Peak oil isn't a crisis either. We can replace every erg of energy from oil with nuclear if we're motivated to do so. Even if we don't, during my lifetime peak oil will mean as an American I might, at some point, have to pay almost as much for gas as the Europeans are paying now, plus a few commodities will cost more.
"Permanent energy crisis"? There's no such thing as a permanent crisis. Yes, energy costs are going up because we're more sensitive to the impact of new capacity. But that hardly constitutes a crisis. The word "crisis" has been practically stripped of meaning - everything these days is a goddamn crisis. When the girlfriend you were about to dump gets pregnant - that's a crisis. A few bucks more on your energy bill - not a crisis.
This is no longer true in any realistic sense. Groups like the KKK have to be ridiculously careful about what they say, which is why they pretty much just put on their costumes and march down the street. Virtually anything you say be construed as harassment or a threat if viewed in the right light, and prosecutors can famously indict a ham sandwich. There's not a huge difference between paying a fine for saying something and paying a huge legal bill for saying something. So what if you win - you'll still be broke.
It's negative in the sense that with cap and trade it's going to cost companies money to release C02 into the atmosphere. A company like Dow makes lots of different kinds of industrial chemicals, and C02 is a common byproduct. Of course, eventually that C02 would be released into the atmosphere by whomever buys the biodiesel. But presumably someone else is paying for the carbon offset at that point.
It's not going to be even close to price-competitive with oil, at least in the foreseeable future. So I doubt it will have much effect short of major governmental playing-field-tilting.
$1.25 a gallon is about twice the spot price for methanol, and $1.25 isn't what they can do, it's what they hope they can do eventually.
But remember they're using C02 as an input to the process. If cap and trade goes through this would allow them to sell or avoid buying carbon credits for other processes. I think C02 is a relatively common by-product in industrial chemistry. $1.25 isn't too bad if the cost of one of the inputs is negative.
Also, don't underestimate the value of a continuous process. The big knock on batch processing isn't the cost of the press, but rather the complication (and cost) it adds to scaling the process. It's the biggest reason we see all those little pilot projects that seem promising but never go anywhere.
The use of corn has less to do with oil companies than it has to do with pork barrel politics in farm states. Biodiesel will probably never be competitive with fossil fuels on a purely economic basis, so it's hard to believe the oil companies care.
Get another job. That's not facetious, either. There isn't any amount of money that's worth doing what you're doing to your body, and by the time you realize what you're giving up it will be too late to do anything about it. I assume you're still young enough that you don't feel it yet, but with that kind of schedule you're looking at hypertension in your 30s and heart disease by your mid 40s.
In fact, despite Microsoft trumpeting Vista as the most successful version of Windows ever sold, more than half of business PCs have subsequently downgraded Vista-based machines to XP, according to data provided by community-based performance-monitoring network of PCs.
That's not necessarily mutually exclusive. There have always been a substantial number of businesses which don't see a compelling reason to upgrade when a new version of Windows comes out. 85% of those machines are used primarily for word processing, after all, something which has been "good enough" for a couple of decades. I worked for a company which was still happily using Windows for Workgroups in 2001. Add the people who always wait for Service Pack 2 and you're at a pretty big percentage of the market.
I have to believe 'gangsters, pedophiles, or terrorists' will be using encryption to carry out their nefarious plans. The real target here is people downloading music and movies.
Sure. Governments do all sorts of despicable things in secrecy. But see, if the US government wants to actually charge you with a crime it still have to use methods that will pass muster in court. If they use an illegal method to get information that information will be excluded from trial, as will anything they find as a result of that information.
Quite honestly I think the gov is just worried that online gambling may be a simplified way of laundering money.
That's exactly what's going on. And it's not about drugs or terrorists. It's about taxes. The government is concerned about any flow of money it doesn't control - that's why we have currency transaction reporting laws and that's why you can get five years in jail for trying to sneak your own money out of the country. Do you realize "money laundering" wasn't even a crime until 1985?
This is not a new idea. There was an US Air Force officer who volunteered for a one-way trip to the moon in order to beat the Russians. The idea was to land him there with a bunch of supplies and then design, build, and launch the return voyage while he was up there playing solitaire. Unfortunately I can't remember his name and my google fu isn't up to snuff to find it.
I'm always amazed that theoretical physicists can manipulate such immensely complex abstract objects in their heads and still be able to breathe and maintain bladder control. It really makes software engineering look like a piece of piss. Much respect.
Sure, but since you have no idea what they're talking about, for all you know it's just random mathematical-sounding bullshit to keep their university positions.
I don't know how it is in other countries, but as a man in the US you'd be barking mad to be a teacher. The child predator hysteria has reached such an (unwarranted) fever pitch you may as well just check yourself into prison.
Have they caught anyone even trying? If not, then the current practice of having passengers remove their shoes and the banning of plum jam are unnecessary.
No, that's pretty much a logical fallacy. Even though the shoebomb plot wasn't successful in downing the plane, it was successful in getting a bomb onto the plane. From a security standpoint that's the important part. You check peoples' shoes because that's a proven, successful way of sneaking a bomb on to a plane in the absence of those measures.
Just because a guy put a bomb in his shoe does not mean the next person will put a bomb in their shoe.
Doesn't mean he won't, either. Richard Reid's shoe bomb came very, very close to going off on the plane. Are we going to pretend he's the only one intelligent enough to put a bomb in his shoe?
If the confiscated liquids and plum jams are so dangerous that they can't be allowed on planes, why are they just chucked in a bin and not disposed of by the bomb squad? Answer, because it is total BS.
That doesn't follow at all. An explosive on a plane at altitude is far, far more dangerous than one in the bin at the airport. Especially if it's a binary explosive that hasn't been mixed.
I've read Schneir's piece, and I don't find it compelling. Yes, yes, of course you're better off breaking up those sorts of plots before they get to the airport. But our ability to do that is nowhere near 100% effective. We still need to take prudent measures at the airport itself. It's a hassle to leave your shampoo at home, and it's a hassle to have your shoes swabbed for nitrates, but neither of those measures is particularly expensive or a huge imposition.
This is wrong. Yes, it's very difficult to make a stable binary explosive in a reasonable amount if time. The trick with liquid binary explosives is getting them not to blow up as you're mixing them. But this is not a problem, really, if you're a suicide bomber.
What do you want them to do? We had a guy who hid a big enough bomb in his shoes to (probably) take a plane down. And we had a full-blown plot to sneak binary explosives on in shampoo bottles. What's your solution to stopping those kinds of attacks without bothering anybody's plum jam?
This is mostly wrong. As someone who played twenty hours of poker or so every week for a decade, I can tell you none of the points on your list have much effect on your long-term winnings.
Nearly everyone picks up enough knowledge of the odds early on. "Is the pot big enough to call this straight draw" kind of things. And most of the close calls probability-wise don't have much effect because they're just that - close calls. If you read the books they tell you things like "In this situation you should call if your opponent is likely to bluff 30% of time." While mathematically true, it's worthless information because you can't peg someone on an exact percentage like that unless it's always or never, particularly if it's someone you've never faced before. What's really going through your head is "this guy bluffs more than most people, so I'll call him more than I would call someone I don't know." You might have a slight advantage if you can calculate exact pot odds, but most pot-odds calculations make assumptions about later-round betting patterns, and in any event that tiny advantage is going to be swamped by the drop.
Tells don't make you much because most people don't have reliable tells. Everyone thinks "hey, a really good player will be like that guy in Rounders, knowing what everyone is thinking by the way they hold their cookie." In reality you don't play individual people often enough to pick up on subtle tells, and people with obvious tells don't last long. The one tell I've found to be pretty reliable is when someone checks his hole cards on a single-suit flop, meaning he has an off-suit hand with an ace (or King, maybe) of the right color but he doesn't remember if it's the right suit. Or he might just remember he has an ace. It's reliable enough to make a tiny bit of extra money over time, but not a whole lot. Sometimes he makes his draw, and you'll run across people who do it when they flop the nut flush in order to keep you in the hand.
Hiding your own tells is about doing the same thing the same way every hand. It's not difficult at all and isn't going to separate you from the average player. Just resist peeking at those hole cards if you don't remember which ace you had.
This is the funny one. Over the long term luck will not make you a winner or a loser in poker, or even affect your rate much. There are enough samples that the laws of probability are an iron-clad bitch. If you're good enough to beat the game you will. If you're not, you won't. Luck may have a large effect your total this session, or this week, or even, if you're running really badly, this year. But the odds will assert themselves, eventually.
Assuming you're not a complete idiot, there are three qualities that separate the winners from the losers:
Discipline. Lots of people play poorly even when they know better. This usually manifests as too much calling, because winning hands is fun, and you can't win if you fold. You have to be able to force yourself to play your top game even if you get burned over and over by runner-runner obscenities.
Game selection. You don't make money in poker by playing pros, even pros who are a little bit worse than you. You make most of your winnings from people with some kind of tragic poker flaw, people who are capable of losing a lot of money and not getting better. Every serious online player has a buddy list of those kinds of people. Where I live in Northern California there are a couple places you can play for middling stakes. Good players will come in, scan the tables, and immediately leave for another card room if they don't see a good game.
Being able to quickly peg your opponents as a certain "type". This is the most important poker skill. The faster you can answer the question "is this the kind of guy who would put in a second bet on a flush draw?", and adjust your play as a result, the better off you are. Poker players try desperately to avoid being a "type", but it's very, very difficult to avoid.
None of the items on my winners list have nothing to do with actually being there in person.
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Peak oil isn't a crisis either. We can replace every erg of energy from oil with nuclear if we're motivated to do so. Even if we don't, during my lifetime peak oil will mean as an American I might, at some point, have to pay almost as much for gas as the Europeans are paying now, plus a few commodities will cost more.
"Permanent energy crisis"? There's no such thing as a permanent crisis. Yes, energy costs are going up because we're more sensitive to the impact of new capacity. But that hardly constitutes a crisis. The word "crisis" has been practically stripped of meaning - everything these days is a goddamn crisis. When the girlfriend you were about to dump gets pregnant - that's a crisis. A few bucks more on your energy bill - not a crisis.
This is no longer true in any realistic sense. Groups like the KKK have to be ridiculously careful about what they say, which is why they pretty much just put on their costumes and march down the street. Virtually anything you say be construed as harassment or a threat if viewed in the right light, and prosecutors can famously indict a ham sandwich. There's not a huge difference between paying a fine for saying something and paying a huge legal bill for saying something. So what if you win - you'll still be broke.
It's negative in the sense that with cap and trade it's going to cost companies money to release C02 into the atmosphere. A company like Dow makes lots of different kinds of industrial chemicals, and C02 is a common byproduct. Of course, eventually that C02 would be released into the atmosphere by whomever buys the biodiesel. But presumably someone else is paying for the carbon offset at that point.
It's not going to be even close to price-competitive with oil, at least in the foreseeable future. So I doubt it will have much effect short of major governmental playing-field-tilting.
But remember they're using C02 as an input to the process. If cap and trade goes through this would allow them to sell or avoid buying carbon credits for other processes. I think C02 is a relatively common by-product in industrial chemistry. $1.25 isn't too bad if the cost of one of the inputs is negative.
Also, don't underestimate the value of a continuous process. The big knock on batch processing isn't the cost of the press, but rather the complication (and cost) it adds to scaling the process. It's the biggest reason we see all those little pilot projects that seem promising but never go anywhere.
I suspect it's a "plan B" option for DOW if carbon taxes go through. They can easily ramp up production if it's economically feasible.
The use of corn has less to do with oil companies than it has to do with pork barrel politics in farm states. Biodiesel will probably never be competitive with fossil fuels on a purely economic basis, so it's hard to believe the oil companies care.
Get another job. That's not facetious, either. There isn't any amount of money that's worth doing what you're doing to your body, and by the time you realize what you're giving up it will be too late to do anything about it. I assume you're still young enough that you don't feel it yet, but with that kind of schedule you're looking at hypertension in your 30s and heart disease by your mid 40s.
In fact, despite Microsoft trumpeting Vista as the most successful version of Windows ever sold, more than half of business PCs have subsequently downgraded Vista-based machines to XP, according to data provided by community-based performance-monitoring network of PCs.
That's not necessarily mutually exclusive. There have always been a substantial number of businesses which don't see a compelling reason to upgrade when a new version of Windows comes out. 85% of those machines are used primarily for word processing, after all, something which has been "good enough" for a couple of decades. I worked for a company which was still happily using Windows for Workgroups in 2001. Add the people who always wait for Service Pack 2 and you're at a pretty big percentage of the market.
Sure. But the billion people out there living on a dollar a day with no electricity aren't exactly torn by the "do I buy a Blu-ray player" question.
LOL, no. The exclusionary rule has not been struck down.
I have to believe 'gangsters, pedophiles, or terrorists' will be using encryption to carry out their nefarious plans. The real target here is people downloading music and movies.
Sure. Governments do all sorts of despicable things in secrecy. But see, if the US government wants to actually charge you with a crime it still have to use methods that will pass muster in court. If they use an illegal method to get information that information will be excluded from trial, as will anything they find as a result of that information.
Quite honestly I think the gov is just worried that online gambling may be a simplified way of laundering money.
That's exactly what's going on. And it's not about drugs or terrorists. It's about taxes. The government is concerned about any flow of money it doesn't control - that's why we have currency transaction reporting laws and that's why you can get five years in jail for trying to sneak your own money out of the country. Do you realize "money laundering" wasn't even a crime until 1985?
This is not a new idea. There was an US Air Force officer who volunteered for a one-way trip to the moon in order to beat the Russians. The idea was to land him there with a bunch of supplies and then design, build, and launch the return voyage while he was up there playing solitaire. Unfortunately I can't remember his name and my google fu isn't up to snuff to find it.
I'm always amazed that theoretical physicists can manipulate such immensely complex abstract objects in their heads and still be able to breathe and maintain bladder control. It really makes software engineering look like a piece of piss. Much respect. Sure, but since you have no idea what they're talking about, for all you know it's just random mathematical-sounding bullshit to keep their university positions.
I don't know how it is in other countries, but as a man in the US you'd be barking mad to be a teacher. The child predator hysteria has reached such an (unwarranted) fever pitch you may as well just check yourself into prison.
Have they caught anyone even trying? If not, then the current practice of having passengers remove their shoes and the banning of plum jam are unnecessary.
No, that's pretty much a logical fallacy. Even though the shoebomb plot wasn't successful in downing the plane, it was successful in getting a bomb onto the plane. From a security standpoint that's the important part. You check peoples' shoes because that's a proven, successful way of sneaking a bomb on to a plane in the absence of those measures.
Just because a guy put a bomb in his shoe does not mean the next person will put a bomb in their shoe.
Doesn't mean he won't, either. Richard Reid's shoe bomb came very, very close to going off on the plane. Are we going to pretend he's the only one intelligent enough to put a bomb in his shoe?
If the confiscated liquids and plum jams are so dangerous that they can't be allowed on planes, why are they just chucked in a bin and not disposed of by the bomb squad? Answer, because it is total BS.
That doesn't follow at all. An explosive on a plane at altitude is far, far more dangerous than one in the bin at the airport. Especially if it's a binary explosive that hasn't been mixed.
I've read Schneir's piece, and I don't find it compelling. Yes, yes, of course you're better off breaking up those sorts of plots before they get to the airport. But our ability to do that is nowhere near 100% effective. We still need to take prudent measures at the airport itself. It's a hassle to leave your shampoo at home, and it's a hassle to have your shoes swabbed for nitrates, but neither of those measures is particularly expensive or a huge imposition.
This is wrong. Yes, it's very difficult to make a stable binary explosive in a reasonable amount if time. The trick with liquid binary explosives is getting them not to blow up as you're mixing them. But this is not a problem, really, if you're a suicide bomber.
What do you want them to do? We had a guy who hid a big enough bomb in his shoes to (probably) take a plane down. And we had a full-blown plot to sneak binary explosives on in shampoo bottles. What's your solution to stopping those kinds of attacks without bothering anybody's plum jam?
None of the items on my winners list have nothing to do with actually being there in person.
Sigh. That was brilliant. Should read "None of the items on my winners list have anything to do with actually being there in person."
This is mostly wrong. As someone who played twenty hours of poker or so every week for a decade, I can tell you none of the points on your list have much effect on your long-term winnings.
Assuming you're not a complete idiot, there are three qualities that separate the winners from the losers:
None of the items on my winners list have nothing to do with actually being there in person.
I agree. Why would they publish for a platform that has the most profitable game ever by a wide margin? Damn these people are stupid.