I'm aware of the problems involved. I currently live 14ft above sea level and most of the town I live in (Jacksonville FL) would be underwater. I'm just saying that I'm not going to wake up one day and find I'm on an island. When the time comes, I, or my liniage will move.
That's all well and good, but the original poster felt that our GDP justified our pollution. It doesn't (or maybe it does; see this thread for a stunning nonconclusion). So we should take steps to curb it.
Bleh. I didn't mean to hit send there. The end of my last sentance should have been "but I really need to get back to work, and don't care enough about the discussion to find them right now:)"
I'll buy that, but I still don't feel that per capita GDP shows the US to be a paragon of evironmental efficiency compared to China, as your original post I replied to implied. There's really no way to tell from the numbers at all. Perhaps most of the polution comes from the service sector, perhaps most from the industrial sector.
I think you are wrong about the breakdown of the GDP as well. When I buy a burger from McDonald's, I'm fairly sure it's 20% agriculture (for the meat, veg, and bun), 10% industry (for the paper wrapping, and the processing of the meat into the standardized patty shapes), 60% service (for the shipping and preparation). At each point, a good has the history of where it came from. You can tell because a single McDonald's wrote off 40% of their taxes as expenses to McDonald's corp, which wrote off 20% as expenses to various farms and 10% to shipping companies. Because it was an expense write off, it didn't count as income in that sector (Note: numbers here are made up and inputs are simplified).
Because of this, I believe that the electricity you are talking about is part of industry. The shipping is part of service, but the gas and equipment used is not.
What that all means, who knows. I will concede that it's a complex topic. I personally feel that the U.S. moving away from coal electricity to nuclear is a better way to go environmentally. I do not think solar is viable or even environmentally safe yet (solar cells die, and they have environmental impact to produce). Staging in emmissions controls and tariffing imports that don't meet the same controls is another thing that I feel should be done. These emmissions controls should scale with the size of the production company (actually trust/consortium) and to the needs of the consuming company), to limit barriers to smaller companies, or other countries that want to catch up.
And this is really about a lot more than the possibility of global warming. Industrial pollution has measurable effects on the environment including people. If you've ever been to Dehli, you would know exactly what I mean. That burning sensation in your eyes isn't because they have clearer skies, it's because they have no wind in the non-typhoon season and the pollution is so heavy it burns (granted after about a week you stop noticing). There are more scientific studies talking about immediate non-global (i.e. selfish) reasons to not pollute.
Ok. My bad. I was confused by your statement "we produce ten times more stuff" I thought you were saying "we" in total, but obviously the thread is per capita.
So doing the math again yeilds China with a per capita industrial GDP of 1900 and the US with 6300. This gives a ratio 3.5. Hell, let's include agriculture, since that is "stuff" too, and you may think it's more fair (personally, I'd stick with industry, since agriculture has mostly different pollutants that we are talking about). China: 2400/capita, US: 7190/capita. Ratio: 3.
So if we are only produce 3 times more stuff percapita, why 8 times more polution?
Which also sounds great until you realize that: a) it isn't true. China has a GDP of 4.5 trillion, the US 10 trillion. b) the US's GDP is 80% services, versus China's 35% services. Thus, 3 trillion of China's economy is from industry and agriculture, compared to 2 trillion of the U.S.'s. If you just want industry, then it is 2.2 trillion (China at 50%) vs 1.73 trillion (US).
Here's my source. You should read the other things these environmentalists are saying about the U.S., like "the US is the largest single emitter of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels; water pollution from runoff of pesticides and fertilizers; very limited natural fresh water resources in much of the western part of the country require careful management; desertification". Those wacky ecoterrorists at the Central Intelligence Agency will say anything, huh?
Global warming, whether caused by humans or not, is nothing to scoff at, either. Many people, particularly in third world nations, live on the coastline, in areas that would (and will) be innundated if and when a higher global temperature causes ocean levels to rise.
This doesn't make a lot of sense. It's not like they are going to wake up one day 8 feet under water. People have a remarkable ability to adjust. Yes, there will be loss of property, but people will move, regardless of how poor they are.
It isn't necessarily the Sun. The pressure of the Earth's mass crushing into itself are a giant source of heat on this planet (which is why rock is molten under the surface). The underground heat of the Earth convects to the surface.
Except that Java the language doesn't presribe how it is compiled. There exist native language compilers (and have for a long time. I used Assymetrix's SuperCede for Java in 97). Plus, Java has always had the native keyword, that allows you to link to C structured functions. And for the most part its impossible to access hardware directly in C, you typically either have to mix in a little asm to get you there, or call library functions that do the asm for you.
And if you find dynamic binding too slow, then mark the methods as final (nonvirtual). I'm sure Objective-C has the same concept.
In addition to the other poster's comments, I'll add that code can document code. This is one of the important reasons to have automated unit testing. The unit tests test the code and are code.
Like the other poster said, the unit tests are not to be considered the authority. The authority only comes from the actual vs expected outcome of the program code. A unit test can be incorrect, as can documentation. There has to be intelligence involved in determining what is right and when is wrong.
And proper design docs are a myth. In most cases documentation becomes out of sync with the code, and leads to the same situation only extra time figuring out that the docs are lying. Good coding practices are a lot better and easier to maintain than supporting documentation.
It's pretty important to know that a computer without a hardware random number generator is a "von Neumann machine" which is a Turing Machine with limited memory (so not as powerful as a Turing Machine, which has an infinite tape). Thus, a UTM can solve any problem a von Neuman machine can, and thus is a fully functioning computer. Obviously, in practise, this UTM can only be run as a von Neumann.
Yeah, I realize. We weren't talking about this. We were talking about real art. Like at the Guggenheim, in the National Art Gallery in Ottawa and the paintings my friend made while taking an art minor. I still don't see a trend of geeks shunning art. My experience is that geeks are more interested than non-geek-non-artists, although there are a lot of noninterested people in both groups.
I live in Jacksonville, Florida, a baptist run town, not quite south enough to be out of the bible belt. We all call each other "sir" here. Plenty of rebel flags around (though most are ouside of people's houses instead of on their cars) and few of my friends outside of work completed high school. The seniors at this company are all ex-military. I worked for another company down here a few years ago (before that, I was up north). I found the same thing up there as I do down here. Act young, get treated young. Most people don't even realize how they do it to themselves.
I'm a big proponent of file sharing and the future business models that will come about. I've posted on/. before some of my ideas of how this will work. But this article was pretty painful for me to read. It didn't make a lot of sense in a lot of areas. Halfway through the second page I gave up reading it. Maybe I should have seen it through to the end, but I thought I gave it enough of a chance.
Yes, the idea is good, but to get people to buy into it, it needs a good explaination.
Or even legal remixes of music that they have recieved from a file sharing service. After all, the Audio Home Recording Act says that noncommerical distribution doesn't infringe copyright.
Slashdot Mirror
The preferred method of linking is such: Scientology.
;
Code: <a href="http://www.xenu.net">Scientology</a>
The reason is because the link itself is the single word, it gives it a higher ranking.
Actally, the traditional form is
0*pi*e=1+i^2
Reference?
I'm aware of the problems involved. I currently live 14ft above sea level and most of the town I live in (Jacksonville FL) would be underwater. I'm just saying that I'm not going to wake up one day and find I'm on an island. When the time comes, I, or my liniage will move.
Two posts above, I stated my source: The CIA World Factbook. It's alright you didn't see it, but I didn't want you to think I hadn't stated it.
But, you are right, China doesn't have an ag GDP 1/3rd of the US. The number I gave was ag+industry GDP.
That's all well and good, but the original poster felt that our GDP justified our pollution. It doesn't (or maybe it does; see this thread for a stunning nonconclusion). So we should take steps to curb it.
The Chinese should, too.
Bleh. I didn't mean to hit send there. The end of my last sentance should have been "but I really need to get back to work, and don't care enough about the discussion to find them right now :)"
I'll buy that, but I still don't feel that per capita GDP shows the US to be a paragon of evironmental efficiency compared to China, as your original post I replied to implied. There's really no way to tell from the numbers at all. Perhaps most of the polution comes from the service sector, perhaps most from the industrial sector.
I think you are wrong about the breakdown of the GDP as well. When I buy a burger from McDonald's, I'm fairly sure it's 20% agriculture (for the meat, veg, and bun), 10% industry (for the paper wrapping, and the processing of the meat into the standardized patty shapes), 60% service (for the shipping and preparation). At each point, a good has the history of where it came from. You can tell because a single McDonald's wrote off 40% of their taxes as expenses to McDonald's corp, which wrote off 20% as expenses to various farms and 10% to shipping companies. Because it was an expense write off, it didn't count as income in that sector (Note: numbers here are made up and inputs are simplified).
Because of this, I believe that the electricity you are talking about is part of industry. The shipping is part of service, but the gas and equipment used is not.
What that all means, who knows. I will concede that it's a complex topic. I personally feel that the U.S. moving away from coal electricity to nuclear is a better way to go environmentally. I do not think solar is viable or even environmentally safe yet (solar cells die, and they have environmental impact to produce). Staging in emmissions controls and tariffing imports that don't meet the same controls is another thing that I feel should be done. These emmissions controls should scale with the size of the production company (actually trust/consortium) and to the needs of the consuming company), to limit barriers to smaller companies, or other countries that want to catch up.
And this is really about a lot more than the possibility of global warming. Industrial pollution has measurable effects on the environment including people. If you've ever been to Dehli, you would know exactly what I mean. That burning sensation in your eyes isn't because they have clearer skies, it's because they have no wind in the non-typhoon season and the pollution is so heavy it burns (granted after about a week you stop noticing). There are more scientific studies talking about immediate non-global (i.e. selfish) reasons to not pollute.
Then the system works. You can wade through the crud at -1 and I'll stay at 1 (unless modding). You can even sort the articles oldest to newest.
You should probablt read this thread. You might be disappointed, though.
Ok. My bad. I was confused by your statement "we produce ten times more stuff" I thought you were saying "we" in total, but obviously the thread is per capita.
So doing the math again yeilds China with a per capita industrial GDP of 1900 and the US with 6300. This gives a ratio 3.5. Hell, let's include agriculture, since that is "stuff" too, and you may think it's more fair (personally, I'd stick with industry, since agriculture has mostly different pollutants that we are talking about). China: 2400/capita, US: 7190/capita. Ratio: 3.
So if we are only produce 3 times more stuff percapita, why 8 times more polution?
Which also sounds great until you realize that:
a) it isn't true. China has a GDP of 4.5 trillion, the US 10 trillion.
b) the US's GDP is 80% services, versus China's 35% services. Thus, 3 trillion of China's economy is from industry and agriculture, compared to 2 trillion of the U.S.'s. If you just want industry, then it is 2.2 trillion (China at 50%) vs 1.73 trillion (US).
Here's my source. You should read the other things these environmentalists are saying about the U.S., like "the US is the largest single emitter of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels; water pollution from runoff of pesticides and fertilizers; very limited natural fresh water resources in much of the western part of the country require careful management; desertification". Those wacky ecoterrorists at the Central Intelligence Agency will say anything, huh?
Global warming, whether caused by humans or not, is nothing to scoff at, either. Many people, particularly in third world nations, live on the coastline, in areas that would (and will) be innundated if and when a higher global temperature causes ocean levels to rise.
This doesn't make a lot of sense. It's not like they are going to wake up one day 8 feet under water. People have a remarkable ability to adjust. Yes, there will be loss of property, but people will move, regardless of how poor they are.
It isn't necessarily the Sun. The pressure of the Earth's mass crushing into itself are a giant source of heat on this planet (which is why rock is molten under the surface). The underground heat of the Earth convects to the surface.
This reminds me of how people would hate it when I would do something like the following in my Java code:
if ("Y".equals(string))
I would do this because sometimes string could be null and I didn't want a NullPointerException to be thrown, I wanted it to evaluate to false.
Of course, it is better to have "Y" as a static final variable, but even that would bother some people and that wasn't their objection.
Except that Java the language doesn't presribe how it is compiled. There exist native language compilers (and have for a long time. I used Assymetrix's SuperCede for Java in 97). Plus, Java has always had the native keyword, that allows you to link to C structured functions. And for the most part its impossible to access hardware directly in C, you typically either have to mix in a little asm to get you there, or call library functions that do the asm for you.
And if you find dynamic binding too slow, then mark the methods as final (nonvirtual). I'm sure Objective-C has the same concept.
To say it is a nicer fashion, maintainance also includes adding new features.
In addition to the other poster's comments, I'll add that code can document code. This is one of the important reasons to have automated unit testing. The unit tests test the code and are code.
Like the other poster said, the unit tests are not to be considered the authority. The authority only comes from the actual vs expected outcome of the program code. A unit test can be incorrect, as can documentation. There has to be intelligence involved in determining what is right and when is wrong.
And proper design docs are a myth. In most cases documentation becomes out of sync with the code, and leads to the same situation only extra time figuring out that the docs are lying. Good coding practices are a lot better and easier to maintain than supporting documentation.
And yet you can still find all of the Harry Potter books on Kazaa
It's pretty important to know that a computer without a hardware random number generator is a "von Neumann machine" which is a Turing Machine with limited memory (so not as powerful as a Turing Machine, which has an infinite tape). Thus, a UTM can solve any problem a von Neuman machine can, and thus is a fully functioning computer. Obviously, in practise, this UTM can only be run as a von Neumann.
Yeah, I realize. We weren't talking about this. We were talking about real art. Like at the Guggenheim, in the National Art Gallery in Ottawa and the paintings my friend made while taking an art minor. I still don't see a trend of geeks shunning art. My experience is that geeks are more interested than non-geek-non-artists, although there are a lot of noninterested people in both groups.
I live in Jacksonville, Florida, a baptist run town, not quite south enough to be out of the bible belt. We all call each other "sir" here. Plenty of rebel flags around (though most are ouside of people's houses instead of on their cars) and few of my friends outside of work completed high school. The seniors at this company are all ex-military. I worked for another company down here a few years ago (before that, I was up north). I found the same thing up there as I do down here. Act young, get treated young. Most people don't even realize how they do it to themselves.
I'm a big proponent of file sharing and the future business models that will come about. I've posted on /. before some of my ideas of how this will work. But this article was pretty painful for me to read. It didn't make a lot of sense in a lot of areas. Halfway through the second page I gave up reading it. Maybe I should have seen it through to the end, but I thought I gave it enough of a chance.
Yes, the idea is good, but to get people to buy into it, it needs a good explaination.
Or even legal remixes of music that they have recieved from a file sharing service. After all, the Audio Home Recording Act says that noncommerical distribution doesn't infringe copyright.