I got an email from my brother about the Janet Jackson incident.
I was *shocked* to learn that he had his 7 year old son watching the Superbowl. Not that football, in of itself, is bad. But you can't tell me that the televised spectacle of the NFL is appropriate for small children. Cheerleader routines have been inappropriate for small children for nigh-on 20 years now.
Of course, he was deeply offended that I implied that parents who let their small children watch this crap are irresponsible.
Thank you, Religious Right, for making this country a more peaceful, united, clusterfuck of joy and love.
The investor-class in America is tired of paying for the science that's proving that global warming is true, and human activity is to blame. That's one messenger they're very eager to shoot. Bush merely figured out a clever way to make it sound like a good thing. In 10 years, $160 Billion spent, good science ended, and nowhere nearer to Mars, what do you think will be the next step at reform for NASA?
The gaming industry has completely fallen asleep on the job with this one.
Halo 2, I'm running around with plasma rifles, energy swords, driving scorpion tanks and warthogs. . . Where The Fuck is my sniper-rifle-armed remote bot? (or UAV, for that matter?)
My degree was in Technical Illustration. I knew then, (15 years ago), that it was inevitable that computers were going to make the field obsolete. (which this technology appears to *finally* achieve to a large degree). So I got into computers.
However, I *do* believe that this statement: Additionally, an endoscopic camera enhanced with the multi-flash technology promises to enhance internal anatomical visualization for researchers and medical doctors.
Won't work out. This flash technology relies on the parellax effect from having the four flashes originate from spacially different locations. That's not really possible with an endoscope. Unless you want to stretch your patient's rectum until it resembles Mr. Goatse's.
I'd worry about any automated aircraft having to perform risky landings on rough terrain. Response-time between Earth and Mars is sufficiently slow that direct remote-control would be difficult at best. It's the repeated landing that's scary.
Unless this thing has a reusable airbag mechanism.
(my arco station doesn't even sell any diesel) - Don't get me wrong.
I'm a big proponent of biodiesel, (I own a TDI Jetta, and have run it on biodiesel at times) and if this algae thing works out, then I believe it will truly be the Salvation of (what's left of) Humanity.
I just think that the transition from Gasoline to Biodiesel is going to be a relatively quick, but very painful (economically) process, and it's entirely dependent on whether ULSD becomes (and stays) readily available. Since the oil companies are railing against oxygenated fuel blends or any other externally mandated controls, I doubt very much that they're making any real effort to make ULSD available in the US. Especially under this Adminsitration.
If the ULSD-thing were going to happen, it would probably encourage more people to buy diesels, increasing demand for diesel fuel, and also increasing the number of modern, biodiesel-compatible vehicles, so that more petrodiesel will be refined, etc, making the inevitable transition to biodiesel less painful for American consumers (but much more painful for the oil industry, which would have to bear the trasitional retooling costs as investment, before being able to pass those costs along to the consumer).
However, if ULSD is forstalled in the US (as I believe it will be), then when gasoline supplies start to tighten, and prices rise, a lot of people are going to be "stuck" with gas-burners, and the price of biodiesel will likely become lower than that of gasoline or petrodiesel. It will be a painful process as people will have to ditch relatively newer gas-burning vehicles for biodiesel-capable vehicles. (this includes a lot of the American-made diesel trucks on the road today, which cannot burn biodiesel, because they're not Direct-Injection type motors.) In this scenario, the consumer pays the investment cost of transition up front, in the form of buying the new vehicles, and paying elevated prices for fuel without the inherent "vaule" - since the fuel is of the high-sulfur, low-quality type during the transition.
Measure the "comfort" of riding in a larger car, against the "comfort" of getting halfway to where you're going, turning out your pocket at the gas pump and finding it empty.
The ONLY thing necessary to change the status quo in the US, is high oil prices. Thanks to that tireless ecologist, George W Bush (greatest President Evar), we have high oil prices! And not through some evil socialist taxation scheme - this oil price hike brings profits that go directly to the tireless, and ever-deserving shieks in Saudi Arabia, who are working night and day to make sure every illiterate 3rd World Child is schooled in a Wahhabist Madrassa, by learning to memorize the Koran, hate Westerners and Jews, and build IEDs for the Jihad. Isn't it great that every mile driven by a God Fearing Cowboy in their SUV, brings another illiterate 3rd World Child closer to Martyrdom and Paradise?
. . ..
People in the US will adapt to smaller, more efficient cars for the same reason they did in Europe. Because they can't afford to feed the beasts.
(of course, with the Euro rising against the Dollar, and a trend to price oil in Euros, mabye this situation will become reversed, and it will be the brie-eating socialists in Europe that will adopt the SUV addiction next!).
Well, the NOx is visible, as the brown haze you see over every major city in the US today.
Also, when petroleum runs out, biodiesel production will get more serious investment. Biodiesel does not produce nearly the particulates as petrodiesel.
There's still the ugly reality that, for soccer moms, they take turns driving their kids' teammates to and from practices and games. (THE literal "soccer mom" issue). A two-seater, even a four-seater, won't cut it under those circumstances. Just an ugly fact.
1. Environmentalists love to hate it. Older diesel engines, true, are terrible polluters. Newer diesel engines are much better, and would be still far better if Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel fuel were available in the US. Diesel proponents in the US are anxiously awaiting some magical date in 2005 where it will be come available. Don't hold your breath, it'll make you blue. Oil companies have been fighting it. If they can get their own little taxpayer funded adventure in Iraq, you can be damn sure they won't supply ULS Diesel if they don't want to. Every indication shows that they don't.
2. West of the Rockies, for some reason, the diesel fuel supply has been constrained, supposedly by some pipeline cut that happened early in 2004. Diesel is now more expensive per gallon than gasoline. I doubt this situation will ever be rectified. What economic incentive do oil companies have to fix it? None.
Copyright law, as intended, has certainly jumped the shark and needs to be completely re-writen or eliminated
No, let's just go back to the Consitution:
"Limited Time" was originally 7 years. Okay, that's good. ". . to promote the useful arts and sciences" - The burden should be on the copyright SEEKER to PROVE that the copyright would "promote the USEFUL arts and sciences", and the copyright should be reviewed (by a board of jurors, selected in the same way court jurors are selected) throughout it's period, and if it's shown that that particular copyright has NOT promoted a useful art or science, then it should be revoked, and the property fall into the Public Domain.
I think that would go quite a ways towards solving this problem.
Oh yeah - also, only a human being, a citizen, should be granted a copyright. Corporations are not human beings, they were never endowed any rights by God. Therefore, at the very least, corporations should not be allowed to hold copyrights. Only trademarks. Maybe.
I'm willing to bet that the more mainstream sites trend towards a higher percentage of IE, and sites that cater to techies (even slashdot!) or political junkies probably trend more towards others, especially F/OSS-type sites (duh).
Folklore has it that there was a test launch out of Vandenberg back in the 1950's where a strap-on booster fell off, and went straight down into someone's house (on base), which was occupied a few hours prior, before the owner went out to the grocery store.
One of the reasons this stuff is so damn expensive is the huge amount of safety testing that goes on for each and every flight, learning from the lessons from the early space program.
Baathist propaganda did a really good job of pumping up the apparent strength of the Iraqi arsenal too. Or a really bad job, depending on how you look at it.
Yeah, that's going to gain a lot of traction and credibility in the mainstream media.
That's like Saddam Hussein heading up an investigation finding that the Oil for Food scandal was all lies.
Listen, I'm not personally biased about any Berkeley researcher's credibility. I'm personally sure they're rock-solid.
But in a nation where 70% of the public believes that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11, you've got to get a little perspective on the frame of reference through which Americans view reality. That frame of reference is dictated by a heavily biased media, (the army of right-wing talkshow hosts) - who will tell you, if you ask, that anyone from the state of Taxechussets, or California, particularly Berkeley, are the antichrist, liars, immoral, America-hating, terrorist-supporting, communist, probably homosexual, evil, French, (etc.).
At the very least, they should have pointed these numbers out to some more "reputable" or believable institution to be reported to the public. It's an unearned credibility gap, but it's there. Sad fact.
When traffic gets too heavy to get to work in a reasonable (according to your employer so it's a bit more than you probably consider reasonable) amount of time, your business will probably move out of the city and to a less populated area.
Why would they?
Time spent commuting is on the WORKER'S hours, not the businesses expense. Gridlock just causes workers to move closer, which drives up real-estate in high-employment locations. (look at real-estate prices in the Bay Area, or New York City).
Of course, business-cycle downturns which cause hundreds of thousands of workers to change employment locations tend to restart the cycle.
The problem of why we're we are adding people to major metropolitan areas faster than we can erect the infrastructure they need should be explored as well.
It's employment. People flock to cities for decent income, sustainable careers. Few people want to risk moving to a rural area, working a job for which there are no other local employers, and then suffering a plant shutdown and mass layoff.
Companies focus on cities for a reason (a rich pool of educated workers). Find, and mitigate that reason (better investment into education in rural areas?), and our population will have more of an incentive to distribute, and take pressure off of highly concentrated (and costly, generally at public expense) infrastructure development.
When the population diffuses more to rural areas and small cities, it will become a self-sustaining movement, because that will revitalize rural economies, starting new businesses to serve as a self-sustaining economic base for residents.
Of course, there are downsides to increased rural development, but the downsides to concentrating population into large cities aren't exactly attractive either.
I know, I know, flamebait. . . (proceed with the flamebait. . . )
This article is obviously false, because 60 Million American Voters agree that the Creation story in the Bible is the truth, and this junk science BS is just more communist propaganda designed to undermine Traditional Judeo-Christian American Values. No way is the earth 25,000 years old. God pulled it out of a cracker jack box last week!
So, can Conservatives stop falsely claiming that opponents of Yucca Mountain just complain and don't have any solutions themselves? This saw is getting tired.
But that changes rapidly when one is in full control. Why would they cut their own throats and limit their power?
That's why I'm certain that "small-government" will always be a pipe-dream in America. As soon as a small-government advocate gains enough control to make it happen, they'll fight to KEEP that control, which equates to big government.
Slashdot Mirror
I got an email from my brother about the Janet Jackson incident.
I was *shocked* to learn that he had his 7 year old son watching the Superbowl. Not that football, in of itself, is bad. But you can't tell me that the televised spectacle of the NFL is appropriate for small children. Cheerleader routines have been inappropriate for small children for nigh-on 20 years now.
Of course, he was deeply offended that I implied that parents who let their small children watch this crap are irresponsible.
Thank you, Religious Right, for making this country a more peaceful, united, clusterfuck of joy and love.
You are correct.
The investor-class in America is tired of paying for the science that's proving that global warming is true, and human activity is to blame. That's one messenger they're very eager to shoot. Bush merely figured out a clever way to make it sound like a good thing. In 10 years, $160 Billion spent, good science ended, and nowhere nearer to Mars, what do you think will be the next step at reform for NASA?
Spyware exists for Mac OS X.
So why don't any Spyware removers exist?
The gaming industry has completely fallen asleep on the job with this one.
Halo 2, I'm running around with plasma rifles, energy swords, driving scorpion tanks and warthogs. . . Where The Fuck is my sniper-rifle-armed remote bot? (or UAV, for that matter?)
My degree was in Technical Illustration. I knew then, (15 years ago), that it was inevitable that computers were going to make the field obsolete. (which this technology appears to *finally* achieve to a large degree). So I got into computers.
However, I *do* believe that this statement:
Additionally, an endoscopic camera enhanced with the multi-flash technology promises to enhance internal anatomical visualization for researchers and medical doctors.
Won't work out. This flash technology relies on the parellax effect from having the four flashes originate from spacially different locations. That's not really possible with an endoscope. Unless you want to stretch your patient's rectum until it resembles Mr. Goatse's.
"It's Hard Work."
I'd worry about any automated aircraft having to perform risky landings on rough terrain. Response-time between Earth and Mars is sufficiently slow that direct remote-control would be difficult at best. It's the repeated landing that's scary.
Unless this thing has a reusable airbag mechanism.
(my arco station doesn't even sell any diesel) -
Don't get me wrong.
I'm a big proponent of biodiesel, (I own a TDI Jetta, and have run it on biodiesel at times) and if this algae thing works out, then I believe it will truly be the Salvation of (what's left of) Humanity.
I just think that the transition from Gasoline to Biodiesel is going to be a relatively quick, but very painful (economically) process, and it's entirely dependent on whether ULSD becomes (and stays) readily available. Since the oil companies are railing against oxygenated fuel blends or any other externally mandated controls, I doubt very much that they're making any real effort to make ULSD available in the US. Especially under this Adminsitration.
If the ULSD-thing were going to happen, it would probably encourage more people to buy diesels, increasing demand for diesel fuel, and also increasing the number of modern, biodiesel-compatible vehicles, so that more petrodiesel will be refined, etc, making the inevitable transition to biodiesel less painful for American consumers (but much more painful for the oil industry, which would have to bear the trasitional retooling costs as investment, before being able to pass those costs along to the consumer).
However, if ULSD is forstalled in the US (as I believe it will be), then when gasoline supplies start to tighten, and prices rise, a lot of people are going to be "stuck" with gas-burners, and the price of biodiesel will likely become lower than that of gasoline or petrodiesel. It will be a painful process as people will have to ditch relatively newer gas-burning vehicles for biodiesel-capable vehicles. (this includes a lot of the American-made diesel trucks on the road today, which cannot burn biodiesel, because they're not Direct-Injection type motors.) In this scenario, the consumer pays the investment cost of transition up front, in the form of buying the new vehicles, and paying elevated prices for fuel without the inherent "vaule" - since the fuel is of the high-sulfur, low-quality type during the transition.
Let's see if you can afford to fill the tank of your Mustang with gasoline when it's $10 a gallon.
Silly.
.
Measure the "comfort" of riding in a larger car, against the "comfort" of getting halfway to where you're going, turning out your pocket at the gas pump and finding it empty.
The ONLY thing necessary to change the status quo in the US, is high oil prices. Thanks to that tireless ecologist, George W Bush (greatest President Evar), we have high oil prices! And not through some evil socialist taxation scheme - this oil price hike brings profits that go directly to the tireless, and ever-deserving shieks in Saudi Arabia, who are working night and day to make sure every illiterate 3rd World Child is schooled in a Wahhabist Madrassa, by learning to memorize the Koran, hate Westerners and Jews, and build IEDs for the Jihad. Isn't it great that every mile driven by a God Fearing Cowboy in their SUV, brings another illiterate 3rd World Child closer to Martyrdom and Paradise?
. . .
People in the US will adapt to smaller, more efficient cars for the same reason they did in Europe. Because they can't afford to feed the beasts.
(of course, with the Euro rising against the Dollar, and a trend to price oil in Euros, mabye this situation will become reversed, and it will be the brie-eating socialists in Europe that will adopt the SUV addiction next!).
Well, the NOx is visible, as the brown haze you see over every major city in the US today.
Also, when petroleum runs out, biodiesel production will get more serious investment. Biodiesel does not produce nearly the particulates as petrodiesel.
There's still the ugly reality that, for soccer moms, they take turns driving their kids' teammates to and from practices and games. (THE literal "soccer mom" issue).
A two-seater, even a four-seater, won't cut it under those circumstances. Just an ugly fact.
Diesel in the US has two things going against it;
1. Environmentalists love to hate it. Older diesel engines, true, are terrible polluters. Newer diesel engines are much better, and would be still far better if Ultra Low Sulfur Diesel fuel were available in the US. Diesel proponents in the US are anxiously awaiting some magical date in 2005 where it will be come available. Don't hold your breath, it'll make you blue. Oil companies have been fighting it. If they can get their own little taxpayer funded adventure in Iraq, you can be damn sure they won't supply ULS Diesel if they don't want to. Every indication shows that they don't.
2. West of the Rockies, for some reason, the diesel fuel supply has been constrained, supposedly by some pipeline cut that happened early in 2004. Diesel is now more expensive per gallon than gasoline. I doubt this situation will ever be rectified. What economic incentive do oil companies have to fix it? None.
Many of the better shows that were on in the 1990's have been cancelled and replaced by crap.
I haven't seen much of anything that would be worth the temporary hard drive space, let alone the bandwidth. Or even the time to sit and watch.
In short - they WISH.
Copyright law, as intended, has certainly jumped the shark and needs to be completely re-writen or eliminated
No, let's just go back to the Consitution:
"Limited Time" was originally 7 years. Okay, that's good.
". . to promote the useful arts and sciences" -
The burden should be on the copyright SEEKER to PROVE that the copyright would "promote the USEFUL arts and sciences", and the copyright should be reviewed (by a board of jurors, selected in the same way court jurors are selected) throughout it's period, and if it's shown that that particular copyright has NOT promoted a useful art or science, then it should be revoked, and the property fall into the Public Domain.
I think that would go quite a ways towards solving this problem.
Oh yeah - also, only a human being, a citizen, should be granted a copyright. Corporations are not human beings, they were never endowed any rights by God. Therefore, at the very least, corporations should not be allowed to hold copyrights. Only trademarks. Maybe.
I'd actually like to see a by-site breakdown.
I'm willing to bet that the more mainstream sites trend towards a higher percentage of IE, and sites that cater to techies (even slashdot!) or political junkies probably trend more towards others, especially F/OSS-type sites (duh).
Folklore has it that there was a test launch out of Vandenberg back in the 1950's where a strap-on booster fell off, and went straight down into someone's house (on base), which was occupied a few hours prior, before the owner went out to the grocery store.
One of the reasons this stuff is so damn expensive is the huge amount of safety testing that goes on for each and every flight, learning from the lessons from the early space program.
Baathist propaganda did a really good job of pumping up the apparent strength of the Iraqi arsenal too. Or a really bad job, depending on how you look at it.
Yeah, that's going to gain a lot of traction and credibility in the mainstream media.
That's like Saddam Hussein heading up an investigation finding that the Oil for Food scandal was all lies.
Listen, I'm not personally biased about any Berkeley researcher's credibility. I'm personally sure they're rock-solid.
But in a nation where 70% of the public believes that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11, you've got to get a little perspective on the frame of reference through which Americans view reality. That frame of reference is dictated by a heavily biased media, (the army of right-wing talkshow hosts) - who will tell you, if you ask, that anyone from the state of Taxechussets, or California, particularly Berkeley, are the antichrist, liars, immoral, America-hating, terrorist-supporting, communist, probably homosexual, evil, French, (etc.).
At the very least, they should have pointed these numbers out to some more "reputable" or believable institution to be reported to the public. It's an unearned credibility gap, but it's there. Sad fact.
When traffic gets too heavy to get to work in a reasonable (according to your employer so it's a bit more than you probably consider reasonable) amount of time, your business will probably move out of the city and to a less populated area.
Why would they?
Time spent commuting is on the WORKER'S hours, not the businesses expense. Gridlock just causes workers to move closer, which drives up real-estate in high-employment locations. (look at real-estate prices in the Bay Area, or New York City).
Of course, business-cycle downturns which cause hundreds of thousands of workers to change employment locations tend to restart the cycle.
the roots of social problems feed in an environment of selfishness and ignorance (as most victorian thinkers recognized).
Let's start in the Red States then, shall we?
The problem of why we're we are adding people to major metropolitan areas faster than we can erect the infrastructure they need should be explored as well.
It's employment. People flock to cities for decent income, sustainable careers. Few people want to risk moving to a rural area, working a job for which there are no other local employers, and then suffering a plant shutdown and mass layoff.
Companies focus on cities for a reason (a rich pool of educated workers). Find, and mitigate that reason (better investment into education in rural areas?), and our population will have more of an incentive to distribute, and take pressure off of highly concentrated (and costly, generally at public expense) infrastructure development.
When the population diffuses more to rural areas and small cities, it will become a self-sustaining movement, because that will revitalize rural economies, starting new businesses to serve as a self-sustaining economic base for residents.
Of course, there are downsides to increased rural development, but the downsides to concentrating population into large cities aren't exactly attractive either.
I know, I know, flamebait. . . (proceed with the flamebait. . . )
This article is obviously false, because 60 Million American Voters agree that the Creation story in the Bible is the truth, and this junk science BS is just more communist propaganda designed to undermine Traditional Judeo-Christian American Values. No way is the earth 25,000 years old. God pulled it out of a cracker jack box last week!
So, can Conservatives stop falsely claiming that opponents of Yucca Mountain just complain and don't have any solutions themselves? This saw is getting tired.
The republicans ideal is a small government.
But that changes rapidly when one is in full control. Why would they cut their own throats and limit their power?
That's why I'm certain that "small-government" will always be a pipe-dream in America. As soon as a small-government advocate gains enough control to make it happen, they'll fight to KEEP that control, which equates to big government.