Honestly, I don't think the BSA, without some credible insider information, or digging through your garbage, has any right to come barging in. I have yet to hear of them actually doing so. For the most part businesses and organizations voluntarily grant them admitance. As it proves to be a nuisance, in the case of Arlington, VA etc. Who in their right mind would allow these clowns in, to interfer with business and potentially find software which no license can be found for? (Not that it could be proven it wasn't bought at one time.)
Just saw in a Fry's ad (San Jose Murky News) 128MB Compact Flash for $24 ($34 less $10 rebate, though I'm _still_ waiting for $60 in rebates from Circuit City, I mailed in early December)
Of course, the floppy works with all your other crap, which Flash doesn't, particularly anything pre-USB.
I've been using a USB adaptor and the CF from my digital camera to move big files around (though I need more capacity than the meager 32MB it has, may make a quick trip to the store and get some extra memory today:-)
Then there's the archive (blow dust off a floppy filer) disks, fulla valuable old junk^H^H^H^Htreasures from years gone by. When I built my home PC (back in Dec., hey CC, where the fsck are my rebates!?!?) it was still a foregone conclusion to get a 3.5" floppy drive and I have used it, several times, so the 3.5" floppy isn't dead yet (or I'm just a crusty old curmudgeon clinging to the past.)
Why is Frank Abagnale a celebrity? (Hint: Catch Me If You Can)
Frank has a site and serves as a consutant on security. (I suggest reading his Film and Book Comments) He's enjoyed a successful career after turning honest. Hopefully Kevin can do likewise. I recognized his name in an article on avoiding identify theft this morning.
On the BBC was carried an interview with a fellow representing India's fledgling space program, including talk of a moon landing (perhaps as yet another confirmation that technologically India has 'arrived'?) China, too, has expressed interest in manned space-flight, and moon mission. Could this be a replay of the U.S. - U.S.S.R. space race? India and China are viewed as rival nations, perhaps the establishment of an international station on the moon, with four countries behind such an effort, could happen.
I don't know why it tanked, either, it's easily one of the best. Probably has more to do with the box office competition or aging of the ST generation. ToS had a strong following, which I don't think TNG ever developed.
Computer industry will be doomed without the yearly 'Bill Gates COMDEX Keynote' !!;-)
That's OK, he's done the Keynote at CES (scaring the hell out of the little guys there: "And then our parters will put our software into all their home entertainment devices, and crush anyone who stands in the way of our vision, whatever the heck it is."
There's an actor by that name? Well, I'll be darned. I remember Matt's contributions to the Amiga, back in the mid 80's and figured he had such a recognizable name someone was likely to cash in by borrowing it.
It's also, the more I think about it, not really that terribly interesting (as in: It was a good flick, with some clever camera work, but I'm in no hurry to see it again), when stacked up against a lot of other Sci-Fi, yet seems to get a significant amount of coverage on Slashdot.
I chalk it up to being a favorite film of Slashdot staff. For strange, thought provoking and humorous, how about Being John Malkovich.
I can't believe you are even sugesting that Bush and his administration created this. The Truth is World Trade Center caused this and since then anytime something bad happens one of the first questions will be was it caused by a Terrrorist.
The first statement I see from the administration was that I quoted from CNN. I don't have to invent anything. It's a sad statement, just like how soon before some PoS offers shuttle debris on eBay.
I find it interesting, that others here are making claims against Bush and implying Bush has something to do with all of NASA's current money problems.
Columbia was built in 1978, first flown in 1981. thats 3 years. Now, scroll the time back to the beginning of the design process. Even if Bush handed NASA an unlimited budget the day he made it into office, we wouldn't have a new shuttle to use today.
Meanwhile countless 727, DC-9 and other jets make multiple flights a day in airframes built in the 60's and 70's. Like the manufacturers of those craft, NASA had the best materials, even the best of the best.
Now, terrorism? Yeah, the terrorists have a missle that can hit a Mach20+ target. *sarcasm*
Readers don't have to introduce the idea of terrorists, I was watching the broadcast on NBC for less than 5 minutes and the subject was broached, here's even a quote from CNN:
A Bush administration spokesman said the shuttle's altitude -- over 200,000 feet -- made it "highly unlikely" that the shuttle fell victim to a terrorist act.
Bush and his administration have made the '00's the decade of fear. Rather than "we have nothing to fear, but fear itself", we have the fear of terrorists hiding under every rock, behind every tree, lurking in every shadow. Now this disaster and the fear is already being considered on national TV, where it should be completely absurd and beyond any scrutiny, the fear brings it up.
Seven explorers died today. Get off your political high horses, and think about that. Accidents do happen.
My thoughts are with the families of the crews.
I wondered if they had made any changes after Challenger, which might serve to protect the crew in these conditions. I haven't given up hope, but I have stopped watching the TV. My friends and I are still planning a mountain bike ride today, when we get to the top of the mountain it will be hard not to look up and pray.
From my experience, I've found that MS office apps are actually loaded
faster than anything else on my system.
Word does come up quick, but that appears to be because almost everything it needs was stuffed into memory on boot. Excel and Access are far less quick. With 512MB RAM on the work PC Access is no less a cow than it was on a lesser system.
FWIW, my home PC is at the desktop in about 5 seconds from turning the power on. After experiencing that a couple times it was hard to convince myself to go back and do anything on my laptop (over a minute to load the desktop from power on.)
You can see some of what I have in my home PC on my journal.
Just another delay in the release of the next cpu. [snip] The should release for Linux, but want to keep us hanging on as
Intel's grip on the market tightens.
I got tired of waiting, but didn't do anything for Intel, as their 64bit offering is $,$$$, not $$$. I plopped the bucks for an XP 2600+/333 and it's holding the page for now.
Actually, to make systems respond better, increasing processors isn't going to help. Increasing cache hits and reducing
time for disk reads is really the only reason to make systems snappier.
Which is why, cache aside, simply adding system memory often improves performance far more than dropping $$$ on a new CPU. Particularly the case with MS apps, only they can explain why my XP 2600+/333 smokes the computer at work in everything but loading MS applications. More than twice the clockspeed and a fat lot of memory doesn't seem to make a hoot of a difference, meanwhile Persistence of Vision renders much, much faster (almost dislocated my jaw the first time I saw it render a 1024x768 anti aliased image in a fraction of the time the 933 PIII did at work.) Probably the same old bottlenecks all versions of windows suffer, load tons of crap in memory and everything waits on disk i/o.
If MS were required to put a meter on the screen:
[Microsoft Visual Studio] *click*
Now loading 128MB of DLL's you probably will only need 2% of.
So if I set Super luser mode, the software doesn't do SQUAT. No clippy, no autocomplete, no nothing. I hate it very
much when my typing stream gets interrupted because Word or MSDev or Excel goes off and tries to autocomplete
something (so I spend several hours every time I get a new machine turning said features off, and every new release turns them back on.. ).:-)
Always top of my list of complaints about MS apps, getting them to shup up so I can get something done. I know exactly what you are talking about, because I've been there enough myself. Now if only I could stop crap from popping up while I'm typing (Not web pop-ups) and removing focus. That is some seriously irritating sh!t, espeically if it includes a default action set on a button and I was just hitting ENTER (RETURN for those of use who remember the past:-) and I begin yelling obsenities. Warnings should be passive and off to the side. Yeah, I'll see them, but let me finish what I'm doing, as I'm the master not the damned slave.
Nice reference... That does sound like something Di$ney would do...
Well, Les Éditions Albert René certainly has the 'goofy' part downpat. They must be a 'mickey mouse' outfit, to draw confusion between two such dissimilar names, further, the court has to be 'goofy' to issue such an opinion. I hate to think of such a fiasco in the US, but I amd sure someone could point me towards more than a few.
If mobilix was a cartoon or comic, they might have a leg, though tenuous. If the comic or cartoon featured a small and large pair of characters looking like vikings and raiding england, the case would be pretty strong. But as it's a portal for mobile un*x and Asterix, nor Obelix are pushing information or handheld tools, I'm convinced the real confusion is in the court.
When technological innovation was driven by war and/or exploration? Now, it's driven by games.
You mean MUDs? They're still around, and they're about as infinite as you can get. AI is fine, but socializing, working together with and developing a deep hatred for pthieves is far more motivating. I haven't mudded in a couple years, but when I looked at the cumulative hours I spent on muds, I wondered where the time went.
Now, what the game industry wants is a way to make money off that and that's what stuff like Everquest is doing. Stories just get in the way of 'play'.
I think it is good, very straightforward for the cars & trucks.
Yeah. So it's a minor step from the Driving simulators we used to get for free.
Perhaps showing what people can expect (or would like to believe really happens) when they drive along in such and such car or truck.
You drive along and all heads turn to watch you drive along. Ego=+5
You drive along and no warning lights ever come on advising you to shift up for better gas mileage. Comfort=+5
You put to a stop and a beautiful model sauntures up and gives you a "do me" look. Lust=+5
What you never actually do in the game:
Pull into a gas station and watch the dollars drain from pocket.
Fail to get it started in a dark parking lot in a bad part of town at 11 PM
Have take it in for routine maintenance and remember your first car cost less than the hourly charge and any part costs more than your enter first full-time paycheck.
You find a nut or bolt lying on the carpet and you can't figure out where it came from and if it's important.
Dude, yourself. In the U.S. emotion overrules logic. As the original poster stated, people have inhibitions. In the absence of reason, emotion prevails. Respect, or fear of Cholera and Dysentery?
There is no such thing as pure H2O for drinking; the water tastes different depending
on what goes into it, plain and simple. It doesn't matter if water cotnains fish and crafish shit, or human shit, cleaned
water is cleaned water.
There is pure water, it is called Deionized or Distilled water, but you shouldn't drink it without adding minerals since it would leech them out of the body to acheive equillibrium. This is why people get stomach cramps from eating snow.
Cleaned water is subjective. What has been removed? Ideally it is free of harmful bacteria, parasites, fungi, etc., which boiling or chlorination would achieve. Other pollutants are another matter. A friend who worked a hazardous waste site shared this nugget of wisdom with me: Hazardous doesn't mean toxic, it simply means of an excessive concentration which would harm the environment. A fine and important point too few are aware of. They increased the demand on our town wells until the displaced water is replaced with unacceptable water, that from nearby aquifers or the sea, which have high (and getting higher) concentrations of various minerals. Fecal matter is the least of anyone's concerns.
Personally and honestly, I detest bottled water. I prefer city-clorinated water, it "tastes" better. But I'll drink any water so long as enough animal shit and dangerous chemicals are removed that it's deemed "safe".
You're fortunate to have a good source of water. When I lived in Michigan the water came from deep in Lake Huron. Even wells up near Gladwin had exceptionally good water. Try the water in Ann Arbor, though, or try it in Phoenix, AZ or Los Angeles, CA. Much of the wests water drains through relatively young geology, such that dozens of salts exist and are building up. A visit to Salt Lake, Death Valley or Owens Valley can shead some light on the magnatude of the problem.
I can't help commenting on your Bible comment, but you do understand that humans have been drinling water for 10's
of thousands of years before the first religions which came thousands of years before the Bible, right? Let's not get into
non-nodern or pre-human apes, or Neanderthals, etc.
Not a matter of religion, though much of religion is peppered with sage advice brought from experience. Though early people lacked the details (what the organism or compound was), they could see the cause and effect clearly. Drink water from a pool with a carcass or drained from a loo and get sick. Science has made us aware of what is in the water and what it does to a body, it takes education to dispell fears and build trust.
The post to which you replied was right - it's weak minded-ness, like, "I eat snails, fungus and shrimp, but would never eat ants!".
Weakminded, or caution for self preservation? Epidemics and plagues are hard to erase from civilizations memory, labeling people stupid or cowardly for their caution is undoubtably what a great many dead or maimed people have done. If it's safe, work toward educating people, rather than name calling.
Nice that I wandered onto the article and read a bit before realizing this was really full of spoilers on a relatively new book. Thanks for hanging it out there without a warning.
Just curious, but when you say, "Water is getting poorer in quality..." what do you mean?
Snowmelt/rainfall fills the stream or aquifer your water comes from (exceptions, like L.A., where it's pumped hundreds of miles _into_ an aquifer)
You live in city D, downstream from Cities A, B, C.
City A uses the water, some of it is treated then fed to streams or back into wells.
City B does the same thing.
City C does the same thing.
All this use increases mineral content of the water, since minerals are disolved into water, not chunks you can filter out. Most can only be removed by energy intensive evaporation.
In City D you turn on the tap and out comes a glass of water with the accumulated minerals, trace elements, pollutants it has acquired on its journey.
Most cities grow, thus increasing their need for water.
The mineral and other chemical content compounds.
There is a treaty between the US and Mexico governing use of the Colorado River, as concentration of salts in water have, in the past, reached levels which were harmful to mexican agriculture. Recently L.A. lost access to Mono Lake water (because they were draining it almost completely), more recently Southern California has lost access to extra shares of Colorado River water, unused by upstream states, until now.
In short, the more water is used after it falls from the clouds, the more things accumulate in it. Biologicals can be treated out, but salts and chemicals are much more difficult. Pumping water into wells, to "purify" water has resulted in their decreasing effectiveness.
Granted, in the eastern US and other regions which receive greater rain and snowfall, it's less of an issue (so far.)
When I was much younger I heard of some Army Corps of Engineers plan to run a pipeline from Lake Michigan to the California. I thought it was just another goofy rumor. After reading Cadillac Desert, I found it wasn't just proposed, but the Great Lake States fought it.
and they say it's "even cleaner than that made from nearby creek water." I think that says more about the creek than it does the waste."
the concept of water purified through man-made means, as opposed to nature which most people are more used to. in singapore's case, they're currently pumping the purified water into reservoirs, just to let it sit in the open so the birds and fish can crap into it and let nature do a bit of its thing, before purifying it again to pump into the water supply. all this, just to satisfy the odd inhibitions that a lot of people have to consuming purified sewage. weak-minded people really do bother me sometimes.
Don't be so hasty to cast stones. Clearly there is a double standard, born of ignorance on the part of many. A small ski resort I visited used to pump icky water from a swamp and make snow from it. You could tell because the air smelled terrible when they were doing it and the snow had a yellowish tinge from algae. However, look at what advertising has told the consumer:
Beer from the land of sky blue waters (can you name it?:-)
Mountain spring water (yeah, right... all 50 zillion gallons of it every day, that's no spring it's a river, in Cal. it's probably pumped from Colorado or Owens River, read Cadillac Desert)
Then there's the simple test of putting two glasses of water in front of someone, filtered from the town well and recovered water. Don't tell them before they taste test, then see if they make a face and call a lawyer once you've explained one came from recovered water.
People have been trained, since before the Bible to avoid water touched by human waste, because bacteria and fungi which cause some pretty bad aflictions grow in it. That was wisdom, it may seem misguided, until you run a marketing campaign to change people's opinion, then catch the local water filtration manager cutting corners. It's probably happening in your town and you don't even know it.
Me, I put a filter on my drinking water, for whatever good it does. Which it does to some small noticable degree.
Water is getting poorer in quality and reuse isn't a new concept, but reuse is growing and people will need to accept it, because alternatives (desalination, for example) can be very expensive.
What's more important than knowing HOW to do it after the first 10 times though is knowing that if you've only done it 2-3 times you probalby haven't got the problem domain really down yet. Rather, alwasys assume there's a better way to do it until you've actually exhausted all other possibilities.
That, and after doing it several times you recognize certain techniques, which can be done differently, more efficiently or with an eye toward compatibility.
I once recoded a college test scoring system, in DEC RSTS Basic (using virtual arrays: Open "x.tmp" as file 1 : dim #1, X.ptr(32767)). Next I recoded it for new hardware, in PL/1 (of all languages on the PR1ME, it handled large buffers better than Pascal and Fortran, though required static arrays to the nth position, ugh!), lastly I wrote it in C (the best language and easiest implementation.) In three versions, in three operating systems, and three languages, the process performed the identical task, capitalizing on essential features of each language critical to the product. I could write it again and again in the same language, and still identify better ways to do it. (Though I was very happy with the c version as it was rock solid and very fast for 600+ 160 question tests, statistical analysis and all:)
Slashdot Mirror
If I'm clean, and I know it, I'd blow them off.
Of course, the floppy works with all your other crap, which Flash doesn't, particularly anything pre-USB.
I've been using a USB adaptor and the CF from my digital camera to move big files around (though I need more capacity than the meager 32MB it has, may make a quick trip to the store and get some extra memory today :-)
Then there's the archive (blow dust off a floppy filer) disks, fulla valuable old junk^H^H^H^Htreasures from years gone by. When I built my home PC (back in Dec., hey CC, where the fsck are my rebates!?!?) it was still a foregone conclusion to get a 3.5" floppy drive and I have used it, several times, so the 3.5" floppy isn't dead yet (or I'm just a crusty old curmudgeon clinging to the past.)
Frank has a site and serves as a consutant on security. (I suggest reading his Film and Book Comments) He's enjoyed a successful career after turning honest. Hopefully Kevin can do likewise. I recognized his name in an article on avoiding identify theft this morning.
Is there any room left in that Atari E.T. cartridge landfill?
On the BBC was carried an interview with a fellow representing India's fledgling space program, including talk of a moon landing (perhaps as yet another confirmation that technologically India has 'arrived'?) China, too, has expressed interest in manned space-flight, and moon mission. Could this be a replay of the U.S. - U.S.S.R. space race? India and China are viewed as rival nations, perhaps the establishment of an international station on the moon, with four countries behind such an effort, could happen.
I don't know why it tanked, either, it's easily one of the best. Probably has more to do with the box office competition or aging of the ST generation. ToS had a strong following, which I don't think TNG ever developed.
That's OK, he's done the Keynote at CES (scaring the hell out of the little guys there: "And then our parters will put our software into all their home entertainment devices, and crush anyone who stands in the way of our vision, whatever the heck it is."
There's an actor by that name? Well, I'll be darned. I remember Matt's contributions to the Amiga, back in the mid 80's and figured he had such a recognizable name someone was likely to cash in by borrowing it.
That's what the matrix is.
It's also, the more I think about it, not really that terribly interesting (as in: It was a good flick, with some clever camera work, but I'm in no hurry to see it again), when stacked up against a lot of other Sci-Fi, yet seems to get a significant amount of coverage on Slashdot.
I chalk it up to being a favorite film of Slashdot staff. For strange, thought provoking and humorous, how about Being John Malkovich.
The first statement I see from the administration was that I quoted from CNN. I don't have to invent anything. It's a sad statement, just like how soon before some PoS offers shuttle debris on eBay.
Welcome to crap land.
Indeed.
Columbia was built in 1978, first flown in 1981. thats 3 years. Now, scroll the time back to the beginning of the design process. Even if Bush handed NASA an unlimited budget the day he made it into office, we wouldn't have a new shuttle to use today.
Meanwhile countless 727, DC-9 and other jets make multiple flights a day in airframes built in the 60's and 70's. Like the manufacturers of those craft, NASA had the best materials, even the best of the best.
Now, terrorism? Yeah, the terrorists have a missle that can hit a Mach20+ target. *sarcasm*
Readers don't have to introduce the idea of terrorists, I was watching the broadcast on NBC for less than 5 minutes and the subject was broached, here's even a quote from CNN:
Bush and his administration have made the '00's the decade of fear. Rather than "we have nothing to fear, but fear itself", we have the fear of terrorists hiding under every rock, behind every tree, lurking in every shadow. Now this disaster and the fear is already being considered on national TV, where it should be completely absurd and beyond any scrutiny, the fear brings it up.
Seven explorers died today. Get off your political high horses, and think about that. Accidents do happen.
My thoughts are with the families of the crews.
I wondered if they had made any changes after Challenger, which might serve to protect the crew in these conditions. I haven't given up hope, but I have stopped watching the TV. My friends and I are still planning a mountain bike ride today, when we get to the top of the mountain it will be hard not to look up and pray.
Interestingly... I just closed Outlook (at work), getting ready to leave and a small message box appears:
I think that sums things up nicely.
Word does come up quick, but that appears to be because almost everything it needs was stuffed into memory on boot. Excel and Access are far less quick. With 512MB RAM on the work PC Access is no less a cow than it was on a lesser system.
FWIW, my home PC is at the desktop in about 5 seconds from turning the power on. After experiencing that a couple times it was hard to convince myself to go back and do anything on my laptop (over a minute to load the desktop from power on.)
You can see some of what I have in my home PC on my journal.
I got tired of waiting, but didn't do anything for Intel, as their 64bit offering is $,$$$, not $$$. I plopped the bucks for an XP 2600+/333 and it's holding the page for now.
Which is why, cache aside, simply adding system memory often improves performance far more than dropping $$$ on a new CPU. Particularly the case with MS apps, only they can explain why my XP 2600+/333 smokes the computer at work in everything but loading MS applications. More than twice the clockspeed and a fat lot of memory doesn't seem to make a hoot of a difference, meanwhile Persistence of Vision renders much, much faster (almost dislocated my jaw the first time I saw it render a 1024x768 anti aliased image in a fraction of the time the 933 PIII did at work.) Probably the same old bottlenecks all versions of windows suffer, load tons of crap in memory and everything waits on disk i/o.
If MS were required to put a meter on the screen: [Microsoft Visual Studio] *click*
Now loading 128MB of DLL's you probably will only need 2% of.
So if I set Super luser mode, the software doesn't do SQUAT. No clippy, no autocomplete, no nothing. I hate it very much when my typing stream gets interrupted because Word or MSDev or Excel goes off and tries to autocomplete something (so I spend several hours every time I get a new machine turning said features off, and every new release turns them back on.. ). :-)
Always top of my list of complaints about MS apps, getting them to shup up so I can get something done. I know exactly what you are talking about, because I've been there enough myself. Now if only I could stop crap from popping up while I'm typing (Not web pop-ups) and removing focus. That is some seriously irritating sh!t, espeically if it includes a default action set on a button and I was just hitting ENTER (RETURN for those of use who remember the past :-) and I begin yelling obsenities. Warnings should be passive and off to the side. Yeah, I'll see them, but let me finish what I'm doing, as I'm the master not the damned slave.
I'm not worried. %-)
Well, Les Éditions Albert René certainly has the 'goofy' part downpat. They must be a 'mickey mouse' outfit, to draw confusion between two such dissimilar names, further, the court has to be 'goofy' to issue such an opinion. I hate to think of such a fiasco in the US, but I amd sure someone could point me towards more than a few.
If mobilix was a cartoon or comic, they might have a leg, though tenuous. If the comic or cartoon featured a small and large pair of characters looking like vikings and raiding england, the case would be pretty strong. But as it's a portal for mobile un*x and Asterix, nor Obelix are pushing information or handheld tools, I'm convinced the real confusion is in the court.
When technological innovation was driven by war and/or exploration? Now, it's driven by games.
You mean MUDs? They're still around, and they're about as infinite as you can get. AI is fine, but socializing, working together with and developing a deep hatred for pthieves is far more motivating. I haven't mudded in a couple years, but when I looked at the cumulative hours I spent on muds, I wondered where the time went.
Now, what the game industry wants is a way to make money off that and that's what stuff like Everquest is doing. Stories just get in the way of 'play'.
Yeah. So it's a minor step from the Driving simulators we used to get for free.
Perhaps showing what people can expect (or would like to believe really happens) when they drive along in such and such car or truck.
You drive along and all heads turn to watch you drive along. Ego=+5
You drive along and no warning lights ever come on advising you to shift up for better gas mileage. Comfort=+5
You put to a stop and a beautiful model sauntures up and gives you a "do me" look. Lust=+5
What you never actually do in the game:
Pull into a gas station and watch the dollars drain from pocket.
Fail to get it started in a dark parking lot in a bad part of town at 11 PM
Have take it in for routine maintenance and remember your first car cost less than the hourly charge and any part costs more than your enter first full-time paycheck.
You find a nut or bolt lying on the carpet and you can't figure out where it came from and if it's important.
Are the kids around here really so young they don't remember Hamms?
Did you know that beer and wine were originally ways to keep water potable? :-)
Dude, yourself. In the U.S. emotion overrules logic. As the original poster stated, people have inhibitions. In the absence of reason, emotion prevails. Respect, or fear of Cholera and Dysentery?
There is no such thing as pure H2O for drinking; the water tastes different depending on what goes into it, plain and simple. It doesn't matter if water cotnains fish and crafish shit, or human shit, cleaned water is cleaned water.
There is pure water, it is called Deionized or Distilled water, but you shouldn't drink it without adding minerals since it would leech them out of the body to acheive equillibrium. This is why people get stomach cramps from eating snow.
Cleaned water is subjective. What has been removed? Ideally it is free of harmful bacteria, parasites, fungi, etc., which boiling or chlorination would achieve. Other pollutants are another matter. A friend who worked a hazardous waste site shared this nugget of wisdom with me: Hazardous doesn't mean toxic, it simply means of an excessive concentration which would harm the environment. A fine and important point too few are aware of. They increased the demand on our town wells until the displaced water is replaced with unacceptable water, that from nearby aquifers or the sea, which have high (and getting higher) concentrations of various minerals. Fecal matter is the least of anyone's concerns.
Personally and honestly, I detest bottled water. I prefer city-clorinated water, it "tastes" better. But I'll drink any water so long as enough animal shit and dangerous chemicals are removed that it's deemed "safe". You're fortunate to have a good source of water. When I lived in Michigan the water came from deep in Lake Huron. Even wells up near Gladwin had exceptionally good water. Try the water in Ann Arbor, though, or try it in Phoenix, AZ or Los Angeles, CA. Much of the wests water drains through relatively young geology, such that dozens of salts exist and are building up. A visit to Salt Lake, Death Valley or Owens Valley can shead some light on the magnatude of the problem.
I can't help commenting on your Bible comment, but you do understand that humans have been drinling water for 10's of thousands of years before the first religions which came thousands of years before the Bible, right? Let's not get into non-nodern or pre-human apes, or Neanderthals, etc.
Not a matter of religion, though much of religion is peppered with sage advice brought from experience. Though early people lacked the details (what the organism or compound was), they could see the cause and effect clearly. Drink water from a pool with a carcass or drained from a loo and get sick. Science has made us aware of what is in the water and what it does to a body, it takes education to dispell fears and build trust.
The post to which you replied was right - it's weak minded-ness, like, "I eat snails, fungus and shrimp, but would never eat ants!".
Weakminded, or caution for self preservation? Epidemics and plagues are hard to erase from civilizations memory, labeling people stupid or cowardly for their caution is undoubtably what a great many dead or maimed people have done. If it's safe, work toward educating people, rather than name calling.
Ignorant fools.
Bravely stated, o anonymous one.
Nice that I wandered onto the article and read a bit before realizing this was really full of spoilers on a relatively new book. Thanks for hanging it out there without a warning.
Snowmelt/rainfall fills the stream or aquifer your water comes from (exceptions, like L.A., where it's pumped hundreds of miles _into_ an aquifer)
You live in city D, downstream from Cities A, B, C.
City A uses the water, some of it is treated then fed to streams or back into wells.
City B does the same thing.
City C does the same thing.
All this use increases mineral content of the water, since minerals are disolved into water, not chunks you can filter out. Most can only be removed by energy intensive evaporation.
In City D you turn on the tap and out comes a glass of water with the accumulated minerals, trace elements, pollutants it has acquired on its journey.
Most cities grow, thus increasing their need for water.
The mineral and other chemical content compounds.
There is a treaty between the US and Mexico governing use of the Colorado River, as concentration of salts in water have, in the past, reached levels which were harmful to mexican agriculture. Recently L.A. lost access to Mono Lake water (because they were draining it almost completely), more recently Southern California has lost access to extra shares of Colorado River water, unused by upstream states, until now.
In short, the more water is used after it falls from the clouds, the more things accumulate in it. Biologicals can be treated out, but salts and chemicals are much more difficult. Pumping water into wells, to "purify" water has resulted in their decreasing effectiveness.
Granted, in the eastern US and other regions which receive greater rain and snowfall, it's less of an issue (so far.)
When I was much younger I heard of some Army Corps of Engineers plan to run a pipeline from Lake Michigan to the California. I thought it was just another goofy rumor. After reading Cadillac Desert, I found it wasn't just proposed, but the Great Lake States fought it.
the concept of water purified through man-made means, as opposed to nature which most people are more used to. in singapore's case, they're currently pumping the purified water into reservoirs, just to let it sit in the open so the birds and fish can crap into it and let nature do a bit of its thing, before purifying it again to pump into the water supply. all this, just to satisfy the odd inhibitions that a lot of people have to consuming purified sewage. weak-minded people really do bother me sometimes.
Don't be so hasty to cast stones. Clearly there is a double standard, born of ignorance on the part of many. A small ski resort I visited used to pump icky water from a swamp and make snow from it. You could tell because the air smelled terrible when they were doing it and the snow had a yellowish tinge from algae. However, look at what advertising has told the consumer:
Beer from the land of sky blue waters (can you name it? :-)
Mountain spring water (yeah, right... all 50 zillion gallons of it every day, that's no spring it's a river, in Cal. it's probably pumped from Colorado or Owens River, read Cadillac Desert)
Then there's the simple test of putting two glasses of water in front of someone, filtered from the town well and recovered water. Don't tell them before they taste test, then see if they make a face and call a lawyer once you've explained one came from recovered water.
People have been trained, since before the Bible to avoid water touched by human waste, because bacteria and fungi which cause some pretty bad aflictions grow in it. That was wisdom, it may seem misguided, until you run a marketing campaign to change people's opinion, then catch the local water filtration manager cutting corners. It's probably happening in your town and you don't even know it.
Me, I put a filter on my drinking water, for whatever good it does. Which it does to some small noticable degree.
Water is getting poorer in quality and reuse isn't a new concept, but reuse is growing and people will need to accept it, because alternatives (desalination, for example) can be very expensive.
That, and after doing it several times you recognize certain techniques, which can be done differently, more efficiently or with an eye toward compatibility.
I once recoded a college test scoring system, in DEC RSTS Basic (using virtual arrays: Open "x.tmp" as file 1 : dim #1, X.ptr(32767)). Next I recoded it for new hardware, in PL/1 (of all languages on the PR1ME, it handled large buffers better than Pascal and Fortran, though required static arrays to the nth position, ugh!), lastly I wrote it in C (the best language and easiest implementation.) In three versions, in three operating systems, and three languages, the process performed the identical task, capitalizing on essential features of each language critical to the product. I could write it again and again in the same language, and still identify better ways to do it. (Though I was very happy with the c version as it was rock solid and very fast for 600+ 160 question tests, statistical analysis and all :)