The ban on organic break pads and clutches was overturned. But since there have been a few high publicity cases in which asbestos manufacturers have been held liable for huge damages, most companies state side refuse to touch it.
Many high end imports still come with asbestos pads though, because even though they aren't as nice performance or health wise as the newer CM pads, they are extremely quiet. And you can still buy asbestos replacement pads for vehicles from the US, but it takes some digging.
I wouldn't trust them for any application that is being touted as needing 'better breaks' though. The CM pads are so much nicer if you're going to be putting the vehicle into any situation where break fade could be an issue.
Your mechanic friends are idiots, IMO. Asbestos is organic, when you get it hot enough, like spirited road driving or light track time, it will out gas, and unless you have slotted/drilled rotors, you'll wind up with significantly less breaking power when you need it the most.
They would be much better off with a Carbonfiber/Semi-metallic (CM) pad. It will last longer, stop faster, not fade, and not pose any significant health risk to them, or people exposed to their break dust.
The IT world has shifted from centralized to distributed computing and back again a number of times. Neither of which has truly dominated the entirety of the market. It is because each design has its own advantages and disadvantages.
The big disadvantages of the PC are it's price, maintenance, and 3rd party purchases. The price of PC's though, has plummeted over the last few years and longevity is increasing. Sans a monitor and printer, I can build a top end PC for under $500 today that would have been a $1000 endeavor 5 years ago, or a $2500 task in the late 90's. Maintenance is becoming easier and easier as AV software producers and MS have bundled automatic updates into the OS, so there is no more patching process, just click 'OK' and reboot once a month and you're set. 3rd party software is also relatively insignificant. Getting a full office suite is often a really cheap add on for buying a new PC, or if you want to save your pennies, OSS alternatives like Open Office will fulfill all your needs with out dropping a dime.
With those disadvantages largely nullified, it dramatically reduces consumer motivation to look for something new, something different, something that is going to require them to change their behavior or spending habits.
The disadvantages of a thin client granny machine still remain: Security, Contracts, Functionality. Since it's a thin client, all of your documents and data are stored somewhere else, which means at some point in time, someone, somewhere, other than you, is going to have access to them. Whether that person is an admin tech restoring a backup and poking around to make sure things restored correctly, a hacker looking for personal information, or an FBI agent with a warrant, it is a real threat. And depending on SaS, your data and services are only as good as the company behind the contract you signed. It was just last week that Yahoo pulled the plug on their SaS DRM music store, screwing all of their former customers out of the products they paid for. Imagine what would happen if your provider went bankrupt and downed the servers before you had a chance to get all of your tax documents stored locally? And there is still the existing limitation on functionality, because as you pointed out, there is no existing solution, nor is there any realistic solution on the horizon, to solve the bandwidth issue.
Cloud computing can work, but it is not for average consumers, nor wide spread use on the internet. There is no need for it there.
Software as a Service does have some basis for distribution to consumers, but largely it is just a way for incumbent software developers to lock in consumers so that they don't wind up running into issues like MS has with Office.
Yup, and that platform has already existed, and flopped, over and over and over and over.
I worked a number of PC-sales jobs in my younger years. These SaS machines would pop up, usually one new vendor a year, with ultra cheap web browsing machines. They took arm processors and a 15" TFT screen, or a 13" wide screen and fold out keyboard, or any number of other small designs trying to treat the PC as an appliance with a monthly contract.
It's been done before and it's failed before, many many times. The nitch market of elderly and non-computer savvy people is not large enough to sustain it. And for that market, cloud computing doesn't even mater. A modern Arm processor has all the oomph needed to handle the vast majority of this market's computing needs, and at a fraction of the price.
And besides, for $10 a month (which is the cheapest I can imagine anyone offering this type of service for), even if you get the client machine for free, you are still going to pay $360 over 3 years for service, which is not much different than what you can get a bottom end machine for, with out the on-going payments or troubles that accompany SaS.
Cloud computing may have it's uses, but replacing the Windows desktop of consumers is not one of them.
In corporate settings, maybe. One office I worked at we replaced a lot of the desktops with thin clients connected to a terminal server running in a VM. Could a cloud computing solution be useful there? possible, but again, most of the stuff that happens in an office environment, isn't processor intensive. Our user's lease management software didn't run any calculations that took more than a split second for a 1Ghz PC to figure out. Most of the latency people experienced had more to do with data retrieval and bandwidth than it did with the local PC's limitations.
But if you had a lot of people with nice machines that were all doing 3-d renderings through out the day, it might work. If you are treating each node on the network as a computing resource, sharing as much as possible but as little as necessary, you might have something. In those cases, where Jim's latest rendering is utilizing small slices off of everyone's machine to augment its own computational power, yeah, you're on to something. But that is an entirely different market (and still a nitch) than the elcheapo ganny PCs.
Ehh, Obama's plan is a $65 billion rebate, paid for by a 5 year wind fall tax on the oil industry members. That's $13 billion a year. The industry as a whole posted $1.9 Trillion in revenue and $155 Billion in profits. $13 billion represents just over 1/2 of 1% of their revenues. An impact so minor, that its effect on their profits would largely be ignored.
No, the real damage would be from the futures market, where the traders, going on their gut reaction to the government sticking their nose into the oil industry would likely bounce prices up again, even in the absence of any true effect to supply, demand, or production costs.
So while I'm not a huge proponent of the tax rebate idea, I'm not opposed to it. But I do think we need to get some regulation BACK into the futures market, preferably before any such wind fall taxation is implemented.
Who cares if they are relatively inefficient. Could a thin client browse the web, check email, play youtube videos? Sure! But why should I get my aging mother to buy a new one when her 3 year old PC is still doing just fine? What's the motivating factor? Not only will I have to motivate her to buy a new PC, but I'll also have to convince her to pay for a monthly service so that she can do all the same stuff she currently does for free. And all the documents that she has, many of which are sensitive in nature, are now going to be hosted on the internet. I'm failing to see why any post about cloud computing for consumers is tagged as anything other than "badidea;goodluckwiththat".
And for as 'relatively inefficient' as desktop PC's are, the network connection you rely on is significantly more inefficient. Sure, passing text blocks isn't a problem, even passing low resolution video only requires a few minutes of queuing. But have you ever tried playing a video game over remote desktop where instead of sending the data across the network you are sending full screen images? I'll give you a hint, even if the cloud computing is rendering 9000 frames per second, you'll be getting a max of 1 frame per second on a 19" monitor at a decent resolution.
And there in lies the rub, if you have a system that is powerful enough to play any modern graphics intensive video game, you have a machine that is more than capable of doing everything else the average consumer would do. Buying a new machine, OS, and dealing with all the pain and inconsistencies of depending on SaS is not a worth while investment.
Corporate use? Maybe. But consumer use? no way. This is not going to be the "next Windows".
Of course - there will be advantages too with an OS like that, especially for distributed computing problems.
And how many average Joe consumers do you know of that require distributed computing problems?
I mean, I'm sitting on a dual core 3.4 ghz machine with 2 gigs of memory. The hardest stuff I put it through is compiles, games, and the occasional rendering, all of which being handled at the local level perform acceptably and any gain in processing time in the 'cloud' is negated by my 1.5 Mb (cha right!) network connection.
Sure, this is great for companies/facilities that require cloud computing, but for average consumers, there is absolutely no reason to buy it. Heck, if it weren't for the security concerns and drivers, most consumers could survive quite well on Windows 98.
They run at maximum capacity because they shut down refineries when they aren't needed.
The US currently consumes over 20 Million barrels of oil a day. The EIA lists the combined output of all US refineries at just over 17 million barrels a day, which means we are importing refined fuel. The reason they shut refineries down is to convert them to winterized/standard fuel mixes at the changing of the season and for maintenance. A single refinery going down unexpectedly will have an immediate effect on gas prices at the pump as the only way to continue to meet supply and demand is to import more refined fuel. Heck, even in the scheduled down time, when switching to and from winterized fuel, you can usually expect a short term $0.05 price jump at the pump.
I disagree on your assessment that more drilling won't lower the price. I believe it will.
That's nice. How did you come to that conclusion? The oil fairy tell you? Or just going with the gut on it?
Me personally, when it comes to the future of transportation fueling, I'll take the word of people who's job it is to monitor and determine such things. Following the recommendations of the Department of Energy http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/otheranalysis/ongr.html opening up the continental shelf to drilling would provide an almost negligible benefit by 2030. This study also assumes that the lifting of the federal ban on drilling in these areas would be followed by the States lifting their own bans, which, in the case of California, will not happen.
So, go with your gut if you like, I'll stick to the scientists point of view.
$400 billion in revenue, $33 billion in taxes, $11 billion in profits.
Note sure where you got $400 billion from, all accounts I've seen put Exxon's revenue right around $100 Billion for the last quarter, putting the profit margin at just over 9%. Still, not a record breaking profit margin. But due to their size, they don't need huge margins to literally, make billions. I don't have any problem with them making billions either. I'm just saying that if they have an existing drilling schedule that is making them $1500 a second, why would they risk their stock value on risky leases?
Again, they are not evil, the are corporations, they have no moral code, they have only their obligation to the share holders and the limitations and regulations placed upon them by the government. That doesn't make them evil, but it may put them into positions that do not match the opinions of many people who are not stock holders.
Just a heads up, EnergyTomorrow is run by the American Petroleum Institute (API). The same company that marketed the 'uncertainties in climate science' in opposition to global warming. The same company that represent the oil industry as a whole. The same company that spent $4 million lobbying our federal government last year.
I'm not saying that a trade group for the oil industry should not be taken seriously, just that it should be taken with a grain of salt. Their FAQ is pretty straight forward, but no where on that page does it say that in the existing millions of acres of leases that they have that there is no commercially viable oil or natural gas, as the parent appeared to be implying.
The CNN story describe what my expectation of the situation is. There are off limit drill sites that present a lower financial risk to the corporations. For the purpose of increasing market cap it is in their best interests to lobby the government to allow them into those financially safer properties than it is to invest in longer term projects for drilling in more difficult to reach locations.
We went down some this year, and I suspect we may be able to squeeze down a little more.
Put gas at $5 tomorrow and you will see a LOT more squeezing. Heck, put it at $6 and you'll see people cramming into VW bugs like a pile of circus clowns. As transportation costs increase, people will adjust. People aren't just going to stop going to work and the grocery, people aren't going to lay down and die just because it is expensive to drive. People will turn to their neighbors, friends, and local municipalities for alternative means of transportation. Will it be comfortable? hell no. Would civilization as we know it continue on? yes.
oil is a good stopgap because we already know what we're doing with it.
I agree entirely! Oil is an excellent stopgap. But at this point, we have to treat it like a stopgap and not a long term solution. Reduction of use today and the continued promotion of alternative fuels are IMO the best way to move from this stopgap to a feasible long term solution. Oil will always play some role in fueling America, but we need to reduce the prominence of that role so that its changes in costs have a largely insignificant impact on the economy of the country. Drilling for more oil will not do so.
I'm stating that what you're suggesting cannot - and won't be - enough.
Absolutely, conservation by itself is not a solution. There is a finite amount of oil available in the world, and no matter how much we conserve, at some point, it will be gone. Conservation is the key though to get oil to last us for a sufficient period of time to get more electric, fuel cell, and bio diesel fueled vehicles on the road.
Why do people keep implying that I said they were "evil"?
They are corporations, they have no moral code, they are not sentient, they are not living, they can not be "evil" any more than a grain of sand can be evil.
Corporations are responsible to their share holders, specifically to increase the value of those shares. They can do so by increasing assets, reducing liabilities, and overall improving their market cap.
Lobbying for the green light to survey and drill in currently forbidden areas doesn't mean that they don't have access to other areas, it just means that they feel that they can get at the oil with less liability in those locations, and thus, improve their market cap. And if they can't get into those low liability areas, they already have an extremely profitable production facility in place, sure, their Q2 estimates were a bit off, which hurt them on wall street, but a slight adjustment to their Q3 forecasts and they'll continue on with out worry.
No one is being evil, they are being capitalists, which is fine. Me, I'll be a capitalist as well and look for alternative and cheaper competitive solutions. The biggie, which I've already stated, is a slight change in behavior. Less miles driven means I'm paying less for fuel, and the reduction of fuel consumption has already caused the price at the pump to drop.
Which gets us back to the topic, why take the risks for wait for a long term possibility by opening up more drilling leases when we already have sufficient crude oil to saturate our refining capacity and a slight change in driving behavior has already proven effective at reducing gas prices at the pump?
No, they have exploration leases on millions of acres. There's no guarantee those acres have any oil. On the other hand, there are places already known to have proven reserves of oil and natural gas that are off-limits to drilling.
Well then, I guess they should get to work looking for oil in those millions of acres they have and stop wasting time looking for oil in places where they don't have leases while us consumers suffer their profits.
It's a moot point anyway. Even if we sign over ANWAR and the California coast (neither of which would actually go through even with the GOP bill), by the time they start producing crud oil from it, the growth of demand in China will have already out paced it.
Do you REALLY think that those "evil" oil companies just want to be mean to everyone and run rampant and pillage? They're out to make the most cost-effective dollar by drilling for oil.
I don't think they are evil. I think they are corporations. As a corporation, they don't have any moral alignment. What they have is a legally binding obligation to their share holders to increase the value of the shares. That's it.
They are already producing enough crude oil to keep the US's refining capacity maxed out. So producing more crud oil will not increase supply with out additional refineries, which are damn near impossible to build due to the whole 'Not in my back yard' issue.
The price of oil has three main factors that I know of: 1) Supply and Demand, with China's economic explosion, they are bidding against the US for a lot of the world oil market that we used to take for granted. 2) Speculators, these futures investors cause the price of crude to bounce around like a roller coaster. Someone in Venezuela farts and they'll bet on oil prices increasing, and since they all bet on oil prices increasing, it increases. 3) Correction of an artificially low price. Gas has been priced artificially low for quite a while now, some amount of the sudden rise is just due to the correction of fuel prices due to inflation and market trends.
Corrections there isn't much to do for, we enjoyed cheep gas for a long time and eventually we knew it would have to balance out.
Speculators are easy to remove from the mix, a simple line of regulation from Congress could do it, unfortunately, the GOP and Bush have worked hard at preventing such a measure.
Supply and demand, we have two options for. First, we have the 'drill more' plan. Drilling more requires us to depend on companies that are making billions of dollars in profit with out drilling, to drill for us. Drilling more requires us to wait for years before the first drop of oil makes it from the ground to the pump. Drilling requires us to continue paying an increasing amount for oil because by the time that oil hits the market, the demand from China will have already out stripped it. The other option is to reduce our demand. In Q2 2008 commuters in the US drop 10 billion less miles than they did in Q2 2007, the net result? A drop of over $0.30 in the price of gas at the pump.
To go further on the risks of depending on the oil companies to drill more, as we know, their only responsibility is to the share holder. By acquiring more leases for drilling, they are increasing their assets, just by having that land in their portfolio it increases the market cap of the company which will likely lead to an increase in their share value. They don't even have to look at the land in order to increase the value of their stocks, which is after all, the corporations primary goal.
TL;DR version: Drilling = unlikely to do squat for consumers ever, Speculators = not helping anything, reduced consumption = win.
What alternative to drilling is project to return more, faster?
Reduced consumption. Over Q2 2008 US commuters drove ~10 BILLION less miles than they did in Q2 2007. Net result: Gas is down over $0.30 after 3 months.
So lets see, driving less has proven to reduce the price of gas almost immediately, OR we could open new lands for drilling, which would require a company that is currently making $11 BILLION a quarter due to high gas prices, to survey, construct, and ship more oil to refineries that are already running at over 95% capacity... So we wait for years for them to find the oil, find a suitable place to drill to the oil, build a drilling structure, build a pipe way to get the oil to somewhere useful, and increase refinery capacity, so that they can increase supply, which will result in lower prices and less profit for them while increasing their risks and liabilities for oil-based natural disasters.....
Hmm, yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath on that one. There is no motivation for oil companies to drill in them unless their existing resources are running out. And seeing as how we are not experiencing shortages, the odds of that happening any time soon is next to nil.
They already have millions of leased acres ready for drilling, why don't they just utilize those resources instead of gaining leases on more land that they wont be able to drill for another 5-15 years?
Oh that's right, Exxon-Mobile just turned an $11 BILLION dollar profit in the last quarter.
The off shore drilling package from the GOP is nothing more than pandering to the uninformed masses while ensuring campaign financing from companies of the most profitable industry in the history of the United States.
Actually, he would be tried, there would be an appeal, a new trial, another appeal, an appeal of the appeal, a sentencing, and appeal of the sentencing, and appeal of the appeal to the sentencing, an appeal to the SCOTUS, a lobbying effort at the state level to ban execution, a lobbying effort at the federal level to ban execution, pleas to the Governor and President to get his execution stayed, etc...
So that eventually, after 20+ years and millions upon millions of tax payer dollars are wasted, he might get executed.
It's cheaper just to toss violent offenders into jail and lock them up for the rest of their natural lives.
A year ago I was working on a PDA based Media PC controller. I could, from work, on my wifi-enabled PDA, pull up the week's line up for all of my local cable channels, set up reminders, flag shows for recording, change the media PC's channel, start up DVD's, change the volume, etc... on the media PC sitting in my living room.
But what I really wanted was a reliable and LEGAL way to download content. Sure, I'll pay $3 to rent a movie with a 72-hour DRM on it. Heck, I used to pay $3-5 to rent movies off of Charter's on demand system. If a movie is worth watching twice, I'll go buy it, if not, I'll rent it for a night, enjoy the show, and not clutter up my house with yet another DVD that I'm not going to watch. I'm fine with that, so long as it plays with out difficulty, and allows ample time to see the movie. But, at the time, there was no functional way to achieve this.
If this new service offers that opportunity, even if it is just a standardized public listing, I'm all for it. Open up an API and let us integrate it into other systems.
Slashdot Mirror
The ban on organic break pads and clutches was overturned. But since there have been a few high publicity cases in which asbestos manufacturers have been held liable for huge damages, most companies state side refuse to touch it.
Many high end imports still come with asbestos pads though, because even though they aren't as nice performance or health wise as the newer CM pads, they are extremely quiet. And you can still buy asbestos replacement pads for vehicles from the US, but it takes some digging.
I wouldn't trust them for any application that is being touted as needing 'better breaks' though. The CM pads are so much nicer if you're going to be putting the vehicle into any situation where break fade could be an issue.
-Rick
Your mechanic friends are idiots, IMO. Asbestos is organic, when you get it hot enough, like spirited road driving or light track time, it will out gas, and unless you have slotted/drilled rotors, you'll wind up with significantly less breaking power when you need it the most.
They would be much better off with a Carbonfiber/Semi-metallic (CM) pad. It will last longer, stop faster, not fade, and not pose any significant health risk to them, or people exposed to their break dust.
-Rick
Then again... being a world wide recognized brand like RadioHead probably didn't hurt either.
'Sailor Bob and the Jim-Bo Band' might have a harder time generating revenue and ticket sales based on a sales campaign similar to Radio Head's.
-Rick
PS: The use of the word "Brand" was on purpose. All other typo's, spelling, and grammatical errors are accidental.
I disagree.
The IT world has shifted from centralized to distributed computing and back again a number of times. Neither of which has truly dominated the entirety of the market. It is because each design has its own advantages and disadvantages.
The big disadvantages of the PC are it's price, maintenance, and 3rd party purchases. The price of PC's though, has plummeted over the last few years and longevity is increasing. Sans a monitor and printer, I can build a top end PC for under $500 today that would have been a $1000 endeavor 5 years ago, or a $2500 task in the late 90's. Maintenance is becoming easier and easier as AV software producers and MS have bundled automatic updates into the OS, so there is no more patching process, just click 'OK' and reboot once a month and you're set. 3rd party software is also relatively insignificant. Getting a full office suite is often a really cheap add on for buying a new PC, or if you want to save your pennies, OSS alternatives like Open Office will fulfill all your needs with out dropping a dime.
With those disadvantages largely nullified, it dramatically reduces consumer motivation to look for something new, something different, something that is going to require them to change their behavior or spending habits.
The disadvantages of a thin client granny machine still remain: Security, Contracts, Functionality. Since it's a thin client, all of your documents and data are stored somewhere else, which means at some point in time, someone, somewhere, other than you, is going to have access to them. Whether that person is an admin tech restoring a backup and poking around to make sure things restored correctly, a hacker looking for personal information, or an FBI agent with a warrant, it is a real threat. And depending on SaS, your data and services are only as good as the company behind the contract you signed. It was just last week that Yahoo pulled the plug on their SaS DRM music store, screwing all of their former customers out of the products they paid for. Imagine what would happen if your provider went bankrupt and downed the servers before you had a chance to get all of your tax documents stored locally? And there is still the existing limitation on functionality, because as you pointed out, there is no existing solution, nor is there any realistic solution on the horizon, to solve the bandwidth issue.
Cloud computing can work, but it is not for average consumers, nor wide spread use on the internet. There is no need for it there.
Software as a Service does have some basis for distribution to consumers, but largely it is just a way for incumbent software developers to lock in consumers so that they don't wind up running into issues like MS has with Office.
-Rick
Yup, and that platform has already existed, and flopped, over and over and over and over.
I worked a number of PC-sales jobs in my younger years. These SaS machines would pop up, usually one new vendor a year, with ultra cheap web browsing machines. They took arm processors and a 15" TFT screen, or a 13" wide screen and fold out keyboard, or any number of other small designs trying to treat the PC as an appliance with a monthly contract.
It's been done before and it's failed before, many many times. The nitch market of elderly and non-computer savvy people is not large enough to sustain it. And for that market, cloud computing doesn't even mater. A modern Arm processor has all the oomph needed to handle the vast majority of this market's computing needs, and at a fraction of the price.
And besides, for $10 a month (which is the cheapest I can imagine anyone offering this type of service for), even if you get the client machine for free, you are still going to pay $360 over 3 years for service, which is not much different than what you can get a bottom end machine for, with out the on-going payments or troubles that accompany SaS.
Cloud computing may have it's uses, but replacing the Windows desktop of consumers is not one of them.
In corporate settings, maybe. One office I worked at we replaced a lot of the desktops with thin clients connected to a terminal server running in a VM. Could a cloud computing solution be useful there? possible, but again, most of the stuff that happens in an office environment, isn't processor intensive. Our user's lease management software didn't run any calculations that took more than a split second for a 1Ghz PC to figure out. Most of the latency people experienced had more to do with data retrieval and bandwidth than it did with the local PC's limitations.
But if you had a lot of people with nice machines that were all doing 3-d renderings through out the day, it might work. If you are treating each node on the network as a computing resource, sharing as much as possible but as little as necessary, you might have something. In those cases, where Jim's latest rendering is utilizing small slices off of everyone's machine to augment its own computational power, yeah, you're on to something. But that is an entirely different market (and still a nitch) than the elcheapo ganny PCs.
-Rick
Ehh, Obama's plan is a $65 billion rebate, paid for by a 5 year wind fall tax on the oil industry members. That's $13 billion a year. The industry as a whole posted $1.9 Trillion in revenue and $155 Billion in profits. $13 billion represents just over 1/2 of 1% of their revenues. An impact so minor, that its effect on their profits would largely be ignored.
No, the real damage would be from the futures market, where the traders, going on their gut reaction to the government sticking their nose into the oil industry would likely bounce prices up again, even in the absence of any true effect to supply, demand, or production costs.
So while I'm not a huge proponent of the tax rebate idea, I'm not opposed to it. But I do think we need to get some regulation BACK into the futures market, preferably before any such wind fall taxation is implemented.
-Rick
Who cares if they are relatively inefficient. Could a thin client browse the web, check email, play youtube videos? Sure! But why should I get my aging mother to buy a new one when her 3 year old PC is still doing just fine? What's the motivating factor? Not only will I have to motivate her to buy a new PC, but I'll also have to convince her to pay for a monthly service so that she can do all the same stuff she currently does for free. And all the documents that she has, many of which are sensitive in nature, are now going to be hosted on the internet. I'm failing to see why any post about cloud computing for consumers is tagged as anything other than "badidea;goodluckwiththat".
And for as 'relatively inefficient' as desktop PC's are, the network connection you rely on is significantly more inefficient. Sure, passing text blocks isn't a problem, even passing low resolution video only requires a few minutes of queuing. But have you ever tried playing a video game over remote desktop where instead of sending the data across the network you are sending full screen images? I'll give you a hint, even if the cloud computing is rendering 9000 frames per second, you'll be getting a max of 1 frame per second on a 19" monitor at a decent resolution.
And there in lies the rub, if you have a system that is powerful enough to play any modern graphics intensive video game, you have a machine that is more than capable of doing everything else the average consumer would do. Buying a new machine, OS, and dealing with all the pain and inconsistencies of depending on SaS is not a worth while investment.
Corporate use? Maybe. But consumer use? no way. This is not going to be the "next Windows".
-Rick
Of course - there will be advantages too with an OS like that, especially for distributed computing problems.
And how many average Joe consumers do you know of that require distributed computing problems?
I mean, I'm sitting on a dual core 3.4 ghz machine with 2 gigs of memory. The hardest stuff I put it through is compiles, games, and the occasional rendering, all of which being handled at the local level perform acceptably and any gain in processing time in the 'cloud' is negated by my 1.5 Mb (cha right!) network connection.
Sure, this is great for companies/facilities that require cloud computing, but for average consumers, there is absolutely no reason to buy it. Heck, if it weren't for the security concerns and drivers, most consumers could survive quite well on Windows 98.
-Rick
The WMV codecs are included in the package he was talking about. The reason to supply MPEG is simple: that's what people use.
-Rick
I am intrigued by your comment and would like to hear more. Have any recommended reading?
-Rick
They run at maximum capacity because they shut down refineries when they aren't needed.
The US currently consumes over 20 Million barrels of oil a day. The EIA lists the combined output of all US refineries at just over 17 million barrels a day, which means we are importing refined fuel. The reason they shut refineries down is to convert them to winterized/standard fuel mixes at the changing of the season and for maintenance. A single refinery going down unexpectedly will have an immediate effect on gas prices at the pump as the only way to continue to meet supply and demand is to import more refined fuel. Heck, even in the scheduled down time, when switching to and from winterized fuel, you can usually expect a short term $0.05 price jump at the pump.
I disagree on your assessment that more drilling won't lower the price. I believe it will.
That's nice. How did you come to that conclusion? The oil fairy tell you? Or just going with the gut on it?
Me personally, when it comes to the future of transportation fueling, I'll take the word of people who's job it is to monitor and determine such things. Following the recommendations of the Department of Energy http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/otheranalysis/ongr.html opening up the continental shelf to drilling would provide an almost negligible benefit by 2030. This study also assumes that the lifting of the federal ban on drilling in these areas would be followed by the States lifting their own bans, which, in the case of California, will not happen.
So, go with your gut if you like, I'll stick to the scientists point of view.
-Rick
The same people who are paying for the $3 Trillion dollar war in Iraq?
-Rick
What makes them evil?
Corporations CAN NOT BE EVIL.
Period.
Done.
End of story.
Fin.
$400 billion in revenue, $33 billion in taxes, $11 billion in profits.
Note sure where you got $400 billion from, all accounts I've seen put Exxon's revenue right around $100 Billion for the last quarter, putting the profit margin at just over 9%. Still, not a record breaking profit margin. But due to their size, they don't need huge margins to literally, make billions. I don't have any problem with them making billions either. I'm just saying that if they have an existing drilling schedule that is making them $1500 a second, why would they risk their stock value on risky leases?
Again, they are not evil, the are corporations, they have no moral code, they have only their obligation to the share holders and the limitations and regulations placed upon them by the government. That doesn't make them evil, but it may put them into positions that do not match the opinions of many people who are not stock holders.
-Rick
Just a heads up, EnergyTomorrow is run by the American Petroleum Institute (API). The same company that marketed the 'uncertainties in climate science' in opposition to global warming. The same company that represent the oil industry as a whole. The same company that spent $4 million lobbying our federal government last year.
I'm not saying that a trade group for the oil industry should not be taken seriously, just that it should be taken with a grain of salt. Their FAQ is pretty straight forward, but no where on that page does it say that in the existing millions of acres of leases that they have that there is no commercially viable oil or natural gas, as the parent appeared to be implying.
The CNN story describe what my expectation of the situation is. There are off limit drill sites that present a lower financial risk to the corporations. For the purpose of increasing market cap it is in their best interests to lobby the government to allow them into those financially safer properties than it is to invest in longer term projects for drilling in more difficult to reach locations.
-Rick
We went down some this year, and I suspect we may be able to squeeze down a little more.
Put gas at $5 tomorrow and you will see a LOT more squeezing. Heck, put it at $6 and you'll see people cramming into VW bugs like a pile of circus clowns. As transportation costs increase, people will adjust. People aren't just going to stop going to work and the grocery, people aren't going to lay down and die just because it is expensive to drive. People will turn to their neighbors, friends, and local municipalities for alternative means of transportation. Will it be comfortable? hell no. Would civilization as we know it continue on? yes.
oil is a good stopgap because we already know what we're doing with it.
I agree entirely! Oil is an excellent stopgap. But at this point, we have to treat it like a stopgap and not a long term solution. Reduction of use today and the continued promotion of alternative fuels are IMO the best way to move from this stopgap to a feasible long term solution. Oil will always play some role in fueling America, but we need to reduce the prominence of that role so that its changes in costs have a largely insignificant impact on the economy of the country. Drilling for more oil will not do so.
I'm stating that what you're suggesting cannot - and won't be - enough.
Absolutely, conservation by itself is not a solution. There is a finite amount of oil available in the world, and no matter how much we conserve, at some point, it will be gone. Conservation is the key though to get oil to last us for a sufficient period of time to get more electric, fuel cell, and bio diesel fueled vehicles on the road.
-Rick
Why do people keep implying that I said they were "evil"?
They are corporations, they have no moral code, they are not sentient, they are not living, they can not be "evil" any more than a grain of sand can be evil.
Corporations are responsible to their share holders, specifically to increase the value of those shares. They can do so by increasing assets, reducing liabilities, and overall improving their market cap.
Lobbying for the green light to survey and drill in currently forbidden areas doesn't mean that they don't have access to other areas, it just means that they feel that they can get at the oil with less liability in those locations, and thus, improve their market cap. And if they can't get into those low liability areas, they already have an extremely profitable production facility in place, sure, their Q2 estimates were a bit off, which hurt them on wall street, but a slight adjustment to their Q3 forecasts and they'll continue on with out worry.
No one is being evil, they are being capitalists, which is fine. Me, I'll be a capitalist as well and look for alternative and cheaper competitive solutions. The biggie, which I've already stated, is a slight change in behavior. Less miles driven means I'm paying less for fuel, and the reduction of fuel consumption has already caused the price at the pump to drop.
Which gets us back to the topic, why take the risks for wait for a long term possibility by opening up more drilling leases when we already have sufficient crude oil to saturate our refining capacity and a slight change in driving behavior has already proven effective at reducing gas prices at the pump?
-Rick
No, they have exploration leases on millions of acres. There's no guarantee those acres have any oil. On the other hand, there are places already known to have proven reserves of oil and natural gas that are off-limits to drilling.
Well then, I guess they should get to work looking for oil in those millions of acres they have and stop wasting time looking for oil in places where they don't have leases while us consumers suffer their profits.
It's a moot point anyway. Even if we sign over ANWAR and the California coast (neither of which would actually go through even with the GOP bill), by the time they start producing crud oil from it, the growth of demand in China will have already out paced it.
-Rick
After almost $120 billion in revenue, what's your point?
-Rick
Do you REALLY think that those "evil" oil companies just want to be mean to everyone and run rampant and pillage? They're out to make the most cost-effective dollar by drilling for oil.
I don't think they are evil. I think they are corporations. As a corporation, they don't have any moral alignment. What they have is a legally binding obligation to their share holders to increase the value of the shares. That's it.
They are already producing enough crude oil to keep the US's refining capacity maxed out. So producing more crud oil will not increase supply with out additional refineries, which are damn near impossible to build due to the whole 'Not in my back yard' issue.
The price of oil has three main factors that I know of:
1) Supply and Demand, with China's economic explosion, they are bidding against the US for a lot of the world oil market that we used to take for granted.
2) Speculators, these futures investors cause the price of crude to bounce around like a roller coaster. Someone in Venezuela farts and they'll bet on oil prices increasing, and since they all bet on oil prices increasing, it increases.
3) Correction of an artificially low price. Gas has been priced artificially low for quite a while now, some amount of the sudden rise is just due to the correction of fuel prices due to inflation and market trends.
Corrections there isn't much to do for, we enjoyed cheep gas for a long time and eventually we knew it would have to balance out.
Speculators are easy to remove from the mix, a simple line of regulation from Congress could do it, unfortunately, the GOP and Bush have worked hard at preventing such a measure.
Supply and demand, we have two options for. First, we have the 'drill more' plan. Drilling more requires us to depend on companies that are making billions of dollars in profit with out drilling, to drill for us. Drilling more requires us to wait for years before the first drop of oil makes it from the ground to the pump. Drilling requires us to continue paying an increasing amount for oil because by the time that oil hits the market, the demand from China will have already out stripped it. The other option is to reduce our demand. In Q2 2008 commuters in the US drop 10 billion less miles than they did in Q2 2007, the net result? A drop of over $0.30 in the price of gas at the pump.
To go further on the risks of depending on the oil companies to drill more, as we know, their only responsibility is to the share holder. By acquiring more leases for drilling, they are increasing their assets, just by having that land in their portfolio it increases the market cap of the company which will likely lead to an increase in their share value. They don't even have to look at the land in order to increase the value of their stocks, which is after all, the corporations primary goal.
TL;DR version: Drilling = unlikely to do squat for consumers ever, Speculators = not helping anything, reduced consumption = win.
-Rick
What alternative to drilling is project to return more, faster?
Reduced consumption. Over Q2 2008 US commuters drove ~10 BILLION less miles than they did in Q2 2007. Net result: Gas is down over $0.30 after 3 months.
So lets see, driving less has proven to reduce the price of gas almost immediately, OR we could open new lands for drilling, which would require a company that is currently making $11 BILLION a quarter due to high gas prices, to survey, construct, and ship more oil to refineries that are already running at over 95% capacity... So we wait for years for them to find the oil, find a suitable place to drill to the oil, build a drilling structure, build a pipe way to get the oil to somewhere useful, and increase refinery capacity, so that they can increase supply, which will result in lower prices and less profit for them while increasing their risks and liabilities for oil-based natural disasters.....
Hmm, yeah, I wouldn't hold my breath on that one. There is no motivation for oil companies to drill in them unless their existing resources are running out. And seeing as how we are not experiencing shortages, the odds of that happening any time soon is next to nil.
-Rick
Do you have any sources to back up that statement?
-Rick
They already have millions of leased acres ready for drilling, why don't they just utilize those resources instead of gaining leases on more land that they wont be able to drill for another 5-15 years?
Oh that's right, Exxon-Mobile just turned an $11 BILLION dollar profit in the last quarter.
The off shore drilling package from the GOP is nothing more than pandering to the uninformed masses while ensuring campaign financing from companies of the most profitable industry in the history of the United States.
-Rick
Actually, he would be tried, there would be an appeal, a new trial, another appeal, an appeal of the appeal, a sentencing, and appeal of the sentencing, and appeal of the appeal to the sentencing, an appeal to the SCOTUS, a lobbying effort at the state level to ban execution, a lobbying effort at the federal level to ban execution, pleas to the Governor and President to get his execution stayed, etc...
So that eventually, after 20+ years and millions upon millions of tax payer dollars are wasted, he might get executed.
It's cheaper just to toss violent offenders into jail and lock them up for the rest of their natural lives.
-Rick
Not that I'm defending Vista, but KDE isn't an operating system.
Using a KDE release to rag on Vista's stability is like using a new product line from BF Goodwrench to rag on Ford Explorers.
I would say though, that KDE appears to kick GDI+'s ass. I haven't played around with KDE 4 or Aero enough to make such a comparison though.
-Rick
A year ago I was working on a PDA based Media PC controller. I could, from work, on my wifi-enabled PDA, pull up the week's line up for all of my local cable channels, set up reminders, flag shows for recording, change the media PC's channel, start up DVD's, change the volume, etc... on the media PC sitting in my living room.
But what I really wanted was a reliable and LEGAL way to download content. Sure, I'll pay $3 to rent a movie with a 72-hour DRM on it. Heck, I used to pay $3-5 to rent movies off of Charter's on demand system. If a movie is worth watching twice, I'll go buy it, if not, I'll rent it for a night, enjoy the show, and not clutter up my house with yet another DVD that I'm not going to watch. I'm fine with that, so long as it plays with out difficulty, and allows ample time to see the movie. But, at the time, there was no functional way to achieve this.
If this new service offers that opportunity, even if it is just a standardized public listing, I'm all for it. Open up an API and let us integrate it into other systems.
-Rick