However, ask the same people if they've heard of or seen apple macs, and most will say yes.
Microsoft and Apple have done a great job of convincing the general public that the OS is tied intrinsically to the hardware - if they have heard of linux (indeed rare), they invariably think they need to buy a 'linux computer' to run it.
The short answer is OEM support. The day that Dell, IBM and HP ship linux as an option on a large majority of their product line will be the day linux takes off. The day they ship it as the default option is the day linux wins the desktop war. As you say, people don't change what OS comes on their computer. Many don't even realise that they can.
Turn off automatic updates, reboot and run a manual windows update will usually clear it. If not, you might have a corrupted update catalog or the like - google the error code will usually give you instructions to clear it; there's quite a few different ways to break windows update and all I've come across so far are pretty straightforward to fix. If you get stuck, post the error code here and i'll try and find a guide.
Yes, it pisses me off too, which is why I run windows under vmware these days:)
This has already happened to google in the UK for a similar trademark reason. Signing up for an account in the UK (you get a drop down box to select country) means you get a googlemail.com address rather than a gmail.com one. However, the site you goto for your email doesn't change - it's actually run under the google.com domain if you look at the address bar, but you are redirected there from both gmail.com and googlemail.com
Conveniently, you still receive bob@gmail.com email at your bob@googlemail.com address, so despite the interface branding you can just use the gmail.com as your published address if you wish. I don't see them changing the gmail interface globally in those countries they don't need to.
He pays taxes like everyone else (time off work, which implies he works) so he already paid for his cover. How is it any different if he'd been paying into private insurance, instead of a government backed scheme? The difference is we all have insurance which keeps prices low for everyone and eliminates paperwork, instead of huge profits going to insurance businesses.
Ah, is this the day I get to choose what bits of universal taxes* I get to refuse because I don't personally use them? In that case, I'd like that part of my money back that was spent on the war in iraq, speed cameras, local schools, pensioners, NHS cancer treatment etc etc.
The BBC is universally funded because its judged a social good not to have all the TV news owned by Rupert Murdoch. If you don't like paying many taxes, I'm sure there's a few anarchist dictatorships about where you only have to pay the local warlord protection money that you might prefer.
*yes, I know it's not strictly a tax, but its close enough.
How do you decide upon levels of probability when you have no evidence to base it on? God has *exactly* the same probability of existing as orbiting mind-reading chocolate teapots - He just has better PR managers.
I'm an atheist because I don't believe in God. I also don't believe in invisible pink unicorns and orbiting mind-control chocolate teapots. To be an agnostic is to admit that anything anyone ever says to you is *possibly* true, without the slightest shred of evidence.
How can you analyse anything when 'magic faeries' and 'mind controlling teapots' have to be considered on the list of possible causes? I have a simple position. You want me to accept something as true and present? Prove it. Failure to provide evidence means that I will not accept your theory. However, come back with real evidence and I'm perfectly happy to change my mind.
Agnostics are basically saying 'well, it might be true' to an infinite amount of unprovable theories with no evidence. That's just gotta be unworkable.
For the 'very little' you can't do natively in linux. Beats dual-booting.
In my case, I have a dell axim x51v. Beautiful VGA screen, but I need outlook & activesync to get data on and off it easily as its windows mobile 5. I use linux on most of my servers, but there's still the odd desktop app that keeps me tied to windows. Virtualization allows me to run that handful of apps while stick to linux for my main desktop. In this role though, windows XP is more than adequate. Vista would be a complete waste of resources. Still, there will come a day when microsoft kill XP, via incompatibility or just end of patches.
If we assume that Sony went inside the church to film/photo it for the modellers to use, they could be charged with trespass on private property if they didn't have permission to film, or if they were misleading about what the footage would be used for. Most churches are private property open to the public - they generally allow photography freely by individuals for personal use (sans flash in some cases), but commercial photography is generally a no-no without explicit permission.
If the filming took shots of people that ended up in the game, that would possible also violate data protection policies the churches generally have these days, but that's a bit of a stretch.
As I understand it, over 2GB SD cards (i.e. 4GB upwards) use the new SDHC standard which is partially backwards compatible, i.e. uses the same form factor and interface, but older standard SD 1.0 or 1.1 devices - i.e. most of them from 2006 or earlier - can't read SDHC cards. Obviously, new SDHC devices can generally read MMC or older SD cards without issue.
It's a bit of a stretch, but here's how it is supposed to work.
Microsoft distributes vouchers with no expiration date for Novell's SUSE linux. Much of the software in that distro is licenced for GPL v2 or later.
Then GPLv3 comes into effect, and someone cashes in a voucher for SUSE linux after that date. NOW the software that is being distributed by microsoft is under the GPLv3 - (the receiver gets to choose) - and the GPLv3 basically says that if you distribute it with patent indemnity for some, you have to issue it with patent indemnity for all, and you can't distribute at all if its covered by patents you haven't also given a licence to use along with the GPL3 code.
Note, this wouldn't cover patents in the linux kernel itself as that is GPL v2 only, and there are no plans to move it to GPL v3. Microsoft's counter argument is that by only selling the vouchers, they're selling a service, not distributing the GPLv3 covered code themselves, and thus don't fall under the patent-licence-alongside-code provisions - that's novell's problem.
Novell theoretically will be in much bigger trouble though. They've made a big deal that their customers are covered by patent indemnities bought by novell from microsoft, but it doesn't apply to any other users of the same GPL code. That appears to be made specifically impossible under GPLv3, so Novell will either have to withdraw the indemnity altogether, extend it to everybody, or not distribute any GPLv3 code thats covered by the (unknown) patents in question. Since most GPLv2 code will automatically transition to GPLv3 code at the discretion of the receiver, thats a lot of code, and would likely sink SUSE linux as a distro.
Free speech laws. I (should) have the right to speak freely, whether it's actual speech, text, or video. This includes the right to publish anything in my possession, even if someone else first recorded it. I can tell stories around the campfire, even if I'm not the original author.
Copyright removes my free speech right, and grants exclusive rights to make copies of a work to the author for a limited period, in order to encourage more authors creating for the public domain. Except it's not the author benefiting, it's the media companies taking all the money, and the bargain of limited exclusivity before the work enters the public domain has been broken by media company lobbying. As long as disney exists, nothing will ever enter the public domain again from copyright expiration.
Far as I'm concerned, all published works enter the public domain immediately, instead of the 200 odd years its now supposed to be. Hey, they broke the bargain first. You think that's unfair? Well, fix copyright so its fair to authors AND the public domain INSTEAD of just a money making method for middlemen.
MMC cards are the predecessor to SD cards, and share a similar interface. SD is basically MMC with extra features, including support for an early DRM scheme, thus the name 'secure digital'. SD cards are usually slightly thicker than MMC cards, so MMC would go in SD, but not vice versa.
So you ask why they don't use CF or SD; in effect they ARE using the SD form factor, or at least its compatible predecessor. Anything that reads SD or MMC should read the new micard format, though SD has a 2GB limit IIRC. Depending on how thin they make the sockets, existing SD cards may not work in micard sockets; I'm sure they've thought of that and will use the SD thickness so new devices can read both. PSP's and ipods use proprietry interfaces. That's what you get for buying devices from companies that suffer from NIH syndrome badly.
They came to the 'agreement' before under duress; basically, they were sued for the same offence they're accused of now, i.e. breach of copyright by parallel importing, and agreed to source their CDs from inside the EU only.
Basically, there's a free-trade area inside the the EU where consumers, and companies as their agents, can buy goods from anywhere inside the EU as long as VAT (sales tax) in the source country is paid.
AFAIK, CD-Wow added 2 pounds to the cost when buying CDs from them in the UK, to account for the higher cost from sourcing CDs in the EU rather than hong-kong. Apparently though, some difficult-to-find CDs were still being sourced outside the EU market. Despite them being perfectly legal for a british citizen to buy in Hong-Kong themselves, and then bring back themselves, CD-Wow are breaking UK copyright law by importing from out-of-region.
As you say, one rule for the rich corporations, another rule for their customers and the companies that try to serve them. It's worth pointing out that CD-Wow say that most of the other big online retailers *cough*amazon*cough* do the exact same thing, but the BPI only go after a relatively small company.
Pipex were excellent up until about 18 months ago. Then they started enforcing FUP conditions, and crippled torrent traffic 24 hours a day. A couple of months ago, they started kicking off people using 'excessive' bandwidth if they didn't agree to very restrictive new FUP conditions.
Now, they're filtering all encrypted traffic to catch the RC4-based torrent encryption to 30KB/s - on an 8Mbs line. They won't even tell people what the limits are, though it's reckoned to be no more than 30-40GB a month.
They also have eye-watering cancellation charges; my line was regraded from 1MB to 2MB 18 months ago, which secretly started a new minimum 12 month contract in their eyes. When I came to move house, they were going to chase me for £200 in early cancellation charges, so I got stuck with another new 12 month minimum contract at my new address. To be honest, the service is getting so unusable of an evening due to the filtering, I'm tempted to just take the hit to leave early.
I have an 8Mb line, it can do 7.5Mb, and unless it's an http connection early in the morning, I get closer to a.5Mb line. It's not just me either, two of my friends on pipex are being similarly throttled in other areas.
Stay the hell away from pipex, bulldog and whatever other poor sods they swallowed up. I'd also advise staying away from Tiscali and Orange, they have super-sikrit FUP policies too.
The best bet is to go with an enta.net reseller; they seem to be upfront about the quotas you have, and don't traffic shape at all. One is adsl24.co.uk; has a good rep, I'm headed there the very day I can cancel pipex; 30GB pcm on peak, 300GB pcm off peak, for less than I'm paying pipex, with no goddamn shaping and a 1 month minimum contract. I can't wait.
Perhaps the fact that the entire channel was caused by ice-melt might make you a little concerned about us pushing the climate as hot as we can as fast as we can, and seeing how much more of the stuff we can melt in the next 100 years. After all, we all still get to eat wolly mammoth and chips, right? a 5m sea level rise in London wouldn't affect the city at all; everyone in the centre would just move! It's not like property is expensive in London at the moment, who cares if we just flood half of it!
My argument is that we are ill-suited to large scale and/or rapid changes in sea-level, given our current city locations. Egging on a rapid change as fast as we are capable of does not seem like a wise idea to me, either hot OR cold.
Sea levels were 5m higher than present during the previous interglacial period, 125,000 years ago. There are negative feedback loops that help offset the problems, but they don't solve everything.
First, no, of course all of London would not be underwater with a 1 meter or even a 10 meter sea-level rise, even without the barrier - it's a city of 6 million, over 600 square miles! However, it would cause a lot of damage. I don't know if you've ever been there, but the Thames runs right through the centre of London, and much of the key areas of the city run right next to the river. Check out this, this and this for a feel for what large storm surge or a few meter sea-level rise could do to the city, if not prevented.
The 1 billion within 1 meter isn't my statistic, but I think the site I pulled it from quickly was in error, and I apologise for saying so. Further research suggests its 100 million living under 1 meter from mean sea-level, 670 million under 5m, and 1 billion 'at risk' in low lying areas. The 2004 tsunami reached 30m.
The IPCC conservative estimate is a sea level rise of an extra 0.5 to 1m rise by the end of the century. Were there to be a large-scale ice-shelf collapse however, sea-levels could rise by several meters in the space of months. Storm surge obviously also becomes a bigger problem as sea-levels rise. Sea levels were 5m higher than present in the last inter-glacial period.
I agree the rapid pace of change is the real worry, but rapid pace of change affects us too. Massive destruction of homes - or just the threat thereof - in the poorer coastal regions of the world would likely cause mass-migration to the richer countries who can afford coastal defences, plus much of the agricultural land is low-lying.
Yes, the earth has been much warmer in the past. When the dinosaurs roamed the earth, for example. However, they didn't have up to a billion people living within a meter of sea-level. It really doesn't take much melting of currently land-bourne ice to cause massive displacement problems for a lot of people. Look at a map of your country. See how many of the major cities are coastal ports. Were it not for the very expensive Thames Barrier, London would already have ended up like New Orleans at a couple of points. It may well still be over-run this century.
Don't worry what may happen to most of the coastal cities. I'm sure you live well away from the sea. Shame so much trade, and thus the global economy runs through them.
There is the doctrine of laches; this can means that if someone is aware of infringement of their patent, but sits quiet for a few years to allow the infringing party to build a big enough business to be worth suing, THEN jumps on them for infringement; they may be judged to have lost their chance. Or not. Generally, it's used to prevent people from refiling a patent to maximise their chance of getting money from an existing infringer, especially if they've waited a number of years to do so, or continuing an application indefinitely so they can wait until someone actually builds what is patent-pending before getting the final patent.
Given the state of the US courts today? It's not a defence I'd want to rely on. IANAL etc, not even from US etc...
Timecube guy and the over-unity energy guys are also in the scientific minority. Being in the minority doesn't mean you're right either. In fact, gallileo wasn't persecuted by the science community (such as it was) for being in the minority, he was persecuted by the church because his theories opposed religious doctrine.
We don't know in detail what climate change will do. Humans have prospered because we adapted our environment to our advantage. Now we're about to find out how well we do as the environment extensively changes beyond our control. Given how well we normally react to big changes, I'm guessing it's not going to be fun.
Yes, because managing your time better always allows you to fit 20 hours of work in a 10 hour day. By that logic, you can have 1 sysadmin running a helpdesk alone for 50,000 people and blame any problems on the sysadmin. Even if it's undermanned, it's the sysadmins fault for not getting a budget approved for more staff!
Thing is, most movies at least break even at the box office, if you include overseas box office receipts. DVD sales are virtually all profit for the studio, retailer and taxman.
I live 25 miles from work through very hilly countryside. My closest major town is 35 miles away. It was the closest house to work I could afford. Oh, and I live in the UK - constant bad weather. You might live in a sunny urban area, but not everyone else does.
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However, ask the same people if they've heard of or seen apple macs, and most will say yes.
Microsoft and Apple have done a great job of convincing the general public that the OS is tied intrinsically to the hardware - if they have heard of linux (indeed rare), they invariably think they need to buy a 'linux computer' to run it.
The short answer is OEM support. The day that Dell, IBM and HP ship linux as an option on a large majority of their product line will be the day linux takes off. The day they ship it as the default option is the day linux wins the desktop war. As you say, people don't change what OS comes on their computer. Many don't even realise that they can.
Turn off automatic updates, reboot and run a manual windows update will usually clear it. If not, you might have a corrupted update catalog or the like - google the error code will usually give you instructions to clear it; there's quite a few different ways to break windows update and all I've come across so far are pretty straightforward to fix. If you get stuck, post the error code here and i'll try and find a guide.
:)
Yes, it pisses me off too, which is why I run windows under vmware these days
This has already happened to google in the UK for a similar trademark reason. Signing up for an account in the UK (you get a drop down box to select country) means you get a googlemail.com address rather than a gmail.com one. However, the site you goto for your email doesn't change - it's actually run under the google.com domain if you look at the address bar, but you are redirected there from both gmail.com and googlemail.com
Conveniently, you still receive bob@gmail.com email at your bob@googlemail.com address, so despite the interface branding you can just use the gmail.com as your published address if you wish. I don't see them changing the gmail interface globally in those countries they don't need to.
He pays taxes like everyone else (time off work, which implies he works) so he already paid for his cover. How is it any different if he'd been paying into private insurance, instead of a government backed scheme? The difference is we all have insurance which keeps prices low for everyone and eliminates paperwork, instead of huge profits going to insurance businesses.
Ah, is this the day I get to choose what bits of universal taxes* I get to refuse because I don't personally use them? In that case, I'd like that part of my money back that was spent on the war in iraq, speed cameras, local schools, pensioners, NHS cancer treatment etc etc.
The BBC is universally funded because its judged a social good not to have all the TV news owned by Rupert Murdoch. If you don't like paying many taxes, I'm sure there's a few anarchist dictatorships about where you only have to pay the local warlord protection money that you might prefer.
*yes, I know it's not strictly a tax, but its close enough.
How do you decide upon levels of probability when you have no evidence to base it on? God has *exactly* the same probability of existing as orbiting mind-reading chocolate teapots - He just has better PR managers.
You are aware that virgin and sky both carry the BBC channels, right?
I'm an atheist because I don't believe in God. I also don't believe in invisible pink unicorns and orbiting mind-control chocolate teapots. To be an agnostic is to admit that anything anyone ever says to you is *possibly* true, without the slightest shred of evidence.
How can you analyse anything when 'magic faeries' and 'mind controlling teapots' have to be considered on the list of possible causes? I have a simple position. You want me to accept something as true and present? Prove it. Failure to provide evidence means that I will not accept your theory.
However, come back with real evidence and I'm perfectly happy to change my mind.
Agnostics are basically saying 'well, it might be true' to an infinite amount of unprovable theories with no evidence. That's just gotta be unworkable.
For the 'very little' you can't do natively in linux. Beats dual-booting.
In my case, I have a dell axim x51v. Beautiful VGA screen, but I need outlook & activesync to get data on and off it easily as its windows mobile 5.
I use linux on most of my servers, but there's still the odd desktop app that keeps me tied to windows. Virtualization allows me to run that handful of apps while stick to linux for my main desktop. In this role though, windows XP is more than adequate. Vista would be a complete waste of resources. Still, there will come a day when microsoft kill XP, via incompatibility or just end of patches.
If we assume that Sony went inside the church to film/photo it for the modellers to use, they could be charged with trespass on private property if they didn't have permission to film, or if they were misleading about what the footage would be used for. Most churches are private property open to the public - they generally allow photography freely by individuals for personal use (sans flash in some cases), but commercial photography is generally a no-no without explicit permission.
If the filming took shots of people that ended up in the game, that would possible also violate data protection policies the churches generally have these days, but that's a bit of a stretch.
As I understand it, over 2GB SD cards (i.e. 4GB upwards) use the new SDHC standard which is partially backwards compatible, i.e. uses the same form factor and interface, but older standard SD 1.0 or 1.1 devices - i.e. most of them from 2006 or earlier - can't read SDHC cards. Obviously, new SDHC devices can generally read MMC or older SD cards without issue.
It's a bit of a stretch, but here's how it is supposed to work.
Microsoft distributes vouchers with no expiration date for Novell's SUSE linux. Much of the software in that distro is licenced for GPL v2 or later.
Then GPLv3 comes into effect, and someone cashes in a voucher for SUSE linux after that date. NOW the software that is being distributed by microsoft is under the GPLv3 - (the receiver gets to choose) - and the GPLv3 basically says that if you distribute it with patent indemnity for some, you have to issue it with patent indemnity for all, and you can't distribute at all if its covered by patents you haven't also given a licence to use along with the GPL3 code.
Note, this wouldn't cover patents in the linux kernel itself as that is GPL v2 only, and there are no plans to move it to GPL v3. Microsoft's counter argument is that by only selling the vouchers, they're selling a service, not distributing the GPLv3 covered code themselves, and thus don't fall under the patent-licence-alongside-code provisions - that's novell's problem.
Novell theoretically will be in much bigger trouble though. They've made a big deal that their customers are covered by patent indemnities bought by novell from microsoft, but it doesn't apply to any other users of the same GPL code. That appears to be made specifically impossible under GPLv3, so Novell will either have to withdraw the indemnity altogether, extend it to everybody, or not distribute any GPLv3 code thats covered by the (unknown) patents in question. Since most GPLv2 code will automatically transition to GPLv3 code at the discretion of the receiver, thats a lot of code, and would likely sink SUSE linux as a distro.
Free speech laws. I (should) have the right to speak freely, whether it's actual speech, text, or video. This includes the right to publish anything in my possession, even if someone else first recorded it.
I can tell stories around the campfire, even if I'm not the original author.
Copyright removes my free speech right, and grants exclusive rights to make copies of a work to the author for a limited period, in order to encourage more authors creating for the public domain. Except it's not the author benefiting, it's the media companies taking all the money, and the bargain of limited exclusivity before the work enters the public domain has been broken by media company lobbying. As long as disney exists, nothing will ever enter the public domain again from copyright expiration.
Far as I'm concerned, all published works enter the public domain immediately, instead of the 200 odd years its now supposed to be. Hey, they broke the bargain first. You think that's unfair? Well, fix copyright so its fair to authors AND the public domain INSTEAD of just a money making method for middlemen.
MMC cards are the predecessor to SD cards, and share a similar interface. SD is basically MMC with extra features, including support for an early DRM scheme, thus the name 'secure digital'. SD cards are usually slightly thicker than MMC cards, so MMC would go in SD, but not vice versa.
So you ask why they don't use CF or SD; in effect they ARE using the SD form factor, or at least its compatible predecessor. Anything that reads SD or MMC should read the new micard format, though SD has a 2GB limit IIRC. Depending on how thin they make the sockets, existing SD cards may not work in micard sockets; I'm sure they've thought of that and will use the SD thickness so new devices can read both. PSP's and ipods use proprietry interfaces. That's what you get for buying devices from companies that suffer from NIH syndrome badly.
They came to the 'agreement' before under duress; basically, they were sued for the same offence they're accused of now, i.e. breach of copyright by parallel importing, and agreed to source their CDs from inside the EU only.
Basically, there's a free-trade area inside the the EU where consumers, and companies as their agents, can buy goods from anywhere inside the EU as long as VAT (sales tax) in the source country is paid.
AFAIK, CD-Wow added 2 pounds to the cost when buying CDs from them in the UK, to account for the higher cost from sourcing CDs in the EU rather than hong-kong. Apparently though, some difficult-to-find CDs were still being sourced outside the EU market. Despite them being perfectly legal for a british citizen to buy in Hong-Kong themselves, and then bring back themselves, CD-Wow are breaking UK copyright law by importing from out-of-region.
As you say, one rule for the rich corporations, another rule for their customers and the companies that try to serve them. It's worth pointing out that CD-Wow say that most of the other big online retailers *cough*amazon*cough* do the exact same thing, but the BPI only go after a relatively small company.
Pipex were excellent up until about 18 months ago. Then they started enforcing FUP conditions, and crippled torrent traffic 24 hours a day. A couple of months ago, they started kicking off people using 'excessive' bandwidth if they didn't agree to very restrictive new FUP conditions.
.5Mb line. It's not just me either, two of my friends on pipex are being similarly throttled in other areas.
Now, they're filtering all encrypted traffic to catch the RC4-based torrent encryption to 30KB/s - on an 8Mbs line. They won't even tell people what the limits are, though it's reckoned to be no more than 30-40GB a month.
They also have eye-watering cancellation charges; my line was regraded from 1MB to 2MB 18 months ago, which secretly started a new minimum 12 month contract in their eyes. When I came to move house, they were going to chase me for £200 in early cancellation charges, so I got stuck with another new 12 month minimum contract at my new address. To be honest, the service is getting so unusable of an evening due to the filtering, I'm tempted to just take the hit to leave early.
I have an 8Mb line, it can do 7.5Mb, and unless it's an http connection early in the morning, I get closer to a
Stay the hell away from pipex, bulldog and whatever other poor sods they swallowed up. I'd also advise staying away from Tiscali and Orange, they have super-sikrit FUP policies too.
The best bet is to go with an enta.net reseller; they seem to be upfront about the quotas you have, and don't traffic shape at all. One is adsl24.co.uk; has a good rep, I'm headed there the very day I can cancel pipex; 30GB pcm on peak, 300GB pcm off peak, for less than I'm paying pipex, with no goddamn shaping and a 1 month minimum contract. I can't wait.
Perhaps the fact that the entire channel was caused by ice-melt might make you a little concerned about us pushing the climate as hot as we can as fast as we can, and seeing how much more of the stuff we can melt in the next 100 years. After all, we all still get to eat wolly mammoth and chips, right? a 5m sea level rise in London wouldn't affect the city at all; everyone in the centre would just move! It's not like property is expensive in London at the moment, who cares if we just flood half of it!
My argument is that we are ill-suited to large scale and/or rapid changes in sea-level, given our current city locations. Egging on a rapid change as fast as we are capable of does not seem like a wise idea to me, either hot OR cold.
Sea levels were 5m higher than present during the previous interglacial period, 125,000 years ago. There are negative feedback loops that help offset the problems, but they don't solve everything.
First, no, of course all of London would not be underwater with a 1 meter or even a 10 meter sea-level rise, even without the barrier - it's a city of 6 million, over 600 square miles! However, it would cause a lot of damage. I don't know if you've ever been there, but the Thames runs right through the centre of London, and much of the key areas of the city run right next to the river.
Check out this, this and this for a feel for what large storm surge or a few meter sea-level rise could do to the city, if not prevented.
The 1 billion within 1 meter isn't my statistic, but I think the site I pulled it from quickly was in error, and I apologise for saying so. Further research suggests its 100 million living under 1 meter from mean sea-level, 670 million under 5m, and 1 billion 'at risk' in low lying areas. The 2004 tsunami reached 30m.
The IPCC conservative estimate is a sea level rise of an extra 0.5 to 1m rise by the end of the century. Were there to be a large-scale ice-shelf collapse however, sea-levels could rise by several meters in the space of months. Storm surge obviously also becomes a bigger problem as sea-levels rise. Sea levels were 5m higher than present in the last inter-glacial period.
I agree the rapid pace of change is the real worry, but rapid pace of change affects us too. Massive destruction of homes - or just the threat thereof - in the poorer coastal regions of the world would likely cause mass-migration to the richer countries who can afford coastal defences, plus much of the agricultural land is low-lying.
Yes, the earth has been much warmer in the past. When the dinosaurs roamed the earth, for example. However, they didn't have up to a billion people living within a meter of sea-level.
It really doesn't take much melting of currently land-bourne ice to cause massive displacement problems for a lot of people. Look at a map of your country. See how many of the major cities are coastal ports.
Were it not for the very expensive Thames Barrier, London would already have ended up like New Orleans at a couple of points. It may well still be over-run this century.
Don't worry what may happen to most of the coastal cities. I'm sure you live well away from the sea. Shame so much trade, and thus the global economy runs through them.
There is the doctrine of laches; this can means that if someone is aware of infringement of their patent, but sits quiet for a few years to allow the infringing party to build a big enough business to be worth suing, THEN jumps on them for infringement; they may be judged to have lost their chance. Or not. Generally, it's used to prevent people from refiling a patent to maximise their chance of getting money from an existing infringer, especially if they've waited a number of years to do so, or continuing an application indefinitely so they can wait until someone actually builds what is patent-pending before getting the final patent.
Given the state of the US courts today? It's not a defence I'd want to rely on. IANAL etc, not even from US etc...
Timecube guy and the over-unity energy guys are also in the scientific minority. Being in the minority doesn't mean you're right either. In fact, gallileo wasn't persecuted by the science community (such as it was) for being in the minority, he was persecuted by the church because his theories opposed religious doctrine.
We don't know in detail what climate change will do. Humans have prospered because we adapted our environment to our advantage. Now we're about to find out how well we do as the environment extensively changes beyond our control. Given how well we normally react to big changes, I'm guessing it's not going to be fun.
Yes, because managing your time better always allows you to fit 20 hours of work in a 10 hour day.
By that logic, you can have 1 sysadmin running a helpdesk alone for 50,000 people and blame any problems on the sysadmin. Even if it's undermanned, it's the sysadmins fault for not getting a budget approved for more staff!
Hmm. You're in management then.
Thing is, most movies at least break even at the box office, if you include overseas box office receipts. DVD sales are virtually all profit for the studio, retailer and taxman.
I live 25 miles from work through very hilly countryside. My closest major town is 35 miles away. It was the closest house to work I could afford. Oh, and I live in the UK - constant bad weather. You might live in a sunny urban area, but not everyone else does.