70% of all vertebrate species died in under a million years, leaving fungi dominant. Something of a mass extinction event, eh? (In fact, Earth's worst mass extinction event.) Observe the big temperature spike at PETM. (Top right corner)
Excellent, thanks for the info. For other Slashdotters, here's some data from Creative's site. It's significantly larger than the latest iPod Shuffle but offers some desirable features.
I didn't realize that the MuVo was larger than the iPod Shuffle, but you are right. While the Shuffle is slightly longer, the MuVo is wider and thicker.
(At least the MuVo Tx Fm version, there seems to be several products that share the 'Muvo' designation).
One caveat -- the MuVo acts like a thick USB key for adding songs, and I've heard some people have a problem with not being able to plug their MuVo into some laptops. I haven't noticed a problem on my own laptop or desktop.
Which is your MP3 player and are its specs and battery life comparable to those of any of Apple's current iPod models? I'm guessing it's one of the older iriver models? iriver has since started using a battery system comparable to the one Apple uses in iPod.
I have a Creative Muvo mp3 player I picked up for a few bucks that also runs on a single AAA battery.
I've gotten at least a full (work) day's worth of battery life out of it (8 hours, about).
The specs on the Creative Muvo says it gets up to 15 hours.
"The US consumes nearly 25% of the worlds energy though it has only 5 % of the worlds population..." We can do better than that. Thanks to ATI / nVidia and their 1.21 gigawatt next gen GPUs, I'm confident we can shatter this number by next year.
America also produces about 25% of the world's GDP.
[blockquote][i]"The US consumes nearly 25% of the worlds energy though it has only 5 % of the worlds population..." We can do better than that. Thanks to ATI / nVidia and their 1.21 gigawatt next gen GPUs, I'm confident we can shatter this number by next year.[/i][/blockquote]
America also produces about 25% of the world's GDP.
A binary search would be better.
Split the search space (the set of startup programs) in half. Enable or disable one half.
If the problem appears, adjust your search space to that half.
If the problem does not appear, adjust your search space to the other half.
Repeat.
We're now pumping carbon into the atmosphere, more than has ever been present in the atmosphere. It stands to reason that more carbon will help warm the earth. To deny that is foolish.
If you know your geological history, you wouldn't have made this claim.
The second atmosphere of earth was mostly carbon dioxide. (The first atmosphere was a mixture of hydrogen and helium, while the current (third) oxygen-rich atmosphere came from cyanobacteria.)
I give the above example first since the three atmospheres of earth are generally accepted in the scientific community (although there is still debate on the exact details).
If we restrict our search for higher CO2 levels to the third (current) atmosphere, and since the time of mammals, the most recent data shows no reliable evidence of CO2 being higher than today's levels. OTOH, the recent data is from ice cores: Presumably higher CO2 levels would have been a large influence against the formation of ice cores.
Going back further in time, we must use geological evidence for CO2. There's some evidence for higher levels 20 million years ago, and less recently, there seems to have been much more CO2 in the atmosphere before the collision of India with Asia, pushing up the Tibetan Plateau which leached CO2 out of the atmosphere (roughly 40 million years ago).
I'm glad to see that most Slashdotters are financially independent - or in a situation (like living in a relatives basement) where having money is irrelevant. I can see no other reason why most of the advice to date boils down to 'quit your job and run'. Few people outside of Slashdot are in such a happy position I suspect.
Maybe the posters that suggest finding another job have the foresight to keep a rainy day fund.
I know I'd rather jump ship before everything comes crashing down.
The second major point I'd like to raise is the absurdity of geekdom and the crazy notion that a geek solution is what is needed. No need for clean water, roads and basic education. Nope: give them computers & wikipedia. If you really want to help an African, go to him and ask him what he needs first.
I'm looking at buying some local acreage and I want to put a good roadway and a few ponds.
Guess where I'm looking for the information to do so? The internet, of course. The US government has released information on road construction and on the construction of small dams. There's also a wealth of army field manuals on how to do a variety of engineering tasks in the field.
Now, admittedly, some of the information won't be directly applicable outside of the US, but much of it is. The internet is a quirky library, full of information some may find useful and a lot of crap.
The internet won't solve any problems, but it will provide information to help solve problems, if there is a willing person.
Being a Vegan is nice and sweet, but if it came down to starvation for you and your child vs eating Bambi, Bambi'd be on a stick.
If it came down to starvation in an apocalyptic scenerio, I suspect that cannibalism would be popular. There are signs of cannibalism in pre-human hominids, and H. Sapiens has a very long history of cannibalism as either a cultural norm or as a survival mechanism in extreme situations (the collapse of the Easter Island civilization being one notable example).
Yet I don't think I'll ever be a cannibal in my lifetime, unless you count such substances as L-cysteine.
That's why the "if you were starving" argument against veg*nism seems silly to me. The same argument can be used against cannibalism. Yet the motives for not eating meat and the motives against not eating each other tend to be similar. Most veg*ns I know will admit that in a push-comes-to-shove survival situation, they would eat meat. But the world, at least in the rich states of the west, isn't a push-comes-to-shove survival situation in regards to diet, and thus the small vegan minority can live their lives without eating meat, and the large non-cannibalistic majority live their lives without eating each other.
Heh, somewhere around here I have a carton of M:TG cards.
My total cost: $0.
I used to hang out with a lot of people who played M:TG, and I ended up collecting cards that nobody wanted. I built a few decks and tended to play people who wanted to test out a new deck idea.
It passed the time.
I don't think I'd ever play the game if it wasn't for getting free cards.
Judging by the great difficulty that the local McDonalds has making change, the only math majors that end up there must have flunked out of their courses.
FWIW, I've been in (free beer, not OS) projects where the number of women make a sizeable percentage of the total number of people involved. But those projects were MUDS (text-based games which tend to rely on well-written descriptions).
There are, secretly, at least two women[1] who post on Slashdot. If you look at any thread where they make a reference to their gender, even indirectly, then you will see a huge number of 'wow, look! A girl!' posts. These are often followed by a load of accusatory posts ('you only hang out here because you have low self-esteem and you want to be fawned over by geeks'). It's small wonder that most of the female population of Slashdot tries hard not to draw attention to the fact.
Have you considered the possibility that online communities tend to have a lot of flames, especially by bitter little trolls? Anyone who seperates themselves out from the crowd would probably attract the same flames.
You're right, but that fact doesn't make Kefka a good villain, or even a mediocre one. I'm not saying that Kefka should be hard to understand, simply that there should be something to understand.
Well, Kefka volunteered to be infused with Magitek -- IIRC, he was the first one to volunteer.
I suspect that he had a lust for power before the infusion (since he volunteered), but the Magitek experiment pushed him over the edge.
OTOH, maybe he something like this planned before the infusion: It is never stated if he was a general before or after the experiment. However, the other magitek knight (Celes) was also a general, so perhaps the volunteers came from the upper ranks. That would suggest that Kefka was seeking power before the infusion.
Of course we want to see Hotel Rwanda, or the new almodovar film, because we are advanced, modern intellectuals. In reality, after a 12 hour day of re-factoring someone else's messy code, would you rather open a beer and collapse in front of Hotel Rwanda or Super Troopers?
Odd, I tend to like old Toshiro Mifune films, the same films where the actor has a disturbing tendency to die in the end while fighting "the man".
I always get a charge when it snows here, and the SUV drivers in the no-season tires think that all you need is the latest Ford behemoth. I drive a '92 Mazda Miata. Yes, a tiny little roadster, but with snow tires.
I drove an older Beretta as well as an older Grand Am in the winter, both front wheel drive, both with snow tires. I lived 20 miles out of town, at the end of a 2 mile dirt road that was the last one plowed, and I had no problem in the Minnesota winters.
Lightweight FWD cars can go through an amazing amount of snow with the right tires. If I was still in Minnesota at the same place, I'd have the same setup for myself and my wife for winter.
I prefer hyphenated names, myself. It would get unwieldy to write them all out after a few generations, but it would be a cool way to have your entire family tree represented in your name.
There's an easy solution.
Assume that Mrs. Smith marries Mr. Jones. They take the family name Jones-Smith.
Their daughters, upon marrying, drop "Jones" (the father's name). Their sons, upon marrying, drop "Smith" (the mother's name). So if Ms. Jones-Smith marries Mr. Jefferson-Clark, they couple takes the name Jefferson-Smith.
A person would then share a name with their father, grandfather, great-grandfather, etc, as well as their mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, etc.
Slightly modified, same-sex couples could use a similar system.
However, there's still a problem with polyamorous couples...
The article fails to consider the Australian Aborigines, who crossed into Australia via a land bridge from Asia around 40,000 - 50,000 years ago.
It's an interesting mathematical trick, but their result is so obviously empirically false, so I doubt their research even after excluding the Aborigines and other populations known to have been isolated from the rest of the world for many thousands of years.
Does it? I doubt that there was no contact between Australian Aboriginies and nearby landmasses (such as the East Indies). What happens when there's a trader, or a rare castaway? That one person, assuming they have offspring, will help bridge the two populations. With a few bridges, they'll tie the human family tree together.
Consider the Americas as well. There was contact across the Berings Straits, there was concact between the Innuit and the Vikings in the east, and there are even records of castaway American natives ending up in Europe around the birth of Christ. Those few individuals help to tie the American population together with the old world population.
You have to understand.... in this society, in this day and age, people DO define (identify) themselves by the things they own, the money they have in their bank account, and their credit rating. Sad, really.
I might not identify myself by my money in my bank account or my credit rating, but I'd be pissed if it disappeared.
That's money I worked hard for, money that I set aside for an emergency, in case of job loss or accident.
While a credit rating is an artificial number, it is also a reflection of my financial history. I do pay bills on time, I am responsible with seeking credit. Through my actions, I can build up a good credit history, and when I need to go to get a loan, that credit history reports that I'm a low risk borrower. Identity theft is a form of libel. By stealing and abusing someone else's credit, the theft is (in effect) writing "don't lend to Mr. Smith, he has no intention of paying back his loans".
As for the things I own, if I lose them, it isn't the end of the world. But the stuff I own is stuff I paid for, and a fair chunk of my net worth in material goods is for work-related items: Vehicles, computer, books. These goods help me earn money. In effect, they are an investment. The rest is stuff I traded time (money) for so that I may enjoy them and live an easier life. That TV in the corner might be 4 hours worth of work, that table in the other room might be 15 hours worth of work. That dishwasher is 30 hours of my life. I'm not complaining about the work I've traded for those possessions because that's my decision. However, when some lazy thief takes away those goods, I will complain. If they want a TV, they can learn valuable skills and join the workforce like the rest of us.
What exactly was wrong with the ESRB ratings we had already? They gave an age category and described any potentially offensive content. It was perfect. What more could we need?
In this day and age, most children have an independent source of income that allows them to afford games, consoles+TVs/computers and a private unsupervised apartment to play them in.
As you can see, it is impossible for parents to dock allowances and take away games if they disagree with the content. The kids will go to their private apartments and play them.
Thus, we need our tax dollars wasted^Wspent to investigate and enforce this issue.
Slashdot Mirror
The world's worst extinction event is the Permian-Triassic extinction event (251 million years ago).
That temperature spike is the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum (55 million years ago).
Wikipedia has a chart of extinction events over time. Note the lack of a spike near 55 million years ago.
Here's a crowbar. You might need it to extract your foot from your mouth. ;)
I didn't realize that the MuVo was larger than the iPod Shuffle, but you are right. While the Shuffle is slightly longer, the MuVo is wider and thicker. (At least the MuVo Tx Fm version, there seems to be several products that share the 'Muvo' designation).
One caveat -- the MuVo acts like a thick USB key for adding songs, and I've heard some people have a problem with not being able to plug their MuVo into some laptops. I haven't noticed a problem on my own laptop or desktop.
I have a Creative Muvo mp3 player I picked up for a few bucks that also runs on a single AAA battery.
I've gotten at least a full (work) day's worth of battery life out of it (8 hours, about).
The specs on the Creative Muvo says it gets up to 15 hours.
Looks like the iPod Shuffle gets up to 12 hours.
America also produces about 25% of the world's GDP.
America also produces about 25% of the world's GDP.
I've played Battlefield: 1942, and the game has "names" of each soldier.
It is rather disturbing to be aiming at someone with a name.
A binary search would be better. Split the search space (the set of startup programs) in half. Enable or disable one half. If the problem appears, adjust your search space to that half. If the problem does not appear, adjust your search space to the other half. Repeat.
If you know your geological history, you wouldn't have made this claim.
The second atmosphere of earth was mostly carbon dioxide. (The first atmosphere was a mixture of hydrogen and helium, while the current (third) oxygen-rich atmosphere came from cyanobacteria.)
I give the above example first since the three atmospheres of earth are generally accepted in the scientific community (although there is still debate on the exact details).
If we restrict our search for higher CO2 levels to the third (current) atmosphere, and since the time of mammals, the most recent data shows no reliable evidence of CO2 being higher than today's levels. OTOH, the recent data is from ice cores: Presumably higher CO2 levels would have been a large influence against the formation of ice cores.
Going back further in time, we must use geological evidence for CO2. There's some evidence for higher levels 20 million years ago, and less recently, there seems to have been much more CO2 in the atmosphere before the collision of India with Asia, pushing up the Tibetan Plateau which leached CO2 out of the atmosphere (roughly 40 million years ago).
Maybe the posters that suggest finding another job have the foresight to keep a rainy day fund.
I know I'd rather jump ship before everything comes crashing down.
I'm looking at buying some local acreage and I want to put a good roadway and a few ponds.
Guess where I'm looking for the information to do so? The internet, of course. The US government has released information on road construction and on the construction of small dams. There's also a wealth of army field manuals on how to do a variety of engineering tasks in the field.
Now, admittedly, some of the information won't be directly applicable outside of the US, but much of it is. The internet is a quirky library, full of information some may find useful and a lot of crap.
The internet won't solve any problems, but it will provide information to help solve problems, if there is a willing person.
Just my $.02
If it came down to starvation in an apocalyptic scenerio, I suspect that cannibalism would be popular. There are signs of cannibalism in pre-human hominids, and H. Sapiens has a very long history of cannibalism as either a cultural norm or as a survival mechanism in extreme situations (the collapse of the Easter Island civilization being one notable example).
Yet I don't think I'll ever be a cannibal in my lifetime, unless you count such substances as L-cysteine.
That's why the "if you were starving" argument against veg*nism seems silly to me. The same argument can be used against cannibalism. Yet the motives for not eating meat and the motives against not eating each other tend to be similar. Most veg*ns I know will admit that in a push-comes-to-shove survival situation, they would eat meat. But the world, at least in the rich states of the west, isn't a push-comes-to-shove survival situation in regards to diet, and thus the small vegan minority can live their lives without eating meat, and the large non-cannibalistic majority live their lives without eating each other.
But you'd contaminate the sun with radioactivity! ;)
Heh, somewhere around here I have a carton of M:TG cards. My total cost: $0. I used to hang out with a lot of people who played M:TG, and I ended up collecting cards that nobody wanted. I built a few decks and tended to play people who wanted to test out a new deck idea. It passed the time. I don't think I'd ever play the game if it wasn't for getting free cards.
Judging by the great difficulty that the local McDonalds has making change, the only math majors that end up there must have flunked out of their courses.
FWIW, I've been in (free beer, not OS) projects where the number of women make a sizeable percentage of the total number of people involved. But those projects were MUDS (text-based games which tend to rely on well-written descriptions).
Have you considered the possibility that online communities tend to have a lot of flames, especially by bitter little trolls? Anyone who seperates themselves out from the crowd would probably attract the same flames.
A one-word example that your post reminded me of: Nethack.
Odd, I tend to like old Toshiro Mifune films, the same films where the actor has a disturbing tendency to die in the end while fighting "the man".
I wonder what that implies about me.
I drove an older Beretta as well as an older Grand Am in the winter, both front wheel drive, both with snow tires. I lived 20 miles out of town, at the end of a 2 mile dirt road that was the last one plowed, and I had no problem in the Minnesota winters.
Lightweight FWD cars can go through an amazing amount of snow with the right tires. If I was still in Minnesota at the same place, I'd have the same setup for myself and my wife for winter.
Linux kernel C is GCCisms C. There might be someway to accomplish it without too much difficulty. I don't know.
I might not identify myself by my money in my bank account or my credit rating, but I'd be pissed if it disappeared.
That's money I worked hard for, money that I set aside for an emergency, in case of job loss or accident.
While a credit rating is an artificial number, it is also a reflection of my financial history. I do pay bills on time, I am responsible with seeking credit. Through my actions, I can build up a good credit history, and when I need to go to get a loan, that credit history reports that I'm a low risk borrower. Identity theft is a form of libel. By stealing and abusing someone else's credit, the theft is (in effect) writing "don't lend to Mr. Smith, he has no intention of paying back his loans".
As for the things I own, if I lose them, it isn't the end of the world. But the stuff I own is stuff I paid for, and a fair chunk of my net worth in material goods is for work-related items: Vehicles, computer, books. These goods help me earn money. In effect, they are an investment. The rest is stuff I traded time (money) for so that I may enjoy them and live an easier life. That TV in the corner might be 4 hours worth of work, that table in the other room might be 15 hours worth of work. That dishwasher is 30 hours of my life. I'm not complaining about the work I've traded for those possessions because that's my decision. However, when some lazy thief takes away those goods, I will complain. If they want a TV, they can learn valuable skills and join the workforce like the rest of us.
Just my $.02
In this day and age, most children have an independent source of income that allows them to afford games, consoles+TVs/computers and a private unsupervised apartment to play them in.
As you can see, it is impossible for parents to dock allowances and take away games if they disagree with the content. The kids will go to their private apartments and play them.
Thus, we need our tax dollars wasted^Wspent to investigate and enforce this issue.