But speaking of low cost space flight. I've seen lots of tricks used to protect the equipment from being burned up in the atmosphere... have there been any attempts to exploit a reaction with the earths atmosphere and harness the resulting energy?
This is the same bullshit they have been spouting among stock traders all along. Its all just because people are panicing and afraid. Sure the stock market works that way but the real world does not.
It couldn't possibly be that we trade debt and have changed our production system to solely attempting to maximize profit rather than total production. Never that.
A highly liquid economy is NOT a substitute for a solvent one backed by actual tangible assets of innate and functional value. Encouraging people to borrow and spend is NOT better than encouraging them to save and produce.
Yes that is old outdated thinking. From back when the economy was self sustaining, before the past few decades of turning liquid the foundation built by those before us and blowing it.
I can't speak for the environmentalists but I'm afraid that something like this will turn out to be the real reason for global warming. If its something we are doing we can fix it, if its something like this we are pretty much fsck'd.
Even with the strong potential for a disaster that threatens human life on earth what do we do? Cut the budget on manned space exploration. People are so fucked up sometimes, really.
No. It runs windows. The solution to global warming is to format and load linux on the box. Then it just sit in the closet and gather dust as it runs happily along.
Anyone who admins *nix and windows equipment knows what I mean. The windows boxen stay clean and sparkly. By the time you finally have to physically interact with the *nix machine you'll be choking on the dust.
Additionally just because the mechanism for energy transfer has been present all along does not mean the amount of energy transferred is static. This mechanism could be transferring an increased amount of heat in recent times.
Can anyone actually dismiss this out of hand because it doesn't fit the idea of a primarily human caused global warming and still call it science?
Global warming is a reality in my mind. And quite frankly the track record of climatology results in my own anecdotal experience of temperature being the most substantial source of evidence for that belief.
The cause of global warming, its long term impact, and its duration are NOT settled issues.
As for CO2 levels, nature takes care of itself. Plants use CO2 for fuel, if you increase CO2 in the atmosphere you will increase plant mass. Just as any experienced indoor pot grower and they will tell you, increase CO2 to about 1500ppm and your flower growth will explode. Wheres the proof? Its in the pudding, start paying attention and you will see that there are large algae blooms starting to appear across the globe. Those blooms are natural CO2 sequestering.
Estimates for plant consumption of CO2 are also generally based on the current CO2 level of the atmosphere. But if you give them more concentrated CO2 they consume more.
Maybe, maybe not. His basis for discounting this in climate change is false. While its true that this form of energy transfer would have been occurring for as long as our planet has had a magnetosphere it does not follow that the amount of energy transferred via that mechanism has remained static over that time.
*light bulb glows* oooooooo nm, nm I figured it out. Pretty much all the resources are in the hands of less than 1% of the global population and on a national basis no more widely dispersed than 5% in any nation.
Of course the death of human race primarily affects people with few resources, there aren't very many humans who have many resources.
Competent web design requires mastery of numerous coding schemes, diverse complex standards, and at least a dozen very complex tools. It is far more complex than the bulk of subjects you can get a BA in including pretty much any business degree.
Whipping together a web page is easy. Competent professional level web design not so much. Just ask all the computer scientists who can't write applications that output valid HTML let alone design professional web pages.
And if that doesn't convince you. Let me just point out that there are hundreds of institutions in the US that issue masters of divinity.
I have had similar experience to the GP with regards to refunds and replacements. Most sellers use a scam system and charge excessive shipping as well and then refund minus shipping charges. If the product is damaged they want you to pay to ship it back. Nevermind that they just sent you broken merchandise. At this point they should be sending me a replacement AND a refund or at least humoring me with a free bozo button or something for the inconvenience of being sent a broken widget.
The real scam is in the feedback department. In a transaction the buyer has one obligation, to pay. A seller on the hand not only has to deliver, they have to sell a quality product, communicate, ship promptly, take full responsibility for faulty merchandise and shipping problems. Ebay sellers would manipulate the system by withholding feedback after buyers had paid and use it to retaliate against anyone who left them negative feedback.
A definition is a line in the sand. If you can't draw such a line then the "thing" is not an appropriate categorization at all. Any theory or model based on it will fail because the distinction isn't real.
Electricity, magnetism, gravity. These are distinct, it is legitimate to label these things. Life, morality, sentience, these things can not be solidly defined and thus they aren't real, we need labels for real and valid things not muddy artificial concepts we simply make and try to define until the end of time.
If there is no clean line then perhaps the concept we are trying to define does not exist and the distinctions people try to draw with it are by definition bogus.
The "life" theory is bunk. Perhaps we should stop using that blanket and invalid term and replace it with a functional system with terms that are more clear and finite. Maybe its just time to stop trying to pretend there are two separate classes, living things like us that are sacred and everything else that doesn't matter.
If Random hardware company x intentionally used gpl'd code, distributed their drivers without releasing the source, were caught breaking the law, and then complied in the minimum manner in order to dodge paying the price for their crime.
They don't deserve a pat on the back either.
Most companies who open something are doing it for business purposes. That is fine, there is nothing wrong with that but that isn't the same thing as doing it for copyright infringment purposes.
Besides, have our values really fallen so much that we give credit to people who provide a tangent benefit to others out of pure self interest?
It is like the old story of a man falling off a snowmobile who breaks his leg and craws three miles through the snow back to the highway. Such a man is not courageous or brave. He merely has a survival instinct and saved his own ass.
"People use what they believe best fits their needs; I encourage open behavior on any platform."
I encourage open behavior as well but I don't go so far as to believe that someone who commits copyright infringement and then only does the right thing in an attempt to avoid paying the debt their illegal action incurs deserves a pat on the back.
Even at that, the driver they opened serves only one purpose, to attempt to drive people away from the open solutions that already dominate this area and to Microsoft's proprietary virtualization solution.
Microsoft didn't donate anything. They were violating the GPL and preemptively released this source before they were caught. The code also is only of benefit to microsoft customers.
We have strayed from the point and I take the blame. I apologize for calling you an 'anal smartass' if you find the term offensive. I refer to myself as an anal smartass on a regular basis and am probably desensitized to it. I meant only that you were making a witty remark by playing on an overly literal and nitpicky interpretation of the AC's comment. Witty (smartass), literal/nitpicky (anal).
The AC referred to people 'bagging jordan'. You suggested he was trying to dismiss them. I disagreed. I was referring to the unsupported and non-constructive opinion posts bashing the author. Apparently you took it to mean any negative opinion of the author and I suspect our disagreement rests largely on this point. I can not speak for the AC so you may be right that his comment was intended as a blanket covering literally every negative Jordan post.
What could have been a great opportunity to discuss the book, the new author, and the comparative writing styles has devolved into nothing more than a long repetition of +5 moderated comments to the effect of "Jordan was a long winded bastard who couldn't finish a series". That's a fair criticism but only the first time it is said. Yet it is repeated in so many words in about 12 +5 comments before this thread.
That is what has me upset and I suspect the AC as well. Not that criticism exists but that this thread has become little more than a bashfest with haters being given the loudest voice. These posters have taken a loud volume and someone considering reading the series would read this discussion and think it the prevailing opinion. It is not the prevailing opinion, there are more NY Times bestselling books in this series than I have fingers.
"No, you did:
If you really must hate read the chapter and then hate on the content."
Taken out of context. If it was not clear, let me rephrase to make it clear. 'If one really must hate, read the chapter, then hate on the content.'
Outside of what I believe to be an overly literal interpretation of the AC's words I didn't notice any hate comments from you regarding Jordan. My comments were certainly not intended as a personal attack.
"You know, I'm beginning to feel sorry for you. I'd heard of people like you, but I think it's my first time communicating with a live specimen. The kind of nerd with a little job and a little life who comes online to jump into a thread where other people were debating and bicker endlessly about details so he can feel good and superior at something."
I prefer to think this assault was the result of you feeling attacked and cornered. Rather than lashing back in turn and furthering negative sentiments I hope I have cleared things up.
You seem an intelligent fellow. If we can not reconcile our difference of opinion on the subject then that is alright. People don't always have to agree. But I would hate to part trading slights over any matter but especially a matter as trivial as this one.
"Do me a favor and post that every time you see someone claim that Ubuntu 'Just Works':)"
Ubuntu does "Just Works" on the vast majority of hardware. It actually works on far more of the hardware out there. It might not seem like if you are a geek or gamer but people running systems that are less than a year old (and particularly who have systems with chipsets less than a year old) are in the minority.
Besides, windows doesn't just work either. I mean plugging in a new usb device breaks that device with windows at least 2 out of 10 times. It it works it will continue to work but if it doesn't work it requires a registry edit to make windows forget about the device.
Sure that doesn't take long if you know how to do it but there certainly isn't any fix a desktop linux user is going to encounter that is harder than that.
"But yes, I do get frustrated when I hear about how great Linux's support is, only to try it, have it fail, and then get attacked for not having the foresight to buy Linux-supported hardware (not to say that you are attacking me, but I've had negative experiences over at the Ubuntu forums. Both now, and two years ago the last time I tried it)."
Two things that might help. When people talk about how great linux's support is, they are talking about the information available. With windows you run into dead ends, just because there isn't an answer to be found with google doesn't mean the problem can't be fixed. With Linux there is likely an answer to be found.
The other thing that may help is to remember that Linuxites seem to refuse to delete outdated documentation. There are howtos and tutorials floating around from the days of yor. If you find something explaining how to do what you are trying, try to make sure it is current. One thing to look out for is the word 'compile'. Solutions that involved compiling are often suggested by old timers who haven't come to terms with the fact that compiling and the make, make install process breaks binary package manager distributions like Ubuntu.
I hope that helps your experience if you give it another go.
I won't argue with your numbered list of points but I will point out that many of them are self reinforcing. Not many people will support linux if there aren't many users and there won't be many users if there isn't support.
Truthfully, I think the biggest obstacle for linux users isn't the IT department though. Its the professors who require windows only apps for courses.
None of the latest version office applications work properly in wine. Nothing has better than a silver rating and all require trickery to install.
That said, support is quite a bit better than when I tried to use Linux for my college work. Outside of college I wouldn't load MS Office in the first place so I haven't even looked at this for some time.
My point wasn't so much office specific though. The real challenge isn't really the big campus wide stuff, its the class specific stuff. The campus is going to be run by some form of geek.
The classes are going to be dictated by a professor with overrated self importance who is going to think it more important that everyone uses the flavor of tool he loves because it has feature x, y, and z that are his favs. Of course this makes all other tools inferior and using something with better compatibility would be compromising the integrity of his class.
That tool could be a *nix tool. But the odds say its going to be windows based and the odds greatly favor the possibility that you will need a windows license to run something for a class a some point.
"I spent several days, and several pages, on the Ubuntu forums trying to get Ubuntu 9.04 to install on my relatively new desktop PC."
Did you buy a PC that is compatible with Linux or Ubuntu? You would have the same problem loading MacOS on a pc, it only works with supported hardware. Windows NT had much the same concern.
Windows is a monopoly so all NEW hardware is properly supported by it is financially driven which means they drop old hardware like a bad habit.
In the linux world on the other hand support for old hardware is rarely ever dropped and its new hardware that is iffy. Windows support is usually written first and if the vendor doesn't support linux then kernel hackers have to wait for specs or reverse engineer the interfaces, that takes time.
The good news is that linux is probably far more stable and speedy on hardware that is a year or two old than windows is on a pc out of the box.
If you want to enjoy the advantages of running Linux then you need to buy linux compatible hardware or better yet, hop over to dell.com and buy a computer with linux preloaded like you would with your mac or windows computer.
Actually the office support you dismiss is what I found to be biggest sticking point. I found no shortage of assignments like "create a powerpoint slideshow about x" and for the most part submitting assignments in word format was common. Printed papers were not.
Slashdot Mirror
This has been done numerous times.
But speaking of low cost space flight. I've seen lots of tricks used to protect the equipment from being burned up in the atmosphere... have there been any attempts to exploit a reaction with the earths atmosphere and harness the resulting energy?
This is the same bullshit they have been spouting among stock traders all along. Its all just because people are panicing and afraid. Sure the stock market works that way but the real world does not.
It couldn't possibly be that we trade debt and have changed our production system to solely attempting to maximize profit rather than total production. Never that.
A highly liquid economy is NOT a substitute for a solvent one backed by actual tangible assets of innate and functional value. Encouraging people to borrow and spend is NOT better than encouraging them to save and produce.
Yes that is old outdated thinking. From back when the economy was self sustaining, before the past few decades of turning liquid the foundation built by those before us and blowing it.
You forget the end game where there is no food to import from anywhere and we die.
"What are they afraid of?"
I can't speak for the environmentalists but I'm afraid that something like this will turn out to be the real reason for global warming. If its something we are doing we can fix it, if its something like this we are pretty much fsck'd.
Even with the strong potential for a disaster that threatens human life on earth what do we do? Cut the budget on manned space exploration. People are so fucked up sometimes, really.
Studies disagree with your oft repeated knee jerk assumptions:
http://www.physicscentral.com/buzz/blog/index.cfm?postid=3414795237807494042
In the real word you come within about a foot of other vehicles traveling 75 mph as you all bob and weave among the several lanes.
If you DON'T do this, you will be stuck at each light and could never make a turn without riding the lane for a half mile.
No. It runs windows. The solution to global warming is to format and load linux on the box. Then it just sit in the closet and gather dust as it runs happily along.
Anyone who admins *nix and windows equipment knows what I mean. The windows boxen stay clean and sparkly. By the time you finally have to physically interact with the *nix machine you'll be choking on the dust.
Additionally just because the mechanism for energy transfer has been present all along does not mean the amount of energy transferred is static. This mechanism could be transferring an increased amount of heat in recent times.
Can anyone actually dismiss this out of hand because it doesn't fit the idea of a primarily human caused global warming and still call it science?
Global warming is a reality in my mind. And quite frankly the track record of climatology results in my own anecdotal experience of temperature being the most substantial source of evidence for that belief.
The cause of global warming, its long term impact, and its duration are NOT settled issues.
As for CO2 levels, nature takes care of itself. Plants use CO2 for fuel, if you increase CO2 in the atmosphere you will increase plant mass. Just as any experienced indoor pot grower and they will tell you, increase CO2 to about 1500ppm and your flower growth will explode. Wheres the proof? Its in the pudding, start paying attention and you will see that there are large algae blooms starting to appear across the globe. Those blooms are natural CO2 sequestering.
Estimates for plant consumption of CO2 are also generally based on the current CO2 level of the atmosphere. But if you give them more concentrated CO2 they consume more.
Maybe, maybe not. His basis for discounting this in climate change is false. While its true that this form of energy transfer would have been occurring for as long as our planet has had a magnetosphere it does not follow that the amount of energy transferred via that mechanism has remained static over that time.
*light bulb glows* oooooooo nm, nm I figured it out. Pretty much all the resources are in the hands of less than 1% of the global population and on a national basis no more widely dispersed than 5% in any nation.
Of course the death of human race primarily affects people with few resources, there aren't very many humans who have many resources.
'And global warming is merely a huge potential environmental problem that will primarily affect people with few resources.'
The disruption of the food chain and death of the human race primarily affects people with few resources? *scratches head*
"It does not appear to matter which congress has it, but which president has it."
uh huh
"the dem controlled congress of the 60's/70's, who paid off most of WWII debt"
Make up yer damn mind already.
You Parisians would be amusing if you weren't so sad. The two party system is one of the greatest evils ever pushed upon mankind.
Competent web design requires mastery of numerous coding schemes, diverse complex standards, and at least a dozen very complex tools. It is far more complex than the bulk of subjects you can get a BA in including pretty much any business degree.
Whipping together a web page is easy. Competent professional level web design not so much. Just ask all the computer scientists who can't write applications that output valid HTML let alone design professional web pages.
And if that doesn't convince you. Let me just point out that there are hundreds of institutions in the US that issue masters of divinity.
I have had similar experience to the GP with regards to refunds and replacements. Most sellers use a scam system and charge excessive shipping as well and then refund minus shipping charges. If the product is damaged they want you to pay to ship it back. Nevermind that they just sent you broken merchandise. At this point they should be sending me a replacement AND a refund or at least humoring me with a free bozo button or something for the inconvenience of being sent a broken widget.
The real scam is in the feedback department. In a transaction the buyer has one obligation, to pay. A seller on the hand not only has to deliver, they have to sell a quality product, communicate, ship promptly, take full responsibility for faulty merchandise and shipping problems. Ebay sellers would manipulate the system by withholding feedback after buyers had paid and use it to retaliate against anyone who left them negative feedback.
A definition is a line in the sand. If you can't draw such a line then the "thing" is not an appropriate categorization at all. Any theory or model based on it will fail because the distinction isn't real.
Electricity, magnetism, gravity. These are distinct, it is legitimate to label these things. Life, morality, sentience, these things can not be solidly defined and thus they aren't real, we need labels for real and valid things not muddy artificial concepts we simply make and try to define until the end of time.
If there is no clean line then perhaps the concept we are trying to define does not exist and the distinctions people try to draw with it are by definition bogus.
The "life" theory is bunk. Perhaps we should stop using that blanket and invalid term and replace it with a functional system with terms that are more clear and finite. Maybe its just time to stop trying to pretend there are two separate classes, living things like us that are sacred and everything else that doesn't matter.
If Random hardware company x intentionally used gpl'd code, distributed their drivers without releasing the source, were caught breaking the law, and then complied in the minimum manner in order to dodge paying the price for their crime.
They don't deserve a pat on the back either.
Most companies who open something are doing it for business purposes. That is fine, there is nothing wrong with that but that isn't the same thing as doing it for copyright infringment purposes.
Besides, have our values really fallen so much that we give credit to people who provide a tangent benefit to others out of pure self interest?
It is like the old story of a man falling off a snowmobile who breaks his leg and craws three miles through the snow back to the highway. Such a man is not courageous or brave. He merely has a survival instinct and saved his own ass.
"People use what they believe best fits their needs; I encourage open behavior on any platform."
I encourage open behavior as well but I don't go so far as to believe that someone who commits copyright infringement and then only does the right thing in an attempt to avoid paying the debt their illegal action incurs deserves a pat on the back.
Even at that, the driver they opened serves only one purpose, to attempt to drive people away from the open solutions that already dominate this area and to Microsoft's proprietary virtualization solution.
Microsoft didn't donate anything. They were violating the GPL and preemptively released this source before they were caught. The code also is only of benefit to microsoft customers.
We have strayed from the point and I take the blame. I apologize for calling you an 'anal smartass' if you find the term offensive. I refer to myself as an anal smartass on a regular basis and am probably desensitized to it. I meant only that you were making a witty remark by playing on an overly literal and nitpicky interpretation of the AC's comment. Witty (smartass), literal/nitpicky (anal).
The AC referred to people 'bagging jordan'. You suggested he was trying to dismiss them. I disagreed. I was referring to the unsupported and non-constructive opinion posts bashing the author. Apparently you took it to mean any negative opinion of the author and I suspect our disagreement rests largely on this point. I can not speak for the AC so you may be right that his comment was intended as a blanket covering literally every negative Jordan post.
What could have been a great opportunity to discuss the book, the new author, and the comparative writing styles has devolved into nothing more than a long repetition of +5 moderated comments to the effect of "Jordan was a long winded bastard who couldn't finish a series". That's a fair criticism but only the first time it is said. Yet it is repeated in so many words in about 12 +5 comments before this thread.
That is what has me upset and I suspect the AC as well. Not that criticism exists but that this thread has become little more than a bashfest with haters being given the loudest voice. These posters have taken a loud volume and someone considering reading the series would read this discussion and think it the prevailing opinion. It is not the prevailing opinion, there are more NY Times bestselling books in this series than I have fingers.
"No, you did:
If you really must hate read the chapter and then hate on the content."
Taken out of context. If it was not clear, let me rephrase to make it clear. 'If one really must hate, read the chapter, then hate on the content.'
Outside of what I believe to be an overly literal interpretation of the AC's words I didn't notice any hate comments from you regarding Jordan. My comments were certainly not intended as a personal attack.
"You know, I'm beginning to feel sorry for you. I'd heard of people like you, but I think it's my first time communicating with a live specimen. The kind of nerd with a little job and a little life who comes online to jump into a thread where other people were debating and bicker endlessly about details so he can feel good and superior at something."
I prefer to think this assault was the result of you feeling attacked and cornered. Rather than lashing back in turn and furthering negative sentiments I hope I have cleared things up.
You seem an intelligent fellow. If we can not reconcile our difference of opinion on the subject then that is alright. People don't always have to agree. But I would hate to part trading slights over any matter but especially a matter as trivial as this one.
"Do me a favor and post that every time you see someone claim that Ubuntu 'Just Works' :)"
Ubuntu does "Just Works" on the vast majority of hardware. It actually works on far more of the hardware out there. It might not seem like if you are a geek or gamer but people running systems that are less than a year old (and particularly who have systems with chipsets less than a year old) are in the minority.
Besides, windows doesn't just work either. I mean plugging in a new usb device breaks that device with windows at least 2 out of 10 times. It it works it will continue to work but if it doesn't work it requires a registry edit to make windows forget about the device.
Sure that doesn't take long if you know how to do it but there certainly isn't any fix a desktop linux user is going to encounter that is harder than that.
"But yes, I do get frustrated when I hear about how great Linux's support is, only to try it, have it fail, and then get attacked for not having the foresight to buy Linux-supported hardware (not to say that you are attacking me, but I've had negative experiences over at the Ubuntu forums. Both now, and two years ago the last time I tried it)."
Two things that might help. When people talk about how great linux's support is, they are talking about the information available. With windows you run into dead ends, just because there isn't an answer to be found with google doesn't mean the problem can't be fixed. With Linux there is likely an answer to be found.
The other thing that may help is to remember that Linuxites seem to refuse to delete outdated documentation. There are howtos and tutorials floating around from the days of yor. If you find something explaining how to do what you are trying, try to make sure it is current. One thing to look out for is the word 'compile'. Solutions that involved compiling are often suggested by old timers who haven't come to terms with the fact that compiling and the make, make install process breaks binary package manager distributions like Ubuntu.
I hope that helps your experience if you give it another go.
I won't argue with your numbered list of points but I will point out that many of them are self reinforcing. Not many people will support linux if there aren't many users and there won't be many users if there isn't support.
Truthfully, I think the biggest obstacle for linux users isn't the IT department though. Its the professors who require windows only apps for courses.
None of the latest version office applications work properly in wine. Nothing has better than a silver rating and all require trickery to install.
That said, support is quite a bit better than when I tried to use Linux for my college work. Outside of college I wouldn't load MS Office in the first place so I haven't even looked at this for some time.
My point wasn't so much office specific though. The real challenge isn't really the big campus wide stuff, its the class specific stuff. The campus is going to be run by some form of geek.
The classes are going to be dictated by a professor with overrated self importance who is going to think it more important that everyone uses the flavor of tool he loves because it has feature x, y, and z that are his favs. Of course this makes all other tools inferior and using something with better compatibility would be compromising the integrity of his class.
That tool could be a *nix tool. But the odds say its going to be windows based and the odds greatly favor the possibility that you will need a windows license to run something for a class a some point.
How is this a troll? I was unable to use Linux for collegework because of this issue. Its' a showstopper. You can't use office in Linux.
"I spent several days, and several pages, on the Ubuntu forums trying to get Ubuntu 9.04 to install on my relatively new desktop PC."
Did you buy a PC that is compatible with Linux or Ubuntu? You would have the same problem loading MacOS on a pc, it only works with supported hardware. Windows NT had much the same concern.
Windows is a monopoly so all NEW hardware is properly supported by it is financially driven which means they drop old hardware like a bad habit.
In the linux world on the other hand support for old hardware is rarely ever dropped and its new hardware that is iffy. Windows support is usually written first and if the vendor doesn't support linux then kernel hackers have to wait for specs or reverse engineer the interfaces, that takes time.
The good news is that linux is probably far more stable and speedy on hardware that is a year or two old than windows is on a pc out of the box.
If you want to enjoy the advantages of running Linux then you need to buy linux compatible hardware or better yet, hop over to dell.com and buy a computer with linux preloaded like you would with your mac or windows computer.
Actually the office support you dismiss is what I found to be biggest sticking point. I found no shortage of assignments like "create a powerpoint slideshow about x" and for the most part submitting assignments in word format was common. Printed papers were not.