Dude, it's slashdot. You have to expect brilliant, humorous trolls being overlooked and modded Insightful. Just like you have to expect overzealous moderators with no sense of humor and ability to piss off a poster by modding him funny, rather than insightful.
It's easy to not give a shit, but just remember - it's slashdot. After all's said and done, this is just a website with a half a bazillion geeks, ranging from politicians, engineers, code monkeys and jizm collectors spouting off *grin*
Amen, forever, and ever. I hope to be reading slashdot when I'm 60 (oh, god, not as far off as it used to be!;( No, Mr. Bill, no!!!
Hmm. What I've read and researched disagrees with that; there are, in fact, a lot of published studies, hundreds, actually, that disagree with that opinion about the floral and faunal extinctions at the K/T-/iridium boundary. Do you perhaps have some links, or would you be willing to expound on that a bit? I'd create a journal entry specifically for it, if I find your arguments convincing.
So far I've just seen statements (like "no large global Tertiary (?) deposit of the kind that would produce..." without any backup. That statement lacks explanation of why you believe there *is* no mechanism.
I may be only an amateur geologist, but I've been one for nearly a quarter century now. I realize all too well just how subject to debate most of these theories are, so I'd like to hear what you have to say. Just back it up with something more convincing than the generalizations you've produced so far.
I'm seriously curious; if you can't use literary deconstruction to analyze historical writings to determine when and by whom they've been edited, then what tool can you use, assuming that there aren't a lot of verifiable external historical documents to compare against?
I'm not a lit major/historian/etc either, more of an scientist, somewhat of an engineer. So I'm curious to know how exactly one *would* determine the authenticity of a document which has obviously been rewritten many thousands of times over the historical period which you are looking at, without looking for consistencies/inconsistencies among the writing itself, and comparing them to what you know of the documents history...
SB (an athiest, but one who has read several dozen current revisions of the bible)
The mechanism that's been postulated is large amounts of dust in the atmosphere cutting off sunlight to photosynthesis. Yeah, it's debatable, but it makes a lot of sense, given the size of Chicxulub.
There is a huge amount of evidence, as the grandparent post said, for floral exctinction above the KT boundary. It's likely there were many mechanisms in additon to the two discussed. There is also very ample evidence of fauna extinction, and consider that most of the fauna at the time fed on the flora.
It's good that you're being skeptical about it, but I think you should read more of the papers published in the last quarter century about Louis's theories. Think x10K Krakatoa event.
One of the animations on these sites might help. I'm looking thru them now.
As slow as plate tectonics changes are, it's not likely there was a lot of difference in continental positions between the two. IIRC the Indian ocean is somewhat younger than the KT boundary, but as I said, I'm not totally sure.
In any case, the images of Keller's crater location *do* have the classic look of an impact crater; inner and outer rings, etc. My real questions about her claim are about the Chicxulub dating (easy enough to confirm, is the iridium impact layer newer or older than Chicxulub), her dating of her new crater find (always problematic until more confirmation from cores).
Fascinating, nonetheless. Of course it's entirely possible that whichever one was first started the extinction, and the second impact was the coup de grace (especially given the error bar in dating geological formations that old - I *think* it's around a 100K years, but correct me if I'm wrong, please, I don't remember exactly)
Darl & Co. just *can't* keep any kind of consistency, can they?
So then who the hell are they going to sue? I doubt you could really define any company in the computer world nowadays as *not* being a technology company.
Darl & co really need to get weaned from their visions of green printed crack.
Sweet, I never thought of that. You could use --pretend or -p to simply get a list, very quickly, and see if the package you unmerged is in there./me slaps forehead
Not that I unmerge packages much anyway, but thanks.
Ditto here. The documentation and forums are light years past where other distros are at. I haven't had many problems (system is extremely stable and the portage system extraordinarily so) but with one or two exceptions, I haven't had to look outside the docs or forums for an answer, and those were kernel driver questions.
Thanks @ all Gentoo devs and community. Gentoo is by far the best linux dist I've ever used.
Man, so us Gentoo users have only used (approx~~!:) the equivalent of 2/3 of a medium nuclear power plant's daily output in two years of compiling?
Argh!
I feel so...so....insignificant
We have to do something about this! Quick, all Gentoo users, buy more machines! Distcc! Stacks of boxes in the closets! Compile compile compile! Aaaahhhh!!!:)
Actually I believe it was the intertwined out rings that they saw ("two earthworms mating") when the reporter Roger and a couple other characters were at JPL viewing the Voyager images. The two narrow rings were being roiled by the Message Bearer's drive, but of course we didn't know that at the time:)
The same chapter does refer to the spokes, but (pulls out copy to check) Yup, in the Prologue: "Outside the broad main ring system, a narrower ring still roiled from the wake of Message Bearer's drive". The first indication that *Earth* had of the oncoming ship was when they detected it, however; nobody could explain the rings.
I thought it was a neat way to refer to the Voyager images...
You know, I find your argument funny. Mostly because the main reason that the steel mines in the town where I moved from were dying because it was cheaper (thru idiot legislation, I'll grant) to ship steel over the Pacific then it was to manufacture it here. But then there's the death of Detroit, back in the 70s.
What makes you think it's actually cheaper to produce cars here anymore? We're not overregulated, last I looked (oh, wait! Just a little bit)
I might have misunderstood your point, and if so, I apologize. But as I understood what you were trying to say, not.
Except that the evil Bill Frieza already sold his software source code to China. So they're contaminated by his heresy.
Sounds to me like China will have an internal war between those who are allied with the evil Bill, and those who need to find the 8 magical Dragonball CPUs.
Who'll win?
If Bill Frieza is brutally murdered in the forest by the Dragonball ninjas, and the Eternal OS is forever deleted, does anyone care?
Yeah, that's exactly it. It's what spurred such crap as the Ford Falcon models, and others, and led to massive problems in the auto industry as they got away from the other idiot course they had been pursuing (essentially "fancier" cars following some model of aesthetics that nobody has yet been able to figure out)
Muscle cars didn't disappear from the manufacturing scene in the mid 70s solely because of the articficially produced "oil shortage" of the early 70s; many manufacturers were concentrating on producing small cars that could "compete" (*snort*) with the Japanese. Remember the Ford Falcon, the Chevy Vega, the Gremlin?
I agree that it's possible, but whether it's actually happened or not, in our particular case, is open to argument. Here's the two arguements I see right now as being the most important.
For: The timescales involved would allow for plenty of chances for life to propogate, survive the conditions/impacts, etc, and re-establish itself. Somewhat supported by the ubiquity of organic molecules in pre-stellar clouds.
Against: Assumes that life started elsewhere first. Presumes bacterial spore survival over potentially tens/hundreds millions of years++ and conditions, plus environmental compatibility of said bacteria with early terrestrial conditions (see end of comments also).
I tend to lean toward it being possible, perhaps even probable, that life here was "seeded" from elsewhere; but of course there's no real evidence either way.
It's still a very fascinating theory, and I suspect it'll be argued for many centuries. If one really looks hard at the timescales involved (age of universe, mixing of star systems materials in those time periods, etc) then it makes a lot of sense...but no hard evidence yet, sigh.
Now if we could find some evidence that the Archeon age lifeforms are related to what we find in distant chemical signatures....holy !!:) But really, considering the conditions they survived under, it'd be a lot more likely they were descended from panspermic transport than modern life.
Yeah, he targeted children - but not because he was a sick pervert who wanted to show kids porn, but because kids were likely to screw up typing in URLs, and he was getting paid per referral to his sites. There's a difference between him and *really* sick child pornographers. It's called motivation.
He's a stupid, greedy fuck and deserves to get stomped, but I'm not convinced that he was "sick" and deserves the same kind of stomping *real* child porno bastards get (and deserve, the sick fuckers).
At least you had *some* idea of where he was getting it; when I was a kid there were adults who would hand you sick shit because they wanted to see how you reacted; and they didn't have your freedom to view it in mind, either (this was back in the early 70s).
I won't argue with you, because you make some good points, but if you think it was hard back then for a kid to get into peep shops, you weren't trying hard enough:)
The previous generation smuggled playboy (which is hardly comparable to most internet porn) under their mattresses.
Hah. I had Hustler and a lot of other MUCH more "hardcore" mags available too, if I wanted to see them, 30+ years ago. The internet has only made access easier, not made particular types of porn more available. I'd rather see kids getting porn on the internet, instead of some of the places we used to get it (adults, mostly, and some of them had other things in mind as well - but nowadays it's shit like meth that those adults are handing out, it's more profitable)
Otherwise I'm pretty much in agreement with you, except (and this isn't in reponse to your post) that I feel that as soon as kids get sex education (puberty) they should be able to view at least soft porn without hassle. Fer crying out loud, they get it *taught* to them, then can't look at a naked woman/man until they're old enough to vote? The lawmakers expect this to be enforceable? Yeah, right.
I'll add to that the fact that it can be very hard, sometimes nearly impossible, to get a job after being in prison (irrelevant of why you were sent there). So oftentimes people who have been in the joint have to turn to crime again after they are out, just to be able to feed themselves.
Prison can be counterproductive for many reasons - and I'm mostly thinking of non-violent offenders, as was the GGPoster. I feel that a more apt penalty for the guy the article talks about would have been to take every penny he had away from him, give him huge amounts of community service, and remove his internet access for at least a few years.
Maybe make him attend some classes/seminars about what he did, although I have my doubts about their effectiveness.
I fail to see the justification of his sentence. As others have pointed out, he wasn't producing child porn, nor, apparently, even distributing it. He just got greedy and really stupid. So perhaps the punishment should fit the crime.
Slashdot Mirror
Dude, it's slashdot. You have to expect brilliant, humorous trolls being overlooked and modded Insightful. Just like you have to expect overzealous moderators with no sense of humor and ability to piss off a poster by modding him funny, rather than insightful.
;( No, Mr. Bill, no!!!
It's easy to not give a shit, but just remember - it's slashdot. After all's said and done, this is just a website with a half a bazillion geeks, ranging from politicians, engineers, code monkeys and jizm collectors spouting off *grin*
Amen, forever, and ever. I hope to be reading slashdot when I'm 60 (oh, god, not as far off as it used to be!
Heh.
SB
Hmm. What I've read and researched disagrees with that; there are, in fact, a lot of published studies, hundreds, actually, that disagree with that opinion about the floral and faunal extinctions at the K/T-/iridium boundary. Do you perhaps have some links, or would you be willing to expound on that a bit? I'd create a journal entry specifically for it, if I find your arguments convincing.
So far I've just seen statements (like "no large global Tertiary (?) deposit of the kind that would produce..." without any backup. That statement lacks explanation of why you believe there *is* no mechanism.
I may be only an amateur geologist, but I've been one for nearly a quarter century now. I realize all too well just how subject to debate most of these theories are, so I'd like to hear what you have to say. Just back it up with something more convincing than the generalizations you've produced so far.
SB
I'm not being a troll when I say this, but what you just said makes your whole argument bunk. I'm sure you realize that
SB
I'm seriously curious; if you can't use literary deconstruction to analyze historical writings to determine when and by whom they've been edited, then what tool can you use, assuming that there aren't a lot of verifiable external historical documents to compare against?
I'm not a lit major/historian/etc either, more of an scientist, somewhat of an engineer. So I'm curious to know how exactly one *would* determine the authenticity of a document which has obviously been rewritten many thousands of times over the historical period which you are looking at, without looking for consistencies/inconsistencies among the writing itself, and comparing them to what you know of the documents history...
SB
(an athiest, but one who has read several dozen current revisions of the bible)
The mechanism that's been postulated is large amounts of dust in the atmosphere cutting off sunlight to photosynthesis. Yeah, it's debatable, but it makes a lot of sense, given the size of Chicxulub.
There is a huge amount of evidence, as the grandparent post said, for floral exctinction above the KT boundary. It's likely there were many mechanisms in additon to the two discussed. There is also very ample evidence of fauna extinction, and consider that most of the fauna at the time fed on the flora.
It's good that you're being skeptical about it, but I think you should read more of the papers published in the last quarter century about Louis's theories. Think x10K Krakatoa event.
SB
Interesting, and I can't remember myself.
One of the animations on these sites might help. I'm looking thru them now.
As slow as plate tectonics changes are, it's not likely there was a lot of difference in continental positions between the two. IIRC the Indian ocean is somewhat younger than the KT boundary, but as I said, I'm not totally sure.
In any case, the images of Keller's crater location *do* have the classic look of an impact crater; inner and outer rings, etc. My real questions about her claim are about the Chicxulub dating (easy enough to confirm, is the iridium impact layer newer or older than Chicxulub), her dating of her new crater find (always problematic until more confirmation from cores).
Fascinating, nonetheless. Of course it's entirely possible that whichever one was first started the extinction, and the second impact was the coup de grace (especially given the error bar in dating geological formations that old - I *think* it's around a 100K years, but correct me if I'm wrong, please, I don't remember exactly)
Disclaimer: IAAAG (I Am A Amateur Geologist)
SB
Bah. Yo mamma was a trilobyte. Admit it.
SB
Darl & Co. just *can't* keep any kind of consistency, can they?
So then who the hell are they going to sue? I doubt you could really define any company in the computer world nowadays as *not* being a technology company.
Darl & co really need to get weaned from their visions of green printed crack.
SB
Sweet, I never thought of that. You could use --pretend or -p to simply get a list, very quickly, and see if the package you unmerged is in there.
Not that I unmerge packages much anyway, but thanks.
SB
Ditto here. The documentation and forums are light years past where other distros are at. I haven't had many problems (system is extremely stable and the portage system extraordinarily so) but with one or two exceptions, I haven't had to look outside the docs or forums for an answer, and those were kernel driver questions.
Thanks @ all Gentoo devs and community. Gentoo is by far the best linux dist I've ever used.
SB
Man, so us Gentoo users have only used (approx~~! :) the equivalent of 2/3 of a medium nuclear power plant's daily output in two years of compiling?
:)
Argh!
I feel so...so....insignificant
We have to do something about this! Quick, all Gentoo users, buy more machines! Distcc! Stacks of boxes in the closets! Compile compile compile! Aaaahhhh!!!
SB
I hope it flies better than his server.
I love the smell of burning computer components...
SB
It's been completely blown away. Our URL is correct but....no movieweb
Guess slashdot has the firepower of more than a thousand starships
SB
Actually I believe it was the intertwined out rings that they saw ("two earthworms mating") when the reporter Roger and a couple other characters were at JPL viewing the Voyager images. The two narrow rings were being roiled by the Message Bearer's drive, but of course we didn't know that at the time :)
The same chapter does refer to the spokes, but (pulls out copy to check) Yup, in the Prologue: "Outside the broad main ring system, a narrower ring still roiled from the wake of Message Bearer's drive". The first indication that *Earth* had of the oncoming ship was when they detected it, however; nobody could explain the rings.
I thought it was a neat way to refer to the Voyager images...
SB
Hm. According to the WTO webpage they actually came into existence in 1995.
The Japanese started their auto imports to the US back in the early 60s/late 50s, IIRC. See Japanese brands take much of the American car market leaving American car makers hurting.
Perhaps you're talking about GATT?
You know, I find your argument funny. Mostly because the main reason that the steel mines in the town where I moved from were dying because it was cheaper (thru idiot legislation, I'll grant) to ship steel over the Pacific then it was to manufacture it here. But then there's the death of Detroit, back in the 70s.
What makes you think it's actually cheaper to produce cars here anymore? We're not overregulated, last I looked (oh, wait! Just a little bit)
I might have misunderstood your point, and if so, I apologize. But as I understood what you were trying to say, not.
SB
Except that the evil Bill Frieza already sold his software source code to China. So they're contaminated by his heresy.
Sounds to me like China will have an internal war between those who are allied with the evil Bill, and those who need to find the 8 magical Dragonball CPUs.
Who'll win?
If Bill Frieza is brutally murdered in the forest by the Dragonball ninjas, and the Eternal OS is forever deleted, does anyone care?
SB
Yeah, that's exactly it. It's what spurred such crap as the Ford Falcon models, and others, and led to massive problems in the auto industry as they got away from the other idiot course they had been pursuing (essentially "fancier" cars following some model of aesthetics that nobody has yet been able to figure out)
Muscle cars didn't disappear from the manufacturing scene in the mid 70s solely because of the articficially produced "oil shortage" of the early 70s; many manufacturers were concentrating on producing small cars that could "compete" (*snort*) with the Japanese. Remember the Ford Falcon, the Chevy Vega, the Gremlin?
Talk about trickle down effect
SB
wrt to E2
:) But really, considering the conditions they survived under, it'd be a lot more likely they were descended from panspermic transport than modern life.
I agree that it's possible, but whether it's actually happened or not, in our particular case, is open to argument. Here's the two arguements I see right now as being the most important.
For: The timescales involved would allow for plenty of chances for life to propogate, survive the conditions/impacts, etc, and re-establish itself. Somewhat supported by the ubiquity of organic molecules in pre-stellar clouds.
Against: Assumes that life started elsewhere first. Presumes bacterial spore survival over potentially tens/hundreds millions of years++ and conditions, plus environmental compatibility of said bacteria with early terrestrial conditions (see end of comments also).
I tend to lean toward it being possible, perhaps even probable, that life here was "seeded" from elsewhere; but of course there's no real evidence either way.
It's still a very fascinating theory, and I suspect it'll be argued for many centuries. If one really looks hard at the timescales involved (age of universe, mixing of star systems materials in those time periods, etc) then it makes a lot of sense...but no hard evidence yet, sigh.
Now if we could find some evidence that the Archeon age lifeforms are related to what we find in distant chemical signatures....holy !!
Cheers, xilmaril
SB
Damn, that'd be positively civilized compared to some of the breakups I've been thru. At least you can't throw things thru text messages.
SB
Yeah, he targeted children - but not because he was a sick pervert who wanted to show kids porn, but because kids were likely to screw up typing in URLs, and he was getting paid per referral to his sites. There's a difference between him and *really* sick child pornographers. It's called motivation.
He's a stupid, greedy fuck and deserves to get stomped, but I'm not convinced that he was "sick" and deserves the same kind of stomping *real* child porno bastards get (and deserve, the sick fuckers).
In any case, he'll pay for what he did....
SB
From what I saw there, he was busted for cybersquatting, which isn't the same thing as he is being busted for here.
I'm not defending him - the man is obviously an idiot who can't make an honest living - but let's get our facts straight, ok?
SB
And jail is not a "correction" method. It's punishment.
Um, so what exactly is punishment for aberrant behavior supposed to be for, then? Just for the hell of it?
No, it's meant to *correct* behavior.
Sheese.
SB
At least you had *some* idea of where he was getting it; when I was a kid there were adults who would hand you sick shit because they wanted to see how you reacted; and they didn't have your freedom to view it in mind, either (this was back in the early 70s).
I won't argue with you, because you make some good points, but if you think it was hard back then for a kid to get into peep shops, you weren't trying hard enough
SB
The previous generation smuggled playboy (which is hardly comparable to most internet porn) under their mattresses.
Hah. I had Hustler and a lot of other MUCH more "hardcore" mags available too, if I wanted to see them, 30+ years ago. The internet has only made access easier, not made particular types of porn more available. I'd rather see kids getting porn on the internet, instead of some of the places we used to get it (adults, mostly, and some of them had other things in mind as well - but nowadays it's shit like meth that those adults are handing out, it's more profitable)
Otherwise I'm pretty much in agreement with you, except (and this isn't in reponse to your post) that I feel that as soon as kids get sex education (puberty) they should be able to view at least soft porn without hassle. Fer crying out loud, they get it *taught* to them, then can't look at a naked woman/man until they're old enough to vote? The lawmakers expect this to be enforceable? Yeah, right.
SB
I'll add to that the fact that it can be very hard, sometimes nearly impossible, to get a job after being in prison (irrelevant of why you were sent there). So oftentimes people who have been in the joint have to turn to crime again after they are out, just to be able to feed themselves.
Prison can be counterproductive for many reasons - and I'm mostly thinking of non-violent offenders, as was the GGPoster. I feel that a more apt penalty for the guy the article talks about would have been to take every penny he had away from him, give him huge amounts of community service, and remove his internet access for at least a few years.
Maybe make him attend some classes/seminars about what he did, although I have my doubts about their effectiveness.
I fail to see the justification of his sentence. As others have pointed out, he wasn't producing child porn, nor, apparently, even distributing it. He just got greedy and really stupid. So perhaps the punishment should fit the crime.
SB