1) this IS a record breaking hurricane season, no 'ifs' about it.
2) Global temperatures are inextricably linked to CO2 levels, its a simple fact, read any high school text book.
There may be some, ableit public rather than scientific, debate about whether humans are causing the CO2 rise. Although I say public because the vast majority of scientists agree human emissions are the cause and many of the few that don't agree have vested interests like working for Exxon and friends).
Would need uptake by a damn lot of people to make any real difference to the demand already there due to Power Station and heating usage of natural gas.
From Wikipedia Fuel cells are electrochemical devices, so they are not constrained by the maximum Carnot cycle efficiency as combustion engines are. Consequently, they can have very high efficiencies in converting chemical energy to electrical energy.
For starters, theres a lot more too it then that but the Wikipedia article gives the jist.
Natural gas is also a lot more abundant so isn't as likely to undergo quite the same massive cost increases over the next decade and beyond like petroleum will.
Back in days gone by we were all 'protected' from alcohol and pornography. Life was so much better, sure, crime and murder rates were many, many times what they are now but atleast we were all 'protected' by the state from these ever so harmful devices. I just hope they don't ban guns, those harmless devices never hurt anyone.
I don't agree with the article (or the other article The Register article refers to) either. In particular I find it slightly cooincidental that the first of two "random articles" he looked up just happened to be one on Bill Gates.
Although upon reading it I find the article is pretty much a fair, balanced and informative article. It is undoubtably an article about one of the most despised persons from the point of view of internet people.
The fact that he "just happened to randomly look it up" I find dubious. Its like opening a Jewish Encyclopedia and "randomly" looking up an article about Hitler.
It seems very malicious of Neil Thompson to suggest the PS3 will have such an extremely late launch date. Does he have a reliable source backing up this claim?
I suspect he is trying to use the age old Microsoft-perfected tactic of instilling doubt about their competitor's product. Trying to say to people, the PS3 is years off (even though offically it is less than a year away)...so buy our product which you don't really want in the meantime.
Oh well, Microsoft using dirty tricks is nothing new I guess.
Surely though the term "Denial of Service" indicates prolonged or sustained denial of a service. Even when counting websites as services then (unless I'm wrong in which case please correct me) the maximum "damage" caused by this exploit (unless it originates from an important website) is that if you do have an important website open (say in another tab or window) while you visit the malicious website, then you will have to reopen the browser and reload that important website.
A minor inconvenience yes, but not really much of a prolonged denial of a service.
That is a gross over-simplification. For starters, Snow/Ice reflects vast amounts of solar radiation into space, wheras the water that replaces the north pole will instead absorb solar radiation....Leading to sea and air warming...Leading to a lot more Storms and Hurricanes like Katrina and her friends which are what cause most of the flooding around the world.
When your talking about 40% dissapperance of millions upon millions of square miles, the effect is not without consequences. And that's not even counting the central role of the Artic in global air flow patterns.
Actually in areas of some countries like Bangladesh and India, such flooding is quite common and yes tens of thousands of people do die. It happened a few months ago in the Southern suburbs of Mumbai I believe.
According to Wikipedia China has had it quite bad also,
In 1975, a typhone (very similar in many ways to katrina) based flood in the Henan Province, China killed around 200,000
In 1931, they yellow river flooded, the death toll is estimated as being upto 4 million!
The only difference is that the Western TV networks can't make the big buck stories out of it like they could with the New Orleans incident and as not many of us watch Chinese or Indian TV we don't hear much about it. Still, doesn't mean it doesn't happen already, although they do say it is getting worse.
Right, because George Bush and his oil company sponsors must be just so desperate to stop us all using gas/oil and get us all onto Fuel Cell Technology. Are you actually trying to say that scrapping the Kyoto Protocol would help encourage the use of Fuel Cell technology?
"The distance between the two sides is 20 times larger in the British Channel."
Don't you mean 20 times smaller than the Channel Tunnel?
The Channel Tunnel is approximatly 50 km's long wheras the proposed bridge will be just under 4 km's long (and only 3.3 km's over the main span).
Also, while the area does get earthquakes (although less frequently than in the area of Japan where the current longest bridge in the world is located), I am unsure exactly which 'ative' volcano you are referring to.
Ofcourse the same thing was said about the Channel Tunnel [Wikipedia] (linking the UK to France) when it was built in the early 90's. Apparently there wasn't enough money to build the 50 km undersea tunnel, there was no need for it and it would probably collapse.
...11 years since completion it carries well over 7 million passangers a year, huge amounts of freight and is widely considered to be one of the 7 wonders of the modern world [Wikipedia].
Not all huge, ground-breaking projects fail and while the company which runs the tunnel has struggled with debt (mainly due to minimal government spending and unfair government policies, especially when compared with the incentives given to competing airports (e.g. no tax on aviation fuel)) the project can't really be called anything but an amazing success. Maybe the same will be said of this bridge in 15 years time.
My biggest critisim of WMP 10 was the way the internet retrieved information about the currently playing song was removed and replaced with song-selling websites which don't provide nearly as much info (i.e. no bio's, lyrics etc.) and only seem to be interested in selling other songs (or even the song you are already listening to, why you would want to repay for something you have probably already brought is beyond me).
I think the story is slightly different from the previous stories in that it is focused on the concept of other large 'net nations' (countries like China in particular) breaking away from the current internet model and the possible consequences this would cause.
The article isn't just about the principle of whether or not the U.S.A has a right to run what is undoubtedly an international entity, but rather the actions certain other countries may take in retaliation if the U.S.A doesn't agree to atleast some sort of compromise
Ahh, great to see our great nation's "democratic" process at work. If only I was rich enough to afford my own lobbyist, then I could get that bit extra say in government also.
Hang on that doesn't sound like the democracy they talked about in school!
"The evidence will show that every failure and setback for which A.M.D. today seeks to blame Intel is actually a direct result of A.M.D.'s own actions or inactions."
So basically their saying that AMD also had the oppurtunity to act as deceitfully as Intel do, but because they didn't it's their own fault?
Sounds like an admission of guilt to me.
Come on, to say that at anytime in recorded history we have seen anything like the frequency and strength in hurricanes that we are now experiencing year on year is ridiculous.
In my opinion they will never really replace pure binaries.
Why not?
Apart for computers without internet connectivity (which are very rare in todays corporate world especially) there are surely few reasons not to use web apps.
Also, your example of Google Maps is an intereasting choice because it does not actually require the streaming map data (there are a host of similar non-web based programs which do the same via a big database). Being a Web App though gives Google Maps the advantage of 1. being easily updatable and more importantly 2. An enourmous amount of detail from all over the world (or atleast the USA at the moment) can be made available without requiring each user to install many terabytes of info.
"Of course, now some audio CDs in stores include copy protection. I have yet to purchase one, but I assume this would make it impossible (or difficult) to get the songs onto my iPod from the CD."
I have not actually heard of a CD which is not in reality easy to copy. There was one CD I purchased which wouldn't copy using the standard Linux apps (its cover mentioned anti-piracy tech.) but I simply played it on a Stereo and plugged a cord from the speakers socket to the computer line-in socket and recorded it that way (took about an hour so guess it would have been smarter to just download another copy. Shouldn't this technically be legal as I already own the CD?).
After put the music on my mp3 player I couldn't notice any change in audio quality or any other discernable difference.
I don't think it is realistic to expect the price to really come down much more (except maybe a bit during some post-Christmas Sales) until the next-gen consoles force the GC to join the long list of obsoletes.
Then I reckon you can expect to see thousands on e-bay for next to nothing. Having said that, they are already going for between $50 - $100 (often with some games) on e-bay.
There's Microsoft saying that in the future we should let them run our lives and give them control of our home applicances and such. Then they go and do this.
Makes you think: In 10 - 15 years when Microsoft will probably own half the home security alarms market, I wonder what will happen if they were to acquire 'Burglers Inc.'?
Its not hard to imagine Microsoft downgrading the threat posed by them to 'ignore' either.
Why can't people get a grip on the figures? Terrorism (although evil and all) kills a slightest fraction of the amount that other man-made causes (i.e. pollution, cars etc) kill. In the U.S.A, air pollution alone kills an estimated 70,000 people per year. Terrorists have a long way to go before they can reach this figure. Yet what is done about air pollution? Nothing, it's increasing in most places.
"The best method to rid the world of these insane fanatics is to kill them at the source"
Yea, because going around the world and making thouands of kids orphans and killing thousands of people's entire families will make them never ever consider wanting to get some sort of revenge.
"Unfortunately we spend too much time placing blame on our own"
Now thats just stupid, two countries have been invaded with 10,000's (some reports say up to 100,000 or so) of their people being killed. Doesn't quite sound like we placed all the blame on ourselves.
What has these wars achieved? it seems little more than help the terrorists (would London and Madrid have been bombed if it wasn't for the Iraq war? Probably not) and play in their game of tit for tat (they blow up something so we blow up something, then them, then us). Its like an arms race, each trying to outdo each other. Eventually the way these sort of things are sorted out is someone with a bit more intelligence comes on the scene and the long, slow process of reconciliation and negotiation (which could probably have occured at the start without all the deaths) starts to occur (as is now happening with ETA and in Israel).
Until this happens, it seems terrorism will simply be an incident that occurs once every so often somewhere around the world (a bit like storm or a flood, but not nearly as bad as a major earthquake or tsunami) and some unfortunate (but thankfully very few) soles will perish.
The only difference bettween terrorism and natural disasters is that the media realise the cash cow that fear of terrorism presents and pump us full of this fear every day (how often is there NOT a story about terrorism or fear of it on the USA news shows?).
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But both those 'ifs' are in fact facts.
1) this IS a record breaking hurricane season, no 'ifs' about it.
2) Global temperatures are inextricably linked to CO2 levels, its a simple fact, read any high school text book.
There may be some, ableit public rather than scientific, debate about whether humans are causing the CO2 rise. Although I say public because the vast majority of scientists agree human emissions are the cause and many of the few that don't agree have vested interests like working for Exxon and friends).
Would need uptake by a damn lot of people to make any real difference to the demand already there due to Power Station and heating usage of natural gas.
For starters, theres a lot more too it then that but the Wikipedia article gives the jist.
Natural gas is also a lot more abundant so isn't as likely to undergo quite the same massive cost increases over the next decade and beyond like petroleum will.
Back in days gone by we were all 'protected' from alcohol and pornography. Life was so much better, sure, crime and murder rates were many, many times what they are now but atleast we were all 'protected' by the state from these ever so harmful devices. I just hope they don't ban guns, those harmless devices never hurt anyone.
I don't agree with the article (or the other article The Register article refers to) either. In particular I find it slightly cooincidental that the first of two "random articles" he looked up just happened to be one on Bill Gates.
Although upon reading it I find the article is pretty much a fair, balanced and informative article. It is undoubtably an article about one of the most despised persons from the point of view of internet people.
The fact that he "just happened to randomly look it up" I find dubious. Its like opening a Jewish Encyclopedia and "randomly" looking up an article about Hitler.
It seems very malicious of Neil Thompson to suggest the PS3 will have such an extremely late launch date. Does he have a reliable source backing up this claim?
...so buy our product which you don't really want in the meantime.
I suspect he is trying to use the age old Microsoft-perfected tactic of instilling doubt about their competitor's product. Trying to say to people, the PS3 is years off (even though offically it is less than a year away)
Oh well, Microsoft using dirty tricks is nothing new I guess.
Surely though the term "Denial of Service" indicates prolonged or sustained denial of a service. Even when counting websites as services then (unless I'm wrong in which case please correct me) the maximum "damage" caused by this exploit (unless it originates from an important website) is that if you do have an important website open (say in another tab or window) while you visit the malicious website, then you will have to reopen the browser and reload that important website.
A minor inconvenience yes, but not really much of a prolonged denial of a service.
Indeed, but much of the temperature rise itself is predicted to be due to the polar ice caps melting.
Kind of a vicous circle I guess.
That is a gross over-simplification. For starters, Snow/Ice reflects vast amounts of solar radiation into space, wheras the water that replaces the north pole will instead absorb solar radiation. ...Leading to sea and air warming ...Leading to a lot more Storms and Hurricanes like Katrina and her friends which are what cause most of the flooding around the world.
When your talking about 40% dissapperance of millions upon millions of square miles, the effect is not without consequences. And that's not even counting the central role of the Artic in global air flow patterns.
Actually in areas of some countries like Bangladesh and India, such flooding is quite common and yes tens of thousands of people do die. It happened a few months ago in the Southern suburbs of Mumbai I believe.
According to Wikipedia China has had it quite bad also,
In 1975, a typhone (very similar in many ways to katrina) based flood in the Henan Province, China killed around 200,000
In 1931, they yellow river flooded, the death toll is estimated as being upto 4 million!
The only difference is that the Western TV networks can't make the big buck stories out of it like they could with the New Orleans incident and as not many of us watch Chinese or Indian TV we don't hear much about it. Still, doesn't mean it doesn't happen already, although they do say it is getting worse.
Right, because George Bush and his oil company sponsors must be just so desperate to stop us all using gas/oil and get us all onto Fuel Cell Technology. Are you actually trying to say that scrapping the Kyoto Protocol would help encourage the use of Fuel Cell technology?
Please, go and grow a brain!
"The distance between the two sides is 20 times larger in the British Channel."
Don't you mean 20 times smaller than the Channel Tunnel?
The Channel Tunnel is approximatly 50 km's long wheras the proposed bridge will be just under 4 km's long (and only 3.3 km's over the main span).
Also, while the area does get earthquakes (although less frequently than in the area of Japan where the current longest bridge in the world is located), I am unsure exactly which 'ative' volcano you are referring to.
Ofcourse the same thing was said about the Channel Tunnel [Wikipedia] (linking the UK to France) when it was built in the early 90's. Apparently there wasn't enough money to build the 50 km undersea tunnel, there was no need for it and it would probably collapse.
Not all huge, ground-breaking projects fail and while the company which runs the tunnel has struggled with debt (mainly due to minimal government spending and unfair government policies, especially when compared with the incentives given to competing airports (e.g. no tax on aviation fuel)) the project can't really be called anything but an amazing success. Maybe the same will be said of this bridge in 15 years time.
My biggest critisim of WMP 10 was the way the internet retrieved information about the currently playing song was removed and replaced with song-selling websites which don't provide nearly as much info (i.e. no bio's, lyrics etc.) and only seem to be interested in selling other songs (or even the song you are already listening to, why you would want to repay for something you have probably already brought is beyond me).
I think the story is slightly different from the previous stories in that it is focused on the concept of other large 'net nations' (countries like China in particular) breaking away from the current internet model and the possible consequences this would cause.
The article isn't just about the principle of whether or not the U.S.A has a right to run what is undoubtedly an international entity, but rather the actions certain other countries may take in retaliation if the U.S.A doesn't agree to atleast some sort of compromise
Ahh, great to see our great nation's "democratic" process at work. If only I was rich enough to afford my own lobbyist, then I could get that bit extra say in government also.
Hang on that doesn't sound like the democracy they talked about in school!
So basically their saying that AMD also had the oppurtunity to act as deceitfully as Intel do, but because they didn't it's their own fault?
Sounds like an admission of guilt to me.
Thats a one year anomaly, a bit different from the year on year storm excesses we see now.
Come on, to say that at anytime in recorded history we have seen anything like the frequency and strength in hurricanes that we are now experiencing year on year is ridiculous.
Why not?
Apart for computers without internet connectivity (which are very rare in todays corporate world especially) there are surely few reasons not to use web apps.
Also, your example of Google Maps is an intereasting choice because it does not actually require the streaming map data (there are a host of similar non-web based programs which do the same via a big database). Being a Web App though gives Google Maps the advantage of 1. being easily updatable and more importantly 2. An enourmous amount of detail from all over the world (or atleast the USA at the moment) can be made available without requiring each user to install many terabytes of info.
I have not actually heard of a CD which is not in reality easy to copy. There was one CD I purchased which wouldn't copy using the standard Linux apps (its cover mentioned anti-piracy tech.) but I simply played it on a Stereo and plugged a cord from the speakers socket to the computer line-in socket and recorded it that way (took about an hour so guess it would have been smarter to just download another copy. Shouldn't this technically be legal as I already own the CD?).
After put the music on my mp3 player I couldn't notice any change in audio quality or any other discernable difference.
I don't think it is realistic to expect the price to really come down much more (except maybe a bit during some post-Christmas Sales) until the next-gen consoles force the GC to join the long list of obsoletes.
Then I reckon you can expect to see thousands on e-bay for next to nothing. Having said that, they are already going for between $50 - $100 (often with some games) on e-bay.
This is disgusting.
There's Microsoft saying that in the future we should let them run our lives and give them control of our home applicances and such. Then they go and do this.
Makes you think: In 10 - 15 years when Microsoft will probably own half the home security alarms market, I wonder what will happen if they were to acquire 'Burglers Inc.'?
Its not hard to imagine Microsoft downgrading the threat posed by them to 'ignore' either.
"How many people need to die"
Why can't people get a grip on the figures?
Terrorism (although evil and all) kills a slightest fraction of the amount that other man-made causes (i.e. pollution, cars etc) kill. In the U.S.A, air pollution alone kills an estimated 70,000 people per year. Terrorists have a long way to go before they can reach this figure. Yet what is done about air pollution? Nothing, it's increasing in most places.
"The best method to rid the world of these insane fanatics is to kill them at the source"
Yea, because going around the world and making thouands of kids orphans and killing thousands of people's entire families will make them never ever consider wanting to get some sort of revenge.
"Unfortunately we spend too much time placing blame on our own"
Now thats just stupid, two countries have been invaded with 10,000's (some reports say up to 100,000 or so) of their people being killed. Doesn't quite sound like we placed all the blame on ourselves.
What has these wars achieved? it seems little more than help the terrorists (would London and Madrid have been bombed if it wasn't for the Iraq war? Probably not) and play in their game of tit for tat (they blow up something so we blow up something, then them, then us). Its like an arms race, each trying to outdo each other. Eventually the way these sort of things are sorted out is someone with a bit more intelligence comes on the scene and the long, slow process of reconciliation and negotiation (which could probably have occured at the start without all the deaths) starts to occur (as is now happening with ETA and in Israel).
Until this happens, it seems terrorism will simply be an incident that occurs once every so often somewhere around the world (a bit like storm or a flood, but not nearly as bad as a major earthquake or tsunami) and some unfortunate (but thankfully very few) soles will perish.
The only difference bettween terrorism and natural disasters is that the media realise the cash cow that fear of terrorism presents and pump us full of this fear every day (how often is there NOT a story about terrorism or fear of it on the USA news shows?).
I rarely have any applications open while playing games, like many gamers I try to get the best performance out of my computer while playing.