It seems, lately, that there is a clearer-than-ever delineation between legality and enforceability. If our government commits an illegal act, who is able to enforce it? Who's able to hold them accountable? I wish I could say I had a good answer to that question.
wtf. Slasdot doesn't like "open parenthesis" followed by "less than". Anyhow:
The EPA's "global warming potential" equivalency factors include a value for residence time in the atmosphere. The IR spectrum for water vapor is irrelevant as its residence time (less than 10 days) is three orders of magnitude lower than CO2 (36,500 days, or 100 yrs).
See: http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/ali1/
Or: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential [wikipedia.org]
And: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_vapor [wikipedia.org]
The EPA's "global warming potential" equivalency factors include a value for residence time in the atmosphere. The IR spectrum for water vapor is irrelevant as its residence time is (http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2010/ph240/ali1/
Or: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming_potential
They should assume that hostile agencies (foreign *and* domestic) have tapped every last network link they own.
I am sure they knew all along. They were fine with it
Everyone is making noise now, because it became public and there is some concern over backlash from the users.
Let's be honest here. "They" in these cases are companies staffed by 1,000's of people. It seems highly implausible that all of those people, or even just all of the 100's that matter with respect to IT & infrastructure security, would have "known it all along," even less so been "fine with it." I find it more likely that the outrage is 99+% genuine, with 1% reserved for the dozen or fewer people who would have actually (or theoretically, if it's just a conspiracy theory) been in the know on something this big.
...and modern coal doesn't even pollute. Modern coal burning process in new power plants alone removes most of the nasties like NOx and SO2 emissions and modern filters can eliminate particle exhaust by turning it into ash which can be kept out of atmosphere..
I'm not sure where you got your information, but it's totally wrong. It sounds like some sound byte, smacks of broad generalizations and seriously lacks technical understanding. Reduction of NOx and SO2, as well as particulate matter, is all technically possible, but to suggest it's "clean" is totally incorrect. Also, there is no "turning particle exhaust to ash", as combustion particulate is already (either fly or bottom) ash, except where it's "consensable" particulate matter (after it's already left the stack). This latter version is also usually the smallest particulate and therefore most injurious to human health & the environment.
The US EPA keeps records on control technology and related emissions for most coal units permitted in the US: http://cfpub.epa.gov/RBLC/
A quick search shows one unit, with proposed industry-accepted best available control for NOx, emitting (after control) up to 1,100 lbs of NOx per hour. A second unit may emit NOx up to 1,800 lbs/hr. The same search shows emissions potentials of 30-70+ lbs/hr, and that's after industry-best controls at 99.9%; the higher number is for the smaller, more injurious particulate, as it's obviously more difficult to capture. Moreover, NOX and SO2 are among the pre-cursors to the formation of aforementioned smallest particulate matter (see: http://yosemite.epa.gov/oa/eab_web_docket.nsf/Filings%20By%20Appeal%20Number/CD5F1D01895E1B6585257719006E71BC/$File/Exhibit%2027%20Damberg...3.11.pdf [PDF Warning]).
Since when does the majority of the actions of the US Government make "financial sense"? This is about what is required, not what is saving money. I've heard from various news sources that the shutdown, itself, *costs* millions per day. By that logic, "financial sense" would have been to not shutdown in the first place.
Water vapor and methane are both greenhouse gases. Both have a => effect on the greenhouse effect when compared to CO2. But the Global Warming crowd only focuses on CO2 because it is politically convenient for them. Meaning they own solar/wind companies and want to profit greatly from government subsidies.
This is mostly incorrect. Sure, water vapor is a greenhouse gas, but its residence time is nothing. Moreover, greenhouse gases are regulated on an equivalency basis, as "CO2e", where each is given a weighted impact. So, methane has a factor of 310 applied to its emissions. The same is true for N2O as well as HFCs / CFCs; those factors are in the ten-to-hundreds of thousands. These actually persist in the atmosphere, hence the reason for their high factors.
Troll harder next time. All of this is available on Wikipedia if you bothered 10 seconds to look.
Preferences are public knowledge. It was out in the open - how do you think people know about it? Investigative reporting? In Australia? Heh.
While I don't necessarily agree with Wikileaks, the fact is that when your opponents take the 'victory at any cost' approach -- as evidenced by the overreaction to Snowden, Manning, Assange, etc., then it's pretty much a given that you're going to have to make "questionable deals" at some point. Honor is a luxury in war; If your oppoents don't have it, then they'll just use yours against you.
Sometimes, you have to become the villain in order to achieve an even greater good.
This has got to be sarcasm. Read what you just wrote and pretend it's the US Government making that statement.
Amazon is currently host to an enormous variety of goods, even after you eliminate everything that isn't sold directly by them. I don't understand how Amazon is going to work out the logistics so that you can host multiples of each of these goods within 12 hours driving distance of all major US cities, let alone within an even shorter travel distance of 99% of the US population? It doesn't seem to work out.
Either you're purchasing 20 of "HDTV model #123456" so that you can be well-positioned to sell one of them to the person within a few hours driving distance, and have 19 leftovers... AND/or you're sending orders-of-magniture more vehicles, sparsely loaded, with goods out for delivery as soon as the order is made. This seems pretty grossly inefficient.
The alternative is that Amazon only ever offers this same-day delivery service for an infinitesimally small fraction of the goods it sells, which doesn't seem like a particularly good business plan to add additional expectations & subsequent confusion for the consumer.
No, dropbox is going in the wrong direction. The direction is going to be smaller, faster, portable HDDs. Thumbdrives are already common at 64gb, and SSDs at 256gb. People already carry around a lot of data on their phones and, more to the point, they already carry around a device as large as a phone. Current gen SSDs are about that big. It won't be much to get people to either carry around a second, similarly sized device, or for the technology to just adapt to allow your phone to store terabytes.
Those are already happening; when finally mature, why would you use the cloud? With increasing proliferation of per-byte charges for data, and with the ENORMOUS gulf in access speeds between SATA and the most common internet plans--a gulf that's unlikely to shrink for years, perhaps decades, as both technologies make their own, separate, speed advancements--people aren't going to spend more money for slower access to their own data that they don't even control.
most people use windows because every program works on windows. if every program worked on linux, a lot more ppl would use linux.
Most people who could/would use linux use windows because hardware support is a royal PITA in linux. Not only graphics cards, which have been historically bad, or onboard wifi/ethernet, which is also spotty--but simple things like mice. Configuring mouse speed, acceleration, and general responsiveness is/was awful in linux the last time I really tried; most information I found online was sympathetic, and hoped for a possible fix in the future. I doubt it ever came.
Then, there's Netflix.
Kleeneness is next to Godelness.
