Not returning found items is a criminal offence now? Can someone point to this Act?
You're probably thinking of the common law concept that the finder of lost property acquires title to that property that is good against all but the true owner. Some (many? most? all?) states in the U.S. have statutes that at the very least add some stipulations to this concept.
For example, in New York State, the law states that if you find something worth $20 or more you must within 10 days either return it to the owner (if the owner is known), or bring it to a police station. If you do not, you are guilty of a misdemeanor and can be sentenced to six months in jail. So yes, not returning found items is a criminal offense in New York State.
The police then hold on to the item for a set period of time (varying from three months to three years based on its value), and if at the end of that period the owner has not claimed it, you as the finder get title to it (make sure you pick it up quickly, though -- after 10 days the cops get to sell it). You can read the text of the applicable law here.
Oh yeah, and one other thing I forgot to mention. For some reason no one I know has ever heard of this, even some tax preparers.
If you are single, make under $25,000, and weren't a full-time student 5 or more months out of the year, you can get a tax credit (not a deduction) for contributing to a retirement account, even a Roth IRA. The credit will also be on top of any traditional IRA deduction you got. It's called the Retirement Savings Contributions Credit. The IRS has information on it here and the form (8880) is here.
Hopefully this will save some slashdotter some money. Check it out. I was able to take it last year, since I graduated in February and took a few months off before starting work so I didn't go over the income limit.
Sorry for any confusion caused by my post, but there are income limits for Roth IRA contributions as well. Single filers can't contribute to a Roth IRA if their AGI is more than $110,000, no matter whether your employer provides a retirement plan or not -- see here.
I'm just not anywhere close to that income, so I wasn't really aware of it.
A traditional IRA is tax deductible for the year you make the contribution.
Not if you have a retirement plan such as a 401(k) through your employer and your AGI is above a certain threshold. For instance, single filers covered by a retirement plan through their employer who have an AGI above $55,000 cannot take any deduction on contributions to a traditional IRA, and those with an AGI between $45,000 and $55,000 can only take a partial deduction. See here for more info.
You can still contribute to a Roth IRA as much as you want without any loss of benefits, however. And, of course, any contributions you make to a traditional IRA will still grow tax-deferred; you're just losing the up-front tax benefit (but, given the existence of Roth IRAs, why on earth would you still contribute to a traditional IRA if you weren't going to get the deduction?)
There's some truth to this, too, but what if you don't want to post-process to get a particular effect (eg emulate T-Max film)? Some people really hate photoshopping every image.
Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Personally I would much rather shoot raw, thus keeping the data as it came off the sensor, and then if I decide I don't like the T-Max emulation and would rather have, say, Velvia emulation (might as well go the exact opposite of B&W film:-), I can do that. In other words I would much rather have this as an option in my raw converter, not in my camera.
I said: the general consensus is that for every application that mere photographic mortals care about, digital cameras CAN take the place of film.
And you said: But for the majority of photographic situations it's true that there's really no need for film anymore
How are those two statements significantly different from each other? But for some reason you contradicted me by saying that "photographers" don't believe that digital is there yet. I think there's a whole lot of pros out there using digital that would be offended by you denying them the term "photographer".
Amongst the two serious limitations of digital versus film today are limited gamut and severely limited exposure lattitude.
The first might possibly be able to be fixed by an open camera (when combined with other tools to support it); the second most certainly is not going to be fixed by an open camera.
Yeah, yeah, I know all about the Digital Rebel and the 10D. I have one, in fact, complete with the hacked firmware. That wasn't my question though. I wanted to know what an open camera was going to do that would let digital "catch up" to film, which was the assertion of the GP.
I enlarged one of my 300d images to a 24"x36" and it was quite easy to see the individual pixels.
Ummm, have you ever tried enlarging 35mm to that size? It looks incredibly grainy. I have a 16x20 from ISO200 35mm film on my wall. It looks no better (a little worse, actually) than the 16x20 I made from a *three* megapixel camera.
As it is, digital cameras still can't take the place of film in all situations. 'Open' cameras could serve to narrow the gap.
I don't see how an open camera could make digital do anything that it currently cannot, that film can. An exposure is based on a combination of three things, that's it: aperture, shutter speed, and sensitivity (ISO speed). All other features that the camera provides are just fluff, and are certainly not film-specific. I imagine the vast majority of digital cameras allow you to adjust these 3 settings; I know the two I've owned do. If you want to adjust these settings and your current camera doesn't allow you to, you're better off buying a new camera, not hacking the one you have -- there's probably plenty of other features you're missing as well.
If your camera offers a raw format (again, the two I've owned do), these raw files will contain the EXACT values that came off the sensor. If you have a better processing algorithm, you can implement it on your computer, no need to try to shove it into the camera (Canon at least implements their Bayer-reconstruction algorithm and other processing [sharpness, white balance, etc] in hardware on the camera, so you wouldn't be able to replace this even if you wanted to).
Besides, the general consensus is that for every application that mere photographic mortals care about, digital cameras CAN take the place of film. It still doesn't match the resolution of large-format, but an 'open' camera isn't going to do anything to help that. What exact situations are you referring to that an 'open' camera could help digital catch up in?
Think of what you would instinctively do if your eyes were being boiled by a laser weapon while flying around at low altitude (near the airports).
Umm, probably not push down on the control stick. Maybe put my hands over my eyes. It's not like this is the first time these guys were ever at the controls of a plane. Pilots receive plenty of training. I'm sure those that make it to the level of flying big airliners know that putting the plane into a nosedive when near the ground is not a good idea.
Also, the idea that two planes were successfully crashed with this laser technique without anyone ever having heard of it until now is a little far-fetched -- it is highly unlikely that there were no failures that other pilots noticed, especially given the apparent lack of success with the recent attempts.
As for other potential causes, well, who knows. Planes are pretty complex. Pick a system that could malfunction. It's amazing there aren't more problems than there are. I know that if my company made planes, I'd never fly.
the Boeing 737 rolled to the right and pitched nose down into the ground [in Colorado Springs] and a 737 dove nose-first to the ground outside Pittsburgh
One would hope that a pilot's response to being blinded by a laser is NOT to point the plane at the ground. Pulling up is a far more optimal solution. I also find it unlikely that a pilot would be blinded and not say anything to air traffic control before crashing the plane, especially since the controller is the only one that could talk him through aborting the landing and guiding the plane safely through traffic while he can't see (that and radio silence is certainly out of the ordinary -- they chatter on the ATC frequency more than teenage girls at a slumber party).
But you don't want such a tiny beam, and you aren't aiming at such a tiny target.
Well, let's say the beam will be 20 feet wide at that distance. I think it's reasonable to assume that the area of the cockpit that needs to be covered is 10 feet wide. Covering a 10ft target with a 20ft beam is identical to covering a 5mm target with a 10mm beam, so the required precision quoted by the original poster will remain the same (whether or not the quoted precision is correct is another matter; I didn't check the math). Making the beam smaller will require even more precision.
GE will be glad to sell you one powerful enough if you've got the bucks.
I don't imagine GE sells many of these lasers. Therefore I think they'd be pretty easy to track, especially since at least two must have been purchased -- the events happened in two cities 2,000 miles apart more or less simultaneously.
Now do the math and compare that to a sniper hitting a 12 inch wide target with a.50 caliber bullet at a miles distance.
In every post of yours I've seen (and I've seen a lot thus far) you've brought up the sniper. The sniper kill from ~2500m away has been done ONCE (and the previous record was 25 or 30 years old), by a highly trained individual with a lot of practice. Yes, the laser is easier than the gun, but we're dealing with a longer distance, less trained individuals, a larger but MUCH faster-moving target, and something that has supposedly been repeated multiple times over the last few days. While I don't think it's impossible, it's certainly suspect.
It just seems intrinsically wrong to experiment on a living cell with human potential.
So given current cloning research, is it going to be illegal for me to let hair go down the drain in my shower?
Or, better yet, what about masturbation? Sperm cells have "human potential". What about women menstruating? Whoops, there goes an egg. Contraception? We CERTAINLY can't have that, especially the kind that allows fertilization to occur but simply prevents implantation in the uterus.
Your drawing of the line at an embryo is just as arbitrary. I also think you misunderstand the word "embryo", since the stage at 2 cells, 1024 cells, one week, and one month is an embryo. It's called a zygote when it's only one cell, and doesn't become a fetus until the third month (in humans).
AOL is certainly not a highly respected corporation, especially in the tech-world. They've agreed to ally themselves with Microsoft for this particular issue, but until some other notable corporations or organizations (particlarly Yahoo!, Google, and Apache) accept sender-ID as a "standard," there's no way it will make any difference in the fight against spam.
Perhaps their endorsement doesn't mean a whole lot in terms of driving sender-id forward, but given the sheer number of @aol.com mailboxes, their non-endorsement would certainly impede adoption.
First off, I never said the soldiers in Black Hawk Down sprayed Mogadishu with bullets. Second, whether they did spray bullets all over Mogadishu really depends on your definition of "spray". Was it constant machine gun fire? No. Was it one bullet here, one bullet there, only shooting at those people that had guns? Absolutely not. And despite your implication, I did read the book, thank you very much.
In the city the rate is 10+ to 1. Soldiers know about this great risc, and this is why you shoot first, ask later.
And as we all know civilians live in the city, so it is no surprise that more civilians die in modern combats. They can't escape, and 'non regular' armys use them as cover.
And that makes it right?
The fact that everyone and his brother in Iraq owns a gun does not make things easier.
Maybe we should have thought about that, along with the 10+ to 1 ratio you mentioned above, before we went in.
Just because we don't have sufficient troops and we're in the middle of the city and everyone has a gun does not allow us to just spray the city with bullets. Did you ever read Black Hawk Down? The book cover calls it a heroic action. I call it a slaughter. If I weren't from the U.S., I'd hate Americans too.
How can a lens "backfocus" on an SLR? If it's in focus on the screen, it's in focus on the film.... Jesus, man - if an AF system misses focus and you can't see it on your screen, throw away your SLR and give the fuck up.
We're not talking about the image being completely out of focus here. That you can obviously notice by looking through the viewfinder. As the OP said, he's talking about the focus being off by 2mm. Most of the time (especially with small apertures [large depth of field] or long focusing distance), this is not noticeable even in a large print. Thus, if the only pictures you take are landscapes, you'll never notice this. Portrait photographers notice it more, due to being closer to the subject and using large apertures to blur the background.
And it happens with a lot of SLRs, actually, especially those that are more entry-level. The AF systems just doesn't always focus correctly. Contrary to your belief, this type of misfocusing is almost never noticeable through the screen (most AF SLR's don't have split-screen focusing, they just rely on you being able to tell by looking at the image in the viewfinder whether it's in focus or not, and with the size of the average viewfinder, that's not always easy).
The average computer is discarded because of obsolesence long before it breaks.
Further, the average joe sixpack does not have a clue that leaving the computer on will make it last longer, he thinks it's the opposite, that it'll break sooner because it's been on more.
I am well aware that there are a variety of ways to study SOME effects of global warming without using simulations. However, we were referring to the effects of global warming on hurricanes, and the fact of the matter is, there isn't much historical record on either Atlantic or Pacific hurricanes. And it's only been the last few decades where we've really studied the hurricanes that didn't come near land.
So thank you for the heads up about that thing called "history", but it really doesn't help here.
Untill we can build either hydrogen fusion or more nuclear plants there will be no reduction in coal fired plants AND there NEVER,EVER will be single source power plants. Image your life with no electricity.
And you electric vehicle assholes, where do you think your pollution is going. It's being made at those big electric power plants like Navajo in Arizona and YOU ARE CLOUDING MY GRAND CANYON and CHOKING the poor Native Americans with you F^CKING POLLUTION!!
Sure, electric cars require electrical generation. Further, fuel cell cars require hydrogen, which requires electrical generation. But the beauty of such devices is that the electricity can be made in ONE PLACE. It's a lot easier to put high quality pollution scrubbers on one big pipe that doesn't move than it is to try and clean up after millions of individual automobiles that can't have heavyweight pollution controls onboard. Plus it's a lot easier to upgrade just a few scrubbers on power plants when the technology improves than it is to change all the cars in the world. I've heard this "but I'll pollute just as much since I still need to get the electricity from somewhere" argument before, and it's crap.
There's really no other way to study the effect of global warming without using some sort of simulation, aside from waiting until the warming occurs and then measuring the result. At which point, if the predictions of this study bear out, it'll be a little too late for anything more than "shit, they were right".
It describes what could happen were CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere to increase by 1% annually.
I think the point of the study was to describe what would probably happen. There could be a decrease in storm intensity, but the study said that there would probably be a rather significant increase.
Of course, the answer is to increase efficiency of internal combustion engines until they can be eliminated by a more efficient technology entirely.
I disagree that this is the answer. It is certainly an answer, but it misses the point. The U.S. is the largest polluter on the planet largely by choice (and I'm considering laziness [i.e. I was too lazy to wait the 45 seconds for the computer to boot up in the morning, so I left it on all night] as a choice). There are already ICEs that are more efficient than others (i.e. my Toyota Corolla gets near 40 mpg the way I drive, various large SUVs get 10 or less), but huge numbers of Americans CHOOSE to drive less efficient vehicles.
And it's not all about ICEs either -- IIRC transportation accounts for about a third of the average person's greenhouse emissions. More insulation in homes would go a long long way towards helping, and doesn't even require high tech solutions (yes, you could heat your house with a candle if it was insulated with aerogel, but fiberglass works pretty well too). Buy an on-demand water heater and stop keeping a tank of water hot while you're at work all day. Buy a compact fluorescent light bulb or two, or turn off a light or two when you leave the room. Etc, etc, etc, etc.
I believe the grandparent post was trying to make a statement about logging/clearcutting of forests, not to belittle the destructive power of the eruption.
Agreed, but in doing so he made it sound as though there was no longer any indication that the eruption had even happened, which is blatantly untrue.
For what it's worth, as I recall from post-9/11 readings, the towers were designed for the impact of a 707, which was the largest airliner in flight at the time the WTC was designed.
Hmmm... As I look around for some links to back this up, I find some interesting things (even after ignoring the conspiracy theorist websites). The 707 was indeed the largest airliner in flight when the towers were designed. However, the 767 is VERY similar to the 707 in fuel capacity, weight, wingspan, and top speed. Specifically, the 767's fuel capacity is only 4% more than that of the 707. So, either the designers were lying when they said it was designed for a 707 impact, or...?
Further, as you alluded to, although the 747 was not in flight when construction of the WTC began, it was in final design phase during the design of the WTC, and therefore the designers could (should?) have considered it, since its specifications were known at the time.
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You're probably thinking of the common law concept that the finder of lost property acquires title to that property that is good against all but the true owner. Some (many? most? all?) states in the U.S. have statutes that at the very least add some stipulations to this concept.
For example, in New York State, the law states that if you find something worth $20 or more you must within 10 days either return it to the owner (if the owner is known), or bring it to a police station. If you do not, you are guilty of a misdemeanor and can be sentenced to six months in jail. So yes, not returning found items is a criminal offense in New York State.
The police then hold on to the item for a set period of time (varying from three months to three years based on its value), and if at the end of that period the owner has not claimed it, you as the finder get title to it (make sure you pick it up quickly, though -- after 10 days the cops get to sell it). You can read the text of the applicable law here.
Oh yeah, and one other thing I forgot to mention. For some reason no one I know has ever heard of this, even some tax preparers.
If you are single, make under $25,000, and weren't a full-time student 5 or more months out of the year, you can get a tax credit (not a deduction) for contributing to a retirement account, even a Roth IRA. The credit will also be on top of any traditional IRA deduction you got. It's called the Retirement Savings Contributions Credit. The IRS has information on it here and the form (8880) is here.
Hopefully this will save some slashdotter some money. Check it out. I was able to take it last year, since I graduated in February and took a few months off before starting work so I didn't go over the income limit.
Sorry for any confusion caused by my post, but there are income limits for Roth IRA contributions as well. Single filers can't contribute to a Roth IRA if their AGI is more than $110,000, no matter whether your employer provides a retirement plan or not -- see here.
I'm just not anywhere close to that income, so I wasn't really aware of it.
A traditional IRA is tax deductible for the year you make the contribution.
Not if you have a retirement plan such as a 401(k) through your employer and your AGI is above a certain threshold. For instance, single filers covered by a retirement plan through their employer who have an AGI above $55,000 cannot take any deduction on contributions to a traditional IRA, and those with an AGI between $45,000 and $55,000 can only take a partial deduction. See here for more info.
You can still contribute to a Roth IRA as much as you want without any loss of benefits, however. And, of course, any contributions you make to a traditional IRA will still grow tax-deferred; you're just losing the up-front tax benefit (but, given the existence of Roth IRAs, why on earth would you still contribute to a traditional IRA if you weren't going to get the deduction?)
At least get the quote right... It's "two chicks at the same time."
There's some truth to this, too, but what if you don't want to post-process to get a particular effect (eg emulate T-Max film)? Some people really hate photoshopping every image.
:-), I can do that. In other words I would much rather have this as an option in my raw converter, not in my camera.
Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Personally I would much rather shoot raw, thus keeping the data as it came off the sensor, and then if I decide I don't like the T-Max emulation and would rather have, say, Velvia emulation (might as well go the exact opposite of B&W film
I said:
the general consensus is that for every application that mere photographic mortals care about, digital cameras CAN take the place of film.
And you said:
But for the majority of photographic situations it's true that there's really no need for film anymore
How are those two statements significantly different from each other? But for some reason you contradicted me by saying that "photographers" don't believe that digital is there yet. I think there's a whole lot of pros out there using digital that would be offended by you denying them the term "photographer".
Amongst the two serious limitations of digital versus film today are limited gamut and severely limited exposure lattitude.
The first might possibly be able to be fixed by an open camera (when combined with other tools to support it); the second most certainly is not going to be fixed by an open camera.
Yeah, yeah, I know all about the Digital Rebel and the 10D. I have one, in fact, complete with the hacked firmware. That wasn't my question though. I wanted to know what an open camera was going to do that would let digital "catch up" to film, which was the assertion of the GP.
I enlarged one of my 300d images to a 24"x36" and it was quite easy to see the individual pixels.
Ummm, have you ever tried enlarging 35mm to that size? It looks incredibly grainy. I have a 16x20 from ISO200 35mm film on my wall. It looks no better (a little worse, actually) than the 16x20 I made from a *three* megapixel camera.
As it is, digital cameras still can't take the place of film in all situations. 'Open' cameras could serve to narrow the gap.
I don't see how an open camera could make digital do anything that it currently cannot, that film can. An exposure is based on a combination of three things, that's it: aperture, shutter speed, and sensitivity (ISO speed). All other features that the camera provides are just fluff, and are certainly not film-specific. I imagine the vast majority of digital cameras allow you to adjust these 3 settings; I know the two I've owned do. If you want to adjust these settings and your current camera doesn't allow you to, you're better off buying a new camera, not hacking the one you have -- there's probably plenty of other features you're missing as well.
If your camera offers a raw format (again, the two I've owned do), these raw files will contain the EXACT values that came off the sensor. If you have a better processing algorithm, you can implement it on your computer, no need to try to shove it into the camera (Canon at least implements their Bayer-reconstruction algorithm and other processing [sharpness, white balance, etc] in hardware on the camera, so you wouldn't be able to replace this even if you wanted to).
Besides, the general consensus is that for every application that mere photographic mortals care about, digital cameras CAN take the place of film. It still doesn't match the resolution of large-format, but an 'open' camera isn't going to do anything to help that. What exact situations are you referring to that an 'open' camera could help digital catch up in?
Umm, probably not push down on the control stick. Maybe put my hands over my eyes. It's not like this is the first time these guys were ever at the controls of a plane. Pilots receive plenty of training. I'm sure those that make it to the level of flying big airliners know that putting the plane into a nosedive when near the ground is not a good idea.
Also, the idea that two planes were successfully crashed with this laser technique without anyone ever having heard of it until now is a little far-fetched -- it is highly unlikely that there were no failures that other pilots noticed, especially given the apparent lack of success with the recent attempts.
As for other potential causes, well, who knows. Planes are pretty complex. Pick a system that could malfunction. It's amazing there aren't more problems than there are. I know that if my company made planes, I'd never fly.
Umm, maybe you'd better take a trip to your favorite dictionary.
From Merriam-Webster:
the Boeing 737 rolled to the right and pitched nose down into the ground [in Colorado Springs]
and
a 737 dove nose-first to the ground outside Pittsburgh
One would hope that a pilot's response to being blinded by a laser is NOT to point the plane at the ground. Pulling up is a far more optimal solution. I also find it unlikely that a pilot would be blinded and not say anything to air traffic control before crashing the plane, especially since the controller is the only one that could talk him through aborting the landing and guiding the plane safely through traffic while he can't see (that and radio silence is certainly out of the ordinary -- they chatter on the ATC frequency more than teenage girls at a slumber party).
Well, let's say the beam will be 20 feet wide at that distance. I think it's reasonable to assume that the area of the cockpit that needs to be covered is 10 feet wide. Covering a 10ft target with a 20ft beam is identical to covering a 5mm target with a 10mm beam, so the required precision quoted by the original poster will remain the same (whether or not the quoted precision is correct is another matter; I didn't check the math). Making the beam smaller will require even more precision.
GE will be glad to sell you one powerful enough if you've got the bucks.
I don't imagine GE sells many of these lasers. Therefore I think they'd be pretty easy to track, especially since at least two must have been purchased -- the events happened in two cities 2,000 miles apart more or less simultaneously.
Now do the math and compare that to a sniper hitting a 12 inch wide target with a .50 caliber bullet at a miles distance.
In every post of yours I've seen (and I've seen a lot thus far) you've brought up the sniper. The sniper kill from ~2500m away has been done ONCE (and the previous record was 25 or 30 years old), by a highly trained individual with a lot of practice. Yes, the laser is easier than the gun, but we're dealing with a longer distance, less trained individuals, a larger but MUCH faster-moving target, and something that has supposedly been repeated multiple times over the last few days. While I don't think it's impossible, it's certainly suspect.
So given current cloning research, is it going to be illegal for me to let hair go down the drain in my shower?
Or, better yet, what about masturbation? Sperm cells have "human potential". What about women menstruating? Whoops, there goes an egg. Contraception? We CERTAINLY can't have that, especially the kind that allows fertilization to occur but simply prevents implantation in the uterus.
Your drawing of the line at an embryo is just as arbitrary. I also think you misunderstand the word "embryo", since the stage at 2 cells, 1024 cells, one week, and one month is an embryo. It's called a zygote when it's only one cell, and doesn't become a fetus until the third month (in humans).
Perhaps their endorsement doesn't mean a whole lot in terms of driving sender-id forward, but given the sheer number of @aol.com mailboxes, their non-endorsement would certainly impede adoption.
First off, I never said the soldiers in Black Hawk Down sprayed Mogadishu with bullets. Second, whether they did spray bullets all over Mogadishu really depends on your definition of "spray". Was it constant machine gun fire? No. Was it one bullet here, one bullet there, only shooting at those people that had guns? Absolutely not. And despite your implication, I did read the book, thank you very much.
And as we all know civilians live in the city, so it is no surprise that more civilians die in modern combats. They can't escape, and 'non regular' armys use them as cover.
And that makes it right?
The fact that everyone and his brother in Iraq owns a gun does not make things easier.
Maybe we should have thought about that, along with the 10+ to 1 ratio you mentioned above, before we went in.
Just because we don't have sufficient troops and we're in the middle of the city and everyone has a gun does not allow us to just spray the city with bullets. Did you ever read Black Hawk Down? The book cover calls it a heroic action. I call it a slaughter. If I weren't from the U.S., I'd hate Americans too.
We're not talking about the image being completely out of focus here. That you can obviously notice by looking through the viewfinder. As the OP said, he's talking about the focus being off by 2mm. Most of the time (especially with small apertures [large depth of field] or long focusing distance), this is not noticeable even in a large print. Thus, if the only pictures you take are landscapes, you'll never notice this. Portrait photographers notice it more, due to being closer to the subject and using large apertures to blur the background.
And it happens with a lot of SLRs, actually, especially those that are more entry-level. The AF systems just doesn't always focus correctly. Contrary to your belief, this type of misfocusing is almost never noticeable through the screen (most AF SLR's don't have split-screen focusing, they just rely on you being able to tell by looking at the image in the viewfinder whether it's in focus or not, and with the size of the average viewfinder, that's not always easy).
Further, the average joe sixpack does not have a clue that leaving the computer on will make it last longer, he thinks it's the opposite, that it'll break sooner because it's been on more.
I am well aware that there are a variety of ways to study SOME effects of global warming without using simulations. However, we were referring to the effects of global warming on hurricanes, and the fact of the matter is, there isn't much historical record on either Atlantic or Pacific hurricanes. And it's only been the last few decades where we've really studied the hurricanes that didn't come near land.
So thank you for the heads up about that thing called "history", but it really doesn't help here.
Huh?
Sure, electric cars require electrical generation. Further, fuel cell cars require hydrogen, which requires electrical generation. But the beauty of such devices is that the electricity can be made in ONE PLACE. It's a lot easier to put high quality pollution scrubbers on one big pipe that doesn't move than it is to try and clean up after millions of individual automobiles that can't have heavyweight pollution controls onboard. Plus it's a lot easier to upgrade just a few scrubbers on power plants when the technology improves than it is to change all the cars in the world. I've heard this "but I'll pollute just as much since I still need to get the electricity from somewhere" argument before, and it's crap.
There's really no other way to study the effect of global warming without using some sort of simulation, aside from waiting until the warming occurs and then measuring the result. At which point, if the predictions of this study bear out, it'll be a little too late for anything more than "shit, they were right".
It describes what could happen were CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere to increase by 1% annually.
I think the point of the study was to describe what would probably happen. There could be a decrease in storm intensity, but the study said that there would probably be a rather significant increase.
Of course, the answer is to increase efficiency of internal combustion engines until they can be eliminated by a more efficient technology entirely.
I disagree that this is the answer. It is certainly an answer, but it misses the point. The U.S. is the largest polluter on the planet largely by choice (and I'm considering laziness [i.e. I was too lazy to wait the 45 seconds for the computer to boot up in the morning, so I left it on all night] as a choice). There are already ICEs that are more efficient than others (i.e. my Toyota Corolla gets near 40 mpg the way I drive, various large SUVs get 10 or less), but huge numbers of Americans CHOOSE to drive less efficient vehicles.
And it's not all about ICEs either -- IIRC transportation accounts for about a third of the average person's greenhouse emissions. More insulation in homes would go a long long way towards helping, and doesn't even require high tech solutions (yes, you could heat your house with a candle if it was insulated with aerogel, but fiberglass works pretty well too). Buy an on-demand water heater and stop keeping a tank of water hot while you're at work all day. Buy a compact fluorescent light bulb or two, or turn off a light or two when you leave the room. Etc, etc, etc, etc.
I believe the grandparent post was trying to make a statement about logging/clearcutting of forests, not to belittle the destructive power of the eruption.
Agreed, but in doing so he made it sound as though there was no longer any indication that the eruption had even happened, which is blatantly untrue.
Hmmm... As I look around for some links to back this up, I find some interesting things (even after ignoring the conspiracy theorist websites). The 707 was indeed the largest airliner in flight when the towers were designed. However, the 767 is VERY similar to the 707 in fuel capacity, weight, wingspan, and top speed. Specifically, the 767's fuel capacity is only 4% more than that of the 707. So, either the designers were lying when they said it was designed for a 707 impact, or ...?
Further, as you alluded to, although the 747 was not in flight when construction of the WTC began, it was in final design phase during the design of the WTC, and therefore the designers could (should?) have considered it, since its specifications were known at the time.
Data from here.