Why is it that every time there's an article about alternative energy sources someone comes out cursing and spewing venom against some mysterious environmental faction that is theoretically against said technology?
you take into account the far more serious effects that traditional energy sources all ready do pose to the enironment and wildlife.
I do. The energy per pound of fossil fuels is a consideration when evaluating energy sources. I would rather we didn't rely so much on fossil fuel, but there is a vocal minority who has pumped the general public with excessive fear of nuclear power.
Holy crap! No wonder they took over the marina: people were feeding them. You can tell people all day not to feed wild animals and they won't listen. That is why you have attacks at Yellowstone.
Yes, it's a shame that fringe reactionary groups have such a strong hold on our nation's energy policy.
Yes, let's look at how many new refineries have been constructed in the US in the last 30 years. And how many nuclear plants have been constructed in the same timeframe.
Your sarcasm doesn't measure up to reality, does it? The fact is, if the US had been continuing to build out its nuclear power capacity we may not be discussing energy strains the way we are today.
The primary contributors to the crash of oil prices in the mid-1980's was conservation measures combined with the expansion of US nuclear energy.
Conservation will only take you so far. After that, you have to develop new sources.
Here is a fairly comprehensive study of hazards to avian populations from wind farms.
The threat isn't as small as a few pigeons, but it is an area where active research in avian behavior could reduce the number of impacts.
There isn't a single "zero impact" energy source. An environmental price for any energy source can be found if you look hard enough. The challenge is learning how to balance our need for energy with the size of the threat to the environment.
I know that the article summary took great pains to point out that few birds are out this far from land, but you just know that one or two will be killed by one of these turbines. It is inevitable.
That said, no matter how much alternative energy sources are promoted by one faction of the environmental movent there will always be the fringe who hates any energy source that benefits humans. It is as if humans are not part of nature and that we are just a fucking infection that is destroying the Mother Earth (Matrix Agentism). It is chilling how much the rhetoric of Earth First! and other enviro-whackos mirrors that of fundamentalist theologies.
I hope this project can get funded. We need energy and there is no reason for us to not develop these resources for human use.
Well, DUH! Of course he had them, once upon a time - We (I say this as an American) sold / gave them to him! And did our damnedest to look the other way and blame Iran when he used them on the Kurds.
Are you looking for an argument about who sold them to him? I'm not here to defend the West's sale of arms to Saddam. Hell, everyone did.
Did he have them in 2003, though?
Nope. As I said, at the time of the invasion is different that inferring that he never had them at all.
And even if so, did they pose any threat whatsoever to the US, with their whopping 700-mile range 50-year-old tech SCUDs?
In case you didn't get the point, Saddam didn't need to threaten the US directly. If he threatened our interests in the region it was provocation enough.
>>and the fact that he had started a nuclear reactor construction program for any purpose he chose
Oh no! Not "any purpose he chose!" anything but that,
We sold him chemical weapons for "any purpose he chose". You seem to have a problem with differentiating your disgust.
for the democratically-elected leader
Right. Democratically-elected.
of the once-sovereign nation of Iraq,
Kosovo was part of the sovereign nation of Serbia. Now it is a UN protectorate. Is there a difference?
as regards an internal domestic Iraq research program!
The Iraqi reactor was not a research-scale reactor.
The horrors! Where oh where will it all end, this bloody race toward energy independance... Fission plants that don't waste 90% of their fuel? Fusion? Antimatter? WIND TURBINES??? YOU BASTARDS!
You obviously don't argue from logic, do you?
The US does not have the right to impose nuclear hegemony over the rest of the world (except those who might actually have the capacity to fight back, such as N. Korea, which we have pretty much left alone).
Yes, we do. If we don't please explain why not.
Our actions in Iraq count as nothing short of an atrocity,
And Saddam's extermination of Shi'ites in the south and Kurds in the north was a "what"?
and I can only pray that the rest of the world, when sanctioning us for our crimes, will consider that Bush never actally legitimately won a US presidential election.
Actually, he did. You and the Democrats just never got over it.
>>I'm not a great fan of how this war was justified, but Saddam was hardly running a regime friendly to anyone but himself and his cronies.
If you accept that excuse, you need to ponder why we still consider the Saud royal family our allies (y'know, the country currently ruled by a theocratic monarchy, and from which all but three of the 9/11 hijackers came?).
You've got me. I guess it is because they are awash with oil and have fairly friendly ties to the US. I know you have trouble believing that, but consider the theocratic republic on the other side of the Persian Gulf and how they regard the US.
Why we didn't go after half of the petty African tyrants currently still in power.
They don't threaten US interests.
Why we didn't revolt at the sweeping of Ohio under the rug.
What are you talking about? If you are going to claim that the Republicans stole the election twice, then you need to polish your rhetoric. Either he lost in 2000 because he didn't get the popular vote, or he won in 2004 because of it.
You need to be consistent or your will turn into a Republican.
But hey, what do I know? I just watch Fox and vote a straight Republican ticket like any Good Christian American.
Well there's your problem. You need to jettison that bullshit and start voting for a change. Vote Libertarian.
According to the bi-partisan 9/11 commission, Iraq neither had WMDs nor programs to build them.
I guess by that comment you mean "at the time of the invasion".
Iraq most certainly possessed WMD during Saddam's reign and used them without mercy on civilian Kurds.
Israel struck first before Iraq could develop nuclear arms.
Now considering the fact that Saddam had used WMD on his own people and his enemies, and the fact that he had started a nuclear reactor construction program for any purpose he chose, and add to this list the fact he invaded his neighbor without provocation, please explain what your sig is meant to express.
I'm not a great fan of how this war was justified, but Saddam was hardly running a regime friendly to anyone but himself and his cronies.
Wow! I think the "VB on Linux" comment generated more heat than just about anything else the author posted.
If everyone who wanted to bash this guy in the head over his suggestion would RTFA again, they would see that he was talking about VB in the same context as Wine and other migration paths for Windows developers. I realize that VB is a poor substitute for just about everything else, but it is the lingua franca for, as one/.er put it, a "metric tonne" of programmers. Why not provide a tool that offers the same programming functions as VB on the Linux desktop?
I'm not advocating VB as a developer's tool, I am advocating migrating Windows programmers away from Windows.
If giving them a VB equivalent (many thanks to the original link provider) means stealing mindshare (whom we can then mold into our own programmers), Linux wins.
DOE built thousands of water wells during the cold war?
That sounds rather high, I know, but they were monitoring an area of 560 square miles.
The wells tended to be concentrated around reactors, separation facilities, fuel fabrication facilities, and liquid disposal facilities (read: the ground).
Were they looking for uranium or something?
That and tritium, nitrate, and cobalt-60. Now they monitor for a whole raft of nuclear and non-nuclear materials.
And if he had a comment section which you frequented, you would most likely be just another libertarian who posts comments to someone else's blog. Would that be any better?
Better or worse, I would leave that judgement to people who rate blogs.
My point was that Hastert providing a comments section would give people the impression that Republicans aren't afraid of criticism. The latest news hasn't been too good for the GOP and their members are showing that they are a bit thin skinned.
As it is, you are perfectly free to post your objections to whatever he has to say, even if no one else decides to read it.
And if I were Speaker of the House, I would expect that someone might actually read it. Whether you believe it or not, there are different standards for the elected and the electorate.
The Internet makes it easier for people to voice their ideas as virtually anyone can say what they want to say, yet at the same time it makes it more difficult as you have to compete with the rest of the world.
That is an uneven fight, don't you think? Compare the power of the Speaker of the House to a mother who has been evacuated from New Orleans and has nothing left because the hurricanes have taken it. Are you seriously comparing powerful Congressional members and their interests with individuals?
And I believe you misread the link I gave,
Actually it was 404 when I tried it the first time.
as it has nothing to do with writing letters, unless you are out of your district come the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. And considering your second paragraph, you probably wouldn't object to this method all that much.
After finally getting through to the site, I think you are probably right.;)
okay, how about better safe then my million dollar ass and 450 million dollar plane lost. Classification is expensive. Loosing people and hardware is very expensive. Loosing a war is terminal.
Yes, but in an over-classified world, how would you know that we were losing the war?
Secret governments fail due to internal decay. The only cure for that disease is the sunshine of open government.
Only in the most extreme cases should information be classified. Once you start creating state secrets "just in case" it is impossible to stop.
I'd like to hear why, on patents specifically, you feel it would be wasteful, however... (since that is the issue at hand)
No, patents were the issue of the article and the submission. You generalized the topic with the statement "Having done a smidge of work for the government, I'm happier with secrets "just in case" than creating holes that might not have to have been made." but, to be fair, you did qualify your statement by citing examples of poor classification candidates.
My point was that I prefer an open government and that a classification should be applied to a document only in the most EXTREME examples. Unfortunately, this Administration is going BACKWARD on the issue of classification to the same system that existed in the Cold War. I offered my comments as a cautionary tale of what costs are borne by *us*, the taxpayers, in producing a government where all activities are given a classification first "just in case".
I won't bother to bore you with a discussion of the threat that a secret government has on democracy.
Having done a smidge of work for the government, I'm happier with secrets "just in case" than creating holes that might not have to have been made.
I'm sorry, but this attitude just smacks of laziness on the part of a classification clerk. When I worked at Department of Energy sites I was amused to discover that groundwater well construction documents known as 'as-builts' were classified during the Cold War. We had to send over a guy with a clearence to review the well log and report back to the classification clerk that no national security information would be disclosed by declassifying the record. At one site the DOE was custodian to over 4,000 wells, of which 90% of the records were classified. Every hour spent by a PhD geologist reviewing well records cost the government real money. This laziness in applying a classified status to well records cost the taxpayers millions of dollars throughout the DOE complex without advancing national security one iota. Countless other examples of construction records for other non-proliferation items were also classified.
Perhaps you like throwing money away for useless 'feel good' measures, but I don't.
Slashdot Mirror
Why is it that every time there's an article about alternative energy sources someone comes out cursing and spewing venom against some mysterious environmental faction that is theoretically against said technology?
Because they exist.
But of course nobody is protesting wind and solar power,
I can't take anything you write seriously.
You are so full of shit that you can't escape your own narrow-minded rhetoric.
The ones I've cited were just the first three entries.
you take into account the far more serious effects that traditional energy sources all ready do pose to the enironment and wildlife.
I do. The energy per pound of fossil fuels is a consideration when evaluating energy sources. I would rather we didn't rely so much on fossil fuel, but there is a vocal minority who has pumped the general public with excessive fear of nuclear power.
Holy crap! No wonder they took over the marina: people were feeding them. You can tell people all day not to feed wild animals and they won't listen. That is why you have attacks at Yellowstone.
Some folks just learn the hard way.
Shit! I shot coffee on my computer screen.
You, sir, owe me one screen cleaning.
Yes, it's a shame that fringe reactionary groups have such a strong hold on our nation's energy policy.
Yes, let's look at how many new refineries have been constructed in the US in the last 30 years. And how many nuclear plants have been constructed in the same timeframe.
Your sarcasm doesn't measure up to reality, does it? The fact is, if the US had been continuing to build out its nuclear power capacity we may not be discussing energy strains the way we are today.
The primary contributors to the crash of oil prices in the mid-1980's was conservation measures combined with the expansion of US nuclear energy.
Conservation will only take you so far. After that, you have to develop new sources.
Here is a fairly comprehensive study of hazards to avian populations from wind farms.
The threat isn't as small as a few pigeons, but it is an area where active research in avian behavior could reduce the number of impacts.
There isn't a single "zero impact" energy source. An environmental price for any energy source can be found if you look hard enough. The challenge is learning how to balance our need for energy with the size of the threat to the environment.
You can't get class status unless you have more than one claimant.
I know that the article summary took great pains to point out that few birds are out this far from land, but you just know that one or two will be killed by one of these turbines. It is inevitable.
That said, no matter how much alternative energy sources are promoted by one faction of the environmental movent there will always be the fringe who hates any energy source that benefits humans. It is as if humans are not part of nature and that we are just a fucking infection that is destroying the Mother Earth (Matrix Agentism). It is chilling how much the rhetoric of Earth First! and other enviro-whackos mirrors that of fundamentalist theologies.
I hope this project can get funded. We need energy and there is no reason for us to not develop these resources for human use.
Well, DUH! Of course he had them, once upon a time - We (I say this as an American) sold / gave them to him! And did our damnedest to look the other way and blame Iran when he used them on the Kurds.
Are you looking for an argument about who sold them to him? I'm not here to defend the West's sale of arms to Saddam. Hell, everyone did.
Did he have them in 2003, though?
Nope. As I said, at the time of the invasion is different that inferring that he never had them at all.
And even if so, did they pose any threat whatsoever to the US, with their whopping 700-mile range 50-year-old tech SCUDs?
In case you didn't get the point, Saddam didn't need to threaten the US directly. If he threatened our interests in the region it was provocation enough.
>>and the fact that he had started a nuclear reactor construction program for any purpose he chose
Oh no! Not "any purpose he chose!" anything but that,
We sold him chemical weapons for "any purpose he chose". You seem to have a problem with differentiating your disgust.
for the democratically-elected leader
Right. Democratically-elected.
of the once-sovereign nation of Iraq,
Kosovo was part of the sovereign nation of Serbia. Now it is a UN protectorate. Is there a difference?
as regards an internal domestic Iraq research program!
The Iraqi reactor was not a research-scale reactor.
The horrors! Where oh where will it all end, this bloody race toward energy independance... Fission plants that don't waste 90% of their fuel? Fusion? Antimatter? WIND TURBINES??? YOU BASTARDS!
You obviously don't argue from logic, do you?
The US does not have the right to impose nuclear hegemony over the rest of the world (except those who might actually have the capacity to fight back, such as N. Korea, which we have pretty much left alone).
Yes, we do. If we don't please explain why not.
Our actions in Iraq count as nothing short of an atrocity,
And Saddam's extermination of Shi'ites in the south and Kurds in the north was a "what"?
and I can only pray that the rest of the world, when sanctioning us for our crimes, will consider that Bush never actally legitimately won a US presidential election.
Actually, he did. You and the Democrats just never got over it.
>>I'm not a great fan of how this war was justified, but Saddam was hardly running a regime friendly to anyone but himself and his cronies.
If you accept that excuse, you need to ponder why we still consider the Saud royal family our allies (y'know, the country currently ruled by a theocratic monarchy, and from which all but three of the 9/11 hijackers came?).
You've got me. I guess it is because they are awash with oil and have fairly friendly ties to the US. I know you have trouble believing that, but consider the theocratic republic on the other side of the Persian Gulf and how they regard the US.
Why we didn't go after half of the petty African tyrants currently still in power.
They don't threaten US interests.
Why we didn't revolt at the sweeping of Ohio under the rug.
What are you talking about? If you are going to claim that the Republicans stole the election twice, then you need to polish your rhetoric. Either he lost in 2000 because he didn't get the popular vote, or he won in 2004 because of it.
You need to be consistent or your will turn into a Republican.
But hey, what do I know? I just watch Fox and vote a straight Republican ticket like any Good Christian American.
Well there's your problem. You need to jettison that bullshit and start voting for a change. Vote Libertarian.
"but Bush was hardly running a regime friendly to anyone but himself and his cronies"
You'll get no argument here, but in all fairness Bush hasn't unleashed chemical weapons on his own countrymen.
I won't argue that he has done a terrible job in justifying or executing this war, but Saddam isn't exactly a posterboy for anyone to emulate.
The only redeeming value that Saddam had was that he was the only Arab country to defy the 1972 oil embargo and sell crude to the US.
Oh, thanks. That clears things up nicely. ;)
According to the bi-partisan 9/11 commission, Iraq neither had WMDs nor programs to build them.
I guess by that comment you mean "at the time of the invasion".
Iraq most certainly possessed WMD during Saddam's reign and used them without mercy on civilian Kurds.
Israel struck first before Iraq could develop nuclear arms.
Now considering the fact that Saddam had used WMD on his own people and his enemies, and the fact that he had started a nuclear reactor construction program for any purpose he chose, and add to this list the fact he invaded his neighbor without provocation, please explain what your sig is meant to express.
I'm not a great fan of how this war was justified, but Saddam was hardly running a regime friendly to anyone but himself and his cronies.
On Netflix's website they proclaim that "Netflix Ranks #1 in Customer Satisfaction", while at the bottom they carry a link to "Settlement".
Their marketing people must have completely detatched themselves from reality.
They must be taking some wicked drugs.
Actually this means that only the men are being fired.
The women are safe.
MIGUEL and NAT are the only two main Novell engineers.
Just ask them! They'll tell you.
Why? Are you implying that a Linux-based article that has a potential negative spin to it will never see the light of day on Slashdot?
Cripes, man! Where were you (a 4 digit UID man, at that) during the endless SCO discussions?
I'm sure if you searh through everyones submission box it was probably one of the thousands of perfectly good articles that got passed over.
All is not lost, however. You got it in, didn't you?
Wow! I think the "VB on Linux" comment generated more heat than just about anything else the author posted.
/.er put it, a "metric tonne" of programmers. Why not provide a tool that offers the same programming functions as VB on the Linux desktop?
If everyone who wanted to bash this guy in the head over his suggestion would RTFA again, they would see that he was talking about VB in the same context as Wine and other migration paths for Windows developers. I realize that VB is a poor substitute for just about everything else, but it is the lingua franca for, as one
I'm not advocating VB as a developer's tool, I am advocating migrating Windows programmers away from Windows.
If giving them a VB equivalent (many thanks to the original link provider) means stealing mindshare (whom we can then mold into our own programmers), Linux wins.
Well, not forever. Just a few hundred thousand years.
Google could be perfectly honest, but their content could be hacked (from within, in particular).
That has to be the only valid reason I've read for their concern.
Good point.
DOE built thousands of water wells during the cold war?
That sounds rather high, I know, but they were monitoring an area of 560 square miles.
The wells tended to be concentrated around reactors, separation facilities, fuel fabrication facilities, and liquid disposal facilities (read: the ground).
Were they looking for uranium or something?
That and tritium, nitrate, and cobalt-60. Now they monitor for a whole raft of nuclear and non-nuclear materials.
And if he had a comment section which you frequented, you would most likely be just another libertarian who posts comments to someone else's blog. Would that be any better?
;)
Better or worse, I would leave that judgement to people who rate blogs.
My point was that Hastert providing a comments section would give people the impression that Republicans aren't afraid of criticism. The latest news hasn't been too good for the GOP and their members are showing that they are a bit thin skinned.
As it is, you are perfectly free to post your objections to whatever he has to say, even if no one else decides to read it.
And if I were Speaker of the House, I would expect that someone might actually read it. Whether you believe it or not, there are different standards for the elected and the electorate.
The Internet makes it easier for people to voice their ideas as virtually anyone can say what they want to say, yet at the same time it makes it more difficult as you have to compete with the rest of the world.
That is an uneven fight, don't you think? Compare the power of the Speaker of the House to a mother who has been evacuated from New Orleans and has nothing left because the hurricanes have taken it. Are you seriously comparing powerful Congressional members and their interests with individuals?
And I believe you misread the link I gave,
Actually it was 404 when I tried it the first time.
as it has nothing to do with writing letters, unless you are out of your district come the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. And considering your second paragraph, you probably wouldn't object to this method all that much.
After finally getting through to the site, I think you are probably right.
okay, how about better safe then my million dollar ass and 450 million dollar plane lost. Classification is expensive. Loosing people and hardware is very expensive. Loosing a war is terminal.
Yes, but in an over-classified world, how would you know that we were losing the war?
Secret governments fail due to internal decay. The only cure for that disease is the sunshine of open government.
Only in the most extreme cases should information be classified. Once you start creating state secrets "just in case" it is impossible to stop.
I'd like to hear why, on patents specifically, you feel it would be wasteful, however... (since that is the issue at hand)
No, patents were the issue of the article and the submission. You generalized the topic with the statement "Having done a smidge of work for the government, I'm happier with secrets "just in case" than creating holes that might not have to have been made." but, to be fair, you did qualify your statement by citing examples of poor classification candidates.
My point was that I prefer an open government and that a classification should be applied to a document only in the most EXTREME examples. Unfortunately, this Administration is going BACKWARD on the issue of classification to the same system that existed in the Cold War. I offered my comments as a cautionary tale of what costs are borne by *us*, the taxpayers, in producing a government where all activities are given a classification first "just in case".
I won't bother to bore you with a discussion of the threat that a secret government has on democracy.
Having done a smidge of work for the government, I'm happier with secrets "just in case" than creating holes that might not have to have been made.
I'm sorry, but this attitude just smacks of laziness on the part of a classification clerk. When I worked at Department of Energy sites I was amused to discover that groundwater well construction documents known as 'as-builts' were classified during the Cold War. We had to send over a guy with a clearence to review the well log and report back to the classification clerk that no national security information would be disclosed by declassifying the record. At one site the DOE was custodian to over 4,000 wells, of which 90% of the records were classified. Every hour spent by a PhD geologist reviewing well records cost the government real money. This laziness in applying a classified status to well records cost the taxpayers millions of dollars throughout the DOE complex without advancing national security one iota. Countless other examples of construction records for other non-proliferation items were also classified.
Perhaps you like throwing money away for useless 'feel good' measures, but I don't.