Re:For those who don't want to RTFA, the top 10:
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· Score: 1
Also missing:
BOFH Darwin Awards
Re:For those who don't want to RTFA, the top 10:
on
Top 10 Web Fads
·
· Score: 1
WHAT?!
No zeekyboogydoog?
(my 11 year old pulled that one up and showed it to me last week. Blast from the past (no pun intended. Really)).
Re:Wharrabout...
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Top 10 Web Fads
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Not to mention tubgirl.
Ah - tubgirl!
I searched for ages on various locator sites trying to learn her true identity so I could stalk her with a pair of rubber gloves and a pot of coffee with cream. But alas. . . I could not find my one and only true love, my tubgirl.
Either your InstallShield package, or your zipped program, will work fine in almost any version of Windows - that is, 1 package for 90% of the computer using population,
yeah, assuming that; 1) MSI is updated properly 2) User is running as Admin 3) Package was written properly (many are not)
1. Enact provocative policy designed to inflame certain groups. 2. Wait for protest. 3. Infiltrate protest group with operatives who toss a brick through a window, or incite a group to overturn a car. 4. Send in the riot cops armed with whatever makes their corporate masters happy. 5. Profit!!!
I don't think that tin foil will likely do it, in this case.
A full-brass-mesh bodysuit, with no openings larger than the wavelength of the radiation, AND the brass-mesh GROUNDED, would likely have the desired shielding effect.
But aluminum foil would leave openings, which would tend to undesirably focus or concentrate the energy in smaller areas - with unpredictable effects. Plus, the generated induction current has to go somewhere (needs to be grounded) - otherwise heat, sparking, perhaps flames, perhaps electrical shock, might be the result.
Other considerations: The radiation might have undesirable effects on other equipment, such as, Journalistic recording devices, cell-phones, pagers, PDA's, even the soldiers' own GPS, radios, night vision systems, and other electronic tools.
Sounds like another case of the "Perfect Weapon" being too effective.
I wouldn't say that "they" (whoever that is) learned their lesson.
The casual misuse of Secret information, in violation of their clearance NDA's for the purposes of mounting a campaign of character assasination against a truthful critic was pretty reckless. And frankly, unforgivable. No true conservative, concerned with National Security, should find it acceptable, given the facts we know about today, based on Rove's and Cooper's public statements alone.
The information was marked Secret. And it was divulged or confirmed to the press. It doesn't matter if she was really "under cover" or not. The information was marked Secret. The likes of Karl Rove and Scooter Libby do not get to decide, on the fly, what "Secret" information is important enough to protect, and what "Secret" information is "fair game" for casual release to the media.
Regardless of how one feels about the Iraq war, or whether the lies justifying the war were themselves justified (ie. "the people needed to be lied to to silence the critics, so that the war's success could be ensured, or that terrorists would not be emboldened by domestic criticism" (absolute horseshit, in my opinion, but hardcore neocons will disagree with that position)) - I guess it's the perogative of the president and his staff to lie to the press and the public if that's the strategy they want to take (proven time and time again, to be unwise), and I guess it's their perogative also, to lie to congress, if congress decides not to call him on it (after all, it's the congress which the people elected - let their acquiescence to Bush's lies reflect on them in November 2006). But the mishandling of Classified information should not be acceptable. No matter what. If Bush had a problem with partisan CIA agents, he should have dealt with it by replacing Tenet back in 2000. Or at least in 2002.
It may be the same playbook, and the same creeps, and the same blood on their hands. But this instance is completely different. The press is undeniably destroying their own credibility by knowingly spreading false information to cover for Rove, and by supressing this story (in favor of Aruba abductions, Michael Jackson, etc.) for over two years now. Karl Rove may have clearly violated his SF-312. But he's not going to be the only casualty. There will be considerable "collateral damage" - both on other "usual suspects" in the White House, and especially on the softball-pitching press. A lot of credit was given them last monday when they raked McLellan over the coals. But frankly, it's a day late and a dollar short. When the Republicans lose their handy myth that the Mainstream Press is Liberal, they'll lose what is arguably their most valuable strategic weapon.
Why would they want a device like this? Are they expecting riots over there? I thought things were going great in Iraq. Freedom's on the march and all.
If you look at it in terms of memetic evolution, it becomes extremely worrying:
Look at the energy-cost that goes into the genesis of an empirically "good" meme. Often, the requirements are: A very smart person. A good education. Years of research. Neutral political bias. In many cases - propagation of such "good" memes is also similarly hampered. Some memes, like General Relativity, find that most human hosts are entirely inhospitable, curtailing that meme's propagation severely.
In contrast, any dumbass can come up with a "bad" meme, propagate it across the internet, and the bumper-stickers of the world.
Survival in nature is often a numbers-game. And that's why I am generally pessimistic about memetic evolution in our culture.
It kind of pisses me off though, that every time I talk about the Hubbert Peak - I'm lumped into the wack-jobs who say we're all gonna die. I never said "Peak Oil Crash".
I'm basically looking at the coming Hubbert Peak with optimism. Ethanol powered tractors? Fine. Organic farming. Fine. Shipping stuff from all over the world when it can be grown at home? That's going away. Maybe sooner, maybe later.
Actually, since Apple switched to Intel chips, basically, any crazy rumor anyone told me about Apple now, I'm likely to believe.
For instance, you could tell me that Steve Ballmer inserted a brain parasite into Steve Jobs' ass, and now Steve Jobs is Microsoft's puppet, and Apple will be building Palladium support into OS X, I would believe it.
Never in a million years did I once think Apple would actually switch to x86 chips. I mean - I thought that MAYBE they'd pursue a dual-platform strategy: x86 for iMacs, laptops, and Minis, PPC for servers and high-end workstations. Never thought they'd dump PPC entirely. Just too surreal for me.
All I'm saying is that the Hubbert Peak occurs (ie. when demand outpaces production capacity) - Oil will become a much more expensive commodity. This isn't a wingnut theory. Respected oil industry analysts are saying the same thing.
So, when oil prices rise, it will no longer be cheap to ship products from some third world shithole where labor is nearly free, to another country, to undercut domestic producers. Nor will it be as cheap to synthesize nitrogen fertilizers. Therefore, the supply of FOOD will be tightly constrained, and the VALUE of food, as a commodity will go up, and the corresponding markup (ie. profit) will also rise, giving small farmers a much needed leg-up. Small farmers have had a hard time for the past century, particularly in the past 30 years or so, due to the abundance of cheap oil. Cheap oil is going away. At $60/bbl, some might argue that it's already gone. I won't agree with that yet - but cheap/expensive is relative. I don't think we're going to see the $20/bbl mark we had in the 1990's ever again. That is, unless US dollars start disappearing en masse (as they have in Iraq!).
Well, I was talking primarily about "the SUV craze" - that is, in response to the parent post talking about how people feel manly when they drive an SUV. I was stating my theory as to why this is so. Not being a Primate Psychologist - I don't really know. Slashdot, of course, is all about talking out one's ass. But I digress.
Of course there are legitimate reasons to have an SUV. (Which is why I've got a 4*8'trailer for my Jetta).
Would I go offroad with the Jetta? No way.
Would I consider a scooter? I need highway speeds for my commute. Besides, 3 months out of the year, it rains just about every day here. So even a small motorcycle wouldn't really cut it.
Now - also, I do live near drivable sand-dunes, so my wife (who likes to "sit up high") has a Toyota 4Runner truck. But she drives less than 50 miles a week.
Because we live near the sand-dunes, we get a LOT of out-of-towners visiting on weekends, with the huge pickup trucks, w/lift kits, etc. I approach this with mixed feelings: When we get a bit farther down the road with the Hubbert Peak, these people will stop visiting my fair town, because they won't be able to afford $10/gal gasoline for their recreational activities. So my local economy will likely collapse. Driving the 4Runner on the dunes will be that much funner when the out-of-towners disappear. Assuming I can afford $10/gal gasoline after my job evaporates.
While I doubt that any real lasting change can ever happen without elimination of the monarchy, try reading the Crossroads Arabia blog, there's a lot of good things happening there, wrt political reforms. I'm just afraid that a lot of it is just for show, because they realize that some Americans are starting to get a little queasy about dealing with them.
Which only proves that ethanol is only feasible with a lot of goverment subsidy.
. ..while the Iraq War only proves that Petroleum is only feasible with a lot of government subsidy. (gee, I wish the government would pay to take over another country so that MY industry could get cheap resources. ..)
But if you took out ALL market regulation from agriculture, then eventually everyone would switch to Opium Poppies, because that would be the most profitable crop.
Don't get me started on how manly people think they are in big trucks and SUVs (burning reg gas) that can't even drive standard transmissions. Y
I've done a lot of thinking about the SUV craze, and the conclusion I came down to:
People like to sit at a higher elevation than everyone else. It's a biological urge.
If you look at how pack-animals behave, with regard to dominance competition, the dominant male holds his head higher than the rest. Those submitting to the dominance lower their heads. It continues through evolution, from reptiles, all the way up to mammals, through primates, to humans. In royal courts, for example, the king's chair is always higher than everyone else's. It's a biological urge, most likely subconsious. It manifests when a human is sitting behind the wheel of a Ford F250 double-cab, with a 16" lift-kit, etc., and they drive down the road looking down on those who drive the Toyota Scions or Priuses on the road. And they feel superior.
Personally, I drive a car that gets 46 miles per gallon. At nearly each gas station I drive by, I see people lined up at the pumps, and they may as well be shoving those hoses up their asses, as they get raped by the oil companies, basically paying a "tax" to them, just to get to their jobs. Driving past gas stations, and looking at the needle of my fuel gauge, knowing that I won't need to fill up for another two weeks, THAT makes ME feel superior.
and without it, small farmers in the midwest would go bankrupt...
The reason why small farmers are in such a bind is due to the large scale industrial farming processes, and exposure to a global market. The energy inputs are so cheap (because of cheap oil) - both for production of nitrogen fertilizers, and global transport to level-out the global market, that small farmers simply can not compete.
After the Hubbert oil peak, in about 10-15 years, I think you'll see a strong resurgence of small farmers. Farmland will be like gold. Sure, production yeilds will be much lower, and crop failures will become much more common, and it will be much more difficult to transport food long distances to markets where demand is high, but because of all these things, demand will be high EVERYWHERE. Food costs are going to go through the roof, to feed a planet of 6+ billion. And farmers will be the 2nd most profitable industry. After weapons manufacturers, of course.
What if:
The plants to produce ethanol were farmed using less-energy-intensive methods? Do we HAVE to use corn? Pretty much ANY grain can be fermented to produce Ethanol. Do we HAVE to use synthetic nitrogen-based fertilizers? The only point of that is to increase yeilds per-acre, but with the amount of farmland in this country lain fallow due to the current market conditions, there's no damn reason to hold Ethanol farming to the same production-efficiency standard. Synthetic fertilizers production is highly energy intensive. But plants will grow just fine without it.
What if the distillation process were done using solar energy? ie. a solar still. (granted, this example is for water purification, but distillation of ethanol can also be readily accomplished using similar methods.
I think that innovative processes could definately improve the energy yeild for ethanol production, if we're willing to think outside of the box that 20th Century industrial farming techniques have put us into.
Pushing a study that finds otherwise is willfully painting a "worst-case scenario" - and perhaps political leanings were behind it? Ethanol is a very highly-charged political topic. Personally, I don't know where to stand on it, because in this case, BOTH sides are evil. (OPEC/7-sisters, or ADM/Monsanto).
I guess we'll know soon enough how bad a mainland invasion of Japan would have been. My guess is, sometime in the next 20 years, China will be doing that. Or maybe they'll just use nukes like we did.
Slashdot Mirror
Also missing:
BOFH
Darwin Awards
WHAT?!
No zeekyboogydoog?
(my 11 year old pulled that one up and showed it to me last week. Blast from the past (no pun intended. Really)).
Not to mention tubgirl.
Ah - tubgirl!
I searched for ages on various locator sites trying to learn her true identity so I could stalk her with a pair of rubber gloves and a pot of coffee with cream. But alas. . . I could not find my one and only true love, my tubgirl.
Also hung firefox on a Mac running 10.3.9
Egad!
Anyone try Safari?
(though Safari's been absolute ass as far as stability goes since 10.4).
I reproduced this twice -
WinXP SP2, QT 6.5.2, about 9/10 of the way through the movie, firefox hangs up, and I had to kill it with Task Manager.
Recommend a separate download, and play outside of the browser.
Unauthorized use of this device for interrogation of detainees in 5, 4, 3, 2. . .
Either your InstallShield package, or your zipped program, will work fine in almost any version of Windows - that is, 1 package for 90% of the computer using population,
yeah, assuming that;
1) MSI is updated properly
2) User is running as Admin
3) Package was written properly (many are not)
1. Enact provocative policy designed to inflame certain groups.
2. Wait for protest.
3. Infiltrate protest group with operatives who toss a brick through a window, or incite a group to overturn a car.
4. Send in the riot cops armed with whatever makes their corporate masters happy.
5. Profit!!!
I don't think that tin foil will likely do it, in this case.
A full-brass-mesh bodysuit, with no openings larger than the wavelength of the radiation, AND the brass-mesh GROUNDED, would likely have the desired shielding effect.
But aluminum foil would leave openings, which would tend to undesirably focus or concentrate the energy in smaller areas - with unpredictable effects. Plus, the generated induction current has to go somewhere (needs to be grounded) - otherwise heat, sparking, perhaps flames, perhaps electrical shock, might be the result.
Other considerations:
The radiation might have undesirable effects on other equipment, such as, Journalistic recording devices, cell-phones, pagers, PDA's, even the soldiers' own GPS, radios, night vision systems, and other electronic tools.
Sounds like another case of the "Perfect Weapon" being too effective.
I wouldn't say that "they" (whoever that is) learned their lesson.
The casual misuse of Secret information, in violation of their clearance NDA's for the purposes of mounting a campaign of character assasination against a truthful critic was pretty reckless. And frankly, unforgivable. No true conservative, concerned with National Security, should find it acceptable, given the facts we know about today, based on Rove's and Cooper's public statements alone.
The information was marked Secret. And it was divulged or confirmed to the press. It doesn't matter if she was really "under cover" or not. The information was marked Secret. The likes of Karl Rove and Scooter Libby do not get to decide, on the fly, what "Secret" information is important enough to protect, and what "Secret" information is "fair game" for casual release to the media.
Regardless of how one feels about the Iraq war, or whether the lies justifying the war were themselves justified (ie. "the people needed to be lied to to silence the critics, so that the war's success could be ensured, or that terrorists would not be emboldened by domestic criticism" (absolute horseshit, in my opinion, but hardcore neocons will disagree with that position)) - I guess it's the perogative of the president and his staff to lie to the press and the public if that's the strategy they want to take (proven time and time again, to be unwise), and I guess it's their perogative also, to lie to congress, if congress decides not to call him on it (after all, it's the congress which the people elected - let their acquiescence to Bush's lies reflect on them in November 2006). But the mishandling of Classified information should not be acceptable. No matter what. If Bush had a problem with partisan CIA agents, he should have dealt with it by replacing Tenet back in 2000. Or at least in 2002.
It may be the same playbook, and the same creeps, and the same blood on their hands. But this instance is completely different. The press is undeniably destroying their own credibility by knowingly spreading false information to cover for Rove, and by supressing this story (in favor of Aruba abductions, Michael Jackson, etc.) for over two years now. Karl Rove may have clearly violated his SF-312. But he's not going to be the only casualty. There will be considerable "collateral damage" - both on other "usual suspects" in the White House, and especially on the softball-pitching press. A lot of credit was given them last monday when they raked McLellan over the coals. But frankly, it's a day late and a dollar short. When the Republicans lose their handy myth that the Mainstream Press is Liberal, they'll lose what is arguably their most valuable strategic weapon.
Why would they want a device like this?
Are they expecting riots over there?
I thought things were going great in Iraq.
Freedom's on the march and all.
So - that means he MUST be right about this too, right?
If she's too "old" for MTV, seriously, try VH1.
.)
(frankly, it sucks too, but it's "targeted" at the 30-40 crowd. .
If you look at it in terms of memetic evolution, it becomes extremely worrying:
Look at the energy-cost that goes into the genesis of an empirically "good" meme. Often, the requirements are: A very smart person. A good education. Years of research. Neutral political bias. In many cases - propagation of such "good" memes is also similarly hampered. Some memes, like General Relativity, find that most human hosts are entirely inhospitable, curtailing that meme's propagation severely.
In contrast, any dumbass can come up with a "bad" meme, propagate it across the internet, and the bumper-stickers of the world.
Survival in nature is often a numbers-game. And that's why I am generally pessimistic about memetic evolution in our culture.
It kind of pisses me off though, that every time I talk about the Hubbert Peak - I'm lumped into the wack-jobs who say we're all gonna die. I never said "Peak Oil Crash".
I'm basically looking at the coming Hubbert Peak with optimism. Ethanol powered tractors? Fine. Organic farming. Fine. Shipping stuff from all over the world when it can be grown at home? That's going away. Maybe sooner, maybe later.
Actually, since Apple switched to Intel chips, basically, any crazy rumor anyone told me about Apple now, I'm likely to believe.
For instance, you could tell me that Steve Ballmer inserted a brain parasite into Steve Jobs' ass, and now Steve Jobs is Microsoft's puppet, and Apple will be building Palladium support into OS X, I would believe it.
Never in a million years did I once think Apple would actually switch to x86 chips. I mean - I thought that MAYBE they'd pursue a dual-platform strategy: x86 for iMacs, laptops, and Minis, PPC for servers and high-end workstations. Never thought they'd dump PPC entirely. Just too surreal for me.
All I'm saying is that the Hubbert Peak occurs (ie. when demand outpaces production capacity) - Oil will become a much more expensive commodity. This isn't a wingnut theory. Respected oil industry analysts are saying the same thing.
So, when oil prices rise, it will no longer be cheap to ship products from some third world shithole where labor is nearly free, to another country, to undercut domestic producers. Nor will it be as cheap to synthesize nitrogen fertilizers. Therefore, the supply of FOOD will be tightly constrained, and the VALUE of food, as a commodity will go up, and the corresponding markup (ie. profit) will also rise, giving small farmers a much needed leg-up. Small farmers have had a hard time for the past century, particularly in the past 30 years or so, due to the abundance of cheap oil. Cheap oil is going away. At $60/bbl, some might argue that it's already gone. I won't agree with that yet - but cheap/expensive is relative. I don't think we're going to see the $20/bbl mark we had in the 1990's ever again. That is, unless US dollars start disappearing en masse (as they have in Iraq!).
Well, I was talking primarily about "the SUV craze" - that is, in response to the parent post talking about how people feel manly when they drive an SUV. I was stating my theory as to why this is so. Not being a Primate Psychologist - I don't really know. Slashdot, of course, is all about talking out one's ass. But I digress.
Of course there are legitimate reasons to have an SUV. (Which is why I've got a 4*8'trailer for my Jetta).
Would I go offroad with the Jetta? No way.
Would I consider a scooter? I need highway speeds for my commute. Besides, 3 months out of the year, it rains just about every day here. So even a small motorcycle wouldn't really cut it.
Now - also, I do live near drivable sand-dunes, so my wife (who likes to "sit up high") has a Toyota 4Runner truck. But she drives less than 50 miles a week.
Because we live near the sand-dunes, we get a LOT of out-of-towners visiting on weekends, with the huge pickup trucks, w/lift kits, etc. I approach this with mixed feelings: When we get a bit farther down the road with the Hubbert Peak, these people will stop visiting my fair town, because they won't be able to afford $10/gal gasoline for their recreational activities. So my local economy will likely collapse. Driving the 4Runner on the dunes will be that much funner when the out-of-towners disappear. Assuming I can afford $10/gal gasoline after my job evaporates.
I feel the same about Saudi Arabia, generally.
While I doubt that any real lasting change can ever happen without elimination of the monarchy, try reading the Crossroads Arabia blog, there's a lot of good things happening there, wrt political reforms. I'm just afraid that a lot of it is just for show, because they realize that some Americans are starting to get a little queasy about dealing with them.
http://www.xrdarabia.org/blog/
Which only proves that ethanol is only feasible with a lot of goverment subsidy.
.while the Iraq War only proves that Petroleum is only feasible with a lot of government subsidy. (gee, I wish the government would pay to take over another country so that MY industry could get cheap resources. . .)
. .
What you say is true.
But if you took out ALL market regulation from agriculture, then eventually everyone would switch to Opium Poppies, because that would be the most profitable crop.
Don't get me started on how manly people think they are in big trucks and SUVs (burning reg gas) that can't even drive standard transmissions. Y
I've done a lot of thinking about the SUV craze, and the conclusion I came down to:
People like to sit at a higher elevation than everyone else. It's a biological urge.
If you look at how pack-animals behave, with regard to dominance competition, the dominant male holds his head higher than the rest. Those submitting to the dominance lower their heads. It continues through evolution, from reptiles, all the way up to mammals, through primates, to humans. In royal courts, for example, the king's chair is always higher than everyone else's. It's a biological urge, most likely subconsious. It manifests when a human is sitting behind the wheel of a Ford F250 double-cab, with a 16" lift-kit, etc., and they drive down the road looking down on those who drive the Toyota Scions or Priuses on the road. And they feel superior.
Personally, I drive a car that gets 46 miles per gallon. At nearly each gas station I drive by, I see people lined up at the pumps, and they may as well be shoving those hoses up their asses, as they get raped by the oil companies, basically paying a "tax" to them, just to get to their jobs. Driving past gas stations, and looking at the needle of my fuel gauge, knowing that I won't need to fill up for another two weeks, THAT makes ME feel superior.
and without it, small farmers in the midwest would go bankrupt...
The reason why small farmers are in such a bind is due to the large scale industrial farming processes, and exposure to a global market. The energy inputs are so cheap (because of cheap oil) - both for production of nitrogen fertilizers, and global transport to level-out the global market, that small farmers simply can not compete.
After the Hubbert oil peak, in about 10-15 years, I think you'll see a strong resurgence of small farmers. Farmland will be like gold. Sure, production yeilds will be much lower, and crop failures will become much more common, and it will be much more difficult to transport food long distances to markets where demand is high, but because of all these things, demand will be high EVERYWHERE. Food costs are going to go through the roof, to feed a planet of 6+ billion. And farmers will be the 2nd most profitable industry. After weapons manufacturers, of course.
What if: The plants to produce ethanol were farmed using less-energy-intensive methods? Do we HAVE to use corn? Pretty much ANY grain can be fermented to produce Ethanol. Do we HAVE to use synthetic nitrogen-based fertilizers? The only point of that is to increase yeilds per-acre, but with the amount of farmland in this country lain fallow due to the current market conditions, there's no damn reason to hold Ethanol farming to the same production-efficiency standard. Synthetic fertilizers production is highly energy intensive. But plants will grow just fine without it. What if the distillation process were done using solar energy? ie. a solar still. (granted, this example is for water purification, but distillation of ethanol can also be readily accomplished using similar methods. I think that innovative processes could definately improve the energy yeild for ethanol production, if we're willing to think outside of the box that 20th Century industrial farming techniques have put us into. Pushing a study that finds otherwise is willfully painting a "worst-case scenario" - and perhaps political leanings were behind it? Ethanol is a very highly-charged political topic. Personally, I don't know where to stand on it, because in this case, BOTH sides are evil. (OPEC/7-sisters, or ADM/Monsanto).
I guess we'll know soon enough how bad a mainland invasion of Japan would have been. My guess is, sometime in the next 20 years, China will be doing that. Or maybe they'll just use nukes like we did.