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I also submit that Global warming / Climate Change has been ruined by the alarmists overstating there case rather than presenting clear and accurate statistics and claims.

There is enough blame to go around all sides of the political debate. But the science was always clear. The NAS showed that there was scientific consensus in 1979, and the public was on board, until Luntz, and some ex-tobacco propagandists got at it in the mid 1990s. Their actions are a matter of public record, but for some reason most people aren't interested in the actual history, except for some historians. And the political manipulation continues. Part of that is to always accuse the other guy of exactly what you are doing.

The fix is for people to deal with it, like grown-ups. Office romances happen across the entire working population. If people are idiots there's fallout. So far the world has survived, and nothing needs to be done to fix this.

Significant enough numbers of grown-ups are sufficiently unable to act like grownups that yeah, the rest of us really do need to fix it.

More importantly, this is not new. Interpersonal struggles and conflict are as old as humanity itself, and we've discovered, as a species, that we really do benefit from having rules, laws, guidelines, and social norms to help us navigate these choppy waters.

"Just deal with it like grownups" is a cop-out philosophy of managers not wanting to do their jobs and employees not wanting to grow beyond what they already are. "Just deal with it like grownups" means nothing more than "I don't like dealing with the strife and drama that is the human condition, therefore I'll pretend that MY employees/co-workers are somehow magically above all that."

Lastly, if you think that the world has survived without people having done anything to fix this, well, you haven't been paying any attention at all.

Google and bing don't help. Google highlights creationist mythology as though it were scientific fact, and bing has the same nonsense cropping up as its first hit. Clearly these mysanthropes have managed to game the search engines, and the search engines can't be bothered to fact-check their own results (or highlighted articles! Come on Google, grow a brain!). A pity they can't use that same intelligence to think their way out of their own ass.

Q: Why are we just talking about it and why hasn't the problem been fixed?
Dr. Pry: Okay. Well, the short answer to that is itâ(TM)s called the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. They are basically the representativeâ" they used to be a trade association or a lobby for the 3,000 electric utilities [...] agency in the U.S. government [...] protect the public safety

Woolsey: [mumble mumble THEY could make a bomb]

I call NO THANKS on this transparent attempt to create yet another regulatory agency arm of DHS, and Jen Bawden who may be as concerned as I am about the grid, but sounds like she wants a boxcar on the gravy train. Mumble mumble THEY could come by boat she says. Then Woolsey and Pry go so far as to declare NERC 'worthless'. Sounds like a gub'mint involvement power grab that has little to do with engineering. To find out how little a political initiative like this will actually improve the grid, just go ahead and create this new agency, just like all the other ones. Before long everyone will be working for the Federal Government and the economy will be supported by a single hot dog vendor in Wash DC. They'll spend their whole budget creating scary power point presentations about bad-people-threats, because they'd rather not go outside.

NERC is populated by people who don't mind going outside to look at things.

NERC does need a kick in the ass though. It needs to worry less about cyberattack (which conveniently does not require you to go outside) and put a more concentrated effort into black start capability --- which is the ability (through planned procedures and simulation) to bring up the grid from complete power down This involves the identification of islands and what are called 'black start resources', stations that can power up first and help others to start. See the working document on EOP-005-x. Whatever the disaster and no matter how pervasive its effects, the first priority needs to be a firm plan for getting things going again and isolating sections that need replacement parts.

Do not let that Carrington Event stuff terrify you too deeply. In the 1859 small gauge telegraph wires were strung hundreds of miles to make the perfect EMP antenna, and its effects were what could be expected of a system that was on no way designed to withstand induced EMF. The modern grid is a lightning-arresting monster of conductor. Many old or improperly maintained components may fail in places, but it's not some slate-wiper, the greatest challenge will be merely to isolate problems and restart the rest.

Unfortunately when it comes to telephone communication this generation is pretty well screwed by a series of shitty little compromises over 30 years that will result in NO PHONES WORKING a week after major sections of the grid has gone dark, no matter if there are portable generators handy. POTS is gone, control has been centralized to distant places. Don't expect that cell tower to let you call your neighbor.

But the essential components and practice of the power grid remains the same as it was in the 70s, robust and reliable. If NERC would spend more time planning and training for black start capability, THAT is the best, possibly only, thing that would make a real difference.

From reading the Mozilla Governance newsgroup, it looks like they did a survey and found that top demands were for (1) a reading list (like in Safari) and (2) a video downloader. Implementing (1) could have been a straightforward bookmark list shared through Mozilla Sync, which is basically what Reading List is on Safari -- a dedicated bookmark /tmp/ zone for bookmarks you don't plan on keeping around and that you can access through any device in the ecosystem via iCloud sync. They could have just made a bookmark list and used Mozilla Sync to handle it, but that was apparently hard and didn't reach devices like e-readers where Mozilla doesn't run. So, they had Pocket do everything for them: a bookmark list, with sync to many devices for which Mozilla has no client, and data mining of your uploaded bookmarks and your e-mail address and the address of any friends with whom you share stuff and your visits to various beaconed web-sites across the net.

If Mozilla actually cared about their users, they'd roll in a full adblock, noscript, and plugin blocker solution (not just the Polaris tracking protection that's in the Nightly Builds). After all, those are the most downloaded plugins. Then they'd build in a "download video" function. And in doing so they'd seal their fate as they'd have pissed off all the advertisers and all the IP lawyers. So, instead it's easier (and legally much less troublesome) to sell the users to Pocket as a way of implementing a Reading List.

also you can convert the .pst into html and put it on the company intranet if that's more palatable.

https://www.google.com/webhp?h...

You're missing the point. Bad guys (ie gang members, drug dealers, etc) will do what they want no matter what the law says. Take Chicago for example. Until very recently (last year) Illinois had NO carry program meaning it was impossible to legally carry a gun unless you were LE. We all know about all the crime problems Chicago has. The bad guys (gang members, drug dealers, etc) would carry anyway and not only that they would commit crimes too (armed robbery, murder, etc). So the fact that there's laws against carry and in Chicago's case even possession (ie you can have a gun but it must stay locked up at home) didn't stop all the violence there. Now, Illinois was told by the courts that they had to institute a carry program (along with DC). Now we've seen stories like this stating that Chicago's crime rates are starting to drop. It could be a coincidence but I doubt it. Now, carry permit holders are some of if not the most law abiding group/demographic nationwide. Crimeresearch Stats (PDF warning) JustFacts Those are just a few sources from a quick search. As far as anecdotal evidence goes, I remember when Minnesota was debating the passage of the carry law there (I live in MN). There was no shortage of people saying that it was going to be the wild west, normal arguments would turn deadly, there would be bar fights with guns, and that road rage incidents would end in shootings. That has not happened. There's only been a few incidents and MN has more carry permit holders by percentage than Texas (3% TX vs 3.3% MN, my own calculations). Minnesota Carry Permit Holder Crime Stats I'm sorry, but carry permit holders are law abiding citizens. Add to all the supporting evidence the supreme court cases (Heller, McDonald, etc) where the court affirmed the 2nd amendment and it's pretty clear that carry is safe, effective, and legal.

You're missing the point. Bad guys (ie gang members, drug dealers, etc) will do what they want no matter what the law says. Take Chicago for example. Until very recently (last year) Illinois had NO carry program meaning it was impossible to legally carry a gun unless you were LE. We all know about all the crime problems Chicago has. The bad guys (gang members, drug dealers, etc) would carry anyway and not only that they would commit crimes too (armed robbery, murder, etc). So the fact that there's laws against carry and in Chicago's case even possession (ie you can have a gun but it must stay locked up at home) didn't stop all the violence there. Now, Illinois was told by the courts that they had to institute a carry program (along with DC). Now we've seen stories like this stating that Chicago's crime rates are starting to drop. It could be a coincidence but I doubt it. Now, carry permit holders are some of if not the most law abiding group/demographic nationwide. Crimeresearch Stats (PDF warning) JustFacts Those are just a few sources from a quick search. As far as anecdotal evidence goes, I remember when Minnesota was debating the passage of the carry law there (I live in MN). There was no shortage of people saying that it was going to be the wild west, normal arguments would turn deadly, there would be bar fights with guns, and that road rage incidents would end in shootings. That has not happened. There's only been a few incidents and MN has more carry permit holders by percentage than Texas (3% TX vs 3.3% MN, my own calculations). Minnesota Carry Permit Holder Crime Stats I'm sorry, but carry permit holders are law abiding citizens. Add to all the supporting evidence the supreme court cases (Heller, McDonald, etc) where the court affirmed the 2nd amendment and it's pretty clear that carry is safe, effective, and legal.

I see this as the New New Orleans. We can find a major disaster; get billions of dollars of aid and instead of wasting it on feeding or housing the poor residents, we can spend it all on DARPA 3D printing experiments which might, theoretically, help a future special case disaster.

3D PRINTING ARTICLES OF THE FUTURE

From Sten Guns to Stem Cells: A Look Back What was the world like before ubiquitous crossover technology revolutionized technology and biology? Its difficult to imagine a time when the plastic steak was the brunt of jokes, years before the plastic human was perfected. Now both steak and human alike are produced from the same Universal Cartridge, and this fascinating short documentary pokes fun at the metaphorical difficulties experienced by what we now call '2D Humans' when trying to imagine the possibilities of today.

3D-Printed Food and Furniture for Disaster Relief: Look what's on the menu! The challenge of providing an appropriate and timely response to disaster, such as when Mother Gaia's tummy gets upset, has been hampered by problems of supply and distribution. Thanks to the application of the same advanced computer models used to verify and adjust historical climate records with uncanny precision, it was discovered that there is more than one practical approach to solving the old adage 'Greatest Good for the Greatest Number with Greatest Assurance of Success'. Traditional response models attempted to solve for Greatest Good, providing a comprehensive disaster response to (regrettably) few people. By maximizing instead for Greatest Number and working towards proactive not reactive measures, the new paradigm calls for global distribution of a package of items that provide a complete measure of support --- food, clothing, shelter, on a smaller scale.

Color your world (stuff your printer-gullet) with Rainbow Slime! It walks like a duck, talks like a duck... but it looks like a rainbow! Why make old things look old when everything can look new? Rainbow Slime is made from old things that once came in old colors, in olden times. These old things have been sorted and composted and re-mogrified with the extrusive dynamacism of Rainbow Eye-Searing Technology until the vividness is palpable and delectable. WARNING: The most vivid of the hues, especially those that glow in the dark, are not approved for human consumption.

3D Printed Cellphone Covers Rock Your World and are an FDA-approved alternative to unprotected sex. Your time spent selecting a style that is uniquely your own from our catalog is time well spent, because the World of Today is Hand-Crafted To Order (tm). Now that the extrusion of copper wire, electrical engineering, steel fabrication and industrial mass-production has all been supplanted by the industrial mass-production of 3D printers, Mankind now has the leisure time once envisioned by such forward-seers as Orwell and Huxley. Celebrate your future! You are you and you is good. Select a cell phone cover today.

I see this as the New New Orleans. We can find a major disaster; get billions of dollars of aid and instead of wasting it on feeding or housing the poor residents, we can spend it all on DARPA 3D printing experiments which might, theoretically, help a future special case disaster.

3D PRINTING ARTICLES OF THE FUTURE

From Sten Guns to Stem Cells: A Look Back What was the world like before ubiquitous crossover technology revolutionized technology and biology? Its difficult to imagine a time when the plastic steak was the brunt of jokes, years before the plastic human was perfected. Now both steak and human alike are produced from the same Universal Cartridge, and this fascinating short documentary pokes fun at the metaphorical difficulties experienced by what we now call '2D Humans' when trying to imagine the possibilities of today.

3D-Printed Food and Furniture for Disaster Relief: Look what's on the menu! The challenge of providing an appropriate and timely response to disaster, such as when Mother Gaia's tummy gets upset, has been hampered by problems of supply and distribution. Thanks to the application of the same advanced computer models used to verify and adjust historical climate records with uncanny precision, it was discovered that there is more than one practical approach to solving the old adage 'Greatest Good for the Greatest Number with Greatest Assurance of Success'. Traditional response models attempted to solve for Greatest Good, providing a comprehensive disaster response to (regrettably) few people. By maximizing instead for Greatest Number and working towards proactive not reactive measures, the new paradigm calls for global distribution of a package of items that provide a complete measure of support --- food, clothing, shelter, on a smaller scale.

Color your world (stuff your printer-gullet) with Rainbow Slime! It walks like a duck, talks like a duck... but it looks like a rainbow! Why make old things look old when everything can look new? Rainbow Slime is made from old things that once came in old colors, in olden times. These old things have been sorted and composted and re-mogrified with the extrusive dynamacism of Rainbow Eye-Searing Technology until the vividness is palpable and delectable. WARNING: The most vivid of the hues, especially those that glow in the dark, are not approved for human consumption.

3D Printed Cellphone Covers Rock Your World and are an FDA-approved alternative to unprotected sex. Your time spent selecting a style that is uniquely your own from our catalog is time well spent, because the World of Today is Hand-Crafted To Order (tm). Now that the extrusion of copper wire, electrical engineering, steel fabrication and industrial mass-production has all been supplanted by the industrial mass-production of 3D printers, Mankind now has the leisure time once envisioned by such forward-seers as Orwell and Huxley. Celebrate your future! You are you and you is good. Select a cell phone cover today.

I see this as the New New Orleans. We can find a major disaster; get billions of dollars of aid and instead of wasting it on feeding or housing the poor residents, we can spend it all on DARPA 3D printing experiments which might, theoretically, help a future special case disaster.

3D PRINTING ARTICLES OF THE FUTURE

From Sten Guns to Stem Cells: A Look Back What was the world like before ubiquitous crossover technology revolutionized technology and biology? Its difficult to imagine a time when the plastic steak was the brunt of jokes, years before the plastic human was perfected. Now both steak and human alike are produced from the same Universal Cartridge, and this fascinating short documentary pokes fun at the metaphorical difficulties experienced by what we now call '2D Humans' when trying to imagine the possibilities of today.

3D-Printed Food and Furniture for Disaster Relief: Look what's on the menu! The challenge of providing an appropriate and timely response to disaster, such as when Mother Gaia's tummy gets upset, has been hampered by problems of supply and distribution. Thanks to the application of the same advanced computer models used to verify and adjust historical climate records with uncanny precision, it was discovered that there is more than one practical approach to solving the old adage 'Greatest Good for the Greatest Number with Greatest Assurance of Success'. Traditional response models attempted to solve for Greatest Good, providing a comprehensive disaster response to (regrettably) few people. By maximizing instead for Greatest Number and working towards proactive not reactive measures, the new paradigm calls for global distribution of a package of items that provide a complete measure of support --- food, clothing, shelter, on a smaller scale.

Color your world (stuff your printer-gullet) with Rainbow Slime! It walks like a duck, talks like a duck... but it looks like a rainbow! Why make old things look old when everything can look new? Rainbow Slime is made from old things that once came in old colors, in olden times. These old things have been sorted and composted and re-mogrified with the extrusive dynamacism of Rainbow Eye-Searing Technology until the vividness is palpable and delectable. WARNING: The most vivid of the hues, especially those that glow in the dark, are not approved for human consumption.

3D Printed Cellphone Covers Rock Your World and are an FDA-approved alternative to unprotected sex. Your time spent selecting a style that is uniquely your own from our catalog is time well spent, because the World of Today is Hand-Crafted To Order (tm). Now that the extrusion of copper wire, electrical engineering, steel fabrication and industrial mass-production has all been supplanted by the industrial mass-production of 3D printers, Mankind now has the leisure time once envisioned by such forward-seers as Orwell and Huxley. Celebrate your future! You are you and you is good. Select a cell phone cover today.

I'd suggest the $67,000,000 in assets he keeps would suggest it was.

He also has a really hot wife.

Had. Apparently having the cops bust down your door is harmful to ones marriage.

I'd suggest the $67,000,000 in assets he keeps would suggest it was.

He also has a really hot wife.

Exhibit A: Predator Drone Cost
Exhibit B: Average College Tuition

40,000,000 / 31,231 = 1280.8 people could go to a private college for a year (not semester) on the cost of a single Predator drone.
1,000,000 / 1280.8 = 780.8 Predator drones would be equivalent to the cost of tuition for a million people for one year.
780.8 * 4 = 3123.2 -> 3124 (rounded up) Predator drones could send a million people to a full 4 years of college.

Exhibit C: How Many Predator Drones Does The US Have?

The US had (as of August 2012) 678 drones of all makes and models. Even if they were all Predator drones, that would not be enough (cost-wise) to send a million people to college for even a single year, much less a 4-year full ride. But it's certainly enough to send a million people to a fiery doom, I would imagine. I don't really hear anyone asking for that, though.

Exhibit A: Predator Drone Cost
Exhibit B: Average College Tuition

40,000,000 / 31,231 = 1280.8 people could go to a private college for a year (not semester) on the cost of a single Predator drone.
1,000,000 / 1280.8 = 780.8 Predator drones would be equivalent to the cost of tuition for a million people for one year.
780.8 * 4 = 3123.2 -> 3124 (rounded up) Predator drones could send a million people to a full 4 years of college.

Exhibit C: How Many Predator Drones Does The US Have?

The US had (as of August 2012) 678 drones of all makes and models. Even if they were all Predator drones, that would not be enough (cost-wise) to send a million people to college for even a single year, much less a 4-year full ride. But it's certainly enough to send a million people to a fiery doom, I would imagine. I don't really hear anyone asking for that, though.

Their download service didn't work on Linux. Why? It's only an MP3 file!

Actually it does work.

I had to download an application from Amazon that would only work on Windows that would "help" me download my recently purchased mp3 file. Huh?

Here's what your problem is/was:

In the early days you could download singles on Linux easily but NOT albums Then Amazon released a package of the Downloader which worked on linux, so we could download albums too, but eventually they stopped updating it, except for the Amazon UK version which only works on the Amazon UK store. Then they changed how their service and storage works.

To make the Amazon MP3 store work on Linux now, you just need the ".AMZ" files you get when you buy a song or album To do that you have to set a cookie by telling it that you're NOT using their software and using the old downloader (can't remember the exact wording on the page). Also Amazon "sometimes" does a user agent check and if they detect Linux, they won't give you the AMZ but send you to the cloud page which is annoying if you just bought an album. (I've contacted Amazon customer support a few times to tell them to not do the User agent check because Linux users have pymazon and clamz available) So when you buy music, you might need to change the user agent to Windows.

Once you do have that AMZ, feed it into pymazon, or clamz and there's your music

https://code.google.com/p/pyma...

(which also works on Windows too!)

It takes a lot of effort to look at a galaxy connected by wires, and nevertheless refuse to consider that the wires might actually be conducting ...

"Observations with ESA's Herschel space observatory have revealed that our Galaxy is threaded with filamentary structures on every length scale. From nearby clouds hosting tangles of filaments a few light-years long to gigantic structures stretching hundreds of light-years across the Milky Way's spiral arms, they appear to be truly ubiquitous. The Herschel data have rekindled the interest of astronomers in studying filaments, emphasising the crucial role of these structures in the process of star formation."

See recent article at http://sci.esa.int/herschel/55...

Notice also people who try so hard to ignore electrical cosmology then subsequently just have no idea that they are re-discovering things that laboratory astrophysicists discovered in the 19th century ...

https://plus.google.com/+Chris...

You might consider listening to the graduate programs' biggest critic, Jeff Schmidt. He explains exactly what is going on here, but on a much more fundamental level. The consensus is created within the graduate programs. He shows exactly how that is. The key quotes from his book, Disciplined Minds are collected here:

https://plus.google.com/108466...

Scandinavian countries are socialdemocratic, not socialist, and their state welfare programs have been severely curtailed since joining the European Union. GDP first.

Really? The GDP of the Scandinavian countries has taken a nosedive since they joined the EU? For one thing Norway isn't even an EU member and Norway's GDP growth seems to have gone back to the pre-2000 rate. Not that Norway is a typical case study of a no-EU member since their GDP is powered by Oil, a fact which has still not prevented Norway from being a poster boy for how to have a booming economy outside the EU (after all every European country is floating on an ocean of Oil right?). The GDP of Denmark has been on a general climbing trend since they joined what later became the EU in 1973. It has flatlined since the 2008 credit crisis but that crisis was predominantly an American invention. Sweden's GDP climbed after joining the EU in 1995 and is still climbing after the 2008 crisis. If we also count Finland as a Scandinavinan country which it technically is not Finland's GDP has also flatlined since 2008 but it climbed steadily after the country joined the EU 1n 1995. Economic stagnation in EU countries has a lot of causes including the Euro crisis but the ineptitude of eurocrats is not the only cause of stagnation in these countries the ineptitude and stupidity of local politicians also has a lot to do with it as well as the ineptitude of politicians, bankers and business people across the water which caused the 2008 crisis in the first place. The EU may be flawed but it is not the root of all evil, ineptitude, corruption and stupidity.

Scandinavian countries are socialdemocratic, not socialist, and their state welfare programs have been severely curtailed since joining the European Union. GDP first.

Really? The GDP of the Scandinavian countries has taken a nosedive since they joined the EU? For one thing Norway isn't even an EU member and Norway's GDP growth seems to have gone back to the pre-2000 rate. Not that Norway is a typical case study of a no-EU member since their GDP is powered by Oil, a fact which has still not prevented Norway from being a poster boy for how to have a booming economy outside the EU (after all every European country is floating on an ocean of Oil right?). The GDP of Denmark has been on a general climbing trend since they joined what later became the EU in 1973. It has flatlined since the 2008 credit crisis but that crisis was predominantly an American invention. Sweden's GDP climbed after joining the EU in 1995 and is still climbing after the 2008 crisis. If we also count Finland as a Scandinavinan country which it technically is not Finland's GDP has also flatlined since 2008 but it climbed steadily after the country joined the EU 1n 1995. Economic stagnation in EU countries has a lot of causes including the Euro crisis but the ineptitude of eurocrats is not the only cause of stagnation in these countries the ineptitude and stupidity of local politicians also has a lot to do with it as well as the ineptitude of politicians, bankers and business people across the water which caused the 2008 crisis in the first place. The EU may be flawed but it is not the root of all evil, ineptitude, corruption and stupidity.

Scandinavian countries are socialdemocratic, not socialist, and their state welfare programs have been severely curtailed since joining the European Union. GDP first.

Really? The GDP of the Scandinavian countries has taken a nosedive since they joined the EU? For one thing Norway isn't even an EU member and Norway's GDP growth seems to have gone back to the pre-2000 rate. Not that Norway is a typical case study of a no-EU member since their GDP is powered by Oil, a fact which has still not prevented Norway from being a poster boy for how to have a booming economy outside the EU (after all every European country is floating on an ocean of Oil right?). The GDP of Denmark has been on a general climbing trend since they joined what later became the EU in 1973. It has flatlined since the 2008 credit crisis but that crisis was predominantly an American invention. Sweden's GDP climbed after joining the EU in 1995 and is still climbing after the 2008 crisis. If we also count Finland as a Scandinavinan country which it technically is not Finland's GDP has also flatlined since 2008 but it climbed steadily after the country joined the EU 1n 1995. Economic stagnation in EU countries has a lot of causes including the Euro crisis but the ineptitude of eurocrats is not the only cause of stagnation in these countries the ineptitude and stupidity of local politicians also has a lot to do with it as well as the ineptitude of politicians, bankers and business people across the water which caused the 2008 crisis in the first place. The EU may be flawed but it is not the root of all evil, ineptitude, corruption and stupidity.

Scandinavian countries are socialdemocratic, not socialist, and their state welfare programs have been severely curtailed since joining the European Union. GDP first.

Really? The GDP of the Scandinavian countries has taken a nosedive since they joined the EU? For one thing Norway isn't even an EU member and Norway's GDP growth seems to have gone back to the pre-2000 rate. Not that Norway is a typical case study of a no-EU member since their GDP is powered by Oil, a fact which has still not prevented Norway from being a poster boy for how to have a booming economy outside the EU (after all every European country is floating on an ocean of Oil right?). The GDP of Denmark has been on a general climbing trend since they joined what later became the EU in 1973. It has flatlined since the 2008 credit crisis but that crisis was predominantly an American invention. Sweden's GDP climbed after joining the EU in 1995 and is still climbing after the 2008 crisis. If we also count Finland as a Scandinavinan country which it technically is not Finland's GDP has also flatlined since 2008 but it climbed steadily after the country joined the EU 1n 1995. Economic stagnation in EU countries has a lot of causes including the Euro crisis but the ineptitude of eurocrats is not the only cause of stagnation in these countries the ineptitude and stupidity of local politicians also has a lot to do with it as well as the ineptitude of politicians, bankers and business people across the water which caused the 2008 crisis in the first place. The EU may be flawed but it is not the root of all evil, ineptitude, corruption and stupidity.

I already solved it.

IPv4 at its maximum would be 4 billion addresses - that's it!!! That is just marginally more than the world's population.

The world's population is currently more than 7 billion. The population hasn't been able to fit into 32 bits since about 1978. (Amusingly, that's about when IPv4 was developed.)

If the blaster was black plastic, would you be able to distinguish it from a real gun from 100 feet away?

I was raised around guns, and also enjoyed the original Star Wars movies when they were popular. So I'm going to say, I could distinguish between a toy and a real gun from farther away than that, even with failing eyesight. Here's a stormtrooper gun vs. a 9 mm. Which is probably going to be fairly common. How blind would you have to be to not be able to see the difference? Even if you are not very familiar with guns, you'd have to be pretty obtuse to mistake these two. If you can't tell the difference between them, then you probably wouldn't be able to distinguish a gun from a stick.

Probably the most similar weapon you'd see in the US would be a TEC-9 But even that would be pretty hard to confuse with a toy blaster. Quite honestly, someone would probably have a better chance of hitting you by throwing the toy at you than hitting you with a TEC-9, unless you are less then a few inches from the barrel, and it doesn't jam.

Apparently the Stormtrooper blaster is based off of the Sterling L2A3 But the toy has a lot of extra crap attached to it, so you'd have to be pretty far to mistake the two. Plus, I can't say I've ever seen a Sterling L2A3 in the US. I doubt many people in the US, other than serious gun collectors, have ever seen one.

If the blaster was black plastic, would you be able to distinguish it from a real gun from 100 feet away?

I was raised around guns, and also enjoyed the original Star Wars movies when they were popular. So I'm going to say, I could distinguish between a toy and a real gun from farther away than that, even with failing eyesight. Here's a stormtrooper gun vs. a 9 mm. Which is probably going to be fairly common. How blind would you have to be to not be able to see the difference? Even if you are not very familiar with guns, you'd have to be pretty obtuse to mistake these two. If you can't tell the difference between them, then you probably wouldn't be able to distinguish a gun from a stick.

Probably the most similar weapon you'd see in the US would be a TEC-9 But even that would be pretty hard to confuse with a toy blaster. Quite honestly, someone would probably have a better chance of hitting you by throwing the toy at you than hitting you with a TEC-9, unless you are less then a few inches from the barrel, and it doesn't jam.

Apparently the Stormtrooper blaster is based off of the Sterling L2A3 But the toy has a lot of extra crap attached to it, so you'd have to be pretty far to mistake the two. Plus, I can't say I've ever seen a Sterling L2A3 in the US. I doubt many people in the US, other than serious gun collectors, have ever seen one.

If the blaster was black plastic, would you be able to distinguish it from a real gun from 100 feet away?

I was raised around guns, and also enjoyed the original Star Wars movies when they were popular. So I'm going to say, I could distinguish between a toy and a real gun from farther away than that, even with failing eyesight. Here's a stormtrooper gun vs. a 9 mm. Which is probably going to be fairly common. How blind would you have to be to not be able to see the difference? Even if you are not very familiar with guns, you'd have to be pretty obtuse to mistake these two. If you can't tell the difference between them, then you probably wouldn't be able to distinguish a gun from a stick.

Probably the most similar weapon you'd see in the US would be a TEC-9 But even that would be pretty hard to confuse with a toy blaster. Quite honestly, someone would probably have a better chance of hitting you by throwing the toy at you than hitting you with a TEC-9, unless you are less then a few inches from the barrel, and it doesn't jam.

Apparently the Stormtrooper blaster is based off of the Sterling L2A3 But the toy has a lot of extra crap attached to it, so you'd have to be pretty far to mistake the two. Plus, I can't say I've ever seen a Sterling L2A3 in the US. I doubt many people in the US, other than serious gun collectors, have ever seen one.

If the blaster was black plastic, would you be able to distinguish it from a real gun from 100 feet away?

I was raised around guns, and also enjoyed the original Star Wars movies when they were popular. So I'm going to say, I could distinguish between a toy and a real gun from farther away than that, even with failing eyesight. Here's a stormtrooper gun vs. a 9 mm. Which is probably going to be fairly common. How blind would you have to be to not be able to see the difference? Even if you are not very familiar with guns, you'd have to be pretty obtuse to mistake these two. If you can't tell the difference between them, then you probably wouldn't be able to distinguish a gun from a stick.

Probably the most similar weapon you'd see in the US would be a TEC-9 But even that would be pretty hard to confuse with a toy blaster. Quite honestly, someone would probably have a better chance of hitting you by throwing the toy at you than hitting you with a TEC-9, unless you are less then a few inches from the barrel, and it doesn't jam.

Apparently the Stormtrooper blaster is based off of the Sterling L2A3 But the toy has a lot of extra crap attached to it, so you'd have to be pretty far to mistake the two. Plus, I can't say I've ever seen a Sterling L2A3 in the US. I doubt many people in the US, other than serious gun collectors, have ever seen one.

There has been a debate over how to model cosmic plasmas (such as the solar wind) for more than half a century between the Astrophysical Journal and IEEE's Transactions on Plasma Science.

Conventional theory models this flow of charged particles fundamentally as a fluid, but these models have been in dispute since their inception.

Electric joule heating stems from the idea that these moving charges are an electric current, and advocates point to the fact that the solar wind is oftentimes guided by planetary magnetic fields into the poles.

The presence of hot spots at the poles of Enceladus, Neptune and Venus, in particular, are suggestive of the simple idea that these moving charged particles can heat up the planets.

It was noted in 2005 by NASA that Mars' ice caps had also been diminishing for three summers in a row.

Pluto has continued to warm up even as it moves away from the Sun.

Many atmospheric circulation models are unable to reproduce the observed polar stratospheric winds (aka the polar vortex).

The observed splitting of the polar vortex on both Earth and Venus is an expected feature of laboratory plasmas when they are conducting electrical currents, yet climate and planetary scientists claim to not understand either observation.

The solar wind intensity correlates with lightning strikes, raising questions about lightning's underlying cause, and suggesting that the Earth is part of a larger electrical circuit.

Sunspot numbers appear to correlate with lower stratosphere temperature anomalies, minus the temporal effects of volcanic eruptions -- suggesting that the sunspots are related to these electrical flows. Laboratory plasma terrella experiments appear to confirm this suspicion.

Electric field variability can significantly increase the amount of Joule heating, yet existing general circulation models assume a smooth field in both space and time. In other words, the current climate models do not take electric joule heating into account.

The primitive equations which are used to model atmospheric flows basically ignore charge change phenomena.

This will likely turn out to be a mistake.

For a more graphical presentation w/ the sources for these claims, see https://plus.google.com/108466...

Aren't "cycling" and "chaotic" mutually exclusive?

No. Chaotic systems cycle-- look up, say "strange attractor". Or even google "cycle AND chaos theory."

What makes it chaotic is that the phase of the cycling is predictable in the short term, unpredictable in the long term.

Nah, the greenies and crystal-suckers already claim that WiFi causes all sorts of diseases and conditions - do you think they'll endorse even higher power Wifi transmitters? It might start interfering with their 'aura'.

That discharge curve you posted lacks context. What's the discharge rate? What battery?

And unfortunately, the source page does not provide these details either, basically making the chart useless. In fact, I suspect that the author just drew it freehand rather than actually measuring it? Certainly, his starting voltage is flat out *wrong* and his curve seems too flat. (In fact, he has the NiMH voltage *increasing* slightly during parts of the discharge period!)

Here's a better reference, with a much more useful discharge curve on page six. This is for a specific battery (Energizer NiMH NH15 AA) at a specific discharge rate (750 mA with a pulse (presumably the pulse is to remove the effect of the internal resistance when measuring and to simulate a low discharge rate -- which I would call slightly misleading, but they did disclose it.) Note the starting voltage of a bit over 1.4 volts, and note that once the battery hits 1.2 volts ... it is indeed about halfway discharged.

If you'd like to see a bunch more *real world* NiMH discharge curves, here you go. Keep in mind that they're not all for a single cell, but those that are start at a bit over 1.4 volts for lower discharge rates and a bit under 1.4 volts for higher discharge rates. And here's the alkaline discharge curves to compare to.

Self-discharge alone will drop most NiMH/NiCd cells to below 1.4V pretty quickly.

They do have a significant self discharge rate -- but still, they start at 1.41 volts, not 1.22 volts. And the low-discharge rate NiMH cells (like the Eneloops) have *greatly* reduced the self discharge rate.

Either way, if you were trying to explain why primary batteries are rated based on their starting voltages and primary batteries on their "middle of their discharge curve" voltages ... you didn't really succeed. The real world discharge curves for NiMH and alkaline batteries look pretty similar, but why should we look at the very highest point for alkalines and the middle point for NiMH beyond "that's the way it's always been done" ?

That discharge curve you posted lacks context. What's the discharge rate? What battery?

And unfortunately, the source page does not provide these details either, basically making the chart useless. In fact, I suspect that the author just drew it freehand rather than actually measuring it? Certainly, his starting voltage is flat out *wrong* and his curve seems too flat. (In fact, he has the NiMH voltage *increasing* slightly during parts of the discharge period!)

Here's a better reference, with a much more useful discharge curve on page six. This is for a specific battery (Energizer NiMH NH15 AA) at a specific discharge rate (750 mA with a pulse (presumably the pulse is to remove the effect of the internal resistance when measuring and to simulate a low discharge rate -- which I would call slightly misleading, but they did disclose it.) Note the starting voltage of a bit over 1.4 volts, and note that once the battery hits 1.2 volts ... it is indeed about halfway discharged.

If you'd like to see a bunch more *real world* NiMH discharge curves, here you go. Keep in mind that they're not all for a single cell, but those that are start at a bit over 1.4 volts for lower discharge rates and a bit under 1.4 volts for higher discharge rates. And here's the alkaline discharge curves to compare to.

Self-discharge alone will drop most NiMH/NiCd cells to below 1.4V pretty quickly.

They do have a significant self discharge rate -- but still, they start at 1.41 volts, not 1.22 volts. And the low-discharge rate NiMH cells (like the Eneloops) have *greatly* reduced the self discharge rate.

Either way, if you were trying to explain why primary batteries are rated based on their starting voltages and primary batteries on their "middle of their discharge curve" voltages ... you didn't really succeed. The real world discharge curves for NiMH and alkaline batteries look pretty similar, but why should we look at the very highest point for alkalines and the middle point for NiMH beyond "that's the way it's always been done" ?

Feel free to give it a try yourself, it's available in the Android Market:
https://play.google.com/store/...

We're currently on an invite system and anyone can request one, but the wait for one shouldn't be too long.

Yes I work for SoundHound ;)

Actually you can increase the speed of the speaking voice on Android in Settings -> Language & input -> Text-to-speech output -> Speech rate, that's what was done for this video. The recording is at normal speed.

Feel free to test it yourself, you'll notice the results are completely different from Wolfram Alpha:
https://play.google.com/store/...

Just cleaning up the FUD, yes I work at SoundHound ;)

Feel free to give it a try yourself:
https://play.google.com/store/...

Currently we are on an invite system, but a lot of people have received invites.

Yes I work for SoundHound ;)

Actively avoiding scientific data like that from the Magellan project?

?

Two of the top ten hits suggests that this refers to a spacecraft that orbited Venus, so I assume that this is some reference to the Venus greenhouse effect?

https://www.google.com/search?...

You've proven my point. It doesn't exist for the computer because it doesn't really understand speech.

https://youtu.be/Gqdy1jLlf50?t... is how it's pronounced by it's creators, but don't just take their word for it - try google translate and have it pronounce the two for you: https://translate.google.com/?...

It's identical. It's a problem that will occur with most "hip" app names which sound like a common word, but which are spelled differently.

https://books.google.com/books...

http://www.vdare.com/letters/t...

Here you go..

A month ago, Kevin Flanagan, age 41, found out that he`d be losing his job at the Bank of America`s Concord Technology Center and be required to train his h1b replacement. That same day, he took his lifeâ"in the parking lot of his former employer.

It wasn`t that Flanagan was surprised to lose his jobâ"he`d seen it coming for months, as his father told the paper. Flanagan had watched as veteran co-workers were forced to train newcomers from Indiaâ"then fired and replaced by the immigrants. One former employee told the CC Times that employees at Concord feel like they`re âoeon death row. Every day you think, `Is this the day I`m gone?` he said.â

When I was growing up, we had no choice...

I dislike being forced to do anything, even if it is in my best interests, but I am genuinely GLAD that I was given vaccinations against polio, mumps, etc.

Look at this for polio: https://www.google.com/search?...

Why would ANYONE let their children risk this, no matter how minuscule the chance?

Take your vaccines. Takes your vaccines. Take you fucking vaccines!

If you want to skip on the yearly flu shot and do not work around vulnerable people, fine; but, take your vaccines!

Have you ever worked for a politically connected US corporation? From your comments I assume not.

Every company has a PAC. Once you get to a certain level you had better be giving money to that PAC, or you are not a "team player". Good luck moving up in the hierarchy, or even keeping your job, if you don't.

I was in a smallish aerospace company (by now they've pass $1 billion in sales, which is not big in that industry), and I saw this first hand.

Grow up. There's no room for honest dissent in corporate culture. It's a subset of the reality that there's no room for honestly in corporate culture.

This does not mesh with my experience working at:

- Novell
- Artisoft
- IBM (after they bought our startup)
- Apple
- Google

Perhaps the aerospace industry is more corrupt?

Both Google and Apple had *very active* PACs, and there was no consequence to not voting Democrat when Steve Jobs urged you to do so, or not contributing to Google's NETPAC when the executives urged you to do so.

Google's pretty much all over the map on who they contribute to, and the article is full of crap, pretty much it all gets disclosed:

http://www.google.com/publicpo...

Its not an assault rifle. Those have been banned nationwide since 1986

Pardner, I can go by my local "Grab a Gun" and buy any one of dozens of assault rifles.

What you or some candy ass Washington lawyer want to call 'em is your own durn bidness. Down here in Texas we know what these guns are, and they sure ain't the pea-shooter Glocks we give our kids to play with.

Yee Haw! [gunshots]

Who's we white man?

Now I'm white and a man?

I really hope that you were joking too. I don't know you, so just in case - here's the joke that I was referencing. :)

"We" is the people that actually do work in the tech industry & engineering. When I go to work in the morning I don't care if you're white, black, purple, gay, straight, trans-gendered, female, pierced, tattooed, et al. All I care about (those that I work about care about) is if you get your work done and if it's quality work. It's been that way for a while and it's been that way with most people I work with and know.

It's why a lot of similar industries don't care about your attire and you can get away with piercings, colored hair and tattoos

It's great that all you care about is results. I wish that there were more people like you. However, it doesn't mean that the tech industry is immune from the wage gap (or position gap) between men and women. It has and it continues to happen. There are some companies who are pioneers in this sense, too. However, these are not the norm. While I am optimistic about progress, we have a long way to go to establish equality. I welcome hearing about it on Slashdot, as the topic is worthy of discussion. To squelch discussion is being complicit with the status quo, which is a form of racism/sexism in and of itself. Please don't take that as me accusing you of anything. It's not my point. My point is to explain the merits of discussing it here.

That's the thing. I believe in social justice. And the way to get 'social justice' is to stop pointing out the differences and turning sides against each other. Women and LGBT have been in 'industry' for a long time. (Grace Murray Hopper graduated from Yale in the 30s) It's not an issue for most people. The only people that think it's an issue are the ones that are trying to grandstand it into something more than it is.

Tim Cook wasn't really deep in the closet before he came out, it's just that it was a non-issue around Apple.

I agree that the tech industry is diverse. However, it continues to be a male-dominated industry. If certain people feel alienated, or there is a wage/position gap - should they not be free to voice their opinion? Should they not be welcome to engage in discussion about it (it's not like anyone is forcing anyone else to participate in it)? What makes Slashdot the wrong place for it? I mean, if they're "nerds" in their field, should they head over to Ms-Slashdot.org and discuss it there? Just because the CEO of Apple's sexuality was a non-issue, does it mean that others in other companies do not experience it on a wholesale basis? Another example: while I am a huge admirer of Grace Hopper, her story is an exceptional one, considering that she practically stands along among history's female computer pioneers.

With respect to how to achieve social justice, I don't know if I agree with you. There is really no way to point out how inequality within the status quo without someone feeling attacked. Every online discussion that I have ever read about gender equality or racism results in a person in the majority (who is usually white, male, and/or heterosexual) attacking back, or at least pushing back in a way that indicates that they feel threatened. This type of behavior is endemic to the status quo. An attempt at social change that will negatively affect the privileged will often result in a negative response. At best, activists of social justice are accused of being divisive or stirring the pot. Maybe they are being divisive, but maybe they're right to be if they've been living with inequality their entire lives.

I also understand your point about grandstanding. However, if we agree to stipulate that there are

Yep, once the hardware is in place, I imagine the software will do nothing but get better over time.

Companies like Amazon have all the incentive in the world to make it work, and they aren't alone. There are thousands of other companies that also need to make this all cheaper and more reliable.

https://www.google.com/search?...

That is a Google Search of "Newegg Warehouse" and I clicked on images.

Some of those are not of Newegg of course, but many are. This is a huge problem to solve...

The latest...? You do realize this term has been in regular usage for close to a decade now, right?

The cost of implementing all of the power management for the optional 100W facilities will be non-trivial. Substantially more than barrel jack expecting a voltage a bit higher than the laptop's battery voltage. Posh laptops may support what you suggest but I doubt it will be a universal feature.

I'm confused, are you meaning that creating the power supply would be difficult or the internals of the laptop would be difficult? Because both of those exist already (granted, not necessarily at 100W), as evidence by a few different products. It took a while for USB 3 to come to budget oriented devices as well.

The cost of implementing all of the power management for the optional 100W facilities will be non-trivial. Substantially more than barrel jack expecting a voltage a bit higher than the laptop's battery voltage. Posh laptops may support what you suggest but I doubt it will be a universal feature.

I'm confused, are you meaning that creating the power supply would be difficult or the internals of the laptop would be difficult? Because both of those exist already (granted, not necessarily at 100W), as evidence by a few different products. It took a while for USB 3 to come to budget oriented devices as well.

If you want the proof, it is damn easy to come up with. The problem is that Russians on general are programmed to see everything put out by the West as faked.

https://www.google.com/search?...

There are a whole bunch of satellite photos of the launchers.

https://www.google.com/search?...

There are photos of the launchers in Eastern Ukraine, though it is unclear who has them, it is clear that the Ukraine doesn't even own that launcher.

The rest of your points are Russian propaganda, there was no smell of formaldehyde, that was made up by Russian media. MH-17 was sent to that area because it was a valid flight path, and was used repeatedly before and a few times right after the downing; it was assumed that no one was capable, or stupid enough to launch on a commercial aircraft flying at 30k feet. UFO, more Russian propaganda, please link to any non Russian source of this. Plenty of pics of Buk launchers, the launcher was in the middle of a field controlled by the rebels, so no one who wasn't involved was around to take a picture or video of it actually launching.

Here's a question for you, how do you explain the recordings of phone calls from the rebels to Russia claiming that it was an accident?

https://www.google.com/webhp?s...

If you want the proof, it is damn easy to come up with. The problem is that Russians on general are programmed to see everything put out by the West as faked.

https://www.google.com/search?...

There are a whole bunch of satellite photos of the launchers.

https://www.google.com/search?...

There are photos of the launchers in Eastern Ukraine, though it is unclear who has them, it is clear that the Ukraine doesn't even own that launcher.

The rest of your points are Russian propaganda, there was no smell of formaldehyde, that was made up by Russian media. MH-17 was sent to that area because it was a valid flight path, and was used repeatedly before and a few times right after the downing; it was assumed that no one was capable, or stupid enough to launch on a commercial aircraft flying at 30k feet. UFO, more Russian propaganda, please link to any non Russian source of this. Plenty of pics of Buk launchers, the launcher was in the middle of a field controlled by the rebels, so no one who wasn't involved was around to take a picture or video of it actually launching.

Here's a question for you, how do you explain the recordings of phone calls from the rebels to Russia claiming that it was an accident?

https://www.google.com/webhp?s...

If you want the proof, it is damn easy to come up with. The problem is that Russians on general are programmed to see everything put out by the West as faked.

https://www.google.com/search?...

There are a whole bunch of satellite photos of the launchers.

https://www.google.com/search?...

There are photos of the launchers in Eastern Ukraine, though it is unclear who has them, it is clear that the Ukraine doesn't even own that launcher.

The rest of your points are Russian propaganda, there was no smell of formaldehyde, that was made up by Russian media. MH-17 was sent to that area because it was a valid flight path, and was used repeatedly before and a few times right after the downing; it was assumed that no one was capable, or stupid enough to launch on a commercial aircraft flying at 30k feet. UFO, more Russian propaganda, please link to any non Russian source of this. Plenty of pics of Buk launchers, the launcher was in the middle of a field controlled by the rebels, so no one who wasn't involved was around to take a picture or video of it actually launching.

Here's a question for you, how do you explain the recordings of phone calls from the rebels to Russia claiming that it was an accident?

https://www.google.com/webhp?s...