I assumed all that was obvious. I was going for the +1, Funny mods.
On a serious note, though, fossil fuels are just solar power that's been stored up for us, and they will eventually run out, unless we consume them more slowly than they are replenished. So we're screwed if we need more power than the Sun provides. Well, with the exception of what we can generate from nuclear fission or fusion ourselves.
As for minivans, they are interesting from a safety point of view. They have the same high center of gravity that SUVs have yet they roll over less frequently.
I think a minivan's COG is considerably lower than an SUV's. Look at the difference in ground clearance. A minivan is typically just as tall, but the height is in the interior of the vehicle, not underneath the chassis. The engine, transmission, seats, passengers, fuel tank, etc., are all closer to the ground in the minivan.
Once or twice I've had to make emergency maneuvers in my old Dodge Caravan which would have sent an Explorer tumbling across the road. I'm pretty sure they're inherently less prone to rollover. Not only that, but minivans are more likely to crumple and absorb collision forces, whereas SUVs, being built heavily like trucks, will transmit the forces into the passenger area.
Back to my marketing point (from a previous post), it is very hard to make minivans cool, even to people who need a minivan. That is one of the big reasons for the success of the SUV.
Yes, absolutely. I have a friend who recently bought a Sequoia. He said he wanted a big vehicle since he and the wife were planning to start a family, but he 'wouldn't look cool in a minivan.' Which is rather funny, because among the guys I hung out with back in the day, he was always the leading candidate for 'Least Likely to be Accused of Being Cool.'
But apparently the marketing works. Myself, I can't see how having bigger tires, smaller doors, and a higher step up into the vehicle make it more 'cool'. In fact, soccer-moms look absolutely ridiculous hefting their 5'2" frames into a gigantic truck, but apparently don't realize it....
Ford sells a hybrid Escape [hybridford.com] that you can buy today. It gets about 35 mpg I believe.
That's funny, looking at the link you gave and going to the FAQ they say it will be available to retail customers in mid-year 2004. But, I heard a news story the other day that said the hybrid Escape program was being cancelled.
You are much more likely to kill the other guy when driving an SUV, as opposed to an economy car, in which you are more likely to die.
Some recent studies disagree with this belief. You are actually not much safer in an SUV than in a well-made compact (think Honda Civic, Toyota Corolla), and less safe than in a larger import. The safest vehicle for its own occupants is a minivan, which incidentally is usually roomier, more comfortable, and more efficient than an SUV.
This, plus the fact that as you say, an SUV is more likely to kill others (the only vehicles worse in that regard are actual pickup trucks and sports cars), mean the proliferation of SUVs on the highways has actually made everyone less safe, including the SUV drivers.
That being said, exactly how could we obtain enough solar energy to power the world??
Umm, if we can't get enough energy from the Sun to power the world, we're in big trouble. The Sun outputs 4x10^26 Joules per second, which is roughly one million times the energy consumed by the entire human population of Earth in the year of 1998 (first year for which I found statistics).
Getting it all is an engineering challenge, I'll admit....
In the case of a medical or scientific term, the common usage is that used by physicians or scientists. Thus 'antivenin' is correct. No one involved in venom research or medical treatment of snake bites uses the term 'anti-venom'.
I don't even think it's fair to call this correction pedantry.
Re:Let's hope this means the end of veal
on
Lab-Grown Steak
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· Score: 1
Have you actually tried the soy cheese?
I've tried one brand that looks, smells, and tastes almost exactly like a cheap off-brand cheese food slice, and even melts fairly well onto a burger in the microwave. I'd tell you what it's called, but I can't remember it now.
So the milk is noticeably different I suppose, if you must eat it with a sugary cereal. Does it actually taste bad or just different?
The brand I've been getting (Pacific something-or-other?) isn't so much bad as it just lacks flavor. It's a bit bland if you drink it, but it's fine on cereal. I'm going to do some more taste-testing to see if I can find a brand that's more drinkable, although to be honest I don't drink milk very much anyway.
Well, I'm 100% sure (the highest accuracy possible) that the universe is between 23.5 and Infinity years old.
How do you know it's not less than 23.5 years old? Can you prove that it wasn't created yesterday, and God just stuck memories in your brain to make you think you're 23.5 years old (which I assume is where your lower bound comes from)?
It's a collection of cells that are in the process of becoming a human being. A collection of cells that are not self aware (at least not until sometime in the 3rd trimester, certainly not in the first), cannot survive outside the womb, and only scientfically qualify as an embryo, not a fully developed human being.
Actually, self-awareness isn't completely developed even at birth. It's a couple of months before an infant fully realizes that a reflection in a mirror isn't another baby. Also, at birth an infant still isn't fully developed. Heck, he/she isn't fully developed until puberty. The process of birth is just one of many developmental events in life, and it seems arbitrary to decide that it is the sole event that determines the right to live.
Yes, I'm saying a set of moral values cannot have exceptions (if you want people to take them seriously anyway).
I'm pretty sure that many people believe that taking life is wrong in general, but under certain circumstances (self defense, war) is justifiable. Are you saying all their belief systems are invalid?
Your other arguments belittle and do not properly address the issue of respecting the beliefs and rights of others....
Umm, you just stated that certain sets of moral values can't be taken seriously, and then lecture me on respecting rights and beliefs?
I could use the same tactic on you by saying that by your standards, a woman who has an abortion for a blighted ovum should be put jail for murder.
Well, first of all you don't even know WHAT my 'standards' are, and second, how could anything in my post be construed to indicate that I would condemn someone for an abortion which didn't even involve a living baby? If you re-read my post, you'll find that I never even stated that I believe abortion is wrong or that it should be illegal. All I stated was that I believe an unborn baby is a human being.
As a matter of fact, about three years ago my wife miscarried a baby after about 15 weeks, and had to have a D&C to remove the deceased baby. Needless to say, I don't think she should have gone to jail for that.
There are thousands of reasons a woman would want or need an abortion. You are not in a position to judge the morality of that decision, nor are you in a position to pass judgement.
I don't recall passing judgement on anyone.
You don't have to live with it, and I can tell you first hand that it is not something a woman does lightly. You may think it's wrong, you may believe with all your heart that it is murder in the highest, but it's still not for you to decide. If you believe in God, believe he'll take care of it.
I know what a hard decision it must be, and I have nothing but sympathy toward any woman who finds herself in that position. Still, I think I do have the right to have an opinion on the issue and to express it. And, of course, everyone else has the right to ignore me or to voice their differing opinion.
We'd all be better served by solving the reasons women get abortions, making it illegal will only make things worse.... Which I think is kind of what you ended with, but it's hard to tell with some of the hardline tactics you started with...
Wow, I don't think I've ever been agreed with so vehemently.:)
Re:Let's hope this means the end of veal
on
Lab-Grown Steak
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· Score: 2
I don't eat veal and cut down my milk intake. Mostly for cookies and cereal, which is not often.
Depending on what kind of cereal you're eating, soy milk might be acceptable on it. The more flavorful (or sugary) the cereal, the less you notice the difference. My weakness is cheese. I've tasted passable soy substitutes for cheap cheese food slices, but not for real cheeses.
I can't and will never give up steak and sushi.
Just curious, do you like your steak raw like your fish?;)
There are vegetarian burgers which I find to be a good substitute for the real thing. No, they don't taste exactly the same - but if someone ate the veggie burgers for their whole life and then switched to meat, they'd say the meat ones taste 'funny' and 'not quite right'.
Unfortunately there's nothing to replace a steak, or a good fish (but grill mine for a few minutes please).
Re:Let's hope this means the end of veal
on
Lab-Grown Steak
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
This is a perfect example of why groups like PETA are not taken seriously. Arguments should be based on ALL the evidence, not just those parts that are on "your side".
First of all, why the attack on PETA? The OP didn't even mention them... do you just have a personal vendetta and feel the need to criticize them?
Second, of course PETA is going to present the evidence that is on "their side". They're an organization with a specific agenda. You may not agree with their agenda, but that doesn't mean their opinions are invalid.
On the other hand, the beef industry doesn't spend a whole lot of time telling you you should eat your veggies and whole-grain foods, even though plenty of research indicates that they should be the bulk of a healthy diet. And there's no reason to expect them to do so - their agenda is to sell beef. Where's your outcry that they shouldn't be taken seriously?
Re:Let's hope this means the end of veal
on
Lab-Grown Steak
·
· Score: 2
Of course you glossed over the part where another scientist suggests that the proteins may be digested too rapidly when using pills etc. IANAD though!
This is of course talking from the standpoint of space travelers, who currently have to choose carrying meat or pills. Earthbound vegetarians do have the option of getting all their essential amino acids from plant sources, but the variety of plants needed would most likely be far too cumbersome to carry on a long space voyage.
Heh, I'll stop eating animals when other animals stop eating animals!
Do you base all aspects of your behavior on what other animals do? You must have an interesting life.;)
Carnivores do what they have to do, they don't have the option of being vegetarians because they have evolved a requirement for animal proteins. It's likely that humans naturally have a need for animal proteins also, to some extent. However, with our knowledge of nutrition and modern technology, we now have the ability to choose vegetarianism without endangering our health.
Note that I said "choose", your own diet is a personal matter.
That is a moral argument based on a subjective set of ethics. Before you defend yourself, consider this - according to many (even Christian) belief systems, a person doesn't have a soul until they "draw the breath of life".
And according to other belief systems, a person doesn't have a soul until he/she is given a name. In fact, in some belief systems, people don't have souls at all. So perhaps we should discard any laws enforcing anyone's right to life, because our 'belief systems' can't all agree on when it begins and ends?
Obviously that won't work, so we have to have a logical, scientifically-defined beginning and end of life, and no one argues that cessation of breathing is the end of life, so why should commencement of breathing mark the beginning? Brain function would seem a more reasonable measure, although given the definition of "life" found in most biology textbooks it would be hard to argue against conception being the beginning of life.
In short - it's not a person, it's an organism.
And if you keep repeating that long enough, people will believe it. Some already do. But that doesn't make it so. If it's not a person, what is it? Surely you're not suggesting it is something other than homo sapiens?
It's actually NOT OK to kill in self defense if you believe in such a thing as taking a life being immoral.
Huh? Are you trying to say that a set of moral values can't have exceptions to its rules?
You will never be able to stop abortion (nor will you be able to convince the rest of the world that your concept of morality is right) - it's the oldest procedure after the oldest proffession.
Unfortunately true. However, we'll never be able to stop murder, theft, or rape either. That doesn't stop us from making them illegal.
In an ideal world, all the pro-lifers would be working on making abortion unnecessary by improving the adoption system, removing rapists from the streets, and promoting better sex education and easier availability of effective contraceptives. Work toward these goals would do much more to lower the number of abortions performed than blocking clinics, harassing their unfortunate customers, and killing doctors.
Oh, right, so different from the "Do-whatever-you-want-and-someone-else-will-pay-fo r-it" ethos of the Clinton years.
As far as keeping the budget defecit down, the "Tax-and-spend" liberals seem to make better sense than the "Cut-taxes-and-spend" conservatives. Anyone with a modicum of financial sense can tell you, you're better off paying for it now than paying for it later. Of course, most Americans don't have that much sense, judging from the average household's consumer debt.
Riiight. The stock market collapsed due to US v. Microsoft. Not because idiot investors were pumping their retirement savings into Pets.com and certainly not because of the accounting shenanigans going on at corporations like Enron and WorldCom.
Which President wasted $2 million missles on $10 tents?
Oh, and the current 'War on Terrorism' is producing a much better ROI? We've got a bunch of guys who might have something to do with Al-Qaeda locked up in Cuba, but terrorist attacks continue unabated. Big improvement there. But that's ok, Dubya can draw attention away from his failure to get bin Laden by starting crap with Iraq again. If Clinton had done that, he would have been (perhaps rightfully, I'll admit) accused of 'wagging the dog'.
Of course, this is now so far off topic it's hardly worth posting.
To move to x86-64, Apple would have to plan to phase out PPC entirely. There's no way the caliber of users we see on the 'Switch' commercials could handle having to know whether their machine was x86 or PPC before buying software at CompUSA.
Yeah, Apple's been through a similar migration before, but when they went from 680x0 to PPC, their new architecture was fast enough to do a passable job of emulating the old CPU for legacy software. I'm not convinced that would work this time. Let's say the Opteron is released at 2.0GHz, how fast a PPC will it be able to emulate? Could the legacy software run at least as fast as it would on a low-end iMac classic? I doubt it, but I could be wrong.
Of course the 80386 (they didn't use the 'i' crap back then) was revolutionary. You know that Finn, what's his name, the one with the thing for penguins? He wrote that whole Unix-like operating system because he finally got his hands on an affordable 32-bit CPU for personal use. It's not Intel's fault that the real benefits of the 32-bit design were unavailable with the most common operating system of the time (MS-DOS and Windows 3.0).
Seriously, compare the 80386 to its predecessor, the 80286, and tell me it wasn't revolutionary. Now look at the Pentium (or PII or PIII or P4). A faster 80386, with built-in 80387 and cache memory, and some spiffy additional 'multimedia' instructions. Yes, I'm oversimplifying, but all the improvements I'm leaving out are evolutionary in nature. There's very little code that will run on a Pentium4 that won't on a 80386 - other than the aforementioned MMX/SSE stuff.
If nature could get by just spitting off clones, I'm sure it would have a long time ago.
Well, it did, and it continues to do so. Think of all the creatures that reproduce by fission or by budding or by self-fertilization. Sexual reproduction isn't really necessary for survival, but it does allow for increased genetic diversity and speedier evolution, which is why it is the method of choice among 'higher' organisms.
I hate MD-80s. Not only are they horribly loud if you get stuck in the back, they are also more cramped than any other plane (that sounds impossible, but it's not) and their air circulation is poor. I won't fly on them anymore, I don't care if I have to pay an extra $50 per seat and sit in an airport an extra hour, it's worth it to avoid those God-forsaken planes. I'd rather be on a Brasilia.
I could see IBM, Adobe, or Sun ending up with Macromedia in the end.
Adobe would probably be the best fit. Imagine the product portfolio they'd have if they acquired Macromedia: Photoshop, Pagemaker, Dreamweaver, Flash, and Acrobat. An impressive yet focused lineup.
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I assumed all that was obvious. I was going for the +1, Funny mods.
On a serious note, though, fossil fuels are just solar power that's been stored up for us, and they will eventually run out, unless we consume them more slowly than they are replenished. So we're screwed if we need more power than the Sun provides. Well, with the exception of what we can generate from nuclear fission or fusion ourselves.
As for minivans, they are interesting from a safety point of view. They have the same high center of gravity that SUVs have yet they roll over less frequently.
I think a minivan's COG is considerably lower than an SUV's. Look at the difference in ground clearance. A minivan is typically just as tall, but the height is in the interior of the vehicle, not underneath the chassis. The engine, transmission, seats, passengers, fuel tank, etc., are all closer to the ground in the minivan.
Once or twice I've had to make emergency maneuvers in my old Dodge Caravan which would have sent an Explorer tumbling across the road. I'm pretty sure they're inherently less prone to rollover. Not only that, but minivans are more likely to crumple and absorb collision forces, whereas SUVs, being built heavily like trucks, will transmit the forces into the passenger area.
Back to my marketing point (from a previous post), it is very hard to make minivans cool, even to people who need a minivan. That is one of the big reasons for the success of the SUV.
Yes, absolutely. I have a friend who recently bought a Sequoia. He said he wanted a big vehicle since he and the wife were planning to start a family, but he 'wouldn't look cool in a minivan.' Which is rather funny, because among the guys I hung out with back in the day, he was always the leading candidate for 'Least Likely to be Accused of Being Cool.'
But apparently the marketing works. Myself, I can't see how having bigger tires, smaller doors, and a higher step up into the vehicle make it more 'cool'. In fact, soccer-moms look absolutely ridiculous hefting their 5'2" frames into a gigantic truck, but apparently don't realize it....
Ford sells a hybrid Escape [hybridford.com] that you can buy today. It gets about 35 mpg I believe.
That's funny, looking at the link you gave and going to the FAQ they say it will be available to retail customers in mid-year 2004. But, I heard a news story the other day that said the hybrid Escape program was being cancelled.
You are much more likely to kill the other guy when driving an SUV, as opposed to an economy car, in which you are more likely to die.
Some recent studies disagree with this belief. You are actually not much safer in an SUV than in a well-made compact (think Honda Civic, Toyota Corolla), and less safe than in a larger import. The safest vehicle for its own occupants is a minivan, which incidentally is usually roomier, more comfortable, and more efficient than an SUV.
This, plus the fact that as you say, an SUV is more likely to kill others (the only vehicles worse in that regard are actual pickup trucks and sports cars), mean the proliferation of SUVs on the highways has actually made everyone less safe, including the SUV drivers.
That being said, exactly how could we obtain enough solar energy to power the world??
Umm, if we can't get enough energy from the Sun to power the world, we're in big trouble. The Sun outputs 4x10^26 Joules per second, which is roughly one million times the energy consumed by the entire human population of Earth in the year of 1998 (first year for which I found statistics).
Getting it all is an engineering challenge, I'll admit....
So does this mean I'm going to gain mass if I drive cross-country without stopping?
Not nearly as much as you will gain if you stop at Denny's.
I was going to suggest you'd need to repeat the experiment in a vacuum, but then you'd never hear the gong anyway.
You could suspend the gong from strings attached to a piezoelectric crystal to detect the vibrations.
The common usage dictates proper grammar....
In the case of a medical or scientific term, the common usage is that used by physicians or scientists. Thus 'antivenin' is correct. No one involved in venom research or medical treatment of snake bites uses the term 'anti-venom'.
I don't even think it's fair to call this correction pedantry.
Have you actually tried the soy cheese?
I've tried one brand that looks, smells, and tastes almost exactly like a cheap off-brand cheese food slice, and even melts fairly well onto a burger in the microwave. I'd tell you what it's called, but I can't remember it now.
So the milk is noticeably different I suppose, if you must eat it with a sugary cereal. Does it actually taste bad or just different?
The brand I've been getting (Pacific something-or-other?) isn't so much bad as it just lacks flavor. It's a bit bland if you drink it, but it's fine on cereal. I'm going to do some more taste-testing to see if I can find a brand that's more drinkable, although to be honest I don't drink milk very much anyway.
Well, I'm 100% sure (the highest accuracy possible) that the universe is between 23.5 and Infinity years old.
How do you know it's not less than 23.5 years old? Can you prove that it wasn't created yesterday, and God just stuck memories in your brain to make you think you're 23.5 years old (which I assume is where your lower bound comes from)?
It's a collection of cells that are in the process of becoming a human being. A collection of cells that are not self aware (at least not until sometime in the 3rd trimester, certainly not in the first), cannot survive outside the womb, and only scientfically qualify as an embryo, not a fully developed human being.
... Which I think is kind of what you ended with, but it's hard to tell with some of the hardline tactics you started with...
:)
Actually, self-awareness isn't completely developed even at birth. It's a couple of months before an infant fully realizes that a reflection in a mirror isn't another baby. Also, at birth an infant still isn't fully developed. Heck, he/she isn't fully developed until puberty. The process of birth is just one of many developmental events in life, and it seems arbitrary to decide that it is the sole event that determines the right to live.
Yes, I'm saying a set of moral values cannot have exceptions (if you want people to take them seriously anyway).
I'm pretty sure that many people believe that taking life is wrong in general, but under certain circumstances (self defense, war) is justifiable. Are you saying all their belief systems are invalid?
Your other arguments belittle and do not properly address the issue of respecting the beliefs and rights of others....
Umm, you just stated that certain sets of moral values can't be taken seriously, and then lecture me on respecting rights and beliefs?
I could use the same tactic on you by saying that by your standards, a woman who has an abortion for a blighted ovum should be put jail for murder.
Well, first of all you don't even know WHAT my 'standards' are, and second, how could anything in my post be construed to indicate that I would condemn someone for an abortion which didn't even involve a living baby? If you re-read my post, you'll find that I never even stated that I believe abortion is wrong or that it should be illegal. All I stated was that I believe an unborn baby is a human being.
As a matter of fact, about three years ago my wife miscarried a baby after about 15 weeks, and had to have a D&C to remove the deceased baby. Needless to say, I don't think she should have gone to jail for that.
There are thousands of reasons a woman would want or need an abortion. You are not in a position to judge the morality of that decision, nor are you in a position to pass judgement.
I don't recall passing judgement on anyone.
You don't have to live with it, and I can tell you first hand that it is not something a woman does lightly. You may think it's wrong, you may believe with all your heart that it is murder in the highest, but it's still not for you to decide. If you believe in God, believe he'll take care of it.
I know what a hard decision it must be, and I have nothing but sympathy toward any woman who finds herself in that position. Still, I think I do have the right to have an opinion on the issue and to express it. And, of course, everyone else has the right to ignore me or to voice their differing opinion.
We'd all be better served by solving the reasons women get abortions, making it illegal will only make things worse.
Wow, I don't think I've ever been agreed with so vehemently.
I don't eat veal and cut down my milk intake. Mostly for cookies and cereal, which is not often.
;)
Depending on what kind of cereal you're eating, soy milk might be acceptable on it. The more flavorful (or sugary) the cereal, the less you notice the difference. My weakness is cheese. I've tasted passable soy substitutes for cheap cheese food slices, but not for real cheeses.
I can't and will never give up steak and sushi.
Just curious, do you like your steak raw like your fish?
There are vegetarian burgers which I find to be a good substitute for the real thing. No, they don't taste exactly the same - but if someone ate the veggie burgers for their whole life and then switched to meat, they'd say the meat ones taste 'funny' and 'not quite right'.
Unfortunately there's nothing to replace a steak, or a good fish (but grill mine for a few minutes please).
This is a perfect example of why groups like PETA are not taken seriously. Arguments should be based on ALL the evidence, not just those parts that are on "your side".
First of all, why the attack on PETA? The OP didn't even mention them... do you just have a personal vendetta and feel the need to criticize them?
Second, of course PETA is going to present the evidence that is on "their side". They're an organization with a specific agenda. You may not agree with their agenda, but that doesn't mean their opinions are invalid.
On the other hand, the beef industry doesn't spend a whole lot of time telling you you should eat your veggies and whole-grain foods, even though plenty of research indicates that they should be the bulk of a healthy diet. And there's no reason to expect them to do so - their agenda is to sell beef. Where's your outcry that they shouldn't be taken seriously?
Of course you glossed over the part where another scientist suggests that the proteins may be digested too rapidly when using pills etc. IANAD though!
;)
This is of course talking from the standpoint of space travelers, who currently have to choose carrying meat or pills. Earthbound vegetarians do have the option of getting all their essential amino acids from plant sources, but the variety of plants needed would most likely be far too cumbersome to carry on a long space voyage.
Heh, I'll stop eating animals when other animals stop eating animals!
Do you base all aspects of your behavior on what other animals do? You must have an interesting life.
Carnivores do what they have to do, they don't have the option of being vegetarians because they have evolved a requirement for animal proteins. It's likely that humans naturally have a need for animal proteins also, to some extent. However, with our knowledge of nutrition and modern technology, we now have the ability to choose vegetarianism without endangering our health.
Note that I said "choose", your own diet is a personal matter.
That is a moral argument based on a subjective set of ethics. Before you defend yourself, consider this - according to many (even Christian) belief systems, a person doesn't have a soul until they "draw the breath of life".
And according to other belief systems, a person doesn't have a soul until he/she is given a name. In fact, in some belief systems, people don't have souls at all. So perhaps we should discard any laws enforcing anyone's right to life, because our 'belief systems' can't all agree on when it begins and ends?
Obviously that won't work, so we have to have a logical, scientifically-defined beginning and end of life, and no one argues that cessation of breathing is the end of life, so why should commencement of breathing mark the beginning? Brain function would seem a more reasonable measure, although given the definition of "life" found in most biology textbooks it would be hard to argue against conception being the beginning of life.
In short - it's not a person, it's an organism.
And if you keep repeating that long enough, people will believe it. Some already do. But that doesn't make it so. If it's not a person, what is it? Surely you're not suggesting it is something other than homo sapiens?
It's actually NOT OK to kill in self defense if you believe in such a thing as taking a life being immoral.
Huh? Are you trying to say that a set of moral values can't have exceptions to its rules?
You will never be able to stop abortion (nor will you be able to convince the rest of the world that your concept of morality is right) - it's the oldest procedure after the oldest proffession.
Unfortunately true. However, we'll never be able to stop murder, theft, or rape either. That doesn't stop us from making them illegal.
In an ideal world, all the pro-lifers would be working on making abortion unnecessary by improving the adoption system, removing rapists from the streets, and promoting better sex education and easier availability of effective contraceptives. Work toward these goals would do much more to lower the number of abortions performed than blocking clinics, harassing their unfortunate customers, and killing doctors.
Oh, right, so different from the "Do-whatever-you-want-and-someone-else-will-pay-fo r-it" ethos of the Clinton years.
As far as keeping the budget defecit down, the "Tax-and-spend" liberals seem to make better sense than the "Cut-taxes-and-spend" conservatives. Anyone with a modicum of financial sense can tell you, you're better off paying for it now than paying for it later. Of course, most Americans don't have that much sense, judging from the average household's consumer debt.
When the economy crashes (in this instance, due to an overinflated tech bubble -- pricked by Clinton's Injustice Department and their pursuit of the Evil Bill Gates©), gov't revenues crash as well.
Riiight. The stock market collapsed due to US v. Microsoft. Not because idiot investors were pumping their retirement savings into Pets.com and certainly not because of the accounting shenanigans going on at corporations like Enron and WorldCom.
Which President wasted $2 million missles on $10 tents?
Oh, and the current 'War on Terrorism' is producing a much better ROI? We've got a bunch of guys who might have something to do with Al-Qaeda locked up in Cuba, but terrorist attacks continue unabated. Big improvement there. But that's ok, Dubya can draw attention away from his failure to get bin Laden by starting crap with Iraq again. If Clinton had done that, he would have been (perhaps rightfully, I'll admit) accused of 'wagging the dog'.
Of course, this is now so far off topic it's hardly worth posting.
To move to x86-64, Apple would have to plan to phase out PPC entirely. There's no way the caliber of users we see on the 'Switch' commercials could handle having to know whether their machine was x86 or PPC before buying software at CompUSA.
Yeah, Apple's been through a similar migration before, but when they went from 680x0 to PPC, their new architecture was fast enough to do a passable job of emulating the old CPU for legacy software. I'm not convinced that would work this time. Let's say the Opteron is released at 2.0GHz, how fast a PPC will it be able to emulate? Could the legacy software run at least as fast as it would on a low-end iMac classic? I doubt it, but I could be wrong.
Of course the 80386 (they didn't use the 'i' crap back then) was revolutionary. You know that Finn, what's his name, the one with the thing for penguins? He wrote that whole Unix-like operating system because he finally got his hands on an affordable 32-bit CPU for personal use. It's not Intel's fault that the real benefits of the 32-bit design were unavailable with the most common operating system of the time (MS-DOS and Windows 3.0).
Seriously, compare the 80386 to its predecessor, the 80286, and tell me it wasn't revolutionary. Now look at the Pentium (or PII or PIII or P4). A faster 80386, with built-in 80387 and cache memory, and some spiffy additional 'multimedia' instructions. Yes, I'm oversimplifying, but all the improvements I'm leaving out are evolutionary in nature. There's very little code that will run on a Pentium4 that won't on a 80386 - other than the aforementioned MMX/SSE stuff.
... has quoted the Orange Catholic Bible? "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind."
I'm ashamed of you people.
I, for one, welcome our hockey and donut-eating overlords.
I dunno, when they start eating hockey I'm gonna be a bit worried.
If nature could get by just spitting off clones, I'm sure it would have a long time ago.
Well, it did, and it continues to do so. Think of all the creatures that reproduce by fission or by budding or by self-fertilization. Sexual reproduction isn't really necessary for survival, but it does allow for increased genetic diversity and speedier evolution, which is why it is the method of choice among 'higher' organisms.
Well, that and the fact that it's so much fun.
Because 'rowter' might be pronounced like 'rotor' and get people really confused.
But WHY did CompuServe insist on pronouncing it with a soft G, when the word the G stood for (Graphics) was pronounced with a hard G?
I hate MD-80s. Not only are they horribly loud if you get stuck in the back, they are also more cramped than any other plane (that sounds impossible, but it's not) and their air circulation is poor. I won't fly on them anymore, I don't care if I have to pay an extra $50 per seat and sit in an airport an extra hour, it's worth it to avoid those God-forsaken planes. I'd rather be on a Brasilia.
I could see IBM, Adobe, or Sun ending up with Macromedia in the end.
Adobe would probably be the best fit. Imagine the product portfolio they'd have if they acquired Macromedia: Photoshop, Pagemaker, Dreamweaver, Flash, and Acrobat. An impressive yet focused lineup.