It's not only problematic but offensive. The idea is to take trained, skilled professionals out of the decision-making process. The good doctor who doesn't prescribe Paxil because the patient doesn't need it gets dropped for the rubber-stamping quack who does anyway.
The intellectual lower class wants to believe that they can and should make the best decisions for themselves and fear the authority of officious experts (with thousands of dollars and years invested in skilled knowledge) over their lives, to the point where doctor's advice can be measured against your own self-diagnosis and thereby assessed as good or bad.
To be fair, if my doctor tells me I need X or Y, or don't, I want him to be damned convincing about it. That's because I want to understand it fully, not because I want to play "who's the better doctor".
It seems like this started in psychology, particularly child psychology, with Ritalin. It still happens now. If I see a psychologist who "specializes in ADHD and ODD", I automatically think "ritalin 'scrip' factory." It moved on to Prozac et. al., and Wenatchee, WA was never the same.
Now it's being done with *physical* medications, some with some pretty scary side effects.
So, you admit that encouraging schools to bring in alternative viewpoints on global warming is a dangerous road to go down, fraught with conspiracy theorists and allegations of criminal activity. Just what we need in the schools!
You chided the global warming community for being "ashamed that the school is required to present alterative scientific viewpoints" and that "isn't exactly... being forced to provide unscientific things".
Then when I challenged you come up with a credible scientific viewpoint, you backpedaled, saying simply that Gore expresses "many extreme views that plenty of climate scientist don't agree on".
Then when I challenged you to come up with a single extreme view of Gore's on which a single climate scientist didn't agree on, you choked on a mess of "conspiracy sites".
It's not a dangerous road. It's a dead end.
Go down it and prove me wrong. Please. For the sake of your fellow mankind-influenced global warming deniers.
R> Point me to a credible scientific alternative explanation for global warming. PLEASE. I'm dying to hear it. To date, the only one presented so far is the Book of Revelation.
M> I was refering to Gore's theories specifically. He states many extreme views that plenty of climate scientist don't agree on.
Please name one. One extreme view of Gore's, and one climate scientist that doesn't agree on it.
Not simply Republicans, or nationalists, or Creationists. A scientist, please. (And no, regrettably, Christian Scientists do not count.)
This isn't exactly the evolution debate in which the schools were being forced to provide unscientific things. geez
Yes, it is exactly like that.
Point me to a credible scientific alternative explanation for global warming. PLEASE. I'm dying to hear it. To date, the only one presented so far is the Book of Revelation.
There's plenty of common threads in anti-science thinking, a sort of non-defense where the reasons for opposing the established and long-investigated consensus are based in what the opposer wants, or would rather believe, or emotionally-based defensiveness.
1) We need to distinguish between long term climate change and short term climate change.
I hear this (a lot recently), and yet I see no one showing or pointing us to anyone who shows that a) there is a distinction, which sure, there may be (I believe the universe is a fractal, after all, so this IMO stands to reason), and b) that even if there is a short-term change, that this disproves long-term climate change.
About 15 years ago my stepmother, listening to me relate what I'd been taught about global warming, told me it's all bunk, because there's an 11-year solar cycle. Now I'm hearing it again. Clearly if this 11-year solar cycle explains over 15 years of climate change research, it must be really taking its time this cycle. Certainly an 11-year solar cycle does not explain 150 years of increasing average temperature.
I might be moderately more impressed by this "short term change" and "11 year cycle" and what not if someone would actually tell me *when* the last 11-year cycle started, and show how it explains the past 150 years of recorded temperature history, and beyond.
2) We need to distinguish between human-causes and natural causes.
First, you need to identify a single natural cause that has been consistently occuring since the start of the industrial era, and then, identify how it could possibly cause the global temperature change seen over that time. And then, show how it has continued without any influence by mankind.
Secondly, no, I don't agree that there is, in fact, any need to make this distinction. There would be a need to make this distinction if one could illustrate that the solutions to man-made global warming are in fact harmful. Recycling reduces raw material demand and cost. Greater fuel economy reduces dependency on foreign oil. Alternative fuel, e.g. ethanol, could actually boost the nation's agrarian economy. Reduced driving and mass transit will cut down on air pollution, increase air quality, reduce smog. Increased walking instead of short drives will help keep us all in better physical shape.
Even if you could argue, as some do, that reduction in fossil fuel use will lead to an erosion of American industry, I'd argue you're far too late -- offshoring and international competition with American manufacturing has already done the job; steelmaking, automobile manufacturing, even computer chips and electronics manufacturing. These were once American industrial stalwarts, and now they are either obsoleted by new technology or moved where they can made much more cheaply (and with much less quality). The argument that solutions to man-made global warming destroy America's industrial economy presumes that America even has an industrial economy anymore. If you're worried about American's industrial economy, then you've got lots bigger problems to deal with than conservationism and environmentalism.
3) Skeptics must be heard and not shouted down and ridiculed.
This a great one, because to me it exposes a fundamental anti-science, an "Our Man Flint" fear that scientists are natural totalitarians who lock out opposing theories, or that their personally adopted opposing belief on the topic somehow got locked out of the debate. This ignores the decades of debate that has been going on about global warming, the steep opposition that the theory has been presented with for decades, and that the research has continued to overcome with more compelling evidence.
The reason the skeptics are vehemently opposed now is that they have been disproven by continued research, and that their advocacy of inaction on the matter is potentially harmful.
There is no real or potential harm to the world by adopting the solutions to man-made global warming. In fact, the solutions have multiple side benefits. There is no real or potential benefit to the world or anyone else by not doing anything.
The Hardisons and the school board either really love irony or simply don't get it.
Galileo defended scientific fact in the face of theocratic authorities who based their views on the matter on religion and denial, and forced him to acquiesce to their view.
Here we have a theocratic authority which opposes scientific fact with unmentioned "opposing viewpoints", and forces advocates of over 30 years of ecological research to acquiesce to the idea that it might not be true, at the behest of a family whose religiously-defined geological beliefs contradict some of the most fundamentally accepted, researched, and demonstrated Earth science.
Larson (and Hardison) believe they are Galileo -- not the theocrats which insisted that Galileo was wrong for no other reason than they weren't willing to accept it.
1. Global warming is happening. 2. Man may be causing it, or may not be causing it. 3. Therefore, we should tell students that man is causing it, and then tell them that man is not causing it. 4. ??? 5. Progress
Blur is of course insecure. Beyond this reverse-engineering trick, it's also a known visual trick that something which up close looks blurry and unrecognizable is actually more readable from a distance.
I agree that blur is not a great idea, but "black bar" is tacky. Either get the area to match the surrounding area, via copy-and-paste (and then blur or something), or match the color and paint over.
If those techniques make it look obvious, I've used Noise and Scatter in the past. Since Scatter is presumably random, it should obliviate any ability to recover the source, and the added noise shouldn't help.
I remember when the Internet was supposed to survive a nuclear war, because of the interconnectivity and multiple paths that were available.
So why is it this doesn't work?
(Oh yeah, underregulation.)
If it worked the way it was supposed to, you wouldn't need to search for a sweet-spot colo host to channel your data through. The net would find the best-path for everyone.
Remember when TV was still considered an important medium? When the EBS was an essential way to transfer flash warnings across a region or the country? When it was even seen as a way children could learn?
Now, no one (in power) seems to really care if the public has access to TV or not. With the rise in expensive digital and HD receivers, and the mass obsoletion of literal tons of cheap, mercury-laden TV tubes, TV will become a luxury. Which, of course, is exactly how it started out in the first place.
We may even witness the death of TV as we know it. By the time analog TV is outlawed, will broadcast TV even be relevant anymore? By 2008 (if that date sticks, which it might not), household datapipes could increase to the point where people will start dumping TV receivers like they're currently dumping POTS lines.
(Go figure -- phones going wireless, and TV going wired.)
"Notability" is the number one scourge on Wikipedia's goal of being a compendium of human knowledge (followed by source elitism). You can't claim to catalog human knowledge if you place value judgements on that knowledge based on its popularity. And quite often, editors yell "not notable" about articles that are in fact quite notable, just not in the Americentric or otherwise regionalistic circles those editors run in. Ignorance is not non-notability, but ignorace doesn't know that.
Linux is a kernel and GNU is a collection of usermode software (oversimplification). That's fine. But rare is the Linux system that does not also have GNU. An out of the box Linux system -- RH, Debian, Ubuntu -- has a glut of GNU software on it. It's fair to credit GNU for that contribution to the package.
Wow, you're full of the ad-hominem stereotypes today. Well, to avoid the continued baiting, let me turn this discussion around and ask: Why use Linux as your base OS if you're going to end up needing Windows anyway? Is there a good reason to use Linux on your desktop other than as an alternative to Microsoft software or just to fuck around with it?
One other mistake people make is in assuming that gnu IS linux and that they are not two seperate projects working towards different goals. Opportunists have tried to blur the issue for the purpose of getting personal prestige out of other peoples projects and helped many make this mistake.
I presume then that you are running a Linux box with no GNU/FSF software on it...
The workable alternative is to admit that you need Windows, and just run it.
Or live without it, and the things that you need it for.
What's really telling is how defensive people get about it. I say running Cedega is admitting that you really can't live without Microsoft, whether you're really using Windows or using a clone of it. Source code, software rights, etc. doesn't enter into it.
And everything the PP said about Blizzard could also be said about Microsoft -- good people working there, gets abuse as good as it gives, pursues the buck and ignores the linutic fringe. If those reasons are good enough to defend Blizzard, to say that they shouldn't be scolded for their selectivity of supported platforms, and that you should still buy their stuff -- then it ought to be good enough to defend Blizzard, and form an argument that you should still buy their stuff, too. In other words, just use Windows if you're going to use Windows.
Historically there isn't a lot of downtrend in U.S. oil consumption.
OK, but your graph does show a slowing since 1983 compared to before 1972. Granted, that is probably the result of the jump in prices from the formation of the cartel. Anyway, there's no numbers there for post-2000. The Prius entered the US market in 2001. The fact that hybrids now exist and continue to be made is an indication that people do want them.
Prius's no longer have a waiting list now that gas prices are normal.
Because they've increased supply in response to demand, and because it's no longer the only hybrid choice. And gas prices aren't at all "normal", not compared to this time two years ago and barely approximate to one year ago. They reached an all-time high just two summers ago, and are only down right now because of the normal decreased demand in the colder seasons.
Hey, get over yourself. For the record, I use Windows on my current computer. I didn't say don't use Windows. But I sure don't see the point of running Linux if, in the end, you're ultimately going to find yourself having to run Windows anyway. The point of running Linux, at least for what seems to be a fair number of people, is to avoid being a slave to Microsoft. By running Wine, you've proven that you're not free from it, but you're kidding yourself that you do. But even if that isn't your motivation for running Linux, you should consider the wisdom of that decision if, after the work it takes to learn, install, configure, and acclimate to Linux, you still need to run Windows anyway.
What I ultimately don't follow is how you turned that into a need to defend Blizzard. (After I filter out your ad hominems, prejudices, sterotypes, false attributions, and insecurities, that's really all that's left.)
Blizzard are one case where in my own opinion there has been abuse both given *and* received.
So you don't dispute that they have been abusive, you just think that people should go easy on them because they've been abused back. Um, OK. Then again, I wasn't attacking Blizzard directly, but the game industry as a whole.
Basically your argument is that game studios won't release Linux versions because Linux users are all pretentious assholes. OK, thanks for that. It's a bullshit excuse, but thanks anyway.
Why is there such a constant war between game development and alternative OSes? There is a dearth of games for Linux -- none save perhaps some iD titles are major games. It's a disconnect -- Geeks are generally inclined to be both gamers and OSSers, yet no major games run on OSS OSes natively.
IME, Wine doesn't work out of the box, but even if it did, IMO it's a cheat around practicing an OSS life. Running Wine is a surrender to the Microsoft hegemony. Running Wine says, I can't do it all with Linux, I need to have Windows. You can tell yourself it's really empowerment, or that emulation isn't the same thing as adoption or embracement, but I think you're kidding yourself. You're giving in to Windows dominance. The game studios more or less force you to in order to play the games everyone else is playing.
Is there in fact no real overlap between gamer geeks and OSS geeks? Are there no movements within game housen to say "Hey, we support Windows and Mac, why not support Linux too?" Would porting to a third platform -- one that is openly documented -- be that much more difficult than porting to a second?
The world doesn't have to run out of oil before we have to feel it's effects dramatically.
The fact is that if the United States were cut off from foreign oil we would last 2.87 years at our current consumption.
But we wouldn't remain at our current consumption. Rationing and hording would be quick, which we got a taste of in the 70's IIRC.
And there's a converse possibility to your astute observation. Both the neo-Hubbert theory and the Cambridge report presume that oil consumption will not decline over the time of their study -- which is appropriate, mind you.
Supply is not the only force on price. Demand is also a factor. Price affects demand, which is why it stabilizes. And there are also political effects on demand. Dependency on unstable ME nations for oil is a factor. Environmentalism is a factor, both as pertaining to global warming as well as air pollution. The narrowing of the gap of cost-effectiveness of alternate energy is a factor. Hybrid cars are becoming more popular; the SUV glut seems to be waning in favor of more efficient cars. Over 20 states now have laws requiring power utilities to achieve a certain percentage of renewable power by a few years' deadline.
In short, there are a lot of reasons to believe that, assuming oil prices stayed in the range they've been over the past two or so years, we will see oil consumption, at least in the US, go *down* in the coming years, if it hasn't already. This will blunt the effect of a drop in oil supply.
What a straw man! It would all make sense if one was to believe that Alaska is floating on oil which, if the damned pro-animal-lifers would just let us poke the shit out of it with (more!) straws, would crank crude back down to $30/bbl and we could be a prosperous, asthmatic, smog-greenhouse nation again.
But as expansion into Africa is proving, for better or worse, the ME and the frozen north are not the only places where oil can be found.
This is why I hate people. What self-respecting scientific establishment would fail to maintain such a significant piece of modern technological history? Without even so much as a C record and redirect to a maintained hosted copy? Such a notion should not be difficult for the inventors of the first web server, suck though it may have.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not only problematic but offensive. The idea is to take trained, skilled professionals out of the decision-making process. The good doctor who doesn't prescribe Paxil because the patient doesn't need it gets dropped for the rubber-stamping quack who does anyway.
The intellectual lower class wants to believe that they can and should make the best decisions for themselves and fear the authority of officious experts (with thousands of dollars and years invested in skilled knowledge) over their lives, to the point where doctor's advice can be measured against your own self-diagnosis and thereby assessed as good or bad.
To be fair, if my doctor tells me I need X or Y, or don't, I want him to be damned convincing about it. That's because I want to understand it fully, not because I want to play "who's the better doctor".
It seems like this started in psychology, particularly child psychology, with Ritalin. It still happens now. If I see a psychologist who "specializes in ADHD and ODD", I automatically think "ritalin 'scrip' factory." It moved on to Prozac et. al., and Wenatchee, WA was never the same.
Now it's being done with *physical* medications, some with some pretty scary side effects.
Fat lot of good this does you if your BIOS doesn't support booting from USB.
Which may even be why you're using a floppy to update it.
Actually, in your link's case, fat lot of good this does you if you're not running an HP ProLiant. MPD.
I don't believe you, because you refuse to tell me any of these materials or viewpoints that you say are scientifically compelling.
I definitely don't encourage teaching something that can't even be said.
Sadly, thats a dangerous road to go down.
So, you admit that encouraging schools to bring in alternative viewpoints on global warming is a dangerous road to go down, fraught with conspiracy theorists and allegations of criminal activity. Just what we need in the schools!
You chided the global warming community for being "ashamed that the school is required to present alterative scientific viewpoints" and that "isn't exactly... being forced to provide unscientific things".
Then when I challenged you come up with a credible scientific viewpoint, you backpedaled, saying simply that Gore expresses "many extreme views that plenty of climate scientist don't agree on".
Then when I challenged you to come up with a single extreme view of Gore's on which a single climate scientist didn't agree on, you choked on a mess of "conspiracy sites".
It's not a dangerous road. It's a dead end.
Go down it and prove me wrong. Please. For the sake of your fellow mankind-influenced global warming deniers.
We should ask cellphone makers exactly why their devices can be used to make IEDs.
R> Point me to a credible scientific alternative explanation for global warming. PLEASE. I'm dying to hear it. To date, the only one presented so far is the Book of Revelation.
M> I was refering to Gore's theories specifically. He states many extreme views that plenty of climate scientist don't agree on.
Please name one. One extreme view of Gore's, and one climate scientist that doesn't agree on it.
Not simply Republicans, or nationalists, or Creationists. A scientist, please. (And no, regrettably, Christian Scientists do not count.)
This isn't exactly the evolution debate in which the schools were being forced to provide unscientific things. geez
Yes, it is exactly like that.
Point me to a credible scientific alternative explanation for global warming. PLEASE. I'm dying to hear it. To date, the only one presented so far is the Book of Revelation.
There's plenty of common threads in anti-science thinking, a sort of non-defense where the reasons for opposing the established and long-investigated consensus are based in what the opposer wants, or would rather believe, or emotionally-based defensiveness.
1) We need to distinguish between long term climate change and short term climate change.
I hear this (a lot recently), and yet I see no one showing or pointing us to anyone who shows that a) there is a distinction, which sure, there may be (I believe the universe is a fractal, after all, so this IMO stands to reason), and b) that even if there is a short-term change, that this disproves long-term climate change.
About 15 years ago my stepmother, listening to me relate what I'd been taught about global warming, told me it's all bunk, because there's an 11-year solar cycle. Now I'm hearing it again. Clearly if this 11-year solar cycle explains over 15 years of climate change research, it must be really taking its time this cycle. Certainly an 11-year solar cycle does not explain 150 years of increasing average temperature.
I might be moderately more impressed by this "short term change" and "11 year cycle" and what not if someone would actually tell me *when* the last 11-year cycle started, and show how it explains the past 150 years of recorded temperature history, and beyond.
2) We need to distinguish between human-causes and natural causes.
First, you need to identify a single natural cause that has been consistently occuring since the start of the industrial era, and then, identify how it could possibly cause the global temperature change seen over that time. And then, show how it has continued without any influence by mankind.
Secondly, no, I don't agree that there is, in fact, any need to make this distinction. There would be a need to make this distinction if one could illustrate that the solutions to man-made global warming are in fact harmful. Recycling reduces raw material demand and cost. Greater fuel economy reduces dependency on foreign oil. Alternative fuel, e.g. ethanol, could actually boost the nation's agrarian economy. Reduced driving and mass transit will cut down on air pollution, increase air quality, reduce smog. Increased walking instead of short drives will help keep us all in better physical shape.
Even if you could argue, as some do, that reduction in fossil fuel use will lead to an erosion of American industry, I'd argue you're far too late -- offshoring and international competition with American manufacturing has already done the job; steelmaking, automobile manufacturing, even computer chips and electronics manufacturing. These were once American industrial stalwarts, and now they are either obsoleted by new technology or moved where they can made much more cheaply (and with much less quality). The argument that solutions to man-made global warming destroy America's industrial economy presumes that America even has an industrial economy anymore. If you're worried about American's industrial economy, then you've got lots bigger problems to deal with than conservationism and environmentalism.
3) Skeptics must be heard and not shouted down and ridiculed.
This a great one, because to me it exposes a fundamental anti-science, an "Our Man Flint" fear that scientists are natural totalitarians who lock out opposing theories, or that their personally adopted opposing belief on the topic somehow got locked out of the debate. This ignores the decades of debate that has been going on about global warming, the steep opposition that the theory has been presented with for decades, and that the research has continued to overcome with more compelling evidence.
The reason the skeptics are vehemently opposed now is that they have been disproven by continued research, and that their advocacy of inaction on the matter is potentially harmful.
There is no real or potential harm to the world by adopting the solutions to man-made global warming. In fact, the solutions have multiple side benefits. There is no real or potential benefit to the world or anyone else by not doing anything .
The Hardisons and the school board either really love irony or simply don't get it.
Galileo defended scientific fact in the face of theocratic authorities who based their views on the matter on religion and denial, and forced him to acquiesce to their view.
Here we have a theocratic authority which opposes scientific fact with unmentioned "opposing viewpoints", and forces advocates of over 30 years of ecological research to acquiesce to the idea that it might not be true, at the behest of a family whose religiously-defined geological beliefs contradict some of the most fundamentally accepted, researched, and demonstrated Earth science.
Larson (and Hardison) believe they are Galileo -- not the theocrats which insisted that Galileo was wrong for no other reason than they weren't willing to accept it.
1. Global warming is happening.
2. Man may be causing it, or may not be causing it.
3. Therefore, we should tell students that man is causing it, and then tell them that man is not causing it.
4. ???
5. Progress
Yes, I have heard the "11-year solar warming cycle" line before. In fact, I heard it over 15 years ago.
Can anyone tell me when exactly this 11 year warming cycle began and will end?
Blur is of course insecure. Beyond this reverse-engineering trick, it's also a known visual trick that something which up close looks blurry and unrecognizable is actually more readable from a distance.
I agree that blur is not a great idea, but "black bar" is tacky. Either get the area to match the surrounding area, via copy-and-paste (and then blur or something), or match the color and paint over.
If those techniques make it look obvious, I've used Noise and Scatter in the past. Since Scatter is presumably random, it should obliviate any ability to recover the source, and the added noise shouldn't help.
I remember when the Internet was supposed to survive a nuclear war, because of the interconnectivity and multiple paths that were available.
So why is it this doesn't work?
(Oh yeah, underregulation.)
If it worked the way it was supposed to, you wouldn't need to search for a sweet-spot colo host to channel your data through. The net would find the best-path for everyone.
Remember when TV was still considered an important medium? When the EBS was an essential way to transfer flash warnings across a region or the country? When it was even seen as a way children could learn?
Now, no one (in power) seems to really care if the public has access to TV or not. With the rise in expensive digital and HD receivers, and the mass obsoletion of literal tons of cheap, mercury-laden TV tubes, TV will become a luxury. Which, of course, is exactly how it started out in the first place.
We may even witness the death of TV as we know it. By the time analog TV is outlawed, will broadcast TV even be relevant anymore? By 2008 (if that date sticks, which it might not), household datapipes could increase to the point where people will start dumping TV receivers like they're currently dumping POTS lines.
(Go figure -- phones going wireless, and TV going wired.)
"Notability" is the number one scourge on Wikipedia's goal of being a compendium of human knowledge (followed by source elitism). You can't claim to catalog human knowledge if you place value judgements on that knowledge based on its popularity. And quite often, editors yell "not notable" about articles that are in fact quite notable, just not in the Americentric or otherwise regionalistic circles those editors run in. Ignorance is not non-notability, but ignorace doesn't know that.
Linux is a kernel and GNU is a collection of usermode software (oversimplification). That's fine. But rare is the Linux system that does not also have GNU. An out of the box Linux system -- RH, Debian, Ubuntu -- has a glut of GNU software on it. It's fair to credit GNU for that contribution to the package.
Wow, you're full of the ad-hominem stereotypes today. Well, to avoid the continued baiting, let me turn this discussion around and ask: Why use Linux as your base OS if you're going to end up needing Windows anyway? Is there a good reason to use Linux on your desktop other than as an alternative to Microsoft software or just to fuck around with it?
One other mistake people make is in assuming that gnu IS linux and that they are not two seperate projects working towards different goals. Opportunists have tried to blur the issue for the purpose of getting personal prestige out of other peoples projects and helped many make this mistake.
I presume then that you are running a Linux box with no GNU/FSF software on it...
The workable alternative is to admit that you need Windows, and just run it.
Or live without it, and the things that you need it for.
What's really telling is how defensive people get about it. I say running Cedega is admitting that you really can't live without Microsoft, whether you're really using Windows or using a clone of it. Source code, software rights, etc. doesn't enter into it.
And everything the PP said about Blizzard could also be said about Microsoft -- good people working there, gets abuse as good as it gives, pursues the buck and ignores the linutic fringe. If those reasons are good enough to defend Blizzard, to say that they shouldn't be scolded for their selectivity of supported platforms, and that you should still buy their stuff -- then it ought to be good enough to defend Blizzard, and form an argument that you should still buy their stuff, too. In other words, just use Windows if you're going to use Windows.
Historically there isn't a lot of downtrend in U.S. oil consumption.
OK, but your graph does show a slowing since 1983 compared to before 1972. Granted, that is probably the result of the jump in prices from the formation of the cartel. Anyway, there's no numbers there for post-2000. The Prius entered the US market in 2001. The fact that hybrids now exist and continue to be made is an indication that people do want them.
Prius's no longer have a waiting list now that gas prices are normal.
Because they've increased supply in response to demand, and because it's no longer the only hybrid choice. And gas prices aren't at all "normal", not compared to this time two years ago and barely approximate to one year ago. They reached an all-time high just two summers ago, and are only down right now because of the normal decreased demand in the colder seasons.
Hey, get over yourself. For the record, I use Windows on my current computer. I didn't say don't use Windows. But I sure don't see the point of running Linux if, in the end, you're ultimately going to find yourself having to run Windows anyway. The point of running Linux, at least for what seems to be a fair number of people, is to avoid being a slave to Microsoft. By running Wine, you've proven that you're not free from it, but you're kidding yourself that you do. But even if that isn't your motivation for running Linux, you should consider the wisdom of that decision if, after the work it takes to learn, install, configure, and acclimate to Linux, you still need to run Windows anyway.
What I ultimately don't follow is how you turned that into a need to defend Blizzard. (After I filter out your ad hominems, prejudices, sterotypes, false attributions, and insecurities, that's really all that's left.)
Blizzard are one case where in my own opinion there has been abuse both given *and* received.
So you don't dispute that they have been abusive, you just think that people should go easy on them because they've been abused back. Um, OK. Then again, I wasn't attacking Blizzard directly, but the game industry as a whole.
Basically your argument is that game studios won't release Linux versions because Linux users are all pretentious assholes. OK, thanks for that. It's a bullshit excuse, but thanks anyway.
Why is there such a constant war between game development and alternative OSes? There is a dearth of games for Linux -- none save perhaps some iD titles are major games. It's a disconnect -- Geeks are generally inclined to be both gamers and OSSers, yet no major games run on OSS OSes natively.
IME, Wine doesn't work out of the box, but even if it did, IMO it's a cheat around practicing an OSS life. Running Wine is a surrender to the Microsoft hegemony. Running Wine says, I can't do it all with Linux, I need to have Windows. You can tell yourself it's really empowerment, or that emulation isn't the same thing as adoption or embracement, but I think you're kidding yourself. You're giving in to Windows dominance. The game studios more or less force you to in order to play the games everyone else is playing.
Is there in fact no real overlap between gamer geeks and OSS geeks? Are there no movements within game housen to say "Hey, we support Windows and Mac, why not support Linux too?" Would porting to a third platform -- one that is openly documented -- be that much more difficult than porting to a second?
The world doesn't have to run out of oil before we have to feel it's effects dramatically.
The fact is that if the United States were cut off from foreign oil we would last 2.87 years at our current consumption.
But we wouldn't remain at our current consumption. Rationing and hording would be quick, which we got a taste of in the 70's IIRC.
And there's a converse possibility to your astute observation. Both the neo-Hubbert theory and the Cambridge report presume that oil consumption will not decline over the time of their study -- which is appropriate, mind you.
Supply is not the only force on price. Demand is also a factor. Price affects demand, which is why it stabilizes. And there are also political effects on demand. Dependency on unstable ME nations for oil is a factor. Environmentalism is a factor, both as pertaining to global warming as well as air pollution. The narrowing of the gap of cost-effectiveness of alternate energy is a factor. Hybrid cars are becoming more popular; the SUV glut seems to be waning in favor of more efficient cars. Over 20 states now have laws requiring power utilities to achieve a certain percentage of renewable power by a few years' deadline.
In short, there are a lot of reasons to believe that, assuming oil prices stayed in the range they've been over the past two or so years, we will see oil consumption, at least in the US, go *down* in the coming years, if it hasn't already. This will blunt the effect of a drop in oil supply.
What a straw man! It would all make sense if one was to believe that Alaska is floating on oil which, if the damned pro-animal-lifers would just let us poke the shit out of it with (more!) straws, would crank crude back down to $30/bbl and we could be a prosperous, asthmatic, smog-greenhouse nation again.
But as expansion into Africa is proving, for better or worse, the ME and the frozen north are not the only places where oil can be found.
The first web page [was] http://nxoc01.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.htm l. Unfortunately CERN no longer supports the historical site
This is why I hate people. What self-respecting scientific establishment would fail to maintain such a significant piece of modern technological history? Without even so much as a C record and redirect to a maintained hosted copy? Such a notion should not be difficult for the inventors of the first web server, suck though it may have.