Yes it takes energy to make ethanol, but it can be made anywhere and with a variety of inputs, not just corn. And it takes far less energy to make a barrel of ethanol here where its needed than to get a barrel of gasoline all the way from Saudi. Remember to include oil exploration, extraction, shipping halfway around the world and refining in the comparison. Oh, plus the cost of maintaining the war over there to keep it coming.
Engine alterations - yes for older engines before 2006 when everything went EFI. Cars have been running just fine in Brazil on ethanol+gasoline for 40 years now. Guess what, the same Toyotas and Hondas are sold there as here.
The oil companies did a FUD campaign to convince people the food would run out, not enough corn when the quantity of inputs we produce already far exceeds the world markets causing us to pay producers not to produce and others to dump. Then they did a campaign for "alcohol-free gasoline" to imply that alcohol is bad, even though every pump in america dispenses gasoline with 10% ethanol in it already. Then the oil companies support the antiquated alcohol-production laws to make sure it remains difficult and expensive to comply and compete with them. Then they made a pact with the car producers to resist moves to alcohol.
Back to the point though... cutting emissions. If California simply supported gasohol by deregulating alcohol production it could be produced cheaply and could be widely adopted. This could cut car emissions up to a third. Sure, these emissions are only 17% of all CO2, so you'd really only cut around 1/3 of 17% or 5% of emissions at best, but thats 5% better than the sweet-f***-all we will accomplish with Big Oil at the helm.
Most modern electronic fuel-injected gasoline engines can burn combination of gasoline and ethanol up to 100% pure ethanol if a software change is applied to the timing. Heck, many vehicles are already FLEX-fuel and the owners dont even realize it or what it means.
Burning ethanol produces half of the CO2 of burning gasoline, but with a range penalty. You need 125% as much ethanol as gasoline to travel the same distance.
Still, 125% of half the emissions is 62.5% of gas emissions for the same distance. Thats about 1/3 reduction in CO2 emissions and you can still run gasoline engines for decades to come. And its arguably healthier for your engine to burn alcohol anyway.
But to produce alcohol cheaply enough to be competitive with gasoline, we would have to drop the alcohol taxes and regulations so it could just be a simple commodity.
Guess unraveling the tax/compliance mafia is harder work than simply issuing edicts, bans and such.
Technically feasible, yes I think. Imagine a weatherproof box combining a $5 solar cell and a $5 tiny linux computer operating as a mote repeater and open wifi access point.
Place one on each utility pole running out and around the rural areas. Place one on the roof of every home in the burbs. Homeowner can provide an internet gateway if they choose.
> Would it amass enough volunteers, advocates, and enthusiastic users?
Unlikely. The stakeholders mentioned have already done so much. They have published their research and have supported the open source hardware and software.
Existing ISPs will fight to preserve market share. Government will protect corporate. No startup will achieve enough to get past the chicken-and-egg problem and establish enough market share. No technology or protocol will be dominant enough to become the standard. There will be 'islands' of Zigbee and islands of Dash7, and so on.
One option may be through government emergency preparedness, disaster relief and charitable organizations to build this as a 'backup internet' in case of SHTF scenarios.
Recommend taking a look at steem.io and steemit.com. Steem offers financial reward for writing, curating, mining and other positive activities. FB has zero cost to post and very little incentive for liking or disliking, so c**p has no resistance to propagation.
Three cheers for Mr. Gates and some others for taking some action, but it seems like marketing and self-protection. Quoting http://www.b-t.energy/unsolici... [www.b-t.energy]
"Breakthrough Energy Coalition (BEC) and Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV) do not accept or consider unsolicited ideas, suggestions, information, or materials of any nature whatsoever (“submissions”) and we request that you don’t provide submissions to us. The purpose of this policy is to avoid misunderstandings and disputes when BEC’s and/or BEV’s products, services, technologies or business are similar or even identical to your submissions."
The lack of opportunity for the general public to work on environmental initiatives is disappointing. It would be great to see such leadership include a public engagement plan to make real projects happen first at small scale then up. The ideas, enthusiasm and effort must come from and benefit the average person.
To be fair to BEC/BEV, at least their club is doing something. It seems the public is disorganized and government is dysfunctional, preferring instead to argue over building big walls and making war.
Am finding the netflix originals and their selections so much better than the network stuff, maybe comparable to BBC. I like how they seem less afraid to take editorial risks to investigate new markets.
That said, still see plenty of unexploited opportunity streaming direct-to-consumer though, in niches that Netflix probably wont choose to go as they too become bigger.
Ex: I sub to NHL and would gladly subscribe to other sports channels like golf channel. Ex: huge potential in independant/art/amateur scenes, political channels, charitable/volunteer channels,... Ex: Would gladly pay much more for new movie releases. Sorry theatre industry, havent visited you in over 8 years.
The laureates are looking at it strictly through the lens of science. They are correct given the logic and brief history of experiments to date. Not qualified to fact-check it myself so I'll believe them.
However if they are being 100% honest they must admit they ignore the issues around how that science is being applied and used for real business. For example it enables the establishment of monoculture in the food supply puts it at high risk of infection. As went the Gros Michel so goes the Cavendish soon. Is there enough genetic diversity in the animal food supply to resist a new superbug? Of course there are other issues with the big business around control of the GMOs and the close relationship they have with government.
Only one question - if GMOs are truly safe then why can't they just be labeled as such in the store? I like to know my ingredients and I'll choose. Why are big business and government trying to hide it?
1. Build Gen IV nuclear reactor(s) [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor] 2. Get paid to take the rest of the world's Gen III waste, which is burned in the Gen IV to create power 3. Use $$$ sales of power from step 2 to offset capital costs from step (1) 4. Remove the old inefficient hydro dams that are choking the salmon out of existence and genociding the first nations
We must at least consider, study the possibility. Bring new money into the economy. Develop a new generation of physicists and nuclear engineers. Dont bitch about the cost too much: Canada spent around $1B/month on Afghanistan for over 10 years. Make guns or butter. Build empire or civilization. Choose wisely.
Canada's natural nuclear advantage comes from geographical/political stability, wealth of isolated places, highly educated people, natural supply of high quality Uranium in the north and so on...
Meanwhile we save the food supply, unless of course we want our descendants to live on insects and algae.
Fossils are evil but plastic is so damn useful, if we could just get people to recycle responsibly. Solar cells are made with nasty stuff like arsenic and take more power to burn sand than they will ever produce in their warranty period. Look at Taiwan/China air pollution. Want to live in that?
Wind turbines take a whack of metal/etc that had to get smelted. Probably takes more energy to create a turbine than it ever produces, and they kill alot of bird life. Then theres the creepy moving shadows and noise all the time. Wouldnt want to live near one.
Geothermal's great if you live in Iceland I guess.
Not saying Nuclear's perfect but jeez Gen IV looks awesome compared to the options. How are we going to scale up to support the 12B people we expect to be on the planet by the end of the century???
... to the Harry Potter Academy of Computing! Here you will learn plenty of magic spells that do quick and flashy things to amaze the muggins. Remember to bring your StackOverflow spellbook, where you will find all the spells you will ever need.
Sounds familiar. Everything may be total shit, and that means there is NOTHING that can't be redone better. You, me or anybody can come up with the ideas, the trick is to just pick one and do it, break some eggs, take some chances. Chase your pleasures as they drive your dreams and let your dreams drive your work.
Colonel Sanders was 42 when he started cooking chicken in a gas station and was broke again at 65.
“You just keep pushing. You just keep pushing. I made every mistake that could be made. But I just kept pushing.” - Descartes
When leaders start using propaganda like "doing what is right for the citizenry" and "greater good" we should get nervous. A CTV article mentioned that government and corporate clients were exempt from this intrusion. That says it all.
Stay on GMT - so here we would start work at midnight and work until 0900. If you travel somewhere you figure out in advance what time they start work/stores open and you're fine. Too easy.
Do your company/team a favour and don't recruit 'superstars'. You might find yourself hiring some braggart with a big ego who insists on wanking their ideas around and bullying everyone else into using their pet technology of choice.
I suggest looking for people who can provide hard evidence of:
- decent technical knowledge (depth and breadth) about what you are hiring for - having developed larger non-trivial components in real world projects - having worked successfully in a team. In fact have them meet some of your team in the interview. - having written documentation/requirements/designs - having worked on, and persevered through, disaster death-march projects (have battle scars) - willingness to treat others with respect, listen well, and take direction
Anyone who is even average or slightly above average in all these points will likely be a superstar in your organization.
No they will not acquire Tesla and come up with something... they will acquire Tesla and shut it down.
The reason Tesla is exciting is that the current owners are not completely motivated by the money - they are already rich from other sources. Thus they are free to pursue a dream and change the world.
With CPAN you have to download and install modules 'by hand' (at least when I did Perl some years ago). Of course, the first few times I tried it I messed it up (heh).
With Java, all the basic libraries are already there. Sure, there are 3rd-party jars but the CLASSPATH mechanism is sooooo simple. I am still surprised that other languages like.NET make your life hard by forcing your hand as to where to put things (the GAC or current directory, no other choices).
Anyone who needs a gui;-)
How would you implement a gui under Mono to work across the big three platforms? Assuming you talk about bindings to wxWidgets or something, would it not be easier to write with AWT or Swing or SWT?
I develop web applications/sites under contract, and I find the opposite.
Early in the project, I talk to the client about the browser issues and they always say they only care about IE. They just don't care about standards and such - that's my problem to deal with.
To do what the parent suggests, to develop the app for IE only hoping to get the change request, strikes me as shady if not unethical. Set the project scope correctly at the start, make sure the appropriate efforts are planned, and execute the plan.
If you tell the client about cross-browser and they say they dont care, then they cant complain when it works for IE only. At least it was their choice.
In software it is fairly expensive to develop a concept, define requirements, build the prototype or first revision and encounter/resolve the issues. It is called the 'bleeding edge' for a good reason.
Once you have a product, the cost for someone else to build a work-alike is a fraction of what it cost you.
With such a low barrier to competition, it can be a real problem trying to make money from a first product. Your only safety is to try and stay one step ahead of the mimickers by innovating your product and serving a niche market.
How many people have owned a Prius long enough to have to replace the batteries?
I hear the batteries last several years, but they cost thousands of dollars to replace. Prius owners will end up buying their car several times over.
And, consider the environmental damage that comes from having to dispose of the used batteries. Even 'recycling' the materials takes energy and costs money.
Apparently you can watch Wizard of Oz and start Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album, and all kinds of stuff magically matches up. Never tried it myself.
Roger Waters denied setting it up that way, but it would be genius if he did.
With Ontario making the announcement, other provinces will follow, including the one I live in.
Why is this great news? Because of all the software maintenance effort that will be required to upgrade the systems to comply. The additional workload will mean more money and maybe even a recovery in the job market after the tech bubble a few years back.
This is the one thing GWB has done that will benefit me. Thanks George!
Slashdot Mirror
Yes it takes energy to make ethanol, but it can be made anywhere and with a variety of inputs, not just corn. And it takes far less energy to make a barrel of ethanol here where its needed than to get a barrel of gasoline all the way from Saudi. Remember to include oil exploration, extraction, shipping halfway around the world and refining in the comparison. Oh, plus the cost of maintaining the war over there to keep it coming.
Engine alterations - yes for older engines before 2006 when everything went EFI. Cars have been running just fine in Brazil on ethanol+gasoline for 40 years now. Guess what, the same Toyotas and Hondas are sold there as here.
The oil companies did a FUD campaign to convince people the food would run out, not enough corn when the quantity of inputs we produce already far exceeds the world markets causing us to pay producers not to produce and others to dump. Then they did a campaign for "alcohol-free gasoline" to imply that alcohol is bad, even though every pump in america dispenses gasoline with 10% ethanol in it already. Then the oil companies support the antiquated alcohol-production laws to make sure it remains difficult and expensive to comply and compete with them. Then they made a pact with the car producers to resist moves to alcohol.
Back to the point though ... cutting emissions. If California simply supported gasohol by deregulating alcohol production it could be produced cheaply and could be widely adopted. This could cut car emissions up to a third. Sure, these emissions are only 17% of all CO2, so you'd really only cut around 1/3 of 17% or 5% of emissions at best, but thats 5% better than the sweet-f***-all we will accomplish with Big Oil at the helm.
Most modern electronic fuel-injected gasoline engines can burn combination of gasoline and ethanol up to 100% pure ethanol if a software change is applied to the timing. Heck, many vehicles are already FLEX-fuel and the owners dont even realize it or what it means.
Burning ethanol produces half of the CO2 of burning gasoline, but with a range penalty. You need 125% as much ethanol as gasoline to travel the same distance.
Still, 125% of half the emissions is 62.5% of gas emissions for the same distance. Thats about 1/3 reduction in CO2 emissions and you can still run gasoline engines for decades to come. And its arguably healthier for your engine to burn alcohol anyway.
But to produce alcohol cheaply enough to be competitive with gasoline, we would have to drop the alcohol taxes and regulations so it could just be a simple commodity.
Guess unraveling the tax/compliance mafia is harder work than simply issuing edicts, bans and such.
Here we sit after a few decades of doubleplusungood IP law.
It meant "Software Through Pictures" but we knew it affectionately as "Software Through Pain"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
> Is this feasible?
Technically feasible, yes I think. Imagine a weatherproof box combining a $5 solar cell and a $5 tiny linux computer operating as a mote repeater and open wifi access point.
Place one on each utility pole running out and around the rural areas. Place one on the roof of every home in the burbs. Homeowner can provide an internet gateway if they choose.
> Would it amass enough volunteers, advocates, and enthusiastic users?
Unlikely. The stakeholders mentioned have already done so much. They have published their research and have supported the open source hardware and software.
Existing ISPs will fight to preserve market share. Government will protect corporate. No startup will achieve enough to get past the chicken-and-egg problem and establish enough market share. No technology or protocol will be dominant enough to become the standard. There will be 'islands' of Zigbee and islands of Dash7, and so on.
One option may be through government emergency preparedness, disaster relief and charitable organizations to build this as a 'backup internet' in case of SHTF scenarios.
Recommend taking a look at steem.io and steemit.com. Steem offers financial reward for writing, curating, mining and other positive activities. FB has zero cost to post and very little incentive for liking or disliking, so c**p has no resistance to propagation.
Three cheers for Mr. Gates and some others for taking some action, but it seems like marketing and self-protection. Quoting http://www.b-t.energy/unsolici... [www.b-t.energy]
"Breakthrough Energy Coalition (BEC) and Breakthrough Energy Ventures (BEV) do not accept or consider unsolicited ideas, suggestions, information, or materials of any nature whatsoever (“submissions”) and we request that you don’t provide submissions to us. The purpose of this policy is to avoid misunderstandings and disputes when BEC’s and/or BEV’s products, services, technologies or business are similar or even identical to your submissions."
The lack of opportunity for the general public to work on environmental initiatives is disappointing. It would be great to see such leadership include a public engagement plan to make real projects happen first at small scale then up. The ideas, enthusiasm and effort must come from and benefit the average person.
To be fair to BEC/BEV, at least their club is doing something. It seems the public is disorganized and government is dysfunctional, preferring instead to argue over building big walls and making war.
Here's a few:
. Arcade.city [ https://arcade.city/ ] - started by p1553d off Uber drivers
. Cell 411 [ https://getcell411.com/ ] - includes ride-share feature
. ReachNow [ http://www.bmwcarsharing.com/ ] - pay-per-minute car rental
Am finding the netflix originals and their selections so much better than the network stuff, maybe comparable to BBC. I like how they seem less afraid to take editorial risks to investigate new markets.
That said, still see plenty of unexploited opportunity streaming direct-to-consumer though, in niches that Netflix probably wont choose to go as they too become bigger.
Ex: I sub to NHL and would gladly subscribe to other sports channels like golf channel. ...
Ex: huge potential in independant/art/amateur scenes, political channels, charitable/volunteer channels,
Ex: Would gladly pay much more for new movie releases. Sorry theatre industry, havent visited you in over 8 years.
The laureates are looking at it strictly through the lens of science. They are correct given the logic and brief history of experiments to date. Not qualified to fact-check it myself so I'll believe them.
However if they are being 100% honest they must admit they ignore the issues around how that science is being applied and used for real business. For example it enables the establishment of monoculture in the food supply puts it at high risk of infection. As went the Gros Michel so goes the Cavendish soon. Is there enough genetic diversity in the animal food supply to resist a new superbug? Of course there are other issues with the big business around control of the GMOs and the close relationship they have with government.
Only one question - if GMOs are truly safe then why can't they just be labeled as such in the store? I like to know my ingredients and I'll choose. Why are big business and government trying to hide it?
1. Build Gen IV nuclear reactor(s) [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_IV_reactor]
2. Get paid to take the rest of the world's Gen III waste, which is burned in the Gen IV to create power
3. Use $$$ sales of power from step 2 to offset capital costs from step (1)
4. Remove the old inefficient hydro dams that are choking the salmon out of existence and genociding the first nations
We must at least consider, study the possibility. Bring new money into the economy. Develop a new generation of physicists and nuclear engineers. Dont bitch about the cost too much: Canada spent around $1B/month on Afghanistan for over 10 years. Make guns or butter. Build empire or civilization. Choose wisely.
Canada's natural nuclear advantage comes from geographical/political stability, wealth of isolated places, highly educated people, natural supply of high quality Uranium in the north and so on ...
Meanwhile we save the food supply, unless of course we want our descendants to live on insects and algae.
Fossils are evil but plastic is so damn useful, if we could just get people to recycle responsibly. Solar cells are made with nasty stuff like arsenic and take more power to burn sand than they will ever produce in their warranty period. Look at Taiwan/China air pollution. Want to live in that?
Wind turbines take a whack of metal/etc that had to get smelted. Probably takes more energy to create a turbine than it ever produces, and they kill alot of bird life. Then theres the creepy moving shadows and noise all the time. Wouldnt want to live near one.
Geothermal's great if you live in Iceland I guess.
Not saying Nuclear's perfect but jeez Gen IV looks awesome compared to the options. How are we going to scale up to support the 12B people we expect to be on the planet by the end of the century???
... to the Harry Potter Academy of Computing! Here you will learn plenty of magic spells that do quick and flashy things to amaze the muggins. Remember to bring your StackOverflow spellbook, where you will find all the spells you will ever need.
... a 'communist mole' ...
Sounds familiar. Everything may be total shit, and that means there is NOTHING that can't be redone better. You, me or anybody can come up with the ideas, the trick is to just pick one and do it, break some eggs, take some chances. Chase your pleasures as they drive your dreams and let your dreams drive your work.
Colonel Sanders was 42 when he started cooking chicken in a gas station and was broke again at 65.
“You just keep pushing. You just keep pushing. I made every mistake that could be made. But I just kept pushing.” - Descartes
When leaders start using propaganda like "doing what is right for the citizenry" and "greater good" we should get nervous. A CTV article mentioned that government and corporate clients were exempt from this intrusion. That says it all.
Stay on GMT - so here we would start work at midnight and work until 0900. If you travel somewhere you figure out in advance what time they start work/stores open and you're fine. Too easy.
Do your company/team a favour and don't recruit 'superstars'. You might find yourself hiring some braggart with a big ego who insists on wanking their ideas around and bullying everyone else into using their pet technology of choice.
I suggest looking for people who can provide hard evidence of:
- decent technical knowledge (depth and breadth) about what you are hiring for
- having developed larger non-trivial components in real world projects
- having worked successfully in a team. In fact have them meet some of your team in the interview.
- having written documentation/requirements/designs
- having worked on, and persevered through, disaster death-march projects (have battle scars)
- willingness to treat others with respect, listen well, and take direction
Anyone who is even average or slightly above average in all these points will likely be a superstar in your organization.
HTH
No they will not acquire Tesla and come up with something ... they will acquire Tesla and shut it down.
The reason Tesla is exciting is that the current owners are not completely motivated by the money - they are already rich from other sources. Thus they are free to pursue a dream and change the world.
With CPAN you have to download and install modules 'by hand' (at least when I did Perl some years ago). Of course, the first few times I tried it I messed it up (heh).
.NET make your life hard by forcing your hand as to where to put things (the GAC or current directory, no other choices).
With Java, all the basic libraries are already there. Sure, there are 3rd-party jars but the CLASSPATH mechanism is sooooo simple. I am still surprised that other languages like
Anyone who needs a gui ;-)
How would you implement a gui under Mono to work across the big three platforms? Assuming you talk about bindings to wxWidgets or something, would it not be easier to write with AWT or Swing or SWT?
I develop web applications/sites under contract, and I find the opposite.
Early in the project, I talk to the client about the browser issues and they always say they only care about IE. They just don't care about standards and such - that's my problem to deal with.
To do what the parent suggests, to develop the app for IE only hoping to get the change request, strikes me as shady if not unethical. Set the project scope correctly at the start, make sure the appropriate efforts are planned, and execute the plan.
If you tell the client about cross-browser and they say they dont care, then they cant complain when it works for IE only. At least it was their choice.
In software it is fairly expensive to develop a concept, define requirements, build the prototype or first revision and encounter/resolve the issues. It is called the 'bleeding edge' for a good reason.
Once you have a product, the cost for someone else to build a work-alike is a fraction of what it cost you.
With such a low barrier to competition, it can be a real problem trying to make money from a first product. Your only safety is to try and stay one step ahead of the mimickers by innovating your product and serving a niche market.
How many people have owned a Prius long enough to have to replace the batteries?
I hear the batteries last several years, but they cost thousands of dollars to replace. Prius owners will end up buying their car several times over.
And, consider the environmental damage that comes from having to dispose of the used batteries. Even 'recycling' the materials takes energy and costs money.
Roger Waters denied setting it up that way, but it would be genius if he did.
Heh.
Why is this great news? Because of all the software maintenance effort that will be required to upgrade the systems to comply. The additional workload will mean more money and maybe even a recovery in the job market after the tech bubble a few years back.
This is the one thing GWB has done that will benefit me. Thanks George!