Ozone depleation is much easier to tackle than global warming; while ozone depleation is primarilty caused by a nonessential and easily replaced chemical, global warming concernes energy generation, and there's no technical solution today which might solve the problem, and without a technical solution political solutions become much more difficult to design and implement, as well as being disliked by a good number of people. The solution, as far as I'm concerned, is in nuclear fusion. It's the only power source which has litle to no environmental impact, and because it can produce such large amounts of electricity, it solves problems all the way down the chain - electrolisis to seperate hydrogen from water would become environmentally sound, making fuel cells workable, and so forth.
You forgot to mention that it's perfectly normal and expected for the earth to have large swings in temprature all on its own (ice age, anyone?) But looking at it from that angle only is a bit of a simplistic viewpoint. Yes, the earth is a system which will work changes over the long term, but you're ignoring The Question: what happens between now and when the earth corrects itself? A significant percentage of the earth's landmass is located at or below 1m above sea level, meaning that in the near future a large percentage of the earth's biomass could be underwater, a change that would, even outside of being regrettable in terms of loss of live, percipitate futher changes to the ecosystem (reduced gene pool, less migration,...). Humans may be a 'natural' part of the earth, but the machines humans have made have, in the space of the last ~100-150 years significantly altered the chemical composition of the earth's atmosphere. This will be corrected if and when we stop affecting the system, but the effects of it will not be painless.
Spike Lee's latest, bamboozled, was shot entirely in digital video.. he actually used a cheap (~$2000, I think) sony digital video camera for the whole thing.. shows how effective and cheap digital video can be..
can you give one rms quote where he says, or even implies, that people should write free software for any reason other than that they want to? Put another way, does rms ever say or imply that people must write free software (rather than saying that people should write free software)?
Open source/gpl'd/etc. software is about the community that makes it happen, not a few individuals. Yes, linus has had alot to do with the linux kernel, but so do a significant number of other people who have, and are, working on it right now. It's not that linus isn't important to the community; it's that he's no more important than dozens, if not hundereds, of other people working on the same project. cults of personality help noone - the talking heads spend too much time doing interviews and become either convinced of their own status as gods, or become disenchanted with the media, and the work that led them to their prominance; people in the community go from having a very personal sense of signficance, and duty, to the project(s) they're working on to being disconnected trainspotters who produce code for someone else, not for the community... I think. But I'm rambling, and this post is far too long.
As long as they have a clear policy on such matters, and they inform you of it when you sign up and whenever it changes. They should not have the right to arbitrarily delete files which by chance have a file extension they don't understand.
Why don't you put yourself off food for the next year to help us all out? No? Then why ask 2 billion people to die while you eat your pizza-with-5-toppings? The answer to overpopulation isn't to let people that are alive today die, but to actively feed _and_ educate _and_ give economic opportunity to them. Ever wonder why some poor families have more childern (and this isn't just today; the precious usa had a much higher birthrate not too long ago)? Because if you're poor, if you live an a rural area, you need your childern to help you and each other in order to survive. There's no two ways about it. Either you have lots of children, or you _and_ your childern die. It's pretty fucking callous to write off 2 000 000 000 people in order to save 10 seconds worth of brain cycles. Pretty fucking callous - moreso as a joke.
What about... *gasp* government regulation?
on
On Asteroid Mining
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· Score: 1
If and when asteroid mining becomes techinically feasable and reasonably cheap, why not have regulations subjecting mining on earth to the same social/environmental standards that asteroid mining can achieve? It would essentially cripple the earth-based mining industry, but with good reason: it's impact is greater than asteroid mining. It's my understanding that government regulations adapt to whatever the state of the art is, (i.e. after dynamite came out, laws were changed to reflect that advancement), and asteroid mining would definitly be the state of the art. just my 2..
It's not as simplistic as you put it. This thing isn't just a germany-france bitterness holdover, its - and this is attested to by the fact that other european countries have similar laws - based alot on a lingering, and perfectly valid, disgust over what happend there 50-odd years ago. That's why you're allowd to buy german ww1 memerobilia in france (as far as I know..), but you arn't allowed to buy german ww2 memerobilia. just my 2 (canadian)
correct me if I'm wrong, but what gets me is that there is no mention of any buyout option when the year is over, so that joeblow can't pay ms the balance of what he would have paid had he bought the app as we do today, forcing mr. blow to either pay ms for another year or have nothing to read the files on his hdd when the lease term is up. Most, if not all, other lease programs have that kind of option (cars, boxen, etc.)
Because upgrades are included in with the service, ms can now say that you're buying their latest and greatest for the next year. Beacuse they'll no doubt have some sort of autopayment system (give us your credit card #, and we'll detuct $x from your accout every year), by signing the agreement, ms can tell joe user that payment is worry-free, as long as you pay...
It appears, at least, to me that he didn't show the video in his defence because the video didn't show him.. or that, at least, is what the police said. And as for the phones, my extensive viewing of Law and Order tells me that the prosecution has to prove the call was malicious, not the defence; as long as the defendant claims the call was innocent, that is accepted as evidence until proven otherwise (through phone records, witnesses (on the other end, around the phone, etc.)
Of course, I am not a lawer or an american, so I don't know and I shouldn't care (as much as you folk, at least)...
MH
Last I heart (when ~99% of the vote had been counted), the turnout was only projected to be up ~1%, from 49% to 50%. Apparently, there was an early rush but it tapered off later on...
You're forgetting that the programmers of mozilla have already fixed many of the standards problems in netscape 6, but the patches arn't being implemented. Yes, mozilla is generally rock-solid... but nestcape 6 won't benifit from all of that stability unless the recommendations of the initial criticizm are carried out.
I haven't used mozilla in awile, but keeping that in mind... IE does crash, but it crashes far less than netscape (4.x). Add to that the fact that it's generally more elegent, has better bookmark support, download support, macos integration and dosen't have a 'shopping' button on the main buttonbar... it's really the better browser.
... because the profit of the person who exercises the options is taken from the market, not the corporation. That is, if a person makes a 100% profit on a stock option, the company dosen't lose any capital, it looses a potential capital gain from the market. Thus, the taxes that are paid by the individual, though they may end up putting more money in the gov't accounts, are actually taxes on capital from the market, not the company.... of course, IANACA
I'm seriously considering switching from the mac (which i've been on since i've been 10 years old) to an ibm w/ GNU|Linux. they're actually trying to censor the damned press now to keep their relatively unimportant and predictable secrets safe. Rumors are usually just educated guesses which the readers can come up with on their own anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
my mistake. it should have read 'most of the land-based biomass will be underwater, ...'
Ozone depleation is much easier to tackle than global warming; while ozone depleation is primarilty caused by a nonessential and easily replaced chemical, global warming concernes energy generation, and there's no technical solution today which might solve the problem, and without a technical solution political solutions become much more difficult to design and implement, as well as being disliked by a good number of people. The solution, as far as I'm concerned, is in nuclear fusion. It's the only power source which has litle to no environmental impact, and because it can produce such large amounts of electricity, it solves problems all the way down the chain - electrolisis to seperate hydrogen from water would become environmentally sound, making fuel cells workable, and so forth.
You forgot to mention that it's perfectly normal and expected for the earth to have large swings in temprature all on its own (ice age, anyone?) But looking at it from that angle only is a bit of a simplistic viewpoint. Yes, the earth is a system which will work changes over the long term, but you're ignoring The Question: what happens between now and when the earth corrects itself? A significant percentage of the earth's landmass is located at or below 1m above sea level, meaning that in the near future a large percentage of the earth's biomass could be underwater, a change that would, even outside of being regrettable in terms of loss of live, percipitate futher changes to the ecosystem (reduced gene pool, less migration, ...). Humans may be a 'natural' part of the earth, but the machines humans have made have, in the space of the last ~100-150 years significantly altered the chemical composition of the earth's atmosphere. This will be corrected if and when we stop affecting the system, but the effects of it will not be painless.
Spike Lee's latest, bamboozled, was shot entirely in digital video.. he actually used a cheap (~$2000, I think) sony digital video camera for the whole thing.. shows how effective and cheap digital video can be..
can you give one rms quote where he says, or even implies, that people should write free software for any reason other than that they want to? Put another way, does rms ever say or imply that people must write free software (rather than saying that people should write free software)?
Open source/gpl'd/etc. software is about the community that makes it happen, not a few individuals. Yes, linus has had alot to do with the linux kernel, but so do a significant number of other people who have, and are, working on it right now. It's not that linus isn't important to the community; it's that he's no more important than dozens, if not hundereds, of other people working on the same project. cults of personality help noone - the talking heads spend too much time doing interviews and become either convinced of their own status as gods, or become disenchanted with the media, and the work that led them to their prominance; people in the community go from having a very personal sense of signficance, and duty, to the project(s) they're working on to being disconnected trainspotters who produce code for someone else, not for the community... I think. But I'm rambling, and this post is far too long.
As long as they have a clear policy on such matters, and they inform you of it when you sign up and whenever it changes. They should not have the right to arbitrarily delete files which by chance have a file extension they don't understand.
Why don't you put yourself off food for the next year to help us all out? No? Then why ask 2 billion people to die while you eat your pizza-with-5-toppings? The answer to overpopulation isn't to let people that are alive today die, but to actively feed _and_ educate _and_ give economic opportunity to them. Ever wonder why some poor families have more childern (and this isn't just today; the precious usa had a much higher birthrate not too long ago)? Because if you're poor, if you live an a rural area, you need your childern to help you and each other in order to survive. There's no two ways about it. Either you have lots of children, or you _and_ your childern die. It's pretty fucking callous to write off 2 000 000 000 people in order to save 10 seconds worth of brain cycles. Pretty fucking callous - moreso as a joke.
If and when asteroid mining becomes techinically feasable and reasonably cheap, why not have regulations subjecting mining on earth to the same social/environmental standards that asteroid mining can achieve? It would essentially cripple the earth-based mining industry, but with good reason: it's impact is greater than asteroid mining. It's my understanding that government regulations adapt to whatever the state of the art is, (i.e. after dynamite came out, laws were changed to reflect that advancement), and asteroid mining would definitly be the state of the art.
just my 2..
It's ...funny how this is marked 'interesting' and the one above it (titled 'french v. freedom') is marked 'insightful'.
It's not as simplistic as you put it. This thing isn't just a germany-france bitterness holdover, its - and this is attested to by the fact that other european countries have similar laws - based alot on a lingering, and perfectly valid, disgust over what happend there 50-odd years ago. That's why you're allowd to buy german ww1 memerobilia in france (as far as I know..), but you arn't allowed to buy german ww2 memerobilia.
just my 2 (canadian)
can you? cause i have no clue as to how it works...
I just realized that J. blow can read the docs after the payperiod is up, but the point remains - there should be a buyout option.
correct me if I'm wrong, but what gets me is that there is no mention of any buyout option when the year is over, so that joeblow can't pay ms the balance of what he would have paid had he bought the app as we do today, forcing mr. blow to either pay ms for another year or have nothing to read the files on his hdd when the lease term is up. Most, if not all, other lease programs have that kind of option (cars, boxen, etc.)
Because upgrades are included in with the service, ms can now say that you're buying their latest and greatest for the next year. Beacuse they'll no doubt have some sort of autopayment system (give us your credit card #, and we'll detuct $x from your accout every year), by signing the agreement, ms can tell joe user that payment is worry-free, as long as you pay...
Of course, I am not a lawer or an american, so I don't know and I shouldn't care (as much as you folk, at least)... MH
Last I heart (when ~99% of the vote had been counted), the turnout was only projected to be up ~1%, from 49% to 50%. Apparently, there was an early rush but it tapered off later on...
I haven't used mozilla in awile, but keeping that in mind...
IE does crash, but it crashes far less than netscape (4.x). Add to that the fact that it's generally more elegent, has better bookmark support, download support, macos integration and dosen't have a 'shopping' button on the main buttonbar... it's really the better browser.
Well said... I'd say the same thing had you not said it first.
Do you support the International Criminal court in theory or in practice?
... because the profit of the person who exercises the options is taken from the market, not the corporation. That is, if a person makes a 100% profit on a stock option, the company dosen't lose any capital, it looses a potential capital gain from the market. Thus, the taxes that are paid by the individual, though they may end up putting more money in the gov't accounts, are actually taxes on capital from the market, not the company. ... of course, IANACA
I'm seriously considering switching from the mac (which i've been on since i've been 10 years old) to an ibm w/ GNU|Linux. they're actually trying to censor the damned press now to keep their relatively unimportant and predictable secrets safe. Rumors are usually just educated guesses which the readers can come up with on their own anyway.