There's not enough data to say the things this report is saying. All of these "catastrophe" reports are nothing more than political maneuvers backed by very little to no real scientific proof. Like a previous poster said, we've been in a warming trend since the last Ice age. The climate changes; It's a fact of the Earth. We don't know rates because these changes happen over hundreds of thousands of years, and the patterns last millions of years. We have data for a couple hundred years max. There's no way we could know whether or not what we're doing (humans) is either helping or hurting this process. Maybe we are helping the planet warm. But what's helping Mars warm? The sun's more active these days, making all planets warmer. Our magnetic field is in the beginning stages of a flip (magnetic north will become south and vice versa), and it's thus weakening. This prevents less of the sun's radiation from hitting parts of the Earth.
All I'm saying is that this is a group of politicians who know nothing about what they speak (typical), and are just trying to scare people into voting for them again and to donate money to the environmental movement organizations that fund said politicians' campaigns.
I'll first apologize for the tone of my last post, if it was at all harsh. When I replied I, obviously, thought you were talking directly to me when you wrote "Don't blame Bush...", then soon after realized it was your signature./. really doesn't do a good job of differentiating... in any case. I will cede certain points to you. I agree that Bush's health care plan isn't a lot better, but I do think it is, in fact, better in that it offers people more choices (i.e. Health Savings Accounts) instead of less. But I'm with you in that I believe (as I think you were implying) that health care should be left alone by Government as it's not their job to provide me with it, and it should be left to the free market to set the prices.
In theory I also agree that our meddling in wars in which we aren't directly involved is not the best policy. But we do have to protect our interests. I think that we've certainly made mistakes in this regard, not least of which was supporting Saddam against Iran, but I also think we've been justified just as often (i.e. Milosevic). Plus, I'm not saying that the U.N. shouldn't be involved either, but it's hard to get support or even consideration when a country with veto power (France) says publicly that they'll veto anything we put forth on Iraq. Attitudes and statements like those render the UN useless in that situation and at that point it's time to decide on our own what to do. I'm just glad we had a leader in place who was willing to do just that.
I also agree that when dealing with nations that an offensive stance may not be the best. However, we're not dealing with a direct threat from a nation, it's from a vast disjointed, though very persistent, network of psychos. And when dealing with such a threat that can and will strike in any way, at any time, and at anyone, then I think it's important that we do go on the offensive, because if not then we'll be mourning deaths more often than capturing terrorists.
I don't agree, however, that strong leadership = freedom quashing fascism. In fact, I believe that it's only through strong and principled leadership that such things can be avoided. The main difference I see between Kerry and Bush is that Bush has principals and will stick with them, whereas Kerry seems to base all his positions on focus groups or something similar. How else could his taking all sides of every issue be explained? Though I do not agree with all of Bush's policies, I do respect the fact that he stands by what he says.
I haven't blamed Bush for anything. I'm scared of what might happen to the country if sKerry is elected. His health plan is socialist crap that will limit the citizens' medical choices and steal more money from the people who've earned it. His views on defense are weak and he favors U.N. control of our military. I've never said that I agree with Bush or the Republican Party Platform 100%, and I'll say now that I do not. But I believe that in this time Bush is best for the country because sKerry's ideas on dealing w/ Terror by preparing for an attack, and on the economy by raising taxes on business will harm this country, whereas Bush's policies on these subjects will, and are protecting and strengthening the country.
And when I referred to sKerry as "French looking," I meant that he will look to France for permission to protect this country as he's said he would do when he said that he believed that the US should not act without the permission of the UN. It's when I refer to him as a Poodle that I mean that he's 1. French 2. Has the same hair cut, 3. Is a rich woman's pet, and 4. Won't protect you!
If Colorado passes this measure, and more states follow, then it will become nearly impossible for any candidate to get the required 270 EC votes to win the election. Therefore the House of Representatives will almost always decide who the president should be. It sounds to me like a system like that would make everyone's vote meaningless save congressmen/women. James Taranto in his August 25th edition of Best of the Web Today put it best:
Will Colorado Flunk College?
ASPEN, Colo.--As long as we're visiting the Centennial State, we thought we'd write something about the initiative that will appear on the November ballot to change the way Colorado allocates its electoral votes. The Colorado Electoral College Reform Initiative would allocate the state's 9 electoral votes proportionately to each candidate's popular vote, and it would be retroactive to the 2004 election. Currently the candidate who wins a plurality of the popular vote gets all of the state's electors, as is the case in 47 other states and the District of Columbia. (Maine and Nebraska allocate 2 electoral votes to the statewide winner and the remaining votes by congressional district, though neither has had a split since adopting this method.)
The initiative is a transparent effort to help John Kerry, who is expected to lose Colorado. If it had been in effect in 2000, Al Gore would have picked up 3 of the state's 8 electoral votes (one has been added since, thanks to reapportionment). This would have shifted the overall electoral vote from 271-266 in Bush's favor to 270-268 in Gore's. (One Gore elector from the District of Columbia abstained but said she would have cast her vote for Gore if it had been decisive.) If Kerry took 3 or 4 of Colorado's electors this year, that could make the difference in a close election.
But Coloradans would have to be pretty stupid to approve this measure, for the result would be to diminish the state's power in electing a president. To see why, consider this: In postwar elections, the Democrats have never received less than 31.1% of the Colorado vote (Jimmy Carter's total in 1980). The Republicans' worst showing was George H.W. Bush's 35.9% in 1992. If we take this as each party's floor, Democrats would have a lock on 2 of Colorado's electoral votes and Republicans on 3 of them, leaving a maximum of 4 electoral votes in play in any given election--the number of electoral votes such small states as Hawaii, Idaho and New Hampshire have. And winning all 4 of those votes (for a 7-2 GOP advantage or a 6-3 Democratic one) would require a blowout victory in the state.
The Bush campaign is concerned enough about Colorado that it has been airing campaign ads here, something we never see back home in solidly Democratic New York. It's unlikely that either candidate would bother to campaign in a state where at most 4, and more realistically only 1 or 2, electoral votes are at stake.
What would happen if every state adopted the proposed Colorado system? For one thing, "swing" states would be a thing of the past; the difference between carrying Iowa and losing it by a small plurality would be 1 electoral vote (4-3 vs. 3-4) rather than 7. This would benefit large states at the expense of small ones. It's a lot easier to shift, say, 3.2% of the vote in New York (which has 31 electoral votes) than 25% in New Hampshire (4).
It would also increase the importance of third parties, thereby possibly pushing the major parties to extremes. No third-party candidate has carried a state since George Wallace in 1968, but under a proportional system for choosing electors, several would have won electoral votes.
We ran the numbers for the 2000 election, and it turns out that if all states followed the proposed Colorado system, Ralph Nader would have garnered 6 electoral votes (2 from California and 1 each from Massachusetts, Ohio, New York and Texas). Gore w
If you are one of those who take what the liberal media says at face value, then you're probably one of them, and no more capable of dealing with the truth than any of your socialist pals. However, you should know that Moore's portrayal of Saddam's Iraq is grossly false, and that's just the first of his lies. It's all detailed in this review, but to sum-up... He leaves out any mention of the death camps, the Iraqi's walking around without hands, feet, tongues, etc. which were removed by law in prison. He fails to mention the mass graves containing hundreds of thousands of Saddam's citizens, the chemical weapons he used to kill 5000 Kurds, his ties with al Qaeda , his attempted murder of one of our former presidents, and his complete disregard for UN resolutions for 12 years. Michael Moore is scary because his hatred for America has caused him to befriend one of the most murderous and ruthless dictators in history. I think many people are falling into his trap as well due to his very misleading, if not completely false portrayal of events.
huh... I guess I stand corrected. I'm fairly sure it didn't have USB support and that was the major reson for SE besides stability. Perhaps they finally just got around to patching it enough that they are basically the same now.... oh well. never mind then;)
dude... 98 first edition was shit. I'm sorry, but it was (notice the past tense.. as in it "used" to exist). I'm glad you use Gentoo, but that doesn't really make up for 98 first edition. You don't have any USB devices???; because first edition didn't support them. I will say that I liked 98 SE, and that it was sort of considered stable untill 2000 came out, and then XP has 2000 beat in stability and performance. None of them can beat a well crafted Linux of couse, but XP's ok if you don't mind M$ looking in on what you're doing. But, anything's better than first edition (well... other than ME.. wow was that a bag of crap).
Napster 2.0's subscription plan sounds great. They have over 500K songs, and for $9.95/month or so you can download as many as you want, as well as share purchased music and play lists with other subscribers. This comes as a direct shot to emusic for their recent announcement that they would start limiting the number of downloads/month on their subscription service.
I will not be signing up however. Napster sells their music in the Micro$oft proprietary WMA format. I don't like the format or the idea behind it, and so I will not be purchasing any WMA music. Apple's iTunes Music Store sells a version of AAC which is based on an open standard, but the codec for which is only available (hardware wise) on the iPod. Since the iPod is, by far, the best hard drive based compressed music player in existence, this is a good thing for Apple. And conversely, since the aforementioned iPod does not support WMA, it does not bode well for Napster.
Slashdot Mirror
There's not enough data to say the things this report is saying. All of these "catastrophe" reports are nothing more than political maneuvers backed by very little to no real scientific proof. Like a previous poster said, we've been in a warming trend since the last Ice age. The climate changes; It's a fact of the Earth. We don't know rates because these changes happen over hundreds of thousands of years, and the patterns last millions of years. We have data for a couple hundred years max. There's no way we could know whether or not what we're doing (humans) is either helping or hurting this process. Maybe we are helping the planet warm. But what's helping Mars warm? The sun's more active these days, making all planets warmer. Our magnetic field is in the beginning stages of a flip (magnetic north will become south and vice versa), and it's thus weakening. This prevents less of the sun's radiation from hitting parts of the Earth. All I'm saying is that this is a group of politicians who know nothing about what they speak (typical), and are just trying to scare people into voting for them again and to donate money to the environmental movement organizations that fund said politicians' campaigns.
I would have thought the car would have surrendered much easier; what with it being French and all ;)
I'll first apologize for the tone of my last post, if it was at all harsh. When I replied I, obviously, thought you were talking directly to me when you wrote "Don't blame Bush...", then soon after realized it was your signature. /. really doesn't do a good job of differentiating... in any case. I will cede certain points to you. I agree that Bush's health care plan isn't a lot better, but I do think it is, in fact, better in that it offers people more choices (i.e. Health Savings Accounts) instead of less. But I'm with you in that I believe (as I think you were implying) that health care should be left alone by Government as it's not their job to provide me with it, and it should be left to the free market to set the prices.
In theory I also agree that our meddling in wars in which we aren't directly involved is not the best policy. But we do have to protect our interests. I think that we've certainly made mistakes in this regard, not least of which was supporting Saddam against Iran, but I also think we've been justified just as often (i.e. Milosevic). Plus, I'm not saying that the U.N. shouldn't be involved either, but it's hard to get support or even consideration when a country with veto power (France) says publicly that they'll veto anything we put forth on Iraq. Attitudes and statements like those render the UN useless in that situation and at that point it's time to decide on our own what to do. I'm just glad we had a leader in place who was willing to do just that.
I also agree that when dealing with nations that an offensive stance may not be the best. However, we're not dealing with a direct threat from a nation, it's from a vast disjointed, though very persistent, network of psychos. And when dealing with such a threat that can and will strike in any way, at any time, and at anyone, then I think it's important that we do go on the offensive, because if not then we'll be mourning deaths more often than capturing terrorists.
I don't agree, however, that strong leadership = freedom quashing fascism. In fact, I believe that it's only through strong and principled leadership that such things can be avoided. The main difference I see between Kerry and Bush is that Bush has principals and will stick with them, whereas Kerry seems to base all his positions on focus groups or something similar. How else could his taking all sides of every issue be explained? Though I do not agree with all of Bush's policies, I do respect the fact that he stands by what he says.
I haven't blamed Bush for anything. I'm scared of what might happen to the country if sKerry is elected. His health plan is socialist crap that will limit the citizens' medical choices and steal more money from the people who've earned it. His views on defense are weak and he favors U.N. control of our military. I've never said that I agree with Bush or the Republican Party Platform 100%, and I'll say now that I do not. But I believe that in this time Bush is best for the country because sKerry's ideas on dealing w/ Terror by preparing for an attack, and on the economy by raising taxes on business will harm this country, whereas Bush's policies on these subjects will, and are protecting and strengthening the country.
And when I referred to sKerry as "French looking," I meant that he will look to France for permission to protect this country as he's said he would do when he said that he believed that the US should not act without the permission of the UN. It's when I refer to him as a Poodle that I mean that he's 1. French 2. Has the same hair cut, 3. Is a rich woman's pet, and 4. Won't protect you!
If Colorado passes this measure, and more states follow, then it will become nearly impossible for any candidate to get the required 270 EC votes to win the election. Therefore the House of Representatives will almost always decide who the president should be. It sounds to me like a system like that would make everyone's vote meaningless save congressmen/women. James Taranto in his August 25th edition of Best of the Web Today put it best:
If you are one of those who take what the liberal media says at face value, then you're probably one of them, and no more capable of dealing with the truth than any of your socialist pals. However, you should know that Moore's portrayal of Saddam's Iraq is grossly false, and that's just the first of his lies. It's all detailed in this review, but to sum-up... He leaves out any mention of the death camps, the Iraqi's walking around without hands, feet, tongues, etc. which were removed by law in prison. He fails to mention the mass graves containing hundreds of thousands of Saddam's citizens, the chemical weapons he used to kill 5000 Kurds, his ties with al Qaeda , his attempted murder of one of our former presidents, and his complete disregard for UN resolutions for 12 years. Michael Moore is scary because his hatred for America has caused him to befriend one of the most murderous and ruthless dictators in history. I think many people are falling into his trap as well due to his very misleading, if not completely false portrayal of events.
huh... I guess I stand corrected. I'm fairly sure it didn't have USB support and that was the major reson for SE besides stability. Perhaps they finally just got around to patching it enough that they are basically the same now.... oh well. never mind then ;)
dude... 98 first edition was shit. I'm sorry, but it was (notice the past tense.. as in it "used" to exist). I'm glad you use Gentoo, but that doesn't really make up for 98 first edition. You don't have any USB devices???; because first edition didn't support them. I will say that I liked 98 SE, and that it was sort of considered stable untill 2000 came out, and then XP has 2000 beat in stability and performance. None of them can beat a well crafted Linux of couse, but XP's ok if you don't mind M$ looking in on what you're doing. But, anything's better than first edition (well... other than ME.. wow was that a bag of crap).
1. Moz Firefox (browser)
2. Photoshop (graphics)
3. Homesite (HTML/PHP Editor)
4. FileZilla (FTP)
5. PuTTY (ssh)
6. iTunes (media player)
7. Gaim (instant messenger)
8. SETI@Home (find aliens)
9. Java (excellent)
10. UT2K4 (ULTRA-KILL)
Napster 2.0's subscription plan sounds great. They have over 500K songs, and for $9.95/month or so you can download as many as you want, as well as share purchased music and play lists with other subscribers. This comes as a direct shot to emusic for their recent announcement that they would start limiting the number of downloads/month on their subscription service. I will not be signing up however. Napster sells their music in the Micro$oft proprietary WMA format. I don't like the format or the idea behind it, and so I will not be purchasing any WMA music. Apple's iTunes Music Store sells a version of AAC which is based on an open standard, but the codec for which is only available (hardware wise) on the iPod. Since the iPod is, by far, the best hard drive based compressed music player in existence, this is a good thing for Apple. And conversely, since the aforementioned iPod does not support WMA, it does not bode well for Napster.