People are perfectly capable of writing letters without using smilies and stupid acronyms. At least they used to be able, god knows that the text generation is up to.
You are so right. I think it's due to two things: 1) modern (il)literacy 2) the immediacy of modern communications These combine to make sloppy, poorly constructed communication commonplace and, frankly, good enough in most situations. In the days (e.g. 1800s) when a letter would take a month (or three... or a year) to travel some great distance to get "back home," people would carefully construct letters to say precisely what they thought. A "follow-up call" wasn't an option. And people communicated news and events primarily by written word and by word of mouth -- the visual medium hadn't spoiled/replaced their command of language. Read the Letters Home of Civil War soldiers; thoughtful, tender, moving accounts of the world around them explained to a loved one far away. Ken Burns' Civil War series read several, there are hundreds more at the national archives and museums in most moderate-sized towns have a collection in their historical archives.
The problem may be our beloved technology. Numerous studies shown a decrease in working vocabulary in the past two centuries. Sure, we now have lots of buzzwords and technical jargon (typically nouns) but the power of English lies in the adjectives (borrowed heavily and adapted from numerous other languages.) Read a random small-town newspaper from the mid-1800's. Compare to yesterday's newsprint. The latter is written as if for a child. The former will find most college graduates reaching for a dictionary.
You are either missing the point or being deliberately hardheaded. Property rights encourage innovation and investment.
>>Please give me your home address. I think your right ot own property is "fairly stupid" and I should be free to take your stuff. Give me that freedom you hateful bastard!!! >Please feel free. You can take a *copy* of any property of mine that you see
You feel that way because you own no original works. You are almost certainly not an inventor of the property to which you refer (meaning you have no investment in it's invention) which is why you feel so cavalier about copying.
However, your point is a distraction. At the core, the argument is not about taking a copy -- it's about stealing an invention and competing with the inventor. Anyone is free to copy an invention for research or personal use, but it may not be sold. You are free to build your own 1:1 scale reproduction of a Chevrolet Corvette but you may not benefit for its sale or pass it off as your own original work. Ditto for Crest Toothpaste, or a Sony TV. The purpose of the American Patent system is the dissemination of information, after all.
Why prohibit competiting with the original inventor? It's like this: 1) You work for several days/months/years to discover/invent a product, incurring great expense (time, money, etc.) along the way. 2) You offer your product for sale. 3) I offer your product for sale, at a much lower price (after all, my research and development costs were zero!) 4) Because my product is lower priced, "my" product sells well but you go out of business.
Now, are you feeling inspired to go invent the next great product?
You see, it's about rewarding innovation and preserving the value of original works.
>>an online rollerblading music rhythm game >This is a hiddden gem?
I don't understand it either. Two points:
1) For me, the joy of rollerblading/biking/hiking/running/etc. comes in large part from from motion and from experiencing the environment. A multiplayer rollerblade game strikes me as a bit too sterile -- in the same way that riding a Segway isolates you in a way from the environment by reducing your interaction to one of simply leaning, this game reduces skating to button pressing. Then again, I don't understand why people would read magazines about music or newspaper articles about art, so maybe I'm the problem. Experience what life has to offer, but don't fool oneself filtering it through another medium because that makes it something else entirely. A story about a great meal may create an appetite, but it cannot satisfy one. If that makes me a purist then so be it.
So says the guy having a discussion over a computer screen.:(
2) Simply making something multiplayer doesn't make it better. What's next? Massive Multiplayer novel reading? (Would Oprah's book club claim prior art?)
Look, computers are great for a lot of things. Experiencing life is not one of them.
I know that due to your leftwing bias it's difficult to understand, but just because a news story doesn't fit your worldview that doesn't mean it's untrue. Try to be open minded and do some research before hurling insults.
Besides, the Weekly World News is known for reporting different types of Aliens.
Think of the unintended consequences. If this passes, I think we can expect the free internet at coffeehouses, libraries, airports, etc. to end quite abruptly. Maybe we'll have to present a national ID card first...
I know your questions are rhethorical, but from this Conservative Libertarian's viewpoint: 1. Who runs the country? Lobbysts, and those who hire them. The will of the people is little more than a quaint notion. Just look at this Amnesty program for ILLEGAL aliens. 80% of America is against it from recent opinion polls, but the politicians don't care. Same goes for the Dubai ports deal. America's against it, but the politicians will make it work anyway. 2. What does Congress think it's doing? Whatever the hell it wants. It's not like that 10th Amendment to the Constitution applies any more. Seriously, have you ever (EVER?) heard any poliician say "We can't do that, that's a State Right?" or "We can't pass a law requiring XYZ, that violates the 10th Amendment?" Nobody else has either. 3. Do they have any idea how much it will cost? No. Like they care. It won't cost THEM anything. That's your problem, buddy. Now get back to work paying your taxes. (Speaking of taxes, Tax Amnesty Day is the 3rd of June for 2006, meaning that if the tax burden were evenly distributed, the average person would work from Jan 1 to June 3 just to pay their taxes for that year. Now consider that 49% pays no federal taxes. Don't believe me? Go to the IRS web site and look it up yourself. http://www.irs.ustreas.gov/pub/irs-soi/01in01ts.xl s)
Anything else I can clear up for you?
(And moderators, just because you disagree, it doesn't mean it's "flamebait" or "troll". It could simply indicate that I'm an idiot.)
Something tells me this is going to get ugly. Just off the top of my head:
1) Shopper: "Hi. I see these are on sale. I would like to take a Wii." 2) Son, you've been playing with your Wii all day on that tiny monitor -- give it a rest or you'll go blind. 3) Headline: Wii usage linked to possible repetitive stress injury?
BTW, Is a cluster of these called a Wii-Wii?
Surely there are more jokes to be had... your turn, Slashdotters.
Not really sure how this differs from a monitor with iSight built in. Big-brother wise, that is.
The answer is simple, you can point the iSight away from you, or unplug the damned thing and be certain it's not still filming you. Not so if the "camera" is built in between every pixel and is always potentially looking at you.
Cue up the Scooby Do music and the moving eyeballs in the family portrait if you will, but I gotta say, this camera-in-the-monitor thing spooks me due to simple potential for abuse.
>>could've done it in 5 lines of perl You know, I don't doubt that. I'm thinking Mr. Moore may have slept through some important concepts in CompSci 101. Like, say, LOOPS and ALGORITHMS.
From Original Post: >>20,000 lines of code produce about 250,000 lines of statements of the form "set frequency of oscillator X to Y Hertz
And I'll bet that code looks like something off of www.dailywtf.com
I've got one word for Mr. Moorer : A_L_G_O_R_I_T_H_M It's this facinating little trick where you put a formula in a loop and permute a variable. In short, you let the computer do the work for you in about 1/100th of a second instead of hacking out TWENTY_FUNKING_THOUSAND_LINES_OF_C over only God knows how long a time period.
Unbelievable!
Thank goodness he wasn't trying to compute a moonshot. "okay, and then at 1.004 seconds after liftoff the following five thousand things happen. [snip] Then at 1.005 seconds..."
Not really. When all the producers are fighting over the same customers, we consumers enjoy better product and lower prices.
As evidenced by such dirt-cheap titles as Half-Life2, Quake#, and World of Warcraft for the PC ($50+$10/month), not to mention the abundance of $60 titles for $400 consoles.
On behalf of the legions of/. readers who 1) recognize satire and 2)have no mod points at this moment, please accept our apology for the idiots who modded your post "flamebait." They do not speak for us and hopefully they'll get slapped down during meta-moderation.
Mod points should only be given to those who can demonstrate basic literacy.
Looks like the "blame America" crowd has most of the mod points this week. FYI:
Comment Moderation sent by Slashdot Message System on Saturday April 15, @12:04AM
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Layoffs and Corporate Deception #1 - Soon after the completion of the IBM/Lenovo buyout/merger/whatever, it was announced that IBM would be laying off 300-350 of its 1800 employees in Research Triangle Park(RTP), North Carolina.
http://www.trianglejobs.com/front/story/2913958p -9364351c.html It's a big shift for a company that promised 400 new jobs in October when it accepted $14 million in state and local incentives to build a corporate campus in Morrisville. Some of the incentives depend on Lenovo maintaining its current employment level for the 11-year duration of the grant, as well as adding and keeping the jobs it said it would create over the next five years. Lenovo's layoffs wouldn't violate the terms of the incentives until early 2007, when its first report to the government is due, giving it time to boost its work force again.
IOW, they fire off the well paying jobs, and replace with call center operators. Offshoring. Well, screw that! Not buying Lenovo is a show of support for US engineering and a show of solidarity.
#2 - Lenovo = not sexy. Sorry, but no self-respecting geek wants to carry a Lenovo laptop. This box practically shouts "I SOLD OUT TO THE MAN!! I WRITE CRYSTAL REPORT QUERIES AND MAINTAIN LOTUS NOTES DATABASES FOR A LIVING!" Meanwhile, Alpha-geeks can be seen hacking on widescreen dual-core Intel MacBookPros which boot Windows "if you have to" but run OSX "'cause you want to."
SlippyToad, a Prius won't save the world. There are far, far too few of them to make a difference -- even if half of all the cars on the road were replaced with Prius', it would barely impact the national CO2 output. You do realize that CO2 isn't solely about automobiles, don't you? One volcano eruption can spew out more CO2 that all the cars in America in a year!
And what do you propose to do about the long-haul truckers with their diesel rigs? (which deliver practically 100% of everything you buy. "if you got it, a truck brought it") Coal-fired electric generating plants? (which provide, 10-to-1, the majority of our electricity) Farm tractors? Industrial ovens? Fireplaces? Lawnmowers? Bovine flatulence? Human repiration?
Sure, some of those later examples are a little silly, but I'm trying to make a point. There is no legitimate substitute for powering any of the above without producing CO2, except maybe nuclear power->electricity, but then the rest of the kook-fringe in America will freak out about nuclear power and that'll never fly. (Do you know that there hasn't been a new nuclear plant built in America in nearly 30 years.) To comply with Kyoto we would have to immediately replace the technology above with inferior technology.
Explain to me, in concrete terms, how it is damaging to our economy to improve our energy efficiency. It's OK if you can't use big words, I understand.
I'll type slowly, so you won't fall behind.
A requirement to dramatically reduce America's output of CO2, with no such parallel requirement being placed on other nations, puts us at a competitive disadvantage. It increases our cost of production and shifts advanage to the unrestricted producer. If CO2 levels are capped at present-day levels or reduced (as per the Kyoto Protocol) without remarkable innovation of a variety that no-one can presently demonstrate, the growth of the economy stops. Even worse, considering that our population continues to grow and exert pressure for good and services, the net effect is a shrinking of the economy.
Supporters often point to the the idea that scarcity fosters innovation, which may, potentially, possibly, somehow make American industry more effective or efficient in the future which would offset the initial restrictions on CO2 output and return America to an equal footing.
LOL!! Sorry, I was trying to squeeze in a posting between meetings and didn't preview. I left out a pretty important word after BILLION -- "MORE". Note to self: Must. Slow. Down.
Ehrlich's prediction was that the world population would expand by a billion in the coming decade and hundreds of millions would starve to death in the 70's and 80s because humanity would outstrip our ability to support the population. Granted, over the past thirty years there have been famines in Socialist and Muslims ruled countries (Eithiopia, North Korea, China, etc.) but those are self-imposed choices made by governments that choose military expenditures over civilian comfort and quality of life. It's not due to technial inability to produce, as Ehrlich claimed would be the case.
You know, I was reading this great book from the 1960's that described, with lots of charts and graphs and equations, how the world population would soon reach a BILLION people and there was no way agriculture could keep up and feed them. There would be mass death in every country in the 1980s due to a lack of food...
Except that the 1980s came and went and showed it to be completely wrong. The world has never had more food, or higher quality food thanks in large part to American agriculture.
Move along, nothing to see here. Just more America-hating handwringing.
Yes, the US refuses to cut levels (translation: "refuses to devolve our economy") precisely because the absurd Kyoto Protocol would put no such restrictions on developing nations such as China and India. They could grow and boom, consume all the energy the like and spew unlimited amounts of who-know-what into the atmosphere, but America would have to shrink it's economy to comply.
No wonder it's been called the "Stop America Protocol."
Brutal! Let's examine. Breakfast: Fresh OJ, and fruit, pancakes, and coffee for breakfast. Lunch is brown rice & whole wheat pita, peaches, steamed asparagus, northern beans, and tea or poweraid drink. Dinner includes "Noodles Jefferson", bread, fruit, beans, carrots, baked chicken, and a drink. That's one day, the menus are shuffled.
If that's torture, then my diet of a bananna on the way out the door this morning, and a ham sandwich for lunch is a crime against humanity! (You do understand sarcasm, don't you?)
"Torture"? What the hell are you talking about? These are non-uniformed combatants (to whom the Genevea convention most certainly does NOT apply). They could (and should IMO) be drug out and shot at a moment's notice, quite legally. They waged war against our country and are being kept alive only out of the restraint of the American government. Let me repeat: the Geneva convention does not apply. If you want to know torture, examine a Muslim prison where fingers, hands, eyes, tongues are removed. Feeding is optional. Ever seen a "stoning" (and no, I don't mean you and and your friends with a bong)? A beheading? That's brutality.
Torture: The prisoner are treated almost literally with kid gloves. Their Korans are handled with remarkable (undue, IMO) respect, in a gloved hand so that the filthy "infidel" guards don't descecrate their holy book. They get calls to prayer. Prayer rugs. Medical care (for many, for the first time in their lives!) Visits from Internation Red Cross. Most have gained weight. That we don't let the return to their sandtraps to plan another assault on America is torture? Whatever. BTW, there have been several who were released, only to be caught (or killed) later in battle. These aren't innocent bystanders. They're warriors commited to killing Americans.
I think the guards show considerable restraint. The prinsoners routinely curse and taunt, restate their commitment to murder Americans, they hurl feces and urine at the guards. Gouge eyeballs. Bite. Spit. Punch. Break arms and or fingers -- several guards have been seriously injured. Etc. Little angels, aren't they?
Look, you clearly have your point of view, but to call this one of the worst prisons in the world demonstrates a remarkable ignorance of real prisons.
I won't change your mind. You won't change mine. Bottom line: want to stay out of Gitmo? Don't fuck with America. That includes hacking our computers.
It's not projection. It's called 'paying attention to the marketplace' aka Market Research. In case you weren't aware, the networks hire companies to watch what's "hot" on the torrent and P2P scene.
Your silly personal attacks aside (referred to in psychology as "being a wiseass"), nobody's asking the networks to give away the shows. I simply want the freedom to choose whether to watch the commercials or not. I'd say about half the time, I do. Locking me into watching commercials simply pisses me off in the same way that many DVDs try to force me to watch their stupid movie trailers. (which I then defeat by ripping the disc and removing the trailers. Since I own a licensed copy, it's Fair Use.)
Just sayin' that while I appreciate what the studio is trying to do, making a product that is less convenient is not necessarily a recipe for success. They may have to start trusting their customers, someday.
Slashdot Mirror
1) modern (il)literacy
2) the immediacy of modern communications
These combine to make sloppy, poorly constructed communication commonplace and, frankly, good enough in most situations. In the days (e.g. 1800s) when a letter would take a month (or three... or a year) to travel some great distance to get "back home," people would carefully construct letters to say precisely what they thought. A "follow-up call" wasn't an option. And people communicated news and events primarily by written word and by word of mouth -- the visual medium hadn't spoiled/replaced their command of language. Read the Letters Home of Civil War soldiers; thoughtful, tender, moving accounts of the world around them explained to a loved one far away. Ken Burns' Civil War series read several, there are hundreds more at the national archives and museums in most moderate-sized towns have a collection in their historical archives.
The problem may be our beloved technology. Numerous studies shown a decrease in working vocabulary in the past two centuries. Sure, we now have lots of buzzwords and technical jargon (typically nouns) but the power of English lies in the adjectives (borrowed heavily and adapted from numerous other languages.) Read a random small-town newspaper from the mid-1800's. Compare to yesterday's newsprint. The latter is written as if for a child. The former will find most college graduates reaching for a dictionary.
That's why I usually begin my letters with:
FU U F'ing F'er.
Such a versitile word. And no confusion!
You are either missing the point or being deliberately hardheaded. Property rights encourage innovation and investment.
>>Please give me your home address. I think your right ot own property is "fairly stupid" and I should be free to take your stuff. Give me that freedom you hateful bastard!!!
>Please feel free. You can take a *copy* of any property of mine that you see
You feel that way because you own no original works. You are almost certainly not an inventor of the property to which you refer (meaning you have no investment in it's invention) which is why you feel so cavalier about copying.
However, your point is a distraction. At the core, the argument is not about taking a copy -- it's about stealing an invention and competing with the inventor. Anyone is free to copy an invention for research or personal use, but it may not be sold. You are free to build your own 1:1 scale reproduction of a Chevrolet Corvette but you may not benefit for its sale or pass it off as your own original work. Ditto for Crest Toothpaste, or a Sony TV. The purpose of the American Patent system is the dissemination of information, after all.
Why prohibit competiting with the original inventor? It's like this:
1) You work for several days/months/years to discover/invent a product, incurring great expense (time, money, etc.) along the way.
2) You offer your product for sale.
3) I offer your product for sale, at a much lower price (after all, my research and development costs were zero!)
4) Because my product is lower priced, "my" product sells well but you go out of business.
Now, are you feeling inspired to go invent the next great product?
You see, it's about rewarding innovation and preserving the value of original works.
>>an online rollerblading music rhythm game
:(
>This is a hiddden gem?
I don't understand it either. Two points:
1) For me, the joy of rollerblading/biking/hiking/running/etc. comes in large part from from motion and from experiencing the environment. A multiplayer rollerblade game strikes me as a bit too sterile -- in the same way that riding a Segway isolates you in a way from the environment by reducing your interaction to one of simply leaning, this game reduces skating to button pressing. Then again, I don't understand why people would read magazines about music or newspaper articles about art, so maybe I'm the problem. Experience what life has to offer, but don't fool oneself filtering it through another medium because that makes it something else entirely. A story about a great meal may create an appetite, but it cannot satisfy one. If that makes me a purist then so be it.
So says the guy having a discussion over a computer screen.
2) Simply making something multiplayer doesn't make it better. What's next? Massive Multiplayer novel reading? (Would Oprah's book club claim prior art?)
Look, computers are great for a lot of things. Experiencing life is not one of them.
I hate to break it to you, but FROGGER was completely nude. And don't get me started about Donkey Kong!
It's shocking, I tell you.
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?typ e=domesticNews&storyid=2006-04-30T201936Z_01_N3043 1831_RTRUKOC_0_US-USA-IMMIGRATION-MIDWEST.xml&rpc= 22
Notice it's posted on that well-known, ultra rightwing network known as Reuters. (And I say that, dripping with sarcasm.)
I know that due to your leftwing bias it's difficult to understand, but just because a news story doesn't fit your worldview that doesn't mean it's untrue. Try to be open minded and do some research before hurling insults.
Besides, the Weekly World News is known for reporting different types of Aliens.
When the same group that writes FireFox also writes the operating system on which it runs, then you'll have an arguement. Until then, Apples->Oranges.
Think of the unintended consequences. If this passes, I think we can expect the free internet at coffeehouses, libraries, airports, etc. to end quite abruptly. Maybe we'll have to present a national ID card first...
l s)
I know your questions are rhethorical, but from this Conservative Libertarian's viewpoint:
1. Who runs the country? Lobbysts, and those who hire them. The will of the people is little more than a quaint notion. Just look at this Amnesty program for ILLEGAL aliens. 80% of America is against it from recent opinion polls, but the politicians don't care. Same goes for the Dubai ports deal. America's against it, but the politicians will make it work anyway.
2. What does Congress think it's doing? Whatever the hell it wants. It's not like that 10th Amendment to the Constitution applies any more. Seriously, have you ever (EVER?) heard any poliician say "We can't do that, that's a State Right?" or "We can't pass a law requiring XYZ, that violates the 10th Amendment?" Nobody else has either.
3. Do they have any idea how much it will cost? No. Like they care. It won't cost THEM anything. That's your problem, buddy. Now get back to work paying your taxes. (Speaking of taxes, Tax Amnesty Day is the 3rd of June for 2006, meaning that if the tax burden were evenly distributed, the average person would work from Jan 1 to June 3 just to pay their taxes for that year. Now consider that 49% pays no federal taxes. Don't believe me? Go to the IRS web site and look it up yourself. http://www.irs.ustreas.gov/pub/irs-soi/01in01ts.x
Anything else I can clear up for you?
(And moderators, just because you disagree, it doesn't mean it's "flamebait" or "troll". It could simply indicate that I'm an idiot.)
>>3. If you think that "wee"is funny, you must have difficulty when people use the first-person-plural pronoun, or when people speak French.
True, but for some reason "Nintendo Cock" doesn't have that je ne sais quoi.
Something tells me this is going to get ugly. Just off the top of my head:
1) Shopper: "Hi. I see these are on sale. I would like to take a Wii."
2) Son, you've been playing with your Wii all day on that tiny monitor -- give it a rest or you'll go blind.
3) Headline: Wii usage linked to possible repetitive stress injury?
BTW, Is a cluster of these called a Wii-Wii?
Surely there are more jokes to be had... your turn, Slashdotters.
The answer is simple, you can point the iSight away from you, or unplug the damned thing and be certain it's not still filming you. Not so if the "camera" is built in between every pixel and is always potentially looking at you.
Cue up the Scooby Do music and the moving eyeballs in the family portrait if you will, but I gotta say, this camera-in-the-monitor thing spooks me due to simple potential for abuse.
>>could've done it in 5 lines of perl
You know, I don't doubt that. I'm thinking Mr. Moore may have slept through some important concepts in CompSci 101. Like, say, LOOPS and ALGORITHMS.
From Original Post:
>>20,000 lines of code produce about 250,000 lines of statements of the form "set frequency of oscillator X to Y Hertz
And I'll bet that code looks like something off of www.dailywtf.com
I've got one word for Mr. Moorer : A_L_G_O_R_I_T_H_M It's this facinating little trick where you put a formula in a loop and permute a variable. In short, you let the computer do the work for you in about 1/100th of a second instead of hacking out TWENTY_FUNKING_THOUSAND_LINES_OF_C over only God knows how long a time period.
Unbelievable!
Thank goodness he wasn't trying to compute a moonshot. "okay, and then at 1.004 seconds after liftoff the following five thousand things happen. [snip] Then at 1.005 seconds..."
Or am I missing something?
David,
/. readers who 1) recognize satire and 2)have no mod points at this moment, please accept our apology for the idiots who modded your post "flamebait." They do not speak for us and hopefully they'll get slapped down during meta-moderation.
On behalf of the legions of
Mod points should only be given to those who can demonstrate basic literacy.
Looks like the "blame America" crowd has most of the mod points this week.
FYI:
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It is currently scored Insightful (4).
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Time for a little balance to the propaganda, posted to A Stark Warning On Climate Change, has been moderated Troll (-1).
It is currently scored Insightful (3).
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Time for a little balance to the propaganda, posted to A Stark Warning On Climate Change, has been moderated Underrated (+1).
It is currently scored Insightful (4).
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Time for a little balance to the propaganda, posted to A Stark Warning On Climate Change, has been moderated Insightful (+1).
It is currently scored Insightful (5).
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Time for a little balance to the propaganda, posted to A Stark Warning On Climate Change, has been moderated Troll (-1).
It is currently scored Insightful (4).
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Time for a little balance to the propaganda, posted to A Stark Warning On Climate Change, has been moderated Overrated (-1).
It is currently scored Insightful (3).
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Time for a little balance to the propaganda, posted to A Stark Warning On Climate Change, has been moderated Insightful (+1).
It is currently scored Insightful (4).
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Time for a little balance to the propaganda, posted to A Stark Warning On Climate Change, has been moderated Insightful (+1).
It is currently scored Insightful (5).
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Time for a little balance to the propaganda, posted to A Stark Warning On Climate Change, has been moderated Flamebait (-1).
It is currently scored Insightful (4).
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Time for a little balance to the prop
Layoffs and Corporate Deception
#1 - Soon after the completion of the IBM/Lenovo buyout/merger/whatever, it was announced that IBM would be laying off 300-350 of its 1800 employees in Research Triangle Park(RTP), North Carolina.
IOW, they fire off the well paying jobs, and replace with call center operators. Offshoring. Well, screw that! Not buying Lenovo is a show of support for US engineering and a show of solidarity.
#2 - Lenovo = not sexy. Sorry, but no self-respecting geek wants to carry a Lenovo laptop. This box practically shouts "I SOLD OUT TO THE MAN!! I WRITE CRYSTAL REPORT QUERIES AND MAINTAIN LOTUS NOTES DATABASES FOR A LIVING!" Meanwhile, Alpha-geeks can be seen hacking on widescreen dual-core Intel MacBookPros which boot Windows "if you have to" but run OSX "'cause you want to."
SlippyToad, a Prius won't save the world. There are far, far too few of them to make a difference -- even if half of all the cars on the road were replaced with Prius', it would barely impact the national CO2 output. You do realize that CO2 isn't solely about automobiles, don't you? One volcano eruption can spew out more CO2 that all the cars in America in a year!
And what do you propose to do about the long-haul truckers with their diesel rigs? (which deliver practically 100% of everything you buy. "if you got it, a truck brought it")
Coal-fired electric generating plants? (which provide, 10-to-1, the majority of our electricity)
Farm tractors? Industrial ovens? Fireplaces? Lawnmowers? Bovine flatulence? Human repiration?
Sure, some of those later examples are a little silly, but I'm trying to make a point. There is no legitimate substitute for powering any of the above without producing CO2, except maybe nuclear power->electricity, but then the rest of the kook-fringe in America will freak out about nuclear power and that'll never fly. (Do you know that there hasn't been a new nuclear plant built in America in nearly 30 years.) To comply with Kyoto we would have to immediately replace the technology above with inferior technology.
That's the best I can do.
A requirement to dramatically reduce America's output of CO2, with no such parallel requirement being placed on other nations, puts us at a competitive disadvantage. It increases our cost of production and shifts advanage to the unrestricted producer.
If CO2 levels are capped at present-day levels or reduced (as per the Kyoto Protocol) without remarkable innovation of a variety that no-one can presently demonstrate, the growth of the economy stops. Even worse, considering that our population continues to grow and exert pressure for good and services, the net effect is a shrinking of the economy.
Supporters often point to the the idea that scarcity fosters innovation, which may, potentially, possibly, somehow make American industry more effective or efficient in the future which would offset the initial restrictions on CO2 output and return America to an equal footing.
This is often referred to as "wishful thinking."
Class dismissed.
Summary: "My organic diet gives me superior logic skills. I am slim and agile, with a svelte, lithe physique. I eat raw plants, therefore I am right."
It's hard to argue with logic like that. Thank you for sharing.
LOL!! Sorry, I was trying to squeeze in a posting between meetings and didn't preview. I left out a pretty important word after BILLION -- "MORE". Note to self: Must. Slow. Down.
2 56426-3102215?v=glance&n=283155
The book is "The Population Bomb (1968)" by Paul Ehrlich.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1568495870/103-3
Ehrlich's prediction was that the world population would expand by a billion in the coming decade and hundreds of millions would starve to death in the 70's and 80s because humanity would outstrip our ability to support the population. Granted, over the past thirty years there have been famines in Socialist and Muslims ruled countries (Eithiopia, North Korea, China, etc.) but those are self-imposed choices made by governments that choose military expenditures over civilian comfort and quality of life. It's not due to technial inability to produce, as Ehrlich claimed would be the case.
You know, I was reading this great book from the 1960's that described, with lots of charts and graphs and equations, how the world population would soon reach a BILLION people and there was no way agriculture could keep up and feed them. There would be mass death in every country in the 1980s due to a lack of food...
Except that the 1980s came and went and showed it to be completely wrong. The world has never had more food, or higher quality food thanks in large part to American agriculture.
Move along, nothing to see here. Just more America-hating handwringing.
Yes, the US refuses to cut levels (translation: "refuses to devolve our economy") precisely because the absurd Kyoto Protocol would put no such restrictions on developing nations such as China and India. They could grow and boom, consume all the energy the like and spew unlimited amounts of who-know-what into the atmosphere, but America would have to shrink it's economy to comply.
No wonder it's been called the "Stop America Protocol."
Four words: "Bleeding Heart Activist Attorneys"
The ramifications are obvious. No need to spell it all out for you, is there?
Hyperbole, often? These prisoners are treated far too well, IMO.
Let me first refer you to the Gitmo Menu:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&start=1&q=http://w
Brutal! Let's examine. Breakfast: Fresh OJ, and fruit, pancakes, and coffee for breakfast. Lunch is brown rice & whole wheat pita, peaches, steamed asparagus, northern beans, and tea or poweraid drink. Dinner includes "Noodles Jefferson", bread, fruit, beans, carrots, baked chicken, and a drink. That's one day, the menus are shuffled.
If that's torture, then my diet of a bananna on the way out the door this morning, and a ham sandwich for lunch is a crime against humanity! (You do understand sarcasm, don't you?)
"Torture"? What the hell are you talking about? These are non-uniformed combatants (to whom the Genevea convention most certainly does NOT apply). They could (and should IMO) be drug out and shot at a moment's notice, quite legally. They waged war against our country and are being kept alive only out of the restraint of the American government. Let me repeat: the Geneva convention does not apply. If you want to know torture, examine a Muslim prison where fingers, hands, eyes, tongues are removed. Feeding is optional. Ever seen a "stoning" (and no, I don't mean you and and your friends with a bong)? A beheading? That's brutality.
Torture: The prisoner are treated almost literally with kid gloves. Their Korans are handled with remarkable (undue, IMO) respect, in a gloved hand so that the filthy "infidel" guards don't descecrate their holy book. They get calls to prayer. Prayer rugs. Medical care (for many, for the first time in their lives!) Visits from Internation Red Cross. Most have gained weight. That we don't let the return to their sandtraps to plan another assault on America is torture? Whatever. BTW, there have been several who were released, only to be caught (or killed) later in battle. These aren't innocent bystanders. They're warriors commited to killing Americans.
I think the guards show considerable restraint. The prinsoners routinely curse and taunt, restate their commitment to murder Americans, they hurl feces and urine at the guards. Gouge eyeballs. Bite. Spit. Punch. Break arms and or fingers -- several guards have been seriously injured. Etc. Little angels, aren't they?
Look, you clearly have your point of view, but to call this one of the worst prisons in the world demonstrates a remarkable ignorance of real prisons.
I won't change your mind. You won't change mine. Bottom line: want to stay out of Gitmo? Don't fuck with America. That includes hacking our computers.
It's not projection. It's called 'paying attention to the marketplace' aka Market Research. In case you weren't aware, the networks hire companies to watch what's "hot" on the torrent and P2P scene.
Your silly personal attacks aside (referred to in psychology as "being a wiseass"), nobody's asking the networks to give away the shows. I simply want the freedom to choose whether to watch the commercials or not. I'd say about half the time, I do. Locking me into watching commercials simply pisses me off in the same way that many DVDs try to force me to watch their stupid movie trailers. (which I then defeat by ripping the disc and removing the trailers. Since I own a licensed copy, it's Fair Use.)
Just sayin' that while I appreciate what the studio is trying to do, making a product that is less convenient is not necessarily a recipe for success. They may have to start trusting their customers, someday.