Some scientists suspect that the dusty soil on Mars may be such a strong oxidizer that it burns any organic compound such as plastics, rubber or human skin as viciously as undiluted lye or laundry bleach.
The dust itself won't do much oxidizing unless it gets wet.
Undiluted lye is FAR FAR WORSE than laundry bleach...
If it doesn't get much warmer than -20 deg F at the equator, and the air is about as thin as on Mt Everest, don't you think that people will be in some form of bunnysuit out there anyways?
Don't you think this incredibly chemically corrosive dust would have been eating at the two little 6-wheeled autonomous slugs by now?
Hmm... but plants are an excellent passive storage mechanism for solar energy, whether its converted later to biodiesel or simply burned in a cogeneration plant later at one's convenience, instead of at the sun's and atmosphere's conditions.
Which is what will be a kicker in the gonads for big photovoltaic installations as primary, vs secondary, energy.
Having an aluminum smelter running next to a PV powerplant will not work. The plant needs to run 24hrs a day, but the PV array will make electricity 10-14 hrs a day, and building a storage facility to provide megawatts of power to the smelter pots would be...prohibitive, unless you invest in lead or cadmium futures.
Well, I'll guess that the glass is probably some borosilicate glass (much better optical qualities), not simple soda glass like most common drinking glasses. It might even be tempered, too. Borosilicate glass does indeed break, but not like soda glass.
Here's one way to destroy a pyrex casserole dish, which are more or less relatively indestructible by normal means. Heat in oven until it's heat soaked (i.e., what was being cooked is done cooking). Take out, and put on a surface that has a point metal contact, like, say, one of the bolt heads sticking out of the wood side deck on your barbeque outside. The metal point will draw much more heat out of the contact area than the air does, and your dish will probably crack rather nicely from the resulting internal thermal stresses. Yes, I did it...
Well, it's the same reason that most diesel-powered trucks have turbochargers. It's hard to increase displacement much more than they already have, so there have to be other ways to either get more power out of existing engines or match power in a smaller engine with an existing larger, but less efficient, engine. Turbochargers increase volumetric efficiency of gas and diesel engines (more air in engine = more mass energized by fuel combustion = more power from engine).
What does this HFI do, then? Well, it sounds like it uses energy from the alternator that is probably not being used (like energy from exhaust gasses powering turbochargers...) and extracts it in a more usable form (into the crankshaft). It seemed like the article mentioned that both H2 and O2 from the electrolysis system are injected into the engine, which is good.
One of the big "wins" of Nitrous Oxide injection in cars is that increases the charge mass of the air going into the engine, it "burns" in a way that releases a little more O2 in the combustion chamber, thus helping burn the gasoline better, resulting in instant power boost as long as the Gas is on. I think this is a bit similar, too.
Again, the goal isn't increasing the overall thermodynamic efficiency of the engine, but to get more usable efficiency, i.e, HP and torque into the transmission and to the wheels for the same amount of diesel used.
Because with a book, once the publisher prints and sells it, that is the end of their involvement. Game developers are expected to provide warranties, support, and online resources (servers) for games after sale, and they often do even when the users don't have a right to it.
Maybe for MMOs. On-line multiplayer? Well, if user is paying for an account, it matters not really whether the software is bought new or used, because the big $$$ are in the subscriptions, right? If not, and it's really a bitch about most console games, well, too bad.
A small cost, perhaps. But go to EB Games and they pay you something like $6 for a $60 game, and then sell the used copy for $50. I'd actually not be oppose to reselling MMOs, since they have a monthly fee attached in addition to the boxed cost. So companies are getting paid for the after-sale resources consumed by a used buyer.
See what your car is pulling in your area in the classifieds. Go to the dealer, and semi-seriously inquire about getting a new car, and see how much they offer you to trade in your car. It'll be about 1/2 what you could probably sell it for on your own. Trust me, it doesn't feel good. Go pawn your car stereo. You won't get more than 10% "street" value for it.
Buy low, sell high. Welcome to basic mercantilism.
I've bought several used books (hey, we've all been to college now, haven't we?) that were sitting right next to their brand new brethren on the same shelf. The used book trade does well for Powell's Books (think of it this way: Every resale of a used book through the store is probably going to net the store 50% margin).
Car dealerships these days probably make as much as, or more, from their associated used car side businesses.
While I agree with the spirit, the truth of the matter is that them that write the laws (who oddly enough are close to those who get to enforce the law as well as mete out its punishments) will never want to keep it so simple, to appease the enforcers and punishers, and will keep some loopholes in it just in case they happen to fall under its searing gaze as well, to give themselves a chance to weasel out of a harsh punishment.
At first, "thou shalt not kill" was probably pretty literately enforced. Unless you were a soldier. Fighting in a War (but, hey, God struck down our enemies for us). Or were fighting some infidels or soemthing. Or you thought that God told you to kill your son ("no, no...I was just testing you, heheh").
But then you deal with the whole social paradox: "If you kill someone, you will be put to death".
In the US, anyone can perform a citizen's arrest as a peace officer. In almost all jurisdictions, citizens have the right to lethal self-defense. (guns, etc.) I'm not sure if you're promoting the idea that US Citizens should be able to wage ware oversees without being part of the military? Your logic gets pretty weak, here.
Well...the funny thing is, that while this may be true in a criminal court sense, there is nothing stopping the asshat who tried to steal your backpack that you leveled with a nicely placed aikido chop, subsequently crushing his trachea but did indeed stop him in his tracks, from suing you for unnecessary violence and paying for his medical bills, pain and suffering, and imagined economic loss (because he was studying to be an MCSE, and his lawyer argued out he'd have been billing out at $100/hr for the next 40 years).
Well, of course it all depends on the database. For those DBs that use autogenerated field types (i.e., SERIAL in PostGres, AUTOINC attribute in many others) getting the generated ID for the record you inserted is...problematic at best. Your point is valid.
For other DBs that can use triggers and sequence generators (Oracle, PostGres, Interbase/Firebird), it can be a bit easier, as these DBs have ways to query the sequence generator for its current or next value (as long as you're still in the same transaction scope). In the case of Oracle, getting the Next value off of a sequence increments the sequence, so as long as you hold onto that value, it's going to be unique. No more silly "select max(id) from my table" queries after you insert a record...
In both cases, though, it generally requires some way that can peek at the record being added, in a state where it's "added" to the table but before it's locked down. Generally the most expedient method to do this is with a stored proc/function that has the actual INSERT statement in it, but returns the autogen'd field value, however you can get it, and return it to the layer you called the proc from.
It all depends on your database and your database access layer (e.g., ADO, ODBC, OleDB, direct-to-driver, etc).
MIDAS (database caching layer from Borland 5 Enterprise and later) really does this well. There are other similar products as well.
OF course, ASP.Net makes its postback stuff work by having the server-side stuff spit the Javascript to the browser that does the postbacks. Didn't you read some of the articles about overriding ASP.Net JavaScript generation so it would be cross-browser (i.e., some of the JavaScript that ASP.Net is IE-specific, I think primarily regarding MS additions to the DOM).
And why did it take so long to come up with a generic database api! Having to use an OracleConnection class and a SqlConnection class and a NPGSqlConnection class is just asinine and either shows a lack of thought for encapsulation or probably something more malicious.
Well, yes, it was a big change from ADO, ADOX, DAO and ODBC, which abstract (most of) the details of accessing the database, but still allow you do a few db flavor-specific things if you need to. Borland worked around it with its BDP stuff for Delphi 8/9, which added back this layer of generalization that MS stupidly got rid of in ADO.Net 1.1. I think MS' goal was to push SQL Server, personally. Most of the example stuff with ADO.Net blatantly assumes you're working with SQL Server. Good luck if you're not.
Did your car come with all the tools necessary to change the oil and rotate the tires?
Well, my cars have all come with some type of jack and a lug wrench, as well as a spare tire. So, it's possible to rotate the tires. If only the oil pan plug was the same size as a lug nut, then I'd have all the tools to probably do an oil change as well, assuming the grease monkey didn't tighten the oil filter on too tight for the last oil change, thus requiring some sort of oil filter or strap wrench to remove it.
If I tell you that secretly living inside every internal-combustion engine, lives a combustion gnome, you'd be skeptical.
Yes, but if you had said "inside every piece of electronic circuitry and components, there is a stored amount of 'blue smoke', and when that blue smoke is caused to be released, the componentry or circuit fails and is ruined. Electricity is not electrons, but 'blue smoke quanta'", I'd be with you.
Having an interest in the I-80/I-88 "connector" that is being developed thru Hastert's district, it would be interesting to see him blogging a bit about that, because if he wasn't Speaker of the House, it probably wouldn't be happening (yes, I think Spokane, WA, voters are some of the stupidest voters in the country for voting OUT the speaker of the House...cutting off your face to spite your nose, eh?). The drive down Ill-47, one of the proposed corridors, is pretty nice, because at least 4 years ago it was still a very rural drive between McHenry and Morris, IL. Having family in the Morris, IL, area adds interest, too. I hope they build the connector east of Morris, because west of Morris (Ottawa, Seneca, etc) is still pretty rural, but of course msot of it won't be once it's built (Morris is becoming a bedroom community for SW Chicagoland employees...).
Yes, the area needs it from a pure traffic sense, but somehow I wonder if federal $$$ wouldn't be better spent helping North (Lake County) and Northwest Chicagoland improve their traffic. All the main highways (except I-80 and the I-290/355 beltway) go to downtown Chicago, but I was among thousands who did not commute this way, and a 15-mile commute took close to an hour, because it was mainly all on 2-3 lane county roads. Others I worked with who lived near I-94 had about a 15-minute commute for the same distance...
Unless you've spent much time on the outskirts of an oil refinery, there's nothing "environmentalist" about not wanting one nearby. Would you put up with the city putting a garbage collection depot or sewage treatment plant in your neighborhood? Probably not.
Of course, the absurdities are when the oil companies do buy thousands of acres of land to put the refinery in the middle of that land, relatively isolated from all the NIMBYs, and yet people from hundreds of miles away come out of the woodwork to protest something that will have negligible tangible effects on their lifestyles.
* Federal enviro regulators who have no idea how jobs or how exactly the money that gets direct deposited into their accounts every month is generated
Some of these "enviro-regulators" have probably been named in lawsuits, etc. Can't blame them. Again, it all comes down to politics. If 1000 people bitch about an oil refinery, and there will be tangible net losses in the community for a large number of people because of it (remember, the new jobs coming in will take awhile to be felt politically and economically), there will be opposition to it. It usually is more than just about "jobs, jobs, jobs".
* Unions for treating investors like the enemy rather than their best friend
Why treat your enemy like your best friend when you know that all they see the employees as is a large item on the expense side of the balance sheet, instead of a value-adding asset?
* High taxes and workplace regulations.
Hmm... You can bet that if the oil companies essentially put out to bid a few locations where they're considering putting new refineries, there will be some areas that are opposed to them, and the others will come in with their eyes closed, their mouths open and their nether regions already lubed.
Workplace regulations... Hmm... A company making millions of dollars in profits cannot be bothered to spend a few bucks per employee for what seems to be common sense safety items? there are lots of good reasons for some of the regulations. You've obviously never been on the end of the stick that's stuck into the septic tank to measure it...
Now, you may disagree with me on all of these as policies. I understand that./. is somewhere to the left of Mao. But what you can't disagree with is that these reasons are among the reasons that refineries have not been built here since the 1970s. And my point is that for Hastert to try to portray this as the oil industries FAULT is assinine. He knows better. Give any company a chance to make a profit by making someone happy and they will - that's the beauty of capitalism.
There is also the economic reality that most of the refineries are *OLD*. That means that most of the capital equipment on them is either in an advanced state of depreciation or already is depreciated off the books, even though it is still fully functional. In other words, they're paid for. That means they've become relatively profitable, year after year. Especially when it comes to grandfather clauses in many of those regulations you collectively bemoan above. A new refinery will take some time to truly become profitable, and that makes shareholders and dividend-receivers mad.
I would argue that this fact alone is the most important reason why new refineries have not been built. All the other stuff is just nice excuse-making. If there was a relatively short-term payoff to build new refineries, and make ooodles of money off of it in that short term, inspite of all the negative shit that will come up trying to get them built, they'd be getting built.
It makes no business sense for a refiner to have excess capacity not being used, as there is no reward for keeping it around. The current investment market seems to revolve more around high short-term profits, vs sustained long-term overall gain. Old refineries are essentially money generators that guarantee consistent profits (as demand increases and production cannot), which also fits in with Wall Street's current mindset as well.
Well, the copy prevention schemes being used seem to be about as effective as the firstgen versions from the 80's and 90's. Instead of an install floppy disk (which copied a file to the HD in a sneaky manner), now you have to have your SecureRom CD in the drive to run the program.
When software fit on a floppy or two, things weren't all that intrusive, but they really caused people fits when HDs started to become commonplace. If your install floppy got trashed, you were SOL.
And, the biggest complainers were games players (and Lotus 1-2-3 users). Eventually, people went to other copy restriction methods (like lookup tables in user manuals, etc)., which worked OK until BBSs and other nascent dialup services got going.
Slashdot Mirror
Some scientists suspect that the dusty soil on Mars may be such a strong oxidizer that it burns any organic compound such as plastics, rubber or human skin as viciously as undiluted lye or laundry bleach.
The dust itself won't do much oxidizing unless it gets wet.
Undiluted lye is FAR FAR WORSE than laundry bleach...
If it doesn't get much warmer than -20 deg F at the equator, and the air is about as thin as on Mt Everest, don't you think that people will be in some form of bunnysuit out there anyways?
Don't you think this incredibly chemically corrosive dust would have been eating at the two little 6-wheeled autonomous slugs by now?
Hmm... but plants are an excellent passive storage mechanism for solar energy, whether its converted later to biodiesel or simply burned in a cogeneration plant later at one's convenience, instead of at the sun's and atmosphere's conditions.
Which is what will be a kicker in the gonads for big photovoltaic installations as primary, vs secondary, energy.
Having an aluminum smelter running next to a PV powerplant will not work. The plant needs to run 24hrs a day, but the PV array will make electricity 10-14 hrs a day, and building a storage facility to provide megawatts of power to the smelter pots would be...prohibitive, unless you invest in lead or cadmium futures.
Yep, if you have DirecTV, Dish or digital cable, because the boxes don't have number keypads to enter channel numbers directly.
Well, I'll guess that the glass is probably some borosilicate glass (much better optical qualities), not simple soda glass like most common drinking glasses. It might even be tempered, too. Borosilicate glass does indeed break, but not like soda glass.
Here's one way to destroy a pyrex casserole dish, which are more or less relatively indestructible by normal means. Heat in oven until it's heat soaked (i.e., what was being cooked is done cooking). Take out, and put on a surface that has a point metal contact, like, say, one of the bolt heads sticking out of the wood side deck on your barbeque outside. The metal point will draw much more heat out of the contact area than the air does, and your dish will probably crack rather nicely from the resulting internal thermal stresses. Yes, I did it...
Well, us Hatfields (or McCoys) could tell you a few things about "misunderstandings" as well.
Kasparov, Fischer or Karpov? Hmm... I'd have to go with... 1: P-PK4.
Mozart can only lick JS Bach's boots as far as musical genius goes.
For a real test of your own skills, take up sheep shearing, and analyze that.
Well, it's the same reason that most diesel-powered trucks have turbochargers. It's hard to increase displacement much more than they already have, so there have to be other ways to either get more power out of existing engines or match power in a smaller engine with an existing larger, but less efficient, engine. Turbochargers increase volumetric efficiency of gas and diesel engines (more air in engine = more mass energized by fuel combustion = more power from engine).
What does this HFI do, then? Well, it sounds like it uses energy from the alternator that is probably not being used (like energy from exhaust gasses powering turbochargers...) and extracts it in a more usable form (into the crankshaft). It seemed like the article mentioned that both H2 and O2 from the electrolysis system are injected into the engine, which is good.
One of the big "wins" of Nitrous Oxide injection in cars is that increases the charge mass of the air going into the engine, it "burns" in a way that releases a little more O2 in the combustion chamber, thus helping burn the gasoline better, resulting in instant power boost as long as the Gas is on. I think this is a bit similar, too.
Again, the goal isn't increasing the overall thermodynamic efficiency of the engine, but to get more usable efficiency, i.e, HP and torque into the transmission and to the wheels for the same amount of diesel used.
Don't forget: Machiavelli - Tale of Two Cities
If you really want to examine what visual and auditory cues "hook" people, just go to your average casino or porn store.
Because with a book, once the publisher prints and sells it, that is the end of their involvement. Game developers are expected to provide warranties, support, and online resources (servers) for games after sale, and they often do even when the users don't have a right to it.
Maybe for MMOs. On-line multiplayer? Well, if user is paying for an account, it matters not really whether the software is bought new or used, because the big $$$ are in the subscriptions, right? If not, and it's really a bitch about most console games, well, too bad.
A small cost, perhaps. But go to EB Games and they pay you something like $6 for a $60 game, and then sell the used copy for $50. I'd actually not be oppose to reselling MMOs, since they have a monthly fee attached in addition to the boxed cost. So companies are getting paid for the after-sale resources consumed by a used buyer.
See what your car is pulling in your area in the classifieds. Go to the dealer, and semi-seriously inquire about getting a new car, and see how much they offer you to trade in your car. It'll be about 1/2 what you could probably sell it for on your own. Trust me, it doesn't feel good. Go pawn your car stereo. You won't get more than 10% "street" value for it.
Buy low, sell high. Welcome to basic mercantilism.
First Sale Doctrine.
I've bought several used books (hey, we've all been to college now, haven't we?) that were sitting right next to their brand new brethren on the same shelf. The used book trade does well for Powell's Books (think of it this way: Every resale of a used book through the store is probably going to net the store 50% margin).
Car dealerships these days probably make as much as, or more, from their associated used car side businesses.
Etc.
While I agree with the spirit, the truth of the matter is that them that write the laws (who oddly enough are close to those who get to enforce the law as well as mete out its punishments) will never want to keep it so simple, to appease the enforcers and punishers, and will keep some loopholes in it just in case they happen to fall under its searing gaze as well, to give themselves a chance to weasel out of a harsh punishment.
At first, "thou shalt not kill" was probably pretty literately enforced. Unless you were a soldier. Fighting in a War (but, hey, God struck down our enemies for us). Or were fighting some infidels or soemthing. Or you thought that God told you to kill your son ("no, no...I was just testing you, heheh").
But then you deal with the whole social paradox: "If you kill someone, you will be put to death".
Spitting on the street where not explicitly disallowed?
Are you from Singapore?
In the US, anyone can perform a citizen's arrest as a peace officer. In almost all jurisdictions, citizens have the right to lethal self-defense. (guns, etc.) I'm not sure if you're promoting the idea that US Citizens should be able to wage ware oversees without being part of the military? Your logic gets pretty weak, here.
Well...the funny thing is, that while this may be true in a criminal court sense, there is nothing stopping the asshat who tried to steal your backpack that you leveled with a nicely placed aikido chop, subsequently crushing his trachea but did indeed stop him in his tracks, from suing you for unnecessary violence and paying for his medical bills, pain and suffering, and imagined economic loss (because he was studying to be an MCSE, and his lawyer argued out he'd have been billing out at $100/hr for the next 40 years).
Well, of course it all depends on the database. For those DBs that use autogenerated field types (i.e., SERIAL in PostGres, AUTOINC attribute in many others) getting the generated ID for the record you inserted is...problematic at best. Your point is valid.
For other DBs that can use triggers and sequence generators (Oracle, PostGres, Interbase/Firebird), it can be a bit easier, as these DBs have ways to query the sequence generator for its current or next value (as long as you're still in the same transaction scope). In the case of Oracle, getting the Next value off of a sequence increments the sequence, so as long as you hold onto that value, it's going to be unique. No more silly "select max(id) from my table" queries after you insert a record...
In both cases, though, it generally requires some way that can peek at the record being added, in a state where it's "added" to the table but before it's locked down. Generally the most expedient method to do this is with a stored proc/function that has the actual INSERT statement in it, but returns the autogen'd field value, however you can get it, and return it to the layer you called the proc from.
It all depends on your database and your database access layer (e.g., ADO, ODBC, OleDB, direct-to-driver, etc).
MIDAS (database caching layer from Borland 5 Enterprise and later) really does this well. There are other similar products as well.
OF course, ASP.Net makes its postback stuff work by having the server-side stuff spit the Javascript to the browser that does the postbacks. Didn't you read some of the articles about overriding ASP.Net JavaScript generation so it would be cross-browser (i.e., some of the JavaScript that ASP.Net is IE-specific, I think primarily regarding MS additions to the DOM).
And why did it take so long to come up with a generic database api! Having to use an OracleConnection class and a SqlConnection class and a NPGSqlConnection class is just asinine and either shows a lack of thought for encapsulation or probably something more malicious.
Well, yes, it was a big change from ADO, ADOX, DAO and ODBC, which abstract (most of) the details of accessing the database, but still allow you do a few db flavor-specific things if you need to. Borland worked around it with its BDP stuff for Delphi 8/9, which added back this layer of generalization that MS stupidly got rid of in ADO.Net 1.1. I think MS' goal was to push SQL Server, personally. Most of the example stuff with ADO.Net blatantly assumes you're working with SQL Server. Good luck if you're not.
Did your car come with all the tools necessary to change the oil and rotate the tires?
Well, my cars have all come with some type of jack and a lug wrench, as well as a spare tire. So, it's possible to rotate the tires. If only the oil pan plug was the same size as a lug nut, then I'd have all the tools to probably do an oil change as well, assuming the grease monkey didn't tighten the oil filter on too tight for the last oil change, thus requiring some sort of oil filter or strap wrench to remove it.
Matrox's Parahelia cards supports/ed more than 8bpp... and that was at least 4 years ago when they flopped onto the market.
The SDRAM standard picked by JEDEC DOES NOT REQUIRE RAMBUS IP.
funny, though, how RamBus was trying to sue SDRAM makers for patent violations around DDR, etc., after this...
If I tell you that secretly living inside every internal-combustion engine, lives a combustion gnome, you'd be skeptical.
Yes, but if you had said "inside every piece of electronic circuitry and components, there is a stored amount of 'blue smoke', and when that blue smoke is caused to be released, the componentry or circuit fails and is ruined. Electricity is not electrons, but 'blue smoke quanta'", I'd be with you.
Having an interest in the I-80/I-88 "connector" that is being developed thru Hastert's district, it would be interesting to see him blogging a bit about that, because if he wasn't Speaker of the House, it probably wouldn't be happening (yes, I think Spokane, WA, voters are some of the stupidest voters in the country for voting OUT the speaker of the House...cutting off your face to spite your nose, eh?). The drive down Ill-47, one of the proposed corridors, is pretty nice, because at least 4 years ago it was still a very rural drive between McHenry and Morris, IL. Having family in the Morris, IL, area adds interest, too. I hope they build the connector east of Morris, because west of Morris (Ottawa, Seneca, etc) is still pretty rural, but of course msot of it won't be once it's built (Morris is becoming a bedroom community for SW Chicagoland employees...).
Yes, the area needs it from a pure traffic sense, but somehow I wonder if federal $$$ wouldn't be better spent helping North (Lake County) and Northwest Chicagoland improve their traffic. All the main highways (except I-80 and the I-290/355 beltway) go to downtown Chicago, but I was among thousands who did not commute this way, and a 15-mile commute took close to an hour, because it was mainly all on 2-3 lane county roads. Others I worked with who lived near I-94 had about a 15-minute commute for the same distance...
* NIMBY environmentalists on the local level.
/. is somewhere to the left of Mao. But what you can't disagree with is that these reasons are among the reasons that refineries have not been built here since the 1970s. And my point is that for Hastert to try to portray this as the oil industries FAULT is assinine. He knows better. Give any company a chance to make a profit by making someone happy and they will - that's the beauty of capitalism.
Unless you've spent much time on the outskirts of an oil refinery, there's nothing "environmentalist" about not wanting one nearby. Would you put up with the city putting a garbage collection depot or sewage treatment plant in your neighborhood? Probably not.
Of course, the absurdities are when the oil companies do buy thousands of acres of land to put the refinery in the middle of that land, relatively isolated from all the NIMBYs, and yet people from hundreds of miles away come out of the woodwork to protest something that will have negligible tangible effects on their lifestyles.
* Federal enviro regulators who have no idea how jobs or how exactly the money that gets direct deposited into their accounts every month is generated
Some of these "enviro-regulators" have probably been named in lawsuits, etc. Can't blame them. Again, it all comes down to politics. If 1000 people bitch about an oil refinery, and there will be tangible net losses in the community for a large number of people because of it (remember, the new jobs coming in will take awhile to be felt politically and economically), there will be opposition to it. It usually is more than just about "jobs, jobs, jobs".
* Unions for treating investors like the enemy rather than their best friend
Why treat your enemy like your best friend when you know that all they see the employees as is a large item on the expense side of the balance sheet, instead of a value-adding asset?
* High taxes and workplace regulations.
Hmm... You can bet that if the oil companies essentially put out to bid a few locations where they're considering putting new refineries, there will be some areas that are opposed to them, and the others will come in with their eyes closed, their mouths open and their nether regions already lubed.
Workplace regulations... Hmm... A company making millions of dollars in profits cannot be bothered to spend a few bucks per employee for what seems to be common sense safety items? there are lots of good reasons for some of the regulations. You've obviously never been on the end of the stick that's stuck into the septic tank to measure it...
Now, you may disagree with me on all of these as policies. I understand that.
There is also the economic reality that most of the refineries are *OLD*. That means that most of the capital equipment on them is either in an advanced state of depreciation or already is depreciated off the books, even though it is still fully functional. In other words, they're paid for. That means they've become relatively profitable, year after year. Especially when it comes to grandfather clauses in many of those regulations you collectively bemoan above. A new refinery will take some time to truly become profitable, and that makes shareholders and dividend-receivers mad.
I would argue that this fact alone is the most important reason why new refineries have not been built. All the other stuff is just nice excuse-making. If there was a relatively short-term payoff to build new refineries, and make ooodles of money off of it in that short term, inspite of all the negative shit that will come up trying to get them built, they'd be getting built.
It makes no business sense for a refiner to have excess capacity not being used, as there is no reward for keeping it around. The current investment market seems to revolve more around high short-term profits, vs sustained long-term overall gain. Old refineries are essentially money generators that guarantee consistent profits (as demand increases and production cannot), which also fits in with Wall Street's current mindset as well.
Well, the copy prevention schemes being used seem to be about as effective as the firstgen versions from the 80's and 90's. Instead of an install floppy disk (which copied a file to the HD in a sneaky manner), now you have to have your SecureRom CD in the drive to run the program.
When software fit on a floppy or two, things weren't all that intrusive, but they really caused people fits when HDs started to become commonplace. If your install floppy got trashed, you were SOL.
And, the biggest complainers were games players (and Lotus 1-2-3 users). Eventually, people went to other copy restriction methods (like lookup tables in user manuals, etc)., which worked OK until BBSs and other nascent dialup services got going.
Oh well.
Now we're back to the Old Days. Come ce, Come ca.