"Looking around at all the plastics, having them inadventantly eaten by bacteria would be a BAD thing"
You mean like when the plastic insulation in your house electrical wiring rots off, and the house burns down? And the smoke detector does not go off because its critical parts were eaten by the bacteria?
Think "Fall of Cities" from the Ringworld books.
I hope they keep this thing tightly under control.
"There are people sitting on G4s because the cost of moving up is prohibitive."
That's me. My 2002 Quicksilver is still going fine. And the video card has been upgraded, and there is also a USB 2 card (machine only shipped with USB 1) and a SATA card to run the two new >120 GB hard drives. So yes I do use the slots.
The Pro also pulls 12 amps according to the tech specs, and I don't have 9 extra amps on this circuit. I could hotwire it into the 240 V air-conditioner circuit, but that seems like overkill.
So, Apple, either put Expresscard slots in the iMac, or come up with a minitower. And if you wait too much longer, Ubuntu will dump you right off of my desk. If I'm going to run an OpenOffice variant anyway, why not? And OSX taught me not to fear the command line.
"The minute the government stops subsidizing the production of ethanol, not only will farmers start moving back to wheat and other foods that the world needs"
Don't count on that. Wheat and corn are not always interchangable. Where I live corn can only be grown under irrigation, and wheat is grown on the "dryland" areas. The problem with wheat is bad weather (too dry in the drylands) not so much substitution with corn. Most wheat would rot where it stands (a rust, actually) if you tried to grow it in corn country.
And corn has not been displacing rice production at all. I don't know what caused the current rice shortage, but it's not the US's ethanol fuels program.
Also, on a more general note, who says the farmers owe you or anyone else cheap food? People now spend 1/2 of what they paid (as a proportion of income) for food in 1950. The continuous price reductions drove most of the family farmers out of business (including both sides of my family). What was left behind is the corporate factory farming that is also rather unpopular here on slashdot. It's not pretty, but it's cheap.
Many people here feel virtuous about paying extra for organic or "whole" foods. But now they are complaining about high food prices? So the upper class gets the good food from the family organic farmers, and everyone else gets the industrial crap? A pretty elitist argument, in my opinion.
If the farmers can finally make money, so much the better. They always spend it again, which is good for the economy, especially if urban consumer spending is down.
I would also note that this new technology, like ethanol from cellulose, oil from algae, and, well, every other transportation fuel I've heard of, is 5 to 10 years down the road. Corn-ethanol is available now. So your options for now, as in today, are to do nothing at all, or build the corn-ethanol plants. If you want to make a case to sit tight for a decade while waiting to see which system works the best, you can. That argument will even have some merit. But until you have a level 4 cost estimate, a fully defined process flow diagram, and matching Equipment Data Sheets from Fluor or Bechtel in one hand, and an approved construction loan from the bank in the other, don't tell me it's "the answer."
That is sensible. Around here, (Eastern Washington State) corn and barley are grown in different areas. There is very little competition between the two. So I don't think we will see much local difference in the ratio between the two.
"Microsoft doesn't need respect and marketshare. In the desktop space, they still lead. "
But for how long is the question. Operating systems are a commodity with a marginal cost of USD 0.05 (cost of a blank CD). What you can still sell is fit and finish (see Apple) and applications, at least the specialized ones.
And Office still fits in the specialized application category due to all those add-ins. For instance we use OSIsoft's Datalink to get data from the plant historian to Excel. Datalink is Excel only, no OOO support. We use Vanguard, which hooks into Word, as our procedure management tool. Intrepid, an on-line training tool, works only with IE (6, no less, no more).
OOO is fine for home, but I need Datalink and the others at work. So that part of the monopoly is still safe. But after spending the billions on Vista (IT's decision is we will move to Vista when we are absolutely forced to, and not a bit before) and paying for all the fines for antitrust in the EU, they frankly would have been better off porting Office to Some Linux Distro.
You would think Bill would remember his own past. Word and Excel had a safe haven on the Mac to get sorted out and become competitive because Wordperfect and Lotus couldn't be bothered to write Mac versions, and keep them up to date. Now MS is making the same mistake, leaving their products off of Linux, giving the competition a safe haven to gather strength. This recession or the next, some CIO is going to decide that the Microsoft Tax is too high, and it will be axed to save his/her bonus.
Simon Illyan had one of these in Lois Bujold's Vorkosigan series. In Memories, it went bad due to a bio-weapon. The consequences were pretty well explored. In short, it's hard to function with random HD memories popping up at random moments. What's current, and what's history?
"the widget makers need people from widget land to show them how to build the factories and train them, they need someone to design and market the widgets for them in the first place."
True, but we still have a numbers mismatch. Take a factory with 1000 workers. Outsource the work. It takes about 100 of the original thousand to build the factories and train the new workers. And you only need to do that once. So instead of 1000 people employed for decades, you have 100 employed for the three years it takes to build a new factory. So what do the other 900 do now? And what do the 100 factory builders do later? When the next factory needs to be built, the people from the outsourced location will be able to build it; you won't need the original 100 any more even then.
The designers are about 10 out of the 1000. They might be able to keep their jobs for longer, but eventually they will be replaced by the overseas designers too, who will have learned how to do that task. So unless you are truly of the Steve Jobs and Jon Ives caliber, you will be outsourced to in turn.
I used to be a big believer in free trade. Not so much any more. We may be returning to the early 1900's with a few ultra-rich tycoons/robber-barons, a small professional class, and 20% of the population being servants to those groups.
As the grandparent post put it well, current consumer consumption was powered by home equity loans. With that shut down, the "wealth" in real estate declining, and unemployment going up, and jobs still departing (Lazy-Boy furniture's departure was on on NPR this morning) what will hold up the economy? More exactly, what will hold up the middle class? Or was a large middle class a temporary aberration caused by a shortage of labor in the same locations that had excess capital to invest?
On the other hand, the Pacific Northwest is purring along wondering what all the fuss is about Back East. (Back East is east of Idaho, by the way.) The oil patch is doing very well, thank you. And farmers might actually make some money for the next few years, much to the annoyance of those city dwellers who think the countryside owes them cheap food no matter what. And since farmers spend money like mad when they have it, that will support other parts of the economy. So it's not all doom and gloom.
The next decade will be way too interesting. I actually expect who ever wins the White House will be a one termer reviled even more than Jimmy Carter was as he/she gets dumped in a landslide. And said President will find they have almost no freedom of action once they are in the Oval office. You'd have to be either completely power-mad or totally naive to want that job just now.
Exactly. And it's not just the US blowing off the WTO when it suits them. It's "the way the game is played." France has a 15% tariff in all but name that they'll administratively fix real soon now;-) (It's a VAT dodge of some sort.)
Canada dumps lumber in the US at subsidized prices, but the subsidy is the less than fair market price for the wood on their equivalent of national forests. Who determines what they call fair market price? The Canadian government. And correctly so. Whether Canada wants it's money from stump royalties or income taxes on employed workers is their call.
It's about time the US had as much enlightened self-interest as the French. All that consistently "taking one for free trade" has gotten for us is bankruptcy. Wages haven't moved since 1973. First we put the women to work. Since then the standard of living has been maintained by home equity loans on the ever rising value of a house. Now that that has stopped, pain will ensue. Whether the pain will be inflation (raise prices on everything else so that housing isn't over priced anymore) or deflation (as book-keeping entries develop the same marginal value as other "IP") is the question of the year.
"Do you suggest that Israel invade and take more territory to solve this problem?"
Yes, actually. For any Israeli killed by a rocket fired from Gaza they should annex 1 hectare (or some other suitable amount) of Gaza into Israel proper. Move the fences and all. Keep repeating it until the Palestinians figure it out and stop. Or until they drown, or until they end up in Egypt, depending on which fence you move.
I was in grad school with a Palestinian. He was not stupid. I'm sure there are lots more who are not stupid. The '67 war is over. They lost. It's time to deal with it.
The Sudeten Germans got evicted from Czechoslovakia when Germany lost even though they had been there for generations. They are not shooting rockets across the border from East Germany.
And certainly complaining to a Jew about being booted out of your homeland is a lost cause. At least for the first 2000 years.
(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
So women have to join the Guard to be in the militia, but guys just have to be standing there with a pulse. Including Illegal aliens if they promise to become citizens eventually.
In theory, they kick you out of the militia after you are 45, but this might trigger an age discrimination suit if they tried to take your guns just because of your age. I'm sure some lawyer could make a profit in that trial.:-)
"Why not charge a maintenance fee for copyrights every ten years?"
And make it exponential. $10/year for the first decade. $100/year for the next decade. $1000/year for the third decade. And so on. Ninth decade is $1 billion/year, payable up front or in annual installments. Decade 12, $1 trillion per year.
I hope it means to get cereal grains to fix their own nitrogen so you wouldn't need nitrate fertilizers, especially with natural gas heading for its own production peaks. North American natural gas is expected to peak about 2010, unless the deep Gulf is more productive than they currently think.
If we don't come up with that, we'll need three or four thousand LNG tankers cruising to the middle east and back to keep the pipelines full. (Worse case admittedly, but eventually one of them is going to go boom, then the others won't be allowed to dock, and then...)
"No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow." (S. Ivanova, 2260)
You are basically correct, but your math is wrong too. If we were talking about real horsepower, then there is 0.749 kw per Hp, so the 166 Hp car is about 124 kw. However, cars are rated by some bogus BHP scam. Otherwise you would be able to use that Honda motor to pull a 6 bottom plow through clay soil. For comparison, Dad has a John Deere 4020. (http://www.tractordata.com/td/td64.html) It's rated (gas version) for 83.8 HP, or 62.5 kw at the drawbar, or 95.8 hp or 71.4 kw at the PTO.
Although I don't have figures to hand, the same engine in a boat has a much lower horsepower rating than it has in a car.
The point is that automobile horsepower ratings are totally bogus. You can't base anything on the advertising copy. At best they are consistent (between automobile lines) lies.
The other point is better, "assume you can keep it pointed normal to the incident light", In December around here, the mid day sun is about 25 degrees above the horizon. That makes for an interesting suspension if you are going to keep the car's solar array normal to the sun. The sine of 25 degrees is about 0.42, so actual collected power would be 2/5 of that 3.3 kw. Oh, and that 1000 w/meter^2 drops to about 700 watts per meter^2 in the winter, so now you are down to 2.3 kw.
If the sun is out.
Solar power has lots of potential in other places, but not on cars.
Step 1: Generate pure hydrogen in highly efficient processing plant Step 1A: Remove CO2 from air and reduce it to carbon in a highly efficient processing plant. Step 2: Merge with carbon to create lower density hydrocarbon based fuel called methanol. Step 3: Use existing liquid fuel transport system to ship methanol. Step 4: Use methanol fuel cell to the power the car, producing CO2 and H2O Step 5: $$$, at least compared to hydrogen fuel cycles.
If methanol is good enough for 5000 hp tractor pullers, it should do just fine to get me work, even if the fuel cells don't work out.
"The article goes on about rainforest being clear-cut to make way for the production of fuel plants"
That's where I lost interest. Under that criteria, solar cells are also net CO2 producers.
The radical environmentalists want industrial civilization ended. So they are now fighting against biofuels, wind power, hydropower (including tidal power), and anything else that might enable industrial civilization to continue. Soon they will turn on some alleged crime of solar power too. Probably as soon as they figure out that solar power peaks at the same time as the demand for air conditioning, so Phoenix and LA won't have to return to deserts as soon as the oil and natural gas runs out.
"Hi ho, going to Canada before it's too late...this boat is likely going down in 4 years..."
I don't disagree in principle, but Canada is too close and too interconnected with the US. If the US goes down, then so does Canada. Australia or Iceland might be better. New Zealand?
"If McCain becomes President, we'll be at war with Iran AND Pakistan within six months....
Unfortunately, electing either Obama or Clinton will end up in the same place -"
You've got that call right. It's odd how that both Clinton and McCain are running on a "return to the 20th century" ticket. McCain wants to dig out the Cold War text book, replace "communism" with "terrorism" and "Soviet Union" with "Al Queda" and go from there. Clinton wants to return to the glory days of the '90s with some to-be-determined "boom" economy for the cities, and eco-colonization for the hinterlands. I think she believes that is she allows in enough illegals, the income taxes and social-security taxes will fix the debt? (I'm actually a bit vague on what she believes other than Hillary for President.)
The next President is walking into a buzz saw. Only a total egomaniac would actually want the job.
Sufficient time spent studying causes them to realize the world is not such a scary place after all, and that they are capable of running their own lives without incessant nannying from the State, making an ideology like Libertarianism very appealing.
Make a bid, which is rejected. Generate a massive amount of negative media buzz, causing the stock price to fall. Repeat the original bid "I offer $31 for your company", which is now accepted with relief "$31 a share is more than fair." Dogbert: "Yeah, $31 'a share' would have been fair." implying they just sold the entire company for $31,being too paniced to read the fine print.
We'll have to wait and see how this high-stakes corporate waltz plays out.
"I really didn't like Bill Clinton as president, but compared to Bush, the 90s look like the golden years."
Your mileage is definitely different than mine. But then I lived (and still live) in the intermountain West. Case in point, ignoring the effects of inflation; with my income as a ratio of 1993 levels,
Note the "Lameness filter" won't allow this as a neat table, so CSV will have to do.
Year,Income,Benefits. 1993, Clinton takes office, 1.0, Full; defined benefit pension plan. 1997, Clintons second term, 0.81, None at all. 2001, W takes office, 1.05, Full; except for pension (not eligible for 401(k) until 2002) 2005, W second term, 1.28 , Full; and 401(k) (different job from 2001) 2008, Estimate for this year, 1.67, Full, and 401(k)
Since Hillary has not claimed that her husband's "war on the west" was a mistake, I must assume she wants to resume making the west convenient for urban tourists at the expense of those who live here. Therefore, I will be voting against her at every and all opportunities.
Now, if she holds a press conference at one of the Snake River Dams, and announces that people are more important than fish, and this is the wrong time to rip out 3 GW of CO2-free power generation that is already paid for, then I might reconsider. I do not consider this to be likely.
"You go ahead and tell Wyoming that you're sorry about all the lost tourist revenue and degradation of the wilderness, but you need to start harvesting Yellowstone National Park."
Wyoming would probably be delighted to trade minimum wage, benefit-free jobs in tourism for high-dollar skilled trades jobs with benefits. It's the coastal city dwellers who will be flapping their arms screaming about the degradation of the wilderness. And the Robert Redford types, (made their money elsewhere, now want to retire to pretty scenery.)
The closer you live to the mountains, the more annoying they are. I was surprised to find this out when I moved West. So now I live in the Columbia Basin, where the nearest mountains are over an hour away. That's close enough.
Now slant drilling under Mt St. Helens would seem to be a good way to get geothermal energy, and not all of that is in Wilderness. But no one is doing it yet, which I find puzzling, so I guess the cost of other energy isn't high enough yet.
1) Replace Congress with look-alike robots who do what I want without arguing. I need this to carry off the rest.
2) Repeal the DMCA, the Patriot Act, and whatever other looney post 9-11 laws were passed.
3) Rework copyright laws. I was thinking a straight 20 year term would be best, but I've heard of a better idea. Sliding scale. The first 10 years copyright costs $10/year. The second decade is $100/year, the third is $1000/year, and so forth. If Disney thinks the Mouse is worth $10 billion a year for years 101 to 110, why shouldn't the government take the cash?
4) Ban software patents. Software is covered under copyright.
5) End corporate personhood, as in corporations may not lobby, or enjoy any rights under the constitution. At the same time, increase Sarbox scrutiny. Make CEOs 100% liable for anything that occurs under their management. Make sure loot and run is no longer legally viable. Also overhaul the laws regulating the Board of Directors. And require the mutual and pension funds to take a more proactive role in management. Did you know most of them are self-prohibited in "interfering" with the business of the companies they hold stock in? No wonder the Boards and CEOs have been getting away with total theft.
6) Rewrite the Third Amendment to prohibit all unfunded mandates from the Federal Government.
7) Begin selling public lands in the West, excluding national parks and wilderness areas. When the Government owns 70 or 80 % of the land, and they will not sell, it really screws up the local economy. The money would be placed in a Swiss bank account, denominated in euros, and made untouchable for 20 years, at which time it can be withdrawn only for paying the Social Security Deficit.
8) Abolish the EPA's authority over State waters; let the States do it. Only the EPA can come up with a requirement to pour battery acid into city water before letting it discharge to an irrigation ditch because the "Local water quality is impaired as the pH is 9.1" All the local water is at 9.1 because that is the normal and natural PH of water here. It also has a silica level of 75 ppm. (Sorry, pet peeve.)
9) Open Season on spotted owls. Release barred owls, which are much less "sensitive", into that habitat.
10) Restart nuclear power. Also start fuel reprocessing. Continue with wind, solar and so forth, with the intent of getting baseline electrical loads off of coal in 20 years. Probably won't make it, but it's a worthy goal.
11) Declare Greenpeace a terrorist organization. Round them up and put them in work camp on the High Plains with only technology that they approve of. So, no metal, wood, animal labor, or quarried stone. Also no windmills, and no solar power other than what falls on their roofs, if they have roofs. See how long they last when forced to live the way they want the rest of us to live.
12) Continue the War on the Dollar. If, as I recently read, the Chinese are very near the theoretical minimum labor cost, then either they revalue their currency or stop trading with anyone but the US (which they can't since we have no oil) or they will end up with the civil war they narrowly averted at Tianamen Square.
13) Stop the War on Drugs. Fully legalize (and tax) anything less dangerous than PCP.
14) Back to corporations. End this Delaware Corporation crap. State-chartered corporations should only be allowed to operate in the state they are registered in, and in contiguous states. So if you want to operate in Washington and Minnesota, then you have to register as a Federal Corporation. This is what the commerce clause was supposed to accomplish.
15) Repeal that idiotic Supreme court decision (in '38?) that made everything everything subject to the commerce clause, even things you grew on your own property for your own use. FDR was more than a little powermad by then, but the Court should have stood up to him on this one.
Slashdot Mirror
"Looking around at all the plastics, having them inadventantly eaten by bacteria would be a BAD thing"
You mean like when the plastic insulation in your house electrical wiring rots off, and the house burns down? And the smoke detector does not go off because its critical parts were eaten by the bacteria?
Think "Fall of Cities" from the Ringworld books.
I hope they keep this thing tightly under control.
"There are people sitting on G4s because the cost of moving up is prohibitive."
That's me. My 2002 Quicksilver is still going fine. And the video card has been upgraded, and there is also a USB 2 card (machine only shipped with USB 1) and a SATA card to run the two new >120 GB hard drives. So yes I do use the slots.
The Pro also pulls 12 amps according to the tech specs, and I don't have 9 extra amps on this circuit. I could hotwire it into the 240 V air-conditioner circuit, but that seems like overkill.
So, Apple, either put Expresscard slots in the iMac, or come up with a minitower. And if you wait too much longer, Ubuntu will dump you right off of my desk. If I'm going to run an OpenOffice variant anyway, why not? And OSX taught me not to fear the command line.
"The minute the government stops subsidizing the production of ethanol, not only will farmers start moving back to wheat and other foods that the world needs"
Don't count on that. Wheat and corn are not always interchangable. Where I live corn can only be grown under irrigation, and wheat is grown on the "dryland" areas. The problem with wheat is bad weather (too dry in the drylands) not so much substitution with corn. Most wheat would rot where it stands (a rust, actually) if you tried to grow it in corn country.
And corn has not been displacing rice production at all. I don't know what caused the current rice shortage, but it's not the US's ethanol fuels program.
Also, on a more general note, who says the farmers owe you or anyone else cheap food? People now spend 1/2 of what they paid (as a proportion of income) for food in 1950. The continuous price reductions drove most of the family farmers out of business (including both sides of my family). What was left behind is the corporate factory farming that is also rather unpopular here on slashdot. It's not pretty, but it's cheap.
Many people here feel virtuous about paying extra for organic or "whole" foods. But now they are complaining about high food prices? So the upper class gets the good food from the family organic farmers, and everyone else gets the industrial crap? A pretty elitist argument, in my opinion.
If the farmers can finally make money, so much the better. They always spend it again, which is good for the economy, especially if urban consumer spending is down.
I would also note that this new technology, like ethanol from cellulose, oil from algae, and, well, every other transportation fuel I've heard of, is 5 to 10 years down the road. Corn-ethanol is available now. So your options for now, as in today, are to do nothing at all, or build the corn-ethanol plants. If you want to make a case to sit tight for a decade while waiting to see which system works the best, you can. That argument will even have some merit. But until you have a level 4 cost estimate, a fully defined process flow diagram, and matching Equipment Data Sheets from Fluor or Bechtel in one hand, and an approved construction loan from the bank in the other, don't tell me it's "the answer."
That is sensible. Around here, (Eastern Washington State) corn and barley are grown in different areas. There is very little competition between the two. So I don't think we will see much local difference in the ratio between the two.
"Microsoft doesn't need respect and marketshare. In the desktop space, they still lead. "
But for how long is the question. Operating systems are a commodity with a marginal cost of USD 0.05 (cost of a blank CD). What you can still sell is fit and finish (see Apple) and applications, at least the specialized ones.
And Office still fits in the specialized application category due to all those add-ins. For instance we use OSIsoft's Datalink to get data from the plant historian to Excel. Datalink is Excel only, no OOO support. We use Vanguard, which hooks into Word, as our procedure management tool. Intrepid, an on-line training tool, works only with IE (6, no less, no more).
OOO is fine for home, but I need Datalink and the others at work. So that part of the monopoly is still safe. But after spending the billions on Vista (IT's decision is we will move to Vista when we are absolutely forced to, and not a bit before) and paying for all the fines for antitrust in the EU, they frankly would have been better off porting Office to Some Linux Distro.
You would think Bill would remember his own past. Word and Excel had a safe haven on the Mac to get sorted out and become competitive because Wordperfect and Lotus couldn't be bothered to write Mac versions, and keep them up to date. Now MS is making the same mistake, leaving their products off of Linux, giving the competition a safe haven to gather strength. This recession or the next, some CIO is going to decide that the Microsoft Tax is too high, and it will be axed to save his/her bonus.
Simon Illyan had one of these in Lois Bujold's Vorkosigan series. In Memories, it went bad due to a bio-weapon. The consequences were pretty well explored. In short, it's hard to function with random HD memories popping up at random moments. What's current, and what's history?
"the widget makers need people from widget land to show them how to build the factories and train them, they need someone to design and market the widgets for them in the first place."
True, but we still have a numbers mismatch. Take a factory with 1000 workers. Outsource the work. It takes about 100 of the original thousand to build the factories and train the new workers. And you only need to do that once. So instead of 1000 people employed for decades, you have 100 employed for the three years it takes to build a new factory. So what do the other 900 do now? And what do the 100 factory builders do later? When the next factory needs to be built, the people from the outsourced location will be able to build it; you won't need the original 100 any more even then.
The designers are about 10 out of the 1000. They might be able to keep their jobs for longer, but eventually they will be replaced by the overseas designers too, who will have learned how to do that task. So unless you are truly of the Steve Jobs and Jon Ives caliber, you will be outsourced to in turn.
I used to be a big believer in free trade. Not so much any more. We may be returning to the early 1900's with a few ultra-rich tycoons/robber-barons, a small professional class, and 20% of the population being servants to those groups.
As the grandparent post put it well, current consumer consumption was powered by home equity loans. With that shut down, the "wealth" in real estate declining, and unemployment going up, and jobs still departing (Lazy-Boy furniture's departure was on on NPR this morning) what will hold up the economy? More exactly, what will hold up the middle class? Or was a large middle class a temporary aberration caused by a shortage of labor in the same locations that had excess capital to invest?
On the other hand, the Pacific Northwest is purring along wondering what all the fuss is about Back East. (Back East is east of Idaho, by the way.) The oil patch is doing very well, thank you. And farmers might actually make some money for the next few years, much to the annoyance of those city dwellers who think the countryside owes them cheap food no matter what. And since farmers spend money like mad when they have it, that will support other parts of the economy. So it's not all doom and gloom.
The next decade will be way too interesting. I actually expect who ever wins the White House will be a one termer reviled even more than Jimmy Carter was as he/she gets dumped in a landslide. And said President will find they have almost no freedom of action once they are in the Oval office. You'd have to be either completely power-mad or totally naive to want that job just now.
Exactly. And it's not just the US blowing off the WTO when it suits them. It's "the way the game is played." France has a 15% tariff in all but name that they'll administratively fix real soon now ;-) (It's a VAT dodge of some sort.)
Canada dumps lumber in the US at subsidized prices, but the subsidy is the less than fair market price for the wood on their equivalent of national forests. Who determines what they call fair market price? The Canadian government. And correctly so. Whether Canada wants it's money from stump royalties or income taxes on employed workers is their call.
It's about time the US had as much enlightened self-interest as the French. All that consistently "taking one for free trade" has gotten for us is bankruptcy. Wages haven't moved since 1973. First we put the women to work. Since then the standard of living has been maintained by home equity loans on the ever rising value of a house. Now that that has stopped, pain will ensue. Whether the pain will be inflation (raise prices on everything else so that housing isn't over priced anymore) or deflation (as book-keeping entries develop the same marginal value as other "IP") is the question of the year.
Stay tuned.
"Having a mechanical failure in a tunnel is safer than in the sky, too."
Unless it involves a hydrogen fueled vehicle.
In a short tunnel it would still be OK, as it would disperse out the ends. But in a long tunnel.....
Potential major ouch.
"No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There is always a boom tomorrow.' S. Ivanova, 2260
Hillary?
"Monster of ambition" is the actual quote, supposedly from Shakespeare, but I couldn't find it specifically.
"Do you suggest that Israel invade and take more territory to solve this problem?"
Yes, actually. For any Israeli killed by a rocket fired from Gaza they should annex 1 hectare (or some other suitable amount) of Gaza into Israel proper. Move the fences and all. Keep repeating it until the Palestinians figure it out and stop. Or until they drown, or until they end up in Egypt, depending on which fence you move.
I was in grad school with a Palestinian. He was not stupid. I'm sure there are lots more who are not stupid. The '67 war is over. They lost. It's time to deal with it.
The Sudeten Germans got evicted from Czechoslovakia when Germany lost even though they had been there for generations. They are not shooting rockets across the border from East Germany.
And certainly complaining to a Jew about being booted out of your homeland is a lost cause. At least for the first 2000 years.
TITLE 10 > Subtitle A > PART I > CHAPTER 13 > 311
:-)
(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(source http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/10/usc_sec_10_00000311----000-.html)
So women have to join the Guard to be in the militia, but guys just have to be standing there with a pulse. Including Illegal aliens if they promise to become citizens eventually.
In theory, they kick you out of the militia after you are 45, but this might trigger an age discrimination suit if they tried to take your guns just because of your age. I'm sure some lawyer could make a profit in that trial.
"Why not charge a maintenance fee for copyrights every ten years?"
And make it exponential. $10/year for the first decade. $100/year for the next decade. $1000/year for the third decade. And so on. Ninth decade is $1 billion/year, payable up front or in annual installments. Decade 12, $1 trillion per year.
Just how much is that Mouse worth, CEO of Disney?
I hope it means to get cereal grains to fix their own nitrogen so you wouldn't need nitrate fertilizers, especially with natural gas heading for its own production peaks. North American natural gas is expected to peak about 2010, unless the deep Gulf is more productive than they currently think.
...)
If we don't come up with that, we'll need three or four thousand LNG tankers cruising to the middle east and back to keep the pipelines full. (Worse case admittedly, but eventually one of them is going to go boom, then the others won't be allowed to dock, and then
"No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow." (S. Ivanova, 2260)
I hope they were properly notarized.
Ebay Brown races up to the football, as Lucy Scientology holds it and smiles serenely.....
You are basically correct, but your math is wrong too. If we were talking about real horsepower, then there is 0.749 kw per Hp, so the 166 Hp car is about 124 kw. However, cars are rated by some bogus BHP scam. Otherwise you would be able to use that Honda motor to pull a 6 bottom plow through clay soil. For comparison, Dad has a John Deere 4020. (http://www.tractordata.com/td/td64.html) It's rated (gas version) for 83.8 HP, or 62.5 kw at the drawbar, or 95.8 hp or 71.4 kw at the PTO.
Although I don't have figures to hand, the same engine in a boat has a much lower horsepower rating than it has in a car.
The point is that automobile horsepower ratings are totally bogus. You can't base anything on the advertising copy. At best they are consistent (between automobile lines) lies.
The other point is better, "assume you can keep it pointed normal to the incident light", In December around here, the mid day sun is about 25 degrees above the horizon. That makes for an interesting suspension if you are going to keep the car's solar array normal to the sun. The sine of 25 degrees is about 0.42, so actual collected power would be 2/5 of that 3.3 kw. Oh, and that 1000 w/meter^2 drops to about 700 watts per meter^2 in the winter, so now you are down to 2.3 kw.
If the sun is out.
Solar power has lots of potential in other places, but not on cars.
My version, which is only slightly modified;
Step 1: Generate pure hydrogen in highly efficient processing plant
Step 1A: Remove CO2 from air and reduce it to carbon in a highly efficient processing plant.
Step 2: Merge with carbon to create lower density hydrocarbon based fuel called methanol.
Step 3: Use existing liquid fuel transport system to ship methanol.
Step 4: Use methanol fuel cell to the power the car, producing CO2 and H2O
Step 5: $$$, at least compared to hydrogen fuel cycles.
If methanol is good enough for 5000 hp tractor pullers, it should do just fine to get me work, even if the fuel cells don't work out.
"The article goes on about rainforest being clear-cut to make way for the production of fuel plants"
That's where I lost interest. Under that criteria, solar cells are also net CO2 producers.
The radical environmentalists want industrial civilization ended. So they are now fighting against biofuels, wind power, hydropower (including tidal power), and anything else that might enable industrial civilization to continue. Soon they will turn on some alleged crime of solar power too. Probably as soon as they figure out that solar power peaks at the same time as the demand for air conditioning, so Phoenix and LA won't have to return to deserts as soon as the oil and natural gas runs out.
"Hi ho, going to Canada before it's too late...this boat is likely going down in 4 years..."
I don't disagree in principle, but Canada is too close and too interconnected with the US. If the US goes down, then so does Canada. Australia or Iceland might be better. New Zealand?
"If McCain becomes President, we'll be at war with Iran AND Pakistan within six months ....
Unfortunately, electing either Obama or Clinton will end up in the same place -"
You've got that call right. It's odd how that both Clinton and McCain are running on a "return to the 20th century" ticket. McCain wants to dig out the Cold War text book, replace "communism" with "terrorism" and "Soviet Union" with "Al Queda" and go from there. Clinton wants to return to the glory days of the '90s with some to-be-determined "boom" economy for the cities, and eco-colonization for the hinterlands. I think she believes that is she allows in enough illegals, the income taxes and social-security taxes will fix the debt? (I'm actually a bit vague on what she believes other than Hillary for President.)
The next President is walking into a buzz saw. Only a total egomaniac would actually want the job.
One small adjustment...
Sufficient time spent studying causes them to realize the world is not such a scary place after all, and that they are capable of running their own lives without incessant nannying from the State, making an ideology like Libertarianism very appealing.
There, much better.
Dogbert's strategy comes to mind.
Make a bid, which is rejected.
Generate a massive amount of negative media buzz, causing the stock price to fall.
Repeat the original bid "I offer $31 for your company", which is now accepted with relief "$31 a share is more than fair."
Dogbert: "Yeah, $31 'a share' would have been fair." implying they just sold the entire company for $31,being too paniced to read the fine print.
We'll have to wait and see how this high-stakes corporate waltz plays out.
"I really didn't like Bill Clinton as president, but compared to Bush, the 90s look like the golden years."
Your mileage is definitely different than mine. But then I lived (and still live) in the intermountain West. Case in point, ignoring the effects of inflation; with my income as a ratio of 1993 levels,
Note the "Lameness filter" won't allow this as a neat table, so CSV will have to do.
Year,Income,Benefits.
1993, Clinton takes office, 1.0, Full; defined benefit pension plan.
1997, Clintons second term, 0.81, None at all.
2001, W takes office, 1.05, Full; except for pension (not eligible for 401(k) until 2002)
2005, W second term, 1.28 , Full; and 401(k) (different job from 2001)
2008, Estimate for this year, 1.67, Full, and 401(k)
Since Hillary has not claimed that her husband's "war on the west" was a mistake, I must assume she wants to resume making the west convenient for urban tourists at the expense of those who live here. Therefore, I will be voting against her at every and all opportunities.
Now, if she holds a press conference at one of the Snake River Dams, and announces that people are more important than fish, and this is the wrong time to rip out 3 GW of CO2-free power generation that is already paid for, then I might reconsider. I do not consider this to be likely.
"You go ahead and tell Wyoming that you're sorry about all the lost tourist revenue and degradation of the wilderness, but you need to start harvesting Yellowstone National Park."
Wyoming would probably be delighted to trade minimum wage, benefit-free jobs in tourism for high-dollar skilled trades jobs with benefits. It's the coastal city dwellers who will be flapping their arms screaming about the degradation of the wilderness. And the Robert Redford types, (made their money elsewhere, now want to retire to pretty scenery.)
The closer you live to the mountains, the more annoying they are. I was surprised to find this out when I moved West. So now I live in the Columbia Basin, where the nearest mountains are over an hour away. That's close enough.
Now slant drilling under Mt St. Helens would seem to be a good way to get geothermal energy, and not all of that is in Wilderness. But no one is doing it yet, which I find puzzling, so I guess the cost of other energy isn't high enough yet.
Fantasy time, is it?
1) Replace Congress with look-alike robots who do what I want without arguing. I need this to carry off the rest.
2) Repeal the DMCA, the Patriot Act, and whatever other looney post 9-11 laws were passed.
3) Rework copyright laws. I was thinking a straight 20 year term would be best, but I've heard of a better idea. Sliding scale. The first 10 years copyright costs $10/year. The second decade is $100/year, the third is $1000/year, and so forth. If Disney thinks the Mouse is worth $10 billion a year for years 101 to 110, why shouldn't the government take the cash?
4) Ban software patents. Software is covered under copyright.
5) End corporate personhood, as in corporations may not lobby, or enjoy any rights under the constitution. At the same time, increase Sarbox scrutiny. Make CEOs 100% liable for anything that occurs under their management. Make sure loot and run is no longer legally viable. Also overhaul the laws regulating the Board of Directors. And require the mutual and pension funds to take a more proactive role in management. Did you know most of them are self-prohibited in "interfering" with the business of the companies they hold stock in? No wonder the Boards and CEOs have been getting away with total theft.
6) Rewrite the Third Amendment to prohibit all unfunded mandates from the Federal Government.
7) Begin selling public lands in the West, excluding national parks and wilderness areas. When the Government owns 70 or 80 % of the land, and they will not sell, it really screws up the local economy. The money would be placed in a Swiss bank account, denominated in euros, and made untouchable for 20 years, at which time it can be withdrawn only for paying the Social Security Deficit.
8) Abolish the EPA's authority over State waters; let the States do it. Only the EPA can come up with a requirement to pour battery acid into city water before letting it discharge to an irrigation ditch because the "Local water quality is impaired as the pH is 9.1" All the local water is at 9.1 because that is the normal and natural PH of water here. It also has a silica level of 75 ppm. (Sorry, pet peeve.)
9) Open Season on spotted owls. Release barred owls, which are much less "sensitive", into that habitat.
10) Restart nuclear power. Also start fuel reprocessing. Continue with wind, solar and so forth, with the intent of getting baseline electrical loads off of coal in 20 years. Probably won't make it, but it's a worthy goal.
11) Declare Greenpeace a terrorist organization. Round them up and put them in work camp on the High Plains with only technology that they approve of. So, no metal, wood, animal labor, or quarried stone. Also no windmills, and no solar power other than what falls on their roofs, if they have roofs. See how long they last when forced to live the way they want the rest of us to live.
12) Continue the War on the Dollar. If, as I recently read, the Chinese are very near the theoretical minimum labor cost, then either they revalue their currency or stop trading with anyone but the US (which they can't since we have no oil) or they will end up with the civil war they narrowly averted at Tianamen Square.
13) Stop the War on Drugs. Fully legalize (and tax) anything less dangerous than PCP.
14) Back to corporations. End this Delaware Corporation crap. State-chartered corporations should only be allowed to operate in the state they are registered in, and in contiguous states. So if you want to operate in Washington and Minnesota, then you have to register as a Federal Corporation. This is what the commerce clause was supposed to accomplish.
15) Repeal that idiotic Supreme court decision (in '38?) that made everything everything subject to the commerce clause, even things you grew on your own property for your own use. FDR was more than a little powermad by then, but the Court should have stood up to him on this one.
That's enough for now. It's fun to think about.