Likewise, not to quibble... but not had *usable* symlinks and junctions? What are all those things in the directory & share structures I made that are nearing 8 years old? They gave a util to make them in the value-add, man! And then there's other places like sysint, assuming you don't roll your own (which is what most of us did anyway, while we were tweaking).
The point is... and I stress this, because it *is* this simplistic - "upgrade", to prematurely toss existing for the sake of something new. And, there is *nothing* new of value in Vista - it *enables* nothing. I'm sure it'll make a fine replacement as things are retired... but no upgrades, since there is no point. Again, name one thing of value that it enables, that isn't already handled by legacies. Your examples were certainly Golden Topics - but Vista does not enable them; all it does is consolidate... and the resulting consolidated featureset is *not* necessarily the "best of breed" that I'd choose. You mentioned a better TCP/IP stack in Vista, for example... remember the old days when TCP/IP wasn't bundled with Windows? You got to pick your favorite from a variety of sources. Now, it's included... and it is very difficult to justify *not* using it, by simple virtue of being bundled.
Consolidation is a very weak and double-edged value, methinks... and that's about all that Vista offers, more homogeneity of preexisting solutions. For upgrades, it's pointless.
Please note that there is a significant difference between the terms "upgrade" and "retire".
If a box has reached end-of-life, and you retire it from production for a new one... the process is not an "upgrade". It is a "retirement".
If a box is still in production, and you deliberately "replace" it before its intended end-of-life for the sake of enhancement, THAT is an "upgrade". For example, we UPGRADED several EGA monitors and video adaptors to take advantage of VGA, long ago. The EGA video was adequate, and the machines using them worked fine - and they were not due for retirement for another year or two. But, there was significant advantage in dumping EGA, and moving those machines up to VGA. THAT is an "upgrade". Meanwhile, other EGA machines were slated for retirement - and they were NOT upgraded. They were RETIRED. And the replacements had VGA cards and monitors. THAT is NOT an "upgrade"; that's just the normal churn of replacement.
So, get your facts straight. The topic is "Upgrade"; the deliberate tossing of one thing for another, for the sake of having that other.
# I'll just lump UAC, the more-secure IE7 running in protected mode, Mandatory Integrity Control, Session 0 isolation, BitLocker drive encryption, Address Space Layout Randomization,and, oh, a handful of other security features into this one little bullet point. Properly taken advantage of, these could deliver that $170k of ROI all by themselves, in the form of less 3rd-party security requirements, managment of same, and management of security incidents.
All of this is irrelevent or already covered by a competent and tested solution. You'd really retire tried and tested legacy "security measures" for brand new, immature, untested ones? No, the legacy layers stay intact for quite some time... long enough that they effectively never go away, because they stay until every other legacy piece goes away. And by then, Vista will be the thing we're upgrading *from*.
# Speech recognition that works. Not sure if you want a cube-farm full of blabbering knowledge workers, but hey. I can see some orgs using this to good advantage.
You have a new definition of "works". I do have a cube farm; not only does the fun SRE not work that well for realtime production usage, but it's several orders of magnitude slower than typing.
# IPV6, much better wireless support, saved network profiles.
Uh... I've got installs of NT4 with IP6. "Wireless support", again... last I checked, (a) who cares in a desktop world, and (b) "better" defined as "sucks less". Saved profiles? As opposed to the original prism drivers from a century ago?
# mklink -- create, modify and delete junctions, hard links, and symbolic links.
Are you new? We've had this since day 1 of NTFS!
# Completely re-written image-based installation will make deployment a lot easier. It'll also make it a snap to move an employee from old computer to new computer, preserving all apps and settings without extra frobbing by IT staff (or the user!)
That will be a nice feature; too bad it goes against deployment costs, which are only required AFTER the deployment is justified. "We need to upgrade to Vista, because we'll save money by the method of deployment! In fact, if we deploy enough copies... we'll actually turn a profit! We can setup an automated batch job to repeatedly deploy Vista to a single machine, over and over, and make a fortune off the money we save!" My wife uses that same argument about buying junk we don't need that's "on sale". Bzzzt... and then there's Ghost. As for legacy app migration, aside from most of this already being handled by conditional GPOs and things like X-Setup, such migration will only work as well as the legacy software's copyprotection allows. In other words, it won't... massive frobs will still be required, and in fact existing 2k/xp kludges will need to be redesigned because we're now on... Vista. (This last part doesn't really matter, though; the kludges would eventually need adaptation anyway, once Vista is deployed as a replacement... but we're not talking replacement, we're talking upgrade. Very, very, big difference.)
# Deadlock detection should remove most hang conditions. User-mode drivers should also be worthwhile in this respect.
How that applies to our devices remains to be seen; most users never encounter such deadlocks, unless something got fudged. And if that's the case, then they have bigger issues. Then there's the whole FUD surrounding the signed driver/module/whatever issue, which has yet to be de-FUDded to anyone's satisfaction.
# New task manager can perform specific actions in response to system events, or even multiple triggers.
If you're talking about what I think you are, again... we've had this since NT4. Just not from MS.
# Restart Manager should make most reboots a thing of the past.
Our only major outages seem to mysteriously occur on the 2nd Tuesday of each month, even with 2K3R2... our uptime is actually worse than we had when the backline was NTS4. Will those "mysterious outages" be going away? No?
No value; existing network is tuned as good as it gets.
> productivity gains from improved UI,
I've yet to meet one SINGLE user who spends *ANY* time in the OS UI. Result: 0. Users spend time in app-land, not the desktop. And again, a new improved "open/save" common-dialogue doesn't cut it. On a good day, a fancy new dialog might change an 8 second process... to a 7 second process. It'll be years before we see our $60 at that rate; you're also ignoring the cash required to pay me to roll this stuff out, which is one hell of a lot more than $60 a shot.
> the revamped security model,
Again, not relevent - it does not allow for the relaxation of any legacy tactics... at the end of the day, it's just more eye-candy that accomplishes nothing, just another layer of complexity that must be managed yet provides no value. "Revamped"... you mean, "not yet debugged". You know, like WMTimer priv escallation design flaw stuff.
> and the general reliability improvements you'll get from Vista
Sorry to take exception to this one, rofl... that would be a negative value. We're already at a 2-nine uptime (if we *ignore* black tuesday) with XP and 2K; any "crashes" are generally a result of bad behavior in userland, which has no bearing on the OS. You're asking us to start back at square-one, and you're retroactively giving credit to the stability of WVSP6a before we've even hit SP1, yet. Sorry, but "reliability improvements" are long, long ways away.
So, you gave it a good amateur try... but I'm still waiting for an actual reason that puts money on the table, which includes User's Time.
So, perhaps you can name a SINGLE "useful new feature" that is worth $170k in new desktops across my enterprise. And when I say "useful", I mean it'll earn that $170k BACK somehow.
Please, name one. And, "Solitare 2007" doesn't cut it.
Besides, the "African Wikipedia" is actually the exact same thing as the "current" one, except that ALL TEXT IS UPPPER CASE AND ALL USERNAMES BEGIN WITH "BARRISTER_".
> None of the devices provides a means to daisy-chain nearby devices. They used to - the typical AT supply had an in and an out - and various TTL monitors had a plug that'd fit. That went out of favor with EGA, as people ran into issues with brownouts when they turned on the tube. Today, it's a different issue altogether. - No enterprise on the planet runs all of its stuff off the same rail. They distribute things across several circuits. The best power supplies will span several circuits. - Daisy chained stuff is not appropriate for a UPS. Having a UPS is all about uptime... otherwise, buy a surge strip. Noone in their right mind would waste a single mah on speakers, a scanner, or anything else that isn't mission critical. - Things break, supplies fail. Daisies will screw you when this happens. - Things get replaced. Again, daisies will screw you when you wish to remove something... everything downstream goes away, with it. - Daisies aren't the be-all you think they are... probably because you haven't had to deal with one over the long term. Yet. Remember thinnet (ethernet over a coax bus)? Yep, daisies are great if everything is located in a nice straight line. Move something after the fact, though, and it's a rats nest. Place something off by itself, and it's a rats nest. In fact, anything that involves a change in cable length is a rats nest. And you can't break the bus, else you'll dump the entire segment. Then one day, "Star Lan" came of age. Daisied networks immediately bit the dust. And "daisied anything" went with it, and we rejoiced.
Can some things be daisied?
Yes, certainly. I'd daisy a low-power monitor off a PC... but NOT the other way around. Monitors blow up; they need to be swapped without dumping anything else. OTOH if the PC blows up, the monitor is moot. The same is more true with peripherals... the whole point of the USB fad is to facilitate adds, moves, and changes. But consider if you actually daisy these devices off of each other, and... buh-bye uptime.
> Compared to the typical PC, where each part appears to have been designed without any consideration to how it will fit within the whole. People should stop buying commodity junk? When you buy stuff that's oriented toward a moron who'd buy an iPod, you get something that the iPod market would buy. Otherwise, I'm not sure what you mean by "typical PC"... none of mine, anywhere, suffer this issue. Not the desktops, not the towers, not the 1Us, not the 2Us, not the 6Us or 8Us. Of course, it helps that I have a plan for the internal layout before I buy something, I guess... but I don't own an iPod, either.
There's three philosphies with PC guts - 1. iPod junk. The buyer wants to feel good about a box that has a great appearance. They've no clue about anything else. Companies that market to these people intend to protect their margins by spending money on outside appearance, and shaving costs in the guts. 2. Uptime / Heat management. This group's primary concern is airflow / etc, to preserve the longevity and availability of the device. They honestly do not care how it looks, nor what cables are needed - so long as it works. That's not completely true, though... I'll not buy a box that only has one power cable. I demand at least a 2+1, and prefer 3. Same with any other single point of failure that can be eliminated. 3. Dev Boxes. It's all about real estate and slot counts. It's all about stuffing 8 or 10 fullsized cards into it (with daughterboards), and still being able to manage what happens inside of it when things go wrong. They likewise do not care about anything else, so long as they can cram stuff into it and have it continue to work. They do not care about cables, at all, because *noone* can predict what cables will be plugged into it, and these cables will be hand-made, on-site, anyway. Well, except for power... we can predict *that*. And we've already discovered that a single power cord is
The challenge to this is that it is impossible to determine if an open wifi is "restricted" or not. With zero challenges on the way in, how should I differentiate the two?
We need to remember a basic tenet of the 'net - in the old days, things were hard. People didn't accidentally write, then install, then setup a ftp|web service on the internet. And they didn't accidentally copy a pile of private files to it. No, in the old days... making this junk work took a small amount of talent. If something was "public", it was intended to be... because the person who offered it had to sacrifice his first-born to make it work that way.
The early days of wifi weren't much different - we all remember the plethora of posts here, about those few whackos in corner apartments in big metro areas, going VERY FAR out of their way to get walk-by traffic.
Now, with morons who cannot read the setup-cartoon on the top of the box that a unit comes in... suddenly that exact same setup is "invasion", yet the moron has excercised NO "due care" in indicating it. And despite this complete lack of effort, the moron insists that they have been wronged... that someone "trampled into" their network.
Imagine if the rest of this network functioned that way... wanna use google? Or, visit some.com? Did you get written permission first? You cannot get permission from the site itself in your browser, because that'd mean... you guessed it, you just "stole" a page from a private system illegally. Clearly, the default intent for any unchallenged access must be "allowed". After all, if everyone IS allowed to access it, then clearly someone intended that to be true. We MUST assume the host provider is Competent.
Otherwise, this network becomes a Notwork, very quickly.
Actually, I thought Cisco's business model is to sell hardware for the purpose of extorting a monthly $20,000 training fee. You know, like Novell did back in the late '80s.
Some.big.com rents an OC12 from a provider. Some.big.com is Provider's FIRST customer! Provider provisions an OC12's worth of backbone to their border with SomeOtherProvider.
Then, I decide to rent a T1 from that Provider. They take a look at their backbone load, with their one existing customer... and see that it's only 60% utilized by him. Plenty of room to add me to it, and they do not need to "re-provision" anything.
Wash, rinse, repeat until their backbone is fully loaded... and welcome to today.
Tomorrow, Some.Big.Com unrolls a new video service. They're paying for an OC12 and are only using half of it, after all... goddamn if they aren't going to use the rest of it. Their new service get slashdotted and Dugg, and the visitors like what they see - they keep coming back. Bang - their OC12 is now at 98% utilization. Guess what happened to Provider's backbone? Yep... seriously overbooked. And Provider does NOT want to pay to re-provision either their internal backbone, nor their border, to what they AGREED to.
Wash, rinse, repeat with the OtherProvider that Some.Big.Com's Provider connects to.
THAT is what "non-neutral" networks are intended to facilitate, and that's it. It's about selling me a 10mb symmetric, and NOT having to provision the full 10megs that they are billing ME for. It's about playing "% utilization" games with ten 1.5Mb pipes to route them along a shared 5Mb backbone, instead of a shared 15Mb backbone. And it's about keeping it a 5Mb backbone no matter how much you overbook it.
"What, you actually want to USE the full amount of bandwidth that you're paying for? Oh, well... that'll cost extra."
Sorry for the random caps, but this topic pisses me off.:)
Great insight - but there's nothing to test... there are several other ways of bettering the conversion rate without the base temperature being 99deg. And, we wouldn't need to deal with a hose-line that is just below boiling.
1. Surface area via HPF. High Pressure Fog systems were all the rage a few decades ago, and also in the 1800s (wait long enough, everything comes around again, eh?). The conversion rates are dangerous if the application rate is not properly managed. Likewise, application is dangerous because fog doesn't travel; you physically need to be next to the hot spot. Not only does this expose the human to untenable radiative heat, but the resulting steam production will instantaneously boil any persperation in the shell of his gear, blowing it directly onto his skin underneath. HPF quickly lost appeal in manned application scenarios because humans are not compatible with it; any gear capable of protecting the user from the radiation and resulting steam bath was not and still is not capable of surviving the intense crawl from the front door to the fire room. It certainly will not survive it twice, and neither would the person wearing it after they collapse from heat exhaustion. HPF still has strong promise of making a return, however, because it is perfect for mitigating atmospheric threats (rollover / smoke explosions) without inverting the strata.
2. Surface area via aeration (Compressed Air Foam). CAF is a low pressure method of placing "bubbles" into the supression agent (water), consisting of a typical Class A foam agent and compressed air injected after the pump. The result is a very fine, uniform foam - like soggy shaving cream, pure surface area and little volume. It also sticks to things, as opposed to ending up on the floor. The surface area allows for an explosive conversion rate, and is dangerous (severe steam burns to the crew) if proper expansion paths are not created to route the steam flow away from the users during application. Application technique is further complicated by needing to close all vent paths after the application is complete. The Class A agent likewise acts as a sofactant, lowering surface tension and allowing penetration which is a huge advantage over HPF... HPF is useless on a burning couch, mattress, or hay bale for example. The stickiness allows it to be used as a heat-conduction insulator for protecting unburned regions, and an IR absorber for slowing flashover. If the compartment can be adequately sealed up, direct application to the heat source is not necessary; the agent can be applied anywhere that the smoke path / IR path will produce an adequate conversion. Unlike HPF or straight water with a TFT, CAF application is not effective at preventing smoke explosions / ignitions (rollover) in the thermal strata... so if one starts while you're under it, you're screwed. CAF is most effective when applied from outside the compartment just before flashover, or can be applied inside the compartment in a post-flashover environment. In short, the more heat and pressure inside the compartment... the better your performance will be. CAF is significantly less effective in open / well ventilated areas, but still beats the snot out of foam or water - with potential conversion rates up to 90+%, as opposed to 3 or 4% with water or foam. Typical kitchen fire with 1200F degrees at the ceiling: 800 gallons of water directly applied to the fire to suppress, 20 minutes for the ambient temperature to drop to 200 degrees. Same fire with CAF: 80 gallons applied to the ceiling (ABOVE the fire, not ON the fire) by users outside the structure. Temp drops to 250 degrees in 45 seconds. After vents are created for the steam to exit, temp drops to 200 in another 7 minutes.
So, while near-boiling water may add a few points of efficiency to the conversion, it's kinda moot... we've got the efficiency for those cases we can use it. If victims are involved, for example, we cannot use it. We also cannot use it if we'll be sitting the the resulting steam path.
Go back a bunch of decades, to the "High Pressure Fog" days. Lots of engines produced that pressure, and they used 1" boosters.
Also, remember that this is a Euro invention. Think it's gonna have a smoothbore? A TFT?
Nope... it'll be HPF with a 1". Europeans have been begging for a way to bring back HPF for almost a decade... and this might just be a viable way to do it. Expensive as hell, but viable.
Actually, we want low pressure and tight stream... but depending on the tip, higher pressures are needed for proper function.
Presently, there's two popular tip-types - the TFT (taskforce tip) which has an adjustable "spray" pattern, and the smoothbore, which is actually not a tip at all. It's just a pipe.
Arguments over which is better have raged on, forever. In either case, though, the goal is to get gallonage onto the heat source. The theory of water as an extinguising agent is fairly simple - we want to stop the chemical reaction by eliminating Heat from the equation. Water is ideal - to raise 1 gram of water 1 degree celcius, it takes 1 calorie. Great! I've got a fire producing 2000 calories of heat per second. That's gonna take a lot of water to mitigate.
But, there's a trick - we don't want water. We want STEAM. Water needs 1 calorie for that 1 degree, all the way up to 99 degrees. But... to get from 99 to 100 takes... wait for it... 1400 calories. That is a LOT of heat.
Water doesn't put fires out. Water converting to steam does. That ONE degree shift is what fights the fire. Any water that ends up on the floor is a waste of time.
The TFT theory is based on surface area; a bunch of droplets will have more exposed surface area than a cylinder ("straight stream") of water, hence will evaporate faster / have a higher conversion rate.
The smoothbore argument is based on penetration; with a solid ("straight") stream, you know the water is impacting the hot surface pretty hard with some depth of penetration. Since that water will be trapped, its only way "out" is to convert. It has the added advantage of being able to blow holes through things that are in the way... walls, furniture, whatever. Smoothbores are obviously popular with urban companies, like FDNY for example.
The tight-spray actually isn't that relevent to distance; it's all about NOT screwing up the thermal strata in the room. A smoothbore is ideal for a cooker, since there is almost no drag and (therefore) no venturi effect. A TFT, with all of its droplets, has a lot more cross section - but these droplets create a big venturi as they travel through space. The resulting turbulance can suck the hot stuff above into the cool stuff where we are. That's the argument in the US, anyway. The Europeans see it a completely different way... but their building construction is completely different, also.
Hey, if they can make a deuce-and-a-half that can get itself up 3 or 4 flights of stairs... I'm all for it. If they can make this thing go *down* a flight of stairs into a basement... I'm all for it.
There's just a couple of caveats, however -
1. Typical hose lengths on an engine (in the US, at least) are 150', 200', and 400', made up of either 50' or 100' segments. There's no way in hell the entire length of hose will contain a "snake" exoskel as someone had suggested... meaning you'd probably have several snakes separated by "normal" hose lengths. This stuff needs to fit on the truck, somewhere... and a mere human needs to deploy it WITHOUT a Genie-lift.
2. The unit only operates when the line is charged. As Mikey said, that means the entire length of the line is rigid; typical fire streams run at +60 psi (plus additional for friction loss and altitude) for a smoothbore, or up to 160 for a "taskforce" (fog) style tip. Such pressures are not condusive to bending. Combined with having a coupling every 50' along the length of the hose, which invariably get snagged on every corner or edge they find... the idea of this device pulling the hose behind it has some serious challenges.
3. Speaking of bending, it'd be interesting to see how this device would be stored on the truck. A flat-load is probably out of the question... and space on a truck is typically at a premium. I assume the "snake" would retain it's circular cross-section, compared with a typical hose which squashes flat.
4. Somewhere, there was mention of a camera at the head of the unit. Since your typical CCD is useless in a smoke condition... your starting price for vision is $13k for a bolometer, and that's just the sensor. By the time you've added everything else needed for vision, including the "Motorola Floating Decimal Point", remote-vision will probably top $25k, easily. (And yes, I'm pulling numbers out of my butt. However, your typical bolometer-based TIC will run about $16k-$23k for a hand-held unit, and those are mass-produced. Remove the production volume, separate the sensor from the display by 200', realize that "wireless" is not an option, invent a cabling system that'll withstand 1000+ deg...) I don't see anyone who could afford to run this thing via remote vision.
5. I *WILL* disagree with Mikey on the Noz-Reaction argument. He's right, but sadly he lives in TFT-land:
5a. Water weighs 8lbs per gallon; whatever your reaction force is, you need merely have adequate water-weight in the hose on the ground, behind you. (Yes, that description was awful). I weigh 130lbs soaking wet, and can solo a deuce and a half at 170psi with a TFT. Don't ask me to move it while it's flowing water, but once in position... I can solo it without any effort, and maintain control over a 30 degree arc. The trick is to have the line continue *straight* behind you for a few meters, such that the hose jacket takes the compression from the reaction force; meanwhile, residuals keep the jacket from kinking, and mass & ground friction prevent the hose from sliding backwards. It's not appropriate in many places (e.g. if a tight corner is involved), but it's effective in others. Barn fires and corridors, for example:)
5b. Pressure isn't volume, especially with a Thinker nob. Most thinkers intend 120lbs (or whatever) at the tip, and they clamp anything above that. Remind your guys that the typical Taskforce Tip has Thinker built into it, so the excess pressure is NOT increasing the GPM; you crank it up, the Thinker chokes it down at the bale. Most TFTs don't have a visible control for this device, but many Master devices do. Take a look at the deck gun on your engine - it probably has an adjustable GPM collar. So long as you meet the minimum pressure for the tip, it doesn't matter what pressure you dump into it - if you set the collar at 900 gpm, you'll GET 900 gpm. It won't matter if you're at 130psi or 250psi... you'll get 900gpm. Most TFTs contain this device (it's a selling point), but it's f
Absolutely. HP was viewed as a company who made stuff that supported think tanks. Today... mention HP and the associated phrases are "ink prices", "pedestrian junk", "walmart", and "grossly average". They've completely disavowed the $10,000 "brain" market, and are instead targeting the $10 "ipod user" market.
From a business perspective, they might not be wrong. Is it easier to find a guy with $10,000? Or find 1000 guys with $10?
I'd strongly disagree that "all parties must consent", specifically in this regard -
"..the person: (a) Wilfully intercepts, endeavors to intercept, or procures any other person to intercept or endeavor to intercept..."
There's a strong implication of being a 3rd person, here. You cannot "intercept" something that is intended for YOU... any more than I can steal my own personal property. The very concept of "intercept" denies 1st party intent.
If the above is the statute in question, someone is about to get sued.
Very good post, even so... thanks for the insight.
The answer is right in the panel's own words - "though relatively warm conditions persisted around the year 1000, followed by a "Little Ice Age" from about 1500 to 1850."
Actually, a key part of the debate is if WE are causing the climate change, AT ALL. Read it again, worded different... if we didn't exist, the climate change would STILL occur. Right NOW, exactly as it is ocurring.
There are two flavors of the extreme "global warming is BS" camp. The first states that we have no impact on "global warming". Half the camp believes it is, in fact, a precursor to an "Ice Age" and is NOT "warming". The other half believes that it is the tail end of an "Ice Age". There is nothing we can do to stop it, any more than there is something we could do to cause it. The second flavor, which typically has political vestings, denies that any climate change is happening no matter what.
The moderate "it's BS" camp believes that we have little impact on "global warming". You'll find varying opinions on if it is, in fact, a precursor to (or end stage of) an "Ice Age". Most will state that, if anything at all, our impact was to increase the change rate by a fraction of a fraction of a percent. They reference beetle studies from the English coast, and use phrases like "Atlantic Conveyor".
The moderate "dunno" camp doesn't know what to think. They've got morons on all sides who have strong financial interests, telling them that the other side is the problem. Moderate "dunno" people all have one thing in common - they all agree that there is an assload of money to be made by the (politically) extreme group that wins.
The moderate "it's real" camp believes that we have significant impact on "global warming". Some believe that it will LEAD to an "Ice Age" (as opposed to an upcoming/terminating ice-age CAUSING it); most think that Earth will end up like Venus.
The extreme "it's real" camp believes that we are the absolute cause of "global warming". The melting of the polar ice is a direct result of CO2 emissions etc, and has nothing to do with the Atlantic Conveyor / freshwater / IceAge cycle. Most of the extreme "It's real" camp has never heard of the Atlantic Conveyor, anyway, and some (right here on Slashdot, where else?) have attributed an increased Solar Flare activity to SUV emissions. The exception to this is extremists who are politically vested. The extremists who are vested... have economic interests. And exactly like the "No Climate change has happened" extremists, they will invent whatever data is required to win.
Operative word with both political extremists - "Invent". Take a look at the origins of the "hockey stick" for further detail, the data gathering reads like a Microsoft funded study of TCO. Also understand that both extremist camps have all the money.
The true argument, here, and the reason most "in the know" have avoided it... is that "global warming" has *nothing* to do with science. No fact in the world (regardless of which "side" it's on) can stand against an onslaught of political, completely unaccountable BS that is spread with an unlimited budget. It'd be suicide to speak in such an environment. If you need proof, consider that there are "sides" to this issue in the first place. The last time I checked, the only thing that mattered was "the truth"... and it doesn't have "sides". THAT is why you won't find a good scientific argument, either way... its buried in noise, with the author ducking for cover. Kind of like why you picked "I'm not disputing global warming" as a subject, then asked for facts to demonstrate it was real. You knew your question could easily devolve into a flame fest.
For what it's worth, the real reason we're still running on Oil is because noone owns the sun. Yet.
My wife's farm had 29 cats. Half were over the age of 12, and several were well past 15. The farm up the road from me has over 35 cats scattered throughout several barns. They aren't "dropping like flies" up there, either.
My two cats, as a kid, were indoor/outdoor. We put the first one down after she stroked out at 18. We put the 2nd one down when she was 20, after she broke her leg... from jumping off a shelf, *IN THE HOUSE*. Both spent 99% of the time either outside, or in the garage.
My wife's 4 cats, today, go in and out as they please. The oldest is 12; the youngest is 7. We had five, but one died two weeks ago... not from a car, not from antifreeze, and not from a dog. It died at 13 years old from heart congestion. If anything, "being an asshole who lets my cat out" probably kept him alive longer, from the exercise.
So, sorry... I call bullshit. Not everyone is dumb enough to live in a f*ing metro area, you arrogant ass. You sound like the type who would give up *everything* in order to stay "safe"... it's better to live forever in a cage than it is to be free if there's risk.
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Likewise, not to quibble... but not had *usable* symlinks and junctions? What are all those things in the directory & share structures I made that are nearing 8 years old? They gave a util to make them in the value-add, man! And then there's other places like sysint, assuming you don't roll your own (which is what most of us did anyway, while we were tweaking).
The point is... and I stress this, because it *is* this simplistic - "upgrade", to prematurely toss existing for the sake of something new. And, there is *nothing* new of value in Vista - it *enables* nothing. I'm sure it'll make a fine replacement as things are retired... but no upgrades, since there is no point. Again, name one thing of value that it enables, that isn't already handled by legacies. Your examples were certainly Golden Topics - but Vista does not enable them; all it does is consolidate... and the resulting consolidated featureset is *not* necessarily the "best of breed" that I'd choose. You mentioned a better TCP/IP stack in Vista, for example... remember the old days when TCP/IP wasn't bundled with Windows? You got to pick your favorite from a variety of sources. Now, it's included... and it is very difficult to justify *not* using it, by simple virtue of being bundled.
Consolidation is a very weak and double-edged value, methinks... and that's about all that Vista offers, more homogeneity of preexisting solutions. For upgrades, it's pointless.
Dip$%|*,
The topic is "upgrade".
Please note that there is a significant difference between the terms "upgrade" and "retire".
If a box has reached end-of-life, and you retire it from production for a new one... the process is not an "upgrade". It is a "retirement".
If a box is still in production, and you deliberately "replace" it before its intended end-of-life for the sake of enhancement, THAT is an "upgrade". For example, we UPGRADED several EGA monitors and video adaptors to take advantage of VGA, long ago. The EGA video was adequate, and the machines using them worked fine - and they were not due for retirement for another year or two. But, there was significant advantage in dumping EGA, and moving those machines up to VGA. THAT is an "upgrade". Meanwhile, other EGA machines were slated for retirement - and they were NOT upgraded. They were RETIRED. And the replacements had VGA cards and monitors. THAT is NOT an "upgrade"; that's just the normal churn of replacement.
So, get your facts straight. The topic is "Upgrade"; the deliberate tossing of one thing for another, for the sake of having that other.
# I'll just lump UAC, the more-secure IE7 running in protected mode, Mandatory Integrity Control, Session 0 isolation, BitLocker drive encryption, Address Space Layout Randomization,and, oh, a handful of other security features into this one little bullet point. Properly taken advantage of, these could deliver that $170k of ROI all by themselves, in the form of less 3rd-party security requirements, managment of same, and management of security incidents.
All of this is irrelevent or already covered by a competent and tested solution. You'd really retire tried and tested legacy "security measures" for brand new, immature, untested ones? No, the legacy layers stay intact for quite some time... long enough that they effectively never go away, because they stay until every other legacy piece goes away. And by then, Vista will be the thing we're upgrading *from*.
# Speech recognition that works. Not sure if you want a cube-farm full of blabbering knowledge workers, but hey. I can see some orgs using this to good advantage.
You have a new definition of "works". I do have a cube farm; not only does the fun SRE not work that well for realtime production usage, but it's several orders of magnitude slower than typing.
# IPV6, much better wireless support, saved network profiles.
Uh... I've got installs of NT4 with IP6. "Wireless support", again... last I checked, (a) who cares in a desktop world, and (b) "better" defined as "sucks less". Saved profiles? As opposed to the original prism drivers from a century ago?
# mklink -- create, modify and delete junctions, hard links, and symbolic links.
Are you new? We've had this since day 1 of NTFS!
# Completely re-written image-based installation will make deployment a lot easier. It'll also make it a snap to move an employee from old computer to new computer, preserving all apps and settings without extra frobbing by IT staff (or the user!)
That will be a nice feature; too bad it goes against deployment costs, which are only required AFTER the deployment is justified. "We need to upgrade to Vista, because we'll save money by the method of deployment! In fact, if we deploy enough copies... we'll actually turn a profit! We can setup an automated batch job to repeatedly deploy Vista to a single machine, over and over, and make a fortune off the money we save!" My wife uses that same argument about buying junk we don't need that's "on sale". Bzzzt... and then there's Ghost.
As for legacy app migration, aside from most of this already being handled by conditional GPOs and things like X-Setup, such migration will only work as well as the legacy software's copyprotection allows. In other words, it won't... massive frobs will still be required, and in fact existing 2k/xp kludges will need to be redesigned because we're now on... Vista. (This last part doesn't really matter, though; the kludges would eventually need adaptation anyway, once Vista is deployed as a replacement... but we're not talking replacement, we're talking upgrade. Very, very, big difference.)
# Deadlock detection should remove most hang conditions. User-mode drivers should also be worthwhile in this respect.
How that applies to our devices remains to be seen; most users never encounter such deadlocks, unless something got fudged. And if that's the case, then they have bigger issues. Then there's the whole FUD surrounding the signed driver/module/whatever issue, which has yet to be de-FUDded to anyone's satisfaction.
# New task manager can perform specific actions in response to system events, or even multiple triggers.
If you're talking about what I think you are, again... we've had this since NT4. Just not from MS.
# Restart Manager should make most reboots a thing of the past.
Our only major outages seem to mysteriously occur on the 2nd Tuesday of each month, even with 2K3R2... our uptime is actually worse than we had when the backline was NTS4. Will those "mysterious outages" be going away? No?
# Service
> I would say the TCP/IP improvements,
No value; existing network is tuned as good as it gets.
> productivity gains from improved UI,
I've yet to meet one SINGLE user who spends *ANY* time in the OS UI. Result: 0. Users spend time in app-land, not the desktop. And again, a new improved "open/save" common-dialogue doesn't cut it. On a good day, a fancy new dialog might change an 8 second process... to a 7 second process. It'll be years before we see our $60 at that rate; you're also ignoring the cash required to pay me to roll this stuff out, which is one hell of a lot more than $60 a shot.
> the revamped security model,
Again, not relevent - it does not allow for the relaxation of any legacy tactics... at the end of the day, it's just more eye-candy that accomplishes nothing, just another layer of complexity that must be managed yet provides no value. "Revamped"... you mean, "not yet debugged". You know, like WMTimer priv escallation design flaw stuff.
> and the general reliability improvements you'll get from Vista
Sorry to take exception to this one, rofl... that would be a negative value. We're already at a 2-nine uptime (if we *ignore* black tuesday) with XP and 2K; any "crashes" are generally a result of bad behavior in userland, which has no bearing on the OS. You're asking us to start back at square-one, and you're retroactively giving credit to the stability of WVSP6a before we've even hit SP1, yet. Sorry, but "reliability improvements" are long, long ways away.
So, you gave it a good amateur try... but I'm still waiting for an actual reason that puts money on the table, which includes User's Time.
Ah!
So, perhaps you can name a SINGLE "useful new feature" that is worth $170k in new desktops across my enterprise. And when I say "useful", I mean it'll earn that $170k BACK somehow.
Please, name one. And, "Solitare 2007" doesn't cut it.
Besides, the "African Wikipedia" is actually the exact same thing as the "current" one, except that ALL TEXT IS UPPPER CASE AND ALL USERNAMES BEGIN WITH "BARRISTER_".
It should read,
"See the universe, meet interesting people, and clean them to death."
After all, how did "Nomad" happen?
First, great points and concepts.
Second, a couple of answers -
> None of the devices provides a means to daisy-chain nearby devices.
They used to - the typical AT supply had an in and an out - and various TTL monitors had a plug that'd fit.
That went out of favor with EGA, as people ran into issues with brownouts when they turned on the tube.
Today, it's a different issue altogether.
- No enterprise on the planet runs all of its stuff off the same rail. They distribute things across several circuits. The best power supplies will span several circuits.
- Daisy chained stuff is not appropriate for a UPS. Having a UPS is all about uptime... otherwise, buy a surge strip. Noone in their right mind would waste a single mah on speakers, a scanner, or anything else that isn't mission critical.
- Things break, supplies fail. Daisies will screw you when this happens.
- Things get replaced. Again, daisies will screw you when you wish to remove something... everything downstream goes away, with it.
- Daisies aren't the be-all you think they are... probably because you haven't had to deal with one over the long term. Yet. Remember thinnet (ethernet over a coax bus)? Yep, daisies are great if everything is located in a nice straight line. Move something after the fact, though, and it's a rats nest. Place something off by itself, and it's a rats nest. In fact, anything that involves a change in cable length is a rats nest. And you can't break the bus, else you'll dump the entire segment. Then one day, "Star Lan" came of age. Daisied networks immediately bit the dust. And "daisied anything" went with it, and we rejoiced.
Can some things be daisied?
Yes, certainly. I'd daisy a low-power monitor off a PC... but NOT the other way around. Monitors blow up; they need to be swapped without dumping anything else. OTOH if the PC blows up, the monitor is moot. The same is more true with peripherals... the whole point of the USB fad is to facilitate adds, moves, and changes. But consider if you actually daisy these devices off of each other, and... buh-bye uptime.
> Compared to the typical PC, where each part appears to have been designed without any consideration to how it will fit within the whole.
People should stop buying commodity junk? When you buy stuff that's oriented toward a moron who'd buy an iPod, you get something that the iPod market would buy. Otherwise, I'm not sure what you mean by "typical PC"... none of mine, anywhere, suffer this issue. Not the desktops, not the towers, not the 1Us, not the 2Us, not the 6Us or 8Us. Of course, it helps that I have a plan for the internal layout before I buy something, I guess... but I don't own an iPod, either.
There's three philosphies with PC guts -
1. iPod junk. The buyer wants to feel good about a box that has a great appearance. They've no clue about anything else. Companies that market to these people intend to protect their margins by spending money on outside appearance, and shaving costs in the guts.
2. Uptime / Heat management. This group's primary concern is airflow / etc, to preserve the longevity and availability of the device. They honestly do not care how it looks, nor what cables are needed - so long as it works. That's not completely true, though... I'll not buy a box that only has one power cable. I demand at least a 2+1, and prefer 3. Same with any other single point of failure that can be eliminated.
3. Dev Boxes. It's all about real estate and slot counts. It's all about stuffing 8 or 10 fullsized cards into it (with daughterboards), and still being able to manage what happens inside of it when things go wrong. They likewise do not care about anything else, so long as they can cram stuff into it and have it continue to work. They do not care about cables, at all, because *noone* can predict what cables will be plugged into it, and these cables will be hand-made, on-site, anyway. Well, except for power... we can predict *that*. And we've already discovered that a single power cord is
Screw all you "Wireless Electricity" people.
We need to upgrade DIGITAL electricity! Get rid of this old, Analog electricity-crap we're stuck with!
... let it leak that Al Queda is planning to exploit these flaws. Then run for cover.
The challenge to this is that it is impossible to determine if an open wifi is "restricted" or not. With zero challenges on the way in, how should I differentiate the two?
We need to remember a basic tenet of the 'net - in the old days, things were hard. People didn't accidentally write, then install, then setup a ftp|web service on the internet. And they didn't accidentally copy a pile of private files to it. No, in the old days... making this junk work took a small amount of talent. If something was "public", it was intended to be... because the person who offered it had to sacrifice his first-born to make it work that way.
The early days of wifi weren't much different - we all remember the plethora of posts here, about those few whackos in corner apartments in big metro areas, going VERY FAR out of their way to get walk-by traffic.
Now, with morons who cannot read the setup-cartoon on the top of the box that a unit comes in... suddenly that exact same setup is "invasion", yet the moron has excercised NO "due care" in indicating it. And despite this complete lack of effort, the moron insists that they have been wronged... that someone "trampled into" their network.
Imagine if the rest of this network functioned that way... wanna use google? Or, visit some.com? Did you get written permission first? You cannot get permission from the site itself in your browser, because that'd mean... you guessed it, you just "stole" a page from a private system illegally. Clearly, the default intent for any unchallenged access must be "allowed". After all, if everyone IS allowed to access it, then clearly someone intended that to be true. We MUST assume the host provider is Competent.
Otherwise, this network becomes a Notwork, very quickly.
Actually, I thought Cisco's business model is to sell hardware for the purpose of extorting a monthly $20,000 training fee. You know, like Novell did back in the late '80s.
And what's worse, everyone is missing the boat.
:)
Some.big.com rents an OC12 from a provider. Some.big.com is Provider's FIRST customer! Provider provisions an OC12's worth of backbone to their border with SomeOtherProvider.
Then, I decide to rent a T1 from that Provider. They take a look at their backbone load, with their one existing customer... and see that it's only 60% utilized by him. Plenty of room to add me to it, and they do not need to "re-provision" anything.
Wash, rinse, repeat until their backbone is fully loaded... and welcome to today.
Tomorrow, Some.Big.Com unrolls a new video service. They're paying for an OC12 and are only using half of it, after all... goddamn if they aren't going to use the rest of it. Their new service get slashdotted and Dugg, and the visitors like what they see - they keep coming back. Bang - their OC12 is now at 98% utilization. Guess what happened to Provider's backbone? Yep... seriously overbooked. And Provider does NOT want to pay to re-provision either their internal backbone, nor their border, to what they AGREED to.
Wash, rinse, repeat with the OtherProvider that Some.Big.Com's Provider connects to.
THAT is what "non-neutral" networks are intended to facilitate, and that's it. It's about selling me a 10mb symmetric, and NOT having to provision the full 10megs that they are billing ME for. It's about playing "% utilization" games with ten 1.5Mb pipes to route them along a shared 5Mb backbone, instead of a shared 15Mb backbone. And it's about keeping it a 5Mb backbone no matter how much you overbook it.
"What, you actually want to USE the full amount of bandwidth that you're paying for? Oh, well... that'll cost extra."
Sorry for the random caps, but this topic pisses me off.
Great insight - but there's nothing to test... there are several other ways of bettering the conversion rate without the base temperature being 99deg. And, we wouldn't need to deal with a hose-line that is just below boiling.
1. Surface area via HPF. High Pressure Fog systems were all the rage a few decades ago, and also in the 1800s (wait long enough, everything comes around again, eh?). The conversion rates are dangerous if the application rate is not properly managed. Likewise, application is dangerous because fog doesn't travel; you physically need to be next to the hot spot. Not only does this expose the human to untenable radiative heat, but the resulting steam production will instantaneously boil any persperation in the shell of his gear, blowing it directly onto his skin underneath. HPF quickly lost appeal in manned application scenarios because humans are not compatible with it; any gear capable of protecting the user from the radiation and resulting steam bath was not and still is not capable of surviving the intense crawl from the front door to the fire room. It certainly will not survive it twice, and neither would the person wearing it after they collapse from heat exhaustion. HPF still has strong promise of making a return, however, because it is perfect for mitigating atmospheric threats (rollover / smoke explosions) without inverting the strata.
2. Surface area via aeration (Compressed Air Foam). CAF is a low pressure method of placing "bubbles" into the supression agent (water), consisting of a typical Class A foam agent and compressed air injected after the pump. The result is a very fine, uniform foam - like soggy shaving cream, pure surface area and little volume. It also sticks to things, as opposed to ending up on the floor. The surface area allows for an explosive conversion rate, and is dangerous (severe steam burns to the crew) if proper expansion paths are not created to route the steam flow away from the users during application. Application technique is further complicated by needing to close all vent paths after the application is complete. The Class A agent likewise acts as a sofactant, lowering surface tension and allowing penetration which is a huge advantage over HPF... HPF is useless on a burning couch, mattress, or hay bale for example. The stickiness allows it to be used as a heat-conduction insulator for protecting unburned regions, and an IR absorber for slowing flashover. If the compartment can be adequately sealed up, direct application to the heat source is not necessary; the agent can be applied anywhere that the smoke path / IR path will produce an adequate conversion. Unlike HPF or straight water with a TFT, CAF application is not effective at preventing smoke explosions / ignitions (rollover) in the thermal strata... so if one starts while you're under it, you're screwed. CAF is most effective when applied from outside the compartment just before flashover, or can be applied inside the compartment in a post-flashover environment. In short, the more heat and pressure inside the compartment... the better your performance will be. CAF is significantly less effective in open / well ventilated areas, but still beats the snot out of foam or water - with potential conversion rates up to 90+%, as opposed to 3 or 4% with water or foam. Typical kitchen fire with 1200F degrees at the ceiling: 800 gallons of water directly applied to the fire to suppress, 20 minutes for the ambient temperature to drop to 200 degrees. Same fire with CAF: 80 gallons applied to the ceiling (ABOVE the fire, not ON the fire) by users outside the structure. Temp drops to 250 degrees in 45 seconds. After vents are created for the steam to exit, temp drops to 200 in another 7 minutes.
So, while near-boiling water may add a few points of efficiency to the conversion, it's kinda moot... we've got the efficiency for those cases we can use it. If victims are involved, for example, we cannot use it. We also cannot use it if we'll be sitting the the resulting steam path.
Go back a bunch of decades, to the "High Pressure Fog" days. Lots of engines produced that pressure, and they used 1" boosters.
Also, remember that this is a Euro invention. Think it's gonna have a smoothbore? A TFT?
Nope... it'll be HPF with a 1". Europeans have been begging for a way to bring back HPF for almost a decade... and this might just be a viable way to do it. Expensive as hell, but viable.
Actually, we want low pressure and tight stream... but depending on the tip, higher pressures are needed for proper function.
Presently, there's two popular tip-types - the TFT (taskforce tip) which has an adjustable "spray" pattern, and the smoothbore, which is actually not a tip at all. It's just a pipe.
Arguments over which is better have raged on, forever. In either case, though, the goal is to get gallonage onto the heat source. The theory of water as an extinguising agent is fairly simple - we want to stop the chemical reaction by eliminating Heat from the equation. Water is ideal - to raise 1 gram of water 1 degree celcius, it takes 1 calorie. Great! I've got a fire producing 2000 calories of heat per second. That's gonna take a lot of water to mitigate.
But, there's a trick - we don't want water. We want STEAM. Water needs 1 calorie for that 1 degree, all the way up to 99 degrees. But... to get from 99 to 100 takes... wait for it... 1400 calories. That is a LOT of heat.
Water doesn't put fires out. Water converting to steam does. That ONE degree shift is what fights the fire. Any water that ends up on the floor is a waste of time.
The TFT theory is based on surface area; a bunch of droplets will have more exposed surface area than a cylinder ("straight stream") of water, hence will evaporate faster / have a higher conversion rate.
The smoothbore argument is based on penetration; with a solid ("straight") stream, you know the water is impacting the hot surface pretty hard with some depth of penetration. Since that water will be trapped, its only way "out" is to convert. It has the added advantage of being able to blow holes through things that are in the way... walls, furniture, whatever. Smoothbores are obviously popular with urban companies, like FDNY for example.
The tight-spray actually isn't that relevent to distance; it's all about NOT screwing up the thermal strata in the room. A smoothbore is ideal for a cooker, since there is almost no drag and (therefore) no venturi effect. A TFT, with all of its droplets, has a lot more cross section - but these droplets create a big venturi as they travel through space. The resulting turbulance can suck the hot stuff above into the cool stuff where we are. That's the argument in the US, anyway. The Europeans see it a completely different way... but their building construction is completely different, also.
Hey, if they can make a deuce-and-a-half that can get itself up 3 or 4 flights of stairs... I'm all for it. If they can make this thing go *down* a flight of stairs into a basement... I'm all for it.
:)
There's just a couple of caveats, however -
1. Typical hose lengths on an engine (in the US, at least) are 150', 200', and 400', made up of either 50' or 100' segments. There's no way in hell the entire length of hose will contain a "snake" exoskel as someone had suggested... meaning you'd probably have several snakes separated by "normal" hose lengths. This stuff needs to fit on the truck, somewhere... and a mere human needs to deploy it WITHOUT a Genie-lift.
2. The unit only operates when the line is charged. As Mikey said, that means the entire length of the line is rigid; typical fire streams run at +60 psi (plus additional for friction loss and altitude) for a smoothbore, or up to 160 for a "taskforce" (fog) style tip. Such pressures are not condusive to bending. Combined with having a coupling every 50' along the length of the hose, which invariably get snagged on every corner or edge they find... the idea of this device pulling the hose behind it has some serious challenges.
3. Speaking of bending, it'd be interesting to see how this device would be stored on the truck. A flat-load is probably out of the question... and space on a truck is typically at a premium. I assume the "snake" would retain it's circular cross-section, compared with a typical hose which squashes flat.
4. Somewhere, there was mention of a camera at the head of the unit. Since your typical CCD is useless in a smoke condition... your starting price for vision is $13k for a bolometer, and that's just the sensor. By the time you've added everything else needed for vision, including the "Motorola Floating Decimal Point", remote-vision will probably top $25k, easily. (And yes, I'm pulling numbers out of my butt. However, your typical bolometer-based TIC will run about $16k-$23k for a hand-held unit, and those are mass-produced. Remove the production volume, separate the sensor from the display by 200', realize that "wireless" is not an option, invent a cabling system that'll withstand 1000+ deg...) I don't see anyone who could afford to run this thing via remote vision.
5. I *WILL* disagree with Mikey on the Noz-Reaction argument. He's right, but sadly he lives in TFT-land:
5a. Water weighs 8lbs per gallon; whatever your reaction force is, you need merely have adequate water-weight in the hose on the ground, behind you. (Yes, that description was awful). I weigh 130lbs soaking wet, and can solo a deuce and a half at 170psi with a TFT. Don't ask me to move it while it's flowing water, but once in position... I can solo it without any effort, and maintain control over a 30 degree arc. The trick is to have the line continue *straight* behind you for a few meters, such that the hose jacket takes the compression from the reaction force; meanwhile, residuals keep the jacket from kinking, and mass & ground friction prevent the hose from sliding backwards. It's not appropriate in many places (e.g. if a tight corner is involved), but it's effective in others. Barn fires and corridors, for example
5b. Pressure isn't volume, especially with a Thinker nob. Most thinkers intend 120lbs (or whatever) at the tip, and they clamp anything above that. Remind your guys that the typical Taskforce Tip has Thinker built into it, so the excess pressure is NOT increasing the GPM; you crank it up, the Thinker chokes it down at the bale. Most TFTs don't have a visible control for this device, but many Master devices do. Take a look at the deck gun on your engine - it probably has an adjustable GPM collar. So long as you meet the minimum pressure for the tip, it doesn't matter what pressure you dump into it - if you set the collar at 900 gpm, you'll GET 900 gpm. It won't matter if you're at 130psi or 250psi... you'll get 900gpm. Most TFTs contain this device (it's a selling point), but it's f
Absolutely. HP was viewed as a company who made stuff that supported think tanks. Today... mention HP and the associated phrases are "ink prices", "pedestrian junk", "walmart", and "grossly average". They've completely disavowed the $10,000 "brain" market, and are instead targeting the $10 "ipod user" market.
From a business perspective, they might not be wrong. Is it easier to find a guy with $10,000? Or find 1000 guys with $10?
Still, HP is dead, and has no reputation left.
I'd strongly disagree that "all parties must consent", specifically in this regard -
"..the person: (a) Wilfully intercepts, endeavors to intercept, or procures any other person to intercept or endeavor to intercept..."
There's a strong implication of being a 3rd person, here. You cannot "intercept" something that is intended for YOU... any more than I can steal my own personal property. The very concept of "intercept" denies 1st party intent.
If the above is the statute in question, someone is about to get sued.
Very good post, even so... thanks for the insight.
...with putting the power lines underground is that the phone poles are so tall, it is a total pain to auger deep enough to bury them.
To those people who say "Nothing to hide, nothing to fear"... the response is simple:
"Nothing to hide, no reason to look."
Period.
> ...what made it so hot 400 years ago?
The answer is right in the panel's own words -
"though relatively warm conditions persisted around the year 1000, followed by a "Little Ice Age" from about 1500 to 1850."
2006 - 400 = 1606.
Actually, a key part of the debate is if WE are causing the climate change, AT ALL. Read it again, worded different... if we didn't exist, the climate change would STILL occur. Right NOW, exactly as it is ocurring.
There are two flavors of the extreme "global warming is BS" camp. The first states that we have no impact on "global warming". Half the camp believes it is, in fact, a precursor to an "Ice Age" and is NOT "warming". The other half believes that it is the tail end of an "Ice Age". There is nothing we can do to stop it, any more than there is something we could do to cause it. The second flavor, which typically has political vestings, denies that any climate change is happening no matter what.
The moderate "it's BS" camp believes that we have little impact on "global warming". You'll find varying opinions on if it is, in fact, a precursor to (or end stage of) an "Ice Age". Most will state that, if anything at all, our impact was to increase the change rate by a fraction of a fraction of a percent. They reference beetle studies from the English coast, and use phrases like "Atlantic Conveyor".
The moderate "dunno" camp doesn't know what to think. They've got morons on all sides who have strong financial interests, telling them that the other side is the problem. Moderate "dunno" people all have one thing in common - they all agree that there is an assload of money to be made by the (politically) extreme group that wins.
The moderate "it's real" camp believes that we have significant impact on "global warming". Some believe that it will LEAD to an "Ice Age" (as opposed to an upcoming/terminating ice-age CAUSING it); most think that Earth will end up like Venus.
The extreme "it's real" camp believes that we are the absolute cause of "global warming". The melting of the polar ice is a direct result of CO2 emissions etc, and has nothing to do with the Atlantic Conveyor / freshwater / IceAge cycle. Most of the extreme "It's real" camp has never heard of the Atlantic Conveyor, anyway, and some (right here on Slashdot, where else?) have attributed an increased Solar Flare activity to SUV emissions. The exception to this is extremists who are politically vested. The extremists who are vested... have economic interests. And exactly like the "No Climate change has happened" extremists, they will invent whatever data is required to win.
Operative word with both political extremists - "Invent". Take a look at the origins of the "hockey stick" for further detail, the data gathering reads like a Microsoft funded study of TCO. Also understand that both extremist camps have all the money.
The true argument, here, and the reason most "in the know" have avoided it... is that "global warming" has *nothing* to do with science. No fact in the world (regardless of which "side" it's on) can stand against an onslaught of political, completely unaccountable BS that is spread with an unlimited budget. It'd be suicide to speak in such an environment. If you need proof, consider that there are "sides" to this issue in the first place. The last time I checked, the only thing that mattered was "the truth"... and it doesn't have "sides". THAT is why you won't find a good scientific argument, either way... its buried in noise, with the author ducking for cover. Kind of like why you picked "I'm not disputing global warming" as a subject, then asked for facts to demonstrate it was real. You knew your question could easily devolve into a flame fest.
For what it's worth, the real reason we're still running on Oil is because noone owns the sun. Yet.
Have a good one,
Actually, this topic is a spillover from the "OMG PONIES! LOLOL" topic that was so popular.
"Assholes"?
My wife's farm had 29 cats. Half were over the age of 12, and several were well past 15. The farm up the road from me has over 35 cats scattered throughout several barns. They aren't "dropping like flies" up there, either.
My two cats, as a kid, were indoor/outdoor. We put the first one down after she stroked out at 18. We put the 2nd one down when she was 20, after she broke her leg... from jumping off a shelf, *IN THE HOUSE*. Both spent 99% of the time either outside, or in the garage.
My wife's 4 cats, today, go in and out as they please. The oldest is 12; the youngest is 7. We had five, but one died two weeks ago... not from a car, not from antifreeze, and not from a dog. It died at 13 years old from heart congestion. If anything, "being an asshole who lets my cat out" probably kept him alive longer, from the exercise.
So, sorry... I call bullshit. Not everyone is dumb enough to live in a f*ing metro area, you arrogant ass. You sound like the type who would give up *everything* in order to stay "safe"... it's better to live forever in a cage than it is to be free if there's risk.