actually, your wrong. It not the radioactivity of the individual particle, but the overall level of radioactivity, the concentration, which is MUCH higher in DU weapons. Up to 1000 times above background radiation. So, you dont know what you are talking about.
Being a web developer, what subverts the standard based web environment is the shoddy and inadequate, feature starved nature of the standards themselves. The standards often leave out some important and obvious capability that would make my life a lot eisier in designing web pages and applications. One example is the scrollbar controls in DOM, there was only a way to control the vertical scrollbar and a primitive one at that, but no way to control the horizontal one. There is also the deplorable situation where several essential features which have helped enhance the environment and make it more versatile and flexible, such as XMLHTTPRequest and InnerHTML are the various edit modes was not in the w3c specifications at all. There are also problems with the lack of any kind of dynamic font loading to use custom fonts in a web page. It almost seems the people who write the specifications do not actually use them in real world situations or the need for these would be more apparent. So w3c almost seems to be its own worst enemy when it comes to the brain damaged nature of the web programming environment.
I dont buy this idea that yellowcake uranium would not pose human health risks. Its a heavy metal, and there are reports of damage to internal organs and harm from it. Breathing this stuff would also be bad. The DU you mention has been used extensively in iraq since 1991 and there has been a drastic increase in cancer and birth defects in iraq since. The DU produces levels of radioactivity far higher than safe limits. The use of DU is truly a crime against humanity, it is the same as litering the country with landmines so people are being blown up long after you have left, in fact far worse. the DU will be there for billions of years and it is very hard to decontaminate an area compared with demining. The people in the area suffer terribly from the diseases from DU exposure. It is as bad as the agent orange atrocity we inflicted on the people of vietnam, and perhaps worse.
I think it is outrageous that we can spend trillions on Bushs war of lies and deciet in iraq but we cannot come up with $11 million for aricebo. It shows how corrupt the government has become, when Bushs wars of aggression of killing and death are more important than expanding human knowledge.
I consider this to be outrageous and a major breach of everyones privacy. Now viacom will basically be able to mine the database and basically do whatever it wants that suits its fancy. Its another reason to boycott Viacomm. But as well, we should be asking Google to stop recording logs of what videos people use, or destroy them after a week. The view logging is not needed for other features, like comments, view count, ratings, favourite lists, and so on.
You make a good point, google should not be logging video views, or destroy the logs after a week or so. The log is not needed for favourites lists, view counts, popularity rating, commenting, etc.
If people are writing their applications using threads, I dont see there should be a big problem with more cores. Basically, threads should be used where it is practical and makes sense and does not make programming that much more difficult, in fact it can make things eisier. Rather than some overly complicated reengineering, threads when properly used can lead to programs that are just as easy to understand. They can be used for a program that does many tasks, processing can usually be parallelised when you have different operations which do not depend on the output of each other. A list of instructions which depends on output of a previous instructions, which must run sequentially, of course cannot be threaded or paralellised. Obvious example of applications that can be threaded is a server, where you have a thread to process data from each socket, a program which scans multiple files, can have a thread for processing each file, etc.
This is basisically technical sounding nonsense that just obscures the fact of what is happening. If a resource gets to the point where there is not enough to meet demand, or it is no longer economical, it doesnt matter if there is still a little left, the effect is basically that you cant use it anymore, so you can say it has run out. You are just using slippery words to try to obscure this fact.
I dont think that your idea that current ways and habits, can be sustained in their current form, or that technologies to replace these will magically appear. Furthermore, if we can be more efficient, we should eb done so now rather than just going on business as usual. If we improve our efficiecy, we can extend the life of the resources that we have now and help mitigate problems in the future. This is called planning ahead, and it is often alien to the chaos of free markets, which is not driven by foresight by immediate profits and greed. Such as oil, if we cared about the future, and we wanted to take action that would help us reduce problems in the future and avoid them, we would not be using oil now. We are using it still because of short term greed of oil companies, and the immature behaviouer of the people that keeps us from more responsible long term alternatives that could stop global warming adn supply us with clean energy. We should not keep using oil, we should leave it in the ground where it belongs and stop adding to the climate change mess. But only foresight and planning can get that done, and that means not a chaotic market driven trends but us deciding to implement goals and objectives, and a plan.
We should be pushing much more for sequestering and recycling of all electronics, conservation, renewable energy and so on, but its not happening because private industry isnt interested, and we have a conservative government that is basically a lapdog of private corporations.
Another thing that needs to be done is to educate people globally to encourage more sustainable population trends. We really need to encourage people through education amd with contraception and abstinance to engage in family planning and decide to limit themselves to two children per family, and perhaps 1 per family in many cases, and with a target of 0% and in certain cases a temporary period of negative population growth. Population growth simply adds to demand, and if we want to give ourselves the best chance of solving our problems we should hold demand at the level it is at now, this will give us a better chance of eliminating poverty and would likely save many lives. Such would actually prevent overpopulation problems, which are real since the earths resources are finite, and nothing can change that, no matter what you do eventually you will reach the point of exhausting those resources. Eventually, if population growth continued, the earth would end up covered in a 100 foot thick deep layer of human beings. Long before, environmental quality of life will be greatly degraded as food becomes more difficult to acquire and quality of life suffers as it does when population density increases (better environment for diseases, a loss of scenic beauty, supply problems get worse, sewage problems worsen, etc). If you doubt that overpopulation causes a debasement of living conditions, I suggest you visit india where families live in crowded slums of cardboard boxes and see it for yourself. The fact that overpopulation is a problem is undeniable, its a physical law. The earth isnt getting bigger, You cant magically increase the size of the earth or its finite resources but many people delude themselves into thinking that somehow we can keep reproducing like we are now. No technology can escape this problem. Technology in agriculture has only worsened the quality of food and has caused soil desertification due to intensive agricultural practices and increases pesticide exposure. None of these things are good. Those who would want us to do nothing to help educate people to help them understand the economic realities of overpopul
It is not at all reasonable or economically feasible to try to mine metals of the moon or other bodies. I mean, come on, this is a desperate delusion. We can barely get a shuttle off the ground at enormous expense. Rockets are outrageously expensive. And with the coming shortages of all metals and oil, and energy, where are the massive resources that you would need to launch all of these space craft going to come from.
There are many environmental concerns regarding this. In digging up a landfill, you are also exposing potentially harmful waste. The electronics itself are harmful wastes so there will be great concerns about how to process these without leaking toxics into the environment. Many electronics contain plastics that emit dioxins and other toxic chemicals when incinerated. All of this will be complicated by the fact that oil is also running out, so to do this all in an environmentally responsible way becomes more difficult.
As I said, there is also the issue that the amount recoverable from landfills might not be enough to meet demand, and that might see a drop off in supply. This spells economic problems and scarcity, and a partial regression for many people back into a less technological lifestyle. Also, the oil which is going to run out soon is going to combine with the other resources problems, since recycling is very energy intensive.
If we were smart we would have been placing metal bearing items and electronics, etc into seperate storage areas, and mandated that consumers properly dispose of electronics.
To say private corporations will do this is pretty naive. It usually takes a penalty, fines, of some sort to force people to recycle. Its just human nature that they wont bother to if you dont. Government can put in a legal mandate that can get this done. If we leave it to corporations it may never happen. Corporations are driven mainly by profit. This does not always lead to the best outcomes and can lead to serious problems. The chaos of market systems can often lead to unnecessary shortsightedness and lack of long term planning that worsens our future condition. Right now, it might seem cheapest just to dump electronics into the trash and not worrry about storing it seperately. The profit motivations, adn peoples lazy habits, are driven by short term interests, greed and a lack of long term perspective. Recycling and seperating electronics from other junk doesnt really have a profit interest for private corporations so they arent encouraged to do it.
Governments do have to play a role in mandating the recycling. It often takes government initiative and often we cant wait for private industry to do it.
For instance, with oil, we cant afford to wait until market forces decide oil is no longer affordable, and consumers get too fed up with oil prices. First of all, the oil companies have such a monopoly on the market, and really dont want to start offering alternatives now, and that it is too capital intensiv for smaller companies to offer renewable technology . Oil company solutions have been to keep drilling for more oil, which is doing more of exactly what got us into this mess in the first place. Drilling for oil will not solve the problem in the long run. Oil drilling will not solve it at all in the US because the amount of oil in the US is so small it could only supply a small percentage of our energy needs.
Then you have the environmental impact from polluted land, ruined landscapes, polluted water which always happens with oil. Big oil likes to present themselves as environmentally friendly. Dont believe it. Its marketing propoganda. Oil companies hide the true nature of their operations and hide and cover up the pollution that it causes so they can present the pretty delusion to the public. OIl companies will not admit they pollute the environment, when in fact they almost always do and cause health dangers for nearby communities. They will pollute the environment and then to the public they put out propoganda about how clean and wonderful they are, while at the same time they are basically destroying water supplies, peoples homes, well being, and health.
Market forces tend to be chaotic and not to have much long term vision or planning. In order to plan for the future we often have to look past what is more profitable in the short term. We often need to develop a plan rather than to leave it to chance and the chaos of markets. Government often is the only en
We are not crying wolf. Oil will run out eventually, and regardless of what discoveries are made, I dont think that the timeline will change very much. 40 years or 100 years is still to soon for comfort for these things running out. Peak oil might come well before that. As far as offshore, current estimates place the amount of oil offshore, at enough to supply the US for 4 years or so. It is highly unlikely we will find any new large oil reserves, and certainly very unlikely that it will delay the inevitable more than a few years.
We also have the environmental toll and impact of oil drilling, spills, etc, global warming, etc. With the combination of peak oil, peak copper, peak iron, peak trace metals, peak phosphorus, and peak oil, combined with a planet with uncontrolled and reckless population growth, we basically have a recipe for total disaster and a major cataclysmic economic event and possibly massive famines and die offs. This is no joke. Many scientists and experts have been warning about this, its human nature just to ignore it, but that doesnt change the reality.
Yes, you are right, sorry about my misunderstanding. As far as food, there will still be trace metals in the ground, i am sure. Yes, it is correct that these are not economically mineable, and not in an environmentally sane manner.
The problem, is used LCDs have often ended up in landfulls because of our incompetent governments inability to establish recycling programs for electronics, batteries, cable, etc, often due to fatalistic small government conservative ideas. How many governments have curbside pickup for electronics, batteries, cable, etc? Not many. Its human nature that if its not convenient and people cannot put it out on the street, it goes into the trash. Its hard enough to get people to recycle as it is. There should have been huge fines for not recycling these years ago. Now it will be difficult to try to find them in landfills with all the other trash. Like with an ore, if the concentration of zinc and other metals is not very high, its not economical to mine it. With the electronics mixed in with other stuff in the land fills, it would be very time intensive to seperate it all out. Some of the metals may have corroded away as well, making things worse. Even if we do start recycling, demand for zinc would probably exceed the amount of material that is being offered up for recycling, meaning there will be shortages, huge shortages. So, coupled with the oil problem, which which will affect our ability to have the energy for all of these energy intensive recycling tasks, we will have big problems ahead.
So it is a serious problem, and like peak oil, there it is human nature to try to avoid looking at the problem because it is too painful to look at reality, so people have to try to desperately convince themselves it doesnt exist and detach themselves from reality, like the ostrich sticking its head in the sand. But this does not make our problems go away. Their ignorance of the problem inevitably makes their own situation far worse, because we are not addressing it as we should. They say, ignorance is bliss, but only for so long.
It sounds like you just contradicted yourself there. The loss of feasibly mineable zinc deposits will spell disaster for applications that use it. We should be recycling zinc from batteries, from electronics, everything, but we arent! Will by the time we realise this is a problem will it be too late? Even with recycling, there may not be enough materials avialable for recycling to supply new demand. So it is a serious problem, and like peak oil, there it is human nature to try to avoid looking at the problem because it is too painful to look at reality, so people have to try to desperately convince themselves it doesnt exist and detach themselves from reality, like the ostrich sticking its head in the sand. But this does not make our problems go away. They say, ignorance is bliss, but only for so long.
The problem is getting them back, recycling them, thats the problem. Its not scaremongering at all. THis will reduce progress and economic growth, there is no doubt about that. Without an easy supply of thse materials manufacturing will be capped and we probably wont be able to get enough from recycling to meet demand, considering we are recycling AT ALL. We could have had recycling programs for electronics in place years ago and could have recollected electronic equipment for recycling, but our arrogant and idiotic, shortsighted governments have been too slow to do this, as they have been with renewable energy. There should be HUGE fines for throwing anything metal or electronic into the garbage, including batteries that are filled witn metals. How many people recycle their alkaline batteries I ask? How many cities have curbside recycling pickup for batteries and electronic waste, cable, etc? Now with much of these materials buried in landfills, it will be a impractical idea to try to recover them. Duh! How could we be so stupid.
Given even with recycling we still will not get enough metals to meet demand, this is a HUGE problem. Given depleation of other resources such as iron and copper, oil, phosphorus (fertilizer, CRT displays), we are seeing serious trouble ahead. To avert this will take action now but do to the lack of action things are a lot worse than they could have been, since so many materials have already been sent to landfills.
This is more reason for Net Neutralityin law. Anyone who does not support net neutrality seems to want freedom of speech to be taken away from them and wants to live in a fascist totalitarian dictatorship like china. If we want net neutrality we need to elect people who support it.
That backwards compatability slows down performance in an OS is an old myth that refuses to go away. Its just a popular myth that simple minded people who dont know what the heck they are talking about can use to blame performance problems on. Code for old APIs isnt usually even entered until a program requests it. Backwards compatability is a feature of FreeBSD I use, I can run binaries back to 3.0, and Linux binaries too, and its very fast. There is a module that implements Linux syscalls. This code doesnt slow down other parts of the system, and is only activated when you run Linux software, and is only used by Linux software. It doesnt affect the FreeBSD software. Wine often runs windows programs faster than on windows. Backwards compatability is an important useability feature and does not affect OS performance significantly.
The technology is extremely dangerous and right out of Brave New World. There is way too much chance it could be use to undermine the rights and the uniqueness of the invidual by people selecting gender or eye colour. The technology should be completely banned. I want to be my own person, and there is somnething special about no one has control over your body and what you look like, you are completely your own. I dont want to be my parents idea of what I should be. If you value your freedom and your unique individual nature you will reject this. Nature doesnt have agendas. It doesnt have an agenda to perhaps try to for instance mess with childrens behaviour genes to make them more robot like and obedient. There is something important to our individuality and special quality as unique human beings, none other than our own, in the random processes of nature.
Many insurance companies give people physicals and tend to cherry pick the best and most healthy individuals. With a universal system this would be reduced a great bit so we would probably see less regulations on peoples life style. I support universal health care but not these kinds of regulations. Education is a part of the solution, helping people understand how to eat a health diet. Ironically, it is americans workaholic busy lifestyle that leaves little time for exercise. If we gave people better pay, shorter work days and more vacation time, that would lead to a healthier population. The better pay would also mean better food. Many people eat a largely carbohydrate diet because that is the cheapest but that can lead to obesity. I think there is a lot of opposition to higher pay shorter work weeks and universal health care since it deconsolidates wealth and increases the overall well being of the general population but gets in the way of a few rich elites hoarding vast wealth.
I first tried to use Firefox/WIne on FreeBSD because it seemed a little eisier to install tghan the Linux ELF. It actually has installed. It just crashes every so often. But I still use it.
I dont see why they chose this time to release 1.0. Still, a large number of software programs dont run on Wine. One that would not run at all is acrobat. Firefox crashes constantly. I could not get AOL online service client to run. Office XP doesnt run. Its pathetic. Wine is nowhere near 1.0 status. Its misleading since the software does not fully emulate windows, even reasonably well. Release 1.0 when you finally get everything working right.
I would further like to add, that US foreign policy directly contributes to the problem of the terrorist threat. We have specifically engaged in antagonism and provocative actions against muslim countries, or have done so by supporting the illegal acts of israel. Israel has commited dispoportionate violence against the arabs, as which can clearly be seen in the 2008 gaza seige and the 2006 lebanon, both forms of collective punishment of all arabs, including innocent ones who have done nothing wrong, indiscriminate acts. Israel has also demolished the homes of palestinians, and have bombed, or shot and killed palestinian children. This of course, only further escalates the conflict and does the exact opposite of what it is claimed to, israels abusive activiries have only placed israel in greater danger and brought it closer to conflict. The US is seen as complicit since we give more foreign aid to israel than any other country, yes, even more than to famine wracked countries in africa where children die of starvation left and right, and a vast military aid to to israel. Israel, with our help, has acquired nuclear weapons when no other country in the middle east had them, and while the other middle eastern countries were actually supporting nuclear disarmament treaties, which we and isreal opposed! We furthermore have no evidence that iran is developing, presently, nuclear weapons. In fact our actions against iran, seems to be sending a signal that whether or not they do develop them, we will attack anyway, which removes any incentive for them to hold off on developing them. The israeli actions in 2006 and 2008 fit the definition of terror perfectly, since they are clearly intended, through the use of violence against innocent civilians, to attempt to influence and coerce the actions of palestinians. As Chomsky and many others have pointed out, we seem to have a double standard with how we apply the term terrorism. We selectively apply it. Whenever we do something, it is not terorrist, even if it is, its only when the arabs do something. There is a small group of people on both sides who have commited wrongs, on one side fanatical factions in the israeli government, on the other side, muslim extremists. I believe that most israelis and palestinians want peace but it only takes a fanatical few to disrupt this process. People are also easily brainwashed into supporting antagonistic acts, like the gaza siege, which they think will somehow intimidate the palestinians, when in fact, it could possibly further aggravate and antagonise them. This is going to be remembered for a long time and further erodes away trust between all sides. This simply fuels the anti-US sentiment. When we invaded iraq we answered bin ladens prayers, since he has been promoting his fanatical agenda on the idea that the US and israel are trying to colonise the middle east, partly for its oil, partly due to extremist zionism. We simply validated what osama had been saying for years and provided him with more justification which he could use for his agenda. We confirmed what he had been saying with our illegal war against a country that was quite defenseless, with our lies of WMDs and such. We also during the 80s funded and trained the taliban.
The US government is clearly provoking terrorism through antagonistic foreign policy, likely knowingly. The threat of terorrism is then used to promote a trend towards a police state in the the US, and a systematic closing down of the US as a democratic, free society and turning it into a totalitarian state. It all seems fishy to me.
The items in the proposed swedish bill have already been implemented in the US. Kudos to the Swedish for doing something to oppose this and to block it. What has happened, when police state legislation such as this has been introduced in the US? Almost nothing, there is nary a whimper of protest. The causes of this are of interest and a topic of inquiry. Perhaps americans are simply not very well organised enough, and are simply complacent and apathetic when it comes to actually doing anything substaintial to truly protect their freedom. If we want to protect our freedom we need to oppose legislation such as this. The only way we can lose our freedom is if we give it up, and the only ones who can truly take it away from us is the government. A rag tag group of violent extremists can threaten us, but as long as we do not permit ourselves to be overcome by fear so much that we give away our freedoms, they cannot take our freedoms from us. The iraq war and so on has nothing at all whatsoever to do with freedoms. It is a war of aggression that has violated international law. One can perhaps call the involvement in afghanistan a security effort but I would also say it has little or nothing to do with "protecting freedom". These are just government buzzwords to manipulate the simple minded and ignorant people into supporting government policies. These are just distractions to keep the ignorant and gullible masses into the thinking the US government is doing something to "protect your freedom", while they rob you of your freedom blind, where it counts. It is ironic that the same US government that blathers on about how they are supposed to be protecting our freedom are the very ones who are stealing it from us, and doing so right under our noses with most of the ignorant and gullible sheep of the brain dead, asleep country, not noticing. We are told we "cant let the terrorist win", and the terrorists what to take away our freedom, well if we give up our freedom and allow laws which take away our freedoms to be passed, arent we allowing the terrorists to win. Laws like the patriot act, wiretapping, strip searches in airports, torture, thought crime bill where people can be arrested for nothing more than the words they have said, the military commisions act which allows habeas corpus to be suspended, indefinite detainments, and proposed or enacted legislation that allows the entire gamut of civil liberties to be suspended for acts the government has deamed terrorist, which are increasingly defined as anything it wants, including, eventually, peaceful protests? I would not be surprised if one day they labelled protesters trying to bring attention to pollution of the environment by mega corporations, or demanding union representation, as terorrists because they threaten corporate profits. Or those who oppose the iraq war, as such because they threaten the policies of the elite leadership in washington who wishes to do whatever they please with complete indifference and impunity, towards the will of the people. Furthermore, the definition of terrorism is using violence to coerce the public into supporting certain government or political policies. The US government has made an art form out of using the terrorist threat to basically scare and coerce the people of this country into supporting whatever laws it proposes to take away their freedom. They are using the terrorist threat to turn the US into a totalitarian police state, to enlarge its power, and that of its corporate sponsors. So one must ask, who is the terrorist, who is the enemy?
Legal protections such as a prohibition of illegal search and seizure, habeas corpus, and journalistic source confidentiality forms critical pillars of a free society and are designed to protect the rights and freedoms of the innocent and of the people. Something like a ban on torture, right to attorney client privelege, right to habeas corpus, speedy trial by a fair and impartial jury, etc, are there to protect the innocent and to make sure that people cannot be arbitrarily arrested for an
I find the article to be quite ridiculous. These are overly broad stereotypes, and generalisations, and I quite frankly do not see them in real life. They are more the result of myths and misandrist and sexist ideas about men. If someone were to write such an article claiming that women were less proficient, etc, it would create a huge controversy and would be called sexist against women.
Quite frankly, I am tired of these ridiculous myths that women have more emotional intelligence than men, are more caring, more concerned about others needs, etc. I think, how we behave and act is up to the individual and has nothing to do with gender, race, etc. Peoples behaviour is influenced by the culture too, and perhaps, the gender stereotypes we actually teach to children when they are young affects their behaviour, so it would be a self fulfilling prophecy. But men or women are equally capable of good or evil. I have met some of the kindest, most caring and sensitive people who are men, and some of the rudest, or most insensitive and violent people who happen to be women. It has nothing to do with gender. It can have something to do with environment and societies gender roles it creates, a persons childhood, etc. But these sorts of things, a person can change, even someone who is violent, insensitive, etc, can change their ways.
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actually, your wrong. It not the radioactivity of the individual particle, but the overall level of radioactivity, the concentration, which is MUCH higher in DU weapons. Up to 1000 times above background radiation. So, you dont know what you are talking about.
Being a web developer, what subverts the standard based web environment is the shoddy and inadequate, feature starved nature of the standards themselves. The standards often leave out some important and obvious capability that would make my life a lot eisier in designing web pages and applications. One example is the scrollbar controls in DOM, there was only a way to control the vertical scrollbar and a primitive one at that, but no way to control the horizontal one. There is also the deplorable situation where several essential features which have helped enhance the environment and make it more versatile and flexible, such as XMLHTTPRequest and InnerHTML are the various edit modes was not in the w3c specifications at all. There are also problems with the lack of any kind of dynamic font loading to use custom fonts in a web page. It almost seems the people who write the specifications do not actually use them in real world situations or the need for these would be more apparent. So w3c almost seems to be its own worst enemy when it comes to the brain damaged nature of the web programming environment.
I dont buy this idea that yellowcake uranium would not pose human health risks. Its a heavy metal, and there are reports of damage to internal organs and harm from it. Breathing this stuff would also be bad. The DU you mention has been used extensively in iraq since 1991 and there has been a drastic increase in cancer and birth defects in iraq since. The DU produces levels of radioactivity far higher than safe limits. The use of DU is truly a crime against humanity, it is the same as litering the country with landmines so people are being blown up long after you have left, in fact far worse. the DU will be there for billions of years and it is very hard to decontaminate an area compared with demining. The people in the area suffer terribly from the diseases from DU exposure. It is as bad as the agent orange atrocity we inflicted on the people of vietnam, and perhaps worse.
I think it is outrageous that we can spend trillions on Bushs war of lies and deciet in iraq but we cannot come up with $11 million for aricebo. It shows how corrupt the government has become, when Bushs wars of aggression of killing and death are more important than expanding human knowledge.
I consider this to be outrageous and a major breach of everyones privacy. Now viacom will basically be able to mine the database and basically do whatever it wants that suits its fancy. Its another reason to boycott Viacomm. But as well, we should be asking Google to stop recording logs of what videos people use, or destroy them after a week. The view logging is not needed for other features, like comments, view count, ratings, favourite lists, and so on.
You make a good point, google should not be logging video views, or destroy the logs after a week or so. The log is not needed for favourites lists, view counts, popularity rating, commenting, etc.
If people are writing their applications using threads, I dont see there should be a big problem with more cores. Basically, threads should be used where it is practical and makes sense and does not make programming that much more difficult, in fact it can make things eisier. Rather than some overly complicated reengineering, threads when properly used can lead to programs that are just as easy to understand. They can be used for a program that does many tasks, processing can usually be parallelised when you have different operations which do not depend on the output of each other. A list of instructions which depends on output of a previous instructions, which must run sequentially, of course cannot be threaded or paralellised. Obvious example of applications that can be threaded is a server, where you have a thread to process data from each socket, a program which scans multiple files, can have a thread for processing each file, etc.
This is basisically technical sounding nonsense that just obscures the fact of what is happening. If a resource gets to the point where there is not enough to meet demand, or it is no longer economical, it doesnt matter if there is still a little left, the effect is basically that you cant use it anymore, so you can say it has run out. You are just using slippery words to try to obscure this fact.
I dont think that your idea that current ways and habits, can be sustained in their current form, or that technologies to replace these will magically appear. Furthermore, if we can be more efficient, we should eb done so now rather than just going on business as usual. If we improve our efficiecy, we can extend the life of the resources that we have now and help mitigate problems in the future. This is called planning ahead, and it is often alien to the chaos of free markets, which is not driven by foresight by immediate profits and greed. Such as oil, if we cared about the future, and we wanted to take action that would help us reduce problems in the future and avoid them, we would not be using oil now. We are using it still because of short term greed of oil companies, and the immature behaviouer of the people that keeps us from more responsible long term alternatives that could stop global warming adn supply us with clean energy. We should not keep using oil, we should leave it in the ground where it belongs and stop adding to the climate change mess. But only foresight and planning can get that done, and that means not a chaotic market driven trends but us deciding to implement goals and objectives, and a plan.
We should be pushing much more for sequestering and recycling of all electronics, conservation, renewable energy and so on, but its not happening because private industry isnt interested, and we have a conservative government that is basically a lapdog of private corporations.
Another thing that needs to be done is to educate people globally to encourage more sustainable population trends. We really need to encourage people through education amd with contraception and abstinance to engage in family planning and decide to limit themselves to two children per family, and perhaps 1 per family in many cases, and with a target of 0% and in certain cases a temporary period of negative population growth. Population growth simply adds to demand, and if we want to give ourselves the best chance of solving our problems we should hold demand at the level it is at now, this will give us a better chance of eliminating poverty and would likely save many lives. Such would actually prevent overpopulation problems, which are real since the earths resources are finite, and nothing can change that, no matter what you do eventually you will reach the point of exhausting those resources. Eventually, if population growth continued, the earth would end up covered in a 100 foot thick deep layer of human beings. Long before, environmental quality of life will be greatly degraded as food becomes more difficult to acquire and quality of life suffers as it does when population density increases (better environment for diseases, a loss of scenic beauty, supply problems get worse, sewage problems worsen, etc). If you doubt that overpopulation causes a debasement of living conditions, I suggest you visit india where families live in crowded slums of cardboard boxes and see it for yourself. The fact that overpopulation is a problem is undeniable, its a physical law. The earth isnt getting bigger, You cant magically increase the size of the earth or its finite resources but many people delude themselves into thinking that somehow we can keep reproducing like we are now. No technology can escape this problem. Technology in agriculture has only worsened the quality of food and has caused soil desertification due to intensive agricultural practices and increases pesticide exposure. None of these things are good. Those who would want us to do nothing to help educate people to help them understand the economic realities of overpopul
It is not at all reasonable or economically feasible to try to mine metals of the moon or other bodies. I mean, come on, this is a desperate delusion. We can barely get a shuttle off the ground at enormous expense. Rockets are outrageously expensive. And with the coming shortages of all metals and oil, and energy, where are the massive resources that you would need to launch all of these space craft going to come from.
There are many environmental concerns regarding this. In digging up a landfill, you are also exposing potentially harmful waste. The electronics itself are harmful wastes so there will be great concerns about how to process these without leaking toxics into the environment. Many electronics contain plastics that emit dioxins and other toxic chemicals when incinerated. All of this will be complicated by the fact that oil is also running out, so to do this all in an environmentally responsible way becomes more difficult.
As I said, there is also the issue that the amount recoverable from landfills might not be enough to meet demand, and that might see a drop off in supply. This spells economic problems and scarcity, and a partial regression for many people back into a less technological lifestyle. Also, the oil which is going to run out soon is going to combine with the other resources problems, since recycling is very energy intensive.
If we were smart we would have been placing metal bearing items and electronics, etc into seperate storage areas, and mandated that consumers properly dispose of electronics.
To say private corporations will do this is pretty naive. It usually takes a penalty, fines, of some sort to force people to recycle. Its just human nature that they wont bother to if you dont. Government can put in a legal mandate that can get this done. If we leave it to corporations it may never happen. Corporations are driven mainly by profit. This does not always lead to the best outcomes and can lead to serious problems. The chaos of market systems can often lead to unnecessary shortsightedness and lack of long term planning that worsens our future condition. Right now, it might seem cheapest just to dump electronics into the trash and not worrry about storing it seperately. The profit motivations, adn peoples lazy habits, are driven by short term interests, greed and a lack of long term perspective. Recycling and seperating electronics from other junk doesnt really have a profit interest for private corporations so they arent encouraged to do it.
Governments do have to play a role in mandating the recycling. It often takes government initiative and often we cant wait for private industry to do it.
For instance, with oil, we cant afford to wait until market forces decide oil is no longer affordable, and consumers get too fed up with oil prices. First of all, the oil companies have such a monopoly on the market, and really dont want to start offering alternatives now, and that it is too capital intensiv for smaller companies to offer renewable technology . Oil company solutions have been to keep drilling for more oil, which is doing more of exactly what got us into this mess in the first place. Drilling for oil will not solve the problem in the long run. Oil drilling will not solve it at all in the US because the amount of oil in the US is so small it could only supply a small percentage of our energy needs.
Then you have the environmental impact from polluted land, ruined landscapes, polluted water which always happens with oil. Big oil likes to present themselves as environmentally friendly. Dont believe it. Its marketing propoganda. Oil companies hide the true nature of their operations and hide and cover up the pollution that it causes so they can present the pretty delusion to the public. OIl companies will not admit they pollute the environment, when in fact they almost always do and cause health dangers for nearby communities. They will pollute the environment and then to the public they put out propoganda about how clean and wonderful they are, while at the same time they are basically destroying water supplies, peoples homes, well being, and health.
Market forces tend to be chaotic and not to have much long term vision or planning. In order to plan for the future we often have to look past what is more profitable in the short term. We often need to develop a plan rather than to leave it to chance and the chaos of markets. Government often is the only en
We are not crying wolf. Oil will run out eventually, and regardless of what discoveries are made, I dont think that the timeline will change very much. 40 years or 100 years is still to soon for comfort for these things running out. Peak oil might come well before that. As far as offshore, current estimates place the amount of oil offshore, at enough to supply the US for 4 years or so. It is highly unlikely we will find any new large oil reserves, and certainly very unlikely that it will delay the inevitable more than a few years.
We also have the environmental toll and impact of oil drilling, spills, etc, global warming, etc. With the combination of peak oil, peak copper, peak iron, peak trace metals, peak phosphorus, and peak oil, combined with a planet with uncontrolled and reckless population growth, we basically have a recipe for total disaster and a major cataclysmic economic event and possibly massive famines and die offs. This is no joke. Many scientists and experts have been warning about this, its human nature just to ignore it, but that doesnt change the reality.
Yes, you are right, sorry about my misunderstanding. As far as food, there will still be trace metals in the ground, i am sure. Yes, it is correct that these are not economically mineable, and not in an environmentally sane manner.
The problem, is used LCDs have often ended up in landfulls because of our incompetent governments inability to establish recycling programs for electronics, batteries, cable, etc, often due to fatalistic small government conservative ideas. How many governments have curbside pickup for electronics, batteries, cable, etc? Not many. Its human nature that if its not convenient and people cannot put it out on the street, it goes into the trash. Its hard enough to get people to recycle as it is. There should have been huge fines for not recycling these years ago. Now it will be difficult to try to find them in landfills with all the other trash. Like with an ore, if the concentration of zinc and other metals is not very high, its not economical to mine it. With the electronics mixed in with other stuff in the land fills, it would be very time intensive to seperate it all out. Some of the metals may have corroded away as well, making things worse. Even if we do start recycling, demand for zinc would probably exceed the amount of material that is being offered up for recycling, meaning there will be shortages, huge shortages. So, coupled with the oil problem, which which will affect our ability to have the energy for all of these energy intensive recycling tasks, we will have big problems ahead.
So it is a serious problem, and like peak oil, there it is human nature to try to avoid looking at the problem because it is too painful to look at reality, so people have to try to desperately convince themselves it doesnt exist and detach themselves from reality, like the ostrich sticking its head in the sand. But this does not make our problems go away. Their ignorance of the problem inevitably makes their own situation far worse, because we are not addressing it as we should. They say, ignorance is bliss, but only for so long.
It sounds like you just contradicted yourself there. The loss of feasibly mineable zinc deposits will spell disaster for applications that use it. We should be recycling zinc from batteries, from electronics, everything, but we arent! Will by the time we realise this is a problem will it be too late? Even with recycling, there may not be enough materials avialable for recycling to supply new demand. So it is a serious problem, and like peak oil, there it is human nature to try to avoid looking at the problem because it is too painful to look at reality, so people have to try to desperately convince themselves it doesnt exist and detach themselves from reality, like the ostrich sticking its head in the sand. But this does not make our problems go away. They say, ignorance is bliss, but only for so long.
The problem is getting them back, recycling them, thats the problem. Its not scaremongering at all. THis will reduce progress and economic growth, there is no doubt about that. Without an easy supply of thse materials manufacturing will be capped and we probably wont be able to get enough from recycling to meet demand, considering we are recycling AT ALL. We could have had recycling programs for electronics in place years ago and could have recollected electronic equipment for recycling, but our arrogant and idiotic, shortsighted governments have been too slow to do this, as they have been with renewable energy. There should be HUGE fines for throwing anything metal or electronic into the garbage, including batteries that are filled witn metals. How many people recycle their alkaline batteries I ask? How many cities have curbside recycling pickup for batteries and electronic waste, cable, etc? Now with much of these materials buried in landfills, it will be a impractical idea to try to recover them. Duh! How could we be so stupid.
Given even with recycling we still will not get enough metals to meet demand, this is a HUGE problem. Given depleation of other resources such as iron and copper, oil, phosphorus (fertilizer, CRT displays), we are seeing serious trouble ahead. To avert this will take action now but do to the lack of action things are a lot worse than they could have been, since so many materials have already been sent to landfills.
This is more reason for Net Neutralityin law. Anyone who does not support net neutrality seems to want freedom of speech to be taken away from them and wants to live in a fascist totalitarian dictatorship like china. If we want net neutrality we need to elect people who support it.
That backwards compatability slows down performance in an OS is an old myth that refuses to go away. Its just a popular myth that simple minded people who dont know what the heck they are talking about can use to blame performance problems on. Code for old APIs isnt usually even entered until a program requests it. Backwards compatability is a feature of FreeBSD I use, I can run binaries back to 3.0, and Linux binaries too, and its very fast. There is a module that implements Linux syscalls. This code doesnt slow down other parts of the system, and is only activated when you run Linux software, and is only used by Linux software. It doesnt affect the FreeBSD software. Wine often runs windows programs faster than on windows. Backwards compatability is an important useability feature and does not affect OS performance significantly.
The technology is extremely dangerous and right out of Brave New World. There is way too much chance it could be use to undermine the rights and the uniqueness of the invidual by people selecting gender or eye colour. The technology should be completely banned. I want to be my own person, and there is somnething special about no one has control over your body and what you look like, you are completely your own. I dont want to be my parents idea of what I should be. If you value your freedom and your unique individual nature you will reject this. Nature doesnt have agendas. It doesnt have an agenda to perhaps try to for instance mess with childrens behaviour genes to make them more robot like and obedient. There is something important to our individuality and special quality as unique human beings, none other than our own, in the random processes of nature.
Many insurance companies give people physicals and tend to cherry pick the best and most healthy individuals. With a universal system this would be reduced a great bit so we would probably see less regulations on peoples life style. I support universal health care but not these kinds of regulations. Education is a part of the solution, helping people understand how to eat a health diet. Ironically, it is americans workaholic busy lifestyle that leaves little time for exercise. If we gave people better pay, shorter work days and more vacation time, that would lead to a healthier population. The better pay would also mean better food. Many people eat a largely carbohydrate diet because that is the cheapest but that can lead to obesity. I think there is a lot of opposition to higher pay shorter work weeks and universal health care since it deconsolidates wealth and increases the overall well being of the general population but gets in the way of a few rich elites hoarding vast wealth.
thanks for the reply.
I first tried to use Firefox/WIne on FreeBSD because it seemed a little eisier to install tghan the Linux ELF. It actually has installed. It just crashes every so often. But I still use it.
I use Windows firefox because I am on FreeBSD and there is no flash player for FreeBSD.
It was Office 2003 that would not install right.
I was talking about the AOL online service client, not AOL instant messager. That is AOL 9.0.
http://daol.aol.com/software/90vr
Its still not acceptable that these programs should crash.
I dont see why they chose this time to release 1.0. Still, a large number of software programs dont run on Wine. One that would not run at all is acrobat. Firefox crashes constantly. I could not get AOL online service client to run. Office XP doesnt run. Its pathetic. Wine is nowhere near 1.0 status. Its misleading since the software does not fully emulate windows, even reasonably well. Release 1.0 when you finally get everything working right.
I would further like to add, that US foreign policy directly contributes to the problem of the terrorist threat. We have specifically engaged in antagonism and provocative actions against muslim countries, or have done so by supporting the illegal acts of israel. Israel has commited dispoportionate violence against the arabs, as which can clearly be seen in the 2008 gaza seige and the 2006 lebanon, both forms of collective punishment of all arabs, including innocent ones who have done nothing wrong, indiscriminate acts. Israel has also demolished the homes of palestinians, and have bombed, or shot and killed palestinian children. This of course, only further escalates the conflict and does the exact opposite of what it is claimed to, israels abusive activiries have only placed israel in greater danger and brought it closer to conflict. The US is seen as complicit since we give more foreign aid to israel than any other country, yes, even more than to famine wracked countries in africa where children die of starvation left and right, and a vast military aid to to israel. Israel, with our help, has acquired nuclear weapons when no other country in the middle east had them, and while the other middle eastern countries were actually supporting nuclear disarmament treaties, which we and isreal opposed! We furthermore have no evidence that iran is developing, presently, nuclear weapons. In fact our actions against iran, seems to be sending a signal that whether or not they do develop them, we will attack anyway, which removes any incentive for them to hold off on developing them. The israeli actions in 2006 and 2008 fit the definition of terror perfectly, since they are clearly intended, through the use of violence against innocent civilians, to attempt to influence and coerce the actions of palestinians. As Chomsky and many others have pointed out, we seem to have a double standard with how we apply the term terrorism. We selectively apply it. Whenever we do something, it is not terorrist, even if it is, its only when the arabs do something. There is a small group of people on both sides who have commited wrongs, on one side fanatical factions in the israeli government, on the other side, muslim extremists. I believe that most israelis and palestinians want peace but it only takes a fanatical few to disrupt this process. People are also easily brainwashed into supporting antagonistic acts, like the gaza siege, which they think will somehow intimidate the palestinians, when in fact, it could possibly further aggravate and antagonise them. This is going to be remembered for a long time and further erodes away trust between all sides. This simply fuels the anti-US sentiment. When we invaded iraq we answered bin ladens prayers, since he has been promoting his fanatical agenda on the idea that the US and israel are trying to colonise the middle east, partly for its oil, partly due to extremist zionism. We simply validated what osama had been saying for years and provided him with more justification which he could use for his agenda. We confirmed what he had been saying with our illegal war against a country that was quite defenseless, with our lies of WMDs and such. We also during the 80s funded and trained the taliban.
The US government is clearly provoking terrorism through antagonistic foreign policy, likely knowingly. The threat of terorrism is then used to promote a trend towards a police state in the the US, and a systematic closing down of the US as a democratic, free society and turning it into a totalitarian state. It all seems fishy to me.
The items in the proposed swedish bill have already been implemented in the US. Kudos to the Swedish for doing something to oppose this and to block it. What has happened, when police state legislation such as this has been introduced in the US? Almost nothing, there is nary a whimper of protest. The causes of this are of interest and a topic of inquiry. Perhaps americans are simply not very well organised enough, and are simply complacent and apathetic when it comes to actually doing anything substaintial to truly protect their freedom. If we want to protect our freedom we need to oppose legislation such as this. The only way we can lose our freedom is if we give it up, and the only ones who can truly take it away from us is the government. A rag tag group of violent extremists can threaten us, but as long as we do not permit ourselves to be overcome by fear so much that we give away our freedoms, they cannot take our freedoms from us. The iraq war and so on has nothing at all whatsoever to do with freedoms. It is a war of aggression that has violated international law. One can perhaps call the involvement in afghanistan a security effort but I would also say it has little or nothing to do with "protecting freedom". These are just government buzzwords to manipulate the simple minded and ignorant people into supporting government policies. These are just distractions to keep the ignorant and gullible masses into the thinking the US government is doing something to "protect your freedom", while they rob you of your freedom blind, where it counts. It is ironic that the same US government that blathers on about how they are supposed to be protecting our freedom are the very ones who are stealing it from us, and doing so right under our noses with most of the ignorant and gullible sheep of the brain dead, asleep country, not noticing. We are told we "cant let the terrorist win", and the terrorists what to take away our freedom, well if we give up our freedom and allow laws which take away our freedoms to be passed, arent we allowing the terrorists to win. Laws like the patriot act, wiretapping, strip searches in airports, torture, thought crime bill where people can be arrested for nothing more than the words they have said, the military commisions act which allows habeas corpus to be suspended, indefinite detainments, and proposed or enacted legislation that allows the entire gamut of civil liberties to be suspended for acts the government has deamed terrorist, which are increasingly defined as anything it wants, including, eventually, peaceful protests? I would not be surprised if one day they labelled protesters trying to bring attention to pollution of the environment by mega corporations, or demanding union representation, as terorrists because they threaten corporate profits. Or those who oppose the iraq war, as such because they threaten the policies of the elite leadership in washington who wishes to do whatever they please with complete indifference and impunity, towards the will of the people. Furthermore, the definition of terrorism is using violence to coerce the public into supporting certain government or political policies. The US government has made an art form out of using the terrorist threat to basically scare and coerce the people of this country into supporting whatever laws it proposes to take away their freedom. They are using the terrorist threat to turn the US into a totalitarian police state, to enlarge its power, and that of its corporate sponsors. So one must ask, who is the terrorist, who is the enemy?
Legal protections such as a prohibition of illegal search and seizure, habeas corpus, and journalistic source confidentiality forms critical pillars of a free society and are designed to protect the rights and freedoms of the innocent and of the people. Something like a ban on torture, right to attorney client privelege, right to habeas corpus, speedy trial by a fair and impartial jury, etc, are there to protect the innocent and to make sure that people cannot be arbitrarily arrested for an
I find the article to be quite ridiculous. These are overly broad stereotypes, and generalisations, and I quite frankly do not see them in real life. They are more the result of myths and misandrist and sexist ideas about men. If someone were to write such an article claiming that women were less proficient, etc, it would create a huge controversy and would be called sexist against women.
Quite frankly, I am tired of these ridiculous myths that women have more emotional intelligence than men, are more caring, more concerned about others needs, etc. I think, how we behave and act is up to the individual and has nothing to do with gender, race, etc. Peoples behaviour is influenced by the culture too, and perhaps, the gender stereotypes we actually teach to children when they are young affects their behaviour, so it would be a self fulfilling prophecy. But men or women are equally capable of good or evil. I have met some of the kindest, most caring and sensitive people who are men, and some of the rudest, or most insensitive and violent people who happen to be women. It has nothing to do with gender. It can have something to do with environment and societies gender roles it creates, a persons childhood, etc. But these sorts of things, a person can change, even someone who is violent, insensitive, etc, can change their ways.