(disclaimer, I work for Sun, but I manage to be completely clueless about many things, including the official names of Sun's products)
Niagara 1, had one FPU per chip. Niagara 2, has more than one.
The way you pose it -- doesn't perform unless you can find the parallelism -- is not the right way. Some clever person found a market where there was parallelism, and that turns the problem around. "Given that I have all this work to do, what's the throughput per watt?" Niagara wins there. And it happened that those people, or a lot of them, didn't have a burning need for floating point.
Or to use a lame car analogy, a schoolbus is no good unless you can find 32 kids to haul, whereas a minicooper is cool and zippy with only two. But if you regularly have 32 kids to haul, and some people do, you want a schoolbus, and a minicooper is not very efficient.
Ditto that. Years ago my two boys got given (older) Gameboy + Pokemon and (younger) an Educational Toy. The ET was clearly understood to be no fun, younger son, who could not read at the time, later got a Gameboy + Pokemon, got very frustrated for a while.
As soon as a kid can read, Pokemon, at least the old Red/Blue versions, is a fine game, vastly superior to the TV show, movies, and card games.
Super Mario Brothers is pretty good fun.
Also, younger son was not reading at the beginning of 2nd grade, which had everyone rather concerned. Not too long after that he was reading the NY Times pretty regularly, and comprehending (he's a big fan of Paul Krugman).
Your understanding is inconsistent with my experience. Encryption off, torrents don't work. Encryption on, torrents work. They may be filtering differently in different places; if they were clever, they would, because it keeps us confused discussing it on the intertubes.
I'm not running torrents right now, because Comcast also has Sekrit Limits that might cause them to bounce me as a customer. I'm prepared for that, but the rest of my family is not. (The fact that I am still a Comcast customer, means that I have no alternatives. My neighbor has FIOS, I think about hammering a pipe between our basements sometimes.)
If it did, then we can at least talk about tradeoffs between safety and civil liberties.
If it didn't, then we've lost liberty for nothing.
And no, I don't think it made us one bit safer. It might make panicky paranoid people feel safer, but anyone who can count knows that we've got more terrorists behind the wheels of automobiles, than ever tried to get on an airplane.
If you have ever participated in any town hall style meeting, you generally get one or two questions, then you sit your butt down and let another person have the podium.
And if not, we'll Taser(TM) your ass! We've got a few people who habitually run over at town meeting, this will definitely move things along. Good thinking.
Legal p2p file sharing is one way to keep the internet from becoming just like commercial TV. If the only people allowed to upload are those who can afford big pipes, then it will be content from big corporations. User-generated content is certainly not guaranteed to be wonderful, but I'll take my chances; every once in a while I see something pretty wonderful -- for example:
This user would like to support legal file sharing. Download limits are not interesting, since I aim to get a share ratio greater than one. Uploading 40KB/second translates to 144MB/hour, 3.456 GB/day, 104GB/month. I did this, more or less, last year or so, with DSL (I used speed scheduling, so that I used less during the day, but cranked it up late at night).
I still have no idea if this is excessive, or not. If Comcast gave me information (e.g., times of day when bandwidth is more available) I would be happy to adjust my usage to be more helpful. I would back switch to DSL if it were not for bizarre noise issues (DSL worked fine for 4-5 years, then it started hissing despite lots of filters).
You are imagining, say, a vehicle-dependent gas tax, calculated based on your score at the most recent smog test?
That would be interesting, if it could be (politically) managed. Or do you have some other plan? (If you say something is possible AND worth doing, then clearly you have thought about it enough to establish an upper bound on the cost).
Doesn't work, if your goal is to reduce smog, unless we can come up with a mechanism for billing each and every smog producer for their proportional contribution. That is, smog is an external cost, that market mechanisms will ignore.
"Laughable" is not an appropriate word here. The Boehm GC works astonishingly well, given the obstacles that it faces. The BIBOP scheme that it uses is roughly equivalent to multiple-sized-free lists, which generally works well for malloc/free memory allocation. If you wish to nasty words like "laughable", I seriously suggest that you go out and take some measurements with real applications to back them up. Java will do better, but the gap is unlikely to be large enough to justify the sneering tone of your post.
And it is also possible to devise a conservative-compacting collector (look for patents by Joel Bartlett).
(You may safely assume that I understand all the "come back when" items you list.)
Hell, here in Boston we've had more people killed by infrastructure falling on them, than by bombs on infrastructure.
If you're worried about dying in a violent surprise, then a rational person is worried about getting hit by a car.
If you're worried about dying from the most common causes of death in this country, a (non-smoking) rational person is worried about getting fat and out of shape in a car.
Actual terrorist deaths are in the noise. Even 9/11 was less than 10% of the yearly auto death rate, and 1% of the statistically-inferred yearly tobacco death rate.
I'm not going to go shoving it in people's faces, however
I seem to recall some saying
I want to see them make the sacrifices first. If they are willing to do that, then I'm more willing to listen to them.
And if I had merely said, "my eco-dick is huge, therefore you should listen to ME", what would your response have been?
The world is full of people who say what you said in your great-grand-parent post, who aren't doing diddly, and that needs to change, whether Al Gore has a big wasteful mansion or not. I'm sorry that I mistook you for one of those useless whiners.
"You first." Basically, for anyone who advocates something like that, I want to see them make the sacrifices first.
Sacrifices, eh? So if it's good for me, or I enjoy it, it doesn't count? The oil's not really saved unless I suffer? But anyhow...
I'm averaging over 30 miles of would-be-car-travel on my bicycle, each week, with one month off this winter when it was single digits outside and I was recovering from the flu and out of town twice. I'm doing "grocery runs" and one or two work commutes per week (my goal is two, if the weather and schedules cooperate). And when I drive, it's a Honda Civic. I'm six feet tall, over 200 pounds, I don't want to hear anyone whining about "I need a big car" unless you're bigger (taller, not fatter) than me. My friend Walter's 6-2 or 6-3, he fits in a Miata.
I think you are missing the point. Technology can used for a lot more than just production of fuel, and reducing consumption does not mean returning to horse-and-buggy.
Consider if we had properly "smart" cars, that would not run into each other or anything else. If you're not going to run into anything, all of a sudden, all those crush zones and all that armor is unnecessary. You can drive a much smaller, lighter car. You can cram more cars into a parking lot, hence more economic activity. You can cram more cars into a road, too. This is technology saving energy, without costing you any comfort.
Technology also makes "hair shirts" much more comfortable. Maybe you're blessed with a no-maintenance body, but mine benefits from a few hours of heavy exercise each week (it benefits in measureable ways that get me a thumbs-up from my doctor). I have to spend this time exercising, one way or another. If I overlap that exercise with my commute, say on a bicycle, I save time. Technology makes this an easier option. Better lighting (LEDs, better battery technology) makes the bike more visible. Better fabric (microfiber, Goretex, Polartec) makes me more comfortable. Better fibers (kevlar) make the tires lighter, stronger, and more puncture-resistant. Better engineering (9-speed indexed shifting; chain master-link; disk brakes; SPD pedals) makes the bike easier to use. I could, if I wanted, spend money on aerodynamic spokes and fairings; that would let me travel faster, and (for a given amount of exercise) do more commuting. (Remember, I need to get a certain minimum amount of exercise each week. Technology lets me turn that exercise into larger and larger hunks of transportation.)
Computers (networks, databases) might allow more flexible use of cars -- imagine a system that could find you a relatively compatible car-pool partner with 30-minutes notice, that would manage trading of car-pool credits, so that you could barter rides, or perhaps even earn a little money for being a helpful guy if you regularly gave people rides.
And furthermore, much of our consumption is a side-effect of clever marketing induced by quirks in the emissions and fuel-economy rules. Auto manufacturers saw that they could make money selling huge cars, they pulled out all the stops in an effort to convince us that our lives would not be complete, unless we each had our own personal armored personnel carrier to travel to the corner store in. It's very much in their economic interest that you continue to believe this.
It would take more than just that. I'm riding my bike 1-2 days/week, meaning a 20-40% reduction in commuting fuel. However, my itty-bitty car burns maybe 300 gallons of gas in a whole year, versus several 250-gallon tanks of fuel oil to heat my house in the winter. 40% of 300 gallons is not that much. If I were living in the south, I'd save on heating, but lose on cooling.
One thing that would really help would be to convert as many of the costs of driving into incremental costs as possible. If, with each gallon of gas that you bought, you paid for the proportional auto insurance, plus your contribution into a Car Care Savings Account (for funding repairs, or subsidizing replacement) each gallon would be in your-face expensive. Total costs would not change, but your perception would, and people would drive less, take more trouble to car pool, etc.
How do you know the "extremists" aren't police plants? Once upon a time, that would have sounded like a paranoid remark, but with this crowd, who knows?
And kids, don't forget, not only should we start planning how to disrupt the 2008 Republican Convention, we should make "plans" even if we have no intention of going. Make those spies earn their pay. Shouldn't be hard to get their attention, if they are willing to infiltrate the Quakers and Billionaires for Bush.
Even if you don't live in CA, work for a CA company, they are less likely to bother you with this crap since it is apparently (IANAL) unenforceable in CA. California also serves as a useful example of the economic uselessness of such agreements; if they were so necessary, their lack would stifle investment and industry.
I've turned down a job because we could not reach agreement over a non-compete clause; it was very broad, and unreasonable-looking, and they insisted on the annoying language. I took this as a sign that they might make trouble if I ever did want to leave (and if I have to hire a lawyer to assert my rights, that's trouble, even if I eventually win). I've signed others that were not so insane, but I generally hate them, and wish that other states would follow California's lead.
This has little or nothing to do with Pirate Bay and Sealand, but you asked a question that I can answer.
Lacking any other information, I will assume that you want the same songs I do, in which case http://www.emusic.com/ is what you want. They have a use-it-or-lose it subscription model, with the current cheapest monthly plan providing (I think) 30 songs for $10 ($.33/song), no DRM, MP3, usually encoded VBR with LAME 3.96. Sampling my purchases, the bit rate reported by iTunes is usually between 160 and 195kbps.
I have not purchased any songs on iTunes since I signed up for eMusic.
I've purchased songs by (output of "ls -1" in the appropriate folder):
Asobi Seksu,
Bettie Serveert,
Bjo??rk,
Brave Combo,
Dar Williams,
Frank Zappa,
Gillian Welch,
Johann Johannsson,
John Fahey,
Kaki King,
Led Zepplin Tribute,
Mission of Burma,
Nouvelle Vague,
Pere Ubu,
So Percussion,
The Go-Betweens,
The Mountain Goats,
Tracy Grammer and
Various Artists.
You might want to use this as a sort of a guide to what they do or don't have in their digital inventory.
I have no problem buying my quota each month, and at $.33/song I am perfectly willing to take a
chance on a second album by So Percussion or Bettie Serveert.
and notice that I am not even spamming you with the canned "tell a friend about eMusic"
mail that gets me free songs if you sign up. I'm doing this because I want these guys to
succeed.
You wonder, sometimes, what they hell we're paying these people for. I'm a town meeting member. No pay, no lobbyists offering to buy me dinner or tickets to a ball game, and I read the junk I vote on, and so do a lot of other people in town meeting.
Of course, we're not voting on these damnable phonebook-sized bills, but if someone handed me one of those, I would just vote no, unless it all really did pertain to a single issue (which they don't). It's 17 layers of logrolling and backscratching and earmarks and nonsense.
I'll be giving this a try, in Boston, this winter. My plan is to get studded snow tires (Nokians) and to ride in the roads, because I know about the sidewalks and the trails. If that fails, I plan to get my aerobic exercise wandering around the neighborhood and shoveling unshoveled sidewalks into the driveways of the people who were supposed to shovel them in the first place. Supposedly you can be cited for not shoveling your sidewalk, but that never happens.
I tried out a set of snow chains the other day as an experiment. Okay on grass (okay if you aren't the grass) not so okay on dry pavement. Major, tooth-chattering vibration at any sensible speed. I might do it on a snow-covered bike path, I imagine it would be a substantial workout, and I'll piss off all the urban cross-country skiers by messing up their snow.
Plan C is to convert an old trailer into a plow, drag that behind a tandem, find a gullible but strong friend, and get a serious workout on the weekends. (I know this sounds loony, but it might work, and it'll make a fine story if it fails. The tandem's got some nice low gears on it, so who knows? Are you in?)
A 20 mile round trip, twice a week, will let you pick and choose your cycling days, and still lose (my estimate) about a pound per week (I'm down 20 since I got serious about biking more). This is something that you can ease into, if you are the timid/prudent sort. If you need to carry a little bit of cargo, you can build trash can panniers. If you need a lot, you can get an xtracycle. I've got one, the handling is great unloaded, and better than expected when loaded.
Free market economic theory doesn't say much about how we choose, only that we do, and that our utility functions have certain properties. As it happens, some of those theories (independent utility functions, full knowledge of choices) are more or less untrue, but capitalism muddles along anyhow.
In fact, a nanospambot's utility function may be a closer match to the theory than the ones that we have already. Just for example, "MORE SPLUNGE GOOD!!!" is independent (no matter what you do, I want MORE SPLUNGE. Without nanospambots, your purchase of an SUV might prompt me to consider acquiring my own defensive hardware in response -- my choice is influenced by yours).
Ooooh, Economists! Now there's a scientific profession with a track record for making solid predictions and avoiding political influence. (not)
The anti-Gore industries in fact have a long track record of crying wolf about all manner of regulation, whether it is safety devices or pollution controls. I would not bet that they are finally right this time. The auto industry is a particular offender here, and has engaged in heroic efforts to deceive consumers about the "safety" of those gas-guzzling SUVs that they so love to sell (it's an arms race -- in a crash into an abutment, a HumVee has the same amount of hood length to collapse as my Honda Civic, but in a crash between the two cars, the Honda is the loser in the momentum exchange. If your neighbor buys an SUV, it increases your motive to buy one. An honest economist would tell you that this blows one of the assumptions required for a free-market economy to be welfare-maximizing (independent utility functions), and we do NOT necessarily obtain the best outcome with a complete absence of government regulation. Money spent on an arms race still counts as economic activity, but it benefits only the arms merchants, and not the consumers.)
We'll have a hard time proving that global warming "caused" Katrina. On the other hand, 3 of the 6 most intense hurricanes in the Atlantic occurred last year (Katrina, Rita, Wilma). I'm sure some of this is more thorough measurement in modern times, but we've been flying planes into hurricanes for decades, and that's still how we collect barometric data. In particular, the "most intense storm" record was broken twice -- the previous record was held by Gilbert (late 1980s) and before that the Labor Day storm (1935?).
Slashdot Mirror
(disclaimer, I work for Sun, but I manage to be completely clueless about many things, including the official names of Sun's products)
Niagara 1, had one FPU per chip. Niagara 2, has more than one.
The way you pose it -- doesn't perform unless you can find the parallelism -- is not the right way. Some clever person found a market where there was parallelism, and that turns the problem around. "Given that I have all this work to do, what's the throughput per watt?" Niagara wins there. And it happened that those people, or a lot of them, didn't have a burning need for floating point.
Or to use a lame car analogy, a schoolbus is no good unless you can find 32 kids to haul, whereas a minicooper is cool and zippy with only two. But if you regularly have 32 kids to haul, and some people do, you want a schoolbus, and a minicooper is not very efficient.
Ditto that. Years ago my two boys got given (older) Gameboy + Pokemon and (younger) an Educational Toy. The ET was clearly understood to be no fun, younger son, who could not read at the time, later got a Gameboy + Pokemon, got very frustrated for a while.
As soon as a kid can read, Pokemon, at least the old Red/Blue versions, is a fine game, vastly superior to the TV show, movies, and card games.
Super Mario Brothers is pretty good fun.
Also, younger son was not reading at the beginning of 2nd grade, which had everyone rather concerned. Not too long after that he was reading the NY Times pretty regularly, and comprehending (he's a big fan of Paul Krugman).
I'm not running torrents right now, because Comcast also has Sekrit Limits that might cause them to bounce me as a customer. I'm prepared for that, but the rest of my family is not. (The fact that I am still a Comcast customer, means that I have no alternatives. My neighbor has FIOS, I think about hammering a pipe between our basements sometimes.)
If it didn't, then we've lost liberty for nothing.
And no, I don't think it made us one bit safer. It might make panicky paranoid people feel safer, but anyone who can count knows that we've got more terrorists behind the wheels of automobiles, than ever tried to get on an airplane.
And if not, we'll Taser(TM) your ass! We've got a few people who habitually run over at town meeting, this will definitely move things along. Good thinking.
Bike Messengers on crack
Fixed gear bike tricks
Bike tricks (with horrible music)
Unicycle tricks
You also might not be the only old fart posting to slashdot.
This user would like to support legal file sharing. Download limits are not interesting, since I aim to get a share ratio greater than one. Uploading 40KB/second translates to 144MB/hour, 3.456 GB/day, 104GB/month. I did this, more or less, last year or so, with DSL (I used speed scheduling, so that I used less during the day, but cranked it up late at night). I still have no idea if this is excessive, or not. If Comcast gave me information (e.g., times of day when bandwidth is more available) I would be happy to adjust my usage to be more helpful. I would back switch to DSL if it were not for bizarre noise issues (DSL worked fine for 4-5 years, then it started hissing despite lots of filters).
You are imagining, say, a vehicle-dependent gas tax, calculated based on your score at the most recent smog test? That would be interesting, if it could be (politically) managed. Or do you have some other plan? (If you say something is possible AND worth doing, then clearly you have thought about it enough to establish an upper bound on the cost).
Doesn't work, if your goal is to reduce smog, unless we can come up with a mechanism for billing each and every smog producer for their proportional contribution. That is, smog is an external cost, that market mechanisms will ignore.
You are, of course, behind them. I hope your wiper fluid is topped up.
"Laughable" is not an appropriate word here. The Boehm GC works astonishingly well, given the obstacles that it faces. The BIBOP scheme that it uses is roughly equivalent to multiple-sized-free lists, which generally works well for malloc/free memory allocation. If you wish to nasty words like "laughable", I seriously suggest that you go out and take some measurements with real applications to back them up. Java will do better, but the gap is unlikely to be large enough to justify the sneering tone of your post. And it is also possible to devise a conservative-compacting collector (look for patents by Joel Bartlett). (You may safely assume that I understand all the "come back when" items you list.)
Hell, here in Boston we've had more people killed by infrastructure falling on them, than by bombs on infrastructure.
If you're worried about dying in a violent surprise, then a rational person is worried about getting hit by a car.
If you're worried about dying from the most common causes of death in this country, a (non-smoking) rational person is worried about getting fat and out of shape in a car.
Actual terrorist deaths are in the noise. Even 9/11 was less than 10% of the yearly auto death rate, and 1% of the statistically-inferred yearly tobacco death rate.
Sacrifices, eh? So if it's good for me, or I enjoy it, it doesn't count? The oil's not really saved unless I suffer? But anyhow...
I'm averaging over 30 miles of would-be-car-travel on my bicycle, each week, with one month off this winter when it was single digits outside and I was recovering from the flu and out of town twice. I'm doing "grocery runs" and one or two work commutes per week (my goal is two, if the weather and schedules cooperate). And when I drive, it's a Honda Civic. I'm six feet tall, over 200 pounds, I don't want to hear anyone whining about "I need a big car" unless you're bigger (taller, not fatter) than me. My friend Walter's 6-2 or 6-3, he fits in a Miata.
Your turn now. What are you doing?
I think you are missing the point. Technology can used for a lot more than just production of fuel, and reducing consumption does not mean returning to horse-and-buggy.
Consider if we had properly "smart" cars, that would not run into each other or anything else. If you're not going to run into anything, all of a sudden, all those crush zones and all that armor is unnecessary. You can drive a much smaller, lighter car. You can cram more cars into a parking lot, hence more economic activity. You can cram more cars into a road, too. This is technology saving energy, without costing you any comfort.
Technology also makes "hair shirts" much more comfortable. Maybe you're blessed with a no-maintenance body, but mine benefits from a few hours of heavy exercise each week (it benefits in measureable ways that get me a thumbs-up from my doctor). I have to spend this time exercising, one way or another. If I overlap that exercise with my commute, say on a bicycle, I save time. Technology makes this an easier option. Better lighting (LEDs, better battery technology) makes the bike more visible. Better fabric (microfiber, Goretex, Polartec) makes me more comfortable. Better fibers (kevlar) make the tires lighter, stronger, and more puncture-resistant. Better engineering (9-speed indexed shifting; chain master-link; disk brakes; SPD pedals) makes the bike easier to use. I could, if I wanted, spend money on aerodynamic spokes and fairings; that would let me travel faster, and (for a given amount of exercise) do more commuting. (Remember, I need to get a certain minimum amount of exercise each week. Technology lets me turn that exercise into larger and larger
hunks of transportation.)
Computers (networks, databases) might allow more flexible use of cars -- imagine a system that could find you a relatively compatible car-pool partner with 30-minutes notice, that would manage trading of car-pool credits, so that you could barter rides, or perhaps even earn a little money for being a helpful guy if you regularly gave people rides.
And furthermore, much of our consumption is a side-effect of clever marketing induced by quirks in the emissions and fuel-economy rules. Auto manufacturers saw that they could make money selling huge cars, they pulled out all the stops in an effort to convince us that our lives would not be complete, unless we each had our own personal armored personnel carrier to travel to the corner store in. It's very much in their economic interest that you continue to believe this.
One thing that would really help would be to convert as many of the costs of driving into incremental costs as possible. If, with each gallon of gas that you bought, you paid for the proportional auto insurance, plus your contribution into a Car Care Savings Account (for funding repairs, or subsidizing replacement) each gallon would be in your-face expensive. Total costs would not change, but your perception would, and people would drive less, take more trouble to car pool, etc.
How do you know the "extremists" aren't police plants? Once upon a time, that would have sounded like a paranoid remark, but with this crowd, who knows?
And kids, don't forget, not only should we start planning how to disrupt the 2008 Republican Convention, we should make "plans" even if we have no intention of going. Make those spies earn their pay. Shouldn't be hard to get their attention, if they are willing to infiltrate the Quakers and Billionaires for Bush.
I've turned down a job because we could not reach agreement over a non-compete clause; it was very broad, and unreasonable-looking, and they insisted on the annoying language. I took this as a sign that they might make trouble if I ever did want to leave (and if I have to hire a lawyer to assert my rights, that's trouble, even if I eventually win). I've signed others that were not so insane, but I generally hate them, and wish that other states would follow California's lead.
And don't forget, that extra power has to go somewhere; it gets turned into heat, inside your PC case.
Lacking any other information, I will assume that you want the same songs I do, in which case http://www.emusic.com/ is what you want. They have a use-it-or-lose it subscription model, with the current cheapest monthly plan providing (I think) 30 songs for $10 ($.33/song), no DRM, MP3, usually encoded VBR with LAME 3.96. Sampling my purchases, the bit rate reported by iTunes is usually between 160 and 195kbps.
I have not purchased any songs on iTunes since I signed up for eMusic.
I've purchased songs by (output of "ls -1" in the appropriate folder): Asobi Seksu, Bettie Serveert, Bjo??rk, Brave Combo, Dar Williams, Frank Zappa, Gillian Welch, Johann Johannsson, John Fahey, Kaki King, Led Zepplin Tribute, Mission of Burma, Nouvelle Vague, Pere Ubu, So Percussion, The Go-Betweens, The Mountain Goats, Tracy Grammer and Various Artists. You might want to use this as a sort of a guide to what they do or don't have in their digital inventory. I have no problem buying my quota each month, and at $.33/song I am perfectly willing to take a chance on a second album by So Percussion or Bettie Serveert.
and notice that I am not even spamming you with the canned "tell a friend about eMusic" mail that gets me free songs if you sign up. I'm doing this because I want these guys to succeed.
You wonder, sometimes, what they hell we're paying these people for. I'm a town meeting member. No pay, no lobbyists offering to buy me dinner or tickets to a ball game, and I read the junk I vote on, and so do a lot of other people in town meeting. Of course, we're not voting on these damnable phonebook-sized bills, but if someone handed me one of those, I would just vote no, unless it all really did pertain to a single issue (which they don't). It's 17 layers of logrolling and backscratching and earmarks and nonsense.
I tried out a set of snow chains the other day as an experiment. Okay on grass (okay if you aren't the grass) not so okay on dry pavement. Major, tooth-chattering vibration at any sensible speed. I might do it on a snow-covered bike path, I imagine it would be a substantial workout, and I'll piss off all the urban cross-country skiers by messing up their snow.
Plan C is to convert an old trailer into a plow, drag that behind a tandem, find a gullible but strong friend, and get a serious workout on the weekends. (I know this sounds loony, but it might work, and it'll make a fine story if it fails. The tandem's got some nice low gears on it, so who knows? Are you in?)
A 20 mile round trip, twice a week, will let you pick and choose your cycling days, and still lose (my estimate) about a pound per week (I'm down 20 since I got serious about biking more). This is something that you can ease into, if you are the timid/prudent sort. If you need to carry a little bit of cargo, you can build trash can panniers. If you need a lot, you can get an xtracycle. I've got one, the handling is great unloaded, and better than expected when loaded.
In fact, a nanospambot's utility function may be a closer match to the theory than the ones that we have already. Just for example, "MORE SPLUNGE GOOD!!!" is independent (no matter what you do, I want MORE SPLUNGE. Without nanospambots, your purchase of an SUV might prompt me to consider acquiring my own defensive hardware in response -- my choice is influenced by yours).
The anti-Gore industries in fact have a long track record of crying wolf about all manner of regulation, whether it is safety devices or pollution controls. I would not bet that they are finally right this time. The auto industry is a particular offender here, and has engaged in heroic efforts to deceive consumers about the "safety" of those gas-guzzling SUVs that they so love to sell (it's an arms race -- in a crash into an abutment, a HumVee has the same amount of hood length to collapse as my Honda Civic, but in a crash between the two cars, the Honda is the loser in the momentum exchange. If your neighbor buys an SUV, it increases your motive to buy one. An honest economist would tell you that this blows one of the assumptions required for a free-market economy to be welfare-maximizing (independent utility functions), and we do NOT necessarily obtain the best outcome with a complete absence of government regulation. Money spent on an arms race still counts as economic activity, but it benefits only the arms merchants, and not the consumers.)
We'll have a hard time proving that global warming "caused" Katrina. On the other hand, 3 of the 6 most intense hurricanes in the Atlantic occurred last year (Katrina, Rita, Wilma). I'm sure some of this is more thorough measurement in modern times, but we've been flying planes into hurricanes for decades, and that's still how we collect barometric data. In particular, the "most intense storm" record was broken twice -- the previous record was held by Gilbert (late 1980s) and before that the Labor Day storm (1935?).