That bicycle? It produced as much or more pollution as the car burning the gasoline to produce it unless you're making it entirely out of wood. The same goes for most of the other ones you brought up.
Wrong for all the wrong reasons. A (smallish) car has about 1000 kg of metal in it. A (big) bike has about 15 kg. The amount of energy/pollution that goes into making it is, by definition, a tiny fraction of that vs. a car.
You've got to take in an even bigger picture than you're doing- otherwise you're no better than the people you're tarring with that brush of yours.
As do you - you can't go comparing the energy required to build a bike to the energy spent powering some craptastic car or SUV some arbitrary distance. You have to compare like to like, in this case, the energy required to build a bike vs. a car or SUV, and the energy required to propel a bike vs. a car or SUV.
This can be measured in watts, and is fairly straight forward. I can assure you it takes much more energy to hurtle 1400 kg of glass, steel, and plastic down the road at 100 kmph than it does to propel 100 kg of bike and rider at 20 kmph.
If you want to see the "car" of the future, watch this:
GROSS ME OUT!!!! GAK!!! GURGLE!!! (heaves into bucket)
What? You live like a PIG??? You TOUCH your SCREEN??? Arf and barf!!!
(joking)
I have a different experience. Like you, I also use a stylus rather than a mouse when I'm doing graphics, and a track pad on the laptop I'm using right now is fine. The mouse has been around since 1961 - I don't think it's going away any time soon. And I still think touchscreens are gross GERM MAGNETS!!!!
SPRAY YOUR SCREEN WITH DISINFECTANT!!! BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!!!!
Sorry, but the touch screen responds to what? Oh - that's right - HUMAN touch. And humans are covered with what? Oh, that's right - oily greasy crap that covers and protects their skin.
Large ouch screens look MANGY after a few weeks, and require constant attention if your office has any glare issues. Also, the grease screws with the viewing of pixels, making for a screen that is harder to read.
Touch screens for an iPhone is one thing - it's tiny and the set of expectations are lower in terms of screen appearance. Personally, I go ballistic when some neanderthal starts touching the screen on my computer. Not that they'll hurt it - it just means I have to CLEAN IT. What a pain in the ass.
while short, these two posts are spot on. We don't have to have "dangerous wastes" if we use the right reactors. IIRC, using an IFR, after 1400 years,the waste has the same radioactivity as my kitchen countertop (granite). confused one is also correct - Subcrit reactors are another viable direction for low waste reactors, and - both run on thorium, and there's 10x as much thorium as there is uranium.
We need THESE kind of technologies, NOW. Not 20 years from now.
I would also note to damburger that the petty despots and terrorists only have power because of state sponsored nuclear terror was practiced live and in action on civilians by the USA (viz Nagasaki and Hiroshima) and held the world hostage in the fear mongering practice of the Cold War by the USA and CCCP. I agree with damburger that it is sad that a small group of asshats is making life exceptionally difficult for the rest of humanity. Remember when you could go to Mexico or Canada and use your Driver's License as ID? Remember a time before the DHS? I do.
This is all a problem of risk assessment which humans largely suck at. 3000 people died on 9/11, and suddenly a multi-billion dollar dept is thrown together making everyone's travelling life difficult and illegal to take cosmetics or liquids on board and all manner of other over-reactive legal nonsense. Every year 50,000 people die on the highways, but I don't see them making cars illegal. How many people died at 3 mile island? Oh that's right - none. Did it shorten some people's lives? Yes. However, the proper response would have been to build IFRs and subcrits, not ban them altogether. Chernyobl is a different deal - that was people being stupid and destructive, so many people died there. IFRs and subcrits and pebblebeds - these are all VASTLY safer technologies, and Mister and Missus John Q Smith from Anytown USA need to pull their heads out of their asses NOW, and get with the program if they have ANY hope of keeping the lights on in 20 years.
I don't fancy freezing in the dark, as it would result in the disappearance of the forests, and THAT would suck...
RS
Re:Why not apply spam filters on outgoing messages
on
Spammers Choose GMail
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· Score: 1
Hi!
I'm not concerned with recieving spam - as you noted - spam filters work well, and I also noted that. I am much more concerned with labeling outgoing email as spam, as it is a fast and slippery slope from halting viagra adverts to straight censorship. My concern isn't technical - it's conceptual.
cheers!
RS
Re:Why not apply spam filters on outgoing messages
on
Spammers Choose GMail
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· Score: 1
Nice idea, but what if you're discussing spam content? Then your email will appear spammy, even though it isn't.
Or, what if you write poetry? A lot of modern poetry reads like seriously fucked up spam. Also, scripts read as nonsense, and nonsensical scripts, even more so. Example, from "Waiting for Godot":
(with magnanimous gesture). Let's say no more about it. (He jerks the rope.) Up pig! (Pause.) Every time he drops he falls asleep. (Jerks the rope.) Up hog! (Noise of Lucky getting up and picking up his baggage. Pozzo jerks the rope.) Back! (Enter Lucky backwards.) Stop! (Lucky stops.) Turn! (Lucky turns. To Vladimir and Estragon, affably.) Gentlemen, I am happy to have met you. (Before their incredulous expression.)
So, if I were discussing that, or simply emailing a friend or group of friends saying "Here's the passage you were looking for / we were discussing", it would get flagged as spam.
So, no, hindering outgoing mail is NOT the answer, or part of an answer. One poster above noted that opting for (Language X) charsets only (such as Roman only) would help get rid of all the cyrillic and chinese/korean spam. That would be good, and VERY simple to set up. As far as the rest of it goes, heuristic filters do work, if you use them. But, you always have to use them...
how much energy does it take to cool those lines to that insanely cold value? In a standard copper line the value is zero: we don't cool them... So the cooling of the line from generator to user must be very energy efficient. Like, a lot. Somehow, given what I know of Thermodynamics, I kind of have my doubts this is of any real value. I could be wrong, but my back of te nvelope calculations tell me this is a boondoggle- i.e. something right up the poop shoot for halliburton.
fuck off. I lived in CA for 15 years. You live like a pig.
I have a pool (which has a pump that soaks up 40A) and I have air-conditioning which can do the same. Add the washer/dryer, pond pumps (another 5A) and general load (server in the garage, lighting, etc..) and I'm using ~80kWH/day.
Do you need a pool? No. Do you need AC? Not if your house is properly insulated - with tht all you need is a small heat pump. Do you need a washer? Sure - I'll grant you that. Dryer? In CA? Fuck no, unless you live in the Sunset district of SF which never gets any sun. Pond Pump? WTF? Lemme guess - something to keep you koi fish happy on your ornamental lawn? Sure - load up your house with PV Solar - you're just living proof of Jeavon's Paradox and your life is no better than that of yeast.
so keep on keepin on with your unsustainable hell.
RS
ps: a word of advice: learn to food garden. Don't say you weren't warned.
They will only become involved with open source insofar as it suits their ends (At minimum) and dilutes or destroys open source software as a category of human endeavour.
Good on ya! The California dood probably eats gobs of juice because his house is made of crap and has no insulation (typical of California). And he probably leaves the HVAC on 24/7, etc.
Due to these simple points, terrestrial solar power generation stations will NEVER replace the 24/7 reliability of Coal/Gas/Nuclear/Hydroelectric power generation plants. Solar can only be used as a supplement during peak demand in sunny 'daytime', for example..
Points are well taken - what flips my crank may not flip someone elses.
Thanks for the suggestion of acquiring a trophy girl, but that's not my style.
;-)
The lefty politics I don't mind, being a bit of a socialist myself. But I'm glad you're happy where-ever you are. Your idea of living on the Appalachian trail is a good one, I just suck at camping...
The problem is, when they hit a midlife crisis, rather than do something MEANINGFUL, like bug out of the rat race, they instead dump their wives and kids for a trophy girl, get drunk a lot and spin their way into debt on a sports car and trinkets for the trophy, like this fat idiot and his bleeth.
when faced with a crisis, people tend to panic, and they don't always make the best choices when they're flopping around like fish on the existential beach.
Me? I turned 40 and flipped out, but instead of the bleeth and the car, I talked with my wife, went back to school and got into academia... teaching university is incredibly intense, but lots of fun, and now we're a happy family living and teaching abroad. Yay!
If you define artificial intelligence as self-aware, self-learning, mobile systems, then artificial intelligence has been a huge disappointment. On the other hand, every time you search the Web, get a movie recommendation from NetFlix, or speak to a telephone voice recognition system, tools developed chasing the great promise of intelligent machines do the work."
No, it just means that they've figured out machines are never going to "win" that argument, so they're changing the terms of the argument so they can "win" and keep getting their grants and protect their pensions.
AI is to Science what PostModernism was to cultural studies - a stupid boondoggle that got a generation tenure.
And breeders make fuel, but they aren't a universal option (no one wants North Korea to build a breeder...) so we're back to using a mix of sources. People are going t o have to become more responsible for their energy consumption by becoming more responsible for their energy production.
The nukes (with hydro and geothermal) could be used for baseload, and wind / solar could add on/top off as needed. MASSIVE changes are going to be needed, and they need to be done VERY quickly.
Demand destruction is the only way a society can grow in the face of resource depletion - efficiency improvements must exceed depletion rates.
I know the surface is like 6000C or so, but I thought the corona was in the millions of degrees. I don't see how they'd get anything close enough to it before the corona vapourised it.
Huge amounts of work are being auctioned off to India, China, and Korea as well as Eastern Europe. You know - countries where people know how to read and stuff. IMHO, the only work going to be done in the USA is the business dev and central programming / architecting / and management work. Everything else will be shipped off shore.
China's technology minister, Wan Gang, told Reuters China he would "guarantee as much [access] as possible," defending Web limitations as necessary to protect the country's citizens.
Protect them?
PROTECT THEM???
From WHAT??? Other than finding out what a murderous bunch of thugs run their craptastic fascist gov't?
For one thing, it's insanely expensive. Then there are the fear mongering chimps of the TSA whose sole job it is is to let the public think "the gubbernment is doing something about terrism", as it has been demonstrated more than once that they let all kinds of weapons pass through their systems. And then the indignities of being treated like cattle by the airline staff... It's just not worth it. I read somewhere that by 2020 the IT industry will use more energy than the airline industry, and that doesn't surprise me, as I think there won't be much of an airline industry by 2020.
Word up: bring a tiny bit of modelling clay in your pocket, and then when you sit down, put it on top of the camera lens.
Or just sit there and pick your nose for THE ENTIRE FLIGHT.
Slashdot Mirror
That bicycle? It produced as much or more pollution as the car burning the gasoline to produce it unless you're making it entirely out of wood. The same goes for most of the other ones you brought up.
Wrong for all the wrong reasons. A (smallish) car has about 1000 kg of metal in it. A (big) bike has about 15 kg. The amount of energy/pollution that goes into making it is, by definition, a tiny fraction of that vs. a car.
You've got to take in an even bigger picture than you're doing- otherwise you're no better than the people you're tarring with that brush of yours.
As do you - you can't go comparing the energy required to build a bike to the energy spent powering some craptastic car or SUV some arbitrary distance. You have to compare like to like, in this case, the energy required to build a bike vs. a car or SUV, and the energy required to propel a bike vs. a car or SUV.
This can be measured in watts, and is fairly straight forward. I can assure you it takes much more energy to hurtle 1400 kg of glass, steel, and plastic down the road at 100 kmph than it does to propel 100 kg of bike and rider at 20 kmph.
If you want to see the "car" of the future, watch this:
Electric velomobile
RS
Eeeeeeew!
GROSS ME OUT!!!! GAK!!! GURGLE!!! (heaves into bucket)
What? You live like a PIG??? You TOUCH your SCREEN??? Arf and barf!!!
(joking)
I have a different experience. Like you, I also use a stylus rather than a mouse when I'm doing graphics, and a track pad on the laptop I'm using right now is fine. The mouse has been around since 1961 - I don't think it's going away any time soon. And I still think touchscreens are gross GERM MAGNETS!!!!
SPRAY YOUR SCREEN WITH DISINFECTANT!!! BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE!!!!
cheers,
RS
Large ouch screens look MANGY after a few weeks, and require constant attention if your office has any glare issues. Also, the grease screws with the viewing of pixels, making for a screen that is harder to read.
Touch screens for an iPhone is one thing - it's tiny and the set of expectations are lower in terms of screen appearance. Personally, I go ballistic when some neanderthal starts touching the screen on my computer. Not that they'll hurt it - it just means I have to CLEAN IT. What a pain in the ass.
RS
We need THESE kind of technologies, NOW. Not 20 years from now.
I would also note to damburger that the petty despots and terrorists only have power because of state sponsored nuclear terror was practiced live and in action on civilians by the USA (viz Nagasaki and Hiroshima) and held the world hostage in the fear mongering practice of the Cold War by the USA and CCCP. I agree with damburger that it is sad that a small group of asshats is making life exceptionally difficult for the rest of humanity. Remember when you could go to Mexico or Canada and use your Driver's License as ID? Remember a time before the DHS? I do.
This is all a problem of risk assessment which humans largely suck at. 3000 people died on 9/11, and suddenly a multi-billion dollar dept is thrown together making everyone's travelling life difficult and illegal to take cosmetics or liquids on board and all manner of other over-reactive legal nonsense. Every year 50,000 people die on the highways, but I don't see them making cars illegal. How many people died at 3 mile island? Oh that's right - none. Did it shorten some people's lives? Yes. However, the proper response would have been to build IFRs and subcrits, not ban them altogether. Chernyobl is a different deal - that was people being stupid and destructive, so many people died there. IFRs and subcrits and pebblebeds - these are all VASTLY safer technologies, and Mister and Missus John Q Smith from Anytown USA need to pull their heads out of their asses NOW, and get with the program if they have ANY hope of keeping the lights on in 20 years.
I don't fancy freezing in the dark, as it would result in the disappearance of the forests, and THAT would suck...
RS
I'm not concerned with recieving spam - as you noted - spam filters work well, and I also noted that. I am much more concerned with labeling outgoing email as spam, as it is a fast and slippery slope from halting viagra adverts to straight censorship. My concern isn't technical - it's conceptual.
cheers!
RS
Or, what if you write poetry? A lot of modern poetry reads like seriously fucked up spam. Also, scripts read as nonsense, and nonsensical scripts, even more so. Example, from "Waiting for Godot":
(with magnanimous gesture). Let's say no more about it. (He jerks the rope.) Up pig! (Pause.) Every time he drops he falls asleep. (Jerks the rope.) Up hog! (Noise of Lucky getting up and picking up his baggage. Pozzo jerks the rope.) Back! (Enter Lucky backwards.) Stop! (Lucky stops.) Turn! (Lucky turns. To Vladimir and Estragon, affably.) Gentlemen, I am happy to have met you. (Before their incredulous expression.)
So, if I were discussing that, or simply emailing a friend or group of friends saying "Here's the passage you were looking for / we were discussing", it would get flagged as spam.
So, no, hindering outgoing mail is NOT the answer, or part of an answer. One poster above noted that opting for (Language X) charsets only (such as Roman only) would help get rid of all the cyrillic and chinese/korean spam. That would be good, and VERY simple to set up. As far as the rest of it goes, heuristic filters do work, if you use them. But, you always have to use them...
RS
how much energy does it take to cool those lines to that insanely cold value? In a standard copper line the value is zero: we don't cool them... So the cooling of the line from generator to user must be very energy efficient. Like, a lot. Somehow, given what I know of Thermodynamics, I kind of have my doubts this is of any real value. I could be wrong, but my back of te nvelope calculations tell me this is a boondoggle- i.e. something right up the poop shoot for halliburton.
I'm 50 and I don't watch TV at all...
I have a pool (which has a pump that soaks up 40A) and I have air-conditioning which can do the same. Add the washer/dryer, pond pumps (another 5A) and general load (server in the garage, lighting, etc..) and I'm using ~80kWH/day.
Do you need a pool? No. Do you need AC? Not if your house is properly insulated - with tht all you need is a small heat pump. Do you need a washer? Sure - I'll grant you that. Dryer? In CA? Fuck no, unless you live in the Sunset district of SF which never gets any sun. Pond Pump? WTF? Lemme guess - something to keep you koi fish happy on your ornamental lawn? Sure - load up your house with PV Solar - you're just living proof of Jeavon's Paradox and your life is no better than that of yeast.
so keep on keepin on with your unsustainable hell.
RS
ps: a word of advice: learn to food garden. Don't say you weren't warned.not that bob was open source, but that it was a POS beyond human imagining, but it was a boondogle tht served them. Until it didn't.
They are not to be trusted. Proof? Bob.
RS
cheers.
RS
Bullshit
It's called SOLAR THERMAL. And you use molten salt or graphite to generate electricity at night.
RS
RS
Thanks for the suggestion of acquiring a trophy girl, but that's not my style.
The lefty politics I don't mind, being a bit of a socialist myself. But I'm glad you're happy where-ever you are. Your idea of living on the Appalachian trail is a good one, I just suck at camping...
best,
RS
The problem is, when they hit a midlife crisis, rather than do something MEANINGFUL, like bug out of the rat race, they instead dump their wives and kids for a trophy girl, get drunk a lot and spin their way into debt on a sports car and trinkets for the trophy, like this fat idiot and his bleeth.
when faced with a crisis, people tend to panic, and they don't always make the best choices when they're flopping around like fish on the existential beach.
Me? I turned 40 and flipped out, but instead of the bleeth and the car, I talked with my wife, went back to school and got into academia... teaching university is incredibly intense, but lots of fun, and now we're a happy family living and teaching abroad. Yay!
RS
But sometimes I wonder about the sports car...
No, it just means that they've figured out machines are never going to "win" that argument, so they're changing the terms of the argument so they can "win" and keep getting their grants and protect their pensions.
AI is to Science what PostModernism was to cultural studies - a stupid boondoggle that got a generation tenure.
RS
Esp. given that Uranium is a limited resource.
And breeders make fuel, but they aren't a universal option (no one wants North Korea to build a breeder...) so we're back to using a mix of sources. People are going t o have to become more responsible for their energy consumption by becoming more responsible for their energy production.
The nukes (with hydro and geothermal) could be used for baseload, and wind / solar could add on/top off as needed. MASSIVE changes are going to be needed, and they need to be done VERY quickly.
Demand destruction is the only way a society can grow in the face of resource depletion - efficiency improvements must exceed depletion rates.
RS
is brewing. Rawls: unfair / unjust / unreasonable. His termination fits all three. Now, how much will he rake these people for?
If you go here
there's this data:
"Gas particles in the corona can reach temperatures of up to 1,700,000 ÂC"
- Prentice Hall Earth Science. Engelwood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1987: 73.
So wouldn't that tend to prevent anything man made from getting near the sun, much less its "surface" / chromosphere?
RS
or even identify it. RS
no, it just means that people will build these huge honkin ultralightweight SUVs.
RS
Protect them?
PROTECT THEM???
From WHAT??? Other than finding out what a murderous bunch of thugs run their craptastic fascist gov't?
RS
Word up: bring a tiny bit of modelling clay in your pocket, and then when you sit down, put it on top of the camera lens.
Or just sit there and pick your nose for THE ENTIRE FLIGHT.
RS