I doubt any "standard" will develop among different social network sites.
It may not have to. Imagine some software that would come pre-installed with most web hosting accounts or easily installed via c-panel a la wordpress or movabletype and people will no longer need a centralized site in order to connect in the way they seem to want to. Friends lists, message boards, picture commenting and bulletins could all easily be done with a free host and the right software. No need to rely on a central server/company that buries you in ads or censors you. And your less geeky friends could use it from a multitude of free or cheap hosts as their entire page and I could install it in a directory of my site to stay connected in a neat way to my online friends.
Sure, today the software's too difficult to install and lacks some features. But if that ever changes it could mean a big change in how social networking pages interact with each other: No more middle-man.
Actually, done on the cheap, yachting is probably the lowest-cost way to see the world. - No hotel bills, no airfare, make your own food most of the time. Just need to save up that big downpayment. But if you shop around and are willing to buy modest and used you can find them for around $30k-$60k depending on where you live.
humbug. You make a lot of insinuations clearly derived from an after-school-special mindset.
...and now I don't play any video games at all, because the guitar is actually productive
So who says being productive is better than not being productive? Seems to me a lot of peoples' idea of the good life is fishing or playing golf most of the day, why not video games? And how is making music productive?
Music will even help you unwind, and will stimulate new areas of your brain.
Video games do both of those.
I realized that it's really kind of anti-social, sitting in your house on the computer, so I figured I'd better start playing music again.
Oh My God! Somebody wants to be alone! They must be anti-social, weird, a slug, a unibomber or mal-adjusted. It's nice that your hobby solved a problem for you; lonliness. But not everyone has that problem. Some gamers are happy just hanging out with their one or two or three friends on rare occasions when they need some sunlight. This is one of those opinions that stems from the idea that social activities are somehow intrinsicly superior to solitary activities. I'm sure 10 out of 10 extroverts agree but for some people solitude is a fulfilling aspect of life, not something to be avoided at all costs.
What would you rather do - sit at home playing video games and being a slug, or out with your friends making music
9 times out of 10? Rather be at home playing video games, sometimes with a friend, sometimes not, though I run a few miles several times a week so I don't quite think I'm a slug. Out with friends making music usually also entails things like noisy, dirty environments, fragile egos, equipment freaks with more gadgets than talent, drug use (legal or otherwise) and staying up so late I regret it the next day.
Anyway, I'm glad music helped you make some friends you evidently desired more than solitude, but not everyone is like that. Just because no one can contact me for four days when a new RTS game comes out doesn't mean I'm a miserable addict shaking myself to sleep wishing I had more friends. Sure I'm not immune to the need for socialization, but a few hours with a friend and some time in the same room as another beating heart and I'm good to go for another 2-4 days by myself, completely satisfied.
When the power's out or I'm just burned out on games I study philosophy mostly and read a lot. I imagine the after-school-special mentality of reading=good would say that those activities are more "productive" than video gaming. But all they really do is make me a more interesting cocktail party guest. Other than that they serve the same exact purpose as all my leisure activities: To make me happy. Therefore the only way to decide which activity is superior to another is to decide which makes me happiest. Now, by default, whichever activity I choose is the one that's going to make me happiest, otherwise I wouldn't have chosen it. Ergo: Video games make me just as happy as drinking beer with friends, playing guitar or reading Aristotle. They all have their time and place. What makes one more important than another is dependent upon the individual.
So, I'm glad you found a life that makes you happy. But that doesn't mean lots of people wouldn't have been perfectly happy with the one you were trying to escape.
Also, algal (sic) fuel is carbon-neutral (it sucks up as much CO2 as is released by burning it) so it doesn't contribute to global warming.
Even better; the process of turning the algea into biodiesel isn't 100% efficient so there's mush left over that's typically used as fertilizer or animal feed. So not only does it not contribute to the total amount of CO2 in the air, it actually removes some of it.
That's not following a trail, that's just smelling.
Now if you took chocolate and had someone drag it along the floor in a zig zag and you were later able to identify with your nose what precisely that zig zag pattern was then you would be following a scent.
I don't understand. Are you pointing out that the author's an idiot?
Seems to me that sentence summarizes why he is. We have plenty of ways to make energy: waves, wind, solar, nuclear, coal, hydro, natural gas, oil. The problem is only one or two of those really works well in a car's engine. The others make electricity (an energy carrier) but that doesn't work too well in cars since batteries don't work too well. I guess we could create some kind of electric car rail system so that vehicles constantly get electric feeds from the road or highway it's on but that sounds dangerous and expensive.... Improving batteries, using compressed gasses, alcohol or other biofuels are all good tries and may work at the scale we need them to.
But we're not running around asking, "Oh God! How are we going to charge all these batteries once cheap oil goes away???" That's an easy problem. The real issue is that there aren't any batteries good enough to bother charging in the first place.
Anyway, point is: It is precisely an energy carrier problem.
I don't get this. Since when, in America, the country of the suburb, is space scarce? There are millions of home, factory and warehouse roofs sitting unused along with millions of uncovered parking lots that suck up thermal energy from the sun all day. Solar panels don't benefit from being bunched together. You don't get efficiencies of scale like with coal, gas, oil, hydro or nuclear plants. There's no reason at all to 'cover half of utah' or whatever it would have to be.
I admit that solar has a few problems, but I don't see how space is one of them. Its ability to be decentralized and make use of currently unused space is one of its greatest strengths not one of its weaknesses.
Yes, it is. You mean it's not an alternative energy source.
I think you just mistyped but the inability to make a distinction between an energy source and a way to store energy or, a fuel, makes alternative energy debate in the media and with joe voter almost impossible and it's one of my pet peeves.
I want to step lightly here. I think perhaps your boiling blood caused your eyes to pass too quickly over dada21's post. Granted by refering to people's complaints about their lives as 'horror stories' he may be a bit insulting but it's a stretch and he's not being arrogant at all. He hedges himself by saying 'Personally' and he says he doesn't think everyone should live that way, he says it's not the best way to live, he's just saying that when he hears people complain about their lives he doesn't understand then why they choose the lives they have. I've got to say I'm in his boat. I hear things like, 'Life's hard', and 'Life's a bitch, then you die', and 'It's really hard sometimes.' And pretty much always those complaints are in reference to financial related things.
You seem to infer that only the super rich are able to be financially independent and able to live the lives they want to live (you mention having to make 7 figures). But if you read dada21's post he's clearly not super-rich, he's just not buying into what everyone else is buying into, or as you put it, the real world (which, btw, shows your arrogance about your own feelings of superiority. How is your life any more real than his? Because you have debt and kids?). He mentions how he prefers old mobile homes to a mortgaged house because it means he has to work less and so he has more time to work on things that interest him but don't necessarily pay him well or at all.
Now, for people who like their jobs and are passionate about them, power to them. And for people who just can't go through life without a sports car, good for them. And for people who like having kids, a five bedroom house and an SUV, live on, the world wouldn't be what it is without them. But he's not talking about the happy people. He's talking about the complainers, the one's who feel trapped, the ones who have no end in sight, the people who hate their jobs (and there are plenty of them). When I hear those people complain I try to help them out by showing them how little they would have to work if they just chose to live a little differently, but they won't hear of it. They NEED their car, and $10 martinis and $1,500/month loft.
I dropped out of college two years ago because I found myself more distracted by class than engaged by it and I figured I was wasting a lot of money to do it. I was a philosophy/mathematics double major but found myself more interested in computer science towards the end of sophomore and mid-way through junior year. I could have transfered but I figured I was studying so much independently just from library books why not drop out entirely and learn on my own? So I did. Of course I needed to pay rent though since my parents weren't too excited about the idea and lived 2,000 miles away. I could have gotten a $15 or $18/hour job pretty easily at one of the city's major employers but instead I opted for the $10/hour night clerk job at a 4 star hotel in the city. That way I was able to spend all night studying without being bothered. Anyway, after taxes I was pulling in about $1250/month. My rent was $375 for a downtown studio (Albuquerque, NM), $30 for dsl, $75 food, $12 buspass, $20 for my 250cc motorcycle gas and insurance/month. Some money for new socks and t-shirts every six months or so and those were about all my expenses. So I was able to stash about $700/month. After sixteen months of having a pretty ok time at that job some new management moved in whom I didn't really like. They increased my work load so that I actually had stuff to do and couldn't just study through my shift so I just decided to quit.
So now since July I've been job-free and I ought to be ok money-wise until around March or April when I'll have to make some decisions (I'm already making plans). But right now I spend lots of time at the public and university libraries, go hiking in the mountains and go walking around the city, visit the parks, lots of studying/learning new programming languages mostly and reading up on OS design. I go to $1 matinee sec
That's 8,888 180 Watt panels to get to 1.6MW peak.
Total cost for the panels: $7,821,440. Now, let's say for spending that much money google is able to negotiate a modest 5% discount to bring the cost per panel with discount down to: $7,430,368.
I'm going to stick with the above assumption that wiring and converters at this level will come in around 20% of the cost. Which is $1,486,073.
Now let's assume they can get the whole thing installed at a price of $500 per panel on average. That's $4,444,400.
There, my total cost for installation is now: $13,360,441.
It's hard to estimate how many watts per day one of the 180 watt panels will produce because it depends a lot on local weather patterns and how they're positioned. But over a 24hour/365 day period I'm going to go ahead and assume an average hourly production ballpark figure of 25 watts per panel. So that's 25 watts x 8,888 panels: 222.2KW hours. Multiply it by 8,760 hours in a year: 1,946,472 KW hours/year.
The best I could find for electric rates is Sacramento at $0.111/kwh.
At that rate, google will save $216,058/year.
Solar panels last much longer than 15 years. Here's a company that claims a lifespan of 30+ years and they have a 25 year warranty. Here's a guy who talks about a 21 year old panel still producing at near it's peak rating.
From personal experience I can say many older panels lose some efficiency and after 12-15 years their output drops to ~80% of the their original peak output. But let's assume the gradual loss of output will coincide with a gradual increase in the grid power price, offsetting each other.
So let's say a 30 year life, $216,058/year comes to $6,481,740. Subtract that from the installation costs and you get: $-6,878,701. Not nearly the $120M loss you estimate.
Now, if prices did, in fact, quadruple (which over a 30 year period isn't only unheard of, but likely) the numbers get ever closer to a net of zero. Not to mention the publicity google gains from this and the mitigation of risk by not leaving themselves susceptable to rising energy prices. And who knows, the panels may last 40 years.
Either way, it's not the giant boondoggle you make it out to be.
In New Mexico, and many states, anyone can carry a pistol without permit so long as it isn't concealed. You don't see it much, but I have seen pistols worn in a holster on the outside of the hip; perfectly legal, no permits at all.
Freedom of Speech is the right to speak freely. It is NOT the right to speak without repercussion.
So then saying that, "I have the right to murder everyone in the world," would be a perfectly true statement by what you're saying. I just don't have the right to murder without repercussion.
I don't quite think that would be considered clarifying and improving the language of an argument. Seems to me to be a needless distinction.
Capitalism isn't about embarassing others into doing what you want them to.
Well no, it's not about that. But social pressure is certainly an aspect of a free market.
Here's an experiment. Go to a small town in the midwest, buy all the fresh vegetables from every supermarket in town, then hold a big bonfire on your lawn where everyone can see you destroying all the food. Now wait for the mob to start congregating on the street in front of the house as they realize no one can get their hands on some brocoli without driving 30 miles to the next town to get it just because some wingnut wanted to burn it. Then wait as the angry mob begins to steal it all and perhaps proceed to beat you to a pulp all as the local police are conveniently on patrol on the otherside of town.
He can buy as many bulbs as he wants. But when someone wastes a resource it drives the prices up for everyone. Then there's the space in the landfills where he's using up more than anyone else and the air and water pollution he's creating more of than anyone else.
Imagine if Bill Gates started buying up oil wells and torching them. You think there wouldn't be social pressure for him to stop??? There would probably be a war.
Slashdot Mirror
I doubt any "standard" will develop among different social network sites.
It may not have to. Imagine some software that would come pre-installed with most web hosting accounts or easily installed via c-panel a la wordpress or movabletype and people will no longer need a centralized site in order to connect in the way they seem to want to. Friends lists, message boards, picture commenting and bulletins could all easily be done with a free host and the right software. No need to rely on a central server/company that buries you in ads or censors you. And your less geeky friends could use it from a multitude of free or cheap hosts as their entire page and I could install it in a directory of my site to stay connected in a neat way to my online friends.
Sure, today the software's too difficult to install and lacks some features. But if that ever changes it could mean a big change in how social networking pages interact with each other: No more middle-man.
One thing they're not making anymore of these days is land
ummmmmmm. RTFA.
Actually, done on the cheap, yachting is probably the lowest-cost way to see the world. - No hotel bills, no airfare, make your own food most of the time. Just need to save up that big downpayment. But if you shop around and are willing to buy modest and used you can find them for around $30k-$60k depending on where you live.
Yeah, I have detailed early retirement plans...
let me fix this:
Apparently the point of our civil liberties is to protect everyone on earth, including the alleged terrorists, huh?
Yes.
humbug. You make a lot of insinuations clearly derived from an after-school-special mindset.
...and now I don't play any video games at all, because the guitar is actually productive
So who says being productive is better than not being productive? Seems to me a lot of peoples' idea of the good life is fishing or playing golf most of the day, why not video games? And how is making music productive?
Music will even help you unwind, and will stimulate new areas of your brain.
Video games do both of those.
I realized that it's really kind of anti-social, sitting in your house on the computer, so I figured I'd better start playing music again.
Oh My God! Somebody wants to be alone! They must be anti-social, weird, a slug, a unibomber or mal-adjusted. It's nice that your hobby solved a problem for you; lonliness. But not everyone has that problem. Some gamers are happy just hanging out with their one or two or three friends on rare occasions when they need some sunlight. This is one of those opinions that stems from the idea that social activities are somehow intrinsicly superior to solitary activities. I'm sure 10 out of 10 extroverts agree but for some people solitude is a fulfilling aspect of life, not something to be avoided at all costs.
What would you rather do - sit at home playing video games and being a slug, or out with your friends making music
9 times out of 10? Rather be at home playing video games, sometimes with a friend, sometimes not, though I run a few miles several times a week so I don't quite think I'm a slug. Out with friends making music usually also entails things like noisy, dirty environments, fragile egos, equipment freaks with more gadgets than talent, drug use (legal or otherwise) and staying up so late I regret it the next day.
it's a great way to meet...the opposite sex
Yick, you can keep 'em.
Anyway, I'm glad music helped you make some friends you evidently desired more than solitude, but not everyone is like that. Just because no one can contact me for four days when a new RTS game comes out doesn't mean I'm a miserable addict shaking myself to sleep wishing I had more friends. Sure I'm not immune to the need for socialization, but a few hours with a friend and some time in the same room as another beating heart and I'm good to go for another 2-4 days by myself, completely satisfied.
When the power's out or I'm just burned out on games I study philosophy mostly and read a lot. I imagine the after-school-special mentality of reading=good would say that those activities are more "productive" than video gaming. But all they really do is make me a more interesting cocktail party guest. Other than that they serve the same exact purpose as all my leisure activities: To make me happy. Therefore the only way to decide which activity is superior to another is to decide which makes me happiest. Now, by default, whichever activity I choose is the one that's going to make me happiest, otherwise I wouldn't have chosen it. Ergo: Video games make me just as happy as drinking beer with friends, playing guitar or reading Aristotle. They all have their time and place. What makes one more important than another is dependent upon the individual.
So, I'm glad you found a life that makes you happy. But that doesn't mean lots of people wouldn't have been perfectly happy with the one you were trying to escape.
Also, algal (sic) fuel is carbon-neutral (it sucks up as much CO2 as is released by burning it) so it doesn't contribute to global warming.
Even better; the process of turning the algea into biodiesel isn't 100% efficient so there's mush left over that's typically used as fertilizer or animal feed. So not only does it not contribute to the total amount of CO2 in the air, it actually removes some of it.
wtf. What's with the slownewsday tag? A successful space mission isn't news for nerds?
any parent may allow his children to drink
Actually that's also perfectly legal in all but 7 U.S. states.
That's not following a trail, that's just smelling.
Now if you took chocolate and had someone drag it along the floor in a zig zag and you were later able to identify with your nose what precisely that zig zag pattern was then you would be following a scent.
I don't understand. Are you pointing out that the author's an idiot?
Seems to me that sentence summarizes why he is. We have plenty of ways to make energy: waves, wind, solar, nuclear, coal, hydro, natural gas, oil. The problem is only one or two of those really works well in a car's engine. The others make electricity (an energy carrier) but that doesn't work too well in cars since batteries don't work too well. I guess we could create some kind of electric car rail system so that vehicles constantly get electric feeds from the road or highway it's on but that sounds dangerous and expensive.... Improving batteries, using compressed gasses, alcohol or other biofuels are all good tries and may work at the scale we need them to.
But we're not running around asking, "Oh God! How are we going to charge all these batteries once cheap oil goes away???" That's an easy problem. The real issue is that there aren't any batteries good enough to bother charging in the first place.
Anyway, point is: It is precisely an energy carrier problem.
Actually both are space hogs
I don't get this. Since when, in America, the country of the suburb, is space scarce? There are millions of home, factory and warehouse roofs sitting unused along with millions of uncovered parking lots that suck up thermal energy from the sun all day. Solar panels don't benefit from being bunched together. You don't get efficiencies of scale like with coal, gas, oil, hydro or nuclear plants. There's no reason at all to 'cover half of utah' or whatever it would have to be.
I admit that solar has a few problems, but I don't see how space is one of them. Its ability to be decentralized and make use of currently unused space is one of its greatest strengths not one of its weaknesses.
Hydrogen is not an alternative fuel.
Yes, it is. You mean it's not an alternative energy source.
I think you just mistyped but the inability to make a distinction between an energy source and a way to store energy or, a fuel, makes alternative energy debate in the media and with joe voter almost impossible and it's one of my pet peeves.
The loss to our economy of about 1/2 trillion dollars represents the loss of about 100,000,000 jobs (Yes one hundred million) annually.
So you're saying 1/3 of U.S. citizens lose their jobs to overseas workers annually? So in three years we'll all be on unemployment then?
oooh p0wned!
People are talking about you.
I want to step lightly here. I think perhaps your boiling blood caused your eyes to pass too quickly over dada21's post. Granted by refering to people's complaints about their lives as 'horror stories' he may be a bit insulting but it's a stretch and he's not being arrogant at all. He hedges himself by saying 'Personally' and he says he doesn't think everyone should live that way, he says it's not the best way to live, he's just saying that when he hears people complain about their lives he doesn't understand then why they choose the lives they have. I've got to say I'm in his boat. I hear things like, 'Life's hard', and 'Life's a bitch, then you die', and 'It's really hard sometimes.' And pretty much always those complaints are in reference to financial related things.
You seem to infer that only the super rich are able to be financially independent and able to live the lives they want to live (you mention having to make 7 figures). But if you read dada21's post he's clearly not super-rich, he's just not buying into what everyone else is buying into, or as you put it, the real world (which, btw, shows your arrogance about your own feelings of superiority. How is your life any more real than his? Because you have debt and kids?). He mentions how he prefers old mobile homes to a mortgaged house because it means he has to work less and so he has more time to work on things that interest him but don't necessarily pay him well or at all.
Now, for people who like their jobs and are passionate about them, power to them. And for people who just can't go through life without a sports car, good for them. And for people who like having kids, a five bedroom house and an SUV, live on, the world wouldn't be what it is without them. But he's not talking about the happy people. He's talking about the complainers, the one's who feel trapped, the ones who have no end in sight, the people who hate their jobs (and there are plenty of them). When I hear those people complain I try to help them out by showing them how little they would have to work if they just chose to live a little differently, but they won't hear of it. They NEED their car, and $10 martinis and $1,500/month loft.
I dropped out of college two years ago because I found myself more distracted by class than engaged by it and I figured I was wasting a lot of money to do it. I was a philosophy/mathematics double major but found myself more interested in computer science towards the end of sophomore and mid-way through junior year. I could have transfered but I figured I was studying so much independently just from library books why not drop out entirely and learn on my own? So I did. Of course I needed to pay rent though since my parents weren't too excited about the idea and lived 2,000 miles away. I could have gotten a $15 or $18/hour job pretty easily at one of the city's major employers but instead I opted for the $10/hour night clerk job at a 4 star hotel in the city. That way I was able to spend all night studying without being bothered. Anyway, after taxes I was pulling in about $1250/month. My rent was $375 for a downtown studio (Albuquerque, NM), $30 for dsl, $75 food, $12 buspass, $20 for my 250cc motorcycle gas and insurance/month. Some money for new socks and t-shirts every six months or so and those were about all my expenses. So I was able to stash about $700/month. After sixteen months of having a pretty ok time at that job some new management moved in whom I didn't really like. They increased my work load so that I actually had stuff to do and couldn't just study through my shift so I just decided to quit.
So now since July I've been job-free and I ought to be ok money-wise until around March or April when I'll have to make some decisions (I'm already making plans). But right now I spend lots of time at the public and university libraries, go hiking in the mountains and go walking around the city, visit the parks, lots of studying/learning new programming languages mostly and reading up on OS design. I go to $1 matinee sec
Let's try this with some more accurate numbers.
180 Watt Solar Panels ($880 each)
That's 8,888 180 Watt panels to get to 1.6MW peak.
Total cost for the panels: $7,821,440. Now, let's say for spending that much money google is able to negotiate a modest 5% discount to bring the cost per panel with discount down to: $7,430,368.
I'm going to stick with the above assumption that wiring and converters at this level will come in around 20% of the cost. Which is $1,486,073.
Now let's assume they can get the whole thing installed at a price of $500 per panel on average. That's $4,444,400.
There, my total cost for installation is now: $13,360,441.
It's hard to estimate how many watts per day one of the 180 watt panels will produce because it depends a lot on local weather patterns and how they're positioned. But over a 24hour/365 day period I'm going to go ahead and assume an average hourly production ballpark figure of 25 watts per panel. So that's 25 watts x 8,888 panels: 222.2KW hours. Multiply it by 8,760 hours in a year: 1,946,472 KW hours/year.
The best I could find for electric rates is Sacramento at $0.111/kwh.
At that rate, google will save $216,058/year.
Solar panels last much longer than 15 years. Here's a company that claims a lifespan of 30+ years and they have a 25 year warranty. Here's a guy who talks about a 21 year old panel still producing at near it's peak rating.
From personal experience I can say many older panels lose some efficiency and after 12-15 years their output drops to ~80% of the their original peak output. But let's assume the gradual loss of output will coincide with a gradual increase in the grid power price, offsetting each other.
So let's say a 30 year life, $216,058/year comes to $6,481,740. Subtract that from the installation costs and you get: $-6,878,701. Not nearly the $120M loss you estimate.
Now, if prices did, in fact, quadruple (which over a 30 year period isn't only unheard of, but likely) the numbers get ever closer to a net of zero. Not to mention the publicity google gains from this and the mitigation of risk by not leaving themselves susceptable to rising energy prices. And who knows, the panels may last 40 years.
Either way, it's not the giant boondoggle you make it out to be.
In New Mexico, and many states, anyone can carry a pistol without permit so long as it isn't concealed. You don't see it much, but I have seen pistols worn in a holster on the outside of the hip; perfectly legal, no permits at all.
Freedom of Speech is the right to speak freely. It is NOT the right to speak without repercussion.
So then saying that, "I have the right to murder everyone in the world," would be a perfectly true statement by what you're saying. I just don't have the right to murder without repercussion.
I don't quite think that would be considered clarifying and improving the language of an argument. Seems to me to be a needless distinction.
Is life so precious or peace so sweet that we shall pay for it with the price of chains and slavery?
The rapid-ride doesn't take the metrocard. Try a student buspass $12 ;-)
So make one and drive it around. Who's stopping you?
I've been to China.
Big whoop. Join the club.
Capitalism isn't about embarassing others into doing what you want them to.
Well no, it's not about that. But social pressure is certainly an aspect of a free market.
Here's an experiment. Go to a small town in the midwest, buy all the fresh vegetables from every supermarket in town, then hold a big bonfire on your lawn where everyone can see you destroying all the food. Now wait for the mob to start congregating on the street in front of the house as they realize no one can get their hands on some brocoli without driving 30 miles to the next town to get it just because some wingnut wanted to burn it. Then wait as the angry mob begins to steal it all and perhaps proceed to beat you to a pulp all as the local police are conveniently on patrol on the otherside of town.
He can buy as many bulbs as he wants. But when someone wastes a resource it drives the prices up for everyone. Then there's the space in the landfills where he's using up more than anyone else and the air and water pollution he's creating more of than anyone else.
Imagine if Bill Gates started buying up oil wells and torching them. You think there wouldn't be social pressure for him to stop??? There would probably be a war.
Two words: Menendez Brothers