EVERYBODY KNOWS that if some asshole tries ANYTHING on a plane, the only thing to do is for the passengers to immediately stomp the life out of the motherfucker, no ifs, no ands, no buts. Just take him apart.
EVERYBODY KNOWS that, including the terrorists. As a consequence, there is really no point to screening people at airports.
If people want to blow up a plane, it's a lot easier to book a flight, check your bags full of bombs that are hooked up to timers, and then let it rip. The security at the checkpoint is ludicrous, and the security for checked baggage is even worse. So, if you want to blow up a plane, it's not hard.
If you want to commadeer the plane a la 9/11, the passengers will take you out before you even get to the cabin. They know they have nothing to lose.
So, as a consequence, there is NO point in this idiotic security theatre. None whatsoever. And the smiling jackasses who come up with this Orwellian technology are vampiric leeches with their fingers up the butt of the reactionary militarists and an invertebrate Congress.
And all it means is that flying on an airplane is just that much more insulting and that much more irritating, and that much less worth the trouble.
OK cowardly asslicking fuckwit, I'll spell it out for you.
ERoEI stands for Energy Return on Energy Invested.
There are things that generate energy at a great return, some not so much, and some require MORE energy to create than what you get out of it.
Petroleum is the result of of millions of years of sea creatures dying and getting crushed into oil. The Energy Input was from the sun - the sun drove those processes, so we can see oil as a storage system of ancient solar energy. The sun shone on some critturs. They died, and were slowly crushed into oil by a variety of geological forces and chemical reactions.
You can look at Petroleum as our "savings account". Same with natural gas and uranium and thorium. Uranium and Thorium are also the result of solar power - just not our sun... They are also part of the "savings account".
Then there is energetic income. That comes from two places: the heat from the earth and the power of the sun and combinations thereof. Period. That's it. Thinking there is some kind of alternative to this is Real Pretending. There isn't.
Both of these sources, as income, are subject to the second law of thermodynamics. Hence: there is no 100% solar solution or geothermal or anything. Everything runs at a ratio of its input. This is a simple and inescapable fact of physics.
Hydrogen is predominantly locked up in two forms: hydrocarbons (which are in ever decreasing supply, as they are a limited resource) and water. Breaking hydrogen out of either of these bonds REQUIRES MORE ENERGY than you can get out of burning the hydrogen EVEN IF you got 100% efficiency out of it (which as noted, is impossible). Therefore, Hydrogen is not a fuel - it has negative ERoEI.
Batteries have a generally, if weakly, positive ERoEI, in that the energy used to make the battery is less than the energy the battery carries over a lifetime. Ultracapacitors are even better. The question then becomes: how do these systems get charged? By using energy income, which is either solar, geothermal, or a combination (like tide power or hydroelectric).
The problem is, there isn't enough material to generate the amount of electricity needed to continue the profligate lifestyle of contemporary western culture.
Which means that western culture will have to change. The world won't and can't.
The net result is fairly simple: the gradual disappearance of industrial civilisation, followed by the gradual disappearance of metal based tools. Eventually humans will end up back in the stone age. If it follows a bellcurve, then industrialism has another 200 years or so. Metal based societies have 5000 years, and then, that's it. Unfortunately, due to exigencies of energy requirements to acquire resources and the tendency of complex societies to collapse rather than transition and evolve, there is a non-zero probability of industrialism failing by the end of the century, and metal based societies disappearing within the next 1500 years.
The ONLY reasonable workable alternative is to simply modify society to do more with less, and reduce consumption to zero: essentially go to a
1. landbase centered system that recycles EVERYTHING including human waste
2. depopulate the planet by an order of magintude
3. do both at once.
That's it. Anything else will eventually lead to a tipping point and crisis. The solution is not technological. The solution is social and intellectual. But, being a fucking retard, I doubt you would find that palatable.
Now go back to your mommy's basement and play some more Halo. I'm sure it is training you in many useful skills. not.
This isn't tough to understand, but things are complicated by your apparent inability to understand simple English.
It is only exceeded by your wilful ignorance of the second law of thermodynamics, which completely and utterly trumps any of your points, and which informs any and all discussion of ERoEI. As hydrogen will ALWAYS AND FOREVER have a negative ERoEI (once again, due to the kinds of fundamentals in physics a high school student could understand) there is absolutely NO point in considering hydrogen as a fuel or fuel component, especially as other alternatives exist that have much better ERoEI.
Also: cement is one of the greatest contributors to CO2 emissions on the planet. To replace the entire highway system with concrete would contribute to epic amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere, which is the exact point we're trying to stop.
Check out the manufacturing process for anhydrous ammonia or methanol sometime. Either process usually starts by using natural gas to produce hydrogen.
and what is natural gas? Oh, that's right: a fossil fuel. NEXT!
Now, if it becomes cheaper to produce hydrogen via electrolysis than by fracturing propane,
And what is propane? Oh, that's right: a fossil fuel. NEXT!
then it very much does make sense to talk about the "hydrogen economy".
No, it doesn't because it makes ZERO sense to take something that has a very high "Energy Return on Energy Invested" (ERoEI) ratio like Propane or natural gas, and turn it into something that has, BY DEFINITION a NEGATIVE ERoEI ratio.
In fact it's less than zero sense: it's completely stupid.
It seems like you are getting too much of your information about what the "hydrogen economy" is about from the MSM and perhaps a few popular blogs.
Actually, in terms of energy density per kg or per $, batteries are much, much worse than hydrogen.
Oh, please. Talk about selective data and card stacking.
1. $ per joule don't make any sense in this discussion. $100 per battery - sure - for retail!
2. right now eestor and others are developing ultracapacitors that have 3x the energy density of the best LIon batteres, and have many orders of magnitude more charging rounds than batteries, AND are cheaper to build AND they charge Really Really Fast. They will be expensive at first, but industrialism knows how to fix that through production.
3. The amount of energy per dollar per kg in gasoline blows all of them away. But gas is going away, so it doesn't matter.
I'm not worried about "cheapest" I'm more concerned about simple FACTS OF PHYSICS that people don't seem to understand too often or selectively forget when they talk about hydrogen.
Hydrogen is a BAD IDEA as a fuel. It is better left in water.
The other problem w/ICE vehicles is What Are You Going to Drive Them On? Peak Oil == Peak Asphalt. You can build your spiffy vehicles running on fucking pixie dust - if the roads are reduced to muck in the Springtime and frozen ruts in the winter, your aerodynamic cruiser car with its 4 cm clearance is going to stay in the garage...forever.
There's a lot more to the energy debate than substituting fuels - our entire way of life has been centred and modelled on a specific energy arrangement and density provided by fossil fuels. Without them, our civilisation itself is going to have to change, radically.
We've done it before. If you were born in 1850 and died in 1940 - think about it...
Because it takes more energy to MAKE hydrogen (i.e., snap the chemical bonds that embed it in various compounds) than you get out of burning it, EVEN AT !00% efficiency (which is impossible, of course.)
So, straight off, it's not a fuel. At best, it is an energy carrier.
TWO
IT SUCKS AS A CARRIER
A: Batteries and ultracapacitors are much better, and can be woven into the present infrastructure at a far lower cost.
B: There is no vessel on earth than can contain Hydrogen. It consists of a proton and an electron. Period. You cannot tighten the lid on a jar or whatever to contain it. It just leaks out. If it leaks out it either quickly bonds to something or it flies out of the atmosphere, gets ionised and then it's not even hydrogen - it's just an energetic proton. electronic bottles make the negative energy value of hydrogen as a fuel utterly farcical.
Therefore: HYDROGEN IS NOT A FUEL. IT IS NOT EVEN A GOOD IDEA FOR A CARRIER.
Those who seek "Business As Usual", i.e. the permanent continuance of the present energy glut circumstance are simply going to have to suck it up and deal with The Facts:
Petroleum is a limited resource that is either at or near peak or just recently past peak production. Its energy density and malleability are unparalleled - there is simply nothing like it. Hydrogen cannot substitute for it. We are simply going to have to re-order our society along the lines of the new reality. Don't like it? Tough shit. Those who resist will simply die off. Make plans or have them made for you.
We need a countervailing force against the minions of IP evil like the MAFIAA and the rest of them.
However, I don't know where he would actually do more good - inside the administration which is already compromised with appointments like Rahm Emanuel - or outside fighting the good fight. As a consequence, I'm not certain he would take such a position if asked.
It's quite possible, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it.
In short, if you have some meaningful argument against patents in principle, please present it. On the other hand, if the substance of that argument is, "Look, McDonald's applied for a patent on a method of making a sandwich, LOL" then I counter that you have not proved that a novel and non-obvious method of making a sandwich should not be patentable. You certainly haven't proved anything about this method, since you have read no more than the title. And failing to prove a specific case does not magically translate into proving the general proposition.
True enough zordak. What I think most people are beating around the bush here is that basically anyone who patents sandwich making is some kind of a buttmunching douchebag. It's a fucking sandwich.
MS Office labours on because of VBA, nothing else. Apart from fear.
Sory, no. MS Office is a much more polished product that Open Office. What I like about OO (I use it a lot) is the drawing tool. VERY handy. But MSWord and Excel are simply better than the OO equivalents. Period.
GIMP pwns Photoshop unless you NEED $1,000 worth of "product".
WTF? You're an idiot, or never had to work in CMYK or do UCR or significant retouch work.
Dreamweaver doesn't have an sftp client. Shit.
SO WHAT? You design in DW or Contribute locally, test it out on the dev or test server. Then you use an SFTP client to upload the deliverables. Done. You're a fucking moron. No go back and play in your mommy's basement.
who ever blew him to zero as a Troll is wrong. He is actually correct, and the grand parent is wrong.
There are inefficiencies, anomalies, asymmetries, etc. galore in the world, and proprietary software will be there to deal with it. His real world examples are spot on: Linux *IS* great, but it has almost no penetration in the non-tech world. Open OFfice is a great product, but MS Office reigns. GIMP is a POS compared to Photoshop, and Dreamweaver is in a league of its own.
I would add Final Cut Pro and AVID to that list. There is NOTHING in the FOSS world that equals either one of those. ProTools is a cranky thing, but it too faces little competition. Equaly so: Propellerhead's Reason and Ableton Live. There are similar products in FOSS, but none are as good.
so, sure: you can run Apache and do all kinds of tech-things in Linux, but the fact remains the quality non-tech software is still proprietary, even after all these years.
Facts are facts, and blasting someone as a troll for stating the obvious only idicates the blinkered hive mind of mods on/.
We all know cats manage the planet. The white mice run the joint, of course, but the day to day management is left to the cats.
This is intuited by the stupid humans in their cliche "Dogs have masters, Cats have staff". We work for the cats.
So, trying to model a cat's brain is both too complex for computers (try and herd cats) and too simple (try and herd pointy haired bosses). The contradiction results in the computer overheating and exploding.
and when the researcher gets home, blubbering about the 'sploded computer to his wife, the dog says "LOVE ME LOVE ME LOVE!!!! TAKE ME ON WALKIES!!!" and the cat says "Get my fucking dinner, you stupid ass. Maybe I will deign to let you pet me. After I do my rounds. Maybe."
Replace mars with the new world and it holds true.
No it doesn't. Not even close. Why?
Because technically, given enough time, the European Invasion forces could have WALKED almost the entire way to "the New World" by way of Siberia and then taken a very short boat ride across to Alaska, and then WALKED down through Canada.
Interestingly, when there was more ice around, people did EXACTLY that and had already filled the continent with people 12 - 14,000 years prior to the European Invasion, and were living rich and colourful lives in the mean time for hundreds of generations.
There isn't remotely enough air on Mars, and what is there isn't breathable, and you can't walk anywhere near it, and it has weather not that different from Antarctica, at its best.
So, no, the people who go to Mars are idiots, just typical human douchebags off to plant a flag someplace, to pound their chests like the hairless apes they are.
Quick Answer: there will be no Mars Colony. Not now, not ever.
I agree. That's why I like books made of paper, especially paperbacks. I read it and then put it in my jacket or coat pocket or laptop bag and do what I have to do and then pull it out and read it some more. No electricity required, nothing.
For me, the convenience of a paper book far outweighs that of Kindle. I never have to charge my book, i never have to really think about it much. The hardest part is finding a bookmark, which usually ends up being a bus transfer or a used subway ticket.
So, I agree, convenience is the entire equation, which is why I prefer the tree-killer versions.
Humanity WILL go extinct - it's a question of WHEN not IF.
We could go POOF from nuclear weapons or an asteroid strike, but then, so would a number of other species. Like my cats - little fuckers would starve if I didn't feed them... fat little bastards.
I see it this way: we either go extinct WITH issue (i.e., we evolve into another species) or we go extinct WITHOUT issue (nukes / asteroids / 100% deadly plague / solar flare / nano goo).
It's much like the coming de-population process. We can get rid of 5 or 6 billion people in two very different ways, and it has to do with how YOU want to die:
at a young(er) age of starvation / exposure / thirst in some transit camp in eastern oregon or in food riots in some over populated rat hole of a city, OR peacefully at home surrounded by friends and family.
We all have to go - so it's just a question of HOW not IF, and WHEN not IF.
The USA is simply doomed. I live outside the USA, and I can assure you, the rest of the world is }{ close to pulling the plug on the USA, economically, diplomatically, socially, the whole works.
If McCain is the next president, the world will say "Ya know what? We're done here. Game over. Thanks for playing" and it will hurt (a lot) in the short run, but once the American Empire's wings are clipped, the rest of the planet can set about building a future that works.
Economic? Send the dollars back home. How? Buy up the assets. Devalue the currency. Don't loan them money.
Diplomatic? The USA as a pariah state, sim. N Korea today or Libya back in the day. Turn off the WTO and IMF. Look elsewhere for partnership.
Socially? Don't let Americans out of America. Make travel difficult. Strict Visa reqs, limited visas, etc. Let them know that when they visit, they know they are thought of as ASSHOLES.
The Americans would bitch and moan and threaten and swagger, but since they're basically bankrupt and have dumped a substantial amount of their wealth into non-wealth generating assets (the military, first and foremost) the USA is really at the mercy of the rest of the planet and some. And if some swaggering third rate imperialist like McCain or, godferbid, his delusional retard of a VP, Palin, comes around acting like a dork, the simple and obvious reply is to shun them.
Now, before you think I'm some sort of Obama supporter, you're wrong. Obama is every bit the imperialist that McCain is - it's just that his focus is not on global domination, but on the much more realistic goal of regional domination. In other words, McCain is a unipolar imperialist and Obama is a multipolar imperialist. The multipolar option is the ONLY realistic option for the USA right now.
So, if the USA has ANY sense of self preservation, it will put Obama in as president. If it wants to drive itself off the cliff of history and explode on the rocks of self-inflicted stupidity, then it should vote for McCain.
The reality that is going to come crashing in is simple: energy. You either have it and use it wisely and with great thrift, or you act like Americans and permit atrocities like Las Vegas and the Cadillac Escalade to exist. Get with the program, or die off. It's a simple choice.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder what the diameter of its event horizon is. TFA didn't say.
The British government su
EVERYBODY KNOWS that if some asshole tries ANYTHING on a plane, the only thing to do is for the passengers to immediately stomp the life out of the motherfucker, no ifs, no ands, no buts. Just take him apart.
EVERYBODY KNOWS that, including the terrorists. As a consequence, there is really no point to screening people at airports.
If people want to blow up a plane, it's a lot easier to book a flight, check your bags full of bombs that are hooked up to timers, and then let it rip. The security at the checkpoint is ludicrous, and the security for checked baggage is even worse. So, if you want to blow up a plane, it's not hard.
If you want to commadeer the plane a la 9/11, the passengers will take you out before you even get to the cabin. They know they have nothing to lose.
So, as a consequence, there is NO point in this idiotic security theatre. None whatsoever. And the smiling jackasses who come up with this Orwellian technology are vampiric leeches with their fingers up the butt of the reactionary militarists and an invertebrate Congress.
And all it means is that flying on an airplane is just that much more insulting and that much more irritating, and that much less worth the trouble.
RS
ERoEI stands for Energy Return on Energy Invested.
There are things that generate energy at a great return, some not so much, and some require MORE energy to create than what you get out of it.
Petroleum is the result of of millions of years of sea creatures dying and getting crushed into oil. The Energy Input was from the sun - the sun drove those processes, so we can see oil as a storage system of ancient solar energy. The sun shone on some critturs. They died, and were slowly crushed into oil by a variety of geological forces and chemical reactions.
You can look at Petroleum as our "savings account". Same with natural gas and uranium and thorium. Uranium and Thorium are also the result of solar power - just not our sun... They are also part of the "savings account".
Then there is energetic income. That comes from two places: the heat from the earth and the power of the sun and combinations thereof. Period. That's it. Thinking there is some kind of alternative to this is Real Pretending. There isn't.
Both of these sources, as income, are subject to the second law of thermodynamics. Hence: there is no 100% solar solution or geothermal or anything. Everything runs at a ratio of its input. This is a simple and inescapable fact of physics.
Hydrogen is predominantly locked up in two forms: hydrocarbons (which are in ever decreasing supply, as they are a limited resource) and water. Breaking hydrogen out of either of these bonds REQUIRES MORE ENERGY than you can get out of burning the hydrogen EVEN IF you got 100% efficiency out of it (which as noted, is impossible). Therefore, Hydrogen is not a fuel - it has negative ERoEI.
Batteries have a generally, if weakly, positive ERoEI, in that the energy used to make the battery is less than the energy the battery carries over a lifetime. Ultracapacitors are even better. The question then becomes: how do these systems get charged? By using energy income, which is either solar, geothermal, or a combination (like tide power or hydroelectric).
The problem is, there isn't enough material to generate the amount of electricity needed to continue the profligate lifestyle of contemporary western culture.
Which means that western culture will have to change. The world won't and can't.
The net result is fairly simple: the gradual disappearance of industrial civilisation, followed by the gradual disappearance of metal based tools. Eventually humans will end up back in the stone age. If it follows a bellcurve, then industrialism has another 200 years or so. Metal based societies have 5000 years, and then, that's it. Unfortunately, due to exigencies of energy requirements to acquire resources and the tendency of complex societies to collapse rather than transition and evolve, there is a non-zero probability of industrialism failing by the end of the century, and metal based societies disappearing within the next 1500 years.
The ONLY reasonable workable alternative is to simply modify society to do more with less, and reduce consumption to zero: essentially go to a
1. landbase centered system that recycles EVERYTHING including human waste
2. depopulate the planet by an order of magintude
3. do both at once.
That's it. Anything else will eventually lead to a tipping point and crisis. The solution is not technological. The solution is social and intellectual. But, being a fucking retard, I doubt you would find that palatable.
Now go back to your mommy's basement and play some more Halo. I'm sure it is training you in many useful skills. not.
RS
It is only exceeded by your wilful ignorance of the second law of thermodynamics, which completely and utterly trumps any of your points, and which informs any and all discussion of ERoEI. As hydrogen will ALWAYS AND FOREVER have a negative ERoEI (once again, due to the kinds of fundamentals in physics a high school student could understand) there is absolutely NO point in considering hydrogen as a fuel or fuel component, especially as other alternatives exist that have much better ERoEI.
Thanks for playing.
RS
Also: cement is one of the greatest contributors to CO2 emissions on the planet. To replace the entire highway system with concrete would contribute to epic amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere, which is the exact point we're trying to stop.
RS
and what is natural gas? Oh, that's right: a fossil fuel. NEXT!
Now, if it becomes cheaper to produce hydrogen via electrolysis than by fracturing propane,
And what is propane? Oh, that's right: a fossil fuel. NEXT!
then it very much does make sense to talk about the "hydrogen economy".
No, it doesn't because it makes ZERO sense to take something that has a very high "Energy Return on Energy Invested" (ERoEI) ratio like Propane or natural gas, and turn it into something that has, BY DEFINITION a NEGATIVE ERoEI ratio.
In fact it's less than zero sense: it's completely stupid.
It seems like you are getting too much of your information about what the "hydrogen economy" is about from the MSM and perhaps a few popular blogs.
No, I get it from dedicated research since 1998.
RS
Oh, please. Talk about selective data and card stacking.
1. $ per joule don't make any sense in this discussion. $100 per battery - sure - for retail!
2. right now eestor and others are developing ultracapacitors that have 3x the energy density of the best LIon batteres, and have many orders of magnitude more charging rounds than batteries, AND are cheaper to build AND they charge Really Really Fast. They will be expensive at first, but industrialism knows how to fix that through production.
3. The amount of energy per dollar per kg in gasoline blows all of them away. But gas is going away, so it doesn't matter.
I'm not worried about "cheapest" I'm more concerned about simple FACTS OF PHYSICS that people don't seem to understand too often or selectively forget when they talk about hydrogen.
Hydrogen is a BAD IDEA as a fuel. It is better left in water.
The other problem w/ICE vehicles is What Are You Going to Drive Them On? Peak Oil == Peak Asphalt. You can build your spiffy vehicles running on fucking pixie dust - if the roads are reduced to muck in the Springtime and frozen ruts in the winter, your aerodynamic cruiser car with its 4 cm clearance is going to stay in the garage...forever.
There's a lot more to the energy debate than substituting fuels - our entire way of life has been centred and modelled on a specific energy arrangement and density provided by fossil fuels. Without them, our civilisation itself is going to have to change, radically.
We've done it before. If you were born in 1850 and died in 1940 - think about it...
RS
HYDROGEN IS NOT A FUEL.
Not now, not ever, never.
WHY?
Because it takes more energy to MAKE hydrogen (i.e., snap the chemical bonds that embed it in various compounds) than you get out of burning it, EVEN AT !00% efficiency (which is impossible, of course.)
So, straight off, it's not a fuel. At best, it is an energy carrier.
TWO
IT SUCKS AS A CARRIER
A: Batteries and ultracapacitors are much better, and can be woven into the present infrastructure at a far lower cost.
B: There is no vessel on earth than can contain Hydrogen. It consists of a proton and an electron. Period. You cannot tighten the lid on a jar or whatever to contain it. It just leaks out. If it leaks out it either quickly bonds to something or it flies out of the atmosphere, gets ionised and then it's not even hydrogen - it's just an energetic proton. electronic bottles make the negative energy value of hydrogen as a fuel utterly farcical.
Therefore: HYDROGEN IS NOT A FUEL. IT IS NOT EVEN A GOOD IDEA FOR A CARRIER.
Those who seek "Business As Usual", i.e. the permanent continuance of the present energy glut circumstance are simply going to have to suck it up and deal with The Facts:
Petroleum is a limited resource that is either at or near peak or just recently past peak production. Its energy density and malleability are unparalleled - there is simply nothing like it. Hydrogen cannot substitute for it. We are simply going to have to re-order our society along the lines of the new reality. Don't like it? Tough shit. Those who resist will simply die off. Make plans or have them made for you.
RS
However, I don't know where he would actually do more good - inside the administration which is already compromised with appointments like Rahm Emanuel - or outside fighting the good fight. As a consequence, I'm not certain he would take such a position if asked.
It's quite possible, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it.
RS
In short, if you have some meaningful argument against patents in principle, please present it. On the other hand, if the substance of that argument is, "Look, McDonald's applied for a patent on a method of making a sandwich, LOL" then I counter that you have not proved that a novel and non-obvious method of making a sandwich should not be patentable. You certainly haven't proved anything about this method, since you have read no more than the title. And failing to prove a specific case does not magically translate into proving the general proposition.
True enough zordak. What I think most people are beating around the bush here is that basically anyone who patents sandwich making is some kind of a buttmunching douchebag. It's a fucking sandwich.
RS
MS Office labours on because of VBA, nothing else. Apart from fear.
Sory, no. MS Office is a much more polished product that Open Office. What I like about OO (I use it a lot) is the drawing tool. VERY handy. But MSWord and Excel are simply better than the OO equivalents. Period.
GIMP pwns Photoshop unless you NEED $1,000 worth of "product".
WTF? You're an idiot, or never had to work in CMYK or do UCR or significant retouch work.
Dreamweaver doesn't have an sftp client. Shit.
SO WHAT? You design in DW or Contribute locally, test it out on the dev or test server. Then you use an SFTP client to upload the deliverables. Done. You're a fucking moron. No go back and play in your mommy's basement.
RS
There are inefficiencies, anomalies, asymmetries, etc. galore in the world, and proprietary software will be there to deal with it. His real world examples are spot on: Linux *IS* great, but it has almost no penetration in the non-tech world. Open OFfice is a great product, but MS Office reigns. GIMP is a POS compared to Photoshop, and Dreamweaver is in a league of its own.
I would add Final Cut Pro and AVID to that list. There is NOTHING in the FOSS world that equals either one of those. ProTools is a cranky thing, but it too faces little competition. Equaly so: Propellerhead's Reason and Ableton Live. There are similar products in FOSS, but none are as good.
so, sure: you can run Apache and do all kinds of tech-things in Linux, but the fact remains the quality non-tech software is still proprietary, even after all these years.
Facts are facts, and blasting someone as a troll for stating the obvious only idicates the blinkered hive mind of mods on /.
RS
From software with a name derived from Dadaist nonsense poetry by Hugo Ball?
This is intuited by the stupid humans in their cliche "Dogs have masters, Cats have staff". We work for the cats.
So, trying to model a cat's brain is both too complex for computers (try and herd cats) and too simple (try and herd pointy haired bosses). The contradiction results in the computer overheating and exploding.
and when the researcher gets home, blubbering about the 'sploded computer to his wife, the dog says "LOVE ME LOVE ME LOVE!!!! TAKE ME ON WALKIES!!!" and the cat says "Get my fucking dinner, you stupid ass. Maybe I will deign to let you pet me. After I do my rounds. Maybe."
RS
No it doesn't. Not even close. Why? Because technically, given enough time, the European Invasion forces could have WALKED almost the entire way to "the New World" by way of Siberia and then taken a very short boat ride across to Alaska, and then WALKED down through Canada.
Interestingly, when there was more ice around, people did EXACTLY that and had already filled the continent with people 12 - 14,000 years prior to the European Invasion, and were living rich and colourful lives in the mean time for hundreds of generations.
There isn't remotely enough air on Mars, and what is there isn't breathable, and you can't walk anywhere near it, and it has weather not that different from Antarctica, at its best.
So, no, the people who go to Mars are idiots, just typical human douchebags off to plant a flag someplace, to pound their chests like the hairless apes they are.
Quick Answer: there will be no Mars Colony. Not now, not ever.
RS
Now we can get Neanderthal DNA and create an army of slaves for when the oil runs out.
Next month?
Early next year?
It's really kind of stunning how stupid they think people are.
RS
Stop selling your snake oil bullshit and get a real job.
RS
For me, the convenience of a paper book far outweighs that of Kindle. I never have to charge my book, i never have to really think about it much. The hardest part is finding a bookmark, which usually ends up being a bus transfer or a used subway ticket.
So, I agree, convenience is the entire equation, which is why I prefer the tree-killer versions.
RS
We could go POOF from nuclear weapons or an asteroid strike, but then, so would a number of other species. Like my cats - little fuckers would starve if I didn't feed them... fat little bastards.
I see it this way: we either go extinct WITH issue (i.e., we evolve into another species) or we go extinct WITHOUT issue (nukes / asteroids / 100% deadly plague / solar flare / nano goo).
It's much like the coming de-population process. We can get rid of 5 or 6 billion people in two very different ways, and it has to do with how YOU want to die:
at a young(er) age of starvation / exposure / thirst in some transit camp in eastern oregon or in food riots in some over populated rat hole of a city, OR peacefully at home surrounded by friends and family.
We all have to go - so it's just a question of HOW not IF, and WHEN not IF.
RS
Take all that money and put it into robotic missions and space telescopes.
If a telescope needs work that only people can do, put some people on a rocket and have them work on it.
For all the money they want to piss away on a Mars mission, I'd send 100 robots.
for the money on the ISS, I'd put it into space telescopes or even one on the far side of the moon with lunar satellites for data transmission.
People in space has been and always will be a dumb idea. fun and glorious and all that crap, but still, vastly more expensive for less data.
RS
As if.
Because if you go to the same location in mapquest, and turn on aerial view you see the buildings in all their glory.
And if you go to the Google Maps version and turn on Street View, you can see the buildings in living colour. Ground Level.
So, basically, Google's being stupidly secretive, as you can use their own tools against them.
Dur.
RS
good move ace. Let me know how that works out for ya.
RS
If McCain is the next president, the world will say "Ya know what? We're done here. Game over. Thanks for playing" and it will hurt (a lot) in the short run, but once the American Empire's wings are clipped, the rest of the planet can set about building a future that works.
Economic? Send the dollars back home. How? Buy up the assets. Devalue the currency. Don't loan them money.
Diplomatic? The USA as a pariah state, sim. N Korea today or Libya back in the day. Turn off the WTO and IMF. Look elsewhere for partnership.
Socially? Don't let Americans out of America. Make travel difficult. Strict Visa reqs, limited visas, etc. Let them know that when they visit, they know they are thought of as ASSHOLES.
The Americans would bitch and moan and threaten and swagger, but since they're basically bankrupt and have dumped a substantial amount of their wealth into non-wealth generating assets (the military, first and foremost) the USA is really at the mercy of the rest of the planet and some. And if some swaggering third rate imperialist like McCain or, godferbid, his delusional retard of a VP, Palin, comes around acting like a dork, the simple and obvious reply is to shun them.
Now, before you think I'm some sort of Obama supporter, you're wrong. Obama is every bit the imperialist that McCain is - it's just that his focus is not on global domination, but on the much more realistic goal of regional domination. In other words, McCain is a unipolar imperialist and Obama is a multipolar imperialist. The multipolar option is the ONLY realistic option for the USA right now.
So, if the USA has ANY sense of self preservation, it will put Obama in as president. If it wants to drive itself off the cliff of history and explode on the rocks of self-inflicted stupidity, then it should vote for McCain.
The reality that is going to come crashing in is simple: energy. You either have it and use it wisely and with great thrift, or you act like Americans and permit atrocities like Las Vegas and the Cadillac Escalade to exist. Get with the program, or die off. It's a simple choice.
Now, go vote, and vote wisely.
RS