I have been reading slashdot for many years. I have not visited this website for 3 months. I decided to revisit and see what stories were posted. When I fell upon this post I remembered why I stopped visiting this website in the first place. I see/. is still full of the same partisan, sophmoric, off topic posts as ever. I don't suppose this site is worth revisiting. Here is my one last parting shot. For those of you who think that their party is good and the other evil, think again. Both (all) parties are rife with corruption. I can name scores of scandles on both sides of the aisles. Oh and by the way, most of those PACs that you contribute to (environmental groups too) are chocked full corruption. More disinformation originates from special interest groups (including environmental groups and unions) than any other source. Don't kid yourselves, money and power corrupts EVERYONE not just Republicans or Democrats. The source of problems are those of you who are "team players" that blindly believe that their side is good and the other is evil. You have long ago sacrificed ANY objectivity that you might have had in lieu of a lemming mentality. The next time you feel the urge to tell someone how good your cause is and how evil the other cause is, do youself a favor and shut your mouth. To those with a modicum of intelligence and maturity, you just seem like a complete fool for they realise that there can be both nuance and reason to both sides of the arguement. Most people who vote are pricipled people who have actually thought about their positions and no they are not just being duped and they are not evil. It is the "team player" (Democrat and Republican) who are the problem.
Someone makes an allegation against NASA and everyone starts the Nazi and Soviet Union comparasons with the current American administration. Doesn't this strike you as shockingly paranoid. It is just a little concerning that people are so eager to believe, without ANY evidence, that NASA policies are actually a secret, malicious government conspiricy against the American people starting at the presidency. Whatever happened to skepticism? I wouldn't want you on my jury in a trumpt up suit against me.
The arguement is that the EU does not want one country to control the root servers. The only problem is that the US has done a very good job with maintaining the openness and freedom of the internet. To a huge extent , the Internet's growth is due to the way it was managed. More specifically, the way in which it was not managed by huge multinational committees who want to impose all sorts of strange rules. Thomas Jefferson said something along the lines of "the government that is best is that that governs least". I think that this is the US' line of thinking. Then, contrast this with most everything that the UN has done. You can see why the US is very very weary of letting the UN control ANYTHING.
Ummm. ICANN approved the.eu domain over 6 months ago. BTW, the year is 2005.
Re:am I the only one who does not get it?
on
Video iPod Oct 12?
·
· Score: 1
you fool. I was not being critical. I was asking a bunch of ipod users why it is so popular despite what I considered downfalls. Are you always this suspicious and critical of people? Maybe you should consider professional help.
Re:am I the only one who does not get it?
on
Video iPod Oct 12?
·
· Score: 0, Redundant
This is a good explanation. Thank you. This makes much more sense. There is, however, a conversion when loading mp3 to an iPod? I knew that there was a very close relationship between iTunes and iPod. It concerned me that their end game is to tie you to their retail service much the same way that MS has done by slightly altering their implementations of standards.
These are very good points. I think that I get it now. Thanks for the reply.
Re:am I the only one who does not get it?
on
Video iPod Oct 12?
·
· Score: 1
That is pretty presumtuous. I happen to love OSX and many Apple products. Please tell me, who am I showing bias towards or is it just against Apple. BTW, I am about to purchase a Mac Mini for my wife. This must make me a hypocrite.
Re:am I the only one who does not get it?
on
Video iPod Oct 12?
·
· Score: 1
Several years ago, I purchased an iRiver flash based player for when I exercise. They support most standards out. Including ogg. Is this not a consideration. Can you play music files ripped from you CD collection on an iPod?
It is not that it is difficult. I realise that you can convert them it is that the very people that spend hours posting about MS hegemony are the same ones that given the choice seem to support a system based upon a closed standard. Many of my friends and relatives have IPods. I am sure that they are nice. My question still stands. Given the choice of competators with similar products with similar perfomance specs that DON'T attempt to enforce adherence to an proprietary or closed standard, what makes people gravitate to IPod? I know the IPods look cool and have a nice interface but it seems to be against much of what/. posters are against. Can you convert you CD collection to mp3 and play them (or your existing music files)?
am I the only one who does not get it?
on
Video iPod Oct 12?
·
· Score: -1, Troll
For the life of me, I cannot figure out why the IPod is so popular. Especially with the open source community. There have been several other companies who have already released portable video players, and everyone is getting worked up over Apple releasing another IPod. It has always bugged the hell out of me why you can only listen to their proprietary format with the IPod. Also, you are tied to ITunes as well....correct? There are tons of other media players out there that accept open standards (at least more open). Most of them are very good products. In addition, the consumer is not forced to use a particular retailer. Please someone explain this apparent cult mentality.
Yes some of the particles end up there, but the reason for the hole is that UV radiation (sunlight) creates ozone when it interacts with the oxygen (atmosphere). The reason that they always talk about the onzone hole over Antartica during the southern hemisphere winter is that there is very little UV (sunlight) over the southern pole during their winter so no ozone is created. Why don't you take a look at the "hole" during the souther hemisphere's summer. The reason is because there is no hole there in their summer. Actually, there is no hole there during their winter either. What they actually mean is there is a reduction below a certain threshold, not a hole.
Actually it was pretty amazing; the childish utterly over-the-top hissy-fits of the americans in the wake of the Iraq debacle ("freedom fries"? Come on!)
I suppose you do not see the irony in your statement. The French maintain strict controls over language in their country. So much control that they have a ministry in charge of it. What ever happened to "le e-mail"... or was it "la email"? I will tell you. It was decreed that "le e-mail" was not "French" and the government came up with a "French" equivilent. This is a country obsessed with preserving the "Frenchness" of their language. So, jokingly, some Americans called french fries freedom fries for a while just to needle the French a little. Guilty. It's a JOKE. Lighten up.
I love the French. They gave us such innovations as French Dressing and Freedom Fries.
It has been quite a while since I have done a rigerous statistical analysis, but this study seems quite weak. Their intent seems to be to prove their hypothesis as opposed to trying to disprove their logical hypothesis. Also, their use of previous election results as a baseline seems quite weak. I do like the fact that they account for the different viting methods. All in all, this seems like a class project rather than a rigerous scientific study. The premise of the study, the need for voting logs to ensure validity, seems quite logical. This study just reeks of a class project. I would think that a reliability study of computer voting with strict controls and known inputs would be a far far more productive study and conclusive study.
Uhhmm, I think that the point is that fusion in and of itself will not cure US addiction to oil. The only way this will happen is to change the method we use to power our vehicles. This is not an easy prospect. It will require major changes in infrastructure. What will happen to the gas stations? Will they become hydrogen stations? It is very expensive to retrofit or transform them to hydrostations. We have to change all the cars to fuel cells which happen to be very expensive. The fuel cells are not just expensive because of economies of scale but because of the materials needed to make them (platinum et al?). The point is you are not home free just because of the prospect of productive fusion in the next 30 or more years.
Secondly, transportation accounts "for two-thirds of U.S. petroleum use in 2002 and this level of consumption is expected to continue through 2025" Meaning if you get the fusion, at best, you would get rid of 1/3 oil consumption. This is at best because of all of the plastics and other products derived from oil.
Thirdly, yes people do use fosil fuels to heat their homes. I will give you that, but I think that they primarily use natural gas for that. Natural gas is not oil. There are some very old homes that do still use some type of fuel oil for home heating. So I don't know why this would affect our oil consumption.
Finally, the original post said that fusion by itself would not have a huge affect on US oil consumption. I did not see anything about fission reactors in the original post.
I seem to remember some physicists proving that bees could not fly because their wing size was not sufficiently large. It is a good thing that the bees did not know this.
Why are people suggesting that this will in any way affect the US's dependancy on oil. We use oil primarily for our vehicles. Unless everyone is going to get a fusion reactor in their car or someone miraculously solves all of the problems associated with electric cars, this will have very little affect on our dependency on oil. It will have a very large affect on our coal and fission consumption.
Since the beginning of the www, people have been criticizing the medium not the source. This is a rediculous notion. To suggest this is to suggest that if there are a couple of bad television stations, then television as a whole is a bad source of information. I have seen broad inditements of the whole Internet because of some misinformation regarding health news. I know that the internet is full of nonsense. The government specifically warned about health information on the internet. This is no reason to doubt the veracity of every site on the internet. To bring this to it's logical conclusion, I was reading Penthouse Forum. I am fairly certain that either I am pretty lame or some people contributing to Penthouse Forum have embellished a touch. Is this a reason to consider periodicals as an unreliable source of information?
News consumers should always Consider the Source. I assume that when I am reading Penhouse Forum, there is a fair amount of fiction. The same is true for websites. If I am reading some guy's blog who has not proved his credibility, I take his views with due skepticism. When I read some of the more established or trusted bloggers, I will give them greater deference. The same is true for magazines. There are some editorialists who are always wrong.
Not True. NBC had called for Bush much earlier. I saw Tom Brokaw defending his position by 7am. This was before FOX. In my opionion, I think all the networks did a good job not calling state by state results prematurely.
In fairness, the problem with last election was that CBS,NBC, and ABC all called Florida for Gore before it was official. If you were referring to this election, I thought that, accross the board, the networks were very very conservative in their judgement. Meaning that they were very very careful about giving states to one candidate or another before the official counts were in. In fact, I think that they were a little too careful in some cases.
Understood. My only point is that people have made some very broad conclusions based upon a very static analysis on an extremely dynamic process. To say "all things being equal" warmer water creates more hurricanes is one thing, but to say warmer water means more hurricanes is a giant leap and scientificly spurious. This is not to say that it will not turn out to be the case.
Slashdot Mirror
I have been reading slashdot for many years. I have not visited this website for 3 months. I decided to revisit and see what stories were posted. When I fell upon this post I remembered why I stopped visiting this website in the first place. I see /. is still full of the same partisan, sophmoric, off topic posts as ever. I don't suppose this site is worth revisiting. Here is my one last parting shot. For those of you who think that their party is good and the other evil, think again. Both (all) parties are rife with corruption. I can name scores of scandles on both sides of the aisles. Oh and by the way, most of those PACs that you contribute to (environmental groups too) are chocked full corruption. More disinformation originates from special interest groups (including environmental groups and unions) than any other source. Don't kid yourselves, money and power corrupts EVERYONE not just Republicans or Democrats. The source of problems are those of you who are "team players" that blindly believe that their side is good and the other is evil. You have long ago sacrificed ANY objectivity that you might have had in lieu of a lemming mentality. The next time you feel the urge to tell someone how good your cause is and how evil the other cause is, do youself a favor and shut your mouth. To those with a modicum of intelligence and maturity, you just seem like a complete fool for they realise that there can be both nuance and reason to both sides of the arguement. Most people who vote are pricipled people who have actually thought about their positions and no they are not just being duped and they are not evil. It is the "team player" (Democrat and Republican) who are the problem.
Someone makes an allegation against NASA and everyone starts the Nazi and Soviet Union comparasons with the current American administration. Doesn't this strike you as shockingly paranoid. It is just a little concerning that people are so eager to believe, without ANY evidence, that NASA policies are actually a secret, malicious government conspiricy against the American people starting at the presidency. Whatever happened to skepticism? I wouldn't want you on my jury in a trumpt up suit against me.
They had a Scientific American segment on this. Here is the segment transcript. It was quite interesting.
LEPP
Your name says it all
The arguement is that the EU does not want one country to control the root servers. The only problem is that the US has done a very good job with maintaining the openness and freedom of the internet. To a huge extent , the Internet's growth is due to the way it was managed. More specifically, the way in which it was not managed by huge multinational committees who want to impose all sorts of strange rules. Thomas Jefferson said something along the lines of "the government that is best is that that governs least". I think that this is the US' line of thinking. Then, contrast this with most everything that the UN has done. You can see why the US is very very weary of letting the UN control ANYTHING.
Ummm. ICANN approved the .eu domain over 6 months ago. BTW, the year is 2005.
you fool. I was not being critical. I was asking a bunch of ipod users why it is so popular despite what I considered downfalls. Are you always this suspicious and critical of people? Maybe you should consider professional help.
This is a good explanation. Thank you. This makes much more sense. There is, however, a conversion when loading mp3 to an iPod? I knew that there was a very close relationship between iTunes and iPod. It concerned me that their end game is to tie you to their retail service much the same way that MS has done by slightly altering their implementations of standards.
These are very good points. I think that I get it now. Thanks for the reply.
That is pretty presumtuous. I happen to love OSX and many Apple products. Please tell me, who am I showing bias towards or is it just against Apple. BTW, I am about to purchase a Mac Mini for my wife. This must make me a hypocrite.
Several years ago, I purchased an iRiver flash based player for when I exercise. They support most standards out. Including ogg. Is this not a consideration. Can you play music files ripped from you CD collection on an iPod?
It is not that it is difficult. I realise that you can convert them it is that the very people that spend hours posting about MS hegemony are the same ones that given the choice seem to support a system based upon a closed standard. Many of my friends and relatives have IPods. I am sure that they are nice. My question still stands. Given the choice of competators with similar products with similar perfomance specs that DON'T attempt to enforce adherence to an proprietary or closed standard, what makes people gravitate to IPod? I know the IPods look cool and have a nice interface but it seems to be against much of what /. posters are against. Can you convert you CD collection to mp3 and play them (or your existing music files)?
For the life of me, I cannot figure out why the IPod is so popular. Especially with the open source community. There have been several other companies who have already released portable video players, and everyone is getting worked up over Apple releasing another IPod. It has always bugged the hell out of me why you can only listen to their proprietary format with the IPod. Also, you are tied to ITunes as well....correct? There are tons of other media players out there that accept open standards (at least more open). Most of them are very good products. In addition, the consumer is not forced to use a particular retailer. Please someone explain this apparent cult mentality.
Yes some of the particles end up there, but the reason for the hole is that UV radiation (sunlight) creates ozone when it interacts with the oxygen (atmosphere). The reason that they always talk about the onzone hole over Antartica during the southern hemisphere winter is that there is very little UV (sunlight) over the southern pole during their winter so no ozone is created. Why don't you take a look at the "hole" during the souther hemisphere's summer. The reason is because there is no hole there in their summer. Actually, there is no hole there during their winter either. What they actually mean is there is a reduction below a certain threshold, not a hole.
This sounds suspiciously like Mad libs. For those of you who don't remember Mad Libs, check this out.
Lepp
Actually it was pretty amazing; the childish utterly over-the-top hissy-fits of the americans in the wake of the Iraq debacle ("freedom fries"? Come on!)
I suppose you do not see the irony in your statement. The French maintain strict controls over language in their country. So much control that they have a ministry in charge of it. What ever happened to "le e-mail"... or was it "la email"? I will tell you. It was decreed that "le e-mail" was not "French" and the government came up with a "French" equivilent. This is a country obsessed with preserving the "Frenchness" of their language.
So, jokingly, some Americans called french fries freedom fries for a while just to needle the French a little. Guilty. It's a JOKE. Lighten up.
I love the French. They gave us such innovations as French Dressing and Freedom Fries.
Great link!
LEPP
It has been quite a while since I have done a rigerous statistical analysis, but this study seems quite weak. Their intent seems to be to prove their hypothesis as opposed to trying to disprove their logical hypothesis. Also, their use of previous election results as a baseline seems quite weak. I do like the fact that they account for the different viting methods. All in all, this seems like a class project rather than a rigerous scientific study. The premise of the study, the need for voting logs to ensure validity, seems quite logical. This study just reeks of a class project. I would think that a reliability study of computer voting with strict controls and known inputs would be a far far more productive study and conclusive study.
I am no expert but this is my 2 cents.
Uhhmm, I think that the point is that fusion in and of itself will not cure US addiction to oil. The only way this will happen is to change the method we use to power our vehicles. This is not an easy prospect. It will require major changes in infrastructure. What will happen to the gas stations? Will they become hydrogen stations? It is very expensive to retrofit or transform them to hydrostations. We have to change all the cars to fuel cells which happen to be very expensive. The fuel cells are not just expensive because of economies of scale but because of the materials needed to make them (platinum et al?). The point is you are not home free just because of the prospect of productive fusion in the next 30 or more years.
Secondly, transportation accounts "for two-thirds of U.S. petroleum use in 2002 and this level of consumption is expected to continue through 2025" Meaning if you get the fusion, at best, you would get rid of 1/3 oil consumption. This is at best because of all of the plastics and other products derived from oil.
Thirdly, yes people do use fosil fuels to heat their homes. I will give you that, but I think that they primarily use natural gas for that. Natural gas is not oil. There are some very old homes that do still use some type of fuel oil for home heating. So I don't know why this would affect our oil consumption.
Finally, the original post said that fusion by itself would not have a huge affect on US oil consumption. I did not see anything about fission reactors in the original post.
I seem to remember some physicists proving that bees could not fly because their wing size was not sufficiently large. It is a good thing that the bees did not know this.
Why are people suggesting that this will in any way affect the US's dependancy on oil. We use oil primarily for our vehicles. Unless everyone is going to get a fusion reactor in their car or someone miraculously solves all of the problems associated with electric cars, this will have very little affect on our dependency on oil. It will have a very large affect on our coal and fission consumption.
Since the beginning of the www, people have been criticizing the medium not the source. This is a rediculous notion. To suggest this is to suggest that if there are a couple of bad television stations, then television as a whole is a bad source of information. I have seen broad inditements of the whole Internet because of some misinformation regarding health news. I know that the internet is full of nonsense. The government specifically warned about health information on the internet. This is no reason to doubt the veracity of every site on the internet. To bring this to it's logical conclusion, I was reading Penthouse Forum. I am fairly certain that either I am pretty lame or some people contributing to Penthouse Forum have embellished a touch. Is this a reason to consider periodicals as an unreliable source of information?
News consumers should always Consider the Source. I assume that when I am reading Penhouse Forum, there is a fair amount of fiction. The same is true for websites. If I am reading some guy's blog who has not proved his credibility, I take his views with due skepticism. When I read some of the more established or trusted bloggers, I will give them greater deference. The same is true for magazines. There are some editorialists who are always wrong.
As for this article, I would consider the source.
Not True. NBC had called for Bush much earlier. I saw Tom Brokaw defending his position by 7am. This was before FOX. In my opionion, I think all the networks did a good job not calling state by state results prematurely.
LEPP
In fairness, the problem with last election was that CBS,NBC, and ABC all called Florida for Gore before it was official. If you were referring to this election, I thought that, accross the board, the networks were very very conservative in their judgement. Meaning that they were very very careful about giving states to one candidate or another before the official counts were in. In fact, I think that they were a little too careful in some cases.
I am going out on a limb here, but I can count the number of people who this will effect on my middle leg.
LEPP
Understood. My only point is that people have made some very broad conclusions based upon a very static analysis on an extremely dynamic process. To say "all things being equal" warmer water creates more hurricanes is one thing, but to say warmer water means more hurricanes is a giant leap and scientificly spurious. This is not to say that it will not turn out to be the case.