I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.
Emusic *was* great. Before Universal/Vivendi bought them and borked their early adopters in 2003. Not only did they change the terms of their subscription agreement retroactively, but they made it difficult for customers to download queued items before the deadline for cancellation vs. acceptance of a 14.99 automatic monthly fee. Fuck that, and fuck Emusic.
The sequestration value of rain forests is the ongoing static amount of biomass in an undisturbed system. You get problems when forests are converted to lower net static biomass vegetation regimes, such as pasture or cropland, which simply don't hold as much carbon at a given point in time over the same area. You also risk the long term inability to reforest if rainfall patterns change with the removal of massive evapotranspiration mechanisms. See the Amazon for a case study.
Sequestration through production of calcium carbonate (limestone) by marine organisms is a hugely important factor. Ocean fertilization might increase this process, but carries its own risks and possible unintended side effects: iron toxicity in multicelled creatures, giant evil squid being roused from millenia of slumber by all those exoskeletons, etc.
Of course, the fact that we're merrily burning all that carbon that was sequestered millions of years ago doesn't help a whole lot.
From: Chmn Hu Jintao Date: Thursday, January 25, 2007 12:53 PM Subject: PURIFICATION CAMPAIGN
Chmn Hu Jintao
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am fine today and how are you? I hope this letter will find you in the best of health. I am Chmn Hu Jintao, the Chairman of the "Communist Party" and the "Fifth Civilization Marching Forward Into the Millenium (FCMFIM)", a subsidiary of the "PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA (PRC)".
The Fifth Civilization Marching Forward Into the Millenium (FCMFIM) was set up by the late Head of State, Chmn Mao Zedong who died on 9 September 1976, to manage the excess revenue accruing from the electronic commerce and its allied products as a domestic increase in the campaign to purify the internet environment. The estimated annual revenue for 2005 was $45 Billion US Dollars Ref. FMF A26 Unit 3B Paragraph "D" of the Auditor General of the People's Republic of China Report of Nov. 2006 on estimated revenue.
I am the Chairman of the Contract Award Committee, and my committee is solely responsible for awaiting and paying of contracts on behalf of the People's Republic of China. My Committee awarded Contracts to foreign contractors for Vigorous Purification By One Hand Grasping Matters in the cheap plastic consumer goods producing areas of Sichuan. We overshot the contract sum by US$25,000,000.00. We have paid the contractors and withholding the balance of US$25,000,000.00. But, because of the existence of some of the domestic laws forbidding civil servants in PR from opening, operating and maintaining foreign accounts, we do not have the expertise to transfer this balance of fund to a foreign account.
However, this balance of US$25,000,000.00 has been secured in form of Credit/Payment to a foreign contractor, hence we wish to transfer into your bank account as the beneficiary of the fund. We have also arrived at a conclusion that you will be given 20% of the total sum transferred as our foreign partner, while 5% will be reserved for incidental expenses that both parties will incur in the course of actualizing this transaction, and the balance of 75% will be kept for the committee members.
If you know that you will be capable of helping us actualize this transaction, you should send to me immediately the details of your bank particulars or open a new bank account where we can transfer the money US$25,000, 000.00, which you will be holding in trust for us until we come to your country for our share. Your nature of business does not matter in this transaction. The required details includes your company's name, address, your private personal telephone/fax numbers, your full name and address, including your complete bank details where the transferred fund will be routed by the Shengdong Bank.
Note that this transaction is expected to be actualized within 21 working days from the day the required details are forwarded to the People's Ministry of Finance who will approve the needed foreign exchange control allocation for the release of this money to your account. Please, treat this as top secret. You should contact me urgently.
Pukeko are hell on mice, or anything that will fit in their beaks for that matter. They're quite effective hunters, as anyone who has free-roaming poultry in rural NZ will attest.
So maybe that's where the little furry buggers went.
The megavolcano theory is certainly a possibility. Lake Taupo is a huge caldera that has erupted violently several times in very recent geologic history. All you'd need to do is look around the islands for evidence of a layer of rhyolitic ash deposits corresponding to an extinction horizon. Don't know if anything like this has been found, though....
What was the 1849 decision? I've always labored under the belief that the landmark ruling was Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, 1886.
At any rate, the effective loss of the right of the state (acting on behalf of its citizens) to hold a corporate entity liable for its actions with real consequences is only a dim memory now. When was the last time a corporation's charter was revoked, and all of its assets liquidated? Especially in Delaware...now there's a real waste of 3 congressional seats if I ever saw one.
If the inhabitants had actually been on board a spaceship, they would have croaked. O2 levels went dangerously low, CO2 spiked (but a lot of this was due to lower-than-expected insolation during a winter that was cloudier than normal for the S AZ desert). It was a neat idea, but not completely thought out - not just from the photosynthesis aspect, but horticulturally as well.
I was at an event commemorating the one-year anniversary of the sealing of the dome, and I walked around the place to get as much of a look-see as I could. One thing in particular that I noticed was that their primary food-growing area appeared to have been taken over by weeds. What looked like a stand of grain was pretty well invaded by bermuda grass (Cynodon dactylon), a tough perennial that is notoriously difficult to get out of places you don't want it to grow. On top of that, it's not all that tasty or nutritious unless you're a ruminant.
It's likely the grass got in via contaminated seed or soil - I can't imagine putting it there intentionally. If the colonists got slack in their weeding regimen, it wouldn't take long for a handful of invasives (kudzu, spurge, crabgrass, take your pick)to start wrecking productivity...then as famine set in, they just wouldn't have the strength to do the job right.
You're several years too late. The Big Dildo in the Sky has been tethered over Ft. Huachucha, Arizona, for quite some time now. They have to reel it in when the wind kicks up....
A compost pile that is working well enough to reach 150-160F isn't going to stink. It'll steam, and if you put your face into it you might get a little whiff of ammonia (assuming that there's a little surplus of nitrogen stoking the fire). All you should get from a properly balanced heap is the smell of rich dirt.
Not the worst aroma to waft by the hot tub, although I'd want to augment it with a hearty red, cedar wood and pheromones.
Actually, the above comment just perpetuates a common myth. Yields of most food crops are about the same relative to pest and disease losses as they were prior to the introduction of chemical pesticides in the 1940s. In many areas they are lower because the pesticides wiped out many beneficial species, such as pollinators, symbionts and *gasp* predators of the nasties. Then you get adaptive mutation of the pest species making them less susceptible to the pesticides. Oops.
IPM, which is a "sorta green" strategy, gets the producer back toward balance (instead of fighting) with nature and almost always improves the yield and bottom line (chemical treatment is expensive).
Then there's the whole monoculture issue -- and the vulnerability of having Illinois and Iowa planted wall-to-wall with only a couple of types of hybrid corn or soybean. Film at 11, etc.
Voting to give W the authority to go to war != voting for W's war. Many Dem senators went along with this vote because they were repeatedly assured that the administration viewed war as a last resort, that the sanctions were still in place, the WMD inspectors were still on the ground, and the decision to commit troops would be made only on the firmest of evidentiary and moral grounds.
We all know no what a crock that was. Kerry has said as much. What's unfortunate is that this inaccurate right-wing trope has also become a soundbite for some on the left.
Absolutely. The assholes managing lots of corps nowadays think that techies and geek-types are so hungry for work that they'll put up with this sort of shite.
They *don't* own your life (that's the time you're not in the office). My ex-employer made increasing demands on my time and availability off-hours, and it turned into an ultimatum from the engineering and sysadmin/DBA staff: You want these uptime and availability numbers, then pay us to carry the "football" (be on call) and pay for the calls we take and solve. They did it, and it was a good working arrangement.
Of course, since then I got surplused, wife and I had a daughter and now I'm a stay-at-home dad. Still a better working arrangement....
Yep, and the Gulf of California (that long skinny arm of the Pacific that separates the Baja California peninsula from the rest of Mexico) is referred to in Mexico as El Mar de Cortes, or Sea of Cortez. This respects the Spanish heritage stemming from the conquest of the region in the 16th century, but obviously tramples on whatever name that body of water was called by the Yaquis, the Pimas, the Seris and all the other folks who were living there already.
And aren't Z80s still around in gigalots of auto, industrial and consumer electronics applications? Not to mention the 68k...I bet the sum of those two venerable chips smothers the Intel population out there.
Not only is the parent insightful, but the demonization of law enforcement and intel agencies by the Bushies is no different than the way they have drummed out highly motivated and talented career people in National Parks, Forest Service, BLM and EPA. By a clever combination of project underfunding, staff reassignments and rolling over for corporate donors, the current administration has set back the oversight of public lands, resource management and pollution control by decades.
You betcha, double and (the real kicker) aggravated by higher speeds that a lot of SUV drivers seem to favor. Think mass*velocity squared. This is why the speed limit is often drastically reduced on older, worn-out bridges: they may be able to handle a 40-ton semi doing 35, but the pounding produced by the same truck doing 55 literally shakes them apart.
Slashdot Mirror
Your timezone may be stable. But you are running out of water.
Also, about 20 percent of your land area *does* observe DST, but it's sparsely populated. Navajo Nation ring any bells?
I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.
Emusic *was* great. Before Universal/Vivendi bought them and borked their early adopters in 2003. Not only did they change the terms of their subscription agreement retroactively, but they made it difficult for customers to download queued items before the deadline for cancellation vs. acceptance of a 14.99 automatic monthly fee. Fuck that, and fuck Emusic.
The sequestration value of rain forests is the ongoing static amount of biomass in an undisturbed system. You get problems when forests are converted to lower net static biomass vegetation regimes, such as pasture or cropland, which simply don't hold as much carbon at a given point in time over the same area. You also risk the long term inability to reforest if rainfall patterns change with the removal of massive evapotranspiration mechanisms. See the Amazon for a case study.
Sequestration through production of calcium carbonate (limestone) by marine organisms is a hugely important factor. Ocean fertilization might increase this process, but carries its own risks and possible unintended side effects: iron toxicity in multicelled creatures, giant evil squid being roused from millenia of slumber by all those exoskeletons, etc.
Of course, the fact that we're merrily burning all that carbon that was sequestered millions of years ago doesn't help a whole lot.
From: Chmn Hu Jintao
Date: Thursday, January 25, 2007 12:53 PM
Subject: PURIFICATION CAMPAIGN
Chmn Hu Jintao
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am fine today and how are you? I hope this letter will find you in the best of health. I am Chmn Hu Jintao, the Chairman of the "Communist Party" and the "Fifth Civilization Marching Forward Into the Millenium (FCMFIM)", a subsidiary of the "PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA (PRC)".
The Fifth Civilization Marching Forward Into the Millenium (FCMFIM) was set up by the late Head of State, Chmn Mao Zedong who died on 9 September 1976, to manage the excess revenue accruing from the electronic commerce and its allied products as a domestic increase in the campaign to purify the internet environment. The estimated annual revenue for 2005 was $45 Billion US Dollars Ref. FMF A26 Unit 3B Paragraph "D" of the Auditor General of the People's Republic of China Report of Nov. 2006 on estimated revenue.
I am the Chairman of the Contract Award Committee, and my committee is solely responsible for awaiting and paying of contracts on behalf of the People's Republic of China. My Committee awarded Contracts to foreign contractors for Vigorous Purification By One Hand Grasping Matters in the cheap plastic consumer goods producing areas of Sichuan. We overshot the contract sum by US$25,000,000.00. We have paid the contractors and withholding the balance of US$25,000,000.00. But, because of the existence of some of the domestic laws forbidding civil servants in PR from opening, operating and maintaining foreign accounts, we do not have the expertise to transfer this balance of fund to a foreign account.
However, this balance of US$25,000,000.00 has been secured in form of Credit/Payment to a foreign contractor, hence we wish to transfer into your bank account as the beneficiary of the fund. We have also arrived at a conclusion that you will be given 20% of the total sum transferred as our foreign partner, while 5% will be reserved for incidental expenses that both parties will incur in the course of actualizing this transaction, and the balance of 75% will be kept for the committee members.
If you know that you will be capable of helping us actualize this transaction, you should send to me immediately the details of your bank particulars or open a new bank account where we can transfer the money US$25,000, 000.00, which you will be holding in trust for us until we come to your country for our share. Your nature of business does not matter in this transaction. The required details includes your company's name, address, your private personal telephone/fax numbers, your full name and address, including your complete bank details where the transferred fund will be routed by the Shengdong Bank.
Note that this transaction is expected to be actualized within 21 working days from the day the required details are forwarded to the People's Ministry of Finance who will approve the needed foreign exchange control allocation for the release of this money to your account. Please, treat this as top secret. You should contact me urgently.
Thanks for your cooperation.
Yours RESPECTFULLY,
Chmn Hu Jintao
Pukeko are hell on mice, or anything that will fit in their beaks for that matter. They're quite effective hunters, as anyone who has free-roaming poultry in rural NZ will attest. So maybe that's where the little furry buggers went.
The megavolcano theory is certainly a possibility. Lake Taupo is a huge caldera that has erupted violently several times in very recent geologic history. All you'd need to do is look around the islands for evidence of a layer of rhyolitic ash deposits corresponding to an extinction horizon. Don't know if anything like this has been found, though....
I use ROT1 for everyday stuff, double for sensitive data.
No, boobies are *for* kids. Listen to La Leche League. _You_ are the one who needs to think of the children, pal.
<sing>Mammaries...Like the corners of my mind</sing>
What was the 1849 decision? I've always labored under the belief that the landmark ruling was Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad, 1886. At any rate, the effective loss of the right of the state (acting on behalf of its citizens) to hold a corporate entity liable for its actions with real consequences is only a dim memory now. When was the last time a corporation's charter was revoked, and all of its assets liquidated? Especially in Delaware...now there's a real waste of 3 congressional seats if I ever saw one.
Can't do it:
lpt on fire
$
Ping *looks* nice and innocuous, so you say. Small, yellow, and fuzzy, with webbed feet....
Think about it, folks. The Story About Ping is set in CHINA!!!
Back in black!
Yes, I'm back in black!
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Hey, who turned off the microphone?
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If the inhabitants had actually been on board a spaceship, they would have croaked. O2 levels went dangerously low, CO2 spiked (but a lot of this was due to lower-than-expected insolation during a winter that was cloudier than normal for the S AZ desert). It was a neat idea, but not completely thought out - not just from the photosynthesis aspect, but horticulturally as well.
I was at an event commemorating the one-year anniversary of the sealing of the dome, and I walked around the place to get as much of a look-see as I could. One thing in particular that I noticed was that their primary food-growing area appeared to have been taken over by weeds. What looked like a stand of grain was pretty well invaded by bermuda grass (Cynodon dactylon), a tough perennial that is notoriously difficult to get out of places you don't want it to grow. On top of that, it's not all that tasty or nutritious unless you're a ruminant.
It's likely the grass got in via contaminated seed or soil - I can't imagine putting it there intentionally. If the colonists got slack in their weeding regimen, it wouldn't take long for a handful of invasives (kudzu, spurge, crabgrass, take your pick)to start wrecking productivity...then as famine set in, they just wouldn't have the strength to do the job right.
You're several years too late. The Big Dildo in the Sky has been tethered over Ft. Huachucha, Arizona, for quite some time now. They have to reel it in when the wind kicks up....
Nope, your compost experience was faulty.
A compost pile that is working well enough to reach 150-160F isn't going to stink. It'll steam, and if you put your face into it you might get a little whiff of ammonia (assuming that there's a little surplus of nitrogen stoking the fire). All you should get from a properly balanced heap is the smell of rich dirt.
Not the worst aroma to waft by the hot tub, although I'd want to augment it with a hearty red, cedar wood and pheromones.
Umm not quite....
Actually, the above comment just perpetuates a common myth. Yields of most food crops are about the same relative to pest and disease losses as they were prior to the introduction of chemical pesticides in the 1940s. In many areas they are lower because the pesticides wiped out many beneficial species, such as pollinators, symbionts and *gasp* predators of the nasties. Then you get adaptive mutation of the pest species making them less susceptible to the pesticides. Oops.
IPM, which is a "sorta green" strategy, gets the producer back toward balance (instead of fighting) with nature and almost always improves the yield and bottom line (chemical treatment is expensive).
Then there's the whole monoculture issue -- and the vulnerability of having Illinois and Iowa planted wall-to-wall with only a couple of types of hybrid corn or soybean. Film at 11, etc.
Voting to give W the authority to go to war != voting for W's war. Many Dem senators went along with this vote because they were repeatedly assured that the administration viewed war as a last resort, that the sanctions were still in place, the WMD inspectors were still on the ground, and the decision to commit troops would be made only on the firmest of evidentiary and moral grounds.
We all know no what a crock that was. Kerry has said as much. What's unfortunate is that this inaccurate right-wing trope has also become a soundbite for some on the left.
Absolutely. The assholes managing lots of corps nowadays think that techies and geek-types are so hungry for work that they'll put up with this sort of shite.
They *don't* own your life (that's the time you're not in the office). My ex-employer made increasing demands on my time and availability off-hours, and it turned into an ultimatum from the engineering and sysadmin/DBA staff: You want these uptime and availability numbers, then pay us to carry the "football" (be on call) and pay for the calls we take and solve. They did it, and it was a good working arrangement.
Of course, since then I got surplused, wife and I had a daughter and now I'm a stay-at-home dad. Still a better working arrangement....
Yep, and the Gulf of California (that long skinny arm of the Pacific that separates the Baja California peninsula from the rest of Mexico) is referred to in Mexico as El Mar de Cortes, or Sea of Cortez. This respects the Spanish heritage stemming from the conquest of the region in the 16th century, but obviously tramples on whatever name that body of water was called by the Yaquis, the Pimas, the Seris and all the other folks who were living there already.
I direct you to this tidbit.
Follow the link to the review. I really don't think the guy's tongue was anywhere near his cheek.
And aren't Z80s still around in gigalots of auto, industrial and consumer electronics applications? Not to mention the 68k...I bet the sum of those two venerable chips smothers the Intel population out there.
Hear, hear.
Not only is the parent insightful, but the demonization of law enforcement and intel agencies by the Bushies is no different than the way they have drummed out highly motivated and talented career people in National Parks, Forest Service, BLM and EPA. By a clever combination of project underfunding, staff reassignments and rolling over for corporate donors, the current administration has set back the oversight of public lands, resource management and pollution control by decades.
You betcha, double and (the real kicker) aggravated by higher speeds that a lot of SUV drivers seem to favor. Think mass*velocity squared. This is why the speed limit is often drastically reduced on older, worn-out bridges: they may be able to handle a 40-ton semi doing 35, but the pounding produced by the same truck doing 55 literally shakes them apart.