"When incandescent light bulbs are banned, the black market will flourish"
Not just the black market. There will be a sudden need for low power (100-200 watt) space heaters. A surprising number of things use an incandescent light for a bit of heat. and since formal heat lamps are $5, and a 100W bulb is $0.25, who buys a heat lamp?
Although Australia doesn't have a problem with sub-zero (F, that is) temperatures, much of the US does, and CFL's are not going to work outside, or in the rain unless in a well sealed fixture. LEDs should be fine though.
And appliances (ovens in particular) are another issue. Has anyone seen an LED rated to operate at 425 F (200C)? 60 C is the best I've seen.
I want a Mac midi too, something like the HP 7600 series of upgradable small formfactor desktops. The mini is too mini. I have one in the stereo cabinet, where its size is an asset, but the hard drive just isn't what I want to use for a desktop.
As an alternative, I would consider an imac with two expresscard slots. The graphics are good enough for a non-gamer like me, but I want to be able to install USB 3 or firewire 800, or some other future high throughput gadget. My 2002 Quicksilver has a USB 2 card, and a SATA card, and an upgraded video card too. I use slots.
And no, I can't run a mac pro on this electrical circuit. The monster pulls 12 amps. The circuit breaker blows at 15. I could hotwire it to the clothes dryer circuit, as the mac pro has a 240 V capable power supply, but I shouldn't have to do that just to have a new computer.
"The whole point is to reduce the usage of electric lighting (and heating to an extent)"
I can keep the lights off for an hour longer at night, but now I have to turn them on for an hour in the morning to get dressed, eat breakfast, pack lunch, and head for work.
No net gain. And we don't use oil to generate electricity in this country anyway. It is and always was a dumb idea.
Just as dumb and probably related somehow, why does "prime time" go from 8 to 11? I go to bed at 10. Anything on from 10 to 11 never gets watched. If there is some "can't miss" show, it gets recorded and watched the next day, with the commercials skipped. Somehow I doubt the advertisers are getting the discount they deserve for their never watched commercials after 10. What hours do people keep on the East Coast anyway?
Prop 13 was one of the best ideas CA ever had. I've believed this ever since the assessed valuation on my former house went up $20,000, (one sixth of its value at the time, and with a corresponding increase in property taxes) because I put a new coat of paint on it.
Also you might want to read up on the "view" tax they have come up with in New Hampshire. High property taxes are a great way to force land rich but income people to sell to developers. And there are a lot of people in the countryside that fit the description land rich, income poor.
Elgato's eyetv uses titan TV to schedule recordings. So when I click on the record button, not only do they send the "record this" information back to my mac mini, they also have a clicks worth of information to sell. Much more reliable than a Neilson rating, but not as inclusive since it misses what we watch live.
I hadn't thought of it before, but it makes sense.
Do not use below 50 F (some are good to 30 F, neither will start in the shop at 10 F.)
Not for use outdoors, I assume the electronics are not water tight.
LED lights may solve both problems, but I haven't actually seen one for sale yet.
This will probably make a market for low wattage heaters. Now one or two light bulbs can heat a small space quite well. But if you can't buy an incandescent light, then I will need a small heater for the cold frame.
"Most zirconium minerals contain 1 to 3% hafnium. Hafnium is a ductile metal with a brilliant silver lustre. Its properties are influenced considerably by the impurities of zirconium present. Of all the elements, zirconium and hafnium are two of the most difficult to separate. Hafnium is a Group 4 transition element.
Because hafnium has a good absorption cross section for thermal neutrons (almost 600 times that of zirconium), has excellent mechanical properties, and is extremely corrosion resistant, it is used for nuclear reactor control rods.
Hafnium carbide is the most refractory binary composition known, and the nitride is the most refractory metal nitride (m.p. 3310C)."
Intel is not going to be burned by thermal problems again, and you can also hide behind your CPU if "the big one" goes off in the neighborhood. OK, several CPUs and a water tank. But still.
This whole plot always was limited. The Humans are pushed off into deep space. They have no supply, no refit for the ships, and nowhere they can stop. Galactica needs 6 months in the space dock at least. It's falling apart. They are running out of fighters, Raptors, and everything else. It's not sustainable for a long series.
The only options the humans have is slow death by attrition, quick death by Cylon, or jump as far and fast as possible away from the cylons and try to resettle, hoping that by the time the Cylons find them again either they have calmed down, or that the human decendants are strong enough to hold them off. Or, if the fleet does find earth, then earth will be technologically undeveloped, and wiped out by the Cylons, or earth will have starfleet, and blow away the cylons, or earth will have been taken over by their own Cylon equivalents. Long term plot options are limited.
My analysis may be colored by my time in the Navy, when I found out just how much repair time and infrastructure it took to keep one warship operational, even if it was nuclear powered (to remove the fuel problem). One increasingly battered battlestar and a ragtag fleet is not sustainable. The story arc (as in the character's subjective time) must be short.
Now one thing the writers could do is modify that cylon-killing virus so it only works on the "source material" on the Resurrection ships, and infect the Cylons. Then since D'anna is close to discovering that the resurrection routine is functioning as a "soul trap" to keep the Cylons from truly knowing God, the resulting stress could turn into a Cylon civil war, and that would give a way to wrap up the show without either finding earth, or watching the last human die.
But now it's just "Angst and Depression in Space."
In 2004 SCO sold Bill some UNIX something that is widely believed to be in Vista, at least the corporate versions. But (and I quote) "Section 4.16(b) of the Asset Purchase Agreement reads as follows:
Buyer shall not, and shall not have the authority to, amend, modify or waive any right under or assign any SVRX License without the prior written consent of Seller."
Buyer is (old) SCO, now mutated to new SCO. Seller is Novell.
SCO did NOT clear the sale of whatever with Novell. So, although Bill may have acted in good faith, he has misappropriated goods in Vista. Novell found out what was sold while arguing over the UNIX copyrights. And offered to let Bill buy the full rights to what SCO sold him, or "I'm afraid we'll have to ask for an injunction on shipping Vista until this issue is sorted out, or until you remove the infringing code."
Bill pulls out the checkbook. Interestingly, Since SCO got to keep 5% of UNIX sales, and supposedly got about $12 million from Bill, that would make Novell's share of the Unix sale about $240 million.
And Apple. In 1993 or so, Apple shipped two 68040 Macs with a Motorola DSP chip on the motherboard. (Codename Tsunami?) As I remember, no one but Apple ever wrote software that used it.
Intel had the same idea with MMX. And how long did it take for anyone to use MMX? Years. Unless AMD sticks with it for years, at least until the first models that have it are obsolete, few people will use it because it's not the least common denominator.
Electrolysis works better in salt water, but with NaCl as the salt, you get chlorine gas off one side. The stuff they used in trench warfare in WW1. Screamingly toxic. And you would get tons (or tonnes) of it. No fun there. And it's costing you energy to make it, so it's a parasitic load on your process. And the calcium, magnesium, carbonates and sulfates in seawater would make a mess of the cell too.
The only commercial eIectrolysis unit I have close knowledge of uses KOH (potassium hydroxide) as the salt, and deionzed water.
On a different track, any hydrogen leak (and I work with the stuff, the damned little molecule always leaks) results in hydrogen escaping to the top of the atmosphere and then out to space. Eventually the loons at GreenPeace and the other wackos are going to notice this fact, and start screaming to "save the oceans" from the evil oil companies (who already have experience with making and handling the dangerous stuff, and therefore will be at the forefront of the whole project) and that will be the end of hydrogen's political correctness.
It makes far more sense to turn the hydrogen into methanol, and haul that around. Or go further and convert methanol to something else (ethanol, butanol, etc). You can pull CO2 right out of the air if you wanted to be carbon neutral, or use the hydrogen as a carbon extender/diluter for coal or biomass.
Brick and concrete are good ways to build a house, and are widely used in the South, where termites are a problem. However, they are comparitively expensive, especially when you are surrounded by forest, as in the Northern parts of the United States. And brick and concrete are dangerous in earthquake country. Nor do they do well in the cold and wet. Freeze-thaw cycles break them up rapidly. I have the chimney to prove it, to my unhappiness.
In 2002 SCO sold something Unix related to MS, and also something to Sun for a total of $24 million. In the MS case, this something was supposed to allow UNIX apps to run on Vista, at least on the professional version.
Now, it has come out that SCO was NOT ALLOWED to sell Sys V technology to anyone without Novell's permission. But they did. Now, like buying a stolen car, MS won't be held liable for having the code in their possession, but they aren't allowed to use it either. So they would be out the money, and they would have to pull the code out of Vista a whole month before it's launch date. Disaster city.
However, if they go to Novell, they can buy the code from the people who CAN sell it. Actually, Novell may have knocked on MS's door, as it took until last spring for Novell to pry the contract out of SCO detailing exactly what was sold to MS.
So, Bill has to upchuck cash to keep Vista on track. And the rest of this is smoke and mirrors to cover Bill's butt, and to give Novell a marketing edge with the pointy-haired IT manager set.
The payment to Novell worked out to $686 for each of the 350,000 SLES. Interestingly, SCO gets to keep 5% of the revenue from Sys V licenses. 5% of about $240 million is $12 million, right in the middle of SCOs 2002 technology sales revenue. So Novell just had MS cough up the other 95% they were due?
"0 watts is better than >0 watts, but only if EVERYTHING ELSE IS EQUAL."
Exactly. That $24 per year is $16 during the heating season, $2 during the cooling season, and $6 during the "windows are open but don't need AC" season. The $16 would have been spent on heat anyway (since we have electric heat) so that leaves $8 spent that we didn't need to. Maybe $9 with the extra AC needed during the one month we use AC.
Obviously, people living further south may have a different result, but this is non-visible on my worry scale.
* You cannot really appreciate Dilbert unless you've read it in the original Klingon.
* Indentation?! I will show you how to indent when I indent your skull!
* What is this talk of 'release'? Klingons do not make software 'releases'. Our software escapes, leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality assurance people in its wake!
* Klingon function calls do not have "parameters" - they have "arguments"- and they ALWAYS WIN THEM.
* Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Our software does not coddle the weak.
* I have challenged the entire Quality Assurance team to a Bat-Leh contest! They will not concern us again.
* Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
"Is it just me or is this a big gaping hole in their line-up?"
Same thoughts I have, actually. Either a Mac Midi with room for two hard drives, an upgradeable video card, and at least one more slot for USB 3 or whatever comes out next, or put two Expresscard 54 slots on the iMac.
My 4 1/2 year old Quicksilver has two cards installed in it, USB 2 and SATA. The SATA card is a luxury, but without the USB 2 card I'd have had to junk the machine and get a new one. (And I upgraded the video card too.) If I have to upgrade the machine every three years or less, then I'm only buying the minimal Mac to get the job done now. Not the high-profit margin super-hardware Apple likes to sell.
Since there is now a sealed box (iMac) and self-contained cluster (Mac pro) then I would hope that something else will slide into the middle. I'm buying something next spring. So I can wait until MacWorld comes up again to see if the box I want shows up. If not, then Mini, since I have the support hardware already.
Growth. And how is someone my size (5'8" and 155 lbs) supposed to not get pounded into the pavement by Joe Bruiser (6'2" and 225 lbs)? In a fair fight, I will lose. Maybe with a decade of martial arts training I could manage to win, but after watching a Jujitsu black belt get pulverized by a bar fighter in some no-holds fighting show a few years ago, I don't even think that would work any more.
Three last thoughts;
"God did not make all men equal, but Sam Colt did." Quote from somewhere way back.
The feudal Japanese managed to get the Portuguese and other European guns off the islands. Why? Because with a gun, the scruffiest of peasants could kill the most highly trained Samurai. This threatened the social order, so the warlords went for the status quo.
And, another quote from the introduction to my edition of 'On War', "A peasant with a gun may get ideas about his place in the social order."
"With the onset and end of ice ages, we are talking about geological timescales - minimum of thousands of years for any discernable difference."
Ah, well, no. Look up the 8200 year event, and the Younger Dryas. A 10 degree C drop in like 20 years. And they came out of it in about 50. The end of the previous interglacial was assumed to to take thousands of years, but it appears now it went from hotter than now to full ice age in a century. It obviously took longer than that for the glaciers to build up enough to move, but the temperature regime was established. If you want to worry, then worry about unknown tipping points.
In fact it appears that since Antarctica and South America parted company, allowing the Antarctic Drift to go in circles rather than move cold water to the equator, the climate on this mudball has been notably unstable. Bummer.
And you can hope the solar cycle is partly responsible, because it is peaking now (actually has peaked but the climate effects lag) and that should reduce it's contribution to warming, so the rate of change should be leveling out by 2010. And it should be cooling by 2020.
And if it is all CO2 after all, then move to Denmark, become a citizen, and buy a retirement home on Greenland, which will be quite pleasant by then.
"Soon it'll make more sense to outsource from expensive american cities to inexpensive smaller cities, larger towns, or downright rural locations within the United States. "
Already happening. Microsoft and Yahoo are installing data centers in Quincy, Washington. I think Yahoo also is putting one in Wenatchee.
"Hand-picking two years, and doing a linear fit between them is not science. It is better to fit the entire curve and then see if you see any trends. "
Using methodology over the last 1 million years (straight line between first and last) you would have undoubtedly concluded climate was pretty constant. Hand picking points and fitting sections within that period leads you to think that the climate was oscillating. Then you measure the period, and look for things that match.
At work we have a chemical reactor that over time, is constant. By hand picking points and fitting curves, we discover that the there is a three day cycle that slightly lags shift change. Conclusion by your method: everything is fine. Conclusion by my method; at least one crew runs the plant better than the other crews. Which leads to the questions of what are they doing different, and why is it better. Followed by experiments, training, and in the end a bigger profit sharing bonus.
Plotting everything to one giant curve isn't too helpful, or if you do, then you need to look at the residuals. But then you still have to hand pick the points where you think a significant change occurred. And see what matches.
The sun is heating up at the moment (or was). Mars is warming, and so was Jupiter or one of its moons, (it was posted somewhere). How much is due to each effect is open to debate, but the correlation between the Maunder Minimum and Little Ice Age is pretty convincing. The climate in pre-industrial times was notably variable. The solar cycle theory matches a lot of the variation pretty well. It missed the 8200 year event, but if that was a freshwater incursion from last gasp of the Labrador ice cap, then the solar cycle wouldn't be needed for that anyway.
I googled "solar cycle global warming" and got 1.3 million links. The first three pages had some interesting sites including NOAA, and Stanford to name two I can remember. And some crackpot sites too.
"Maybe you don't like the "noise", but you also seem to dislike facts. If anything, there was no trend in temperatures from the 30's to the 70's if you believe NASA (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/). According to the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC, the effect of solar cycles is considerably smaller than the effect of increased greenhouse gases.
Your solution? Let's wait until 2020, and then we can safely conclude whether we should have acted on global warming or not."
You, bunkie, need to look at your own link. Look at the top graph, at the 1940 point, look at the 1975 point, the line through those points is DOWN to the right. It was cooling during that time. And those were not isolated outliers either.
The other respondent to my comment is correct about global dimming. However, if that was the only cause of the cooling trend, global dimming did not offset part of global warming, it offset ALL of it, and more.
It is likely that CO2 and the current solar cycle are reinforcing each other just now. That will end by 2010, and we can see what happens next. It will probably take 10 years to sort the signal from the noise, (see your graph for a fine example of how much statistical noise there is.) In the mean time, switching away from oil-based fuels is still a good idea regardless of global warming. It's a matter of whether to panic about it, or let the market work with a few appropriate nudges.
"In 1942 and 1980 the global mean temperature was approximately the same. In every year between those two the mean temperature was lower than those years. Since CO2 output was continuing to increase during this period of nearly four decades, why didn't the global mean temperature increase as well?"
You put your finger right on the problem for the "CO2 is all of it" crowd. From the late '30s to the mid-70's the temperature went down. The CO2 believers have no explanation. The solar cycle people do.
Right now, both camps say we should be hot. We are. In 2020, the CO2 people say we'll be hotter than now, and the solar cycle people say we'll be cooling down. So the argument will be settled then.
Until then, I have to listen to all this noise. sigh.
"And it's also legal to shoot a half-grizzly, even though shooting grizzlies is illegal?"
What- you expect the guy to figure "Hey, this might just be the first ever in the wild grizzly-polar bear hybrid!", stick a hypo in the bear's butt, then run the blood sample through the portable DNA sequencer he had carefully put in the backpack for just such an emergency, read the results, then either shoot the bear, or not, depending on the results?
Some things you can only figure out afterwards. Especially if you want to do it from outside of the bear's digestive tract.
Granted, fishing licenses in Washington State have gotten almost to the point where you need a laser interferometer ruler, a GPS, and gene sequencer to figure out if you can keep the fish or not. And all that still won't help on the Columbia, where you need an fish anatomy chart to decide if all the fins are there or not. (Intact fish are Gods, and must be returned to the river with apologies.)
Slashdot Mirror
"When incandescent light bulbs are banned, the black market will flourish"
Not just the black market. There will be a sudden need for low power (100-200 watt) space heaters. A surprising number of things use an incandescent light for a bit of heat. and since formal heat lamps are $5, and a 100W bulb is $0.25, who buys a heat lamp?
Although Australia doesn't have a problem with sub-zero (F, that is) temperatures, much of the US does, and CFL's are not going to work outside, or in the rain unless in a well sealed fixture. LEDs should be fine though.
And appliances (ovens in particular) are another issue. Has anyone seen an LED rated to operate at 425 F (200C)? 60 C is the best I've seen.
I want a Mac midi too, something like the HP 7600 series of upgradable small formfactor desktops. The mini is too mini. I have one in the stereo cabinet, where its size is an asset, but the hard drive just isn't what I want to use for a desktop.
As an alternative, I would consider an imac with two expresscard slots. The graphics are good enough for a non-gamer like me, but I want to be able to install USB 3 or firewire 800, or some other future high throughput gadget. My 2002 Quicksilver has a USB 2 card, and a SATA card, and an upgraded video card too. I use slots.
And no, I can't run a mac pro on this electrical circuit. The monster pulls 12 amps. The circuit breaker blows at 15. I could hotwire it to the clothes dryer circuit, as the mac pro has a 240 V capable power supply, but I shouldn't have to do that just to have a new computer.
"The whole point is to reduce the usage of electric lighting (and heating to an extent)"
I can keep the lights off for an hour longer at night, but now I have to turn them on for an hour in the morning to get dressed, eat breakfast, pack lunch, and head for work.
No net gain. And we don't use oil to generate electricity in this country anyway. It is and always was a dumb idea.
Just as dumb and probably related somehow, why does "prime time" go from 8 to 11? I go to bed at 10. Anything on from 10 to 11 never gets watched. If there is some "can't miss" show, it gets recorded and watched the next day, with the commercials skipped. Somehow I doubt the advertisers are getting the discount they deserve for their never watched commercials after 10. What hours do people keep on the East Coast anyway?
Prop 13 was one of the best ideas CA ever had. I've believed this ever since the assessed valuation on my former house went up $20,000, (one sixth of its value at the time, and with a corresponding increase in property taxes) because I put a new coat of paint on it.
Also you might want to read up on the "view" tax they have come up with in New Hampshire. High property taxes are a great way to force land rich but income people to sell to developers. And there are a lot of people in the countryside that fit the description land rich, income poor.
Elgato's eyetv uses titan TV to schedule recordings. So when I click on the record button, not only do they send the "record this" information back to my mac mini, they also have a clicks worth of information to sell. Much more reliable than a Neilson rating, but not as inclusive since it misses what we watch live.
I hadn't thought of it before, but it makes sense.
And two other limitations on the package label.
Do not use below 50 F (some are good to 30 F, neither will start in the shop at 10 F.)
Not for use outdoors, I assume the electronics are not water tight.
LED lights may solve both problems, but I haven't actually seen one for sale yet.
This will probably make a market for low wattage heaters. Now one or two light bulbs can heat a small space quite well. But if you can't buy an incandescent light, then I will need a small heater for the cold frame.
From webelements:
"Most zirconium minerals contain 1 to 3% hafnium. Hafnium is a ductile metal with a brilliant silver lustre. Its properties are influenced considerably by the impurities of zirconium present. Of all the elements, zirconium and hafnium are two of the most difficult to separate. Hafnium is a Group 4 transition element.
Because hafnium has a good absorption cross section for thermal neutrons (almost 600 times that of zirconium), has excellent mechanical properties, and is extremely corrosion resistant, it is used for nuclear reactor control rods.
Hafnium carbide is the most refractory binary composition known, and the nitride is the most refractory metal nitride (m.p. 3310C)."
Intel is not going to be burned by thermal problems again, and you can also hide behind your CPU if "the big one" goes off in the neighborhood. OK, several CPUs and a water tank. But still.
Most efficient.
Last price I could find is $150/pound.
This whole plot always was limited. The Humans are pushed off into deep space. They have no supply, no refit for the ships, and nowhere they can stop. Galactica needs 6 months in the space dock at least. It's falling apart. They are running out of fighters, Raptors, and everything else. It's not sustainable for a long series.
The only options the humans have is slow death by attrition, quick death by Cylon, or jump as far and fast as possible away from the cylons and try to resettle, hoping that by the time the Cylons find them again either they have calmed down, or that the human decendants are strong enough to hold them off. Or, if the fleet does find earth, then earth will be technologically undeveloped, and wiped out by the Cylons, or earth will have starfleet, and blow away the cylons, or earth will have been taken over by their own Cylon equivalents. Long term plot options are limited.
My analysis may be colored by my time in the Navy, when I found out just how much repair time and infrastructure it took to keep one warship operational, even if it was nuclear powered (to remove the fuel problem). One increasingly battered battlestar and a ragtag fleet is not sustainable. The story arc (as in the character's subjective time) must be short.
Now one thing the writers could do is modify that cylon-killing virus so it only works on the "source material" on the Resurrection ships, and infect the Cylons. Then since D'anna is close to discovering that the resurrection routine is functioning as a "soul trap" to keep the Cylons from truly knowing God, the resulting stress could turn into a Cylon civil war, and that would give a way to wrap up the show without either finding earth, or watching the last human die.
But now it's just "Angst and Depression in Space."
I noticed them too.
In 2004 SCO sold Bill some UNIX something that is widely believed to be in Vista, at least the corporate versions. But (and I quote)
"Section 4.16(b) of the Asset Purchase Agreement reads as follows:
Buyer shall not, and shall not have the authority to, amend, modify or waive any right under or assign any SVRX License without the prior written consent of Seller."
Buyer is (old) SCO, now mutated to new SCO. Seller is Novell.
SCO did NOT clear the sale of whatever with Novell. So, although Bill may have acted in good faith, he has misappropriated goods in Vista. Novell found out what was sold while arguing over the UNIX copyrights. And offered to let Bill buy the full rights to what SCO sold him, or "I'm afraid we'll have to ask for an injunction on shipping Vista until this issue is sorted out, or until you remove the infringing code."
Bill pulls out the checkbook. Interestingly, Since SCO got to keep 5% of UNIX sales, and supposedly got about $12 million from Bill, that would make Novell's share of the Unix sale about $240 million.
My favorite conspiracy theory of late.
Cheers.
And Apple. In 1993 or so, Apple shipped two 68040 Macs with a Motorola DSP chip on the motherboard. (Codename Tsunami?) As I remember, no one but Apple ever wrote software that used it.
Intel had the same idea with MMX. And how long did it take for anyone to use MMX? Years. Unless AMD sticks with it for years, at least until the first models that have it are obsolete, few people will use it because it's not the least common denominator.
Electrolysis works better in salt water, but with NaCl as the salt, you get chlorine gas off one side. The stuff they used in trench warfare in WW1. Screamingly toxic. And you would get tons (or tonnes) of it. No fun there. And it's costing you energy to make it, so it's a parasitic load on your process. And the calcium, magnesium, carbonates and sulfates in seawater would make a mess of the cell too.
The only commercial eIectrolysis unit I have close knowledge of uses KOH (potassium hydroxide) as the salt, and deionzed water.
On a different track, any hydrogen leak (and I work with the stuff, the damned little molecule always leaks) results in hydrogen escaping to the top of the atmosphere and then out to space. Eventually the loons at GreenPeace and the other wackos are going to notice this fact, and start screaming to "save the oceans" from the evil oil companies (who already have experience with making and handling the dangerous stuff, and therefore will be at the forefront of the whole project) and that will be the end of hydrogen's political correctness.
It makes far more sense to turn the hydrogen into methanol, and haul that around. Or go further and convert methanol to something else (ethanol, butanol, etc). You can pull CO2 right out of the air if you wanted to be carbon neutral, or use the hydrogen as a carbon extender/diluter for coal or biomass.
Brick and concrete are good ways to build a house, and are widely used in the South, where termites are a problem. However, they are comparitively expensive, especially when you are surrounded by forest, as in the Northern parts of the United States. And brick and concrete are dangerous in earthquake country. Nor do they do well in the cold and wet. Freeze-thaw cycles break them up rapidly. I have the chimney to prove it, to my unhappiness.
They are not a panacea.
"It's SCO all over again."
:-)
I wonder if that is more true than we think?
In 2002 SCO sold something Unix related to MS, and also something to Sun for a total of $24 million. In the MS case, this something was supposed to allow UNIX apps to run on Vista, at least on the professional version.
Now, it has come out that SCO was NOT ALLOWED to sell Sys V technology to anyone without Novell's permission. But they did. Now, like buying a stolen car, MS won't be held liable for having the code in their possession, but they aren't allowed to use it either. So they would be out the money, and they would have to pull the code out of Vista a whole month before it's launch date. Disaster city.
However, if they go to Novell, they can buy the code from the people who CAN sell it. Actually, Novell may have knocked on MS's door, as it took until last spring for Novell to pry the contract out of SCO detailing exactly what was sold to MS.
So, Bill has to upchuck cash to keep Vista on track. And the rest of this is smoke and mirrors to cover Bill's butt, and to give Novell a marketing edge with the pointy-haired IT manager set.
The payment to Novell worked out to $686 for each of the 350,000 SLES. Interestingly, SCO gets to keep 5% of the revenue from Sys V licenses. 5% of about $240 million is $12 million, right in the middle of SCOs 2002 technology sales revenue. So Novell just had MS cough up the other 95% they were due?
It's currently my favorite conspiracy theory
Inconstant Moon, by Larry Niven. One of my favorite short stories.
If you are on the night side, you might make it.
"The summary mentions Alphas and Epsilons, but glosses over the transitional Betas, Gammas and Deltas."
Deltas!! How about Tri-Deltas?
As I recall, troll-prime Bluto ended up with the very upper-class Mandy Pepperridge. This should have rejoined the gene lines nicely.
"0 watts is better than >0 watts, but only if EVERYTHING ELSE IS EQUAL."
Exactly. That $24 per year is $16 during the heating season, $2 during the cooling season, and $6 during the "windows are open but don't need AC" season. The $16 would have been spent on heat anyway (since we have electric heat) so that leaves $8 spent that we didn't need to. Maybe $9 with the extra AC needed during the one month we use AC.
Obviously, people living further south may have a different result, but this is non-visible on my worry scale.
Other comments;
* You cannot really appreciate Dilbert unless you've read it in the original Klingon.
* Indentation?! I will show you how to indent when I indent your skull!
* What is this talk of 'release'? Klingons do not make software 'releases'. Our software escapes, leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality assurance people in its wake!
* Klingon function calls do not have "parameters" - they have "arguments"- and they ALWAYS WIN THEM.
* Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Our software does not coddle the weak.
* I have challenged the entire Quality Assurance team to a Bat-Leh contest! They will not concern us again.
* Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
"Is it just me or is this a big gaping hole in their line-up?"
Same thoughts I have, actually. Either a Mac Midi with room for two hard drives, an upgradeable video card, and at least one more slot for USB 3 or whatever comes out next, or put two Expresscard 54 slots on the iMac.
My 4 1/2 year old Quicksilver has two cards installed in it, USB 2 and SATA. The SATA card is a luxury, but without the USB 2 card I'd have had to junk the machine and get a new one. (And I upgraded the video card too.) If I have to upgrade the machine every three years or less, then I'm only buying the minimal Mac to get the job done now. Not the high-profit margin super-hardware Apple likes to sell.
Since there is now a sealed box (iMac) and self-contained cluster (Mac pro) then I would hope that something else will slide into the middle. I'm buying something next spring. So I can wait until MacWorld comes up again to see if the box I want shows up. If not, then Mini, since I have the support hardware already.
"Whatever happened to "putting up your dukes"."
Growth. And how is someone my size (5'8" and 155 lbs) supposed to not get pounded into the pavement by Joe Bruiser (6'2" and 225 lbs)? In a fair fight, I will lose. Maybe with a decade of martial arts training I could manage to win, but after watching a Jujitsu black belt get pulverized by a bar fighter in some no-holds fighting show a few years ago, I don't even think that would work any more.
Three last thoughts;
"God did not make all men equal, but Sam Colt did." Quote from somewhere way back.
The feudal Japanese managed to get the Portuguese and other European guns off the islands. Why? Because with a gun, the scruffiest of peasants could kill the most highly trained Samurai. This threatened the social order, so the warlords went for the status quo.
And, another quote from the introduction to my edition of 'On War', "A peasant with a gun may get ideas about his place in the social order."
"With the onset and end of ice ages, we are talking about geological timescales - minimum of thousands of years for any discernable difference."
Ah, well, no. Look up the 8200 year event, and the Younger Dryas. A 10 degree C drop in like 20 years. And they came out of it in about 50. The end of the previous interglacial was assumed to to take thousands of years, but it appears now it went from hotter than now to full ice age in a century. It obviously took longer than that for the glaciers to build up enough to move, but the temperature regime was established. If you want to worry, then worry about unknown tipping points.
In fact it appears that since Antarctica and South America parted company, allowing the Antarctic Drift to go in circles rather than move cold water to the equator, the climate on this mudball has been notably unstable. Bummer.
And you can hope the solar cycle is partly responsible, because it is peaking now (actually has peaked but the climate effects lag) and that should reduce it's contribution to warming, so the rate of change should be leveling out by 2010. And it should be cooling by 2020.
And if it is all CO2 after all, then move to Denmark, become a citizen, and buy a retirement home on Greenland, which will be quite pleasant by then.
"Soon it'll make more sense to outsource from expensive american cities to inexpensive smaller cities, larger towns, or downright rural locations within the United States. "
Already happening. Microsoft and Yahoo are installing data centers in Quincy, Washington. I think Yahoo also is putting one in Wenatchee.
"Hand-picking two years, and doing a linear fit between them is not science. It is better to fit the entire curve and then see if you see any trends. "
Using methodology over the last 1 million years (straight line between first and last) you would have undoubtedly concluded climate was pretty constant. Hand picking points and fitting sections within that period leads you to think that the climate was oscillating. Then you measure the period, and look for things that match.
At work we have a chemical reactor that over time, is constant. By hand picking points and fitting curves, we discover that the there is a three day cycle that slightly lags shift change. Conclusion by your method: everything is fine. Conclusion by my method; at least one crew runs the plant better than the other crews. Which leads to the questions of what are they doing different, and why is it better. Followed by experiments, training, and in the end a bigger profit sharing bonus.
Plotting everything to one giant curve isn't too helpful, or if you do, then you need to look at the residuals. But then you still have to hand pick the points where you think a significant change occurred. And see what matches.
The sun is heating up at the moment (or was). Mars is warming, and so was Jupiter or one of its moons, (it was posted somewhere). How much is due to each effect is open to debate, but the correlation between the Maunder Minimum and Little Ice Age is pretty convincing. The climate in pre-industrial times was notably variable. The solar cycle theory matches a lot of the variation pretty well. It missed the 8200 year event, but if that was a freshwater incursion from last gasp of the Labrador ice cap, then the solar cycle wouldn't be needed for that anyway.
I googled "solar cycle global warming" and got 1.3 million links. The first three pages had some interesting sites including NOAA, and Stanford to name two I can remember. And some crackpot sites too.
"Maybe you don't like the "noise", but you also seem to dislike facts. If anything, there was no trend in temperatures from the 30's to the 70's if you believe NASA (http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/). According to the Third Assessment Report of the IPCC, the effect of solar cycles is considerably smaller than the effect of increased greenhouse gases.
Your solution? Let's wait until 2020, and then we can safely conclude whether we should have acted on global warming or not."
You, bunkie, need to look at your own link. Look at the top graph, at the 1940 point, look at the 1975 point, the line through those points is DOWN to the right. It was cooling during that time. And those were not isolated outliers either.
The other respondent to my comment is correct about global dimming. However, if that was the only cause of the cooling trend, global dimming did not offset part of global warming, it offset ALL of it, and more.
It is likely that CO2 and the current solar cycle are reinforcing each other just now. That will end by 2010, and we can see what happens next. It will probably take 10 years to sort the signal from the noise, (see your graph for a fine example of how much statistical noise there is.) In the mean time, switching away from oil-based fuels is still a good idea regardless of global warming. It's a matter of whether to panic about it, or let the market work with a few appropriate nudges.
"In 1942 and 1980 the global mean temperature was approximately the same. In every year between those two the mean temperature was lower than those years. Since CO2 output was continuing to increase during this period of nearly four decades, why didn't the global mean temperature increase as well?"
You put your finger right on the problem for the "CO2 is all of it" crowd. From the late '30s to the mid-70's the temperature went down. The CO2 believers have no explanation. The solar cycle people do.
Right now, both camps say we should be hot. We are. In 2020, the CO2 people say we'll be hotter than now, and the solar cycle people say we'll be cooling down. So the argument will be settled then.
Until then, I have to listen to all this noise. sigh.
"And it's also legal to shoot a half-grizzly, even though shooting grizzlies is illegal?"
What- you expect the guy to figure "Hey, this might just be the first ever in the wild grizzly-polar bear hybrid!", stick a hypo in the bear's butt, then run the blood sample through the portable DNA sequencer he had carefully put in the backpack for just such an emergency, read the results, then either shoot the bear, or not, depending on the results?
Some things you can only figure out afterwards. Especially if you want to do it from outside of the bear's digestive tract.
Granted, fishing licenses in Washington State have gotten almost to the point where you need a laser interferometer ruler, a GPS, and gene sequencer to figure out if you can keep the fish or not. And all that still won't help on the Columbia, where you need an fish anatomy chart to decide if all the fins are there or not. (Intact fish are Gods, and must be returned to the river with apologies.)