Researchers at UC Berkeley have crunched numbers and determined that 130,000-260,000 excess votes went to Bush in Florida. From the Slashdot heading
I also did RTFA... Some people are so quick to dismiss what others have to say it's immediately "RTFA! RTFA!"...
I read the summary of the study's findings (linked from the header), which mentioned that 130,000 votes "or more" could have gone to Bush... and the article header (here) says between 130,000 to 260,000... (which I now assume is incorrect)
The rest of the figures I took from the post I was replying to (which is why I mentioned "If these figures are correct")...
Uh... well, do the math (if these figures are right).
Bush wins by 400,000
subtract (possibly) 260,000
Now he's only 140,000 ahead...
Add those 260,000 votes to Kerry's tally...
and you have Kerry winning the state by 120,000 votes.
So... if this analysis holds up under scrutiny (which I doubt it will), it definitely could have affected the election.
I really hope you don't believe that your narrow worldview is the be-all and end-all when it comes to unions.
As is shown in the example, it doesn't matter how friggin brilliant you are, YOU ARE EXPENDABLE.
As a student of Economics, labor is simply a factor of production, and that is EXACTLY how management sees employees. There's very few companies that truly care about their employees and see to it that they're kept happy on the job (until you hit the management level anyway... but even then you're only a boardroom meeting away from a rolling head).
Labor's only defense against market fluctuations is to unionize... I realize that you can cite chapter and verse of how bad unions are, but you do realize working conditions were abysmal until unions started forming in the early 1900s, and companies spent the better part of 20 years trying to stamp out the union movement. And these were honest, hard-working people... I challenge you to tell me that you work harder than your grandfather had to.
Unions are not a threat... and the fact that you think they are leads me to believe either you're in management, or you work in a job where you have some 'perceived' security.
If you were in a market where you were easily exploited as a source of labor I doubt you'd be as arrogant.
For example, I live in a 1 hospital town, and the nurses there are treated so badly they've decided to unionize just so they can stop pulling 48 hour shifts, 100 hour weeks, no vacation and being on-call for their remaining time off... simply because the management is too cheap to hire more nurses.
I bet you can guess that these people are salaried...
Let's see you call them 'lazy, unproductive or incompetent'... simply because they're tired of being treated like shit.
Well, your numbers are a little flawed... that is unless you plan on everybody driving electric cars to replace our current gasoline-burning ones.
A good majority of that 22MBPD is for refinement into Gasoline, Jet Fuel, Kerosene, Plastics, Fuel Oil (for heating), etc.
Coal is the most popular fossil-fuel choice for electrical generation in the US.
Also, most windmills are 1MW, not 500KW... I think there was a story on slashdot recently about a 5MW monster windmill that was built somewhere in Europe...
I'd say that it would be closer to maybe 60,000 to 100,000 windmills nationwide to replace our oil-fired powerplants... then we gotta get rid of those coal-burning ones (good luck).
The main problem is that the main source of electrical generation in the U.S. is from coal-fired power plants. Out west here we have some hydropower as well, but we burn more coal than any country (even China).
Economically speaking, coal is the cheapest natural resource we have in the U.S. We have over 400 years of reserves by most estimates, but the drawback is that it's the dirtier, low-grade coal that's found in the Eastern U.S., not the cleaner Bituminous coal that's found here out west.
This is what GWB is talking about when he's talking about jobs... in order to clean up our sulfur dioxide emissions, it means moving away from coal as a fuel source, which would send the coal industry reeling. (Just so I don't seem sympathetic to him I'll divulge that I voted for Kerry).
To make the comparison fair, you need to compare U.S. emissions to 'all' of Europe and half of Asia... it's rather unfair to compare them on a country-by-country basis.
Like you mention, China is one of the success stories of the developing nations... even though the Three Gorges Dam is going to create the world's largest cesspool out of the Yangtze river, it will also take the place of them having to build several coal-fired powerplants. They've actually been reducing their pollution output as well from their current plants, even though they are one of the excepted countries in the Kyoto agreement.
You also are kinda forgetting that European countries have had a hundred more years or so to get their emissions in order... remember that at one time London's air quality was so bad that people were literally dying from breathing. Germany's Black Forest has also been almost completely decimated by acid rain... so they also had incentive to reduce their emissions, without needing the Kyoto agreement.
I don't want to appear like I'm making excuses, but sometimes you have to look past ideals and see how it's going to effect us economically... there will be a point in the future that we will be able to participate, but with the economy already in shambles, now is not the time.
I'm a senior in Environmental Economics, and the Kyoto agreement is one subject we've spent a lot of time analyzing. The economic repercussions of signing onto this agreement are pretty large, so we'll need to make sure the economy is growing pretty well before we take the plunge. Right now it's just suicide...
The main thing to understand behind the Kyoto agreement is the fact that it institutes a system of Tradeable Emissions Rights (TERs). TERs are already being used in the U.S. among coal-fired power plants with great success in curbing emissions. Basically, a TER is a publicly traded permit that allows 1 ton of pollution emission per permit purchased. Each power plant is granted a certain number of emissions permits up to the amount that needs to be abated (by statute), and the company must then purchase additional rights to pollute above that amount.
This is a great market because it makes the industry self-policing. Those powerplants that can economically abate emissions are free to sell excess TERs to companies that are unable to do so, making it a win-win situation for all parties. Every year the amount of pollution abated increases, which encourages companies to invest in cleanup technology, or decommission powerplants that simply can't meet the requirements economically (which are replaced with new plants with better technology).
Now apply this on a global scale, and you have Kyoto. The reason Russia is so gung-ho about signing onto this treaty is because they stand to make billions of dollars on the deal. "Why" may you ask? Because the baseline was set at 10% below 1990 pollution levels (IIRC). Anybody that knows anything about Russia's economy since the collapse of the Soviet Union knows that they're running at about 30-40% of their industrial output as they were during the Communist heyday... in other words, they have a shitload of permits to sell... and guess who their #1 customer will be? The U.S., of course.
This is why the U.S. is so apprehensive about the treaty... we're already doing what we can within our country's own TER system to combat pollution, so there's not much room left for maneuvering on a global scale (we've already hit the point of economical abatement). So, that's the primary reason why the U.S. won't sign on, and why it's been a bipartisan issue.
We stand to lose quite a bit of GDP if we have to implement the Kyoto agreement, though with the price of oil forever-escalating this could finally spur development in the Hydrogen/Solar area.
Also, to those protesting the unfairness of Kyoto, keep in mind that in every country's industrial development, there's a point in time where they emit huge amounts of pollution... attempting to deny those developing countries economical fossil-fuel sources is a bit hypocritical, even though on a global scale it make sense. That is why Kyoto makes exception for these countries... they're allowed to pollute at their current levels for 10-20 years, upon which time they will also be subject to the provisions outlined in the Kyoto treaty. The hope is that by that time technology will have evolved enough that it will be economically feasible for these developing countries to afford, which will lead to implementation.
It's like the guy who calls the police and files a report about his pot stash being stolen.
I don't know if the parent was being sarcastic, but here in my town, the police actually encourage this behavior.
We've had several home invasion robberies where people's marijuana and cash were stolen, who called the police, and had no charges pressed against them.
Our local police chief said he'll never prosecute people under these circumstances... his opinion is that it's better to get the people off the streets performing these robberies than it is to lock up these unlucky potheads, and thus he doesn't want them to be afraid to call the police.
Of course I live in Northern California as well, so that could have something to do with it...;)
2, You ignored my point about reprocessing and other fission methods. Reprocessing fuel leads to MORE energy than was originally extracted from the Uranium, and fission plants can be built from materials such as Thorium and Radium.
No. You're not taking into account the amount of energy it takes to reprocess this waste. The net energy available after you take this into account is so low that it is much more cost effective to enrich newly mined uranium... hence the reason all reactors have holding ponds for spent fuel rods. If it were economical to reprocess this waste there wouldn't be such a clamor for a safe disposal site (i.e. Yucca Mountain), it would be reused.
Wow, that letter's great and all, but doesn't it kinda give them a roadmap of which data to destroy?
Heck, we all know that computer problems happen, or that electronic data mysteriously gets misplaced (I like to call it 'lost in virtuality').
I'm picturing Tim Allen's house in 'The Santa Clause' when the naughty or nice list arrived... these guys are gonna be buried under a crapload of paper .:D
As an environmental economist (how's that for a combination), while some of the things they point out have some merit, it's all smoke and mirrors as an attempt to make Bush look better.
They're operating under the assumption that these companies are all reinvesting the money (as capital expenditures) that they now don't have to pay in taxes, which is extremely hard to determine.
I find it hard to believe that these companies are having such a hard time functioning now, when before the tax break they were doing just fine and remaining profitable.
My hunch is that this was a boilerplate letter sent out by Rove and Co. to see who would actually endorse it.
Funny how the stock market tends to do better under a Democratic president, no? Of course, the Republicans would have you believe that they're better for business, whereas they simply put business ahead of the common good... a bad combination.
The thing that gets me is that these are the same people that called for Clinton's head on a pike because he got a blowjob from an intern... in fact it went as far as impeachment.
Yet here we have a President who has repeatedly lied to the American people about serious issues, has dragged is into an unnecessary war, and is probably the most stubborn, divisive president we've had since Herbert Hoover... yet Bush is still winning the popular vote.
So, either the election's rigged, or we have some seriously misinformed (i.e. 'dumb') individuals voting for Bush.
(I know somebody is gonna point out that this is a false dichotomy, but after looking at the facts, these were the only two logical conclusions I could reach... unless people actually like these qualities in a President, which would make that a third possible conclusion.)
I don't recall the government spending $20 billion and sending 15,000 troops into North Carolina to find Rudolph though...
So, while I appreciate your attempt at adding some perspective to the above post, it's not even closely analagous to the situation at hand.
Just because it's some guy 'hiding out' that takes the government eons to catch doesn't dismiss the argument that Bush is an inept moron who couldn't catch a blind man handcuffed to a park bench.
But in this case Wikipedia is actually correct. Don't fall victim to logical fallacies, just because one entry isn't correct doesn't mean that ALL their entries are incorrect.
Gas turbines are inefficient by design, because they use combustion to produce power, and the combustion process is inherently inefficient from an energy transfer point-of-view.
I'm an environmental econ major, and we talk extensively about fossil fuels and alternative energy sources. The size doesn't matter... you're dealing with the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics here, you get a little energy and a LOT of heat. Unless the mini turbines have somehow figured out how to turn all that excessive heat from the combusted fuel into energy they're gonna suffer the same problems of their larger brethren.
The only way to make gas turbines more efficient is to pump the excess heat from the exhaust into a steam turbine and gain a bit more bang for your buck... but I doubt we'll see any miracle breakthrough's on the combustion front, even though these mini turbines are intriguing.
After reading through the code snippets I'm at a loss as to how you know that it's based on your code. All the variable names seem really generic (file, server, user, etc.), and just because they follow a particular order doesn't mean shit.
I've taken enough programming classes to see that logically the code he wrote could coincindentally be similar to yours (as it is in this case).
Not to be inflammatory, but I think his code looks better, and is definitely more detailed than yours is... so this begs the question... why would he rip off your code when he was perfectly capable of writing his own?
Oh, and I guess I should add the disclaimer that I have nothing to do with 'g4l' or have any idea who it is that wrote it, but I will say that you may have actually been off the mark on this one... no wonder the programmer just yanked it off the net rather than give you credit.
The one thing you forgot to cover in your in-depth article is the fact that Apple's EULA strictly prohibits the end user from running MacOS on anything but Apple-branded hardware.
So I don't think Apple has to worry much about emulators taking what remains of their market share... the actual big selling point about Macs is the fact that it's designed as a whole widget, not hardware vs. software as it is in the PC world.
When you buy a Mac you buy an 'experience', not just a piece of hardware bundled with some software.
Until somebody can replicate that then I don't think Apple needs to worry...
Not to nitpick, but you're kinda running two separate occurrances together, global warming and ozone layer depletion.
With ozone depletion, CFC's and any other molecule that contains Chlorine spend their time robbing O3 molecules of one of their oxygen atoms, in a recurring cycle until the Chlorine atom is spent and can no longer split O3 molecules apart.
Global warming on the other hand, is from the proliferation of molecules that contain 3 atoms or more (such as CO2, and even H2O!). These molecules act to trap infrared radiation, which normally radiates back out into space, by reflecting it back to earth.
Let me also state that the earth has a normal 'Greenhouse Effect' built in to the atmosphere... were it not for this, the average Earth temperature would be in the range of -400 degrees Fahrenheit.
I hear that Canada and Ukraine are pretty stoked about global warming... since that's where the new corn and wheat belts will be in about 20 or so years if we continue with our current rate of pollution.
It's also unknown what the Earth's self-correction mechanism will be, but I predict that we face some pretty serious climactic changes before it regains balance... something that I don't think the human race can survive.
Well, if a flat tax is to work then it'll have to be based on sales rather than income... the marginal utility of each dollar spent (not earned) has about equal value with both levels of wealth.
The only thing you wouldn't tax is food and rent... and since the majority of the $30,000 families income is tied up with these two necessities, they'll pay hardly any tax at all, whereas the family buying Buffy her new Mercedes will be contributing 10% of that cost to the government...
It's a progressive tax, with flat properties... the more you spend on non-necessities the more you pay... and unless you wish to be wealthy yet live like a lower-class family, there's no escaping the tax.
Win-Win.
There would also have to be taxes on interest-bearing accounts and taxes on investment, but I think a plan like this would have a good chance of making it.
Slashdot Mirror
Researchers at UC Berkeley have crunched numbers and determined that 130,000-260,000 excess votes went to Bush in Florida. From the Slashdot heading
I also did RTFA... Some people are so quick to dismiss what others have to say it's immediately "RTFA! RTFA!"...
I read the summary of the study's findings (linked from the header), which mentioned that 130,000 votes "or more" could have gone to Bush... and the article header (here) says between 130,000 to 260,000... (which I now assume is incorrect)
The rest of the figures I took from the post I was replying to (which is why I mentioned "If these figures are correct")...
Egads... I give up... you win...
Uh... well, do the math (if these figures are right).
Bush wins by 400,000
subtract (possibly) 260,000
Now he's only 140,000 ahead...
Add those 260,000 votes to Kerry's tally...
and you have Kerry winning the state by 120,000 votes.
So... if this analysis holds up under scrutiny (which I doubt it will), it definitely could have affected the election.
Wow! Ronald Reagan's back from the dead!
/me braces for the karma hit...
I really hope you don't believe that your narrow worldview is the be-all and end-all when it comes to unions.
As is shown in the example, it doesn't matter how friggin brilliant you are, YOU ARE EXPENDABLE.
As a student of Economics, labor is simply a factor of production, and that is EXACTLY how management sees employees. There's very few companies that truly care about their employees and see to it that they're kept happy on the job (until you hit the management level anyway... but even then you're only a boardroom meeting away from a rolling head).
Labor's only defense against market fluctuations is to unionize... I realize that you can cite chapter and verse of how bad unions are, but you do realize working conditions were abysmal until unions started forming in the early 1900s, and companies spent the better part of 20 years trying to stamp out the union movement. And these were honest, hard-working people... I challenge you to tell me that you work harder than your grandfather had to.
Unions are not a threat... and the fact that you think they are leads me to believe either you're in management, or you work in a job where you have some 'perceived' security.
If you were in a market where you were easily exploited as a source of labor I doubt you'd be as arrogant.
For example, I live in a 1 hospital town, and the nurses there are treated so badly they've decided to unionize just so they can stop pulling 48 hour shifts, 100 hour weeks, no vacation and being on-call for their remaining time off... simply because the management is too cheap to hire more nurses.
I bet you can guess that these people are salaried...
Let's see you call them 'lazy, unproductive or incompetent'... simply because they're tired of being treated like shit.
Well, your numbers are a little flawed... that is unless you plan on everybody driving electric cars to replace our current gasoline-burning ones.
A good majority of that 22MBPD is for refinement into Gasoline, Jet Fuel, Kerosene, Plastics, Fuel Oil (for heating), etc.
Coal is the most popular fossil-fuel choice for electrical generation in the US.
Also, most windmills are 1MW, not 500KW... I think there was a story on slashdot recently about a 5MW monster windmill that was built somewhere in Europe...
I'd say that it would be closer to maybe 60,000 to 100,000 windmills nationwide to replace our oil-fired powerplants... then we gotta get rid of those coal-burning ones (good luck).
The main problem is that the main source of electrical generation in the U.S. is from coal-fired power plants. Out west here we have some hydropower as well, but we burn more coal than any country (even China).
Economically speaking, coal is the cheapest natural resource we have in the U.S. We have over 400 years of reserves by most estimates, but the drawback is that it's the dirtier, low-grade coal that's found in the Eastern U.S., not the cleaner Bituminous coal that's found here out west.
This is what GWB is talking about when he's talking about jobs... in order to clean up our sulfur dioxide emissions, it means moving away from coal as a fuel source, which would send the coal industry reeling. (Just so I don't seem sympathetic to him I'll divulge that I voted for Kerry).
To make the comparison fair, you need to compare U.S. emissions to 'all' of Europe and half of Asia... it's rather unfair to compare them on a country-by-country basis.
Like you mention, China is one of the success stories of the developing nations... even though the Three Gorges Dam is going to create the world's largest cesspool out of the Yangtze river, it will also take the place of them having to build several coal-fired powerplants. They've actually been reducing their pollution output as well from their current plants, even though they are one of the excepted countries in the Kyoto agreement.
You also are kinda forgetting that European countries have had a hundred more years or so to get their emissions in order... remember that at one time London's air quality was so bad that people were literally dying from breathing. Germany's Black Forest has also been almost completely decimated by acid rain... so they also had incentive to reduce their emissions, without needing the Kyoto agreement.
I don't want to appear like I'm making excuses, but sometimes you have to look past ideals and see how it's going to effect us economically... there will be a point in the future that we will be able to participate, but with the economy already in shambles, now is not the time.
I'm a senior in Environmental Economics, and the Kyoto agreement is one subject we've spent a lot of time analyzing. The economic repercussions of signing onto this agreement are pretty large, so we'll need to make sure the economy is growing pretty well before we take the plunge. Right now it's just suicide...
The main thing to understand behind the Kyoto agreement is the fact that it institutes a system of Tradeable Emissions Rights (TERs). TERs are already being used in the U.S. among coal-fired power plants with great success in curbing emissions. Basically, a TER is a publicly traded permit that allows 1 ton of pollution emission per permit purchased. Each power plant is granted a certain number of emissions permits up to the amount that needs to be abated (by statute), and the company must then purchase additional rights to pollute above that amount.
;)
This is a great market because it makes the industry self-policing. Those powerplants that can economically abate emissions are free to sell excess TERs to companies that are unable to do so, making it a win-win situation for all parties. Every year the amount of pollution abated increases, which encourages companies to invest in cleanup technology, or decommission powerplants that simply can't meet the requirements economically (which are replaced with new plants with better technology).
Now apply this on a global scale, and you have Kyoto. The reason Russia is so gung-ho about signing onto this treaty is because they stand to make billions of dollars on the deal. "Why" may you ask? Because the baseline was set at 10% below 1990 pollution levels (IIRC). Anybody that knows anything about Russia's economy since the collapse of the Soviet Union knows that they're running at about 30-40% of their industrial output as they were during the Communist heyday... in other words, they have a shitload of permits to sell... and guess who their #1 customer will be? The U.S., of course.
This is why the U.S. is so apprehensive about the treaty... we're already doing what we can within our country's own TER system to combat pollution, so there's not much room left for maneuvering on a global scale (we've already hit the point of economical abatement). So, that's the primary reason why the U.S. won't sign on, and why it's been a bipartisan issue.
We stand to lose quite a bit of GDP if we have to implement the Kyoto agreement, though with the price of oil forever-escalating this could finally spur development in the Hydrogen/Solar area.
Also, to those protesting the unfairness of Kyoto, keep in mind that in every country's industrial development, there's a point in time where they emit huge amounts of pollution... attempting to deny those developing countries economical fossil-fuel sources is a bit hypocritical, even though on a global scale it make sense. That is why Kyoto makes exception for these countries... they're allowed to pollute at their current levels for 10-20 years, upon which time they will also be subject to the provisions outlined in the Kyoto treaty. The hope is that by that time technology will have evolved enough that it will be economically feasible for these developing countries to afford, which will lead to implementation.
Any questions?
I should've been more specific... these people were 'cultivating' marijuana, not just possessing it.
Hope that addresses your sarcasm.
It's like the guy who calls the police and files a report about his pot stash being stolen.
;)
I don't know if the parent was being sarcastic, but here in my town, the police actually encourage this behavior.
We've had several home invasion robberies where people's marijuana and cash were stolen, who called the police, and had no charges pressed against them.
Our local police chief said he'll never prosecute people under these circumstances... his opinion is that it's better to get the people off the streets performing these robberies than it is to lock up these unlucky potheads, and thus he doesn't want them to be afraid to call the police.
Of course I live in Northern California as well, so that could have something to do with it...
2, You ignored my point about reprocessing and other fission methods. Reprocessing fuel leads to MORE energy than was originally extracted from the Uranium, and fission plants can be built from materials such as Thorium and Radium.
No. You're not taking into account the amount of energy it takes to reprocess this waste. The net energy available after you take this into account is so low that it is much more cost effective to enrich newly mined uranium... hence the reason all reactors have holding ponds for spent fuel rods. If it were economical to reprocess this waste there wouldn't be such a clamor for a safe disposal site (i.e. Yucca Mountain), it would be reused.
Wow, that letter's great and all, but doesn't it kinda give them a roadmap of which data to destroy?
:D
Heck, we all know that computer problems happen, or that electronic data mysteriously gets misplaced (I like to call it 'lost in virtuality').
I'm picturing Tim Allen's house in 'The Santa Clause' when the naughty or nice list arrived... these guys are gonna be buried under a crapload of paper .
I (as a Kerry voter) also concede defeat to President Bush.
I plan on sending George a congratulatory bag of pretzels.
I call bullshit. (on the letter)
As an environmental economist (how's that for a combination), while some of the things they point out have some merit, it's all smoke and mirrors as an attempt to make Bush look better.
They're operating under the assumption that these companies are all reinvesting the money (as capital expenditures) that they now don't have to pay in taxes, which is extremely hard to determine.
I find it hard to believe that these companies are having such a hard time functioning now, when before the tax break they were doing just fine and remaining profitable.
My hunch is that this was a boilerplate letter sent out by Rove and Co. to see who would actually endorse it.
Funny how the stock market tends to do better under a Democratic president, no? Of course, the Republicans would have you believe that they're better for business, whereas they simply put business ahead of the common good... a bad combination.
The thing that gets me is that these are the same people that called for Clinton's head on a pike because he got a blowjob from an intern... in fact it went as far as impeachment.
Yet here we have a President who has repeatedly lied to the American people about serious issues, has dragged is into an unnecessary war, and is probably the most stubborn, divisive president we've had since Herbert Hoover... yet Bush is still winning the popular vote.
So, either the election's rigged, or we have some seriously misinformed (i.e. 'dumb') individuals voting for Bush.
(I know somebody is gonna point out that this is a false dichotomy, but after looking at the facts, these were the only two logical conclusions I could reach... unless people actually like these qualities in a President, which would make that a third possible conclusion.)
I don't recall the government spending $20 billion and sending 15,000 troops into North Carolina to find Rudolph though...
:P
So, while I appreciate your attempt at adding some perspective to the above post, it's not even closely analagous to the situation at hand.
Just because it's some guy 'hiding out' that takes the government eons to catch doesn't dismiss the argument that Bush is an inept moron who couldn't catch a blind man handcuffed to a park bench.
But that's just my opinion...
"That guy from Willow"
:D
That would be Warwick Davis... who, amazingly enough, also played Wicket the Ewok in ROTJ.
Man, those little guys sure get around.
I've discovered that I really have a liking for 'Industrial Squaredance' music...
/me makes an appointment with his psychiatrist.
But in this case Wikipedia is actually correct. Don't fall victim to logical fallacies, just because one entry isn't correct doesn't mean that ALL their entries are incorrect.
Gas turbines are inefficient by design, because they use combustion to produce power, and the combustion process is inherently inefficient from an energy transfer point-of-view.
I'm an environmental econ major, and we talk extensively about fossil fuels and alternative energy sources. The size doesn't matter... you're dealing with the 1st and 2nd laws of thermodynamics here, you get a little energy and a LOT of heat. Unless the mini turbines have somehow figured out how to turn all that excessive heat from the combusted fuel into energy they're gonna suffer the same problems of their larger brethren.
The only way to make gas turbines more efficient is to pump the excess heat from the exhaust into a steam turbine and gain a bit more bang for your buck... but I doubt we'll see any miracle breakthrough's on the combustion front, even though these mini turbines are intriguing.
Eeeewps... find/replace *your* *their*. ;)
After reading through the code snippets I'm at a loss as to how you know that it's based on your code. All the variable names seem really generic (file, server, user, etc.), and just because they follow a particular order doesn't mean shit.
I've taken enough programming classes to see that logically the code he wrote could coincindentally be similar to yours (as it is in this case).
Not to be inflammatory, but I think his code looks better, and is definitely more detailed than yours is... so this begs the question... why would he rip off your code when he was perfectly capable of writing his own?
Oh, and I guess I should add the disclaimer that I have nothing to do with 'g4l' or have any idea who it is that wrote it, but I will say that you may have actually been off the mark on this one... no wonder the programmer just yanked it off the net rather than give you credit.
The one thing you forgot to cover in your in-depth article is the fact that Apple's EULA strictly prohibits the end user from running MacOS on anything but Apple-branded hardware.
So I don't think Apple has to worry much about emulators taking what remains of their market share... the actual big selling point about Macs is the fact that it's designed as a whole widget, not hardware vs. software as it is in the PC world.
When you buy a Mac you buy an 'experience', not just a piece of hardware bundled with some software.
Until somebody can replicate that then I don't think Apple needs to worry...
The problem is that there's no 'Galactic Virgins' left after Star Trek... Captain Kirk banged them all.
Not to nitpick, but you're kinda running two separate occurrances together, global warming and ozone layer depletion.
With ozone depletion, CFC's and any other molecule that contains Chlorine spend their time robbing O3 molecules of one of their oxygen atoms, in a recurring cycle until the Chlorine atom is spent and can no longer split O3 molecules apart.
Global warming on the other hand, is from the proliferation of molecules that contain 3 atoms or more (such as CO2, and even H2O!). These molecules act to trap infrared radiation, which normally radiates back out into space, by reflecting it back to earth.
Let me also state that the earth has a normal 'Greenhouse Effect' built in to the atmosphere... were it not for this, the average Earth temperature would be in the range of -400 degrees Fahrenheit.
I hear that Canada and Ukraine are pretty stoked about global warming... since that's where the new corn and wheat belts will be in about 20 or so years if we continue with our current rate of pollution.
It's also unknown what the Earth's self-correction mechanism will be, but I predict that we face some pretty serious climactic changes before it regains balance... something that I don't think the human race can survive.
"Oh, my favorite band XXX is so completely enabled by the man who invented the electric guitar."
...and that would be Les Paul.
Well, if a flat tax is to work then it'll have to be based on sales rather than income... the marginal utility of each dollar spent (not earned) has about equal value with both levels of wealth.
The only thing you wouldn't tax is food and rent... and since the majority of the $30,000 families income is tied up with these two necessities, they'll pay hardly any tax at all, whereas the family buying Buffy her new Mercedes will be contributing 10% of that cost to the government...
It's a progressive tax, with flat properties... the more you spend on non-necessities the more you pay... and unless you wish to be wealthy yet live like a lower-class family, there's no escaping the tax.
Win-Win.
There would also have to be taxes on interest-bearing accounts and taxes on investment, but I think a plan like this would have a good chance of making it.
is how they're gonna recreate the 'Death Blossom' scene... are the actors just going to spin around really fast and throw stuff at the audience?