It can be less efficient. It's not like they care, they're fucking around all day and collecting a paycheck while the rest of us pay to support them. Although they did invent the term "sonification technology" so at least they're providing us with a little entertainment. I know I laughed when I read that line. What a bunch of pure bullshit.
"To eject a CD-ROM, USB-key, or external storage, I drag it to the trash. That seems illogical to me."
Well, if you had a mac, you'd notice the eject button on the keyboard, but if you want to use OSX on your dell, just press and hold F12 until it ejects the disk. You can also right click the drive on you desktop and select "eject", or use the "command E" key combination. So, it's not like dragging it to the trash is your only option. Honestly, in the face of all the options, your comment is more of a troll than a complaint.
"Double-clicking the downloaded file yielded some puzzling prompt I can't recall."
No, all applications should run from a disk image. Some do come as a "package" that you need to run to install the application. For the most part, I'd say that dragging a file to the Applications folder in the dock is easier, and more intuitive than running an installer.
"Driver management is a nightmare."
I don't think you mean to say "driver management" since managing drivers is easy. The hard part is finding drivers for hardware that OSX doesn't support natively. This is a problem that would go away if you bought mac. The vast majority of printers, digital cameras, and any other accessory you may want to attach to your computer are supported. Unfortunately, Apple only supports the video cards it actually puts in it's computers. That's where your problem is.
"OSX feels like an OS that is 50 feet thick. And by that I mean it feels like there's layer upon layer of abstraction, as if it were trying to protect me from seeing how a computer really works."
I'm not sure what you mean by that. Most everything you'd want to do is right out in the open. There's a command line built in, which is more than you can say for windows. And OSX tends to be more free of "wizards" than Windows is. I guess any GUI would be too much of an abstraction for you.
"OSX is slow."
Well, it runs acceptably on my ~6 year old power mac G4, and it runs well on my girlfriends ~4 year old iMac G4. You should probably stop by an apple store and try it on a real mac before you deem it "slow". I use WIN XP at work, and it doesn't seem to run any faster to me.
"Give me Outlook Express over Apples default mail application any day."
That's just crazy. I don't even know what to say about that. That's like saying you'd rather drink battery acid than a milkshake.
To anyone who is considering buying a Mac: Try using OSX first! Just do it on a Mac for god-sake!
Why is it that the very same liberals who claim that there's more to life then just money always turn around and claim that you need lots of money to "partake of what life has to offer"? I've got news for you, being a janitor is a low stress job (I know, I've been one) and as a janitor, one has time to experience the finer things in life, like social outings, and camping, and just lazing around. Being a manager (as I am now) is a high stress job. I spend too much time worrying about my figures, and how well business is going to really relax and enjoy life. It has also put more stress on my relationships, I have half as many friends, and it seems like my SO and I are always fighting. On top of that, I have student loans I need to pay off.
So the janitor can not enjoy some of the nice things I will be able to (someday, hopefully), like a new house, or a new car, but he can enjoy some things I can't. It makes me sick to my stomach when people talk about the plight of the "disadvantaged", as if it's really hard to sit around and collect a welfare check. You know what, those people don't do anything for me, and I don't owe them anything.
As far as social programs go, I'm all for feeding and educating every last child, but that's where it ends. I don't want to see any poor people leaching off the system to make a quick buck. Schools should provide 100% of children's health care needs, as well as meals, and a place to stay (if their parents can't provide one), but they shouldn't give a dime to their parents.
"your Constitution was written at a time when people had to deal with bears on their property, ferfuxsake! It was a fact of life at the time, the need to own a gun. Not so much now. "
Just so that everyone knows, we still do have to deal with bears, coyotes, wolves and mountian loins in most of this country. Moose, deer and elk can be pretty troublesome as well. Then there's also the foxes, racoons and skunks . . . thank god for shotguns.
What they should do is sell DVD players that can download a separate track from the internet containing information about which parts of the movie to skip. Then they could charge people for the DVD players and the filtering service.
It's cheaper to build new goods than to replace old ones because it uses less resources. I know it seems contradictory, but in the age of industrialization products can be built with almost no labour cost. The most resource intensive part of producing almost anything is labour. What you want to do is devalue labour. I don't think you've fully considered the ramifications of what you've proposed here. People are expensive to keep alive. It's what we spend literally all of our resources doing. So when you say that we should use more labour to do the same amount of work, you're talking about increasing the amount of resources used, not decreasing it.
While I admit that decreasing the amount of resources we use is important, that should be done by using our existing resources more efficiently. One of the things I've noticed is that people often fail to appreciate the value of a quality item, which is less likely to break. I think people only need to learn to spend their money more wisely, waste would be less of a problem.
Just FYI, I have DSL only from verizon (they call it "dry loop") and it only costs $22/month with a 1 year contract, $79 early termination fee. Nearest I can that, that's the best deal out there right now, so you might want to get switched over to that.
The reason congress isn't seriously investigating activities that the press has called "illegal" is because they approved of all of those activities in the first place. Not only that, but the still do approve of them. And not only the republicans support it, so do the democrats. Why would they want to draw attention to the fact that the approved of some politically unpopular programs? You'd be better off if you'd just look at the facts and realize that the democratic party is not now, nor has it ever been the party of civil rights.
I guess the real problem isn't that the political parties are against civil rights, so much as the american public is. At least two thirds of this country is obsessed with inappropriately controlling aspects of other peoples lives. Some people want to tell you not to do drugs, some people want to tell you not to have gay sex, some people want to tell you you can't shop at wal-mart, some people want to tell you that you can't decide how to spend you own money, some people want to tell you that you can't play violent video games. Add all of that fucked up shit together and you have millions of people using the ballot box to try to control and regulate every little aspect of your life.
And then, people pretend that just because you can vote, they aren't trampling all over your rights. WTF? If I want to buy pot and gay porn at wal-mart, why the hell shouldn't I be able to? These people always talk about what's good for society, and the common good and all that crap, but you know what's really best for society? Everyone staying out of everyone else's shit. That's what's best for society. When it comes down to it, democracy is just another way of doing the same thing dictators do.
You cannot "remove the economic incentive to steal". That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. When you steel from someone, you literally get something for nothing. Legitimate operations cannot compete with that because it costs money to produce music. They need to receive payment for that effort, or they will go out of business. Making and enforcing anti-piracy laws is the only way to stop piracy.
Just because the BBC only reports on the US government's attempt to gather personal information, doesn't mean there's nothing similar going on in europe. The UK, for example, seems to be on a quest to video tape everything that goes on in the country. Then there's the fact that european countries already collect all the data that they were sharing with the US government. I don't know what makes you think it's safer in the hands of European governments than in the hands of the US government. I know you'll say something about guantanimo bay, or some stupid shit like that, but the fact is that European countries cooperate with the US on those kind of operations all the time, so it's not like they're "better". Ideologically, most European governments are on the same page as the US when it comes to privacy rights, or combatting terrorism. And lets face it, some stupid pissing contest between the European Union and the United States (which is all this court case really is) hardly counts as "standing up for individual privacy rights" as you say.
I see this mistake time and time again. Democracy is in no way equivalent to freedom. The founding fathers of the united states knew this, that's why they added the bill of rights to the constitution. If everyone in the country votes to send you to prison, are you free? Of course not, but that can happen in a democracy (need I remind you that the Japanese internment, and the NAZI internment for that matter where carried out under a democratic process?).
Clearly a more participatory democracy is not what is needed to ensure a more free society. If anything, a more participatory democracy would lead to less freedom, since it would give less voice to business leaders who often promote economic freedom out of their own self interest. Sometimes I wonder if democracy was a good idea at all. The only purpose it seems to serve is to grant "legitimacy" to government, which is a nice way of saying that it makes people think their government represents them when it really doesn't. Worse still, when the public does have an influence it is almost always bad. Public opinion is as stable as a blade of grass in the wind, and has never been a basis for forming good long term policy. While the individuals voting may be well informed and thoughtful, their votes in aggregate often make for fickle,ineffective, and inconsistent policy.
The solution is not more representation in government, but less government and less governmental authority. The more decisions are made through the mutual consent of individuals, the more freedom we all have.
"there IS ABSOLUTELY NO WAY to produce hydrogen efficiently, from a renewable resource without leaving toxic byproducts;"
I'm not sure where you got that idea. High temperature electrolysis, for example, just uses really hot water and electricity. It's about 70% efficient.
"you've got to do some nasty processes to natural gas to get the hydrogen"
Well, there are a couple things wrong with that statement. First of all, hydrocarbon reformation could hardly be described as a "nasty process". You put you hydrocarbon in with some solid catalyst, hot steam, and that's all. Second of all, it can work with virtually any hydrocarbon. Thirdly, natural gas is primarily methane, which can be produced in other ways.
"Fuel cells!" you say. Except they're very expensive, have toxic catalysts in them, and have a very finite lifetime unless you use very, very clean water. Distilled/deionized water takes a lot of energy to produce...
Fuel cells do not have toxic catalysts in them, they have platinum, which is just about as non-toxic as a material can get. Though they are expensive and short lived.
The idea behind hydrogen is that it can be implemented now, and is compatible with existing infrastructure. Automobiles and power-plants that exist now can be converted to use hydrogen. Hydrogen can be produced using conventional energy inputs, but can also be produced using many other inputs. So the advantage is versatility, and the potential to operate industry without producing CO2. Of course, it's not ready for prime time yet.
I got 7 out of 8, and I've never been to any of those sites. I just looked at the claims that were made on each of the sites, and chose the one that seemed the least deceptive. Although one of the screenshots actually said right on it that it would collect information from the user (hello, spyware!). And I just said that all of the file sharing sites were spyware, because most file sharing software if spyware (that's the one I got wrong). I think the point they're trying to make is that you can't tell just by looking at a site, and that you need to take other precautions to protect yourself. Even with an 7 of 8, they said :
"Remember that even one misstep can put your PC at risk, so SiteAdvisor's free software can help you always stay safe and in control online."
Well, you can get their software, or you can just avoid downloading "free" software off the internet. It's not rocket science, software developers need make money somehow. They can either sell software, ad-space, or personal information (or some combination of those three).
"The only solution on the table right now is Yucca"
Well, there's always the reprocessing route. If you use a breeder reactor and waste reprocessing fuel cycle, you can eliminate all of the high level, won't go away for thousands of years waste. Of course, you still have the "low level" waste, but that will go away after a few hundred years (maybe 500 or so to be safe). The great part is that they've figured out how to convert conventional PWR's and BWR's into breeders through advanced computer modeling, so there's no need for any new R&D. The only problem is that it's a lot more expensive than the once through fuel cycle. I guess you can have it clean, or you can have it cheap. Its cheaper and cleaner than coal anyway.
Storing the high level waste isn't really as much as a problem as you think, either. 48 tons of nuclear waste may sound like a lot, but it's really only a few cubic meters. There are salt domes in new mexico that will probably be geologically stable for millions of years (look up the waste isolation pilot plant, WIPP). The only reason yucca mountain is at yucca mountain is politics, it's really a pretty bad location. At any rate, 48 tons of waste per year compares favorably to the hundreds of tones of waste generated daily by a coal plant, in my opinion.
The cash advance is "recoverable" which means that it will be deducted from royalties before the artist starts receiving royalties. Having to work for the labels for the duration of the contract is the risk the artist takes, but the label risks not making the advance back, as well as not making back any the money they spend promoting the artist.
All things considered, you are much more likely to make money with a label, because you get the cash advance up front, and you get promoted. If you're going indie, you're not going to be able to promote yourself as effectively. You're going to have to work another job while you're trying produce and promote your music.
Those guys don't know anything. When you say something like: compression removes the subtle nuance and texture from your music, you have no right to complain about apple saying iTunes pays the artists. Especially not if you advocate stealing music as an alternative.
Not only that, but their $.11 figure is not a realistic picture of the artist's compensation. It does not consider the risk the label takes in publishing the music (which the artist does not have to take), or the cash advance paid by the label to the artist at signing. Moreover, the actual commission varies from artist to artist (and from song to song if the artist has been around long enough to get different contracts). Many labels on itunes pay their artists more commission, while offering less promotion. Of course, that model is likely to make the artist less money overall, but it does show that the $.11 figure is bullshit.
Don't ever believe anything you read on that website, it's propaganda at best, blatant lies at the worst.
I worked at Wal-Mart, and I qualified for health insurance after 90 days just like anyone else who works there more than 35 hours a week, they told me before hand that I would qualify for it, and how much it would cost before hand, then told me again when it was time for me to enroll. It was just like every other company I've ever worked for.
Of course walmart is looking into ways to reduce their health care costs, every entity that pays for health care it looking for ways to reduce how much they spend. I don't know why you think walmart is any different from any other company.
Unlike most of the mom and pop establishments that you not doubt cherish, Wal-Mart offers low cost health insurance to it's employees. Of course they don't all have it, for two reasons. 1) It costs extra and they can't afford it because of other expenses 2) If you are low income, the government will pau for you.
Wal Mart has the most employees on medicare for one reason, they have the most employees.
"They've dirven their competitors out of business with unfair practices."
Like what? Selling stuff for less. Last I checked that was called competition.
"They've reamed North American manufacuring as they insisted on cheaper products until they had to go off shore"
Because it's really evil to switch to a lower cost provider.
"causing a replacement of manufacturing jobs with low-end retail jobs"
No, walmart has reduced the number of retail jobs, not made more. There is no such "replacment" taking place. And who ever said manufacturing jobs were so great? Arent they the jobs where you're exposed to toxic chemicals, work wierd hours, and are in constant danger of debilitating injury. Yeah, we're really loosing some great jobs.
"Wal-Mart has the gaming industry by the short-hairs"
Yes, how evil of walmart to let game companies know beforehand what titles they will stock. Wal-Mart should wait until the games are released, and suprise the game companies. Wouldn't that be fun!
The FCC is an enforcement agency, the law is the law. They are changing their mechanism of enforcement (presumably to a more effective one, since most people seem to agree that the DNC list is working for telephone calls). How is that selling out the american public? The poster is clearly a moron.
Moreover, since businesses use faxes a lot more than individuals, wouldn't the evil big business supporting Bush want to increase enforcement? The lack of logic astounds me.
The should just charge for the online downloads. That should make up the difference. They already basically sell CD's to raise funds (free with a donation), what's the difference?
I'm not sure what you think private use is, but that's when the government leases public land rights to a private party for commercial use (like generating power, perhaps?). And yes, there is quite a lot of public land around that would be perfect for this application. There's no good reason for the government to be taking private land to build a fucking wind farm.
Congress is legally required to spend money on social security, but you know what? Congress writes the law! If there were enough support for doing away with social security, congress would do it. That's is the only difference between "discretionary" and "non-discretionary" spending. The reality of the matter is that defense spending is not any more discretionary than social security because the government must provide security to US citizens, and defense spending is necessary to achieve that.
People like to complain about the Iraq war, but the truth is that spending is a drop in the bucket compared to what we spend continually expanding and maintaining our military's capability. I'm not saying that makes it okay, but we have much more to gain from trying to operate the military more efficiently than we've spent on Iraq. We need to stop spending money to develop new conventional war machines (like air superiority fighters, warships, and tanks), and spend it instead on developing our intelligence gathering and rapid deployment capabilities (right now we spend a whole bunch on both). It wouldn't hurt to do away with a lot of the pork as well.
As far as shutting down our military and pouring all the money into alternative energy research, it's important to understand what kind of an effect that would have on the status of alternative energy. This nation has a limited number of scientists and engineers, and the ones who specialize in energy research are already working in those fields. So even a massive increase in energy spending right now would only yield a marginal increase in the rate of energy research until more more scientists and engineers are able to enter the field. But that in itself wouldn't necessarily be beneficial because of the resulting lack of progress in other fields. On top of that, we have developed all the nuclear technologies we would need to do away with fossil fuels completely, and for a comparable economic cost to fossil fuels. All we really have to do is build more nuclear reactors, and reprocessing facilities so that we can start decommissioning coal plants. To make that happen, all we need to do this is rewrite some laws, and power companies will build them on their own. Especially if the government starts taxing CO2 emissions at a rate similar to how much those emissions cost society.
But the noises that many consumer electronics generate definitely increases my stress level. Though it's been a lot better since I stopped using CRTs. Now all I need to do is find a work environment that is free of fluorescent lights.
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It can be less efficient. It's not like they care, they're fucking around all day and collecting a paycheck while the rest of us pay to support them. Although they did invent the term "sonification technology" so at least they're providing us with a little entertainment. I know I laughed when I read that line. What a bunch of pure bullshit.
"To eject a CD-ROM, USB-key, or external storage, I drag it to the trash. That seems illogical to me."
Well, if you had a mac, you'd notice the eject button on the keyboard, but if you want to use OSX on your dell, just press and hold F12 until it ejects the disk. You can also right click the drive on you desktop and select "eject", or use the "command E" key combination. So, it's not like dragging it to the trash is your only option. Honestly, in the face of all the options, your comment is more of a troll than a complaint.
"Double-clicking the downloaded file yielded some puzzling prompt I can't recall."
No, all applications should run from a disk image. Some do come as a "package" that you need to run to install the application. For the most part, I'd say that dragging a file to the Applications folder in the dock is easier, and more intuitive than running an installer.
"Driver management is a nightmare."
I don't think you mean to say "driver management" since managing drivers is easy. The hard part is finding drivers for hardware that OSX doesn't support natively. This is a problem that would go away if you bought mac. The vast majority of printers, digital cameras, and any other accessory you may want to attach to your computer are supported. Unfortunately, Apple only supports the video cards it actually puts in it's computers. That's where your problem is.
"OSX feels like an OS that is 50 feet thick. And by that I mean it feels like there's layer upon layer of abstraction, as if it were trying to protect me from seeing how a computer really works."
I'm not sure what you mean by that. Most everything you'd want to do is right out in the open. There's a command line built in, which is more than you can say for windows. And OSX tends to be more free of "wizards" than Windows is. I guess any GUI would be too much of an abstraction for you.
"OSX is slow."
Well, it runs acceptably on my ~6 year old power mac G4, and it runs well on my girlfriends ~4 year old iMac G4. You should probably stop by an apple store and try it on a real mac before you deem it "slow". I use WIN XP at work, and it doesn't seem to run any faster to me.
"Give me Outlook Express over Apples default mail application any day."
That's just crazy. I don't even know what to say about that. That's like saying you'd rather drink battery acid than a milkshake.
To anyone who is considering buying a Mac: Try using OSX first! Just do it on a Mac for god-sake!
Why is it that the very same liberals who claim that there's more to life then just money always turn around and claim that you need lots of money to "partake of what life has to offer"? I've got news for you, being a janitor is a low stress job (I know, I've been one) and as a janitor, one has time to experience the finer things in life, like social outings, and camping, and just lazing around. Being a manager (as I am now) is a high stress job. I spend too much time worrying about my figures, and how well business is going to really relax and enjoy life. It has also put more stress on my relationships, I have half as many friends, and it seems like my SO and I are always fighting. On top of that, I have student loans I need to pay off.
So the janitor can not enjoy some of the nice things I will be able to (someday, hopefully), like a new house, or a new car, but he can enjoy some things I can't. It makes me sick to my stomach when people talk about the plight of the "disadvantaged", as if it's really hard to sit around and collect a welfare check. You know what, those people don't do anything for me, and I don't owe them anything.
As far as social programs go, I'm all for feeding and educating every last child, but that's where it ends. I don't want to see any poor people leaching off the system to make a quick buck. Schools should provide 100% of children's health care needs, as well as meals, and a place to stay (if their parents can't provide one), but they shouldn't give a dime to their parents.
"your Constitution was written at a time when people had to deal with bears on their property, ferfuxsake! It was a fact of life at the time, the need to own a gun. Not so much now. "
Just so that everyone knows, we still do have to deal with bears, coyotes, wolves and mountian loins in most of this country. Moose, deer and elk can be pretty troublesome as well. Then there's also the foxes, racoons and skunks . . . thank god for shotguns.
What they should do is sell DVD players that can download a separate track from the internet containing information about which parts of the movie to skip. Then they could charge people for the DVD players and the filtering service.
It's cheaper to build new goods than to replace old ones because it uses less resources. I know it seems contradictory, but in the age of industrialization products can be built with almost no labour cost. The most resource intensive part of producing almost anything is labour. What you want to do is devalue labour. I don't think you've fully considered the ramifications of what you've proposed here. People are expensive to keep alive. It's what we spend literally all of our resources doing. So when you say that we should use more labour to do the same amount of work, you're talking about increasing the amount of resources used, not decreasing it.
While I admit that decreasing the amount of resources we use is important, that should be done by using our existing resources more efficiently. One of the things I've noticed is that people often fail to appreciate the value of a quality item, which is less likely to break. I think people only need to learn to spend their money more wisely, waste would be less of a problem.
Just FYI, I have DSL only from verizon (they call it "dry loop") and it only costs $22/month with a 1 year contract, $79 early termination fee. Nearest I can that, that's the best deal out there right now, so you might want to get switched over to that.
The reason congress isn't seriously investigating activities that the press has called "illegal" is because they approved of all of those activities in the first place. Not only that, but the still do approve of them. And not only the republicans support it, so do the democrats. Why would they want to draw attention to the fact that the approved of some politically unpopular programs? You'd be better off if you'd just look at the facts and realize that the democratic party is not now, nor has it ever been the party of civil rights.
I guess the real problem isn't that the political parties are against civil rights, so much as the american public is. At least two thirds of this country is obsessed with inappropriately controlling aspects of other peoples lives. Some people want to tell you not to do drugs, some people want to tell you not to have gay sex, some people want to tell you you can't shop at wal-mart, some people want to tell you that you can't decide how to spend you own money, some people want to tell you that you can't play violent video games. Add all of that fucked up shit together and you have millions of people using the ballot box to try to control and regulate every little aspect of your life.
And then, people pretend that just because you can vote, they aren't trampling all over your rights. WTF? If I want to buy pot and gay porn at wal-mart, why the hell shouldn't I be able to? These people always talk about what's good for society, and the common good and all that crap, but you know what's really best for society? Everyone staying out of everyone else's shit. That's what's best for society. When it comes down to it, democracy is just another way of doing the same thing dictators do.
You cannot "remove the economic incentive to steal". That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. When you steel from someone, you literally get something for nothing. Legitimate operations cannot compete with that because it costs money to produce music. They need to receive payment for that effort, or they will go out of business. Making and enforcing anti-piracy laws is the only way to stop piracy.
Just because the BBC only reports on the US government's attempt to gather personal information, doesn't mean there's nothing similar going on in europe. The UK, for example, seems to be on a quest to video tape everything that goes on in the country. Then there's the fact that european countries already collect all the data that they were sharing with the US government. I don't know what makes you think it's safer in the hands of European governments than in the hands of the US government. I know you'll say something about guantanimo bay, or some stupid shit like that, but the fact is that European countries cooperate with the US on those kind of operations all the time, so it's not like they're "better". Ideologically, most European governments are on the same page as the US when it comes to privacy rights, or combatting terrorism. And lets face it, some stupid pissing contest between the European Union and the United States (which is all this court case really is) hardly counts as "standing up for individual privacy rights" as you say.
I see this mistake time and time again. Democracy is in no way equivalent to freedom. The founding fathers of the united states knew this, that's why they added the bill of rights to the constitution. If everyone in the country votes to send you to prison, are you free? Of course not, but that can happen in a democracy (need I remind you that the Japanese internment, and the NAZI internment for that matter where carried out under a democratic process?).
Clearly a more participatory democracy is not what is needed to ensure a more free society. If anything, a more participatory democracy would lead to less freedom, since it would give less voice to business leaders who often promote economic freedom out of their own self interest. Sometimes I wonder if democracy was a good idea at all. The only purpose it seems to serve is to grant "legitimacy" to government, which is a nice way of saying that it makes people think their government represents them when it really doesn't. Worse still, when the public does have an influence it is almost always bad. Public opinion is as stable as a blade of grass in the wind, and has never been a basis for forming good long term policy. While the individuals voting may be well informed and thoughtful, their votes in aggregate often make for fickle,ineffective, and inconsistent policy.
The solution is not more representation in government, but less government and less governmental authority. The more decisions are made through the mutual consent of individuals, the more freedom we all have.
"there IS ABSOLUTELY NO WAY to produce hydrogen efficiently, from a renewable resource without leaving toxic byproducts;"
I'm not sure where you got that idea. High temperature electrolysis, for example, just uses really hot water and electricity. It's about 70% efficient.
"you've got to do some nasty processes to natural gas to get the hydrogen"
Well, there are a couple things wrong with that statement. First of all, hydrocarbon reformation could hardly be described as a "nasty process". You put you hydrocarbon in with some solid catalyst, hot steam, and that's all. Second of all, it can work with virtually any hydrocarbon. Thirdly, natural gas is primarily methane, which can be produced in other ways.
"Fuel cells!" you say. Except they're very expensive, have toxic catalysts in them, and have a very finite lifetime unless you use very, very clean water. Distilled/deionized water takes a lot of energy to produce...
Fuel cells do not have toxic catalysts in them, they have platinum, which is just about as non-toxic as a material can get. Though they are expensive and short lived.
The idea behind hydrogen is that it can be implemented now, and is compatible with existing infrastructure. Automobiles and power-plants that exist now can be converted to use hydrogen. Hydrogen can be produced using conventional energy inputs, but can also be produced using many other inputs. So the advantage is versatility, and the potential to operate industry without producing CO2. Of course, it's not ready for prime time yet.
I got 7 out of 8, and I've never been to any of those sites. I just looked at the claims that were made on each of the sites, and chose the one that seemed the least deceptive. Although one of the screenshots actually said right on it that it would collect information from the user (hello, spyware!). And I just said that all of the file sharing sites were spyware, because most file sharing software if spyware (that's the one I got wrong). I think the point they're trying to make is that you can't tell just by looking at a site, and that you need to take other precautions to protect yourself. Even with an 7 of 8, they said :
"Remember that even one misstep can put your PC at risk, so SiteAdvisor's free software can help you always stay safe and in control online."
Well, you can get their software, or you can just avoid downloading "free" software off the internet. It's not rocket science, software developers need make money somehow. They can either sell software, ad-space, or personal information (or some combination of those three).
"The only solution on the table right now is Yucca"
Well, there's always the reprocessing route. If you use a breeder reactor and waste reprocessing fuel cycle, you can eliminate all of the high level, won't go away for thousands of years waste. Of course, you still have the "low level" waste, but that will go away after a few hundred years (maybe 500 or so to be safe). The great part is that they've figured out how to convert conventional PWR's and BWR's into breeders through advanced computer modeling, so there's no need for any new R&D. The only problem is that it's a lot more expensive than the once through fuel cycle. I guess you can have it clean, or you can have it cheap. Its cheaper and cleaner than coal anyway.
Storing the high level waste isn't really as much as a problem as you think, either. 48 tons of nuclear waste may sound like a lot, but it's really only a few cubic meters. There are salt domes in new mexico that will probably be geologically stable for millions of years (look up the waste isolation pilot plant, WIPP). The only reason yucca mountain is at yucca mountain is politics, it's really a pretty bad location. At any rate, 48 tons of waste per year compares favorably to the hundreds of tones of waste generated daily by a coal plant, in my opinion.
The cash advance is "recoverable" which means that it will be deducted from royalties before the artist starts receiving royalties. Having to work for the labels for the duration of the contract is the risk the artist takes, but the label risks not making the advance back, as well as not making back any the money they spend promoting the artist.
All things considered, you are much more likely to make money with a label, because you get the cash advance up front, and you get promoted. If you're going indie, you're not going to be able to promote yourself as effectively. You're going to have to work another job while you're trying produce and promote your music.
Those guys don't know anything. When you say something like: compression removes the subtle nuance and texture from your music, you have no right to complain about apple saying iTunes pays the artists. Especially not if you advocate stealing music as an alternative.
Not only that, but their $.11 figure is not a realistic picture of the artist's compensation. It does not consider the risk the label takes in publishing the music (which the artist does not have to take), or the cash advance paid by the label to the artist at signing. Moreover, the actual commission varies from artist to artist (and from song to song if the artist has been around long enough to get different contracts). Many labels on itunes pay their artists more commission, while offering less promotion. Of course, that model is likely to make the artist less money overall, but it does show that the $.11 figure is bullshit.
Don't ever believe anything you read on that website, it's propaganda at best, blatant lies at the worst.
I worked at Wal-Mart, and I qualified for health insurance after 90 days just like anyone else who works there more than 35 hours a week, they told me before hand that I would qualify for it, and how much it would cost before hand, then told me again when it was time for me to enroll. It was just like every other company I've ever worked for.
Of course walmart is looking into ways to reduce their health care costs, every entity that pays for health care it looking for ways to reduce how much they spend. I don't know why you think walmart is any different from any other company.
Unlike most of the mom and pop establishments that you not doubt cherish, Wal-Mart offers low cost health insurance to it's employees. Of course they don't all have it, for two reasons. 1) It costs extra and they can't afford it because of other expenses 2) If you are low income, the government will pau for you.
Wal Mart has the most employees on medicare for one reason, they have the most employees.
"They've dirven their competitors out of business with unfair practices."
Like what? Selling stuff for less. Last I checked that was called competition.
"They've reamed North American manufacuring as they insisted on cheaper products until they had to go off shore"
Because it's really evil to switch to a lower cost provider.
"causing a replacement of manufacturing jobs with low-end retail jobs"
No, walmart has reduced the number of retail jobs, not made more. There is no such "replacment" taking place. And who ever said manufacturing jobs were so great? Arent they the jobs where you're exposed to toxic chemicals, work wierd hours, and are in constant danger of debilitating injury. Yeah, we're really loosing some great jobs.
"Wal-Mart has the gaming industry by the short-hairs"
Yes, how evil of walmart to let game companies know beforehand what titles they will stock. Wal-Mart should wait until the games are released, and suprise the game companies. Wouldn't that be fun!
The FCC is an enforcement agency, the law is the law. They are changing their mechanism of enforcement (presumably to a more effective one, since most people seem to agree that the DNC list is working for telephone calls). How is that selling out the american public? The poster is clearly a moron.
Moreover, since businesses use faxes a lot more than individuals, wouldn't the evil big business supporting Bush want to increase enforcement? The lack of logic astounds me.
The should just charge for the online downloads. That should make up the difference. They already basically sell CD's to raise funds (free with a donation), what's the difference?
The only drawback to environmental damage is it's resulting effect on the economy, from a public policy perspective at least.
"Because it's set aside for . . . private use"
I'm not sure what you think private use is, but that's when the government leases public land rights to a private party for commercial use (like generating power, perhaps?). And yes, there is quite a lot of public land around that would be perfect for this application. There's no good reason for the government to be taking private land to build a fucking wind farm.
Congress is legally required to spend money on social security, but you know what? Congress writes the law! If there were enough support for doing away with social security, congress would do it. That's is the only difference between "discretionary" and "non-discretionary" spending. The reality of the matter is that defense spending is not any more discretionary than social security because the government must provide security to US citizens, and defense spending is necessary to achieve that.
People like to complain about the Iraq war, but the truth is that spending is a drop in the bucket compared to what we spend continually expanding and maintaining our military's capability. I'm not saying that makes it okay, but we have much more to gain from trying to operate the military more efficiently than we've spent on Iraq. We need to stop spending money to develop new conventional war machines (like air superiority fighters, warships, and tanks), and spend it instead on developing our intelligence gathering and rapid deployment capabilities (right now we spend a whole bunch on both). It wouldn't hurt to do away with a lot of the pork as well.
As far as shutting down our military and pouring all the money into alternative energy research, it's important to understand what kind of an effect that would have on the status of alternative energy. This nation has a limited number of scientists and engineers, and the ones who specialize in energy research are already working in those fields. So even a massive increase in energy spending right now would only yield a marginal increase in the rate of energy research until more more scientists and engineers are able to enter the field. But that in itself wouldn't necessarily be beneficial because of the resulting lack of progress in other fields. On top of that, we have developed all the nuclear technologies we would need to do away with fossil fuels completely, and for a comparable economic cost to fossil fuels. All we really have to do is build more nuclear reactors, and reprocessing facilities so that we can start decommissioning coal plants. To make that happen, all we need to do this is rewrite some laws, and power companies will build them on their own. Especially if the government starts taxing CO2 emissions at a rate similar to how much those emissions cost society.
But the noises that many consumer electronics generate definitely increases my stress level. Though it's been a lot better since I stopped using CRTs. Now all I need to do is find a work environment that is free of fluorescent lights.