A) The wireless access has to be turned on by you before they can do anything. It is NOT always online.
B) This is a case of selling content they didn't have a licence to sell. This "recall" of sorts was legally covering their ass, since they were selling a pirated copy of the book.
This "recall" of sorts was indeed an attempt to cover their asses, but I don't see any language in the EULA to allow for it nor have I ever heard of any case law or precedent that would allow for a post-sale, non-optional reneg on the sale where the product was involuntary "stolen" by the seller and refunded.
If somebody infringed on the copyright, that is "their bad". That doesn't given them the right (or legal justification) to repossess the property. Additionally, repossessing or destroying the copies does not negate their liability for the infringement. Somebody still infringed the copyright, and may still be liable for that, regardless of Amazon's actions to destroy those copies.
And yes, I understand this isn't a physical property sale but a granting of a permanent license to use a product. I'd be amazed if a court didn't treat it the same way, though.
agnostic: "I don't know if $DEITY exists." atheist: "$DEITY does not exist (with a probability approaching certainty)" antitheist: "There's no $DEITY, period."
Atheism in its modern usage means "I don't believe in $DEITY".
Strong Atheist: "$DEITY does not exist." Weak Atheist: "I don't believe $DEITY exists."
The semantics are constantly being argued, but atheists and agnostics are just as divided between labels as everyone else. Many now feel, though, that theism/atheism is a good distinction, and this would make agnostics (and Buddhists) fall under the atheist category.
Exactly, let the doctor decide and worry about how to pay for it later. If it is a non-cosmetic procedure and you really do need it the Hospitals and Doctors will always work out some way for you to pay for it, even if your insurance company won't. I have never met a doctor that won't fully pay for a patients care if the patient really needs it.
For example: I only have half a brain, and it took even me a while to figure out "photog."
Common sense isn't so common, and none of my friends are photographers.
Good point, that was rude of me. I find it fun to figure out words from context, but I suppose others perhaps aren't the same way.
I'll admit that I am a photog, so I may have a bit of a bias on this... but to be fair, the first time I heard it was when I was getting into photography, and I did get it from context nearly instantly. Then again, the context wasn't the same.
Making some bold assumptions, in the U.K. with electricity at 12 p per kWh and with average annual wind strengths of 8 mph a 1kW unit would push out about 600kWh in a year. This means a £2000 wind turbine installed would take 27 years to pay back. The average wind strength you get affects the mathematics dramatically. This is because electrical output is a cube function of the wind speed. If the wind speed doubles for example, the turbine output goes up by a factor of 8. If your average wind is just 20% stronger at say 10 mph the break even comes down to about 14 years.
Right...laughably ridiculous... ----
Yup, this was already refuted by AC. Power generated is a cube function of wind speed, so a few mph makes a huge difference.
Because we're not talking about DC transmission...[DC] transmission is actually much cheaper/more efficient than AC for long hauls.
Doesn't change the fact that it's still absurdly expensive. Yet again, much better to put that money into nuclear.
Whenever long runs >1,000 km are necessary, HVDC is a money saver. It doesn't matter if that power is coming from nuclear or wind.
Because there is none.
Haha, right. Prove it. You see, in my opinion, there's no impact to the environment if we just burn lots of coal.
If you believe that, then your opinion is both idiotic and demonstrably wrong. Your claim that windmills significantly affect climate is the claim that requires evidence here. And there is none.
As usual, the hip-and-green crowd gets modded up without proving a thing. Slashdot, you're better than this. Parent is a prime example of how environmentalism is a blinding religion. Even GLOBALWARMINGALLIANCE.com says it takes 15-30 years to break even energy wise on windmills.
*Yawn* again. I'm not even an environmentalist. Parent is a prime example of how much trouble a failed education system can put us in.
One more for the road...
It obviously has nothing to do with the 15-30 year window before you reach 1:1 parity with energy invested::energy harvested.
That was your original ridiculous claim. You didn't even attempt to provide support for it because it's so far out there you can't find any credible evidence for it. Energy invested != Dollars invested. The ENERGY payback for windmills is pretty quick. The financial payback depends entirely on the price of electricity.
There is a certain similarity insofar as both profess to "know" something which has not been (cannot be?) proven. Atheists claim that god does not exist, theists claim that god does exist. Neither point has yet to be proven to be true, thus I find a strong assertion of either viewpoint to be somewhat absurd. A more rational response to something that appears not to be falsifiable is to simply acknowledge that we can't make rational statements about it.
A few major points to clarify. Atheists don't claim to know whether or not a god exists. Some do, but many do not. Sorry, but Agnostics are still Atheists in that they're not Theists.
Now that the terminology is straightened out, I'll explain why it's ridiculous to be an Agnostic regarding Yahweh. This particular god is so chock full of contradictions that there's no need to prove he doesn't exist. If I claim I'm both a man and a woman, I have an 18" penis, an IQ of both 143 and 465, and that only a select few can ever actually see me, you don't HAVE to scientifically prove that I don't exist or that my claims are wrong. You can simply disregard it as the most ludicrous thing you've ever heard, pointing out the logical contradictions in my claims, not to mention the fact that most men tend to inflate both their IQ and their penis size when self-reporting. I find the claims regarding Yahweh to be much more ridiculous than this. They're so all-encompassing that Yahweh could be anything and still meet the definitions of at least one Christian church.
Yes, I'm a Yahweh Atheist. I'm also a Teapot Atheist, an Invisible Pink Unicorn Atheist, and (blasphemy!) an FSM Atheist. Even though our society has put more effort into trying to prove religions than any other intellectual pursuit, there isn't a shred of evidence for any of these gods that gives them even the slightest credence to me. I remain an Agnostic to the Deist god, as well as many other religious notions. While there is no evidence for their existence and they're rather improbable, some of them are logically possible and agnosticism towards them is a sane position.
You should try somafm if you haven't already. I feel the same way about most indie music, but I'm a pretty big Groove Salad fan. My father and I both listen to it. We've even bought some CDs of the good stuff I've found on it. (Dzihan & Kamien, Groove Armada, Baby Mammoth, Mr. Scruff)
I think it's pretty obvious what Pandora is angling at here, they're attacking the obvious double-standard. Problem is that if it goes the other way, then that's pretty much the last nail in the coffin of broadcast radio; it's already only a marginally profitable business to be in anymore, and having to pay more royalties will kill most of them off for good.
Only a few months ago, it was charged in the US Congress that record companies have been paying radio stations (again, like in the fifties) to play their records.
Now they want the stations to pay them?
Playing a recording on the air is better than advertising it, and the record companies know it.
This effort is bound to fail, if not ignite laughter.
Actually, it's quite logical. Instead of paying the stations to play their crappy music, they can get the stations to pay them for the right to play ANYONE'S music. Even if it's not their music. This way, they collect no matter what. It's brilliant.
Even better, Pandora's role in this lobbying effort, directly attacking radio stations, ensures that they're involved in this fight. If the radio stations manage to convince congresscritters that it's not OK to do this, it could swing the same way for internet radio. Either that, or it'll level the playing field a bit.
Well, if solar electricity is generated and transmitted to 400 miles away where it is then used in 1000 blenders, toasters, etc, the heat effect of that sunlight is now displaced. The effect of moving the sun's heat energy from places which currently receive it the most (best candidates for solar panels) to other regions, the effects is evening out the delivery of the sun's energy, thus effecting weather patterns and ecosystems in many ways.
According to the first link, waste heat may be responsible for up to 1/3rd of the UHI effect. This will certainly get worse as we use more energy, but I have hope that reduction in greenhouse gases will help relieve the UHI problem.
If anything, I'd say that moving solar energy around the globe in large scales has to have less of an effect than pulling sequestered carbon out of the ground and burning it on large scales.
Blah blah blah. It obviously has nothing to do with the 15-30 year window before you reach 1:1 parity with energy invested::energy harvested.
Because that's a bogus claim that's laughably ridiculous.
Or with the cost of DC transmission.
Because we're not talking about DC transmission. The person you replied to was talking about regional interconnects. People well above this in the story were talking about long-distance DC transmission, which is actually much cheaper/more efficient than AC for long hauls.
Or with the potential impact on the weather.
Because there is none.
You're right, it has to be Big %insert something you hate here%.
You're right - it has to be Imaginary %insert bogus claim here%.
There are much bigger things to worry about at the moment than "Big Coal".
You're right. One of those Big Things is the unsustainable fossil-fuel based energy economy in the US and potential alternative energy sources and distribution systems. Big Coal is just a political roadblock to some of the proposed solutions.
Yes, but do you have enough letters to be delivered from Kearny, NJ to Fresno, CA to fill that box? If not, how are you going to sort/redirect the individual letters that don't fit in conveniently-sized bins?
The USPS sorting infrastructure is just as (if not more) impressive than the actual shipping infrastructure.
Not to mention the fact that they could read my handwriting when I was five years old. Not that it's improved much.
* Promote and defend the integrity of science and its use;
* Provide a voice for science on societal issues;
* Promote the responsible use of science in public policy;
* Foster education in science and technology for everyone;
That doesn't really seem particularly liberal or conservative from a political standpoint, unless conservatives have a decidedly anti-science-education standpoint.
How can you call this group non-partisan? I doubt there are too many Republicans in their ranks!
But that would not prove the existence of an "IDer," scientifically b/c supernatural is outside the realm of the scientific method.
I really hate this argument! The supernatural is not outside of the realm of science. Anything that affects the natural or interacts with it in any way is subject to scientific inquiry and testing. Any interaction with our universe should be observable and testable from within our universe. If the supernatural has absolutely no interaction with our universe, then it may as well not exist. It certainly would invalidate every religion I've heard of.
So you've got a good excuse. Over 25% of americans are overweight. How many % of americans have some kind of permanent injury that prevents them from working out?
In most western countries, the majority of fat people are fat because they have poor impulse control and are lazy.
*yawn*. All this hating on fat people and blaming them for it is getting pretty old. Most fat people are fat because of a confluence of various reasons. Yes, many people have more efficient intestinal bacteria, slower metabolisms, or bodies that tend to store as much fat as possible. Since the dawn of life these were generally good traits to have because food was usually scarce. The body is also designed for regular physical use, constant walking and motion and a much shorter lifespan. Naturally, we setup a society where food is extremely calorie-dense, is so easy to eat you can literally inhale it (instead of picking meat off bones) and exercise is difficult and actually expensive for many people. Of course, the fatter you are, the more likely you are to be embarrassed by their bodies because of twits like you making fun of them, further decreasing the likelihood that they will have the courage to try more outdoor activities.
Does a workaholic lawyer with an 80-hour work week have time to take an hour-long lunch break? How about a couple hours of exercise? I doubt he will.
Let's look at the life of an average cubicle drone where I live. To be at work by about 8:45am, he has to leave by 7:45am (LA commute from suburbs). That means getting up about 7:00 or so. Now he gets a 30-minute lunch break from 12:00-12:30pm. There's a Jamba Juice, Starbucks, McDonald's, and a few other fast food places within a 5 minute walk from where he works (traffic isn't good enough to be able to drive anywhere on a 30m break). He eats his lard and goes back to his boring, mundane job that he's miserable with. 5:30pm or so rolls around and he gets excited about going home, gets into his car, and hits LA rush hour traffic. His drive home takes another 1.5 hours today.
Now he's home at 7pm, he's upset about sitting in the car so long in shitty traffic with everyone being assholes to him, if he's lucky he has a wife who doesn't work and has prepared a healthy meal for him. If not, he's probably picked up some unhealthy crap on the way home, eaten it real quick, and sat around watching TV for a couple hours to dull the pain. He needs to go to bed soon so he can repeat this tomorrow.
We have a society that treats people like cattle, feeds them highly calorie-dense foods, and locks them in pastures where it's unlikely they'll really get a lot of exercise. Then we kill their hopes and dreams and make sure they know they're worth about as much to us as cattle. You're surprised that they get fat in these conditions? You're part of the problem.
All aviation is taking a gamble with gravity. If a potential for a downdraft anywhere became a limiting factor, no one would ever leave the ground.
Even in the best situations with the most accomplished pilots, the atmosphere can still prove a greater force than our best technology and minds. And these forces can crop up in any place and time, even with the best weather reports.
And you can suddenly poof out of existence, or a lion could escape from the zoo and eat you alive while you're on the toilet. Or a massive coronal ejection could kill us all.
Yes, these things COULD all happen, but they're extremely unlikely to happen, especially if we take the proper precautions. I'm not familiar with the particular details of this crash, but there is a point where the benefits outweigh the risks. If 25% of all flights crashed, most people would not risk flying except in the most dire of situations.
They are now much easier for the disabled to use. While it was possible for someone who was blind to use an OS/2 ATM, it relied more or less on memorizing what to do. The buttons had braille on them but there wasn't really any feed back other than beeps. So it was a situation of memorize the key presses to do what you want. New ATMs have headphone jacks and can give audio feedback, allowing those with vision problems to use them much easier.
So what? It's not like they can tell whether the ATMs gave them $1 bills or $100s.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the aircraft was almost completely unnecessary, and yet we built more than twenty.
What do you mean "unnecessary"? That's a load of rubbish! Stealth bombers are still extremely necessary and useful, and will continue to be well into the future. They give us an incredible capability that has already saved us valuable lives and given us a unique, powerful capability. I'm sure the costs could come down on them, but it would have been idiotic to abandon our stealth programs just because the USSR collapsed!
The SSC could easily have been built, and would have kept the US in the lead for basic science research for at least twenty years.
(And, yeah. The ISS should *never* have been built)
Agreed with everything else above. I think people are confusing things... No offense to those who work in the field, but I see the ISS as more of an engineering project than a science project. The science it enables us to do is a pretty crappy ROI, and I see it as a huge waste of money. I'd rather have the SSC and Human Genome Project, not to mention the IFR and other programs that could have really done a lot for our society.
It seems Republicans like engineering not science. They like science for the resulting technologies, but they're more willing to discard scientific results that disagree with their ideology. As they've become more dogmatic and dominated by the religious right, they've become more openly hostile to science. It's no surprise that most scientists want nothing to do with the GOP, just as most atheists want nothing to do with the GOP.
Not in the US. I'm not sure how that is handled in other countries though. I know a lot of international students in the US voluntarily surrender their passport to the dean's office, which will hold them in a secure place, since students tend to lose important documents like that easily. I've taken more than a few couch surfers out drinking only to realize their government issued ID is in Lousiana, California, or D.C. due to this.
Precisely. Some countries do require it, and some countries do require you to be able to present ID. In most countries, as a foreigner, the only ID they will accept as valid is the passport. It's too easy to get away with faking something like a Wisconsin driver's license that nobody in Istanbul would be able to authenticate.
On the same line, it's rapidly getting to the point where you can't travel within the US without having your papers (ID). If cops think you're acting suspicious (just walking down the street), they'll frequently ask for ID. There have been a lot of recent cases regarding this, and the laws are getting more and more towards making ID mandatory.
But we're computer geeks, not darkroom geeks; "photog" might need a little more explanation in these circles, than in its native ones.
Many of the computer geeks I know are also amateur photographers. They're also smart enough to understand, from context, that photog=photographer when they read "the Obama Photog who took this picture is..."
Seriously, anyone with half a brain should be able to grok that. Just like anyone with half a brain will figure out what "grok" means from context in the previous sentence.
Even when I figured out what he and other of his IBM colleagues had done, he simply changed the subject. And, that was over 22 years after the fact. Classified is classified and there is no shelf date.
I have to respect that and understand. It seems too few people know what it means to keep your word and keep a secret. I do have to make a technical nitpick, though: Classified does have a shelf date. IIRC, it's a 75 year commitment from the time your security clearance goes inactive or whatever else it's called. It's actually a signed legal contract with the government.
Additionally, there's a schedule for the declassification of information. More time sensitive stuff is declassified rather quickly, and other stuff remains classified for quite a long time. But I've only heard of a few instances of documents older than 75 years remaining classified.
Modern farming is based on centuries of research and experimentation. Farmers have been performing genetic engineering for thousands of years.
Yes, it would be fair to call them agricultural engineers. Just like any other engineer, however, they aren't actually scientists. They use science, they don't do science. Likewise, machinists, engineers, and pilots aren't scientists.
Anyways, sounds like the GPP is mad because they didn't skew the sample in his favor. We all know farmers are pretty conservative. Since farmers do things with their hands and with machinery, we should conduct a poll where we ask taxi drivers and carpenters what the best farming methods are. I'm sure they'll be less biased than all those farmers!
Thanks for giving us such a clear example of why the average 'merican doesn't understand science.
Slashdot Mirror
A) The wireless access has to be turned on by you before they can do anything. It is NOT always online.
B) This is a case of selling content they didn't have a licence to sell. This "recall" of sorts was legally covering their ass, since they were selling a pirated copy of the book.
This "recall" of sorts was indeed an attempt to cover their asses, but I don't see any language in the EULA to allow for it nor have I ever heard of any case law or precedent that would allow for a post-sale, non-optional reneg on the sale where the product was involuntary "stolen" by the seller and refunded.
If somebody infringed on the copyright, that is "their bad". That doesn't given them the right (or legal justification) to repossess the property. Additionally, repossessing or destroying the copies does not negate their liability for the infringement. Somebody still infringed the copyright, and may still be liable for that, regardless of Amazon's actions to destroy those copies.
And yes, I understand this isn't a physical property sale but a granting of a permanent license to use a product. I'd be amazed if a court didn't treat it the same way, though.
Actually, the difference is mostly semantic.
agnostic: "I don't know if $DEITY exists."
atheist: "$DEITY does not exist (with a probability approaching certainty)"
antitheist: "There's no $DEITY, period."
Atheism in its modern usage means "I don't believe in $DEITY".
Strong Atheist: "$DEITY does not exist."
Weak Atheist: "I don't believe $DEITY exists."
The semantics are constantly being argued, but atheists and agnostics are just as divided between labels as everyone else. Many now feel, though, that theism/atheism is a good distinction, and this would make agnostics (and Buddhists) fall under the atheist category.
Exactly, let the doctor decide and worry about how to pay for it later. If it is a non-cosmetic procedure and you really do need it the Hospitals and Doctors will always work out some way for you to pay for it, even if your insurance company won't. I have never met a doctor that won't fully pay for a patients care if the patient really needs it.
(emphasis mine) WHAT?! Now I know you're just making shit up. Let me give you a hand with that: In 2007, 62 percent of all personal bankruptcies were linked to medical bills.
For example: I only have half a brain, and it took even me a while to figure out "photog."
Common sense isn't so common, and none of my friends are photographers.
Good point, that was rude of me. I find it fun to figure out words from context, but I suppose others perhaps aren't the same way.
I'll admit that I am a photog, so I may have a bit of a bias on this... but to be fair, the first time I heard it was when I was getting into photography, and I did get it from context nearly instantly. Then again, the context wasn't the same.
Because that's a bogus claim that's laughably ridiculous.
Oh really?
4 Cost versus Payback
Making some bold assumptions, in the U.K. with electricity at 12 p per kWh and with average annual wind strengths of 8 mph a 1kW unit would push out about 600kWh in a year. This means a £2000 wind turbine installed would take 27 years to pay back. The average wind strength you get affects the mathematics dramatically. This is because electrical output is a cube function of the wind speed. If the wind speed doubles for example, the turbine output goes up by a factor of 8. If your average wind is just 20% stronger at say 10 mph the break even comes down to about 14 years.
Right...laughably ridiculous...
----
Yup, this was already refuted by AC. Power generated is a cube function of wind speed, so a few mph makes a huge difference.
Because we're not talking about DC transmission...[DC] transmission is actually much cheaper/more efficient than AC for long hauls.
Doesn't change the fact that it's still absurdly expensive. Yet again, much better to put that money into nuclear.
Whenever long runs >1,000 km are necessary, HVDC is a money saver. It doesn't matter if that power is coming from nuclear or wind.
Because there is none.
Haha, right. Prove it. You see, in my opinion, there's no impact to the environment if we just burn lots of coal.
If you believe that, then your opinion is both idiotic and demonstrably wrong. Your claim that windmills significantly affect climate is the claim that requires evidence here. And there is none.
As usual, the hip-and-green crowd gets modded up without proving a thing. Slashdot, you're better than this. Parent is a prime example of how environmentalism is a blinding religion. Even GLOBALWARMINGALLIANCE.com says it takes 15-30 years to break even energy wise on windmills.
*Yawn* again. I'm not even an environmentalist. Parent is a prime example of how much trouble a failed education system can put us in.
One more for the road...
It obviously has nothing to do with the 15-30 year window before you reach 1:1 parity with energy invested::energy harvested.
That was your original ridiculous claim. You didn't even attempt to provide support for it because it's so far out there you can't find any credible evidence for it. Energy invested != Dollars invested. The ENERGY payback for windmills is pretty quick. The financial payback depends entirely on the price of electricity.
There is a certain similarity insofar as both profess to "know" something which has not been (cannot be?) proven. Atheists claim that god does not exist, theists claim that god does exist. Neither point has yet to be proven to be true, thus I find a strong assertion of either viewpoint to be somewhat absurd. A more rational response to something that appears not to be falsifiable is to simply acknowledge that we can't make rational statements about it.
A few major points to clarify. Atheists don't claim to know whether or not a god exists. Some do, but many do not. Sorry, but Agnostics are still Atheists in that they're not Theists.
Now that the terminology is straightened out, I'll explain why it's ridiculous to be an Agnostic regarding Yahweh. This particular god is so chock full of contradictions that there's no need to prove he doesn't exist. If I claim I'm both a man and a woman, I have an 18" penis, an IQ of both 143 and 465, and that only a select few can ever actually see me, you don't HAVE to scientifically prove that I don't exist or that my claims are wrong. You can simply disregard it as the most ludicrous thing you've ever heard, pointing out the logical contradictions in my claims, not to mention the fact that most men tend to inflate both their IQ and their penis size when self-reporting. I find the claims regarding Yahweh to be much more ridiculous than this. They're so all-encompassing that Yahweh could be anything and still meet the definitions of at least one Christian church.
Yes, I'm a Yahweh Atheist. I'm also a Teapot Atheist, an Invisible Pink Unicorn Atheist, and (blasphemy!) an FSM Atheist. Even though our society has put more effort into trying to prove religions than any other intellectual pursuit, there isn't a shred of evidence for any of these gods that gives them even the slightest credence to me. I remain an Agnostic to the Deist god, as well as many other religious notions. While there is no evidence for their existence and they're rather improbable, some of them are logically possible and agnosticism towards them is a sane position.
You should try somafm if you haven't already. I feel the same way about most indie music, but I'm a pretty big Groove Salad fan. My father and I both listen to it. We've even bought some CDs of the good stuff I've found on it. (Dzihan & Kamien, Groove Armada, Baby Mammoth, Mr. Scruff)
I think it's pretty obvious what Pandora is angling at here, they're attacking the obvious double-standard. Problem is that if it goes the other way, then that's pretty much the last nail in the coffin of broadcast radio; it's already only a marginally profitable business to be in anymore, and having to pay more royalties will kill most of them off for good.
(emphasis mine)
I fail to see how that's a problem for Pandora.
Only a few months ago, it was charged in the US Congress that record companies have been paying radio stations (again, like in the fifties) to play their records.
Now they want the stations to pay them?
Playing a recording on the air is better than advertising it, and the record companies know it.
This effort is bound to fail, if not ignite laughter.
Actually, it's quite logical. Instead of paying the stations to play their crappy music, they can get the stations to pay them for the right to play ANYONE'S music. Even if it's not their music. This way, they collect no matter what. It's brilliant.
Even better, Pandora's role in this lobbying effort, directly attacking radio stations, ensures that they're involved in this fight. If the radio stations manage to convince congresscritters that it's not OK to do this, it could swing the same way for internet radio. Either that, or it'll level the playing field a bit.
Nice nick, btw.
Well, if solar electricity is generated and transmitted to 400 miles away where it is then used in 1000 blenders, toasters, etc, the heat effect of that sunlight is now displaced. The effect of moving the sun's heat energy from places which currently receive it the most (best candidates for solar panels) to other regions, the effects is evening out the delivery of the sun's energy, thus effecting weather patterns and ecosystems in many ways.
We already have that occurring with the existing system, and it's nothing compared to Urban Heat Islands. Greenhouse Gases play a role in UHIs, but so do the materials cities are made of.
According to the first link, waste heat may be responsible for up to 1/3rd of the UHI effect. This will certainly get worse as we use more energy, but I have hope that reduction in greenhouse gases will help relieve the UHI problem.
If anything, I'd say that moving solar energy around the globe in large scales has to have less of an effect than pulling sequestered carbon out of the ground and burning it on large scales.
Blah blah blah.
It obviously has nothing to do with the 15-30 year window before you reach 1:1 parity with energy invested::energy harvested.
Because that's a bogus claim that's laughably ridiculous.
Or with the cost of DC transmission.
Because we're not talking about DC transmission. The person you replied to was talking about regional interconnects. People well above this in the story were talking about long-distance DC transmission, which is actually much cheaper/more efficient than AC for long hauls.
Or with the potential impact on the weather.
Because there is none.
You're right, it has to be Big %insert something you hate here%.
You're right - it has to be Imaginary %insert bogus claim here%.
There are much bigger things to worry about at the moment than "Big Coal".
You're right. One of those Big Things is the unsustainable fossil-fuel based energy economy in the US and potential alternative energy sources and distribution systems. Big Coal is just a political roadblock to some of the proposed solutions.
Yes, but do you have enough letters to be delivered from Kearny, NJ to Fresno, CA to fill that box? If not, how are you going to sort/redirect the individual letters that don't fit in conveniently-sized bins?
The USPS sorting infrastructure is just as (if not more) impressive than the actual shipping infrastructure.
Not to mention the fact that they could read my handwriting when I was five years old. Not that it's improved much.
AAAS Mission
AAAS seeks to...:
* Promote and defend the integrity of science and its use;
* Provide a voice for science on societal issues;
* Promote the responsible use of science in public policy;
* Foster education in science and technology for everyone;
That doesn't really seem particularly liberal or conservative from a political standpoint, unless conservatives have a decidedly anti-science-education standpoint.
How can you call this group non-partisan? I doubt there are too many Republicans in their ranks!
Thank you. That was interesting and informative.
Unfortunately, I think religion and ego will get the better of us and stifle these technologies for a long time to come.
But that would not prove the existence of an "IDer," scientifically b/c supernatural is outside the realm of the scientific method.
I really hate this argument! The supernatural is not outside of the realm of science. Anything that affects the natural or interacts with it in any way is subject to scientific inquiry and testing. Any interaction with our universe should be observable and testable from within our universe. If the supernatural has absolutely no interaction with our universe, then it may as well not exist. It certainly would invalidate every religion I've heard of.
Frankenstein tried to create a Human, and he nearly succeded.
These Folks create something artifical, like Chimera, or the Beast from the Book of Revelation
Interestingly enough, these are all fictional stories. As such, they can't really be held up as real-world arguments of why we shouldn't do something.
So you've got a good excuse. Over 25% of americans are overweight. How many % of americans have some kind of permanent injury that prevents them from working out?
In most western countries, the majority of fat people are fat because they have poor impulse control and are lazy.
*yawn*. All this hating on fat people and blaming them for it is getting pretty old. Most fat people are fat because of a confluence of various reasons. Yes, many people have more efficient intestinal bacteria, slower metabolisms, or bodies that tend to store as much fat as possible. Since the dawn of life these were generally good traits to have because food was usually scarce. The body is also designed for regular physical use, constant walking and motion and a much shorter lifespan. Naturally, we setup a society where food is extremely calorie-dense, is so easy to eat you can literally inhale it (instead of picking meat off bones) and exercise is difficult and actually expensive for many people. Of course, the fatter you are, the more likely you are to be embarrassed by their bodies because of twits like you making fun of them, further decreasing the likelihood that they will have the courage to try more outdoor activities.
Does a workaholic lawyer with an 80-hour work week have time to take an hour-long lunch break? How about a couple hours of exercise? I doubt he will.
Let's look at the life of an average cubicle drone where I live. To be at work by about 8:45am, he has to leave by 7:45am (LA commute from suburbs). That means getting up about 7:00 or so. Now he gets a 30-minute lunch break from 12:00-12:30pm. There's a Jamba Juice, Starbucks, McDonald's, and a few other fast food places within a 5 minute walk from where he works (traffic isn't good enough to be able to drive anywhere on a 30m break). He eats his lard and goes back to his boring, mundane job that he's miserable with. 5:30pm or so rolls around and he gets excited about going home, gets into his car, and hits LA rush hour traffic. His drive home takes another 1.5 hours today.
Now he's home at 7pm, he's upset about sitting in the car so long in shitty traffic with everyone being assholes to him, if he's lucky he has a wife who doesn't work and has prepared a healthy meal for him. If not, he's probably picked up some unhealthy crap on the way home, eaten it real quick, and sat around watching TV for a couple hours to dull the pain. He needs to go to bed soon so he can repeat this tomorrow.
We have a society that treats people like cattle, feeds them highly calorie-dense foods, and locks them in pastures where it's unlikely they'll really get a lot of exercise. Then we kill their hopes and dreams and make sure they know they're worth about as much to us as cattle. You're surprised that they get fat in these conditions? You're part of the problem.
All aviation is taking a gamble with gravity. If a potential for a downdraft anywhere became a limiting factor, no one would ever leave the ground.
Even in the best situations with the most accomplished pilots, the atmosphere can still prove a greater force than our best technology and minds. And these forces can crop up in any place and time, even with the best weather reports.
And you can suddenly poof out of existence, or a lion could escape from the zoo and eat you alive while you're on the toilet. Or a massive coronal ejection could kill us all.
Yes, these things COULD all happen, but they're extremely unlikely to happen, especially if we take the proper precautions. I'm not familiar with the particular details of this crash, but there is a point where the benefits outweigh the risks. If 25% of all flights crashed, most people would not risk flying except in the most dire of situations.
They are now much easier for the disabled to use. While it was possible for someone who was blind to use an OS/2 ATM, it relied more or less on memorizing what to do. The buttons had braille on them but there wasn't really any feed back other than beeps. So it was a situation of memorize the key presses to do what you want. New ATMs have headphone jacks and can give audio feedback, allowing those with vision problems to use them much easier.
So what? It's not like they can tell whether the ATMs gave them $1 bills or $100s.
Each B-2 bomber cost about $1 billion.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the aircraft was almost completely unnecessary, and yet we built more than twenty.
What do you mean "unnecessary"? That's a load of rubbish! Stealth bombers are still extremely necessary and useful, and will continue to be well into the future. They give us an incredible capability that has already saved us valuable lives and given us a unique, powerful capability. I'm sure the costs could come down on them, but it would have been idiotic to abandon our stealth programs just because the USSR collapsed!
The SSC could easily have been built, and would have kept the US in the lead for basic science research for at least twenty years.
(And, yeah. The ISS should *never* have been built)
Agreed with everything else above. I think people are confusing things... No offense to those who work in the field, but I see the ISS as more of an engineering project than a science project. The science it enables us to do is a pretty crappy ROI, and I see it as a huge waste of money. I'd rather have the SSC and Human Genome Project, not to mention the IFR and other programs that could have really done a lot for our society.
It seems Republicans like engineering not science. They like science for the resulting technologies, but they're more willing to discard scientific results that disagree with their ideology. As they've become more dogmatic and dominated by the religious right, they've become more openly hostile to science. It's no surprise that most scientists want nothing to do with the GOP, just as most atheists want nothing to do with the GOP.
Thanks, this is perhaps the best explanation of the situation I have seen. It even explains their motives instead of simply saying "they're evil".
I went to add you as a friend, but it seems you're already added as one. I'm not surprised :)
Not in the US. I'm not sure how that is handled in other countries though. I know a lot of international students in the US voluntarily surrender their passport to the dean's office, which will hold them in a secure place, since students tend to lose important documents like that easily. I've taken more than a few couch surfers out drinking only to realize their government issued ID is in Lousiana, California, or D.C. due to this.
Precisely. Some countries do require it, and some countries do require you to be able to present ID. In most countries, as a foreigner, the only ID they will accept as valid is the passport. It's too easy to get away with faking something like a Wisconsin driver's license that nobody in Istanbul would be able to authenticate.
On the same line, it's rapidly getting to the point where you can't travel within the US without having your papers (ID). If cops think you're acting suspicious (just walking down the street), they'll frequently ask for ID. There have been a lot of recent cases regarding this, and the laws are getting more and more towards making ID mandatory.
But we're computer geeks, not darkroom geeks; "photog" might need a little more explanation in these circles, than in its native ones.
Many of the computer geeks I know are also amateur photographers. They're also smart enough to understand, from context, that photog=photographer when they read "the Obama Photog who took this picture is..."
Seriously, anyone with half a brain should be able to grok that. Just like anyone with half a brain will figure out what "grok" means from context in the previous sentence.
Even when I figured out what he and other of his IBM colleagues had done, he simply changed the subject. And, that was over 22 years after the fact. Classified is classified and there is no shelf date.
I have to respect that and understand. It seems too few people know what it means to keep your word and keep a secret. I do have to make a technical nitpick, though: Classified does have a shelf date. IIRC, it's a 75 year commitment from the time your security clearance goes inactive or whatever else it's called. It's actually a signed legal contract with the government.
Additionally, there's a schedule for the declassification of information. More time sensitive stuff is declassified rather quickly, and other stuff remains classified for quite a long time. But I've only heard of a few instances of documents older than 75 years remaining classified.
Modern farming is based on centuries of research and experimentation. Farmers have been performing genetic engineering for thousands of years.
Yes, it would be fair to call them agricultural engineers. Just like any other engineer, however, they aren't actually scientists. They use science, they don't do science. Likewise, machinists, engineers, and pilots aren't scientists.
Anyways, sounds like the GPP is mad because they didn't skew the sample in his favor. We all know farmers are pretty conservative. Since farmers do things with their hands and with machinery, we should conduct a poll where we ask taxi drivers and carpenters what the best farming methods are. I'm sure they'll be less biased than all those farmers!
Thanks for giving us such a clear example of why the average 'merican doesn't understand science.