A problem with many "green" power plants is that they are constructed with materials that were produced burning fossile fuels. If this were not the case, "green" power would be cheaper than "fossile/dirty" power. It often comes down to the point that "green" power plants are just very expensive batteries, and it would not surprise me, if in many cases the are actually wasting energy.
I'm not sure if I understand your point. Are you saying "Well, you can't build a green power plant without using dirty materials, so fuckit, just build an oil/coal plant"? Seems to me that if a guy can make a couple bucks selling electricity from burning nut shells that used to go to a landfill, that maybe - just maybe - there's a net benefit somewhere.
Where I live, some folks put a furnace made from a 55 gallon drum in their homes & burn corn cobs in the winter for supplemental heating. Seems great to me. You're not sending a drum to the landfill & you're burning the cobs - probably acquired for free - instead of paying someone else for fuel. Maybe that drum was used before to haul around toxic sludge & maybe it was built in an inefficient high energy steel plant & maybe a huge mining pit was dug into the earth to extract the ore in the first place, but don't you think that throwing it in the basement & using it as a furnace is better than rolling it into a ravine somewhere to keep an old car & washing machine company?
otherwise, could you elaborate on your point on how the "green" power plants are somehow actually wasting energy?
Pet Peeve #1 People who think because there gas prices are too high, they think every bodies should be that high.
Ignoring the fact that other countries might be able to get drill there own oil, and get a better deal because there population is higher, and thus can by in larger 'bulk'.
You're kidding, right? The reality is that we essentially burn subsidized fuel in this country. In other countries, the tax man adds a bit to the cost of fuel. Go figure, Western Europe and Scandinavia seem to put more focus on population health and a clean environment than profits in the auto and oil industries. Charging extra for the fuel does a couple things, it is a disincentive to waste fuel. It helps pay for some of the hidden costs associated with burning fossil fuels.
The US is not serious about reducing emissions. We are also not charged the true cost of fuel. By that I mean that we, as consumers, do not pay for the cleanup costs, or the healthcare costs that petroleum based fuels cause.
This URL explains, a little bit, about how the cost of gasoline effetively hasn't changed in the US in the last 30 years. If you only go back 25 years, its arguable that the cost has dropped, and significantly. The price per gallon in the US first hit a dollar in the late 70s. As long as I've been driving (17 years), its barely changed. Compare that to the changes in wages. Or the change in real estate values. Or the cost of the vehicles we're driving. Gas is CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP.
devil's advocate: Its a free market baby!
on
No Americans Need Apply
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
In this age's global economy, the reality is that the US economic model is growing beyond the US's borders. Multi-national corportations are shopping around for the best deal. Particularly when the US economy is struggling, many of these companies will define 'best' deal as the cheapest. Other posters have pointed out that you get what you pay for. Maybe eventually the companies that outsource will realize that their savings on paper are costing them more than they realize.
In the meantime, technical folks that lived large during the boom times have to realize that people offshore have also realized there's money to be made in technology. Their price is lower, so the jobs go offshore. Those of us here in the US have to either lower our prices or convince employers that we provide more value than the cheaper offshore workers.
In other news, blue-collar workers have been arguing for years that we need to close our borders to foreign products, or tarrif the hell out of them. Now, suddenly, white collar jobs are being lost as well & people are shouting "Close the borders!" "Get rid of the H1-B's!" "Save MY job!"
Sorry, dude. Thats the way it works. Change careers. Develop new skills. Start your own business that hires only 3+ generation Americans. But if you choose to drive a foreign car, or watch an off-shore made television, or insert example here of products built outside the US that were/are more expensive when built here, you're living a double-standard. It can't work both ways. Pick your economic system: protectionism or a free market.
How come this seems to be the only project that's getting any attention?
Is it because it's the only one that's doing anything? Or is it more like it's the only one that's making all their results public?
(or quite possibly, in true slashdot tradition, it could be just because it's the one that looks the coolest?;-))
To address your last point first, I'd say that, on slashdot anyway, Carmack is getting a lot more coverage & support than Rutan. I think mostly because he's famous for videogames, though I'm personally more impressed that he's willing to dedicate resources to a grassroots effort, because he's looking for a new challenge/hobby.
Rutan, on the other hand, has the resources as well as the vision. Frankly, I think his primary motivation is fed from some inner child still inspired by the science fiction of the 50's and the space race of the 60's. Lucky for him, he has the talent, experience & team to be able to chase that dream.
Observers in the chase Starship were treated to a closeup bizarre view of the spaceship plunging downward in a rock-stable near vertical feathered descent. First public showings of these videos will be on 26 September at the annual SETP symposium in Los Angeles.
How long is halley's comet going to last? If its a little 10km diameter object thats not only melting on each pass, but breaking up as well, how many times can it survive its lap of the sun?
For the record, downloading the firmware & reinstalling is a piece of cake. I'm not enough of an admin to know how to check for the incessant SNTP packets, but following the Netgear reinstall directions was easy enough.
Makes a guy wonder just how much is still available regarding key electrical and telephone infrastructure. Emergency power capabilities of broadcasters (radio, television, mobile phone). Gas lines, in the parts of the country that have them. Water systems. There's likely a bunch of data out there, ready to be mined.
We are one step closer to having R2D2! I wonder if the robots can crawl around while the plane is in flight? (Probably not, based on the specs given). Anyway, I think this is pretty interesting. Using these on a space shuttle might not be a bad idea, ie- crawling around outside and inspecting things before take off. And later- making external in-flight repairs...
Uh, dude. The wall-crawler (i.e. fuselage inspector) uses a fan to create a low pressure area between it & the surface its crawling. Without an incredibly powerful fan, it won't work on a flying aircraft. Do I have to say anything about the absence of air in space?
Re:There goes my number-one excuse
on
Chimera Twins Story
·
· Score: 2, Funny
I call it, 'Being a Gemini'. If you believe in that astrology crap, which I certainly don't want to imply I do & invoke the wrath of God fearing Christians.
Of course, you're joking, but on the other hand; why not? While their success rate is still fairly low at one out of 5 on this flight; and only 1 out of what, a dozen attempts? Seems like many of their problems were maintenance related - they blamed the fuel system and bad servos for two of the crashes - I think only one was attributed to weather.
Next challenge: send the plane one way & get an Irish modeller to send it back!
I would argue that weight is irrelevant. However, wingloading is very significant. This is typically measured in lbs / ft2 (thats pounds per square foot). The shuttle's wing loading is very very high, partly due to its high weight, partly due to its relatively small wings.
Wingloading has an impact on sink rate. As wingload goes up, sink rate does as well; i.e. the more work a piece of wing has to do in terms of lifting, the more drag it produces. ergo, higher wing loadings usually equal higher drag.
Sink rate is sometimes expressed as glide ratio. i.e. how for forward does the aircraft move for each foot it drops? High performance sailplanes are in the 100:1 neighborhood. Normal GA (general aviation) aircraft are more like 30:1. My guess is that the shuttle doesn't do much better than 2 or 3 to 1. For reference, a brick is 0:1. Space Ship One? I'd be rather surprised if Rutan designed a craft with anything worse than 10:1, but then I'm not an aerospace engineer.
One of the questions in the parent of your post was:
Also are they using a distribution or are they "rolling their own"?
so, what is it? Red Hat was mentioned in the article, but my guess is that Oracle has to support a variety of distributions. Any other names? Suse? Pardon my ignorance, but who are the other big players, particularly internationally?
Goto a prof with your suspicions (but you don't know yet, how could you?) and get assigned to find out for one of your papers. You've already done the work, so it should be an easy grade.
Yeah, what he said. Do you have a prof that you respect & have a good relationship with? Hey, maybe thats a dumb question, but I went to a small school. Anyway, you can potentially turn it into a proof of knowledge in subject matter & get credit. Also, having a faculty member on your side should mitigate the potential downsides of the administration saying "and tell us again why you were hacking into the system in the first place?"
"...a growing body of research suggests that excessive exposure to [artificial] night light can... even trigger deadly hormonal imbalances in humans."
riiiiight.... That's why everyone that lives in Alaska, north of the arctic circle, dies when they reach puberty. Man, what would life be like without those deadly hormonal imbalances due to excessive light during the summer in Alaska?
Seriously though, I think the bigger problem is from the lack of light! If you go to those same regions (north of the arctic circle), you'll find abnormally high suicide rates during the winter due to depression from the excessive darkness.
You rebutted your own argument. As the article mentioned, living organisms (humans, for instance) have evolved to expect certain levels of light & darkness. It is the lack or disruption of these cycles that has the potential to effect humans & other life forms adversely. Like people that whack themselves due to SAD (seasonal affective disorder). The article (did I say RTFA?) mentions higher rates of breast cancer in women who work the night shift - they don't get a regular dose of darkness that their bodies expect.
Ok. Busted. I only looked at the article before posting, without actually reading the thing...
In any case, I'm still skeptical of these devices working in any vehicle with the windows down. Ok, maybe I should just fix the a/c, but there's something to be said for fresh air.
Your hypothesis would hold true if there were only one drug company. However, with several 'big boys' there is competition to provide a better drug for common problems. This would hold more true if drug patents lasted forever - companies would work harder to find a better drug ASAP instead of just waiting for the patent to run out.
you can easily define all columns in all tables as NOT NULL. so if YOU don't want to use them, or consider tham a "poison pill" then don't allow them. But some of the rest of us might find a value in a NULLable column. For instance some rows, but not all in table A might have a relationsip to table B. Leaving a NULL value in that column (Foreign Key) pretty clearly expresses this concept.
Are you certain SQL was modeled on COBOL?? Granted I never used COBOL on the job, but what I recall of the language doesn't much remind me of SQL.
Slashdot Mirror
Indeed! We saw the movie in high school english class as background material to the King Arthur / Camelot literature.
Wait, are you talking about the sendmail bug discussed on slashdot 2 days ago?
I'm not sure if I understand your point. Are you saying "Well, you can't build a green power plant without using dirty materials, so fuckit, just build an oil/coal plant"? Seems to me that if a guy can make a couple bucks selling electricity from burning nut shells that used to go to a landfill, that maybe - just maybe - there's a net benefit somewhere.
Where I live, some folks put a furnace made from a 55 gallon drum in their homes & burn corn cobs in the winter for supplemental heating. Seems great to me. You're not sending a drum to the landfill & you're burning the cobs - probably acquired for free - instead of paying someone else for fuel. Maybe that drum was used before to haul around toxic sludge & maybe it was built in an inefficient high energy steel plant & maybe a huge mining pit was dug into the earth to extract the ore in the first place, but don't you think that throwing it in the basement & using it as a furnace is better than rolling it into a ravine somewhere to keep an old car & washing machine company?
otherwise, could you elaborate on your point on how the "green" power plants are somehow actually wasting energy?
You're kidding, right? The reality is that we essentially burn subsidized fuel in this country. In other countries, the tax man adds a bit to the cost of fuel. Go figure, Western Europe and Scandinavia seem to put more focus on population health and a clean environment than profits in the auto and oil industries. Charging extra for the fuel does a couple things, it is a disincentive to waste fuel. It helps pay for some of the hidden costs associated with burning fossil fuels.
The US is not serious about reducing emissions. We are also not charged the true cost of fuel. By that I mean that we, as consumers, do not pay for the cleanup costs, or the healthcare costs that petroleum based fuels cause.
This URL explains, a little bit, about how the cost of gasoline effetively hasn't changed in the US in the last 30 years. If you only go back 25 years, its arguable that the cost has dropped, and significantly. The price per gallon in the US first hit a dollar in the late 70s. As long as I've been driving (17 years), its barely changed. Compare that to the changes in wages. Or the change in real estate values. Or the cost of the vehicles we're driving. Gas is CHEAP CHEAP CHEAP.
In this age's global economy, the reality is that the US economic model is growing beyond the US's borders. Multi-national corportations are shopping around for the best deal. Particularly when the US economy is struggling, many of these companies will define 'best' deal as the cheapest. Other posters have pointed out that you get what you pay for. Maybe eventually the companies that outsource will realize that their savings on paper are costing them more than they realize.
In the meantime, technical folks that lived large during the boom times have to realize that people offshore have also realized there's money to be made in technology. Their price is lower, so the jobs go offshore. Those of us here in the US have to either lower our prices or convince employers that we provide more value than the cheaper offshore workers.
In other news, blue-collar workers have been arguing for years that we need to close our borders to foreign products, or tarrif the hell out of them. Now, suddenly, white collar jobs are being lost as well & people are shouting "Close the borders!" "Get rid of the H1-B's!" "Save MY job!"
Sorry, dude. Thats the way it works. Change careers. Develop new skills. Start your own business that hires only 3+ generation Americans. But if you choose to drive a foreign car, or watch an off-shore made television, or insert example here of products built outside the US that were/are more expensive when built here, you're living a double-standard. It can't work both ways. Pick your economic system: protectionism or a free market.
To address your last point first, I'd say that, on slashdot anyway, Carmack is getting a lot more coverage & support than Rutan. I think mostly because he's famous for videogames, though I'm personally more impressed that he's willing to dedicate resources to a grassroots effort, because he's looking for a new challenge/hobby.
Rutan, on the other hand, has the resources as well as the vision. Frankly, I think his primary motivation is fed from some inner child still inspired by the science fiction of the 50's and the space race of the 60's. Lucky for him, he has the talent, experience & team to be able to chase that dream.
From the mission summary:
here's a stoopid question:
How long is halley's comet going to last? If its a little 10km diameter object thats not only melting on each pass, but breaking up as well, how many times can it survive its lap of the sun?
Inquiring Minds want to Know!
For the record, downloading the firmware & reinstalling is a piece of cake. I'm not enough of an admin to know how to check for the incessant SNTP packets, but following the Netgear reinstall directions was easy enough.
I'd shell out 20,000,000 just to ESCAPE Lance Bass.
Where do I mod the Article +5 Fuggin Hilarious?
An accomplished searcher can learn much about the world we live in, as slashdot reported some time ago.
An interesting reminder, to be sure, given yesterday's blackout.
Makes a guy wonder just how much is still available regarding key electrical and telephone infrastructure. Emergency power capabilities of broadcasters (radio, television, mobile phone). Gas lines, in the parts of the country that have them. Water systems. There's likely a bunch of data out there, ready to be mined.
Actually, the pulse-jet people are not Xcor. The pulse jet people are a couple guys messing around in their garage. Did you hit the link in the parent? Try Junkyard Wars Yield New Engine Technology. The unfortunately low-quality pic is here.
Uh, dude. The wall-crawler (i.e. fuselage inspector) uses a fan to create a low pressure area between it & the surface its crawling. Without an incredibly powerful fan, it won't work on a flying aircraft. Do I have to say anything about the absence of air in space?
I call it, 'Being a Gemini'. If you believe in that astrology crap, which I certainly don't want to imply I do & invoke the wrath of God fearing Christians.
Of course, you're joking, but on the other hand; why not? While their success rate is still fairly low at one out of 5 on this flight; and only 1 out of what, a dozen attempts? Seems like many of their problems were maintenance related - they blamed the fuel system and bad servos for two of the crashes - I think only one was attributed to weather.
Next challenge: send the plane one way & get an Irish modeller to send it back!
I would argue that weight is irrelevant. However, wingloading is very significant. This is typically measured in lbs / ft2 (thats pounds per square foot). The shuttle's wing loading is very very high, partly due to its high weight, partly due to its relatively small wings.
Wingloading has an impact on sink rate. As wingload goes up, sink rate does as well; i.e. the more work a piece of wing has to do in terms of lifting, the more drag it produces. ergo, higher wing loadings usually equal higher drag.
Sink rate is sometimes expressed as glide ratio. i.e. how for forward does the aircraft move for each foot it drops? High performance sailplanes are in the 100:1 neighborhood. Normal GA (general aviation) aircraft are more like 30:1. My guess is that the shuttle doesn't do much better than 2 or 3 to 1. For reference, a brick is 0:1. Space Ship One? I'd be rather surprised if Rutan designed a craft with anything worse than 10:1, but then I'm not an aerospace engineer.
One of the questions in the parent of your post was:
so, what is it? Red Hat was mentioned in the article, but my guess is that Oracle has to support a variety of distributions. Any other names? Suse? Pardon my ignorance, but who are the other big players, particularly internationally?
Yeah, what he said. Do you have a prof that you respect & have a good relationship with? Hey, maybe thats a dumb question, but I went to a small school. Anyway, you can potentially turn it into a proof of knowledge in subject matter & get credit. Also, having a faculty member on your side should mitigate the potential downsides of the administration saying "and tell us again why you were hacking into the system in the first place?"
You rebutted your own argument. As the article mentioned, living organisms (humans, for instance) have evolved to expect certain levels of light & darkness. It is the lack or disruption of these cycles that has the potential to effect humans & other life forms adversely. Like people that whack themselves due to SAD (seasonal affective disorder). The article (did I say RTFA?) mentions higher rates of breast cancer in women who work the night shift - they don't get a regular dose of darkness that their bodies expect.
How do you do it in any other vehicle? Is your argument that it is safer to yapp on the phone in something like a Yugo?
Ok. Busted. I only looked at the article before posting, without actually reading the thing...
In any case, I'm still skeptical of these devices working in any vehicle with the windows down. Ok, maybe I should just fix the a/c, but there's something to be said for fresh air.
Yeah, but which one works well when driving down the freeway in a topless jeep with the (mud) tires howling at 75mph?
Your hypothesis would hold true if there were only one drug company. However, with several 'big boys' there is competition to provide a better drug for common problems. This would hold more true if drug patents lasted forever - companies would work harder to find a better drug ASAP instead of just waiting for the patent to run out.
2 things:
you can easily define all columns in all tables as NOT NULL. so if YOU don't want to use them, or consider tham a "poison pill" then don't allow them. But some of the rest of us might find a value in a NULLable column. For instance some rows, but not all in table A might have a relationsip to table B. Leaving a NULL value in that column (Foreign Key) pretty clearly expresses this concept.
Are you certain SQL was modeled on COBOL?? Granted I never used COBOL on the job, but what I recall of the language doesn't much remind me of SQL.