This article is idiotic. Time to exclude Unknown Lamer.
>/p>
Not to some of us.
Me, for instance. I'm a pretty serious student of the life of Alexander the Great - one of whose long-term projects was the rebuilding of the Ziggurat of Babylon. Up until now, there simply hasn't been a known-contemporary depiction of the Tower and its temple. All the illustrations heretofore have been products of their artists' imangination (the same is true of the Lighthouse of Pharos in Alexandria, btw). For history geeks, this is a rather wonderful discovery.
"Over and over, we read of hidden, manipulated, and cherry-picked data, refusals to abide with having outsiders vet their work, and allowing naked advocacy into the IPCC reports on climate change as if they were peer-reviewed science. "
To which nomadic responded:
No, we don't; you just made those things up.
Actually, he didn't just make those things up - and he does read of those things "over and over."
The thing is, you and he read completely different sources: he reads anti-AGW blogs, and you read reasonably objective reports. So somebody else made those things up, and he reads them "over and over", because those fictions are endlessly repeated by the sources he reads.
It's something like a self-fulfilling prophecy, except it's more of a wingnut trope, instead.
I hope that clears up that little misunderstanding.
just as it's legal nationwide to turn right at a red light after first stopping, unless a right turn on red is clearly posted as prohibited at that intersection.
Wrong (unless the law has been changed in the last 10 years or so). There are a very small number of states, New Jersey I believe being one of them, where it is NOT legal to turn right at a red light after stopping.
Wrong. From the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's index page: "Since January 1, 1980, all 50 states and the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have had laws permitting right-turn-on-red unless a sign prohibits the turn. As of January 1, 1994, 43 jurisdictions provided for left-turn-on-red (LTOR) and nine did not. LTOR is permitted only at the intersection of a one-way street with another one-way street."
To quote Stephen Colbert, "I accept your apology."
In most states, the person in the intersection (e.g. you), has the right away over people entering the intersection. Since in some states it is perfectly legal to enter the intersection on yellow, the people proceeding straight in front of your intended route have the right of way. This is of course ignoring how some people enter on yellow when they were perfectly capable of stopping safely. Once traffic finally stops, no one should be entering the intersection from crossing traffic until you are clear of the intersection. If they do, they are violating traffic law just as much as someone running a red light.
AFAIK it's legal in all fifty states to enter an intersection when the light is yellow, just as it's legal nationwide to turn right at a red light after first stopping, unless a right turn on red is clearly posted as prohibited at that intersection. Yellow means "prepare to stop", NOT "stop now", and the rule I recall from driver's ed, lo these many years ago, is "If your entire vehicle is past the stop line when the light turns red, you may legally proceed through the intersection." In some states/localities, it's "If more than 50% of the vehicle's length is past the stop line when the light turns red, you may legally proceed through the intersection."
Regardless, it is entirely legal in all 50 states to pull into the intersection while the light is yellow for the purpose of making a left turn once the signal turns red, as long as you meet the "whole vehicle/more than 50% of the vehicle's length" test. Anyone who believes otherwise needs a driver safety refresher.
Nothing I see in that article suggests that this is a new phenomenon...aside from the hyperbolic statements of the scientists.
The author is astonishingly remiss in not asking the obvious question: did this just start? It could be that such methane plumes have existed forever, we just never detected them. This is the EIGHTH such cruise/survey. They should be able to conclusively say "we checked this area in at least one or two previous instances and such seeps weren't observed", no?
It seems logical that there must have been plumes like this for a while, to prompt (and justify) such a large-scale survey.
Yet both the scientists and article author seem to gloss over the fact that "never seen before" != "never happened before".
In fact, Igor Semiletov's team has been conducting this survey annually for some time now. From the article:
The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years.
And they have seen this phenomenon in prior years - just not on anything like the scale of methane release they observed this year. Again, from the article:
"Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This is the first time that we've found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It's amazing," Dr Semiletov said.
Don't blame the scientist. Don't blame the journalist. Blame the reader, for not reading the story.
""The concentration of atmospheric methane increased unto three times in the past two centuries from 0.7 parts per million to 1.7ppm, and in the Arctic to 1.9ppm. That's a huge increase, between two and three times,"
I'm OK with her statement, until this:
"...and this has never happened in the history of the planet," she added.
So there's data for the last 4+ BILLION years with 10-50 year precision so that over a 100-200 year timespan, she can measure the slope of the line (rate in rise over the run of time) precisely enough to say that the slope of the line over the last 200 years is steeper than it has been in any other 200 year period in the last 4 billion years? Sorry, but I find that hard to believe.
I suspect she's talking about it having never previously happened in a span of just a couple of centuries.
A dramatic increase in atmospheric methane - triggered by a dramatic rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide? Now that's definitely happened before - at the end of the Permian Period. And it helped cause the Permian/Triassic extinction event, the largest species die-off since the Oxygen Catastrophe.
peerblock + bluetack list (p2p) + any torrenting app = you won't/can't be tracked by any industry in any legal fashion. It literally is that simple these days.
No it's not.
ALL of the URLs that bluetack points to have been "suspended" by Vectrohost.com, and bluetack's own page is now just a plea for contributions.
So, I posted the comment below, and some asshat modded it -1 Troll - which it is not.
It's a review - and the modder is probably Mr. Dotcom's sockpuppet:
Looks like they contracted the producing of that song to Printz Board. Wonder how much he paid for that.
Basically, it's an undisguised commercial for MegaUpload, with a dumptruck load of testimonials chucked into a pedestrian soundtrack, featuring lead vocals by the increasingly shameless will.i.am. It all comes off as every bit as sincere as a used car salesman's promises.
That being the case, my guess is that Mr. Dotcom paid an arm and a leg for every hip-hopper who appears in it, plus a boatload more for Printz Board and the Blackeyed Pea who "sings" it.
Looks like they contracted the producing of that song to Printz Board. Wonder how much he paid for that.
Basically, it's an undisguised commercial for MegaUpload, with a dumptruck load of testimonials chucked into a pedestrian soundtrack, featuring lead vocals by the increasingly shameless will.i.am. It all comes off as every bit as sincere as a used car salesman's promises.
That being the case, my guess is that Mr. Dotcom paid an arm and a leg for every hip-hopper who appears in it, plus a boatload more for Printz Board and the Blackeyed Pea who "sings" it.
Name something that was on TV that was so profound and moving that it was absolutely critical that you see it when it first came out, rather than waiting a few months and spending half the price of one month's cable on DVDs to watch it whenever you like. (And that's assuming only completely legal viewing options) For bonus points, explain why that show was so awesome that you'd rather be watching it than spending that hour conversing with your loved ones.
Okay, I'll bite:
Star Trek. In 1966, when consumer video was still the best part of a decade away.
Roots. Which took a year or more to come to video.
Shogun. Same deal.
Carbon 300 ppm second to pretty much everything but vanadium and stuff like that. For all intents and purposes the earth is not the idea place for a carbon based life form.
Incorrect, I'm afraid.
If you exclusively look at the abundance of carbon in the Earth's makeup, you miss the most crucial aspect of hydrocarbon-based biochemistry: the abundance of water as a solvent for hydrocarbons, particularly here on the surface of the planet, where the incredible profusion of possible compound-producing reactions benefits tremendously from sunlight as a source of energy input to trigger the making and breaking of hydrocarbon bonds.
A world where carbon is greatly more abundant - but water is largely absent - wouldn't necessarily be more conducive to the evolution of life.
The reason why we're made out of relatively rare C instead of tremendously available Si is C chemistry is incredibly better than Si chemistry for bio, or heck, chemistry in general. The fine article didn't give it enough justice or maybe the editors edited out the chemistry rants. Lets just say that Xe biochem is not all that more unlikely or difficult than Si biochem would be (in other words, nearly totally freaking almost incomprehendibly impossible vs just merely incredibly extremely impossibly unlikely)
This, on the other hand, is a much better point... and, IMnsHO, one deserving of an "Insightful" upmod.
Indeed, before I became a permanent AC I had a user account on here and with tedious regularity would get modded down for expressing pro-copyright points of view (this was in the days of Napster). Great thing about posting AC is you only ever get modded up:)
Here's the thing: whenever I get mod points, I try, insofar as that's possible, not to downmod posts. I only mod "Troll" or "Flamebait" when a post is blatantly one or the other, and it has no redeeming value otherwise. If there's even a modest attempt to be informative, or there's at least some hint of a broader perspective, or some faint, flaccid attempt at humor, I won't downmod, regardless of how transparent the intent to provoke mindless reaction may be. (Side note: I didn't realize that modding "Funny" doesn't gain you Karma - but I'm still going to hand out "+1 Funny" mods when I think a post is genuinely funny, nontheless.) And I never, EVER downmod posts simply because I disagree with their worldview, even if I really, REALLY disagree with it.
But I also NEVER mod posts by Anonymous Cowards, up or down. To my mind, posting AC is truly an act of cowardice, and I refuse to reward it by giving it any attention whatsoever..
Yes, I get the "bury brigade" problem. I've been a victim of it more than once myself - but I refuse to allow infantilism on the part of others to cow me. Likewise, I realize how rampant the sockpuppet account problem is on/., but I refuse to participate in it myself, because to allow the actions of others to persuade you to abuse the system yourself is to use the ethical shortcomings of others merely as an excuse to abandon your own ethics.
What's interesting about the Google patent is it almost exactly matches my view on what our voting system should be. Everyone gets a vote on every issue, but to achieve practicality they can defer their vote to someone they trust, thus creating de-facto politicians whose position one trusts enough that one lets them vote for them. Each politician can thus issue N votes, and we have perfect proportional representation. Making this into an online system means we can shift our vote around, allocate it to different people on different issues, and elect to vote directly on things that really matter to us. Elections then choose which set of people we wish to govern us, not which set of people we allow to rule us.
I actually think that'd be an excellent model for real-world democracy in the Internet age: start with direct eDemocracy, then give voters the option to delegate their votes on all issues other than X - where X can be any topic or topics on which a voter wants to exercise more fine-grained control - along with the ability instantly to redelegate their votes. Presto! Truly representative democracy overlaid on direct democracy, with the added bonus of not having to wait until the next election cycle to jettison a politician who betrays your trust. Don't like the way the person to whom you've routinely delegated your vote has flipflopped on an issue, or sold out to special interests? Redelegate your vote to someone else, or vote it directly yourself - and watch the influence of special interest money on professional politicians evaporate.
My expectations were conditioned by this though: 'voted the funniest joke in the world by American men'. When I read the references to hunting and guns, my expectations were further bolstered, making it almost impossible for the joke itself to engender surprise, since the context had already rendered me determinedly unsurprised.
What makes the joke funny is not the hunting, or the guns. What makes it funny is the unexpected twist - and the fact that, by implication, the guy making the phone call is an idiot.
Incongruity is one widely-advocated theory of the foundations of all humor (there are others). Regardless of whether you accept the proposition that it's the basis of ALL humor, it's certainly a key ingredient. For instance, it's the reason why the Rule of Three (and the lesser known Rule of Seven) consistently produces jokes that most people find funny. It's why gags from the squirting boutonniere, to the whoopee cushion consistently get laughs. It's why:
A neutron walks into a bar. The bartender asks, "Would you like a beer?" The neutron replies, "You bet!" so the bartender pulls him a tall, frosty one and sets it on the bar in front of him. The neutron downs it with gusto, wipes the foam off his chin, and asks, "So, what do I owe you?"
The bartender looks him up and down and says, "For you? No charge."
is funny - because it violates your expectations (who expects a bartender to know the charges of subnuclear particles, just off the top of his head, anyway?).
So it's not hunters or guns, per se, that make the "funniest" joke funny. It's that you're expecting the guy who calls 911 to come back and tell the operator, "Well, he's not breathing," rather than to "make sure he's dead" by finishing him off. That incongruity is what makes it funny. That, and the fact that the caller is an obvious idiot.
I found it ironic that the article relied on American men to judge the best joke in the world.
Ironic in what way?
Because you're non-American? Because over two million ratings were submitted, and the one that got the highest score also happened to be the one that most appealed to those who identified themselves as American men? Because you, personally, don't find that joke particularly funny?
"Thinking" with your prejudices is not really thinking at all.
Actually I've toured the south a few times myself and known several indie bands and most of us put our stuff on P2P, thanks anyway. you know why? Because fans will STILL happily buy your CDs at the shows, along with the T-Shirts, caps, mugs, keyrings, mousepads (those were my idea BTW) and anything else to help out the band because guess what? they are FANS and want to see you get ahead.
If bands and/or solo artists CHOOSE to put their music on P2P, that's one thing. Taking that choice away from them is quite another.
I'm surprised I even have to explain this to you.
BTW I probably shouldn't share this trick, as we were raking in the cash with it, but what the fuck, sharing is caring right? Indie guys, want to make a fuckton of money and sell out your swag? The magic word is "raffle". We would go to a local pawnshop in whatever town we were at, but a cool cheap guitar or bass, me or the guitarist would play it for 3 or 4 songs and at the end of the show we would all sign it and anybody who bought a piece of swag had their name in the drawing for the instrument.
Not only did audiences eat it up but we ended up with several hardcore fans that showed up at nearly every gig simply because they won something that made them feel closer to the band. We'd always let them sit with the wives and GFs and they were happy to hang up posters or post on FB or anything else that got out the word, simply because it made them feel like a winner.
It works, its cheap, makes you a hell of a lot more than the guitar costs, and creates really loyal long lasting fans. Last gig I played even though i wasn't with that band anymore and hadn't been in 5 years i had a guy show up and bring nearly 30 friends, all of whom bought swag, simply because 'hey man I still have that bass i won in Memphis, remember me?" so he and his buds got to hang out with the wives and GFs while we played and we had a beer afterward. Its a great way to get long term fans
Great idea. If I were wearing it, I'd take my hat off to you.
Bimbo Newton Crosby, what this does is gives the big boys a really nice weapon to shut down the indies.
For the first time in history we are seeing artists bypass the gatekeepers completely, going from 'viral sensation' to nationally known artist and this scares the living fuck out of them. They know in the age of YouTube and Twitter and a bazillion other non controlled communication circuits their ability to force artists into assraping contracts where they are basically nothing but cogs and "all your IP belong to us" is becoming a thing of the past.
Sadly the only way we have to fight back anymore is massive piracy, there simply is nothing else.
The ONLY way we are gonna get rid of these bastards is to bleed them to death, there is simply no other choices left now.
Here's the problem I have with your exhortation: indiscriminate "massive piracy" will not only harm the IP plutocrats of the RIAA, it will also adversely impact the very independent artists you claim to support - and it is them, and not the Sonys of the industry, who will be harmed the most. That's because the warez kiddies who do the vast majority of unauthorized downloading are unlikely to make any distinction whatsoever between music the rights to which the RIAA members control, and those recordings which are directly owned and controlled by independent artists themselves. Instead, in their enthusiasm to embrace "stick it to The Man" as a valid excuse to download every popular tune they see, they will gleefully end up harming the innocent along with the guilty.
It's very difficult to make a living in the music industry as an independent artist. And I mean VERY difficult. Every dollar in income you have to sacrifice puts you a dollar closer to being forced to hang up your guitar for good. And, while that's especially true for independents early in their careers, it is, to some extent, true of all independent musical artists. Downloading their music without their permission, and refusing to pay them for it is NOT "sticking it to The Man". It's sticking it to the artist him/herself... and that's Not A Good Thing, especially if that artist is one whose music you like and would like to hear more of.
I know it's popular here on/. to maintain that artists "should" regard recorded tracks as pure loss leaders, and be content to make their money strictly from live performances. And that's fine, if you're Lady Gaga, or some other top-tier artist. But independent musicians - and, again, especially those who are just starting their careers, or who have, after struggling for years, finally released a hit record - don't pull in the big bucks for performances. Touring is expensive: transportation for you, and your band and crew, lodging for all of you, food for all of you, concert promotional costs (You didn't think those posters advertising that concert you think will be so profitable printed themselves, did you? Or posted themselves on all those walls, windows, and telephone poles?), liability and property insurance (On Pink Floyd's first U.S. tour, their van was stolen in Texas, and they lost all of their instruments, including Rick Wright's heavily-customized Hammond organ, their giant - and very expensive - gong, and all their guitars and amplifiers - and, as a result, they had to return to England, because they couldn't afford both to replace their gear and continue to pay for a tour that had been only marginally profitable for a band that, at that point, wasn't at all well-known here in the States.), merchandise (tee shirts aren't free - and neither is having your band's name and touring information printed on them), and so on. By the time you finish paying for all that - and much of it has to be paid for in advance - even a show in a decent-sized venue, at a relatively high per-ticket price (which you have to split with the concert promoter/venue owner, btw), to a sold-out audience is likely to make you exactly enou
No they don't. Their staffers take care of their representation on Facebook and the like. Ted Stevens represented the most knowledgeable politician with respect to the Internet.
Nonsense. Patrick Leahy of Vermont is probably the most Internet-saavy politician currently in office (even though he's pretty much a tool of the RIAA/MPAA IP cabal). Going back to the 80's and early 90's, you had Al Gore of Tennessee, and even Conrad Burns of Montana was knowledgeable enough to co-sponsor (with Leahy) a bill to overturn Clinton-era restrictions on cryptography strength for American consumer products.
You may have been trying to be funny. If so, the joke fell flat enough that you got modded "Informative", instead.
Religion and science can be fundamentally at odds; heard of young earth creationism and Biblical literalism? How about the persistent Catholic belief of transubstantiation? What about the Scientologist's e-meter, or the claim that praying can alter physical reality?
Er... you're comparing apples and iPods, friend. Creationism, Biblical literalism, and belief in transubstatiation and the physical efficacy of prayer are all examples of faith in things for which there is no physical evidence. Scientology's e-meter, by contrast is a device that measures galvanic skin response. It is not based on faith at all, but on medical/forensic science, combined with a decision tree of common neuroses. That's the devilish thing about it (and the reason why Scientology is so adamantly opposed to psychiatry - because they rightly see it as their competition!): the e-meter/decision tree combination is actually pretty effective at identifying common neuroses in people to whom it is applied. And human nature is such that, having been forced to confront neuroses that they've been repressing, most folks immediately feel better about themselves - and they give Scientology the credit for that, and get sucked into the progressively-more-expensive process that leads to the revelation (at the highest and most expensive end of the scam) that Xenu entombed Thetans in an ice volcano (!) and so on.
Disclaimer: I am not a Scientologist, nor do I in any way endorse Scientology as a religion or a lifestyle. I do, however, prefer any discussion to be based on facts, not propaganda.
Meanwhile the USA's industrial productivity is dropping year by year. Those "organise anywhere" people are getting what they want. A dismantling of capitalism. I'm not sure they're gonna like like it.
Industrial productivity is the only way out. But that's not going to happen while you have the Fed funding and subsidising projects that will lift energy and industrial input costs.
Absolutely wrong.
Industrial productivity is not going to increase domestically as long as it is significantly cheaper to manufacture products overseas (i.e. - in China, India, Indonesia, etc.). Meanwhile, domestic income tax revenue will continue to decline as former line-level manufacturing employees permanently lose their middle-class incomes, while the self-styled "job creators" buy Congressional complicity in sheltering their own spiraling incomes from taxation (see: General Electric, etc.), and in generating 10-figure tax-funded handouts to themselves (see: the oil industry). Saying the problem is, "the Fed funding and subsidising projects that will lift energy and industrial input costs," is an attack on the flimsiest of straw men. The true problem is the combination of relentless globalization, predatory trade policy by the new industrial giants (China, again, and India, again), and MBA-dominated domestic corporate managment's obsessive focus on short-term profitability at the expense of the long-term viability of the companies whose interests they pretend to serve.
Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action.
Er.. not a Goldfingerism. The quote is from Marc-Ange Draco, a Mafia don, and the father of Contessa Teresa di Vicenzo, Bond's love interest (and, briefly, spouse) in the novel On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
"No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die." - Auric Goldfinger.
Slashdot Mirror
Doctor Morbius opined:
This article is idiotic. Time to exclude Unknown Lamer.
>/p>
Not to some of us.
Me, for instance. I'm a pretty serious student of the life of Alexander the Great - one of whose long-term projects was the rebuilding of the Ziggurat of Babylon. Up until now, there simply hasn't been a known-contemporary depiction of the Tower and its temple. All the illustrations heretofore have been products of their artists' imangination (the same is true of the Lighthouse of Pharos in Alexandria, btw). For history geeks, this is a rather wonderful discovery.
The Krell would be ashamed of you.
Scareduck asserted:
"Over and over, we read of hidden, manipulated, and cherry-picked data, refusals to abide with having outsiders vet their work, and allowing naked advocacy into the IPCC reports on climate change as if they were peer-reviewed science. "
To which nomadic responded:
No, we don't; you just made those things up.
Actually, he didn't just make those things up - and he does read of those things "over and over."
The thing is, you and he read completely different sources: he reads anti-AGW blogs, and you read reasonably objective reports. So somebody else made those things up, and he reads them "over and over", because those fictions are endlessly repeated by the sources he reads.
It's something like a self-fulfilling prophecy, except it's more of a wingnut trope, instead.
I hope that clears up that little misunderstanding.
just as it's legal nationwide to turn right at a red light after first stopping, unless a right turn on red is clearly posted as prohibited at that intersection.
Wrong (unless the law has been changed in the last 10 years or so). There are a very small number of states, New Jersey I believe being one of them, where it is NOT legal to turn right at a red light after stopping.
Wrong. From the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's index page: "Since January 1, 1980, all 50 states and the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have had laws permitting right-turn-on-red unless a sign prohibits the turn. As of January 1, 1994, 43 jurisdictions provided for left-turn-on-red (LTOR) and nine did not. LTOR is permitted only at the intersection of a one-way street with another one-way street."
To quote Stephen Colbert, "I accept your apology."
In most states, the person in the intersection (e.g. you), has the right away over people entering the intersection. Since in some states it is perfectly legal to enter the intersection on yellow, the people proceeding straight in front of your intended route have the right of way. This is of course ignoring how some people enter on yellow when they were perfectly capable of stopping safely. Once traffic finally stops, no one should be entering the intersection from crossing traffic until you are clear of the intersection. If they do, they are violating traffic law just as much as someone running a red light.
AFAIK it's legal in all fifty states to enter an intersection when the light is yellow, just as it's legal nationwide to turn right at a red light after first stopping, unless a right turn on red is clearly posted as prohibited at that intersection. Yellow means "prepare to stop", NOT "stop now", and the rule I recall from driver's ed, lo these many years ago, is "If your entire vehicle is past the stop line when the light turns red, you may legally proceed through the intersection." In some states/localities, it's "If more than 50% of the vehicle's length is past the stop line when the light turns red, you may legally proceed through the intersection."
Regardless, it is entirely legal in all 50 states to pull into the intersection while the light is yellow for the purpose of making a left turn once the signal turns red, as long as you meet the "whole vehicle/more than 50% of the vehicle's length" test. Anyone who believes otherwise needs a driver safety refresher.
Nothing I see in that article suggests that this is a new phenomenon...aside from the hyperbolic statements of the scientists.
The author is astonishingly remiss in not asking the obvious question: did this just start? It could be that such methane plumes have existed forever, we just never detected them. This is the EIGHTH such cruise/survey. They should be able to conclusively say "we checked this area in at least one or two previous instances and such seeps weren't observed", no?
It seems logical that there must have been plumes like this for a while, to prompt (and justify) such a large-scale survey.
Yet both the scientists and article author seem to gloss over the fact that "never seen before" != "never happened before".
In fact, Igor Semiletov's team has been conducting this survey annually for some time now. From the article:
The scale and volume of the methane release has astonished the head of the Russian research team who has been surveying the seabed of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf off northern Russia for nearly 20 years.
And they have seen this phenomenon in prior years - just not on anything like the scale of methane release they observed this year. Again, from the article:
"Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of metres in diameter. This is the first time that we've found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It's amazing," Dr Semiletov said.
Don't blame the scientist. Don't blame the journalist. Blame the reader, for not reading the story.
""The concentration of atmospheric methane increased unto three times in the past two centuries from 0.7 parts per million to 1.7ppm, and in the Arctic to 1.9ppm. That's a huge increase, between two and three times,"
I'm OK with her statement, until this:
"...and this has never happened in the history of the planet," she added.
So there's data for the last 4+ BILLION years with 10-50 year precision so that over a 100-200 year timespan, she can measure the slope of the line (rate in rise over the run of time) precisely enough to say that the slope of the line over the last 200 years is steeper than it has been in any other 200 year period in the last 4 billion years? Sorry, but I find that hard to believe.
I suspect she's talking about it having never previously happened in a span of just a couple of centuries.
A dramatic increase in atmospheric methane - triggered by a dramatic rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide? Now that's definitely happened before - at the end of the Permian Period. And it helped cause the Permian/Triassic extinction event, the largest species die-off since the Oxygen Catastrophe.
peerblock + bluetack list (p2p) + any torrenting app = you won't/can't be tracked by any industry in any legal fashion. It literally is that simple these days.
No it's not.
ALL of the URLs that bluetack points to have been "suspended" by Vectrohost.com, and bluetack's own page is now just a plea for contributions.
So, I posted the comment below, and some asshat modded it -1 Troll - which it is not.
It's a review - and the modder is probably Mr. Dotcom's sockpuppet:
Looks like they contracted the producing of that song to Printz Board. Wonder how much he paid for that.
Basically, it's an undisguised commercial for MegaUpload, with a dumptruck load of testimonials chucked into a pedestrian soundtrack, featuring lead vocals by the increasingly shameless will.i.am. It all comes off as every bit as sincere as a used car salesman's promises.
That being the case, my guess is that Mr. Dotcom paid an arm and a leg for every hip-hopper who appears in it, plus a boatload more for Printz Board and the Blackeyed Pea who "sings" it.
Looks like they contracted the producing of that song to Printz Board. Wonder how much he paid for that.
Basically, it's an undisguised commercial for MegaUpload, with a dumptruck load of testimonials chucked into a pedestrian soundtrack, featuring lead vocals by the increasingly shameless will.i.am. It all comes off as every bit as sincere as a used car salesman's promises.
That being the case, my guess is that Mr. Dotcom paid an arm and a leg for every hip-hopper who appears in it, plus a boatload more for Printz Board and the Blackeyed Pea who "sings" it.
dkleinsc challenged:
Name something that was on TV that was so profound and moving that it was absolutely critical that you see it when it first came out, rather than waiting a few months and spending half the price of one month's cable on DVDs to watch it whenever you like. (And that's assuming only completely legal viewing options) For bonus points, explain why that show was so awesome that you'd rather be watching it than spending that hour conversing with your loved ones.
Okay, I'll bite:
Star Trek. In 1966, when consumer video was still the best part of a decade away.
Roots. Which took a year or more to come to video.
Shogun. Same deal.
I could go on ...
vlm answered the musical question:
Why not evolve Si life here?
Thusly:>/p>
Carbon 300 ppm second to pretty much everything but vanadium and stuff like that. For all intents and purposes the earth is not the idea place for a carbon based life form.
Incorrect, I'm afraid.
If you exclusively look at the abundance of carbon in the Earth's makeup, you miss the most crucial aspect of hydrocarbon-based biochemistry: the abundance of water as a solvent for hydrocarbons, particularly here on the surface of the planet, where the incredible profusion of possible compound-producing reactions benefits tremendously from sunlight as a source of energy input to trigger the making and breaking of hydrocarbon bonds.
A world where carbon is greatly more abundant - but water is largely absent - wouldn't necessarily be more conducive to the evolution of life.
The reason why we're made out of relatively rare C instead of tremendously available Si is C chemistry is incredibly better than Si chemistry for bio, or heck, chemistry in general. The fine article didn't give it enough justice or maybe the editors edited out the chemistry rants. Lets just say that Xe biochem is not all that more unlikely or difficult than Si biochem would be (in other words, nearly totally freaking almost incomprehendibly impossible vs just merely incredibly extremely impossibly unlikely)
This, on the other hand, is a much better point ... and, IMnsHO, one deserving of an "Insightful" upmod.
this both gives me the chills, and doesn't.
Well, then, put on a sweater ...
... and don't.
An Anonymous Coward stated:
Indeed, before I became a permanent AC I had a user account on here and with tedious regularity would get modded down for expressing pro-copyright points of view (this was in the days of Napster). Great thing about posting AC is you only ever get modded up :)
Here's the thing: whenever I get mod points, I try, insofar as that's possible, not to downmod posts. I only mod "Troll" or "Flamebait" when a post is blatantly one or the other, and it has no redeeming value otherwise. If there's even a modest attempt to be informative, or there's at least some hint of a broader perspective, or some faint, flaccid attempt at humor, I won't downmod, regardless of how transparent the intent to provoke mindless reaction may be. (Side note: I didn't realize that modding "Funny" doesn't gain you Karma - but I'm still going to hand out "+1 Funny" mods when I think a post is genuinely funny, nontheless.) And I never, EVER downmod posts simply because I disagree with their worldview, even if I really, REALLY disagree with it.
But I also NEVER mod posts by Anonymous Cowards, up or down. To my mind, posting AC is truly an act of cowardice, and I refuse to reward it by giving it any attention whatsoever..
Yes, I get the "bury brigade" problem. I've been a victim of it more than once myself - but I refuse to allow infantilism on the part of others to cow me. Likewise, I realize how rampant the sockpuppet account problem is on /., but I refuse to participate in it myself, because to allow the actions of others to persuade you to abuse the system yourself is to use the ethical shortcomings of others merely as an excuse to abandon your own ethics.
What's interesting about the Google patent is it almost exactly matches my view on what our voting system should be. Everyone gets a vote on every issue, but to achieve practicality they can defer their vote to someone they trust, thus creating de-facto politicians whose position one trusts enough that one lets them vote for them. Each politician can thus issue N votes, and we have perfect proportional representation. Making this into an online system means we can shift our vote around, allocate it to different people on different issues, and elect to vote directly on things that really matter to us. Elections then choose which set of people we wish to govern us, not which set of people we allow to rule us.
I actually think that'd be an excellent model for real-world democracy in the Internet age: start with direct eDemocracy, then give voters the option to delegate their votes on all issues other than X - where X can be any topic or topics on which a voter wants to exercise more fine-grained control - along with the ability instantly to redelegate their votes. Presto! Truly representative democracy overlaid on direct democracy, with the added bonus of not having to wait until the next election cycle to jettison a politician who betrays your trust. Don't like the way the person to whom you've routinely delegated your vote has flipflopped on an issue, or sold out to special interests? Redelegate your vote to someone else, or vote it directly yourself - and watch the influence of special interest money on professional politicians evaporate.
My expectations were conditioned by this though: 'voted the funniest joke in the world by American men'. When I read the references to hunting and guns, my expectations were further bolstered, making it almost impossible for the joke itself to engender surprise, since the context had already rendered me determinedly unsurprised.
What makes the joke funny is not the hunting, or the guns. What makes it funny is the unexpected twist - and the fact that, by implication, the guy making the phone call is an idiot.
Incongruity is one widely-advocated theory of the foundations of all humor (there are others). Regardless of whether you accept the proposition that it's the basis of ALL humor, it's certainly a key ingredient. For instance, it's the reason why the Rule of Three (and the lesser known Rule of Seven) consistently produces jokes that most people find funny. It's why gags from the squirting boutonniere, to the whoopee cushion consistently get laughs. It's why:
A neutron walks into a bar. The bartender asks, "Would you like a beer?" The neutron replies, "You bet!" so the bartender pulls him a tall, frosty one and sets it on the bar in front of him. The neutron downs it with gusto, wipes the foam off his chin, and asks, "So, what do I owe you?"
The bartender looks him up and down and says, "For you? No charge."
is funny - because it violates your expectations (who expects a bartender to know the charges of subnuclear particles, just off the top of his head, anyway?).
So it's not hunters or guns, per se, that make the "funniest" joke funny. It's that you're expecting the guy who calls 911 to come back and tell the operator, "Well, he's not breathing," rather than to "make sure he's dead" by finishing him off. That incongruity is what makes it funny. That, and the fact that the caller is an obvious idiot.
I found it ironic that the article relied on American men to judge the best joke in the world.
Ironic in what way?
Because you're non-American? Because over two million ratings were submitted, and the one that got the highest score also happened to be the one that most appealed to those who identified themselves as American men? Because you, personally, don't find that joke particularly funny?
"Thinking" with your prejudices is not really thinking at all.
Korma: Good
Indeed.
Actually I've toured the south a few times myself and known several indie bands and most of us put our stuff on P2P, thanks anyway. you know why? Because fans will STILL happily buy your CDs at the shows, along with the T-Shirts, caps, mugs, keyrings, mousepads (those were my idea BTW) and anything else to help out the band because guess what? they are FANS and want to see you get ahead.
If bands and/or solo artists CHOOSE to put their music on P2P, that's one thing. Taking that choice away from them is quite another.
I'm surprised I even have to explain this to you.
BTW I probably shouldn't share this trick, as we were raking in the cash with it, but what the fuck, sharing is caring right? Indie guys, want to make a fuckton of money and sell out your swag? The magic word is "raffle". We would go to a local pawnshop in whatever town we were at, but a cool cheap guitar or bass, me or the guitarist would play it for 3 or 4 songs and at the end of the show we would all sign it and anybody who bought a piece of swag had their name in the drawing for the instrument.
Not only did audiences eat it up but we ended up with several hardcore fans that showed up at nearly every gig simply because they won something that made them feel closer to the band. We'd always let them sit with the wives and GFs and they were happy to hang up posters or post on FB or anything else that got out the word, simply because it made them feel like a winner.
It works, its cheap, makes you a hell of a lot more than the guitar costs, and creates really loyal long lasting fans. Last gig I played even though i wasn't with that band anymore and hadn't been in 5 years i had a guy show up and bring nearly 30 friends, all of whom bought swag, simply because 'hey man I still have that bass i won in Memphis, remember me?" so he and his buds got to hang out with the wives and GFs while we played and we had a beer afterward. Its a great way to get long term fans
Great idea. If I were wearing it, I'd take my hat off to you.
hairyfeet opined:
Bimbo Newton Crosby, what this does is gives the big boys a really nice weapon to shut down the indies.
For the first time in history we are seeing artists bypass the gatekeepers completely, going from 'viral sensation' to nationally known artist and this scares the living fuck out of them. They know in the age of YouTube and Twitter and a bazillion other non controlled communication circuits their ability to force artists into assraping contracts where they are basically nothing but cogs and "all your IP belong to us" is becoming a thing of the past.
Sadly the only way we have to fight back anymore is massive piracy, there simply is nothing else.
The ONLY way we are gonna get rid of these bastards is to bleed them to death, there is simply no other choices left now.
Here's the problem I have with your exhortation: indiscriminate "massive piracy" will not only harm the IP plutocrats of the RIAA, it will also adversely impact the very independent artists you claim to support - and it is them, and not the Sonys of the industry, who will be harmed the most. That's because the warez kiddies who do the vast majority of unauthorized downloading are unlikely to make any distinction whatsoever between music the rights to which the RIAA members control, and those recordings which are directly owned and controlled by independent artists themselves. Instead, in their enthusiasm to embrace "stick it to The Man" as a valid excuse to download every popular tune they see, they will gleefully end up harming the innocent along with the guilty.
It's very difficult to make a living in the music industry as an independent artist. And I mean VERY difficult. Every dollar in income you have to sacrifice puts you a dollar closer to being forced to hang up your guitar for good. And, while that's especially true for independents early in their careers, it is, to some extent, true of all independent musical artists. Downloading their music without their permission, and refusing to pay them for it is NOT "sticking it to The Man". It's sticking it to the artist him/herself ... and that's Not A Good Thing, especially if that artist is one whose music you like and would like to hear more of.
I know it's popular here on /. to maintain that artists "should" regard recorded tracks as pure loss leaders, and be content to make their money strictly from live performances. And that's fine, if you're Lady Gaga, or some other top-tier artist. But independent musicians - and, again, especially those who are just starting their careers, or who have, after struggling for years, finally released a hit record - don't pull in the big bucks for performances. Touring is expensive: transportation for you, and your band and crew, lodging for all of you, food for all of you, concert promotional costs (You didn't think those posters advertising that concert you think will be so profitable printed themselves, did you? Or posted themselves on all those walls, windows, and telephone poles?), liability and property insurance (On Pink Floyd's first U.S. tour, their van was stolen in Texas, and they lost all of their instruments, including Rick Wright's heavily-customized Hammond organ, their giant - and very expensive - gong, and all their guitars and amplifiers - and, as a result, they had to return to England, because they couldn't afford both to replace their gear and continue to pay for a tour that had been only marginally profitable for a band that, at that point, wasn't at all well-known here in the States.), merchandise (tee shirts aren't free - and neither is having your band's name and touring information printed on them), and so on. By the time you finish paying for all that - and much of it has to be paid for in advance - even a show in a decent-sized venue, at a relatively high per-ticket price (which you have to split with the concert promoter/venue owner, btw), to a sold-out audience is likely to make you exactly enou
I've never heard of Raythorn BBN Technologies and I bet you haven't either. So here.
Actually, I knew about Bolt, Beranek, and Newman long before Raytheon acquired the company.
Disclaimer: I've actually studied the history of the Internet ... so I'm cheating.
No they don't. Their staffers take care of their representation on Facebook and the like. Ted Stevens represented the most knowledgeable politician with respect to the Internet.
Nonsense. Patrick Leahy of Vermont is probably the most Internet-saavy politician currently in office (even though he's pretty much a tool of the RIAA/MPAA IP cabal). Going back to the 80's and early 90's, you had Al Gore of Tennessee, and even Conrad Burns of Montana was knowledgeable enough to co-sponsor (with Leahy) a bill to overturn Clinton-era restrictions on cryptography strength for American consumer products.
You may have been trying to be funny. If so, the joke fell flat enough that you got modded "Informative", instead.
"Informative"?"
At a glance, I read that as "Bill and Ted's stoned talk". Must be all the movie references in this thread...
Sadly, I have no mod points, so I'll have to leave it to someone else to mod you +1 Funny ...
Here's the part of Bill Stone's TED talk that details Shackleton's plans.
Religion and science can be fundamentally at odds; heard of young earth creationism and Biblical literalism? How about the persistent Catholic belief of transubstantiation? What about the Scientologist's e-meter, or the claim that praying can alter physical reality?
Er ... you're comparing apples and iPods, friend. Creationism, Biblical literalism, and belief in transubstatiation and the physical efficacy of prayer are all examples of faith in things for which there is no physical evidence. Scientology's e-meter, by contrast is a device that measures galvanic skin response. It is not based on faith at all, but on medical/forensic science, combined with a decision tree of common neuroses. That's the devilish thing about it (and the reason why Scientology is so adamantly opposed to psychiatry - because they rightly see it as their competition!): the e-meter/decision tree combination is actually pretty effective at identifying common neuroses in people to whom it is applied. And human nature is such that, having been forced to confront neuroses that they've been repressing, most folks immediately feel better about themselves - and they give Scientology the credit for that, and get sucked into the progressively-more-expensive process that leads to the revelation (at the highest and most expensive end of the scam) that Xenu entombed Thetans in an ice volcano (!) and so on.
Disclaimer: I am not a Scientologist, nor do I in any way endorse Scientology as a religion or a lifestyle. I do, however, prefer any discussion to be based on facts, not propaganda.
nickmh opined:
Meanwhile the USA's industrial productivity is dropping year by year. Those "organise anywhere" people are getting what they want. A dismantling of capitalism. I'm not sure they're gonna like like it.
Industrial productivity is the only way out. But that's not going to happen while you have the Fed funding and subsidising projects that will lift energy and industrial input costs.
Absolutely wrong.
Industrial productivity is not going to increase domestically as long as it is significantly cheaper to manufacture products overseas (i.e. - in China, India, Indonesia, etc.). Meanwhile, domestic income tax revenue will continue to decline as former line-level manufacturing employees permanently lose their middle-class incomes, while the self-styled "job creators" buy Congressional complicity in sheltering their own spiraling incomes from taxation (see: General Electric, etc.), and in generating 10-figure tax-funded handouts to themselves (see: the oil industry). Saying the problem is, "the Fed funding and subsidising projects that will lift energy and industrial input costs," is an attack on the flimsiest of straw men. The true problem is the combination of relentless globalization, predatory trade policy by the new industrial giants (China, again, and India, again), and MBA-dominated domestic corporate managment's obsessive focus on short-term profitability at the expense of the long-term viability of the companies whose interests they pretend to serve.
Welcome to the Roaring Twenties, redux.
I think not. First paragraph, third sentence.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ella_Wheeler_Wilcox
Dude. Grow a sense of humor.
Seriously.
Weep, and you weep alone. Laugh, and the world laughs at you.
FTFY
Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action.
Er .. not a Goldfingerism. The quote is from Marc-Ange Draco, a Mafia don, and the father of Contessa Teresa di Vicenzo, Bond's love interest (and, briefly, spouse) in the novel On Her Majesty's Secret Service.
"No, Mr. Bond. I expect you to die." - Auric Goldfinger.