If China ever did start regulating for safety and health at anywhere near the benefits of American workers (let alone European, which is higher), the computer you buy to replace your current one will cost you (in parts or in whole) roughly 600% more, not counting shipping.
That, or the big boys in tech will simply move their operations to South America, Africa, Eastern Europe...
The smaller processors are actually somewhat of a bigger hazard. These things known as cosmic rays (and simila) tend to occasionally wreck delicate bits such as living cells and microscopic transistors. While no big deal down here on Earth, it is a big deal in space - w/o the big magnetic shield that the Earth currently enjoys, there's a whole lot more cosmic rays out there, than there are down here.
Back in the day, the computer parts were spread relatively far apart, and even on-die, the transistors were a pretty good distance from each other. This meant that it would take quite a bit to wreck something, especially considering that (IIRC) the systems were redundant.
If you were to take up an off-the-shelf Core i7 (only for example) and try to use that for something vital, one even half-lucky shot by a cosmic ray could blow a register, or cause the thing to fry. You could certainly put together a system with multiple redundancies (aircraft and even spacecraft computers do this all the time - it only makes sense to), but again, the shielding, redundancy, and various other requirements that come with space travel usually mean that, even with modern techniques, you still end up with something a goodly distance behind the bleeding edge of Moore's Law.
(Not even seeing them use x86 (or even PPC) architecture, either... maybe MIPS, but I suspect that whatever they use, the architecture is probably built from scratch, especially for the job... not exactly something you can just buy 1,000 of from Intel or AMD, yanno? I could be wrong, but I suspect it's pretty custom, right down to the architecture).
Also, IIRC, the programming requirements are hellishly strict, and that they try to keep things as simple and short-pathed as humanly possible, if only to reduce any chance of bugs and/or outright failure. This means you don't need a Beowulf cluster of Nehalems to run the thing.:)
That's unlikely to be an end to the species. Any money you spent colonizing another world would have more impact preparing for such an event on Earth instead.
Err, some events are pretty near impossible to prepare for down here, as well as eventualities...
* A large enough asteroid will sear the planet's surface and the first couple kilometers of rock underneath to the temperature of molten steel. Oh, and that temperature will stay at around that level for a couple thousand years before it even begins to cool off. Where exactly would you intend to hide from that, with sufficient supplies to last you and your descendants at least 5-6 millennia? Remember that your descendants will eventually have to dig their way out, since the tunnels you ancestors used to get there will have likely melted shut. Oh, then there's the niggling fact that the oceans will have boiled off, and will have disappeared along with a huge chunk of the breathable atmosphere in general and most of the oxygen in particular.
* An aggressive enough pathogen can (and eventually will) get into any nook and cranny you can possibly conceive of. The only sure way to barricade against deadly bacteria and/or viruses would be a good comfy quarter-million kilometers of hard vacuum atop a gravity well.
* On Earth, no matter how bad-assed your shelter may be, it may well be surrounded by folks who want in there with you real badly, and will do whatever they can to either get your shelter, or at least help themselves to your stuff. Short version - it's a lot easier for desperate/hostile people to blast their way into your shelter, than it is for them to build a rocket sufficiently strong to reach, then take over, an orbital, Lunar, or Martian colony.
...we'd be talking 99.999%+ fatality but probably still not extinction.
Err, yeah. I'm pretty sure that 0.001% is going to be pretty miserable, and assuming there are even enough of them in one spot, and in sufficient numbers, to insure against inbreeding? Let's just say that it'll likely take at least 6,000 years to get things back up technologically, just to where we are now. This is of course assuming that these folks would have the same lucky breaks that our civilization had along the way.
...anything so bad as to wipe out humanity on earth is quite possibly so bad Mars would become uninhabitable too.
Wrong-O, my friend. A 300-mile wide asteroid (there are plenty out there) would easily sterilize the entire surface of the Earth at ~3,000 degrees C (and do so to about 2-3 kilometers down). Meanwhile, folks on Mars (or on the far side of the Moon for that matter) would never even notice its physical effects, no matter the collision scenario. You could even have a good shot of avoiding such an event in an Earth-Moon Lagrangian orbital colony.
'course, it would suck greatly, and extraterrestrial colonies had damned well better be self-sufficient by then, but survival of most extinction events on Earth is quite doable by colonists living off-Earth.
You don't even have to get 5% of the total up... a (relatively) microscopic number of 20k humans, of sufficient diversity, will suffice to keep the human race going. The only real trick is to insure that their new home is self-sufficient, and that they have the means to manufacture and improve transportation and construction techniques.
20k is only 1/325,000th of the total, and is quite doable over the space of 20-30 years, provided that a big enough government really wants it done. Oh, and those folks who go up early will have had children the whole time, making the grand total of people you need to lift up quite a bit less than really needed.
Err, how do you accidentally collect WiFi packets on platform whose ostensible purpose is to take photographs, and transmit them back via some other means (3g most likely) entirely?
That's like saying the MAC is the top selling model of Personal Computers... Just because there are so many other models in the PC camp.
*fweet!* Strawman Argument - 15 yard penalty!
The top-selling PC model is likely the HP Elitebook, I suspect. OTOH, Apple clearly isn't suing the crap out of PC manufacturers (or Microsoft) over design patents, are they? Are you asserting that if the top-selling PC brand was a MacBook or Mac, that Apple would suddenly sue?
Here, let me help you a bit. The reason I wrote that blurb was that the iPhone's growth and popularity among consumers is insanely high - enough to make it a 'stand-out' brand. If your product is widely wanted and is selling like crazy, then where is the 'desperation' that would justify a costly lawsuit?
BTW: In the IT realm, "MAC" usually stands for "Media Access Control", as in, that unique little hex address your network card comes with.;)
Sorry if that hurts your Apple Fanboism.
Neat assumption, but I still use an old-but-serviceable Blackberry Bold. I don't own an iPhone *or* Android phone.;)/P
Certainly the ideas of rectangular device with rounded corners came out before the iPhone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_PRADA
Err, the Prada's "rounding" was/is far less pronounced, and was/is far closer to having sharp corners than rounded ones. It also has (in some LG Prada models) a slide-out keyboard.
That's a vast difference between that and various Samsung smartphone models, which have a nearly identical shape and layout, look, and feel.
Finally, it's a lot more than just a "rectangular device with rounded corners" that is at issue here - simplifying it as such is disingenuous. I strongly suggest reading the *entire* complaint, and not just over-simplifying things to the point of fanboy ranting.
* Apple is selling pretty much every iPhone they can make. * the iPhone (in various versions) is the single top-selling phone model, bar none. While overall, yes Android *phones* are selling equal-to-better, no single Android model is anywhere close to matching the iPhone. Therefore, why would Apple bother to chase just Samsung, and not LG, HTC, or a larger phone maker? * Suing over design won't achieve the premise in TFA... phone makers will just make it look/feel different to work around the stated patent(s). If Apple was truly chasing the goal of crippling Android as a whole, they'd be better off going after the *core* of Android (like, well, Oracle is doing. Speaking of which...) * Oracle is already working towards something that would achieve the same thing, but to provide Oracle an income stream - so why would Apple feel it had to do something similar, when Oracle is already doing it for them, and has been running that lawsuit long before Apple fired a shot across Samsung's bow?
This one has *got* to find itself appealed, and that appeal will happen well outside of East Texas.
I for one do not see folks like IBM, RH, Intel, Oracle, or other huge companies simply forking over either, even if the "licensing fee" was something ridiculously low. IT would be the camel's nose in the tent, and they know it.
Actually, the engineers below decks were the first to see the water rushing in, and knew before anyone else to get the hell out of Dodge. This explains why the bulk of the men who wound up oarsmen on lifeboats were the engineer types.
Also, the first person to declare that RMS Titanic would sink within a few hours of striking the iceberg was Thomas Andrews... the Chief Engineer.
The trick is to keep what you have but actively look for better.
I have a relatively ancient resume on Monster from 3 years ago that I haven't bothered to update or touch (I haven't even logged into it in all this time), and I suspect that the moment I update it, the number of headhunter and recruiter calls will go up from one every few weeks to one every other day.
While most outside cold-call offers are temp/contract, the FTE slots that do come along are pretty impressive IMHO, and have so far almost always caused me to stop and at least do some sort of analysis and even active research - mostly on what I have now with its potentials, versus what I could get '...if I moved to {position} with {company}.' Once in a great while (call it every 3 months or so) it's enough to call up the employer and make a few inquiries, and on rare occasion (call it once every 8 months to a year) go to an interview.
The jobs are certainly out there - just that the employers have certain expectations (both good and bad - your job is to weed out the crap from the gold, and hope you do it right).
As for TFA? If I ever get tired of being the Sr Technical Guy and decide to jump to management, you can bet your ass that I won't do it internally... too much would be expected from above, lost from below, and be ultimately frustrating all around. Upper management would expect me to not only do my new job, but continue my old one until I get my lower-level replacement up to snuff. My colleagues would become either nervous (because I know them), or would expect preferential treatment (because they know me). It's much, much easier to start fresh with a new crew, so that you can not only make your expectations clear, but because they won't have any pre-conceived expectations that you would then have to break.
Hilarious. This story has polarized Slashdot into the "I actually work in IT in a systems administration capacity" camp and the "I tinker with computers as a hobby" camp..
I do both (tinker and admin), and I agree with you... if someone parks a home-brew/unauthorized device on my SCADA networks, I'll have the offender's ass fired so quickly that the sonic boom will shatter glass. Do it on the office networks, and there had better be a *very* good explanation as to why.
It's not that I'm an asshole (nor are my colleagues), but because there are quite a few moving parts that the tinkering crowd doesn't realize, know about, or in some cases may not even care about.
Dunno about TFA's case, but the network ports should've been closed by default and port_security turned on.:/
With all of this angst over "Global Warming" people are missing the real issue: cut pollution.
The urge to be right at all costs is a bit of a bit of a problem in the scientific and political communities. Sadly, it's the rest of us who have to put up with results when people in those two groups happen to travel together on an issue.
In your haste to exonerate the UN, you missed something.
Yes, if you read the actual Google cached page (and not just the map), you'd find something interesting in the headline and very first paragraph:
"Fifty million climate refugees by 2010.
Today we find a world of asymmetric development, unsustainable natural resource use, and continued rural and urban poverty. There is general agreement about the current global environmental and development crisis. It is also known that the consequences of these global changes have the most devastating impacts on the poorest, who historically have had limited entitlements and opportunities for growth."
Now that's not an 'official' UN site... or is it? Let's go to the front page of the grida.no site and see who they are:
"GRID-Arendal is a collaborating centre of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Established in 1989 by the Government of Norway as a Norwegian Foundation, our mission is to communicate environmental information to policy-makers and facilitate environmental decision-making for change. We are based in Arendal, Norway and have offices in Ottawa, Canada and Stockholm, Sweden."
Long story short - even if the UN *itself* didn't put out such a statement, one of its own programs authorized and publicized it - no matter the source.
TFA's author is right in the premise of pointing out excessive alarmism.
As for the actuality of flooding and such, sure, it is happening. OTOH, I'm kind of wondering where those 50m refugees are. Katrina and Pakistan (your sort-of examples) have bupkis to do with rising sea levels - one was blasted by hurricane storm surge in lands which were below sea level since long before human settlement - the other was due to flooding, yes, but not from the sea at all.
BTW - It doesn't help when you're fudging your defense with (obviously paraphrased): 'OAMG it's all environmental and no one can tell if it's AGW or not, so we better FUD them in and count them as AGW refugees anyway!'
Seriously - let's stick to known facts, and stop making extrapolations based on emotion and guesswork.
You could always do what my parents did when I was a kid.
Talk with them. Teach them things you think they should know. Discuss your family history. Bring some books along that they can read aloud and *discuss* with you. Ask them stuff. Sing songs - and make a few up while you're at it. Talk about what makes the weather they see outside, or teach them the different kinds of trees/cacti/mountains/etc they see passing by the window. If you have more than one kid, supply a couple of notebooks and pencils, and hold an impromptu art contest. Make up debates, and always take the other side, forcing them to use logic and reason (hell, *teach* them logic and reasoning while you're at it).
Even if the kid(s) are too young to be all that articulate - you can use the time to help them improve their vocabulary, pronunciation, and to teach them things - even if they're sitting in the back seat and you're up front.
Long story short, teach them to engage their minds and become creative, not just ignore them into becoming passive consumers of entertainment.
As a bonus, by doing this you help make your kid into someone that wants to talk to you first when it really matters later on.
According to GP, the *parent* was the one who did the downloading/install for his kid. Kinda implies that the parent agreed to the terms on the kid's behalf anyway.
My vote is for "stupid parent" - esp. with the comment about demanding that he not be arsed to "read all about these apps" first.:/
That's pretty much the case with any real 3D/CG application - even the allegedly easy Kai Krause built apps of yore (Bryce, Poser, RayDream/Cararra) required more than just a little bit of time and effort to grok the controls (let alone the concepts behind them).
Turn a complete newbie loose on Modo, Maya (*shiver*), Lightwave, or 3DS Max... or even a totally NURBs-happy app like Rhino. I guarantee you that 60% of those newbies will give it up in disgust in less than a few cumulative hours, and at least 20% more will give up on it after creating (and perhaps animating) a few crude meshes. It simply takes some work to know what's going on in a CG app. The closest I can remember any CG app being newbie-friendly? It was MakeHuman, but in that app's case it was (and still is IMHO) pretty limited in what it could do offhand.
Hell, I've been dinking around with CG apps for 10 years now, and I'm still learning things when it comes to maximizing what even my most favorite and oft-used tools can do.
It's been redesigned to look like 3ds Max or maya.
I was thinking Modo... and I hope to hell it has Modo's kind of customizable UI - that would be extremely sweet (because then I can make it match the other tools in the workflow...)
I thought they'd *never* tame that beast. I'm hoping the real thing stands up to the screenies. (it reminds me a *lot* of what DAZ|Studio used to look like back in 1.0-1.5, which IMHO is a damned good thing).
Slashdot Mirror
there's your enforcement. It's surprisingly hard to kill a human being when they don't have access to guns or tall buildings...
...and yet a cheap plastic bag would be just as effective, and wouldn't cost as much.
Err, one small bit:
If China ever did start regulating for safety and health at anywhere near the benefits of American workers (let alone European, which is higher), the computer you buy to replace your current one will cost you (in parts or in whole) roughly 600% more, not counting shipping.
That, or the big boys in tech will simply move their operations to South America, Africa, Eastern Europe...
Barracuda sells that, packaged as a separate appliance (among lots of other folks...)
Who calls it "The NASA"? I'll let that one pass.
Well, according to Invader Zim, it's supposed to be called "NASAPlace".
Err, about that computer stuff...
The smaller processors are actually somewhat of a bigger hazard. These things known as cosmic rays (and simila) tend to occasionally wreck delicate bits such as living cells and microscopic transistors. While no big deal down here on Earth, it is a big deal in space - w/o the big magnetic shield that the Earth currently enjoys, there's a whole lot more cosmic rays out there, than there are down here.
Back in the day, the computer parts were spread relatively far apart, and even on-die, the transistors were a pretty good distance from each other. This meant that it would take quite a bit to wreck something, especially considering that (IIRC) the systems were redundant.
If you were to take up an off-the-shelf Core i7 (only for example) and try to use that for something vital, one even half-lucky shot by a cosmic ray could blow a register, or cause the thing to fry. You could certainly put together a system with multiple redundancies (aircraft and even spacecraft computers do this all the time - it only makes sense to), but again, the shielding, redundancy, and various other requirements that come with space travel usually mean that, even with modern techniques, you still end up with something a goodly distance behind the bleeding edge of Moore's Law.
(Not even seeing them use x86 (or even PPC) architecture, either... maybe MIPS, but I suspect that whatever they use, the architecture is probably built from scratch, especially for the job... not exactly something you can just buy 1,000 of from Intel or AMD, yanno? I could be wrong, but I suspect it's pretty custom, right down to the architecture).
Also, IIRC, the programming requirements are hellishly strict, and that they try to keep things as simple and short-pathed as humanly possible, if only to reduce any chance of bugs and/or outright failure. This means you don't need a Beowulf cluster of Nehalems to run the thing. :)
...who said you have to build a rocket factory? An inside-out railgun will do the job easier, cheaper, and repeatedly.
That's unlikely to be an end to the species. Any money you spent colonizing another world would have more impact preparing for such an event on Earth instead.
Err, some events are pretty near impossible to prepare for down here, as well as eventualities...
* A large enough asteroid will sear the planet's surface and the first couple kilometers of rock underneath to the temperature of molten steel. Oh, and that temperature will stay at around that level for a couple thousand years before it even begins to cool off. Where exactly would you intend to hide from that, with sufficient supplies to last you and your descendants at least 5-6 millennia? Remember that your descendants will eventually have to dig their way out, since the tunnels you ancestors used to get there will have likely melted shut. Oh, then there's the niggling fact that the oceans will have boiled off, and will have disappeared along with a huge chunk of the breathable atmosphere in general and most of the oxygen in particular.
* An aggressive enough pathogen can (and eventually will) get into any nook and cranny you can possibly conceive of. The only sure way to barricade against deadly bacteria and/or viruses would be a good comfy quarter-million kilometers of hard vacuum atop a gravity well.
* On Earth, no matter how bad-assed your shelter may be, it may well be surrounded by folks who want in there with you real badly, and will do whatever they can to either get your shelter, or at least help themselves to your stuff. Short version - it's a lot easier for desperate/hostile people to blast their way into your shelter, than it is for them to build a rocket sufficiently strong to reach, then take over, an orbital, Lunar, or Martian colony.
Could go on, but I think you get the idea.
...we'd be talking 99.999%+ fatality but probably still not extinction.
Err, yeah. I'm pretty sure that 0.001% is going to be pretty miserable, and assuming there are even enough of them in one spot, and in sufficient numbers, to insure against inbreeding? Let's just say that it'll likely take at least 6,000 years to get things back up technologically, just to where we are now. This is of course assuming that these folks would have the same lucky breaks that our civilization had along the way.
...anything so bad as to wipe out humanity on earth is quite possibly so bad Mars would become uninhabitable too.
Wrong-O, my friend. A 300-mile wide asteroid (there are plenty out there) would easily sterilize the entire surface of the Earth at ~3,000 degrees C (and do so to about 2-3 kilometers down). Meanwhile, folks on Mars (or on the far side of the Moon for that matter) would never even notice its physical effects, no matter the collision scenario. You could even have a good shot of avoiding such an event in an Earth-Moon Lagrangian orbital colony.
'course, it would suck greatly, and extraterrestrial colonies had damned well better be self-sufficient by then, but survival of most extinction events on Earth is quite doable by colonists living off-Earth.
You don't even have to get 5% of the total up... a (relatively) microscopic number of 20k humans, of sufficient diversity, will suffice to keep the human race going. The only real trick is to insure that their new home is self-sufficient, and that they have the means to manufacture and improve transportation and construction techniques.
20k is only 1/325,000th of the total, and is quite doable over the space of 20-30 years, provided that a big enough government really wants it done. Oh, and those folks who go up early will have had children the whole time, making the grand total of people you need to lift up quite a bit less than really needed.
...that or an Eggs Boson Particle. :p
Mistake != Malice.
Err, how do you accidentally collect WiFi packets on platform whose ostensible purpose is to take photographs, and transmit them back via some other means (3g most likely) entirely?
That's like saying the MAC is the top selling model of Personal Computers... Just because there are so many other models in the PC camp.
*fweet!* Strawman Argument - 15 yard penalty!
The top-selling PC model is likely the HP Elitebook, I suspect. OTOH, Apple clearly isn't suing the crap out of PC manufacturers (or Microsoft) over design patents, are they? Are you asserting that if the top-selling PC brand was a MacBook or Mac, that Apple would suddenly sue?
Here, let me help you a bit. The reason I wrote that blurb was that the iPhone's growth and popularity among consumers is insanely high - enough to make it a 'stand-out' brand. If your product is widely wanted and is selling like crazy, then where is the 'desperation' that would justify a costly lawsuit?
BTW: In the IT realm, "MAC" usually stands for "Media Access Control", as in, that unique little hex address your network card comes with. ;)
Sorry if that hurts your Apple Fanboism.
Neat assumption, but I still use an old-but-serviceable Blackberry Bold. I don't own an iPhone *or* Android phone. ;) /P
Certainly the ideas of rectangular device with rounded corners came out before the iPhone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LG_PRADA
Err, the Prada's "rounding" was/is far less pronounced, and was/is far closer to having sharp corners than rounded ones. It also has (in some LG Prada models) a slide-out keyboard.
That's a vast difference between that and various Samsung smartphone models, which have a nearly identical shape and layout, look, and feel.
Finally, it's a lot more than just a "rectangular device with rounded corners" that is at issue here - simplifying it as such is disingenuous. I strongly suggest reading the *entire* complaint, and not just over-simplifying things to the point of fanboy ranting.
...bit of a problem or four in it, though:
* Apple is selling pretty much every iPhone they can make.
* the iPhone (in various versions) is the single top-selling phone model, bar none. While overall, yes Android *phones* are selling equal-to-better, no single Android model is anywhere close to matching the iPhone. Therefore, why would Apple bother to chase just Samsung, and not LG, HTC, or a larger phone maker?
* Suing over design won't achieve the premise in TFA... phone makers will just make it look/feel different to work around the stated patent(s). If Apple was truly chasing the goal of crippling Android as a whole, they'd be better off going after the *core* of Android (like, well, Oracle is doing. Speaking of which...)
* Oracle is already working towards something that would achieve the same thing, but to provide Oracle an income stream - so why would Apple feel it had to do something similar, when Oracle is already doing it for them, and has been running that lawsuit long before Apple fired a shot across Samsung's bow?
This one has *got* to find itself appealed, and that appeal will happen well outside of East Texas.
I for one do not see folks like IBM, RH, Intel, Oracle, or other huge companies simply forking over either, even if the "licensing fee" was something ridiculously low. IT would be the camel's nose in the tent, and they know it.
Actually, the engineers below decks were the first to see the water rushing in, and knew before anyone else to get the hell out of Dodge. This explains why the bulk of the men who wound up oarsmen on lifeboats were the engineer types.
Also, the first person to declare that RMS Titanic would sink within a few hours of striking the iceberg was Thomas Andrews... the Chief Engineer.
The trick is to keep what you have but actively look for better.
I have a relatively ancient resume on Monster from 3 years ago that I haven't bothered to update or touch (I haven't even logged into it in all this time), and I suspect that the moment I update it, the number of headhunter and recruiter calls will go up from one every few weeks to one every other day.
While most outside cold-call offers are temp/contract, the FTE slots that do come along are pretty impressive IMHO, and have so far almost always caused me to stop and at least do some sort of analysis and even active research - mostly on what I have now with its potentials, versus what I could get '...if I moved to {position} with {company}.' Once in a great while (call it every 3 months or so) it's enough to call up the employer and make a few inquiries, and on rare occasion (call it once every 8 months to a year) go to an interview.
The jobs are certainly out there - just that the employers have certain expectations (both good and bad - your job is to weed out the crap from the gold, and hope you do it right).
As for TFA? If I ever get tired of being the Sr Technical Guy and decide to jump to management, you can bet your ass that I won't do it internally... too much would be expected from above, lost from below, and be ultimately frustrating all around. Upper management would expect me to not only do my new job, but continue my old one until I get my lower-level replacement up to snuff. My colleagues would become either nervous (because I know them), or would expect preferential treatment (because they know me). It's much, much easier to start fresh with a new crew, so that you can not only make your expectations clear, but because they won't have any pre-conceived expectations that you would then have to break.
Hilarious. This story has polarized Slashdot into the "I actually work in IT in a systems administration capacity" camp and the "I tinker with computers as a hobby" camp..
I do both (tinker and admin), and I agree with you... if someone parks a home-brew/unauthorized device on my SCADA networks, I'll have the offender's ass fired so quickly that the sonic boom will shatter glass. Do it on the office networks, and there had better be a *very* good explanation as to why.
It's not that I'm an asshole (nor are my colleagues), but because there are quite a few moving parts that the tinkering crowd doesn't realize, know about, or in some cases may not even care about.
Dunno about TFA's case, but the network ports should've been closed by default and port_security turned on. :/
With all of this angst over "Global Warming" people are missing the real issue: cut pollution.
The urge to be right at all costs is a bit of a bit of a problem in the scientific and political communities. Sadly, it's the rest of us who have to put up with results when people in those two groups happen to travel together on an issue.
In your haste to exonerate the UN, you missed something.
Yes, if you read the actual Google cached page (and not just the map), you'd find something interesting in the headline and very first paragraph:
"Fifty million climate refugees by 2010.
Today we find a world of asymmetric development, unsustainable natural resource use, and continued rural and urban poverty. There is general agreement about the current global environmental and development crisis. It is also known that the consequences of these global changes have the most devastating impacts on the poorest, who historically have had limited entitlements and opportunities for growth."
Now that's not an 'official' UN site... or is it? Let's go to the front page of the grida.no site and see who they are:
"GRID-Arendal is a collaborating centre of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Established in 1989 by the Government of Norway as a Norwegian Foundation, our mission is to communicate environmental information to policy-makers and facilitate environmental decision-making for change. We are based in Arendal, Norway and have offices in Ottawa, Canada and Stockholm, Sweden."
Long story short - even if the UN *itself* didn't put out such a statement, one of its own programs authorized and publicized it - no matter the source.
TFA's author is right in the premise of pointing out excessive alarmism.
As for the actuality of flooding and such, sure, it is happening. OTOH, I'm kind of wondering where those 50m refugees are. Katrina and Pakistan (your sort-of examples) have bupkis to do with rising sea levels - one was blasted by hurricane storm surge in lands which were below sea level since long before human settlement - the other was due to flooding, yes, but not from the sea at all.
BTW - It doesn't help when you're fudging your defense with (obviously paraphrased): 'OAMG it's all environmental and no one can tell if it's AGW or not, so we better FUD them in and count them as AGW refugees anyway!'
Seriously - let's stick to known facts, and stop making extrapolations based on emotion and guesswork.
You could always do what my parents did when I was a kid.
Talk with them. Teach them things you think they should know. Discuss your family history. Bring some books along that they can read aloud and *discuss* with you. Ask them stuff. Sing songs - and make a few up while you're at it. Talk about what makes the weather they see outside, or teach them the different kinds of trees/cacti/mountains/etc they see passing by the window. If you have more than one kid, supply a couple of notebooks and pencils, and hold an impromptu art contest. Make up debates, and always take the other side, forcing them to use logic and reason (hell, *teach* them logic and reasoning while you're at it).
Even if the kid(s) are too young to be all that articulate - you can use the time to help them improve their vocabulary, pronunciation, and to teach them things - even if they're sitting in the back seat and you're up front.
Long story short, teach them to engage their minds and become creative, not just ignore them into becoming passive consumers of entertainment.
As a bonus, by doing this you help make your kid into someone that wants to talk to you first when it really matters later on.
According to GP, the *parent* was the one who did the downloading/install for his kid. Kinda implies that the parent agreed to the terms on the kid's behalf anyway.
My vote is for "stupid parent" - esp. with the comment about demanding that he not be arsed to "read all about these apps" first. :/
That's pretty much the case with any real 3D/CG application - even the allegedly easy Kai Krause built apps of yore (Bryce, Poser, RayDream/Cararra) required more than just a little bit of time and effort to grok the controls (let alone the concepts behind them).
Turn a complete newbie loose on Modo, Maya (*shiver*), Lightwave, or 3DS Max... or even a totally NURBs-happy app like Rhino. I guarantee you that 60% of those newbies will give it up in disgust in less than a few cumulative hours, and at least 20% more will give up on it after creating (and perhaps animating) a few crude meshes. It simply takes some work to know what's going on in a CG app. The closest I can remember any CG app being newbie-friendly? It was MakeHuman, but in that app's case it was (and still is IMHO) pretty limited in what it could do offhand.
Hell, I've been dinking around with CG apps for 10 years now, and I'm still learning things when it comes to maximizing what even my most favorite and oft-used tools can do.
It's been redesigned to look like 3ds Max or maya.
I was thinking Modo... and I hope to hell it has Modo's kind of customizable UI - that would be extremely sweet (because then I can make it match the other tools in the workflow...)
No.... Shit. (no, not flaming you, honest... I'm frickin' impressed).
O.O
I thought they'd *never* tame that beast. I'm hoping the real thing stands up to the screenies.
(it reminds me a *lot* of what DAZ|Studio used to look like back in 1.0-1.5, which IMHO is a damned good thing).