"da people" can be bought too. Often cheaper than politicians.
They're called TV commercials. You may not be stupid. But for every smart person, there are a dozen people out there who listen to Brittney Spears, believe in UFO's, and think Harry Potter is the greatest literature of the 20th century.
Jedi Vacquero: We don't need to show you any steenkin' boches!
If representatives were banned, and everyone were allowed to vote, Madonna would be president, rich people would be outlawed, and all public drinking fountains would dispense beer. And not good beer. Miller Lite.
Jedi Vacquero: We don't need to show you any steenkin' boches!
You are a disposable piece of trash to your employer.
Right now, it's good, because there is a tight labor market, so you can make a LOT of money NOW without your degree.
Life enrichment argments are straw-men here.
The deal is, in 5 years, 10 years, who knows? Your company may fold, may be bought by Microsoft, or worse (CA), or you may get laid off, or you may get fired for looking at porn at work, or boffing the bosses wife, whatever. Then you're out on the street, and what if the job market is a bit softer now? You've got experience, but you're now competing against people with experience AND degrees.
No matter how much of a hotshot you are, you'll command a higher salary with a degree. That's all there is to it.
Play now, pay later.
I don't have a degree, and I've been a valued employee for 8 years, but at my last two job hunts, I could not find a deal as sweet as I have right here. It's easy to convince your current boss how great you are, but without that piece of paper, it's not so easy to convince someone who doesn't know you.
An education is an investment. Often a wise one.
Jedi Vacquero: We don't need to show you any steenkin' boches!
Well, your equivalent in the music industry is the "studio musician", who does stuff like soundtracks for beer commercials. Quite often, these guys are really talented musicians, but also, usually not very good or prolific writers, so they play music written, arranged, and produced by others. They often get salaries, work from 9 to 5, never tour, usually never play outside of a recording studio. If they suck, their manager hears their music and says: you suck, you're fired.
Then there's the free-lance consultant programmer, who may write shareware for Kagi, or do database or web programming for fees. If they're smart, they'll include royalties in their contract, in case some other contracter comes in later, maybe to fix a bug, or update features, looks at your source code, decides he likes it, copies it, uses it in other projects later. That is where your copyright infringement and royalties would come into play.
Now, just like any shmo with Netscape can view your source, any shmo with minimal talent can listen very carefully to a song played, and transcribe it, and learn to play it himself. If he plays it professionally, he's infringing, though there are these "cover bands" that play at your local nightclubs and stuff, who do this all the time, and AFAIK, don't pay royalties on the songs they cover. (Free Bird!)
Yes, the CD player's manufacturer probably DOES have an agreement with the RIAA. There are a set of standards that the manufacturer has to follow, at a minimum.
Granted, the agreement with DVD manufacturers is much more stringent, regarding region encoding, CSS, etc.
The thing I don't understand is, why the hell the RIAA didn't go after the phone companies who provide the phone lines that the pirates used to dial-in with. The phone company has a buttload of money for them to sponge off of. And just as much legitimate culpability as MP3.com. The RIAA could easily show how much profit the phone company attributes solely to internet access, and assign an arbitrary percentage for the amount of that traffic that was dedicated to illegal MP3 trading (hey, that's redundant, since all MP3 trading is illegal, right? let's just say MP3 trading), then siphon that percentage right off the phone companies - hey, some enterprising scumbag lobbyist for the RIAA might just have legislation drawn up and voted in that would impose a tax on phone lines, to pay the RIAA companies for the potential piracy useage. How would that hurt the phone companies anyway? They could just pass the costs on to consumers. Then the RIAA could sue itself for it's cable operators, and calculate the percentage of cable bandwidth that's going towards MP3 servers on Hotline, and charge every cable customer an extra fee for the potential piracy.
Hell, the RIAA could just tax everybody who has ears and a brain, so we could pay a fee for the potential copyright infringement that goes on every time we overhear a song played on someone else's stereo!
Hell, talk about all the unauthorized copying, from the computer, to the computer's memory, across the network, to the server's memory, to the server's RAID cache, to the server's disk, then when the song is served, to the server's RAID cache, server memory, network, firewall's memory, network again, routers, ISP's firewall, ISP's internal networ, ISP's server's memory, modem bank, phone lines, repeaters, end user's machine's memory, maybe copied to disk in VM paging, etc. (thank goodness we're not going to Usenet, think of all the unauthorized copies stored all over the place!).
Based on the money I have now (stock options) that I didn't have 5 years ago, the banks treat me like royalty now, they know me by name, etc. But it didn't use to be like this - I can bounce checks now, and they give me the benefit of the doubt for a day or two, but man, a few years ago, I could deposit money in the morning, write a check in the evening, bounce it, and rack up a buttload of fees.
I'm tellin ya man, they FUCK you at the drive thru!
Why do women get paid less for doing the same job as a man?
Why do a pair of women's jeans (typically less raw material) cost 1.5-3 times as much as men's jeans?
Why does an Acura Integra cost 1.5 times as much as the Honda Accord, a fairly identical car, the only meaningful difference being the sheet metal and name badge? (never mind the Cadillac Catera and the Chevy Cavalier!)
Why does an audio cassette of an album cost $10, while the CD costs $18, even though the cassette costs about $2 to reproduce, and the CD about 5 cents?
Why does a VW fan belt for an old beetle cost about 1/10 of what the SAME EXACT PART for a Porsche 356 cost?
Things cost what stupid sheeple will pay for them.
no, in the future, they'll take you're credit card number, look you up, see how much you spend total, figure out where your paycheck comes from, and what you're yearly income is, your mortgage value, and calculate how much you can afford to pay for a product.
Then, possibly, they'll look up your name on internet chat-boards and newsgroups to see if you've ever been outspokenly critical of Amazon.com or any of it's affiliate businesses or suppliers, and tack on an "asshole-fee".
Will it matter that you're making twice as much as your neighbor, Mr. Jones? How about when you pay $70 for the same DVD he pays $30 for?
naw, the Asteroid theory was my first attempt, (I haven't had a post modded up to 4 like that in a long while), but after post #41, I doubt that. I don't know how an Asteroid could possibly have gasses trapped inside it that match so closely the Martian atmosphere, unless it were inside the Martian atmosphere when it was last liquified, which strongly suggests it came from Mars in the first place.
The Martian atmosphere was not a direct product of accretion, (as would be found on an asteroid), but was modified by early Martian volcanic activity, and subsequent chemical interaction that wasn't likely to have happened on an asteroid (within the last 200 million years). It could have happened on a larger object, (planet or planitesimal) but we have no evidence that such a large object ever existed. My theory #6 was presented as an absurdity to ridicule another AC posting. It's a possibility, but about as probable as the meteorites originating from an isolated patch of rock on Mars that was recently formed by volcanic activity (representing an improbably small proportion of Mars' surface, in proportion to the number of young meteorites found on Earth). While it's possible that a single, recent collision on Mars in just the right location could have resulted in a large number of these rocks being spewed earthward, that would have to have been either many recent impacts (no evidence of such) or one large recent impact (no evidence of such), or one HUGE volcanic eruption (no evidence of such).
I'm currently leaning towards either the vast conspiracy of funding-hungry scientists, or the alien pranksters with a particle accelerator theories.
Yes, but some patents are actually defensive, that is, a company might patent something only in order to prevent a competitor from patenting it, in cases where we're talking about an obvious idea. An antipatent is a much better way to do this than making a "normal" patent.
There is a vast left-wing conspiracy of scientists fudging their data to raise these interesting questions in order to spark controversy enough to spur funding for a mission to Mars.
(Seriously, all they'd really have to do is talk to Bill Gates - Scientific American says that a manned mission to Mars would only take about $20 Billion, which would be significant, but easily doable for Bill)
or, #6, there was a mysterious planet out there in deep - deep space, past Pluto, with a chemical makeup or rocks AND atmosphere identical to Mars, that was very recently formed (200 million years) by a mechanism that counters all present theories, and was shattered in a collision, and miraculously, many of the fragments made it all that distance to Earth.
I think that one is not very likely - not as likely as #5. I entertained the idea of Asteroid origin because that could exist without being observed all these years, but that didn't work because that doesn't explain the trapped gases matching the Martian atmosphere. But it's a better theory than suggesting there is or was a Mars-like object that far out from the Sun. Or suggesting that there was a large Mars-identical object, with an atmosphere elswhere in the solar system 200 million years ago - despite the distances, the solar system is too crowded for that - the existance of such a planet would be apparent in the orbits of the current planes (and whatever event that caused this theoretical object to vanish without a trace). Current planet formation theory (which admittedly may be wrong in light of this information) suggests that the composition of Mars was determined by the mix of elements that was present in the primordial dust/gas cloud at that distance from the Sun; and no other, because stuff was separated-out by mass like what happens in a centrifuge, which is why the inner planets are rocky and metallic, and the outer planets are made mostly of light gasses like Hydrogen and Nitrogen (Pluto is different, because it's in an eccentric orbit, the theory is that it's either made of the same substances as comets - hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen, light gases, condensed to water, ice, etc, that it is a large kuiper-belt object that is out-of place, or that it was formed closer to the Sun originally, and was displaced by a collision or close-encounter with another very large object).
I'll read that link when I'm done reading all the Penis_Bird posts, but post #41 seems to sum things up pretty nicely - or at least does serious harm to my Asteroid theory.
But the fact is, that even with Viking, we don't have DIRECT observation. No human being has ever touched or seen an actual Mars rock that we're sure came from Mars, with the exception of these meteorites, so we can't be sure that that is actually where they came from.
Bottom line is - either Mars' surface is younger than we thought; which really fucks the hell out a lot of assumptions we have about our solar system, which are really foundational, OR our isotope dating system is WAY off, which also fucks with a lot of assumptions which are really foundational, to more than just the origins of our solar system, OR something happened to these rocks in-transit that totally messed with the isotope ratios in a way we have no scientific way of modelling, (I'm picturing prankster-aliens with a particle accelerator) OR, these rocks did not come from Mars. Occam's Razor suggests #4 is most likely, IMHO.
if the dating of the rock is done based on the last time the rock crystalized, it could have been a medium-sized asteroid, (the inner rocks having been protected from long-term exposure to cosmic rays), with a chemical make-up similar to that of Mars, (being from the same region of the solar system, having accreted from the same mix of dust and stuff), having been involved in a collision that melted it, thereby resetting it's "age", then fragments headed towards Earth.
Oh, and I Am Not A Scientist either, but I play one in make-believe with my kids. I'm the mad kind that tries to take over the world with an army of mind-controlled penguins, or giant robots.
The conclusion of the article says it all; that they need to send a lander to bring back samples from Mars as soon as possible.
IANAEG or CC (Exo-Geologist or Cosmo-Chemist):
I say this because until that happens, how can we be so sure that these rocks actually came from Mars? Yes, the chemistry is similar, to what we THINK Mars' chemistry is, based on our very limited (and no direct) observations, but if the planets, Mars included, formed by accretion of dust particles in space around the early Sun, then it stands to reason that maybe not ALL of the materials of similar Martian chemistry accreted to Mars. There could be any number of asteroids made of similar materials floating out there between Mars and Jupiter, and periodically colliding, getting melted, and sent Earthward. Sure, the stats may be against it, but I don't believe we really know all that much about the smaller residents of the asteroid belt.
I'm not saying that these rocks are not from Mars, but I'm saying that maybe it's time to entertain alternative theories as to these rocks origins, because the data doesn't jibe.
BJH refutes most of your points nicely, I would like to add:
Just because AMD also FUDs, doesn't make it okay for Intel to FUD. AMD *has* to FUD to survive against competitor Intel's FUD. That doesn't make it alright either. I know it interferes with the magical "free market", and the invisible hand-job and all, but it would be nice if *someone* would take these companies to task for false advertising when they FUD.
Intel pushes IDE because IDE relies on CPU horsepower to initiate transfers. SCSI relies on the controller. Therefore, if HD access takes CPU cycles, this increases the demand (in a bogus way) for faster CPUs. Bottom line for Intel; slower and ultimately costlier machines for consumers. Same principle works with Winmodems, and USB too, if I'm not mistaken.
I do agree that PCI was a good spec. So why did they abandon it for AGP? If you read Intel's press releases (and it sounds like you do, on Sunday morning, in front of an altar, accompanied by organ music), it's to reduce the need for VRAM on the card, but the REAL reason was so they could corner the market on graphics chips. Why did they fail? Because their chips SUCK. They had decent competition. And nowadays, I challenge you to even FIND an AGP card with 4mb of VRAM. Or less than 16. Thank God that there were competiors out there with faster, cheaper solutions (and cozier relationships with system vendors), who were able to keep the technology up. Otherwise, today, Intel's graphics chips would be the standard, and ONLY solution.
And finally, about the AMD statement about using Slot A for higher performance, that may be the public statement, but in Private, you can bet your loose and hairy sphincter that the reason was so they didn't have to pay their main competitor MORE license fees, and take it up the ass when Intel decided to change the spec again (Slot 2, Socket 370, etc. ad infinutum, ad nauseum, ad analintrusiun), but they took it up the ass anyway when Intel told the mobo manufacturers; "nice license you got there, it'd be a *shame* if something were to happen to it!"
Rude cellphone users seem to also be common in the Phoenix area.
What I'd like is a missile launcher for my car that fires a cell-phone-seeking missile, fires automatically at any call answered while the vehicle is in the left lane.
I'm not even a nazi about driving while gabbing. I'd just appreciate it if the dumb FUCKS would just get the hell out of the left lane so people can pass.
The best bumper sticker I saw was: "do you think you could drive any better if that cell phone were up your ass?"
#1, I hope they trademark this so they can sue the inevitable spammers who will abuse it. (because people won't delete such a message knowing that they might REALLY have cash).
Ego boost? What about those of us who are confident of our abilities, and feel that our output is WORTH money? Or those of use who maybe, need money, are good at something, but for one reason or another, can't "plug into" the moneymaking architecture of an industry; for instance, what if a person is musically inclined, but doesn't give good head - to the right record executive, should our culture be deprived of this person's music? I agree that not everyone should have a ferrari with a 13 year old filipino girl, but on the other hand, people gotta eat. Should our musically inclined person who doesn't give good head be forced to spend his 8-hour days flipping burgers and do music in his spare time?
Slashdot Mirror
They're probably worried that if they shut down LEP, then Fermi will step in and steal their thunder.
A very expensive pissing match, if you ask me.
Jedi Vacquero: We don't need to show you any steenkin' boches!
"da people" can be bought too. Often cheaper than politicians.
They're called TV commercials. You may not be stupid. But for every smart person, there are a dozen people out there who listen to Brittney Spears, believe in UFO's, and think Harry Potter is the greatest literature of the 20th century.
Jedi Vacquero: We don't need to show you any steenkin' boches!
If representatives were banned, and everyone were allowed to vote, Madonna would be president, rich people would be outlawed, and all public drinking fountains would dispense beer. And not good beer. Miller Lite.
Jedi Vacquero: We don't need to show you any steenkin' boches!
You are a disposable piece of trash to your employer.
Right now, it's good, because there is a tight labor market, so you can make a LOT of money NOW without your degree.
Life enrichment argments are straw-men here.
The deal is, in 5 years, 10 years, who knows? Your company may fold, may be bought by Microsoft, or worse (CA), or you may get laid off, or you may get fired for looking at porn at work, or boffing the bosses wife, whatever. Then you're out on the street, and what if the job market is a bit softer now? You've got experience, but you're now competing against people with experience AND degrees.
No matter how much of a hotshot you are, you'll command a higher salary with a degree. That's all there is to it.
Play now, pay later.
I don't have a degree, and I've been a valued employee for 8 years, but at my last two job hunts, I could not find a deal as sweet as I have right here. It's easy to convince your current boss how great you are, but without that piece of paper, it's not so easy to convince someone who doesn't know you.
An education is an investment. Often a wise one.
Jedi Vacquero: We don't need to show you any steenkin' boches!
Well, your equivalent in the music industry is the "studio musician", who does stuff like soundtracks for beer commercials. Quite often, these guys are really talented musicians, but also, usually not very good or prolific writers, so they play music written, arranged, and produced by others. They often get salaries, work from 9 to 5, never tour, usually never play outside of a recording studio. If they suck, their manager hears their music and says: you suck, you're fired.
Then there's the free-lance consultant programmer, who may write shareware for Kagi, or do database or web programming for fees. If they're smart, they'll include royalties in their contract, in case some other contracter comes in later, maybe to fix a bug, or update features, looks at your source code, decides he likes it, copies it, uses it in other projects later. That is where your copyright infringement and royalties would come into play.
Now, just like any shmo with Netscape can view your source, any shmo with minimal talent can listen very carefully to a song played, and transcribe it, and learn to play it himself. If he plays it professionally, he's infringing, though there are these "cover bands" that play at your local nightclubs and stuff, who do this all the time, and AFAIK, don't pay royalties on the songs they cover. (Free Bird!)
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
Yes, the CD player's manufacturer probably DOES have an agreement with the RIAA. There are a set of standards that the manufacturer has to follow, at a minimum.
Granted, the agreement with DVD manufacturers is much more stringent, regarding region encoding, CSS, etc.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
Maybe it sucks to be a mole, and it also probably is a bit frustrating to be a whacker. But at $500/hr, it probably ROCKS to be a hammer (lawyer).
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
The RIAA's idea of micropayments is $5 a track to download singles. MP3s, not raw audio files from the CD, so the quality isn't even the same.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
The thing I don't understand is, why the hell the RIAA didn't go after the phone companies who provide the phone lines that the pirates used to dial-in with. The phone company has a buttload of money for them to sponge off of. And just as much legitimate culpability as MP3.com. The RIAA could easily show how much profit the phone company attributes solely to internet access, and assign an arbitrary percentage for the amount of that traffic that was dedicated to illegal MP3 trading (hey, that's redundant, since all MP3 trading is illegal, right? let's just say MP3 trading), then siphon that percentage right off the phone companies - hey, some enterprising scumbag lobbyist for the RIAA might just have legislation drawn up and voted in that would impose a tax on phone lines, to pay the RIAA companies for the potential piracy useage. How would that hurt the phone companies anyway? They could just pass the costs on to consumers. Then the RIAA could sue itself for it's cable operators, and calculate the percentage of cable bandwidth that's going towards MP3 servers on Hotline, and charge every cable customer an extra fee for the potential piracy.
Hell, the RIAA could just tax everybody who has ears and a brain, so we could pay a fee for the potential copyright infringement that goes on every time we overhear a song played on someone else's stereo!
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
Hell, talk about all the unauthorized copying, from the computer, to the computer's memory, across the network, to the server's memory, to the server's RAID cache, to the server's disk, then when the song is served, to the server's RAID cache, server memory, network, firewall's memory, network again, routers, ISP's firewall, ISP's internal networ, ISP's server's memory, modem bank, phone lines, repeaters, end user's machine's memory, maybe copied to disk in VM paging, etc. (thank goodness we're not going to Usenet, think of all the unauthorized copies stored all over the place!).
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
Don't even get me started on banking.
Based on the money I have now (stock options) that I didn't have 5 years ago, the banks treat me like royalty now, they know me by name, etc. But it didn't use to be like this - I can bounce checks now, and they give me the benefit of the doubt for a day or two, but man, a few years ago, I could deposit money in the morning, write a check in the evening, bounce it, and rack up a buttload of fees.
I'm tellin ya man, they FUCK you at the drive thru!
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
How about:
Why do women get paid less for doing the same job as a man?
Why do a pair of women's jeans (typically less raw material) cost 1.5-3 times as much as men's jeans?
Why does an Acura Integra cost 1.5 times as much as the Honda Accord, a fairly identical car, the only meaningful difference being the sheet metal and name badge? (never mind the Cadillac Catera and the Chevy Cavalier!)
Why does an audio cassette of an album cost $10, while the CD costs $18, even though the cassette costs about $2 to reproduce, and the CD about 5 cents?
Why does a VW fan belt for an old beetle cost about 1/10 of what the SAME EXACT PART for a Porsche 356 cost?
Things cost what stupid sheeple will pay for them.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
no, in the future, they'll take you're credit card number, look you up, see how much you spend total, figure out where your paycheck comes from, and what you're yearly income is, your mortgage value, and calculate how much you can afford to pay for a product.
Then, possibly, they'll look up your name on internet chat-boards and newsgroups to see if you've ever been outspokenly critical of Amazon.com or any of it's affiliate businesses or suppliers, and tack on an "asshole-fee".
Will it matter that you're making twice as much as your neighbor, Mr. Jones? How about when you pay $70 for the same DVD he pays $30 for?
Welcome to the future.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
naw, the Asteroid theory was my first attempt, (I haven't had a post modded up to 4 like that in a long while), but after post #41, I doubt that. I don't know how an Asteroid could possibly have gasses trapped inside it that match so closely the Martian atmosphere, unless it were inside the Martian atmosphere when it was last liquified, which strongly suggests it came from Mars in the first place.
The Martian atmosphere was not a direct product of accretion, (as would be found on an asteroid), but was modified by early Martian volcanic activity, and subsequent chemical interaction that wasn't likely to have happened on an asteroid (within the last 200 million years). It could have happened on a larger object, (planet or planitesimal) but we have no evidence that such a large object ever existed. My theory #6 was presented as an absurdity to ridicule another AC posting. It's a possibility, but about as probable as the meteorites originating from an isolated patch of rock on Mars that was recently formed by volcanic activity (representing an improbably small proportion of Mars' surface, in proportion to the number of young meteorites found on Earth). While it's possible that a single, recent collision on Mars in just the right location could have resulted in a large number of these rocks being spewed earthward, that would have to have been either many recent impacts (no evidence of such) or one large recent impact (no evidence of such), or one HUGE volcanic eruption (no evidence of such).
I'm currently leaning towards either the vast conspiracy of funding-hungry scientists, or the alien pranksters with a particle accelerator theories.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
Yes, but some patents are actually defensive, that is, a company might patent something only in order to prevent a competitor from patenting it, in cases where we're talking about an obvious idea. An antipatent is a much better way to do this than making a "normal" patent.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
oh, I forgot two other possibilities:
There is a vast left-wing conspiracy of scientists fudging their data to raise these interesting questions in order to spark controversy enough to spur funding for a mission to Mars.
(Seriously, all they'd really have to do is talk to Bill Gates - Scientific American says that a manned mission to Mars would only take about $20 Billion, which would be significant, but easily doable for Bill)
or, #6, there was a mysterious planet out there in deep - deep space, past Pluto, with a chemical makeup or rocks AND atmosphere identical to Mars, that was very recently formed (200 million years) by a mechanism that counters all present theories, and was shattered in a collision, and miraculously, many of the fragments made it all that distance to Earth.
I think that one is not very likely - not as likely as #5. I entertained the idea of Asteroid origin because that could exist without being observed all these years, but that didn't work because that doesn't explain the trapped gases matching the Martian atmosphere. But it's a better theory than suggesting there is or was a Mars-like object that far out from the Sun. Or suggesting that there was a large Mars-identical object, with an atmosphere elswhere in the solar system 200 million years ago - despite the distances, the solar system is too crowded for that - the existance of such a planet would be apparent in the orbits of the current planes (and whatever event that caused this theoretical object to vanish without a trace). Current planet formation theory (which admittedly may be wrong in light of this information) suggests that the composition of Mars was determined by the mix of elements that was present in the primordial dust/gas cloud at that distance from the Sun; and no other, because stuff was separated-out by mass like what happens in a centrifuge, which is why the inner planets are rocky and metallic, and the outer planets are made mostly of light gasses like Hydrogen and Nitrogen (Pluto is different, because it's in an eccentric orbit, the theory is that it's either made of the same substances as comets - hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen, light gases, condensed to water, ice, etc, that it is a large kuiper-belt object that is out-of place, or that it was formed closer to the Sun originally, and was displaced by a collision or close-encounter with another very large object).
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
I'll read that link when I'm done reading all the Penis_Bird posts, but post #41 seems to sum things up pretty nicely - or at least does serious harm to my Asteroid theory.
But the fact is, that even with Viking, we don't have DIRECT observation. No human being has ever touched or seen an actual Mars rock that we're sure came from Mars, with the exception of these meteorites, so we can't be sure that that is actually where they came from.
Bottom line is - either Mars' surface is younger than we thought; which really fucks the hell out a lot of assumptions we have about our solar system, which are really foundational, OR our isotope dating system is WAY off, which also fucks with a lot of assumptions which are really foundational, to more than just the origins of our solar system, OR something happened to these rocks in-transit that totally messed with the isotope ratios in a way we have no scientific way of modelling, (I'm picturing prankster-aliens with a particle accelerator) OR, these rocks did not come from Mars. Occam's Razor suggests #4 is most likely, IMHO.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
if the dating of the rock is done based on the last time the rock crystalized, it could have been a medium-sized asteroid, (the inner rocks having been protected from long-term exposure to cosmic rays), with a chemical make-up similar to that of Mars, (being from the same region of the solar system, having accreted from the same mix of dust and stuff), having been involved in a collision that melted it, thereby resetting it's "age", then fragments headed towards Earth.
Oh, and I Am Not A Scientist either, but I play one in make-believe with my kids. I'm the mad kind that tries to take over the world with an army of mind-controlled penguins, or giant robots.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
somehow that's just not as funny coming from you as it was from Meept.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
The conclusion of the article says it all; that they need to send a lander to bring back samples from Mars as soon as possible.
IANAEG or CC (Exo-Geologist or Cosmo-Chemist):
I say this because until that happens, how can we be so sure that these rocks actually came from Mars? Yes, the chemistry is similar, to what we THINK Mars' chemistry is, based on our very limited (and no direct) observations, but if the planets, Mars included, formed by accretion of dust particles in space around the early Sun, then it stands to reason that maybe not ALL of the materials of similar Martian chemistry accreted to Mars. There could be any number of asteroids made of similar materials floating out there between Mars and Jupiter, and periodically colliding, getting melted, and sent Earthward. Sure, the stats may be against it, but I don't believe we really know all that much about the smaller residents of the asteroid belt.
I'm not saying that these rocks are not from Mars, but I'm saying that maybe it's time to entertain alternative theories as to these rocks origins, because the data doesn't jibe.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
BJH refutes most of your points nicely, I would like to add:
Just because AMD also FUDs, doesn't make it okay for Intel to FUD. AMD *has* to FUD to survive against competitor Intel's FUD. That doesn't make it alright either. I know it interferes with the magical "free market", and the invisible hand-job and all, but it would be nice if *someone* would take these companies to task for false advertising when they FUD.
Intel pushes IDE because IDE relies on CPU horsepower to initiate transfers. SCSI relies on the controller. Therefore, if HD access takes CPU cycles, this increases the demand (in a bogus way) for faster CPUs. Bottom line for Intel; slower and ultimately costlier machines for consumers. Same principle works with Winmodems, and USB too, if I'm not mistaken.
I do agree that PCI was a good spec. So why did they abandon it for AGP? If you read Intel's press releases (and it sounds like you do, on Sunday morning, in front of an altar, accompanied by organ music), it's to reduce the need for VRAM on the card, but the REAL reason was so they could corner the market on graphics chips. Why did they fail? Because their chips SUCK. They had decent competition. And nowadays, I challenge you to even FIND an AGP card with 4mb of VRAM. Or less than 16. Thank God that there were competiors out there with faster, cheaper solutions (and cozier relationships with system vendors), who were able to keep the technology up. Otherwise, today, Intel's graphics chips would be the standard, and ONLY solution.
And finally, about the AMD statement about using Slot A for higher performance, that may be the public statement, but in Private, you can bet your loose and hairy sphincter that the reason was so they didn't have to pay their main competitor MORE license fees, and take it up the ass when Intel decided to change the spec again (Slot 2, Socket 370, etc. ad infinutum, ad nauseum, ad analintrusiun), but they took it up the ass anyway when Intel told the mobo manufacturers; "nice license you got there, it'd be a *shame* if something were to happen to it!"
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
Rude cellphone users seem to also be common in the Phoenix area.
What I'd like is a missile launcher for my car that fires a cell-phone-seeking missile, fires automatically at any call answered while the vehicle is in the left lane.
I'm not even a nazi about driving while gabbing. I'd just appreciate it if the dumb FUCKS would just get the hell out of the left lane so people can pass.
The best bumper sticker I saw was: "do you think you could drive any better if that cell phone were up your ass?"
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
#1, I hope they trademark this so they can sue the inevitable spammers who will abuse it. (because people won't delete such a message knowing that they might REALLY have cash).
#2, I hope AOL doesn't sue them.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
Ego boost? What about those of us who are confident of our abilities, and feel that our output is WORTH money? Or those of use who maybe, need money, are good at something, but for one reason or another, can't "plug into" the moneymaking architecture of an industry; for instance, what if a person is musically inclined, but doesn't give good head - to the right record executive, should our culture be deprived of this person's music? I agree that not everyone should have a ferrari with a 13 year old filipino girl, but on the other hand, people gotta eat. Should our musically inclined person who doesn't give good head be forced to spend his 8-hour days flipping burgers and do music in his spare time?
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!
The incentive for good service should be the same incentives everyone else has for doing good work; pride, and the boss is watching.
if it ain't broke, then fix it 'till it is!