Just because a legitimate, completely truthful opinion angers some, it does not make the opinion "flamebait".
Words like "flamebait" and "troll" are most often used seriously by those who are trying to incite trouble amongst people who are pointing out real, solid facts.
He pays almost no heed to the nearly diametrically opposed approach to security taken by Apple compared to Microsoft, and writes off the lack of viruses on market share.
That is either complete ignorance or a blatant troll. Someone who writes columns on IT should at the very least know better.
Macs USED to have viruses. They changed their approach years ago, and now have all but eliminated them, and their prognosis for spreading is pretty limited too.
Microsoft could very easily engineer this approach into the next version of Windows. And kill a billion dollar anti-virus industry. But they won't, simply because people are going to buy Windows whether it is susceptible to viruses or not.
A great virus story. A friend at work had a virus on his Windows laptop. He had the sys admin wipe it, and re-install Windows. Then he had to get SP1 and SP2. In the process of downloading those, he got re-infected. So, the sys admin pulled out a hardware firewall, installed a second time, and was actually able to upgrade the service packs without being infected.
If Microsoft shipped their OS with no ports open by default, and forced users to act with limited permissions, 99.9% of all Windows virus activity would cease. This is the critical point the author missed, either out of sheer ignorance or because he is a blatant troll.
In calling him a troll you can really give him the benefit of the doubt.
Remember, Mac OS X is often targetted towards more inexperienced users, or those who just want a system that works. For the most part, that is true of Mac OS X. It does often just work. But likewise, it is necessary to keep it updated.
Now, he isn't a "troll" for pointing out that very real, very serious fact. Sure, it might have angered some people, but that's not his fault in any way.
He is either an ingorant fool or a troll, take your pick.
Last time I checked, nearly every UNIX vulnerability was the result of attacks through open ports, including http ports via php attacks, sendmail, BIND, and so on.
Mac OS X is a Unix that ships with no open ports, because it is principally a CLIENT operating system, not a SERVER operating system.
Windows has made an entire industry out of making a CLIENT OS insecure by default. However, it is not so tough to make a CLIENT OS incredibly secure by default, in the way that Apple has done. And it is not because the software has no bugs. It is not because the programming is perfect. It is because the users operate with limited permissions, AND THERE ARE NO OPEN PORTS!
None of this is to say there can never be a virus. Of course there can. But just as a virus spreads much faster in the 2 year old daycare class than in the adult office, Macs will remain relatively immune and slow to spread viruses compared to Windows.
It would be more appropriate to compare a distribution of linux to a Windows install, and not linux in general. Because linux in general spans the spectrum on open ports at install. Debian, however, installs with no open ports. A nice thing to do is run the netstat command to see which ports are listening. My Mac OS X machine shows no system open ports. I don't know why you are running a name server, maybe it is a local caching dns only open at 127.0.0.1?
My Debian linux box shows no open ports either, except those I enabled. I like running a name server on it with djbdns b/c I know there is no worry about that port, and it speeds up the internet.
And in general, if a port is open and you don't know why, close it. Or risk having to learn the hard way. This is a great rule of thumb for Windows, linux, and Mac alike. One remote root can eat an entire workday at an unpredictable time.
The differences between Windows and Mac wrt security extend far deeper than that.
Windows ships with ports open for non-essential services, has effectively no firewall, and encourages users to act with permissions that allow them to access every file on the system.
Mac OS X ships with no ports open at all, has a usable firewall, and encourages users to act with only as many permissions as are necessary to get the job done.
That's not to say Mac viruses will never happen, because they will, but the architecture of security into the system make it a far far far safer place.
Disclaimer: I'm a UNIX user who uses a Mac because I want a good shell and I hate lockups. I also use Windows when dragged kicking and screaming into it, but I shut off all non-essential services, and ActiveX, and buy a cheapo NAT firewall device before I connect it to anything. And I use Firefox unless I HAVE to use IE. Viruses cost WAY WAY too much in the workplace not to be safe by default.
Works like a charm and they're not that expensive. The only upgrade would be if they did a buckling spring version but that's probably too much to hope for.
Unicomp now manufactures the old IBM "clicky" keyboards, at pckeyboards.com for around $50.
Other keyboards that use mechanical keyswitchs are the SmartBoard, a split keyboard, and a "Lil Big Board", a reduced number of keys keyboard. Both available at datadesktech.com for around $80. Both use mechanical keyswitches that are less noisy than the IBM ones. The Smartboard keyswitches are additionally lower force and to me feel a lot better.
But the biggest difference come from going to a keyswitch keyboard instead of a capacitive dome keyboard. Happy fingers.
Unicomp make the original IBM clicky keyboards, for $50 or so. pckeyboards.com
Darwin Keyboards makes the Smartboard, available through Datadesktech.com. It features a lighter mechanical keyswitch than the IBM keyboards, a split key layout, and wider keys for your pinky fingers. Very nice to type on, although I do not like the split keyboards in general. But these are the best keyswitchs available bar none.
Datadesktech.com also sells the "lil big board" for $80, a mechanical keyswitch keyboard that is downsized by using fewer keys. This is probably a good choice for the original query - a good smaller keyboard.
AFAICT these are the only mechanical keyswitch keyboards available. Mechanical keyswitches just plain rule, it is a shame all the computer companies shaft you by using capacitive dome keyboards to cut on costs (they cost much much less). If you type a lot at work I highly recommend checking out some mechanical keyswitch boards. I get them on the machines I use most.
There is no longer a resolution edge for film. It is about dynamic range and color matching...for some reason digitals all are a little too red and not enough blue...and they cannot match the dynamic range of film...but that is not going to save them. 35 mm film is dead.
Two things to consider. First of all, this is a Jobs Keynote, he wants to announce the newest slickest cutting-edge-est Apple products. So, he focusses on the high end stuff. Look - we've raised our high end by using dual processor Intel chips and blown the doors off all old specs.
He was saying to his people "Look, our machines will finally be able to run Java without choking for years. This will enable us to make bloatier and bloatier iMovie and iTunes that will force anyone on older hardware to upgrade. It'll be like the 90s again!"
Reality is Mac has always had products priced higher than WinTel and outmarketed them with better cleaner interfaces and especially more aesthetically pleasing products.
Probably a new Mac mini and iMac will come out too, probably Jobs will raise the specs and keep the pricepoint the same. It's the Apple way. They market to people who are proud of their Apple products, not people who try to get work done on a budget.
For some reason, prions seem to like to develop when you eat the nervous tissue of your own species.
Prions arise by abnormal folding of normal proteins.
They auto-catalyze- - that is, presence of SOME prions will cause more to develop.
So, if you feed a species CNS tissue from the same species, be it cow, sheep, human, etc, it will increase the chances of prion disease development many-fold.
There's still some issue with how well it spreads to other species. I prefer not to eat mammalian brains, although pigs seem not to transfer to humans for those who like it.
And the whole discussion on cannabilism, seems to revolve around eating the CNS tissue of your own (or similar) species. Eating muscle, liver, fat, heart, etc, confer no particular risk. Providing they are well cooked, breaded, fried, and served with gravy.
I went and read one of the refs, the other was inaccessible.
The arguments were that the one wind turbine could produce the energy required to make them in 6.8 months, and then produced energy for a long time thereafter. Makes sense.
Unfortunately, the real analysis necessary is to factor the total cost of the wind turbine. Then, factor the amount of gas that money would otherwise buy. Then decide on what timetable a gas generator would beat the wind turbine if you had some money and needed some energy...
Just a few years ago it was incalculable, because wind turbines required replacement parts on a regular basis that made it simply cheaper to buy gas and put it in a generator than it would be to put up a wind farm. Still today I do not see the arguments framed in the same way...can you actually MAKE MONEY with a wind farm (decide with or without subsidies)...
Because when you can, it is going to be BIG TIME. Until then, it will be like biodiesel, waiting for a barrel of oil to cost three times what it costs now before it is cost effective. And the articles today still avoid this main point...
But you don't even need to read the article to see that...when wind becomes cheaper than gas you will see wind farms EVERYWHERE popping up like mushrooms after a rainstorm.
So I take issue with the notion that wind is competitive with grid prices for energy. All the current investment is based on the supposition that petroleum based energy will rise enough to make it cost effective. PT Barnum said there's a sucker born every minute.
ALL wines contain ethylene glycol in testable quantities. Probably a natural source.
There is famous Austrian wine scandal from 1985 in which the vintners added ethylene glycol to their wines.
There is a Simpsons episode in which Bart is an exchange student to France and they have him work hard labor making wine and adding ethylene glycol to the wines. He turns them in and is a big hero.
The company Enologix already uses a "formula" based on chemical composition to predict wine rating scores. It translates all of that winemaking into one number...one number that matters a lot.
They contract clients who test wine at different times. It tells them how long to ferment, when to stop, if the batch will ferment faster or slower than usual, etc. And of course, in France, how much ethylene glycol to add at the end. They average a 5-6 rating point increase in the first year their clients use them.
To take it even further, I'll use a coffee example. Illy did a LOT of scientific taste testing studies on its coffee (or in the US, espresso). They found the magical chemical formula. Then, they would test each batch, alter the chemical content to become perfect, and sell it.
The Italians were OUTRAGED! It was as bad as cigarette makers adding nicotine to cigarettes!
So what did Illy do? They stopped that process. Now, they draw several batches in parallel. Test all of them. And figure out how to combine them to achieve the magical formula. The end result is chemically the same, but the Italians are happy to know that Illy comes from 100% roasted Arabica beans from Brasil.
Of course winemakers already try to do this with blended wines. But it would be pretty easy if each wine were independently chemically tested, and then the appropriate convex combination were defined to result in a 90+ Wine Spectator rating. And I'm sure many of them do this already.
There's a lot of money in this. Not surprisingly, a former vintner decided to make this into a company. In the past they have accurately ranked wine involved in taste comparisons by experts. Unexpectedly, they use a one dimensional scale which works, suggesting the wine judges use a one dimensional scale too.
The exact formula is a mystery/trade secret. But it is no secret that Enologix tests many of the top wines at various points in production, and they AVERAGE a 5-6 point rating increase for the first year they are contracted by their clients.
I've been to their web site before when it was useful and worked...right now they appear to be hosed.
That's exactly what Netflix is concerned with. They beat Wal-Mart AND Blockbuster in the online market. But the execs at Netflix are concerned with the content-over-broadband market. They view that as their primary threat.
Rupert Murdoch's DirecTV will begin delivering content from Murdoch's empire, and anything else they can get their hands on, over the DirecTV lines to their DVR, both as trickle download and OnDemand.
Comcast is working on OnDemand.
And then there is the Netflix-TiVO-Comcast arrangement, in which TiVO programs the trickle download so Netflix subscribers can rent movies onto their TiVO box. After all, the only better way to rent a movie from Netflix would be to have it available, nearly instantly, on your TiVO box. And that is what is coming. You'll be able to view a few movies from your TiVO box. When you delete them, the next ones will be able to be viewed. TiVO's engineers are using their broadband boxes to download the moves, 6-8 hours each.
Now, OnDemand can beat that turn-around time, but only with limited content. Netflix can deliver ANY of their content. And, with content protection, the consumer will see ZERO download times (unless you delete 2-3 Netflix movies rapidly, then you will need to wait for the download).
The Future? Who knows? But OnDemand and trickle download models are emerging, and a lot of money is being spent trying to determine the video equivalent of the iPod.
So let's not forget them. The new video iPods can store 15 movies. You could download from iTunes store and carry it with you. Neat-o.
This is most likely due to the upcoming Intel transition. IE is written against the Carbon APIs (and most likely in CodeWarrior), which by all accounts (including Jobs himself) takes substantially more code refactoring...
No one refactors code.
I hope you meant re-engineered for a different toolkit.
Refactoring is the process by which you take perfectly functional code, and decide to "clean up" the API, break the code, spend eons re-debugging the code, and then realize weeks later you've spent dozens of hours making your code a tiny bit cleaner so it can accomplish the same thing.
A scam was launched by these guys who labelled this process as EXTREME PROGRAMMING. They claimed you should re-factor more, and do it in pair programming. If you ever find a programmer who was subjected to this against his will, be prepared for some REAL vitriolic.
Microsoft was spending money maintaining IE for Macs. Apple stopped loading it by default. NO ONE EVER CHANGES TO IE from Safari. It was only a matter of time before Microsoft dropped it. That's a lot of engineer hours for no reason whatsoever.
Microsoft will continue pushing their Web Toolkits that prefer to make web sites compatible only with IE. Its in their blood.
The pictures accompanying the article suggest the system interfaces with the relatively large radiator already in the front of the car. It is not going to produce nearly as much steam as an engine that would power the entire car, and this steam engine doesn't need a heat source either.
The experiment uses FEEDBACK to TEACH the neurons how they should respond. They SHOCK the neurons to train them.
This experiment says that you can CONDITION neuronal cell cultures (which was already known), and that you can cleverly use this conditioning to make a big PR splash which will land you a lot of grant money from the NSF. DARPA would probably eat it up, too, but I suspect NIH will require something a little more substantive than a PR trick.
Also, you say that most of the cost is in plant processing and refining. What about the fuel used for planting, cultivating, irrigation, and transport? It seems to me that there would be quite a bit of opportunity for hidden energy costs.
Estimated as trivial compared to plant processing and refining. Check it out, it is a good article.
How did I make the costs out to be simple? The cost of most (all?) products comes from two sources - energy and intellectual property. To the extent that products are commodities (i.e. low IP costs), their price reflects the energy required to make them. Biodiesel is not yet a commodity in that sense, but getting close, and the reason it is expensive is the energy required to create and distribute it is high - probably more than the energy using it will produce....
Spouting misinformation like this really does no one a service.
It "costs" about 0.3 gallons of diesel fuel to produce 1 gallon of biodiesel. Most of the cost is in plant processing and refining. It is dramatically environmentally sensible, and reduces greenhouse emissions substantially. I agree that the place to attack the problem is in increasing production efficiency, which means better methods of plant processing and refining biodiesel.
Why is it a "patch"? It's completely carbon neutral and sustainable.
There are real questions about production capacity. If all the soy in the US were used in biodiesel it would produce 2.8 billion gallons of fuel a year. Or 68 million barrels of oil equivalent. That would last the United States 3-4 days at current energy usage rates. It should be easy to see farmland usage would need to be increased by 1-2 orders of magnitude to make a complete replacement.
Right now biodiesel is just at a trickle. You need to think about capacity questions if it is to be a real replacement.
The same may be claimed of hydrogen fuel. First, it is a high energy density fuel, but it is not an energy source. You still need to produce it in a petroleum-free manner to make it renewable. And production capacities necessary to make enough hydrogen are impossible. You just cannot do it.
By far the most logical choice to handle the downtrend in petroleum is nuke-u-lar production, which is already cost competitive and has a supply sufficient to handle US current energy usage for another 100 years.
And the primary reason it costs more is that it requires so much energy to produce it.
There is nothing cheaper than pumping energy straight out of the ground. The costs associated with biodiesel are far from as simple as you make them out to be, though. The costs of farming and crude oil production are significant. The costs of refining are also significant. And until petroleum costs double (at least), biodiesel will not be a serious fuel except among those who value reducing greenhouse gases more than they value their money.
I call bullshit on at least one claim. The primary greenhouse gas is CO2 and biodiesel is still carbon based so it still produces CO2. If that claim is wrong, what about the others?
Biodiesel emits CO2, this is true.
However, that CO2 was trapped by plants in the last year or two. Any large extent to which we switch to biodiesel will dramatically reduce net CO2 emissions.
Petroleum based diesel emits CO2 that was trapped by plants tens of thousands of years ago (or more). This causes a shift in greenhouse gases. By and large, B100 biodiesel does not.
The real problem, however, is cost. Yellow grease produced biodiesel has a wholesale cost 2-3 times greater than petroleum based diesel, and plant-based biodiesel costs 3-4 times more wholesale. Unless there is a tax or government subsidy for recyclable diesel (diesel in which the CO2 was trapped by plants recently), biodiesel will never take off b/c few consumers will double or triple their fuel costs to use a sustainable energy source.
TiVO, Comcast, and Netflix announced a deal a while back, which should be operational in another 2 months or so. Trickle-download netflix.
Here's how it would work. You maintain a Netflix cue on their Internet site. You always keep two or three of their movies on your TiVO box. You pay a monthly fee of $10-15. When you remove a movie, the next one starts to download, using your high speed internet connection. 6-8 hours later, the new movie is on your TiVO box. You can watch it as many times as you like, but you can't get your next Netflix movie until you remove it from your TiVO box.
The TiVO engineers have been making widgets for the boxes that allow them to use any possible internet connection they can find. Cable modem, bluetooth to your land-line machine, wireless, etc, all seamless.
I honestly think ALL the netflix customers who are appropriately equipped with a high-speed connection and TiVO box will switch over. It reduces the turnaround time by three days!
TiVO already leads in the necessary market for e-distribution of movies. You need a big hard drive capable of playing video that sits next to your TV. That is a TiVO.
Disclaimer: a good friend of mine is a software engineer at TiVO, so I get updates regularly on how things are going.
Re:Yes, but is it better than emacs??
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Vim 6.4 Released
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· Score: 1
I wonder if any of the VIM developers use emacs to develop VIM.
Blatant troll response.
Yes, we all know that the BEST solution for a text editor requires a full LISP interpreter.
Slashdot Mirror
Just because a legitimate, completely truthful opinion angers some, it does not make the opinion "flamebait".
Words like "flamebait" and "troll" are most often used seriously by those who are trying to incite trouble amongst people who are pointing out real, solid facts.
He pays almost no heed to the nearly diametrically opposed approach to security taken by Apple compared to Microsoft, and writes off the lack of viruses on market share.
That is either complete ignorance or a blatant troll. Someone who writes columns on IT should at the very least know better.
Macs USED to have viruses. They changed their approach years ago, and now have all but eliminated them, and their prognosis for spreading is pretty limited too.
Microsoft could very easily engineer this approach into the next version of Windows. And kill a billion dollar anti-virus industry. But they won't, simply because people are going to buy Windows whether it is susceptible to viruses or not.
A great virus story. A friend at work had a virus on his Windows laptop. He had the sys admin wipe it, and re-install Windows. Then he had to get SP1 and SP2. In the process of downloading those, he got re-infected. So, the sys admin pulled out a hardware firewall, installed a second time, and was actually able to upgrade the service packs without being infected.
If Microsoft shipped their OS with no ports open by default, and forced users to act with limited permissions, 99.9% of all Windows virus activity would cease. This is the critical point the author missed, either out of sheer ignorance or because he is a blatant troll.
In calling him a troll you can really give him the benefit of the doubt.
Remember, Mac OS X is often targetted towards more inexperienced users, or those who just want a system that works. For the most part, that is true of Mac OS X. It does often just work. But likewise, it is necessary to keep it updated.
Now, he isn't a "troll" for pointing out that very real, very serious fact. Sure, it might have angered some people, but that's not his fault in any way.
He is either an ingorant fool or a troll, take your pick.
Last time I checked, nearly every UNIX vulnerability was the result of attacks through open ports, including http ports via php attacks, sendmail, BIND, and so on.
Mac OS X is a Unix that ships with no open ports, because it is principally a CLIENT operating system, not a SERVER operating system.
Windows has made an entire industry out of making a CLIENT OS insecure by default. However, it is not so tough to make a CLIENT OS incredibly secure by default, in the way that Apple has done. And it is not because the software has no bugs. It is not because the programming is perfect. It is because the users operate with limited permissions, AND THERE ARE NO OPEN PORTS!
None of this is to say there can never be a virus. Of course there can. But just as a virus spreads much faster in the 2 year old daycare class than in the adult office, Macs will remain relatively immune and slow to spread viruses compared to Windows.
It would be more appropriate to compare a distribution of linux to a Windows install, and not linux in general. Because linux in general spans the spectrum on open ports at install. Debian, however, installs with no open ports. A nice thing to do is run the netstat command to see which ports are listening. My Mac OS X machine shows no system open ports. I don't know why you are running a name server, maybe it is a local caching dns only open at 127.0.0.1?
My Debian linux box shows no open ports either, except those I enabled. I like running a name server on it with djbdns b/c I know there is no worry about that port, and it speeds up the internet.
And in general, if a port is open and you don't know why, close it. Or risk having to learn the hard way. This is a great rule of thumb for Windows, linux, and Mac alike. One remote root can eat an entire workday at an unpredictable time.
The differences between Windows and Mac wrt security extend far deeper than that.
Windows ships with ports open for non-essential services, has effectively no firewall, and encourages users to act with permissions that allow them to access every file on the system.
Mac OS X ships with no ports open at all, has a usable firewall, and encourages users to act with only as many permissions as are necessary to get the job done.
That's not to say Mac viruses will never happen, because they will, but the architecture of security into the system make it a far far far safer place.
Disclaimer: I'm a UNIX user who uses a Mac because I want a good shell and I hate lockups. I also use Windows when dragged kicking and screaming into it, but I shut off all non-essential services, and ActiveX, and buy a cheapo NAT firewall device before I connect it to anything. And I use Firefox unless I HAVE to use IE. Viruses cost WAY WAY too much in the workplace not to be safe by default.
Works like a charm and they're not that expensive. The only upgrade would be if they did a buckling spring version but that's probably too much to hope for.
l
But you can get the "Lil Big Board" for $80 with a buckling spring (ie: mechanical keyswitch).
http://www.datadesktech.com/desktop_lbb_start.htm
Unicomp now manufactures the old IBM "clicky" keyboards, at pckeyboards.com for around $50.
Other keyboards that use mechanical keyswitchs are the SmartBoard, a split keyboard, and a "Lil Big Board", a reduced number of keys keyboard. Both available at datadesktech.com for around $80. Both use mechanical keyswitches that are less noisy than the IBM ones. The Smartboard keyswitches are additionally lower force and to me feel a lot better.
But the biggest difference come from going to a keyswitch keyboard instead of a capacitive dome keyboard. Happy fingers.
Unicomp make the original IBM clicky keyboards, for $50 or so. pckeyboards.com
Darwin Keyboards makes the Smartboard, available through Datadesktech.com. It features a lighter mechanical keyswitch than the IBM keyboards, a split key layout, and wider keys for your pinky fingers. Very nice to type on, although I do not like the split keyboards in general. But these are the best keyswitchs available bar none.
Datadesktech.com also sells the "lil big board" for $80, a mechanical keyswitch keyboard that is downsized by using fewer keys. This is probably a good choice for the original query - a good smaller keyboard.
AFAICT these are the only mechanical keyswitch keyboards available. Mechanical keyswitches just plain rule, it is a shame all the computer companies shaft you by using capacitive dome keyboards to cut on costs (they cost much much less). If you type a lot at work I highly recommend checking out some mechanical keyswitch boards. I get them on the machines I use most.
There is no longer a resolution edge for film. It is about dynamic range and color matching...for some reason digitals all are a little too red and not enough blue...and they cannot match the dynamic range of film...but that is not going to save them. 35 mm film is dead.
Two things to consider. First of all, this is a Jobs Keynote, he wants to announce the newest slickest cutting-edge-est Apple products. So, he focusses on the high end stuff. Look - we've raised our high end by using dual processor Intel chips and blown the doors off all old specs.
He was saying to his people "Look, our machines will finally be able to run Java without choking for years. This will enable us to make bloatier and bloatier iMovie and iTunes that will force anyone on older hardware to upgrade. It'll be like the 90s again!"
Reality is Mac has always had products priced higher than WinTel and outmarketed them with better cleaner interfaces and especially more aesthetically pleasing products.
Probably a new Mac mini and iMac will come out too, probably Jobs will raise the specs and keep the pricepoint the same. It's the Apple way. They market to people who are proud of their Apple products, not people who try to get work done on a budget.
For some reason, prions seem to like to develop when you eat the nervous tissue of your own species.
Prions arise by abnormal folding of normal proteins.
They auto-catalyze- - that is, presence of SOME prions will cause more to develop.
So, if you feed a species CNS tissue from the same species, be it cow, sheep, human, etc, it will increase the chances of prion disease development many-fold.
There's still some issue with how well it spreads to other species. I prefer not to eat mammalian brains, although pigs seem not to transfer to humans for those who like it.
And the whole discussion on cannabilism, seems to revolve around eating the CNS tissue of your own (or similar) species. Eating muscle, liver, fat, heart, etc, confer no particular risk. Providing they are well cooked, breaded, fried, and served with gravy.
I went and read one of the refs, the other was inaccessible.
The arguments were that the one wind turbine could produce the energy required to make them in 6.8 months, and then produced energy for a long time thereafter. Makes sense.
Unfortunately, the real analysis necessary is to factor the total cost of the wind turbine. Then, factor the amount of gas that money would otherwise buy. Then decide on what timetable a gas generator would beat the wind turbine if you had some money and needed some energy...
Just a few years ago it was incalculable, because wind turbines required replacement parts on a regular basis that made it simply cheaper to buy gas and put it in a generator than it would be to put up a wind farm. Still today I do not see the arguments framed in the same way...can you actually MAKE MONEY with a wind farm (decide with or without subsidies)...
Because when you can, it is going to be BIG TIME. Until then, it will be like biodiesel, waiting for a barrel of oil to cost three times what it costs now before it is cost effective. And the articles today still avoid this main point...
But you don't even need to read the article to see that...when wind becomes cheaper than gas you will see wind farms EVERYWHERE popping up like mushrooms after a rainstorm.
So I take issue with the notion that wind is competitive with grid prices for energy. All the current investment is based on the supposition that petroleum based energy will rise enough to make it cost effective. PT Barnum said there's a sucker born every minute.
ALL wines contain ethylene glycol in testable quantities. Probably a natural source.
There is famous Austrian wine scandal from 1985 in which the vintners added ethylene glycol to their wines.
There is a Simpsons episode in which Bart is an exchange student to France and they have him work hard labor making wine and adding ethylene glycol to the wines. He turns them in and is a big hero.
The French love the Simpsons.
Mes couilles!
The company Enologix already uses a "formula" based on chemical composition to predict wine rating scores. It translates all of that winemaking into one number...one number that matters a lot.
They contract clients who test wine at different times. It tells them how long to ferment, when to stop, if the batch will ferment faster or slower than usual, etc. And of course, in France, how much ethylene glycol to add at the end. They average a 5-6 rating point increase in the first year their clients use them.
To take it even further, I'll use a coffee example. Illy did a LOT of scientific taste testing studies on its coffee (or in the US, espresso). They found the magical chemical formula. Then, they would test each batch, alter the chemical content to become perfect, and sell it.
The Italians were OUTRAGED! It was as bad as cigarette makers adding nicotine to cigarettes!
So what did Illy do? They stopped that process. Now, they draw several batches in parallel. Test all of them. And figure out how to combine them to achieve the magical formula. The end result is chemically the same, but the Italians are happy to know that Illy comes from 100% roasted Arabica beans from Brasil.
Of course winemakers already try to do this with blended wines. But it would be pretty easy if each wine were independently chemically tested, and then the appropriate convex combination were defined to result in a 90+ Wine Spectator rating. And I'm sure many of them do this already.
There's a lot of money in this. Not surprisingly, a former vintner decided to make this into a company. In the past they have accurately ranked wine involved in taste comparisons by experts. Unexpectedly, they use a one dimensional scale which works, suggesting the wine judges use a one dimensional scale too.
The exact formula is a mystery/trade secret. But it is no secret that Enologix tests many of the top wines at various points in production, and they AVERAGE a 5-6 point rating increase for the first year they are contracted by their clients.
I've been to their web site before when it was useful and worked...right now they appear to be hosed.
That's exactly what Netflix is concerned with. They beat Wal-Mart AND Blockbuster in the online market. But the execs at Netflix are concerned with the content-over-broadband market. They view that as their primary threat.
Rupert Murdoch's DirecTV will begin delivering content from Murdoch's empire, and anything else they can get their hands on, over the DirecTV lines to their DVR, both as trickle download and OnDemand.
Comcast is working on OnDemand.
And then there is the Netflix-TiVO-Comcast arrangement, in which TiVO programs the trickle download so Netflix subscribers can rent movies onto their TiVO box. After all, the only better way to rent a movie from Netflix would be to have it available, nearly instantly, on your TiVO box. And that is what is coming. You'll be able to view a few movies from your TiVO box. When you delete them, the next ones will be able to be viewed. TiVO's engineers are using their broadband boxes to download the moves, 6-8 hours each.
Now, OnDemand can beat that turn-around time, but only with limited content. Netflix can deliver ANY of their content. And, with content protection, the consumer will see ZERO download times (unless you delete 2-3 Netflix movies rapidly, then you will need to wait for the download).
The Future? Who knows? But OnDemand and trickle download models are emerging, and a lot of money is being spent trying to determine the video equivalent of the iPod.
So let's not forget them. The new video iPods can store 15 movies. You could download from iTunes store and carry it with you. Neat-o.
This is most likely due to the upcoming Intel transition. IE is written against the Carbon APIs (and most likely in CodeWarrior), which by all accounts (including Jobs himself) takes substantially more code refactoring...
No one refactors code.
I hope you meant re-engineered for a different toolkit.
Refactoring is the process by which you take perfectly functional code, and decide to "clean up" the API, break the code, spend eons re-debugging the code, and then realize weeks later you've spent dozens of hours making your code a tiny bit cleaner so it can accomplish the same thing.
A scam was launched by these guys who labelled this process as EXTREME PROGRAMMING. They claimed you should re-factor more, and do it in pair programming. If you ever find a programmer who was subjected to this against his will, be prepared for some REAL vitriolic.
Microsoft was spending money maintaining IE for Macs. Apple stopped loading it by default. NO ONE EVER CHANGES TO IE from Safari. It was only a matter of time before Microsoft dropped it. That's a lot of engineer hours for no reason whatsoever.
Microsoft will continue pushing their Web Toolkits that prefer to make web sites compatible only with IE. Its in their blood.
The pictures accompanying the article suggest the system interfaces with the relatively large radiator already in the front of the car. It is not going to produce nearly as much steam as an engine that would power the entire car, and this steam engine doesn't need a heat source either.
People are somewhat missing the experiment.
The experiment uses FEEDBACK to TEACH the neurons how they should respond. They SHOCK the neurons to train them.
This experiment says that you can CONDITION neuronal cell cultures (which was already known), and that you can cleverly use this conditioning to make a big PR splash which will land you a lot of grant money from the NSF. DARPA would probably eat it up, too, but I suspect NIH will require something a little more substantive than a PR trick.
Do you have a reference for your numbers?
NREL/SR-580-24089
Also, you say that most of the cost is in plant processing and refining. What about the fuel used for planting, cultivating, irrigation, and transport? It seems to me that there would be quite a bit of opportunity for hidden energy costs.
Estimated as trivial compared to plant processing and refining. Check it out, it is a good article.
How did I make the costs out to be simple? The cost of most (all?) products comes from two sources - energy and intellectual property. To the extent that products are commodities (i.e. low IP costs), their price reflects the energy required to make them. Biodiesel is not yet a commodity in that sense, but getting close, and the reason it is expensive is the energy required to create and distribute it is high - probably more than the energy using it will produce. ...
Spouting misinformation like this really does no one a service.
It "costs" about 0.3 gallons of diesel fuel to produce 1 gallon of biodiesel. Most of the cost is in plant processing and refining. It is dramatically environmentally sensible, and reduces greenhouse emissions substantially. I agree that the place to attack the problem is in increasing production efficiency, which means better methods of plant processing and refining biodiesel.
Why is it a "patch"? It's completely carbon neutral and sustainable.
There are real questions about production capacity. If all the soy in the US were used in biodiesel it would produce 2.8 billion gallons of fuel a year. Or 68 million barrels of oil equivalent. That would last the United States 3-4 days at current energy usage rates. It should be easy to see farmland usage would need to be increased by 1-2 orders of magnitude to make a complete replacement.
Right now biodiesel is just at a trickle. You need to think about capacity questions if it is to be a real replacement.
The same may be claimed of hydrogen fuel. First, it is a high energy density fuel, but it is not an energy source. You still need to produce it in a petroleum-free manner to make it renewable. And production capacities necessary to make enough hydrogen are impossible. You just cannot do it.
By far the most logical choice to handle the downtrend in petroleum is nuke-u-lar production, which is already cost competitive and has a supply sufficient to handle US current energy usage for another 100 years.
And the primary reason it costs more is that it requires so much energy to produce it.
There is nothing cheaper than pumping energy straight out of the ground. The costs associated with biodiesel are far from as simple as you make them out to be, though. The costs of farming and crude oil production are significant. The costs of refining are also significant. And until petroleum costs double (at least), biodiesel will not be a serious fuel except among those who value reducing greenhouse gases more than they value their money.
I call bullshit on at least one claim. The primary greenhouse gas is CO2 and biodiesel is still carbon based so it still produces CO2. If that claim is wrong, what about the others?
Biodiesel emits CO2, this is true.
However, that CO2 was trapped by plants in the last year or two. Any large extent to which we switch to biodiesel will dramatically reduce net CO2 emissions.
Petroleum based diesel emits CO2 that was trapped by plants tens of thousands of years ago (or more). This causes a shift in greenhouse gases. By and large, B100 biodiesel does not.
The real problem, however, is cost. Yellow grease produced biodiesel has a wholesale cost 2-3 times greater than petroleum based diesel, and plant-based biodiesel costs 3-4 times more wholesale. Unless there is a tax or government subsidy for recyclable diesel (diesel in which the CO2 was trapped by plants recently), biodiesel will never take off b/c few consumers will double or triple their fuel costs to use a sustainable energy source.
TiVO, Comcast, and Netflix announced a deal a while back, which should be operational in another 2 months or so. Trickle-download netflix.
Here's how it would work. You maintain a Netflix cue on their Internet site. You always keep two or three of their movies on your TiVO box. You pay a monthly fee of $10-15. When you remove a movie, the next one starts to download, using your high speed internet connection. 6-8 hours later, the new movie is on your TiVO box. You can watch it as many times as you like, but you can't get your next Netflix movie until you remove it from your TiVO box.
The TiVO engineers have been making widgets for the boxes that allow them to use any possible internet connection they can find. Cable modem, bluetooth to your land-line machine, wireless, etc, all seamless.
I honestly think ALL the netflix customers who are appropriately equipped with a high-speed connection and TiVO box will switch over. It reduces the turnaround time by three days!
TiVO already leads in the necessary market for e-distribution of movies. You need a big hard drive capable of playing video that sits next to your TV. That is a TiVO.
Disclaimer: a good friend of mine is a software engineer at TiVO, so I get updates regularly on how things are going.
I wonder if any of the VIM developers use emacs to develop VIM.
Blatant troll response.
Yes, we all know that the BEST solution for a text editor requires a full LISP interpreter.