The problem with Merkel is she doesn't have a mind of her own. She just follows the electorate in whatever they want at that time. Plus how can you be German Chancellor for 9 years? Don't you guys have term limits or something?
Yes. I used to read that Edison 'invented' the light bulb and similar crapola when I was a kid. In fact this view was expounded in US TV kid shows. Heck if you listened to what was said it was like he had invented every single application of electricity developed in the XIXth century. Then I learned better. Then again they also used to say in the same TV shows that Columbus 'proved' the Earth was round and that people back then used to universally think the Earth was flat. Both of which is BS. Eratosthenes is turning in his grave now.
A BSD licensed compiler that an University of Illinois student wrote, which eventually got hired by Apple to continue working on it in order to replace the GCC compiler Apple used to use before.
The history of computer software and hardware design has been all about managing complexity in order to do more things with less people since the beginning.
As for your little tirade against the GPLv3 you have no clue about what the license changes mean. The only substantial difference is that anyone who distributes GPLv3 code *must* give the recipients a royalty free license to any patents they own that are required to be able to use that particular product. I do not think that is particularly onerous. In fact it keeps the spirit of the original license. Corporations like IBM have included similar clauses when they open sourced software e.g. the IBM Eclipse Public License. Do you think they aren't interested in profiting from it? Eclipse is the basis for their Rational Application Developer suite of tools.
Over the long run gold tends to have a constant value adjusted to inflation. So what will happen in a decade or two is that the price of gold will come up again. Some say there was a speculative bubble that pushed the gold price up momentarily. Others say it was a massive cash injection after the crisis that caused the gold price to rise so much. AFAIK both are true. The price of gold is too inflated right now and gold always goes down as an economy recovers at the same time platinum goes up. Since platinum is used in catalysts its usually one indirect way to measure economic recovery as industry recovers.
If money is the tool of the Devil then Bitcoin is even worse. Exponentially wasting electricity and semiconducts to generate a unique numeric key. Great!
Wayland is a modern display system for Unixes which is similar to what Windows and OSX use.
Bollocks. It sucks. It only supports textures and more textures. Does it support vector graphics like Quartz? No. Its a throwback to systems predating X that's what it is.
I thought about getting one. Then I looked into the installation costs. Ask for a quote on such a system and *then* you will see why people don't use this more. Especially a ground source heat pump which is the most useful kind.
These things are pre-optimized for nearer term profits for the operators and the longer term clean up costs in the rare (but not so rare it never happens) even of a disaster and the longer term waste storage costs just aren't factored in, not on the correct scale at least.
No. It takes several years to build one before electricity starts coming out of one. If you want to make a quick buck you don't invest in nuclear power plants. From my POV the recycling and cleanup problems are because the industry originally need to dispose of less materials so it wasn't a big issue back then and they probably thought they could think about it later. But nuclear research has essentially stalled since the 1970s for political reasons. If it ever became easier to separate and reprocess the waste it would become easier to extract the plutonium out of it. That is the problem. Its political.
Its a building. Its build using stuff used to make buildings. It could have been brick if you wanted to. Lets stop making buildings because they pollute too.
energy used in the mining, extraction and refining processes
Yes because solar panels and windmills aren't made of materials which need mining operations. Silicon wafers are magically turned with no energy from what is essentially silica sand into crystal ingots. Not.
It can take more than 6 years to mitigate the energy used in building of the facility, let alone the actual construction costs
Bunk. Plus they last for over 4 times that time.
negative learning curve of nuclear power
More bunk. Costs increase with inflation. Plus if you don't build reactors in series but only make a prototype or two... of course the per unit costs will be more expensive. For more information on this phenomenon Google 'Augustine's Laws'.
it really is very dated technology
Not as dated as wind power which dates from BC.
flow batteries
Been available since forever. They don't generate energy only store it. Plus they are usually made of acids and similar not very pleasant liquids.
don't need to have peaking power plants paired with the renewables. You just need more renewables
Its a matter of cost effectiveness. Resources you devote to unproductive things are resources you don't use for other things. Period.
So you are telling me we can't replace old power plants built in the 1970s with XXIst century tech because its too expensive? But the old ones were based on bleeding edge technology back then and the proved economical. I agree they need to replaced. They should have started replacing them a long time ago. The proposed lifetime was 20 years. A lot of these plants were built in the late 1970s. They should be closing down right now. But replacing them is neither too expensive nor is it impossible. Its just a bunch of steel and concrete. Remember that construction industry that stopped having anything to do? Use the materials for something useful instead of building more useless second and third vacation homes no one really needs.
It goes on the market and is up for anybody to buy.
Yes. But you can bet the Chinese are not interested in expensive oil.
It would likely not make much of a dent in prices over the long term as the supply of 'cheap' oil is dwindling - exactly the reason the tar sands are now even economical to develop
It is more complicated than that. One factor is that the technology improved to the point that it is now more energetically effective to exploit those resources than it was in the past. The Canadians worked a lot on that. The second factor is that the US now has found shale oil near the pipeline route inside its own territory. That is real oil mind you, not tar sands, nor shale. This is a bona fide crude oil deposit in the middle of a shale formation. It is just a bit low grade. The oil will be expensive, yes, but the fact is you can't turn the entire transportation industry on a dime like that. If this buys us enough time to come up with alternatives and can pay for itself it is good policy to build it.
Reducing the dependency on fuel imports is important for all the West. We have spent enough time and effort trying to forcibly stabilize the Middle East as it is. Air pollution is also a concern. The rest is just not important IMO.
I like the idea of having electric cars for several reasons. Environmental reasons being the least important of these. Especially since cars started having catalytic converters. Diesel is getting cleaner as the amount of sulfur in the fuel is being reduced and as catalytic converters, formerly found only on gasoline cars, become useable there as well.
Slashdot Mirror
Foxconn was started in Taiwan by an ethnic Chinese. However most of their factories are presently located in mainland China.
Yes. Because Joseph Swan didn't sell his bulbs to anyone. Not.
Actually there are options in wget for that.
You can change the materials used to mint the coins or use smaller coins. Or bigger denominations. That's what happens.
The problem with Merkel is she doesn't have a mind of her own. She just follows the electorate in whatever they want at that time. Plus how can you be German Chancellor for 9 years? Don't you guys have term limits or something?
Yes. I used to read that Edison 'invented' the light bulb and similar crapola when I was a kid. In fact this view was expounded in US TV kid shows. Heck if you listened to what was said it was like he had invented every single application of electricity developed in the XIXth century. Then I learned better. Then again they also used to say in the same TV shows that Columbus 'proved' the Earth was round and that people back then used to universally think the Earth was flat. Both of which is BS. Eratosthenes is turning in his grave now.
Sure. Ask the Wine developers why they switched from BSD to LGPL.
A BSD licensed compiler that an University of Illinois student wrote, which eventually got hired by Apple to continue working on it in order to replace the GCC compiler Apple used to use before.
The history of computer software and hardware design has been all about managing complexity in order to do more things with less people since the beginning.
As for your little tirade against the GPLv3 you have no clue about what the license changes mean. The only substantial difference is that anyone who distributes GPLv3 code *must* give the recipients a royalty free license to any patents they own that are required to be able to use that particular product. I do not think that is particularly onerous. In fact it keeps the spirit of the original license. Corporations like IBM have included similar clauses when they open sourced software e.g. the IBM Eclipse Public License. Do you think they aren't interested in profiting from it? Eclipse is the basis for their Rational Application Developer suite of tools.
Over the long run gold tends to have a constant value adjusted to inflation. So what will happen in a decade or two is that the price of gold will come up again. Some say there was a speculative bubble that pushed the gold price up momentarily. Others say it was a massive cash injection after the crisis that caused the gold price to rise so much. AFAIK both are true. The price of gold is too inflated right now and gold always goes down as an economy recovers at the same time platinum goes up. Since platinum is used in catalysts its usually one indirect way to measure economic recovery as industry recovers.
The gold wasn't 'destroyed' merely dissolved.
Try to pick advertisers who make products people reading Slashdot actually care about for a change.
If money is the tool of the Devil then Bitcoin is even worse. Exponentially wasting electricity and semiconducts to generate a unique numeric key. Great!
Kewl.
Wayland is a modern display system for Unixes which is similar to what Windows and OSX use.
Bollocks. It sucks. It only supports textures and more textures. Does it support vector graphics like Quartz? No. Its a throwback to systems predating X that's what it is.
I thought about getting one. Then I looked into the installation costs. Ask for a quote on such a system and *then* you will see why people don't use this more. Especially a ground source heat pump which is the most useful kind.
These things are pre-optimized for nearer term profits for the operators and the longer term clean up costs in the rare (but not so rare it never happens) even of a disaster and the longer term waste storage costs just aren't factored in, not on the correct scale at least.
No. It takes several years to build one before electricity starts coming out of one. If you want to make a quick buck you don't invest in nuclear power plants. From my POV the recycling and cleanup problems are because the industry originally need to dispose of less materials so it wasn't a big issue back then and they probably thought they could think about it later. But nuclear research has essentially stalled since the 1970s for political reasons. If it ever became easier to separate and reprocess the waste it would become easier to extract the plutonium out of it. That is the problem. Its political.
concrete used to build the stations
Its a building. Its build using stuff used to make buildings. It could have been brick if you wanted to. Lets stop making buildings because they pollute too.
energy used in the mining, extraction and refining processes
Yes because solar panels and windmills aren't made of materials which need mining operations. Silicon wafers are magically turned with no energy from what is essentially silica sand into crystal ingots. Not.
It can take more than 6 years to mitigate the energy used in building of the facility, let alone the actual construction costs
Bunk. Plus they last for over 4 times that time.
negative learning curve of nuclear power
More bunk. Costs increase with inflation. Plus if you don't build reactors in series but only make a prototype or two... of course the per unit costs will be more expensive. For more information on this phenomenon Google 'Augustine's Laws'.
it really is very dated technology
Not as dated as wind power which dates from BC.
flow batteries
Been available since forever. They don't generate energy only store it. Plus they are usually made of acids and similar not very pleasant liquids.
don't need to have peaking power plants paired with the renewables. You just need more renewables
Its a matter of cost effectiveness. Resources you devote to unproductive things are resources you don't use for other things. Period.
So you are telling me we can't replace old power plants built in the 1970s with XXIst century tech because its too expensive? But the old ones were based on bleeding edge technology back then and the proved economical. I agree they need to replaced. They should have started replacing them a long time ago. The proposed lifetime was 20 years. A lot of these plants were built in the late 1970s. They should be closing down right now. But replacing them is neither too expensive nor is it impossible. Its just a bunch of steel and concrete. Remember that construction industry that stopped having anything to do? Use the materials for something useful instead of building more useless second and third vacation homes no one really needs.
Good. Now you understand the 'gravity' of the situation. Pun intended.
When the Sun burns out the solar power generation will stop and the wind will stop as well. The fact is 'renewables' are nuclear fusion powered.
It goes on the market and is up for anybody to buy.
Yes. But you can bet the Chinese are not interested in expensive oil.
It would likely not make much of a dent in prices over the long term as the supply of 'cheap' oil is dwindling - exactly the reason the tar sands are now even economical to develop
It is more complicated than that. One factor is that the technology improved to the point that it is now more energetically effective to exploit those resources than it was in the past. The Canadians worked a lot on that. The second factor is that the US now has found shale oil near the pipeline route inside its own territory. That is real oil mind you, not tar sands, nor shale. This is a bona fide crude oil deposit in the middle of a shale formation. It is just a bit low grade. The oil will be expensive, yes, but the fact is you can't turn the entire transportation industry on a dime like that. If this buys us enough time to come up with alternatives and can pay for itself it is good policy to build it.
Reducing the dependency on fuel imports is important for all the West. We have spent enough time and effort trying to forcibly stabilize the Middle East as it is. Air pollution is also a concern. The rest is just not important IMO.
I like the idea of having electric cars for several reasons. Environmental reasons being the least important of these. Especially since cars started having catalytic converters. Diesel is getting cleaner as the amount of sulfur in the fuel is being reduced and as catalytic converters, formerly found only on gasoline cars, become useable there as well.
before too long I expect 500 year lifespans
So did Qin Shi Huang. He still died.
Fine. Go back to burning peat and whale oil then.