The game industry's worst nightmare is a game that stays fun for two years. An AI that learns the game with you, and adapts its strategies to yours so that you have to keep innovating, might make that possible.
I'd like to see a football game that does that - where the other teams in the conference evolve to use strategies that counter your style of play.
Some gas stations are starting to carry E85 at the pump (85% ethanol, 15% gasoline).
The problem with burning straight ethanol is that it will eat the rubber bits in the fuel system (at least that used to be the problem - perhaps newer cars can handle it?).
Other ideas would be to run a huge air compressor and then produce liquid nitrogen and bottled oxygen.
Iowa has a proposal to do this - use wind turbines to compress air (I think) into underground caverns during the winter and spring (when we have lots of wind) and draw it out to produce power during the summer (when it is hot and still).
http://www.iamu.org/isep/Overview%20April%20-%20Ma y%202005.ppt
The corn acres come at the expense of soybean acres (for now). The amount of work, fertilizer, and chemicals that each crop requires is similar, so there isn't much difference in the amount of petroleum used regardless of whether ethanol is a market or not.
Corn (and soybeans) are commodity markets - so farmers will typically sell their crops into the market for what they can get. If there is an ethanol plant nearby, it reduces the basis (this is essentially the difference in the price of corn at the chicago board of trade and the price of corn locally - the price of transporting corn to where it will be used) and has only a slight affect on the price of corn.
That's gotta come from somewhere, and right now its going to be fossil fuels.
Fossil fuels != oil. Coal can be (and is being) used to fire ethanol plants. We have a larger supply of coal readily available - in the United States - than oil and essentially converting it to a liquid fuel (in the form of ethanol) would be useful for weaning the economy off of foreign oil.
've also heard that ethanol processing essentially removes the sugars from the corn, leaving a high-protein slurry that can be used as animal feed. Since it's high in protein and low in carbohydrates it's a more efficient feed and causes lower emissions from the cows.
According to TFA, they are including the energy used in producing the fuel used for growing and harvesting the grain and for making the fertilizers. This should probably be backed out of the equation because these activities will take place anyway - regardless of whether or not we're using ethanol.
The TFA also disregards the uses of the rest of the byproducts of ethanol production (distillers grain and industrial gases).
The useful thing about ethanol and biodiesel is that we already have an infrastructure available and ready to use it as a vehicle fuel now. With Hydrogen fuel we don't. Same with Fuel Cells.
The Patriot Act formalized and forced a standardization of the customer ID programs (as an aside, it is more onerous on smaller banks than larger ones because the smaller banks already "knew their customers"). Thankfully the regulators relented a bit and allowed existing customers to be grandfathered in.
The FinCEN 314a stuff is what I most dislike about the Patriot Act. A bunch of work every two weeks and not so much as a thank-you from the Feds.
With all of the Patriot Act grumbling going on, I'm willing to bet that if it was repealed (or not renewed), the CIP and FinCEN 314a provisions would remain.
I'm not one of those types and know from experience (in the implementation of the Customer Identification Program) of what used to be required and what is now required.
It used to be that only accounts where previously really required to have social security numbers were those that drew interest and thus had to be reported for income tax purposes. A non-interest bearing checking account needed no SSN.
Don't kid yourself on the impact of the Patriot Act on banking. The Customer Identification Program was required because of it - and the regulators view it as part of the Bank Secrecy Act framework - and have moved BSA/OFAC/CIP into a "safety and soundness" category for examinations.
Of course, you're entirely free to not share your SSN with the bank...and they're just as free to deny you an account.
Banks are not free to deny the account - Social Security Numbers are now required for opening any bank accounts. This is part of the Patriot Act (but is something that the regulators have wanted to do for a long time).
Now, granted, it's his company, and he can afford an accounting firm that can figure out how to write off $3.3 Million.
No need - all he has to do is to write a program that grabs all the fractions of pennies floating around the accounting software giving him an instant "black ops" budget:)
When this happens, I use Knoppix and an external USB hard drive to copy data off of the machine before redoing it. It doesn't take too long, but it does save everything prior to restoring the system.
Then factor in the SPOUSE HASSLE FACTOR...God forbid you move some file of your spouses from the old computer to the new one and she can't find it, or things look different on the new computer, etc...
The obvious answer is to leave the spouse's data where it is on the old machine and let them have it - that way you don't need to be bothered with the "how do I do that" and "where is it at now" questions while you're playing Doom3.
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Sounds like the days of DOS and Windows 3.1 - a 16 bit operating system on a 32 bit platform.
It just means that you need to hit the snooze button once or twice more - you're getting up too early.
I'd like to see a football game that does that - where the other teams in the conference evolve to use strategies that counter your style of play.
The problem with burning straight ethanol is that it will eat the rubber bits in the fuel system (at least that used to be the problem - perhaps newer cars can handle it?).
Iowa has a proposal to do this - use wind turbines to compress air (I think) into underground caverns during the winter and spring (when we have lots of wind) and draw it out to produce power during the summer (when it is hot and still). http://www.iamu.org/isep/Overview%20April%20-%20Ma y%202005.ppt
(a command that sucks to use, by the way)
Corn (and soybeans) are commodity markets - so farmers will typically sell their crops into the market for what they can get. If there is an ethanol plant nearby, it reduces the basis (this is essentially the difference in the price of corn at the chicago board of trade and the price of corn locally - the price of transporting corn to where it will be used) and has only a slight affect on the price of corn.
Fossil fuels != oil. Coal can be (and is being) used to fire ethanol plants. We have a larger supply of coal readily available - in the United States - than oil and essentially converting it to a liquid fuel (in the form of ethanol) would be useful for weaning the economy off of foreign oil.
It's called distillers grain and (interestingly enough), it has its own website: http://www.distillersgrains.org/
The TFA also disregards the uses of the rest of the byproducts of ethanol production (distillers grain and industrial gases).
The useful thing about ethanol and biodiesel is that we already have an infrastructure available and ready to use it as a vehicle fuel now. With Hydrogen fuel we don't. Same with Fuel Cells.
First it's zombie dogs, then it's zombie people...
I don't think that it's a good state of affairs, but that's the way that it seems to be.
The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Just look at the cover and "Don't Panic"
That sets the bar pretty low and is kind of a sad commentary on the state of IT customer service.
The FinCEN 314a stuff is what I most dislike about the Patriot Act. A bunch of work every two weeks and not so much as a thank-you from the Feds.
With all of the Patriot Act grumbling going on, I'm willing to bet that if it was repealed (or not renewed), the CIP and FinCEN 314a provisions would remain.
It used to be that only accounts where previously really required to have social security numbers were those that drew interest and thus had to be reported for income tax purposes. A non-interest bearing checking account needed no SSN.
Don't kid yourself on the impact of the Patriot Act on banking. The Customer Identification Program was required because of it - and the regulators view it as part of the Bank Secrecy Act framework - and have moved BSA/OFAC/CIP into a "safety and soundness" category for examinations.
Banks are not free to deny the account - Social Security Numbers are now required for opening any bank accounts. This is part of the Patriot Act (but is something that the regulators have wanted to do for a long time).
If all they're doing is creating ACH transactions from one account to another, the money never will reside with them.
Or use it with MIMEDefang ahref=http://www.mimedefang.org/http://www.mimedef ang.org/>
No need - all he has to do is to write a program that grabs all the fractions of pennies floating around the accounting software giving him an instant "black ops" budget :)
So, you'd like to switch a regular day behind a desk for a longer day on a tractor seat?
When this happens, I use Knoppix and an external USB hard drive to copy data off of the machine before redoing it. It doesn't take too long, but it does save everything prior to restoring the system.
The obvious answer is to leave the spouse's data where it is on the old machine and let them have it - that way you don't need to be bothered with the "how do I do that" and "where is it at now" questions while you're playing Doom3.
SuSE is phonetically pronounced soo-suh. Cue the John Phillip SuSE sountrack here...