Thought I would plug these guys. http://furthurnet.org/ Great place, especially if you're into jambands-- but it's all live music from bands with taper-friendly policies. They're very anal about making sure no copyright violating material goes out on the network.
This could be a potential lawsuit against GM, if GM knew that the Hummers were unsafe by design yet went forward with the design anyway. I wonder if there are any Slashdot-reading lawyers out there looking for a good cause (and potentially a huge windfall) . . .
Take away all the special breaks and taxpayer subsidies that Hummers get and then post your troll about Hummers, okay? (BTW, how did that troll post get modded a 5??!!)
Consider the extra damage that super heavy SUVs do to the pavement. Consider the high bumpers that are deadly to smaller cars. Not to mention the 10 MPG at a time when US troops arguably are dying for oil.
It is not hyperbole to say that the Hummer is evil.
As atmospheric CO2 reaches insane levels, causing global warming and all of its catastrophic consequences, the internal combustion engine may be remembered in the future as the greatest evil in all of history.
Hopefully this kid's death can mean something and he will not have died in vain. His death was for the greatest cause of all, which is our home, our planet.
Why is government control *always* considered a bad thing? That ridiculous. Many humans are by nature, unfortunately, selfish and will take advantage of others if allowed to do so. Ergo the government has to stand in as referee.
By the way, that's a libertarian argument. Even those in favor of minimalist government still want to government to prevent people from infringing on the rights of others. Popup backdoor ads interfere with the use of your property, which is your computer. Hence they infringe on your rights, which makes it necessary for the government to step in.
Well, I don't know about others, bit I'm still unemployed since September 2003...
After nearly 23 years with one organization.... to whom I was loyal and faithful...
My UI benefits were exhausted last month...
I now own a business: but it is a start up, and we are frantically trying to reach the breakeven point; we arent there yet.... we wont be there for a few months, and even then: we wont be able to pull a salary there for a few months after that...
Im down to my last $150 in my bank account...
My rent is due in 24 days... and I dont have it...
I have three kids: the oldest could not start college, because we cannot afford her modest tuition...
We are starting to buy basic staples: rice and bean, pasta and flour... in anticipation of running out of other 'easier' foods...
My credit cards are saving my life, for the moment, but they will require another payment in 28 days...
The job search, which should have already ended with a good job, has stalled, and gone stale: I have four outstanding cover letter/resume packages with prospects for decent work, but they are sitting on them, while I start to sweat it... badly....
I have sent each of those four a kindly email to find out my current status, and all four say I am in the running.... but: the clock is ticking....
I have been thinking about looking up the local food bank... my thoughts are now floating towards memories of obtaining food stamps, and the shame I felt being in that office, and answering those questions...
All the while: knowing I have vast technical experience that surpasses nearly anyone else in the local job market, and should have been hired weeks ago.... I think my experience scares prospective employers... I have been paring it down to the bare bones to try to be more attractive to employers: so far: no dice....
So as I ponder my near term future: as I fret over how I will feed and house my children and wife, as I wait by the phone, wondering if those whom still consider me a 'viable candidate' for open jobs will actually call, wondering if I should at least find a menial job of ANY kind in the interim: fry cook, janitor, laborer, gas jockey, ANYTHING.... I am resisting making further contect with my 'prospective' future employers, so I dont reveal my ever growing desperation.....
Im going to dig in the phone book: and see if I can find a backdoor into my chosen field... otherwise: all Im doing is spinning my wheels, waiting for a call that may never come...
Sighs: dont you wonder how much better this GOP economy can get ?...
Do you wonder how many jobs 2.4 TRILLION dollars in tax cuts will buy the nation ?....
Is it trickling down yet ???...
Someone tell me if it does: I would hate to miss it....
The first Japanese Prius debuted in fall, 1997. Now, in August 2004, Ford's first hybrid SUV arrives. And while GM and Chrysler have talked big about their hybrid pickup trucks, neither company will produce more than a few hundred in the next 2-3 years.
Oh, but I forgot, it's easier to blather about the hydrogen economy than it is to produce an actual car that people will buy. I do give Ford credit for actually doing it.
Hybrids milage on highways generally drops to that of conventional cars.
Hybrids make a lot of their gains through regenerative braking. So they do really well in low speed, stop and go traffic. Want good mileage in a hybrid? Find a traffic jam.
On the highway they have to burn energy to shove their way through the airstream, just like any other vehicle. Milage becomes more a matter of frontal area and aerodynamics.
Sounds like the the Escape's a bit old school, regarding driveline and aerodynamics. But at least they're trying, and maybe some other SUVs will follow suit.
Plus it's quite an improvement. The regular Escape gets like 20/25.
If every SUV got that kind of improvement, it would represent a huge savings in fossil fuels. Especially considering that so much driving is stop-and-go.
How often do you *really* need an SUV, even in snowy areas? Being realistic, not likely more than a few days a year. The obvious solution here is to borrow somebody else's truck, or rent one for a day. I think our culture has an impact here. People don't seem to be as willing to just borrow cars (or anything else). We want to have one ourselves. Nobody shares resources anymore.
There's also the idea of "delivery." Didn't more things used to just get delivered than they are today? now we have this model where we buy large things from warehouses and are assumed to truck them home ourselves.
There were some stories about the cross-licensing when Ford presented the Escape at the NY auto show a few months ago.
Toyota confirmed that Ford developed its own system, but that there were similarities that resulted in the licensing.
Another story from the auto show was that Toyota offered GM a license on the Toyota system. GM and Toyota have worked together for some times on the Corolla/Prizm clones and now on the Matrix clones. However, GM refused the hybrid technology in favor of hydrogen, which GM sees as the future of automotive propulsion.
1. Woody Guthrie didn't give a shit about the copyright law that's designed to make the rich richer. As he wrote on the bottom of his albums: "This song is Copyrighted in U.S., under Seal of Copyright # 154085, for a period of 28 years, and anybody caught singin it without our permission, will be mighty good friends of ourn, cause we don't give a dern. Publish it. Write it. Sing it. Swing to it. Yodel it. We wrote it, that's all we wanted to do." W.G.
2. No way in hell would Woody Guthrie be a Bush supporter!! He'd most definitely be in the Anybody But Bush camp.
>> Nor am I allowed to tell anyone that the request >>happened.
>Yes, this part IS true. Not sure how I personally come >down on this one, but it does make a certain sense.
Why on earth would you be undecided? For the life of me, I can't figure out a sane argument to throw librarians in jail because they tell people the feds came to search library records.
There was nothing mysterious about the death. This is why it's good to read the fucking articles. Here's a snippet: "Kurtz's 45-year-old wife, Hope, died of apparent heart failure and her death is not believed related to the suspect materials, authorities said."
You're wrong when you say that biofuel "require[s] more than a gallon of oil input to generate a gallon of vegetable oil." You didn't cite a source for that infomation, as I suspect you don't have one.
In fact, producing biodiesel has a net energy gain. It is not a black hole that eats up more energy than it produces.
http://www.westbioenergy.org/july98/0798_01.htm
Oklahoma Researchers Test Switchgrass for Biofuel Production
A sea of switchgrass once grew in the central and eastern portions of the United States from the Gulf Coast to Canada. Today, switchgrass survives mainly on land not used for other purposes, land that is poorer in quality or land in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Conservation Reserve Program.
However, if research at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater proves fruitful, this innocuous native grass may once again wave across vast areas grown as a feedstock to make biofuel.
Biofuel is fuel derived from plants. One biofuel, ethanol, is primarily made from corn and grain sorghum and blended with gasoline, but ethanol also can be made from other plant matter, waste dairy products and grasses such as switchgrass. Research has shown that, with the right infrastructure, ethanol could be produced from switchgrass more efficiently than from corn.
The parent post is wrong on a number of levels. First, biofuel comes in the US primarily from corn, not soy. Second, sugar is a far better source than corn. The following article may be of interest.
Rio de Janeiro, 25 - Brazil could become the worlds largest supplier of biofuel within a decade according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), by which time 10% of the worlds gasoline and 3% of diesel will be biofuel admixtures.
The IEA furthermore sees 60% to 70% of the biofuel replacements being made up of ethanol.
Brazilian ethanol, made from sugarcane, is around twice as cheap to produce as U.S. ethanol, which is made from corn. This means Brazil is already facing trade barriers to the U.S. market, where every cubic meter, which can be sold at $150, has another $130 added.
"Theres no fair competition," says Antônio Padua, the director of the São Paulo Sugar and Ethanol Association (Unica).
The U.S. Senate justifies its trade barrier by saying it is trying to encourage a nascent alternative energy source.
"This market (the U.S.) can be completely supplied by corn ethanol but even so prospects are excellent for Brazil, as well as for other cane growers such as China and Thailand," said Pádua.
Pádua forecasts that in ten years Brazils ethanol exports could rise to 10 billion liters annually from the 1 billion liters of 2003 and forecast 1.5b/l of 2004.
If you think the government heavily subsidizes wind and solar, why don't you do this--start your own company dealing in such energy sources. I used to sell solar panels, and believe me, there are no subsidies. It's a myth.
Fossil fuel companies, on the other hand, get massive tax breaks.
That's not true about solar and wind energy. There are ZERO tax breaks from the federal government for using wind and solar energy. If you think there are such breaks, I challenge you to find them. They don't exist.
There did used to be federal tax breaks for such energy uses, but they went out in the 1980s, during the wonderful Reagan Administration.
On the other hand, oil companies receive massive breaks. So, while solar and wind energy are forced to compete in the free market, fossil fuel energy is subsidized.
Taiwan was under Japanese control since 1895, and "Manchuria", "West Xinjiang", and "Tibet" were not part of China at the time.
The first was a Japanese puppet, the second a haven for a warlord and the local Turkic Muslims, and the last was still a free country.
It is amazing the mind games the Chinese government tries to play with their history, although it is nothing new. The First Emperor burned all the ancient records from before his reign and the Han Emperor later on made sure they were the ones to tell the story of the wicked Chin dynasty. If they could have banned historically based Strategy games, they surely would have done it.
Slashdot Mirror
Thought I would plug these guys. http://furthurnet.org/ Great place, especially if you're into jambands-- but it's all live music from bands with taper-friendly policies. They're very anal about making sure no copyright violating material goes out on the network.
The 9th circuit is about the only court left with any sanity.
Unfortunately a dude who wrote one of the torture memos is now on the court thanks to Bush.
This could be a potential lawsuit against GM, if GM knew that the Hummers were unsafe by design yet went forward with the design anyway. I wonder if there are any Slashdot-reading lawyers out there looking for a good cause (and potentially a huge windfall) . . .
Take, for instance, the massive tax dedeuction that your typically middle-aged, obese suburbanite Hummer owner gets. See http://www.taxpayer.net/TCS/whitepapers/SUVtaxbrea k.htm
Consider the extra damage that super heavy SUVs do to the pavement. Consider the high bumpers that are deadly to smaller cars. Not to mention the 10 MPG at a time when US troops arguably are dying for oil.
It is not hyperbole to say that the Hummer is evil.
Hopefully this kid's death can mean something and he will not have died in vain. His death was for the greatest cause of all, which is our home, our planet.
By the way, that's a libertarian argument. Even those in favor of minimalist government still want to government to prevent people from infringing on the rights of others. Popup backdoor ads interfere with the use of your property, which is your computer. Hence they infringe on your rights, which makes it necessary for the government to step in.
After nearly 23 years with one organization .... to whom I was loyal and faithful ...
My UI benefits were exhausted last month ...
I now own a business: but it is a start up, and we are frantically trying to reach the breakeven point; we arent there yet .... we wont be there for a few months, and even then: we wont be able to pull a salary there for a few months after that ...
Im down to my last $150 in my bank account ...
My rent is due in 24 days ... and I dont have it ...
I have three kids: the oldest could not start college, because we cannot afford her modest tuition ...
We are starting to buy basic staples: rice and bean, pasta and flour ... in anticipation of running out of other 'easier' foods ...
My credit cards are saving my life, for the moment, but they will require another payment in 28 days ...
The job search, which should have already ended with a good job, has stalled, and gone stale: I have four outstanding cover letter/resume packages with prospects for decent work, but they are sitting on them, while I start to sweat it ... badly ....
I have sent each of those four a kindly email to find out my current status, and all four say I am in the running .... but: the clock is ticking ....
I have been thinking about looking up the local food bank ... my thoughts are now floating towards memories of obtaining food stamps, and the shame I felt being in that office, and answering those questions ...
All the while: knowing I have vast technical experience that surpasses nearly anyone else in the local job market, and should have been hired weeks ago .... I think my experience scares prospective employers ... I have been paring it down to the bare bones to try to be more attractive to employers: so far: no dice ....
So as I ponder my near term future: as I fret over how I will feed and house my children and wife, as I wait by the phone, wondering if those whom still consider me a 'viable candidate' for open jobs will actually call, wondering if I should at least find a menial job of ANY kind in the interim: fry cook, janitor, laborer, gas jockey, ANYTHING .... I am resisting making further contect with my 'prospective' future employers, so I dont reveal my ever growing desperation .....
Im going to dig in the phone book: and see if I can find a backdoor into my chosen field ... otherwise: all Im doing is spinning my wheels, waiting for a call that may never come ...
Sighs: dont you wonder how much better this GOP economy can get ? ...
Do you wonder how many jobs 2.4 TRILLION dollars in tax cuts will buy the nation ? ....
Is it trickling down yet ??? ...
Someone tell me if it does: I would hate to miss it ....
The first Japanese Prius debuted in fall, 1997. Now, in August 2004, Ford's first hybrid SUV arrives. And while GM and Chrysler have talked big about their hybrid pickup trucks, neither company will produce more than a few hundred in the next 2-3 years.
Oh, but I forgot, it's easier to blather about the hydrogen economy than it is to produce an actual car that people will buy. I do give Ford credit for actually doing it.
Hybrids make a lot of their gains through regenerative braking. So they do really well in low speed, stop and go traffic. Want good mileage in a hybrid? Find a traffic jam.
On the highway they have to burn energy to shove their way through the airstream, just like any other vehicle. Milage becomes more a matter of frontal area and aerodynamics.
Sounds like the the Escape's a bit old school, regarding driveline and aerodynamics. But at least they're trying, and maybe some other SUVs will follow suit.
Plus it's quite an improvement. The regular Escape gets like 20/25.
If every SUV got that kind of improvement, it would represent a huge savings in fossil fuels. Especially considering that so much driving is stop-and-go.
There's also the idea of "delivery." Didn't more things used to just get delivered than they are today? now we have this model where we buy large things from warehouses and are assumed to truck them home ourselves.
There were some stories about the cross-licensing when Ford presented the Escape at the NY auto show a few months ago. Toyota confirmed that Ford developed its own system, but that there were similarities that resulted in the licensing. Another story from the auto show was that Toyota offered GM a license on the Toyota system. GM and Toyota have worked together for some times on the Corolla/Prizm clones and now on the Matrix clones. However, GM refused the hybrid technology in favor of hydrogen, which GM sees as the future of automotive propulsion.
Trademarks don't necessarily need to be registered. See http://www.bitlaw.com/trademark/common.html for a brief summary of common law trademark rights, but also do a google search http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q= common+law+trademark+and+internet&btnG=Search
What you'll find is that trademark law is actually a lot more complex--and often contradictory--than you think.
2. No way in hell would Woody Guthrie be a Bush supporter!! He'd most definitely be in the Anybody But Bush camp.
>Yes, this part IS true. Not sure how I personally come >down on this one, but it does make a certain sense.
Why on earth would you be undecided? For the life of me, I can't figure out a sane argument to throw librarians in jail because they tell people the feds came to search library records.
There was nothing mysterious about the death. This is why it's good to read the fucking articles. Here's a snippet: "Kurtz's 45-year-old wife, Hope, died of apparent heart failure and her death is not believed related to the suspect materials, authorities said."
In fact, producing biodiesel has a net energy gain. It is not a black hole that eats up more energy than it produces.
http://www.westbioenergy.org/july98/0798_01.htm Oklahoma Researchers Test Switchgrass for Biofuel Production
A sea of switchgrass once grew in the central and eastern portions of the United States from the Gulf Coast to Canada. Today, switchgrass survives mainly on land not used for other purposes, land that is poorer in quality or land in the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Conservation Reserve Program.
However, if research at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater proves fruitful, this innocuous native grass may once again wave across vast areas grown as a feedstock to make biofuel.
Biofuel is fuel derived from plants. One biofuel, ethanol, is primarily made from corn and grain sorghum and blended with gasoline, but ethanol also can be made from other plant matter, waste dairy products and grasses such as switchgrass. Research has shown that, with the right infrastructure, ethanol could be produced from switchgrass more efficiently than from corn.
Brazil set to become worlds main biofuel supplier
http://www.aebrazil.com/highlights/2004/mai/25/38. htm
Rio de Janeiro, 25 - Brazil could become the worlds largest supplier of biofuel within a decade according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), by which time 10% of the worlds gasoline and 3% of diesel will be biofuel admixtures.
The IEA furthermore sees 60% to 70% of the biofuel replacements being made up of ethanol.
Brazilian ethanol, made from sugarcane, is around twice as cheap to produce as U.S. ethanol, which is made from corn. This means Brazil is already facing trade barriers to the U.S. market, where every cubic meter, which can be sold at $150, has another $130 added.
"Theres no fair competition," says Antônio Padua, the director of the São Paulo Sugar and Ethanol Association (Unica).
The U.S. Senate justifies its trade barrier by saying it is trying to encourage a nascent alternative energy source.
"This market (the U.S.) can be completely supplied by corn ethanol but even so prospects are excellent for Brazil, as well as for other cane growers such as China and Thailand," said Pádua.
Pádua forecasts that in ten years Brazils ethanol exports could rise to 10 billion liters annually from the 1 billion liters of 2003 and forecast 1.5b/l of 2004.
Fossil fuel companies, on the other hand, get massive tax breaks.
There did used to be federal tax breaks for such energy uses, but they went out in the 1980s, during the wonderful Reagan Administration.
On the other hand, oil companies receive massive breaks. So, while solar and wind energy are forced to compete in the free market, fossil fuel energy is subsidized.
Taiwan was under Japanese control since 1895, and "Manchuria", "West Xinjiang", and "Tibet" were not part of China at the time. The first was a Japanese puppet, the second a haven for a warlord and the local Turkic Muslims, and the last was still a free country. It is amazing the mind games the Chinese government tries to play with their history, although it is nothing new. The First Emperor burned all the ancient records from before his reign and the Han Emperor later on made sure they were the ones to tell the story of the wicked Chin dynasty. If they could have banned historically based Strategy games, they surely would have done it.