The key to that is "eat good" more than the exercise. I don't have TIME to exercise AND eat good- and if it's a choice between gaining weight and having to break the ice to go to the toilet, I'm going to choose chopping wood over eating right. I need food that is convient- that I don't need a fork and knife to eat.
But, really, there's no reason you ever have to leave the virtual world. Most podcasts are about an hour long, which is plenty of time to get enough exercise. Plug in your earbuds and go for a walk. Turn around halfway through and do this three times a week. No need to leave the virtual world, and no need to turn into a lardass.
I tried this for a while- chop wood in winter, walk in spring, summer and fall- it didn't help. I'm still gaining around 5 lbs a year and am currently 100 lbs above my ideal BMI.
No amount of exercise will help if you spend 9 hours a day in front of a computer for your job.
Hoard recievers and other hardware built before 2003 NOW. Hoard hardware built buy manufacturers outside of this DVB consortium. Then boycott the CONTENT of companies that use the broadcast flag.
The one good thing about capitalism is that companies that try to grab more rights for themselves than for their customers go out of business and get replaced with companies that don't. There will be pirate stations that will broadcast analog still, and there will be pirate content creators who create digital content without the broadcast flag, or better yet with all the bits turned on.
Although Microsoft has no intentions of scaling down (much less abandoning) its effort to chase software counterfeiters, Raikes argues that it's against its interests to push illegitimate users so hard that they wind up using alternative products. "You want to push towards getting legal licensing, but you don't want to push so hard that you lose the asset that's most fundamental in the business," Raikes said, adding that Microsoft is developing "pay-as-you-go" software pricing models in a bid to encourage low-income people in emerging countries to use its technology.
Seems to me WGA is coming close to "pushing so hard that you lose the asset"- if it gains a higher false-positive rate, people will be turning to linux in droves.
Why not stick peas up you nose? We evolved to live in a premass agricultural market and we could go back. Why bother with the debate on how this could help or hurt farmers selling peas.
Local production is almost always better for everybody involved, except for those who seek to interfere in other cultures. I suppose the timber industry in the first world would be harmed if all the houses in the third world would be built out of bamboo?
I know that was rediculous. But the answer is the same. You can do it if you want to. I might even do it myself. But forcing others to od so is were I would draw the line. If there is a need, We should do it all the way. If there isn't a need and someone thinks it is benificial, then more power to them.
Oh there's a need for the housing- and something that can get 6L in an 8 hour period out of 3% humidity and 1km/hr wind makes it possible. The other benefits are almost beside the point, but might get somebody like Virgin Industries to invest $25 million as an X-prize.
I cannot argue with that. Except maybe Why would we need to do this.
Because it's hard to raise timber in the desert without water?
And if we could get the water to evaporate in death valley fast enough, we could use gravity to power the genorators for the evaporative distillation that cleans the salts from the water. (i don't mean pump the water to be evaporated, I mean place it far enough away that the presure of the watter going to the plant powers enough turbins to power the evaporative distillation process.)
Well, since Death Valley is about 200 miles inland, you're going to get enough power that way- but far easier would be to just pipe the water into long troughs with side channels and plastic hoods and let the sun do the real work without any other power input from us. However, that's a lot of hardware in comparison to the windmill....
Well, I was thinking mre along the lines of force extortion and racketeering hiding behind a legitimate business model. If vinny's boss is paying the goons who bashed the store up-
Yes, but that doesn't mean that EVERY insurance company that comes along is illegitimate. Got to sidestep the paranoia a bit, just as on the other side we've got to sidestep the Al Gores who would have us believe that every port is going to be under 20 feet of water in a killer huricane.
I see you just didn't get it. I was talking about the mob and some of the gangs and how they sometimes wuold shake down businesses in the area. The old protection money racket. And I do see a lot of parralells here. Maybe not intentional but you don't have to look very hard to see them.
Yes, but what is the option? I say the real option is to sidestep the protection money racket and steal their thunder by solving the problem ourselves.
Sort of. I'm find with paying the money, if it is something absolutly neccesary or I decide to spend it myself. Outside that, I am against being forced to pay it. And I stand on that ground for more then one reason. So, yea, You can boild it down to I don't want it comming from my pocket. But then I think the government takes too much money from us now under the guise of helping fellow man out but end up spending it in ways to ensure they get re-elected. American work too hard fo the money they get to have it basicly stolen from us.
It's funny how we want so much from our government- but when it comes to paying for it we get stingy. When you add up all the things the American government does to provide mere transportation, stable money supply, and a common defense, we're not helping our fellow man at all- we're helping ourselves to borrowing China's nest egg to help others and ourselves. That's what the national debt is all about.
I see Kyoto as the problem though. If we had a treaty that said every country chip in a scientist and look for ways to fix it, In the mean time, every country attempt to apply what i
Thank you for informing me- apparently at those concentrations (from my own university experience) it only causes comas. I wonder how much more it would take for you to be dead? Though I'm surprised they'd allow those concentrations in a space station- you'd think having a working brain (at least, working better than mine was in Introductory to Computer Architecture, a class I regularly fell asleep in) would be a priority for our astronauts.
The reason I mention Kyoto, is because it is a symbol of the philosophy behind all this.
Almost but not quite...
"Dont solve the problem, just profit from it."
Unlike what I'm sure is a shared ideal between you and me, the real world is things that don't produce a profit simply don't get done. Non-monetized benefit is simply not enough for a sustainable cure.
In the same way that certain Black leaders pimp problems for money, but dont do anything for blacks, the Environmental folks are exactly the same. What is Greenpeace without something to bitch about? Do you think they would ever go away? All these people do is just put on another hat, and hit the street in protest of something else.
That is why I'm saying- sidestep them. The bamboo forest idea, for instance, will produce a new industry in areas that have none- a new labor-intensive industry VERY fitting for much of what the IMF would consider "nations with failed economies". IF it turns out that CO2 isn't a problem (until we have a billion acres of bamboo soaking it up that is), it'll be easy to reverse- just grind up the bamboo into fuel pellets for pellet stoves, or convert it's cellulose to sucrose and make ethanol. Either way, you return the CO2 to the atmophere- and still make money at it.
Pollution today, spotted owls tomorrow, Whales and sonar on Wednesday, "Dont eat meat" Thursdays, and on Fridays? Oh man, Fridays are just a general "America Sucks" Party.
Actually, as a Roman Catholic, we've been doing "Don't eat meat on Fridays" just fine for about a thousand years now during this time of the year.:-). But the real point is- ignore the idiots on the extremes and find a way to profit in the middle!
Accepting that we know nothing at all is the first part of becoming humble enough to actually SOLVE the problem instead of merely PREDICTING that there will be a problem. It's the difference between being a scientist and an engineer.
To get back on track, we're still arguing about the predictions and even *some* of the causes. But other causes and effects have now moved into the past- and are certain fact. Why not do what we can about the FACTS and leave the rest until it becomes FACT? You might just avoid the prediction that way (where if we do nothing, we'll hit the prediction in the worst possible way).
In other words, the time for DEBATE is over, and it's stupid to keep demonizing the other side. The time for ACTION has arrived.
Having said that, I wasn't talking about Kyoto- which to me is an inadequate solution because it merely slows down the problem and doesn't reverse the damage.
I guess I should have worded that differently. If you getting 4 instead of six, You are wrongly estimating the problem. The Idea of the anaolgy was to say that if we don't know what the normal temperature is supposed to be, We asume 4 and it is really 6, we are working for nothing or possibly making it worse. But it doesn't have to be 4 instead of 6. The point was that it was 6 instead of 4. And the idea behind it was because we didn't know better at the time.
Where what I'm saying is that there are variables OTHER than temperature that we can, and should, adjust, for reasons OTHER than climate change. We evolved to live in the pre-industrial atmosphere- why bother with the debate over mankind's part in creating the current atmosphere when we can quite easily fix it?
So what? You don't see the problem with being forced into something that might be a good idea? What if there is something better then windmills?
It's so clear at this point that reducing the CO2 IS a good idea, that it's pretty easy to see what we should be doing. And as for there being something better than windmills- well, that is LOCAL climate based. The Whisson Windmills do a good job of pulling water out of the air at extremely low windspeeds and humidity- and they scale well. Other places (Death Valley California springs to mind) might do better with gravity feed aquaducts from the nearest ocean and evaporative distillation; but we only need the billion or so acres within 500 km of an ocean to begin with, and not all of it is below sea level.
SO someone breaks into the corner store and smashes everything up. The next day someone names Vinny goes by, notices all the damage and goes in with a business deal. He is selling insurance and comprehensive protection against store owners having their shops destroy by vandels in the night. In the proccess of making the sale, vinny says imagine what would have happened to you if you were here. You better get this extra coverage so you don't die. Whats the harm in this? It isn't like Vinny is going to smash the place up or kill the guy. And the guy probably is better off having insurance and protection now anyways.
Oh, I see- you're talking paranoia. But that's why it's better not to focus on the warming, but rather on the changes we can prove have taken place. In other words- say no to Vinny and install a camera system instead.
Unfortunatly this has been done. An it is being done right now if we are wrong.
Actually, no it really hasn't. The conservation measures so far are good at slowing the rate of increase, but they're terrible at actually reversing the damage we know about.
Sure, I'm all for this. Untill someone tells me I cannot drive or the price of something skyrockets because of this.
In other words, you're fine with experimenting unless it costs you money personally? What an incredibly subjective point of view!
And so far (kyoto) the only real attempt at extracting results was little more then a cover for redistribution of wealth and a comple other formerly rejected political causes.
Kyoto's just the tip of the iceberg. Like I said, conservation is good but won't fix the problem. However, I happen to think redistribution of wealth is a good thing- but I see a far better redistribution of wealth in actually cleaning up the mess. Especially if we can convert that CO2 to a product.
So if the market can work it out, I have no problem whatso ever at all. If I'm forced to do something because of a hidden political agenda that has little real effect on the problem, then I'm strongly against it.
What if, in working it out, the market actually raises prices to the point where you can no longer drive?
Lol.. I have looked at this. The problem isn't that they work. It isn't that they ar productive or anything related to that. The problem is that if use on a large scale, they will pull some of the largest effecting greenhouse gass f
May I ask exactly what those CO2 concentrations would do to the humans that we "can't take"? Just curious.
Ironically, heat for one. Concentrations in the levels that the dinasoars thrived in (as lizards, after all) would do in a mammal with a subcutaneous layer of fat. Breathing is another- double your concentration of CO2 will regulate your breathing- but triple it will kill you.
Human beings, like any other species, evolve to slow changes in environment. Sudden changes in that environment probably won't kill the planet or all species, but will likely kill hyperspecialized species.
"When dinosaurs walked the earth (about 70 to 130 million years ago), there was from five to ten times more CO2 in the atmosphere than today. The resulting abundant plant life allowed the huge creatures to thrive. . . . Based on nearly 800 scientific observations around the world, a doubling of CO2 from present levels would improve plant productivity on average by 32 percent across species."
Human beings are neither dinasoars nor plants- we can't take the added CO2 concentration. So this is entirely irrelevant to keeping the earth's atmosphere in a state where human beings can survive.
Our inability to predict has everything to do with it. Our entire conclusion abut why and how it effect is to what to do about it revolves around what we think it should be. If we cannot predict a natural cycle, then we have nothing to base our outcome on.
We DON'T have anything to base our outcome on. We never have. We can get closer as time goes on and we add more observations, but it's no use pretending that we will ever be 100% certain about the future.
Imagine we are doing business together. You recently had something done to your eyes and came to my store to purchase medicine for them. Now you cannot see very well and asume you gave me a ten and I gave you $4 dollars back. You in pain and don't question it (it must be taxes or something). When you can see better, you realize you gave me a 20 and I gave you four bills that equal $16 back. The difference is that you paid $4 instead of $6 for the medicine. This applies to global warming too because when you inacuratly asume you should have a value of 6 and realize it is actualy 4, the entire transaction is different.
Yes, so what? Does that mean that just because we only get back the 4, that we shouldn't work to achieve that 4?
Calling it global change is just setting it up for a no lose situation.
Yes it is. Again so what? Does that mean we shouldn't work towards what we do know? Returning the atmosphere to 280ppm CO2 isn't going to harm us any if done right, and could yeild health benefits, EVEN IF CO2 HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE CLIMATE SHIFTS WE ARE SEEING, and it's not only possible to do so, but could also be profitable thanks to Whisson Windmills.
You will always have change because we have had it since we started recording weather.
Yes, we've had it since we started recording weather. The point is that for what we can tell of fossilized weather, we haven't had change in certain key variables until the last couple of centuries. Let's do what we can, as an experiment, to return those key variables to their pre-industrial value, and see what happens.
Note that we don't actually have to return to a pre-industrial culture to do so- we're much smarter than that now. You can absorb a ton an acre of CO2 by planting bamboo; we've got a billion acres desert that can be now returned to farmland by use of Whisson Windmills. Our current level of industrialization is adding a billion tons a year of CO2 to the atmosphere. What could it hurt to remove the same amount, returning the climate to the same balance of gasses we had for the 880,000 years previous? What are you scared of?
Which is why "global warming" is on it's way out and "global climate change" is on it's way in. But the inability to predict the changes has nothing to do with changes currently observed OR whether or not it was caused by mankind.
My thought is that we're facing backlash based on 30 years of bad predictions- with nobody noticing the logic of "hey, maybe we SHOULD reduce pollution for other reasons", or "maybe we should capitalize on all the extra CO2 in the atmosphere and provide us with some nice large lumber-grade bamboo forests for building materials in the mean time".
I wasn't talking to you. I do not care for your responses. You know what you need to do. Rather than trailing me around and slinging mud at me you should be making amends for your repeated demonstrations of "wrong theory of mind". Your entire history here on Slashdot is a wrong theory of mind.
The above is not mud slinging- and I have the right theory of mind now. You are no more than George W. Bush- yet another bull headed sheep.
No, you may not suggest anything. Any suggestion you make is received as predatory.
Not my problem, for your reception is your own fault.
You are a backwoods hick who ran a part time overnight BBS from his dorm room in college. You see Slashdot as the reincarnation of your lost dream to be SysOp and lord and master of all the users around you.
Better a backwards hick than a Easterner with an ego as large as his sense of entitlement. Nobody owes you a job, nobody owes you respect; you have to EARN it.
And yet, you refuse your place in this dance. Perhaps you need to find another system of social control elsewhere that fits you better. May I suggest the Rule of St. Benedict instead, based on Acts Chapter 4?
It's not because H1B workers make less money- at Microsoft, they make the same money as their peers- pay is based on level and performance, not on visa status.
Level and performance is the very thing that is being hit by a lack of American graduates. Typically Microsoft fires people below a certain management level in their mid 30s, to make room for younger staff. If there aren't American graduates, they use H-1bs; but it's still replacing those workers in their 30s. Thus the subject line I used.....get close to actually having the intellectual propery of Microsoft's upper management or founders, they'll find a reason to replace you.
Add to that the fact that they use each new generation to revise the starting wages downward (instead of up, like they should be doing to attract new students into the field), and you get a downward spiral of wages.
Perhaps you should move to a cave in a remote location so that you can stick your head in the sand and just ignore the rest of us...the world isn't going to change itself for you and you seem to be desperately unhappy with the life that you are currently living.
My ancestors showed me what happens when you do that- eventually somebody comes along and builds a dam and takes away your ancesteral hunting grounds.
What we really need is a way to fence off the cave, permanently.
To "localized power sources" But of course, slashdot standards require that you spend more than 20 seconds on a single thought, so I added this sentence.
I see what you're getting at, but a company doesn't consider the debts of the applicant when determining whether to offer employment.
Incorrect. Major corporations have been running credit checks on applicants for at least the last 10 years. While I was unemployed, I had credit checks for jobs as lowly as fry cook at a fast food restaurant.
Even if they wanted to, it would be illegal, but in the end it's irrelevant.
It is not illegal- your credit record details are public information, available to anybody who pays the credit reporting fee, and is a valid predictor of embezzlement probability and required salary.
The job carries a salary value that's advertised when the company goes looking for staff.
Yeah- and if you believe that is a true value, then you must believe the lie of salary surveys as well.
I don't know if it's the same where you work, but here I get paid for the job I do, not for the person I am.
The person you are influences the job you do- it's in the company's best interest to know as much about the person you are as possible.
First of all, the job of the State is not to support anyone's standard of living;
I'm not talking about the government- I'm talking about you as an individual consumer. If you're not willing to buy your neighbor's product, why should he be willing to buy yours?
it is to prevent and punish murder, rape, theft and fraud. Everything else is commentary.
On a side point- the entire concept of an international free market is fraud, since it prevents and destroys the ideal of community. So therefore, it's the government's job to prevent it, by your standard. But the most efficient way to prevent it isn't by government- it's by YOU, as an individual consumer, saying no to foreign goods and foreign imports.
That's the broken windows fallacy, from a little economic parable. A kid breaks a shopkeeper's window and a crowd gathers. As he's being arrested, a wit in the crowd points out that the kid has created a job for the glazier, who can now buy a new suit from the tailor, who cna buy bread from the baker and so forth. The kid is then hailed as the savior of the town.
The wit is more right than the Free Traitor- who would instead import an illegal immigrant to put in the glass, who would send the money back to Mexico and put the tailor and baker out of work.
What you don't see is what that money could have been used for instead: the shopkeeper might have bought a much nicer suit. Or he may have invested in a new set of goods to offer for sale.
Or he might have ordered that suit from China, and bough the new set of goods from India, once again putting the tailor and baker out of work.
Likewise with the real-life example. You can see that IT folks are making more than they otherwise would, and spending more than they otherwise would. What you don't see is what could have been done with that money instead. Bankers might have been able to offer lower interest rates by spending less money on IT, as just one example. Or restaurants could have offered cheaper food by spending less on POS systems.
Higher interest rates, in a closed system, means that the Bankers can afford the more expensive food- and once the POS system is paid for, the more expensive prices are pure profit for the restaurants. Those "other uses for the money" are often just more hoarding, less economic movement.
The situation is a lot like farm subsidies: a few hundred people make milions extra a year while the population at large pays an extra fifty cents. The payees profit immensely, the payers lose only a little, and everyone's happy. Except for the fact that the market becomes screwy and inefficient.
Inefficiency is what is required for inflation and a higher standard of living.
That is the single most ignorant thing I have ever read on Slashdot. The Law of Comparative Advantage is like that of gravity, or one and one summing to two--it's a mathematical principal and, quite simply, cannot be wrong.
And yet it is- to take on your analogy, one and one have been summing to negative six in reality for the past 40 years when it comes to "free trade". SOMETHING has gone wrong with that theory. My idea is that "something wrong" is corporate control of the government writing the laws. As you say, Comparative Advantage is an axiom- so when reality doesn't match it, something has gone desparately wrong with the world.
As for trade deficits, who cares?
I care. I'm an honest fellow, I like to PAY my debts off and stay in the black- not keep building up debt until I and my family have to be sold into slavery to pay it off.
We send the Japanese little pieces of paper, and they send us automobiles. Would you rather have a stack of paper, or a car?
I'd rather pay my neighbor to build my car- without going into debt to buy it, and without resorting to an economic model that no longer matches the real world.
Sigh...I really shouldn't feed the trolls, but here goes...The reason that the 'duel of honor' as you put it was phased out of our present legal system is because it has the unfortunate side effect that one must be willing to stake life and limb on the outcome of the dispute and there are plenty of things that while important do not merit risking life and limb. Thus, the 'duel of honor', is at best inefficient and at worst a barbaric anachronism...a reminder of those times when the strong took what they wanted from the weak at sword point and that is precisely the type of coercion that libertarians seek to avoid.
My point is this- the strong are still taking what they want from the weak. All you've really done is change the weapon from sword to money. The coercion will still exist. There is no way to avoid the coercion. A man killed by starvation on the street is just as dead as one killed by the sword- but his death was slower and more painful and less humane. If a CEO isn't willing to face his victims in a dispute, and hides behind the government, there's a reason for that.
You are attempting a Reductio ad absurdum but with statements like that it is clear that what you are in fact doing is Argumentum ad nauseam.
I actually don't believe in Euclidean Logic- I run on Boolean instead.
The free market cannot exist without government protection from threat of violent force. If you want to dispute the libertarian position then you must at least get your facts straight about what that position entails. The government exists to defend the people from external aggression, enforce contracts, and resolve disputes without people picking up the sword or the gun.
You forgot "As long as we don't have to pay for it", since most libertarians are tax evaders.
The free market does not and cannot stand against threat of violence which is why the government exists to suppress the use of coercive force, because most reasonable people (you are obviously not one of them) agree that we would rather live in a civil society where people don't beat their neighbor over the head because they have a dispute.
The "Free" Market, in and of itself, is a threat of coercive force. A civil society is just one where you are forbidden from taking justice on the people who wronged you when they deserve it.
the true function of capitalism is to achieve a fair and just society for everyone and to provide the highest possible standard of living to each individual member of that society. Capitalism is not just for the rich, but also for the poor and everyone else.
Then why is it that Capitalism ALWAYS breaks down into Corporatism, where corporations run the government to put individual human beings into situations of debt slavery? If that is the true function of capitalism, then it's made the same mistake as Marx- it doesn't work in situations where you can't take justice on those who would defraud you.
The government enforces the rules of the game
No it doesn't- the government is owned by the rich and enforces the rules of the rich to the detriment of the poor.
the rules that we all agreed to play by when we put down the guns and tried to form a decent society. There is nothing wrong with that.
We don't have a decent society. No level of human cohabitation above the tribe can possibly be decent because it cannot be held together without rules and coercion.
what a load of bullox...nobody is forcing you to buy their products
What other products are available to buy? It's not profitable to build stuff locally if every other government in the world can sell here at any price.
and the government prevents them from taking your money through violence.
No, the government ALLOWS them to take my money through violence. International corporations could not exist without major military support- and the government provides that to them. Try to protes
Slashdot Mirror
Not when you're a parent of a Cerebral Palsy child, but yes, a single person should be able to do all that. I did when I was single and young.
The key to that is "eat good" more than the exercise. I don't have TIME to exercise AND eat good- and if it's a choice between gaining weight and having to break the ice to go to the toilet, I'm going to choose chopping wood over eating right. I need food that is convient- that I don't need a fork and knife to eat.
But, really, there's no reason you ever have to leave the virtual world. Most podcasts are about an hour long, which is plenty of time to get enough exercise. Plug in your earbuds and go for a walk. Turn around halfway through and do this three times a week. No need to leave the virtual world, and no need to turn into a lardass.
I tried this for a while- chop wood in winter, walk in spring, summer and fall- it didn't help. I'm still gaining around 5 lbs a year and am currently 100 lbs above my ideal BMI.
No amount of exercise will help if you spend 9 hours a day in front of a computer for your job.
I already have an HDMI reciever that I'm using with a low-def composite input card. The key is to not have the recording equipment understand the DRM.
Hoard recievers and other hardware built before 2003 NOW. Hoard hardware built buy manufacturers outside of this DVB consortium. Then boycott the CONTENT of companies that use the broadcast flag.
The one good thing about capitalism is that companies that try to grab more rights for themselves than for their customers go out of business and get replaced with companies that don't. There will be pirate stations that will broadcast analog still, and there will be pirate content creators who create digital content without the broadcast flag, or better yet with all the bits turned on.
Or, from TFA:
Although Microsoft has no intentions of scaling down (much less abandoning) its effort to chase software counterfeiters, Raikes argues that it's against its interests to push illegitimate users so hard that they wind up using alternative products. "You want to push towards getting legal licensing, but you don't want to push so hard that you lose the asset that's most fundamental in the business," Raikes said, adding that Microsoft is developing "pay-as-you-go" software pricing models in a bid to encourage low-income people in emerging countries to use its technology.
Seems to me WGA is coming close to "pushing so hard that you lose the asset"- if it gains a higher false-positive rate, people will be turning to linux in droves.
That doesn't allow you to see ComputerWorld sites?
What I need is a meta-surfer, a free port 80 VPN with a built in browser on the client side....maybe one day I'll build one myself.
Why not stick peas up you nose? We evolved to live in a premass agricultural market and we could go back. Why bother with the debate on how this could help or hurt farmers selling peas.
Local production is almost always better for everybody involved, except for those who seek to interfere in other cultures. I suppose the timber industry in the first world would be harmed if all the houses in the third world would be built out of bamboo?
I know that was rediculous. But the answer is the same. You can do it if you want to. I might even do it myself. But forcing others to od so is were I would draw the line. If there is a need, We should do it all the way. If there isn't a need and someone thinks it is benificial, then more power to them.
Oh there's a need for the housing- and something that can get 6L in an 8 hour period out of 3% humidity and 1km/hr wind makes it possible. The other benefits are almost beside the point, but might get somebody like Virgin Industries to invest $25 million as an X-prize.
I cannot argue with that. Except maybe Why would we need to do this.
Because it's hard to raise timber in the desert without water?
And if we could get the water to evaporate in death valley fast enough, we could use gravity to power the genorators for the evaporative distillation that cleans the salts from the water. (i don't mean pump the water to be evaporated, I mean place it far enough away that the presure of the watter going to the plant powers enough turbins to power the evaporative distillation process.)
Well, since Death Valley is about 200 miles inland, you're going to get enough power that way- but far easier would be to just pipe the water into long troughs with side channels and plastic hoods and let the sun do the real work without any other power input from us. However, that's a lot of hardware in comparison to the windmill....
Well, I was thinking mre along the lines of force extortion and racketeering hiding behind a legitimate business model. If vinny's boss is paying the goons who bashed the store up-
Yes, but that doesn't mean that EVERY insurance company that comes along is illegitimate. Got to sidestep the paranoia a bit, just as on the other side we've got to sidestep the Al Gores who would have us believe that every port is going to be under 20 feet of water in a killer huricane.
I see you just didn't get it. I was talking about the mob and some of the gangs and how they sometimes wuold shake down businesses in the area. The old protection money racket. And I do see a lot of parralells here. Maybe not intentional but you don't have to look very hard to see them.
Yes, but what is the option? I say the real option is to sidestep the protection money racket and steal their thunder by solving the problem ourselves.
Sort of. I'm find with paying the money, if it is something absolutly neccesary or I decide to spend it myself. Outside that, I am against being forced to pay it. And I stand on that ground for more then one reason. So, yea, You can boild it down to I don't want it comming from my pocket. But then I think the government takes too much money from us now under the guise of helping fellow man out but end up spending it in ways to ensure they get re-elected. American work too hard fo the money they get to have it basicly stolen from us.
It's funny how we want so much from our government- but when it comes to paying for it we get stingy. When you add up all the things the American government does to provide mere transportation, stable money supply, and a common defense, we're not helping our fellow man at all- we're helping ourselves to borrowing China's nest egg to help others and ourselves. That's what the national debt is all about.
I see Kyoto as the problem though. If we had a treaty that said every country chip in a scientist and look for ways to fix it, In the mean time, every country attempt to apply what i
Thank you for informing me- apparently at those concentrations (from my own university experience) it only causes comas. I wonder how much more it would take for you to be dead? Though I'm surprised they'd allow those concentrations in a space station- you'd think having a working brain (at least, working better than mine was in Introductory to Computer Architecture, a class I regularly fell asleep in) would be a priority for our astronauts.
The reason I mention Kyoto, is because it is a symbol of the philosophy behind all this.
:-). But the real point is- ignore the idiots on the extremes and find a way to profit in the middle!
Almost but not quite...
"Dont solve the problem, just profit from it."
Unlike what I'm sure is a shared ideal between you and me, the real world is things that don't produce a profit simply don't get done. Non-monetized benefit is simply not enough for a sustainable cure.
In the same way that certain Black leaders pimp problems for money, but dont do anything for blacks, the Environmental folks are exactly the same. What is Greenpeace without something to bitch about? Do you think they would ever go away? All these people do is just put on another hat, and hit the street in protest of something else.
That is why I'm saying- sidestep them. The bamboo forest idea, for instance, will produce a new industry in areas that have none- a new labor-intensive industry VERY fitting for much of what the IMF would consider "nations with failed economies". IF it turns out that CO2 isn't a problem (until we have a billion acres of bamboo soaking it up that is), it'll be easy to reverse- just grind up the bamboo into fuel pellets for pellet stoves, or convert it's cellulose to sucrose and make ethanol. Either way, you return the CO2 to the atmophere- and still make money at it.
Pollution today, spotted owls tomorrow, Whales and sonar on Wednesday, "Dont eat meat" Thursdays, and on Fridays? Oh man, Fridays are just a general "America Sucks" Party.
Actually, as a Roman Catholic, we've been doing "Don't eat meat on Fridays" just fine for about a thousand years now during this time of the year.
Accepting that we know nothing at all is the first part of becoming humble enough to actually SOLVE the problem instead of merely PREDICTING that there will be a problem. It's the difference between being a scientist and an engineer.
To get back on track, we're still arguing about the predictions and even *some* of the causes. But other causes and effects have now moved into the past- and are certain fact. Why not do what we can about the FACTS and leave the rest until it becomes FACT? You might just avoid the prediction that way (where if we do nothing, we'll hit the prediction in the worst possible way).
In other words, the time for DEBATE is over, and it's stupid to keep demonizing the other side. The time for ACTION has arrived.
In my mind, once you build an Aircraft Carrier and a few Submarines, you aint "developing" no mo'.
Somehow, I don't think building an aircraft carrier that can't go anywhere counts.
Having said that, I wasn't talking about Kyoto- which to me is an inadequate solution because it merely slows down the problem and doesn't reverse the damage.
I guess I should have worded that differently. If you getting 4 instead of six, You are wrongly estimating the problem. The Idea of the anaolgy was to say that if we don't know what the normal temperature is supposed to be, We asume 4 and it is really 6, we are working for nothing or possibly making it worse. But it doesn't have to be 4 instead of 6. The point was that it was 6 instead of 4. And the idea behind it was because we didn't know better at the time.
Where what I'm saying is that there are variables OTHER than temperature that we can, and should, adjust, for reasons OTHER than climate change. We evolved to live in the pre-industrial atmosphere- why bother with the debate over mankind's part in creating the current atmosphere when we can quite easily fix it?
So what? You don't see the problem with being forced into something that might be a good idea? What if there is something better then windmills?
It's so clear at this point that reducing the CO2 IS a good idea, that it's pretty easy to see what we should be doing. And as for there being something better than windmills- well, that is LOCAL climate based. The Whisson Windmills do a good job of pulling water out of the air at extremely low windspeeds and humidity- and they scale well. Other places (Death Valley California springs to mind) might do better with gravity feed aquaducts from the nearest ocean and evaporative distillation; but we only need the billion or so acres within 500 km of an ocean to begin with, and not all of it is below sea level.
SO someone breaks into the corner store and smashes everything up. The next day someone names Vinny goes by, notices all the damage and goes in with a business deal. He is selling insurance and comprehensive protection against store owners having their shops destroy by vandels in the night. In the proccess of making the sale, vinny says imagine what would have happened to you if you were here. You better get this extra coverage so you don't die. Whats the harm in this? It isn't like Vinny is going to smash the place up or kill the guy. And the guy probably is better off having insurance and protection now anyways.
Oh, I see- you're talking paranoia. But that's why it's better not to focus on the warming, but rather on the changes we can prove have taken place. In other words- say no to Vinny and install a camera system instead.
Unfortunatly this has been done. An it is being done right now if we are wrong.
Actually, no it really hasn't. The conservation measures so far are good at slowing the rate of increase, but they're terrible at actually reversing the damage we know about.
Sure, I'm all for this. Untill someone tells me I cannot drive or the price of something skyrockets because of this.
In other words, you're fine with experimenting unless it costs you money personally? What an incredibly subjective point of view!
And so far (kyoto) the only real attempt at extracting results was little more then a cover for redistribution of wealth and a comple other formerly rejected political causes.
Kyoto's just the tip of the iceberg. Like I said, conservation is good but won't fix the problem. However, I happen to think redistribution of wealth is a good thing- but I see a far better redistribution of wealth in actually cleaning up the mess. Especially if we can convert that CO2 to a product.
So if the market can work it out, I have no problem whatso ever at all. If I'm forced to do something because of a hidden political agenda that has little real effect on the problem, then I'm strongly against it.
What if, in working it out, the market actually raises prices to the point where you can no longer drive?
Lol.. I have looked at this. The problem isn't that they work. It isn't that they ar productive or anything related to that. The problem is that if use on a large scale, they will pull some of the largest effecting greenhouse gass f
May I ask exactly what those CO2 concentrations would do to the humans that we "can't take"? Just curious.
Ironically, heat for one. Concentrations in the levels that the dinasoars thrived in (as lizards, after all) would do in a mammal with a subcutaneous layer of fat. Breathing is another- double your concentration of CO2 will regulate your breathing- but triple it will kill you.
Human beings, like any other species, evolve to slow changes in environment. Sudden changes in that environment probably won't kill the planet or all species, but will likely kill hyperspecialized species.
"When dinosaurs walked the earth (about 70 to 130 million years ago), there was from five to ten times more CO2 in the atmosphere than today. The resulting abundant plant life allowed the huge creatures to thrive. . . . Based on nearly 800 scientific observations around the world, a doubling of CO2 from present levels would improve plant productivity on average by 32 percent across species."
Human beings are neither dinasoars nor plants- we can't take the added CO2 concentration. So this is entirely irrelevant to keeping the earth's atmosphere in a state where human beings can survive.
Our inability to predict has everything to do with it. Our entire conclusion abut why and how it effect is to what to do about it revolves around what we think it should be. If we cannot predict a natural cycle, then we have nothing to base our outcome on.
We DON'T have anything to base our outcome on. We never have. We can get closer as time goes on and we add more observations, but it's no use pretending that we will ever be 100% certain about the future.
Imagine we are doing business together. You recently had something done to your eyes and came to my store to purchase medicine for them. Now you cannot see very well and asume you gave me a ten and I gave you $4 dollars back. You in pain and don't question it (it must be taxes or something). When you can see better, you realize you gave me a 20 and I gave you four bills that equal $16 back. The difference is that you paid $4 instead of $6 for the medicine. This applies to global warming too because when you inacuratly asume you should have a value of 6 and realize it is actualy 4, the entire transaction is different.
Yes, so what? Does that mean that just because we only get back the 4, that we shouldn't work to achieve that 4?
Calling it global change is just setting it up for a no lose situation.
Yes it is. Again so what? Does that mean we shouldn't work towards what we do know? Returning the atmosphere to 280ppm CO2 isn't going to harm us any if done right, and could yeild health benefits, EVEN IF CO2 HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE CLIMATE SHIFTS WE ARE SEEING, and it's not only possible to do so, but could also be profitable thanks to Whisson Windmills.
You will always have change because we have had it since we started recording weather.
Yes, we've had it since we started recording weather. The point is that for what we can tell of fossilized weather, we haven't had change in certain key variables until the last couple of centuries. Let's do what we can, as an experiment, to return those key variables to their pre-industrial value, and see what happens.
Note that we don't actually have to return to a pre-industrial culture to do so- we're much smarter than that now. You can absorb a ton an acre of CO2 by planting bamboo; we've got a billion acres desert that can be now returned to farmland by use of Whisson Windmills. Our current level of industrialization is adding a billion tons a year of CO2 to the atmosphere. What could it hurt to remove the same amount, returning the climate to the same balance of gasses we had for the 880,000 years previous? What are you scared of?
Which is why "global warming" is on it's way out and "global climate change" is on it's way in. But the inability to predict the changes has nothing to do with changes currently observed OR whether or not it was caused by mankind.
My thought is that we're facing backlash based on 30 years of bad predictions- with nobody noticing the logic of "hey, maybe we SHOULD reduce pollution for other reasons", or "maybe we should capitalize on all the extra CO2 in the atmosphere and provide us with some nice large lumber-grade bamboo forests for building materials in the mean time".
I wasn't talking to you. I do not care for your responses. You know what you need to do. Rather than trailing me around and slinging mud at me you should be making amends for your repeated demonstrations of "wrong theory of mind". Your entire history here on Slashdot is a wrong theory of mind.
The above is not mud slinging- and I have the right theory of mind now. You are no more than George W. Bush- yet another bull headed sheep.
No, you may not suggest anything. Any suggestion you make is received as predatory.
Not my problem, for your reception is your own fault.
You are a backwoods hick who ran a part time overnight BBS from his dorm room in college. You see Slashdot as the reincarnation of your lost dream to be SysOp and lord and master of all the users around you.
Better a backwards hick than a Easterner with an ego as large as his sense of entitlement. Nobody owes you a job, nobody owes you respect; you have to EARN it.
And yet, you refuse your place in this dance. Perhaps you need to find another system of social control elsewhere that fits you better. May I suggest the Rule of St. Benedict instead, based on Acts Chapter 4?
It's not because H1B workers make less money- at Microsoft, they make the same money as their peers- pay is based on level and performance, not on visa status.
Level and performance is the very thing that is being hit by a lack of American graduates. Typically Microsoft fires people below a certain management level in their mid 30s, to make room for younger staff. If there aren't American graduates, they use H-1bs; but it's still replacing those workers in their 30s. Thus the subject line I used.....get close to actually having the intellectual propery of Microsoft's upper management or founders, they'll find a reason to replace you.
Add to that the fact that they use each new generation to revise the starting wages downward (instead of up, like they should be doing to attract new students into the field), and you get a downward spiral of wages.
Perhaps you should move to a cave in a remote location so that you can stick your head in the sand and just ignore the rest of us...the world isn't going to change itself for you and you seem to be desperately unhappy with the life that you are currently living.
My ancestors showed me what happens when you do that- eventually somebody comes along and builds a dam and takes away your ancesteral hunting grounds.
What we really need is a way to fence off the cave, permanently.
To "localized power sources" But of course, slashdot standards require that you spend more than 20 seconds on a single thought, so I added this sentence.
I see what you're getting at, but a company doesn't consider the debts of the applicant when determining whether to offer employment.
Incorrect. Major corporations have been running credit checks on applicants for at least the last 10 years. While I was unemployed, I had credit checks for jobs as lowly as fry cook at a fast food restaurant.
Even if they wanted to, it would be illegal, but in the end it's irrelevant.
It is not illegal- your credit record details are public information, available to anybody who pays the credit reporting fee, and is a valid predictor of embezzlement probability and required salary.
The job carries a salary value that's advertised when the company goes looking for staff.
Yeah- and if you believe that is a true value, then you must believe the lie of salary surveys as well.
I don't know if it's the same where you work, but here I get paid for the job I do, not for the person I am.
The person you are influences the job you do- it's in the company's best interest to know as much about the person you are as possible.
First of all, the job of the State is not to support anyone's standard of living;
I'm not talking about the government- I'm talking about you as an individual consumer. If you're not willing to buy your neighbor's product, why should he be willing to buy yours?
it is to prevent and punish murder, rape, theft and fraud. Everything else is commentary.
On a side point- the entire concept of an international free market is fraud, since it prevents and destroys the ideal of community. So therefore, it's the government's job to prevent it, by your standard. But the most efficient way to prevent it isn't by government- it's by YOU, as an individual consumer, saying no to foreign goods and foreign imports.
That's the broken windows fallacy, from a little economic parable. A kid breaks a shopkeeper's window and a crowd gathers. As he's being arrested, a wit in the crowd points out that the kid has created a job for the glazier, who can now buy a new suit from the tailor, who cna buy bread from the baker and so forth. The kid is then hailed as the savior of the town.
The wit is more right than the Free Traitor- who would instead import an illegal immigrant to put in the glass, who would send the money back to Mexico and put the tailor and baker out of work.
What you don't see is what that money could have been used for instead: the shopkeeper might have bought a much nicer suit. Or he may have invested in a new set of goods to offer for sale.
Or he might have ordered that suit from China, and bough the new set of goods from India, once again putting the tailor and baker out of work.
Likewise with the real-life example. You can see that IT folks are making more than they otherwise would, and spending more than they otherwise would. What you don't see is what could have been done with that money instead. Bankers might have been able to offer lower interest rates by spending less money on IT, as just one example. Or restaurants could have offered cheaper food by spending less on POS systems.
Higher interest rates, in a closed system, means that the Bankers can afford the more expensive food- and once the POS system is paid for, the more expensive prices are pure profit for the restaurants. Those "other uses for the money" are often just more hoarding, less economic movement.
The situation is a lot like farm subsidies: a few hundred people make milions extra a year while the population at large pays an extra fifty cents. The payees profit immensely, the payers lose only a little, and everyone's happy. Except for the fact that the market becomes screwy and inefficient.
Inefficiency is what is required for inflation and a higher standard of living.
That is the single most ignorant thing I have ever read on Slashdot. The Law of Comparative Advantage is like that of gravity, or one and one summing to two--it's a mathematical principal and, quite simply, cannot be wrong.
And yet it is- to take on your analogy, one and one have been summing to negative six in reality for the past 40 years when it comes to "free trade". SOMETHING has gone wrong with that theory. My idea is that "something wrong" is corporate control of the government writing the laws. As you say, Comparative Advantage is an axiom- so when reality doesn't match it, something has gone desparately wrong with the world.
As for trade deficits, who cares?
I care. I'm an honest fellow, I like to PAY my debts off and stay in the black- not keep building up debt until I and my family have to be sold into slavery to pay it off.
We send the Japanese little pieces of paper, and they send us automobiles. Would you rather have a stack of paper, or a car?
I'd rather pay my neighbor to build my car- without going into debt to buy it, and without resorting to an economic model that no longer matches the real world.
Dude, it was an example. The really interesti
Sigh...I really shouldn't feed the trolls, but here goes...The reason that the 'duel of honor' as you put it was phased out of our present legal system is because it has the unfortunate side effect that one must be willing to stake life and limb on the outcome of the dispute and there are plenty of things that while important do not merit risking life and limb. Thus, the 'duel of honor', is at best inefficient and at worst a barbaric anachronism...a reminder of those times when the strong took what they wanted from the weak at sword point and that is precisely the type of coercion that libertarians seek to avoid.
My point is this- the strong are still taking what they want from the weak. All you've really done is change the weapon from sword to money. The coercion will still exist. There is no way to avoid the coercion. A man killed by starvation on the street is just as dead as one killed by the sword- but his death was slower and more painful and less humane. If a CEO isn't willing to face his victims in a dispute, and hides behind the government, there's a reason for that.
You are attempting a Reductio ad absurdum but with statements like that it is clear that what you are in fact doing is Argumentum ad nauseam.
I actually don't believe in Euclidean Logic- I run on Boolean instead.
The free market cannot exist without government protection from threat of violent force. If you want to dispute the libertarian position then you must at least get your facts straight about what that position entails. The government exists to defend the people from external aggression, enforce contracts, and resolve disputes without people picking up the sword or the gun.
You forgot "As long as we don't have to pay for it", since most libertarians are tax evaders.
The free market does not and cannot stand against threat of violence which is why the government exists to suppress the use of coercive force, because most reasonable people (you are obviously not one of them) agree that we would rather live in a civil society where people don't beat their neighbor over the head because they have a dispute.
The "Free" Market, in and of itself, is a threat of coercive force. A civil society is just one where you are forbidden from taking justice on the people who wronged you when they deserve it.
the true function of capitalism is to achieve a fair and just society for everyone and to provide the highest possible standard of living to each individual member of that society. Capitalism is not just for the rich, but also for the poor and everyone else.
Then why is it that Capitalism ALWAYS breaks down into Corporatism, where corporations run the government to put individual human beings into situations of debt slavery? If that is the true function of capitalism, then it's made the same mistake as Marx- it doesn't work in situations where you can't take justice on those who would defraud you.
The government enforces the rules of the game
No it doesn't- the government is owned by the rich and enforces the rules of the rich to the detriment of the poor.
the rules that we all agreed to play by when we put down the guns and tried to form a decent society. There is nothing wrong with that.
We don't have a decent society. No level of human cohabitation above the tribe can possibly be decent because it cannot be held together without rules and coercion.
what a load of bullox...nobody is forcing you to buy their products
What other products are available to buy? It's not profitable to build stuff locally if every other government in the world can sell here at any price.
and the government prevents them from taking your money through violence.
No, the government ALLOWS them to take my money through violence. International corporations could not exist without major military support- and the government provides that to them. Try to protes