Posts by fritsd 79 publicly visible posts • joined 22 Mar 2011
The power of x86 (...)
(...) just by taking a minimal Debian, (...)
Debian runs on 18 different architectures, if I counted right (not all of them official ports with the full infrastructure). Just saying...
source: http://www.debian.org/ports/
Well, maybe the protein is properly hydrolysed first by applying sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid.
That would give something with lots of glutamate (taste enhancer!) resembling soy sauce or Marmite or Maggi, not to mention the more extreme exotic variants of "garum" or Bovril.
"What has happened is that the ruling classes have become internationalized, rather than just being the ruling class of a particular nation."
Hey, don't knock the idea, it worked for Charlemagne after all!
Prerequisite for this to work is that the elites understand that people speak different languages in the EU, and that they should at least try to acquire some fluency in a few of the most important ones.
I suspect this is why the Brits feel a bit left out sometimes.
Well, that's the other leg of the "secret EU blueprint": food supply security. Hence the enormous agricultural subsidies. The "secret" plan was:
1. No more wars
2. No more famine
3. Everything else, is a bonus
For a very thorough description of the history of the past 100 years, read Geert Mak's "In Europa". It includes interviews with the people who built the EU, while they were still alive.
That lawsuit was very interesting, but it seemed to be about copyright, not patents. It's really clouding your mind if you conflate those two to "intellectual property" (see Stallman's essay, www.gnu.org/philosophy/not-ipr.html ).
It seemed to be about that reverse engineering protocols and languages for the purpose of interoperability must always stay allowed, otherwise it would restrict the software industry too much.
I think it has to do with something called our planet's "albedo": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albedo . IANAP, but see if this makes sense:
Ice and snow reflect a lot of visible sunlight (i.e. they are white), not sure about the infrared absorption. Ocean looks dark if you look from above because all the plants (seaweed, algae) that live in its top layer try to absorb as much of the visible light as they can to grow. I bet it absorbs almost all of the infrared that falls on it, as well.
I realize that IR and visible absorption have not much to do with each other, but assuming the IR absorption stays the same whether the Arctic is molten or not, and the visible absorption doubles (albedo halved from snow to seawater), that would still mean that the Arctic ocean area would warm a fraction faster (fraction determined by visible irradiation / ( visible + IR ) irradiation ).
Or am I making an error somewhere?
Thanks for the factual data.
So if you ignore the datapoints from the last 5 years, it looks like the Arctic will be molten in september in 81 years, and if you include them (they seem a lot lower though) then it will be molten in september in 37 years.
Unless the last 5 years points are indicative of an acceleration (North Siberian fart-gas clathrates?).
Exactly. EROEI is the key.
Please look it up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested
Ask yourself why don't our cars run on (renewable!) whale blubber diesel? There are still whales about, you know, just ask the Japanese who "research" them.
The answer is because petroleum-based fuel was cheaper during the 20th century and still is at the moment.
Rudolf Diesel would have understood EROEI.
The two examples you mention, hydraulic fracking and synthetic fuel, have drawbacks which is the reason why they are not used currently: both are bad for the environment and the EROEI is really quite a lot lower than other current fuel production methods (e.g. South Africa Sasol's Fischer-Tropsch synfuel: google it).
You mentioned that there are hundreds of new wells in the USA to extract their huge amount of shale oil with hydraulic fracking. To me this doesn't sound like a brave new world of cheap fuel, but as an act of desperation to keep continuing with the profitable status quo for a little bit longer.
You cannot in the 21st century decouple the inventivity needed to get resources from the *energy investment* needed to get those resources otherwise you will fail.
Also, in economic terms the discussion often focuses on our "need" for fuel and energy. But unfortunately, physical rather than economical reality doesn't give a hoot about our "needs".
To put it differently, thermodynamics trumps economics. We're finding that out now.
I'll end my long and no doubt tedious rant by stating that I, a "tree-hugging hippy" as you'd probably call it, *love* human ingenuity and innovation and I sincerely believe that in 100 years we will still have wind and sunlight to our disposal to provide energy and food (lookup energy costs of Haber-Bosch process: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process ) for whatever size world population that can fit within those energy constraints post-Peak Oil.
I thought that, when he gets convicted and sentenced, he has to pay a € 150 fine (maybe with interest after all this time).
But I hope that the judge also forces him to apologize to those women for his boorish conduct.
Mind you, I wouldn't want to be on the same plane as him flying from the UK to Sweden.. I think he has more scary enemies than the Swedish judiciary.
In related news, Nokia is planning to monetize their Precious Intellectual Property by selling 450 patents, amongst which basic GSM patents, to the famous company Sysvel:
http://www.intomobile.com/2012/01/16/nokia-sells-over-450-patents-some-them-deemed-essential-gsm-patent-troll/
The obvious benefit to Nokia is ???
But stage 3 is profit for someone, for sure!
Even if all you say is true, you're missing the following large piece of the puzzle:
The choice is *NOT* between a future with expensive green energy or a future with cheap energy like we have today.
The choice is between a future with expensive green energy (requiring investments *TODAY* now that production costs are still low), or a future with not enough energy to sustain a technological civilization.
Google "peak oil". It was probably between 2005 and this decade. It doesn't actually matter when it was exactly.
If you're poor, it's tough but energy supply will never get better in the future unless the EU-sponsored ITER and DEMO reactors show potential uses 50 years from now.
Deal with reality, not "you wish energy would be as cheap in the future as it is now. make it so # 1.". Politicians who tell you this is possible are lying.
I shudder at the thought of agreeing about anything with mr. A.O., but with regards to money: I suspect he's right that most people would be willing to pay for content if it was easy and not bothering them with scary stuff like stolen credit card details etc.
One internet experiment I found that attempts to address the problem is http://www.flattr.com, but it seems to be used mostly by anarchists from Germany and hasn't reached the mindshare of the Anglo-Saxon intertubes yet. If the network effect would take of I think it could become very valuable and, well, "normal" way to give and receive money for your creative efforts.
We don't need Tories or economists, we need philosophers to solve this one, methinks.
I don't see why you couldn't do this, if you sell PCs:
1 "super-business" PC with Super Business Linux(*) pre-installed ₤ 1000
box of Super Business Linux installation DVDs (for just in case) ₤ 25
box of Super Business Linux source code DVDs (recommended
for legal reasons) ₤ 25
(*) Super Business Linux = xubuntu with a different background
@ Danny 5: the Dutch ex-bishop of Breda, mgr. Muskens, was completely chewed out in the media because he had said, that under certain circumstances it would be OK if a poor person stole a bread.
But these looters are not stealing a bread which they need to live: they've got Blackberries (sp?), they are stealing luxury items, and burning the shops. If they would have non-violently stolen basic foodstuffs from those shops because otherwise they'd be starving from hunger in the streets of London then I, being a left-wing hippy treehugger myself, would maybe have some sympathy (but also for the pissed-off shop personnel).
It's real simple: you *NEED* bread (or unemployment benefits etc.). you don't *NEED* a TV. So don't steal one. There's the nuance.
If Muskens were not senile by now, he'd probably say that the fact those yobo's felt they "needed" those luxury things was a societal disease in and of itself.
It is very possible that Microsoft would never attack Google directly with software patents.
Instead certain legally independent "intellectual licensing" companies, such as Intellectual Ventures and Interval Licensing LLC, might suddenly become interested to sue the pants off of Microsoft's perceived "enemies".
You know, for old times' sake.
See also U.S. patent 6757682 "alerting users to items of current interest"
Sodium-sulfur isn't very toxic chemicals, especially compared to nuclear or coal waste :-). For example it's less toxic than the sulfuric acid-lead batteries that every car driver has. If you'd neutralize and oxidate it, the end result can be used as a laxative or in washing powder (sodium sulfate). It is corrosive, so you'd want to keep the batteries in a locked waterproof shack with a warning sign on the door.
My complaint was mostly that it was a main component in the author's argument (wind and solar without storage doesn't work), and then completely ignored for three pages and glossed over, and then came the conclusion (... therefore wind and solar doesn't work).
About the cold storage meat warehouses: I read the idea basically
here: http://ec.europa.eu/research/energy/eu/research/smartgrid/index_en.htm
and more specific here: http://nightwind.eu/night-wind.html
The idea is that most industry currently is built to use constant amounts of electricity, but for industries that could switch processes to use more power when it's cheaper (see http://www.apxendex.com/ , it 's a bit like a stock market), it can be a win-win both for that industry (cheaper power if they're able to be flexible) and for the country (less total energy infrastructure needed).
Here's another crazy hippie idea:
- when the wind blows in the UK but not in France, sell electricity to France. when the wind blows in France but not in the UK, vice versa. I doubt that it's physically possible for there to be no wind in the whole of Europe at any single time.
Also this should be a net win for Blighty because it's a bloody island.
1. "Thus, in the absence of a storage system, populating the country with windmills just won't work."
2. ???
3. "(...) windmills, which we know won't work, (...)"
You forgot step 2: you imply that storage systems (pumped hydro storage, Sodium Sulfur batteries, using cold storage meat warehouses as energy storage) are not available.
As you write yourself, this is because of "Thus they don't even want people investigating such systems, let alone proving that they will work."
But maybe I'm being unkind to you. Of course it's all the fault of the all-powerful hippies.
@Patrick O'Reilly doesn't matter: you can also patent something just to cut competitors off from inventing something useful you don't want. E.g. if no one is allowed to make a faster browser than Microsofts' , IE9 will be the fastest browser in the world without needing to compete. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_encumbrance_of_large_automotive_NiMH_batteries ("who killed the electric car").
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