Another example of abusing computer models comes from the proposed Cap & Trade laws. The agency determining a company's (or factory, power plant, etc) carbon output isn't using measured data but rather some fancy-pants computer model with assumptions that aren't based on historical outputs and there is no legal mechanism to dispute the results.
Yes, you can make a computer model say anything. Point is that Halliburton's model showed serious problems with the concrete yet the BP people directly involved ostensibly chose to ignore it to maintain their schedule. If that turns out to be the case, Halliburton is not at fault and technically BP's upper management isn't at fault either if they were kept in the dark by middle management.
I got my Masters degree in software engineering which was largely all about project management. We even took a course from CMU on a topic that was a theory about proving the "correctness" of code without testing it. Bottom line is that when all the mucky-muck non-programmer BS dust settles, you still have to write the code. Of course, once you get a few programmers together who are working on projects that overlap, you need some way of managing the effort. In terms of butt-covering, I've heard it said that when a small company hires more than one lawyer it's time to leave.
I find it fascinating that people were willing to blame Halliburton (and Dick Cheney who hasn't been its CEO for 10 years) when they had computer modeling software for the cement that pointed out problems. I wonder if these same people are going to dismiss this fact as junk science while blindly accepting computer models of weather forecasts for the next 100 years all because they prefer one flavor of politics over another.
Recently I was playing golf at a course that had electric carts with built in GPS map displays. The software detected that I was approaching a no-cart area and stopped moving forward and the cart displayed a message telling you to back up and turn around. They can also turn off the cart if it goes off the course to prevent theft. So in this way a phone could detect that it's moving faster than walking speed and disable the phone function. Of course this wouldn't work on a bus or train but it's an idea.
This is the kind of implementation that actually makes sense. You don't need dedicated hardware or real estate to set it up. Granted northern exposure probably would work but put this stuff all over southern exposure windows in a whole city and tie it all onto the grid. It's akin to not using food crops for biofuels. Algae and switch grass make more sense.
Now the big key is getting the cost per kilowatt down where it's competitive with traditional power generation. And of course you really need a large scale storage system. I remember a Popular Science article about giant underground flywheels.
I'd like to know if there are also different rates depending on which OS you're running. Or for that matter, what about a mobile device (iPhone, iPad, Android) versus a regular computer.
The 3G version has wifi too...I bought it for the GPS. I have AT&T data service on my iPhone. I have a problem with having to pay double to get it on the iPad. It's not like I'm going to be surfing on two devices at the same time. Why can't I punch my account into the other device. And it wouldn't be too difficult to look at the packets for the device serial number and only allow one of them to work at any given time.
IMHO, environmental extremism is nothing more that a reconstituted Luddite movement. This is a perfect example. It's as though they think there will suddenly be thousands of space flights every single day and more on the holidays.
Really old & busted: Global Warming. Old & Busted: Global Climate Change. New hotness: Global Climate Disruption. IMHO, they have yet to find the right marketing term to scare the pants off people. Warming didn't work out so well when lots of places were freezing their nuts off in the last 10 years. Change didn't work out because people say "The climate is ALWAYS changing." Plus, fewer people are buying "hope & change" so they need to disassociate the term. So, "disruption" could work because they can point to anything that isn't sunny and 72 degrees and say "See?!?! We were right all along. Give us money."
Sure the lines and plants are privately owned but they are regulated by governments. They can still get a court order to shut off your power. I saw a copy of one plastered on a nearby foreclosed home. They can't get a court order to prevent you from going to joe shmo's gas station and paying cash.
As far as Enron goes, no argument there. They sucked. I just know that in SoCal, I never experienced a black out. Sure, Enron was greedy but they weren't the only one. And the California legislature had to agree to buy that power. Why they locked themselves into such a restrictive contract makes you wonder if they were on the take too.
I also grew up in the 70s during the oil embargo and gas lines. Two points here: 1) We should be exploiting our own resources far more than we are so that geopolitics plays less of a role. 2) Fuel can sit in storage tanks for a long time. We don't have any way to store the electricity we generate so you can't plan for a disaster.
As for generating your own power, great but people who don't have a place to put solar panels or a windmill can't do that. You live in a condo or an apartment? No green energy for you. You don't have southern exposure, no solar for you. And even then, can you afford to generate wattage you need to run this charger system they're talking about?
Seems like there are too many impracticalities and unanswered questions to jump into this with both feet.
Ethanol is really corrosive especially to older engines and you can't run it through pipelines built to handle fossil fuels. That's one problem. The other problem is using a food source as a fuel means you have to make a choice so you can end up with shortages of one or the other. Non-food crop biofuels are more interesting but the cost to produce is still way too high even with subsidies.
I never understood how the free market electric power was going to work. Somebody still has to pay for the infrastructure and you don't get multiple companies running multiple wires down the street. Same thing applies to the cable company. Until satellite came along you had pretty much no choice which was why they were hell-bent on preventing satellite from getting access to local stations. But the free market has triumphed in the end. Not only do you have two satellite companies competing with cable you also have FIOS in some places and internet-based TV now. As a matter of interest, I lived in California during the Enron days and I never once experienced a black out or brown out.
Distribution of fossil fuels (natural gas not included) can't easily be restricted by a runaway government. The fuel companies can buy all the trucks they want. But a government can easily get a court order banning your use of public utilities. They could also restrict the amount of power you're allowed to use which we're starting to see with the advent of smart meters and other devices.
If electric cars are as good as or superior to fossil-fuel vehicles, great. But, if you don't have a choice, screw that noise.
Precisely. My mechanic told me that hybrid vehicle packs cost about $5000 and neesd to be replaced every three years or so. At that rate people will be more likely to blow it off and run only on the gasoline side. But I have another question to add: What's the self-discharge rate of this battery? How long can it sit before you've pissed away all that stored energy. Gasoline can sit for years. Granted you'd probably use it but if the battery drains in a couple of weeks, forget going on vacation and leaving your car at the airport. And then what about those of us who live in the boonies and don't have access to this sort of high-end charging station? It's a bit like not having cable or DSL or 3G. And then there's another problem: Electricity is a public utility. Gasoline and diesel distribution is not. Not only are you locked into a single source which means there is no market competition to keep prices down, you also open the door for government to restrict or ban your access. It's been said that rests on four boxes: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. I've also read that there is a fifth box: Moving. Freedom also includes freedom of movement. Totalitarian regimes restrict that movement. Without the ability to buy electricity from whomever you want or to generate it yourself which is probably impossible in this case, your movement can be restricted.
Okay, so I'm playing around with a Drupal site concept in Artisteer. Artisteer lets you drop in Flash animations as little overlays on banners and the like and it comes with a couple of samples. A dead effing simple moving cloud overlay caused the fan in my machine to crank up to hurricane speed. And this is the most recent build of Flash. IMO (definitely not being humble here), Flash blows, literally and figuratively. If Flash had to be certified EnergyStar compliant it would fail miserably.
I know the guy who designed the molds for the original IBM PC. He tells the tail of IBM suits coming to him to get the molds made. He asked them how many parts they planned to make off the mold. Their answer: 150,000. Ten copies of the mold later, IBM had farmed out the production work to ten different parts of the country to keep up with the demand.
IMHO there should be more technology than competing countries have. FAR less emphasis on athletics and FAR more emphasis on teaching kids the skills they will need. I'll never forget 4th grade. Science days were once in a blue moon and the other kids would always make fun of me for getting excited about it. Technology propels economies. But it must be current stuff too. The stuff I learned in college wasn't marketable when I graduated. It would have been 5-10 years earlier. I would also opine that project-based learning is far more useful than regurgitating names, dates, and places. Project-based learning teaches kids to work together and solve problems with a clear goal in mind.
Keep your friends close, your enemies closer. We're more likely to get better intel on what the Chinese are really doing by teaming up with them than being isolationist about it.
Fascist governments forbid and suppress opposition to the fascist state and the fascist movement. Exactly which side is it that is a huge proponent of the so-called Fairness Doctrine? That would be the left. Exactly which side is it that instead of debating the issues shouts racism whenever there is dissent. That would be the left.
Fascism presents itself as a solution to the perceived benefits and disadvantages of conservatism by advocating state-controlled modernization. Exactly which side is hell-bent on enacting "progressive" Cap & Trade and heavily subsidized "green" projects? That would be the left.
Fascism is heavily opposed to laissez-faire capitalism which by definition means "leave us the hell alone". Exactly which side is a huge proponent of heavy-handed government regulation? That would be the left.
There is a scholarly consensus that fascism was influenced by both the left and the right. A number of historians have regarded fascism either as a revolutionary centrist doctrine, as a doctrine which mixes philosophies of the left and the right, or as both of those things. Don't give me that crap about Fascism be exclusively the domain of the right wing.
Xenophobia? Nationalistic? What a crock. Leftist regimes have been the most xenophobic and genocidic in history.
Obsession with stomping out socialism? Fine by me. By what right should anyone have to give up what they rightfully earn so other people can slack off?
Tribalism? Oh, you mean those leftist warlords in African and other parts of the world who aren't satisfied with corrupting elections that they kill anyone who opposes them?
Quite frankly it is you, sir (spelled with a c and a u) that are full of it. Don't let factual history hit you in the butt on your way out.
If this is yet another attempt to paint conservatives as evil facists, this will be total sh*t. Given that it's coming out of Hollywood, I wouldn't put it past them. Given that Scott's Robin Hood practically threw away the entire original script and subsequently turned it in to another steaming pile, I can see how this is going to end up. Come on, creatives, be original for once.
Sure...just find a scenic flight outfit. Throwing stuff out of a plane isn't exactly legal but then again, the legality of GPS tracking is being debated quite a bit.
This guy missed a golden opportunity to mess with the FBI. Like maybe taking the thing up in a plane and throwing it out the window. Or tie it to a giant helium balloon.
Has anyone actually seen physical evidence that Stuxnet was present on one of the Iranian nuclear power computers? Or is it possible that their nuclear program has serious problems and they decided to create some propaganda to shift the blame to their arch-enemies? I personally wouldn't take the chance that it was the latter case. As a matter of history, the Soviet Union was far less advanced than originally thought but it took a surge in Cold War activities to find out. If there is a third world war, IMHO it will begin with a country like Iran. Yes, just as there were Germans who didn't follow the Nazi regime or the Kaiser's regime, there are Iranians who don't subscribe to the regime's ideals and there are Muslims who don't blindly follow sharia law or subscribe to radical Islam. But for the foreseeable future, radical Islam is entrenched in the halls of power.
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Another example of abusing computer models comes from the proposed Cap & Trade laws. The agency determining a company's (or factory, power plant, etc) carbon output isn't using measured data but rather some fancy-pants computer model with assumptions that aren't based on historical outputs and there is no legal mechanism to dispute the results.
Yes, you can make a computer model say anything. Point is that Halliburton's model showed serious problems with the concrete yet the BP people directly involved ostensibly chose to ignore it to maintain their schedule. If that turns out to be the case, Halliburton is not at fault and technically BP's upper management isn't at fault either if they were kept in the dark by middle management.
I got my Masters degree in software engineering which was largely all about project management. We even took a course from CMU on a topic that was a theory about proving the "correctness" of code without testing it. Bottom line is that when all the mucky-muck non-programmer BS dust settles, you still have to write the code. Of course, once you get a few programmers together who are working on projects that overlap, you need some way of managing the effort. In terms of butt-covering, I've heard it said that when a small company hires more than one lawyer it's time to leave.
I find it fascinating that people were willing to blame Halliburton (and Dick Cheney who hasn't been its CEO for 10 years) when they had computer modeling software for the cement that pointed out problems. I wonder if these same people are going to dismiss this fact as junk science while blindly accepting computer models of weather forecasts for the next 100 years all because they prefer one flavor of politics over another.
Recently I was playing golf at a course that had electric carts with built in GPS map displays. The software detected that I was approaching a no-cart area and stopped moving forward and the cart displayed a message telling you to back up and turn around. They can also turn off the cart if it goes off the course to prevent theft. So in this way a phone could detect that it's moving faster than walking speed and disable the phone function. Of course this wouldn't work on a bus or train but it's an idea.
Oh, you mean this: http://www.eaavideo.org/video.aspx?v=635469588001
As for living under the ocean, when mammals the size of 18-wheelers can accidentally ram into your windows, I'll stay on dry land, thanks.
This is the kind of implementation that actually makes sense. You don't need dedicated hardware or real estate to set it up. Granted northern exposure probably would work but put this stuff all over southern exposure windows in a whole city and tie it all onto the grid. It's akin to not using food crops for biofuels. Algae and switch grass make more sense.
Now the big key is getting the cost per kilowatt down where it's competitive with traditional power generation. And of course you really need a large scale storage system. I remember a Popular Science article about giant underground flywheels.
I'd like to know if there are also different rates depending on which OS you're running. Or for that matter, what about a mobile device (iPhone, iPad, Android) versus a regular computer.
The 3G version has wifi too...I bought it for the GPS. I have AT&T data service on my iPhone. I have a problem with having to pay double to get it on the iPad. It's not like I'm going to be surfing on two devices at the same time. Why can't I punch my account into the other device. And it wouldn't be too difficult to look at the packets for the device serial number and only allow one of them to work at any given time.
IMHO, environmental extremism is nothing more that a reconstituted Luddite movement. This is a perfect example. It's as though they think there will suddenly be thousands of space flights every single day and more on the holidays.
Really old & busted: Global Warming. Old & Busted: Global Climate Change. New hotness: Global Climate Disruption.
IMHO, they have yet to find the right marketing term to scare the pants off people. Warming didn't work out so well when lots of places were freezing their nuts off in the last 10 years. Change didn't work out because people say "The climate is ALWAYS changing." Plus, fewer people are buying "hope & change" so they need to disassociate the term. So, "disruption" could work because they can point to anything that isn't sunny and 72 degrees and say "See?!?! We were right all along. Give us money."
Sure the lines and plants are privately owned but they are regulated by governments. They can still get a court order to shut off your power. I saw a copy of one plastered on a nearby foreclosed home. They can't get a court order to prevent you from going to joe shmo's gas station and paying cash.
As far as Enron goes, no argument there. They sucked. I just know that in SoCal, I never experienced a black out. Sure, Enron was greedy but they weren't the only one. And the California legislature had to agree to buy that power. Why they locked themselves into such a restrictive contract makes you wonder if they were on the take too.
I also grew up in the 70s during the oil embargo and gas lines. Two points here: 1) We should be exploiting our own resources far more than we are so that geopolitics plays less of a role. 2) Fuel can sit in storage tanks for a long time. We don't have any way to store the electricity we generate so you can't plan for a disaster.
As for generating your own power, great but people who don't have a place to put solar panels or a windmill can't do that. You live in a condo or an apartment? No green energy for you. You don't have southern exposure, no solar for you. And even then, can you afford to generate wattage you need to run this charger system they're talking about?
Seems like there are too many impracticalities and unanswered questions to jump into this with both feet.
Ethanol is really corrosive especially to older engines and you can't run it through pipelines built to handle fossil fuels. That's one problem. The other problem is using a food source as a fuel means you have to make a choice so you can end up with shortages of one or the other. Non-food crop biofuels are more interesting but the cost to produce is still way too high even with subsidies.
I never understood how the free market electric power was going to work. Somebody still has to pay for the infrastructure and you don't get multiple companies running multiple wires down the street. Same thing applies to the cable company. Until satellite came along you had pretty much no choice which was why they were hell-bent on preventing satellite from getting access to local stations. But the free market has triumphed in the end. Not only do you have two satellite companies competing with cable you also have FIOS in some places and internet-based TV now. As a matter of interest, I lived in California during the Enron days and I never once experienced a black out or brown out.
Distribution of fossil fuels (natural gas not included) can't easily be restricted by a runaway government. The fuel companies can buy all the trucks they want. But a government can easily get a court order banning your use of public utilities. They could also restrict the amount of power you're allowed to use which we're starting to see with the advent of smart meters and other devices.
If electric cars are as good as or superior to fossil-fuel vehicles, great. But, if you don't have a choice, screw that noise.
Precisely. My mechanic told me that hybrid vehicle packs cost about $5000 and neesd to be replaced every three years or so. At that rate people will be more likely to blow it off and run only on the gasoline side. But I have another question to add: What's the self-discharge rate of this battery? How long can it sit before you've pissed away all that stored energy. Gasoline can sit for years. Granted you'd probably use it but if the battery drains in a couple of weeks, forget going on vacation and leaving your car at the airport. And then what about those of us who live in the boonies and don't have access to this sort of high-end charging station? It's a bit like not having cable or DSL or 3G. And then there's another problem: Electricity is a public utility. Gasoline and diesel distribution is not. Not only are you locked into a single source which means there is no market competition to keep prices down, you also open the door for government to restrict or ban your access. It's been said that rests on four boxes: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. I've also read that there is a fifth box: Moving. Freedom also includes freedom of movement. Totalitarian regimes restrict that movement. Without the ability to buy electricity from whomever you want or to generate it yourself which is probably impossible in this case, your movement can be restricted.
No, because as soon as I turn off that one little bit of Flash everything runs fine. Besides, Drupal isn't creating the pages continuously.
Okay, so I'm playing around with a Drupal site concept in Artisteer. Artisteer lets you drop in Flash animations as little overlays on banners and the like and it comes with a couple of samples. A dead effing simple moving cloud overlay caused the fan in my machine to crank up to hurricane speed. And this is the most recent build of Flash. IMO (definitely not being humble here), Flash blows, literally and figuratively. If Flash had to be certified EnergyStar compliant it would fail miserably.
I know the guy who designed the molds for the original IBM PC. He tells the tail of IBM suits coming to him to get the molds made. He asked them how many parts they planned to make off the mold. Their answer: 150,000. Ten copies of the mold later, IBM had farmed out the production work to ten different parts of the country to keep up with the demand.
IMHO there should be more technology than competing countries have. FAR less emphasis on athletics and FAR more emphasis on teaching kids the skills they will need. I'll never forget 4th grade. Science days were once in a blue moon and the other kids would always make fun of me for getting excited about it. Technology propels economies. But it must be current stuff too. The stuff I learned in college wasn't marketable when I graduated. It would have been 5-10 years earlier. I would also opine that project-based learning is far more useful than regurgitating names, dates, and places. Project-based learning teaches kids to work together and solve problems with a clear goal in mind.
Keep your friends close, your enemies closer. We're more likely to get better intel on what the Chinese are really doing by teaming up with them than being isolationist about it.
Fascist governments forbid and suppress opposition to the fascist state and the fascist movement. Exactly which side is it that is a huge proponent of the so-called Fairness Doctrine? That would be the left. Exactly which side is it that instead of debating the issues shouts racism whenever there is dissent. That would be the left.
Fascism presents itself as a solution to the perceived benefits and disadvantages of conservatism by advocating state-controlled modernization. Exactly which side is hell-bent on enacting "progressive" Cap & Trade and heavily subsidized "green" projects? That would be the left.
Fascism is heavily opposed to laissez-faire capitalism which by definition means "leave us the hell alone". Exactly which side is a huge proponent of heavy-handed government regulation? That would be the left.
There is a scholarly consensus that fascism was influenced by both the left and the right. A number of historians have regarded fascism either as a revolutionary centrist doctrine, as a doctrine which mixes philosophies of the left and the right, or as both of those things. Don't give me that crap about Fascism be exclusively the domain of the right wing.
Xenophobia? Nationalistic? What a crock. Leftist regimes have been the most xenophobic and genocidic in history.
Obsession with stomping out socialism? Fine by me. By what right should anyone have to give up what they rightfully earn so other people can slack off?
Tribalism? Oh, you mean those leftist warlords in African and other parts of the world who aren't satisfied with corrupting elections that they kill anyone who opposes them?
Quite frankly it is you, sir (spelled with a c and a u) that are full of it. Don't let factual history hit you in the butt on your way out.
If this is yet another attempt to paint conservatives as evil facists, this will be total sh*t. Given that it's coming out of Hollywood, I wouldn't put it past them. Given that Scott's Robin Hood practically threw away the entire original script and subsequently turned it in to another steaming pile, I can see how this is going to end up. Come on, creatives, be original for once.
Sure...just find a scenic flight outfit. Throwing stuff out of a plane isn't exactly legal but then again, the legality of GPS tracking is being debated quite a bit.
This guy missed a golden opportunity to mess with the FBI. Like maybe taking the thing up in a plane and throwing it out the window. Or tie it to a giant helium balloon.
Has anyone actually seen physical evidence that Stuxnet was present on one of the Iranian nuclear power computers?
Or is it possible that their nuclear program has serious problems and they decided to create some propaganda to shift the blame to their arch-enemies?
I personally wouldn't take the chance that it was the latter case. As a matter of history, the Soviet Union was far less advanced than originally thought but it took a surge in Cold War activities to find out.
If there is a third world war, IMHO it will begin with a country like Iran. Yes, just as there were Germans who didn't follow the Nazi regime or the Kaiser's regime, there are Iranians who don't subscribe to the regime's ideals and there are Muslims who don't blindly follow sharia law or subscribe to radical Islam. But for the foreseeable future, radical Islam is entrenched in the halls of power.