False premise. The idea that subsidies have a singular purpose is false. In the case of oil companies, subsidies also exist to encourage domestic production, i.e. to create jobs.
The Tesla, a vehicle, does not generate emissions.
If you charge it with carbon-sourced electricity, the Tesla, a vehicle, still doesn't generate emissions.
If you strap a diesel generator to the roof to run your personal electronics, the Tesla, a vehicle, still doesn't generate emissions.
If you load up the trunk with flatulent cattle, the Tesla, a vehicle, still doesn't generate emissions.
That some people have trouble parsing natural language is not Elon's problem.
There was a day when web servers were expected to do the heavy lifting instead of offloading everything to client browsers. And somehow, they were able to afford this kind of outrageous web server horsepower without inundating visitors with advertising.
Forms on webpages have been around since at least HTML 2.0, in 1995.
Or, for a cynical twist on your post:
yeah! when i want to fill in a form i want to download a script that my browser will execute in a virtual machine rather than piddle around with this html crap! hell the internet should just be replaced with untrusted executable code!
Oh wait. That already happened. Fuck you and the executable webpage you rode in on.
The notion of drones and computerized pilots scares me because it threatens that dream. Stories in which autopilots and drones are slandered make me happy.
Further confirmation for my theory that parents are the most selfish people on this planet. Thanks for almost giving a fuck about the rest of the human race. God forbid that advances in technology result in safer and cheaper air transport for everyone if it threatens your kid's chosen career.
Not exactly. Aside from the huge amount of water ice that can be found in the always-dark craters near the poles, there's also the regolith itself. NASA plans to mine the regolith for water.
Half the reason why a lunar space elevator makes sense is because of the tremendous value of having a source of water (and consequently hydrogen and oxygen for fuel/oxidizer) in a shallow gravity well.
A while back, mine were ">450mg/dL". Doctor said their lab's test range maxed out at 450, and I was somewhere above that. They wanted to put me on statins, etc., while I was still in my 20s!
Instead, I cut down my drinking, stopped eating like shit, and started exercising. Got down to 150mg/dL in 6 months. On the one hand, it's nice being healthier. On the other hand, I somewhat miss my days of extreme gluttony and sloth.
I'm in a similar boat. I thought it was seeing the flood of blood that is taken for routine bloodwork that made me white out, but getting a vaccine booster shot resulted in similar symptoms. Over the years, I found needlework more bearable if I:
a) look away. seriously.
b) think about something else. other body parts, other things entirely. and think hard!
c) inform the technician ahead of time, and lay down for the duration of the needling. most techs are very accomodating.
At the doctor's I always bring up, half in jest, that it's ridiculous how much blood they need. On TV they can sequence someone's entire genome from a single red blood cell. In medical research they can watch individual neurons firing in realtime with fMRI. But to determine if my excessive butter consumption is fucking up my HDL:LDL ratio, they need a bucket of fresh blood? This development couldn't be more appealing to me.
That being said, good luck with those damn blood thieves. I swear they only need a drop of that blood for testing and then they sell the rest on the black market.
The cost-per-test, or marginal cost, is impacted neither by the pharmaceutical company's study used to verify the accuracy of the test nor the FDA approval.
These costs are fixed costs, not marginal costs. That is, these costs do not change dependent on the number of test kits produced.
So technically, no, they don't push the cost-per-test up quite a bit. The company's desire to turn a profit is what pushes up the cost-per-test.
Our current approach to preventing the inevitable bullshit/violence that would result is unacceptable to me. Instead of allowing people to get out there and figure shit out in whatever messy way they inevitably will, we've outlawed any such attempts. We've become party to a treaty that effectively bans commercial development of extraterrestrial resources. I think this approach is a little extreme, analogous to locking everyone in their homes to prevent street crime. Sure, homesteading isn't perfect, and I agree that it will most definitely lead to problems. However, I'm not convinced that a de facto ban on development is any better.
My safe driving status should be based on what really makes for safe driving, and they haven't yet made the ODBII compliant device that monitors how alert and aware I am of the traffic around me.
Ol' Dirty Bastard's son has established compatibility guidelines?
I'm just bustin' yer balls because frequently I still make the same mistake.
ODB = Ol' Dirty Bastard
OBD = On Board Diagnostic
Suppose some aliens turned up tomorrow and claimed the Moon for themselves.
Possession is nine tenths of the law?
I see your argument, and it does appeal to me at some level. Indeed, we all helped with the first steps, and it would be nice if we had something more to show for it besides grainy footage of guys bouncing around in black&white. However, it's clear to me that we need to establish a framework for ownership of property on the moon (and elsewhere) if we want any commercial development to take place there. While I'd like to get some more out of the investment in NASA paving the way to the moon, I'm much more interested in seeing real development of the moon happen as soon as possible. If I have to forfeit any claim I may or may not have to the moon for this to happen, I'm all for it.
I have a history of posting diatribes against capitalism, against the widening inequity in the distribution of wealth, against the exploitation of the poor by the uberwealthy. I understand that commercial development of space, if undertaken the same way business ventures are undertaken on Earth, will likely exacerbate the economic problems I regularly complain about. I fully expect that peons like you and I will see a disproportionately tiny share of the benefits afforded by the exploitation of extraterrestrial resources.
I just think that getting off this rock takes priority over anything else. I'd gladly give my own life (and yours too!) if it guaranteed mankind a ticket to the stars. At some point, I can't help but see economics and preservation of the human race as two separate propositions, and the latter is to me infinitely more important than the former. If we have to suffer under some rich assholes even more than we do today in order to get off this rock, I'm still all for it. Sure, ideally it wouldn't have to be like that. Ideally we could all high-five each other in a Star Trek camaraderie into space, with nobody worrying about trite shit like profit or private ownership. But there may not be time for idealism. This is too important to be patient, be measured, and ensure we get it right the first time. We need to go, go, go before the big one hits. We need to get off our asses and move it. We as a race have incurred great increase in inequality for much less worthy causes, like, say, the industrial revolution. If factories were important enough for us to just wing it and press forward, I think the preservation of the human race is at the very least an equally valid justification.
We don't think we own the entire universe. Your hyperbole aside I would have to say that most of us have grown up from the Manifest Destiny thinking you are demonstrating.
I refer you to the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, more commonly known as the Outer Space Treaty:
The treaty explicitly forbids any government from claiming a celestial resource such as the Moon or a planet, claiming that they are the common heritage of mankind.
So now that we've established that my hyperbole is really more like a quote of the relevant treaty, and that actually none of us have grown up (sic) from the Manifest Destiny thinking that is embodied in the relevant treaty, we can move on to your other points.
Regarding classification of the initial appropriation of American land as "a migrating species" rather than "a land grab", that's really not relevant. The aboriginal people came, and they settled/developed land that was previously uninhabited, simply by virtue of being the first to do so. That they lived in harmony with their neighbors (a questionable claim) would only further demonstrate that the land was in fact appropriated by homesteading and not annexed via violent conflict. Feel free to quibble over semantics, but in the end, this initial appropriation of America meets the definition of homesteading. That it was tribes doing the homesteading, as opposed to individuals, would be analogous to corporations homesteading on the moon, as opposed to individuals.
Regarding your argument against mining the moon, it's rather absurd. The moon's mass is about 7.35e22 kg. There is 1.4e21 kg of water on the Earth (Earth is only 0.023% water, by mass). If we mined an "Earth's total water" amount of water from the moon (way, way more water than is expected to be on the moon, as you may expect, since Earth is covered in oceans and the moon is made of dry ass dust), we'd decrease its mass by a whopping 1.9%. I don't think that a reduction in tidal forces of this magnitude would be noticeable on Earth, but don't forget that this is an absolute worst case scenario. The actual effect, after robbing the moon for all of its water, would actually be orders of magnitude less than this, since there just isn't that much water on the moon. Even assuming the moon is as wet as Earth (by mass), we'd be stripping 0.023% of the moon's mass. But again, the moon isn't quite as wet as our pale blue dot, so I'd expect an effect orders of magnitude smaller than that. In a nutshell, the idea that we could "ef up the moon" by changing its mass is... lunacy.
For an interesting read about mining the moon, read up on Jerome Pearson's proposal for a Lunar Space Elevator. It really is quite sad that we're not doing this yet.
And when the indigenous people appropriated this land through homesteading, who had claim to the land before that? Are you honestly suggesting that all land has always been owned by someone since the dawn of time?
But yes, homesteading only works with unowned land. That's why I brought it up in the context of appropriating the land on the moon. Because, as you point out, the moon belongs to no one (and there are no national claims or armies to worry about). If we want ownership rights on the moon (widely believed to be a prerequisite to commercial development), then homesteading seems to be an appropriate means to bring that about.
Well, sure, I suppose it is a very arbitrary approach to the problem of appropriation of unowned property. Really, it's no better than simply holding a lottery to award parcels of land to random people. The end result would be the same: unowned property becomes owned property.
My point is that today we have a problem. There is no extraterrestrial real estate. It's not that there isn't stuff out there, it's that nobody owns it, and that nobody can own it. This prevents commercial development of space. Now, you may believe that commercial development of space is undesirable. That the last thing we need is billboards and McDonalds in space. That we belong down here, on mama Earth. Everyone's entitled to their own opinion. Conversely, there are those of us that believe that commercial development of space is our best chance at getting off this rock in any meaningful way. This isn't currently possible, due to a legal vacuum when it comes to extraterrestrial property rights. The solution to this problem is to establish ownership rights in space. Whether it's by homesteading or by lottery or by any other means, legal recognition of ownership of property is necessary for commercial development.
That being said, I feel that homesteading is the best approach here, for several reasons. One, it's how we did things on Earth, so we know that it works. Two, it seems to many people less arbitrary than a lottery (regardless of whether or not it actually is less arbitrary). Three, it's an actual proposition. That is, I'm proposing homesteading as the mechanism through which property rights can be established on the moon. You're proposing that it's a bad idea. Your proposition does not result in property rights being established on the moon.
When the ancestors of indigenous Americans crossed over the land bridge to the Americas ages ago to appropriate the newly discovered lands through homesteading, what government was willing and able to enforce it? Who were these unowned natural resources in use by? Are you really honestly suggesting that all land was always owned by someone, since the dawn of time, and that never in the history of the human race was unowned land appropriated by humans?
Slashdot Mirror
The idea of subsidies is to encourage growth.
False premise. The idea that subsidies have a singular purpose is false. In the case of oil companies, subsidies also exist to encourage domestic production, i.e. to create jobs.
The Tesla, a vehicle, does not generate emissions.
If you charge it with carbon-sourced electricity, the Tesla, a vehicle, still doesn't generate emissions.
If you strap a diesel generator to the roof to run your personal electronics, the Tesla, a vehicle, still doesn't generate emissions.
If you load up the trunk with flatulent cattle, the Tesla, a vehicle, still doesn't generate emissions.
That some people have trouble parsing natural language is not Elon's problem.
Server side scripting.
There was a day when web servers were expected to do the heavy lifting instead of offloading everything to client browsers. And somehow, they were able to afford this kind of outrageous web server horsepower without inundating visitors with advertising.
We've come a long way.
Forms on webpages have been around since at least HTML 2.0, in 1995.
Or, for a cynical twist on your post:
yeah! when i want to fill in a form i want to download a script that my browser will execute in a virtual machine rather than piddle around with this html crap! hell the internet should just be replaced with untrusted executable code!
Oh wait. That already happened. Fuck you and the executable webpage you rode in on.
The notion of drones and computerized pilots scares me because it threatens that dream. Stories in which autopilots and drones are slandered make me happy.
Further confirmation for my theory that parents are the most selfish people on this planet. Thanks for almost giving a fuck about the rest of the human race. God forbid that advances in technology result in safer and cheaper air transport for everyone if it threatens your kid's chosen career.
a heavily modified 747 Boeing uses for cargo hauling it is manufacturing process.
Okay, incorrect usage of "it's" in place of "its" is irritating enough, but expanding it to "it is"?!?!?
no water
Not exactly. Aside from the huge amount of water ice that can be found in the always-dark craters near the poles, there's also the regolith itself. NASA plans to mine the regolith for water.
Half the reason why a lunar space elevator makes sense is because of the tremendous value of having a source of water (and consequently hydrogen and oxygen for fuel/oxidizer) in a shallow gravity well.
I thought it was a Continental Ballistic Missile.
Now tell us how you really feel.
I can has espanol?
A while back, mine were ">450mg/dL". Doctor said their lab's test range maxed out at 450, and I was somewhere above that. They wanted to put me on statins, etc., while I was still in my 20s!
Instead, I cut down my drinking, stopped eating like shit, and started exercising. Got down to 150mg/dL in 6 months. On the one hand, it's nice being healthier. On the other hand, I somewhat miss my days of extreme gluttony and sloth.
In economics and finance, marginal cost is the change in the total cost that arises when the quantity produced has an increment by unity.
Are you arguing that per-unit costs are in fact average total costs, not marginal costs? That's quite the redefinition of terms...
I'm in a similar boat. I thought it was seeing the flood of blood that is taken for routine bloodwork that made me white out, but getting a vaccine booster shot resulted in similar symptoms. Over the years, I found needlework more bearable if I:
a) look away. seriously.
b) think about something else. other body parts, other things entirely. and think hard!
c) inform the technician ahead of time, and lay down for the duration of the needling. most techs are very accomodating.
At the doctor's I always bring up, half in jest, that it's ridiculous how much blood they need. On TV they can sequence someone's entire genome from a single red blood cell. In medical research they can watch individual neurons firing in realtime with fMRI. But to determine if my excessive butter consumption is fucking up my HDL:LDL ratio, they need a bucket of fresh blood? This development couldn't be more appealing to me.
That being said, good luck with those damn blood thieves. I swear they only need a drop of that blood for testing and then they sell the rest on the black market.
The cost-per-test, or marginal cost, is impacted neither by the pharmaceutical company's study used to verify the accuracy of the test nor the FDA approval.
These costs are fixed costs, not marginal costs. That is, these costs do not change dependent on the number of test kits produced.
So technically, no, they don't push the cost-per-test up quite a bit. The company's desire to turn a profit is what pushes up the cost-per-test.
Just install any Linux-based firmware like OpenWRT, dd-wrt, or tomato.
:P
Of course, you may need to upgrade to a higher quality router. Like a Linksys.
Buuuurned
Our current approach to preventing the inevitable bullshit/violence that would result is unacceptable to me. Instead of allowing people to get out there and figure shit out in whatever messy way they inevitably will, we've outlawed any such attempts. We've become party to a treaty that effectively bans commercial development of extraterrestrial resources. I think this approach is a little extreme, analogous to locking everyone in their homes to prevent street crime. Sure, homesteading isn't perfect, and I agree that it will most definitely lead to problems. However, I'm not convinced that a de facto ban on development is any better.
Someone I know has a Progressive monitor plugged into her ODB-II port. It beeps to "berate" her when she is driving "badly".
ODB = Ol' Dirty Bastard
:)
OBD = On Board Diagnostic
I make the same mistake all the time
My safe driving status should be based on what really makes for safe driving, and they haven't yet made the ODBII compliant device that monitors how alert and aware I am of the traffic around me.
Ol' Dirty Bastard's son has established compatibility guidelines?
I'm just bustin' yer balls because frequently I still make the same mistake.
ODB = Ol' Dirty Bastard
OBD = On Board Diagnostic
Taking phones/internet away from a cracker is more than sufficient to protect society
Why you gotta get all racial up in here?
Suppose some aliens turned up tomorrow and claimed the Moon for themselves.
Possession is nine tenths of the law?
I see your argument, and it does appeal to me at some level. Indeed, we all helped with the first steps, and it would be nice if we had something more to show for it besides grainy footage of guys bouncing around in black&white. However, it's clear to me that we need to establish a framework for ownership of property on the moon (and elsewhere) if we want any commercial development to take place there. While I'd like to get some more out of the investment in NASA paving the way to the moon, I'm much more interested in seeing real development of the moon happen as soon as possible. If I have to forfeit any claim I may or may not have to the moon for this to happen, I'm all for it.
Well, it seems we're on the same page after all.
I have a history of posting diatribes against capitalism, against the widening inequity in the distribution of wealth, against the exploitation of the poor by the uberwealthy. I understand that commercial development of space, if undertaken the same way business ventures are undertaken on Earth, will likely exacerbate the economic problems I regularly complain about. I fully expect that peons like you and I will see a disproportionately tiny share of the benefits afforded by the exploitation of extraterrestrial resources.
I just think that getting off this rock takes priority over anything else. I'd gladly give my own life (and yours too!) if it guaranteed mankind a ticket to the stars. At some point, I can't help but see economics and preservation of the human race as two separate propositions, and the latter is to me infinitely more important than the former. If we have to suffer under some rich assholes even more than we do today in order to get off this rock, I'm still all for it. Sure, ideally it wouldn't have to be like that. Ideally we could all high-five each other in a Star Trek camaraderie into space, with nobody worrying about trite shit like profit or private ownership. But there may not be time for idealism. This is too important to be patient, be measured, and ensure we get it right the first time. We need to go, go, go before the big one hits. We need to get off our asses and move it. We as a race have incurred great increase in inequality for much less worthy causes, like, say, the industrial revolution. If factories were important enough for us to just wing it and press forward, I think the preservation of the human race is at the very least an equally valid justification.
We don't think we own the entire universe. Your hyperbole aside I would have to say that most of us have grown up from the Manifest Destiny thinking you are demonstrating.
I refer you to the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies, more commonly known as the Outer Space Treaty:
The treaty explicitly forbids any government from claiming a celestial resource such as the Moon or a planet, claiming that they are the common heritage of mankind.
So now that we've established that my hyperbole is really more like a quote of the relevant treaty, and that actually none of us have grown up (sic) from the Manifest Destiny thinking that is embodied in the relevant treaty, we can move on to your other points.
Regarding classification of the initial appropriation of American land as "a migrating species" rather than "a land grab", that's really not relevant. The aboriginal people came, and they settled/developed land that was previously uninhabited, simply by virtue of being the first to do so. That they lived in harmony with their neighbors (a questionable claim) would only further demonstrate that the land was in fact appropriated by homesteading and not annexed via violent conflict. Feel free to quibble over semantics, but in the end, this initial appropriation of America meets the definition of homesteading. That it was tribes doing the homesteading, as opposed to individuals, would be analogous to corporations homesteading on the moon, as opposed to individuals.
Regarding your argument against mining the moon, it's rather absurd. The moon's mass is about 7.35e22 kg. There is 1.4e21 kg of water on the Earth (Earth is only 0.023% water, by mass). If we mined an "Earth's total water" amount of water from the moon (way, way more water than is expected to be on the moon, as you may expect, since Earth is covered in oceans and the moon is made of dry ass dust), we'd decrease its mass by a whopping 1.9%. I don't think that a reduction in tidal forces of this magnitude would be noticeable on Earth, but don't forget that this is an absolute worst case scenario. The actual effect, after robbing the moon for all of its water, would actually be orders of magnitude less than this, since there just isn't that much water on the moon. Even assuming the moon is as wet as Earth (by mass), we'd be stripping 0.023% of the moon's mass. But again, the moon isn't quite as wet as our pale blue dot, so I'd expect an effect orders of magnitude smaller than that. In a nutshell, the idea that we could "ef up the moon" by changing its mass is... lunacy.
For an interesting read about mining the moon, read up on Jerome Pearson's proposal for a Lunar Space Elevator. It really is quite sad that we're not doing this yet.
And when the indigenous people appropriated this land through homesteading, who had claim to the land before that? Are you honestly suggesting that all land has always been owned by someone since the dawn of time?
But yes, homesteading only works with unowned land. That's why I brought it up in the context of appropriating the land on the moon. Because, as you point out, the moon belongs to no one (and there are no national claims or armies to worry about). If we want ownership rights on the moon (widely believed to be a prerequisite to commercial development), then homesteading seems to be an appropriate means to bring that about.
Well, sure, I suppose it is a very arbitrary approach to the problem of appropriation of unowned property. Really, it's no better than simply holding a lottery to award parcels of land to random people. The end result would be the same: unowned property becomes owned property.
My point is that today we have a problem. There is no extraterrestrial real estate. It's not that there isn't stuff out there, it's that nobody owns it, and that nobody can own it. This prevents commercial development of space. Now, you may believe that commercial development of space is undesirable. That the last thing we need is billboards and McDonalds in space. That we belong down here, on mama Earth. Everyone's entitled to their own opinion. Conversely, there are those of us that believe that commercial development of space is our best chance at getting off this rock in any meaningful way. This isn't currently possible, due to a legal vacuum when it comes to extraterrestrial property rights. The solution to this problem is to establish ownership rights in space. Whether it's by homesteading or by lottery or by any other means, legal recognition of ownership of property is necessary for commercial development.
That being said, I feel that homesteading is the best approach here, for several reasons. One, it's how we did things on Earth, so we know that it works. Two, it seems to many people less arbitrary than a lottery (regardless of whether or not it actually is less arbitrary). Three, it's an actual proposition. That is, I'm proposing homesteading as the mechanism through which property rights can be established on the moon. You're proposing that it's a bad idea. Your proposition does not result in property rights being established on the moon.
When the ancestors of indigenous Americans crossed over the land bridge to the Americas ages ago to appropriate the newly discovered lands through homesteading, what government was willing and able to enforce it? Who were these unowned natural resources in use by? Are you really honestly suggesting that all land was always owned by someone, since the dawn of time, and that never in the history of the human race was unowned land appropriated by humans?