P.S.: We could contribute also to have it named Linus Torvalds, and I am serious
To be really egregiously cruel, and to make sure Billy doesn't take back his money, you should ask for it to be named for both: the Gates-Torvalds Center for Computer Science. Hey, Bill gave first, even if his share is less we should let him keep top, er, bill. I'm sure they'd both be ecstatic to have their names so associated, and would doubtless be delighted to speak at the opening ceremonies. =)
There are problems with the deep hot biosphere.
First, the theory is heavily debated; while Gold makes some interesting arguements, they are not universally accepted (due to some of Gold's arguements being fast talk and handwaving), and he is at this point mostly a lone voice. Attempts to reproduce the Russian and Ukranian results in the west have not been successful. While Gold may eventually be proven right, he's still a kook in the meanwhile.
Second, the theory says nothing about the rate at which these renewals occur. There is an energy cost of 9.81 Joules per kg oil per meter depth extracted from for pumping; when deep enough, oil may not be economical to forcibly extract as a fuel. (Raw material is a separate but less pressing question.) If the demand for oil (growing as 3rd world nations like China industrialize) exceeds the rate at which extractable reserves replenish themselves, there will be a shortfall.
Large supply shocks are MINDBOGGLINGLY bad for the economy especially for something as fundamental these days as the cost of electricity, and are far worse for consumers than for corporations or corporate stockholders-- especially for the corporations producing the shocked supply. You don't remember the economy of the early 1970's very well, do you? It royally sucked. "Those who do not study their history...."
It takes time to develop the engineering expertise to make wind plants economical, efficient, and integrated into a fairly regular cyclical demand grid (nontrivial given the intermittency of wind supply). Subsidies make it look at least marginally economical to build plants now. Once you have people building plants, greed will drive them to try to figure out how to improve them to make more money... which will start pushing the calendar on developing the aforementioned expertise, so that we will (hopefully) have it before the need for it is critical. Yeah, it's a "carrot for the jackass" approach, but given the number of stupid jackasses in the US, and given the traditions of this country, we really can't use a stick exclusively.
Use the power to pump water uphill and store it in a reservoir
...gives around 30% return on the energy you store. This was used at a nearby hydro station where I grew up. Energy was stored by pumping to a set of water towers during the dead hours on the grid (~12AM-5AM), and was then used at the 5PM-7PM peak, allowing a greater water flow rate through the turbines than the river would otherwise sustain.
While there are plenty of ways to store large amounts of electricity, they tend to be at least as lossy as this. This increases the cost of your re-extracted electricity substantially, out of the economic useful range except at peak hours.
[The password] is stored in an XOR encrypted form and can be read directly from the device without any authentication.
That's not much of a punchline when you realize that XORing something to something unknon (and presumibly unknowable) is unbreakable excryption.
...provided, of course, that that the unknown something is only used for encryption ONCE. Breaking a message encrypted from a securely exchanged one time pad is impossible; breaking a two-time pad, given copies of both encrypted texts, is routine.
There is no indication this "pad" for the password is encrypted by is one-time only; contrariwise, in fact.
Even granting your silly point, asking religious questions is perfectly valid of candidates. The government is not permitted to impose a religious test on holding political office, but there's precluding the electorate deciding they only want to elect a "Ronald Reagan Carl Sagan San Diegan Pagan who every other Tuesday night will worship Israel's Begin."
For example, I'm very glad to know that President Dubya is a born-again Christian zealot whose religion dictates numerous parts of his political agenda. Kerry's Catholocism, and the Bishops threatening him over his stance on abortion, is slightly less interesting, but still helpful to know.
Stakes ? What stakes ? Democracy isn't a lottery. You don't get a prize if you happen to vote for the guy that wins.
Democracy is a system where everyone gets what the majority deserve. If the person who gets elected is a total disaster who dooms the country, being able to say "well, *I* didn't vote for him" is small comfort.
Or, in other words, if the wrong guy gets elected, you get the booby prize regardless of whether you voted for him OR someone else.
Problem is, real issues like Debt or Fiscal Policy aren't sexy enough to campaign.
I'm afraid the problem is more basic than that.
Anyone who spends any time doing enough study on this to grasp the scope of the problem will end scared out of their wits. If the candidates explain the issue to their constituents so that the voters start to understand, they will start to scare the voters out of their wits. The sheep in this country will be traumatized by this, and associate the trauma with the candidate explaining this. They will then usually change the channel to make the bad man go away. Whether they do or not, come the voting booth, Pavlovian conditioning ("aiigh! scary man!") will make them vote against the honest man.
As Walter Mondale so memorably demonstrated, voters don't vote for people who tell them the bad news; they shoot the messenger. This, lamentably, may well set up a memorable demonstration of "evolution in action" as applied to societies.
The problem may get scarier. I am not an Economist (and I'd be delighted if one can explain why I'm wrong), but according to my old ECON201 textbook, stagflation (inflation combined with slowing economy and job loss) is caused by economic shocks to the national aggregate supply curve-- IE, something suddenly causes making things to be more expensive. Government deficit spending can somewhat reduce the effects.
Stagflation was first triggered in the 1970's by the rise in oil prices, coincident with OPEC tightening supply-- and, perhaps more importantly, the peak of the US oil production Hubbert Curve. The Reagan era's deficit spending (continuing to the present) helped make this problem disappear-- but not necessarily go away.
Estimates for the peak of the global oil Hubbert curve are at 2010, plus or minus 10 years. (Yes, that means some people worry it has already peaked.) So, we'll be facing a global economic slowdown that reduces the US tax base, we'll have exhausted our ability to hide this via deficit spending, and we'll be facing this financial shortfall from needing to pay for the Boom going out to pasture.
Oh... and the diminished likelihood in such an economy for those at lower income levels to earn enough for the necessities of life will result in increased numbers resorting to illegal means to do so... just to add widespread small scale mayhem to probable riots in the streets. With luck, though, we should be able to avoid a civil war fought with nuclear weapons. =|
Now, where did I put that electronic thumb I borrowed from Ford Prefect....
I believe Maine has a system that splits the electoral distribution by districts. The positions corresponding to the house of representatives are determined based on the vote count in those districts; those corresponding to the senate as determined based on the state count at large-- just like the senate seats. This avoids a "pure" popular vote; it's still possible to "sweep" a three-representative 9999999 voter state with only 5000001 votes-- but not very likely.
Of course, since I'm living in a Liberal-Weiner district of a Right-Wing-Nutjob state, and am myself a Libertarian-Flavored-Loonie, I'm a little biased here. =)
The trick is to give this "power" out in a fair, ie nonpartisan way. As long as both camps are equally vociferous about the fairness, the balance that will be struck should be a fair compromise...
Not if the two camps are equally vociferous, but unequally dedicated, to the efforts at fairness.
And lest anyone think I refer to the present, I suggest you review the history of Gerrymandering.
That's irrational paranoia. This happened Thursday, near the Chinese border. If a US nuke went off near the Sino-Korean border, both China and North Korea would have been howling about it non-stop to the international press. No such howling appears in, for example, the Press Trust of India. Ergo, it wasn't American.
Now, if the Chinese were responsible, there might well be no outcry to the press. The Chinese government is ruthless, but not stupid; such action would not be taken without at least *warning* the trigger-happy DamnYankees in Washington, lest they start lobbing their toys around with abandon. It's even conceivable Washington might persuade the Chinese to do such to get KJI to quiet down and back off. But even George Bush isn't daft enough to risk riling up a population of over a billion armed with nuclear ballistic missiles.
Of course, the most likely Chinese targets are Hawaii and the West Coast, where Kerry leads in the polls... Hmm.... =)
Like I know everyone has their minds set on WMD but couldn't it just be a bigger-than-chernobyl fuck-up?
There's no evidence it's nuclear, yet (although there's no proof it isn't); it might be a bigger-than-last-train fuckup. We've got a big kaboom, not the radiation, so Chernobyl's the wrong analogy.
And any arguments about mad countries that can be made can apply to mad citizens with AK-47s.
Oh? Try applying this analogy:
In the US, if you are a convicted felon, your 2nd amendment right to bear arms is
gone, regardless of whether the crime involved a gun.
The nations in question are not so much insane, as criminal. Their leaders may be another story, but that's a seperate worry.
An even better question is "Do you want to start a land war in Asia?"
As the Middle East is usually classed as part of the Asian continent, arguably we already have. A better question is "Do you want to start a two front land war in Asia?"
"Only an idiot fights a war on two fronts. Only the heir to the throne of the Kingdom of Idiot would fight a war on twelve fronts."
Do we have any choice but to play ball with the N Koreans?
Yes: Nuke 'em till they glow and shoot 'em in the dark.
Not saying it's a good idea, but it's definitely a choice that our current idiot-in-chief would consider. Yes, it would piss off the Chinese. Do I think he's bright enough to not piss off a billion Commies armed with nukes and a superiority complex? Do I think he's bright enough to pour piss out of a boot?
First of all, no doubt its a nuke. No conventional explosive creates that large a mushroom cloud... well if you had about 10,000 tons of TNT maybe you could, but otherwise its most likely a nuke.
The mushroom cloud is not particular to the nuclear nature of such weapons, merely to their yield. Admittedly, 10+ Ktons of TNT is a lot of explosives to leave lying around. However, the site of the explosion is reported to be a missile base with a test range, so having that much conventional firepower around is conceivable-- EG, a large munitions dump explosion. Most sources are saying it probably wasn't nuclear. I wouldn't completely rule out a nuke yet, but it's still doubtful.
Damnit, why can't I find a web-enabled Geiger counter in.jp? Are they all too busy with their USB powered vibrators to do anything useful over there??? =)
Am I the only one who is getting bored with the future? I can only see aliens trying to kill Earth so many times. There are some interesting things here and there but so many future predictions are very similar.
Well, these predictions should interest you then; they're not saying aliens will kill the earth, they're saying we'll probably have done it before the aliens arrive. =)
Does anyone know of a right wing science fiction writer?
You might try L. E. Modesitt Jr.; he held a (very minor) post during the Reagan adminstration. Like much of the right (and like Dubya), his characters largely have no qualms about the ruthless use of military force when the solution requires it. In particular, you might consider "The Parafaith War", and moreover it's sequel "The Ethos Effect"-- which can easily be read as simultaneously as strong support for the recent invasion/demolition/whatever of Iraq, and a thorough damnation of the US administration that did it.
On the other hand, while his characters will use force, they tend to make sure it is the absolute last resort, and will accept the consequences if the guess wrong. As an example, were Dubya a major secondary hero in a Modesitt novel, he would indeed have struck unilaterally on the suspicion of WMDs... but when the evidence turned up so thoroughly negative, would have resigned, and agreed to extradition for a trial at the Hague on charges of Conspiracy to Wage an Agressive War.
Also, his characters largely have a respect for the environment that makes a Greenpeace anti-whaling ship look like the crew of the Exxon Valdez; I suspect "Club of Rome" leanings. He also seems to have a distinct bias against religious fanatics of all sorts, exhibited in his Ghost of the Revelator and Parafaith War series, as well as his newest.
On yet another the other hand, his characters seems to have the "most people are morons" attitude I get from the few conservatives I associate with.
On the last limb of this octupoid, I should note that it's may be a mistake to assign the views of a character to an author. He may just be taking an interesting position, not one he agrees with.
You're also missing the prime opportunity to get your ass sued into the poorhouse
They'd have to be a really good lawyer to get pain and suffering damage from that, but you might have to refund the sales price & shipping both ways and pay the lawyer... unless the judge rules the "DOA" guarantee makes you liable for the death of the buyer on opening the package. =)
Still, it's a fun ad to imagine writing... "Used dual 3.0 Xeon server 8 GB RAM Gigabit ethernet; removed from industrial environment. Works fine. No visible damage. Still, head of our IT department insists this machine stinks, so we're upgrading." (It would help if your IT department head is a Mac enthusiast.)
Make sure to save a copy of the ad for your court date. "But your honor, the machine is exactly as described...." "Exhibit A, your honor, the machine in question." "Dear GOD, get that thing out of my courtroom!"
Slashdot Mirror
To be really egregiously cruel, and to make sure Billy doesn't take back his money, you should ask for it to be named for both: the Gates-Torvalds Center for Computer Science. Hey, Bill gave first, even if his share is less we should let him keep top, er, bill. I'm sure they'd both be ecstatic to have their names so associated, and would doubtless be delighted to speak at the opening ceremonies. =)
Second, the theory says nothing about the rate at which these renewals occur. There is an energy cost of 9.81 Joules per kg oil per meter depth extracted from for pumping; when deep enough, oil may not be economical to forcibly extract as a fuel. (Raw material is a separate but less pressing question.) If the demand for oil (growing as 3rd world nations like China industrialize) exceeds the rate at which extractable reserves replenish themselves, there will be a shortfall.
Certainly not if there if there is a substantial risk of fuel cost rises for current preferred energy generation methods in a timeframe less than or on the close order of the lead time for putting a currently-nonexistant wind plant on the grid (both for construction and dealing with NIMBY locational issues that may arise).
Large supply shocks are MINDBOGGLINGLY bad for the economy especially for something as fundamental these days as the cost of electricity, and are far worse for consumers than for corporations or corporate stockholders-- especially for the corporations producing the shocked supply. You don't remember the economy of the early 1970's very well, do you? It royally sucked. "Those who do not study their history...."
It takes time to develop the engineering expertise to make wind plants economical, efficient, and integrated into a fairly regular cyclical demand grid (nontrivial given the intermittency of wind supply). Subsidies make it look at least marginally economical to build plants now. Once you have people building plants, greed will drive them to try to figure out how to improve them to make more money... which will start pushing the calendar on developing the aforementioned expertise, so that we will (hopefully) have it before the need for it is critical. Yeah, it's a "carrot for the jackass" approach, but given the number of stupid jackasses in the US, and given the traditions of this country, we really can't use a stick exclusively.
While there are plenty of ways to store large amounts of electricity, they tend to be at least as lossy as this. This increases the cost of your re-extracted electricity substantially, out of the economic useful range except at peak hours.
Very not-- EBay blocks viewing it with Safari, but not Netscape or IE. Interstink.
There is no indication this "pad" for the password is encrypted by is one-time only; contrariwise, in fact.
For example, I'm very glad to know that President Dubya is a born-again Christian zealot whose religion dictates numerous parts of his political agenda. Kerry's Catholocism, and the Bishops threatening him over his stance on abortion, is slightly less interesting, but still helpful to know.
Democracy is a system where everyone gets what the majority deserve. If the person who gets elected is a total disaster who dooms the country, being able to say "well, *I* didn't vote for him" is small comfort.
Or, in other words, if the wrong guy gets elected, you get the booby prize regardless of whether you voted for him OR someone else.
I'm afraid the problem is more basic than that.
Anyone who spends any time doing enough study on this to grasp the scope of the problem will end scared out of their wits. If the candidates explain the issue to their constituents so that the voters start to understand, they will start to scare the voters out of their wits. The sheep in this country will be traumatized by this, and associate the trauma with the candidate explaining this. They will then usually change the channel to make the bad man go away. Whether they do or not, come the voting booth, Pavlovian conditioning ("aiigh! scary man!") will make them vote against the honest man.
As Walter Mondale so memorably demonstrated, voters don't vote for people who tell them the bad news; they shoot the messenger. This, lamentably, may well set up a memorable demonstration of "evolution in action" as applied to societies.
The problem may get scarier. I am not an Economist (and I'd be delighted if one can explain why I'm wrong), but according to my old ECON201 textbook, stagflation (inflation combined with slowing economy and job loss) is caused by economic shocks to the national aggregate supply curve-- IE, something suddenly causes making things to be more expensive. Government deficit spending can somewhat reduce the effects.
Stagflation was first triggered in the 1970's by the rise in oil prices, coincident with OPEC tightening supply-- and, perhaps more importantly, the peak of the US oil production Hubbert Curve. The Reagan era's deficit spending (continuing to the present) helped make this problem disappear-- but not necessarily go away.
Estimates for the peak of the global oil Hubbert curve are at 2010, plus or minus 10 years. (Yes, that means some people worry it has already peaked.) So, we'll be facing a global economic slowdown that reduces the US tax base, we'll have exhausted our ability to hide this via deficit spending, and we'll be facing this financial shortfall from needing to pay for the Boom going out to pasture.
Oh... and the diminished likelihood in such an economy for those at lower income levels to earn enough for the necessities of life will result in increased numbers resorting to illegal means to do so... just to add widespread small scale mayhem to probable riots in the streets. With luck, though, we should be able to avoid a civil war fought with nuclear weapons. =|
Now, where did I put that electronic thumb I borrowed from Ford Prefect....
Of course, since I'm living in a Liberal-Weiner district of a Right-Wing-Nutjob state, and am myself a Libertarian-Flavored-Loonie, I'm a little biased here. =)
Not if the two camps are equally vociferous, but unequally dedicated, to the efforts at fairness.
And lest anyone think I refer to the present, I suggest you review the history of Gerrymandering.
Anyone rememember "The Crystal Spheres"?
Now, if the Chinese were responsible, there might well be no outcry to the press. The Chinese government is ruthless, but not stupid; such action would not be taken without at least *warning* the trigger-happy DamnYankees in Washington, lest they start lobbing their toys around with abandon. It's even conceivable Washington might persuade the Chinese to do such to get KJI to quiet down and back off. But even George Bush isn't daft enough to risk riling up a population of over a billion armed with nuclear ballistic missiles.
Of course, the most likely Chinese targets are Hawaii and the West Coast, where Kerry leads in the polls... Hmm.... =)
There's no evidence it's nuclear, yet (although there's no proof it isn't); it might be a bigger-than-last-train fuckup. We've got a big kaboom, not the radiation, so Chernobyl's the wrong analogy.
And any arguments about mad countries that can be made can apply to mad citizens with AK-47s.
Oh? Try applying this analogy:
The nations in question are not so much insane, as criminal. Their leaders may be another story, but that's a seperate worry.As the Middle East is usually classed as part of the Asian continent, arguably we already have. A better question is "Do you want to start a two front land war in Asia?"
"Only an idiot fights a war on two fronts. Only the heir to the throne of the Kingdom of Idiot would fight a war on twelve fronts."
Hail to the chief....
Useless against non-traditional delivery systems; EG, suicidal cargo vessel sailing into some US port. Does leave NORAD kinda intact, though.
"Whadda mean, Korea's in Southeast Asia?"
[clickety... BOOM]
"There's no Korea in Southeast Asia!"
Yes: Nuke 'em till they glow and shoot 'em in the dark.
Not saying it's a good idea, but it's definitely a choice that our current idiot-in-chief would consider. Yes, it would piss off the Chinese. Do I think he's bright enough to not piss off a billion Commies armed with nukes and a superiority complex? Do I think he's bright enough to pour piss out of a boot?
How remarkably paranoid.
Not that I'm saying you're wrong, mind you. But you're definitely paranoid.
The mushroom cloud is not particular to the nuclear nature of such weapons, merely to their yield. Admittedly, 10+ Ktons of TNT is a lot of explosives to leave lying around. However, the site of the explosion is reported to be a missile base with a test range, so having that much conventional firepower around is conceivable-- EG, a large munitions dump explosion. Most sources are saying it probably wasn't nuclear. I wouldn't completely rule out a nuke yet, but it's still doubtful.
Damnit, why can't I find a web-enabled Geiger counter in .jp? Are they all too busy with their USB powered vibrators to do anything useful over there??? =)
Increased range on the malaria mosquito, not to mention nasty Biohazard-4 tropicals.
Well, these predictions should interest you then; they're not saying aliens will kill the earth, they're saying we'll probably have done it before the aliens arrive. =)
You might try L. E. Modesitt Jr.; he held a (very minor) post during the Reagan adminstration. Like much of the right (and like Dubya), his characters largely have no qualms about the ruthless use of military force when the solution requires it. In particular, you might consider "The Parafaith War", and moreover it's sequel "The Ethos Effect"-- which can easily be read as simultaneously as strong support for the recent invasion/demolition/whatever of Iraq, and a thorough damnation of the US administration that did it.
On the other hand, while his characters will use force, they tend to make sure it is the absolute last resort, and will accept the consequences if the guess wrong. As an example, were Dubya a major secondary hero in a Modesitt novel, he would indeed have struck unilaterally on the suspicion of WMDs... but when the evidence turned up so thoroughly negative, would have resigned, and agreed to extradition for a trial at the Hague on charges of Conspiracy to Wage an Agressive War.
Also, his characters largely have a respect for the environment that makes a Greenpeace anti-whaling ship look like the crew of the Exxon Valdez; I suspect "Club of Rome" leanings. He also seems to have a distinct bias against religious fanatics of all sorts, exhibited in his Ghost of the Revelator and Parafaith War series, as well as his newest.
On yet another the other hand, his characters seems to have the "most people are morons" attitude I get from the few conservatives I associate with.
On the last limb of this octupoid, I should note that it's may be a mistake to assign the views of a character to an author. He may just be taking an interesting position, not one he agrees with.
They'd have to be a really good lawyer to get pain and suffering damage from that, but you might have to refund the sales price & shipping both ways and pay the lawyer... unless the judge rules the "DOA" guarantee makes you liable for the death of the buyer on opening the package. =)
Still, it's a fun ad to imagine writing... "Used dual 3.0 Xeon server 8 GB RAM Gigabit ethernet; removed from industrial environment. Works fine. No visible damage. Still, head of our IT department insists this machine stinks, so we're upgrading." (It would help if your IT department head is a Mac enthusiast.)
Make sure to save a copy of the ad for your court date. "But your honor, the machine is exactly as described...." "Exhibit A, your honor, the machine in question." "Dear GOD, get that thing out of my courtroom!"