But if they think it's a "game changer," I suggest that the researchers quickly engage in a remedial math course. Plants are very inefficient solar collectors, land area is limited, using "natural" sources will quickly lead to the destruction of every natural environment if we were so silly as to try and replace the 160 exajoules per year provided by petroleum.
So, useful for small things. Maybe, one day, if the process is cheap enough and energy positive. Third world countries may benefit. Industrial scale economies, not a chance in hell.
In fact, if anything you are setting up a single point of failure that would be the best target for control by those with wealth... This goes both ways. You're also setting up a single point of repair. Democracies, real ones, tend to do that.
In fact, I expect corruption forever. What I also expect is that the world is a big place with many competing interests. Any unitary political entity will be difficult to maintain, but have the advantage of serving no one group exclusively. If, for example, there was a minimum global wage, many business groups would fight for exceptions, however many more would fight for its maintenance. Currently, efforts are fragmented by nationalist "beggar thy neighbor" strategies. An international playing field eliminates this.
Until we get a transnational regulatory authority with teeth, the wealthy will simply use nations as convenient operating environments to skirt environmental regulation, labor laws, taxes or any other inconvenient regulation. Wealth is political power. Unelected, frequently dangerous political power. We either choose to control it, globally, or we will continue to be victimized by it, globally.
The people who are freaked about losing "sovereignty" or the new world order are just dupes of the wealthy, as far as I can tell. Independent nation states, banks and lawyers serve rogues and villains better than any number of guns.
Well, if we use just that battery, I'd agree, but I think any rationally designed electric car will use a combination of heavy duty batteries or fuel cells, supplemented by rechargeable lithium ion batteries, or more likely, high-capacity supercapacitors to handle sudden surges in load and allow for regenerative braking.
It's still prudent to close the barn door to keep the rest of the livestock in, and the varmints out.
Chinese components and software are obvious attack vectors. Only a fool would believe they would not be set in place beforehand, or used during any significant conflict.
Any business leaders who can't figure out why there's a technical skills shortage probably also can't dress themselves, navigate public walkways or avoid urinating in public. As has been stated, ad nauseam, it's about the money and prestige. Treat skilled IT professionals with the same regard as management (IT manages machines, not people) and provide commensurate salaries and watch that shortage vanish like the morning dew.
The guy in the stockroom is "the help." The garage mechanics are "The help." IT professional are NOT the "the help," and for the enlightenment of the one or two MBAs reading this, we're smarter than you, on average. As management, you ignore this at their peril.
Everything else said about the subject is delusional bullshit - the kind of circle-jerk-in-the-echo-chamber at which recent American MBAs excel.
ALL biofuels are inefficient solar energy collectors whose only advantage is that their output is directly chemical. Even if it took no petroleum based, petroleum transported fertilizer to grow sugar beets in quantity, it still takes land, water and sunlight away from other food crops and the natural ecology, on which we will be dependent for the foreseeable future.
Want to keep running a large scale industrial civilization? Forget biofuels. The unpleasant reality is that in the long run, it's thorium nuclear, space based solar, or nothing much, and civilization as we know it now, contracts contracts significantly, along with the world's population.
like biofuels (inefficient solar collectors that don't scale without ecologically disastrous consequences), ethanol (breakeven or negative net energy) are obvious losers. This is something that needs science oversight, not political oversight. Political oversight gets you ethanol, or whatever idiocy gets you elected next term. You need people who can handle math and physics for this one, not senators.
So now you've got a choice. Ship cheaper workers in (the lesser evil), or ship jobs overseas, and never punish corporations for doing so. Happy unregulated market. Is there nothing you can't do? Of course, you voted for it in your 20s, when you weren't going to be the person with obsolete skills that got laid off, before you had a spouse and kids. Before you got sick and got the hospital bill that bankrupted you. Before you were conned into buying an overpriced house because you actually were stupid enough to believe the value would keep going up, forever. Before you decided that the benevolent Wall Street geniuses would make stock markets go up forever, and never down. Before you were bought the oil company line that gasoline would always be cheap and plentiful. Before you realized that companies wrote contracts that allowed them to change the terms of your retirement health care at will. Before if finally soaked in that laws are purchased for corporations, not voted in for the benefit of the citizenry. Before it dawned on you, finally, that you might not be the big winner in the casino of capitalism.
You, who voted for Reagan. For Bush, and Bush again. You voted for it. You got it.
So, enjoy the increasingly unregulated, conservative, free market capitalism you ranted about in your 20s as it comes back to bite you ever so slowly and painfully in the ass.
I will now sit back and wait for the legions of morons who will tell me this is all the fault of over-regulation, liberals, muslims, taxes and evil spirits. We've all heard it all before. Have at it.
Carly wasn't bad because she's a woman, or because she's a self-absorbed sociopath who only saw HP as a big money pot from which she could extract a personal fortune (regardless of the costs to the company or its employees), she was actively incompetent at running a technology company due to a lack of experience with, or any interest in, high technology. Her education was in liberal arts, and then several extended business degrees. That's pretty much a formula for failure in almost any industry, but particularly so in the tech industry. She was just a female version of John Scully's disastrous run at Apple without Scully's good luck at joining at the right time.
And why should I? From the results of this poll, they clearly don't care what I think. Many seem to be under the impression that I can't read as well. While it may shock many doctors, some of their patients are as smart as they are, or smarter, and have owned a Tabers Merck manual since college, and used it more or less like they would use an encyclopedia or a dictionary. While this is not substitute for a medical education, we're not all idiots either.
Bottom line? My records are *mine* to do with as I wish. If it shows medical mistakes, than that's just too damn bad. I don't get to hide my mistakes. Suck it up and deal with it.
Slashdot Mirror
But if they think it's a "game changer," I suggest that the researchers quickly engage in a remedial math course. Plants are very inefficient solar collectors, land area is limited, using "natural" sources will quickly lead to the destruction of every natural environment if we were so silly as to try and replace the 160 exajoules per year provided by petroleum.
So, useful for small things. Maybe, one day, if the process is cheap enough and energy positive. Third world countries may benefit. Industrial scale economies, not a chance in hell.
In fact, if anything you are setting up a single point of failure that would be the best target for control by those with wealth...
This goes both ways. You're also setting up a single point of repair. Democracies, real ones, tend to do that.
In fact, I expect corruption forever. What I also expect is that the world is a big place with many competing interests. Any unitary political entity will be difficult to maintain, but have the advantage of serving no one group exclusively. If, for example, there was a minimum global wage, many business groups would fight for exceptions, however many more would fight for its maintenance. Currently, efforts are fragmented by nationalist "beggar thy neighbor" strategies. An international playing field eliminates this.
Until we get a transnational regulatory authority with teeth, the wealthy will simply use nations as convenient operating environments to skirt environmental regulation, labor laws, taxes or any other inconvenient regulation. Wealth is political power. Unelected, frequently dangerous political power. We either choose to control it, globally, or we will continue to be victimized by it, globally.
The people who are freaked about losing "sovereignty" or the new world order are just dupes of the wealthy, as far as I can tell. Independent nation states, banks and lawyers serve rogues and villains better than any number of guns.
Well, if we use just that battery, I'd agree, but I think any rationally designed electric car will use a combination of heavy duty batteries or fuel cells, supplemented by rechargeable lithium ion batteries, or more likely, high-capacity supercapacitors to handle sudden surges in load and allow for regenerative braking.
It's still prudent to close the barn door to keep the rest of the livestock in, and the varmints out.
Chinese components and software are obvious attack vectors. Only a fool would believe they would not be set in place beforehand, or used during any significant conflict.
Any business leaders who can't figure out why there's a technical skills shortage probably also can't dress themselves, navigate public walkways or avoid urinating in public. As has been stated, ad nauseam, it's about the money and prestige. Treat skilled IT professionals with the same regard as management (IT manages machines, not people) and provide commensurate salaries and watch that shortage vanish like the morning dew.
The guy in the stockroom is "the help." The garage mechanics are "The help." IT professional are NOT the "the help," and for the enlightenment of the one or two MBAs reading this, we're smarter than you, on average. As management, you ignore this at their peril.
Everything else said about the subject is delusional bullshit - the kind of circle-jerk-in-the-echo-chamber at which recent American MBAs excel.
just can't happen fast enough for some people.
ALL biofuels are inefficient solar energy collectors whose only advantage is that their output is directly chemical. Even if it took no petroleum based, petroleum transported fertilizer to grow sugar beets in quantity, it still takes land, water and sunlight away from other food crops and the natural ecology, on which we will be dependent for the foreseeable future.
Want to keep running a large scale industrial civilization? Forget biofuels. The unpleasant reality is that in the long run, it's thorium nuclear, space based solar, or nothing much, and civilization as we know it now, contracts contracts significantly, along with the world's population.
Not as I do.
Any questions?
So, I'll be sticking with Amazon.
So, you don't plan to be alive in 20 years?
like biofuels (inefficient solar collectors that don't scale without ecologically disastrous consequences), ethanol (breakeven or negative net energy) are obvious losers. This is something that needs science oversight, not political oversight. Political oversight gets you ethanol, or whatever idiocy gets you elected next term. You need people who can handle math and physics for this one, not senators.
So now you've got a choice. Ship cheaper workers in (the lesser evil), or ship jobs overseas, and never punish corporations for doing so. Happy unregulated market. Is there nothing you can't do? Of course, you voted for it in your 20s, when you weren't going to be the person with obsolete skills that got laid off, before you had a spouse and kids. Before you got sick and got the hospital bill that bankrupted you. Before you were conned into buying an overpriced house because you actually were stupid enough to believe the value would keep going up, forever. Before you decided that the benevolent Wall Street geniuses would make stock markets go up forever, and never down. Before you were bought the oil company line that gasoline would always be cheap and plentiful. Before you realized that companies wrote contracts that allowed them to change the terms of your retirement health care at will. Before if finally soaked in that laws are purchased for corporations, not voted in for the benefit of the citizenry. Before it dawned on you, finally, that you might not be the big winner in the casino of capitalism.
You, who voted for Reagan. For Bush, and Bush again. You voted for it. You got it.
So, enjoy the increasingly unregulated, conservative, free market capitalism you ranted about in your 20s as it comes back to bite you ever so slowly and painfully in the ass.
I will now sit back and wait for the legions of morons who will tell me this is all the fault of over-regulation, liberals, muslims, taxes and evil spirits. We've all heard it all before. Have at it.
Tax evasion, of course!
He leads a major denomination, Bud. He's a Mac guy.
The woods, however, are still the traditional choice.
I'd pay extra to have that installed in certain select friends and acquaintances.
Carly wasn't bad because she's a woman, or because she's a self-absorbed sociopath who only saw HP as a big money pot from which she could extract a personal fortune (regardless of the costs to the company or its employees), she was actively incompetent at running a technology company due to a lack of experience with, or any interest in, high technology. Her education was in liberal arts, and then several extended business degrees. That's pretty much a formula for failure in almost any industry, but particularly so in the tech industry. She was just a female version of John Scully's disastrous run at Apple without Scully's good luck at joining at the right time.
bite the hand that feeds them?
Stop it? Why would I want to stop it?
And why should I? From the results of this poll, they clearly don't care what I think. Many seem to be under the impression that I can't read as well. While it may shock many doctors, some of their patients are as smart as they are, or smarter, and have owned a Tabers Merck manual since college, and used it more or less like they would use an encyclopedia or a dictionary. While this is not substitute for a medical education, we're not all idiots either.
Bottom line? My records are *mine* to do with as I wish. If it shows medical mistakes, than that's just too damn bad. I don't get to hide my mistakes. Suck it up and deal with it.
And speaking of women's rights, are they going to ban Berlesconi too? I mean, I'm in favor of banning him, but not for that reason.
by having the UN writer a very stern letter! Or even better, broadcasting this over North Korea's TV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEaKX9YYHiQ
Or worms - maybe even intelligent worms capable of thinking great worm thoughts like, "dirt, dirt, water, dirt, um... more dirt, aw shit. Dirt..."