Yeah, Destroying the ecology in a small area around a power plant is way worse than spewing fossil fuel exhaust directly into the air, huh?
Now, if you could please point to where I endorse fossil fuel plants as an alternative to nukes? Strawman.
The way I see it, the simple fact is that you can not extract energy from a system without altering the system.
Agreed. BUT... you then imply that means we might as well ignore the differences between the impact of different types of energy extraction. And that's ridiculous. What we want is cheap, reasonably cleanly-generated power, and sometimes we have to figure out the trade-off we want to make between those two. To do so, we also need to understand exactly what those trade-offs are. Wind looks to have reasonably minimal impact, the question is can it be cost-efficient. According to
http://www.cogreenpower.org/FAQs.htm:
"The cost of wind power has fallen dramatically in recent years, from about 38 cents per kilowatt hour in the early 1980s to about 3 to 6 cents per kilowatt hour today. That is competitive with the price of conventionally generated electricity in many parts of the United States, but is still more expensive than current electric rates paid by Colorado customers, who enjoy some of the lowest rates in the country.
The cost of wind power is expected to continue to fall. By 2005, many analysts expect wind power to cost about 2 cents per kilowatt hour, making it the cheapest source of electricity available."
There's also the issue of how many good spots there are for turbines, as many places get much more wind than others.
According to that same web page, Denmark already gets 10% of its electricity from wind.
Commandos 2 seems to have the same problem (penguins and polar bears at a Nazi base), and they're generally trying to be fairly realistic. Sigh...
I bet there was a meeting regarding that game where a geek programmer tried to point out that penguins are southern hemisphere only but a marketing guy overruled him because penguins are cute and funny.
Fission would be just fine. About as clean as it gets.
...except for the risk of terrorist attacks. Remember the govt getting libraries to destroy records regarding nuclear power plants? Oh, and once the plant is decomissioned, as I recall it gets buried in concrete and/or glass for some long time. Not exactly clean -- the land's not very useful -- even if the containment is entirely successful. Not to mention all the other waste that everyone wants NIMBY, and the feds have been trying to force on Nevada for, what, twenty years?
Wind power really looks like the most promising approach. Along with numerous locations on land (Montana esp.), the East Coast's continental shelf could support a gigantic wind farm with minimal environmental impact. From what I've read, some wind farms are already price-competitive with coal, etc.
This is also my big beef with GPL. We should encourage people to take idea's from others, add their own stuff and make a profit on it.
The GPL does not protect ideas, just the code itself. Nothing in the GPL stops a corporation from copying the ideas from a GPL'ed app and making their own version, they just can't copy it too closely. The GPL protection just makes it more convenient to contribute to the project rather than rewriting it oneself, to encourage people to contribute.
Finally, I have to ask why the Linux/GNU/FreeBSD/Open Source/Free Software community is so obsessed with trumping the "closed" community by producing open source replicas of hard work?
One issue is immortality. There are a number of fun games from the past that are very hard to obtain now, simply because it is no longer profitable for the companies to provide it or they're out of business. Take X-COM Apocalypse (the first game I thought of), for example. The developer's page is now a porn site, the publisher has no records for it, and I can't find a place to buy it (maybe ebay would work.) But essentially, it no longer exists. Open source games tend to live forever if they reach a certain level of quality.
The second is that it becomes the basis for new and better versions, including ones with better graphics. Perhaps one could create a 3-D model rather than using 2-D tiles, and have much better zooming ability. I think it would be an interesting experiment, and "innovative."
Re:By your silly definition, Mr. Editor,
on
Freedom or Power?
·
· Score: 2
true freedom would mean I can't be thrown in jail for murdering a bus full of kids.
BS, because that would mean you're restricting *my* freedom to throw you into jail. So it isn't true freedom.
We live in a world of absolute freedom. What we've chosen to do with that freedom is to set up systems of laws, to jail people who do things we don't like, etc. You're "free" to murder the busload of kids, and I'm "free" to introduce you to Ol' Sparky for doing so. Perhaps you should consider a more meaningful definition of freedom?
Right click on the tab, there are a couple of interesting menu options there
I wish close tab was the first, though; I've accidentally gotten rid of other panes I didn't want to get rid of because I've chosen the wrong menu thingie. The first item is generally the easiest to pick and should the most common thing.
I wonder if there could be a clean way to make tabs convertable to separate windows and vice-versa.
Re:Not to sound like an asshole, but...
on
Message from Kabul
·
· Score: 1
Slavery was wrong in America, therefore it was abolished.
...by the North imposing its will on the South via invasion, which claimed to be a distinct country (succession and all that.) It had sod all to do with passing laws, it took government troops armed with guns and ~600,000 deaths. One fairly cohesive group (the North) imposed its will on another (the South). And it was the right thing to do.
Re:Not to sound like an asshole, but...
on
Message from Kabul
·
· Score: 2
What you and I call "enslavement", Afghans call "respect".
You can call a pile of bat guano filet mignon if you want to, but I'm still not going to eat it.
Anyway, you can't even stop me from "enslaving" my wife if I lived next door to you, as long as I don't break any laws.
Sure I can. I can choose to try and get her out of there, just like Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad did back when slavery was legal in this country. Did the law make slavery moral? Like hell.
How can you expect to Americanize these people halfway across the globe?
It seems to me like we've already started doing exactly that. "Americanize" is your term, not mine, but if you mean eliminating repression, yes, we already *have* done a lot of that.
You have no rights not given to you by your nation of residence.
Here we're getting into a terminology argument. As TJ wrote, we are "endowed with certain inalienable rights". As such, our government does not give us or take away rights, it can merely guarantee them or violate them. On the other hand, the Federalists gave an enumeration in the Bill of Rights. In that context, rights are specified in law. So talking about rights becomes a terminology discussion. I'd rather discuss moral/immoral.
Do you agree that slavery, regardless of where it occurs, is immoral? If not, I posit you're a nihilist, and thus anything goes anyway; arguing we don't have a right to do X posits that there is a universal morality, which contradicts your assertion of localized morality.
There has never been an election in Saudi Arabia either.
Yup, and it's a pretty repressive place with immoral leaders. I would be morally right to free its people from such repression. That doesn't mean I have to throw my life away futilely. Just because you can't do something to stop immoral behavior doesn't make it moral, just unstoppable.
Democracy is not for everyone.
Just because we can't stop all repression doesn't mean we can't (or shouldn't) stop some, or pressuring governments to reduce repression.
Re:Not to sound like an asshole, but...
on
Message from Kabul
·
· Score: 4, Informative
What business is it of ours how women are treated in Afghanistan?
Mankind is my business, and yours too. Enslave someone *anywhere*, and I have the moral right to stop you. Morality does not stop at national borders.
Ask orthodox Jews or the Amish if they'd like to be forced to "modernize", and see what they think!
The Taliban forced people to do things they didn't want to do. It's not like all of Afghanistan sat down and agreed, "OK, women stay at home, don't get schooling, and have to wear burqas." People with guns forced others to behave that way.
Anyone who works for a company making their co-workers redundant will tell you that they have less and less time to devote to an outside project.
Wasn't one of the features of the dot-com boom that techies were working absurd hours in the hopes of stock option millions? Then again, I never worked those hours, and I suspect many not-coms didn't also; perhaps it's the pressure at not-coms that has changed.
It is nice to see Bluetooth becoming the standard here though.
I wish it was the standard, though; Logitech and Thrustmaster are both coming out with wireless gamepads, but every RF device from either company needs its own receiver. A single receiver would save a mess of USB ports...
It's not the $8,000 system I want to see blown out, it's the $140,000 one mentioned a couple months back on/. Then, hopefully, with the judgement check in hand, the audiophile will see the lunacy of his ways, so you have two good things...
Why was a Queen elected? The very fact that she is a Queen makes election, well stupid.
It may be that on Naboo, generally the role of queen is ceremonial; it was only the Trade Federation invasion and the fact she was free that made her more essential than usual.
surely if you were trying to lie low (which is what I assume the sith do) why be so bloody obvious with black makeup and horns.
Perhaps his force skills include a "Somebody else's problem" field, so most people simply don't notice his appearance. Or perhaps his species actually all look like that.
Why was R2D2 given a "special commendation" when all the other droids were referred as "We're losing droids..."
Same reason people will pay millions for Mark McGwire's 70th home run ball, even though it's just like every other pro baseball.
Is anyone actually working on XBox linux? I couldn't find any real projects for it.
Is there any evidence of (or cunning way to use) USB peripherals for the XBox? I suppose you might manage something working through the ethernet connector, but additional hardware starts eating away at the cheapness of it as a PC.
As long as I'm asking, is anyone playing with using a Gameboy Advance as a fancy PC peripheral? Using it for games like football where one wants to secretly set plays seems like a nifty idea.
Hell, at 2pm on a Sunday a local station showed predator, including Carl Weather's character's severed arm flying off, still firing an automatic weapon. Yeah, *that's* good family fare...
"Congratulations, Mr. Jones, on your court victory. You now own the rights to the patent. Oh, by the way, here is the bill for all of your research time."
The university generally gets paid by taking a very healthy cut of the patent royalties, no matter whose name is on the patent. This decision wouldn't change that.
Remember, *anyone* can sue you for anything. There's little reason, however, to believe this particular case will set a precedent that makes a suit such as you describe more likely to succeed. So no, I see no reason for you to be concerned.
Don't get me wrong, I do believe that the U.S. should do anything in its hands to solve the Israeli-Palestinan problem (if only to leave Bin Laden without arguments).
All indications are that what Bin Laden hates is the current Saudi government (King Fahd, pretty tyrannical and Taliban-like himself, frankly) and the U.S. support for that self-same government. While I would like to see peace in Israel/Palestine, it's not the key issue here.
Note that in Mazar-e-Sharif, women dispensed with their burqas, went to mosques, and regained the rights they had lost to the Taliban, now that the Northern Alliance has retaken the city. So have a little good news for today.
First, governments cooperate on creating a treaty with provisions that would never pass muster with the folks back home if they tried to pass it directly. Once signed, they then work to pass laws implementing the treaty. If people complain about the provisions, the lawmakers disclaim responsibility, saying they have to do this to comply with the treaty.
It HAS happened and It DOES happen, EXACTLY like this. Let's not get fooled again.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, Destroying the ecology in a small area around a power plant is way worse than spewing fossil fuel exhaust directly into the air, huh?
Now, if you could please point to where I endorse fossil fuel plants as an alternative to nukes? Strawman.
The way I see it, the simple fact is that you can not extract energy from a system without altering the system.
Agreed. BUT... you then imply that means we might as well ignore the differences between the impact of different types of energy extraction. And that's ridiculous. What we want is cheap, reasonably cleanly-generated power, and sometimes we have to figure out the trade-off we want to make between those two. To do so, we also need to understand exactly what those trade-offs are. Wind looks to have reasonably minimal impact, the question is can it be cost-efficient. According to
http://www.cogreenpower.org/FAQs.htm:
"The cost of wind power has fallen dramatically in recent years, from about 38 cents per kilowatt hour in the early 1980s to about 3 to 6 cents per kilowatt hour today. That is competitive with the price of conventionally generated electricity in many parts of the United States, but is still more expensive than current electric rates paid by Colorado customers, who enjoy some of the lowest rates in the country.
The cost of wind power is expected to continue to fall. By 2005, many analysts expect wind power to cost about 2 cents per kilowatt hour, making it the cheapest source of electricity available."
There's also the issue of how many good spots there are for turbines, as many places get much more wind than others.
According to that same web page, Denmark already gets 10% of its electricity from wind.
Commandos 2 seems to have the same problem (penguins and polar bears at a Nazi base), and they're generally trying to be fairly realistic. Sigh...
I bet there was a meeting regarding that game where a geek programmer tried to point out that penguins are southern hemisphere only but a marketing guy overruled him because penguins are cute and funny.
Fission would be just fine. About as clean as it gets.
...except for the risk of terrorist attacks. Remember the govt getting libraries to destroy records regarding nuclear power plants? Oh, and once the plant is decomissioned, as I recall it gets buried in concrete and/or glass for some long time. Not exactly clean -- the land's not very useful -- even if the containment is entirely successful. Not to mention all the other waste that everyone wants NIMBY, and the feds have been trying to force on Nevada for, what, twenty years?
Wind power really looks like the most promising approach. Along with numerous locations on land (Montana esp.), the East Coast's continental shelf could support a gigantic wind farm with minimal environmental impact. From what I've read, some wind farms are already price-competitive with coal, etc.
This is also my big beef with GPL. We should encourage people to take idea's from others, add their own stuff and make a profit on it.
The GPL does not protect ideas, just the code itself. Nothing in the GPL stops a corporation from copying the ideas from a GPL'ed app and making their own version, they just can't copy it too closely. The GPL protection just makes it more convenient to contribute to the project rather than rewriting it oneself, to encourage people to contribute.
Finally, I have to ask why the Linux/GNU/FreeBSD/Open Source/Free Software community is so obsessed with trumping the "closed" community by producing open source replicas of hard work?
One issue is immortality. There are a number of fun games from the past that are very hard to obtain now, simply because it is no longer profitable for the companies to provide it or they're out of business. Take X-COM Apocalypse (the first game I thought of), for example. The developer's page is now a porn site, the publisher has no records for it, and I can't find a place to buy it (maybe ebay would work.) But essentially, it no longer exists. Open source games tend to live forever if they reach a certain level of quality.
The second is that it becomes the basis for new and better versions, including ones with better graphics. Perhaps one could create a 3-D model rather than using 2-D tiles, and have much better zooming ability. I think it would be an interesting experiment, and "innovative."
true freedom would mean I can't be thrown in jail for murdering a bus full of kids.
BS, because that would mean you're restricting *my* freedom to throw you into jail. So it isn't true freedom.
We live in a world of absolute freedom. What we've chosen to do with that freedom is to set up systems of laws, to jail people who do things we don't like, etc. You're "free" to murder the busload of kids, and I'm "free" to introduce you to Ol' Sparky for doing so. Perhaps you should consider a more meaningful definition of freedom?
Right click on the tab, there are a couple of interesting menu options there
I wish close tab was the first, though; I've accidentally gotten rid of other panes I didn't want to get rid of because I've chosen the wrong menu thingie. The first item is generally the easiest to pick and should the most common thing.
I wonder if there could be a clean way to make tabs convertable to separate windows and vice-versa.
Slavery was wrong in America, therefore it was abolished.
...by the North imposing its will on the South via invasion, which claimed to be a distinct country (succession and all that.) It had sod all to do with passing laws, it took government troops armed with guns and ~600,000 deaths. One fairly cohesive group (the North) imposed its will on another (the South). And it was the right thing to do.
What you and I call "enslavement", Afghans call "respect".
You can call a pile of bat guano filet mignon if you want to, but I'm still not going to eat it.
Anyway, you can't even stop me from "enslaving" my wife if I lived next door to you, as long as I don't break any laws.
Sure I can. I can choose to try and get her out of there, just like Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad did back when slavery was legal in this country. Did the law make slavery moral? Like hell.
How can you expect to Americanize these people halfway across the globe?
It seems to me like we've already started doing exactly that. "Americanize" is your term, not mine, but if you mean eliminating repression, yes, we already *have* done a lot of that.
You have no rights not given to you by your nation of residence.
Here we're getting into a terminology argument. As TJ wrote, we are "endowed with certain inalienable rights". As such, our government does not give us or take away rights, it can merely guarantee them or violate them. On the other hand, the Federalists gave an enumeration in the Bill of Rights. In that context, rights are specified in law. So talking about rights becomes a terminology discussion. I'd rather discuss moral/immoral.
Do you agree that slavery, regardless of where it occurs, is immoral? If not, I posit you're a nihilist, and thus anything goes anyway; arguing we don't have a right to do X posits that there is a universal morality, which contradicts your assertion of localized morality.
There has never been an election in Saudi Arabia either.
Yup, and it's a pretty repressive place with immoral leaders. I would be morally right to free its people from such repression. That doesn't mean I have to throw my life away futilely. Just because you can't do something to stop immoral behavior doesn't make it moral, just unstoppable.
Democracy is not for everyone.
Just because we can't stop all repression doesn't mean we can't (or shouldn't) stop some, or pressuring governments to reduce repression.
What business is it of ours how women are treated in Afghanistan?
Mankind is my business, and yours too. Enslave someone *anywhere*, and I have the moral right to stop you. Morality does not stop at national borders.
Ask orthodox Jews or the Amish if they'd like to be forced to "modernize", and see what they think!
The Taliban forced people to do things they didn't want to do. It's not like all of Afghanistan sat down and agreed, "OK, women stay at home, don't get schooling, and have to wear burqas." People with guns forced others to behave that way.
Anyone who works for a company making their co-workers redundant will tell you that they have less and less time to devote to an outside project.
Wasn't one of the features of the dot-com boom that techies were working absurd hours in the hopes of stock option millions? Then again, I never worked those hours, and I suspect many not-coms didn't also; perhaps it's the pressure at not-coms that has changed.
It is nice to see Bluetooth becoming the standard here though.
I wish it was the standard, though; Logitech and Thrustmaster are both coming out with wireless gamepads, but every RF device from either company needs its own receiver. A single receiver would save a mess of USB ports...
why not, at very least, increase the leg-room, deskspace, whatever and combine the cpu-box and monitor.
One reason not to is so you can upgrade those components separately. Their assumption is that you upgrade monitors less frequently than systems.
Three posts in one day from Alan Cox?
/. time...
So *that's* why he turned over 2.4 maintenance to someone else; it was going to interfere with his
Sure, it's bad to let a potential terrorist gain access to info about a nuclear plant that may help them kill millions.
Which, for all you pro-nukers out there, may be a good reason *not* to build nuclear power plants...
It's not the $8,000 system I want to see blown out, it's the $140,000 one mentioned a couple months back on /. Then, hopefully, with the judgement check in hand, the audiophile will see the lunacy of his ways, so you have two good things...
Why was a Queen elected? The very fact that she is a Queen makes election, well stupid.
It may be that on Naboo, generally the role of queen is ceremonial; it was only the Trade Federation invasion and the fact she was free that made her more essential than usual.
surely if you were trying to lie low (which is what I assume the sith do) why be so bloody obvious with black makeup and horns.
Perhaps his force skills include a "Somebody else's problem" field, so most people simply don't notice his appearance. Or perhaps his species actually all look like that.
Why was R2D2 given a "special commendation" when all the other droids were referred as "We're losing droids..."
Same reason people will pay millions for Mark McGwire's 70th home run ball, even though it's just like every other pro baseball.
Re: running Linux:
Is anyone actually working on XBox linux? I couldn't find any real projects for it.
Is there any evidence of (or cunning way to use) USB peripherals for the XBox? I suppose you might manage something working through the ethernet connector, but additional hardware starts eating away at the cheapness of it as a PC.
As long as I'm asking, is anyone playing with using a Gameboy Advance as a fancy PC peripheral? Using it for games like football where one wants to secretly set plays seems like a nifty idea.
Hell, at 2pm on a Sunday a local station showed predator, including Carl Weather's character's severed arm flying off, still firing an automatic weapon. Yeah, *that's* good family fare...
You forgot to mention that you also need your eyelids glued open for the duration of the movie...
"Congratulations, Mr. Jones, on your court victory. You now own the rights to the patent. Oh, by the way, here is the bill for all of your research time."
The university generally gets paid by taking a very healthy cut of the patent royalties, no matter whose name is on the patent. This decision wouldn't change that.
It's probably more than $85K too.
Remember, *anyone* can sue you for anything. There's little reason, however, to believe this particular case will set a precedent that makes a suit such as you describe more likely to succeed. So no, I see no reason for you to be concerned.
As always, IANAL.
You mark my words, Linux will lose friends quickly if it ever sits on more than 10% of the world's PCs...
Sounds like a Yogi Berra-ism: "Nobody goes there anymore; it's too crowded."
Don't get me wrong, I do believe that the U.S. should do anything in its hands to solve the Israeli-Palestinan problem (if only to leave Bin Laden without arguments).
All indications are that what Bin Laden hates is the current Saudi government (King Fahd, pretty tyrannical and Taliban-like himself, frankly) and the U.S. support for that self-same government. While I would like to see peace in Israel/Palestine, it's not the key issue here.
Note that in Mazar-e-Sharif, women dispensed with their burqas, went to mosques, and regained the rights they had lost to the Taliban, now that the Northern Alliance has retaken the city. So have a little good news for today.
First, governments cooperate on creating a treaty with provisions that would never pass muster with the folks back home if they tried to pass it directly. Once signed, they then work to pass laws implementing the treaty. If people complain about the provisions, the lawmakers disclaim responsibility, saying they have to do this to comply with the treaty.
It HAS happened and It DOES happen, EXACTLY like this. Let's not get fooled again.