I really don't see the shift in assumptions. With both biodiesel and hydrogen, they talk about energy efficiency for both production and usage. Could you be a little more specific?
Presumably, there's also a fair amount of chemical energy in the waste products they digest; so essentially they're using the energy they take in (both chemical and solar) to store some of that energy in a form (oil) that we find easily usable. Saying "it's all solar energy" is true in the long run, but it strikes me as an oversimplification.
You and the grandparent poster are both wrong. The US was not the first modern democracy, but it is a democracy (modulo rigged voting machines and the like.) Anyone who parrots the "republic not a democracy line" has no understanding of either word and is clearly a moron whose opinion on any political argument is too uninformed to be worth a damn.
Nerds who are interested only in "technology or computers or programing [sic] or software or hardware or anthing [sic] electonic [sic] whatsoever" are the people who give nerds a bad name.
As satisfying as that might be (public executions, please!) I don't think anyone really wants such a law. However, they should face substantial penalties; I don't think a few years in prison and multimillion-dollar fines and/or lawsuit liability are unreasonable for the worst of the "spam kings."
To accomplish that, Internet anonymity should be eliminated for spammers, while not affecting the rest of us.
Spammers, as individuals, have the same right to anonymity as everyone else. But anyone who is trying to sell me something wants me to give them money at some point along the line. That requires that they reveal their identity. And if the spammers are acting as contractors for someone else who is selling something -- type "bulk e-mail service" into Google and see how many hits you get -- then it is not unreasonable to require that they, too, reveal who they are.
Any such policy must apply to the entire world. Instantly.
Would that it could be so! But the next best thing would be to make having an effective spam policy a condition of international trade treaties, and again, I don't think that's an unreasonable requirement.
Oh, and if anyone can think of a way by which a single spam might slip through, a proposal is obviously worthless and the person who proposed it is a techno-illiterate simpleton.
Many anti-spam proposals are techno-illiterate, and it's fair to point that out when such proposals are made. Others, like CAN-SPAM, are the result of legislative sell-outs to entrenched corporate interests. I don't think anyone realistically expects ever to see a solution that eliminates every single spam. But it would be nice to see one that achieves a 90%, or even 75%, or hell, even 50% reduction in the volume we see now -- and certainly we don't want to see "solutions" that actually give spammers more freedom to spam under certain circumstances, as CAN-SPAM does.
CAN-SPAM is not a "sensible, cautious law." It is a very nearly toothless law. If it puts one or two spam kings out of business, well, good. But it's not what we need to make a measurable difference in the total amount of spam now clogging the Net.
The argument goes deeper than cell walls (or the lack thereof). The fundamental difference is that prions aren't "life" in any sense that we recognize the word -- they're just misfolded bits of protein that, apparently, somehow, force other proteins to assume their shape. The proposed nanobacteria have DNA and a means of reproducing themselves in the same way larger cells do.
The reason for the controversy is that cellular metabolism and reproduction (the basic requirements for life) are fairly complex processes which require fairly complex molecular machinery, and these critters seem to be too small to contain that machinery. Geek analogy: suppose someone claimed to have invented a computer the size of a wristwatch that had the same processing power as a building-size supercomputer. It would be fascinating, but we'd be right to be skeptical.
Google knows from prior experience that when it comes to new tech, geek acceptance is the first step to general acceptance. They're not going to alienate the knowledgeable early adopters (i.e., pretty much the/. crowd, with the exception of certain Microsoft-shill porn site operators) by making YAWOP (Yet Another Windows-Only Product).
Everyone snoops on everyone else, and everyone knows it. We're not going to war with France or Germany over radio interceptions. Hell, we didn't even go to war with the USSR...
Well, yes, that did occur to me. We were pretty close to the grill, with assorted metal implements lying around; BBQ'ed spam would have made for a great addition to the food table! But he was a friend of the host, and I thought it would be rude.;)
I was at a party the other night and got into a conversation with a guy who wanted some advice from me, as a Web developer, on setting up a commercial Web site. At first the conversation was pretty normal -- we talked about the choice of servers, languages, back-end databases, etc. Then he asked me, "How can I make sure people go to my site?"
So I talked about Google PageRank, targeted vs. untargeted advertising, making his site attractive enough to inspire users to stay on it, making sure it's simple enough that it loads quickly and works on different browsers, etc. And he seemed to be listening, but after a while he asked me, "No, I mean when I send people e-mail advertising my site, how do I make sure they go to it?"
I had to talk to him for a while to make sure he was saying what I thought he was saying, but after a while it became pretty clear that the deal is this: he's going to be running a site selling Brazilian sex tours, and he wants to know how to send spam that will a) get people to go to his site, and b) get through spam filters.
Needless to say, the conversation didn't last long after that, but it did provide some insight into the mind of the spammer. He really didn't see anything wrong with spamming, or even with trying to be deceptive to get past spam filters. As far as he's concerned, he's selling a service people will want if only he can get his message through. I'd say he was an aggressively normal guy -- a bit of a yuppie, with a backwards baseball cap and a lite (sic) beer, definitely not a geek, probably watches lots of football and drives an SUV.
These are the people who are crapflooding your mailbox. They're not mysterious creeps living in caves. They're your neighbors. Be aware. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty...
Take a look at some of the Cambrian Explosion fossils. There was a greater diversity of animal life at that time than at any time before or since, including our own era. Most of those species died off (presumably without any help from a Big Rock, just because they weren't all that well-suited to their environments) and the few basic body plans of modern animal life were the ones that went on to form the foundation for all future generations.
Life is always experimenting with greater diversity; in times of low diversity, as after great die-offs, the existing forms will quickly branch out to fill the available ecological niches. There does, however, seem to be an upper bound as well, as the Cambrian shows.
Um, right, like the Mafia wiped itself out in a generation?
There will always be a willing supply of recruits, because organized crime makes money. Okay, most of these kids were probably just morons... but it's a good bet that one or two of them are headed for an exciting and lucrative career in the Colombian and Afghan imports business.
True enough. However, the main effect of the 2004 election, in terms of civil rights, will not be in who the President is, but the people he appoints to the federal courts (note that there will almost certainly be one Supreme Court vacancy in 2005-2009, perhaps two, and of course plenty at lower levels) and as Attorney General. Kerry is no angel, but I really don't see him appointing anyone like Ashcroft, or any of Bush's recent judicial appointments.
It's also worth noting that given the time at which "USA-PATRIOT" was passed, and the speed with which it was rushed through Congress, very little meaningful opposition was possible. IIRC, only one Senator (Feingold?) actually voted against it. That doesn't let Kerry off the hook, but IMO people can be excused for doing dumb things in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Now, two and a half years later, it's a different story.
Note to moderators: parent post is not offtopic. The Bush administration is directly responsible for the Ashcroft DoJ's fullscale assault, including but not limited to the "USA-PATRIOT Act," on traditional American liberties. Right-wingers are afraid of an open debate about this, because they know they'd lose, so they try to shut people up instead...
I can't wait to see how the Bush babies try to spin this one. I expect a flood of right-wing apologists to appear in the thread soon telling us that a) it isn't that bad, and b) somehow, Clinton was worse.
Think about it. Not only do we have a law which allows secret investigations and arrests, and prohibits the accused from telling anyone about what's being done to them -- but apparently, the powers granted to the government by the law are themselves state secrets! This has gone beyond evil into insanity. When did my home become the Unites States of Kafka?
Re:That's not irony! (OT)
on
SCO Caught Copying
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Yep. In fact, I think the second meaning listed -- "Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs" -- is actually the original one, and the linguistic usage of "irony" is a later construction.
Alanis Morisette's stupid song has created a generation of wannabe language Nazis who jump on any perceived misuse of the word, and often embarrass themselves in the process. They're not language Nazis at all; they're not competent enough to be Nazis. They're language Italian Fascists!
1. The citation talks only about ash, not other pollutants.
2. There is no comparison given to human output.
3. The citation is talking about the biggest eruption in recroded history; saying "volcanoes alone produce... in one eruption..." as though you were discussing a typical eruption is misleading.
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I really don't see the shift in assumptions. With both biodiesel and hydrogen, they talk about energy efficiency for both production and usage. Could you be a little more specific?
Look up in the sky. Observe the giant glowing thing pouring lots of energy down on you. Note that a portion of this energy lands on farmers' fields.
Now do you understand how this doesn't violate thermodynamics?
Presumably, there's also a fair amount of chemical energy in the waste products they digest; so essentially they're using the energy they take in (both chemical and solar) to store some of that energy in a form (oil) that we find easily usable. Saying "it's all solar energy" is true in the long run, but it strikes me as an oversimplification.
SE Linux, presumably.
Presumably it'll let go of it before coming back? otherwise it'll be the biggest space sample ever collected.
... and maybe the last ...
You and the grandparent poster are both wrong. The US was not the first modern democracy, but it is a democracy (modulo rigged voting machines and the like.) Anyone who parrots the "republic not a democracy line" has no understanding of either word and is clearly a moron whose opinion on any political argument is too uninformed to be worth a damn.
Nerds who are interested only in "technology or computers or programing [sic] or software or hardware or anthing [sic] electonic [sic] whatsoever" are the people who give nerds a bad name.
Spammers should be summarily shot.
As satisfying as that might be (public executions, please!) I don't think anyone really wants such a law. However, they should face substantial penalties; I don't think a few years in prison and multimillion-dollar fines and/or lawsuit liability are unreasonable for the worst of the "spam kings."
To accomplish that, Internet anonymity should be eliminated for spammers, while not affecting the rest of us.
Spammers, as individuals, have the same right to anonymity as everyone else. But anyone who is trying to sell me something wants me to give them money at some point along the line. That requires that they reveal their identity. And if the spammers are acting as contractors for someone else who is selling something -- type "bulk e-mail service" into Google and see how many hits you get -- then it is not unreasonable to require that they, too, reveal who they are.
Any such policy must apply to the entire world. Instantly.
Would that it could be so! But the next best thing would be to make having an effective spam policy a condition of international trade treaties, and again, I don't think that's an unreasonable requirement.
Oh, and if anyone can think of a way by which a single spam might slip through, a proposal is obviously worthless and the person who proposed it is a techno-illiterate simpleton.
Many anti-spam proposals are techno-illiterate, and it's fair to point that out when such proposals are made. Others, like CAN-SPAM, are the result of legislative sell-outs to entrenched corporate interests. I don't think anyone realistically expects ever to see a solution that eliminates every single spam. But it would be nice to see one that achieves a 90%, or even 75%, or hell, even 50% reduction in the volume we see now -- and certainly we don't want to see "solutions" that actually give spammers more freedom to spam under certain circumstances, as CAN-SPAM does.
CAN-SPAM is not a "sensible, cautious law." It is a very nearly toothless law. If it puts one or two spam kings out of business, well, good. But it's not what we need to make a measurable difference in the total amount of spam now clogging the Net.
The argument goes deeper than cell walls (or the lack thereof). The fundamental difference is that prions aren't "life" in any sense that we recognize the word -- they're just misfolded bits of protein that, apparently, somehow, force other proteins to assume their shape. The proposed nanobacteria have DNA and a means of reproducing themselves in the same way larger cells do.
The reason for the controversy is that cellular metabolism and reproduction (the basic requirements for life) are fairly complex processes which require fairly complex molecular machinery, and these critters seem to be too small to contain that machinery. Geek analogy: suppose someone claimed to have invented a computer the size of a wristwatch that had the same processing power as a building-size supercomputer. It would be fascinating, but we'd be right to be skeptical.
Google knows from prior experience that when it comes to new tech, geek acceptance is the first step to general acceptance. They're not going to alienate the knowledgeable early adopters (i.e., pretty much the /. crowd, with the exception of certain Microsoft-shill porn site operators) by making YAWOP (Yet Another Windows-Only Product).
What everybody else said. Back up your data and replace that drive NOW.
flunkies != allies
Everyone snoops on everyone else, and everyone knows it. We're not going to war with France or Germany over radio interceptions. Hell, we didn't even go to war with the USSR ...
Well, yes, that did occur to me. We were pretty close to the grill, with assorted metal implements lying around; BBQ'ed spam would have made for a great addition to the food table! But he was a friend of the host, and I thought it would be rude. ;)
I was at a party the other night and got into a conversation with a guy who wanted some advice from me, as a Web developer, on setting up a commercial Web site. At first the conversation was pretty normal -- we talked about the choice of servers, languages, back-end databases, etc. Then he asked me, "How can I make sure people go to my site?"
...
So I talked about Google PageRank, targeted vs. untargeted advertising, making his site attractive enough to inspire users to stay on it, making sure it's simple enough that it loads quickly and works on different browsers, etc. And he seemed to be listening, but after a while he asked me, "No, I mean when I send people e-mail advertising my site, how do I make sure they go to it?"
I had to talk to him for a while to make sure he was saying what I thought he was saying, but after a while it became pretty clear that the deal is this: he's going to be running a site selling Brazilian sex tours, and he wants to know how to send spam that will a) get people to go to his site, and b) get through spam filters.
Needless to say, the conversation didn't last long after that, but it did provide some insight into the mind of the spammer. He really didn't see anything wrong with spamming, or even with trying to be deceptive to get past spam filters. As far as he's concerned, he's selling a service people will want if only he can get his message through. I'd say he was an aggressively normal guy -- a bit of a yuppie, with a backwards baseball cap and a lite (sic) beer, definitely not a geek, probably watches lots of football and drives an SUV.
These are the people who are crapflooding your mailbox. They're not mysterious creeps living in caves. They're your neighbors. Be aware. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty
Anyway, Mars also has no significant atmosphere of its own either.
Riiight, and we know this because dust storms are so much bigger in vacuum.
"Scrupulously" can also mean "with careful attention to detail."
Take a look at some of the Cambrian Explosion fossils. There was a greater diversity of animal life at that time than at any time before or since, including our own era. Most of those species died off (presumably without any help from a Big Rock, just because they weren't all that well-suited to their environments) and the few basic body plans of modern animal life were the ones that went on to form the foundation for all future generations.
Life is always experimenting with greater diversity; in times of low diversity, as after great die-offs, the existing forms will quickly branch out to fill the available ecological niches. There does, however, seem to be an upper bound as well, as the Cambrian shows.
Um, right, like the Mafia wiped itself out in a generation?
... but it's a good bet that one or two of them are headed for an exciting and lucrative career in the Colombian and Afghan imports business.
There will always be a willing supply of recruits, because organized crime makes money. Okay, most of these kids were probably just morons
"When did my home become the Unites States of Kafka?"
When 3,000 innocent people died.
A hell of a lot more will die if we continue on this course. What the government can do to its own citizens will make 9/11 look like Columbine.
Kerry voted for PATRIOT.
He's no savior.
True enough. However, the main effect of the 2004 election, in terms of civil rights, will not be in who the President is, but the people he appoints to the federal courts (note that there will almost certainly be one Supreme Court vacancy in 2005-2009, perhaps two, and of course plenty at lower levels) and as Attorney General. Kerry is no angel, but I really don't see him appointing anyone like Ashcroft, or any of Bush's recent judicial appointments.
It's also worth noting that given the time at which "USA-PATRIOT" was passed, and the speed with which it was rushed through Congress, very little meaningful opposition was possible. IIRC, only one Senator (Feingold?) actually voted against it. That doesn't let Kerry off the hook, but IMO people can be excused for doing dumb things in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Now, two and a half years later, it's a different story.
Note to moderators: parent post is not offtopic. The Bush administration is directly responsible for the Ashcroft DoJ's fullscale assault, including but not limited to the "USA-PATRIOT Act," on traditional American liberties. Right-wingers are afraid of an open debate about this, because they know they'd lose, so they try to shut people up instead ...
I can't wait to see how the Bush babies try to spin this one. I expect a flood of right-wing apologists to appear in the thread soon telling us that a) it isn't that bad, and b) somehow, Clinton was worse.
Think about it. Not only do we have a law which allows secret investigations and arrests, and prohibits the accused from telling anyone about what's being done to them -- but apparently, the powers granted to the government by the law are themselves state secrets! This has gone beyond evil into insanity. When did my home become the Unites States of Kafka?
Yep. In fact, I think the second meaning listed -- "Incongruity between what might be expected and what actually occurs" -- is actually the original one, and the linguistic usage of "irony" is a later construction.
Alanis Morisette's stupid song has created a generation of wannabe language Nazis who jump on any perceived misuse of the word, and often embarrass themselves in the process. They're not language Nazis at all; they're not competent enough to be Nazis. They're language Italian Fascists!
1. The citation talks only about ash, not other pollutants.
... in one eruption ..." as though you were discussing a typical eruption is misleading.
2. There is no comparison given to human output.
3. The citation is talking about the biggest eruption in recroded history; saying "volcanoes alone produce