There are no conspiracies, just a huge number of people who see no need to do anything, because they're OK.
Which is, at the end of the day, why we have climate change happening in the first place, and why it's not going to be 'fine' until it actually reaches a point where it's actively intolerable to most of the people in the world. By then, it may already be too late. Then again, if you've wiped out most of the population due to global cataclysms, I suppose the state of play of residual oil and coal reserves, not to mention the net impact of individual polluting might reach a point where it's actually stable again.
I have a feeling that some GPS recievers are less enthusiastic about reporting altitude than others. I know the one I've got built into my sat nav doesn't seem to care.
That's not to say that you can't tweak the firmware of the receiver or something, but it may not be _that_ easy.
Of course, 'buy a gps which lets you do altitude' is also a solution:)
Autonomous lego drone + home made explosives, and you've just revolutionised terrorism. I mean, who needs letter bombs, when you can just remote drone their house.
Funnily enough, I got rid of my TV. And don't miss the blasted thing. Freed up quite a lot of time. Although if I'm honest, I tend to spend most of the 'free time' gaming and socialising, rather than exercising, but I do still have enough time to make it to the gym several times a week.
Use the same person, and alternate the pattern of exercise.
I notice when I've been 'slacking off', my sleep, alertness and general health patterns get worse. As does my concentration span. If I spend a month of 'fairly enthusiastic' gym-going, then this changes.
There's two things that exercise does, that's useful. One is increasing calorie usage, which allows one to 'balance' pie vs. exercise. The other is it strengthens muscles. Walking and running may be about the same for making your legs stronger, but one thing it's not better at is your heart - increase your heart rate to 100, and it'll serve to improve the healthiness of it.
Many people I know here would also make a similar assertion about the US legal and political systems. And the UK. And actually... probably most of the legal and political systems in the world, have some degree of craziness about them.
Not really. I mean, there's a lot more legal restrictions on firearms in the UK than in the US. If 'someone' be they person or corporate were asked (and were able to) help identify people buying firearms in the UK, do you not feel it's reasonable for them to do so?
By the same token, criteria of laws such that cover things like free speech, libel and copyright (just to name a few) are locally scoped. I think it's entirely reasonable for people and organisations (Google in this case) to comply with law enforcement in countries in which they operate. Whether you happen to like their laws or not.
Actually, I rather think that's because C&C generals just isn't all that good. They tried to turn the C&C franchies into something like the TA franchise, and failed.
I'm sorry, the game just totally broke when you could build 20 superweapons from the vast piles of cash that was pouring in from you 'unlimited cash' engines.
I though it was a totally terrible idea to have unrestricted superweapons and a 'free flow' economy. Then I started playing Supreme Commander, and found that it can, and does actually work. But requires a whole lot more 'depth' than you've got in C&C Generals.
I really liked SC 3000, but only because of the options in 'rush hour' - namely the 'traffic flow' utility. That was totally fantastic for putting in effective transport networks.
But by the same token, I've seen Lotus notes _trying_ to stand in for a real database. And being an utterly disasterous bodge, that didn't really work, but 'no one' knew how to get it right
Mostly because they didn't really grasp what a 'relational database' means, and why a bloated email client is never going to be able to do what they want it to.
I wish they'd had CS degrees.
Re:If you only want to do pure research, maybe
on
Is Computer Science Dead?
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I'm starting to agree. I look around my 'IT office' and most of it _isn't_ CS degree level. It's helpdesk, RFTM and 'rebuild my PC' level. Now, the infrastructure development and systems architecture is still very definitely a specialist IT role, which is my current focus, but most of the people on the 'coalface' need about as much IT literacy as the guy using MS word.
If you don't include UK, then it's pretty much all of Europe.
Somehow, here in the UK, they think that the way to get 'greener' is to impose differential rode pricing, and congestion charges. Which would be irritating if there were an alternative form of transport that was a reasonable sane way to get about. Outside London (and arguably, even within) there's not. People suck up congestion charges and road pricing because there is no alternative. You'll suffer an extra £5/day, because it's less hassle than finding a new job, that's both closer and sufficiently similar in pay.
The depressing thing is, I know mass transit networks can work, and be good. I have seen it done, germany in particular has a splendid system going.
Sigh, I'd love to combo bicycle and train, to get to work. But I'm not prepared to do so if it takes me significantly longer to get to work (once walking/waiting times are included, I've found that for commutes, public transport tends to take about twice as long), I'm not prepared to do so if it costs me more (train fares are way over operating costs of a car, even when you do include tax/milage etc.), and I'm not prepared to do so if I can't _reliably_ get into work on time. (No, getting the train a half hour earlier just in case services are running late isn't an option).
I'd settle for an employer having shower facilities and a changing room though, that would get me to cycle to my current place - I wear a suit, this is fairly incompatible to cycling to work, and arriving hot and sweaty and wanting to a hard day's work.
If you post an opinion, then that's fine, it will be read and judged on it's own merits.
This is fine.
If you post an opinion, and point out that actually, you have some basis for your comment, such as an academic qualification, then you are assumed to know more about your relevant field than the 'Man on the Street'.
If a friend of mine who has a PhD in Nuclear Physics is having a discussion with someone, and it strays into his subject area, I will tend to assume he's the one who's right, simple because he _has_ spent a lot of year studying the subject.
If my workmate who flys a helpdesk tells me that I'm looking a bit funny, and might have cancer, I will give it a fairly minimal amount of credence. If my GP says the same, then I will listen.
I don't care overly if you have a degree in theology or not, if I'm arguing religion down the pub. However, if you claim 'basis' for the weight of your arguments that don't exist, then I will be very annoyed, and feel as though I've been lied to.
... and some days, you find that whilst your company is a Microsoft shop, and all your collegues are MCSEs, the mental paradigm that a Unix brings with it makes a project vastly more efficent, effective and simple to implement.
Orwell had the right idea, in saying that language defines our thought processes. Only it's not just language, it's the design and philosophy behind the software we're using. Unix offers you more ways to think than Windows does, which is what inspires the zealotry.
Solaris - that is, Unix - just "clicked" with me. Everything was designed to work with everything else in a holistic, hard to characterize way. No longer was I working around deficiencies in the design of the system - the system was working for me.
Those who say Unix is not user friendly are wrong. Unix is really _very_ user friendly, it's just a bit more picky about who it makes friends with.
(I also am a Solaris aficionado, to the point where I'd consider taking a pay cut to work in a Solaris environment over Windows. Thankfully, this doesn't seem to be necessary, if anything the opposite)
Mutual anhiliation seems like 'things dissolve' until people grasp the point of E=MC^2.
I seem to recall a kilo of antimatter, if it came into contact with matter, would be sufficient to boil lake michigan.
It's literally the most efficient way of storing energy - rather than 'burning' wood, and getting some ashes, and smoke, or fusion reactions producing secondary elements, all the mass in the matter/anti-matter reaction converts directly into energy.
Which is a rather large quantity, for a relatively small amount of mass, and why it does so very well in Sci-Fi.
At the moment, however, antimatter isn't so much produced by the kilo, as by one atom at a time. And not very efficiently either. (Those particle accelerators have insane electric bills:))
Slashdot Mirror
Which is, at the end of the day, why we have climate change happening in the first place, and why it's not going to be 'fine' until it actually reaches a point where it's actively intolerable to most of the people in the world. By then, it may already be too late. Then again, if you've wiped out most of the population due to global cataclysms, I suppose the state of play of residual oil and coal reserves, not to mention the net impact of individual polluting might reach a point where it's actually stable again.
Personally, I can't think of a worse prospect. I mean, sweaty-sock beer? Let's not even go near the concept of fermenting underpants.
I mean, it's not like it's even remotely challenging to find porn when you want it. When I typo a URL, generally I don't want porn.*
Well, unless one handed typing leads me to mistype my porn site name, at which point then maybe it counts as value add.
*This goes double when I'm at work.
That's not to say that you can't tweak the firmware of the receiver or something, but it may not be _that_ easy.
Of course, 'buy a gps which lets you do altitude' is also a solution :)
Autonomous lego drone + home made explosives, and you've just revolutionised terrorism. I mean, who needs letter bombs, when you can just remote drone their house.
Funnily enough, I got rid of my TV. And don't miss the blasted thing. Freed up quite a lot of time. Although if I'm honest, I tend to spend most of the 'free time' gaming and socialising, rather than exercising, but I do still have enough time to make it to the gym several times a week.
I notice when I've been 'slacking off', my sleep, alertness and general health patterns get worse. As does my concentration span. If I spend a month of 'fairly enthusiastic' gym-going, then this changes.
There's two things that exercise does, that's useful. One is increasing calorie usage, which allows one to 'balance' pie vs. exercise. The other is it strengthens muscles. Walking and running may be about the same for making your legs stronger, but one thing it's not better at is your heart - increase your heart rate to 100, and it'll serve to improve the healthiness of it.
Shafting the other dope, in the name of getting ahead.
I appreciate that might not mean much to most, especially since it's finally been removed from wikipedia, but I just had to share that.
Many people I know here would also make a similar assertion about the US legal and political systems. And the UK. And actually... probably most of the legal and political systems in the world, have some degree of craziness about them.
By the same token, criteria of laws such that cover things like free speech, libel and copyright (just to name a few) are locally scoped. I think it's entirely reasonable for people and organisations (Google in this case) to comply with law enforcement in countries in which they operate. Whether you happen to like their laws or not.
I'm sorry, the game just totally broke when you could build 20 superweapons from the vast piles of cash that was pouring in from you 'unlimited cash' engines.
I though it was a totally terrible idea to have unrestricted superweapons and a 'free flow' economy. Then I started playing Supreme Commander, and found that it can, and does actually work. But requires a whole lot more 'depth' than you've got in C&C Generals.
I really liked SC 3000, but only because of the options in 'rush hour' - namely the 'traffic flow' utility. That was totally fantastic for putting in effective transport networks.
Mostly because they didn't really grasp what a 'relational database' means, and why a bloated email client is never going to be able to do what they want it to.
I wish they'd had CS degrees.
I'm starting to agree. I look around my 'IT office' and most of it _isn't_ CS degree level. It's helpdesk, RFTM and 'rebuild my PC' level. Now, the infrastructure development and systems architecture is still very definitely a specialist IT role, which is my current focus, but most of the people on the 'coalface' need about as much IT literacy as the guy using MS word.
It'd make war crime tribunals a whole lot easier to deal with.
Somehow, here in the UK, they think that the way to get 'greener' is to impose differential rode pricing, and congestion charges. Which would be irritating if there were an alternative form of transport that was a reasonable sane way to get about. Outside London (and arguably, even within) there's not. People suck up congestion charges and road pricing because there is no alternative. You'll suffer an extra £5/day, because it's less hassle than finding a new job, that's both closer and sufficiently similar in pay.
The depressing thing is, I know mass transit networks can work, and be good. I have seen it done, germany in particular has a splendid system going.
Sigh, I'd love to combo bicycle and train, to get to work. But I'm not prepared to do so if it takes me significantly longer to get to work (once walking/waiting times are included, I've found that for commutes, public transport tends to take about twice as long), I'm not prepared to do so if it costs me more (train fares are way over operating costs of a car, even when you do include tax/milage etc.), and I'm not prepared to do so if I can't _reliably_ get into work on time. (No, getting the train a half hour earlier just in case services are running late isn't an option).
I'd settle for an employer having shower facilities and a changing room though, that would get me to cycle to my current place - I wear a suit, this is fairly incompatible to cycling to work, and arriving hot and sweaty and wanting to a hard day's work.
Seriously, much like Microsoft TCP/IP, LDAP was OK before the beast of Redmond shat upon it.
This is fine.
If you post an opinion, and point out that actually, you have some basis for your comment, such as an academic qualification, then you are assumed to know more about your relevant field than the 'Man on the Street'.
If a friend of mine who has a PhD in Nuclear Physics is having a discussion with someone, and it strays into his subject area, I will tend to assume he's the one who's right, simple because he _has_ spent a lot of year studying the subject.
If my workmate who flys a helpdesk tells me that I'm looking a bit funny, and might have cancer, I will give it a fairly minimal amount of credence. If my GP says the same, then I will listen.
I don't care overly if you have a degree in theology or not, if I'm arguing religion down the pub. However, if you claim 'basis' for the weight of your arguments that don't exist, then I will be very annoyed, and feel as though I've been lied to.
Orwell had the right idea, in saying that language defines our thought processes. Only it's not just language, it's the design and philosophy behind the software we're using. Unix offers you more ways to think than Windows does, which is what inspires the zealotry.
(I also am a Solaris aficionado, to the point where I'd consider taking a pay cut to work in a Solaris environment over Windows. Thankfully, this doesn't seem to be necessary, if anything the opposite)
I seem to recall a kilo of antimatter, if it came into contact with matter, would be sufficient to boil lake michigan.
It's literally the most efficient way of storing energy - rather than 'burning' wood, and getting some ashes, and smoke, or fusion reactions producing secondary elements, all the mass in the matter/anti-matter reaction converts directly into energy.
Which is a rather large quantity, for a relatively small amount of mass, and why it does so very well in Sci-Fi.
At the moment, however, antimatter isn't so much produced by the kilo, as by one atom at a time. And not very efficiently either. (Those particle accelerators have insane electric bills :))
Explains a lot really :)