Becuase "we" fear that there are all those "evil" people out there (somehwere?) to get us and try and kill us? That attitude is fabricated crap, generated from the kind of attitude present in text like this.
Yes, let's just ignore thousands of years of human history. By the way, how's the muffin man doing these days? Still living with the lollipop lady on sugar-plum lane?
Please. Anyone with a half-functioning brain could figure out the mechanics of a crossbow. There's still plenty of people who HUNT with crossbows because they consider it more challenging than using a rifle, and crossbow technology today is a hell of a lot more advanced than it was 200 years ago. I can't even start to comprehend the level of ignorance that would be required to believe that the net amount of human knowledge doesn't increase over time. Are you just trolling, or what?
Solve the problem at the core: stop burning fossil fuels.
If you think that's an option, you are seriously deluded.
I don't have incandescent light bulbs in my house for years.
Me neither, but so what? Eve if every single person were to get rid of incandescent bulbs, the difference in energy use would be infinitesimal, and would be swallowed up by next year's growth in energy demand. Such measures are a good way to save money, but do nothing for the environment.
When it gets cold, I put on a sweater, and a vest, instead of turning up the heat.
Ditto. Once again - good way to save money. Plus I find it to be more comfortable. But as far as saving the environment goes? I don't have any illusions.
I drive 60MPH to work because it saves 10% gas over 65MPH
Well, don't worry, I drive 80 in order to make up the difference for you and 5 other drivers. You're welcome!
I just hope you realize that all of your efforts add up to exactly squat in the long run. They may make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but even if every person in North America were to take the steps you've talked about here, the growth in emissions by China and India over the next year would easily make up for it. Nothing we do at this point to reduce emissions is going to make any long term difference. Nothing is going to roll back the clock. Assuming that excess carbon dioxide and methane really ARE going to cause problems in the future, the only way to fight that is through new technologies. Conservation, while not a bad thing, is certainly not an answer.
Let me know when Bush gets rid of term limits and has Hillary arrested. Then I might care. In the meantime, you're more than welcome to move to a nation with a better form of government. Just don your interstellar space jumpsuit, and off you go!
We're breaking everything and the world is going to end thanks to global warming. We know this for 100% sure, because we're so smart. But we shouldn't try doing anything to fix it, because we're so damn stupid.
Do I have that about right?
It seems to me the only option left is for us to just die. You go first, the rest of us will follow.
This isn't some religious belief, it's a position based on the presented facts. If you present an argument as to why I'm wrong, I'll consider my position.
If you hold the belief that the invasion of Iraq was "all about the oil", it's your responsibility to provide evidence of this. That's the way a logical argument would work. While in the process of providing this evidence, you also have to steer clear of using fallacious arguments, like saying "why aren't they also in _____", or "well what OTHER reason could they possibly have?". Those are not valid forms of argument.
I certainly could provide figures which would make your claims look ludicrous. For starters, I could point out that only a ludicrously small ammount of US oil comes from Iraq, and that the main oil contracts in Iraq seem to be going to Shell, a Dutch company. Incidentally, if you want to argue that the Dutch convinced the US to invade Iraq, you'd be a little more consistent, but you'd still sound silly. I could also point out the inefficiency of burning hundreds of billions of dollars on a "war for oil" which, even if the US stole all the oil in Iraq, wouldn't even cover the cost of the war for at least a few decades. All of that is beside the point though - it's not my responsibility to disprove your silly assertions. If you have evidence that the invasion was "all about the oil", feel free to post it. Otherwise, keep your hatred of America to yourself.
You believe in a nutty conspiracy theory about war and middle eastern oil, so therefore I must believe that global warming is a vast left-wing conspiracy? How the hell did you arrive at that conclusion?
You're obviously a lot more interested in your little ideological pissing contest than you are in facts and figures. That's fine. I don't try to convert people away from their ideological or religious beliefs, since they're pretty much never based on a rational assessment of the available data. You're more than welcome to go on believing whatever you want. Just don't be surprised when people file you away in the "nuttier than squirrel shit" category.
And, yeah, Iraq is about the oil. Anyone who says otherwise is ignoring reality.
Even though the rest of your comments are flat out wrong, and verge on the edge of the usual conspiracy woo, I was actually going to take you seriously and respond in a reasoned manner. Right up until that last "point". If you still believe such nonsense, then you're not really interested in facts or figures. Accusing those who disagree with you of "ignoring reality" tells me that you're utterly unable to distinguish fact from fiction.
These are not products you can actually get, they are in development and may be actual products some day.
Er, no. The entire 2008 line of Tesla Roadsters has already been purchased. According to the tesla motors website, all customers have received estimated delivery dates, and the first cars will be shipping a few months from now. You can certainly buy one right now if you want, you just won't get it until 2009 due to the limited supply. All you need to secure your spot in line is a $5,000 deposit. It's not a question of "if", or even "when" any more. It's a real product which you can purchase.
I don't think the Vectrix is perfect by any means, I'd far rather have a car, or a real motorcycle, but having an actual product for sale is an achievement worth celebrating.
Well, I'm actually comparing a real vehicle to vaporware....
If there was anybody else building actual street-legal reasonable-performance machines, I'd compare them too.
Guess you've never heard of the tesla roadster?
Oh, look at that! It's actually mentioned in TFA. But reading the article before commenting is SO passe!
Besides which, the Volt is far from "vaporware". They've already got a few test models booting around on the roads. Unless a total disaster happens, they should have them available for purchase by 2010.
And last but not least, scooters suck, and I have zero faith in polish technology of any kind. I'm sure you've heard the joke about the polish submarine with the screen door, so i won't go into details.
Probably the same reason we haven't used the mars rover to look for little green men. Namely, we knew even before we launched the rover that there was no way in hell they could possibly exist.
People need to start using less energy or things are going to get very difficult in the near future.
Pure FUD. We've got enough uranium to last us for centuries at the current consumption rate. The actual number is likely to be much higher, since as far as I'm aware no effort has ever been made to catalogue all global uranium deposits. Add to that the technologies being developed for the newest generations of breeder reactors, and you come to the conclusion that even with the massive increase in energy consumption which the industrialization of China and India is going to produce, we'll be good to go for at least another couple hundred years. If we haven't managed to wipe each other out by then, there's little doubt in my mind that we'll be mining the asteroids, at which point questions of resource depletion stop having any meaning. At that point our biggest problem will probably be heat buildup due to all the energy we're producing.
I am the average car buyer who makes a middle class wage. I have a family and bills. I cannot afford a $30,000 car that ultimately wouldn't not fit my entire family and the accompanying resources for 2 kids.
The Chevy Volt WILL fit you entire family and the accompanying resources. As for the price tag.... buy used:) My 2006 doge charger retailed for around $30,000.... but two years later I picked it up for $14,500. Right now I have no intention of getting another car until 2012. Why? Because by then the first Chevy Volt's will be 2 years old.
(And yes, I'm aware that prices won't scale exactly, but you get the point. You'll always be able to find much better deals on used vehicles.)
Sorry, but the conspiracy theories only make sense when you totally ignore reality. GM couldn't afford to manufacture and sell the EV1, and they couldn't simply sell off the already made models without having some sort of support structure in place to provide replacement parts and servicing for them. I mean, sure, theoretically they could have said "if you buy one of these, don't expect any help from us", but realistically such a move would have lead to even more bad publicity for them, and probably more than a few spurious lawsuits. Their marketing and/or legal department certainly would have realized that, and made the logical decision.
Have you actually looked into the costs and problems associated with wind power? They take damage from high winds or bird strikes. They lose efficiency when dead bugs build up on the blades and mechanism. They can't generate power when there's no wind. Their decentralized natures makes them a nightmare to service, and necessitates mobile repair and servicing parties, which burn fossil fuel. And never mind the initial investment in resources and energy to create them! Plus, as an earlier commenter pointed out, we don't really know what sort of effect they will have on wind patterns and the environment in general if we start using them in large numbers.
On a limited basis, they're fine. If you're a farmer and want to have two or three turbines which you service yourself, hey, great, every little bit helps. But as a large scale solution they're worse than solar, and nuclear still has them both beat by a huge margin.
The problem with that is that OpenSolaris has very limited hardware support at this point. My suggestion to anyone considering that route is make sure you don't purchase any hardware until you have verified that it is supported. I started my NAS project assuming that solaris was as mature as linux when it comes to drivers, and was sorely disappointed.
On the bright side, I was able to get a Ubuntu installation up with ZFS running under FUSE. It's stable, but the current FUSE implementation of ZFS is very slow, and development seems to have ground to a halt (no updates since sept 12th) so I'm looking into possibly switching to FreeBSD (version 7 beta 3 is out now, which supports ZFS).
All you need is giant Bee Overseers to police the workers, and kill off any rouge nodes. The actual implementation of the killings is left as an exercise for the reader.
Seems to me you got the wrong message from that experience. There's deffinitely something wrong with a system in which the individual workers have to break the rules in order to properly do their job.
Humans are an inherently illogical species. The reason we need a manned space program right now is the same reason that hollywood movie starts get paid millions of dollars for work that has no practical value whatsoever. Namely, humans like to be amused, and they like drama. And there's nothing amusing or dramatic about lobbing a circuit-board on wheels at Mars, and then having it roll around collecting rocks.
The "judicial overview" you refer to is being done by military tribunals.
No, you're thinking of the actual trials themselves. When I said "judicial overview" I was referring to the civilian court proceedings which reviewed the legality of the bill, as well as reviewing individual instances of it's use. For instance, Jose Padilla's case, while being tried in military court, was reviewed by a civilian court. That's the judicial overview I was referring to.
The power in question is being used very selectively right now in order to quell fears that it may be misused and to give people time to forget about the issue. But I should add that we only think that it's being used selectively and judiciously. There's no guarantee that it's being used in any such way. We simply don't know everything the executive branch is keeping secret, and such secrets could easily include the detention of people who should not be detained at all. We've already released a number of people who were wrongly detained. What in the world makes you think we released them all?
That, my friend, is the road to utter paranoia. Using that sort of logic, you could make pretty much anything out to be a conspiracy. Basically, you're using lack of evidence as if it were evidence. That's like me saying that I THINK you're not a child molester, but I have no proof you're not, therefore I should treat you like a child molester. It's a ridiculous line of argument.
What we're discussing here is doing away with all of that and literally allowing the executive branch to throw anyone they want to into a hole with nothing more than a show trial at most.
*shrug* The government's always had that power. What in the world do you think we did with enemy prisoners during WW2? US citizens are generally afforded better treatment when it comes to such things, but any US citizen caught colluding with the Nazis would have been summarily executed within hours. In such clear-cut cases, and especially during a time of war, I've got absolutely zero concerns about bypassing the regular legal system, and we've been doing it for centuries. The constitution doesn't come into play.
Also, I find it interesting that nobody ever bothers standing up for your soldiers, whose trials are nearly ALWAYS conducted by a military tribunal. It's ok for the defenders of your nation to be tried in military courts, but that's not good enough for those who plot to kill them?
Between all that and the current track record of the current executive administration, I think we all have every reason to be worried.
What track record is that? Their reluctance to use enough force in Iraq to destroy the insurgency? Their failure to abuse their newly defined powers to arrest citizens on false pretences? Their lack of an attempt to get rid of term limits and impose a never-ending republican government?
Man, I've seen the way dictators and fascists behave. The republicans are more reminiscent of big burly mommas boys than any sort of evil regime. They hold a shitload of power, but are too whipped to ever really abuse it. Sure, they'll try to do it once in a while, but as soon as news of it hits the papers they immediately become submissive, start apologizing, and try to hide. It's embarrassing, really. It's like that buddy everyone has who acts tough and macho 24/7, but goes running home as soon as his wife calls, and lets her walk all over him. You gotta feel sorry for them.
Of course, any human being that doesn't recognize this late in the game that the agenda of the US government is in large part driven by the interests of oil companies probably isn't going to be able to digest any of this, but what the hell. Here, have some pearls.
Interesting. The court's decision was specifically that:
"Those powers include the power to detain identified and committed enemies such as Padilla, who associated with al Qaeda . . . who took up arms against this Nation in its war against these enemies, and who entered the United States for the avowed purpose of further prosecuting that war by attacking American citizens."
Seeing that it's being used so selectively, and considering the amount of judicial overview that these cases are going through, I don't think you have much to worry about. But yeah, it's something worth keeping an eye on. And it seems I need to review the relevant laws, since my interpretation of the bill was a lot different.
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Please. Anyone with a half-functioning brain could figure out the mechanics of a crossbow. There's still plenty of people who HUNT with crossbows because they consider it more challenging than using a rifle, and crossbow technology today is a hell of a lot more advanced than it was 200 years ago. I can't even start to comprehend the level of ignorance that would be required to believe that the net amount of human knowledge doesn't increase over time. Are you just trolling, or what?
Me neither, but so what? Eve if every single person were to get rid of incandescent bulbs, the difference in energy use would be infinitesimal, and would be swallowed up by next year's growth in energy demand. Such measures are a good way to save money, but do nothing for the environment.
Ditto. Once again - good way to save money. Plus I find it to be more comfortable. But as far as saving the environment goes? I don't have any illusions.
Well, don't worry, I drive 80 in order to make up the difference for you and 5 other drivers. You're welcome!
I just hope you realize that all of your efforts add up to exactly squat in the long run. They may make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but even if every person in North America were to take the steps you've talked about here, the growth in emissions by China and India over the next year would easily make up for it. Nothing we do at this point to reduce emissions is going to make any long term difference. Nothing is going to roll back the clock. Assuming that excess carbon dioxide and methane really ARE going to cause problems in the future, the only way to fight that is through new technologies. Conservation, while not a bad thing, is certainly not an answer.
Any time you find yourself using the term "neocon talking point", chances are you've been spending WAY too much time hanging out with the Kos Kids!
Let me know when Bush gets rid of term limits and has Hillary arrested. Then I might care. In the meantime, you're more than welcome to move to a nation with a better form of government. Just don your interstellar space jumpsuit, and off you go!
So, the arguent goes something like this:
We're breaking everything and the world is going to end thanks to global warming. We know this for 100% sure, because we're so smart. But we shouldn't try doing anything to fix it, because we're so damn stupid.
Do I have that about right?
It seems to me the only option left is for us to just die. You go first, the rest of us will follow.
Really.
We will.
This is an Accident Fallacy, as well as a type of Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy. But more importantly, it's a total non-sequitur.
Ah yes, the good old Burden of Proof Fallacy.
Let me explain it in words you'll understand:
If you hold the belief that the invasion of Iraq was "all about the oil", it's your responsibility to provide evidence of this. That's the way a logical argument would work. While in the process of providing this evidence, you also have to steer clear of using fallacious arguments, like saying "why aren't they also in _____", or "well what OTHER reason could they possibly have?". Those are not valid forms of argument.
I certainly could provide figures which would make your claims look ludicrous. For starters, I could point out that only a ludicrously small ammount of US oil comes from Iraq, and that the main oil contracts in Iraq seem to be going to Shell, a Dutch company. Incidentally, if you want to argue that the Dutch convinced the US to invade Iraq, you'd be a little more consistent, but you'd still sound silly. I could also point out the inefficiency of burning hundreds of billions of dollars on a "war for oil" which, even if the US stole all the oil in Iraq, wouldn't even cover the cost of the war for at least a few decades. All of that is beside the point though - it's not my responsibility to disprove your silly assertions. If you have evidence that the invasion was "all about the oil", feel free to post it. Otherwise, keep your hatred of America to yourself.
You believe in a nutty conspiracy theory about war and middle eastern oil, so therefore I must believe that global warming is a vast left-wing conspiracy? How the hell did you arrive at that conclusion?
You're obviously a lot more interested in your little ideological pissing contest than you are in facts and figures. That's fine. I don't try to convert people away from their ideological or religious beliefs, since they're pretty much never based on a rational assessment of the available data. You're more than welcome to go on believing whatever you want. Just don't be surprised when people file you away in the "nuttier than squirrel shit" category.
Sure. So was the Segway
Oh, look at that! It's actually mentioned in TFA. But reading the article before commenting is SO passe!
Besides which, the Volt is far from "vaporware". They've already got a few test models booting around on the roads. Unless a total disaster happens, they should have them available for purchase by 2010.
And last but not least, scooters suck, and I have zero faith in polish technology of any kind. I'm sure you've heard the joke about the polish submarine with the screen door, so i won't go into details.
Probably the same reason we haven't used the mars rover to look for little green men. Namely, we knew even before we launched the rover that there was no way in hell they could possibly exist.
(And yes, I'm aware that prices won't scale exactly, but you get the point. You'll always be able to find much better deals on used vehicles.)
Sure. And Iraq was all about the oil.
Sorry, but the conspiracy theories only make sense when you totally ignore reality. GM couldn't afford to manufacture and sell the EV1, and they couldn't simply sell off the already made models without having some sort of support structure in place to provide replacement parts and servicing for them. I mean, sure, theoretically they could have said "if you buy one of these, don't expect any help from us", but realistically such a move would have lead to even more bad publicity for them, and probably more than a few spurious lawsuits. Their marketing and/or legal department certainly would have realized that, and made the logical decision.
You're comparing a polish-made scooter to American and Japanese made cars?
Uh. Sure. You know, I hear you can also get all electric RC cars at Toys R Us.....
Have you actually looked into the costs and problems associated with wind power? They take damage from high winds or bird strikes. They lose efficiency when dead bugs build up on the blades and mechanism. They can't generate power when there's no wind. Their decentralized natures makes them a nightmare to service, and necessitates mobile repair and servicing parties, which burn fossil fuel. And never mind the initial investment in resources and energy to create them! Plus, as an earlier commenter pointed out, we don't really know what sort of effect they will have on wind patterns and the environment in general if we start using them in large numbers.
On a limited basis, they're fine. If you're a farmer and want to have two or three turbines which you service yourself, hey, great, every little bit helps. But as a large scale solution they're worse than solar, and nuclear still has them both beat by a huge margin.
The problem with that is that OpenSolaris has very limited hardware support at this point. My suggestion to anyone considering that route is make sure you don't purchase any hardware until you have verified that it is supported. I started my NAS project assuming that solaris was as mature as linux when it comes to drivers, and was sorely disappointed.
On the bright side, I was able to get a Ubuntu installation up with ZFS running under FUSE. It's stable, but the current FUSE implementation of ZFS is very slow, and development seems to have ground to a halt (no updates since sept 12th) so I'm looking into possibly switching to FreeBSD (version 7 beta 3 is out now, which supports ZFS).
All you need is giant Bee Overseers to police the workers, and kill off any rouge nodes. The actual implementation of the killings is left as an exercise for the reader.
Seems to me you got the wrong message from that experience. There's deffinitely something wrong with a system in which the individual workers have to break the rules in order to properly do their job.
Humans are an inherently illogical species. The reason we need a manned space program right now is the same reason that hollywood movie starts get paid millions of dollars for work that has no practical value whatsoever. Namely, humans like to be amused, and they like drama. And there's nothing amusing or dramatic about lobbing a circuit-board on wheels at Mars, and then having it roll around collecting rocks.
That, my friend, is the road to utter paranoia. Using that sort of logic, you could make pretty much anything out to be a conspiracy. Basically, you're using lack of evidence as if it were evidence. That's like me saying that I THINK you're not a child molester, but I have no proof you're not, therefore I should treat you like a child molester. It's a ridiculous line of argument.
*shrug* The government's always had that power. What in the world do you think we did with enemy prisoners during WW2? US citizens are generally afforded better treatment when it comes to such things, but any US citizen caught colluding with the Nazis would have been summarily executed within hours. In such clear-cut cases, and especially during a time of war, I've got absolutely zero concerns about bypassing the regular legal system, and we've been doing it for centuries. The constitution doesn't come into play.
Also, I find it interesting that nobody ever bothers standing up for your soldiers, whose trials are nearly ALWAYS conducted by a military tribunal. It's ok for the defenders of your nation to be tried in military courts, but that's not good enough for those who plot to kill them?
What track record is that? Their reluctance to use enough force in Iraq to destroy the insurgency? Their failure to abuse their newly defined powers to arrest citizens on false pretences? Their lack of an attempt to get rid of term limits and impose a never-ending republican government?
Man, I've seen the way dictators and fascists behave. The republicans are more reminiscent of big burly mommas boys than any sort of evil regime. They hold a shitload of power, but are too whipped to ever really abuse it. Sure, they'll try to do it once in a while, but as soon as news of it hits the papers they immediately become submissive, start apologizing, and try to hide. It's embarrassing, really. It's like that buddy everyone has who acts tough and macho 24/7, but goes running home as soon as his wife calls, and lets her walk all over him. You gotta feel sorry for them.
I mean "Zionists"...yeah....
Interesting. The court's decision was specifically that: "Those powers include the power to detain identified and committed enemies such as Padilla, who associated with al Qaeda . . . who took up arms against this Nation in its war against these enemies, and who entered the United States for the avowed purpose of further prosecuting that war by attacking American citizens." Seeing that it's being used so selectively, and considering the amount of judicial overview that these cases are going through, I don't think you have much to worry about. But yeah, it's something worth keeping an eye on. And it seems I need to review the relevant laws, since my interpretation of the bill was a lot different.
If slashdot were a swarm of bees, it would long ago have committed suicide by repeatedly attempting to mate with a toaster.
"Ohh! Shiny gizmo!"
*BZZZZT*
"....what do you think happened to him?"
"who cares? look at the shiny gizmo!"