Where the heck did you hear THAT? There are still, today, large stretches of the California foothills that are nearly free of invasive species, or in which native grasses are still the majority. I assure you that these grasses turn quite brown when it doesn't rain for five months straight and the 105 degree summer heat rolls in. Only the oaks and manzanita stay green in that kind of weather.
Look, I'm not a kiwi but if I were I'd have a serious problem with the fact that millions of my tax dollars were being wasted so that a few people can live out their idyllic fantasies of living on a beach lined South Pacific island. If these people want to live there, they should figure out a way to be self supporting...the same way their ancestors were for more than a thousand years.
If the island is no longer naturally hospitable to human habitation, then the people should leave rather than expecting the rest of their nation to subsidize their unsustainable dream of the way things "should be". Dreams are nice, but they need to be tempered with a bit of reality.
A LOT of people make that commute. I used to work in San Jose and live in Ripon (a little town in the Central Valley), easily a 1.5 to 2 hour daily commute. Why did I work in San Jose? For the $90k+ yearly paychecks. Why do I live in Ripon? Because I was able to buy a 2800sf 4/3 here five years ago for about $180,000, and a comparable home in the Bay Area would have set me back $600,000 easily.
Of course, I decided to simplify my life a couple of years ago and gave up my cushy $90k a year San Jose job for a $43k a year government gig about 10 minutes from home. Not everyone is willing to give up half their income to eliminate their commute, however.
Hate to break this to you, but no you don't. Your name may be on the pink, but unless you're emancipated ALL of your property is under the de facto legal control of your parents. If your dad wanted to sell the truck tomorrow, there isn't jack you could do about it (legally anyway). Trust me on this one. I grew up in California, and when I was 17 my dad put my Camaro up for sale after busting me racing. I paid for the car myself, with my own cash, carried my own insurance, and his name was NOWHERE on the pink slip, but I was informed by both the DMV and the local police that there was little I could do short of filing a civil suit AND emancipating myself. As a minor, my parents had full legal authority to dispose of any property in my name. In this state, and practically all others, the right of a minor to own property is simply not recognized.
Look it up if you don't believe me. Or better yet, call a lawyer and ask.
$384 a month for a car payment is actually pretty high nowadays unless you've just bought a new top 'o the line SUV. If I were you I'd consider refinancing through a credit union or other A or B class lending institution. I recently refi'd my Mazda 626, bringing my interest rate down to 5.5% and my payment down from $355 a month to $160 a month. Yeah, it means it'll be an extra two years until I pay it off, but I wasn't planning on dumping the car anyway and the lowered interest rate actually saves me money in the long run.
Actually, we only have one golden rule in my house when it comes to the kids and computers: "Don't do anything online that you wouldn't do in person". If a parent has raised their children to be honest and trustworthy, that's the only rule needed.
And your assertion about kids snooping back is dead wrong. It is the duty of a parent to watch over their progeny to verify that they aren't getting themselves into dangerous situations. We do this in real life by knowing where our kids are, who they are with, and by letting them know what kinds of activities are unacceptable. When my daughter is staying the night at a friends house, I think nothing of calling the friends parents beforehand to verify that it's ok, and then calling them again later that evening to make sure she's behaving herself. That's just a part of parenting.
When my daughter (or my son...I don't want it to seem like I'm picking on her, but he doesn't use it as much) goes online, I lose that ability to find out who she's hanging out with and where she's going, so I use my hacked Squid to get that ability back. I'm no bible thumping conservative, so I don't care if my kids are talking about parties or boys, I just need to know who they're talking to and where they're hanging out.
No, my proxy (when it's on, which is random) actually does keyword searching and emails me when certain words or word combinations are found in the traffic(FYI, it's a self-hacked version of squid, which I'll probably release the code for one of these years), so I didn't discover this until several hours after the fact. My daughter had turned his proposition down, but it still inspired a long talk between her and I about lying about her age in chatrooms.
Or do what I do and just TELL them that you're logging their traffic. Knowing that anything they say online can be used against them by dad does wonders to keep them honest.
And don't give me lip about not trusting my kids...I trust my kids with my life. It's the million other perverts who would lure them to the local Motel 6 that I don't trust. Children, even teenagers, need guidance and need their parents to keep an eye on them and prevent them from getting into potentially dangerous situations. In my case, I do that by occassionally snooping on their communications. Considering that I've already caught my nine year old daughter posing as a 13 year old, AND caught a local high school kid propositioning her, you'll have a heck of a time convincing me that monitoring is a BAD thing.
Yes, and then you have the "accidental" rich, like my dad. He purchased a beautiful stretch of Oregon land in the 1970's for $35,000, which through no fault or work of his own, is now worth an estimated $7 million. Why? Because of the golf course and million dollar homes that went up next door in the 80's and 90's. Personally, I'd like to inherit the land and keep it in the family, but any estate tax will effectively prevent that from happening...we'd have to sell it to some developer just to cover the tax bill.
The US really wasn't a superpower until the close of WWII, and really only gained that status because we were the only nation that wasn't bombed to rubble in the conflict. The LoN fell because of its own powerless, undemocratic structure.
The problem with your argument is that the southerners were right. Any impartial reading of the documents written by the founders of this nation (The Federalist Papers, the Constitution itself..etc) make it pretty clear what they had in mind: The states would be free to run themselves as they chose, and the federal government would only be involved in trade related matters between the states and act as a common negotiating body when dealing with foreign powers. The only exception to this was to be the "national laws" enshrined in the Constitution itself...the articles and amendments that still give us our basic rights today. Lincoln and the other federalists wanted to redefine that relationship to put the federal government in charge of the states. The Union Armies won, but that doesn't neccesarily make Lincoln right.
Personally, I find that the pre-war "independent states" model is actually superior, as it puts the real decision making at a level closer to the citizenry, and allows the states to make decisions based on the needs of their local populations. What's good for the citizens of Florida may be bad for the citizens of Alaska, and yet our current system doesn't allow much flexibility when enacting national laws.
The same thing would happen, I fear, with the UN if it had the ability. Should the UN have the ability to regulate the flow of information across the borders of nations? If the democratically elected leaders of the UN voted to do that, then yes...it SHOULD be within their power (and, of course, we'll vote them out next time around). Should they be able to restrict the flow of information WITHIN the borders of a nation? Absolutely not, the individual citizens of a nation should be governed by the laws and rights of their own nation.
Absolutely not, the UN is a flawed organization
on
Imagine A UN-Run Internet
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· Score: 4, Insightful
The UN needs to get smacked back into place. They are NOT a world government...heck, they aren't even really democratic. They are, for all intents and purposes, a bunch of bureaucrats appointed by their governments to acts as puppets to the wills of their respective national leaders. Even then, their votes aren't really equal, with the handful of Security Council members controlling the real passage of resolutions and the direction of the UN.
I support the concept of world government, but before the UN can assume that role, a few things need to happen.
The UN needs a split houses concept similar to the US and other democratic nation. One house gets a number of representatives dependent on a nations population, and in the other house all nations have equal numbers of representatives. This is the ONLY fair way to ensure that all nations are heard regardless of size or population.
Abolish the security council. It made sense 50 years ago, but not today.
All representatives should be ELECTED by the people in their nations, with reasonably limited terms (5 or six years max). If these people are going to determine my fate and run my Internet, I'd damned well better get a say in who represents me. Undemocratic nations that don't allow their citizens to vote should NOT get voting seats in the UN.
It should respect the constitutions of its member nations. The UN should not have the ability to override, veto, or limit decisions or rights made or granted by their sovereign member states.
You'll pardon me for not holding my breath for these changes. The UN is a flawed, crippled organization that tries to grab onto any semblance of real power that it can, and it's in the interests of this worlds powerful nations to make sure it stays right where it is.
Depends on what the terrorist is doing. If the terrorist is running out to buy a bagel and coffee, then yes, he should be arrested and tried. On the other hand, if he's got a trunkload of sarin gas and is on his way to give everyone in Manhattan a very bad day, then we should simply kill him before he has a chance to activate his weapons.
Anyone who advocates giving EVEY terrorist a trial is a misguided idealist. Anyone who advocates killing every terrorist without a trial is a coldhearted fascist. Reality, as always, demands a solution somewhere in the middle.
The problem is that most of those "dozens of others" based their research on the premises of the Mann '98 report, which claimed that the last 50 years were the hottest in history. They built their claims on what we now understand to be a potentially false foundation.
Note the sequence of events here: A bunch of scientists said the Earth was getting warmer. One small group did some research and said that the Earth was hotter than any other time in history. A bunch of other scientists went "Uh oh, we'd better figure out what's going on" and started researching it. A bunch of other scientists realized that human caused CO2 emissions had risen substantially in the last 50 years, and that CO2 has the potential to be a greenhouse gas. A bunch of other scientists put two and two together and decided that human induced greenhouse gasses caused the sharpest temperature jump and highest temperatures in history. The public panicked, and governments joined in to draft a treaty which would limit CO2 and potentially devastate many economies "for the good of the planet".
Manns research was the bottom card that the rest of the house was built on, and when we pull it out we undermine the whole structure. Is the Earth warming? Yes, that's indisputable. But we now understand that it's warming within its normal range, and that it has been even warmer in relatively recent history when humans WEREN'T influencing the environment. I'm a member of the Sierra Club and believe strongly in protecting our world, but I'm also a scientist and believe that facts must always come first. I read the paper, and it looks like a solid analysis that presents some real problems with the Mann report (which I've always had a problem with anyway...anyone with a research background should read it and take an objective look at some of the questionable assumptions they made to fill in missing data). I'll withhold judgement until a few more researchers familiar with the field have a chance to review and rebut, but it looks to me like the environmental movement just took a serious blow to their credibility.
LOL! No, she didn't. You have to be pretty seriously overweight to lose height (and later gain it back when the weight is lost). My wife was only a little overweight, and didn't gain any height when she lost what little fat she had.
Re:Fundamental problem with most exercise...
on
Hackers On Atkins
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· Score: 1
Heh, that one had me stumped too at first. My doctor later explained to me that it really isn't that uncommon for seriously obese people to gain height while losing a lot of weight. Between joint compression, spinal curvature caused by your gut pulling your torso downwards and forwards, and simple bad posture, most seriously overweight people are anywhere from.3" to.75" shorter than their skeletal potential. My gaining an inch (actually, about.9 inches) while losing 106lbs was a little on the extreme side, but it's certainly not unheard of.
Re:Fundamental problem with most exercise...
on
Hackers On Atkins
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Personally, I consider that one of the best aspects of exercise. My day is full of enough nonstop distractions from ringing phones, clients "just stopping by", tight coding deadlines, meetings, wife demanding attention, kids demanding attention, yards demanding attention...it never ends. That 45 minutes of solitude every morning, when it's just me, my thoughts, and the foggy trail ahead, are the only things that keep me sane.
And for reference: A year ago I was 6' 285lbs. Today I'm 6'1" 179lbs. No fancy diets, no gimmicks, no body abuse. I just reduced the number of calories going into my body (1300-1600 a day depending on activity level) and made a point to exercise whether I wanted to or not. I don't pay attention to things like fat content, carb content, protein content, or any of those other distractions that make dieting seem so complex, I just watch the bottom line....daily caloric intake. It works for me with NO risk of health problems, it's worked for my wife (30 lbs in 4 months), and it's worked for everybody else who's tried it and stuck to it. The human body evolved to deal with two realities: 1) That people are constantly active. 2) That high calorie meals are rare. That we have eliminated these realities in the last 100 years says a lot for humanity, but the underlying fact still remains...if you want your body to operate at its peak, you have to subject it to the conditions it was optimized for. Just like computers. GIGO.
Zip drives failed? Man, if you came to my office and said that the graphics guys would lynch you! Not only are Zip drives still standard equipment on thousands of our office PC's, but we even have Zip libraries organized by our own proprietary barcode system. When someone in our office tells you on the phone "I'm sending that file over to you", they're more likely to SneakerNet a Zip disk to your office than transfer it by LAN or Email. Sad too...our gigabit ethernet is woefully underutilized:)
And is it a cent or a penny you use? Make up your mind!
A "cent" is 1% of a dollar, no matter the combination of coins you are using. If I asked for 75 cents, you could pay me using three quarters, two quarters, two dimes, and a nickel, or seventy five pennies. The format of the money is irrelevant...it's still seventy five cents.
The term "penny" is used when referring specifically to the "one cent" copper coin. Penny is an unofficial name derived from "pence", and is still in use primarily out of habit and popularity. "Penny" just sounds better than "One Cent Coin".
Also, diverting a large one into an ocean would still cause problems, probably just as bad as it hitting on land.
Actually, a large scale ocean impact is MORE devastating than a land impact. With a land impact you punch a big hole in the ground and throw a bunch of dust into the air. With an ocean strike you get the same, with the added bonus of a steam explosion as the water in the impact area instantly converts to its gaseous form. Remember, steam expands. As it expands up and out from the impact point, it displaces the atmosphere creating a second shockwave capable of devastating regions thousands of miles from the strike zone.
Best impact point: South Pole. Glacial melting may be an issue, but that'll give us time to evacuate and minimize casualties.
Worst impact point: In the ocean just off the coast of any continent. The ocean is shallow enough to allow the meteorite to strike the ground and simulate a ground impact, but deep enough to allow a massive steam explosion.
(a ball of hydrogen which never got quite big enough to ignite, but which plays binary to the sun)
25 years ago this theory may have been worth spending time on, but technology has done a pretty good job of ruling it out since then (nothing is impossible, but its presence is highly unlikely).
The theory that a brown dwarf or Uranus to Jupiterian-sized planet could be orbiting beyond Pluto in a slow or elliptical orbit invisible to ground based visible light scopes is believable, but astronomy has moved well beyond visible light. We've scanned the sky in X-Ray, infrared, radio, and gamma ray, and haven't found ANYTHING resembling another planet or nearby star. Planets, especially gas giants, tend to be noisy and easily visible by radio, and ALL planetary bodies have some kind of infrared signature. If there were anything out there of any appreciable size, we'd have seen some sign of it by now.
Ah, but there's a difference. Linux can survive in a world where all software is free, but Microsoft cannot! If Microsoft were to give ALL of their software away, they would only last as a company so long as their cash reserves held out (which wouldn't be long considering that their stocks would quickly become worthless). Microsoft giving their software away would delay the widespread adoption of Linux, but in the long term it would be beneficial to us...Linux would still be standing long after the MS behemoth collapsed.
Heh, but if this catches on, and if Microsoft is forced to discount ALL of its major sales in order to compete with Linux, then the company could quickly find itself in a financial tight spot. If even 10% of MS sales suddenly became "anti-Linux freebies", then the impact against their bottom line would be enormous.
Stand corrected. The California deficit, last I checked, was $36.4 billion dollars. That's more deficit than all of the other state deficits combined. You know how California is...this place always has to be first in everything:\
Funny, I live in California, and I've got a 75rd drum magazine for my AK47, and when an off duty sheriff was looking at it a few weeks ago as I was doing some target shooting at the local range, all I heard from him was..."Nice!" Lot's of us Californians have "grandfathered" weapons that aren't subject to these stupid laws.
Hrm, I wonder if I could cram an MP3 player in there and get on Slashdot....
Slashdot Mirror
Where the heck did you hear THAT? There are still, today, large stretches of the California foothills that are nearly free of invasive species, or in which native grasses are still the majority. I assure you that these grasses turn quite brown when it doesn't rain for five months straight and the 105 degree summer heat rolls in. Only the oaks and manzanita stay green in that kind of weather.
Look, I'm not a kiwi but if I were I'd have a serious problem with the fact that millions of my tax dollars were being wasted so that a few people can live out their idyllic fantasies of living on a beach lined South Pacific island. If these people want to live there, they should figure out a way to be self supporting...the same way their ancestors were for more than a thousand years.
If the island is no longer naturally hospitable to human habitation, then the people should leave rather than expecting the rest of their nation to subsidize their unsustainable dream of the way things "should be". Dreams are nice, but they need to be tempered with a bit of reality.
A LOT of people make that commute. I used to work in San Jose and live in Ripon (a little town in the Central Valley), easily a 1.5 to 2 hour daily commute. Why did I work in San Jose? For the $90k+ yearly paychecks. Why do I live in Ripon? Because I was able to buy a 2800sf 4/3 here five years ago for about $180,000, and a comparable home in the Bay Area would have set me back $600,000 easily.
Of course, I decided to simplify my life a couple of years ago and gave up my cushy $90k a year San Jose job for a $43k a year government gig about 10 minutes from home. Not everyone is willing to give up half their income to eliminate their commute, however.
Hate to break this to you, but no you don't. Your name may be on the pink, but unless you're emancipated ALL of your property is under the de facto legal control of your parents. If your dad wanted to sell the truck tomorrow, there isn't jack you could do about it (legally anyway). Trust me on this one. I grew up in California, and when I was 17 my dad put my Camaro up for sale after busting me racing. I paid for the car myself, with my own cash, carried my own insurance, and his name was NOWHERE on the pink slip, but I was informed by both the DMV and the local police that there was little I could do short of filing a civil suit AND emancipating myself. As a minor, my parents had full legal authority to dispose of any property in my name. In this state, and practically all others, the right of a minor to own property is simply not recognized.
Look it up if you don't believe me. Or better yet, call a lawyer and ask.
A bit late in the conversation but...
$384 a month for a car payment is actually pretty high nowadays unless you've just bought a new top 'o the line SUV. If I were you I'd consider refinancing through a credit union or other A or B class lending institution. I recently refi'd my Mazda 626, bringing my interest rate down to 5.5% and my payment down from $355 a month to $160 a month. Yeah, it means it'll be an extra two years until I pay it off, but I wasn't planning on dumping the car anyway and the lowered interest rate actually saves me money in the long run.
Just a suggestion!
Actually, we only have one golden rule in my house when it comes to the kids and computers: "Don't do anything online that you wouldn't do in person". If a parent has raised their children to be honest and trustworthy, that's the only rule needed.
And your assertion about kids snooping back is dead wrong. It is the duty of a parent to watch over their progeny to verify that they aren't getting themselves into dangerous situations. We do this in real life by knowing where our kids are, who they are with, and by letting them know what kinds of activities are unacceptable. When my daughter is staying the night at a friends house, I think nothing of calling the friends parents beforehand to verify that it's ok, and then calling them again later that evening to make sure she's behaving herself. That's just a part of parenting.
When my daughter (or my son...I don't want it to seem like I'm picking on her, but he doesn't use it as much) goes online, I lose that ability to find out who she's hanging out with and where she's going, so I use my hacked Squid to get that ability back. I'm no bible thumping conservative, so I don't care if my kids are talking about parties or boys, I just need to know who they're talking to and where they're hanging out.
No, my proxy (when it's on, which is random) actually does keyword searching and emails me when certain words or word combinations are found in the traffic(FYI, it's a self-hacked version of squid, which I'll probably release the code for one of these years), so I didn't discover this until several hours after the fact. My daughter had turned his proposition down, but it still inspired a long talk between her and I about lying about her age in chatrooms.
Or do what I do and just TELL them that you're logging their traffic. Knowing that anything they say online can be used against them by dad does wonders to keep them honest.
And don't give me lip about not trusting my kids...I trust my kids with my life. It's the million other perverts who would lure them to the local Motel 6 that I don't trust. Children, even teenagers, need guidance and need their parents to keep an eye on them and prevent them from getting into potentially dangerous situations. In my case, I do that by occassionally snooping on their communications. Considering that I've already caught my nine year old daughter posing as a 13 year old, AND caught a local high school kid propositioning her, you'll have a heck of a time convincing me that monitoring is a BAD thing.
Yes, and then you have the "accidental" rich, like my dad. He purchased a beautiful stretch of Oregon land in the 1970's for $35,000, which through no fault or work of his own, is now worth an estimated $7 million. Why? Because of the golf course and million dollar homes that went up next door in the 80's and 90's. Personally, I'd like to inherit the land and keep it in the family, but any estate tax will effectively prevent that from happening...we'd have to sell it to some developer just to cover the tax bill.
The US really wasn't a superpower until the close of WWII, and really only gained that status because we were the only nation that wasn't bombed to rubble in the conflict. The LoN fell because of its own powerless, undemocratic structure.
The problem with your argument is that the southerners were right. Any impartial reading of the documents written by the founders of this nation (The Federalist Papers, the Constitution itself..etc) make it pretty clear what they had in mind: The states would be free to run themselves as they chose, and the federal government would only be involved in trade related matters between the states and act as a common negotiating body when dealing with foreign powers. The only exception to this was to be the "national laws" enshrined in the Constitution itself...the articles and amendments that still give us our basic rights today. Lincoln and the other federalists wanted to redefine that relationship to put the federal government in charge of the states. The Union Armies won, but that doesn't neccesarily make Lincoln right.
Personally, I find that the pre-war "independent states" model is actually superior, as it puts the real decision making at a level closer to the citizenry, and allows the states to make decisions based on the needs of their local populations. What's good for the citizens of Florida may be bad for the citizens of Alaska, and yet our current system doesn't allow much flexibility when enacting national laws.
The same thing would happen, I fear, with the UN if it had the ability. Should the UN have the ability to regulate the flow of information across the borders of nations? If the democratically elected leaders of the UN voted to do that, then yes...it SHOULD be within their power (and, of course, we'll vote them out next time around). Should they be able to restrict the flow of information WITHIN the borders of a nation? Absolutely not, the individual citizens of a nation should be governed by the laws and rights of their own nation.
I support the concept of world government, but before the UN can assume that role, a few things need to happen.
- The UN needs a split houses concept similar to the US and other democratic nation. One house gets a number of representatives dependent on a nations population, and in the other house all nations have equal numbers of representatives. This is the ONLY fair way to ensure that all nations are heard regardless of size or population.
- Abolish the security council. It made sense 50 years ago, but not today.
- All representatives should be ELECTED by the people in their nations, with reasonably limited terms (5 or six years max). If these people are going to determine my fate and run my Internet, I'd damned well better get a say in who represents me. Undemocratic nations that don't allow their citizens to vote should NOT get voting seats in the UN.
- It should respect the constitutions of its member nations. The UN should not have the ability to override, veto, or limit decisions or rights made or granted by their sovereign member states.
You'll pardon me for not holding my breath for these changes. The UN is a flawed, crippled organization that tries to grab onto any semblance of real power that it can, and it's in the interests of this worlds powerful nations to make sure it stays right where it is.Depends on what the terrorist is doing. If the terrorist is running out to buy a bagel and coffee, then yes, he should be arrested and tried. On the other hand, if he's got a trunkload of sarin gas and is on his way to give everyone in Manhattan a very bad day, then we should simply kill him before he has a chance to activate his weapons.
Anyone who advocates giving EVEY terrorist a trial is a misguided idealist. Anyone who advocates killing every terrorist without a trial is a coldhearted fascist. Reality, as always, demands a solution somewhere in the middle.
The problem is that most of those "dozens of others" based their research on the premises of the Mann '98 report, which claimed that the last 50 years were the hottest in history. They built their claims on what we now understand to be a potentially false foundation.
Note the sequence of events here: A bunch of scientists said the Earth was getting warmer. One small group did some research and said that the Earth was hotter than any other time in history. A bunch of other scientists went "Uh oh, we'd better figure out what's going on" and started researching it. A bunch of other scientists realized that human caused CO2 emissions had risen substantially in the last 50 years, and that CO2 has the potential to be a greenhouse gas. A bunch of other scientists put two and two together and decided that human induced greenhouse gasses caused the sharpest temperature jump and highest temperatures in history. The public panicked, and governments joined in to draft a treaty which would limit CO2 and potentially devastate many economies "for the good of the planet".
Manns research was the bottom card that the rest of the house was built on, and when we pull it out we undermine the whole structure. Is the Earth warming? Yes, that's indisputable. But we now understand that it's warming within its normal range, and that it has been even warmer in relatively recent history when humans WEREN'T influencing the environment. I'm a member of the Sierra Club and believe strongly in protecting our world, but I'm also a scientist and believe that facts must always come first. I read the paper, and it looks like a solid analysis that presents some real problems with the Mann report (which I've always had a problem with anyway...anyone with a research background should read it and take an objective look at some of the questionable assumptions they made to fill in missing data). I'll withhold judgement until a few more researchers familiar with the field have a chance to review and rebut, but it looks to me like the environmental movement just took a serious blow to their credibility.
LOL! No, she didn't. You have to be pretty seriously overweight to lose height (and later gain it back when the weight is lost). My wife was only a little overweight, and didn't gain any height when she lost what little fat she had.
Heh, that one had me stumped too at first. My doctor later explained to me that it really isn't that uncommon for seriously obese people to gain height while losing a lot of weight. Between joint compression, spinal curvature caused by your gut pulling your torso downwards and forwards, and simple bad posture, most seriously overweight people are anywhere from .3" to .75" shorter than their skeletal potential. My gaining an inch (actually, about .9 inches) while losing 106lbs was a little on the extreme side, but it's certainly not unheard of.
Personally, I consider that one of the best aspects of exercise. My day is full of enough nonstop distractions from ringing phones, clients "just stopping by", tight coding deadlines, meetings, wife demanding attention, kids demanding attention, yards demanding attention...it never ends. That 45 minutes of solitude every morning, when it's just me, my thoughts, and the foggy trail ahead, are the only things that keep me sane.
And for reference: A year ago I was 6' 285lbs. Today I'm 6'1" 179lbs. No fancy diets, no gimmicks, no body abuse. I just reduced the number of calories going into my body (1300-1600 a day depending on activity level) and made a point to exercise whether I wanted to or not. I don't pay attention to things like fat content, carb content, protein content, or any of those other distractions that make dieting seem so complex, I just watch the bottom line....daily caloric intake. It works for me with NO risk of health problems, it's worked for my wife (30 lbs in 4 months), and it's worked for everybody else who's tried it and stuck to it. The human body evolved to deal with two realities: 1) That people are constantly active. 2) That high calorie meals are rare. That we have eliminated these realities in the last 100 years says a lot for humanity, but the underlying fact still remains...if you want your body to operate at its peak, you have to subject it to the conditions it was optimized for. Just like computers. GIGO.
Zip drives failed? Man, if you came to my office and said that the graphics guys would lynch you! Not only are Zip drives still standard equipment on thousands of our office PC's, but we even have Zip libraries organized by our own proprietary barcode system. When someone in our office tells you on the phone "I'm sending that file over to you", they're more likely to SneakerNet a Zip disk to your office than transfer it by LAN or Email. Sad too...our gigabit ethernet is woefully underutilized :)
And is it a cent or a penny you use? Make up your mind!
A "cent" is 1% of a dollar, no matter the combination of coins you are using. If I asked for 75 cents, you could pay me using three quarters, two quarters, two dimes, and a nickel, or seventy five pennies. The format of the money is irrelevant...it's still seventy five cents.
The term "penny" is used when referring specifically to the "one cent" copper coin. Penny is an unofficial name derived from "pence", and is still in use primarily out of habit and popularity. "Penny" just sounds better than "One Cent Coin".
Also, diverting a large one into an ocean would still cause problems, probably just as bad as it hitting on land.
Actually, a large scale ocean impact is MORE devastating than a land impact. With a land impact you punch a big hole in the ground and throw a bunch of dust into the air. With an ocean strike you get the same, with the added bonus of a steam explosion as the water in the impact area instantly converts to its gaseous form. Remember, steam expands. As it expands up and out from the impact point, it displaces the atmosphere creating a second shockwave capable of devastating regions thousands of miles from the strike zone.
Best impact point: South Pole. Glacial melting may be an issue, but that'll give us time to evacuate and minimize casualties.
Worst impact point: In the ocean just off the coast of any continent. The ocean is shallow enough to allow the meteorite to strike the ground and simulate a ground impact, but deep enough to allow a massive steam explosion.
(a ball of hydrogen which never got quite big enough to ignite, but which plays binary to the sun)
25 years ago this theory may have been worth spending time on, but technology has done a pretty good job of ruling it out since then (nothing is impossible, but its presence is highly unlikely).
The theory that a brown dwarf or Uranus to Jupiterian-sized planet could be orbiting beyond Pluto in a slow or elliptical orbit invisible to ground based visible light scopes is believable, but astronomy has moved well beyond visible light. We've scanned the sky in X-Ray, infrared, radio, and gamma ray, and haven't found ANYTHING resembling another planet or nearby star. Planets, especially gas giants, tend to be noisy and easily visible by radio, and ALL planetary bodies have some kind of infrared signature. If there were anything out there of any appreciable size, we'd have seen some sign of it by now.
Ah, but there's a difference. Linux can survive in a world where all software is free, but Microsoft cannot! If Microsoft were to give ALL of their software away, they would only last as a company so long as their cash reserves held out (which wouldn't be long considering that their stocks would quickly become worthless). Microsoft giving their software away would delay the widespread adoption of Linux, but in the long term it would be beneficial to us...Linux would still be standing long after the MS behemoth collapsed.
Heh, but if this catches on, and if Microsoft is forced to discount ALL of its major sales in order to compete with Linux, then the company could quickly find itself in a financial tight spot. If even 10% of MS sales suddenly became "anti-Linux freebies", then the impact against their bottom line would be enormous.
:-)
What a happy thought
Stand corrected. The California deficit, last I checked, was $36.4 billion dollars. That's more deficit than all of the other state deficits combined. You know how California is...this place always has to be first in everything :\
Funny, I live in California, and I've got a 75rd drum magazine for my AK47, and when an off duty sheriff was looking at it a few weeks ago as I was doing some target shooting at the local range, all I heard from him was..."Nice!" Lot's of us Californians have "grandfathered" weapons that aren't subject to these stupid laws.
Hrm, I wonder if I could cram an MP3 player in there and get on Slashdot....