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Comment It depends on the biofuel feedstock (Score 1) 224

Using corn to produce ethanol is about the worst possible way to do it, it actually takes more energy to produce x amount of E85 corn ethanol than you get out of it when you use it.
Using sugar cane to produce ethanol is a little bit better but still inefficient.

Using something like switchgrass on the other hand is much better, you can grow it in places where other stuff wont grow, you dont need anywhere near as much energy inputs or chemicals to produce it and with a little R&D and the right kind of processing plants you could get more output per hectare than either corn OR sugar cane.

Comment Re:Not going to disappear quickly.... (Score 2) 293

Looking at Wikipedia, Korean Air, Arik Air, Air China and Transaero have also ordered the 747-8 along with sales of 9 aircraft to what Boeing labels "business jet/VIP" (i.e. sales to entities that aren't airlines). Order numbers for the passenger variant aren't that far behind the numbers for the freight variant.

The older 747s are going away because they are inefficient and expensive to run and maintain. But the -8 contains technology from their latest aircraft like the 787 and the 737-9 to make it more fuel efficient and cheaper to run (being newer, the maintanence costs are probably lower too)

Comment How do we get vendors to support this? (Score 3, Insightful) 282

Its all well and good to talk about "encryption, encryption and more encryption" and to invent new protocols to help keep stuff from the eyes of those who would try to access private information (whether they be criminals, law enforcement, intelligence agencies or otherwise) but unless you can get vendors to adopt your new technology its not going to see widespread enough use to make a difference.

Take SSL/TLS for example. Right now when you visit a https site, your browser retrieves a certificate and checks that the certificate has been signed by a root certificate in your browser's local root trust store. There are a number of proposals out there to change this so that the public keys used for https connections are obtained in a way that doesn't rely on the broken CA model but as of yet none of those proposals have been implemented into any of the mainstream web browsers.

Why isn't more being done to get these new security ideas into the mainstream browsers? (especially the open source ones like Chrome/Webkit/Blink/Firefox). DANE (an RFC for storing https certificates in a DNSSEC secured DNS record) has a patch for Firefox posted in 2011 that has gone nowhere and vague mentions of work for Chrome but nothing else.

Comment Re:Vote against Ubisoft with your dollars (Score 1) 468

The newest game on the Wikipedia "list of Ubisoft games" that I have bought, pirated or played is Riven and that wasn't even a Ubisoft game at the time (Ubisoft bought the company that had the rights some time in the future)

I haven't purchased, played or pirated anything from Activision Blizzard recently either. (the newest game I can find on Wikipedia that I remember playing was one of the really old Tony Hawks games so before they became the scumbags that they are today)

My gaming dollars as of late have gone to TT Games (for The LEGO Movie) and Bethesda Softworks (for Oblivion 3) so I am doing my bit not to support the publishers that do evil crap like this.

Comment Can't they include it in "Google Play Services"? (Score 1) 579

Google seems to be using "Google Play Services" (a piece of middle-ware downloaded from Google Play) as a way to support newer APIs on older Android versions and make sure apps can run on these older Android builds. Why can't they just put the newer web browser engine into either "Google Play Services" or some other downloadable bit that goes on Google Play and gives all Android users the same browser engine. Good for apps that embed it since they get the same behavior on all Android versions. Good for Google since it only has to maintain one browser engine version and doesn't need to care about older versions anymore. And good for users since they get a better browser experience (and less bugs) even on older Android versions.

Comment IMO this is a GOOD thing (Score 1) 392

The more work a spy agency has to do to spy on someone the less likely they are to do it to people who aren't actually worth spying on.

Its the whole "lets collect every single piece of data we can just because we can" spying that we need to STOP. There is NO evidence that such spying was any help in catching the people who shot up the chocolate shop in Sydney or the newspaper office in Paris (or that stronger powers to spy on everyone or to force ISPs and others to retain more data would have helped catch these people).

Comment Re:House of Cards (Score 1) 216

These services all (as far as I know anyway) have requirements that vehicles being used have to be newer than a certain age. And it would be fairly easy for the services to require a mechanical inspection of the car before you are allowed to start driving or even on an annual basis (many jurisdictions already have requirements for regular inspections of cars or inspections when you sell the car or whatever so the infrastructure is probably there)

Comment Re:I would rather see 1000 terrorists go free... (Score 1) 562

If there is evidence (even circumstantial) that an individual is a terrorist or plans to carry out illegal activity (or that a given email account or ISP account or forum account or other online identity is connected to terrorism or illegal activity) then that should be sufficient evidence to get a warrant from a court (even a secret warrant if necessary) to allow their communications to be monitored.

My real point is not that we shouldn't be going after the bad guys (we should) but that we shouldn't be using dragnet surveillance on everyone (good and bad) as a way to catch the small percentage of the population who are planning to do bad things.

Comment Re: I would rather see 1000 terrorists go free... (Score 4, Insightful) 562

What I am really trying to say is "we should not use terrorism as an excuse to make the world less secure or less free" (this includes bans or restrictions on encryption, internet censorship, unconstitutional or illegal acts by governments and their agencies, deliberate backdoors in off-the-shelf software and hardware to make it easier to break and wholesale collection and retention of data or metadata without a warrant or any suspicion of illegal activity)

As one of the founding fathers of the United States said, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"

Comment I would rather see 1000 terrorists go free... (Score 5, Insightful) 562

I dont like the scumbags that shoot up chocolate shops and newspaper offices or crash airplanes into buildings or blow up nightclubs but I would rather see 1000 terrorists go free than to see a single innocent person have their privacy, security, civil liberties or constitutional rights violated.

Comment Why are they still pushing cellphone plans? (Score 1) 314

Its clear from reading here and elsewhere that no-one likes the way Radio Shack hits you with the hard sell on cellphone plans the minute you walk in the door so why are they still doing it? Do they sell enough cellphone plans to clueless sheeple? Do the cellphone carriers pay them too much money for them to give up selling those products? Do they have contracts with the cellphone carriers that prevent them getting rid of the products? Or are their management too clueless to see what's going on in their own company and just how much is being wasted on crap like cellphone plans that they aren't making any money from?

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