If you like those conflicts, you may like L.E. Modesitt's Timegod series. Two-book set on Amazon
I only read The Timegod, and in searching for it found there was another (see link). Kinda fluffy, but interesting ideas. Deals with a civilization who can dance about time, live millions of years, and have "time police" (I forget what they call them) that monitor the universe to look for civilizations that are entering "high tech" periods and could threaten/discover their civilization. They either alter the civilizations path, or destroy it. If the other civilizations had good technology, they would steal it. I may have to read it again! Quick read, read it on the bus during my commute in a week or two.
It is also notable that he was the artist that created (along with writer David Michelinie) and drew the first appearance of Venom in The Amazing Spiderman #298. Venom was always one of my vavorite characters. Check out a copy if you can, you will see his "mark" in venom.
I can understand the debate over what high levels of CO2 have on the environment.
What I can not understand is how people are not alarmed that the C02 levels for the past ~200 years are ~28% higher than the peak of the last 800,000 years! Hard to refute that that is a/significant/ deviation. I find it also hard to refute when atmospheric composition changes this much that it will not have a severe impact on the systems that we have become very comfortable living with.
Personally, I would love to see us progress to the point where cows are well fed, happy and healthy.
Happy and healthy...until we kill them for food at the peak of their tastyness. I have said for years that we will eventually have "meat vats". "Program" the cells to align to attach to points at either side of the vat, keep stretching the vat over time to lengthen the strands, and zap with electric pulses until the desired tone is reached. Huge slabs of fillet mignon! Yum.
Afraid of lab stuff? You don't eat lab grown mold, do you? Cheese? Pretty old backyard food chemistry. Hell of a lot better than raising a HUGE animal that takes incredible amounts of energy and resources to raise, slaughter, prepare, and dispose of waste. Any idea how much water it takes for a 400lbs of beef? Cows suck for a primary source of food.
Large dairy farms have a detrimental effect on the environment. In California, America's top milk-producing state, manure from dairy farms has poisoned hundreds of square miles of groundwater, rivers, and streams. Each of the state's more than one million dairy cows excretes 120 pounds of waste every day--an amount equal to the waste of two dozen people.(22) Overall, animals on factory farms, including dairy farms, produce 1.65 billion tons of manure each year, much of which ends up in our waterways and drinking water.(23) The Environmental Protection Agency reports that agricultural runoff is the primarily cause of polluted lakes, streams, and rivers.
Eighty percent of all agricultural land in the U.S. is used to raise animals for food or to grow grain to feed them--that's almost half the total land mass of the lower 48 states.(24) Each cow raised by the dairy industry drinks as much as 50 gallons of water per day.(25) Along with chickens, pigs, and other animals raised for food, cows are the primary consumers of half the water in the U.S.(26)
In a bio class I took a few years ago, the class had to research other primary sources of food (If we were to raise animals for sole purpose of consumption) and found that turtles would be a great source, they grow quickly, reproduce in large numbers, consume few resources, and could be stacked and easily maintained. A skyscraper turtle farm, turtles all the way down.
The composition/was/ the Earth movement... Dun dun dun da da da dun dun dun da da da daaaaaaaaaaahhh daaaaaaaa dunnnnnnnnn da da da...wow, i love that piece.
Although patents are needed to protect innovation, there is no doubt that they are being abused.
I have always thought that patents protect sources of revenue (money), and stifle innovation. "Hey I have this great thing, and it will change the world...for a price, muahaahaahaaa."
Yah, maybe I am an idealist, but I feel that the world would be much more advanced without patents and other innovation retardants.
Wow, that was one of my favorite games. The intro video was creepy - a guy walking down a crowded street, you see him from the inside of a car, next you see him turn around and get hit by the car. The scene cuts to him strapped to a big ring (DaVinci style), and having his limbs replaced with bionic stuff and his whole body coated with plolymer, next thing you see is the same guy, now with trench coat, all bionic an bad ass with a fancy pistol -- he is now part of the syndicate.
I loved this game, after gaining a few territories I would jack up the tax, go out and mow the lawn, and come back to a all my territories rioting, and with a lot more money and tech research, the added bonus was being able to play the mission again, now with style! I would replay this game any day.
I am not an expert, but I was pretty enamored with the Starfish Prime wikipedia article a few months ago, and I remember thinking the same thing.
While it may have had a specific purpose, I think the main impetus was "lets see what happens" with specific questions/benefits of:
-How close to the blast do we(the mil) have to get for the EMP to be an effective weapon
-How big/how many bombs would we need to charge the atmosphere and fry satellites, and conversely how much do we have to harden our sats?
-Lets show the world we are bad ass, take that Russia!
-What do we have to do to get bombs in space? (rocket, trigger, etc, design)
-Would this be effective against the alien craft we found?
I had heard some (no not really) WAS (wild-ass-speculation) that the scientists on the manhattan project had some initial concerns of "what if the chain reaction continues, we could destroy the world!", but were obviously calculated and absolved. Kinda like the mini-black hole worries now. Not so much of an end-of-the-world-evil-plot bad idea here, calculated enough that it would not pose any "real" problems. A few flipper babies never hurt.
[Sam] The words "big" and "large" only begin to describe this thing.
[Max] "I think "stupid" and "inane" would be useful additions.
[Sam] Not to mention "grotesque."
Yippie! make it portable to all platforms! (hey, we can hope...)
Yes, I understand the beliefs of Christianity. My post, however, was an excerpt from Busta Rhymes' introductory track to his 1998 album Extinction Level Event. The track was one of my favorite intros, as it starts with a very calm steady voice, and as the track progresses the narrator's voice gets deeper and more ominous, by the end of the track the narrator's voice is deep enough to cause the room to shake (provided the monitors can go that low).
Back to the end of the world. I have often wondered what modern theologians think of the end times and Earth, especially since we have become aware of the possibility of earth being wiped out by an asteroid or super volcano or aliens, etc. I have always taken the Bible to be a collection of lessons that should be figuratively interpreted, as it is very old, and has been edited and reworked many times (most likely) since the pieces were originally written.
Well...I hope it'll all be peaches & cream. But I'm afraid the end time is near.
The cataclysmic apocalypse referred to in the scriptures of every holy book known to mankind. It will be an era fraught with boundless greed & corruption where global monetary systems disintegrate leaving brother to kill brother for a grain of over cooked rice. The nations of the civilized world will collapse under the
impressive weight of parasitic political conspiracies which remove all hope & optimism from their once faithful citizens. Around the globe, generations of polluters will be punished for their sins. Unshielded
by the ozone they have successfully depleted, left to bake in the
searing naked rays of light.
Wholesale assassinations served to
destabilize
every remaining government, leaving the starving & wicked to fend
for themselves. Bloodthirsty renegade cyborgs created by tax dodging
corporations wreak havoc. Pissed off androids tired of being slaves to
a godless & gutless system, where the rich get richer & the poor get
fucked over and out, unleash total world wide destruction by means
of nuclear holocaust, annihilating the terrified masses, leaving in
its
torturous wake nothing but vicious, cannibalistic, mutating,
radiating,
and horribly disfigured hordes of satanic killers, bent on
revenge,
but against hope, there are so few left alive.
Starvation reins
supreme,
forcing unlucky survivors to eat anything & anyone in their path.
Massive earthquakes crack the planets crust like a hollow egg shell,
causing unending volcanic eruptions. Creatures of the seven seas,
unable to escape the certain death upon land, boil in their liquid
prison.
Disease then circles the earth, plagues & viruses with no known cause
or cure laying waste to whatever draws breath, and human-kind having
proved itself to be nothing more than a race of ruthless scavengers,
fall
victim to merciless attacks at the hands of interplanetary alien
tribes who
seek to conquer our charred remains.
I figure that the price would be entirely justified if they opened up the linux OS on it, with an untouchable ps3 boot partition. If I could use the thing as another computer (almost as I see fit, unlikely) then I would have no problem shelling out the cash for it, my living room PC is near death, and was never too quick to begin with. Let me install my design tools and I could use it as my dev box in a pinch.
give some free reign with the OS and hardware, and they would have no problem with the geek/tech/money crowd (well, the money crowd does not have many problems with these matters).
Slashdot Mirror
If you like those conflicts, you may like L.E. Modesitt's Timegod series.
Two-book set on Amazon
I only read The Timegod, and in searching for it found there was another (see link). Kinda fluffy, but interesting ideas. Deals with a civilization who can dance about time, live millions of years, and have "time police" (I forget what they call them) that monitor the universe to look for civilizations that are entering "high tech" periods and could threaten/discover their civilization. They either alter the civilizations path, or destroy it. If the other civilizations had good technology, they would steal it.
I may have to read it again! Quick read, read it on the bus during my commute in a week or two.
Forget M-M-Max Head-d-droom. More likely a Goldstein version is what we will be seeing.
no no, one of the outhoused programmers...
nyuk nyuk nyuk
Mavis Beacon Teaches Napping
I have taken a few of these courses, they're great! The best part is [zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz]...
owning a big chunk of Gyration Inc
Ahh! that makes total sense, I always thought the Wiimote looked like a gyration mouse.
The old gyration mouse || the new one looks even more like a remote
it was pretty cool a few years ago when I had one for htpc, the tech is probably even better now. i feel better about the wiimote now.
Sam: I think I've got something in my eye.
/really/ wanted to play this game. Alas. Thwarted again.
Max: Try digging it out with a fork. That always works for me.
Why why why! *sob *sniff.
Oh terrible horror. I
but anybody with a moderate level of critical reasoning ability is going to see [x] as one of the worst [x] in this [x] history.
Not if you re-write or c1455ify said history. Memories are only a lifetime, "history" is forever (until you change it).
It is also notable that he was the artist that created (along with writer David Michelinie) and drew the first appearance of Venom in The Amazing Spiderman #298. Venom was always one of my vavorite characters. Check out a copy if you can, you will see his "mark" in venom.
I can understand the debate over what high levels of CO2 have on the environment.
/significant/ deviation. I find it also hard to refute when atmospheric composition changes this much that it will not have a severe impact on the systems that we have become very comfortable living with.
What I can not understand is how people are not alarmed that the C02 levels for the past ~200 years are ~28% higher than the peak of the last 800,000 years! Hard to refute that that is a
Happy and healthy...until we kill them for food at the peak of their tastyness. I have said for years that we will eventually have "meat vats". "Program" the cells to align to attach to points at either side of the vat, keep stretching the vat over time to lengthen the strands, and zap with electric pulses until the desired tone is reached. Huge slabs of fillet mignon! Yum.
Afraid of lab stuff? You don't eat lab grown mold, do you? Cheese? Pretty old backyard food chemistry. Hell of a lot better than raising a HUGE animal that takes incredible amounts of energy and resources to raise, slaughter, prepare, and dispose of waste. Any idea how much water it takes for a 400lbs of beef? Cows suck for a primary source of food.
From http://www.peta.org/mc/factsheet_display.asp?ID=9
Large dairy farms have a detrimental effect on the environment. In California, America's top milk-producing state, manure from dairy farms has poisoned hundreds of square miles of groundwater, rivers, and streams. Each of the state's more than one million dairy cows excretes 120 pounds of waste every day--an amount equal to the waste of two dozen people.(22) Overall, animals on factory farms, including dairy farms, produce 1.65 billion tons of manure each year, much of which ends up in our waterways and drinking water.(23) The Environmental Protection Agency reports that agricultural runoff is the primarily cause of polluted lakes, streams, and rivers.
Eighty percent of all agricultural land in the U.S. is used to raise animals for food or to grow grain to feed them--that's almost half the total land mass of the lower 48 states.(24) Each cow raised by the dairy industry drinks as much as 50 gallons of water per day.(25) Along with chickens, pigs, and other animals raised for food, cows are the primary consumers of half the water in the U.S.(26)
In a bio class I took a few years ago, the class had to research other primary sources of food (If we were to raise animals for sole purpose of consumption) and found that turtles would be a great source, they grow quickly, reproduce in large numbers, consume few resources, and could be stacked and easily maintained. A skyscraper turtle farm, turtles all the way down.The composition /was/ the Earth movement...
Dun dun dun da da da dun dun dun da da da daaaaaaaaaaahhh daaaaaaaa dunnnnnnnnn da da da...wow, i love that piece.
You wouldnt happen to be in the Duke bioinformatics grad program, would you? I head they have one of those there...
Although patents are needed to protect innovation, there is no doubt that they are being abused.
I have always thought that patents protect sources of revenue (money), and stifle innovation. "Hey I have this great thing, and it will change the world...for a price, muahaahaahaaa."
Yah, maybe I am an idealist, but I feel that the world would be much more advanced without patents and other innovation retardants.
Wow, that was one of my favorite games. The intro video was creepy - a guy walking down a crowded street, you see him from the inside of a car, next you see him turn around and get hit by the car. The scene cuts to him strapped to a big ring (DaVinci style), and having his limbs replaced with bionic stuff and his whole body coated with plolymer, next thing you see is the same guy, now with trench coat, all bionic an bad ass with a fancy pistol -- he is now part of the syndicate.
I loved this game, after gaining a few territories I would jack up the tax, go out and mow the lawn, and come back to a all my territories rioting, and with a lot more money and tech research, the added bonus was being able to play the mission again, now with style! I would replay this game any day.
Heh, change 'a Republican' to 'partisan', and you can count me in!
You, sir, are a buffoon.
Ender? Is that you?
So Van Allen took some cans of orange juice, heated them, put them in the gondola next to the rocket, and covered them in insulation.
Why? To keep the rockets at the proper temperature? (everyone knows its tomato soup that keeps you warm)
I am not an expert, but I was pretty enamored with the Starfish Prime wikipedia article a few months ago, and I remember thinking the same thing.
While it may have had a specific purpose, I think the main impetus was "lets see what happens" with specific questions/benefits of:
-How close to the blast do we(the mil) have to get for the EMP to be an effective weapon
-How big/how many bombs would we need to charge the atmosphere and fry satellites, and conversely how much do we have to harden our sats?
-Lets show the world we are bad ass, take that Russia!
-What do we have to do to get bombs in space? (rocket, trigger, etc, design)
-Would this be effective against the alien craft we found?
I had heard some (no not really) WAS (wild-ass-speculation) that the scientists on the manhattan project had some initial concerns of "what if the chain reaction continues, we could destroy the world!", but were obviously calculated and absolved. Kinda like the mini-black hole worries now. Not so much of an end-of-the-world-evil-plot bad idea here, calculated enough that it would not pose any "real" problems. A few flipper babies never hurt.
[Sam] The words "big" and "large" only begin to describe this thing.
[Max] "I think "stupid" and "inane" would be useful additions.
[Sam] Not to mention "grotesque."
Yippie! make it portable to all platforms! (hey, we can hope...)
Yes, I understand the beliefs of Christianity. My post, however, was an excerpt from Busta Rhymes' introductory track to his 1998 album Extinction Level Event. The track was one of my favorite intros, as it starts with a very calm steady voice, and as the track progresses the narrator's voice gets deeper and more ominous, by the end of the track the narrator's voice is deep enough to cause the room to shake (provided the monitors can go that low).
Back to the end of the world. I have often wondered what modern theologians think of the end times and Earth, especially since we have become aware of the possibility of earth being wiped out by an asteroid or super volcano or aliens, etc. I have always taken the Bible to be a collection of lessons that should be figuratively interpreted, as it is very old, and has been edited and reworked many times (most likely) since the pieces were originally written.
Well...I hope it'll all be peaches & cream. But I'm afraid the end time is near.
The cataclysmic apocalypse referred to in the scriptures of every holy book known to mankind. It will be an era fraught with boundless greed & corruption where global monetary systems disintegrate leaving brother to kill brother for a grain of over cooked rice. The nations of the civilized world will collapse under the impressive weight of parasitic political conspiracies which remove all hope & optimism from their once faithful citizens. Around the globe, generations of polluters will be punished for their sins. Unshielded by the ozone they have successfully depleted, left to bake in the searing naked rays of light.
Wholesale assassinations served to destabilize every remaining government, leaving the starving & wicked to fend for themselves. Bloodthirsty renegade cyborgs created by tax dodging corporations wreak havoc. Pissed off androids tired of being slaves to a godless & gutless system, where the rich get richer & the poor get fucked over and out, unleash total world wide destruction by means of nuclear holocaust, annihilating the terrified masses, leaving in its torturous wake nothing but vicious, cannibalistic, mutating, radiating, and horribly disfigured hordes of satanic killers, bent on revenge, but against hope, there are so few left alive.
Starvation reins supreme, forcing unlucky survivors to eat anything & anyone in their path. Massive earthquakes crack the planets crust like a hollow egg shell, causing unending volcanic eruptions. Creatures of the seven seas, unable to escape the certain death upon land, boil in their liquid prison. Disease then circles the earth, plagues & viruses with no known cause or cure laying waste to whatever draws breath, and human-kind having proved itself to be nothing more than a race of ruthless scavengers, fall victim to merciless attacks at the hands of interplanetary alien tribes who seek to conquer our charred remains.
Get me offa this rock!
People with vapid social lives may be generally annoying to their co-workers, and thus actually be a hindrance to a group effort.
...says the square!
party! wooooooo!
They target Halo and Microsoft send in the lawyer for some team slayer.
I figure that the price would be entirely justified if they opened up the linux OS on it, with an untouchable ps3 boot partition. If I could use the thing as another computer (almost as I see fit, unlikely) then I would have no problem shelling out the cash for it, my living room PC is near death, and was never too quick to begin with. Let me install my design tools and I could use it as my dev box in a pinch.
give some free reign with the OS and hardware, and they would have no problem with the geek/tech/money crowd (well, the money crowd does not have many problems with these matters).