See other commenter re: size. It does matter here.:) As for signal levels, electrical (usually optical) isolation between input and output is a mandatory part of the MIDI spec, so there has to be some circuitry no matter what, though nothing expensive or fancy.
For the 2 or 3 people who care . . . MIDI to (USB, joystick, whatever else) adapters vary tremendously in quality. Poor quality manfests primarily as latency / lag but can also cause missing notes and ciphers if played too fast. HUGE problem for many use cases, including mine, which is playing pipe organ emulators. If you're going to go that route, you want to make sure you choose a decent one from a name brand, not the $15 dollar one that ships from rural western China.
Not sure if you're referring to the 5 pin DIN, but if so, it's held on for decades because the MIDI spec requires optical isolation between input and output. If you've ever tried to wire up audio equipment, you already understand why (to avoid faulty ground loops and their consequences, some of which can be painful and even on rare occasion deadly). Most other "standard" connectors aren't suitable for this purpose, at least not when combined with other purposes.
That may vary depending on geography. In the U.S., the smell from people living and urinating in buses and trains and stations is quite real. And "seating" exists only in systems that are lightly used, like ours in Cleveland. And not always even here. It certainly doesn't in peak hours anywhere in NYC, the one U.S. city that can be said by some measures to have fairly decent transit. During off-peak hours, especially at night, you get people peeing/puking/etc. just like in more lightly used systems. The system is woefully underfunded, and thus the trains may or may not get cleaned up a little bit prior to the next morning's rush. At which point you are glad to be standing and not sitting, because of how dirty and gross the seats can get. I'm not trying to exaggerate or be sensationalistic. I use buses and trains whenever they make sense. But it's not the same experience that Europeans or people in other, slightly less odiferous parts of the world may be accustomed to.
I've never much cared for the heavyweight desktops myself, but more lightweight ones like XFCE have proven more than adequate for my limited needs. (I'm comfortable with the command line, but for those who may not be, YMMV.)
About 800 kilometers to the west . . further than NJ Transit will take you unfortunately . . we do have the 16 Bit Arcade which is a somewhat more alcohol-based, and therefore less child-friendly, take on the concept. These exist in a few other cities also, though unfortunately not New York. All in Ohio I think. They have special days when children are allowed (and I presume alcohol isn't) and I'm hoping to take mine one of those days. It's an experience that wasn't necessarily a huge part of my childhood, but it was a nice one, and I'd like them to have that same kind of experience at least once.
Like most people, my budget and time are both limited. If it becomes too expensive and/or too much a hassle, I'll simply find some other way to be entertained. I won't subscribe to multiple services unless they become a lot cheaper than they are now, and I won't hunt to find something decent to watch if that ends up taking as long as watching it (rapidly approaching that situation now with Netflix IMO). What they need to be doing, and what I believe the market will force them to at least attempt, is the very opposite: to make it possible to quickly and easily locate and view content for a reasonable price, and, preferably, a price paid to a single provider, which can then divvy up the costs and the revenues via whatever formula it and the content owners/producers decide amongst themselves.
1. Yes, consistent libertarianism would lead to a state in which most if not all human interactions were guided by mutual interest rather than coercion. Some call this "anarchism," but that term is highly ambiguous, so many of us prefer to describe it as "voluntaryism."
2. Libertarianism differentiates itself from most other "isms" not by ignoring human nature, but by advocating social constructs that are compatible therewith. We do not say "humans are flawed, and therefore need to be ruled by other at least equally flawed people," but, rather, "no one has a right to rule over another without consent, and, therefore, human interactions should be governed mostly if not entirely by voluntary, consensual agreement."
I need mostly Linux at home, precisely because it's the OS I need to get work done without "stupid mess around." I also need mostly Windows at work because that is what my employer, like most others, has chosen for me. And I need to be able to access any of my systems from any of the others. What I described above is a non-convoluted and non-difficult solution to that problem.
What I'd do if I needed Windows-only rich client software would be to (a) run it in a VM, or (b) run it on a dedicated and carefully firewalled 'Doze box, accessible via Remote Desktop only from specific machines inside my local network. Actually, pretty much, that's what I do now. My home systems run Linux, and when I need to, I remote into the office network using VPN + rdesktop (Linux terminal services client).
That is the problem with rail. It goes where it goes when it was built.
That is true if you're talking about just a single line or handful of lines. But if you build out a true grid or hub-and-spoke system, there is some inherent flexibility in that trains, while they still can only go where there are tracks, can at least be routed into different tracks when needed.
Near Cleveland, Ohio here. Same exact situation. I suspect that's the case throughout much of the country. Our lefties here openly admit that the goal is not to encourage biking, but to discourage driving and to make it as difficult and inconvenient as possible. What has happened is that the roughly halved capacity of our arterial road network has pushed traffic onto local residential streets. Less so than if Cleveland had not lost more than two thirds of its population over the past half century. But still enough to really annoy and frustrate the dwindling handful of people who actually live there. It provides yet another reason for those who haven't fled to distant suburbs already to do so. No bike lanes on the freeways. Not yet anyway.
Roundup works by blocking a plant enzyme that does not exist in humans. So it is not "by definition" a poison to humans
Two huge flaws in your argument.
1. We are symbiotic with our microbiome, much of which does have the shikimate pathway targeted by glyphosate. Therefore, it most assuredly, and emphatically, is a poison to humans, if we consume it in sufficient amounts to affect the microbiome. This is no longer even debatable or disputable. The ONLY question at this point is to what extent.
2. Roundup does not consist solely of glyphosate. It contains other ingredients which increase both its effectiveness in its intended use, and also its toxicity, since what kills our microbiome more efficiently kills us more efficiently as well.
They have ok bagels. Better than most others one can get locally, but not great. And no, I'm not a New Yorker (though I like to visit when I can). Some of their other breads like the French baguettes are IMO very, very good.
I like some of their store (365) brand products as well. Good and surprisingly affordable.
I'm a little skeptical of this number, but to put it into perspective, completing the 2nd Avenue Subway in NYC would cost about $6 billion. Anyone whose ridden the nearby but fatally overcrowded Lexington Ave. line knows it is badly needed, and would probably pay for itself quickly just in terms of person-hours lost through delays. However, in the bigger picture, there is just no comparison between the need for a subway line on one hand, and orders-of-magnitude-cheaper-and-safer energy on the other. We should be investing WAY more than we do, and I'm guessing that if government got the hell out of its way, the private sector alone would likely be doing so all by itself.
I had not thought of it this way, but I tend to agree. I would think that anyplace suitable for biofuel production and agriculture would also be suitable, at least part of the year, for solar, and I believe we can recover the energy form sunlight more efficiently that way, all other things being equal. Solar has an additional inherent advantage over biofuels in that many areas not suitable for agriculture or aquaculture, for various reasons, may still be suitable for solar. Now, biofuel production may compete with fossil fuels in terms of cheap production and storage of liquid fuels. As long as it is more efficient than the combination of solar energy plus conversion of that energy into fuels suitable for automotive transportation, it may have a viable and sustainable niche, notwithstanding the above.
Part of why it takes time. Inertia exists not only because of limitations in the capacity and speed with which we can create the infrastructure for renewables, batteries and whatnot, but also massive pre-existing investments. But it's not unlimited, nor omnipotent. Tobacco companies for a long time fought, and fought dirty, against anything that might result in a decline in tobacco use. But they also recognized that sooner or later they would lose that fight. So the smarter ones prepared for the eventual decline in tobacco consumption by diversifying into, e.g., food companies and whatnot. Likewise, the smart money in energy knew everything we know about future trends 10-20 years before we did, might have fought against these when it was possible, but realized that the future was not on their side, and altered their own strategies accordingly, such that when (not if) most of our energy production and consumption shifts from fossil fuels to renewables, they will still be positioned to make plenty of money.
But still unwise to use in applications such as household wiring, mainly because of the corrosion problem that caused arc fires, and still does since a lot of this wiring is still in service today.
The real problem is not the production of energy, but its storage and distribution to the time and place where it is needed. The first problem is solved. The second is still a work in progress. It is cheaper than fossil fuels in some situations, and not (yet) in others. The problem is not mainly evil people holding up progress in the name of profit, though such people do exist; there is a lot more profit, overall, in doing things efficiently than not. It's that these things take time. We didn't move from whale blubber to coal overnight; that was a transition that took time. It's the same problem now. We need time. We'll get there though. We have all the options we used to - including, ironically, fossil fuels that are cleaner and cheaper by far, accounting for inflation, than they used to be. Plus more and more options with each passing year and decade. Be patient. We may not live in a totally fossil-free world in our lifetimes, but our children and grandchildren almost certainly will.
Good points all, but one quibble: if we had to replace silver, why wouldn't we replace it with copper, which is safer than aluminium, and a better conductor than aluminium as well? It is a little more expensive, but well worth it, because, among other reasons, it doesn't tend to corrode and to catch on fire at the points it comes into contact with other metals. (This happened a lot in the U.S. from the 60s and forward, since aluminium wiring was allowed for about 15 years during a severe copper shortage, and unfortunately some of that wiring is still in service today.)
The 1811-12 quakes caused damage hundreds of kilometers away, and were felt as far away as the East Coast. But the midwestern U.S. was sparsely populated at the time. A repeat performance would cause devastation across hundreds of thousands of square kilometers. The ENTIRE midwest, Southeast, parts of the Atlantic seaboard, and much of southeastern and south central Canada are immensely vulnerable. I'm near Cleveland, over 1000km away, and I don't expect even we will be fully safe, although our buildings have to withstand strong winds, and that has the fortunate side effect of somewhat protecting against seismic events as well, to a degree. Same with Chicago and Toronto. Elsewhere, I don't know.
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A "sterling reputation" for mindlessly perpetuating left-wing, pro-state propaganda. FTFY.
With GPIO pins, preferably quite a few? That's important for many applications, including mine (adding MIDI capability to old electronic organs).
Apparently, German coal-fired power plants run old versions of Linux that store timestamps as 32 bit signed integers.
See other commenter re: size. It does matter here. :) As for signal levels, electrical (usually optical) isolation between input and output is a mandatory part of the MIDI spec, so there has to be some circuitry no matter what, though nothing expensive or fancy.
For the 2 or 3 people who care . . . MIDI to (USB, joystick, whatever else) adapters vary tremendously in quality. Poor quality manfests primarily as latency / lag but can also cause missing notes and ciphers if played too fast. HUGE problem for many use cases, including mine, which is playing pipe organ emulators. If you're going to go that route, you want to make sure you choose a decent one from a name brand, not the $15 dollar one that ships from rural western China.
Not sure if you're referring to the 5 pin DIN, but if so, it's held on for decades because the MIDI spec requires optical isolation between input and output. If you've ever tried to wire up audio equipment, you already understand why (to avoid faulty ground loops and their consequences, some of which can be painful and even on rare occasion deadly). Most other "standard" connectors aren't suitable for this purpose, at least not when combined with other purposes.
That may vary depending on geography. In the U.S., the smell from people living and urinating in buses and trains and stations is quite real. And "seating" exists only in systems that are lightly used, like ours in Cleveland. And not always even here. It certainly doesn't in peak hours anywhere in NYC, the one U.S. city that can be said by some measures to have fairly decent transit. During off-peak hours, especially at night, you get people peeing/puking/etc. just like in more lightly used systems. The system is woefully underfunded, and thus the trains may or may not get cleaned up a little bit prior to the next morning's rush. At which point you are glad to be standing and not sitting, because of how dirty and gross the seats can get. I'm not trying to exaggerate or be sensationalistic. I use buses and trains whenever they make sense. But it's not the same experience that Europeans or people in other, slightly less odiferous parts of the world may be accustomed to.
I've never much cared for the heavyweight desktops myself, but more lightweight ones like XFCE have proven more than adequate for my limited needs. (I'm comfortable with the command line, but for those who may not be, YMMV.)
About 800 kilometers to the west . . further than NJ Transit will take you unfortunately . . we do have the 16 Bit Arcade which is a somewhat more alcohol-based, and therefore less child-friendly, take on the concept. These exist in a few other cities also, though unfortunately not New York. All in Ohio I think. They have special days when children are allowed (and I presume alcohol isn't) and I'm hoping to take mine one of those days. It's an experience that wasn't necessarily a huge part of my childhood, but it was a nice one, and I'd like them to have that same kind of experience at least once.
Like most people, my budget and time are both limited. If it becomes too expensive and/or too much a hassle, I'll simply find some other way to be entertained. I won't subscribe to multiple services unless they become a lot cheaper than they are now, and I won't hunt to find something decent to watch if that ends up taking as long as watching it (rapidly approaching that situation now with Netflix IMO). What they need to be doing, and what I believe the market will force them to at least attempt, is the very opposite: to make it possible to quickly and easily locate and view content for a reasonable price, and, preferably, a price paid to a single provider, which can then divvy up the costs and the revenues via whatever formula it and the content owners/producers decide amongst themselves.
1. Yes, consistent libertarianism would lead to a state in which most if not all human interactions were guided by mutual interest rather than coercion. Some call this "anarchism," but that term is highly ambiguous, so many of us prefer to describe it as "voluntaryism." 2. Libertarianism differentiates itself from most other "isms" not by ignoring human nature, but by advocating social constructs that are compatible therewith. We do not say "humans are flawed, and therefore need to be ruled by other at least equally flawed people," but, rather, "no one has a right to rule over another without consent, and, therefore, human interactions should be governed mostly if not entirely by voluntary, consensual agreement."
I need mostly Linux at home, precisely because it's the OS I need to get work done without "stupid mess around." I also need mostly Windows at work because that is what my employer, like most others, has chosen for me. And I need to be able to access any of my systems from any of the others. What I described above is a non-convoluted and non-difficult solution to that problem.
What I'd do if I needed Windows-only rich client software would be to (a) run it in a VM, or (b) run it on a dedicated and carefully firewalled 'Doze box, accessible via Remote Desktop only from specific machines inside my local network. Actually, pretty much, that's what I do now. My home systems run Linux, and when I need to, I remote into the office network using VPN + rdesktop (Linux terminal services client).
It's higher than most of the country, but significantly lower than parts of the Left Coast.
That is the problem with rail. It goes where it goes when it was built.
That is true if you're talking about just a single line or handful of lines. But if you build out a true grid or hub-and-spoke system, there is some inherent flexibility in that trains, while they still can only go where there are tracks, can at least be routed into different tracks when needed.
Near Cleveland, Ohio here. Same exact situation. I suspect that's the case throughout much of the country. Our lefties here openly admit that the goal is not to encourage biking, but to discourage driving and to make it as difficult and inconvenient as possible. What has happened is that the roughly halved capacity of our arterial road network has pushed traffic onto local residential streets. Less so than if Cleveland had not lost more than two thirds of its population over the past half century. But still enough to really annoy and frustrate the dwindling handful of people who actually live there. It provides yet another reason for those who haven't fled to distant suburbs already to do so. No bike lanes on the freeways. Not yet anyway.
Roundup works by blocking a plant enzyme that does not exist in humans. So it is not "by definition" a poison to humans
Two huge flaws in your argument.
1. We are symbiotic with our microbiome, much of which does have the shikimate pathway targeted by glyphosate. Therefore, it most assuredly, and emphatically, is a poison to humans, if we consume it in sufficient amounts to affect the microbiome. This is no longer even debatable or disputable. The ONLY question at this point is to what extent.
2. Roundup does not consist solely of glyphosate. It contains other ingredients which increase both its effectiveness in its intended use, and also its toxicity, since what kills our microbiome more efficiently kills us more efficiently as well.
They have ok bagels. Better than most others one can get locally, but not great. And no, I'm not a New Yorker (though I like to visit when I can). Some of their other breads like the French baguettes are IMO very, very good. I like some of their store (365) brand products as well. Good and surprisingly affordable.
I'm a little skeptical of this number, but to put it into perspective, completing the 2nd Avenue Subway in NYC would cost about $6 billion. Anyone whose ridden the nearby but fatally overcrowded Lexington Ave. line knows it is badly needed, and would probably pay for itself quickly just in terms of person-hours lost through delays. However, in the bigger picture, there is just no comparison between the need for a subway line on one hand, and orders-of-magnitude-cheaper-and-safer energy on the other. We should be investing WAY more than we do, and I'm guessing that if government got the hell out of its way, the private sector alone would likely be doing so all by itself.
I had not thought of it this way, but I tend to agree. I would think that anyplace suitable for biofuel production and agriculture would also be suitable, at least part of the year, for solar, and I believe we can recover the energy form sunlight more efficiently that way, all other things being equal. Solar has an additional inherent advantage over biofuels in that many areas not suitable for agriculture or aquaculture, for various reasons, may still be suitable for solar. Now, biofuel production may compete with fossil fuels in terms of cheap production and storage of liquid fuels. As long as it is more efficient than the combination of solar energy plus conversion of that energy into fuels suitable for automotive transportation, it may have a viable and sustainable niche, notwithstanding the above.
Part of why it takes time. Inertia exists not only because of limitations in the capacity and speed with which we can create the infrastructure for renewables, batteries and whatnot, but also massive pre-existing investments. But it's not unlimited, nor omnipotent. Tobacco companies for a long time fought, and fought dirty, against anything that might result in a decline in tobacco use. But they also recognized that sooner or later they would lose that fight. So the smarter ones prepared for the eventual decline in tobacco consumption by diversifying into, e.g., food companies and whatnot. Likewise, the smart money in energy knew everything we know about future trends 10-20 years before we did, might have fought against these when it was possible, but realized that the future was not on their side, and altered their own strategies accordingly, such that when (not if) most of our energy production and consumption shifts from fossil fuels to renewables, they will still be positioned to make plenty of money.
But still unwise to use in applications such as household wiring, mainly because of the corrosion problem that caused arc fires, and still does since a lot of this wiring is still in service today.
The real problem is not the production of energy, but its storage and distribution to the time and place where it is needed. The first problem is solved. The second is still a work in progress. It is cheaper than fossil fuels in some situations, and not (yet) in others. The problem is not mainly evil people holding up progress in the name of profit, though such people do exist; there is a lot more profit, overall, in doing things efficiently than not. It's that these things take time. We didn't move from whale blubber to coal overnight; that was a transition that took time. It's the same problem now. We need time. We'll get there though. We have all the options we used to - including, ironically, fossil fuels that are cleaner and cheaper by far, accounting for inflation, than they used to be. Plus more and more options with each passing year and decade. Be patient. We may not live in a totally fossil-free world in our lifetimes, but our children and grandchildren almost certainly will.
Good points all, but one quibble: if we had to replace silver, why wouldn't we replace it with copper, which is safer than aluminium, and a better conductor than aluminium as well? It is a little more expensive, but well worth it, because, among other reasons, it doesn't tend to corrode and to catch on fire at the points it comes into contact with other metals. (This happened a lot in the U.S. from the 60s and forward, since aluminium wiring was allowed for about 15 years during a severe copper shortage, and unfortunately some of that wiring is still in service today.)
The 1811-12 quakes caused damage hundreds of kilometers away, and were felt as far away as the East Coast. But the midwestern U.S. was sparsely populated at the time. A repeat performance would cause devastation across hundreds of thousands of square kilometers. The ENTIRE midwest, Southeast, parts of the Atlantic seaboard, and much of southeastern and south central Canada are immensely vulnerable. I'm near Cleveland, over 1000km away, and I don't expect even we will be fully safe, although our buildings have to withstand strong winds, and that has the fortunate side effect of somewhat protecting against seismic events as well, to a degree. Same with Chicago and Toronto. Elsewhere, I don't know.