Ultimately, all the CO2 burned in all the time since the industrial revolution has caused a change of atmospheric composition of less than 1%. Surprising, but true.
...
The change in atmospheric composition has been about 100 parts per million, from CO2 levels of around 280ppm before the industrial revolution to around 380ppm now.
So, another way of putting it, would be that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased by 36% (((380-280)/280) * 100) since the industrial revolution
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. (Disraeli iirc)
Pedantically, you mean a grammar checker, as all the words you quoted are spelled (I want to write spelt, but I'm sure that has something to do with brewing) correctly.
Either way, I'll see your witch, their, and hods, and raise you coved and temporally
that's just it we have 100 years of accurate data.
No, we have 100 years of directly measured (temperature) data. (Actually the true period is significantly longer than this, but I'm happy to engage with your hyperbole.) We have (fairly) accurate data on atmospheric CO2 levels going back 10's of thousands of years, and those figures are being refined and improved on on an almost daily basis.
Everything else is guessed based on guesses, (...)
There is a huge difference between a guess and evidence based theory. More so between a guess, and multiple, independant, mutually supporting evidence based theories (e.g. pollen counts, stomata size & number, shell calcification, isotopic carbon uptake rates, etc.)
(...) and simulations those same simulations which can't tell the difference between a really bad weather spot in one location and world wide weather.
I'm not sure which simulations you're referring to. In attempting to denigrate all of them, lumping the hundreds of simulators, written by teams worldwide working in this field, together you're doing your 'argument' a disservice and missing a very important point: they are climate simulators, not weather simulators. Climate is the trend to weather's short term fluctuations. While neither is easy to predict the trend quickly becomes obvious, despite short term insanities.
From Pimentel and Pimentel, Food, Energy and Society, 3rd edition, p. 18:
"Americans burn about 40% more fossil energy than the total solar energy captured by all the plant biomass in the United States each year."
So yes, we could convert coal plants to biomass, but we cannot cover our current consumption with biomass, even if we use every last plant that grows in the US.
That is a very interesting 'fact', one I did not previously know. Thank you!
It is also very worrying. The recent climate summit in Durban achieved very little other than a commitment by the participants to finalise binding targets for emissions by 2015, those targets to come into force by 2020. On reading your comment it struck me that a valid method (I hesitate to call it fair, because where countries' emissions are concerned there is no politically 'fair', one size fits all, method) of setting those targets could easily be based on that total, potential, solar energy captured by plant biomass. Unfortunately, I'd have to live in a dream world to seriously expect any government, or party with realistic expectations of political power, to agree, initially at least, to a one-to-one (or lower) mapping of emissions to solar potential, but as a means of setting targets it has promise.
Anyway, once an emissions target has been set (and yes, I realise that emissions are not that same thing as the inputs to the 'energy-cycle', but they are a good proxy for the burning of fossil fuels, which are the main problem when it comes to the causes of climate change), any emissions that exceed this target due to power requirements that cannot be met by non-carbon neutral means will need to be offset by technologies such as the one mentioned in the article, or traded as carbon offsets/credits from countries that have a surplus on their emissions targets.
The sheer scale of the problem though, highlighted in your post, worries the hell out of me...
What should I be learning, reading, thinking about in order to make this transition successfully and avoid growing pointy hair?
So many answers to this question it would be impossible to give a full list, so I'm going to assume that the obvious management strategy / leadership skills books will be covered. I'll just add one suggestion:
What you should be learning is how to talk to people, how to read people, how to motivate them, as individuals, and, very importantly, how to appraise their progress. For the latter I'd suggest regular (though not necessarily very frequent) individual meetings, a piece of paper, a pen, and an open honest conversation.
My only previous experience of the word moxie was as a 'primary attribute' in the classic rpg Paranoia:
"Moxie is a measure of a character's ability to comprehend unusual phenomena, learn new modes of communication, perceive important details, and correctly choose the right course of action in unexpected situations."
Along with Chutzpah (defined as the quality of a man who kills both his parents then pleads for mercy because he is an orphan) it was one of my favourite words for quite a while.
I had always assumed that the above was its 'original' meaning, but I do have a tendancy to live in a dream world
Would citizen Whibla-R-WUK-1 please report for termination immediately, Thank You. Have a nice day!
And what exactly is Google meant to do? Hire loads of people to sift through every DMCA claim for validity and potentially end up in court themselves should one of them make a bad call?
No. They should abide by the strictures of the law. When they receive a take-down notice they should take down the alleged infringing content. If / when they receive a counter-claim from the original uploader they should restore the content. Finally, if / when the case goes to court they should abide by any judgement made regarding the aforementioned content.
That's the simple bit.
Furthermore, given the bad faith shown (by UMG) in this instance they should revoke their (UMG's) access to Google's electronic 'internal take-down service', and insist that every future DMCA take-down notice comes via snail mail (at an incremental cost for each notice) in machine readable form, allowing Google to simply automate the scanning and take-down process. There is, unfortunately, a concomitant incremental cost to Google here, but then 'ethical' businesses often pay more to stand up for what they believe in - no-one said that being good was the cheap option. Additionally, they (Google) should file an amicus brief to the court stating that they felt that use of their internal take-down service (by UMG, in this instance) was the equivalent of them receiving a legal DMCA take-down request.
Agree or disagree with the law (and I think we all know where the balance falls) it is still the law, and it would be against Google's best interests to flout it, but there's no 'good' reason for them to go beyond the letter of the law or to do more than is required in pursuance of it.
Making a stand would, I suspect, go a long way towards winning back some of their waning support, as well as issuing a stern warning to other companies like UMG who might be tempted to similarly abuse their privileges.
Robots can monitor vital signs of interrogated suspects, as well as a human doctor can. They could also administer injections and even inflict pain in a more controlled way, free from malice and prejudices
As a 'thought experiment' I found the article fairly interesting, albeit slightly shallow, however I did take issue with, amongst other things, that quote.
Any fool can attach a finger clip to measure someone's heart rate...a 10 year old can attach a bp monitor to someone's arm. The monitoring of vital signs does not require medical personnel, let alone a doctor, and in most hospitals today routine monitoring is already left to machines. It is the response to problems that requires intervention, and even then in most cases this is little more than an exercise in following a decision tree laid out over the last fifty years or so. It could certainly be argued that not having one's (the state's, the organisation's, etc.) doctors present at the actual torture excuses them of any guilt, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree...
On the subject of guilt, and related to the second sentence of the quote, I can think of one situation where machines are already used to administer injections - namely in the execution ('scuse the pun) of the death penalty. As Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lethal_injection) informs me:
Each person presses one station button on the console which travels to a computer which starts all three injections electronically. The computer then deletes who actually started the syringes so that participants are not aware if their syringe contained saline or one of the drugs necessary for execution (to assuage guilt in a manner similar to...)
Seems like we're well practiced at absolving ourselves of responsibility for our actions using machines, washing away our guilt with some technological hand-waving
It's only a shame that it's not true. If innocents die in war, if a state sponsors terrorism, if a country engages in torture then not only are those directly involved responsible but I would argue that we all share some of the responsibility, we are all partially guilty!
The use of robots in war is not only inevitable it's already happening, and their use will only increase. After all, if you are going to wage war you should probably do so with the intention of winning it with the fewest casualties on your side (this might depend on the aim of the war, but in truth this is a slightly moot point). One unfortunate corollary of this will be an increase in the asymmetry of warfare in the near future, as well as an increasing detachment by those with the newest and shiniest 'toys'. With that in mind, while some of the ethical implications of combat robots are considered in the article there's only one moral implication:
We should do our utmost to ensure we do not (and have no need to) go to war again.
Why should the fact that the poster hasn't logged in make any difference to the correctness of his post, or any difference to his expectations of civility?
That aside, what I find slightly strange is your reaction to 'agreeing' with the AC's post:
There are two things necessary to prevent another 9/11:
...
Both changes were accomplished immediately right after 9/11.
Looks to me like you've misunderstood his post, backed up his own assertion, then insulted him as a way of putting him down (thus bigging yourself up). At the risk of perpetuating the cycle, way to go...
The purpose of the markets is to match people who have surplus capital with those (allowing for the dubious state of companies as people) who have need of it. The lower the barrier to market entry the more readily available capital becomes, allowing companies to access it and use it, hopefully productively. Now, the majority of investors are already likely to carry out some form of oversight before directly investing in a company, through the purchase of shares or what have you, and while most of this oversight is likely to be financially directed - is this a good investment, am I likely to financially profit from this exchange - many people also already include an ethical element to their investment decisions - are the company's business practices reputed to harm the environment, do they manufacture 'bad' (tm) things. Holding individual investors to a higher level of oversight and responsibilty than this is not only not practical it would directly damage the main advantage of a free market, namely the free flows of capital.
As a side note, there is a huge difference between the idea of the (free) market and capitalism per se. Conflating the two does not help in clarifying specific objections to one or the other.
One 'direct' example of the market in action is your bank. You put your savings in the bank, (originally) on the assumption that you will see a small return on that capital, in the form of interest, and the bank, acting as a middle man / broker, lends that money to someone that needs it. This is both a purer form of matching lender to borrower and a more remote one in the fact that you as the lender have no direct say as to the destination of your 'loan'. You are of course free to chose your bank, but, in this day and age the only sure way of ensuring your bank is ethical would be, amongst many other things, if they do not engage in any counter party trades, do not sell stocks and shares isa's, and own no share portfolio of their own. I'm not sure if that would make for a financially viable business as a bank, or merely make them a credit union with a severely restricted remit. Anyway, I get away from the point I was trying to make...
long story short - whomever invests in something should be responsible with their investment.
I'm going to assume you have a bank account. Are you claiming (partial) responsibility for the millions of people who lost their homes / livelihoods / sanity in the recent debacle with the selling, mis-selling, and reselling of sub-prime mortgages? After all, it was your money that was lent to these people that allowed them to buy their homes in the first place, even if they were mis-sold. If so, what penalty should be exacted on you for this crime (and as far as 'evil' acts go this was as large a crime against humanity as any other I can think of in western so called democracies in recent times)? And if not, why not...why are you not being held resposible and accountable for the evils done with your money?
Really, the news is that WoW (especially high end PVE and PVP) is not playable without a few addons (5 ?), and is really much better if you have a bunch of them (I have 20-30).
Absolute rubbish. I play, admittedly a little too much perhaps, and have cleared all the current content.
I do not have a single add-on installed...never have, and never will do.
I'll admit that add-ons make the game "easier", but they are certainly not essential.
A large part of the satisfaction to be gained from the game is working together with other players to overcome in-game obstacles. If you install add-ons that do everything bar push the buttons for you what exactly is the point in playing?
To my mind the only satisfaction to be gained from add-ons would be writing them (think intellectual exercise), and then not using them;-)
This is arguably one of the most corrupt politicians active in Europe today we are talking about. Yet, through control of Italy's media, self proposed legislation making him immune to prosecution, a populist and eternally varying agenda, and a cabinet stacked with convicted fraudsters (convicted whilst working for his media organisations, I should add), he has proved to be quite a 'successful' politician.
All politicians are adept at playing people against each other, buying favours with promises, all the while keeping an eye out for number one, but if anyone can instigate (self-serving) legislation in the name of "regulating the internet", this man has that media / money motive, and, just perhaps, the means by which to do it.
Granted, a lot of their (RIAA) behaviour is reprehensible, but you seem to have ignored virtually everything the article said and trotted out the same old rant.
They, rightly, do not mention suing for copyright infringment for those people who download songs...they do mention suing those people who share their tracks and make them available to upload.
You are not in breach of copyright for dowloading a track; you are in breach of the 'distibution' clause if you allow others to copy it from your computer......Quite how you can download if someone else is not uploading though...
p.s. Ianal, so take the above with a pinch of salt
"Modern GPUs are a similar size to CPUs (if not larger)"
Absolutely true, there are more transistors on your top-of-the range graphics card, than there are on most processors...
"you'd need a 256-bit 1GHz+ memory interface"
Hello? AMD chips have an integrated memory controller, with the AM2s having support for DDR2 memory, running at 667 MHz. So unbuffered memory, running in dual channel mode runs at a speed of approximately 10.7GB/sec. In comparison current graphics technology runs at about 6.4GB/sec.
Either one is fast enough (ouch - take away my \. membership), but personally, when I'm building my next pc, I'll go for the faster one given the option.
So far what they have is a workable, small scale (no pun intended), test solution to the problem of water filtration. But there is little novel, or unobvious, in what they have done.
If there is a patent in this it will be in the process used to create commercial quantities of nanotube filters.
There are of course usually several ways of skinning your animal of choice, so in fact it is probable that there will be several patents sought for nanotube manufacturing processes - this is by and large a good thing - however......no patents should ever be granted for any general process such as filtering water, or making water filters in general.
I will leave you to draw your own analogy as regards software patents.
All, of what we experience as, matter arises as a direct result of quantum fluctuations in the vacuum energy inside the black hole which we (our universe) exist(s).
I realise that my views are not those of the majority, but:
I don't actually have any major objection to the idea of ID cards - however in this case it does seem like a major waste of time, effort and money. Let's examine a few facts:
1. If you live in the UK (as I do) you can be required to provide ID already, at any time, for practically any reason, by the boys (and girls) in blue. So, no change there.
2. Your records are already a case of "public" record - at least if you've got a driving license or a passport, or visited a hospital in the last few years, or have ever signed on, or if you have a bank account.
3. If you've set foot outside your house in the last 10 (ish) years your face is known - see all those cameras?
Does all this bother me? Only slightly - and this is not because I haven't thought about it; I have long and hard!
What does really cheese me off is the wasted opportunity. Even with this ID card I will still require my passport, my driving license, my birth certificate, my donor card, etc. This card will not contain useful medical information that can be used by doctors to save my life (or the life of someone else, should I prove 'unsavable'). This card will not benefit me in any way that I can see, though not having one will certainly be counted prejudicially against me; nor do I seriously think that it will significantly improve the security of the nation, or its inhabitants.
Too late for this post to be read I'm sure, but...
So they've trademarked the appearance of the Rubiks Cube (TM)...
How?
As a corporate logo - this I can see.
As an actual product? You must be joking!
Still, and I never thought I'd say this, kudos to the lawyer who came up with this innovative solution to patent expiration.
Can anyone tell me what would happen if these toys were manufactured by a company based outside the US? Would they be banned/confiscated on importation?
To an extent I agree with you, the patent does not seem to cover this......however, what the patent does seem to cover is a situation that arises in roaming profiles:
From Machine 1
1. Connect to World Wide Web (http port? must be publicly accessible computer? What's the definition of the WWW?)
2. Upload your profile to remote storage (domain controller / file server - this happens when you log off anyway!)
3. Delete original profile (if you don't do this do you need to pay patent royalties?)
To Computer 2
1. Connect to World Wide Web (I mean, what's the real difference between an intranet and the internet, except who has access to it?)
2. Download profile (from file server which, by definition, includes user settings & preferences.)
3.Update user preferences (see above... Automatic and 'transparent' process.)
It is still a useless patent, with a lot of grey areas, that should never have been granted.
This is a nice idea, not that it will affect me in any way whatsoever - unless I get my green card......however a few questions do spring to mind, the most important one being about security and bandwidth caps (and tin foil hats, but that's another issue alltogether).
Let's say I pay $x / month for this service - what's to stop Jo Schmoe next door using my "frequency" for nothing. Experience with 802.11b, or whatever, is slowly teaching us that wireless is not as secure as fibre / cable.
And how much infrastructure will this take to implement? And at what cost? If it's not economically sound to lay cable will it make sense to put up enough satellites / balloons / repeater towers to cover the whole of the US - I mean there isn't even have full cell phone coverage yet!
What I want to know is why 99% of the fscking setup programs need to run as admin to install simple little applets into my user context..
I think that this is due to the fact that these installs are modifying the registry. But, you say, Win2k has a user portion of the registry that the user can edit. Well, yes, but this does not allow for dependancies and global file extension settings. Basically, when a "dependant" program is installed it increments a counter in the registry branch for the program that it is dependant on (if that makes sense:-)), so that if you try to un-install the 'higher-level' depenency, or run a disk clean up, Windows knows not to remove it. Anyway, to get back to the point, you need the admin rights to be able to make changes to the non-user portion of the registry. I do agree though - bloody stupid.
Intelli-sync for Palms is one program like this. Their solution - install / run as Administrator. Just make sure that when you do this you only make the user a LOCAL adminstrator. I made this mistake once - and spent most of a night putting one of our servers back together. Never again!
Slashdot Mirror
Ultimately, all the CO2 burned in all the time since the industrial revolution has caused a change of atmospheric composition of less than 1%. Surprising, but true.
...
The change in atmospheric composition has been about 100 parts per million, from CO2 levels of around 280ppm before the industrial revolution to around 380ppm now.
So, another way of putting it, would be that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased by 36% (((380-280)/280) * 100) since the industrial revolution
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics. (Disraeli iirc)
Details at 11"
That's 5:00 you non-binary-reading troglodytes. I suspect next I'll hear a story about how useful rats are at guarding cheese.
11 in Binary is 5?
Damn, I knew I was getting old, because it used to be only 3...
Pedantically, you mean a grammar checker, as all the words you quoted are spelled (I want to write spelt, but I'm sure that has something to do with brewing) correctly.
Either way, I'll see your witch, their, and hods, and raise you coved and temporally
Apologies to the ac gp...
that's just it we have 100 years of accurate data.
No, we have 100 years of directly measured (temperature) data. (Actually the true period is significantly longer than this, but I'm happy to engage with your hyperbole.) We have (fairly) accurate data on atmospheric CO2 levels going back 10's of thousands of years, and those figures are being refined and improved on on an almost daily basis.
Everything else is guessed based on guesses, (...)
There is a huge difference between a guess and evidence based theory. More so between a guess, and multiple, independant, mutually supporting evidence based theories (e.g. pollen counts, stomata size & number, shell calcification, isotopic carbon uptake rates, etc.)
(...) and simulations those same simulations which can't tell the difference between a really bad weather spot in one location and world wide weather.
I'm not sure which simulations you're referring to. In attempting to denigrate all of them, lumping the hundreds of simulators, written by teams worldwide working in this field, together you're doing your 'argument' a disservice and missing a very important point: they are climate simulators, not weather simulators. Climate is the trend to weather's short term fluctuations. While neither is easy to predict the trend quickly becomes obvious, despite short term insanities.
You just brought tears to my eyes!
Bravo.
From Pimentel and Pimentel, Food, Energy and Society, 3rd edition, p. 18:
"Americans burn about 40% more fossil energy than the total solar energy captured by all the plant biomass in the United States each year."
So yes, we could convert coal plants to biomass, but we cannot cover our current consumption with biomass, even if we use every last plant that grows in the US.
That is a very interesting 'fact', one I did not previously know. Thank you!
It is also very worrying. The recent climate summit in Durban achieved very little other than a commitment by the participants to finalise binding targets for emissions by 2015, those targets to come into force by 2020. On reading your comment it struck me that a valid method (I hesitate to call it fair, because where countries' emissions are concerned there is no politically 'fair', one size fits all, method) of setting those targets could easily be based on that total, potential, solar energy captured by plant biomass. Unfortunately, I'd have to live in a dream world to seriously expect any government, or party with realistic expectations of political power, to agree, initially at least, to a one-to-one (or lower) mapping of emissions to solar potential, but as a means of setting targets it has promise.
Anyway, once an emissions target has been set (and yes, I realise that emissions are not that same thing as the inputs to the 'energy-cycle', but they are a good proxy for the burning of fossil fuels, which are the main problem when it comes to the causes of climate change), any emissions that exceed this target due to power requirements that cannot be met by non-carbon neutral means will need to be offset by technologies such as the one mentioned in the article, or traded as carbon offsets/credits from countries that have a surplus on their emissions targets.
The sheer scale of the problem though, highlighted in your post, worries the hell out of me...
What should I be learning, reading, thinking about in order to make this transition successfully and avoid growing pointy hair?
So many answers to this question it would be impossible to give a full list, so I'm going to assume that the obvious management strategy / leadership skills books will be covered. I'll just add one suggestion:
The Wisdom of Crowds, by James Surowiecki
What you should be learning is how to talk to people, how to read people, how to motivate them, as individuals, and, very importantly, how to appraise their progress. For the latter I'd suggest regular (though not necessarily very frequent) individual meetings, a piece of paper, a pen, and an open honest conversation.
My only previous experience of the word moxie was as a 'primary attribute' in the classic rpg Paranoia:
"Moxie is a measure of a character's ability to comprehend unusual phenomena, learn new modes of communication, perceive important details, and correctly choose the right course of action in unexpected situations."
Along with Chutzpah (defined as the quality of a man who kills both his parents then pleads for mercy because he is an orphan) it was one of my favourite words for quite a while.
I had always assumed that the above was its 'original' meaning, but I do have a tendancy to live in a dream world
Would citizen Whibla-R-WUK-1 please report for termination immediately, Thank You. Have a nice day!
And what exactly is Google meant to do? Hire loads of people to sift through every DMCA claim for validity and potentially end up in court themselves should one of them make a bad call?
No. They should abide by the strictures of the law. When they receive a take-down notice they should take down the alleged infringing content. If / when they receive a counter-claim from the original uploader they should restore the content. Finally, if / when the case goes to court they should abide by any judgement made regarding the aforementioned content.
That's the simple bit.
Furthermore, given the bad faith shown (by UMG) in this instance they should revoke their (UMG's) access to Google's electronic 'internal take-down service', and insist that every future DMCA take-down notice comes via snail mail (at an incremental cost for each notice) in machine readable form, allowing Google to simply automate the scanning and take-down process. There is, unfortunately, a concomitant incremental cost to Google here, but then 'ethical' businesses often pay more to stand up for what they believe in - no-one said that being good was the cheap option. Additionally, they (Google) should file an amicus brief to the court stating that they felt that use of their internal take-down service (by UMG, in this instance) was the equivalent of them receiving a legal DMCA take-down request.
Agree or disagree with the law (and I think we all know where the balance falls) it is still the law, and it would be against Google's best interests to flout it, but there's no 'good' reason for them to go beyond the letter of the law or to do more than is required in pursuance of it.
Making a stand would, I suspect, go a long way towards winning back some of their waning support, as well as issuing a stern warning to other companies like UMG who might be tempted to similarly abuse their privileges.
From TFA:
Robots can monitor vital signs of interrogated suspects, as well as a human doctor can. They could also administer injections and even inflict pain in a more controlled way, free from malice and prejudices
As a 'thought experiment' I found the article fairly interesting, albeit slightly shallow, however I did take issue with, amongst other things, that quote.
Any fool can attach a finger clip to measure someone's heart rate...a 10 year old can attach a bp monitor to someone's arm. The monitoring of vital signs does not require medical personnel, let alone a doctor, and in most hospitals today routine monitoring is already left to machines. It is the response to problems that requires intervention, and even then in most cases this is little more than an exercise in following a decision tree laid out over the last fifty years or so. It could certainly be argued that not having one's (the state's, the organisation's, etc.) doctors present at the actual torture excuses them of any guilt, but I'm afraid I'm going to have to disagree...
On the subject of guilt, and related to the second sentence of the quote, I can think of one situation where machines are already used to administer injections - namely in the execution ('scuse the pun) of the death penalty. As Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lethal_injection) informs me:
Each person presses one station button on the console which travels to a computer which starts all three injections electronically. The computer then deletes who actually started the syringes so that participants are not aware if their syringe contained saline or one of the drugs necessary for execution (to assuage guilt in a manner similar to...)
Seems like we're well practiced at absolving ourselves of responsibility for our actions using machines, washing away our guilt with some technological hand-waving
It's only a shame that it's not true. If innocents die in war, if a state sponsors terrorism, if a country engages in torture then not only are those directly involved responsible but I would argue that we all share some of the responsibility, we are all partially guilty!
The use of robots in war is not only inevitable it's already happening, and their use will only increase. After all, if you are going to wage war you should probably do so with the intention of winning it with the fewest casualties on your side (this might depend on the aim of the war, but in truth this is a slightly moot point). One unfortunate corollary of this will be an increase in the asymmetry of warfare in the near future, as well as an increasing detachment by those with the newest and shiniest 'toys'. With that in mind, while some of the ethical implications of combat robots are considered in the article there's only one moral implication:
We should do our utmost to ensure we do not (and have no need to) go to war again.
Why should the fact that the poster hasn't logged in make any difference to the correctness of his post, or any difference to his expectations of civility?
That aside, what I find slightly strange is your reaction to 'agreeing' with the AC's post:
There are two things necessary to prevent another 9/11:
...
Both changes were accomplished immediately right after 9/11.
Looks to me like you've misunderstood his post, backed up his own assertion, then insulted him as a way of putting him down (thus bigging yourself up). At the risk of perpetuating the cycle, way to go...
I suppose an apology is out of the question?
The purpose of the markets is to match people who have surplus capital with those (allowing for the dubious state of companies as people) who have need of it. The lower the barrier to market entry the more readily available capital becomes, allowing companies to access it and use it, hopefully productively. Now, the majority of investors are already likely to carry out some form of oversight before directly investing in a company, through the purchase of shares or what have you, and while most of this oversight is likely to be financially directed - is this a good investment, am I likely to financially profit from this exchange - many people also already include an ethical element to their investment decisions - are the company's business practices reputed to harm the environment, do they manufacture 'bad' (tm) things. Holding individual investors to a higher level of oversight and responsibilty than this is not only not practical it would directly damage the main advantage of a free market, namely the free flows of capital.
As a side note, there is a huge difference between the idea of the (free) market and capitalism per se. Conflating the two does not help in clarifying specific objections to one or the other.
One 'direct' example of the market in action is your bank. You put your savings in the bank, (originally) on the assumption that you will see a small return on that capital, in the form of interest, and the bank, acting as a middle man / broker, lends that money to someone that needs it. This is both a purer form of matching lender to borrower and a more remote one in the fact that you as the lender have no direct say as to the destination of your 'loan'. You are of course free to chose your bank, but, in this day and age the only sure way of ensuring your bank is ethical would be, amongst many other things, if they do not engage in any counter party trades, do not sell stocks and shares isa's, and own no share portfolio of their own. I'm not sure if that would make for a financially viable business as a bank, or merely make them a credit union with a severely restricted remit. Anyway, I get away from the point I was trying to make...
long story short - whomever invests in something should be responsible with their investment.
I'm going to assume you have a bank account. Are you claiming (partial) responsibility for the millions of people who lost their homes / livelihoods / sanity in the recent debacle with the selling, mis-selling, and reselling of sub-prime mortgages? After all, it was your money that was lent to these people that allowed them to buy their homes in the first place, even if they were mis-sold. If so, what penalty should be exacted on you for this crime (and as far as 'evil' acts go this was as large a crime against humanity as any other I can think of in western so called democracies in recent times)? And if not, why not...why are you not being held resposible and accountable for the evils done with your money?
Really, the news is that WoW (especially high end PVE and PVP) is not playable without a few addons (5 ?), and is really much better if you have a bunch of them (I have 20-30). Absolute rubbish. I play, admittedly a little too much perhaps, and have cleared all the current content. I do not have a single add-on installed...never have, and never will do. I'll admit that add-ons make the game "easier", but they are certainly not essential. A large part of the satisfaction to be gained from the game is working together with other players to overcome in-game obstacles. If you install add-ons that do everything bar push the buttons for you what exactly is the point in playing? To my mind the only satisfaction to be gained from add-ons would be writing them (think intellectual exercise), and then not using them ;-)
I am.
This is arguably one of the most corrupt politicians active in Europe today we are talking about. Yet, through control of Italy's media, self proposed legislation making him immune to prosecution, a populist and eternally varying agenda, and a cabinet stacked with convicted fraudsters (convicted whilst working for his media organisations, I should add), he has proved to be quite a 'successful' politician.
All politicians are adept at playing people against each other, buying favours with promises, all the while keeping an eye out for number one, but if anyone can instigate (self-serving) legislation in the name of "regulating the internet", this man has that media / money motive, and, just perhaps, the means by which to do it.
Granted, a lot of their (RIAA) behaviour is reprehensible, but you seem to have ignored virtually everything the article said and trotted out the same old rant.
...Quite how you can download if someone else is not uploading though...
They, rightly, do not mention suing for copyright infringment for those people who download songs...they do mention suing those people who share their tracks and make them available to upload.
You are not in breach of copyright for dowloading a track; you are in breach of the 'distibution' clause if you allow others to copy it from your computer...
p.s. Ianal, so take the above with a pinch of salt
"Modern GPUs are a similar size to CPUs (if not larger)"
Absolutely true, there are more transistors on your top-of-the range graphics card, than there are on most processors...
"you'd need a 256-bit 1GHz+ memory interface"
Hello? AMD chips have an integrated memory controller, with the AM2s having support for DDR2 memory, running at 667 MHz. So unbuffered memory, running in dual channel mode runs at a speed of approximately 10.7GB/sec. In comparison current graphics technology runs at about 6.4GB/sec.
Either one is fast enough (ouch - take away my \. membership), but personally, when I'm building my next pc, I'll go for the faster one given the option.
But what would their patent be for?
...no patents should ever be granted for any general process such as filtering water, or making water filters in general.
So far what they have is a workable, small scale (no pun intended), test solution to the problem of water filtration. But there is little novel, or unobvious, in what they have done.
If there is a patent in this it will be in the process used to create commercial quantities of nanotube filters.
There are of course usually several ways of skinning your animal of choice, so in fact it is probable that there will be several patents sought for nanotube manufacturing processes - this is by and large a good thing - however...
I will leave you to draw your own analogy as regards software patents.
In reply to your sig.
No, and even then your question does not need to be to that "authority".
In reply to your comment,
It's hard!
It's addictive!
It is possible to change your mind.
Sorry, but I couldn't resist :)
All, of what we experience as, matter arises as a direct result of quantum fluctuations in the vacuum energy inside the black hole which we (our universe) exist(s).
Happy?
Do I qualify to comment on ID now?
"scientifically you can't, like, prove a negative"
Unless my mind is completely on the fritz here I think that you've got somewhat confused.
Proving something to be negative is simple, just find a counterexample / contradiction - proving something correct, now that's the hard part...
I realise that my views are not those of the majority, but:
I don't actually have any major objection to the idea of ID cards - however in this case it does seem like a major waste of time, effort and money. Let's examine a few facts:
1. If you live in the UK (as I do) you can be required to provide ID already, at any time, for practically any reason, by the boys (and girls) in blue. So, no change there.
2. Your records are already a case of "public" record - at least if you've got a driving license or a passport, or visited a hospital in the last few years, or have ever signed on, or if you have a bank account.
3. If you've set foot outside your house in the last 10 (ish) years your face is known - see all those cameras?
Does all this bother me? Only slightly - and this is not because I haven't thought about it; I have long and hard!
What does really cheese me off is the wasted opportunity. Even with this ID card I will still require my passport, my driving license, my birth certificate, my donor card, etc. This card will not contain useful medical information that can be used by doctors to save my life (or the life of someone else, should I prove 'unsavable'). This card will not benefit me in any way that I can see, though not having one will certainly be counted prejudicially against me; nor do I seriously think that it will significantly improve the security of the nation, or its inhabitants.
As I've already said: What a waste!
Too late for this post to be read I'm sure, but...
So they've trademarked the appearance of the Rubiks Cube (TM)...
How?
As a corporate logo - this I can see.
As an actual product? You must be joking!
Still, and I never thought I'd say this, kudos to the lawyer who came up with this innovative solution to patent expiration.
Can anyone tell me what would happen if these toys were manufactured by a company based outside the US? Would they be banned/confiscated on importation?
Whibla.
To an extent I agree with you, the patent does not seem to cover this... ...however, what the patent does seem to cover is a situation that arises in roaming profiles:
From Machine 1
1. Connect to World Wide Web (http port? must be publicly accessible computer? What's the definition of the WWW?)
2. Upload your profile to remote storage (domain controller / file server - this happens when you log off anyway!)
3. Delete original profile (if you don't do this do you need to pay patent royalties?)
To Computer 2
1. Connect to World Wide Web (I mean, what's the real difference between an intranet and the internet, except who has access to it?)
2. Download profile (from file server which, by definition, includes user settings & preferences.)
3.Update user preferences (see above... Automatic and 'transparent' process.)
It is still a useless patent, with a lot of grey areas, that should never have been granted.
This is a nice idea, not that it will affect me in any way whatsoever - unless I get my green card... ...however a few questions do spring to mind, the most important one being about security and bandwidth caps (and tin foil hats, but that's another issue alltogether).
Let's say I pay $x / month for this service - what's to stop Jo Schmoe next door using my "frequency" for nothing. Experience with 802.11b, or whatever, is slowly teaching us that wireless is not as secure as fibre / cable.
And how much infrastructure will this take to implement? And at what cost? If it's not economically sound to lay cable will it make sense to put up enough satellites / balloons / repeater towers to cover the whole of the US - I mean there isn't even have full cell phone coverage yet!
What I want to know is why 99% of the fscking setup programs need to run as admin to install simple little applets into my user context..
:-)), so that if you try to un-install the 'higher-level' depenency, or run a disk clean up, Windows knows not to remove it. Anyway, to get back to the point, you need the admin rights to be able to make changes to the non-user portion of the registry. I do agree though - bloody stupid.
I think that this is due to the fact that these installs are modifying the registry. But, you say, Win2k has a user portion of the registry that the user can edit. Well, yes, but this does not allow for dependancies and global file extension settings. Basically, when a "dependant" program is installed it increments a counter in the registry branch for the program that it is dependant on (if that makes sense
Intelli-sync for Palms is one program like this. Their solution - install / run as Administrator. Just make sure that when you do this you only make the user a LOCAL adminstrator. I made this mistake once - and spent most of a night putting one of our servers back together. Never again!