Coal is a hydrocarbon whose molecular structure means it has more carbon in it per amount of energy extractable than does, for example, crude oil.
Coal has roughly twice as much carbon.
Using coal for energy produces roughly twice as much CO2 as using oil, which is bad enough.
If you had really effective sequestration, maybe this could work, but sequestration is really, really expensive, still basically untested for long-term storage ability, and no where near 100 percent effective.
Leave the coal in the ground and turn your deserts into solar farms and mountains into wind farms instead.
i.e. Get together a panel of computer science professors and experienced software engineers / architects / guru coders (i.e. practitioners in the field) and have them assess a random sample of software patents with an assessment: definitely obvious to a competent practitioner in the field, probably obvious, , probably not obvious, definitely not obvious.
I'd be really curious about the result. (Maybe it needs to be done on a claim by claim basis, but it would be interesting even to see it done on the preamble/overview descriptions of the patents.)
You know, I think when it comes down to it, I think the problem is we're not teaching people HOW to believe.
I don't mean WHAT to believe.
I mean HOW. As in, how to arrive at justified levels of belief in a rational and consistent manner.
I've pretty much come to the conclusion that most people are not that good at believing properly, or anywhere arguably even close to properly. The wrong conclusions being in the majority most of the time are then something of a foregone conclusion, given that when you don't know how to believe rationally, you typically just believe whoever you think is trustworthy, and charismatic slime-ball manipulators (overly self-interested leaders) sure know how to fake trustworthiness when there's something in it for them.
You can do anything you want as long as you don't fry the frickin' planet.
Is that too much to ask? Apparently yes for many people.
And don't give me "the science is wrong" crap. I heard it straight from the co-chair of working group 1 of the IPCC last week. The science is high-quality. The predictions are getting worse (for us) every time they are revised. The evidence that humans are a major cause is clear. As the CO2 is increasing, O2 is decreasing correspondingly, showing that the CO2 emissions are from combustion processes. "The science is wrong" is a desperate last-ditch appeal by the ignorant or malicious to the ignorant.
and as every good right-winger knows, gold supply will continue to grow exponentially because there is an infinite supply of gold on Earth. What do you think the infinite oil fields are lined with?
What about a peer-to-peer co-operative mesh network of residentially located Wi-max basestations.
The idea is: You own a basestation, you get a fair share of the revenue from the use of the wi-max network.
The wi-max network ties in at two or three locations in a city to high-speed fiber backbone.
Yeah, it's kind of like any other ISP business, but it could be organized like a non-profit co-op with all revenues shared among the large number of service-providing users. It would just be allowed to grow "organically" into whatever region someone felt like being a provider for.
Not sure what the cost to end users would end up being, but at least we've provided competition and eliminated the excessive profit factor.
Here's the thing. Markets, left to their own devices, would quickly invent governments, for security, property rights enforcement, and market supervision services. People would then clamor and agitate for and work toward more say in their government.
You just can't win. It's all part of a meta-stable complex system driven by energy efficiency maximization. Certain patterns of organization work better, and hierarchical governance of semi-autonomous agents is one of those patterns. Some people call that government.
I am surprised that you assess that database design requires less knowledge, theory etc. than programming.
I guess doing BAD database design requires less knowledge, but database design is really a lot about modelling the domain in a pragmatic yet suitably abstracted and extensible way, mixing in some tricky performance considerations. That's pretty knowledge-intensive to do right.
How exactly do you propose that businesses and free markets are going to get us to a zero-carbon economy by mid-century as is required to avoid catastrophic climate change, without government regulation or intervention in the markets to price carbon emissions?
Please take your answer step by step. I'm slow. Just don't deny the necessity of that change. You'd just be telegraphing your ignorance of reality if you did so.
Yes. Agreed. We rarely get it right til the second time around. We need to be booted to the ground by the first self-induced collapse before we tend to figure out "hmm. I guess we shouldn't try that again." As went the stockmarket in 1929 and the Titanic in 1912, so goes society as a whole in the mid 21st century.
See. If I'd paid attention in university I would've learned how to make un-mixed metaphors that don't have people leaping off the top of metaphorical pyramids and tumbling down the side of them into oblivion.
If you have real world tools you are a real world tool.
University is supposed to let you run up a pyramid of previous intellectual giants stacked together, so you can leap off the top and transcend what has gone before.
Yes it's good to learn things for yourself, but so much has already been learned by others that you need to get a briefing, a map, and tips about the shortcuts, along with a brain bootcamp workout (labs and exams).
The reason to read the works of (or paraphrases of the works of) ancient or historical thinkers is because they introduced new concepts and new patterns of thought. You can study these concepts and their relationships, and rehearse these patterns of thought, and increase your intellectual ammunition and versatility.
To think you don't need to get deep into some of these areas, and don't need to take time to wander around in each area of knowledge with expert guides, because "there is a wikipedia page for that", is the height of pseudo-intellectual arrogance. You will know the stuff in the same way a parrot knows it. And it will be as much use to you as it is to the parrot.
No seriously though, I got the equivalent of my liberal arts degree by studying artificial intelligence then applying the principles learned (about epistemology, metaphysics, optimization, attention management, agents and their goals etc) back on to people and situations I encountered in real life and in the news.
I hire university graduates for pretty much two reasons:
1. They have stick-to-it-iveness (certain level of define something, start it, finish it) and can work under constraints and pressures.
2. They are often not complete and total morons (may have some ability to learn, and recognize the importance of learning. From tough marking and exposure to academic geniuses they may have some grasp of, and respect the implications of, the true level of their ignorance.).
Me: Ok, as long as you agree never to ask me to start a new task before I've finished the previous one, I'm cool with that.
Oh, and as long as you don't mind me taking extra time and building in risk by guessing at things all the time and doing a lot of trial and error instead of glancing at TFM on the other screen.
I wonder if this is just something any society would tend to with very high population density, or is it cultural for different historical reasons.
Perhaps the concept of the "English Gentleman" has never loomed large in that society.
I know that I, having been raised in the British school of thought on these things, see queue jumping (when it is obvious that there is a queue) as a very grave offense, meriting a throwing down of the gauntlet, or instant destruction with my eye-mounted lasers.
I perceive that the queue jumpers are valuing themselves as greater than the sum total of the value of all the others they have pushed back. They are not behaving with the necessary social graces and reciprocity necessary for sustained civilized co-operation.
Civilized co-operation (and its compromises and restraint of individual selfishness) are an extremely high value to me, and that is why I have great contempt for those who violated it knowingly, and great pity for those condemned to scrabble in the dirt like jackals at a kill because they violate it out of lack of social education/inculcation.
Slashdot Mirror
Coal is a hydrocarbon whose molecular structure means it has more carbon in it per amount of energy extractable than does, for example, crude oil.
Coal has roughly twice as much carbon.
Using coal for energy produces roughly twice as much CO2 as using oil, which is bad enough.
If you had really effective sequestration, maybe this could work, but sequestration is really, really expensive, still basically untested for long-term storage ability, and no where near 100 percent effective.
Leave the coal in the ground and turn your deserts into solar farms and mountains into wind farms instead.
In US software patents?
i.e. Get together a panel of computer science professors and experienced software engineers / architects / guru coders (i.e. practitioners in the field) and have them assess a random sample of software patents with an assessment: definitely obvious to a competent practitioner in the field, probably obvious, , probably not obvious, definitely not obvious.
I'd be really curious about the result. (Maybe it needs to be done on a claim by claim basis, but it would be interesting even to see it done on the preamble/overview descriptions of the patents.)
You are in deep sh$t!
Please reference US Patent 94362451: A method and process of generalizing textually rendered statements by the inclusion of variables.
You know, I think when it comes down to it, I think the problem is we're not teaching people HOW to believe.
I don't mean WHAT to believe.
I mean HOW. As in, how to arrive at justified levels of belief in a rational and consistent manner.
I've pretty much come to the conclusion that most people are not that good at believing properly, or
anywhere arguably even close to properly. The wrong conclusions being in the majority most of the
time are then something of a foregone conclusion, given that when you don't know how to believe
rationally, you typically just believe whoever you think is trustworthy, and charismatic slime-ball
manipulators (overly self-interested leaders) sure know how to fake trustworthiness when there's
something in it for them.
You can do anything you want as long as you don't fry the frickin' planet.
Is that too much to ask? Apparently yes for many people.
And don't give me "the science is wrong" crap. I heard it straight from the co-chair of working group 1 of the IPCC last week.
The science is high-quality. The predictions are getting worse (for us) every time they are revised. The evidence that humans
are a major cause is clear. As the CO2 is increasing, O2 is decreasing correspondingly, showing that the CO2 emissions
are from combustion processes. "The science is wrong" is a desperate last-ditch appeal by the ignorant or malicious to
the ignorant.
"gold's supply grows exponentially"
and as every good right-winger knows, gold supply will continue to grow exponentially because there is an infinite supply of gold on Earth. What do you think the infinite oil fields are lined with?
Why don't we eliminate the scarcity.
What about a peer-to-peer co-operative mesh network of residentially located Wi-max basestations.
The idea is: You own a basestation, you get a fair share of the revenue from the use of the wi-max network.
The wi-max network ties in at two or three locations in a city to high-speed fiber backbone.
Yeah, it's kind of like any other ISP business, but it could be organized like a non-profit co-op with all
revenues shared among the large number of service-providing users. It would just be allowed to grow
"organically" into whatever region someone felt like being a provider for.
Not sure what the cost to end users would end up being, but at least we've provided competition and
eliminated the excessive profit factor.
Here's the thing. Markets, left to their own devices, would quickly invent governments, for security, property rights enforcement, and market supervision services. People would then clamor and agitate for and work toward more say in their government.
You just can't win. It's all part of a meta-stable complex system driven by energy efficiency maximization. Certain patterns of organization work better, and hierarchical governance of semi-autonomous agents is one of those patterns. Some people call that government.
No comment
I am surprised that you assess that database design requires less knowledge, theory etc. than programming.
I guess doing BAD database design requires less knowledge, but database design is really a lot about modelling the domain in a pragmatic yet suitably abstracted and extensible way, mixing in some tricky performance considerations. That's pretty knowledge-intensive to do right.
How trademark law is actually defined is:
If you use a mark in trade, you have the trademark right.
Then there are a bunch of criteria about whether the type of trade is sufficiently similar to cause confusion in the buying public.
So iCloud Rainmakers Inc. would be ok because not a computer or internet related business.
How exactly do you propose that businesses and free markets are going to get us to a zero-carbon economy by mid-century as is required to avoid catastrophic climate change, without government regulation or intervention in the markets to price carbon emissions?
Please take your answer step by step. I'm slow. Just don't deny the necessity of that change. You'd just be telegraphing your ignorance of reality if you did so.
Yes. Agreed. We rarely get it right til the second time around. We need to be booted to the ground by the first self-induced collapse before we tend to figure out "hmm. I guess we shouldn't try that again." As went the stockmarket in 1929 and the Titanic in 1912, so goes society as a whole in the mid 21st century.
A better question is "have we reached the maximum sustainable resource consumption/conversion rate per person times population".
A US citizen is responsible for 10 to 20 times more resource and energy consumption than a Chinese or Indian citizen, for example.
See. If I'd paid attention in university I would've learned how to make un-mixed metaphors that don't have people leaping off the top of metaphorical pyramids and tumbling down the side of them into oblivion.
If you have real world tools you are a real world tool.
University is supposed to let you run up a pyramid of previous intellectual giants stacked together, so you can leap off the top and transcend what has gone before.
Yes it's good to learn things for yourself, but so much has already been learned by others that you need to get a briefing, a map, and tips about the shortcuts, along with a brain bootcamp workout (labs and exams).
The reason to read the works of (or paraphrases of the works of) ancient or historical thinkers is because they introduced new concepts and new patterns of thought. You can study these concepts and their relationships, and rehearse these patterns of thought, and increase your intellectual ammunition and versatility.
To think you don't need to get deep into some of these areas, and don't need to take time to wander around in each area of knowledge with expert guides, because "there is a wikipedia page for that", is the height of pseudo-intellectual arrogance. You will know the stuff in the same way a parrot knows it. And it will be as much use to you as it is to the parrot.
"Google gets hacked from China. Decides to close China office and servers. Operate from Hong Kong"?
Why is this thought to be news?
My favourite term in this sort of area is "disincentivize" as used in the British mini-series "MI-5"
"Confirmed. Subjects have been disincentivized."
I'll leave it to your imagination as to what that's a euphemism for.
Be careful out there.
Ha ha. Well said. You almost got me there.
No seriously though, I got the equivalent of my liberal arts degree by studying artificial intelligence then applying the principles learned (about epistemology, metaphysics, optimization, attention management, agents and their goals etc) back on to people and situations I encountered in real life and in the news.
It actually worked.
I hire university graduates for pretty much two reasons:
1. They have stick-to-it-iveness (certain level of define something, start it, finish it) and can work under constraints and pressures.
2. They are often not complete and total morons (may have some ability to learn, and recognize the importance of learning. From tough marking and exposure to academic geniuses they may have some grasp of, and respect the implications of, the true level of their ignorance.).
the middle finger?
Oh, you mean Anonymous with a capital 'A'. I thought we were talking about anonymous.
Everyone knows anonymous is a mouse (heard in the walls or behind the couch at night) not a cat.
Management:We're taking one of your monitors.
Me: Ok, as long as you agree never to ask me to start a new task before I've finished the previous one, I'm cool with that.
Oh, and as long as you don't mind me taking extra time and building in risk by guessing at things all the time and doing a lot of trial and error instead of glancing at TFM on the other screen.
I wonder if this is just something any society would tend to with very high population density,
or is it cultural for different historical reasons.
Perhaps the concept of the "English Gentleman" has never loomed large in that society.
I know that I, having been raised in the British school of thought on these things, see
queue jumping (when it is obvious that there is a queue) as a very grave offense, meriting
a throwing down of the gauntlet, or instant destruction with my eye-mounted lasers.
I perceive that the queue jumpers are valuing themselves as greater than the sum total of the
value of all the others they have pushed back.
They are not behaving with the necessary social graces and reciprocity
necessary for sustained civilized co-operation.
Civilized co-operation (and its compromises and restraint of individual selfishness) are an extremely
high value to me, and that is why I have great contempt for those who violated it knowingly, and
great pity for those condemned to scrabble in the dirt like jackals at a kill because they violate it out of lack of social
education/inculcation.