japan get real antsy about things, plus losing one third of the planet's oil supplies within a few days...we might not have the time to do much of anything, plus the expense would be huge.
We can do it now, but not later, the changeover costs would be un-doable. Make sub prime so called crisis look like a 7-11 stickup. There are too many potential planet impacting black swan type events that could really screw the pooch on a smooth peaceful and economical transition to alternatives to petroleum. And once something bad happens like that, the race to own the remaining supplies could further exacerbate potential bad news situations, ie, major resource wars. Real wars, not little teeny wars like we have now.
I agree with Ratzo, we needed a huge push starting back right after the OPEC embargo, and we dropped the ball bad. It stagnated after the tax credits ran out in the mid 80s, and weren't renewed until very recently (and I think they should come back at a full 100% to stimulate alternatives), and the oil industry all of a sudden flooded the planet with cheap oil as well back then, real cheap. That worked, killed off solar and the push for electric cars, etc for two decades more or less. They did not want any alternatives to their products to succeed. They *like* having energy monopolies and cartels, makes big money constantly with vendor lockin.
We had electric cars a century ago. Heck, jay leno owns one, and the original batteries still work! This BS that electric vehicle aren't practical until they can go 300 miles with an onboard charge is nuts. We've had that "solution" for a long time now, it is called the 50 mile, they could build it today relatively cheaply, electric car, then the generator trailer, for those occasional long trips where you need to go that far. Most people just do not need a 300 mile range day to day to day vehicle, they just don't drive that far except once in awhile. The generator trailer could be rented for longer trips, or owned by the driver and used as an emergency whole house generator as well, for those times it is needed. This would work until such a time as they really do improve the batteries, and the battery pack doesn't cost more than the rest of the vehicle. We have boutique car builders now with examples, and home DIY guys have proven that the tech exists just swell for an electric commuter car.but no majors have them forsale yet. "coming soon" and in the meantime, look at these hydrogen million dollar prototypes we have...nuts. Or they want to push hybrids, the most rube goldberg of designs.
There's been some work on plant derived oils used for aviation fuel, as well as from coal. I think Virgin did some tests with palm oil, at least blends, http://motherjones.com/environment/2008/01/virgin-airlines-powered-pond-scum and the AF has been looking as well. Let me see.... OKey doke, here is a ref, made from coal (ya, still nasty, but domestic supplies are hugemongous theoretically): http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2009/05/airforce_synthetic_fuel_050509/
As to a wild ass way for heavy lift cargo, using no petroleum fuels, how about huge lighter than air craft, with those thin film printable photovoltaics (the "new amazing breakthrough" ones that appear here weekly, like today, then disappear the next week...) all over the lifting bag shell, and then electric motors and props? Just a thought, in a popular science cover story way..... Most likely they would have to follow the old clipper ships model of following the "trade winds" and currents, just at a higher altitude....
Or just not ship as much stuff in the air, cargo or people. Build and grow more local, slow down this globalism a little, eat local, vacation more local, etc. Business travel..dang, work on better teleconferencing. Commuters, leave a place (the home) with a computer on a desk, travel to another place with a computer on a desk, then go home again, forever... because....I have no idea why this hasn't completely stopped yet.. Physically moving meatbags, twice a day, by the millions and millions, to sit in front of a computer screen is IMO the biggest failure of the computer information age, bar none.
Slowing down wars, dropping such a huge demand for petroleum there as well..that could help. "War" in general, pun intended, is just too profitable. Ike warned against it, said they would accumulate too much control over policy, because the profits are obscenely huge, including this artificially enhanced demand for more petroleum fuels.
This latest leak in the Gulf..the ultimate cost isn't calculated yet, but if it is less than tens of billions I'd be surprised. Now say they had spent those same billions actually constructing plants for manufacturing of those weekly amazing solar breakthrough products, the ones that disappear all the time...
Thanks! I didn't know that about new resistors!
What was bogus back then was my dad was the local radio and TV fixit guy (as his side hobby, he was a big iron guy during the day, mainframes repair and troubleshooting), so we always had a real decent shop at the house. But, try as I might, I just could never get beyond the simple stuff from not being able to read wires and resistors.
I do some work with electronics, but it is limited to just repairs on equipment, etc and I can run the ohm meter OK, hip to that at least. Most of my semi innovative work is just base mechanical for the most part, I just like building and repairing stuff I need to work with, a little basic welding, etc. My alternate energy stuff is all basic wiring so that isn't hard, serial or parallel, positive or ground, choose. That's easy. I'll let the more extreme hobbyists and devs come up with the new exotic gadgets, then I'll get one once they have been on the market long enough to get cheap..heh.
There's another aspect to colorblindness that has to do with extreme short term memory as well. And I just cannot recall the exact name of it, it is a somewhat recent discovery. But it fits the situation you, and to a lesser extent, I have as well. If you get a separate distinct color and it is named for you, you can see it, but a few minutes later, if it is mixed in with other colors, your brain forgets exactly what it looks like so it goes back to the grayscale memory of it you had developed previously.
~~~Once upon a time, a long time ago, in the land known as FreakingFarkedUpLand...a tool company was formed. They made tools. They designed tools and sold tools. They never used tools all that much, a teeny bit..but they wanted to
"make money", and they decided since the upcoming "modern civilization" that everyone was talking about was coming soon, that by selling tools to build civilization, they could all be rich. Well, they was just one guy to start with, but he had some "investors" who needed to get rich quick and easy too....
That was the plan, man...
One of their first mastermind inventions was the "three headed hammer". See, since most hammers only have one head on them, one weight and one size, well gosh darn it, a carpenter might need several, to pound different size nails into different hardness and thicknesses of wood. Little tacks to huge spikes.but you needed different hammers usually. So..they decided that their new invention would have three hammer heads instead of just one, on the same hammer handle shaft. Amazing! Three different sized heads, sticking out at angles. Just flip it around, a new hammer! They would get rich, everyone would buy..err, "license"... their hammer.
The inventor and investors sat around gloating over their huge profits to come...
Unfortunately, back in the real world ->>>
"Yo, Sparky..about this new hammer I got from you.."
YES, YES, WHAT ABOUT MY MOST EXCELLENT HAMMER THAT IS GOING TO MAKE ME RICH?
"Well, you see..these extra heads..when you go to swing at a nail, the heads sticking out to the side smash your hand and.."
WHAT, YOU DARE TO CRITICIZE MY HAMMER! PLUS, YOU HAVE VIOLATED MY HAMMERING LICENSE!
"Ya, but...and this handle..it is freaking 30 inches long, so I decided to cut half of it off and..."
YOU WHAT!!??!! MY LAWYERS WILL BE ONTO YOU SHORTLY, FOR DISASSEMBLING *MY* HAMMER. THAT'S ILLEGAL YOU KNOW, AND I NEED TO MAKE MONEY BY LICENSING MY HAMMERS!
"Ya, but Sparky..check this out..just come work with us carpenters, you can still fool around with new hammer designs, and we can all make money by building new "civilization" houses, and we'll just share ideas on what works and what doesn't and..."
NO, NO, NO A THOUSAND TIMES NO! I AM ONLY IN THE HAMMER DESIGN BUSINESS, THAT IS THE ONLY WAY TO MAKE MONEY, LA LA LA, I CAN'T HEAR YOU, AND I DON'T NEED TO LEARN TO BUILD ANYTHING AS LONG AS I HAVE MY THREE HEADED HAMMER. RICH I SAY, NOW PAY ME LOTS AND OODLES, ALWAYS AND FOREVER.
"Sparky..that just ain't gonna work. There's plenty of work for civilization builders..but not so much for hammer designers...I mean, it's a rock on the end of a stick, man, check it out, excuse me, three rocks in your case..whoopedy zing. The real work that pays good is over here in the sweat zone where all this building is going on. Good honest work, needed, and.."
NOPE! THE ONLIEST WAY TO "MAKE MONEY" IS BY LICENSING THREE HEADED HAMMERS, FULL TIME! BEGONE! AND BE WARNED! OUR NEXT PRODUCT OUT IS THE AUTOMATIC SCRIBE! AND IF YOU USE IT, YOU WILL HAVE TO PAY US A ROYAL PERCENTAGE ON EVERYTHING YOU SCRIBE WITH IT!
"OK...uhh..see ya around.."
THE END
I have the exact same situation. Even down to the not learning as much about electronics back in the day because I would miss on wire colors and resistor color bands etc. The other thing you mention, in seeing detail in the field is also correct. I can see animals and oddball stuff hidden in the bushes etc quite well. Even beat my dogs a lot when we are out walking around, because my brain doesn't think in color so much as it does shapes/lines, etc. I only see some very "loud" and brilliant basic colors, shades, etc..nope. Miss a lot. The docs said I was red green deficient. Well, heck ya! That's why I got tested in the first place...
Anyway, I'll see the rabbit or squirrel or deer or wild turkey, etc well before they do, even close by. And other oddball things like that..for instance I can walk into a room and if a pin is on the floor, dropped accidentally, I will see it almost immediately, it just jumps out as a "wrongness" to the over all expected patterns. Coins on the sidewalk, freaking lots of them over the years. Even just the roundness of a copper penny will stand out to me laying in a green lawn.
So ya, tradeoffs, your brain compensates.
If all that oil leaks out, eventually it will spread to all the oceans. We get most of our oxygen from the oceans. And that is a large field, but I haven't read any exact figures yet, just some hand waving numbers.
It could really suck, depending on how much is down there.
Here's the deal with me. I don't buy new cars, so those ads are out. I buy used based on years of seeing what is a good ride and what isn't, etc, and shop used from that viewpoint, look for deals. Those "little purple pill" big pharmco ads on the news...doesn't apply. Car insurance I just shop for and get quotes, although I admit I liked the geico geckp commercials..but they didn't make the cut on price. I don't drink although for sure I remember the sludgeweiser frog commercials. Subliminal indoctrination on how they slant the news always towards the government/statist point of view..way over that, decades ago. I have a _strong_ default to take any initial claims by government or big business as lies until overwhelmingly and independently proven otherwise. The more important the issue, the higher the probability they are outright lying. I am an extremist in that regard. So their ads or stealth ads posing as "news" have a reverse reaction to me, if I get any reaction at all.
And...geez..I watch so little of TV, I mean I really don't, not anymore, not for years and years. My GF does some but my back is to the TV and I don't pay any overt attention to it except catch some local news and weather. Occasionally she will bug me to chime in on Jeopardy questions, which I can usually get as long as it isn't silver screen/entertainment or obscure old european literature or whatnot. And right now I can't tell you who sponsors jeopardy lately, so those ads..maybe subliminal but I don't recall them.
I really don't make that much, under ten grand a year, so buying anything brand new is just out almost always, so all those commercials are a waste of time, so I tune them out..as much as possible. Some must slip in, but it doesn't lead to much sales for them all that much. So I will give you some points, sure, it can be hard to ignore, but if you are in a physical position were you really *can't* buy much brand new stuff..makes it a lot easier.
All right, I did think of one ad lately, that lead to me buying something, but with a twist. I have a bad back, goes out severely once in awhile. Last month was one of those times, stuck inside, not much to do, sat and watched some old westerns, an infomercial came on for those gravity inversion hang bed things. Looked interesting...and I was getting real tired of being crippled up and in serious pain....but I didn't buy that brand, I shopped online and read reviews and bought one at one third the price and it works great. I think that's about it for the last several years for being influenced by ads where it actually lead to a sale. Still thinking....that's about it.
I mostly use the net, and run noscript and ABP to speed up pages, my connection is slow and I am not going to wait-literally- five minutes for some page to load, and to avoid possible bad security issues, plus I don't want flash ads seizing up my machine, which they will do I found out. Webmasters build pages now thinking their viewers are all on real high speed connections with real new powerful computers, neither of those attributes apply to me, so I block their ads. So I don't see many ads at all on the net either. I am not *adverse* to ad sponsored at all, but it is a waste of time for those folks, I really probably will not click on one or buy their stuff. If I really need something, I just lookup reviews, and then take those with a grain of salt anyway.
So yes, I think I can be influenced like anyone else, but I go out of my way to not let that happen as well, so perhaps it balances out.
Some times to get laws and attitudes changed, mass civil disobedience comes into play. Some laws get on the books that are just so freaking lame, stupid and unfair that they invite mass disobedience. An example would be alcohol prohibition, where so many people disobeyed the law willingly that eventually it was changed. Another example would be racial discrimination. Mass marches and protests and willingly breaking the law obviously and in public, inviting arrest or worse, eventually worked to a large degree.
This is a situation where something like a mass "commercial photoshoot" might work. Thousands of camera owners all get together in a planned protest, video each other, exchange copies of the videos with each other for one dollar, with a big "neener, neener, do your worse" pronouncement. Lather, rinse, repeat. Keep doing it until these software patents are eliminated as just being too stupid and unfair and harmful. They certainly are not advancing the useful arts and sciences, so they fail on that critical aspect of the law.
I mean, this is complete bullshit. Analogy, in ye olden days with mechanical typewriters, if you used brand X, that had some patents on it, you could be an amateur or commercial author according to some writing guide "license to type", but if you used brands Y or Z, that had some other patents, with another variant on the "license to type", you had to pay a fee to the typewriter manufacturers cartel with the Y or Z patents if you wanted to sell your work? Or your publisher had to pay or..what??? Boooolll sheeet.
Actually thought of that, use some drums of old crankcase oil mixed with the diesel. It's just the sheer scale of it that is daunting. It spread like crazy from last year to this year, just starting to show up in the hot weather and man..everywhere. Cows won't eat it and it's toxic anyway, crowds other stuff out. Thankfully it is not cogon grass, but it still sucks.
Anyway, I have to find out sometime soon, I need 100% positive ID one way or the other, makes a diff what we are going to do about it. Some persistent crabgrass I think we can deal with it (that is one of the two expert opinions we have gotten so far), but if it is nutsedge (the other opinion, but only based on pictures and descriptions, etc., that's why I want to take it to the state main brains)..mostly out of the beefer biz for a few years, because we would have to nuke the pastures. Supposedly it takes 4-5 years of multiple heavy treatments to control it once it is well established in pastures. It's even in my gardens and lawn now. The underground nodes can be dormant that long, and there's a lot. Supposedly, the mass underground of those nodes can equal or surpass the mass of a well grown corn crop above ground!
What I am doing for my gardens this year is first tear out all the half rotten raised bed logs, the stuff grew right through them, then rototill sections heavy, once I have a large enough area I am burning those logs in the center, then rototilling again. Next is establish a "cordon sanitaire" around the garden where I will keep a clean dirt strip that gets sprayed as well. (I also went to some virgin areas to get stuff in, those are planted almost all now) I won't spray my main garden area directly, but around it, sure. I still want veggies and with enough cultivation I can get some, I did last year when the stuff hit, but just spring and summer veggies this year, come fall I will keep deep tilling like every three days in the heat, say in september onwards. We can hit 90-100 degree days then, drying the stuff out kills it, you just have to go deep and keep exhausting the nodes as they try to resprout. In a pinch, and I will probably do that, I'll go 100% container gardening in the greenhouse. I have a lot of 100 gallon tubs to use. I've used a few so far, but I have access to a coupla dozen, so that would be enough for a goodly greenhouse crop of various veggies. I will probably build some sort of soil sterilizer to go with that project, perhaps just a solar heated thing made from scrap glass, etc. something to ultrabake the dirt first, then reintroduce soil microbes and worms, etc..
Mr. Fancy pants rich fatcat insensitive clod with his high speed connection! A lot of us use FREE over the air TV signals. Works great, and since the digital changeover, we get a lot more stations.
I have been watching TV since we were the first family on the block to have a television. Yes, that long ago, and I will never pay anything more for it then my eyeballs looking at it, and I learned to ignore commercials decades ago, they don't even register anymore. Of course I don't watch that much either, but we have it, the same old 19 inch color CRT we have had for years and years that I paid 50 bucks for and "upgraded" with my socialist TV digital perverter box. That's all TV is worth to me.
You want to know why I won't pay for TV? Because I can remember going to the county board meeting long ago when those cable TV doofuses promised that if you paid for it, no commercials. Freaking liars. Once they got their monopolies, back to commercials. Screw 'em. had cable for a short time back then, then dropped it when they showed they were liars, never again. I boycott companies when they are dinks or liars, same as I started boycotting (new, I will snag heavily discounted used) the **AA members over priced DRM infested "products" once it was obvious they were never going to offer fair prices or stop being cartel jerks. Despite going through several alleged Federal "busts", they never stopped being jerks.
As to watching "internet TV" ain't happening outside of the dense/urban (mostly, I know there are some exceptions)low hanging fruit areas served with high speed connections. If you are stuck on low speed or dialup, forget it, even youtube won't stream easily.
The same way that MS makes a few bucks..coming preinstalled on PCs. The consumer pays for the software, but never really sees it either the way it is packaged. I have no idea why red hat and canonical don't just sell computers, with their software preinstalled, guaranteed to "just work". Both companies are large enough to fund production runs of computers and get good wholesale prices over in asia, so they could be cost competitive. Heck, they could gauge interest in advance just by running a poll on their support forums to see if people might be interested, what types of hardware, what they thought would be a fair price, etc.
I have hand dug out hundreds or even thousands of them over the past five years now. Mul;tiflora rose I spray first, then yank out the clumps with a heavy chain and a tractor. Privet I spray and mow close. A heavy blast of glyphosate works on poke, too, just I started out with zillions here, and finally had to admit defeat on my mechaincal physical weeding, I am just one guy, it was too much, so went to spray (reluctantly). Starting to get under control, but it has taken some years. Latest nasty weeds are corn buttercups, that multiple hits with 2,4-d seem to manage, and what I *think* is nutsedge and man I hope we don't have that. According to the charts I should be a tad too far north, it's a subtropical invasive species from India, but it sure looks like it. Even heavy spray just bounces off, they have deep creeper roots and just keep coming back. Heavy multiple deep cultivation/rototilling sessions, then sit in the hot sun..a week later..it comes back. I mean..dang...never seen anything like it. I have had two samples looked at so far at the county level, plus all my online research, going for a third right to the main brains at the state ag college soon, I am going to physically drive several live samples stuck into big containers over there. This stuff is like underground kudzu. Poke is easy in comparison.
You can't get rid of it. We have truckloads here I spray, they still come back here and there, from the birds eating the berries I guess. I really *do* wish we had some good uses/ a ready market for some of the more common weeds, poke, multiflora rose, privet, stuff like that. Poke has to be one of the easiest things to grow.
With that said, OK, I looked at their page. Chump change as far as big business goes to set up mass quantities production facilities. Let's see what happens, if this is yet another amazing solar breakthrough that just disappears. We've had dozens, freaking dozens, over the last decade. Breakthrough after breakthrough..poof..disappears.
Just what they are spending daily to try and clean up one leaky oil well would build several big factories with this new solar tech a week. We've got a billion roofs out there sitting rotting shingles in the hot sun, they should be covered with solar panels by now, not just in the "developing" world, I mean all over.
When I first got into solar power in the late sixties I thought for sure by now this would be as common as anything..nope..same old centralized power monopolies. Some advances with commercial windpower, but solar is the tech that allows joe homeowner to actually own the means of production in a reasonable fashion, get independent or dang close, because all you need is the roof, which you already have, no giant wind tower needed.
Why can't they take a pdf? Isn't that common enough? Don't they show up the same across platforms?
To be more accurate, mostly unused, and that is recycling of *anything* that needs to be hauled up there. They should be exploring repurposing/reuse of any of that thousand$ a kilo stuff they haul up. All of it, no exceptions. I know they recycle astrowhizz now, but they should be doing it with everything. "Trash runs" back are silly. Space faring people will be recycling everything, so the sooner they develop the tech, the better, and that won't happen until they get a mindset change. There really should be no such thing as "space trash", it should be "temporarily not needed valuable materials which we will need later". Once it is launched, it gets used forever, one way or the other.
Heck, I am in favor of them leaving the last shuttle up there as well, see if they can keep it running and rebuild it for a real space ship. Not needing to do re-entry and expensive launch anymore, that cuts down on a ton of the maintenance already.
We do something like this on the farm with older trucks. Once they aren't really road worthy, but still driveable, they just get used exclusively on the farm. The dump truck I use hasn't been road registered for years, but will still crank and run and dump. Why waste a still functioning truck? And when a piece of gear *really* isn't functional anymore, we still scrounge parts and stuff from it to build into something else or reuse it somehow. No waste. If it is steel and cost loot in the past, it is kept and reused somehow, like a little torch and welder action, got another useful trailer. Will=way
So, why waste a still functioning shuttle spaceship, especially once it is already up there? We have enough old aero-crap sitting in museums, or tech morgues like I like to think of them, plenty to "inspire the next generation of sci-nerd-youths", whereas a space based working environment and functional space ship in orbit is more useful, or has more potential, put it that way.
They need a mindset change more than anything else to start this experiment. Too many decades of easy money methinks.
We already are if you can term wall street computerized front running/loading flash trading as being robotic. We work so that they can skim the megaprofits and control the economy and our alleged government. /shotgun wielding neogeezer ;)
I am well aware of Dell selling a few examples of Ubuntu based computers. And if you go to Dell's mainpage, not knowing they sold Ubuntu, you wouldn't know it, it is hidden. It's there on the site, but joe sixpack wouldn't see it. OK, so say I am joe sixpack, go to their main page, click over to desktops http://www.dell.com/home/desktops. On the side there they list "operating systems". I see windows, vista and 7. So this theoretical purchaser would have to know in advance they even sold Ubuntu to start searching around for it. That isn't support, it's a hidden in the back of the warehouse few examples of some old cruft they got kicking around, it isn't being pushed, not even close to equal billing. And that's the *best* they have in five years effort so far.
So, this is still *not the same* as a Canonical labeled and supported integrated hardware and software product, that's the point. With Dell labeling, they only have two of those things, and Dell obviously doesn't push it or you would see the choice/option right off the bat when you start shopping on their site. And the whole thread is about Ubuntu becoming something worth buying, for anyone, making them mo' money. They want to sell "the cloud", how about just selling a computer that works and is price competitive as well as "the cloud"? I bet if they tried, it just might work. Heck, start with the cheapest netbooks, maybe ARM based, work up from there. Dip a toe in that water.
If Canonical wants to make some desktop money, they should sell desktops with their software pre-installed and guaranteed to work, as in no hoop jumping for wifi support, whatever video is there, sound really works, etc.. They can still offer the freebie download version to all comers, but desktop purchasers get priority in the forums and support, etc. Just make it reasonably price competitive and it could work, no offering a $300 machine for $800 in other words just because it says official Ubuntu on it, because it won't sell then. Maybe $350 in that case would be reasonable (examples only), and stick the long term release candidates *only* on there, none of those six month beta quality things.
Ya, Dell and some others offer preinstalled..but that isn't Canonical offering it. It needs to be *their* machines with their software that they know will work. They target that hardware first with the developer action, all the time.
Sort of like the Apple idea, but using FOSS, sell the whole stack, and you know it will work with no hassles. Another aspect would be "legal in the USA" DVD and other media playback, if you buy the hardware, part of the money goes to pay the fees required for that. Purists have a thousand other options, so I wouldn't worry about that part if 1% or less on the machine is "non free". People mostly want their media to work, and that's it.
If local mom and pop whitebox shops can do business and make profits building systems from parts at low volume purchasing levels, one would think Ubuntu could get better deals from the Asian wholesalers buying thousands of untis at a time and just make sure what they get "just works". How about one netbook, one laptop, one desktop, one server? Four basic machines, that should cover a ton of normal usages. Ya, it might not fill every niche, but for a lot of people it might work and they could make some hard cash.
You probably picked this article to submit because of your daily dealings with other types of slime molds.
There is another broadband-like tech out there that gives a lot better than dialup, and isn't tied to real laggy and limited transfer satellite or cellphone telcos, and that is motorola canopy wireless tech. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Canopy
I am using it from a local mom and pop ISP outfit and it works OK, and is cheaper than a landline and dialup account. And man, I am grateful too, there was no way that the cable company or the local wired phone monopoly would ever bring broadband here. And it's different from wifi, you can be many miles away easily (I am around seven or eight miles from the main broadcast antenna) and still get service, you just need your home antenna aimed correctly. It's not blazing cable fast or anything, but it is a huge step up from dialup, and because no cables or wires are needed, doesn't have the same sort of giant huge upfront costs for deployment for the ISPs.
It all boils down to pricing for non scarce products. Digital replication is disruptive technology and as such made it so copies were as close to free to "manufacture" as you can get, yet the music and movie industry insists on charging as much as an old durable goods copy from decades ago. Nuts. If they made copies insanely cheap, people wouldn't be so inclined to file share. With six going on seven billion people on this planet, that is enough of a potential market to sell a lot more copies legitimately..if the prices were low enough. And even stuff on plastic disks is way over priced, there is no credible reason to charge 15 dollars for some bits on five cents worth of plastic. Make copies impulse buying priced, you'd sell more. How about two bucks for a dvd movie and a buck for an album on disk instead of the prices they charge now? And download should be even cheaper. If I was to see disks like that at various stores, even gas station/quickee marts, I would be more inclined to pick up some. At fifteen dollars..well, I never will pay that much for a dvd. That's nuts to pay that much. I don't care what their upfront costs are or what salaries and profits "have" to be made for those folks who live in expensive areas, that's just too much.
I hold out and get them used for a couple bucks, that's it. Or I just won't buy them, and no, I don't pirate either, I just boycott, and I started paying for my media entertainment in the 50s, but their cartel price gouging drove me away eventually. They lost a loyal customer, because I just hate being obviously price gouged. They are *nuts* with what they think copies are worth, pure nuts. Your various entertainment unions should have already been going on strike over this situation, napster and street clone disk sellers proved that the prices they wanted were out to lunch, and this is ten years ago now, and it hasn't been noticed or fixed yet, just more DRM and now they want spyware? *&&^%^ those people! It's the legit price they demand that is and has been the largest problem.
And I bet I am not alone there either, I see people pawing through the marked down bargain bins looking for titles at like 4 dollars, and not near as many browsing the "full price" aisle whenever I am at importmart. This should be a clue to these execs, especially in this economy.
Speaking of which..these pricing decisions are made by millionaire execs to whom 10 or 20 bucks is chump change, what they leave for a tip for a bagel and coffee in some ultra expensive urban setting. They have no idea how the economy has impacted people's discretionary spending. It just hasn't sunk in yet, they "don't get it". We have people still desperately looking for a job and hoping their now extended four times unemployment checks will keep coming in. And even people working, when the decision is buy some entertainment for fifteen bucks or put fuel in the car or pay down some CC bill or a utility bill..guess what wins.
They just *have* to stop applying LA and NYC pricing models on their products to the rest of the nation, it just isn't going to work, ever. Most of us DON'T live there, and all of us realize those are really expensive places to live, so salaries and such are much higher. That's why 15 bucks for a movie seems cheap to those execs, but to most everyone else it is expensive. Here's an analogy with something else, food, and pricing differences from one of the two big media cities and everywhere else: GF's son recently moved to NYC and works as a waiter in one of Trump's places. They charge *25 bucks* for a basic cheap spaghetti lunch. If you tried to charge that around here, you wouldn't get one single customer, ever.
But..that's NYC pricing for ya. So...would you please impart that upstream to your union folks then on to those execs? The tech exists to make your copies for sale *much* cheaper, either on disk or download, just do that and make your loot on *much* higher volume sales. Really, it's that simple and that basic. You won't need any weird DRM or spyware/deleteware then. And BTW, will you guys stop with making watching a frakking movie illegal on Linux machines in the US? That's nuts as well. All of that crap is nuts, "regions" for viewing?? WTF?
Sure, if it gets ultra bad wherever they are at some time, even with their tame armed lackey protectors, official badged or private, they go to their other mansion in nation x,y or z. They are internationalists, not particularly loyal to any nation or people, they just don't care, psychopathic. Other humans to them are *prey animals", they go to where the human hunting and exploitation is the easiest, and they have the most "legal" protection, as in, the local warlord/governmental goofball/some authority figure is in their pocket, etc. And that's what helos and business jets are for, just in case they need to flee someplace else. "Laws" mostly apply to serfs and slaves after all.
Well, I am a full time ag worker, so I can speak on that a little,(I also live OK on less than ten grand a year) and the first rule there is you can't generalize too much, as it is such a varied "job". I've worked from subtropical citrus harvesting to sub arctic almost dairy farming, and it can be really different.
As to some aspects being seasonal, sure, and yes, people used to travel to do them, and also, we used to have it that people who only cared or needed a part time job could do them. We used to get by OK with just domestic part time help, before wall street started raping the profits away and the farmers had to look to wherever they could to cut corners.
And for some reason, this last generation or two...they don't seem to need part time jobs as much (very generally speaking). I hate to be a cranky old curmudgeon, but "back in the day" all kids worked part time. I am racking me pea brane here trying to think of *any* of my friends who didn't work a lot growing up, starting in young teen years or even earlier (I started at nine years old working part time, I mowed lawns and harvested fruit) For example, growing up I always worked every summer harvesting/working, then back to school in the fall, with sometimes work after school and on weekends. Off summer/fall season was leaf raking and then snow shoveling in the winter. I used to hand shovel driveways before catching the bus to school. How many kids do stuff like that now? A lot of housewives with kids at school worked with us on the farms as well sometimes, they would show up a little later, leave a little earlier, but every season, they would be back, and they were grateful for the extra cash. College kids working the summer, etc.
It's doable, honest work, and it could pay better, with only very marginal cost increases. Here's an example, an increase at the store/retail level of only five cents per entire chicken, if the poultry farmer was to receive that, it would double our net, and get it back to being profitable, and really make it easier for the owners to pay much better wages. Just a nickle.
About 40-50 years ago, farmers received close to 40% of the retail food products dollar, now it is 5-10%, and the high end there is rare, it is usually much lower, which has really impacted some of our "flyover" states drastically, such as Mississippi. I feel sorry for them ,it is about exactly like an example of old time colonialism, pure exploitation, with dismal wages and a perpetual bad economy, despite some of the hardest work, useful and necessary work, in the nastiest climate there is. They get exploited badly, their labor almost stolen and returned at pennies on the dollar, and people rank them because they need economic help. Blaming the victime mentality, seen it a lot too in political debates "blue states versus red states" etc. Nuts, they would be better off if they could just keep somewhat more of what they produce.
Ag could pay, we would have to severely restrict speculators access and profits though, and skew the laws back more toward the actual producers and not the middlemen and big cartel operators. That would bring it back to being doable and desirable for a lot more people, even just part time, and we wouldn't need as many "guest" workers, and maybe they could stay home and make something of their own nation instead.
Guest workers come here because where they come from their fatcats are even *worse*-almost unimaginable but true- and screw them over terribly. They don't come here because they really want to, it is driven by refugee/necessity aspects, they are fleeing where they are rather than jumping for joy to come here (worked with hundreds of them, so asked them about it, that is more their stance than not, get away from the local corruption and violence and severe badness)(example: worked with some Guatemalan Indians who fled their nation, because their bogus corporate fatcat army there-the technofeudalist elites' mercenaries- used them as live fire