Pundits might suggest that you move closer to work.
You're using a bit of the old snark spray but it does bring up a point. Refactoring a population to use less energy (carbon for the most part) requires a financial commitment that few individuals can make and that society so far refuses to make. There are some societal factors that are moving in the "right" (left?) direction but the time frame to make a significant dent in the process is on the order of generations.
The question then is, do we have a generation or two to make the change?
Wrong way to look at it. The more holistic way goes like this:
1) Cars run over pedestrians with abandon. 2) The result is fewer people using less energy (and other important resources, I said I was going to be holistic). 3) Lower population results in less carbon, etc. use. 4) Global warming is averted 5) Detroit, Japan and parts of China glow in the warm light of economic revival.
By that metric, Fox TV is more important than all of those companies. Within 45 minutes of it's demise the majority of the American population would start to go through a slow, unpleasant and eventually fatal withdrawal.
Other than with the expected value of a patent monopoly, how will the maker of a new drug finance FDA-mandated clinical trials? Show a viable alternative to patents for industries that are as heavily regulated for product safety and truth in advertising as the drug industry, and the case against patents will become clearer.
As much as I think the patent system in the Pharmaceutical industry has been misused (Omeprazole vs. Esomeprazole) comes to mind, at least they are patenting a molecule, or a change in a molecule. A substantial thing. As in something of substance.
Software patents are all too often patenting vague hand waving processes or ideas. Usually just one brain cell shy of completely obvious. Hot air and lawyer drivel.
.. is there such a thing as a computing experience that serves "non-geek needs"? It seems like such a varied thing.
Yes. It's called an iPad. Which is why they're selling like mad and why the general Slashdot HiveMind(TM)(C)(Patent Pending) can't make any sense of it.
I thought it was (relatively) funny. If I happened to be modding this discussion I might have given it a 'funny'. But the sense of humor (along with the general sense of pretty much anything besides angst) is gone from here.
We really need blinky emoticons. Come on 'Taco - if we can't have Unicode, could we at least get emoticons?
Actually, I don't own anything motorola unless it is the occasional chip within something else. I once owned a Motorola Startac phone long, long ago... but that's about it. I'm not a Moto-fan, I just don't see them as evil -- could be my lack of experience with them.
Evil and incompetent are two entirely different things, but let me assure you that Motorola handily manages to be both.
Does all that mean that cell phones will be litigated and taxed into obscurity? No more yapping at the movie theater. No more texting down the freeway. No more having to rip the earbuds off a sullen teenager to get their attention?
The issue is whether a terrorist can impersonate a pilot long enough to bypass the screening process.
Once you introduce multiple avenues for clearance, you introduce vulnerabilities.
That's the thought in TFA. While true, for it to be a useful one has to posit that the TSA is at all competent in screening out the baddies. That's demonstrably false. Further, there is nothing in the current screening system that would prevent a 'fake' pilot to get into the secure area. He / She couldn't carry a bomb, but if they had the appropriately forged credentials they could carry a firearm. You can carry incendiary bullets in a.38 caliber pistol although I doubt they would do all that much.
The other members of the flight crew - the attendants and other pilots - would likely confront a fake pilot / terrorist unless they were incredibly good actors.
And again, the whole cabin cleaning / servicing staff has full access to the plane with very minimal screening.
This is finally a good idea from the TSA, albeit a tiny, halting step forward that won't change much.
Short term resources whose extraction can cause environmental damage should not be abandoned because of the risk, they should be extracted in a way that won't cause long-term damage: put your efforts into writing and enforcing effective regulations, and make those regulations the condition for any development. Yes, regulations can be poorly written and poorly enforced, but an effectively regulated resource industry is a much better objective than simply pretending the resource doesn't exist.
Oh, I agree. But the problem then becomes economic and political or political and economic. Yes, you can hydrofrack responsibly. Just like you can run nuclear power stations responsibly. Even if it happens most of the time, failures can be very expensive for everyone else. We do need to change the political / economic / environmental milieu to allow for complex, potentially dangerous operations to be conducted in a responsible manner.
Unfortunately.
The bottom line is that, at present, most of the companies involved are basically lying. They are lying to their investors (about how long the resource will last), they are lying to the government (about how long the resource will last and the environmental costs of the resource extraction). They don't care because they will be able to scoop up some profits and disappear into the woodwork, cash in hand. I guess that's the American way.....
You should read up on the concept of Resource Curse. In fact, your region has already dealt with those issues twice according to your post (coal, timber). Yes, you make money in the short term which is hard to ignore because long term your region has gone through several boom bust cycles and you're in one of the 'bust' times at present.
Shale gas, while interesting and perhaps important in the short term suffers from two significant drawbacks. First is the fallout from hydrofracking. As several posters have pointed out, this is a technical issue and can be mitigated by best practices. Which somehow never seem to happen (cf, the nuclear power industry). The second is harder to escape. It is a very short term resource. In 5-10-20 years (not the 100 year timeframe that is bandied about by industry), the pressures will drop to unusable levels. Yes, you can 're frack' but that's expensive and natural gas (currently) isn't.
So, you're back to another resource that temporarily brought some economic good to the region, allowed a few lucky people to cash out and trashes the environment for everyone for long periods of time. You all should at least take the hint from Alaska and try to keep the money in state a bit longer.
Doing this kind of thing is a breeze in Belgium. Everyone has an ID card with chip containing a couple of certificates on it. A site can use these to validate you say who you say you are by checking through a government server. Ebay does account verification in this way. Quick, painless.
Why that's communist! We would never do that here!
I agree. The unlicensed fusion reactor that someone is operating - for half the day! - within sight of my house must be shut down immediately. It's already given cancer to millions of people, and that number is going to keep increasing until something is done!
I had imagined that you folks in the UK thought the sun was mostly a fairy tale, useful for scaring kids and the like but not to be taken seriously.
Slashdot Mirror
I like news that tells me something...new.
Son, I've got some bad news for you. This is Slashdot. We aren't into that sort of thing around here.
But whatever floats your boat.
Pundits might suggest that you move closer to work.
You're using a bit of the old snark spray but it does bring up a point. Refactoring a population to use less energy (carbon for the most part) requires a financial commitment that few individuals can make and that society so far refuses to make. There are some societal factors that are moving in the "right" (left?) direction but the time frame to make a significant dent in the process is on the order of generations.
The question then is, do we have a generation or two to make the change?
Wrong way to look at it. The more holistic way goes like this:
1) Cars run over pedestrians with abandon.
2) The result is fewer people using less energy (and other important resources, I said I was going to be holistic).
3) Lower population results in less carbon, etc. use.
4) Global warming is averted
5) Detroit, Japan and parts of China glow in the warm light of economic revival.
So, pedal to the metal!
By that metric, Fox TV is more important than all of those companies. Within 45 minutes of it's demise the majority of the American population would start to go through a slow, unpleasant and eventually fatal withdrawal.
Are you fucking kidding? There's an EIGHT? There's a sane fork of firefox somewhere, I'll find it.
That's nothing. Mine goes to 11.
Other than with the expected value of a patent monopoly, how will the maker of a new drug finance FDA-mandated clinical trials? Show a viable alternative to patents for industries that are as heavily regulated for product safety and truth in advertising as the drug industry, and the case against patents will become clearer.
As much as I think the patent system in the Pharmaceutical industry has been misused (Omeprazole vs. Esomeprazole) comes to mind, at least they are patenting a molecule, or a change in a molecule. A substantial thing. As in something of substance.
Software patents are all too often patenting vague hand waving processes or ideas. Usually just one brain cell shy of completely obvious. Hot air and lawyer drivel.
.. is there such a thing as a computing experience that serves "non-geek needs"? It seems like such a varied thing.
Yes. It's called an iPad. Which is why they're selling like mad and why the general Slashdot HiveMind(TM)(C)(Patent Pending) can't make any sense of it.
OK, you're on. The only rule I would add is that your quote has to be longer than one word.
Killjoy. I was really looking forward to the 250 MW laser. Toss the plasma cutter AND the welder away!
I thought it was (relatively) funny. If I happened to be modding this discussion I might have given it a 'funny'. But the sense of humor (along with the general sense of pretty much anything besides angst) is gone from here.
We really need blinky emoticons. Come on 'Taco - if we can't have Unicode, could we at least get emoticons?
Please?
Actually, I don't own anything motorola unless it is the occasional chip within something else. I once owned a Motorola Startac phone long, long ago... but that's about it. I'm not a Moto-fan, I just don't see them as evil -- could be my lack of experience with them.
Evil and incompetent are two entirely different things, but let me assure you that Motorola handily manages to be both.
Does all that mean that cell phones will be litigated and taxed into obscurity? No more yapping at the movie theater. No more texting down the freeway. No more having to rip the earbuds off a sullen teenager to get their attention?
Bring it on!
No, wait, that would just be a huge overreaction. Suicide it is, then.
Can I have your UID then?
If anything, I'd say regulations on spectrum use should be relaxed so more carriers can get in on the game.
And who is going to pony up 100 billion dollars to just start up a new network from scratch? Apple? Exxon?
The issue is whether a terrorist can impersonate a pilot long enough to bypass the screening process.
Once you introduce multiple avenues for clearance, you introduce vulnerabilities.
That's the thought in TFA. While true, for it to be a useful one has to posit that the TSA is at all competent in screening out the baddies. That's demonstrably false. Further, there is nothing in the current screening system that would prevent a 'fake' pilot to get into the secure area. He / She couldn't carry a bomb, but if they had the appropriately forged credentials they could carry a firearm. You can carry incendiary bullets in a .38 caliber pistol although I doubt they would do all that much.
The other members of the flight crew - the attendants and other pilots - would likely confront a fake pilot / terrorist unless they were incredibly good actors.
And again, the whole cabin cleaning / servicing staff has full access to the plane with very minimal screening.
This is finally a good idea from the TSA, albeit a tiny, halting step forward that won't change much.
Short term resources whose extraction can cause environmental damage should not be abandoned because of the risk, they should be extracted in a way that won't cause long-term damage: put your efforts into writing and enforcing effective regulations, and make those regulations the condition for any development. Yes, regulations can be poorly written and poorly enforced, but an effectively regulated resource industry is a much better objective than simply pretending the resource doesn't exist.
Oh, I agree. But the problem then becomes economic and political or political and economic. Yes, you can hydrofrack responsibly. Just like you can run nuclear power stations responsibly. Even if it happens most of the time, failures can be very expensive for everyone else. We do need to change the political / economic / environmental milieu to allow for complex, potentially dangerous operations to be conducted in a responsible manner.
Unfortunately.
The bottom line is that, at present, most of the companies involved are basically lying. They are lying to their investors (about how long the resource will last), they are lying to the government (about how long the resource will last and the environmental costs of the resource extraction). They don't care because they will be able to scoop up some profits and disappear into the woodwork, cash in hand. I guess that's the American way.....
You should read up on the concept of Resource Curse. In fact, your region has already dealt with those issues twice according to your post (coal, timber). Yes, you make money in the short term which is hard to ignore because long term your region has gone through several boom bust cycles and you're in one of the 'bust' times at present.
Shale gas, while interesting and perhaps important in the short term suffers from two significant drawbacks. First is the fallout from hydrofracking. As several posters have pointed out, this is a technical issue and can be mitigated by best practices. Which somehow never seem to happen (cf, the nuclear power industry). The second is harder to escape. It is a very short term resource. In 5-10-20 years (not the 100 year timeframe that is bandied about by industry), the pressures will drop to unusable levels. Yes, you can 're frack' but that's expensive and natural gas (currently) isn't.
So, you're back to another resource that temporarily brought some economic good to the region, allowed a few lucky people to cash out and trashes the environment for everyone for long periods of time. You all should at least take the hint from Alaska and try to keep the money in state a bit longer.
Or driving isn't as hard as MADD would like you to believe.
WARNING! DANGER!
Rationalization in progress.
Doing this kind of thing is a breeze in Belgium. Everyone has an ID card with chip containing a couple of certificates on it. A site can use these to validate you say who you say you are by checking through a government server. Ebay does account verification in this way. Quick, painless.
Why that's communist! We would never do that here!
Why do you hate America?
What can your full-size box offer me that I don't already have?
Real software.
Photoshop. Maya. 3DS Max. Etc.
The software needed to create anything other than plain text.
Best Buy sells EMP generators? Really?
I'm on my way!
Yes, but how long can you keep that up?
Longer than the suit's batteries.
Money. It's the cost of the Lotus Notes licenses that's preventing us from deploying killbots.
Couldn't they just grab a copy of MySQL, Eudora and Edlin and call it a day?
I agree. The unlicensed fusion reactor that someone is operating - for half the day! - within sight of my house must be shut down immediately. It's already given cancer to millions of people, and that number is going to keep increasing until something is done!
I had imagined that you folks in the UK thought the sun was mostly a fairy tale, useful for scaring kids and the like but not to be taken seriously.
Who said ANYTHING about automobile safety?
This is Slashdot. In fact, I'm rather surprised the argument managed to go as far as it did before wandering into a car analogy.