What's killing them is that they've been shipping them with a single speed tranny since the 2 speed one isn't ready for prime time, thus they aren't living up to their promises, completely anyway. They are making roadworthy cars though, not just prototypes.
However, they are facing a serious drain on earnings. They've promised to retrofit the single speed trannies with 2 speed ones once they are ready... That doesn't sound cheap.
>Any Slashdotters game for explaining who they are voting for and why?
Mickey Mouse. The jackass and elephant are equally responsible for the mess we are in and both need to go because they are self serving, bandaid applying panderers who don't give a shit about this country, just their own political career.
Obama, McCain, Palin and Biden are all the same. Sad but true... Not one wants to dismantle the IRS and give us a fair flat tax. None want to shrink the size of the government and all are socialists (Either little guy or corporate socialism).
Nazi Germany and the USSR were also socialist countries. The floodgates started cracking during the new deal; now they are crumbling and that socialist kool-aid is flooding the valley.
Keep on drinking it and watch what happens... Anyone with a brain should vote against the incumbents. Washington needs an enema.
Further, in cities (where we need this most) electric cars are impractical since a lot of people don't have the option of parking in front of their house to charge up, since usually someone else is parked there.
This issue needs to be solved before us city dwellers even have the option of using these types of cars./sigh
The issue here however is that this is about democracy and the counting of votes. There are no trade secrets in the counting of votes, it is a public process and it should be, indeed is required to be, publicly auditable. The problem here is that the Judge has applied commercial thinking to a public interest case, understandable but wrong.
QFT. Voters have a right to know what every line of code does and how it works. We also have the right build our own voting machines if they won't do it right.
If they don't like it, tough shit. Go sell your broken machines somewhere else.
>The US is a capitalist economy, right ? Not for long. With the government owning companies, we are fast headed to becoming the USSA (United Socialist States of America)
In a truly capitalist economy the market would have crashed and hit rock bottom by now and we'd have a lot less airlines. However it might be sustainable by now, if the depression were over and it had run it's course. We have become experts at delaying the inevitable.
>Isn't the market supposed to fix this ? In a market where tax dollars are paying for service infrastructure? There can only be truly one of each type (cable, fiber, telco) That opportunity has been destroyed by our politicians. EG Verizon gets the politicians to spend tax dollars on infrastructure. Other telcos do rent this from them, but ultimately cannot provide the same level of service for the rates Verizon can. They are usually short lived because they can't really compete. Verizon doesn't pay rent on it 8). They are double dipping. They get tax dollars on the back end and charge us for service on the front.
Not only are we paying for it for them, but we lag behind the rest of the world (#16 for broadband penetration). At least in a real socialist country, you'd get it for free, but we have to pay a lot of cash for bandwidth running on gear we paid for with our taxes.
As it is, we're headed for disaster. The government getting involved just prolongs things. Maybe after the world economy collapses, learns some valuable lessons and starts to recover, we'll have true capitalism again in the US.
I am optimistic in this regard. However, for now, capitalism is on life support because the economy is artificially propped up with tax payer dollars.
I'm sure I'll get flamed for this post, but I'm used to it. Nobody likes to hear the truth.
I'd agree with this. I just cancelled all of my accounts.
I started mmo gaming to hide from a failing marriage, after marriage counseling failed. My wife started getting meaner and meaner, so I started gaming to bury myself in my office and hide from it.
We recently decided to get a divorce. I dropped all of my accounts, started working out again and I've never been more happy in my life. "Hardcore" gamers are usually either escaping from something, or addicted to gaming. Neither situation is conducive to happiness. I'd guess that the ones who are escaping from something are more often also abusing(caffiene, pot, beer, whatever).
I don't think gaming directly causes the unhappiness, it's caused by the circumstances surrounding the gaming. I started gaming *because* I was unhappy. Obsessive compulsive gamers tend to lose their jobs and families because of the gaming. My marriage was already on life support so it was sort of reversed.
Casual gaming is also pretty prevalent and that's perfectly healthy. I'd bet that they'd get much different results interviewing casual gamers.
I quit because now I have better stuff to do and the source of my pain is gone. I'm also looking better because I cook my own food out of fresh ingredients;). I feel really bad for addicted people. They have to hit rock bottom to quit. I never had to do that. Well actually, it's probably more accurate to say I hit rock bottom before I started gaming.
>The service just isn't attracting users at all, in spite of the marketing major label WMG has committed to do
They may have "committed" but I've never heard of Lala and I'd be interested in using it. All I can say is that WMG is doing a terrible job marketing this. I have the feeling they *want* it to fail, as a propaganda stunt. It's the only explanation. WMG has bottomless pockets. If they wanted it to succeed they'd be killing everyone in the online music business with their catalog.
In fact in a search for Online music download Lala's not on the first 5 pages. A comparatively small payment to Google would ensure page rank or at least advertising on the results. Not surprisingly an Apple ad (the destination of which shows has a link to iTunes on the landing page) is at the top. They are actually trying.
Nada... Here's what does show up:
1.
Download music online
Groundbreaking technology like the
new Genius feature. iPod touch.
www.apple.com/ipodtouch
2.
Zune Music Player
Get your ears ready for
the ultimate music experience.
www.Zune.net
3.
Download/Play/Burn Music
Legal Access to 5,000,000+ Songs.
14 Days Free then only $12.99/mo!
www.Rhapsody.com
4.
Napster® Official Site
Listen To 6 Million + Songs
With a Free Trial - Napster®!
Napster.com
5.
Download Music Online
As low as $.27 per song!
25 Free MP3 - No risk 7 day Trial
www.eMusic.com
6.
Top 3 Legal Music Sites
Top 3 Music Download Sites Reviewed
Download All your Favorite Music
www.Real-Music-Reviews.com
7.
Download Online Music
Unlimited Free Music on AOL® Radio
Find Music You Enjoy on One Site!
Radio.AOL.com
8.
Top 5 Music Sites
Top 5 Music Download Sites Reviewed
Download your Favorite Music Now
www.HotMusicDownloader.com
DRM free with lots of options and great music. The only thing killing Lala is WMG. They've got Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Rush, and the White Stripes for crying out loud! Their catalog is unmatched.
I just joined;) At $.89 per song too. I think the author has a warped sense of what "committed to marketing" means, or didn't bother checking for himself. If I was a WMG executive, I'd have the marketing VP in a meeting finding out what the hell he does 8 hours a day.
Instead, the 23-year-old 10-seat Westwind II was sold in August 2007 for $2.1 million to a Valdez, Alaska, entrepreneur; that's about $300,000 less than a broker's asking price, according to news accounts. -- Chicago Tribune -----------------
So she was supposed to sell the plane to the broker for his asking price? Isn't the broker supposed to make money on the deal? I don't know about you, but 12.5% sounds like a fair commission, so technically all she could have gotten from a broker for it, is, you guessed it, 2.1m.
Nice try. She did the right thing with the jet. She'd have gotten 2.1m from a broker, he'd have sold it for 2.4m. Had she actually sold it to a broker for 2.1m and the broker turned around and sold it for 2.4m, we'd all be talking about how she gave a broker friend of hers a sweetheart deal that allowed him to pocket 300k of the "state's money". If you go ahead and sell it for 2.4m, it will sit for a while because it's not a decent deal. In the mean time it's eating 300k in maintenance.
Give me a break. This is a non issue. No matter what had happened, people would be spinning it negative (except keeping the state jet, most likely, which is ironically the wrong thing to do). In fact her having the fortitude to cut the middle man out and make the deal, getting as much money as possible in the process, as quickly as possible, back the state, sort of makes her look good.
Far be it from me to drink republican Kool-aid, but half the time the democrats are pouring the sugar into it for them. The very "issues" they point out makes the republicans look even better half the time. Now if only republicans were actually conservative...
My favorite description is a massively multiplayer online space screen saver. It's beautiful... and ultimately boring. I played for a couple of years and it never really got that interesting. I'm in a guild that has a division there (0.0 pvp corp in an alliance). I had more fun hanging out on teamspeak and shooting the shit than actually playing.
It's kind of like long boring wars gatecamping and seeing if you could actually hit the victim before he was vaporized.
It made an excellent backdrop for conversations tho. Once you've seen it all it's pretty meh. If big battles weren't so laggy, maybe it would be more fun, but probably not.
I got bored and went back to swg, despite the dated graphics and play, it's still actually fun with friends, if you can get over what they did to the game with the first combat upgrade and NGE(aka CU2).
At least there the space combat *is* twitch based and a lot more fun, if not just as beautiful. The ground game is good for a lot of laughs too if you pvp. I laugh pretty hard sometimes...
Yea, the US is kind of hypocritical. It was ok for us to give Canada acid rain, but China has their revolution and "Oh noez, acid rain, teh horrorz".
ROFL
We haven't got a leg to stand on. You can't say that we don't have as much industry, it's just in third world countries running unregulated now in sweat shops and un-unionized factories.
Actually there's an increasingly vocal group of scientists that are saying that the CO2 is a symptom, not the cause. As the earth warms it causes the ocean currents to change, and CO2 rich water from the bottom of the oceans and seas gets churned up to the surface which causes more CO2 than usual to be released into the atmosphere.
I don't fully understand how it works, I am not a scientist, and this is way oversimplified, but that's the gist of their argument. Man's contribution is miniscule compared to the CO2 released by the natural processes of the ocean, which increase in activity when at the peak of a global warming cycle (also evidenced by increased hurricane and typhoon activity) resulting in more CO2 in the atmosphere.
Of course these guys, NASA, NOAA, the atmosphere and the sun are all paid off by George Bush to cooperate to make Al Gore look bad.
It's a republican propaganda campaign, of course.
insert values("tongue firmly in cheek") into tbl_discussion; select asbestos, underwear from tbl_closet;
All joking aside, the deforestation of the earth isn't helping to reduce this CO2 as fast as past planetary climate cycles, so if you can find the time, plant some trees. This is what people should be doing if they want to make a positive contribution to the earth. It's a hell of a lot more effective than buying and selling carbon credits and jawing to everyone (in the guise of "raising awareness") about faulty science, which are make believe contributions and counterproductive.
I found this tidbit pretty damn interesting FTA: "Earth of course is a big heat sink, so it takes awhile to catch up to any changes that originate on the sun, but temperature drops indicated by 4 global temperature metrics (UAH, RSS and to a lesser degree HadCrit and GISS) show a significant and sharp cooling in 2007 and 2008 that has not rebounded.In the 20 years since "global warming" started life as a public issue with Dr. James Hansen's testimony before congress in June 1988, we are actually cooler."
In the early 80's we were in a trough that was bottoming out and people were running around like they are now saying we're headed for an ice age, by 88 it was coming back up again prompting Hansen's sky-is-falling testimony. Here we are in 2008.
I withhold my own comments about the humans-causing-global-warming-and-cooling hysteria. Well, dammit, I can't. IT'S JUNK SCIENCE AND I TOLD YOU SO (and have been flamed for it). I'd lay a buck down on a bet that Mars, Jupiter etc have also started cooling off again, and it will be evident within 5 years.
I only know about SOHO because I've been watching SOHO for a long time (my dad works for a NASA contractor and helps to run the test chambers and fabricate test rigs which tested the satellite at Goddard before it went up). I had this as my screenshot the day it was published: http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/gallery/images/large/c2eitcomp_prev.jpg
You might say I'm a space case and huge NASA fan. Real data trumps incomplete computer models any day of the week and that's what NASA enables the collection of, real data. One day we may just figure out *why* the sun warms and cools. We already know it does.
I'll be glad when this BS has been put to rest so we can move on and solve some real problems. Ok, the earth warms and cools on a cycle and has for billions of years. NEXT!!!
>Strange you should mention that. The very best programmers -- the genius coders -- I had working for me, with rare exception, had >a background in classical music and played one or more instruments. I'm not sure that's causative, but there was a clear trend
I've played orchestral music since 4th grade and went to school for art. I am a professional software developer. My boss thinks I'm brilliant and I get stuff done, at least judging by the way they review and compensate me. Writing software started out as a hobby for me (doing assembler on C64 at age 13).
The simple fact of the matter is I'm not especially talented at art and haven't been in a band yet that lasted very long (not for lack of trying). I love all three pursuits and decided to get a job in computers back in 1992 when I got sick of waiting tables into my third year of trying to get a job as a designer.
After 18 years I think I've made the right move. The simple fact of the matter is you either can or can't. What you went to school for, or where you went, doesn't matter unless you want to teach.
The important thing is that you have improved your mind and can do something. I learned how to study in school. I studied software engineering on my own. If anything, art and music teach you to think "outside the box" and that every last detail is important. These, along with knowing how to learn new stuff, are the most valuable skills you can have for any career.
Slashdot Mirror
Yea, you'd need vmware or a bootloader plus a second OS to help windows =D
> Tesla motors has no proven ability to make anything except prototypes.
Actually they've been shipping cars since July 14th. http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-9990153-54.html
What's killing them is that they've been shipping them with a single speed tranny since the 2 speed one isn't ready for prime time, thus they aren't living up to their promises, completely anyway. They are making roadworthy cars though, not just prototypes.
However, they are facing a serious drain on earnings. They've promised to retrofit the single speed trannies with 2 speed ones once they are ready... That doesn't sound cheap.
-Viz
hehe I've walked GE's whois records. Their IP space is MASSIVE.
-Viz
>I suggest you look at how well the people in countries with 'social' programs do over countries with out them.
doing great like this:
http://www.heartland.org/policybot/results.html?artId=15524
reiterated here:
http://www.harp.org/canada-phillips.htm
and here:
http://www.thestar.com/FederalElection/article/515864
15 percent of canadians don't have a family doctor because they go where they can get paid. People that work and pay their taxes get screwed.
And fascism is a form of socialism as is communism. Get it right ; )
I'm voting independant because republicans and democrats are destroying this country with stupidity.
-Viz
>Any Slashdotters game for explaining who they are voting for and why?
Mickey Mouse. The jackass and elephant are equally responsible for the mess we are in and both need to go because they are self serving, bandaid applying panderers who don't give a shit about this country, just their own political career.
Obama, McCain, Palin and Biden are all the same. Sad but true... Not one wants to dismantle the IRS and give us a fair flat tax. None want to shrink the size of the government and all are socialists (Either little guy or corporate socialism).
Nazi Germany and the USSR were also socialist countries. The floodgates started cracking during the new deal; now they are crumbling and that socialist kool-aid is flooding the valley.
Keep on drinking it and watch what happens... Anyone with a brain should vote against the incumbents. Washington needs an enema.
-Viz
...that Fox has the most reputable and accurate reporting on the planet, their sources are impeccable and they NEVER blow things out of proportion.
This article is more than a little sensationalized...
-Viz
Um distribution rights _is_ something that he once possessed which he was deprived of.
Theft.
Further, in cities (where we need this most) electric cars are impractical since a lot of people don't have the option of parking in front of their house to charge up, since usually someone else is parked there.
This issue needs to be solved before us city dwellers even have the option of using these types of cars. /sigh
-Viz
The issue here however is that this is about democracy and the counting of votes. There are no trade secrets in the counting of votes, it is a public process and it should be, indeed is required to be, publicly auditable. The problem here is that the Judge has applied commercial thinking to a public interest case, understandable but wrong.
QFT. Voters have a right to know what every line of code does and how it works. We also have the right build our own voting machines if they won't do it right.
If they don't like it, tough shit. Go sell your broken machines somewhere else.
-Viz
RUN! RUN, YOU FOOLS!!!
>The US is a capitalist economy, right ?
Not for long. With the government owning companies, we are fast headed to becoming the USSA (United Socialist States of America)
In a truly capitalist economy the market would have crashed and hit rock bottom by now and we'd have a lot less airlines. However it might be sustainable by now, if the depression were over and it had run it's course. We have become experts at delaying the inevitable.
>Isn't the market supposed to fix this ?
In a market where tax dollars are paying for service infrastructure? There can only be truly one of each type (cable, fiber, telco) That opportunity has been destroyed by our politicians. EG Verizon gets the politicians to spend tax dollars on infrastructure. Other telcos do rent this from them, but ultimately cannot provide the same level of service for the rates Verizon can. They are usually short lived because they can't really compete. Verizon doesn't pay rent on it 8). They are double dipping. They get tax dollars on the back end and charge us for service on the front.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2006/03/09/telco-money-grab-numbers-revealed
"Costs to Customers - We estimate that $206 billion dollars in excess profits and tax deductions were collected - over $2000 per household. "
Not only are we paying for it for them, but we lag behind the rest of the world (#16 for broadband penetration). At least in a real socialist country, you'd get it for free, but we have to pay a lot of cash for bandwidth running on gear we paid for with our taxes.
As it is, we're headed for disaster. The government getting involved just prolongs things. Maybe after the world economy collapses, learns some valuable lessons and starts to recover, we'll have true capitalism again in the US.
I am optimistic in this regard. However, for now, capitalism is on life support because the economy is artificially propped up with tax payer dollars.
I'm sure I'll get flamed for this post, but I'm used to it. Nobody likes to hear the truth.
-Viz
I'm an ex smoker too biatch. True story...
I'd agree with this. I just cancelled all of my accounts.
I started mmo gaming to hide from a failing marriage, after marriage counseling failed. My wife started getting meaner and meaner, so I started gaming to bury myself in my office and hide from it.
We recently decided to get a divorce. I dropped all of my accounts, started working out again and I've never been more happy in my life. "Hardcore" gamers are usually either escaping from something, or addicted to gaming. Neither situation is conducive to happiness. I'd guess that the ones who are escaping from something are more often also abusing(caffiene, pot, beer, whatever).
I don't think gaming directly causes the unhappiness, it's caused by the circumstances surrounding the gaming. I started gaming *because* I was unhappy. Obsessive compulsive gamers tend to lose their jobs and families because of the gaming. My marriage was already on life support so it was sort of reversed.
Casual gaming is also pretty prevalent and that's perfectly healthy. I'd bet that they'd get much different results interviewing casual gamers.
I quit because now I have better stuff to do and the source of my pain is gone. I'm also looking better because I cook my own food out of fresh ingredients ;). I feel really bad for addicted people. They have to hit rock bottom to quit. I never had to do that. Well actually, it's probably more accurate to say I hit rock bottom before I started gaming.
-Viz
>The service just isn't attracting users at all, in spite of the marketing major label WMG has committed to do
They may have "committed" but I've never heard of Lala and I'd be interested in using it. All I can say is that WMG is doing a terrible job marketing this. I have the feeling they *want* it to fail, as a propaganda stunt. It's the only explanation. WMG has bottomless pockets. If they wanted it to succeed they'd be killing everyone in the online music business with their catalog.
In fact in a search for Online music download Lala's not on the first 5 pages. A comparatively small payment to Google would ensure page rank or at least advertising on the results. Not surprisingly an Apple ad (the destination of which shows has a link to iTunes on the landing page) is at the top. They are actually trying.
Nada...
Here's what does show up:
1.
Download music online
Groundbreaking technology like the
new Genius feature. iPod touch.
www.apple.com/ipodtouch
2.
Zune Music Player
Get your ears ready for
the ultimate music experience.
www.Zune.net
3.
Download/Play/Burn Music
Legal Access to 5,000,000+ Songs.
14 Days Free then only $12.99/mo!
www.Rhapsody.com
4.
Napster® Official Site
Listen To 6 Million + Songs
With a Free Trial - Napster®!
Napster.com
5.
Download Music Online
As low as $.27 per song!
25 Free MP3 - No risk 7 day Trial
www.eMusic.com
6.
Top 3 Legal Music Sites
Top 3 Music Download Sites Reviewed
Download All your Favorite Music
www.Real-Music-Reviews.com
7.
Download Online Music
Unlimited Free Music on AOL® Radio
Find Music You Enjoy on One Site!
Radio.AOL.com
8.
Top 5 Music Sites
Top 5 Music Download Sites Reviewed
Download your Favorite Music Now
www.HotMusicDownloader.com
DRM free with lots of options and great music. The only thing killing Lala is WMG. They've got Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Rush, and the White Stripes for crying out loud! Their catalog is unmatched.
I just joined ;) At $.89 per song too. I think the author has a warped sense of what "committed to marketing" means, or didn't bother checking for himself. If I was a WMG executive, I'd have the marketing VP in a meeting finding out what the hell he does 8 hours a day.
-Viz
Instead, the 23-year-old 10-seat Westwind II was sold in August 2007 for $2.1 million to a Valdez, Alaska, entrepreneur; that's about $300,000 less than a broker's asking price, according to news accounts. -- Chicago Tribune
-----------------
So she was supposed to sell the plane to the broker for his asking price? Isn't the broker supposed to make money on the deal? I don't know about you, but 12.5% sounds like a fair commission, so technically all she could have gotten from a broker for it, is, you guessed it, 2.1m.
Nice try. She did the right thing with the jet. She'd have gotten 2.1m from a broker, he'd have sold it for 2.4m. Had she actually sold it to a broker for 2.1m and the broker turned around and sold it for 2.4m, we'd all be talking about how she gave a broker friend of hers a sweetheart deal that allowed him to pocket 300k of the "state's money". If you go ahead and sell it for 2.4m, it will sit for a while because it's not a decent deal. In the mean time it's eating 300k in maintenance.
Give me a break. This is a non issue. No matter what had happened, people would be spinning it negative (except keeping the state jet, most likely, which is ironically the wrong thing to do). In fact her having the fortitude to cut the middle man out and make the deal, getting as much money as possible in the process, as quickly as possible, back the state, sort of makes her look good.
Far be it from me to drink republican Kool-aid, but half the time the democrats are pouring the sugar into it for them. The very "issues" they point out makes the republicans look even better half the time. Now if only republicans were actually conservative...
-Viz
you can also have a large battery made up of smaller batteries inside of it.
Doh! yea. My Asian geography is pretty bad.
Those gas station keyfobs (Exxon Quickpass or something like that) are RFID aren't they? I guess you wouldn't have seen them if you don't do those.
-Viz
WOW this is impressive. Maybe one day we can cluster people.
"You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile."
-The Borg collective.
-Viz
My favorite description is a massively multiplayer online space screen saver. It's beautiful... and ultimately boring. I played for a couple of years and it never really got that interesting. I'm in a guild that has a division there (0.0 pvp corp in an alliance). I had more fun hanging out on teamspeak and shooting the shit than actually playing.
It's kind of like long boring wars gatecamping and seeing if you could actually hit the victim before he was vaporized.
It made an excellent backdrop for conversations tho. Once you've seen it all it's pretty meh. If big battles weren't so laggy, maybe it would be more fun, but probably not.
I got bored and went back to swg, despite the dated graphics and play, it's still actually fun with friends, if you can get over what they did to the game with the first combat upgrade and NGE(aka CU2).
At least there the space combat *is* twitch based and a lot more fun, if not just as beautiful. The ground game is good for a lot of laughs too if you pvp. I laugh pretty hard sometimes...
-Viz
The Thai government also canes people that vandalize cars, or spit gum on the sidewalk.
Do you think that the US and European governments will start caning people who vandalize cars and spit gum on the sidewalk?
-Viz
Yea, the US is kind of hypocritical. It was ok for us to give Canada acid rain, but China has their revolution and "Oh noez, acid rain, teh horrorz".
ROFL
We haven't got a leg to stand on. You can't say that we don't have as much industry, it's just in third world countries running unregulated now in sweat shops and un-unionized factories.
-Viz
Actually there's an increasingly vocal group of scientists that are saying that the CO2 is a symptom, not the cause. As the earth warms it causes the ocean currents to change, and CO2 rich water from the bottom of the oceans and seas gets churned up to the surface which causes more CO2 than usual to be released into the atmosphere.
I don't fully understand how it works, I am not a scientist, and this is way oversimplified, but that's the gist of their argument. Man's contribution is miniscule compared to the CO2 released by the natural processes of the ocean, which increase in activity when at the peak of a global warming cycle (also evidenced by increased hurricane and typhoon activity) resulting in more CO2 in the atmosphere.
Of course these guys, NASA, NOAA, the atmosphere and the sun are all paid off by George Bush to cooperate to make Al Gore look bad.
It's a republican propaganda campaign, of course.
insert values("tongue firmly in cheek") into tbl_discussion;
select asbestos, underwear from tbl_closet;
All joking aside, the deforestation of the earth isn't helping to reduce this CO2 as fast as past planetary climate cycles, so if you can find the time, plant some trees. This is what people should be doing if they want to make a positive contribution to the earth. It's a hell of a lot more effective than buying and selling carbon credits and jawing to everyone (in the guise of "raising awareness") about faulty science, which are make believe contributions and counterproductive.
As much as the SOHO data is relieving, this is downright scary:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NasaNews/2005/2005091320344.html
-Viz
I found this tidbit pretty damn interesting
FTA:
"Earth of course is a big heat sink, so it takes awhile to catch up to any changes that originate on the sun, but temperature drops indicated by 4 global temperature metrics (UAH, RSS and to a lesser degree HadCrit and GISS) show a significant and sharp cooling in 2007 and 2008 that has not rebounded.In the 20 years since "global warming" started life as a public issue with Dr. James Hansen's testimony before congress in June 1988, we are actually cooler."
In the early 80's we were in a trough that was bottoming out and people were running around like they are now saying we're headed for an ice age, by 88 it was coming back up again prompting Hansen's sky-is-falling testimony. Here we are in 2008.
I withhold my own comments about the humans-causing-global-warming-and-cooling hysteria. Well, dammit, I can't. IT'S JUNK SCIENCE AND I TOLD YOU SO (and have been flamed for it). I'd lay a buck down on a bet that Mars, Jupiter etc have also started cooling off again, and it will be evident within 5 years.
I only know about SOHO because I've been watching SOHO for a long time (my dad works for a NASA contractor and helps to run the test chambers and fabricate test rigs which tested the satellite at Goddard before it went up). I had this as my screenshot the day it was published:
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/gallery/images/large/c2eitcomp_prev.jpg
You might say I'm a space case and huge NASA fan. Real data trumps incomplete computer models any day of the week and that's what NASA enables the collection of, real data. One day we may just figure out *why* the sun warms and cools. We already know it does.
I'll be glad when this BS has been put to rest so we can move on and solve some real problems. Ok, the earth warms and cools on a cycle and has for billions of years. NEXT!!!
-Viz
>Strange you should mention that. The very best programmers -- the genius coders -- I had working for me, with rare exception, had
>a background in classical music and played one or more instruments. I'm not sure that's causative, but there was a clear trend
I've played orchestral music since 4th grade and went to school for art. I am a professional software developer. My boss thinks I'm brilliant and I get stuff done, at least judging by the way they review and compensate me. Writing software started out as a hobby for me (doing assembler on C64 at age 13).
The simple fact of the matter is I'm not especially talented at art and haven't been in a band yet that lasted very long (not for lack of trying). I love all three pursuits and decided to get a job in computers back in 1992 when I got sick of waiting tables into my third year of trying to get a job as a designer.
After 18 years I think I've made the right move. The simple fact of the matter is you either can or can't. What you went to school for, or where you went, doesn't matter unless you want to teach.
The important thing is that you have improved your mind and can do something. I learned how to study in school. I studied software engineering on my own. If anything, art and music teach you to think "outside the box" and that every last detail is important. These, along with knowing how to learn new stuff, are the most valuable skills you can have for any career.
-Viz