The rah-rah quotes in the article are from the guy who ran the study - which is "about to be submitted for publication in a major peer-reviewed journal."
Like Pons and Fleischmann (remember them?), this guy seems to have started with the mass media - maybe to badger the journal into publishing his study? Let's see if it survives peer review.
From reading your story, I would guess you've sometimes pushed yourself to continue with normal activities (like marathon linux hacking and cross-country road trips!) while you're sick. Lots of geeks do this kind of thing because their love for their work can eclipse their best judgment - and since you maintain the best distro there is, I'll bet your love for your work is uncommonly strong.
Whatever is happening in your body, your body's own immune system is probably your most powerful weapon against it. That weapon is powered by warmth, rest, and an absence of self-imposed task pressure.
If you're really as sick as you sound, you probably need to get away from your work for a while, stay in bed a lot, keep warm, avoid travel and stressful activities, eat easy-to-digest, nourishing foods, and generally rest and recuperate. Take the time to catch up on Larry Niven's latest novels or something. And don't go back to work until you really feel better.
Obviously, plain old rest is no substitute for medical treatment (particularly where heart trouble may be involved), but taking it real easy for a while would at least be supportive of whatever course(s) of treatment/recovery you're attempting.
Happy Thanksgiving, and be well. I and my 3 slack boxes are rooting for your recovery;)
These things are not neutral capitalist market forces - they are intentional, market-distorting government policies. Higher education subsidizes employers by increasing the supply of labor. A weak currency supports exporters (of labor or whatever) by making their products more competitive in world markets. Eventually a critical mass builds up and industrial leadership is captured.
In fact, as long as governments anywhere offer education and print money, it's useless to talk about "pure free markets," because you don't really have them. What you have is regulated markets that are currently being commanded to someone else's benefit and to your detriment. There's no shame in it if this spurs you to political action.
But then, what should that action be?
Well, individual wealthy investors love a strong dollar because it increases their international spending power and influence, and they love foreign educational subsidies because the cheap labor so created multiplies the value of their foreign investments. The problem is that, once too much industrial production is gone from the US, the dollar becomes unsustainable and finally collapses (because there aren't enough US products to buy with it) and the whole country - packed with suddenly worthless dollars but vacant of the industrial capital needed to actually produce anything of value - goes down the tubes (military commitments and all).
So what policies should you support to prevent this scenario?
Well, you should want a weaker dollar and cheaper, more aggressively subsidized technical education. This combo can make US industry competitive again in world markets.
Bush has it half right - he's letting the dollar gradually and progressively weaken. Every cent it falls makes your labor more competitive against your foes in Bangalore.
But it's also necessary to drastically correct and reorient public higher education. No more basket weaving classes and tuition hikes. We need to aggressively educate America's kids with real technical skills, or our industrial competitiveness and ultimately the country's future are going to bleed to death.
Get out there and organize! Recap of platform:
A weaker dollar
Strong focus on publically funded technical education
How many such plants could feasibly be built around, say, continental Asia? How would their output compare to (in our example) Asia's overall energy consumption, or a projection of its future energy needs?
According to the article, the plant produces 500 kilowatts.
Btw, even if these answers aren't so great, it's still a cool experiment - but you have to cite more details than the article does to reasonably brag that you'd save the world except that the evil oil companies won't let you.:(
...for the actions of US government, how can they be any better than those who blame all Arabs and all Muslims for the actions of a few homicidal fruitcakes?
...the constant failure to draw distinctions between the official positions of Arab governments and armies (may of which are bitterly hated by their own people) and ordinary Arabs who just want to go about their lives?
By failing to make this distinction, the Israeli military elite marks itself as a ruthless aggressor.
If you want to have some say, you have to prove that you're worth listening to first, and I'd like to see you propose a better standardized scale than how much money you have.
While I'm not sure I can make a full case for a single better standard, I think we can agree that this one is sadly flawed, in that you can be born with lots of money and yet be an utter jackass.
Also, I doubt Al Capone would have made much of a political leader - and Martin Luther King was not rich.
Or, in my experience, even identifying any worthwhile social changes or making a case for their achievement. With "activists" like these, who needs oppressors?
Inflating licenses are ignored because of widespread belief that they are unenforceable.
If a company ever starts enforcing them, this perception will be destroyed, and then everyone will have to suddenly deflate their licenses or else lose their business because newly skittish customers won't buy.
So this is basically a one-shot thing for some company, somewhere, and presumably everyone is trying to pick the right moment.
If I ran a company, I'd skip the whole debate by saying what I really meant with licenses instead of strategically inflating them with unenforceable terms.
I'm glad that Borland is developing for Linux, but sad that it hasn't had the maturity to avoid this problem (though no sadder than about Microsoft, or Oracle, or anyone else). Each company that makes this mistake will probably be hurt in the long run by it.
...that anything beyond the amount of bandwidth used doesn't affect their costs and is therefore none of their business.
Or you could say that, by extending free wireless service to the rest of your neighborhood, you're unfairly competing with your provider by taking potential customers away from them (and reducing the return they can get on their large capital investment - wiring up a neighborhood probably has a fixed cost).
Compromise? For the moment, offer a choice of two contracts at different prices - a per-bandwidth rate and a per-device rate.
In the long run, though, as infrastructure gets cheaper and cheaper through economies of scale and it therefore gets easier and easier for cable investors to get a good return, it'll be good public policy to steer bandwidth in the direction of being a commodity instead of being controlled by cartels.
This over-broad terrorism definition would sweep in people who engage in acts of political protest if those acts were dangerous to human life.
So you call acts which are "dangerous to human life" "civil dissent"?
Letter-writing campaigns, internet and print publications, and popular gatherings and petitions are civil dissent. Rioting and looting are not. If you feel cramped by this, cry me a river.
law enforcement agents have the authority to charge anyone who provides assistance to that person, even if the assistance is an act as minor as providing lodging.
This sounds a bit more dangerous; it extends guilt by association, and has the potential to draw in many innocents. I can see both sides of this one.
Are they going to fight this unconstitutionality in court?
Here goes... does this law, in fact, violate any term of the fourth amendment? In particular, does it permit warrantless searches or seizures? References are always handy:)
...develop broken hinges, battery covers, and keyboard mounts. Guess this keeps the product moving, but it also teaches me a lesson about the failure rates permitted by Dell manufacturing. By comparison, my Hitachi has stayed in perfect condition for four years and counting.
Thats a wonderful thought that I believed in through many of my younger years. Authority causes repression, Period.
I'm surprised to find myself agreeing with someone who saw the sixties.
When I went to college in the nineties, I found an intellectual wasteland full of cultish marxist professors, angry crowds parroting slogans they couldn't explain if asked about, and aging, cynical ringleaders egging them all on to nowhere.
Did I learn something there? Sure. But I didn't learn the lesson they thought they were trying to teach. I learned about the evils of human stupidity and of authority misused.
Fellow Americans, read this guy's post.
(Posted to a network created by America from American-made computers.)
Remember it.
Remember the attitude it expresses,
and the mindset that attitude represents.
And whatever comes in the future,
do not forget those lessons.
There are some who do,
and some who sit and sneer.
If people should not protest wars and give "support", then what exactly are we fighting for? In the end, isn't the ability to disagree and voice your opinion freely one of the main goals in "defending freedom"?
Right on.
Sure, but as the theory goes, though we, as a free people, do in fact have the right to commit national suicide by not fighting when attacked, and nobody can stop us from making that choice, etc., etc., nevertheless, we hopefully won't be stupid enough to actually do so.
The last time European countries were world powers, I don't think they did much better. If you don't believe me, visit Rhodesia and ask about the British.
So sure, let's advance humankind. But seeing Europe sneer at us, from its seat on top of a basement full of century-old baby skulls, is just plain sickening.
We're bombing to wipe out the Taliban's conventional military assets like planes, tanks, and artillery pieces. After that, there'll be a ground attack (possibly in concert with the Afghan opposition), supported by now-unopposed air power.
The effect will be to reduce the Taliban from a dominant power to a guerilla force, fighting with rifles and mines, and to drive them into remote areas.
After that, we'll try to install a friendlier government and keep it shored up with (sigh) yet more arms shipments. The Taliban will last forever as guerillas, but, without an arms supplier and under aerial surveillance, won't be a serious threat.
We'll have achieved our objectives of spectacularly (and significantly, to onlookers) punishing the Taliban and ending the Afghanistan where the likes of Al Kida can operate openly.
Pakistan makes me more nervous - it's internally unstable, it has nukes, and India is itching to get involved.
Of course, you'd think they'd prefer to hate, say, England, France, Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands - these nations have invaded, conquered, and killed far more people over the last three centuries (and with far less soul-searching about it, too) than the US ever has.
It's almost as if they've carefully stepped out of the way to let us receive the revenge meant for them.
No - we should not stop until their ability to continue to make war on us has been destroyed. Why go any farther? We're fighting for security, not for bloodlust.
(Europeans, spare us the obvious, untrue retort - it's easy to slander people you've never met.)
Slashdot Mirror
It's "The Big Bounce" by Walter S. Tevis, written in 1958. It's in the great short story collection "Where Do We Go From Here?" edited by Asimov.
s imov.html trstvs.htm
http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/sf/books/a/a
http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/sf/books/t/w
The rah-rah quotes in the article are from the guy who ran the study - which is "about to be submitted for publication in a major peer-reviewed journal."
Like Pons and Fleischmann (remember them?), this guy seems to have started with the mass media - maybe to badger the journal into publishing his study? Let's see if it survives peer review.
Patrick,
From reading your story, I would guess you've sometimes pushed yourself to continue with normal activities (like marathon linux hacking and cross-country road trips!) while you're sick. Lots of geeks do this kind of thing because their love for their work can eclipse their best judgment - and since you maintain the best distro there is, I'll bet your love for your work is uncommonly strong.
Whatever is happening in your body, your body's own immune system is probably your most powerful weapon against it. That weapon is powered by warmth, rest, and an absence of self-imposed task pressure.
If you're really as sick as you sound, you probably need to get away from your work for a while, stay in bed a lot, keep warm, avoid travel and stressful activities, eat easy-to-digest, nourishing foods, and generally rest and recuperate. Take the time to catch up on Larry Niven's latest novels or something. And don't go back to work until you really feel better.
Obviously, plain old rest is no substitute for medical treatment (particularly where heart trouble may be involved), but taking it real easy for a while would at least be supportive of whatever course(s) of treatment/recovery you're attempting.
Happy Thanksgiving, and be well. I and my 3 slack boxes are rooting for your recovery ;)
India is winning because it has:
We are losing because we have:
These things are not neutral capitalist market forces - they are intentional, market-distorting government policies. Higher education subsidizes employers by increasing the supply of labor. A weak currency supports exporters (of labor or whatever) by making their products more competitive in world markets. Eventually a critical mass builds up and industrial leadership is captured.
In fact, as long as governments anywhere offer education and print money, it's useless to talk about "pure free markets," because you don't really have them. What you have is regulated markets that are currently being commanded to someone else's benefit and to your detriment. There's no shame in it if this spurs you to political action.
But then, what should that action be?
Well, individual wealthy investors love a strong dollar because it increases their international spending power and influence, and they love foreign educational subsidies because the cheap labor so created multiplies the value of their foreign investments. The problem is that, once too much industrial production is gone from the US, the dollar becomes unsustainable and finally collapses (because there aren't enough US products to buy with it) and the whole country - packed with suddenly worthless dollars but vacant of the industrial capital needed to actually produce anything of value - goes down the tubes (military commitments and all).
So what policies should you support to prevent this scenario?
Well, you should want a weaker dollar and cheaper, more aggressively subsidized technical education. This combo can make US industry competitive again in world markets.
Bush has it half right - he's letting the dollar gradually and progressively weaken. Every cent it falls makes your labor more competitive against your foes in Bangalore.
But it's also necessary to drastically correct and reorient public higher education. No more basket weaving classes and tuition hikes. We need to aggressively educate America's kids with real technical skills, or our industrial competitiveness and ultimately the country's future are going to bleed to death.
Get out there and organize! Recap of platform:
Anyone who doesn't realize this clearly hasn't been following the news.
According to the article, the plant produces 500 kilowatts.
Btw, even if these answers aren't so great, it's still a cool experiment - but you have to cite more details than the article does to reasonably brag that you'd save the world except that the evil oil companies won't let you. :(
They're talking about centrally-monitored CCTV in your house "for safety and to deter criminals"
I think that's a few steps beyond how it is here.
Still, you'd better fight it, civilly. Orwell's logic doesn't decay with age.
...for the actions of US government, how can they be any better than those who blame all Arabs and all Muslims for the actions of a few homicidal fruitcakes?
...the constant failure to draw distinctions between the official positions of Arab governments and armies (may of which are bitterly hated by their own people) and ordinary Arabs who just want to go about their lives?
By failing to make this distinction, the Israeli military elite marks itself as a ruthless aggressor.
In Israel, the policial and social pressure groups rule and not the corporations.
Considering the butchery committed at the behest of those groups, I'm not sure that's a better alternative.
If you want to have some say, you have to prove that you're worth listening to first, and I'd like to see you propose a better standardized scale than how much money you have.
While I'm not sure I can make a full case for a single better standard, I think we can agree that this one is sadly flawed, in that you can be born with lots of money and yet be an utter jackass.
Also, I doubt Al Capone would have made much of a political leader - and Martin Luther King was not rich.
Or, in my experience, even identifying any worthwhile social changes or making a case for their achievement. With "activists" like these, who needs oppressors?
His isn't.
Inflating licenses are ignored because of widespread belief that they are unenforceable.
If a company ever starts enforcing them, this perception will be destroyed, and then everyone will have to suddenly deflate their licenses or else lose their business because newly skittish customers won't buy.
So this is basically a one-shot thing for some company, somewhere, and presumably everyone is trying to pick the right moment.
If I ran a company, I'd skip the whole debate by saying what I really meant with licenses instead of strategically inflating them with unenforceable terms.
I'm glad that Borland is developing for Linux, but sad that it hasn't had the maturity to avoid this problem (though no sadder than about Microsoft, or Oracle, or anyone else). Each company that makes this mistake will probably be hurt in the long run by it.
...that anything beyond the amount of bandwidth used doesn't affect their costs and is therefore none of their business.
Or you could say that, by extending free wireless service to the rest of your neighborhood, you're unfairly competing with your provider by taking potential customers away from them (and reducing the return they can get on their large capital investment - wiring up a neighborhood probably has a fixed cost).
Compromise? For the moment, offer a choice of two contracts at different prices - a per-bandwidth rate and a per-device rate.
In the long run, though, as infrastructure gets cheaper and cheaper through economies of scale and it therefore gets easier and easier for cable investors to get a good return, it'll be good public policy to steer bandwidth in the direction of being a commodity instead of being controlled by cartels.
This over-broad terrorism definition would sweep in people who engage in acts of political protest if those acts were dangerous to human life.
So you call acts which are "dangerous to human life" "civil dissent"?
Letter-writing campaigns, internet and print publications, and popular gatherings and petitions are civil dissent. Rioting and looting are not. If you feel cramped by this, cry me a river.
law enforcement agents have the authority to charge anyone who provides assistance to that person, even if the assistance is an act as minor as providing lodging.
This sounds a bit more dangerous; it extends guilt by association, and has the potential to draw in many innocents. I can see both sides of this one.
Are they going to fight this unconstitutionality in court?
:)
Here goes... does this law, in fact, violate any term of the fourth amendment? In particular, does it permit warrantless searches or seizures? References are always handy
...develop broken hinges, battery covers, and keyboard mounts. Guess this keeps the product moving, but it also teaches me a lesson about the failure rates permitted by Dell manufacturing. By comparison, my Hitachi has stayed in perfect condition for four years and counting.
Thats a wonderful thought that I believed in through many of my younger years. Authority causes repression, Period.
I'm surprised to find myself agreeing with someone who saw the sixties.
When I went to college in the nineties, I found an intellectual wasteland full of cultish marxist professors, angry crowds parroting slogans they couldn't explain if asked about, and aging, cynical ringleaders egging them all on to nowhere.
Did I learn something there? Sure. But I didn't learn the lesson they thought they were trying to teach. I learned about the evils of human stupidity and of authority misused.
It must suck to be you.
Fellow Americans, read this guy's post.
(Posted to a network created by America from American-made computers.)
Remember it.
Remember the attitude it expresses,
and the mindset that attitude represents.
And whatever comes in the future,
do not forget those lessons.
There are some who do,
and some who sit and sneer.
If people should not protest wars and give "support", then what exactly are we fighting for? In the end, isn't the ability to disagree and voice your opinion freely one of the main goals in "defending freedom"?
Right on.
Sure, but as the theory goes, though we, as a free people, do in fact have the right to commit national suicide by not fighting when attacked, and nobody can stop us from making that choice, etc., etc., nevertheless, we hopefully won't be stupid enough to actually do so.
The last time European countries were world powers, I don't think they did much better. If you don't believe me, visit Rhodesia and ask about the British.
So sure, let's advance humankind. But seeing Europe sneer at us, from its seat on top of a basement full of century-old baby skulls, is just plain sickening.
I'll put my money here:
We're bombing to wipe out the Taliban's conventional military assets like planes, tanks, and artillery pieces. After that, there'll be a ground attack (possibly in concert with the Afghan opposition), supported by now-unopposed air power.
The effect will be to reduce the Taliban from a dominant power to a guerilla force, fighting with rifles and mines, and to drive them into remote areas.
After that, we'll try to install a friendlier government and keep it shored up with (sigh) yet more arms shipments. The Taliban will last forever as guerillas, but, without an arms supplier and under aerial surveillance, won't be a serious threat.
We'll have achieved our objectives of spectacularly (and significantly, to onlookers) punishing the Taliban and ending the Afghanistan where the likes of Al Kida can operate openly.
Pakistan makes me more nervous - it's internally unstable, it has nukes, and India is itching to get involved.
Of course, you'd think they'd prefer to hate, say, England, France, Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands - these nations have invaded, conquered, and killed far more people over the last three centuries (and with far less soul-searching about it, too) than the US ever has.
It's almost as if they've carefully stepped out of the way to let us receive the revenge meant for them.
No - we should not stop until their ability to continue to make war on us has been destroyed. Why go any farther? We're fighting for security, not for bloodlust.
(Europeans, spare us the obvious, untrue retort - it's easy to slander people you've never met.)