Re:Environmentalists: Do they make sense anymore
on
Floating Wind Turbines
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I can't really think of any large movement that speaks with a single unified voice. Not everyone who believes in a higher power wants to fly planes into buildings. But you have one small group, who is part of one particular school of thought who speaks louder then everyone else. Environmentalism is a little hard to define, much less pin down as a single solution, and so there are huge differences in opinion. The fact is, the largest group of them are the ones who want to conserve the world so it will be the MOST beneficial to humans. They see they want to improve technology, while at the same time decreasing our footprint, and I personally know many environmentalists who are strong supporters of nuclear power. We've let people turn environmentalism into a bad word to that point that even a lot of supporters don't feel comfortable in saying it anymore. Don't let them, it's about sustainability and conservation, which has show time and time again that the economic impacts aren't some long term grandious proposition, but a real benefit in the near future.
Well sure, for you a heavier four wheel drive vehicle might the best choice. But for a lot of people in many parts of the country, and parts of the world, that is completely unnecessary, and a lot of the tricks and technology developed will hopefully trickle its way to other vehicles.
My 5200BTU Panasonic window air conditioner pulls about 400 watts, I've hooked up an amp-meter myself to look. I doubt a small car or truck would need that much more cooling then it takes to cool off an old, uninsulated, and poorly sealed bedroom. A couple $50 deep cycle batteries would run it constantly for a couple hours. Yeah, that is extra weight, but with lithium-ions, that doesn't seem so unreasonable.
I have curved my questionable downloading habits immensely in the past few years. I'm making an honest effort to buy CDs (I listen to a lot of classical, jazz, and some ambient stuff, much of which are on labels that are a very different beast then what we consider the RIAA). Then I read something like this, and it just pisses me off, and gets me on the defensive FOR something I'm trying to move away from and completely destroys my good will.
Most of these don't even have ANYTHING to do with the subject then blatant emotional devices. More still don't even have a single thing to do with file sharing. What few are even remotely on track still just plain miss the mark. My addendum to some of your list:
1. They make "thousands" of dollars on advertising. Thousands? How many thousands? The guys out picking crops for less then minimum wage are over the course of the year making "thousands" This is purely a play on emotion.
3. Never mind the terrorism card, as pathetic as it is, how has it to do ANYTHING with file sharing? Physical bootleg copies existed well before the internet, and would still happen just as strong today without it. They are unrelated. IN fact, I'd say that file sharing may well put in a much weaker position.
6. My brain seriously hurts even trying to understand this, it's so far out of left field I can't even construct a counter argument because it makes zero sense what so ever. Can anyone even clue me in on this line of thought?
7. Uh, So nothing that doesn't line the pockets of someone else isn't worth doing? I guess we'd better stop things like painting, gardening, amateur writing, well, unless they are writing on golden parchment, that way someone is getting rich, and thats what counts, right?
8. Maybe I'm just ignorant here, how many of those in lower then the middle class in china have a computer and a fast internet connection?
10. Whats that to do with the people who ARE using it for finding new music? If you consider that a valid excuse you are probably interested in file sharing and using it for such purposes. If you don't, you probably don't consider it much of an excuse.
This sort of rhetoric and FUD only just pisses off those of us here in the middle, and is only going to make those on the other side dig in deeper.
What I wonder is, lets say you were frozen taken molecule by molecule and moved, "by hand" from one place to the other and reassembled. It would be "You" just as much as if your limb was detached and reattached whole the same way, right?
The question is, if you went through and replaced your atoms, where you are, right now, all at once, would you still be "you" or just a copy of you in the exact same place? If not, what if you did it one atom at a time, slowly, over the course of a decade? You should still be "you" then, right? Is it just a matter of how fast its done then? Where is the point where you are just a copy of yourself with the original thrown away?
And no, this post was not made with the aid of THC c.c
$35k would get you 7kw of solar at even normal, retail rates, and still leave you with another $15k for a grid-tie inverter and installation. Sure, you wouldn't be getting that power all day, so it's not as much total power, but it's available right now with -zero- fuel costs.
This are PLCs we're talking about, there are loads of network, protocol and connection systems, proprietary or otherwise, for all ranges of complexity.
What I'm wondering, is are these even on TCP? Or for that matter even Ethernet? I would have thought this would be something more like RS485 to begin with.
Though I do notice that it says the plant has been closed for a decade until this year. I guess it's best to check all options, but how is that tiny possibility remotely any sort of news when compared to the vastly more likely problem of a bug in a brand new control system, especially when it seems they found exactly what that bug was already?
Prohibition, among other drinking laws, did something else too, it changed the act of drinking to something more then it was, a social institution and a right of passage. Every student I met in collage from countries with low or non-existent drinking age limits really never had nearly the interest or desire to turn everything into an excuse to go out drinking.
It strikes me the movie industry has done the same thing to themselves. Had in the late 90s, television on demand had rolled out as it should have been, not just as another excuse to gouge the customer, I think today people would be downloading movies legally from their cable boxes and paying a small fee without even a thought.
Instead they bickered over pricing and licensing, crippled the technology, and really killed it before it left the gates. The technology was there even a decade ago, instead they stifled it, and in doing so, themselves laid the groundwork for the enormous system of piracy today, a system I'm not convinced they will ever now be able to control as well as if they had just given what the costumer had wanted and was willing to pay for in the first place.
Huh? How does the fact that it's been done before not make it news if it's not been news before? Even if it has been news before, maybe the submitter/editor/author just maybe felt that it was important to bring to people's attention? You know, just because you might have had the chance to witness something, doesn't mean that everyone else has.
Oh great, now you are going to get all the Toyota fan boys pissed off, because we don't have enough flamewars between OSs, Game Consoles and Editors;)
And uh, i'm not sure a classic car is the best analogy.. Durable, yes, but they require huge amounts of gas and are maintenance nightmares compared to modern cars.
Yeah, if you didn't have a landline, how the hell could you call your cellphone to find it?... Wait, you can call other people's phones with them too, now?
If I'm not mistaken, isn't the H2 just a different body styling on top of a Chevy Tahoe frame, engine and drive train? The price tag to me seems just a bit high for what's only comparable to any midrange full size SUV, on top of the decreased fuel economy for it's extra weight.
What about dark situations? Yes, he's just being winey for the most part, I mean, a blinking light in your office? Big deal. However, I look at my new laptop power supply, and it lights up my whole bedroom at night like a had a blue night light. I'm trying to sleep, and it seems silly to have to black it out when there is no need for something that bright to begin with. I move my power supply around a lot with my laptop so tape ends up just peeling off and leaving a sticky mess, marker rubs off and doesn't do much for decreasing the light.
Even worse, there are a number of TVs being sold, like the Samsungs that have this huge, bright LED facing straight towards the viewer, it's really very distracting when trying to watch a movie in a darkened room.
So, I have no trouble with LEDs, especially informative ones, just, maybe not quite so bright on things meant to be used in dark places.
Yeah, whats with Sci-Fi dealing with issues? They clearly should stick to important stuff like holodeck malfunctions and aliens with crap glued to their foreheads.
A few years ago, I saw a guy playing a PLAY STATION that was sitting on his dash while driving, going about 10 miles an hour in a 45 zone. Using his wrists to steer while he had the controller in both hands...
Needless to say, I had to make a U-turn to drive by again just to be sure I was seeing what I was actualy seeing. Sadly, he was still there, stopped about 40 feet back from the stoplight, still playing.
Yeah, it's not so much that I'm going be be greatly upset that BSG is ending, so long as it doesn't get canceled before it has a chance to wrap things up, but that there likely won't be a quality show to take it's place for some time. Instead it'll most likely be a continuation of the ultra low budget shows for Sci-Fi for a good long while.
My only hope is between the writing of BSG and the mainstream appeal of Heroes, networks will learn that courtroom dramas and hospital shows are not the only shows allowed to be taken seriously, with a budget and good writers to match.
Yes this is getting a little off topic, but there really simply isn't a free or even inexpensive replacement for Autocad, Solid Works or even Vector Works. Nothing.
The free version of sketchup is interesting, but well, still really just a toy comparatively. Most free software packages are "non-commercial" versions, or just simply not up to the task for speedy, accurate work, and I only use a fraction of the power that many professionals absolutely need.
There is no doubt that the "whats used in the industry" mantra is far overrated if you properly teach students to actually understand what they are doing, but as of yet, the companies making the big expensive CAD software can still rest pretty easy about having a job for a good long while yet.
I'm a supporter of solar, there is an enormous amount of roof space, or parking lots that could be covered. It seems like a waste when countless home and factory owners would be glad to give up a little bit of that unutilized space for power production, rather then wasting 1.4 square miles of land. Sure, such space isn't limitless, but we are far from the point of needing to worry about that.
I hope they really make some improvements in the AI, assuming it's still an RTS. As much as I love playing online.. now and again.. sometimes i like to move at my own pace, or don't want to be rude to people if I know I might have to leave in the middle of a game. In too many games single player is just a joke. Sure they can give it perfect accuracy in an FPS, or make it cheat in an RTS, but I'd really like to see something that gives me something at least close to playing with a person. I enjoyed Warcraft 3, but in my opinion at least, single player was awful.
Obviously it won't ever be perfect, but mutiplayer seems to have made game makers lazy when it comes to single player, if they even try at all.
Well, fact is, when it comes to CPUs, in the end, whether Athalon, Sempron, X2, Core 2, Celeron.. all these things over the last decade, if you spent X on one product (not including server chips) the difference in performance was generally measured in a few percent.
On the other hand, buying video cards has gotten BAD. The numbers, ratings, even the price points have become seemingly almost random. The mark up is enormous at just about any retail chain. Higher price cards can have lower performance sometimes even in the same series. Most review sites can't even keep up, and even if they do, reviews are often spread out over multiple articles, making A/B comparisons extreamly difficult. It's even worse for laptop and integrated graphics. Unless you keep up constantly, it's difficult to make even casual recommendations.
Have you ever seen a bottle of Dr. Bonner's soap? I can see how someone might confuse someone carrying it with some sort of religious fundamentalist.;)
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I can't really think of any large movement that speaks with a single unified voice. Not everyone who believes in a higher power wants to fly planes into buildings. But you have one small group, who is part of one particular school of thought who speaks louder then everyone else. Environmentalism is a little hard to define, much less pin down as a single solution, and so there are huge differences in opinion. The fact is, the largest group of them are the ones who want to conserve the world so it will be the MOST beneficial to humans. They see they want to improve technology, while at the same time decreasing our footprint, and I personally know many environmentalists who are strong supporters of nuclear power. We've let people turn environmentalism into a bad word to that point that even a lot of supporters don't feel comfortable in saying it anymore. Don't let them, it's about sustainability and conservation, which has show time and time again that the economic impacts aren't some long term grandious proposition, but a real benefit in the near future.
Can I go?
This person was a content creator, even if one not working for Lindin Labs. I'm sure there are plenty of people at EA who don't enjoy their jobs.
Well sure, for you a heavier four wheel drive vehicle might the best choice. But for a lot of people in many parts of the country, and parts of the world, that is completely unnecessary, and a lot of the tricks and technology developed will hopefully trickle its way to other vehicles.
My 5200BTU Panasonic window air conditioner pulls about 400 watts, I've hooked up an amp-meter myself to look. I doubt a small car or truck would need that much more cooling then it takes to cool off an old, uninsulated, and poorly sealed bedroom. A couple $50 deep cycle batteries would run it constantly for a couple hours. Yeah, that is extra weight, but with lithium-ions, that doesn't seem so unreasonable.
Yes, but they don't know that we know that they know what we already don't know so we know it has to be what we already know.
I have curved my questionable downloading habits immensely in the past few years. I'm making an honest effort to buy CDs (I listen to a lot of classical, jazz, and some ambient stuff, much of which are on labels that are a very different beast then what we consider the RIAA). Then I read something like this, and it just pisses me off, and gets me on the defensive FOR something I'm trying to move away from and completely destroys my good will.
Most of these don't even have ANYTHING to do with the subject then blatant emotional devices. More still don't even have a single thing to do with file sharing. What few are even remotely on track still just plain miss the mark. My addendum to some of your list:
1. They make "thousands" of dollars on advertising. Thousands? How many thousands? The guys out picking crops for less then minimum wage are over the course of the year making "thousands" This is purely a play on emotion.
3. Never mind the terrorism card, as pathetic as it is, how has it to do ANYTHING with file sharing? Physical bootleg copies existed well before the internet, and would still happen just as strong today without it. They are unrelated. IN fact, I'd say that file sharing may well put in a much weaker position.
6. My brain seriously hurts even trying to understand this, it's so far out of left field I can't even construct a counter argument because it makes zero sense what so ever. Can anyone even clue me in on this line of thought?
7. Uh, So nothing that doesn't line the pockets of someone else isn't worth doing? I guess we'd better stop things like painting, gardening, amateur writing, well, unless they are writing on golden parchment, that way someone is getting rich, and thats what counts, right?
8. Maybe I'm just ignorant here, how many of those in lower then the middle class in china have a computer and a fast internet connection?
10. Whats that to do with the people who ARE using it for finding new music? If you consider that a valid excuse you are probably interested in file sharing and using it for such purposes. If you don't, you probably don't consider it much of an excuse.
This sort of rhetoric and FUD only just pisses off those of us here in the middle, and is only going to make those on the other side dig in deeper.
What I wonder is, lets say you were frozen taken molecule by molecule and moved, "by hand" from one place to the other and reassembled. It would be "You" just as much as if your limb was detached and reattached whole the same way, right?
The question is, if you went through and replaced your atoms, where you are, right now, all at once, would you still be "you" or just a copy of you in the exact same place? If not, what if you did it one atom at a time, slowly, over the course of a decade? You should still be "you" then, right? Is it just a matter of how fast its done then? Where is the point where you are just a copy of yourself with the original thrown away?
And no, this post was not made with the aid of THC c.c
$35k would get you 7kw of solar at even normal, retail rates, and still leave you with another $15k for a grid-tie inverter and installation. Sure, you wouldn't be getting that power all day, so it's not as much total power, but it's available right now with -zero- fuel costs.
This are PLCs we're talking about, there are loads of network, protocol and connection systems, proprietary or otherwise, for all ranges of complexity.
What I'm wondering, is are these even on TCP? Or for that matter even Ethernet? I would have thought this would be something more like RS485 to begin with.
Though I do notice that it says the plant has been closed for a decade until this year. I guess it's best to check all options, but how is that tiny possibility remotely any sort of news when compared to the vastly more likely problem of a bug in a brand new control system, especially when it seems they found exactly what that bug was already?
Slightly off topic, but it does make me curious.
Prohibition, among other drinking laws, did something else too, it changed the act of drinking to something more then it was, a social institution and a right of passage. Every student I met in collage from countries with low or non-existent drinking age limits really never had nearly the interest or desire to turn everything into an excuse to go out drinking.
It strikes me the movie industry has done the same thing to themselves. Had in the late 90s, television on demand had rolled out as it should have been, not just as another excuse to gouge the customer, I think today people would be downloading movies legally from their cable boxes and paying a small fee without even a thought.
Instead they bickered over pricing and licensing, crippled the technology, and really killed it before it left the gates. The technology was there even a decade ago, instead they stifled it, and in doing so, themselves laid the groundwork for the enormous system of piracy today, a system I'm not convinced they will ever now be able to control as well as if they had just given what the costumer had wanted and was willing to pay for in the first place.
Huh? How does the fact that it's been done before not make it news if it's not been news before? Even if it has been news before, maybe the submitter/editor/author just maybe felt that it was important to bring to people's attention? You know, just because you might have had the chance to witness something, doesn't mean that everyone else has.
Oh great, now you are going to get all the Toyota fan boys pissed off, because we don't have enough flamewars between OSs, Game Consoles and Editors ;)
And uh, i'm not sure a classic car is the best analogy.. Durable, yes, but they require huge amounts of gas and are maintenance nightmares compared to modern cars.
Yeah, if you didn't have a landline, how the hell could you call your cellphone to find it? ... Wait, you can call other people's phones with them too, now?
If I'm not mistaken, isn't the H2 just a different body styling on top of a Chevy Tahoe frame, engine and drive train? The price tag to me seems just a bit high for what's only comparable to any midrange full size SUV, on top of the decreased fuel economy for it's extra weight.
What about dark situations? Yes, he's just being winey for the most part, I mean, a blinking light in your office? Big deal. However, I look at my new laptop power supply, and it lights up my whole bedroom at night like a had a blue night light. I'm trying to sleep, and it seems silly to have to black it out when there is no need for something that bright to begin with. I move my power supply around a lot with my laptop so tape ends up just peeling off and leaving a sticky mess, marker rubs off and doesn't do much for decreasing the light.
Even worse, there are a number of TVs being sold, like the Samsungs that have this huge, bright LED facing straight towards the viewer, it's really very distracting when trying to watch a movie in a darkened room.
So, I have no trouble with LEDs, especially informative ones, just, maybe not quite so bright on things meant to be used in dark places.
Yeah, whats with Sci-Fi dealing with issues? They clearly should stick to important stuff like holodeck malfunctions and aliens with crap glued to their foreheads.
A few years ago, I saw a guy playing a PLAY STATION that was sitting on his dash while driving, going about 10 miles an hour in a 45 zone. Using his wrists to steer while he had the controller in both hands...
Needless to say, I had to make a U-turn to drive by again just to be sure I was seeing what I was actualy seeing. Sadly, he was still there, stopped about 40 feet back from the stoplight, still playing.
Yeah, it's not so much that I'm going be be greatly upset that BSG is ending, so long as it doesn't get canceled before it has a chance to wrap things up, but that there likely won't be a quality show to take it's place for some time. Instead it'll most likely be a continuation of the ultra low budget shows for Sci-Fi for a good long while.
My only hope is between the writing of BSG and the mainstream appeal of Heroes, networks will learn that courtroom dramas and hospital shows are not the only shows allowed to be taken seriously, with a budget and good writers to match.
Yes this is getting a little off topic, but there really simply isn't a free or even inexpensive replacement for Autocad, Solid Works or even Vector Works. Nothing.
The free version of sketchup is interesting, but well, still really just a toy comparatively. Most free software packages are "non-commercial" versions, or just simply not up to the task for speedy, accurate work, and I only use a fraction of the power that many professionals absolutely need.
There is no doubt that the "whats used in the industry" mantra is far overrated if you properly teach students to actually understand what they are doing, but as of yet, the companies making the big expensive CAD software can still rest pretty easy about having a job for a good long while yet.
I'm a supporter of solar, there is an enormous amount of roof space, or parking lots that could be covered. It seems like a waste when countless home and factory owners would be glad to give up a little bit of that unutilized space for power production, rather then wasting 1.4 square miles of land. Sure, such space isn't limitless, but we are far from the point of needing to worry about that.
I hope they really make some improvements in the AI, assuming it's still an RTS. As much as I love playing online.. now and again.. sometimes i like to move at my own pace, or don't want to be rude to people if I know I might have to leave in the middle of a game. In too many games single player is just a joke. Sure they can give it perfect accuracy in an FPS, or make it cheat in an RTS, but I'd really like to see something that gives me something at least close to playing with a person. I enjoyed Warcraft 3, but in my opinion at least, single player was awful.
Obviously it won't ever be perfect, but mutiplayer seems to have made game makers lazy when it comes to single player, if they even try at all.
Well, fact is, when it comes to CPUs, in the end, whether Athalon, Sempron, X2, Core 2, Celeron.. all these things over the last decade, if you spent X on one product (not including server chips) the difference in performance was generally measured in a few percent.
On the other hand, buying video cards has gotten BAD. The numbers, ratings, even the price points have become seemingly almost random. The mark up is enormous at just about any retail chain. Higher price cards can have lower performance sometimes even in the same series. Most review sites can't even keep up, and even if they do, reviews are often spread out over multiple articles, making A/B comparisons extreamly difficult. It's even worse for laptop and integrated graphics. Unless you keep up constantly, it's difficult to make even casual recommendations.
Have you ever seen a bottle of Dr. Bonner's soap? I can see how someone might confuse someone carrying it with some sort of religious fundamentalist. ;)