If you want to deny the holocaust or advocate nazi-ism, Germany today would consider your speech a crime.
Perhaps such laws are still needed in modern Germany, but I always thought that part of what keeps the neoNazis on the fringe in the US is that neoNazis are able to tell others their insane ideas.
And has been for 2000 years, according to the summary.
And it erupted in 325BC, according to the article.
I dunno about global warming, but I suspect that time traveling volcanoes will be a bigger problem.:p
(Oh, and kudos to the editor or writer who (presumably) dropped the "more than" before "2000 years". Without your sloppy skills, the previous joke would not be possible.)
On one hand, I agree that energy conservation is a good thing.
But the world is going to need massive amounts of energy in order to lift the third world out of poverty. Else, the third world will (and has) rape its own environment in order to increase the standard of living.
Poor people don't have the luxury of being environmentalists. Rich people do.
I'm not trying to sound like an astroturfer for the EeePC (I like the XO better), but there is an interesting project where someone hardhacked an EeePC with bluetooth, more USB ports, wifi, larger solid-state storage, etc.
It only cost him several hundred dollars to turn the EeePC into a midrange laptop.:p
Breaking the bone may not be, but maybe the action before that caused the bone to break was. Driving a car? That's a voluntary action and you assume certain risks when you do it. Climbing a mountain? Same thing.
Actually, I broke my wrist while walking.
From what I can tell, it is the most likely way to break your wrist. It is called "Fall on out-stretched hands".
In my local paper, there was an opinion article about this that pointed out that credit scores reflect (for the most part) voluntary debt, while medical debt is involuntary debt.
Most people can decide to buy a more expensive car than a less expensive car, or put a new TV on a credit card. But breaking a bone isn't a voluntary decision.
I've always thought that the rate of mutation should be alterable as well.
Depending on the creature, it may take more effort or less effort to ensure the integrity of its DNA. Some creatures can take massive doses of radiation and survive, some can survive massive exposures to what would be carcigenic in humans, etc.
So shouldn't evolution heuristically arrive at a rate of mutation that is beneficial to a species?
I thought this was obvious, but maybe I should write a paper on it.:p
CO2 emissions from a gallon of gasoline = 2,421 grams x 0.99 x (44/12) = 8,788 grams = 8.8 kg/gallon = 19.4 pounds/gallon
CO2 emissions from a gallon of diesel = 2,778 grams x 0.99 x (44/12) = 10,084 grams = 10.1 kg/gallon = 22.2 pounds/gallon
So a 34.6 mpg diesel has the same driving carbon footprint as a 30 mpg gasoline engine if we assume total conversion of carbon to CO2 during combustion.
(there's a fairly good argument for not checking the return from malloc in much production code - if malloc actually fails then you're already so far up shit creek without a paddle that it's probably impossible to recover gracefully anyway. Obviously different considerations will apply if you're controlling a nuclear power plant than if you're writing a game)
I thought that one of the major arguments *against* checking malloc's return value is that the most common OSes lie about how much memory they have available and will gladly let a program think a malloc has succeeded and then terminate the program when it tries to use the memory if the OS is running low on memory.
So long as any of the carbon in the cycle is coming from sources currently in the ground or oceans (e.g. coal, oil, natural gas, or methane clathrates). I.e. we are harvesting energy by oxidizing previously reduced carbon -- it is NOT RENEWABLE
Just to be pedantic, it is "renewable". Just wait a hundred million years.:p
Not a single passenger jet has been downed from the type of missiles these "high power lasers" are supposed to be able to prevent. Not a single one.
That won't prevent a company from creating a need to fill. If they do it right, they may even be eligible for government grants in their fight against the "terrorists".
You also have the debate how many resources we should devote to mitigating some of the effects of global warming.
Political stability is very, very nice. Strong economies are very, very nice. And not just for humans -- strong economies in developed nations tend to result in negative population growth and environmental protection. In addition, strong economies mitigate some of the effects of global warming -- malaria is not a problem in the US, although historically it was common. Larger nature preserves and preservation corridors give animals more habitat, allowing them to move if climate change drastically changes the local conditions. A move towards cheaper, more plentiful energy would allow us to reduce some of the impact on the environment -- for example, cheap energy would make water desalination more feasible, allowing cities and farming areas like southern California to not have to divert large quantities of water from a major river system just to get their water supplies.
If you gut the economy and limit global energy growth, there will be political and economical ramifications and those ramifactions will directly impact the environment. Poor nations are too busy trying to devote resources to keeping their own populations alive to care about their environmental impact, as a general rule. Poor nations also tend to have higher rates of population growth, as well as the tendency to greater use marginal land, both of which negatively impact the environment.
Limitations on possible human factors on global warming is a Good Idea, but it needs to be done in a way that doesn't greatly impact the economy. Some ways are simple and easy for people to understand -- more efficient lighting (CFLs probably now, LEDs in the future?), better insulation of houses, heat pumps instead of fossil fueled heating sources. Some ways are going to meet stiff public resistance -- moving from coal to nuclear, and hopefully (in the US) to breeder reactors. Some will still be problematic, at least in the short term, for example, the US lacks the infrastructure for pure-electric cars, limiting electric vehicles to one-charge round trips, or keeping around hybrid vehicles that will still burn fossil fuels on longer trips. There is a solution to the transportation problem in the long term, and the technology for that solution may already exist, but it will take time to figure out which solution is the best solution and implement that solution across the world.
Supposedly, hydrogen airships can survive lightning strikes -- hydrogen isn't flammable unless mixed with oxygen...
Air pirates could be a problem though. Routes to (say) Somalia may not be doable. That being said, aren't routes between (say) the US Atlantic coast and western European coastal towns very possible?
The hydrogen/helium thing not an issue. It's not going to use hydrogen. Whether that's what got the Hindenberg, or not, flying around with tens of thousands of cubic feet of exceptionally flammable gas, with a HUGE range of fuel/air ratios at which it can sustain ignition, isn't going to happen. It's a *bad idea* and wouldn't pass the laugh test for FAA certification.
Would hydrogen still be a Bad Idea if airships were fully automatic/remote controlled and only used for cargo?
A GPS system could be used for most of the flight, while remote controls could be used for take-off and landings.
Specialized airship only flight-lanes could be designated for the automated flights, keeping the airships out of the way of manned heavier-than-air craft.
If airships were restricted to mostly over-ocean travel (between coastal ports), it would also be possible to "crash" a malfunctioning airship into the ocean, with little danger to human life. The restriction to ocean routes would work if packages were transferred to trains for over-land shipping.
Admittedly, there would still be some danger to the ground, mostly to the gound crew during takeoffs & landings, but at the same time, the superior lifting power of hydrogen might make it less dangerous overall. (Doesn't hydrogen have 4x the lifting power of helium? If the average helium airship is not 4x safer than the hydrogen airship, hydrogen ends up being "safer" overall.)
My wife just informed me that the most she has spent on a CD was $15.99 on a Taylor Hicks CD that was only available from some small local store in Arkansas. So I really want to know where these $19 CDs are and why I can't find them -- do they really exist or are Slashbotters just making that number up to cement their idea that RIAA sponsored music is horrid (like we didn't know already)?
Try some of the obscure European metal bands on amazon.
It isn't too hard to find albums that you can't touch new or used for under $20.
They are just naive and confused, and thus easily wander astray!
It is only men that have the higher brain capacity to be evil.
Women, being the weaker sex, need to be protected by staying in a safe place. Preferably the kitchen. And since they are in there, they can make me a sammich.:p
The problem is not that they are not the same or even different charsets. The problem is that they are near enough for the naked eye to confuse a russian user. Lets say they have a real bank with the address www.baHk.py (baHk = bank in russian but I'm not using cyrillics here so use your imagination). A pisher could easily setup a domain www.bahk.py (using latins py = paraguay) and this should be very difficult for a naormal user to catch the error.... This is a phishers wet dream, actually.
Plus, what about similar characters? Would straße.com be the same as strasse.com? Or häuser.com be the same as hauser.com? What about encyclopedia.com and encyclopædia.com?
The energy cost with refining, processing, storing and disposing of nuclear materials makes solar look like a bargain. Nuclear fanatics seem to forget the process it takes from digging up something that is one of the rarest elements on our planet and then disposing of such elements when we are done.
Why can't we run the whole extraction/storage process on electricity derived from nuclear power?
Last time I checked, the equipment used for solar power electricity generation isn't all sustainably-harvested wood gathered by Amazon forest natives at a liveable wage. There's some severe heavy metal usage in most electrical power generation, regardless of source, and heavy metals aren't going to decay into harmless elements. Ever look at the environmental problems with copper and aluminum mines -- guess what carries the electricity to and through your dwelling. It isn't cute little singing ewoks.
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If you want to deny the holocaust or advocate nazi-ism, Germany today would consider your speech a crime.
Perhaps such laws are still needed in modern Germany, but I always thought that part of what keeps the neoNazis on the fringe in the US is that neoNazis are able to tell others their insane ideas.
Er, did music start to suck because it became digital, or did music start to suck because of the loudness war?
Also, I do like to buy CDs due to album art and a wish to support the artist.
Well, as long as nobody invents radioactivity shielding, we'll be safe. Oh wait...
If I was a terrorist, I'd consider shipping it to a major port via private boat or cargo container. Plenty of room for shielding.
Oh well.
At least the politicians are wasting our tax dollars^W^W^W^Wdoing something to protect us, so we should be happy, right?
And it erupted in 325BC, according to the article.
I dunno about global warming, but I suspect that time traveling volcanoes will be a bigger problem. :p
(Oh, and kudos to the editor or writer who (presumably) dropped the "more than" before "2000 years". Without your sloppy skills, the previous joke would not be possible.)
On one hand, I agree that energy conservation is a good thing.
But the world is going to need massive amounts of energy in order to lift the third world out of poverty. Else, the third world will (and has) rape its own environment in order to increase the standard of living.
Poor people don't have the luxury of being environmentalists. Rich people do.
I'm not trying to sound like an astroturfer for the EeePC (I like the XO better), but there is an interesting project where someone hardhacked an EeePC with bluetooth, more USB ports, wifi, larger solid-state storage, etc.
It only cost him several hundred dollars to turn the EeePC into a midrange laptop. :p
I'd link to the site, but it is down.
How do you know that the poster isn't somewhere like France which gets most of its electricity with very low CO2 emissions?
Oh wait, I see your sig. You may be against nuclear power as well...
Actually, I broke my wrist while walking.
From what I can tell, it is the most likely way to break your wrist. It is called "Fall on out-stretched hands".
In my local paper, there was an opinion article about this that pointed out that credit scores reflect (for the most part) voluntary debt, while medical debt is involuntary debt.
Most people can decide to buy a more expensive car than a less expensive car, or put a new TV on a credit card. But breaking a bone isn't a voluntary decision.
I've always thought that the rate of mutation should be alterable as well.
Depending on the creature, it may take more effort or less effort to ensure the integrity of its DNA. Some creatures can take massive doses of radiation and survive, some can survive massive exposures to what would be carcigenic in humans, etc.
So shouldn't evolution heuristically arrive at a rate of mutation that is beneficial to a species?
I thought this was obvious, but maybe I should write a paper on it. :p
I have control and capslock swapped, which is easy to do for most common OSes.
I think left win key controls xmms. ;) Right win key is a modifier key to type some uncommon characters.
I wish I could figure out a way to make both caps lock & control into control keys, and have shift-capslock turn on/off capslock.
It should be possible under xmodmap, right?
While diesel may be a more energy-rich fuel, carbon-wise, it isn't that much worse than gasoline.
CO2 Emissions:
CO2 emissions from a gallon of gasoline = 2,421 grams x 0.99 x (44/12) = 8,788 grams = 8.8 kg/gallon = 19.4 pounds/gallon
CO2 emissions from a gallon of diesel = 2,778 grams x 0.99 x (44/12) = 10,084 grams = 10.1 kg/gallon = 22.2 pounds/gallon
So a 34.6 mpg diesel has the same driving carbon footprint as a 30 mpg gasoline engine if we assume total conversion of carbon to CO2 during combustion.
I thought that one of the major arguments *against* checking malloc's return value is that the most common OSes lie about how much memory they have available and will gladly let a program think a malloc has succeeded and then terminate the program when it tries to use the memory if the OS is running low on memory.
If you did want a diamond, there are non-African diamonds out there.
For example, there are Canadian diamonds.
Of course, there are also artificial diamonds, which, if I was getting hitched to a geek girl, I'd consider to be the perfect gift. :D
Isn't HD-DVD a standard?
As opposed to Blue-Ray, which is still evolving?
Just to be pedantic, it is "renewable". Just wait a hundred million years. :p
That won't prevent a company from creating a need to fill. If they do it right, they may even be eligible for government grants in their fight against the "terrorists".
You also have the debate how many resources we should devote to mitigating some of the effects of global warming.
Political stability is very, very nice. Strong economies are very, very nice. And not just for humans -- strong economies in developed nations tend to result in negative population growth and environmental protection. In addition, strong economies mitigate some of the effects of global warming -- malaria is not a problem in the US, although historically it was common. Larger nature preserves and preservation corridors give animals more habitat, allowing them to move if climate change drastically changes the local conditions. A move towards cheaper, more plentiful energy would allow us to reduce some of the impact on the environment -- for example, cheap energy would make water desalination more feasible, allowing cities and farming areas like southern California to not have to divert large quantities of water from a major river system just to get their water supplies.
If you gut the economy and limit global energy growth, there will be political and economical ramifications and those ramifactions will directly impact the environment. Poor nations are too busy trying to devote resources to keeping their own populations alive to care about their environmental impact, as a general rule. Poor nations also tend to have higher rates of population growth, as well as the tendency to greater use marginal land, both of which negatively impact the environment.
Limitations on possible human factors on global warming is a Good Idea, but it needs to be done in a way that doesn't greatly impact the economy. Some ways are simple and easy for people to understand -- more efficient lighting (CFLs probably now, LEDs in the future?), better insulation of houses, heat pumps instead of fossil fueled heating sources. Some ways are going to meet stiff public resistance -- moving from coal to nuclear, and hopefully (in the US) to breeder reactors. Some will still be problematic, at least in the short term, for example, the US lacks the infrastructure for pure-electric cars, limiting electric vehicles to one-charge round trips, or keeping around hybrid vehicles that will still burn fossil fuels on longer trips. There is a solution to the transportation problem in the long term, and the technology for that solution may already exist, but it will take time to figure out which solution is the best solution and implement that solution across the world.
Supposedly, hydrogen airships can survive lightning strikes -- hydrogen isn't flammable unless mixed with oxygen...
Air pirates could be a problem though. Routes to (say) Somalia may not be doable. That being said, aren't routes between (say) the US Atlantic coast and western European coastal towns very possible?
Would hydrogen still be a Bad Idea if airships were fully automatic/remote controlled and only used for cargo?
A GPS system could be used for most of the flight, while remote controls could be used for take-off and landings.
Specialized airship only flight-lanes could be designated for the automated flights, keeping the airships out of the way of manned heavier-than-air craft.
If airships were restricted to mostly over-ocean travel (between coastal ports), it would also be possible to "crash" a malfunctioning airship into the ocean, with little danger to human life. The restriction to ocean routes would work if packages were transferred to trains for over-land shipping.
Admittedly, there would still be some danger to the ground, mostly to the gound crew during takeoffs & landings, but at the same time, the superior lifting power of hydrogen might make it less dangerous overall. (Doesn't hydrogen have 4x the lifting power of helium? If the average helium airship is not 4x safer than the hydrogen airship, hydrogen ends up being "safer" overall.)
Try some of the obscure European metal bands on amazon.
It isn't too hard to find albums that you can't touch new or used for under $20.
But those bands tend not to be on RIAA labels...
Women can't be true villains.
They are just naive and confused, and thus easily wander astray!
It is only men that have the higher brain capacity to be evil.
Women, being the weaker sex, need to be protected by staying in a safe place. Preferably the kitchen. And since they are in there, they can make me a sammich. :p
This was sarcasm, for the humor-impaired.
Admittedly, the same works for science (no criticism intended).
If we found something that was consistant with a virtualized constant, we'd be more willing to write it off to science.
Heck, looking at quantum physics, we might already have. :p
The phishing problem would also exist if DNS was converted over to unicode, due to duplicate characters in unicode.
Plus, what about similar characters? Would straße.com be the same as strasse.com? Or häuser.com be the same as hauser.com? What about encyclopedia.com and encyclopædia.com?