Kinda like having a 250 HP engine in your car when you only need to drive 20 MPH. In other words, your engine has the potential to provide maxium HP when needed even if you never use it.
No... It sounds more like a car salesman claming the car can reach 200mph when it physically cannot move faster than 70mph.
A 770hp engine cannot put out 770hp unless it has at least (really more than) 770hp (power) from some other energy source. In other words, the engine is tested and found to put out 770hp, then it is called a 770hp engine.
Doesn't the Z machine require vast amounts of electricity just to "fire" once? They only fire it once or twice a day at MOST and it fires for only billionths of a second. It's not a continually running thing. It also produces a shockwave something like a mini-earthquake when it fires.
"Stockpile stewardship" is not about solving our energy problems... Well, at least not peacefully... It's all about ensuring that the aging nukes will perform as expected on demand. A large part of Sandia is dedicated to this mission.
I believe all sorts of radiation is released when they vaporize things in the Z machine... THAT's why its useful for stockpile stewardship.
At one time, I was stupid enough to think that The Department of Energy was concerned with producing/supplying energy for the nation. Despite appearances, they seem more concerned with finding new ways of quickly releasing energy upon other nations.
Fine, don't sell your vote... Sell your services to spend the time & effort required to vote in an election. Campaigning near voting booths is forbidden, but simple clothing (i.e. wear a solid blue shirt without text) is not.
I'm sure the parties would be willing to make it worth you're while...
And I sure hope I don't ever see the crap I just described ever taking place in our elections!
My mayor ran on the promising of "fixing any pothole within 24 hours of discovery." Of course the roads are still filled with potholes. Turns out, it was 24 hours of any confirmed pothole, which is trivially easy as the pothole confirmation team is as slow/backed up as the pothole filling team.
You must be from Houston...
I've actually seen construction crews create potholes and then not fix them. And the heavy metal sheets they place on the concrete roads are worse than the original hole.
They claim 10-100 times more effective than other methods. First of all they dont define more effective. Second of all, they seem to dismiss ideas like a gravity tug out of hand as not developed enough.
Indeed... (The next set of numbers came from ass). Perhaps the best alternative had a probabilty of success of 0.01 percent. Maybe nukes have a 1 in 100 change of succeeding.
It's new! It's improved! Its 100X more effective...
Unlike other slashdotters, I wonder if this is really just another plot to get very long-range nukes in geo-synchronous orbit.
The higher-ups at NASA are doing one of two things:
They are actually being extremely magnanous and trying to develop something to protect the entire planet.
NASA expects sufficient support from Congress to develop this technology.
There are actually enough congressmen who are willing to throw money at this idea. (Perhaps they see potential pork!?!)
There are enough congressmen that such an action will increase their changes for re-election. (i.e. They won't be seen as wasting tax-payer money)
The public is significantly concerned about asteriod impacts, not to mention terrorism, the economy, and our dependance on fossil fuels.
The military is very interested in this type of "asteriod" defense. The satellites will probably have the ability to do a "180" and point toward earth (quotes since its really in 3D).
Unfortunately, most people are first and foremost just consumers. They don't want to edit video. They just want to watch it.
Very few people want to actually *DO* anything anymore, other than be entertained.
I couldn't agree more. As a kid, I often enjoyed drawing silly pictures on the computer instead of playing games... I messed around with sound recording/playback. That was teriffic as a kid.
The Internet eventually got popular and I got my first taste of "high-speed" Internet at a local university (late 1990s). I remember thinking to myself, "What would the world be like if everyone had an ethernet-speed connection (~10mbit/sec) to the Internet from their home?" The thought was mind-boggling and I figured it wouldn't happen for a long, long time. I remember being frustrated at attempts to share files and remote-control (VNC-like,etc) another computer over a dialup connection. Even 56k modems didn't seem to be enough for simple web-browsing (probably due then to the latency).
Well, today ~10mbit to the home is pretty much a reality. A vast percentage of the population has access to multi-megabit Internet connections to their home. My internet connection (cheapo cable modem) is now faster than the CD-ROM drives used to be a few years ago. What has changed? What previously unforseeable possiblities now exist? Well, pr0n is faster to download, that's about it.
Today, I have a scanner, DV video camera, and digital camera. I have never edited video, scanned many pictures (over a few rare occassions), but done practically no image editing (other than simple cropping, color/brightness adjustments). I mainly just create and archive photos, documents, and videos aside from regular internet browsing and email. I use Linux and tinker with my own software a bit.
For me, my daily personal routine just doesn't involve the need for any of the exotic things for which people puportedly use computers. I'm not a gamer, and with a lean Linux distro, I would probably be happy with a 500mhz Pentium, etc... (I am writing thing from a 1ghz laptop that is fairly old). If my family had a once-in-ten-year reunion, I might be inclided to edit & splice a commerative video... On a rare event (solar eclipse on a blue moon), I might be inclined to talk to someone with a webcam over the internet. Of course, given today's cell phone rates, they would have to be outside the country and have high-speed internet, otherwise it wouldn't be worth the hassle.
In short, I feel for *consumers*, the bubble has already burst and no-one realizes it. Further advancements in high-speed connections and faster computers aren't going open much more than what is currently possible with today's technology. In terms of the Internet, I don't see any 'killer app' that will be enabled with further advances...
Perhaps the biggest upcoming change will the economic savings that will allow the developing world to more easily adopt these technologies... For us (in relatively wealthy nations), the wave of change has already begun to pass.
After a few minutes the stripper walks away. Everyone knows they have to fork over a few more bills for continued entertainment...
But when one 'buys' a video or software, they get to keep the physical medium and watch it whenever they like -- perhaps more "concubine" than "stripper". Virtually no other household product is like this... If you physically have possession of it, you can do with it as you like. One may not own the software, but they own the medium! So why should they be restricted on their actions toward the medium! Tearing a book in half and giving a half to a friend is perfectly legal. Yet, cutting a Windows CD in half and giving it to a friend probably would be illegal -- (Unauthorized re-distribution of copyrighted software in part).
Of course the trend now is that all software will be rented for a time-limited period... So it seems the software industry is going to the strippers... Thus, Bill Gates is a whore.
I think Apple is trying to lock people into using the ipod with only one computer. After all, you don't OWN the songs, so why should you be pulling it into different computers on your own free will?
What ever happened to the wind generators? I heard that someone made a computer system with such a generator built in.
Are you referring to devices that generate wind, or to devices that generate electricity using wind?
I'm equally puzzled... Did someone have a computer with enough wind INSIDE it to justify the generator? I hope their CPU is ruggedly attached, they may get tornadoes or the occasional hurricane inside...
Otherwise, I thought there was a highly scientific name for a "wind generator". I believe they are called "fans". And lucky me, my computer has one.
Are people that desperate to have their smartphone on at all times that they need to harvest the energy their heart generates to power it? Maybe that's a little drastic, but they mentioned personal electronics. Do people really need to have their devices charged by blood flow? I understand pacemakers or things of that nature because they keep you alive. If it isn't necessary, why POWER it with YOUR HEART? The fact that people even thought that is a little appalling.
I think for many people, yes they are that desperate.
Imagine the idiot who wears his bluetooth cell-phone thingy in his EAR while in a movie theater or church. I bet he would be the first to step up for a blood-powered thingy. And he probably wouldn't mind if the whole cell phone could be implanted inside him, just as long as it contained enough ringtones.
The amount of computing power found in a typical Pentium III computer sitting out and someones curb far exceeds the needs of most users.
Well it was fast until idiots started using Flash to play real-time video. There are other abuses as well...
Soon, I predict that even our interpreted languages will rely on runtime components that are interpreted themselves. And these will show up on webpages!
I remember when Microsoft Office only occupied a few Mb (10) of disk space and ran on systems with 2MB total memory! I can't name any significant advantage the latest version has over the old one (in terms of usuability).
The thing that makes multi threaded programming so difficult is concurrency control
You DO realize that concurrency models, distributed databases, and other distributed systems research were virtually beaten to death from 1960s,1970s, and 1980s?
I also challenge you to find one application/environment where concurrency control is a major implementation/design issue.
I know this is just flamebait, but you are aware that all of the modern disease cures are built on heavy amounts of basic math developed by previous generations of mathematicians, right?
And sadly, the work of many generations of mathematicians is utilized by idiots so that they can drive their SUV, eat a fast-food hamburger, and talk on the cell phone all at the same time.
(As for me, I'm an EE. Sometimes I think about others I knew who were working several years toward their PhD. It's actually quite (morbidly) funny...)
Personally, I have renewed respect for janitors and garbage collectors. Without R&D folks, *technology* would no longer advance. Without janitors/garbage people, *populations* would cease to exist.
My question is why don't we want a national ID? It seems to me that our social security number has already become a defacto national ID number. Whenever I have to fill out official paperwork, for either governmental things, or even for national corporations or whatever, they all ask for the social security number, supposedly for identification purposes. However, with identity theft rampant, I don't want to give that number away so easily but often the alternative isn't pleasant, so I do it anyway. I wish I had a national ID number which I could give away as easily as my telephone number for identification purposes, knowing that nothing can be done to my financial accounts if someone had only this number, while guarding my social security number as much as I guard my ATM PIN.
Look at this this way. For cases where a drivers' license suffices, mal-use/identity-theft is already trivial. National ID won't improve that, since it will be used everywhere.
What can someone do with your license? Well, they could test-drive a car at a dealership, steal it, and cause YOU some "interesting" days... Endless possibilities at a bank... (Although some now ask for 2 forms of ID).
And what I want to know is this: When I do give my SSN, what do THEY do with it? I would think more than just record it and forget it. (Is there some service that companies use to verify/look-up SSN information)? Does the SSA provide special access to companies? Seems to me they could only do a credit check. But then they know a heck of a lot about you (address, credit cards, loans, etc).
Me? I think the solution lies in something like everyone using a something like public encryption for ID.. Merchant supplies random string, your ID encrypts/signs it, and then merchant verifies that your encrypted version is really signed by you (using national database of public keys). [I suppose even the government should not be able to know/store your "private" key, but that probably is not realistic].
A hundred years ago, people worked 100 hours a week or more in terrible conditions, with a small, crumbling house to live in and just enough food to survive, and had to run ten miles each way to work. Today, people sit for 8 hours a day in comfortable offices (which they drove to), and have a house with double-glazing, a roof that doesn't leak, central heating, electricity, indoor plumbing, a life expectancy in the 70s or 80s, retirement, endless forms of entertainment, several weeks off work a year (a century ago you were lucky to get Christmas Day off), all the food we can eat flown in from around the world, and endless other benefits.
So in the old days, people lived simple lives, exercised every day and ate freshly killed food? Not quite all bad...
Your view of current lifestyles only applies for a portion of the "middle class" population of the United States, Canada, and Western Europe. In terms of world population, this represents only a minority.
I think you will find that (overall) much of Mexico, parts of Eastern Europe, India, China, most of Africa, parts of Russia, do not have such luxuries. In terms of population, this IS "most of the world". Also keep in mind that our current lifestyle is not sustainable. Our current luxuries are derived from extracting metals/minerals/oil/coal/natural gas out of the ground.
After enough petroleum products are consumed, it may become infeasible to sustain other operations (mining, water purification, etc). In some sense, we are consuming the resources from future generations TODAY. To some extent, all "civilized" lifestyles are unsustainable. But it seems to me that ours today will be very short-lived.
Disclaimer: I am not an environmentalist. I just have an morbid fascination of what the future holds for us.
And think about this. Under what conditions were all the nice things you enjoy produced? Here's a hint: things "made in China" often involve much more human labor than you might think. And this labor doesn't live very well.
Modern corporations - with the exception of those that we have foolishly allowed to become monopolies - have to be efficient at pleasing the customer.
I used to believe in that. I don't any more.
Here is a few industries that do not have to please the customer
Car dealerships (the large ones such as "Champion Toyota" )
Insurance Companies
Phone calling-card companies
These companies only have to convince the customer that he/she will be pleased -- before the sale. They rely completely on deception, heavy marketing, and tricking "dumb" customers to survive. I wouldn't consider these to be efficient (in any sense) for pleasing the customer.
Will someone with the initials ML PLEASE give this president some oral sex so impeachment procedures can begin?
What good is Cheney doing these days? Spare the interns please!
Only I doubt Cheney can fit underneath the Oval Office desk as well as Monica did. If he could, he would thow out his back while assuming the position.
if they can actually do this, then set up massive arrays of it on top of active volcanoes and other natural heat sources. As the claim is they end up with electricity, that means there is less heat, and we have this maybe/maybe not global warming thing going on. Seems we can reduce a lot of the natural warming of the earth's atmosphere with something that can do this, if it really can...
Yes, but can you imagine the environmental effects caused by cooling a volcano at "Faster-Than-Nature-Indended" rate?
The UV water purifier isn't needed here in New Orleans. Our tap water has been and continues to be some of the cleanest and best tasting in the country.
I find your comment really funny. Just curious, were you trying to be sarcastic? I once lived in southeastern Louisiana for a long time. New Orleans water always tasted horrible to me. It was difficult to describe. I don't think it was mineral deposits nor chlorine, just *something* else... I don't think I was alone. Many others I new well (who had lived in NO) joked about the tap water there...
OTOH, Baton Rouge puts high amounts of chlorine into their water (one can use a swimming pool testing kit on it!). I've also lived in smaller towns in the area who had water that tasted just like bottled water -- no bad taste, no chlorine smell.
I'm sure a lot is done to purify New Orleans water.... However, I doubt it is enough.
Slashdot Mirror
Kinda like having a 250 HP engine in your car when you only need to drive 20 MPH. In other words, your engine has the potential to provide maxium HP when needed even if you never use it.
No... It sounds more like a car salesman claming the car can reach 200mph when it physically cannot move faster than 70mph.
A 770hp engine cannot put out 770hp unless it has at least (really more than) 770hp (power) from some other energy source. In other words, the engine is tested and found to put out 770hp, then it is called a 770hp engine.
Doesn't the Z machine require vast amounts of electricity just to "fire" once? They only fire it once or twice a day at MOST and it fires for only billionths of a second. It's not a continually running thing. It also produces a shockwave something like a mini-earthquake when it fires.
Also look at this link: http://www.sandia.gov/media/z290.htm
"Stockpile stewardship" is not about solving our energy problems... Well, at least not peacefully... It's all about ensuring that the aging nukes will perform as expected on demand. A large part of Sandia is dedicated to this mission.
I believe all sorts of radiation is released when they vaporize things in the Z machine... THAT's why its useful for stockpile stewardship.
At one time, I was stupid enough to think that The Department of Energy was concerned with producing/supplying energy for the nation. Despite appearances, they seem more concerned with finding new ways of quickly releasing energy upon other nations.
Selling your vote is illegal. Trading == selling.
Fine, don't sell your vote... Sell your services to spend the time & effort required to vote in an election. Campaigning near voting booths is forbidden, but simple clothing (i.e. wear a solid blue shirt without text) is not.
I'm sure the parties would be willing to make it worth you're while...
And I sure hope I don't ever see the crap I just described ever taking place in our elections!
You rank the candidates instead of just picking one. On the first pass of counting, the highest ranked candidate on your ballot gets your vote.
Then they eliminate the lowest ranked candidate
What is this, Survivor?
My mayor ran on the promising of "fixing any pothole within 24 hours of discovery." Of course the roads are still filled with potholes. Turns out, it was 24 hours of any confirmed pothole, which is trivially easy as the pothole confirmation team is as slow/backed up as the pothole filling team.
You must be from Houston...
I've actually seen construction crews create potholes and then not fix them. And the heavy metal sheets they place on the concrete roads are worse than the original hole.
Indeed... (The next set of numbers came from ass). Perhaps the best alternative had a probabilty of success of 0.01 percent. Maybe nukes have a 1 in 100 change of succeeding.
It's new! It's improved! Its 100X more effective...
Unlike other slashdotters, I wonder if this is really just another plot to get very long-range nukes in geo-synchronous orbit.
The higher-ups at NASA are doing one of two things:
Gee. Which one is more likely?
Unfortunately, most people are first and foremost just consumers. They don't want to edit video. They just want to watch it.
Very few people want to actually *DO* anything anymore, other than be entertained.
I couldn't agree more. As a kid, I often enjoyed drawing silly pictures on the computer instead of playing games... I messed around with sound recording/playback. That was teriffic as a kid.
The Internet eventually got popular and I got my first taste of "high-speed" Internet at a local university (late 1990s). I remember thinking to myself, "What would the world be like if everyone had an ethernet-speed connection (~10mbit/sec) to the Internet from their home?" The thought was mind-boggling and I figured it wouldn't happen for a long, long time. I remember being frustrated at attempts to share files and remote-control (VNC-like,etc) another computer over a dialup connection. Even 56k modems didn't seem to be enough for simple web-browsing (probably due then to the latency).
Well, today ~10mbit to the home is pretty much a reality. A vast percentage of the population has access to multi-megabit Internet connections to their home. My internet connection (cheapo cable modem) is now faster than the CD-ROM drives used to be a few years ago. What has changed? What previously unforseeable possiblities now exist? Well, pr0n is faster to download, that's about it.
Today, I have a scanner, DV video camera, and digital camera. I have never edited video, scanned many pictures (over a few rare occassions), but done practically no image editing (other than simple cropping, color/brightness adjustments). I mainly just create and archive photos, documents, and videos aside from regular internet browsing and email. I use Linux and tinker with my own software a bit.
For me, my daily personal routine just doesn't involve the need for any of the exotic things for which people puportedly use computers. I'm not a gamer, and with a lean Linux distro, I would probably be happy with a 500mhz Pentium, etc... (I am writing thing from a 1ghz laptop that is fairly old). If my family had a once-in-ten-year reunion, I might be inclided to edit & splice a commerative video... On a rare event (solar eclipse on a blue moon), I might be inclined to talk to someone with a webcam over the internet. Of course, given today's cell phone rates, they would have to be outside the country and have high-speed internet, otherwise it wouldn't be worth the hassle.
In short, I feel for *consumers*, the bubble has already burst and no-one realizes it. Further advancements in high-speed connections and faster computers aren't going open much more than what is currently possible with today's technology. In terms of the Internet, I don't see any 'killer app' that will be enabled with further advances...
Perhaps the biggest upcoming change will the economic savings that will allow the developing world to more easily adopt these technologies... For us (in relatively wealthy nations), the wave of change has already begun to pass.
Here's one that will* work for everyone: 127.0.0.1
*After you set up your own DNS server on the same computer.
Do you find this to be better than booting Linux off of an NFS share?
I've found that there is considerable latency using NFS and the system doesn't handle large file i/o operations, even on a gigabit network.
Interesting analogy...
After a few minutes the stripper walks away. Everyone knows they have to fork over a few more bills for continued entertainment...
But when one 'buys' a video or software, they get to keep the physical medium and watch it whenever they like -- perhaps more "concubine" than "stripper". Virtually no other household product is like this... If you physically have possession of it, you can do with it as you like. One may not own the software, but they own the medium! So why should they be restricted on their actions toward the medium! Tearing a book in half and giving a half to a friend is perfectly legal. Yet, cutting a Windows CD in half and giving it to a friend probably would be illegal -- (Unauthorized re-distribution of copyrighted software in part).
Of course the trend now is that all software will be rented for a time-limited period... So it seems the software industry is going to the strippers... Thus, Bill Gates is a whore.
I think Apple is trying to lock people into using the ipod with only one computer. After all, you don't OWN the songs, so why should you be pulling it into different computers on your own free will?
What ever happened to the wind generators? I heard that someone made a computer system with such a generator built in.
Are you referring to devices that generate wind, or to devices that generate electricity using wind?
I'm equally puzzled... Did someone have a computer with enough wind INSIDE it to justify the generator? I hope their CPU is ruggedly attached, they may get tornadoes or the occasional hurricane inside...
Otherwise, I thought there was a highly scientific name for a "wind generator". I believe they are called "fans". And lucky me, my computer has one.
Are people that desperate to have their smartphone on at all times that they need to harvest the energy their heart generates to power it? Maybe that's a little drastic, but they mentioned personal electronics. Do people really need to have their devices charged by blood flow? I understand pacemakers or things of that nature because they keep you alive. If it isn't necessary, why POWER it with YOUR HEART? The fact that people even thought that is a little appalling.
I think for many people, yes they are that desperate.
Imagine the idiot who wears his bluetooth cell-phone thingy in his EAR while in a movie theater or church. I bet he would be the first to step up for a blood-powered thingy. And he probably wouldn't mind if the whole cell phone could be implanted inside him, just as long as it contained enough ringtones.
The amount of computing power found in a typical Pentium III computer sitting out and someones curb far exceeds the needs of most users.
Well it was fast until idiots started using Flash to play real-time video. There are other abuses as well...
Soon, I predict that even our interpreted languages will rely on runtime components that are interpreted themselves. And these will show up on webpages!
I remember when Microsoft Office only occupied a few Mb (10) of disk space and ran on systems with 2MB total memory! I can't name any significant advantage the latest version has over the old one (in terms of usuability).
The thing that makes multi threaded programming so difficult is concurrency control
You DO realize that concurrency models, distributed databases, and other distributed systems research were virtually beaten to death from 1960s,1970s, and 1980s?
I also challenge you to find one application/environment where concurrency control is a major implementation/design issue.
I know this is just flamebait, but you are aware that all of the modern disease cures are built on heavy amounts of basic math developed by previous generations of mathematicians, right?
And sadly, the work of many generations of mathematicians is utilized by idiots so that they can drive their SUV, eat a fast-food hamburger, and talk on the cell phone all at the same time.
(As for me, I'm an EE. Sometimes I think about others I knew who were working several years toward their PhD. It's actually quite (morbidly) funny...)
Personally, I have renewed respect for janitors and garbage collectors. Without R&D folks, *technology* would no longer advance. Without janitors/garbage people, *populations* would cease to exist.
humanities professor was riding his ass about that late paper
Considering God had yet to create humans, this was a particularly difficult paper to write.
Perhaps the "humanities" was an active research topic then. Today people write technical papers about things that do not yet exist.
Here's a better one.
Exxon grosses $360bn per year.
Their (world-wide record) profits are $36bn per year.
What retard thinks that oil companies make only 10% profit? A lemonade stand does better than that.
Exxon only has 80000 employees. 36bn/80000 =\ $450K per employee.
I suggest you, Mr. A.C., show me a 2-person lemonade stand keeping $1 Million per year as PROFITS (remember PROFIT, not GROSS).
My question is why don't we want a national ID? It seems to me that our social security number has already become a defacto national ID number. Whenever I have to fill out official paperwork, for either governmental things, or even for national corporations or whatever, they all ask for the social security number, supposedly for identification purposes. However, with identity theft rampant, I don't want to give that number away so easily but often the alternative isn't pleasant, so I do it anyway. I wish I had a national ID number which I could give away as easily as my telephone number for identification purposes, knowing that nothing can be done to my financial accounts if someone had only this number, while guarding my social security number as much as I guard my ATM PIN.
Look at this this way. For cases where a drivers' license suffices, mal-use/identity-theft is already trivial. National ID won't improve that, since it will be used everywhere.
What can someone do with your license? Well, they could test-drive a car at a dealership, steal it, and cause YOU some "interesting" days... Endless possibilities at a bank... (Although some now ask for 2 forms of ID).
And what I want to know is this: When I do give my SSN, what do THEY do with it? I would think more than just record it and forget it. (Is there some service that companies use to verify/look-up SSN information)? Does the SSA provide special access to companies? Seems to me they could only do a credit check. But then they know a heck of a lot about you (address, credit cards, loans, etc).
Me? I think the solution lies in something like everyone using a something like public encryption for ID.. Merchant supplies random string, your ID encrypts/signs it, and then merchant verifies that your encrypted version is really signed by you (using national database of public keys). [I suppose even the government should not be able to know/store your "private" key, but that probably is not realistic].
A hundred years ago, people worked 100 hours a week or more in terrible conditions, with a small, crumbling house to live in and just enough food to survive, and had to run ten miles each way to work. Today, people sit for 8 hours a day in comfortable offices (which they drove to), and have a house with double-glazing, a roof that doesn't leak, central heating, electricity, indoor plumbing, a life expectancy in the 70s or 80s, retirement, endless forms of entertainment, several weeks off work a year (a century ago you were lucky to get Christmas Day off), all the food we can eat flown in from around the world, and endless other benefits.
So in the old days, people lived simple lives, exercised every day and ate freshly killed food? Not quite all bad...
Your view of current lifestyles only applies for a portion of the "middle class" population of the United States, Canada, and Western Europe. In terms of world population, this represents only a minority.
I think you will find that (overall) much of Mexico, parts of Eastern Europe, India, China, most of Africa, parts of Russia, do not have such luxuries. In terms of population, this IS "most of the world". Also keep in mind that our current lifestyle is not sustainable. Our current luxuries are derived from extracting metals/minerals/oil/coal/natural gas out of the ground.
After enough petroleum products are consumed, it may become infeasible to sustain other operations (mining, water purification, etc). In some sense, we are consuming the resources from future generations TODAY. To some extent, all "civilized" lifestyles are unsustainable. But it seems to me that ours today will be very short-lived.
Disclaimer: I am not an environmentalist. I just have an morbid fascination of what the future holds for us.
And think about this. Under what conditions were all the nice things you enjoy produced? Here's a hint: things "made in China" often involve much more human labor than you might think. And this labor doesn't live very well.
I used to believe in that. I don't any more.
Here is a few industries that do not have to please the customer
These companies only have to convince the customer that he/she will be pleased -- before the sale. They rely completely on deception, heavy marketing, and tricking "dumb" customers to survive. I wouldn't consider these to be efficient (in any sense) for pleasing the customer.
Nothing completely new is ever created nowadays, every phrase, every sketch, every melody all use what has come before in varying degrees.
Virtually every phrase, sketch, and melody is "intellectual property" of its relevant owner.
You sir have confessed to heinous acts which are in violation of both state & federal, civil & criminal laws.
(Alternatively, it's somewhat amusing how many people drink while under-age. Nevertheless, it's still a crime).
Try not to have an interesting day...
Will someone with the initials ML PLEASE give this president some oral sex so impeachment procedures can begin?
What good is Cheney doing these days? Spare the interns please!
Only I doubt Cheney can fit underneath the Oval Office desk as well as Monica did. If he could, he would thow out his back while assuming the position.
if they can actually do this, then set up massive arrays of it on top of active volcanoes and other natural heat sources. As the claim is they end up with electricity, that means there is less heat, and we have this maybe/maybe not global warming thing going on. Seems we can reduce a lot of the natural warming of the earth's atmosphere with something that can do this, if it really can...
Yes, but can you imagine the environmental effects caused by cooling a volcano at "Faster-Than-Nature-Indended" rate?
The environmentalists would raise hell!
The UV water purifier isn't needed here in New Orleans. Our tap water has been and continues to be some of the cleanest and best tasting in the country.
I find your comment really funny. Just curious, were you trying to be sarcastic? I once lived in southeastern Louisiana for a long time. New Orleans water always tasted horrible to me. It was difficult to describe. I don't think it was mineral deposits nor chlorine, just *something* else... I don't think I was alone. Many others I new well (who had lived in NO) joked about the tap water there...
OTOH, Baton Rouge puts high amounts of chlorine into their water (one can use a swimming pool testing kit on it!). I've also lived in smaller towns in the area who had water that tasted just like bottled water -- no bad taste, no chlorine smell.
I'm sure a lot is done to purify New Orleans water.... However, I doubt it is enough.