I know that. But if you look at our attempts to "manage" nature, we like to stick it into a box and keep everything in the box as a static environment.
A few miles from where we live, there is national reserve called the "Union Slough" (it started out as undesirable swamp land in the 30's, but has grown tremendously in the last few years). A "Slough" is a swampy area, but the current managers of the Department of the interior would like to "convert the land back" to prairie land as they claim it was in early 1800's. The sad part of that is that is one of the only wooded areas in the region right now, and their goal is to revert it back to grassland.
No problem - for soybeans just crush out the oils first or for corn process it into ethanol. Take the "leavings" and feed it to animals. Take the animals, slaughter them, cook them, and eat them (yummy!) During the whole process, capture animal manure (and what the heck, grab that people poop too!) and process it into oil. After slaughtering the animals, process the leftovers into oil. Repeat.
I think converting to that wouldn't increase demand that drastically, and if it did the supply would still keep pace.
Properly applied, chicken guts/crap are fertilizers and not waste - that's why the plant has to purchase the offal in the first place.
Applying too much chicken guts/crap to a given area of land, however, is just asking for problems.
I think that Iowa does have a law about how much, when, and in what manner pig manure can be applied to fields (if we don't, I know it was discussed) in an effort to reduce nitrate runoff in the spring.
Forget municipal systems - go for the "gold" of sewage and process hog and cattle manure. With confinement livestock, the hardest part is to economically dispose of the contents of the manure pit.
Waste is usually stored up for about a year so that it can be applied to fields after harvest. Because of this, I think that the manure typically has a higher content of solids than what you'd see at a municipal waste facility. Also, hogs produce a lot of manure - I think that I've read that a medium sized confinement operation would produce the same amount of waste as a city of 30,000 people.
Right now, we're seeing spot prices at $2.30 - multiplied by 55 gallons (per barrel, correct me if I'm wrong) - you get over $125. Since you're at the point of purchase already, as long as your equipment costs are less than $55/barrel, you're saving money over filling your trucks at the pump.
Don't forget fuel taxes - not sure what they are, but they make up a substantial portion of that $2.30. If you are filling up and avoiding the "revenuers", then the savings would be as described. If not, then the savings wouldn't be quite as much.
I don't think that you'll see them dumping the windows OS, but I do think that OpenOffice would be a serious contender for the "standard" office suite in smaller communities. Communities like ours don't purchase multiple machines per year (we go multiple years per machine) and will typically just buy a system with the OEM Windows and Office installed. Ignoring office could be a good place to save money (at least during the year a new machine is purchased) that could just as well go to something else.
To be honest, we're not doing anything with OpenOffice (or anything else, really) at city hall - but we've not upgraded any of the city hardware since OpenOffice has been a viable alternative in the last couple of years.
Just like any other business, city government has inertia to software change caused by existing software - but I'm not sure that the office suite is as sticky in a small municipal situation as it would be in a corporate environment (where you do use Outlook with Exchange servers).
I'm on the city council of a (very) small town, and because of that I'm on a mailing list for an Iowa municipal issues magaizine. This month they had an article in it about reducing Microsoft licensing costs - by using the state purchasing power. No mention of Open Office or any other competitors.
In Iowa, there are a few population centers, a few "larger towns", and many towns with low enough populations that they can run the entire municipal government with two or three employees. These are the kinds of places that don't have the built-in MS infrastructure and could migrate to OpenOffice fairly easily. Larger communities may have the infrastructure in place the makes it more difficult to migrate away from Microsoft.
Seeing headlines that LA is thinking about going open source is interesting, but there might be thousands of other communities in the country that could see a proportionally greater benefit from that software than LA would - but they'd never make the news.
Consumers won't be charged more - Microsoft (URL: http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/highlights/mult icore.mspx> has stated that they will not charge on a "per core" basis - so that copy of Windows XP Home(or pro) will still be the same.
Unless it becomes common to charge per core on consumer software, it will not become a big deal in most peoples' eyes.
I've got no real problem with the federal government passing standards for drivers licensing. Right now, a state drivers license is for all intents and purposes a national ID card (with the Patriot Act, a valid drivers license or state ID is a requirement to even open a bank account) and as such there should be standards. How can I in the midwest trust a California drivers license as an ID if they just sort of give them out to anyone?
I agree with your point on the 10th amendment - but that leads us back to the IRS! Without the obscene amounts of tax revenue that the federal government collects, it couldn't bully the states into doing its bidding.
I guess I usually don't care where they get a machine from - they're pretty much the same on the inside. If they needed assistance to get up and running, I would have done so and charged them for it.
I'm a bit surprised that a business would expect that you would give away expertise - they wouldn't give away product.
I probably came back a bit hard on you (sorry) - one of the things that ticks me off the most is the poor customer service that IT in general has.
In fact I've found that rural folks using their computers for business purposes are more likely to keep backups of some form than even small business in the city. Figure that one out.
It's probably easier for a rural-type to imagine a tornado destroying their office (and hence their computer) or power problmes blasting the machine to kingdom come than for the city people.
You should feel bad because you set them up and left them hanging.
Each of those subsequent instances was billable time and work that you could have done to support them and all you did was tell them to "go call 'X'"
When you set up the network you took some form of ownership in it and should have reasonably expected to continue supporting it (and you should have also continued to charge for supporting it). As a business, they would have expected and respected that.
[1] For the record, I'm still trying to figure out if his SS plan is good or bad overall. However, excluding the numbers from the budget is wrong and deceitful.
But no worse than the last 35 years of Social Security being an off-the-books second ledger for the federal government.
Slashdot Mirror
Gramm-Leach-Bliley (if you are a financial institution)
In that case, I hope that they have someone that works through tea-time :)
A few miles from where we live, there is national reserve called the "Union Slough" (it started out as undesirable swamp land in the 30's, but has grown tremendously in the last few years). A "Slough" is a swampy area, but the current managers of the Department of the interior would like to "convert the land back" to prairie land as they claim it was in early 1800's. The sad part of that is that is one of the only wooded areas in the region right now, and their goal is to revert it back to grassland.
I think converting to that wouldn't increase demand that drastically, and if it did the supply would still keep pace.
Applying too much chicken guts/crap to a given area of land, however, is just asking for problems.
I think that Iowa does have a law about how much, when, and in what manner pig manure can be applied to fields (if we don't, I know it was discussed) in an effort to reduce nitrate runoff in the spring.
That, if I might say so, was a pile of crap!
Waste is usually stored up for about a year so that it can be applied to fields after harvest. Because of this, I think that the manure typically has a higher content of solids than what you'd see at a municipal waste facility. Also, hogs produce a lot of manure - I think that I've read that a medium sized confinement operation would produce the same amount of waste as a city of 30,000 people.
Don't forget fuel taxes - not sure what they are, but they make up a substantial portion of that $2.30. If you are filling up and avoiding the "revenuers", then the savings would be as described. If not, then the savings wouldn't be quite as much.
Wouldn't terraforming Mars ruin it - at least in respect to its natural state?
Everyone knows that nature is static, and how things were 50, 100, or 1000 years ago are the way that they should be today, tomorrow, and forever!
Bummer, that just made what I said a whole lot less funny.
But no worries - if it even looks to have a hint at working, Iowa will be saying "Me too!" as soon as possible.
Silly poster - the gas tax won't go away, this is just a bonus tax!
Mmmmm - Pork chops.
To be honest, we're not doing anything with OpenOffice (or anything else, really) at city hall - but we've not upgraded any of the city hardware since OpenOffice has been a viable alternative in the last couple of years.
Just like any other business, city government has inertia to software change caused by existing software - but I'm not sure that the office suite is as sticky in a small municipal situation as it would be in a corporate environment (where you do use Outlook with Exchange servers).
It's LA...
In Iowa, there are a few population centers, a few "larger towns", and many towns with low enough populations that they can run the entire municipal government with two or three employees. These are the kinds of places that don't have the built-in MS infrastructure and could migrate to OpenOffice fairly easily. Larger communities may have the infrastructure in place the makes it more difficult to migrate away from Microsoft.
Seeing headlines that LA is thinking about going open source is interesting, but there might be thousands of other communities in the country that could see a proportionally greater benefit from that software than LA would - but they'd never make the news.
Unless it becomes common to charge per core on consumer software, it will not become a big deal in most peoples' eyes.
I've got no real problem with the federal government passing standards for drivers licensing. Right now, a state drivers license is for all intents and purposes a national ID card (with the Patriot Act, a valid drivers license or state ID is a requirement to even open a bank account) and as such there should be standards. How can I in the midwest trust a California drivers license as an ID if they just sort of give them out to anyone?
I agree with your point on the 10th amendment - but that leads us back to the IRS! Without the obscene amounts of tax revenue that the federal government collects, it couldn't bully the states into doing its bidding.
Presumably they've hired various experts time and time again - just to foul their "modernization" projects up.
They do such a good job with their own computer systems (http://www.taxhelpattorney.com/articles/irs-moder nization-failure.html) that I'm sure that they can build and maintain a high-volume, high-security site like that.
But think of how fast it would run on modern hardware!
I'm a bit surprised that a business would expect that you would give away expertise - they wouldn't give away product.
I probably came back a bit hard on you (sorry) - one of the things that ticks me off the most is the poor customer service that IT in general has.
It's probably easier for a rural-type to imagine a tornado destroying their office (and hence their computer) or power problmes blasting the machine to kingdom come than for the city people.
You should feel bad because you set them up and left them hanging.
Each of those subsequent instances was billable time and work that you could have done to support them and all you did was tell them to "go call 'X'"
When you set up the network you took some form of ownership in it and should have reasonably expected to continue supporting it (and you should have also continued to charge for supporting it). As a business, they would have expected and respected that.
But no worse than the last 35 years of Social Security being an off-the-books second ledger for the federal government.