Maybe. In principal I agree, but I don't want to see the US in the same spot over food in 30 years that we've been in with oil for 40. There's value in having some level of independence of production of food stuffs in all markets. Suppose Brazil became hostile to the US? It could take several years to have kiwi again.:) (Of course, if we hadn't invested so damn much in securing supplies of oil, we probably wouldn't be in such a spot.)
800 bbl * $60/bbl = $48,000/yr. The article says that their costs will be $30/bbl, leaving ~$30/bbl or $24,000/ac-yr for distribution and profit. I'll grant that they're probably optimistic at every turn, but it doesn't seem to be far off viability.
At best, this would bring about a gradual change. In order to displace current US imports, at 800 bbl/ac, they would need about 4,411,000 ac (assuming I've not made a mistake) to fully displace US oil imports. Of course, the US is not the only importer of oil, either, so displacing all of that, while energy demand is only forecast to increase, won't be fast or cheap. Securing 4,411,000 acres will take quite some time, if we're not to displace food crops.
$20/bbl is optimistic. Even the $60/bbl that you mention might be optimistic. The article quotes $30/bbl as the energy cost, and I'm willing to bet that it doesn't include things like land acquisition, labor, distribution, et c. As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, competing with food crops could also be a problem. (Probably not much of a problem, though. The US had 922,095,840 ac in use as farmland as of 2007, according to the USDA.)
And your friend who mentioned in an e-mail that he's staying home to smoke pot tonight? While you, as I choose, may not smoke pot, I would happily make the effort to protect him.
You make a good point, though I didn't actually think about that. What I meant is that the other driver is less likely to wander from her lane, if my or other lights don't dazzle her.
False on the first count, and I won't dispute the second. I derive indirect benefit if the driver in an adjacent, opposing lane isn't dazzled by the high beams that I forgot to turn down. In fact, our eyes take so long to adjust downward to darker conditions that I also benefit if the drivers ahead of me haven't forgotten to turn down their high beams.
Using Firefox? Ctrl+Shift+P initiates a private browsing session. Personally, I think that I would take my chances, because were I writing for a novel, I would want bookmarks and history available should I need it for revisions and editing.
Why would that be such a difficult thing to figure otu?
It wouldn't, nor did I suggest that it would be. I suggested combinations that I am thinking about, not that I am having difficulty with. After my suggestion, I asked about a specific hard- and software combination.
I have similar trouble, though I want to add cellular service to the device and leave out the data plan. I want a phone, but don't want the data plan; I'm quite happy with intermittent wifi. I think that I'm going to switch to either a Nexus 2 phone or a Nokia N900, then buy a prepaid contract with AT&T or Tmobile. I'm still thinking about the options, though. My really old LG flip phone, and N810 still work. I just want these two devices combined into one. They're old enough to finally justify replacing both of them, but I don't know what I want. Maybe I'll wait to see what MeeGo brings.
[pause]I just looked, and found that Meego is available for the N900. Any N900 users out there who've tried it? Willing to tell me what you think?
Fair enough. The article, though, mentioned that the lights might be visible as far south as Texas, and also mentioned visibility in Japan. Japan and the north pole are at about 160 degrees apart. (The north pole is about 114W, while Osaka is at 135E.) Salem is at 135W, just 20 degrees off the magnetic north pole, and moving west as we speak. If it's visible in Japan, it should be visible in Oregon.
. ..could give residents of the continental U.S., southern Europe and Japan the chance to see the northern lights. ..
and,
. ..that with luck, people as far south as Texas might see it.
Japan ranges from 28 to 44 degrees N latitude and Salem is at 44 degrees N latitude. If the light pollution in your area isn't bad, then you may well be able to see the lights when the sun is most active. Or you could move to Fairbanks and see it quite frequently.
1) The Standard Oil monopoly was effectively busted well before the government stepped in. Standard Oil got big largely because it sought efficiencies, such as using gasoline as fuel where others dumped it as waste. (Afterward, it abused it's monopoly position.) By 1911, though, Standard Oil had only a little more than half of the petroleum market because it failed to adjust with the market. (The continued selling primarily kerosene as gasoline became a much more widely-used fuel.) After Standard Oil began to lose it's dominant position, the US Government sued, resulting in, as we all know, the division of Standard Oil into 30-some companies. I'm not trying to say that Standard wasn't abusive, nor that it was unnecessary to subdivide the company, only that it's possible that this harm was at a natural end without the government.
2) Graham Act. Congress has LONG been in the pocket of business.
3) Graham Act. Telephony doesn't really have any competition because the US government still says that it shouldn't. There have been changes, but not many, and I still can't decide between even two companies for land-line service to my house.
4) Yep, probably should have been busted under the Sherman Act. Oh well. On the bright side, Apple is now worth much more that MSFT, Google seems to want a sizeable chunk of MSFT's pie and Linux* is still a thorn in Microsoft's side. I think that we might be seeing the beginning of the end of Microsoft's dominance. (Not that they'll ever go away, though.)
5) You forgot IBM.
I refuse to argue that there aren't companies that have been abusive, though I will argue that those abuses would be more difficult were companies not given the rights of citizens or offered shelter by the governments. Some of the harm that you point out is a product of government action, and isn't solely a product of private action.
*Funny story: I was dissatisfied with Windows, and had given up on OS/2 as a dead end about the time of Microsoft's trial. My wife had a Mac, but OS9 sucked so I didn't like it. Back when NeXT was busy dying, I had heard of Linux, but ignored it because my NeXT machine still worked. I heard a talk show blurb deriding Gates' statement that Linux was a competitor. Within a week or two, I had my first copy of Red Hat. It took several attempts before I settled down on a single distribution, but for personal work, I only use Linux now. Basically, I only switched to Linux because Gates reminded me that it existed.
Well, now I look like an idiot. I would swear, when I first read through, that I identified two or three of them. Now, I can only find a mention of "savory technology." Sorry.
I think M. Freak may have been talking about the combination of the summary and the article. I have to admit that I was a bit tired of them by the time that I was done with the article.
. ..in this case when I pointed out the parts of the agreement that were overreaching they agreed to remove them. ..
Good for you! I can't say that I was in a position at the time to refuse, though I'm recreating my circumstances such that it shouldn't be necessary to: A) sign one, and B) Feel as though I had no choice.
I don't mind much the notion of an NDA, when I'm protecting somebody else's stuff, though I do have a problem with giving away my creativity without sharing. A great deal of the work that I used to do is now locked away in a company that I no longer work for. By contract, I'm not supposed to use either the little I learned or the original work I did for another three years. What pisses me off most is the skull sweat that is (by contract) wasted to me. In reality, I'm pretty sure that the contract is unenforceable, but it still annoys me, and my position will be expensive to defend should I need to.
(The real pisser is that I worked as a civil engineer for a company that gives away some work to a standards body, but keeps much more in secret for a misconceived competitive advantage. What the jerkoffs don't realize is that they're recognized as leaders because they use what they give away so effectively, not because of what they hide. The hidden data is nothing but a few more statistics related to more interesting work that they've done, and I extended. Because they do work that must be published, all of what they're hiding is eventually available as reference anyway. Idiots!)
Interesting, and you're right. It's too bad that Mr Perry agreed to the NDA. (I signed one a few years ago, was reluctant at the time, and will never sign one again, beer money be-damned.)
The trouble, though, is where do you begin with trust? Can you trust nobody beyond your friends? If I did so, then my OS would be written by me, and I'm no great shakes as a programmer. Do you trust Microsoft? I don't trust MS much, but do occasionally use their OS. Do you trust Redhat? I do trust Redhat somewhat, because they're much more public about what they do, and I have a little faith that misdeeds will become public. Hell, Redhat might well publish misdeeds that they find, while Microsoft is more likely to quash.
Hell, I don't know. Seems to me that if there's anybody to trust, it's Theo and the group of paranoid bastards that he's put together. I don't trust any of them with my kids, but I worry somewhat less about my network.
Oh yeah: My first firewall is freebsd. I'll be damned if I'll tell you the second.
There are several discussions about why you shouldn't. If you're willing to pay a few dollars a year to dyndns, and use a pre-configured server from Zentyal, SME or ClarkConnect, you should be able to do what you're looking for (I do) and stay reasonable safe.
Gasoline has an energy density of about 34 MJ/L, while current Li-ion batteries have an energy density of around 0.7 MJ/L. If this comes to fruition, we'll have batteries with about 1/5th of the energy density of gasoline. That's quite amazing, in my opinion.
What if that battery is pierced, though? I know that the Tesla rig uses a slew of small cells. Do other electric cars like the Volt or the Leaf do the same thing? It seems to me that a number of small cells might present less of a problem, though that would drive the energy density of a battery pack down.
Sigh. I forgot to point out that one of the noun definitions discusses linear scales. I used to blame these lapses on beer, but was forced to forgo beer for the most part. May I blame the lapse on one too many glasses of wine?
I hate to provide some agreement with a post so crass as that provided with Yvan256, but do you understand what a coordinate is? May I suggest a dictionary?
I noticed that some students shared answers to assignments, but I never noticed students within the engineering department cheating on exams. I seem to recall seeing somebody cheating on a chemistry exam, and a non-elective history course. *shrug* Perhaps it's because I went to a small school.
Another comment addressed your misconception about the relative (in)efficiencies of gasoline and diesel engines. I checked this against one of my reference books, and found it to be either identical, or close enough. Gasoline has about 90% of the energy content of Diesel.
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Maybe. In principal I agree, but I don't want to see the US in the same spot over food in 30 years that we've been in with oil for 40. There's value in having some level of independence of production of food stuffs in all markets. Suppose Brazil became hostile to the US? It could take several years to have kiwi again. :) (Of course, if we hadn't invested so damn much in securing supplies of oil, we probably wouldn't be in such a spot.)
800 bbl * $60/bbl = $48,000/yr. The article says that their costs will be $30/bbl, leaving ~$30/bbl or $24,000/ac-yr for distribution and profit. I'll grant that they're probably optimistic at every turn, but it doesn't seem to be far off viability.
At best, this would bring about a gradual change. In order to displace current US imports, at 800 bbl/ac, they would need about 4,411,000 ac (assuming I've not made a mistake) to fully displace US oil imports. Of course, the US is not the only importer of oil, either, so displacing all of that, while energy demand is only forecast to increase, won't be fast or cheap. Securing 4,411,000 acres will take quite some time, if we're not to displace food crops.
$20/bbl is optimistic. Even the $60/bbl that you mention might be optimistic. The article quotes $30/bbl as the energy cost, and I'm willing to bet that it doesn't include things like land acquisition, labor, distribution, et c. As I mentioned in the previous paragraph, competing with food crops could also be a problem. (Probably not much of a problem, though. The US had 922,095,840 ac in use as farmland as of 2007, according to the USDA.)
And your friend who mentioned in an e-mail that he's staying home to smoke pot tonight? While you, as I choose, may not smoke pot, I would happily make the effort to protect him.
You make a good point, though I didn't actually think about that. What I meant is that the other driver is less likely to wander from her lane, if my or other lights don't dazzle her.
False on the first count, and I won't dispute the second. I derive indirect benefit if the driver in an adjacent, opposing lane isn't dazzled by the high beams that I forgot to turn down. In fact, our eyes take so long to adjust downward to darker conditions that I also benefit if the drivers ahead of me haven't forgotten to turn down their high beams.
This one is one that that gets to use the Android marketplace.
Using Firefox? Ctrl+Shift+P initiates a private browsing session. Personally, I think that I would take my chances, because were I writing for a novel, I would want bookmarks and history available should I need it for revisions and editing.
Why would that be such a difficult thing to figure otu?
It wouldn't, nor did I suggest that it would be. I suggested combinations that I am thinking about, not that I am having difficulty with. After my suggestion, I asked about a specific hard- and software combination.
Do you have difficulty with English?
-rex
I have similar trouble, though I want to add cellular service to the device and leave out the data plan. I want a phone, but don't want the data plan; I'm quite happy with intermittent wifi. I think that I'm going to switch to either a Nexus 2 phone or a Nokia N900, then buy a prepaid contract with AT&T or Tmobile. I'm still thinking about the options, though. My really old LG flip phone, and N810 still work. I just want these two devices combined into one. They're old enough to finally justify replacing both of them, but I don't know what I want. Maybe I'll wait to see what MeeGo brings.
[pause]I just looked, and found that Meego is available for the N900. Any N900 users out there who've tried it? Willing to tell me what you think?
Fair enough. The article, though, mentioned that the lights might be visible as far south as Texas, and also mentioned visibility in Japan. Japan and the north pole are at about 160 degrees apart. (The north pole is about 114W, while Osaka is at 135E.) Salem is at 135W, just 20 degrees off the magnetic north pole, and moving west as we speak. If it's visible in Japan, it should be visible in Oregon.
From the article:
. . .could give residents of the continental U.S., southern Europe and Japan the chance to see the northern lights. . .
and,
. . .that with luck, people as far south as Texas might see it.
Japan ranges from 28 to 44 degrees N latitude and Salem is at 44 degrees N latitude. If the light pollution in your area isn't bad, then you may well be able to see the lights when the sun is most active. Or you could move to Fairbanks and see it quite frequently.
1) The Standard Oil monopoly was effectively busted well before the government stepped in. Standard Oil got big largely because it sought efficiencies, such as using gasoline as fuel where others dumped it as waste. (Afterward, it abused it's monopoly position.) By 1911, though, Standard Oil had only a little more than half of the petroleum market because it failed to adjust with the market. (The continued selling primarily kerosene as gasoline became a much more widely-used fuel.) After Standard Oil began to lose it's dominant position, the US Government sued, resulting in, as we all know, the division of Standard Oil into 30-some companies. I'm not trying to say that Standard wasn't abusive, nor that it was unnecessary to subdivide the company, only that it's possible that this harm was at a natural end without the government.
2) Graham Act. Congress has LONG been in the pocket of business.
3) Graham Act. Telephony doesn't really have any competition because the US government still says that it shouldn't. There have been changes, but not many, and I still can't decide between even two companies for land-line service to my house.
4) Yep, probably should have been busted under the Sherman Act. Oh well. On the bright side, Apple is now worth much more that MSFT, Google seems to want a sizeable chunk of MSFT's pie and Linux* is still a thorn in Microsoft's side. I think that we might be seeing the beginning of the end of Microsoft's dominance. (Not that they'll ever go away, though.)
5) You forgot IBM.
I refuse to argue that there aren't companies that have been abusive, though I will argue that those abuses would be more difficult were companies not given the rights of citizens or offered shelter by the governments. Some of the harm that you point out is a product of government action, and isn't solely a product of private action.
*Funny story: I was dissatisfied with Windows, and had given up on OS/2 as a dead end about the time of Microsoft's trial. My wife had a Mac, but OS9 sucked so I didn't like it. Back when NeXT was busy dying, I had heard of Linux, but ignored it because my NeXT machine still worked. I heard a talk show blurb deriding Gates' statement that Linux was a competitor. Within a week or two, I had my first copy of Red Hat. It took several attempts before I settled down on a single distribution, but for personal work, I only use Linux now. Basically, I only switched to Linux because Gates reminded me that it existed.
Well, now I look like an idiot. I would swear, when I first read through, that I identified two or three of them. Now, I can only find a mention of "savory technology." Sorry.
I think M. Freak may have been talking about the combination of the summary and the article. I have to admit that I was a bit tired of them by the time that I was done with the article.
. . .in this case when I pointed out the parts of the agreement that were overreaching they agreed to remove them. . .
Good for you! I can't say that I was in a position at the time to refuse, though I'm recreating my circumstances such that it shouldn't be necessary to: A) sign one, and B) Feel as though I had no choice.
I don't mind much the notion of an NDA, when I'm protecting somebody else's stuff, though I do have a problem with giving away my creativity without sharing. A great deal of the work that I used to do is now locked away in a company that I no longer work for. By contract, I'm not supposed to use either the little I learned or the original work I did for another three years. What pisses me off most is the skull sweat that is (by contract) wasted to me. In reality, I'm pretty sure that the contract is unenforceable, but it still annoys me, and my position will be expensive to defend should I need to.
(The real pisser is that I worked as a civil engineer for a company that gives away some work to a standards body, but keeps much more in secret for a misconceived competitive advantage. What the jerkoffs don't realize is that they're recognized as leaders because they use what they give away so effectively, not because of what they hide. The hidden data is nothing but a few more statistics related to more interesting work that they've done, and I extended. Because they do work that must be published, all of what they're hiding is eventually available as reference anyway. Idiots!)
The trouble, though, is where do you begin with trust? Can you trust nobody beyond your friends? If I did so, then my OS would be written by me, and I'm no great shakes as a programmer. Do you trust Microsoft? I don't trust MS much, but do occasionally use their OS. Do you trust Redhat? I do trust Redhat somewhat, because they're much more public about what they do, and I have a little faith that misdeeds will become public. Hell, Redhat might well publish misdeeds that they find, while Microsoft is more likely to quash.
Hell, I don't know. Seems to me that if there's anybody to trust, it's Theo and the group of paranoid bastards that he's put together. I don't trust any of them with my kids, but I worry somewhat less about my network.
Oh yeah: My first firewall is freebsd. I'll be damned if I'll tell you the second.
There are several discussions about why you shouldn't. If you're willing to pay a few dollars a year to dyndns, and use a pre-configured server from Zentyal, SME or ClarkConnect, you should be able to do what you're looking for (I do) and stay reasonable safe.
Gasoline has an energy density of about 34 MJ/L, while current Li-ion batteries have an energy density of around 0.7 MJ/L. If this comes to fruition, we'll have batteries with about 1/5th of the energy density of gasoline. That's quite amazing, in my opinion.
What if that battery is pierced, though? I know that the Tesla rig uses a slew of small cells. Do other electric cars like the Volt or the Leaf do the same thing? It seems to me that a number of small cells might present less of a problem, though that would drive the energy density of a battery pack down.
Gotcha, and you're right. I've been drinking scotch that looks like vodka, not merlot.
I just realized that I've never seen another engineer drink wine: It's always beer or hard liquor. In that case, I've been drinking vodka, not merlot.
Sigh. I forgot to point out that one of the noun definitions discusses linear scales. I used to blame these lapses on beer, but was forced to forgo beer for the most part. May I blame the lapse on one too many glasses of wine?
I hate to provide some agreement with a post so crass as that provided with Yvan256, but do you understand what a coordinate is? May I suggest a dictionary?
Engineering students just copy from each other.
I noticed that some students shared answers to assignments, but I never noticed students within the engineering department cheating on exams. I seem to recall seeing somebody cheating on a chemistry exam, and a non-elective history course. *shrug* Perhaps it's because I went to a small school.
Another comment addressed your misconception about the relative (in)efficiencies of gasoline and diesel engines. I checked this against one of my reference books, and found it to be either identical, or close enough. Gasoline has about 90% of the energy content of Diesel.