The ONLY reasonable ways out are 1) electric cars 2) biodiesel
Either take out 'electric cars' or 'reasonable'. You could also replace 'electric cars' with 'ethanol'.
I'd venture a guess that production of ethanol is approximately similar to production of biodiesel, in terms of cost and energy usage. That's just a WAG, though.
Either way, I don't mind as long as I can continue to drive vehicles that are similar to what I like now.
Electric cars and more nuclear plants is the most probable other solution.
Actually, if we had more nuclear plants, and electricity was plentiful and cheap, we could split water into O and H, and then burn H in internal combustion engines. That way, we are using electric power, but don't have to settle for electric cars.
Your grudging acceptance of reality and my pragmatism both allow us to enjoy the dinosaur juice while we've got it. Good for us.;)
The modification is changing all the rubber seals in the fuel lines to metal seals. It's not terribly difficult, but it can be expensive. The reason is because vegetable oil is harder on the rubber and will do something to it (I forget what) that makes it crack and leak. No internal engine modifications are needed, only fuel system modifications.
Sorry, you are confused. Biodiesel, commonly described as needing no modifications, is the fuel that could require replacing rubber seals with synthetic. Biodiesel is a solvent and is abusive of rubber. Most (if not all) modern diesel engines come with appropriate equipment to handle biodiesel.
Veggie oil, either WVO (Waste Vegetable Oil) or SVO (Straight Vegetable Oil), is not a problem for rubber AFAIK. It is, however, much more viscous than Biodiesel or dino-diesel, and freezes solid at temperatures where we expect our vehicles to start and run immediately. Because of the viscosity, it doesn't feed well through the fuel system and will clog easily, and doesn't spray well from the injectors. The solution is to heat the veg oil, start the vehicle on biodiesel or dino-diesel, and switch to VO when it's hot enough (200 degrees F? 400? I can't remember). Then, before shutting off the vehicle, you switch back to bio/dino-diesel to flush the system so it will be able to start again later. A good VO system has heated lines almost all the way up to the injectors.
I have previously considered the type of system described in TFA as what I'd really like in my next pickup. I don't want to be arsed with filtering and preparing my oil; I want to dump it into a tank where it will get processed and passed on to another tank that holds ready-to-burn stuff. No reason not to; the energy comes from free fuel. Let the fuel process bootstrap itself...
Sure, vegetable oil is a waste product right now, but if we were to try this on a large scale, we would do a lot worse to our world than global warming.
So, you suggest that we continue to put the waste oil in landfills, rather than making it useful?
Biodiesel could be a near drop-in replacement for gasoline in cars
Wow! Where do I sign up?
While I was about to write some more smartassery regarding what I assume is a mistakenly placed "gasoline" where you meant "diesel", I came across something odd in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_Brazi l - "Although Brazil is a major oil producer and now exports gasoline (19,000 m/day), it still must import oil because of internal demand for other oil byproducts, chiefly diesel fuel (which cannot be easily replaced by ethanol)."
You'd think Brazil would at least figure out how to use biodiesel...but even better, the same climate that's good for growing sugarcane is also good for using SVO, which they must be able to produce.
Dave didn't make the list because computers really DO refuse to do stuff, and people really DO destroy them with axes...although I question why an axe would be present on a spaceship.
Wait, was there an axe? It's been so damned long since I've read the book...
"continuing on"? What, "continuing" alone wasn't enough? Could we "continue" any way other than "on"? Perhaps we could "continue off" with tangents like this...
I too have always read it as "Your Rights Online", or slightly reworded, "Your Online Rights" -- the rights you have regarding the internet, not any random rights as discussed on the internet. Indeed, why include "online"? It would just be "Your Rights" if it was about any kind of rights.
If it was about rights in general, it would remind me of people who google for "tv listings web site" rather than "tv listings", or call information and ask for "phone number for Joe Schmoe".
Care to provide a link saying that satellite radio is 64Kbps? AFAIK, only the talk and comedy channels run that bitrate.
I am NOT an audiophile. However, 64Kbps is usually quite obvious to me, sounding muffled or warbled. Talk and comedy channels on XM and Sirius sound like that to me. It's especially obvious when such channels play music; it sounds horrible.
I think there's more to it than commonly known, however. I have one mp3 file that's 22.1kHz, 32kbps, and sounds better than any 64Kbps mp3 I've ever heard. I _can_ distinguish it from 128, but it's not intolerable; no artifacts, just slightly muffled. It takes up 700Kb and is ~3 minutes long. I'm unable to explain it. I wish I knew how it was encoded; I bet that for another 10% in size it would sound as good as 128.
Anyway, the music channels on Sirius sound as good to my unpretentious ears (on my basic equipment) as CDs. When I had XM, the integrated power cord/FM transmitter was awful and made everything sound like schitt, but the XTR7/Starmate/Streamer (same Sirius unit with different brandings) has the best FM transmitter I've ever used (I wish I could hack an input to use the XTR7 as a FM transmitter for other devices).
All that aside, there's no getting around a point others have made: Most people are listening to "portable music" on low-quality equipment in noisy environments.
Who's the jerk that modded parent Offtopic? kdawson asked "Additionally, I'd like to get some input on the durability of the newish card reader / adapter devices, as some of them seem to be pretty flimsy" and parent wrote that those devices are indeed flimsy and a Titanium Cruzer has survived a rough life.
Personally, I use a cheap Memorex Traveldrive and it survives my pants pocket. I've got USBified versions of Cygwin, Opera, Firefox, Thunderbird, putty, WinSCP, VNC, etc.
However, more importantly, I keep handy a UBCD with stuff I've added (such as a mirror of the pre-microsoft www.sysinternals.com, my favorite malware removal tools, locked file deleters, install files for Firefox/Thunderbird/OpenOffice, etc). CDs are infection-resistant, work on failing or older systems where USB doesn't, are waterproof, and cost nearly nothing so I can destroy/lose/leave with client without worrying about it.
There was a recent Ask Slashdot about what to put on a CD for system recovery. I'm sure the answers there apply well to USB drives too.
In actual usage, they are quite different. "insure" means that somebody will pay money if something goes wrong. "ensure" means checking to make sure it's correct in the first place. The headline reads very differently, and I was confused as to why you would want to buy an insurance policy for contributed code, and why it would not be legal to do so if you really wanted to.
Here's what happens when you insure stuff:
Well I'm a sucker for fine Cuban cigars The problem is I can't afford 'em But last year I went and got myself a whole box And just to be safe I insured 'em
I took out a policy against fire and theft And then I hurried home With a thirty-cent lighter I sat on my back steps And I smoked 'em one by one
Two weeks later I went to see that insurance man And I handed in my claim With a straight face I told him that through a series of small fires They'd all gone up in flames
They reviewed my case and they had no choice But to pay me for what I'd done And I took that check and bought a whole new box And I smoked 'em one by one
Two weeks later this detective shows up Tells me that company's pressin' charges One speedy trial later they locked me up On twenty-four separate counts of arson
And now I sit and I stare at a blank brick wall Lookin' back on what I've done To pass the time I've got some ten-cent cigars And I smoke 'em one by one Yeah, I smoke 'em one by one
(Brad Paisley, "The Cigar Song")
Now, if he had ensured that they wouldn't burn, rather than insuring that they wouldn't burn, he wouldn't be in jail. See? Big difference!
Agreed. I can't imagine why batteries, which are 100% sure to wear out before the expected lifetime of the rest of the components, aren't user replacable.
My mp3 player takes a single AAA battery. I carry a few, charge 'em once in a blue moon, and never ever run out of power.
I must be missing something still. How do you attach your phone to it? Do you have a SB5100 at every phone in your house?
I can accept that your cable telephone system might differ from mine, but I have a hard time believing that your actual phones differ from mine, unless (unlike the AC to whom I originally replied) you're using VOIP and have VOIP handsets.
I'm quite aware of that -- but how do you recommend I connect that to my telephone?
HFC only goes as far as an interface box near where the line comes in from the street. HFC goes into the box, and POTS comes out, to be connected to plain old telephones. One can simply attach Verizon's POTS-from-the-street service to the POTS wire that currently is on the customer-side of the HFC->POTS box.
That is unless Cox made you buy proprietary HFC telephones, or an adapter to be used at each phone. I've never heard of that, and I suspect the hassle of having heavy, stiff coax going to phones would be awful.
My Cox digital telephone service works as I describe, with various and sundry plain old telephones and the same POTS interior wiring that worked (and would work in the future) for Verizon service.
Coax and POTS copper aren't the same, but going to devices inside a house, phone service is only POTS copper.
Screws? Bolts? Housing is already too expensive! Now you want to make work take 10 times as long?
A roofing shingle is installed in a few seconds with six nails from a nail gun. It would probably take nearly a minute with an automatic-feed screwgun like drywallers use.
Using screws for framing would take similarly long, because it's really goddamn hard to drive screws in heavy applications like that. Have you ever screwed two 2x4s together? Even with square drive and a powerful screwgun, you've got one hell of a lot of work on your hands.
I can't even imagine building a common stick-built house by bolting everything. How could you bolt the end of a 2x4 to a sill plate while building a wall, for example? Unless you're talking about lag bolts, which are just really huge wood screws that require lots of pre-drilling and a fuckload of work to install.
Post-and-beam can be put together with bolts, and I think that's commonly how it's done. I've never worked on any post-and-beam jobs.
However...common coil gun nails have a piece of the collating wire still stuck to them when they're driven, which acts like a barb. There's two collating wires on each coil, so you'll be looking at two to four remnants of wire acting as barbs. Additionally, for hand nailing and gun nailing, you can get twist-shank and ring-shank nails that break before being pulled out. Head size doesn't seem to be an issue.
Anyway, by only making the fasteners stronger, you merely change the failure mode. Instead of coming apart at the seams, the wood will break right near where it's nailed or screwed. The way to build a strong, stormproof structure is by designing it correctly, including factoring in fastener pullout and strength values. If a wall isn't strong enough and will come apart at nailed joints, it needs more bracing.
I'm sorry, there must be something I don't understand about telephone wiring. I've only done it as an amateur, installing and troubleshooting entire systems in a mere three houses.
That said, how the hell do they have that wired? Was Verizon's original wiring just haphazardly spliced off underneath the house from the line in from the street? If so, why didn't Cox just cut it and use your existing wiring on the far side of their digital -> POTS device? Why can't Verizon just cut your Cox off* and attach their wire to that?
I can't imagine what kind of bizarre wiring would be in your house that can't be attached to either service. I have Cox phone service in a house that originally had Verizon, and there is one place where Cox's digital stuff goes into a box and comes out compatible with POTS; I can't imagine any other way that would work with standard telephones.
Finally, I don't know what kind of magic you think a wiring contractor is going to do, but here's how you can do the wiring yourself: Choose where you want your patch panel. Pull Cat5 from there to each room. Either star or daisy-chain topologies work fine. Strip the ends of the wires and screw them into the back of the phone jacks. Voila!
POTS is >100 year old technology, is very simple, and is very robust.
The wikipedia article on POTS includes this link to self-wiring instructions: http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/phone_wiring.h tml That page additionally notes that "reversed polarity can reportedly damage some kinds of phone equipment", although I've never met any device that knew the difference.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd venture a guess that production of ethanol is approximately similar to production of biodiesel, in terms of cost and energy usage. That's just a WAG, though.
Either way, I don't mind as long as I can continue to drive vehicles that are similar to what I like now.
Actually, if we had more nuclear plants, and electricity was plentiful and cheap, we could split water into O and H, and then burn H in internal combustion engines. That way, we are using electric power, but don't have to settle for electric cars.
Your grudging acceptance of reality and my pragmatism both allow us to enjoy the dinosaur juice while we've got it. Good for us.
Veggie oil, either WVO (Waste Vegetable Oil) or SVO (Straight Vegetable Oil), is not a problem for rubber AFAIK. It is, however, much more viscous than Biodiesel or dino-diesel, and freezes solid at temperatures where we expect our vehicles to start and run immediately. Because of the viscosity, it doesn't feed well through the fuel system and will clog easily, and doesn't spray well from the injectors. The solution is to heat the veg oil, start the vehicle on biodiesel or dino-diesel, and switch to VO when it's hot enough (200 degrees F? 400? I can't remember). Then, before shutting off the vehicle, you switch back to bio/dino-diesel to flush the system so it will be able to start again later. A good VO system has heated lines almost all the way up to the injectors.
I have previously considered the type of system described in TFA as what I'd really like in my next pickup. I don't want to be arsed with filtering and preparing my oil; I want to dump it into a tank where it will get processed and passed on to another tank that holds ready-to-burn stuff. No reason not to; the energy comes from free fuel. Let the fuel process bootstrap itself...
While I was about to write some more smartassery regarding what I assume is a mistakenly placed "gasoline" where you meant "diesel", I came across something odd in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethanol_fuel_in_Braz
You'd think Brazil would at least figure out how to use biodiesel...but even better, the same climate that's good for growing sugarcane is also good for using SVO, which they must be able to produce.
Dave didn't make the list because computers really DO refuse to do stuff, and people really DO destroy them with axes...although I question why an axe would be present on a spaceship.
Wait, was there an axe? It's been so damned long since I've read the book...
I too have always read it as "Your Rights Online", or slightly reworded, "Your Online Rights" -- the rights you have regarding the internet, not any random rights as discussed on the internet. Indeed, why include "online"? It would just be "Your Rights" if it was about any kind of rights.
If it was about rights in general, it would remind me of people who google for "tv listings web site" rather than "tv listings", or call information and ask for "phone number for Joe Schmoe".
Comparing Slashdot to Digg is like comparing televisions to telescopes. They do entirely different things.
Stupid HTML...I had put a "<G>" in there. I guess I should have used a ";)" instead.
I didn't think the word "thou" was involved.
So, when do sightseeing blogs start to pop up, pointing out the rare frame where somebody is caught sunbathing nude?
Stuff it! Maybe we'll get "FREE SATELLITE PORN" of Natalie Portman's Clit covered in Hot Grits while Naked And Petrified...
Bingo! You're right. 'mp3check -l' output:
mpeg 2.0 layer 3 22.1kHz 32kbps single chann no emph --- orig ---- 2:58.11
Anyway, it's the best sounding file I've ever heard at such a good size-length ratio.
Care to provide a link saying that satellite radio is 64Kbps? AFAIK, only the talk and comedy channels run that bitrate.
I am NOT an audiophile. However, 64Kbps is usually quite obvious to me, sounding muffled or warbled. Talk and comedy channels on XM and Sirius sound like that to me. It's especially obvious when such channels play music; it sounds horrible.
I think there's more to it than commonly known, however. I have one mp3 file that's 22.1kHz, 32kbps, and sounds better than any 64Kbps mp3 I've ever heard. I _can_ distinguish it from 128, but it's not intolerable; no artifacts, just slightly muffled. It takes up 700Kb and is ~3 minutes long. I'm unable to explain it. I wish I knew how it was encoded; I bet that for another 10% in size it would sound as good as 128.
Anyway, the music channels on Sirius sound as good to my unpretentious ears (on my basic equipment) as CDs. When I had XM, the integrated power cord/FM transmitter was awful and made everything sound like schitt, but the XTR7/Starmate/Streamer (same Sirius unit with different brandings) has the best FM transmitter I've ever used (I wish I could hack an input to use the XTR7 as a FM transmitter for other devices).
All that aside, there's no getting around a point others have made: Most people are listening to "portable music" on low-quality equipment in noisy environments.
Who's the jerk that modded parent Offtopic? kdawson asked "Additionally, I'd like to get some input on the durability of the newish card reader / adapter devices, as some of them seem to be pretty flimsy" and parent wrote that those devices are indeed flimsy and a Titanium Cruzer has survived a rough life.
Personally, I use a cheap Memorex Traveldrive and it survives my pants pocket. I've got USBified versions of Cygwin, Opera, Firefox, Thunderbird, putty, WinSCP, VNC, etc.
However, more importantly, I keep handy a UBCD with stuff I've added (such as a mirror of the pre-microsoft www.sysinternals.com, my favorite malware removal tools, locked file deleters, install files for Firefox/Thunderbird/OpenOffice, etc). CDs are infection-resistant, work on failing or older systems where USB doesn't, are waterproof, and cost nearly nothing so I can destroy/lose/leave with client without worrying about it.
There was a recent Ask Slashdot about what to put on a CD for system recovery. I'm sure the answers there apply well to USB drives too.
You forgot "and one user will post comparing Slashdot to a Mandelbrot set".
In actual usage, they are quite different. "insure" means that somebody will pay money if something goes wrong. "ensure" means checking to make sure it's correct in the first place. The headline reads very differently, and I was confused as to why you would want to buy an insurance policy for contributed code, and why it would not be legal to do so if you really wanted to.
Here's what happens when you insure stuff:
Well I'm a sucker for fine Cuban cigars
The problem is I can't afford 'em
But last year I went and got myself a whole box
And just to be safe I insured 'em
I took out a policy against fire and theft
And then I hurried home
With a thirty-cent lighter I sat on my back steps
And I smoked 'em one by one
Two weeks later I went to see that insurance man
And I handed in my claim
With a straight face I told him that through a series of small fires
They'd all gone up in flames
They reviewed my case and they had no choice
But to pay me for what I'd done
And I took that check and bought a whole new box
And I smoked 'em one by one
Two weeks later this detective shows up
Tells me that company's pressin' charges
One speedy trial later they locked me up
On twenty-four separate counts of arson
And now I sit and I stare at a blank brick wall
Lookin' back on what I've done
To pass the time I've got some ten-cent cigars
And I smoke 'em one by one
Yeah, I smoke 'em one by one
(Brad Paisley, "The Cigar Song")
Now, if he had ensured that they wouldn't burn, rather than insuring that they wouldn't burn, he wouldn't be in jail. See? Big difference!
Mutual Funs? That's when everybody has a good time! Nyuk nyuk nyuk...
Agreed. I can't imagine why batteries, which are 100% sure to wear out before the expected lifetime of the rest of the components, aren't user replacable.
My mp3 player takes a single AAA battery. I carry a few, charge 'em once in a blue moon, and never ever run out of power.
I must be missing something still. How do you attach your phone to it? Do you have a SB5100 at every phone in your house?
I can accept that your cable telephone system might differ from mine, but I have a hard time believing that your actual phones differ from mine, unless (unlike the AC to whom I originally replied) you're using VOIP and have VOIP handsets.
I'm quite aware of that -- but how do you recommend I connect that to my telephone?
HFC only goes as far as an interface box near where the line comes in from the street. HFC goes into the box, and POTS comes out, to be connected to plain old telephones. One can simply attach Verizon's POTS-from-the-street service to the POTS wire that currently is on the customer-side of the HFC->POTS box.
That is unless Cox made you buy proprietary HFC telephones, or an adapter to be used at each phone. I've never heard of that, and I suspect the hassle of having heavy, stiff coax going to phones would be awful.
My Cox digital telephone service works as I describe, with various and sundry plain old telephones and the same POTS interior wiring that worked (and would work in the future) for Verizon service.
Coax and POTS copper aren't the same, but going to devices inside a house, phone service is only POTS copper.
They should have made glass knives.
Screws? Bolts? Housing is already too expensive! Now you want to make work take 10 times as long?
A roofing shingle is installed in a few seconds with six nails from a nail gun. It would probably take nearly a minute with an automatic-feed screwgun like drywallers use.
Using screws for framing would take similarly long, because it's really goddamn hard to drive screws in heavy applications like that. Have you ever screwed two 2x4s together? Even with square drive and a powerful screwgun, you've got one hell of a lot of work on your hands.
I can't even imagine building a common stick-built house by bolting everything. How could you bolt the end of a 2x4 to a sill plate while building a wall, for example? Unless you're talking about lag bolts, which are just really huge wood screws that require lots of pre-drilling and a fuckload of work to install.
Post-and-beam can be put together with bolts, and I think that's commonly how it's done. I've never worked on any post-and-beam jobs.
However...common coil gun nails have a piece of the collating wire still stuck to them when they're driven, which acts like a barb. There's two collating wires on each coil, so you'll be looking at two to four remnants of wire acting as barbs. Additionally, for hand nailing and gun nailing, you can get twist-shank and ring-shank nails that break before being pulled out. Head size doesn't seem to be an issue.
Anyway, by only making the fasteners stronger, you merely change the failure mode. Instead of coming apart at the seams, the wood will break right near where it's nailed or screwed. The way to build a strong, stormproof structure is by designing it correctly, including factoring in fastener pullout and strength values. If a wall isn't strong enough and will come apart at nailed joints, it needs more bracing.
I'm sorry, there must be something I don't understand about telephone wiring. I've only done it as an amateur, installing and troubleshooting entire systems in a mere three houses.
h tml
That said, how the hell do they have that wired? Was Verizon's original wiring just haphazardly spliced off underneath the house from the line in from the street? If so, why didn't Cox just cut it and use your existing wiring on the far side of their digital -> POTS device? Why can't Verizon just cut your Cox off* and attach their wire to that?
I can't imagine what kind of bizarre wiring would be in your house that can't be attached to either service. I have Cox phone service in a house that originally had Verizon, and there is one place where Cox's digital stuff goes into a box and comes out compatible with POTS; I can't imagine any other way that would work with standard telephones.
Finally, I don't know what kind of magic you think a wiring contractor is going to do, but here's how you can do the wiring yourself:
Choose where you want your patch panel. Pull Cat5 from there to each room. Either star or daisy-chain topologies work fine. Strip the ends of the wires and screw them into the back of the phone jacks. Voila!
POTS is >100 year old technology, is very simple, and is very robust.
The wikipedia article on POTS includes this link to self-wiring instructions:
http://www.ling.upenn.edu/~kurisuto/phone_wiring.
That page additionally notes that "reversed polarity can reportedly damage some kinds of phone equipment", although I've never met any device that knew the difference.
*Get it? Pun? Hahah? No? Bah...nevermind.