In light of the approaching hurricane, and during heavy rain in general, I like to make sure my sump pump is keeping up (I live in an older house). Rather than continually going down to check on it, I installed a WiFi IP Camera in the room pointed at the pump. That way I can check on it periodically from my phone without actually going in there. Of course, infra-red LEDs are a must on such a setup, but they come with most cameras anyway. To generalize, cameras wherever you might want to monitor the state of the house. This would be separate from security cameras.
Ah, now it's $100k, eh? The definition of "rich" really keeps coming down. When Obama started his class warfare schtick, it was over a quarter million or something, then it was $200k, now it's apparently $100k....
Who the hell are you to decide when someone makes too much money and should pay more? In your infinite wisdom, are you adjusting for cost of living per geographical area? How about inflation? Seems as inflation increases, your standard keeps getting lower. How DOES that work anyway? Is there a formula?
Maybe you need to stop picking numbers out of your nose and exposing your jealousy for the world to see. By the way, in most major metropolitan areas, $100k would barely get you by. Certainly you'd never own even an average house, and you'd probably need a second income if you had kids to support. Just because a number *sounds* big to you in your area of the world doesn't mean that it is for everyone.
That may be true, but then, Mexicans get paid more than 2 bucks a day. Fortunately for everyone, businesses sitting down to do the math eliminate such ridiculous hyperbole from the word "Go."
Oddly enough, I just did this about an hour ago. It wouldn't PXE (boot media not found or some crap), but if I generated an etherboot iso image from rom-o-matic.net and set that up in the virtual CDROM drive, it boots up just fine.
Now if I could just get it to give me something other than 4:3 ratio resolutions in the guest, I would be a happy camper. I want 1900x1200, dammit, not 1600x1200!
(For a bit of context -- Using VBox as a PXE-booted LTSP workstation client on my Mac. Works pretty well, after a significant amount of tinkering.)
That's just because they're a bunch of racists who are trying to seem un-racist by voting for the guy who's a member of a race they're racist against. Duh.
Lagging behind? The issue here is a law that's two years old, stating that importers must abide by all of the laws of the country from which they are sourcing the materials. Sounds like a good idea on the face of it, but unfortunately, it's very much open to interpretation.
There are several problems here:
1. The government has confiscated over $1M of materials, *and not given a reason for it* 2. The government did the same thing two years ago re: Madagascar woods, and the trial is still dragging on due to government dragging its feet, missing deadlines, requesting stays, etc. 3. The government has claimed that *any* guitar sold by Gibson can be construed as obstruction of justice, and that this can be applied to the BUYER and the RETAILER. So, in other words, they've threatened criminal charges against anyone who buys a Gibson guitar. Because they have not stated a specific infraction, Gibson does not know which guitars this may apply to, and so must assume *all* of them. 4. Gibson assumes that this has to do with an Indian law stating that if any finishing work is done in India, that ALL finishing work must be done in India. Gibson buys half-finished fingerboard blanks from their Indian suppliers, but has all of the proper sign-offs and paperwork to show that this was approved by the government. 5. The government raided a factory using fully-armed SWAT team. This alone is a disturbing trend that must be stopped. They weren't raiding a pot house or a meth lab, they're raiding a guitar factory. Suits, pens and clipboards were much more appropriate than kevlar and automatic weapons.
Here's a video of the CEO talking about the raid. It's a bit long, but the guy seems genuinely baffled as to what could be the cause of the raid:
Does this mean that I'm supposed to be pro-pollution or pro-global warming? As some people age, they can't figure out the remote control. Me, I have trouble keeping up with the world-ending-panic-du-jour.
That really seems to me to be a non-sequitur. It doesn't follow that, if one opposes illegal immigration that one also opposes legal immigration simply because the legal caps are lower than one would like. It ignores the main thrust of being anti-illegal immigration: supporting the influx of legal immigrants. I think I see what you're saying -- that if certain people aren't allowed in and I don't want them to come illegally, then I'm against them coming. Well, true, I'm against them coming "illegally," but if the government were to raise those caps to a reasonable limit and allow them in legally using appropriate background/health checks, I wouldn't be against it.
The key difference is the solution. Some would say, as many do, that they then have no choice but to come illegally, when the correct solution is to respect the laws of your new home and wait for a diplomatic solution. That's why these things exist. To break the laws of the country from the word "go" puts you on the wrong foot to begin with, and makes any kind of success very difficult to achieve.
I've heard this argument in several forms, but it's essentially "Well, the US won't just let everyone in, so they HAVE to sneak in!" Um, no, they don't. If you're not welcome, go somewhere else.
The fact is that this is a feedback loop. The more people come in illegally, the less can be allowed legally. We can't allow the entirety of Mexico and the rest of Latin America to come here at will because they bring their culture and refuse to adopt ours in any meaningful way. The "hard-working grass cutter guy" is a shocking minority of the people who come here, and is only used for the emotional aspect of the pro-illegal argument. "Oh, see?! You're a bigot!"
Yes, yes I am. Not against individuals, but against the culture of corruption and crime that is shot through nearly everything that happens there. My wife was born and raised in South America. Her country is going to shit along with nearly every other country down there because of self-serving, power-hungry politicians, crime cartels, and very little respect for rule of law. Let me tell you about her country.
* You have to build 10 foot walls around your house in the average neighborhood, complete with glass shards on the top to dissuade the average criminal. It doesn't work, though, because they just throw a blanket over them and walk right along on top.
* You have to have radios with the detachable face plates because your car WILL get robbed. Of course, now they'll just steal the body of the unit without the face plate. They also steal unprotected spare tires, and the engine computer. Why? Because things like radio bodies and engine computers are difficult to find, so you have to their black market flea markets go buy the parts back from the criminals who stole them! It's just an indirect way of robbing your wallet.
* They dig up roads in rural areas and then charge you a "toll" to drive around the ditch they dug.
* Strikers (who are seemingly always on strike, BTW) will destroy national infrastructure in order to get what they want. Typically, this means blockading or tearing up roads.
* Her country has seen an influx of, yes, illegal immigrants from neighboring countries. Are they the "hardworking lawnmowing types?" Nope. They're gangs, gun runners, drug traffickers, and just about every other undesirable. What have they done? Secured their borders. They also have military checkpoints at random spots where yes, you need to show your papers. I, an American, was stopped at one of these by ten guys with machine guns, searched, and let go without incident. (No, I don't think this is a good solution in our country, but it shows that these South American countries are actively dealing with the same problems, and in ways that our "more sensitive" culture would find "racist." Some checkpoints are random, others every car must pass through.)
* Her brother's business is relatively successful, and therefore is repeatedly *individually* targeted by both national and township taxes and regulations, despite the fact that he only operates in two towns and would still be considered a medium sized business by any standards. Why is he targeted? He's successful and doesn't play the political game. His competitors (and there are many) are not as successful, but DO play the political games, and use government as a weapon.
* Cops take bribes on the street in broad daylight.
These are just a few examples. The list goes on, and on, and on. That's just her country, and it's not even the worst country down there.
When she came here she overstayed her visa and her English was... not great. She was sharing an apartment with another family of illegal immigrants from Colombia, who are a whole other story.
(Side story: They eventually left for the socialist paradise, Canada, because of free health care and free houses (?!?!) In the preceding months when he was considering leaving, the husband quit the cash job he had as a painter and did nothing, assuming that he was going to go to Canada to be taken care of, while living
1. Dragging this on only increases and ingrains the overall division of the people in the country, where a clear and decisive victory for one side or the other would have allowed the fighting to stop. Instead of "that awful week when the rebels failed/succeeded in overthrowing govt", people will increasingly remember a full on civil war and the division that comes with it.
2. The longer this takes, the more Gaddafi and supporters believe they can actually win this thing. At first he had several high-level defections once NATO became involved, probably because they didn't see how Gaddafi could possibly win this thing. Now? Probably won't happen anymore. What's more, where Gaddafi might have decided to surrender, he'll now hold on hoping NATO just loses willpower and walks off.
3. When he wins (and he probably will at this point), his retribution will be terrible for the rebels and their supporters. Genocide? Hah. I don't think we've seen anything yet. And what is NATO going to say at that point? They already tried to overthrow him and lost, in the process losing any credibility or threat they may have had.
As with any war, all in or all out. Half-assed is the worst possible thing you can do.
The problem is that, while you're turning your little ideological corner, I'd wager that most other countries are not. If you want to give them your livelihood, well, they'll be happy to take it. But don't expect the same from them. Ever.
I'm a miserable bastard, I know, but my take on this would be that your actions as an individual are insignificant to the point of being negligible, and history shows that your chances of influencing others by your example are also near zero. Realistically the chances are that you're not assisting those worse off than yourself, you're just giving another opportunity for gain to the self-serving asshats who exploit the system for all it's worth.
The alternative is to take advantage of the situation, and be a self-serving asshat yourself. Sometimes you need to let asshats be asshats, and at least not hate yourself at night. Can one person make a difference? Oh, sometimes, but usually not. The real question is whether enough people refuse to be asshats that they can make a difference in aggregate. "If I didn't, someone else would" is not a valid justification for reprehensible behavior.
That's true, and was exactly my point: That it's impossible to know anything outside the confines of the universe. The mistake you're making is assuming that because we can't measure, that because we can't reach it, that:
1) Nothing can possibly exist outside just because it's unknowable to us 2) Someone from outside can't reach in
Another analogy is a fish in a river or pond. He maybe sees blurs from above the surface of the water, but he's confined to the water. He has no way to meaningfully explore the outside. A fish genius using your logic might theorize that nothing can possibly live outside of the water because he can't leave the water to explore it, and, because of the water/land barrier, can perform no meaningful experiments. To him, the idea of an entire society of beings radically different from him would seem ludicrous.
To a fish who has "faith" that humans exist, he has no way to prove it, and a fish scientist might call it "unfalsifiable." Perhaps the believer fish spent a few moments on a catch-and-release fisherman's boat and couldn't really explain what he saw. How would his story sound to skeptical fish who have never had such an experience?
To stretch this analogy a bit thinner, remember that no fish in the water would ever see a human, as such. They'd see the *implements* of humans -- hooks, mysteriously floating worms, lines, etc. Those aren't humans, and it would certainly strain credulity of any thinking fish that these things are the implements of some magical race of super-beings who can exist outside of the water.
See? The assumption that because we can't test it or have access to it, then it can't possibly exist is flawed.
One of the better analogies I've seen is the idea of the universe as a computer program. Once started, yes, everything follows rules and process, which is what a hypothetical scientist inside that computer would study. But the act of coming up with those rules, coming up with the system, the runtime, the engineering of putting it all together into a coherent system -- that's creation. In our universe, we can only study the "program" and make assumptions about where it came from and what the 'programmer' might be like. That's perfectly compatible with the big bang, evolution, and everything else we observe because it's all according the the rules of the system.
As someone within the confines of a system like that, you can't prove or disprove the existence of someone or something outside. You can only make conclusions based on the rules you know, which may not, in fact, be universal in the all-encompassing sense. Yes, that irks some people and does put God outside the reach of "science" and into the realm of "faith," and that's fine, but the decision to have that faith or not is a personal choice. That's why people like you need to chill out, and people who go around killing others in the name of their religion also need to chill out. Faith can only be a personal decision, and no one should be getting killed over it.
Science is the study and description of our universe, but what created that? What was there before? Was there anything before those rules were put down? Maybe different rules? Maybe no rules? Physics already postulates other "universes" with completely different sets of rules -- in essence, completely different "sciences." Perhaps your beloved scientists, in whom you put your faith and trust "need the help of a professional, a psychiatrist" as well?
If you're omniscient, it doesn't mean you've forced anyone's hand. It just means that you know which choices will be made, and the ultimate result of those choices.There's a subtle but important difference.
Imagine you see your kid on the other end of the room reaching for a stove burner. You see what he's doing, you know what will happen, you know he's gonna spend the next hour crying. That doesn't mean you made him do it. That was his choice. You just knew in advance about the burns and the crying.
Now your prediction isn't really omniscience because you're basing it on what you expect to happen in the next second or two. Something might catch his eye at the last moment and he decides not to do it, but that's really the only difference between omniscience and prediction. Well, that, and scale. Either way, it doesn't take away the free will of the actors.
Uranus' atmosphere is 83% hydrogen, 15% helium and 2% methane, making oxidation a bit of a problem. Maybe something in the environment besides oxygen would work. I dunno.
Slashdot Mirror
So are you saying that Zuckerberg is going to pay minions to vet all of this content? Because I'm betting they just automate it.
So any network gets to censor something, and they automatically censor it across other networks! I love it! ...As long as I get to drive.
One is too many. Zero is the optimal number.
Managers in my company have this mastered. Nobody knows anything.
Never even heard of it. I'll check into it. Thanks for the idea!
In light of the approaching hurricane, and during heavy rain in general, I like to make sure my sump pump is keeping up (I live in an older house). Rather than continually going down to check on it, I installed a WiFi IP Camera in the room pointed at the pump. That way I can check on it periodically from my phone without actually going in there. Of course, infra-red LEDs are a must on such a setup, but they come with most cameras anyway. To generalize, cameras wherever you might want to monitor the state of the house. This would be separate from security cameras.
I take it you're a member of the *resistance*? Get it? Heh, heh... er.. never mind. I'll sit down now.
Ah, now it's $100k, eh? The definition of "rich" really keeps coming down. When Obama started his class warfare schtick, it was over a quarter million or something, then it was $200k, now it's apparently $100k....
Who the hell are you to decide when someone makes too much money and should pay more? In your infinite wisdom, are you adjusting for cost of living per geographical area? How about inflation? Seems as inflation increases, your standard keeps getting lower. How DOES that work anyway? Is there a formula?
Maybe you need to stop picking numbers out of your nose and exposing your jealousy for the world to see. By the way, in most major metropolitan areas, $100k would barely get you by. Certainly you'd never own even an average house, and you'd probably need a second income if you had kids to support. Just because a number *sounds* big to you in your area of the world doesn't mean that it is for everyone.
That may be true, but then, Mexicans get paid more than 2 bucks a day. Fortunately for everyone, businesses sitting down to do the math eliminate such ridiculous hyperbole from the word "Go."
Oddly enough, I just did this about an hour ago. It wouldn't PXE (boot media not found or some crap), but if I generated an etherboot iso image from rom-o-matic.net and set that up in the virtual CDROM drive, it boots up just fine.
Now if I could just get it to give me something other than 4:3 ratio resolutions in the guest, I would be a happy camper. I want 1900x1200, dammit, not 1600x1200!
(For a bit of context -- Using VBox as a PXE-booted LTSP workstation client on my Mac. Works pretty well, after a significant amount of tinkering.)
That's just because they're a bunch of racists who are trying to seem un-racist by voting for the guy who's a member of a race they're racist against. Duh.
Lagging behind? The issue here is a law that's two years old, stating that importers must abide by all of the laws of the country from which they are sourcing the materials. Sounds like a good idea on the face of it, but unfortunately, it's very much open to interpretation.
There are several problems here:
1. The government has confiscated over $1M of materials, *and not given a reason for it*
2. The government did the same thing two years ago re: Madagascar woods, and the trial is still dragging on due to government dragging its feet, missing deadlines, requesting stays, etc.
3. The government has claimed that *any* guitar sold by Gibson can be construed as obstruction of justice, and that this can be applied to the BUYER and the RETAILER. So, in other words, they've threatened criminal charges against anyone who buys a Gibson guitar. Because they have not stated a specific infraction, Gibson does not know which guitars this may apply to, and so must assume *all* of them.
4. Gibson assumes that this has to do with an Indian law stating that if any finishing work is done in India, that ALL finishing work must be done in India. Gibson buys half-finished fingerboard blanks from their Indian suppliers, but has all of the proper sign-offs and paperwork to show that this was approved by the government.
5. The government raided a factory using fully-armed SWAT team. This alone is a disturbing trend that must be stopped. They weren't raiding a pot house or a meth lab, they're raiding a guitar factory. Suits, pens and clipboards were much more appropriate than kevlar and automatic weapons.
Here's a video of the CEO talking about the raid. It's a bit long, but the guy seems genuinely baffled as to what could be the cause of the raid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_-taqM5Sk0
Self respect.
The price of civilization is a bitch, isn't it. I read that Pakistan is closer to the libertarian ideal than Somalia, btw.
No, the cost of civilization is fine. It's everything else we're paying for on top of that that's a bitch.
yet. It's not like nobody could ever come up with that smart idea.
I'm thinking any popular social networking site that has a smartphone app. Fortunately, I don't know any like that.
Well, later guys. Time to fire up Google+ and Facebook apps on my way to work so I can see what my friends are having for breakfast!
Does this mean that I'm supposed to be pro-pollution or pro-global warming? As some people age, they can't figure out the remote control. Me, I have trouble keeping up with the world-ending-panic-du-jour.
That really seems to me to be a non-sequitur. It doesn't follow that, if one opposes illegal immigration that one also opposes legal immigration simply because the legal caps are lower than one would like. It ignores the main thrust of being anti-illegal immigration: supporting the influx of legal immigrants. I think I see what you're saying -- that if certain people aren't allowed in and I don't want them to come illegally, then I'm against them coming. Well, true, I'm against them coming "illegally," but if the government were to raise those caps to a reasonable limit and allow them in legally using appropriate background/health checks, I wouldn't be against it.
The key difference is the solution. Some would say, as many do, that they then have no choice but to come illegally, when the correct solution is to respect the laws of your new home and wait for a diplomatic solution. That's why these things exist. To break the laws of the country from the word "go" puts you on the wrong foot to begin with, and makes any kind of success very difficult to achieve.
I've heard this argument in several forms, but it's essentially "Well, the US won't just let everyone in, so they HAVE to sneak in!" Um, no, they don't. If you're not welcome, go somewhere else.
The fact is that this is a feedback loop. The more people come in illegally, the less can be allowed legally. We can't allow the entirety of Mexico and the rest of Latin America to come here at will because they bring their culture and refuse to adopt ours in any meaningful way. The "hard-working grass cutter guy" is a shocking minority of the people who come here, and is only used for the emotional aspect of the pro-illegal argument. "Oh, see?! You're a bigot!"
Yes, yes I am. Not against individuals, but against the culture of corruption and crime that is shot through nearly everything that happens there. My wife was born and raised in South America. Her country is going to shit along with nearly every other country down there because of self-serving, power-hungry politicians, crime cartels, and very little respect for rule of law. Let me tell you about her country.
* You have to build 10 foot walls around your house in the average neighborhood, complete with glass shards on the top to dissuade the average criminal. It doesn't work, though, because they just throw a blanket over them and walk right along on top.
* You have to have radios with the detachable face plates because your car WILL get robbed. Of course, now they'll just steal the body of the unit without the face plate. They also steal unprotected spare tires, and the engine computer. Why? Because things like radio bodies and engine computers are difficult to find, so you have to their black market flea markets go buy the parts back from the criminals who stole them! It's just an indirect way of robbing your wallet.
* They dig up roads in rural areas and then charge you a "toll" to drive around the ditch they dug.
* Strikers (who are seemingly always on strike, BTW) will destroy national infrastructure in order to get what they want. Typically, this means blockading or tearing up roads.
* Her country has seen an influx of, yes, illegal immigrants from neighboring countries. Are they the "hardworking lawnmowing types?" Nope. They're gangs, gun runners, drug traffickers, and just about every other undesirable. What have they done? Secured their borders. They also have military checkpoints at random spots where yes, you need to show your papers. I, an American, was stopped at one of these by ten guys with machine guns, searched, and let go without incident. (No, I don't think this is a good solution in our country, but it shows that these South American countries are actively dealing with the same problems, and in ways that our "more sensitive" culture would find "racist." Some checkpoints are random, others every car must pass through.)
* Her brother's business is relatively successful, and therefore is repeatedly *individually* targeted by both national and township taxes and regulations, despite the fact that he only operates in two towns and would still be considered a medium sized business by any standards. Why is he targeted? He's successful and doesn't play the political game. His competitors (and there are many) are not as successful, but DO play the political games, and use government as a weapon.
* Cops take bribes on the street in broad daylight.
These are just a few examples. The list goes on, and on, and on. That's just her country, and it's not even the worst country down there.
When she came here she overstayed her visa and her English was... not great. She was sharing an apartment with another family of illegal immigrants from Colombia, who are a whole other story.
(Side story: They eventually left for the socialist paradise, Canada, because of free health care and free houses (?!?!) In the preceding months when he was considering leaving, the husband quit the cash job he had as a painter and did nothing, assuming that he was going to go to Canada to be taken care of, while living
In fact, it makes it worse.
1. Dragging this on only increases and ingrains the overall division of the people in the country, where a clear and decisive victory for one side or the other would have allowed the fighting to stop. Instead of "that awful week when the rebels failed/succeeded in overthrowing govt", people will increasingly remember a full on civil war and the division that comes with it.
2. The longer this takes, the more Gaddafi and supporters believe they can actually win this thing. At first he had several high-level defections once NATO became involved, probably because they didn't see how Gaddafi could possibly win this thing. Now? Probably won't happen anymore. What's more, where Gaddafi might have decided to surrender, he'll now hold on hoping NATO just loses willpower and walks off.
3. When he wins (and he probably will at this point), his retribution will be terrible for the rebels and their supporters. Genocide? Hah. I don't think we've seen anything yet. And what is NATO going to say at that point? They already tried to overthrow him and lost, in the process losing any credibility or threat they may have had.
As with any war, all in or all out. Half-assed is the worst possible thing you can do.
The problem is that, while you're turning your little ideological corner, I'd wager that most other countries are not. If you want to give them your livelihood, well, they'll be happy to take it. But don't expect the same from them. Ever.
I'm a miserable bastard, I know, but my take on this would be that your actions as an individual are insignificant to the point of being negligible, and history shows that your chances of influencing others by your example are also near zero. Realistically the chances are that you're not assisting those worse off than yourself, you're just giving another opportunity for gain to the self-serving asshats who exploit the system for all it's worth.
The alternative is to take advantage of the situation, and be a self-serving asshat yourself. Sometimes you need to let asshats be asshats, and at least not hate yourself at night. Can one person make a difference? Oh, sometimes, but usually not. The real question is whether enough people refuse to be asshats that they can make a difference in aggregate. "If I didn't, someone else would" is not a valid justification for reprehensible behavior.
That's true, and was exactly my point: That it's impossible to know anything outside the confines of the universe. The mistake you're making is assuming that because we can't measure, that because we can't reach it, that:
1) Nothing can possibly exist outside just because it's unknowable to us
2) Someone from outside can't reach in
Another analogy is a fish in a river or pond. He maybe sees blurs from above the surface of the water, but he's confined to the water. He has no way to meaningfully explore the outside. A fish genius using your logic might theorize that nothing can possibly live outside of the water because he can't leave the water to explore it, and, because of the water/land barrier, can perform no meaningful experiments. To him, the idea of an entire society of beings radically different from him would seem ludicrous.
To a fish who has "faith" that humans exist, he has no way to prove it, and a fish scientist might call it "unfalsifiable." Perhaps the believer fish spent a few moments on a catch-and-release fisherman's boat and couldn't really explain what he saw. How would his story sound to skeptical fish who have never had such an experience?
To stretch this analogy a bit thinner, remember that no fish in the water would ever see a human, as such. They'd see the *implements* of humans -- hooks, mysteriously floating worms, lines, etc. Those aren't humans, and it would certainly strain credulity of any thinking fish that these things are the implements of some magical race of super-beings who can exist outside of the water.
See? The assumption that because we can't test it or have access to it, then it can't possibly exist is flawed.
You're not thinking "meta" enough.
One of the better analogies I've seen is the idea of the universe as a computer program. Once started, yes, everything follows rules and process, which is what a hypothetical scientist inside that computer would study. But the act of coming up with those rules, coming up with the system, the runtime, the engineering of putting it all together into a coherent system -- that's creation. In our universe, we can only study the "program" and make assumptions about where it came from and what the 'programmer' might be like. That's perfectly compatible with the big bang, evolution, and everything else we observe because it's all according the the rules of the system.
As someone within the confines of a system like that, you can't prove or disprove the existence of someone or something outside. You can only make conclusions based on the rules you know, which may not, in fact, be universal in the all-encompassing sense. Yes, that irks some people and does put God outside the reach of "science" and into the realm of "faith," and that's fine, but the decision to have that faith or not is a personal choice. That's why people like you need to chill out, and people who go around killing others in the name of their religion also need to chill out. Faith can only be a personal decision, and no one should be getting killed over it.
Science is the study and description of our universe, but what created that? What was there before? Was there anything before those rules were put down? Maybe different rules? Maybe no rules? Physics already postulates other "universes" with completely different sets of rules -- in essence, completely different "sciences." Perhaps your beloved scientists, in whom you put your faith and trust "need the help of a professional, a psychiatrist" as well?
If you're omniscient, it doesn't mean you've forced anyone's hand. It just means that you know which choices will be made, and the ultimate result of those choices.There's a subtle but important difference.
Imagine you see your kid on the other end of the room reaching for a stove burner. You see what he's doing, you know what will happen, you know he's gonna spend the next hour crying. That doesn't mean you made him do it. That was his choice. You just knew in advance about the burns and the crying.
Now your prediction isn't really omniscience because you're basing it on what you expect to happen in the next second or two. Something might catch his eye at the last moment and he decides not to do it, but that's really the only difference between omniscience and prediction. Well, that, and scale. Either way, it doesn't take away the free will of the actors.
You aren't the Ruler of the Universe, are you?
Uranus' atmosphere is 83% hydrogen, 15% helium and 2% methane, making oxidation a bit of a problem. Maybe something in the environment besides oxygen would work. I dunno.