The Earth's crust is estimated to contain over 30 trillion tonnes of Uranium. To date we've mined 2 million tonnes of this.
As for your anti-consumption/anti-profit message... what's wrong with consumption, provided we find clean ways to consume? I find it interesting that you see "industry" as a cohesive group with a clear agenda.
What "plenty of" other strategies are there for clean energy on earth? (Please don't say wind... do the math. it doesn't work.)
Disclaimer: I own stock in the world's largest uranium mining company.
It has been stated that the world will run out of uranium in 50 years, or variations thereof. The problem with this statement is you have to ignore a lot of facts to come up with it. This statement assumes that the uranium deposits currently being mined are all that there is. The fact is, we're currently sitting on at least 50 years worth, and there is no real reason to start mining new deposits at this time. As these deposits get depleted, and as (if) the market price of uranium rises, more exploration will be done, and more deposits will be mined. If the price rises high enough, it becomes feasable to "mine" the uranium dissolved in the oceans. If it rises even higher, it becomes feasable to produce it in breeder reactors. In short, the world is _not_ running out of uranium. Second, the "50 year" statement assumes that we will not improve our reactor technology. In north america, we're still running 30+ year old reactors that only remove 5% of the available energy in the uranium. The "waste" that comes out of these reactors can be processed and put through again, or can be used in newer designs to extract more energy from the same uranium. So, ignoring the idea of finding new reserves to mine, if we improve our efficiency to even 50%, we'll now have 500 years worth. (of course, now _I'm_ ignoring the inevitable fact that we will consume more than our current rate over the next 500 years.)
Well, we can thank him for this much. Next time any of us is in a situation where we're dancing around playing "air lightsaber" (or even just air guitar), at least we can safely scratch "videotape it" off the list of "right things to do".
If only that worked... My roommate wanted to borrow my video camera to tape himself playing DDR so he could post it on the net. I tried to dissuade him, reminding him about Star Wars Boy, but he insisted.
Also, the point you make raises one of the problems I have with mainstream religion; it's that it often devalues humanity and life (this life)
Excuse me?!? What groups are largely behind the anti-abortion movement? (Read: trying to protect unborn life) What groups are largely against euthanasia? What groups would rather that children be taught that they were designed by a loving god rather than merely some cosmic accident? What groups are devoted to helping prisoners and their families? ( http://www.pfm.org/ ) How about helping drug addicts? ( http://www.tcfarm.org/ ) How about helping hurricane victims? ( http://www.mds.mennonite.net/ ) How about helping orphans in abject poverty? ( http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/1979/teresa- bio.html ) Let's go back a few years... what groups were largely behind the abolition of slavery in the UK in the 1800s? ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Wilberforce )
"Mainstream religion" is far from a homogonous group. However, I don't see devaluation of humanity and life as a common trait. I see quite the opposite... It's largely the liberal athiest crowd that promotes abortion and euthanasia and teaches that I'm nothing more than a slightly evolved ape.
> I never broke the law by loaning it to him (only 1 copy in circulation at once)
You'd better re-read that little warning that shows at the start of most movies... You are not licensed to loan that movie. Movie rental stores have to pay big bucks to buy copies that _are_ licensed for rental/loan. I'm not sure how the library here avoids that, as their copies have the "no loan" clause.
That might be fine for the more computer literate user, but... giving a clueless user the option to clean, delete, quarantine, or ignore is a recipe for disaster. Trust me. Yes, from experience.
Where did this "millions of new users every week" figure come from? Is it directly taken from the download figures? 100 million downloads over the course of a year is about 2 million per week. It certainly looks as if they are equating downloads with new users to me.
Can you come up with a better way to estimate "new users"? I, for one, installed Firefox for over 600 users from a single download. Maybe there's more than 2 million new users per week. (I suspect there were, at the time of that article, as simply averaging it out over a year is just plain silly. We all know it hit a frenzy for a while, and has probably slowed down now.)
> AFAIK it was used to give the foundation some money to start off with.
No. The money was used to purchase outright a commercial program from a for-profit (although not profitable) company called Not a Number. Put another way, Blender was a commercial program that was purchased from a failing company by the open source community and released as Free/Open Source software. The money will most likely have been used by NaN to pay off debtors. (Yes, I know that NaN was giving away binaries of Blender for free. That doesn't make it Free/Libre/Open Source software.) Blender cost "us" 100,000 euros.
Or, boycott, and get enough people to boycott with you and see how the industry reacts,
Some of us have been doing this for a few years already. How has the industry reacted? They interpret the lower sales (or lower than projected growth) as losses due to "piracy." I have never once heard the RIAA or MPAA suggest that their lower-than-expected growth was even partially to do with people boycotting them and spending their money on independant releases. All I hear from them is how much "piracy" is hurting them.
Well, my reply was a bit of a joke. The _average_ speed is kept down by the fact that the rovers stop to take pictures, grind rocks, sleep, etc. The actual top speed while moving is 50mm/s or about 1/10 mph, still not a speed demon.
It's kind of like the ISO 7 layer model. Each layer needs to be able to communicate with the layers immediately above and below itself and doesn't bother itself with the rest.
Does this really work in a management situation? I would think, as a manager, it would still be beneficial to at least have a big-picture idea of what's going on beneath one's self.
Each claim stands on its own. The usual way to apply is to start as vague as possible and work towards a specific implementation. The idea is to get a patent on the broadest possible wording of your idea. If the first few claims are struck down by prior art, the following, more specific ones can still stand.
While I agree with your subject line and the suggestion that I should wear my seatbelt each and every time I drive my car, I disagree with the details of your post. It _does_ happen in real life. (Except for the "exploding" part -- burning cars rarely explode.) A number of years ago I witnessed an accident where two parents in the front seat were wearing seatbelts and their (adult) daughter, in the back seat, was not. The daughter was "thrown free of the car" (your quotes) and was injury free. She sat in the ditch where the car was burning and watched her parents burn. Her parents couldn't get their seatbelts off and the first people on the scene couldn't get close enough to the car to cut them free due to the heat.
I tell this story to demonstrate that things are not always as simple as people often make them out to be. In this case, the people wearing their seatbelts died and the person not wearing her seatbelt had no physical injuries. That's the simple facts.
I will continue to wear my seatbelt because I know that, on average, it protects me. I do, however, have a problem with laws that require it. Most traffic laws pertain to behaviour that affects the safety and well being of others. Seatbelt laws don't. The real question here is one of personal liberty. Should the law prevent me from doing something that may injure me? (or, in this case, require me to do something that will usually protect me but may, in some cases, injure me?) I don't think so. Others disagree with that position. And, living in a country with publically funded healthcare, I conceed that they do have some valid points.
As an aside, the government that is claiming to protect us, is often slow to do just that. The accident I witnessed occured at least 11 years ago. (I can't remember the exact date, but I lived there the summers of 1992 - 1994. (summer job)) The intersection where the accident happened was well known as a dangerous intersection. (It's a left turn off of a highway into a smallish town. The turn occurs just past a curve in the highway, so people don't have much advance warning that there may be a car stopped in the middle of the highway waiting to turn left.) Just this year, I heard that the Dept. of Highways is _finally_ doing something about that intersection.
And, yes, given the opportunity I would probably vote Libertarian.
> I haven't heard yet in these threads of a single instance of a Christian preacher teaching that a current abuse of the Christian religion by a sinner as a false pretext for their violent sins is a serious sin, prohibited by their church.
And in my previous post I explained exactly why I believe you haven't. It's quite simply not the point of biblical Christianity. I won't speak for Muslims. I'm not a Muslim. I haven't read their book. (I have read parts, but not the whole thing.) If a Muslim cares to explain why their preacher does or does not preach against (or for, for that matter) terrorism, I'd be interested to hear it. My (admittedly very minimal) understanding of Islam is that it is very much a religion about dos and don'ts. ("Do the 5 pillars good enough and you might get to heaven.") If that's true, it would make sense that they should preach dos and don'ts. That's not the point of Christianity and I don't expect to hear a lot of dos and don'ts from the pulpit. I tried to explain this to you in the last message, but you seemed to ignore it. In fact, upon just re-reading your response, I'm not sure you even read my post. Your arguments certainly don't address the points I made. Perhaps I should stop casting my pearls before swine. (seeing as you seem fond of spouting christianisms.)
> And why aren't Christians noting the beams in their own eyes, the conspicuous absence of these sermons, yet noting the motes in their neighbors' eyes, the absence of Muslim sermons to the same effect?
Oh! It's Christians who are demanding that Muslim sermons preach against terrorism? Funny, I haven't demanded that of any Muslim nor am I aware of any Christian that I personally know who has. I thought it was the politicians. (Perhaps some of them claim to be Christians in order to get the votes of people who claim to be Christians because it's the culturally acceptable thing to do in some areas of the world.) Also, I see nothing in post #13241510 that indicates it was written by a Christian.
But Christianity is defined by what's in "the book." Why wouldn't we talk about what's in "the book?" Any group that doesn't teach "the book" shouldn't call themselves "Christian." (If a compiler doesn't follow the C99 specs, it's not a C99 compiler. If a network card doesn't follow the 803.2 spec, it's not an Ethernet card. Why should a religion be any different?)
> There are surely lots of "opinions", but surely Christian morality is very well defined in terms of, say, torture. > Not a single person responding in this thread has claimed that they heard a preacher teach how torture is a sin, earning a place in hell.
Possibly because the Bible doesn't teach that torture is a sin, earning a place in hell. (or, maybe it does... I won't debate you on that, and for the record, I believe that in most cases torture is morally wrong.) The whole point of Christianity is not that "X" is a sin that earns a place in hell. The point of Christianity is that every one of us has sinned and earned our place in hell. (Disobeying your parents is a sin earning a place in hell. Telling a "fib" is a sin earning a place in hell. Wanting something that belongs to your neighbor is a sin earning a place in hell. The point of all the "don't"s is to show us that we _can't_ be "good enough" on our own.) The only way out of that situation is to accept the free gift of God provided through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That's the point of Christianity and any "priest" teaching otherwise is missing the point.
If you care to investigate what I'm saying here (and I encourage you to) may I suggest finding a modern translation (there's a whole nother debate I'll leave for another time) that you are comfortable with and reading the book of Romans. In the book of Romans (more correctly, Paul's letter to the Romans) Paul methodically and logically explains Christian doctrine to a group of people he has not yet met. His other letters to other groups seem to presume that those groups already understand the basics, but Romans doesn't make those assumptions.
The first time I sat down and read Romans was about 10 years ago. It really blew my mind and made me re-evaluate what I believed. I'm still re-evaluating.
Slashdot Mirror
As for your anti-consumption/anti-profit message... what's wrong with consumption, provided we find clean ways to consume? I find it interesting that you see "industry" as a cohesive group with a clear agenda.
What "plenty of" other strategies are there for clean energy on earth? (Please don't say wind... do the math. it doesn't work.)
Disclaimer: I own stock in the world's largest uranium mining company.
It has been stated that the world will run out of uranium in 50 years, or variations thereof. The problem with this statement is you have to ignore a lot of facts to come up with it. This statement assumes that the uranium deposits currently being mined are all that there is. The fact is, we're currently sitting on at least 50 years worth, and there is no real reason to start mining new deposits at this time. As these deposits get depleted, and as (if) the market price of uranium rises, more exploration will be done, and more deposits will be mined. If the price rises high enough, it becomes feasable to "mine" the uranium dissolved in the oceans. If it rises even higher, it becomes feasable to produce it in breeder reactors. In short, the world is _not_ running out of uranium. Second, the "50 year" statement assumes that we will not improve our reactor technology. In north america, we're still running 30+ year old reactors that only remove 5% of the available energy in the uranium. The "waste" that comes out of these reactors can be processed and put through again, or can be used in newer designs to extract more energy from the same uranium. So, ignoring the idea of finding new reserves to mine, if we improve our efficiency to even 50%, we'll now have 500 years worth. (of course, now _I'm_ ignoring the inevitable fact that we will consume more than our current rate over the next 500 years.)
Because that would defeat one of the advantages of owning a Mac. Please refer to the following Macintosh ad:a ds/international/apple/pics/percon8404mac1
;-)
http://www.aresluna.org/attached/computerhistory/
(read the text near the mouse)
If only that worked... My roommate wanted to borrow my video camera to tape himself playing DDR so he could post it on the net. I tried to dissuade him, reminding him about Star Wars Boy, but he insisted.
Excuse me?!? What groups are largely behind the anti-abortion movement? (Read: trying to protect unborn life) What groups are largely against euthanasia? What groups would rather that children be taught that they were designed by a loving god rather than merely some cosmic accident? What groups are devoted to helping prisoners and their families? ( http://www.pfm.org/ ) How about helping drug addicts? ( http://www.tcfarm.org/ ) How about helping hurricane victims? ( http://www.mds.mennonite.net/ ) How about helping orphans in abject poverty? ( http://nobelprize.org/peace/laureates/1979/teresa
"Mainstream religion" is far from a homogonous group. However, I don't see devaluation of humanity and life as a common trait. I see quite the opposite... It's largely the liberal athiest crowd that promotes abortion and euthanasia and teaches that I'm nothing more than a slightly evolved ape.
> I never broke the law by loaning it to him (only 1 copy in circulation at once)
You'd better re-read that little warning that shows at the start of most movies... You are not licensed to loan that movie. Movie rental stores have to pay big bucks to buy copies that _are_ licensed for rental/loan. I'm not sure how the library here avoids that, as their copies have the "no loan" clause.
Doesn't he have to explain how he did it to collect the prize? Am I missing something?
At least "Skype" has an easy and un-ambiguous pronunciation. (At least to an English-speaker.)
I agree, though, that "GnomeMeeting" make far more sense.
ttyl
srw
That might be fine for the more computer literate user, but... giving a clueless user the option to clean, delete, quarantine, or ignore is a recipe for disaster. Trust me. Yes, from experience.
Can you come up with a better way to estimate "new users"? I, for one, installed Firefox for over 600 users from a single download. Maybe there's more than 2 million new users per week. (I suspect there were, at the time of that article, as simply averaging it out over a year is just plain silly. We all know it hit a frenzy for a while, and has probably slowed down now.)
> AFAIK it was used to give the foundation some money to start off with.
No. The money was used to purchase outright a commercial program from a for-profit (although not profitable) company called Not a Number. Put another way, Blender was a commercial program that was purchased from a failing company by the open source community and released as Free/Open Source software. The money will most likely have been used by NaN to pay off debtors. (Yes, I know that NaN was giving away binaries of Blender for free. That doesn't make it Free/Libre/Open Source software.) Blender cost "us" 100,000 euros.
Some of us have been doing this for a few years already. How has the industry reacted? They interpret the lower sales (or lower than projected growth) as losses due to "piracy." I have never once heard the RIAA or MPAA suggest that their lower-than-expected growth was even partially to do with people boycotting them and spending their money on independant releases. All I hear from them is how much "piracy" is hurting them.
What if He were to crush the head of the great evil one? Can we still admire Him then?
They are 1MP. A good lens is more important than the number of pixels. This article discusses the issue.
:-)
BTW, the CCDs are Canadian.
They were supposed to stay operational for 90 days. I guess they're past warranty by now.
Well, my reply was a bit of a joke. The _average_ speed is kept down by the fact that the rovers stop to take pictures, grind rocks, sleep, etc. The actual top speed while moving is 50mm/s or about 1/10 mph, still not a speed demon.
There's a 240 degree in colour here.
I don't see a colour 360.
Well, the odometer on Spirit is 3.0 miles and Opportunity is 3.56 miles, so, about 0.21 miles/month or 0.000287480473 mph on average.
;-)
Or is that not what you meant.
The picture linked is only a 90 degree field of view. The story mentions "horizon all the way around." The picture at http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/spiri t/20050901b/site_A_AD_ND_cyl_360-A592R1_br.jpg shows the full 360.
To use an IT analogy:
It's kind of like the ISO 7 layer model. Each layer needs to be able to communicate with the layers immediately above and below itself and doesn't bother itself with the rest.
Does this really work in a management situation? I would think, as a manager, it would still be beneficial to at least have a big-picture idea of what's going on beneath one's self.
From my reading of this, our Linux User's Group will be on the line for $200/year. Perhaps a large LUG can afford that, but ours sure can't.
Each claim stands on its own. The usual way to apply is to start as vague as possible and work towards a specific implementation. The idea is to get a patent on the broadest possible wording of your idea. If the first few claims are struck down by prior art, the following, more specific ones can still stand.
While I agree with your subject line and the suggestion that I should wear my seatbelt each and every time I drive my car, I disagree with the details of your post. It _does_ happen in real life. (Except for the "exploding" part -- burning cars rarely explode.) A number of years ago I witnessed an accident where two parents in the front seat were wearing seatbelts and their (adult) daughter, in the back seat, was not. The daughter was "thrown free of the car" (your quotes) and was injury free. She sat in the ditch where the car was burning and watched her parents burn. Her parents couldn't get their seatbelts off and the first people on the scene couldn't get close enough to the car to cut them free due to the heat.
I tell this story to demonstrate that things are not always as simple as people often make them out to be. In this case, the people wearing their seatbelts died and the person not wearing her seatbelt had no physical injuries. That's the simple facts.
I will continue to wear my seatbelt because I know that, on average, it protects me. I do, however, have a problem with laws that require it. Most traffic laws pertain to behaviour that affects the safety and well being of others. Seatbelt laws don't. The real question here is one of personal liberty. Should the law prevent me from doing something that may injure me? (or, in this case, require me to do something that will usually protect me but may, in some cases, injure me?) I don't think so. Others disagree with that position. And, living in a country with publically funded healthcare, I conceed that they do have some valid points.
As an aside, the government that is claiming to protect us, is often slow to do just that. The accident I witnessed occured at least 11 years ago. (I can't remember the exact date, but I lived there the summers of 1992 - 1994. (summer job)) The intersection where the accident happened was well known as a dangerous intersection. (It's a left turn off of a highway into a smallish town. The turn occurs just past a curve in the highway, so people don't have much advance warning that there may be a car stopped in the middle of the highway waiting to turn left.) Just this year, I heard that the Dept. of Highways is _finally_ doing something about that intersection.
And, yes, given the opportunity I would probably vote Libertarian.
> I haven't heard yet in these threads of a single instance of a Christian preacher teaching that a current abuse of the Christian religion by a sinner as a false pretext for their violent sins is a serious sin, prohibited by their church.
And in my previous post I explained exactly why I believe you haven't. It's quite simply not the point of biblical Christianity. I won't speak for Muslims. I'm not a Muslim. I haven't read their book. (I have read parts, but not the whole thing.) If a Muslim cares to explain why their preacher does or does not preach against (or for, for that matter) terrorism, I'd be interested to hear it. My (admittedly very minimal) understanding of Islam is that it is very much a religion about dos and don'ts. ("Do the 5 pillars good enough and you might get to heaven.") If that's true, it would make sense that they should preach dos and don'ts. That's not the point of Christianity and I don't expect to hear a lot of dos and don'ts from the pulpit. I tried to explain this to you in the last message, but you seemed to ignore it. In fact, upon just re-reading your response, I'm not sure you even read my post. Your arguments certainly don't address the points I made. Perhaps I should stop casting my pearls before swine. (seeing as you seem fond of spouting christianisms.)
> And why aren't Christians noting the beams in their own eyes, the conspicuous absence of these sermons, yet noting the motes in their neighbors' eyes, the absence of Muslim sermons to the same effect?
Oh! It's Christians who are demanding that Muslim sermons preach against terrorism? Funny, I haven't demanded that of any Muslim nor am I aware of any Christian that I personally know who has. I thought it was the politicians. (Perhaps some of them claim to be Christians in order to get the votes of people who claim to be Christians because it's the culturally acceptable thing to do in some areas of the world.) Also, I see nothing in post #13241510 that indicates it was written by a Christian.
> I'm not talking about what's in the book.
/. What am I thinking?!? )
But Christianity is defined by what's in "the book." Why wouldn't we talk about what's in "the book?" Any group that doesn't teach "the book" shouldn't call themselves "Christian." (If a compiler doesn't follow the C99 specs, it's not a C99 compiler. If a network card doesn't follow the 803.2 spec, it's not an Ethernet card. Why should a religion be any different?)
> There are surely lots of "opinions", but surely Christian morality is very well defined in terms of, say, torture.
> Not a single person responding in this thread has claimed that they heard a preacher teach how torture is a sin, earning a place in hell.
Possibly because the Bible doesn't teach that torture is a sin, earning a place in hell. (or, maybe it does... I won't debate you on that, and for the record, I believe that in most cases torture is morally wrong.) The whole point of Christianity is not that "X" is a sin that earns a place in hell. The point of Christianity is that every one of us has sinned and earned our place in hell. (Disobeying your parents is a sin earning a place in hell. Telling a "fib" is a sin earning a place in hell. Wanting something that belongs to your neighbor is a sin earning a place in hell. The point of all the "don't"s is to show us that we _can't_ be "good enough" on our own.) The only way out of that situation is to accept the free gift of God provided through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. That's the point of Christianity and any "priest" teaching otherwise is missing the point.
If you care to investigate what I'm saying here (and I encourage you to) may I suggest finding a modern translation (there's a whole nother debate I'll leave for another time) that you are comfortable with and reading the book of Romans. In the book of Romans (more correctly, Paul's letter to the Romans) Paul methodically and logically explains Christian doctrine to a group of people he has not yet met. His other letters to other groups seem to presume that those groups already understand the basics, but Romans doesn't make those assumptions.
The first time I sat down and read Romans was about 10 years ago. It really blew my mind and made me re-evaluate what I believed. I'm still re-evaluating.
(geez, I'm preaching on