I think most of it comes from Bolivia. Will that become our next target for some "international policing action" that will require a massive payoff in some local resource?
Nope.
http://www.mining.com/web/america-finds-massive-source-of-lithium-in-wyoming/
Sorry about ruining your stupid conspiracy theory.
FYI, this 'massive' source of Lithium of Wyoming, is tiny compared to the lithium existent at the Uyuni salt flats.
A) Zero pennies now, for getting big profits in the future by controlling its own Lithium production.
B) Small profits now, letting the corporations get the lionshare forever.
Or maybe C) Zero pennies ever, if some other battery tech replaces Li-ion before they get spun up.
The smart move would be to sell lithium now for its raw material value while setting up battery production for the future. Don't leave money on the table now while preparing to step up the food chain.
For poor countries with a lot of precedents of transnational greedy corporations getting the lionshare of their resources for pennies, wouldn't that C option (zero pennies) be an affordable risk to take, if there is a chance to break the vicius circle most poor countries are trapped in?
At least for oil, there has been a lot of talk about supposed technologies that would replace the oil need, nothing more than hot air.
And even if the remote C possibility arrives (I'd say it is more likely that they would find new technological uses for Lithium, than to lithium become useless), just not allowing the greedy corrupt corporations get away this time, would be worth the move, isn't it?
Lithium doesn't come from rare earth ores. It's in fact almost on the opposite end of the periodic table, being the first metal (after hydrogen and helium).
It's mainly found in Bolivia, which is a bit of a problem: Bolivia would like to have a domestic battery industry (higher revenue), instead of exporting raw lithium. The problem? A 20th century socialist for president, who is quite successfully scaring away international investment. As a result, the main exporter is Chile, which has smaller deposits.
In reality, bolivian government is not allowing transnational companies get the lithium for pennies, as they do in other countries who were servile to transnational power, or as happened in Bolivia before.
They are investing heavily (Bolivia is still poor, but its economy is growing steadily, while other countries were affected by the world crisis) in their own R&D, and they consider that no matter how long it takes for them to get everything going on, it's better than the alternative that letting trasnational companies get the lionshare of the profits.
Think about it, 2 alternatives for Bolivia.
A) Zero pennies now, for getting big profits in the future by controlling its own Lithium production.
B) Small profits now, letting the corporations get the lionshare forever.
They chose A, wisely IMO. In fact, that example should be followed by more poor countries, isn't this a good way to stop corporations greed to keep them in poverty while they earn huge profits on the resources of the country?
Check the video of the plane, it's interesting.
Could this add to the on-purpose misinformation theory (as they had a fully capable presidential plane, without the need to refuel, and this have not been commented)?
Dvorak is designed in an ergonomical way, so, trained or untrained, you'd gain comfort, not only typing speed.
Sure, when I'm at *my* computer. I'd be fucked trying to use any other.
So I'll change when everyone else does, as will everyone else.
P.S. You don't have, to put, a comma, every third, word.
That's exaxtly my point was about promoting the dvorak keyboard. If you tread the OP, the whole thread is about to change a STANDARD, if you are promoting to change a standard , keeping the ugly qwerty layout, why not promoting the change, to switch the standar to Dvorak? That was my original point, so when the new standard is set, you wouldn't be bothered by changing your laptop or tablet.
Seriously, I still fail to understand why the Qwerty keyboard still is the norm, even in virtual keyboard in mobile devices.
What's the problem with pushing a better keyboard like Dvorak? wouldn't that be a better improvement over just adding 'th' or other minor fixes?
Because the original studies were biased at best, and follow up studies found there are no cost benefits to retraining with Dvorak:
In the first phase of the experiment, 10 government typists were retrained on the Dvorak keyboard. It took well over 25 days of four-hour-a-day training for these typists to catch up to their old QWERTY speeds. (Compare this to the Navy study's results.) When the typists had finally caught up to their old speeds, the second phase of the experiment began. The newly trained Dvorak typists continued training and a group of 10 QWERTY typists (matched in skill to the Dvorak typists) began a parallel program to improve their skills. In this second phase the Dvorak typists progressed less quickly with further Dvorak training than did QWERTY typists training on QWERTY keyboards. Thus Strong concluded that Dvorak training would never be able to amortize its costs. He recommended instead that the government provide further training in the QWERTY keyboard for QWERTY typists.
The GSA study attempted to control carefully for the abilities and treatments of the two groups. The study design directly paralleled the decision that a real firm or a real government agency might face: Is it worthwhile to retrain its present typists? If Strong's study is correct, it is not efficient for current typists to switch to Dvorak. The study also implied that the eventual typing speed would be greater with QWERTY than with Dvorak, although this conclusion was not emphasized.
Much of the other evidence that has been used to support Dvorak's superiority actually can be used to make a case against Dvorak. We have the 1953 Australian Post Office study already mentioned, which needed to remove psychological impediments to superior performance. A 1973 study based on six typists at Western Electric found that after 104 hours of training on Dvorak, typists were 2.6 percent faster than they had been on QWERTY. Similarly, a 1978 study at Oregon State University indicated that after 100 hours of training, typists were up to 97.6 percent of their old QWERTY speed. Both of these retraining times are similar to those reported by Strong but not to those in the Navy study. But unlike Strong's study neither of these studies included parallel retraining on QWERTY keyboards. As Strong points out, even experienced QWERTY typists increase their speed on QWERTY if they are given additional training.
Ergonomic studies also confirm that the advantages of Dvorak are either small or nonexistent. For example, A. Miller and J Thomas, two researchers at the IBM Research Laboratory, writing in the International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, conclude that "no alternative has shown a realistically significant advantage over the QWERTY for general purpose typing." Other studies based on analysis of hand-and-finger motions find differences of only a few percentage points between Dvorak and QWERTY. The consistent finding in ergonomic studies is that the results imply no clear advantage for Dvorak, and certainly no advantage of the magnitude that is so often claimed.
Tell this speech about speed to Barbara Blackburn, the fastest typist of the world, who entered the Guiness records in 2005, using a Dvorak keyboard.
Please take a time to READ THIS http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/12/09/1102182415761.html http://www.productivity501.com/michael-sampson-on-the-dvorak-keyboard/526/
For most people, it's not the layout of the keyboard that's slowing them down, but rather the lack of effort in trying to learn proper typing techniques. You could probably put the keyboard in the worst possible configuration ever, with all Q,Z, V, and X all in the home row, and people could still learn to type sufficiently fast on it.
Dvorak is designed in an ergonomical way, so, trained or untrained, you'd gain comfort, not only typing speed.
Please READ http://www.bobpusateri.com/archive/2010/08/four-reasons-to-learn-the-dvorak-keyboard/ Or learn about Barbara Blackburn, the Guinness World record holder, who uses a Dvorak.
Without taking this info into account, any of the moderators could explain, what the 'insightful' part is in the former comment?
There's this thing called focus. Helpful beast, it is.
Alas, just because you try, doesn't mean it's worthwhile. There's people trying to pull off the free energy scams all the time. You think that if they try harder, they'll eventually succeed? Sorry, it doesn't work that way. Trying hard is worthwhile in some cases, in others it just amounts to trying hard at being stupid.
Why are you comparing this initiative with a scam? what's your basis?
Do you thing multi-billionaires are so dumb to put their money into a cheap scam?
Do you think a mogul would sell his reputation trying to con the top billionaires of the world, knowing the quantity and quality of scientific advisors they will likely have available, to check the proposals they get (including the resumé of the proposed leaders of the research teams, among tons of other factors analysed), before any kind of funding?
BTW, are you aware all this is about multi-disciplinary scientific research? are you aware that this kind of research, even if not achieving immortality, can bring good 'collateral' results?
Would you be happy if more sports and dumb entertainment is funded, instead of these initiatives?
FWIW, I pay private education for my kid, both school and extra-curriculars. I'm talking about the concept, not looking for benefits.
>So, yes, I still say that the childless, in our system are subsidizing to some extent those with kids, and there is no good >reason for this.
WRONG. The people raising well-educated kids are the ones subsidizing the future to the rest, both the irresponsible and/or incompetent parents, and the childless people.
Incompetent parents raise future parasites who suck up resources from the society. Childless people is not contributing to the society by leaving a productive individual as a replacement.
Egoist individuals would be the parents who you describe as not finding the merit of child bearing/raising itself satisfying enough, that they need to force the rest of society to reward them.
If what you (parents) do is so valuable, people would volunteer to compensate you, which is what happens between private individuals before taxes and tax breaks were involved (i.e friends hold baby showers, family offering to help look after the kids when parents are busy, churches and private charities do their thing)
Where do you see parents asking for rewards?
In my case I was answering to a childless person, who thinks he is subsidizing parents. I showed him otherwise. The small tax break doesn't make up the huge effort that imply raising (biological or adopted son, the effort is huge anyway) a child in a responsible way, and such kind of citizens are needed.
I'm not asking for reward (in fact, the education for my kid is private), I'm asking to stop writing dumb statements about parents.
Too long to answer everything, I refuse to waste more time to answer an AC, so at least take your time to log-in next time, please.
He who has but four and spends five has no need for a wallet.
