Corn isn't necessary for most animal feed, it just gets animals to market quicker. Cattle were domesticated long before corn
Today's mass-produced low-cost beef industry in the US is built upon a foundation of feeding cattle high-calorie diets. The fact that it's possible to produce meat with other means is irrelevant in a discussion of the ability to mass produce meat at low cost. If they could produce an equivalent amount of meat for the same price without using corn, they'd already be doing it.
And yes, everything comes down to money. Which is a finite resource. Technically we could be growing mangoes in Greenland in giant greenhouses. Got the cash for that?
So, you agree that corn isn't necessary, it is merely a choice that maximizes profits. Of course the modern mass produced low cost beef industry requires the use of hormones and antibiotics, but hey, to each their own. Here, in flyover country, most cattle still graze and locally produced beef is no more expensive than than the mass marketed stuff. It is also free from most of the ministrations do to the cattle, too.
Mass produced or manufactured beef may be good for the corporate farm and the shareholder, but it isn't necessarily good for the consumer. As for mangoes in Greenland, why bother? They already grow plenty of strawberries and other fruits and vegetables there in their giant greenhouses. Cost is relative when the alternative to growing it there is shipping it by boat or plane. Greenland was and still is pretty self sufficient.
What problem is this trying to solve? And more importantly, why is google collecting this specific information about users and once collected, how else will it be used and by whom? Maybe that's why the announcement was "low key." They were hoping it would go unnoticed.
I find it interesting that a business doesn't like something said about it online can, with relative ease, get it taken down. But some kid who had a lapse of discretion needs an army of attorneys to get the content removed. That just doesn't seem right.
I find it ironic that in an article about how imprecise and loose language led to the notion that breakfast is somehow special compared to other meals, the summary uses the term magical and the article uses the term mystical.
All of these responses from corn when the topic is on hydrogen, go figure!
Here are the facts. US corn production is used for human consumption, ethanol production and feed stock. The USDA Education Research released information about corn usage (http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn/background.aspx). From the last chart, the one on domestic corn use, it can readily be seen that while the overall use of corn has increased, the amounts attributable to human consumption and feed stock have remained constant. The ethanol corn use has increased, not from shifting corn produced for other purposes, but from planting more corn. As such, corn is not being diverted from human consumption. In addition, the increase in corn production coincides with the increase in ethanol fuel demand and it is probably that without that demand, the production numbers would be in line with years past.
In short, the/. article is about hydrogen vs batteries for vehicles, not corn. I made the mistake of posting to a troll, I regret that, but there is no need to continue this thread!
The food stocks issue comes from what would be silage feed for animals. In that way you're removing the corn, beet mash, and some other plant sources from the market. It also shaping what variety of corn that is grown. Why grown sweet or pop corn to be sold on a volatile food market? You can grow dent corn for ethanol production and get a guaranteed price from subsidies.
Corn by far is the easiest way to generate ethanol but there are other sources that are waste material. Beet mash mentioned above is one of the source. It takes longer to process them because they generally have less carbohydrates to produce this liquid golf. Without the grants and subsidies in the US ethanol would be break-even at best and a losing product at worst for farmers.
I don't disagree with this, however, the argument is that corn used for ethanol is taking food from people's mouths. That is not true, well not directly as eventually, people will eat the beef or whatever animal is fed it. However, the argument is not about taking food from people's mouths in the US, but in third world countries, where it is extremely unlikely that we are exporting that beef.
It's true that Ethanol is not made with crops intended for human consumption, but it is grown on land that in many cases used to grow crops for human consumption. Ethanol production too arable land away from food production, which in the end is close to the same end result as if it took the crop itself.
Not if the discussion is from moving corn from feeding people to producing ethanol because it presupposes that the ethanol corn would be replanted with human consumable corn. The reality is that much of the land producing the ethanol corn was not in production prior to the ethanol boom and will cease once the subsidies are gone (or the water table is depleted, whichever comes first).
This is not true. Switchgrass is not used to any significant extent for ethanol production.
And really, what do you think people were using dent corn for before? Do you think they just stopped using it? Dent corn isn't eaten as corn-on-the-cob, but it's used for animal feed, making corn oil, corn syrup, corn starch, etc. Do you think people just stopped consuming meat and corn products? And instead are getting their energy and nutrition from air?
You are correct, only TN has any appreciable switch grass ethanol production. What I should have said is "many have changed their crops to non-food production crops such as switch grass (or straw, wheat and rice chaff, etc.).
As for dent corn, it is used for animal feed, but the complaint is taking food from people's mouths. Corn isn't necessary for most animal feed, it just gets animals to market quicker. Cattle were domesticated long before corn and in many parts of the world were corn simply didn't exist. It's not ethanol production that takes food from people's mouths, it is using farmable land to grow crops to fatten animals more quickly that takes food from people's mouth (yes, people eat beef, but the amount of corn consumed by a cow would provide many more meals than the beef produced).
As for getting their energy and nutrition from the air, well that is the case in many third world countries because of western policies. And as we've seen, the people don't fare well when that is their only resort.
People (government) also thinks it is a great idea to take USA food-stocks (corn) to make ethanol. It is kick-backs and subsidies -- these technologies would never exist on their own without the government subsidies (because the ideas are not profitable, and even wasteful).
While I am not a proponent of ethanol fuels, the US didn't take food stocks to produce it. They did use feed stock corn, but that corn would never have been for human consumption in the first place. Since then, many have changed their crops to switch grass which has similar yields but requires much less water to grow. So, using food stocks for fuel production did not happen on a large scale, although it is feasible that some farmers switched from food stocks to non food stocks most planted acreage that was not in production.
What any of that has to do with hydrogen fuel cells is beyond me.
"People" aren't passionate about VB6. Businesses who don't want to get their production code out of the 20th century, and they're out there, are passionate about VB6.
Or COBOL or FORTRAN or any other list of vertical applications. Business will run a piece of heavy equipment for decades because 1) it's costly to replace and 2) it still gets the job done. Why should software applications be any different? End-user software systems are the epitome of supply and demand. If the cost to upgrade is low enough, people will upgrade. If not, they won't. That's how a free market works.
Let it die. It's a terrible language and it should die a death. don't open source it or you'll just encourage a new wave of cheapskate programmers to start learning bad habits and producing crappy code.
And what's the problem with that? After all, one can create crappy code with any language, Programming languages are simply a tool and a tool in the hands of craftsman can do wonderful things. Instead, without VB6, people have gone on to use VBA in MS Access and Excel. Cheapskate programmers, as you call them, will use whatever is available, even if it isn't the right tool for the job. However, it isn't your's or mine or Microsoft's responsibility to protect people from themselves.
So, what is the harm is it is released open-source? Either there is a market for it and people will use it or there isn't and it will die off. After all, the whole point of open source is about freedom. Why argue to limit it?
This guys never heard of not reinventing the wheel.
The problem isn't reinventing the wheel. The problem is interfacing with existing equipment and software. Unless you are going to develop everything from the ground up, including the microcode in the processor, you are going to have to use somebody's API somewhere in the process. One cannot even boot a PC without having to interface with the BIOS or UEFI. Of course, one is free to go around those system calls, but then you need the APIs for the components the BIOS/UEFI talks to.
If APIs are copyrightable it doesn't take long before it is turtles all the way down.
In which countries are APIs determined to be not copyrightable? As in, there has already been legal action or explicit laws passed to say so. Due to all of the various IP treaties out there, almost anything copyrightable in one country is automatically granted equivalent protection in all other countries. If this is upheld in the US, expect the EU nations to follow suit soon after.
Most of the world can freely use various CODECS without encumbrance of copyright or patents, it is likely that in those same countries one could use APIs. It does not legal action to say something is not protected. It does, however, take legal action to say something is protected. Therefore, only in countries that define APIs as copyrightable would they be so.
Oracles argument was used in SCO vs IBM and it was tossed there too. Headers are not copyright able.
Unlike that case, aren't they arguing that it is the APIs that are copyrightable? That's is quite a bit different. Of course, it would also mean every book teaching JAVA or any other language, for that matter, would not be infringing. I wonder if Oracle used any APIs of others when they developed their flagship product. They might owe AT&T, IBM and others a lot of money.
Really, sabotaging? That implies intentionally messing up the reviews. Yet, they are looking at reviews with at least 10,000 reviewers. So, are so many men really trying to skew the ratings for shows target at women or are they just rating them based on how they feel about the show? Yet, the article admits that the same thing happens with show with a predominately male audience, such as various sporting events. How come the woman down rating boxing, for instance, aren't accused of sabotaging men's shows?
Here's news, the value of the ratings is questionable at best. It's not statistically valid by any measure. These measures only measure the opinions of those who happen to spend time on IMDB and rate shows. They aren't Nielson or other ratings system. As worthless a measure as the rating is on IMDB, it would be even more worthless if only people who value the show (ie. by gender) are allowed to rate it.
In short, the IMDB ratings are about as valid as Distrowatch's linux distro popularity rating. Here's a thought - if you want to know if a show is good or not, read the reviews people write, not an arbitrary number they click on. Or better yet, watch a few episodes and decide for yourself.
Obviously you'd have to choose a depth limit that balances space utilization with access efficiency. But it would still be dramatically more space-efficient than current parking lots.
Even better is if most of those cars are automated taxis, which only park because current demand is low enough that it's not cost-effective for them to be on the road. When demand picks up more cars need to be sent out... but it doesn't matter which ones, so you don't have to retrieve the one in the bottom of the stack.
Unless the taxis are solar powered or recharge via solar power, than there is still an additional carbon footprint for having them just drive about aimlessly waiting to be summoned. However, what you describe is one of the predictions of a future uber system that will have the potential to replace taxis as we know them, today.
Unless you are more than 100 years old, you have never lived during a time when there were no commercial airlines.
If I didn't have access to commerical airlines growing up, then I'm 100 years old, the original statement is false, or the statement is overly simplicistic.
Not having personal access to commercial airlines is not the same as not having commercial airlines. Using your reasoning, there are no nuclear weapons, either.
It's more of a shock that anyone is still paid well considering hype literal billions of cheap labor outside America.
Sure, we could fix the visa problem, but if companies are forced to use expensive (globally speaking) labor, they'll just leave the country.
I suggest everyone start saving their money, because the gravy train is ending.
Then, supply and demand will return to the markets and prices, wages, jobs and everything else will stabilize. BTW, in case you are not aware of it, doing things that is good for business and not for the people is called fascism or the new politically correct term corporatism.
Also, SDCs can park much closer together, since the door doesn't need to open to disgorge humans, so they can park with only inches between cars. If they can retract their mirrors (or if the mirrors are replaced with cameras), then they can park even closer. If they have car-to-car communication, then they can park head-to-tail as well as side-by-side, and cooperate to make room for a summoned car to leave. A typical parking lot could hold 2 or 3 times as many SDCs as HDCs.
That's how a freight yard works for the railroad. Of course, if the car is in the middle of the line, and you need to move 100 cars to get to yours, it will be about as efficient as a railroad trying to cherry pick a single car out of the yard. It simple won't happen.
Slashdot Mirror
Today's mass-produced low-cost beef industry in the US is built upon a foundation of feeding cattle high-calorie diets. The fact that it's possible to produce meat with other means is irrelevant in a discussion of the ability to mass produce meat at low cost. If they could produce an equivalent amount of meat for the same price without using corn, they'd already be doing it.
And yes, everything comes down to money. Which is a finite resource. Technically we could be growing mangoes in Greenland in giant greenhouses. Got the cash for that?
So, you agree that corn isn't necessary, it is merely a choice that maximizes profits. Of course the modern mass produced low cost beef industry requires the use of hormones and antibiotics, but hey, to each their own. Here, in flyover country, most cattle still graze and locally produced beef is no more expensive than than the mass marketed stuff. It is also free from most of the ministrations do to the cattle, too.
Mass produced or manufactured beef may be good for the corporate farm and the shareholder, but it isn't necessarily good for the consumer. As for mangoes in Greenland, why bother? They already grow plenty of strawberries and other fruits and vegetables there in their giant greenhouses. Cost is relative when the alternative to growing it there is shipping it by boat or plane. Greenland was and still is pretty self sufficient.
What problem is this trying to solve? And more importantly, why is google collecting this specific information about users and once collected, how else will it be used and by whom? Maybe that's why the announcement was "low key." They were hoping it would go unnoticed.
I find it interesting that a business doesn't like something said about it online can, with relative ease, get it taken down. But some kid who had a lapse of discretion needs an army of attorneys to get the content removed. That just doesn't seem right.
I find it ironic that in an article about how imprecise and loose language led to the notion that breakfast is somehow special compared to other meals, the summary uses the term magical and the article uses the term mystical.
All of these responses from corn when the topic is on hydrogen, go figure!
Here are the facts. US corn production is used for human consumption, ethanol production and feed stock. The USDA Education Research released information about corn usage (http://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/crops/corn/background.aspx). From the last chart, the one on domestic corn use, it can readily be seen that while the overall use of corn has increased, the amounts attributable to human consumption and feed stock have remained constant. The ethanol corn use has increased, not from shifting corn produced for other purposes, but from planting more corn. As such, corn is not being diverted from human consumption. In addition, the increase in corn production coincides with the increase in ethanol fuel demand and it is probably that without that demand, the production numbers would be in line with years past.
In short, the /. article is about hydrogen vs batteries for vehicles, not corn. I made the mistake of posting to a troll, I regret that, but there is no need to continue this thread!
Right because higher priced feed corn does not translate directly into higher priced beef, lamb, chicken, etc.
Ummmm, how much of that beef, lamb and chicken is being exported to third world countries where the cry of diverting food for ethanol comes from?
The food stocks issue comes from what would be silage feed for animals. In that way you're removing the corn, beet mash, and some other plant sources from the market. It also shaping what variety of corn that is grown. Why grown sweet or pop corn to be sold on a volatile food market? You can grow dent corn for ethanol production and get a guaranteed price from subsidies.
Corn by far is the easiest way to generate ethanol but there are other sources that are waste material. Beet mash mentioned above is one of the source. It takes longer to process them because they generally have less carbohydrates to produce this liquid golf. Without the grants and subsidies in the US ethanol would be break-even at best and a losing product at worst for farmers.
I don't disagree with this, however, the argument is that corn used for ethanol is taking food from people's mouths. That is not true, well not directly as eventually, people will eat the beef or whatever animal is fed it. However, the argument is not about taking food from people's mouths in the US, but in third world countries, where it is extremely unlikely that we are exporting that beef.
It's true that Ethanol is not made with crops intended for human consumption, but it is grown on land that in many cases used to grow crops for human consumption. Ethanol production too arable land away from food production, which in the end is close to the same end result as if it took the crop itself.
Not if the discussion is from moving corn from feeding people to producing ethanol because it presupposes that the ethanol corn would be replanted with human consumable corn. The reality is that much of the land producing the ethanol corn was not in production prior to the ethanol boom and will cease once the subsidies are gone (or the water table is depleted, whichever comes first).
This is not true. Switchgrass is not used to any significant extent for ethanol production.
And really, what do you think people were using dent corn for before? Do you think they just stopped using it? Dent corn isn't eaten as corn-on-the-cob, but it's used for animal feed, making corn oil, corn syrup, corn starch, etc. Do you think people just stopped consuming meat and corn products? And instead are getting their energy and nutrition from air?
You are correct, only TN has any appreciable switch grass ethanol production. What I should have said is "many have changed their crops to non-food production crops such as switch grass (or straw, wheat and rice chaff, etc.).
As for dent corn, it is used for animal feed, but the complaint is taking food from people's mouths. Corn isn't necessary for most animal feed, it just gets animals to market quicker. Cattle were domesticated long before corn and in many parts of the world were corn simply didn't exist. It's not ethanol production that takes food from people's mouths, it is using farmable land to grow crops to fatten animals more quickly that takes food from people's mouth (yes, people eat beef, but the amount of corn consumed by a cow would provide many more meals than the beef produced).
As for getting their energy and nutrition from the air, well that is the case in many third world countries because of western policies. And as we've seen, the people don't fare well when that is their only resort.
People (government) also thinks it is a great idea to take USA food-stocks (corn) to make ethanol. It is kick-backs and subsidies -- these technologies would never exist on their own without the government subsidies (because the ideas are not profitable, and even wasteful).
While I am not a proponent of ethanol fuels, the US didn't take food stocks to produce it. They did use feed stock corn, but that corn would never have been for human consumption in the first place. Since then, many have changed their crops to switch grass which has similar yields but requires much less water to grow. So, using food stocks for fuel production did not happen on a large scale, although it is feasible that some farmers switched from food stocks to non food stocks most planted acreage that was not in production.
What any of that has to do with hydrogen fuel cells is beyond me.
"People" aren't passionate about VB6. Businesses who don't want to get their production code out of the 20th century, and they're out there, are passionate about VB6.
Or COBOL or FORTRAN or any other list of vertical applications. Business will run a piece of heavy equipment for decades because 1) it's costly to replace and 2) it still gets the job done. Why should software applications be any different? End-user software systems are the epitome of supply and demand. If the cost to upgrade is low enough, people will upgrade. If not, they won't. That's how a free market works.
Let it die. It's a terrible language and it should die a death. don't open source it or you'll just encourage a new wave of cheapskate programmers to start learning bad habits and producing crappy code.
And what's the problem with that? After all, one can create crappy code with any language, Programming languages are simply a tool and a tool in the hands of craftsman can do wonderful things. Instead, without VB6, people have gone on to use VBA in MS Access and Excel. Cheapskate programmers, as you call them, will use whatever is available, even if it isn't the right tool for the job. However, it isn't your's or mine or Microsoft's responsibility to protect people from themselves.
So, what is the harm is it is released open-source? Either there is a market for it and people will use it or there isn't and it will die off. After all, the whole point of open source is about freedom. Why argue to limit it?
That is Oracle's argument if you substitute API for music.
This case is not about use, but about reimplementation.
It doesn't matter what the case is about, if there is a finding that APIs are copyrightable, then we are all screwed.
This guys never heard of not reinventing the wheel.
The problem isn't reinventing the wheel. The problem is interfacing with existing equipment and software. Unless you are going to develop everything from the ground up, including the microcode in the processor, you are going to have to use somebody's API somewhere in the process. One cannot even boot a PC without having to interface with the BIOS or UEFI. Of course, one is free to go around those system calls, but then you need the APIs for the components the BIOS/UEFI talks to.
If APIs are copyrightable it doesn't take long before it is turtles all the way down.
In which countries are APIs determined to be not copyrightable? As in, there has already been legal action or explicit laws passed to say so.
Due to all of the various IP treaties out there, almost anything copyrightable in one country is automatically granted equivalent protection in all other countries. If this is upheld in the US, expect the EU nations to follow suit soon after.
Most of the world can freely use various CODECS without encumbrance of copyright or patents, it is likely that in those same countries one could use APIs. It does not legal action to say something is not protected. It does, however, take legal action to say something is protected. Therefore, only in countries that define APIs as copyrightable would they be so.
Only after SCO sues IBM for trillions.
Oracles argument was used in SCO vs IBM and it was tossed there too. Headers are not copyright able.
Unlike that case, aren't they arguing that it is the APIs that are copyrightable? That's is quite a bit different. Of course, it would also mean every book teaching JAVA or any other language, for that matter, would not be infringing. I wonder if Oracle used any APIs of others when they developed their flagship product. They might owe AT&T, IBM and others a lot of money.
If the jury rules for Oracle, that means Microsoft will owe billions to the estate of Gary Kildall.
And IBM will be able to sue Oracle and Microsoft for billions, for Oracle's use of the SQL API .
And anybody who built an IBM compatible computer using the what was formerly thought to be open APIs.
Really, sabotaging? That implies intentionally messing up the reviews. Yet, they are looking at reviews with at least 10,000 reviewers. So, are so many men really trying to skew the ratings for shows target at women or are they just rating them based on how they feel about the show? Yet, the article admits that the same thing happens with show with a predominately male audience, such as various sporting events. How come the woman down rating boxing, for instance, aren't accused of sabotaging men's shows?
Here's news, the value of the ratings is questionable at best. It's not statistically valid by any measure. These measures only measure the opinions of those who happen to spend time on IMDB and rate shows. They aren't Nielson or other ratings system. As worthless a measure as the rating is on IMDB, it would be even more worthless if only people who value the show (ie. by gender) are allowed to rate it.
In short, the IMDB ratings are about as valid as Distrowatch's linux distro popularity rating. Here's a thought - if you want to know if a show is good or not, read the reviews people write, not an arbitrary number they click on. Or better yet, watch a few episodes and decide for yourself.
Isn't the point of autonomous vehicles to avoid hitting pedestrians?
Obviously you'd have to choose a depth limit that balances space utilization with access efficiency. But it would still be dramatically more space-efficient than current parking lots.
Even better is if most of those cars are automated taxis, which only park because current demand is low enough that it's not cost-effective for them to be on the road. When demand picks up more cars need to be sent out... but it doesn't matter which ones, so you don't have to retrieve the one in the bottom of the stack.
Unless the taxis are solar powered or recharge via solar power, than there is still an additional carbon footprint for having them just drive about aimlessly waiting to be summoned. However, what you describe is one of the predictions of a future uber system that will have the potential to replace taxis as we know them, today.
Unless you are more than 100 years old, you have never lived during a time when there were no commercial airlines.
If I didn't have access to commerical airlines growing up, then I'm 100 years old, the original statement is false, or the statement is overly simplicistic.
Not having personal access to commercial airlines is not the same as not having commercial airlines. Using your reasoning, there are no nuclear weapons, either.
It's more of a shock that anyone is still paid well considering hype literal billions of cheap labor outside America.
Sure, we could fix the visa problem, but if companies are forced to use expensive (globally speaking) labor, they'll just leave the country.
I suggest everyone start saving their money, because the gravy train is ending.
Then, supply and demand will return to the markets and prices, wages, jobs and everything else will stabilize. BTW, in case you are not aware of it, doing things that is good for business and not for the people is called fascism or the new politically correct term corporatism.
A car park with cars parked right next to each other will need to be defragged.
Please don't burst the bubbles of enthusiasts with reality..
Also, SDCs can park much closer together, since the door doesn't need to open to disgorge humans, so they can park with only inches between cars. If they can retract their mirrors (or if the mirrors are replaced with cameras), then they can park even closer. If they have car-to-car communication, then they can park head-to-tail as well as side-by-side, and cooperate to make room for a summoned car to leave. A typical parking lot could hold 2 or 3 times as many SDCs as HDCs.
That's how a freight yard works for the railroad. Of course, if the car is in the middle of the line, and you need to move 100 cars to get to yours, it will be about as efficient as a railroad trying to cherry pick a single car out of the yard. It simple won't happen.