I don't think it's an either or situation, but if we're getting a spike that is outside the bounds of models based primarily on increased greenhouse gas composition in the atmosphere, which indisputably contribute to warming, then we might want to factor in increased solar activity into our models to more accurately predict the climate trends into the next century.
Participating in fricking global warming discussions is almost completely pointless...Whatever you say, there is bound to be someone who will latch on to one word and accuse you of being a hippy or an oil company shill.
Just start buying up inland real estate, 'cause beachfront's gonna be moving.
It's interesting that the models are proving to be conservative...Makes the case that the current warming trend is more closely related to a solar upswing (than greenhouse gas buildup) more persuasive. Either way, I think we need to start putting less thought into "how are we going to slow down our greenhouse gas emissions" and more thought into "what steps are we going to need to take to deal with the inevitable consequences of the current warming trend."
I doubt it. A lot of the studies on dementia have boiled down to: if your brain is more flexible, you develop symptoms much more slowly. People with more education tend to exhibit symptoms much more slowly, people who know extra languages exhibit symptoms much more slowly.
What it boils down to is, if your brain is wired to do things in more than one way, you're more likely to be able to cope for longer when dementia starts throwing up road blocks. So, in that sense, I'd expect programming skills to be useful, due to the amount of problem solving ability that comes with coding.
Much as I like Java, I'm not exactly sure how much a fortran-esqe language is going to "benefit from the lesson's learned with Java". It's apples to oranges, because of fortran's narrow focus, and equally narrow deployment base. Java's primary schtick is in the exact opposite direction, with wide focus, and deployment on a large number of systems.
I suppose increased multi-processor support would be nice. It'll all depend on performance.
The reality of networking is that you don't see a performance increase when you do heavy traffic control, a la token ring...It's actually more efficient in 99% of cases to just spam your packets and hope for few collisions, and it's a hell of a lot more robust, because the idea of failures is built into the system. It's also faster, because the packets are sent instantly, with no waiting for the token.
The theory behind token ring assumed that chaos would be less efficient, and it's just not. Sure, the ideal of every packet coming at the right instant and having no collisions is great, but it's an impossible ideal. Lot of things like that in computers.
Subduction zones are generally at continental boundaries, and the problem is, anything that's sitting on top of the subducting plate may very well get scraped up onto the edge of the continental plate, which would make for some interesting beach-front real estate.
Additionally, subduction zones are geologically unstable, and the remote possiblity of volcanic activity spewing nuclear waste into the atmosphere should be taken into account, along with the more probable possibilities of seismic activity and accidental/intentional human interference.
All plots are old and tired. Fantasy seldom has any sort of different plot conflict than Lord of the Rings...Man vs. Evil. But the execution is what separates LotR from "Wizards of the Coast" licensed D&D spinoff novels.
Same is true with Zelda...The plot remains the same, but the details are always fresh and creative. It's the same with games like "Gears of War"...How tired is that formula? But the game is a great game!
There is a difference between saying, "Okay we need to tighten up what can be patented" and saying, "All patents are crap."
The point of patents is not to make companies money, as you seem to imagine, it is to make sure that companies share their secrets. The alternative to patents is not wild free information, it is corporations taking secrecy to whole new levels, and never sharing ANY of their findings, to keep their competitive edge.
Why is this such a big issue? Because we don't currently have a reliable way of verifying identity. Until that basic problem is fixed, there is no way to fix the identity theft issue.
Of course, the only really reliable way of proving identity is some kind of private key crypto backed up by high-end biometrics (eg, retinal scan, or dna), and the odds of something like that being implemented are hilariously low, for about a million reasons.
At the very least there needs to be some sort of private ID that is used to verify the "public" id that you pass along to the credit companies and whatnot.
I disagree. Thompson does more harm than good to his purported cause.
This is a simple issue that no one disagrees with him on. Rockstar sure as hell doesn't care, and that only leaves the retailers, and I've yet to see a single one of them who has argued that they should be allowed to sell M rated games to minors. A handful of rational people could sit down and hash this deal out over a weekend.
Enter Jack Thompson, whose notion of a "solution" to this problem is probably a firmware patch that will prohibit the game from running or a law making it a criminal offense for any store to carry the game...Stuff so crazy that no one would agree to it.
I'm still not convinced that he's not being paid under the table by the game companies to make sure that no rational legislation shows up dealing with games. Either way, he practically guarantees that nothing will actually be done.
So you'd rather pay 47,270 per year per cop for them to stand guard in public areas, than add around sixty really nice cameras, or a few hundred middlin cameras.
Sure we'd rather have real cops, but frankly, there is no possible way we'd ever be able to afford all the cops we'll ever need to make sure there is no crime, so why not make sure that people who do commit crimes don't get a chance to repeat.
I'm sure in this crowd, this'll be seen as flamebait, but I don't see how expecting not to be seen while you're out in public is an essential liberty. This is no different than if a handful of eyewitnesses pegged him at the scene.
The question is, do the benefits outweigh the costs? Since all the cameras were in public areas, and since there is a lot of precedent supporting the idea that you have no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public place, I'm not sure what the legal objection could be...
Sure a camera network could be used by an oppressive government to help control a civilian populace...but so could a police force, and no one argues against the police on the grounds that they take away your right to privacy.
Regardless of our feelings about the subject, cameras are getting better, cheaper, and smaller. This sort of thing is only going to get more common, and it's hard to form a cogent argument against it since the privacy you lose is intangible, whereas serial killers being caught based on camera data is pretty tangible.
I don't know, you're pretty adversarial, and you clearly take a lot of stuff personally, and when you take it personally, you immediately get emotionally involved. You don't pick your fights very well, and you're quick to drop to verbal abuse when someone disagrees. You're quick to assert your "rights" which always rubs me the wrong way...People who do that keep careful track of what they're "owed" which makes everything brutally tit for tat.
Having worked for that type, they're fine when they're pointed at someone else, but they suck when they're pointed at you, and they don't take unexpected things in stride, so when something breaks and there is fault to be found they'll jump your shit in the name of "motivation".
In short, you sound like a short-sighted jackass who can't bear criticism, and I sure as hell wouldn't want to work under you.
Carnivores are more expensive to raise in terms of calories than herbivores...Those cows that you have to feed and water then get fed to the tigers or whatever that you're raising for meat.
Most efficient food is vegetable mass. Second most efficient is things that live on vegetable mass. Last comes things that eat things that live on vegetable mass.
On top of that, even if you could solve the problem of food efficiency, it would be extremely difficult to raise them efficiently, as carnivores are usually solitary or semi-solitary in organization. You'd have to keep them isolated from each other or they'd kill each other in response to territorial instincts.
Finally, raising food that would think of you as food is problematic. If a cow escapes from a cattle farm, it's probably not going to be a threat to nearby people, while a farm-raised carnivore is bound to be seriously feral and potentially very aggressive.
I'd imagine that they spiked...I know IGE, for example, changes it's prices all the time, so I'd be surprised if they didn't reflect the growing scarcity. I wouldn't think it would affect the sale of characters, and I'd imagine for WoW, that the coming expansion has already knocked the bottom out of the sale of high level items.
I'll call bullshit on that one...Having to have, on your porn site, a link telling the federal investigators who to contact to procure the legally mandated age records of your "models" isn't at all, or in any way, a legally mandated HTML tag.
The same information would have to be available on any printed publication or movie.
A legal precedent that opens you to civil liability is your big example? Farting in public opens you to civil liability in this country. Hell, breathing in public opens you to civil liability in this country. It has nothing to do with the law, only with the right for one private citizen to sue another private citizen.
Some random whack job senator may very well try to lobby for something like this, but I don't see it ever happening for the following reasons:
1) Impossible to enforce on pages, due to global nature of internet. 2) Impossible to clearly define content to be tagged, due to fuzzy definition of obscenity. 3) Impossible to enforce software compliance, due to open source and extra territorial software vendors.
You're a troll. An AC first post whose entire argument is a fallacy, responding to an article talking about a guy who's working on a way to not accidentally get porn at work, with a hysterical barely on-topic diatribe against hypothetical government censorship.
And last time I checked, the fundies got schooled in the last election. Not that the goddamn Dems won't jump on the "OMG THINK OF THE CHILDREN" bandwagon, but it's still not gonna happen.
Nah, because the gold farmers don't farm gold out of thin air...They farm materials, and kill creatures, and sell items...So while the gold supply drops, so does the supply of stuff to buy
Lot of commodity prices have tanked in WoW because of people shifting their characters to grind mode for the upcoming expansion, so I doubt you'll see much change there. Don't know about any others.
Please submit a single example of a government mandated HTML tag. HTML is always opt in/opt out. You think the porn sites are going to jump on the NSFW tag?
Nice troll though. Looks like you snagged a few moderators.
Slashdot Mirror
I shall reiterate: "more closely related"
I don't think it's an either or situation, but if we're getting a spike that is outside the bounds of models based primarily on increased greenhouse gas composition in the atmosphere, which indisputably contribute to warming, then we might want to factor in increased solar activity into our models to more accurately predict the climate trends into the next century.
Participating in fricking global warming discussions is almost completely pointless...Whatever you say, there is bound to be someone who will latch on to one word and accuse you of being a hippy or an oil company shill.
Just start buying up inland real estate, 'cause beachfront's gonna be moving.
It's interesting that the models are proving to be conservative...Makes the case that the current warming trend is more closely related to a solar upswing (than greenhouse gas buildup) more persuasive. Either way, I think we need to start putting less thought into "how are we going to slow down our greenhouse gas emissions" and more thought into "what steps are we going to need to take to deal with the inevitable consequences of the current warming trend."
I doubt it. A lot of the studies on dementia have boiled down to: if your brain is more flexible, you develop symptoms much more slowly. People with more education tend to exhibit symptoms much more slowly, people who know extra languages exhibit symptoms much more slowly.
What it boils down to is, if your brain is wired to do things in more than one way, you're more likely to be able to cope for longer when dementia starts throwing up road blocks. So, in that sense, I'd expect programming skills to be useful, due to the amount of problem solving ability that comes with coding.
Much as I like Java, I'm not exactly sure how much a fortran-esqe language is going to "benefit from the lesson's learned with Java". It's apples to oranges, because of fortran's narrow focus, and equally narrow deployment base. Java's primary schtick is in the exact opposite direction, with wide focus, and deployment on a large number of systems.
I suppose increased multi-processor support would be nice. It'll all depend on performance.
The reality of networking is that you don't see a performance increase when you do heavy traffic control, a la token ring...It's actually more efficient in 99% of cases to just spam your packets and hope for few collisions, and it's a hell of a lot more robust, because the idea of failures is built into the system. It's also faster, because the packets are sent instantly, with no waiting for the token.
The theory behind token ring assumed that chaos would be less efficient, and it's just not. Sure, the ideal of every packet coming at the right instant and having no collisions is great, but it's an impossible ideal. Lot of things like that in computers.
Subduction zones are generally at continental boundaries, and the problem is, anything that's sitting on top of the subducting plate may very well get scraped up onto the edge of the continental plate, which would make for some interesting beach-front real estate.
Additionally, subduction zones are geologically unstable, and the remote possiblity of volcanic activity spewing nuclear waste into the atmosphere should be taken into account, along with the more probable possibilities of seismic activity and accidental/intentional human interference.
I'd definitely need an indeterminate number of beers if I didn't know how many bears I'd had the night before.
Re Zelda:
All plots are old and tired. Fantasy seldom has any sort of different plot conflict than Lord of the Rings...Man vs. Evil. But the execution is what separates LotR from "Wizards of the Coast" licensed D&D spinoff novels.
Same is true with Zelda...The plot remains the same, but the details are always fresh and creative. It's the same with games like "Gears of War"...How tired is that formula? But the game is a great game!
Maybe the rest of the damn CD makers will follow suit, and I can go back to using my Sharpies to scribble on the front of my CDs!
There is a difference between saying, "Okay we need to tighten up what can be patented" and saying, "All patents are crap."
The point of patents is not to make companies money, as you seem to imagine, it is to make sure that companies share their secrets. The alternative to patents is not wild free information, it is corporations taking secrecy to whole new levels, and never sharing ANY of their findings, to keep their competitive edge.
Why is this such a big issue? Because we don't currently have a reliable way of verifying identity. Until that basic problem is fixed, there is no way to fix the identity theft issue.
Of course, the only really reliable way of proving identity is some kind of private key crypto backed up by high-end biometrics (eg, retinal scan, or dna), and the odds of something like that being implemented are hilariously low, for about a million reasons.
At the very least there needs to be some sort of private ID that is used to verify the "public" id that you pass along to the credit companies and whatnot.
I disagree. Thompson does more harm than good to his purported cause.
This is a simple issue that no one disagrees with him on. Rockstar sure as hell doesn't care, and that only leaves the retailers, and I've yet to see a single one of them who has argued that they should be allowed to sell M rated games to minors. A handful of rational people could sit down and hash this deal out over a weekend.
Enter Jack Thompson, whose notion of a "solution" to this problem is probably a firmware patch that will prohibit the game from running or a law making it a criminal offense for any store to carry the game...Stuff so crazy that no one would agree to it.
I'm still not convinced that he's not being paid under the table by the game companies to make sure that no rational legislation shows up dealing with games. Either way, he practically guarantees that nothing will actually be done.
Is someone setting up cameras outside your house?
So you'd rather pay 47,270 per year per cop for them to stand guard in public areas, than add around sixty really nice cameras, or a few hundred middlin cameras.
Sure we'd rather have real cops, but frankly, there is no possible way we'd ever be able to afford all the cops we'll ever need to make sure there is no crime, so why not make sure that people who do commit crimes don't get a chance to repeat.
So, if I'm looking at you, does this violate your right to be secure in your person? Because that seems to be what you're saying.
There is a huge difference between an invasive search and simply looking at / filming someone.
I'm sure in this crowd, this'll be seen as flamebait, but I don't see how expecting not to be seen while you're out in public is an essential liberty. This is no different than if a handful of eyewitnesses pegged him at the scene.
The question is, do the benefits outweigh the costs? Since all the cameras were in public areas, and since there is a lot of precedent supporting the idea that you have no reasonable expectation of privacy in a public place, I'm not sure what the legal objection could be...
Sure a camera network could be used by an oppressive government to help control a civilian populace...but so could a police force, and no one argues against the police on the grounds that they take away your right to privacy.
Regardless of our feelings about the subject, cameras are getting better, cheaper, and smaller. This sort of thing is only going to get more common, and it's hard to form a cogent argument against it since the privacy you lose is intangible, whereas serial killers being caught based on camera data is pretty tangible.
I don't know, you're pretty adversarial, and you clearly take a lot of stuff personally, and when you take it personally, you immediately get emotionally involved. You don't pick your fights very well, and you're quick to drop to verbal abuse when someone disagrees. You're quick to assert your "rights" which always rubs me the wrong way...People who do that keep careful track of what they're "owed" which makes everything brutally tit for tat.
Having worked for that type, they're fine when they're pointed at someone else, but they suck when they're pointed at you, and they don't take unexpected things in stride, so when something breaks and there is fault to be found they'll jump your shit in the name of "motivation".
In short, you sound like a short-sighted jackass who can't bear criticism, and I sure as hell wouldn't want to work under you.
Carnivores are more expensive to raise in terms of calories than herbivores...Those cows that you have to feed and water then get fed to the tigers or whatever that you're raising for meat.
Most efficient food is vegetable mass. Second most efficient is things that live on vegetable mass. Last comes things that eat things that live on vegetable mass.
On top of that, even if you could solve the problem of food efficiency, it would be extremely difficult to raise them efficiently, as carnivores are usually solitary or semi-solitary in organization. You'd have to keep them isolated from each other or they'd kill each other in response to territorial instincts.
Finally, raising food that would think of you as food is problematic. If a cow escapes from a cattle farm, it's probably not going to be a threat to nearby people, while a farm-raised carnivore is bound to be seriously feral and potentially very aggressive.
Ahhhh, I'm sorry, I misunderstood.
I'd imagine that they spiked...I know IGE, for example, changes it's prices all the time, so I'd be surprised if they didn't reflect the growing scarcity. I wouldn't think it would affect the sale of characters, and I'd imagine for WoW, that the coming expansion has already knocked the bottom out of the sale of high level items.
I'll call bullshit on that one...Having to have, on your porn site, a link telling the federal investigators who to contact to procure the legally mandated age records of your "models" isn't at all, or in any way, a legally mandated HTML tag.
The same information would have to be available on any printed publication or movie.
A legal precedent that opens you to civil liability is your big example? Farting in public opens you to civil liability in this country. Hell, breathing in public opens you to civil liability in this country. It has nothing to do with the law, only with the right for one private citizen to sue another private citizen.
Some random whack job senator may very well try to lobby for something like this, but I don't see it ever happening for the following reasons:
1) Impossible to enforce on pages, due to global nature of internet.
2) Impossible to clearly define content to be tagged, due to fuzzy definition of obscenity.
3) Impossible to enforce software compliance, due to open source and extra territorial software vendors.
You're a troll. An AC first post whose entire argument is a fallacy, responding to an article talking about a guy who's working on a way to not accidentally get porn at work, with a hysterical barely on-topic diatribe against hypothetical government censorship.
And last time I checked, the fundies got schooled in the last election. Not that the goddamn Dems won't jump on the "OMG THINK OF THE CHILDREN" bandwagon, but it's still not gonna happen.
Nah, because the gold farmers don't farm gold out of thin air...They farm materials, and kill creatures, and sell items...So while the gold supply drops, so does the supply of stuff to buy
Lot of commodity prices have tanked in WoW because of people shifting their characters to grind mode for the upcoming expansion, so I doubt you'll see much change there. Don't know about any others.
Hello slippery slope, pleased to meetcha.
Please submit a single example of a government mandated HTML tag. HTML is always opt in/opt out. You think the porn sites are going to jump on the NSFW tag?
Nice troll though. Looks like you snagged a few moderators.