Actually, what they "see" is that we're running out of oil while demand is growing enormously. They can understand the basic fact that this means your precious BIG auto-mobile is an endangered species. In a few years, you'll understand that too.
I don't know if you're old enough to remember the gas crisis of the 70s. Cars got a lot smaller right after that, and fuel efficiency went up briefly.
Now imagine that happening again, except this time it's not an artificial shortage of oil created by an OPEC boycott, but the REAL THING, and that it never ends. (In fact it gets worse.) You won't have to imagine it for long, and your attitude is simply going to hasten it along.
What they're probably worried about, and what you should be worried about (but obviously aren't, and probably can't be convinced to be, either) is the fact that the world is running out of oil, fast. We should be conserving what we have left while making an Apollo program-style push for alternative energy sources, instead of wasting it trying to beat the guy next to you off the start line.
Call me a enviro-wacko or whatever; sadly, we'll all be feeling the pain (badly) in a decade or so at the outside. Then no one will be laughing.
1. There's been a measured increase in Solar activity and radiation, which is *where* we get our heat from, obviously. Once the Sun gets over it's current temper tantrum, temperatures will get more moderate.
Wonderful logic. Assuming this is a contributing factor, it doesn't make it the only factor.
2. If Dinosaurs ruled a tropical paradise 65 million years ago, wouldn't the current trend of Global Warming just be the Earth returning to a Tropical state?
Truly, you have a dizzying intellect!
3. Isn't is just a little bit arrogant on the part of humanity to assume that we really affect the environment that much? What about bovine methane? What about a single volcanic eruption spewing more CFC's then we've ever thought about using?
What's arrogant is assuming you know more than the people who spend their lives studying these things. Honestly, do you really believe that the combined pollution generated by 6 billion human beings and their creations will have no impact on the planet? Why don't we just go back to dumping all of our waste into rivers, eh?
I mean, even the Russians are saying Kyoto just kills economies...
The mind boggles. Yes, even those tree-hugging, far-looking, ever-wise Russians oppose the Kyoto treaty. What were we thinking??!!
And then your sig links to an anti-Kerry site. Pretty sad when you pubs are trying to run against (a ridiculously distorted version of) John Kerry's record. Couldn't you just run on your candidate's record instead? Oh, wait, I guess you really can't...
The administration has "admitted" that it was "mislead" by faulty intelligence. They seem that the naughty intelligence people made them do it. Never mind that there is ample documentation that they were warned that those same intelligence agencies that the intelligence they were using to make their case was either weak or outright false. Never mind that they (specifically Cheney) were so unhappy with the lack of WMD proof that the CIA was providing them with that they formed their own intelligence group, the Office of Special Plans, to come up with more dirt. (Mostly in the form of completely false testimony provided by Iraqi exiles who simply wanted Hussein out at all costs.)
Never mind that they admitted exactly nothing before David Kay came out and pretty much made it impossible for them to deny it any longer. Never mind that Cheny persists to this day in claiming that Iraq and Al Qaeda were closely linked. Never mind that they at first opposed a probe into the whole mess until the polls made it clear that wasn't going to fly. Never mind that they then reacted by forming a partisan commission to look into the matter, specifically limiting the investigation to matters of how the intelligence agencies screwed up, while making off-limits the subject of how the administration used the intelligence provided. And never mind the final insult of delaying the findings until after the election, in a mind-bogglingly transparent political move that has fooled exactly no one.
Just read the transcript from the Russert interview. If what you see there is a "mea culpa", then you're too far gone to care.
Never mind, I've wasted too much time already, and this is going to fall on deaf ears.
Dow may be wrong or negligent in compensating the survivors, but protesters causing a business to loose money to gain their attention or try and get them to change their action is about as effective as spanking a child when they don't eat their peas.
Actually, they were completely unsuccessfuly at getting the business to loose money from their coffers to clean up the mess caused by Union Carbide. The money remained securely where it was before. Therefore, the basis for you criticism seems to be voided!
I can't believe how many posts here have been putting down this service. Yes, the latency will be relatively high, yes there are significant startup costs, but no, this is NOT only relevant to the "rural community". We should all stand up and cheer every time there's a new way to get Internet access that doesn't involve the existing cable plant, I don't care if it involves smoke signals and ham radio!
Sure, DSL and cable are just fine ways of getting Internet access, in theory. I personally don't consider myself to live in a "rural" area. I live in a large and dense community, about 1.5 miles from AOL headquarters. I can SEE MCI/Worldcom headquarters from my neighborhood. But guess what: there is NO real broadband access available where I live! None! Zippy! Nada! The only thing that comes close is the cable service, which is (you guessed it) one way. Further, their service is lousy, and for some reason their plans for upgrading the infrastructure are a state secret that they're subscribers are not worthy of knowing.
DSL? Hahaha! There are at least a dozen independent DSL providers in the area, all of whom would happily provide service (including Covad, of course), but they can't. Why? Because Bell Atlantic (I'm sorry, Verizon!) hasn't gotten around to upgrading the CO. They're supposed to get to it this fall; I'm sure we all believe this latest prediction. And I'm sure that service rollout will be immediate, once the CO is updated. You've only got a few thousand homes in the CO's area waiting for something, anything to become available. Oddly enough, with a few huge internet companies in the neighborhood, a few people are actually interested in accessing the Internet! Of course, the bad news is that all the neighborhoods are new, and many of them have fiber running through them. Sounds great, doesn't it? Except DSL isn't built for fiber, it wants copper! So you can't REALLY do DSL in these neighborhoods. Instead, you get iDSL, which is really nothing more than an ISDN line, and your bandwidth (up and down) is limited to 144Kb. Wow! And all of this for only $80 or so a month! A bargain at twice the price! I guess we should just go ahead and get the readily available ISDN service, instead. After all, it's 128Kb, almost as good. Oooh, but that's right, Verizon charges for that one by the minute, right? Oh, I think they offer flat rate for $150-300 a month. Let me jump right on that!
Enough ranting. The point is this. As long as the cable plant monopolies (your local phone and cable companies) are your only choices for Internet access, it's bad for you, the consumer. We're just lucky that the cable companies got into the act; otherwise, we'd still be wistfully looking forward to the day when T1 prices fall below $1000 a month, or ISDN cost less than $250 a month. Unfortunately, neither the cable companies or the phone companies are making a significant portion of their revenue from home broadband access, so they just don't care. Don't let them fool you. Even where the service is readily available and cheap, we hear endless horror stories about the providers filtering traffic, throttling connections, forbidding telecommuting, etc. Wireless is the ONLY arena where its still possible for a hungry, focused company to come in, provide real value, and finally start realizing the dream of universal affordable broadband access (or at least the universal availability of it).
I'm not saying that these satellite services are some sort of godsend; for all I know, they're going to be horrible. I'm already wary of Gilat (the company behind the MSN/Echostar service) given several goofy statements that have leaked out about the service. (One story claimed that the service would only be bundled with new computers purchased at Radio Shack for the first few months of the rollout??) But maybe, just maybe, it'll help keep the others on their toes. Worldcom is experimenting with line of sight, ground based wireless. Ricochet is claiming (for the last few years) that they're upping their wireless service to 128K in all 1.5 cities it's available. There's nothing the phone company or the cable company can do about these services, and that's the best thing about them.
Finally, personally, I don't WANT to get DSL, because I'm not so keen on giving more money to the local phone company, even indirectly. Those guys have been dragging their feet on high speed access for decades to maximize their profits; how long ago was ISDN introduced? Why is it STILL not affordable everywhere? Whatever. Maybe they'll finally, finally wake up if enough people start walking away.
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That's because they're "artists". Next time, remember to throw pennies at them.
Maybe today's youth will actually loose weight if forced to something that requires little bit of excerise.
Yes, and hopefully they'll loose it in your direction.
Actually, what they "see" is that we're running out of oil while demand is growing enormously. They can understand the basic fact that this means your precious BIG auto-mobile is an endangered species. In a few years, you'll understand that too.
I don't know if you're old enough to remember the gas crisis of the 70s. Cars got a lot smaller right after that, and fuel efficiency went up briefly.
Now imagine that happening again, except this time it's not an artificial shortage of oil created by an OPEC boycott, but the REAL THING, and that it never ends. (In fact it gets worse.) You won't have to imagine it for long, and your attitude is simply going to hasten it along.
Please, wake up!
Until the oil starts running dry in a few years, of course.
Then you'll probably be less interested in those trucks of yours...
What they're probably worried about, and what you should be worried about (but obviously aren't, and probably can't be convinced to be, either) is the fact that the world is running out of oil, fast. We should be conserving what we have left while making an Apollo program-style push for alternative energy sources, instead of wasting it trying to beat the guy next to you off the start line.
Call me a enviro-wacko or whatever; sadly, we'll all be feeling the pain (badly) in a decade or so at the outside. Then no one will be laughing.
Wonderful logic. Assuming this is a contributing factor, it doesn't make it the only factor.
Truly, you have a dizzying intellect!
What's arrogant is assuming you know more than the people who spend their lives studying these things. Honestly, do you really believe that the combined pollution generated by 6 billion human beings and their creations will have no impact on the planet? Why don't we just go back to dumping all of our waste into rivers, eh?
The mind boggles. Yes, even those tree-hugging, far-looking, ever-wise Russians oppose the Kyoto treaty. What were we thinking??!!
And then your sig links to an anti-Kerry site. Pretty sad when you pubs are trying to run against (a ridiculously distorted version of) John Kerry's record. Couldn't you just run on your candidate's record instead? Oh, wait, I guess you really can't...
Ole!
Wow, that lame, huh?
Nope!
The administration has "admitted" that it was "mislead" by faulty intelligence. They seem that the naughty intelligence people made them do it. Never mind that there is ample documentation that they were warned that those same intelligence agencies that the intelligence they were using to make their case was either weak or outright false. Never mind that they (specifically Cheney) were so unhappy with the lack of WMD proof that the CIA was providing them with that they formed their own intelligence group, the Office of Special Plans, to come up with more dirt. (Mostly in the form of completely false testimony provided by Iraqi exiles who simply wanted Hussein out at all costs.)
Never mind that they admitted exactly nothing before David Kay came out and pretty much made it impossible for them to deny it any longer. Never mind that Cheny persists to this day in claiming that Iraq and Al Qaeda were closely linked. Never mind that they at first opposed a probe into the whole mess until the polls made it clear that wasn't going to fly. Never mind that they then reacted by forming a partisan commission to look into the matter, specifically limiting the investigation to matters of how the intelligence agencies screwed up, while making off-limits the subject of how the administration used the intelligence provided. And never mind the final insult of delaying the findings until after the election, in a mind-bogglingly transparent political move that has fooled exactly no one.
Just read the transcript
from the Russert interview. If what you see there is a "mea culpa", then you're too far gone to care.
Never mind, I've wasted too much time already, and this is going to fall on deaf ears.
Nope, not really. You see, the "libs" are capable of admitting their mistakes...
Dow may be wrong or negligent in compensating the survivors, but protesters causing a business to loose money to gain their attention or try and get them to change their action is about as effective as spanking a child when they don't eat their peas.
Actually, they were completely unsuccessfuly at getting the business to loose money from their coffers to clean up the mess caused by Union Carbide. The money remained securely where it was before. Therefore, the basis for you criticism seems to be voided!
I can't believe how many posts here have been putting down this service. Yes, the latency will be relatively high, yes there are significant startup costs, but no, this is NOT only relevant to the "rural community". We should all stand up and cheer every time there's a new way to get Internet access that doesn't involve the existing cable plant, I don't care if it involves smoke signals and ham radio!
Sure, DSL and cable are just fine ways of getting Internet access, in theory. I personally don't consider myself to live in a "rural" area. I live in a large and dense community, about 1.5 miles from AOL headquarters. I can SEE MCI/Worldcom headquarters from my neighborhood. But guess what: there is NO real broadband access available where I live! None! Zippy! Nada! The only thing that comes close is the cable service, which is (you guessed it) one way. Further, their service is lousy, and for some reason their plans for upgrading the infrastructure are a state secret that they're subscribers are not worthy of knowing.
DSL? Hahaha! There are at least a dozen independent DSL providers in the area, all of whom would happily provide service (including Covad, of course), but they can't. Why? Because Bell Atlantic (I'm sorry, Verizon!) hasn't gotten around to upgrading the CO. They're supposed to get to it this fall; I'm sure we all believe this latest prediction. And I'm sure that service rollout will be immediate, once the CO is updated. You've only got a few thousand homes in the CO's area waiting for something, anything to become available. Oddly enough, with a few huge internet companies in the neighborhood, a few people are actually interested in accessing the Internet! Of course, the bad news is that all the neighborhoods are new, and many of them have fiber running through them. Sounds great, doesn't it? Except DSL isn't built for fiber, it wants copper! So you can't REALLY do DSL in these neighborhoods. Instead, you get iDSL, which is really nothing more than an ISDN line, and your bandwidth (up and down) is limited to 144Kb. Wow! And all of this for only $80 or so a month! A bargain at twice the price! I guess we should just go ahead and get the readily available ISDN service, instead. After all, it's 128Kb, almost as good. Oooh, but that's right, Verizon charges for that one by the minute, right? Oh, I think they offer flat rate for $150-300 a month. Let me jump right on that!
Enough ranting. The point is this. As long as the cable plant monopolies (your local phone and cable companies) are your only choices for Internet access, it's bad for you, the consumer. We're just lucky that the cable companies got into the act; otherwise, we'd still be wistfully looking forward to the day when T1 prices fall below $1000 a month, or ISDN cost less than $250 a month. Unfortunately, neither the cable companies or the phone companies are making a significant portion of their revenue from home broadband access, so they just don't care. Don't let them fool you. Even where the service is readily available and cheap, we hear endless horror stories about the providers filtering traffic, throttling connections, forbidding telecommuting, etc. Wireless is the ONLY arena where its still possible for a hungry, focused company to come in, provide real value, and finally start realizing the dream of universal affordable broadband access (or at least the universal availability of it).
I'm not saying that these satellite services are some sort of godsend; for all I know, they're going to be horrible. I'm already wary of Gilat (the company behind the MSN/Echostar service) given several goofy statements that have leaked out about the service. (One story claimed that the service would only be bundled with new computers purchased at Radio Shack for the first few months of the rollout??) But maybe, just maybe, it'll help keep the others on their toes. Worldcom is experimenting with line of sight, ground based wireless. Ricochet is claiming (for the last few years) that they're upping their wireless service to 128K in all 1.5 cities it's available. There's nothing the phone company or the cable company can do about these services, and that's the best thing about them.
Finally, personally, I don't WANT to get DSL, because I'm not so keen on giving more money to the local phone company, even indirectly. Those guys have been dragging their feet on high speed access for decades to maximize their profits; how long ago was ISDN introduced? Why is it STILL not affordable everywhere? Whatever. Maybe they'll finally, finally wake up if enough people start walking away.
Yeah, toady's computers are pretty rockin'. He lets you use them, too? Toady is the man.