Too much precision is arbitrary. I can't play most FPS games on a console with thumb joysticks, because my thumbs just will not respond quick enough or in the directions that I expect to move. I am pretty awful at flight sim style games on consoles for the same reason. But a full joystick I can use just fine, and Metroid Prime (1 and 3 for now) I seem to be good at. I think the point the GPP is making is that, for most of what a mouse is used to control, the brain doesn't think of it as auto-centering activities. And muscle memory kicks in as well, 'knowing' where the horizon is if you look up and down repeatedly. I suspect good console gamers get that same benefit with practice.
I also think it depends on which style you played with first. But to say that a joystick is less precise than a mouse, try playing a flight sim with a mouse and keyboard. It doesn't turn out so pretty.
75F instead of 70? I'll admit to turning my AC down to 70 if I know I'll be outside most of the afternoon and want to come back to a nicely cool room, but most days it stays set at 76. If I were leaving, it gets turned off. Completely. Yes, the heat stays on, set at around 48 or so. Like one of the sibling posts, when I was younger my family just turned everything off for a summer vacation. Even if it was just a two day vacation, everything electrical was unplugged. Furnace would get the pilot turns off if we were going to be gone for a week or more, no clue if the temperature got reset other times.
For my self, I would like Internet 3.0 appliances. I don't work stable hours, so being able to text the AC to start cooling the place because I'll be home in an hour would be wonderful. Having the fridge only keep things super cold when I'm at home, and saving a little power when I am not would be good too, since I can't open the door to let the cold air out if I am not there. And paying 10$ extra for those features, which is what GE seems to say in the article, would be well in the price increase I would expect. I mean, the price of converting every lightbulb in a house to CFL or LED is more than 10$.
To counter, I have looked at my own thought processes and found no trace of free will. If I 'choose' to perform some task, did I choose it or is that just the illusion that the brain provides? Sure, I could then turn around and do the opposite, but that could still be the chemical response of brain cells. Nothing you are presenting is proof of the argument you are making.
I could also argue that brain/body are the hardware, the software running the brain, semantically a 'soul' but without any comment on divine or natural origin, and the world of experience is input. What makes the 'soul'? Could be divine, could be genetic or learned from bootstrap code in genetics. What causes free-will or even random thoughts? I am partial to the fact that individual photons and electrons are bound by QM, and the brain operates on a combination of electrical and chemical responses. I'm not going to jump off the deep end of 'the quantum brain' since I don't think it would affect whole neurons, but just cause enough noise to act as the brain's built in RNG. Viola, I can make up just as much stuff and claim that it is proof the divine soul does not exist. Only, I'll admit to making it up.
I don't agree that the presence of some unexplained soul would cause any big questions. A soul would not have to be religious in nature. Consider it as the firmware of the brain. Maybe it's inherited, or develops from the mother during very early fetal development.
The reason science tends to discount the possibility of neural firmware is that, so far, no evidence has been found for it. One would expect any firmware analogue to take over on a complete reset, like complete amnesia. However, that is not what is always seen. Somewhere around 10% of people with a minor concussion suffer from personality changes, sometimes major ones. This would be the ideal place for firmware, either evolved or designed, to provide a reset or some instructions to prevent a person from suddenly feeling even more invincible than they did before the injury.
Nothing about a soul would instantly provide some hole in thermodynamics, any more than computer code staying on a flash drive proves entropy to be wrong. And of course there will be some 'code' running in the brain all the time, whether we call that a soul or not is semantics. Memories get moved from short term to long term in pretty predictable manners, so there is at least the equivalent of interrupts. The nice thing about us being biological machines is that we have an outside energy source, food, that allows for local phenomenon that run contrary to entropy. Maybe those stem cells that just know how to become bone/muscle/nerve cells also contain the basic start-up 'code' that eventually becomes the 'soul' we find.
I don't find the process scary, at all. The more we find out the more fascinating it becomes. And I'll still be first in line for a neural access computer jack when one is developed.
All of these are things we will need to know later if are to move people to other planets. Just because these things aren't advances that civilians will see benefits from in 10 years does not mean they are useless advances.
Re:Start them on a tricycle? Or a GSXR?
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At that age, do they really need to know how to solve a sigma equation? I remember learning to code on an Apple IIe, writing lines of Apple basic on note pads before typing them in to make sure that I left enough line numbers free to add little patches back in later. No one ever told me that each line of code cost time, nor that each individual step on a line added to that time. In 4th grade, it didn't matter even on those slow computers. We were not dealing with concepts that would be useful in later life, and even a college freshman course in C++ broke all of those old bad habits.
As for teaching them to use libraries, you'll get a resounding "Yes!" from me. I've met CS graduates who, because the uni does not allow outside libraries for some projects, never learned how to search google for a function or known solution to a problem. They try to reinvent the wheel every single time. It makes sense in school, where the using a library prevents you from learning the underlying concept they are teaching, but it makes not a wit of sense in the real world. Same for writing a dynamic or shared library, depending on the OS. 10 years of college, and I can't remember a single class that covered anything other than static libraries linked in at build time.
None of that matters if the child doesn't want to learn how computers work, though. Some kids just want to play and build, stuff like Scratch, Processing, Squeek or Croquet. Others want to learn how to use it for more complex stuff, so languages like Haskell might be up their alley. And some kids are so curious that teaching them C and assembly on a small platform would be a good way to pique their interests (personal recommendation of the DS homebrew scene, but any console will do). There won't be 'one way' to teach kids to program, just like there isn't just one type of kid or one type of programmer. But leave the math topics till later, when the kid wants to learn how to do things faster or wants to learn the math.
Right, I wasn't suggesting that only 2 or 3 embryos were grown. Just that there is the fear that, instead of growing 20* and picking 2 or 3, the doctors start with 100* or 200* and save the rest for research.
As for how dangerous it would be for the woman, that's why I was suggesting the fear is pretty irrational to begin with. That, however, is not going to stop anyone who wants to believe that a doctor would do so.
*: numbers are just used for scale. I don't have a clue how many embryos are started, I just picked numbers for this post.
The fear, rational or not, that seems prevalent in those with a 'conservative' mindset is not that the embryos are going to waste, but that if the discarded embryos are going to be used for stem cells it may encourage doctors to create many more than they need. That IVF happens may be something that individuals agree or disagree with, but there is a general disagreement with encouraging doctors to create even more extras.
And since the last 4 digits of the credit card number are a check sum for the first 12, you can narrow it down a bit further. If you have the first 6 and last 4, finding the middle 6 could be pretty easy.
I think it was a wikipedia meets special relativity pun. Since there can be no absolute reference frame, how can there be an "absolute zero". Maybe, somewhere outside our 4 dimensional reference, an object we think is at complete rest is vibrating and contains energy. Then you match that with Wiki's intended neutral point of view . ..
And if it wasn't a really horrible pun, then maybe the GP was trolling
If you make a product and then make a new version how can the new version freakout and break because you once had the older version made by the same company?
That's a pretty easy question. You skip the regression testing phase. Or maybe they trusted the OS too much, moved a function from one dll to another, changed how the function worked, and forgot to have the update script remove the dll from the OS. If the program gets the invalid response from the older function, it might cause problems. Anyway you work this, it all comes down to them not testing enough.
Now that I got into the article and read that, I'm relieved. And almost thrilled. It means when I see a doctor following this ban I will be able to get a pure opioid in a pill instead of a mix.
But then we'll see articles by the anti-drug folks screaming about how easy it is to get opioids in a pure form, and how many people are dying from an overdose of 20 pills of pure oxy, instead of those dying a week after they OD from the liver failure the APAP causes.
In many cases that means if you take a pain killer and then take two extra strength Tylenol, you may have gone over the maximum dosage per day.
Would it not make more sense to educate the people taking the pills, instead of banning an effective pain reliever? Anyone taking a vicodin and then two Tylenol is either in serious pain that the hydrocodone is not treating, or is unaware of what is in vicodin. A little talk by the pharmacist or doctor can fix both. Lowering the dose of APAP in prescription pills makes sense too, I mean 650mg in Darvocets? Take that 4 times a day and you are already over the daily dose. All of that just to prevent some junkies from getting high?
Not that I will argue too much, since I can't take Aspirin or ibuprofen, it will be much easier to get a script for pure codeine.
My cousin's son did the same thing about 10 years back. No one used the computer for banking at the time, but the sudden 20 thousand dollar phone bill had them confused. They weren't even home when the computer made these phone calls to 1-900 numbers.
It's just not new. The direct risks are, since people do store credit card and bank information now, but the scammers have always targeted whoever is using the computer, whether it is boys looking for desktop pics of hot women, men looking for midget videos, or girls playing with neopets.
Targeting the weakest link in the security chain? Who would have thought the spammers would do that? Alright, it's scummy to target this towards kids, but it has happened since the start of the internet. Think back to the bad old days of AOL and Compuserve chats, or telling scriptkidz that your ip address was 127.0.0.1 and to 'hack me if you dare'.
What does surprise me, is that people are letting their kids play on websites while logged in as administrator. How computer savvy do you have to be to realize this is a bad idea. Admin on their own computer, maybe. If you make them clean up their own mess and just smile when they lose their Neopet.
The more you clarify your position, the more you start to make sense. I told you, if you would just get off your damned moral high-horse, you would get a real discussion.
First, EROEI. You are right. I thought you were arguing that the investment in oil was going to produce more in the coming years. This was because of your incessant ranting about it, and how that 'proved' hydrogen was inefficient. I misread your intent.
Hydrogen from water has a theoretical EROEI of about 1:1.5625. That's from calculating the efficiency of cracking hydrogen from water via electrolysis, which is about 80%, and then the efficiency of fuel cells, which are also about 80% at the moment. In practice, it works out to about 1:2.22... Yes, hydrogen from fuel oils would be 'cheaper' in that regard, however the ease of production has to be considered. Electrolysis doesn't require a hugh plant, like cracking hydrocarbons does.
Oil should be used for stuff like carbon fibre and high impact plastics - stuff that can be recycled relatively indefinitely. Also agreed. Strange what we can get past when you start talking instead of ranting. What I disagree with is the assertion that, because oil becomes more expensive, the personal vehicle culture is going to end. That is one of the things hydrogen fuel cells are good for, and fit in well with the distributed nature of small water-to-hydrogen electrolysis facilities. You are completely discounting the friction caused by society, and just hoping that it will end the fixation on cars. 5 years till I need to be a pedestrian? While I nearly am, living on a bus route that gets me most places and driving a 100mpg vehicle for the few things the bus won't get me to, I have trouble believing that anyone could think that the rest of the country (the USA, since you quoted Chris Martenson who was talking about USA oil use) would just give up their cars because of oil price increases. The last few years showed us that, even when prices were near 5$ a gallon, people kept driving. They pulled money out of other places in their budget, not away from their cars. Even at 10$, even at 20$ a gallon for gasoline, I do not think that people in the USA will give up their cars. The mass transit system blows in most towns, and the fabled migration back into city centers around core industries has not happened. If you ask people which they could afford, 25$ a gallon gas or to move closer to where they worked, I'm not sure they could answer you. That is why hydrogen, and other vehicle technologies, are worth the investment. Running the whole economy on hydrogen, not likely. But the article was about cars, not the whole bloody economy. Your link, the hydrogen economy is bullshit, focused on cars and why they should continue to use internal combustion engines. If I misconstrued your meaning, it was because your argument clouded the facts you were trying to present.
Yes, the EROEI on oil has declined. That's because we are using so bloody much of it that the profit to be made on it is worth the effort to find more. As for point 3, the graph you say suggests that the EROEI will decrease, I hope you linked the wrong graph. That one suggests a sharp decrease in production, not cost or return on investment. A sharp decrease in production, while not meaning a change in how much oil we get for how much work, will mean a much higher cost to the consumer.
Point 4, no shit?! I thought free energy actually worked? Alright, over that now. Oil is not free energy either; it takes a lot of energy to make it. I do not foresee some point in the future in which the production of oil from non-fossil sources will suddenly appear and drastically change the landscape of energy. It may, or it may be some other fuel source. But fossil fuel oil will run out at some point. At that point, what fuel do we switch to, pixie dust?
Point 5, alright, so what about ultra caps? They store power, where does that power come from, and how efficient is it to turn back into motive force, if we are still just focusing on automobiles. And I can tell we are not arguing on a level field, because you just claimed that the caps store kW. They do not, they store kWh. The energy in a capacitor does not magically appear, it will come from some electrical source. And get unstuck from the bloody EROEI, nothing man made is going to get to 1:1, ever. That's the thermodynamics you are talking about. I'm sure you'll redirect this, and say that oil has a less than 1:1 energy investment, because it was made before humans were around or something. Or maybe the solar and geothermal energy that created the oil is free on the EROEI scale, in that case, let's make hydrogen with natural power sources. Tada!
The reason hydrogen makes sense is simple, energy density. Since you like Wiki articles, try this one. Storing hydrogen in solid forms, not as a liquid but inside another matrix, has been a materials science goal for a lot of companies. Activated carbon came very close, and that was just from companies that happened to be playing with it already. The density per liter, as the controlling argument, is then a moot point. So is the "OMG, hydrogen burns!" stuff that we both know is crap. The super cap you linked to stores that energy at over 3 kV. Hydrogen burns, but a short circuit in a car with that could have potential (har-har) hazards.
The reason you were modded to flame bait has little to do with your argument against hydrogen, I hope. I would hope that real reason is this incessant need to frame your questions so that the only right answer is your own. Of course the EROEI has declined since 1920, so it has for lots of stuff. Thermodynamics doesn't just apply to hydrogen production, it applies to everything. And oil has a limited supply, but I'll consent that hydrogen does as well. It just so happens that, after we run the hydrogen through a fuel cell, we can split it again with a bit of energy lost. But if you want to frame the whole thing with "true believers" and other buzz words to make the opposition look foolish, I suppose someone will just have to resort to calling you a hack, tin-foil hat wearer, or maybe just a shill for oil or super capacitor companies that haven't shown a real product. Not me, mind you, I'm trying to stay above that. Yes, I would rather have a basement loaded with a few super capacitors to store the energy from local power production, say solar or wind, for use when that source is not available, over a basement full of hydrogen tanks, but that is also what this discovery may change.. But for vehicles, sooner rather than later, we need something that isn't oil. Leave the oil for the things that have good efficiencies, like power plants. Not the rolling generators that have a very limited thermodynamic efficiency.
That's your argument against hydrogen fuel cells as an energy source? That, since the hydrogen fuel cell was discovered in 1839 it is obviously past any chance of improvement? In that case, we should have given up on fuel oils a long time ago. I mean, oil wells were dug in about 347 by the Chinese and it took till 1847 before someone successfully distilled crude into lantern oil. And EROEI? Complete bullshit metric for the situation. Yes, it is a great guide to the feasibility of a system. But we know that the EROEI for oil is going to go up, and possibly soon.
The point of portable hydrogen fuel cells is not to convert every home in the world into it's own hydrogen production station. At the moment, that would have a really horrid energy return because of the current inefficiencies in solar panels. One of the goals is to replace the internal combustion engine because we know that, at some arguable point in the future, we will not be able to get oil cheaply any more. If we move the oil demand from the end users, where the engine is not all that damn efficient any ways, to the large power plants where the scale of the operations allows it to be used more efficiently than we have just bought time to continue finding a replacement source for oil
Since you didn't feel like bringing facts to the party, allow me to do that for you. The average car requires around 20 to 200 kW to operate according to this physics book. Let's start at the low end, since the same site also says that a typical automobile only requires about 15kW to maintain a speed of 50 miles per hour. So, a 20kW engine would get a car slowly up to speed. How much would that engine cost at the absurdly high price of 73$ per kilowatt? 1460 bucks. And, a quick google search puts the price of a rebuilt combustion engine right in the same price range. Now, it would result in a slower accelerating vehicle, but that is tolerable for a technology that is still in it's relative infancy. After all, the model T's engine only produced around 15 kW. And that was, what, 86 years after the first internal combustion engine was made in 1823. How dare we push technology forwards, using concepts that were discovered decades ago. How could we ever think those technologies would mature.
Now, before you think me all snark and no thought, I offer you this. I'll retract all of my statements if you can respond with facts, and without trite statements like "The so-called hydrogen economy is a lie." Of course the "so-called hydrogen economy" is a lie, that's why it's the "so-called" one. No more priming statements like "true believers", and then we'll talk.
How many people are going to go through the hassle of looping an HDMI cable around, just to record an episode form Hulu? How many of the people who do would find it simpler to just use a torrent?
I should have been more specific and said "it doesn't matter that someone can record from Hulu, they probably won't." but come on. And nothing stops them from going to the kitchen or another tab. But advertisers count on that anyways. They know that on TV most of the thousand eyes on the program don't see their commercial. I'm saying that the eyes that do are more valuable to them when they are actively seeking the show and not when they are just watching TV because it's on, or because it's the SO's favorite show, or any other reason. Internet VOD provides that, and you can be the ad execs and psychology folks they hire for marketing are paying attention.
Because the television company has exclusive deals with your local television stations, that will eventually let you watch the show. If their contract with Hulu gave the internet the coveted first broadcast, the big company would be breaking a contract with the local stations. And those contracts get them an awful lot of money.
No, I got a bank and credit card company when I went to watch Burn Notice. However, the banner certainly isn't there in full screen mode.
And the irony of a bank sponsoring a show that often involves bank fraud to trick the bad guys? Well, I would say priceless, but that would be the wrong company. But this sure makes you want to check what is in your wallet.
There are fewer commercials. In my experience, Hulu puts one commercials for every break instead of 5, and one short commercial at the beginning. Taking an hour-long show down to about 45 minutes. Plus, you can not record Hulu to a DVR or VCR meaning that every one of those thousand viewers actually watches your commercial, instead of only about half.
It's psychology, and it's what geeks have been telling advertisers for ages. VOD, even over the internet, should mean more to these companies. The viewers are going after shows they like, that they actually want to see, and not just leaving the TV on to what ever crap comes on. You can not ask for a better audience, for influence by a commercial, than one pumped about the show they are watching.
Which Sony cameras are locked to Memory Sticks? When I was looking at DSLRs, all of their Alpha line accepted Compact Flash. I thought most of their point-and-shoots were similar, with the ability to use both SD and Memory Sticks.
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Too much precision is arbitrary. I can't play most FPS games on a console with thumb joysticks, because my thumbs just will not respond quick enough or in the directions that I expect to move. I am pretty awful at flight sim style games on consoles for the same reason. But a full joystick I can use just fine, and Metroid Prime (1 and 3 for now) I seem to be good at. I think the point the GPP is making is that, for most of what a mouse is used to control, the brain doesn't think of it as auto-centering activities. And muscle memory kicks in as well, 'knowing' where the horizon is if you look up and down repeatedly. I suspect good console gamers get that same benefit with practice.
I also think it depends on which style you played with first. But to say that a joystick is less precise than a mouse, try playing a flight sim with a mouse and keyboard. It doesn't turn out so pretty.
75F instead of 70? I'll admit to turning my AC down to 70 if I know I'll be outside most of the afternoon and want to come back to a nicely cool room, but most days it stays set at 76. If I were leaving, it gets turned off. Completely. Yes, the heat stays on, set at around 48 or so. Like one of the sibling posts, when I was younger my family just turned everything off for a summer vacation. Even if it was just a two day vacation, everything electrical was unplugged. Furnace would get the pilot turns off if we were going to be gone for a week or more, no clue if the temperature got reset other times.
For my self, I would like Internet 3.0 appliances. I don't work stable hours, so being able to text the AC to start cooling the place because I'll be home in an hour would be wonderful. Having the fridge only keep things super cold when I'm at home, and saving a little power when I am not would be good too, since I can't open the door to let the cold air out if I am not there. And paying 10$ extra for those features, which is what GE seems to say in the article, would be well in the price increase I would expect. I mean, the price of converting every lightbulb in a house to CFL or LED is more than 10$.
To counter, I have looked at my own thought processes and found no trace of free will. If I 'choose' to perform some task, did I choose it or is that just the illusion that the brain provides? Sure, I could then turn around and do the opposite, but that could still be the chemical response of brain cells. Nothing you are presenting is proof of the argument you are making.
I could also argue that brain/body are the hardware, the software running the brain, semantically a 'soul' but without any comment on divine or natural origin, and the world of experience is input. What makes the 'soul'? Could be divine, could be genetic or learned from bootstrap code in genetics. What causes free-will or even random thoughts? I am partial to the fact that individual photons and electrons are bound by QM, and the brain operates on a combination of electrical and chemical responses. I'm not going to jump off the deep end of 'the quantum brain' since I don't think it would affect whole neurons, but just cause enough noise to act as the brain's built in RNG. Viola, I can make up just as much stuff and claim that it is proof the divine soul does not exist. Only, I'll admit to making it up.
I don't agree that the presence of some unexplained soul would cause any big questions. A soul would not have to be religious in nature. Consider it as the firmware of the brain. Maybe it's inherited, or develops from the mother during very early fetal development.
The reason science tends to discount the possibility of neural firmware is that, so far, no evidence has been found for it. One would expect any firmware analogue to take over on a complete reset, like complete amnesia. However, that is not what is always seen. Somewhere around 10% of people with a minor concussion suffer from personality changes, sometimes major ones. This would be the ideal place for firmware, either evolved or designed, to provide a reset or some instructions to prevent a person from suddenly feeling even more invincible than they did before the injury.
Nothing about a soul would instantly provide some hole in thermodynamics, any more than computer code staying on a flash drive proves entropy to be wrong. And of course there will be some 'code' running in the brain all the time, whether we call that a soul or not is semantics. Memories get moved from short term to long term in pretty predictable manners, so there is at least the equivalent of interrupts. The nice thing about us being biological machines is that we have an outside energy source, food, that allows for local phenomenon that run contrary to entropy. Maybe those stem cells that just know how to become bone/muscle/nerve cells also contain the basic start-up 'code' that eventually becomes the 'soul' we find.
I don't find the process scary, at all. The more we find out the more fascinating it becomes. And I'll still be first in line for a neural access computer jack when one is developed.
All of these are things we will need to know later if are to move people to other planets.
Just because these things aren't advances that civilians will see benefits from in 10 years does not mean they are useless advances.
At that age, do they really need to know how to solve a sigma equation? I remember learning to code on an Apple IIe, writing lines of Apple basic on note pads before typing them in to make sure that I left enough line numbers free to add little patches back in later. No one ever told me that each line of code cost time, nor that each individual step on a line added to that time. In 4th grade, it didn't matter even on those slow computers. We were not dealing with concepts that would be useful in later life, and even a college freshman course in C++ broke all of those old bad habits.
As for teaching them to use libraries, you'll get a resounding "Yes!" from me. I've met CS graduates who, because the uni does not allow outside libraries for some projects, never learned how to search google for a function or known solution to a problem. They try to reinvent the wheel every single time. It makes sense in school, where the using a library prevents you from learning the underlying concept they are teaching, but it makes not a wit of sense in the real world. Same for writing a dynamic or shared library, depending on the OS. 10 years of college, and I can't remember a single class that covered anything other than static libraries linked in at build time.
None of that matters if the child doesn't want to learn how computers work, though. Some kids just want to play and build, stuff like Scratch, Processing, Squeek or Croquet. Others want to learn how to use it for more complex stuff, so languages like Haskell might be up their alley. And some kids are so curious that teaching them C and assembly on a small platform would be a good way to pique their interests (personal recommendation of the DS homebrew scene, but any console will do). There won't be 'one way' to teach kids to program, just like there isn't just one type of kid or one type of programmer. But leave the math topics till later, when the kid wants to learn how to do things faster or wants to learn the math.
Right, I wasn't suggesting that only 2 or 3 embryos were grown. Just that there is the fear that, instead of growing 20* and picking 2 or 3, the doctors start with 100* or 200* and save the rest for research.
As for how dangerous it would be for the woman, that's why I was suggesting the fear is pretty irrational to begin with. That, however, is not going to stop anyone who wants to believe that a doctor would do so.
*: numbers are just used for scale. I don't have a clue how many embryos are started, I just picked numbers for this post.
Ahh, it's been forever since my days spent trolling bbs and forums learning all of this. I blame age and forgetfulness.
The fear, rational or not, that seems prevalent in those with a 'conservative' mindset is not that the embryos are going to waste, but that if the discarded embryos are going to be used for stem cells it may encourage doctors to create many more than they need. That IVF happens may be something that individuals agree or disagree with, but there is a general disagreement with encouraging doctors to create even more extras.
And since the last 4 digits of the credit card number are a check sum for the first 12, you can narrow it down a bit further. If you have the first 6 and last 4, finding the middle 6 could be pretty easy.
I think it was a wikipedia meets special relativity pun. Since there can be no absolute reference frame, how can there be an "absolute zero". Maybe, somewhere outside our 4 dimensional reference, an object we think is at complete rest is vibrating and contains energy. Then you match that with Wiki's intended neutral point of view . . .
And if it wasn't a really horrible pun, then maybe the GP was trolling
If you make a product and then make a new version how can the new version freakout and break because you once had the older version made by the same company?
That's a pretty easy question. You skip the regression testing phase. Or maybe they trusted the OS too much, moved a function from one dll to another, changed how the function worked, and forgot to have the update script remove the dll from the OS. If the program gets the invalid response from the older function, it might cause problems. Anyway you work this, it all comes down to them not testing enough.
Now that I got into the article and read that, I'm relieved. And almost thrilled. It means when I see a doctor following this ban I will be able to get a pure opioid in a pill instead of a mix.
But then we'll see articles by the anti-drug folks screaming about how easy it is to get opioids in a pure form, and how many people are dying from an overdose of 20 pills of pure oxy, instead of those dying a week after they OD from the liver failure the APAP causes.
Name them, then tell me which can be taken by people with kidney or stomach problems.
Would it not make more sense to educate the people taking the pills, instead of banning an effective pain reliever? Anyone taking a vicodin and then two Tylenol is either in serious pain that the hydrocodone is not treating, or is unaware of what is in vicodin. A little talk by the pharmacist or doctor can fix both. Lowering the dose of APAP in prescription pills makes sense too, I mean 650mg in Darvocets? Take that 4 times a day and you are already over the daily dose. All of that just to prevent some junkies from getting high?
Not that I will argue too much, since I can't take Aspirin or ibuprofen, it will be much easier to get a script for pure codeine.
My cousin's son did the same thing about 10 years back. No one used the computer for banking at the time, but the sudden 20 thousand dollar phone bill had them confused. They weren't even home when the computer made these phone calls to 1-900 numbers.
It's just not new. The direct risks are, since people do store credit card and bank information now, but the scammers have always targeted whoever is using the computer, whether it is boys looking for desktop pics of hot women, men looking for midget videos, or girls playing with neopets.
Targeting the weakest link in the security chain? Who would have thought the spammers would do that? Alright, it's scummy to target this towards kids, but it has happened since the start of the internet. Think back to the bad old days of AOL and Compuserve chats, or telling scriptkidz that your ip address was 127.0.0.1 and to 'hack me if you dare'.
What does surprise me, is that people are letting their kids play on websites while logged in as administrator. How computer savvy do you have to be to realize this is a bad idea. Admin on their own computer, maybe. If you make them clean up their own mess and just smile when they lose their Neopet.
The more you clarify your position, the more you start to make sense. I told you, if you would just get off your damned moral high-horse, you would get a real discussion.
First, EROEI. You are right. I thought you were arguing that the investment in oil was going to produce more in the coming years. This was because of your incessant ranting about it, and how that 'proved' hydrogen was inefficient. I misread your intent.
Hydrogen from water has a theoretical EROEI of about 1:1.5625. That's from calculating the efficiency of cracking hydrogen from water via electrolysis, which is about 80%, and then the efficiency of fuel cells, which are also about 80% at the moment. In practice, it works out to about 1:2.22... Yes, hydrogen from fuel oils would be 'cheaper' in that regard, however the ease of production has to be considered. Electrolysis doesn't require a hugh plant, like cracking hydrocarbons does.
Oil should be used for stuff like carbon fibre and high impact plastics - stuff that can be recycled relatively indefinitely.
Also agreed. Strange what we can get past when you start talking instead of ranting. What I disagree with is the assertion that, because oil becomes more expensive, the personal vehicle culture is going to end. That is one of the things hydrogen fuel cells are good for, and fit in well with the distributed nature of small water-to-hydrogen electrolysis facilities. You are completely discounting the friction caused by society, and just hoping that it will end the fixation on cars. 5 years till I need to be a pedestrian? While I nearly am, living on a bus route that gets me most places and driving a 100mpg vehicle for the few things the bus won't get me to, I have trouble believing that anyone could think that the rest of the country (the USA, since you quoted Chris Martenson who was talking about USA oil use) would just give up their cars because of oil price increases. The last few years showed us that, even when prices were near 5$ a gallon, people kept driving. They pulled money out of other places in their budget, not away from their cars. Even at 10$, even at 20$ a gallon for gasoline, I do not think that people in the USA will give up their cars. The mass transit system blows in most towns, and the fabled migration back into city centers around core industries has not happened. If you ask people which they could afford, 25$ a gallon gas or to move closer to where they worked, I'm not sure they could answer you.
That is why hydrogen, and other vehicle technologies, are worth the investment. Running the whole economy on hydrogen, not likely. But the article was about cars, not the whole bloody economy. Your link, the hydrogen economy is bullshit, focused on cars and why they should continue to use internal combustion engines. If I misconstrued your meaning, it was because your argument clouded the facts you were trying to present.
Yes, the EROEI on oil has declined. That's because we are using so bloody much of it that the profit to be made on it is worth the effort to find more. As for point 3, the graph you say suggests that the EROEI will decrease, I hope you linked the wrong graph. That one suggests a sharp decrease in production, not cost or return on investment. A sharp decrease in production, while not meaning a change in how much oil we get for how much work, will mean a much higher cost to the consumer.
Point 4, no shit?! I thought free energy actually worked?
Alright, over that now. Oil is not free energy either; it takes a lot of energy to make it. I do not foresee some point in the future in which the production of oil from non-fossil sources will suddenly appear and drastically change the landscape of energy. It may, or it may be some other fuel source. But fossil fuel oil will run out at some point. At that point, what fuel do we switch to, pixie dust?
Point 5, alright, so what about ultra caps? They store power, where does that power come from, and how efficient is it to turn back into motive force, if we are still just focusing on automobiles. And I can tell we are not arguing on a level field, because you just claimed that the caps store kW. They do not, they store kWh. The energy in a capacitor does not magically appear, it will come from some electrical source. And get unstuck from the bloody EROEI, nothing man made is going to get to 1:1, ever. That's the thermodynamics you are talking about. I'm sure you'll redirect this, and say that oil has a less than 1:1 energy investment, because it was made before humans were around or something. Or maybe the solar and geothermal energy that created the oil is free on the EROEI scale, in that case, let's make hydrogen with natural power sources. Tada!
The reason hydrogen makes sense is simple, energy density. Since you like Wiki articles, try this one. Storing hydrogen in solid forms, not as a liquid but inside another matrix, has been a materials science goal for a lot of companies. Activated carbon came very close, and that was just from companies that happened to be playing with it already. The density per liter, as the controlling argument, is then a moot point. So is the "OMG, hydrogen burns!" stuff that we both know is crap. The super cap you linked to stores that energy at over 3 kV. Hydrogen burns, but a short circuit in a car with that could have potential (har-har) hazards.
The reason you were modded to flame bait has little to do with your argument against hydrogen, I hope. I would hope that real reason is this incessant need to frame your questions so that the only right answer is your own. Of course the EROEI has declined since 1920, so it has for lots of stuff. Thermodynamics doesn't just apply to hydrogen production, it applies to everything. And oil has a limited supply, but I'll consent that hydrogen does as well. It just so happens that, after we run the hydrogen through a fuel cell, we can split it again with a bit of energy lost. But if you want to frame the whole thing with "true believers" and other buzz words to make the opposition look foolish, I suppose someone will just have to resort to calling you a hack, tin-foil hat wearer, or maybe just a shill for oil or super capacitor companies that haven't shown a real product. Not me, mind you, I'm trying to stay above that.
Yes, I would rather have a basement loaded with a few super capacitors to store the energy from local power production, say solar or wind, for use when that source is not available, over a basement full of hydrogen tanks, but that is also what this discovery may change.. But for vehicles, sooner rather than later, we need something that isn't oil. Leave the oil for the things that have good efficiencies, like power plants. Not the rolling generators that have a very limited thermodynamic efficiency.
That's your argument against hydrogen fuel cells as an energy source? That, since the hydrogen fuel cell was discovered in 1839 it is obviously past any chance of improvement? In that case, we should have given up on fuel oils a long time ago. I mean, oil wells were dug in about 347 by the Chinese and it took till 1847 before someone successfully distilled crude into lantern oil. And EROEI? Complete bullshit metric for the situation. Yes, it is a great guide to the feasibility of a system. But we know that the EROEI for oil is going to go up, and possibly soon.
The point of portable hydrogen fuel cells is not to convert every home in the world into it's own hydrogen production station. At the moment, that would have a really horrid energy return because of the current inefficiencies in solar panels. One of the goals is to replace the internal combustion engine because we know that, at some arguable point in the future, we will not be able to get oil cheaply any more. If we move the oil demand from the end users, where the engine is not all that damn efficient any ways, to the large power plants where the scale of the operations allows it to be used more efficiently than we have just bought time to continue finding a replacement source for oil
Since you didn't feel like bringing facts to the party, allow me to do that for you. The average car requires around 20 to 200 kW to operate according to this physics book. Let's start at the low end, since the same site also says that a typical automobile only requires about 15kW to maintain a speed of 50 miles per hour. So, a 20kW engine would get a car slowly up to speed. How much would that engine cost at the absurdly high price of 73$ per kilowatt? 1460 bucks. And, a quick google search puts the price of a rebuilt combustion engine right in the same price range. Now, it would result in a slower accelerating vehicle, but that is tolerable for a technology that is still in it's relative infancy. After all, the model T's engine only produced around 15 kW. And that was, what, 86 years after the first internal combustion engine was made in 1823. How dare we push technology forwards, using concepts that were discovered decades ago. How could we ever think those technologies would mature.
Now, before you think me all snark and no thought, I offer you this. I'll retract all of my statements if you can respond with facts, and without trite statements like "The so-called hydrogen economy is a lie." Of course the "so-called hydrogen economy" is a lie, that's why it's the "so-called" one. No more priming statements like "true believers", and then we'll talk.
How many people are going to go through the hassle of looping an HDMI cable around, just to record an episode form Hulu? How many of the people who do would find it simpler to just use a torrent?
I should have been more specific and said "it doesn't matter that someone can record from Hulu, they probably won't." but come on. And nothing stops them from going to the kitchen or another tab. But advertisers count on that anyways. They know that on TV most of the thousand eyes on the program don't see their commercial. I'm saying that the eyes that do are more valuable to them when they are actively seeking the show and not when they are just watching TV because it's on, or because it's the SO's favorite show, or any other reason. Internet VOD provides that, and you can be the ad execs and psychology folks they hire for marketing are paying attention.
Because the television company has exclusive deals with your local television stations, that will eventually let you watch the show. If their contract with Hulu gave the internet the coveted first broadcast, the big company would be breaking a contract with the local stations. And those contracts get them an awful lot of money.
No, I got a bank and credit card company when I went to watch Burn Notice. However, the banner certainly isn't there in full screen mode. And the irony of a bank sponsoring a show that often involves bank fraud to trick the bad guys? Well, I would say priceless, but that would be the wrong company. But this sure makes you want to check what is in your wallet.
There are fewer commercials. In my experience, Hulu puts one commercials for every break instead of 5, and one short commercial at the beginning. Taking an hour-long show down to about 45 minutes. Plus, you can not record Hulu to a DVR or VCR meaning that every one of those thousand viewers actually watches your commercial, instead of only about half.
It's psychology, and it's what geeks have been telling advertisers for ages. VOD, even over the internet, should mean more to these companies. The viewers are going after shows they like, that they actually want to see, and not just leaving the TV on to what ever crap comes on. You can not ask for a better audience, for influence by a commercial, than one pumped about the show they are watching.
Which Sony cameras are locked to Memory Sticks? When I was looking at DSLRs, all of their Alpha line accepted Compact Flash. I thought most of their point-and-shoots were similar, with the ability to use both SD and Memory Sticks.