> I'm going to take a stab at explaining the results by suggesting that the hardware is probably performing the scaling operations each and every time, while imlib2 caches the results (or something).
Well, you have the means at hand to confirm it.
A quick glance reveals, no, the result is not cached in the sense you probably assume. The Imlib2 scales and fitlers the image in each of the REPS iterations.
Yes, this might be unfair, but consider the first test. Simply blending the images and displaying them is faster than the off-screen variant and the imlib2 code.
So, the possible penalty seems to be irrelevant. Also, the "overhead" of X seems to be unrelevant, too.
I'd say that the scaling and filtering implemented in either X or the drivers is suboptimal.
> It is the [unpleasant] duty of scientists to ignore the politicians, and pursue the clues Nature provides.
It is the duty of a scientist to search one's conscience, whether a goal is right, and the way to reach the goal is right.
This is what Mengele and Oppenheimer are examples for. Both have shown us two different scientists, which we both surely don't want to become. The first, is one without a conscience, the second, is one with a plagued conscience.
Oppenheimer's point of view was initially a similar one to yours. A scientist is like Prometheus. He brings the fire to humanity and cannot be held responsible for the consequences, but his experience changed him.
Stem-cell research is touching ethical questions as, what do we consider as human-life, and do we want to sacrifice proto? human-life for another, as it is embryonal stem-cell research.
My esteemed members of the jury. After hearing those facts about the stolen code (in a more silent voice) which we could not provide in order (clears his throat) to save the secrets. (Speaks normaly again) When comparing them with the allegations you have heard from those people from RedHat, keep in mind that those people have a red hat as sign and rely on the work of people. 'From each according to their means, to each according to their needs.' (Shudders)
Now, they have even started and are relying on a public fund for this suit and suit likes this, in order to destroy our profit as assured to us in the Foundation. While they were starting this "fund", we had to lay of a significant number of personel to boost our stocks to make a better cut. The target of this fund is to eliminate the advantages of hard working companies have towards slacking companies in judical battles, or even towards single asocial, anti-capitalistic persons, which work for free.
Not only that, the work is available to anyone without discrimination. They are using it actively in Red China. But also even to terrorists.
So, keep in mind, this case is not only about whether it is right to demand what is ours but also how it will affect businesses all over our beloved nation.
May God bless you, and save our nation from socialism.
Not that I'm disagreeing with your final point (how much power does one need)
But, you are comparing apple and oranges, or TDP with typical power consumption.
Thermal Design Power (TDP) represents the maximum amount of power the thermal solution is required to dissipate. The thermal solution should be designed to dissipate the TDP without exceeding the maximum Tjunction specification. TDP does not represent the power delivery and voltage regulation requirements for the processor.
According to Intel, the Pentium-4M 2.2GHz has a typical power consumption of 2W (But that doesn't include the North-bridge, like Transmeta AFAIK does) and what Intel defines as "typical usage" also critical point ("Don't touch, I said").
Another thing, the LCD backlight alone consumes about 20W. Add RAM, HDD, CDROM, WiFi, and the difference between a 4W or a 1W CPU would be negligable.
What brings me to another topic: I want OLED and M-RAM!
Well, it might be based on the PIII and has adopted some parts of the P4. But it has some more radical changes.
It has more in common with Transmeta than one might think. It features Micro-Op Fusion (TM)(R)(C). After translating the Ops into muOps they are reassembled to, how do they call them? Not-LIW, no.., ah.. Macro-instruction, which can be executed more efficiently.
> it's hard not to see that SuSE stuff as largely influenced by nationalism.
Why should it be a nationalistic decision? Because they are from the same country? I hope, the management doesn't drive Mercedes, or BMW.
IBM works close with both RedHat and SuSE. For what reasons chose IBM both? IBM achieved with SuSE the Common Criteria.
No, I don't want to say that SuSE is superior to RedHat. The point is some people might consider it that way, on purely technical reasons. It is beyond my judgement to say, whether they are right or wrong. As for me, I prefer RedHat.
> Click link You enter the Web-site. You are seeing various links. > Read description You gain 1 experience about RPGs. Your motivation rises. > Click Screen Shots You are seeing several links for different clients for different platforms. You gain 1 experience in linux gaming. Your motivation rises. > Click GTK Client You are hit by 16 colours and several pixels. You are dead.
Another suggestion I haven't played it, but I like their client features:
Support for nearly all platform: Windows (XP, 2000, ME, 98), Linux, Macintosh And their game feature list, point one:
A Role Playing Game! (Their exclamation mark)
I will not mention that it is published under the GPL. Damn, I failed. I wonder, if I managed to destroy a promising game by publishing this information on this site. Maybe I can stop it, by mentioning that it is pre-alpha.
Um, mDNA is only some 16kbp long and is in ring-form. My guess it is much more stable than the DNA and therefor much easier to discriminate from all the linear DNA-fragments you have around, most of which are probably not ape-DNA.
The problem is not the amount of DNA you have (as you said, there is very likey an abundant amount of it in there), but finding the pieces you are interested in.
I've yet to see a hardcore-roleplayer, which shun people because they have not written 6 page essays on their characters.
As I wrote in another post, I'm not a hard-core roleplayer. In my experience, every attempt at role-play was appreciated by role-players, and non-roleplay was tolerated.
The only thing I heard of, what you could call "punishmemt" of a non-role-player was the following: A NRP wanted to buy something at a market place from a RP from the opposing faction, the RP denied, because the NRP was from the opposing faction. The NRP tried it by some other RP (RP2) right next to the other. The RP2 denied it for the same reason. As he made clear that he desperately needed the item, the RP2 demanded an exorbitant sum, the NRP went back to RP. Both RPs made a little bit fun of letting the NRP running between them as they lowered the price bit by bit, until he finally bought it for quite some price.
So, one could even go as far as saying, that real role-players can have fun with non-role-players. But the point, is there is a group, like me, which probably lack the imagination or creativity to cope with such situations. A real role-player would probably even be able to hear a deep male voice with heavy texan accent impersonating a lithe elf girl. But I'm not. Call me unimagitive.
> Personally I think it's best when you have a compromise. [...]
Sometimes I'm not a democrat: Compromises only lead to mediocrity. This might be fine and dandy for a nation, but not for entertainment. I don't want a mediocre game as like I don't want bloody mediocre music. I think both are the result of attempting to please to many people. Only in the second case, it has become more obvious. When did you last hear to the compromise called "MTV" or the compromise "radio"? I certainly didn't for the past several years.
You don't have to make compromises: AFAIK, there are some 60 MMOG in work. It would suffice than 4 of become decent. Two for each group. One SciFi, one Fantasy. Then you could call me a happy unimagitive person.
Well, the author in question seems to be interested in creating the atmosphere I desire.
Of course, this is an assumption, but I think there are other people like me, who feel that level-and-gather people are destroying the atmosphere. As I said, I believe the people like me are in the minority of the active players. I don't want to deny them to play the game the way the like.
But I think it is a sizeable minority, which is able and willing to pay for a game, which would more carter for their needs. So, I think this would qualify as target-group, market-wise. Even more so, I think that there is even a large group people (probably including the large group of non-hunter-gatherer, e.g the fairer side of sex) which are interested in games creating an atmosphere and makes you part of story and don't feel appealed by the current state of MMORPGs.
The point is, they are trying to cover both groups with MMORPG, which I think is a Bad Idea (tm). Bartle seems think along the same lines. Except that he considers non-role-players as newbies.
> And paperback editions You don't really want to suggest that paper RPGs are equivalent in terms of possiblity to MMORPGs, are you? They are complementary, like movies and books.
> They have hardcore RPG servers for people like you Where? Besides classical MUDs? Something a little bit more graphical?
I'm not writing in old-english, not even playing very sophisticated roles (mostly a slighlty different me), an have not been creating a history for my character. So, quite frankly, such hardcore RPGs server scare me.
I've just been trying to keep RL out and act a little bit as I'd be situated in the world and give a little bit thought about my appearance and name. Do you think, this would qualify me already as a hardcore role-player? What is then a softcore role-player?
>What the public wants, it will get. [...] You cannot expect people "in the wild" to create the exact atmosphere you desire.
Well, I'm not expecting them to create the exact athmosphere, I'm expecting them to create a athmosphere (unless you call my dialogue as athmospheric). I'm expecting them to do so, because I think there is a target group currently not sufficiently covered. (Hint: Market-opportunity).
The fun part about the Internet is, for every niche there are communities, which might appeal you. And in contrast to reality, they don't eliminate each other, they coexist without interference.
You consider yourself a nerd, because you installed an OS yourself at least once, I know a community for you. You are interested in sports, know just so much about computer that you can turn it on at click your way through the internet, I know a community for you (Well, I don't, but you get the point)
But in contrast to, say an American High School (from hear-say, cannot tell from personal experience), the former community is not pushed in the background by the latter or the other way around. They all can thrive independently.
And in the same way as those sites co-exists, I think, can role-playing MMORPGs, and hack-and-slay MMORPGS co-exist, by playing in ignorance of each other:).
No, sadly you aren't. You're in the majority. I say that as a person, who likes role-playing games, and not item gathering/leveling games.
> Why should I have to pretend to be an stupid ogre?
Because that is the whole idea of a role-playing game? When you want to l/m/i/etc, play Diablo, but not a role-playing game. Because it destroys the fucking athmosphere, wandering through, say Middle-Earth, and see a knight in shiny armor called "+R011Ki114". Well, actually that's the part, one could ignore, but going in the city and seeing a group of people showing of their various spells to one another and talking about
+R011Ki114: "Dude, did you already killed Sauron?" ph34rm3: "I've killed him already twice, he dropped some awesome L00t"
Well, this is of course a little bit extreme and the result of dissapointment of trying some MMORPGs, as you might've already infered from my statements.
Of course, one should not deny you playing the game of your choice. But it is the task of the game designers to create the games of our choices for both of us.
He is a game designer and talks about the negative effects voice chat will have on MMORPGs. Not about the positive effects it will have on MMO"item-gathering"G. To my regret, they are currently the same.
Re:LinuxBIOS in flight computers
on
In-Flight Reboot?
·
· Score: 5, Informative
> and would be totally unacceptable if it were say, a navigation computer on a 737 with a hundred civilians on-board.
AFAIK, civilian flight systems are three times redundant. Written by three different isolated teams in three different programming paradigms, from three different cultures to avoid similar faults due to "contamination" by other teams, or simlar faults due to similar paradigms. (Airbus 340 (3M LOC), Boeing 777 are said to have employed such techniques)
And IRC, they don't fly with at least two redundant fully functional systems.
It makes me wonder why the military has less stringent requirements.
Well, setting aside that the desert will not experience more rain-fall (Actually, with almost certainity the arid regions around the desert will get even less rain), the effect of more rain in the deserts will not be a greener desert (at least not in the next centuries, or some tremendious effort). Its effect will be salinisation.
Even with my limited expertise in ecology I can tell you the following: Water is important, but much more important is soil. Soil is the result of centuries of water and bacteria, insects and plants growing on them.
Saying, that when it becomes warmer and there is more CO2 and rain, it is good for agriculture is either simplicistic, or thought in the long run. In the short (say Remember, there were no deserts before global cooling. Remember, there were no human civilisation before global cooling. The meaning of this sentence is two-fold. a) Due to global cooling, and the climate we have seen the last 10 millenia (which provided the most stable climate in earth history as far as we can tell), humanity prospered. b) The desert we currently have, is not the result of the climate alone. It is, for a great deal, the result of humanity. No, I'm not speaking about global warming, again. It is the result of overutilisation of the arid regions: Overgrazing, deforestification, salinisation due to much irrigation.
Global cooling would make the deserts green, increase the fish population and makes the skying people happy. Not to mention, that we will have a weather control machine by then and if not, we can't do anything about it anyway since a small butterfly can change everything anyway (Just in case: Not)
The global cooling is about the development in the next several millenia (5+). The human induced global warming has probably no impact on the return of the current ice age period.
> global warming will increase crop yields, provide more rain in some fertile but drought-ridden areas, and increase the usefulness of the currently useless solar power?
On a global scale, there will be less rain. But more clouds. (Less effective solar panels) Global warming will bring (with a high probability) droughts to currently fertile lands. Currently drought-ridden areas are per se not fertile and will not become fertile just because it rains. It requires time and tremendious work, ask the Israelis.
dB is a ratio. But without a reference point a ratio is useless. dB in acoustics measures the pressure of sound. So it is independent from the frequency. +1Bel (10 deci-Bel) stands for a doubling the pressure of sound.
+3dB just sounds twice as loud.
So, 104dB of music damages your ears as the 100dB of an incoming subway damages your ears. It's just the former is more pleasent than the latter. They excert (roughly) the same force (Actually, iPod: +30%).
> So no a soft note at 104db than it's normal volume will not cause damage.
Since +104dB of an inaudible sound causes damage, +104dB of a soft note will surely do.
Re:Well i live in Europe (Belgium)...
on
The Beast of Brussels
·
· Score: 4, Informative
> but I'd like to avoid having data about me being gathered and correlated unnecessarily.
Well, that's is why there is the European Union Privacy Directive, which regulates what kind of data may be stored and processed, and what other rights you have on your data. Here is a summary from the US point of view.
> FUD (I'm sorry, that's what it is when you say "We don't know what effect this might have, but it could be catastrophic," by definition) [...] > All this said, there obviously are legitimate concerns about GM foods, and so I think it's good that we're seeing more and more studies on their safety and effects. [...]
So, it is not FUD. Fear, likely. Uncertainity, sure. Desinformation? The EU has democratically decided on precautious measures, while there are still, as you wrote, legitimate concerns. AFAIK, it is not prohibited to import GM, or GM-derived food. They have just to be labelled as such. When the EU public doesn't buy them, it not only a democratic decision, but also one of the free market.
As you stated yourself: > [...] nobody in the EU will buy any food exports from the US [...]
So, it is not a matter of oppression, not on the import side, and neither on the consumer side, who has the choice to buy GM food.
> So European farmers, who would normally be driven out of business in a free market economy, get to stay alive.
That is not a matter of GM or no GM. Or do you thing European farmers cannot afford buying the necessary crops, but developing countries can?
> Is GM a cure for world hunger? Maybe some day, but not now.
So, not even is a reason. Actually, quite the contrary might be the truth, considering that developing countries might be sued by patent owners, for seeding crops from the last year. What reasons are left they have to buy GM food? It's not like they can't research without selling it to the public.
So, why is the (democratic and market-driven) decision in the EU as worse than the (democratic and market-driven) decision in the US?
> (I use "EU" here basically to mean both the EU and the UK) Nothing wrong here, the UK is still part of the EU.
Um, some goverments have already begun to abandom analogue TV. Berlin, for example. The deadlines have passed and the terrestrial analogue TV has been turned off, accordingly. Other regions in Germany will follow in 2004. The transisition should finish in 2010, like in several other countries (e.g. UK, Japan 2011)
An overview about the state on digital TV in the world.
Re:At least you're trying to be rational.
on
UK Pushing ID Cards
·
· Score: 1
> The problem is that they are enabling technologies for what could be very, very evil.
So are many other technologies. But I think it is less the question of what technologies you are employing, but wether you are aware of the risks and what counter-measurements are installed.
The states of the EU have enacted relatively strict privacy-laws. And those requiring a national ID are especially precaucious arbout what data is stored and can be connected with the ID. I think that is the critical part.
> "what if Nazi Germany could have done a SELECT WHERE against a central citizen-unit database?"
Unless they didn't had build up a db storing "religion" and "parents" over two, or three generations back in history, it would not help them much. Not to mention, that your friendly neighbourhood "blockwart" is much more effective.
On a side-note: Stalin let execute several million people based on quota, which had to be fulfilled. The randomness of the murdering was intentional. It fueled the fear among people of each other. A national ID, would not add much to it.
Anyway, I think it boils down who stores, what kind of data, and who else has access to it. I'd say, an ID, unless it enables one to trace your habits, is not "evil" per se. In contrast, a database with nation wide profiling information, based on buyed or lend books, diving schools, racial or political is.
Slashdot Mirror
> I'm going to take a stab at explaining the results by suggesting that the hardware is probably performing the scaling operations each and every time, while imlib2 caches the results (or something).
Well, you have the means at hand to confirm it.
A quick glance reveals, no, the result is not cached in the sense you probably assume.
The Imlib2 scales and fitlers the image in each of the REPS iterations.
Yes, this might be unfair, but consider the first test.
Simply blending the images and displaying them is faster than the off-screen variant and the imlib2 code.
So, the possible penalty seems to be irrelevant.
Also, the "overhead" of X seems to be unrelevant, too.
I'd say that the scaling and filtering implemented in either X or the drivers is suboptimal.
> It is the [unpleasant] duty of scientists to ignore the politicians, and pursue the clues Nature provides.
It is the duty of a scientist to search one's conscience, whether a goal is right, and the way to reach the goal is right.
This is what Mengele and Oppenheimer are examples for. Both have shown us two different scientists, which we both surely don't want to become. The first, is one without a conscience, the second, is one with a plagued conscience.
Oppenheimer's point of view was initially a similar one to yours. A scientist is like Prometheus. He brings the fire to humanity and cannot be held responsible for the consequences, but his experience changed him.
Stem-cell research is touching ethical questions as, what do we consider as human-life, and do we want to sacrifice proto? human-life for another, as it is embryonal stem-cell research.
Yes, they certainly should avoid that.
Place sarcasm tags at your discretion.
But, you are comparing apple and oranges, or TDP with typical power consumption.
According to Intel, the Pentium-4M 2.2GHz has a typical power consumption of 2W (But that doesn't include the North-bridge, like Transmeta AFAIK does) and what Intel defines as "typical usage" also critical point ("Don't touch, I said").
Another thing, the LCD backlight alone consumes about 20W. Add RAM, HDD, CDROM, WiFi, and the difference between a 4W or a 1W CPU would be negligable.
What brings me to another topic:
I want OLED and M-RAM!
Well, it might be based on the PIII and has adopted some parts of the P4. But it has some more radical changes.
It has more in common with Transmeta than one might think. It features Micro-Op Fusion (TM)(R)(C). After translating the Ops into muOps they are reassembled to, how do they call them? Not-LIW, no.., ah.. Macro-instruction, which can be executed more efficiently.
But why should I smatter. Use the source Luke.
> it's hard not to see that SuSE stuff as largely influenced by nationalism.
Why should it be a nationalistic decision? Because they are from the same country? I hope, the management doesn't drive Mercedes, or BMW.
IBM works close with both RedHat and SuSE. For what reasons chose IBM both? IBM achieved with SuSE the Common Criteria.
No, I don't want to say that SuSE is superior to RedHat. The point is some people might consider it that way, on purely technical reasons. It is beyond my judgement to say, whether they are right or wrong. As for me, I prefer RedHat.
I haven't played it, but I like their client features:
Support for nearly all platform: Windows (XP, 2000, ME, 98), Linux, Macintosh
And their game feature list, point one:
A Role Playing Game!
(Their exclamation mark)
I will not mention that it is published under the GPL. Damn, I failed.
I wonder, if I managed to destroy a promising game by publishing this information on this site.
Maybe I can stop it, by mentioning that it is pre-alpha.
Um, mDNA is only some 16kbp long and is in ring-form. My guess it is much more stable than the DNA and therefor much easier to discriminate from all the linear DNA-fragments you have around, most of which are probably not ape-DNA.
The problem is not the amount of DNA you have (as you said, there is very likey an abundant amount of it in there), but finding the pieces you are interested in.
Just my fairly uneducated guess.
I've yet to see a hardcore-roleplayer, which shun people because they have not written 6 page essays on their characters.
As I wrote in another post, I'm not a hard-core roleplayer. In my experience, every attempt at role-play was appreciated by role-players, and non-roleplay was tolerated.
The only thing I heard of, what you could call "punishmemt" of a non-role-player was the following:
A NRP wanted to buy something at a market place from a RP from the opposing faction, the RP denied, because the NRP was from the opposing faction. The NRP tried it by some other RP (RP2) right next to the other. The RP2 denied it for the same reason. As he made clear that he desperately needed the item, the RP2 demanded an exorbitant sum, the NRP went back to RP.
Both RPs made a little bit fun of letting the NRP running between them as they lowered the price bit by bit, until he finally bought it for quite some price.
So, one could even go as far as saying, that real role-players can have fun with non-role-players.
But the point, is there is a group, like me, which probably lack the imagination or creativity to cope with such situations. A real role-player would probably even be able to hear a deep male voice with heavy texan accent impersonating a lithe elf girl. But I'm not. Call me unimagitive.
> Personally I think it's best when you have a compromise. [...]
Sometimes I'm not a democrat:
Compromises only lead to mediocrity. This might be fine and dandy for a nation, but not for entertainment.
I don't want a mediocre game as like I don't want bloody mediocre music.
I think both are the result of attempting to please to many people. Only in the second case, it has become more obvious. When did you last hear to the compromise called "MTV" or the compromise "radio"? I certainly didn't for the past several years.
You don't have to make compromises: AFAIK, there are some 60 MMOG in work. It would suffice than 4 of become decent. Two for each group. One SciFi, one Fantasy. Then you could call me a happy unimagitive person.
Well, the author in question seems to be interested in creating the atmosphere I desire.
:).
Of course, this is an assumption, but I think there are other people like me, who feel that level-and-gather people are destroying the atmosphere. As I said, I believe the people like me are in the minority of the active players. I don't want to deny them to play the game the way the like.
But I think it is a sizeable minority, which is able and willing to pay for a game, which would more carter for their needs. So, I think this would qualify as target-group, market-wise.
Even more so, I think that there is even a large group people (probably including the large group of non-hunter-gatherer, e.g the fairer side of sex) which are interested in games creating an atmosphere and makes you part of story and don't feel appealed by the current state of MMORPGs.
The point is, they are trying to cover both groups with MMORPG, which I think is a Bad Idea (tm).
Bartle seems think along the same lines. Except that he considers non-role-players as newbies.
> And paperback editions
You don't really want to suggest that paper RPGs are equivalent in terms of possiblity to MMORPGs, are you?
They are complementary, like movies and books.
> They have hardcore RPG servers for people like you
Where? Besides classical MUDs? Something a little bit more graphical?
I'm not writing in old-english, not even playing very sophisticated roles (mostly a slighlty different me), an have not been creating a history for my character. So, quite frankly, such hardcore RPGs server scare me.
I've just been trying to keep RL out and act a little bit as I'd be situated in the world and give a little bit thought about my appearance and name.
Do you think, this would qualify me already as a hardcore role-player?
What is then a softcore role-player?
>What the public wants, it will get. [...] You cannot expect people "in the wild" to create the exact atmosphere you desire.
Well, I'm not expecting them to create the exact athmosphere, I'm expecting them to create a athmosphere (unless you call my dialogue as athmospheric).
I'm expecting them to do so, because I think there is a target group currently not sufficiently covered. (Hint: Market-opportunity).
The fun part about the Internet is, for every niche there are communities, which might appeal you. And in contrast to reality, they don't eliminate each other, they coexist without interference.
You consider yourself a nerd, because you installed an OS yourself at least once, I know a community for you.
You are interested in sports, know just so much about computer that you can turn it on at click your way through the internet, I know a community for you (Well, I don't, but you get the point)
But in contrast to, say an American High School (from hear-say, cannot tell from personal experience), the former community is not pushed in the background by the latter or the other way around. They all can thrive independently.
And in the same way as those sites co-exists, I think, can role-playing MMORPGs, and hack-and-slay MMORPGS co-exist, by playing in ignorance of each other
No, sadly you aren't. You're in the majority. I say that as a person, who likes role-playing games, and not item gathering/leveling games.
> Why should I have to pretend to be an stupid ogre?
Because that is the whole idea of a role-playing game? When you want to l/m/i/etc, play Diablo, but not a role-playing game. Because it destroys the fucking athmosphere, wandering through, say Middle-Earth, and see a knight in shiny armor called "+R011Ki114".
Well, actually that's the part, one could ignore, but going in the city and seeing a group of people showing of their various spells to one another and talking about
Well, this is of course a little bit extreme and the result of dissapointment of trying some MMORPGs, as you might've already infered from my statements.
Of course, one should not deny you playing the game of your choice. But it is the task of the game designers to create the games of our choices for both of us.
He is a game designer and talks about the negative effects voice chat will have on MMORPGs.
Not about the positive effects it will have on MMO"item-gathering"G. To my regret, they are currently the same.
> and would be totally unacceptable if it were say, a navigation computer on a 737 with a hundred civilians on-board.
AFAIK, civilian flight systems are three times redundant. Written by three different isolated teams in three different programming paradigms, from three different cultures to avoid similar faults due to "contamination" by other teams, or simlar faults due to similar paradigms.
(Airbus 340 (3M LOC), Boeing 777 are said to have employed such techniques)
And IRC, they don't fly with at least two redundant fully functional systems.
It makes me wonder why the military has less stringent requirements.
Well, setting aside that the desert will not experience more rain-fall (Actually, with almost certainity the arid regions around the desert will get even less rain), the effect of more rain in the deserts will not be a greener desert (at least not in the next centuries, or some tremendious effort).
.
Its effect will be salinisation.
Even with my limited expertise in ecology I can tell you the following:
Water is important, but much more important is soil.
Soil is the result of centuries of water and bacteria, insects and plants growing on them.
Saying, that when it becomes warmer and there is more CO2 and rain, it is good for agriculture is either simplicistic, or thought in the long run.
In the short (say Remember, there were no deserts before global cooling.
Remember, there were no human civilisation before global cooling.
The meaning of this sentence is two-fold.
a) Due to global cooling, and the climate we have seen the last 10 millenia (which provided the most stable climate in earth history as far as we can tell), humanity prospered
b) The desert we currently have, is not the result of the climate alone. It is, for a great deal, the result of humanity. No, I'm not speaking about global warming, again. It is the result of overutilisation of the arid regions:
Overgrazing, deforestification, salinisation due to much irrigation.
Global cooling would make the deserts green, increase the fish population and makes the skying people happy. Not to mention, that we will have a weather control machine by then and if not, we can't do anything about it anyway since a small butterfly can change everything anyway (Just in case: Not)
The global cooling is about the development in the next several millenia (5+). The human induced global warming has probably no impact on the return of the current ice age period.
> global warming will increase crop yields, provide more rain in some fertile but drought-ridden areas, and increase the usefulness of the currently useless solar power?
On a global scale, there will be less rain. But more clouds. (Less effective solar panels)
Global warming will bring (with a high probability) droughts to currently fertile lands.
Currently drought-ridden areas are per se not fertile and will not become fertile just because it rains. It requires time and tremendious work, ask the Israelis.
dB is a ratio. But without a reference point a ratio is useless.
dB in acoustics measures the pressure of sound. So it is independent from the frequency.
+1Bel (10 deci-Bel) stands for a doubling the pressure of sound.
+3dB just sounds twice as loud.
So, 104dB of music damages your ears as the 100dB of an incoming subway damages your ears. It's just the former is more pleasent than the latter.
They excert (roughly) the same force (Actually, iPod: +30%).
> So no a soft note at 104db than it's normal volume will not cause damage.
Since +104dB of an inaudible sound causes damage, +104dB of a soft note will surely do.
> but I'd like to avoid having data about me being gathered and correlated unnecessarily.
Well, that's is why there is the European Union Privacy Directive, which regulates what kind of data may be stored and processed, and what other rights you have on your data.
Here is a summary from the US point of view.
iThink iFlashy iColourful iApps.
> FUD (I'm sorry, that's what it is when you say "We don't know what effect this might have, but it could be catastrophic," by definition) [...]
> All this said, there obviously are legitimate concerns about GM foods, and so I think it's good that we're seeing more and more studies on their safety and effects. [...]
So, it is not FUD. Fear, likely. Uncertainity, sure. Desinformation?
The EU has democratically decided on precautious measures, while there are still, as you wrote, legitimate concerns. AFAIK, it is not prohibited to import GM, or GM-derived food. They have just to be labelled as such. When the EU public doesn't buy them, it not only a democratic decision, but also one of the free market.
As you stated yourself:
> [...] nobody in the EU will buy any food exports from the US [...]
So, it is not a matter of oppression, not on the import side, and neither on the consumer side, who has the choice to buy GM food.
> So European farmers, who would normally be driven out of business in a free market economy, get to stay alive.
That is not a matter of GM or no GM. Or do you thing European farmers cannot afford buying the necessary crops, but developing countries can?
> Is GM a cure for world hunger? Maybe some day, but not now.
So, not even is a reason. Actually, quite the contrary might be the truth, considering that developing countries might be sued by patent owners, for seeding crops from the last year.
What reasons are left they have to buy GM food? It's not like they can't research without selling it to the public.
So, why is the (democratic and market-driven) decision in the EU as worse than the (democratic and market-driven) decision in the US?
> (I use "EU" here basically to mean both the EU and the UK)
Nothing wrong here, the UK is still part of the EU.
You mean something like Robocup mentioned previously on Slashdot?
:).
I have no problems reaching the site. Actually, it loads quite fast, I dare to say. So, maybe the connection between the US and Japan is saturated
Um, some goverments have already begun to abandom analogue TV. Berlin, for example. The deadlines have passed and the terrestrial analogue TV has been turned off, accordingly. Other regions in Germany will follow in 2004. The transisition should finish in 2010, like in several other countries (e.g. UK, Japan 2011)
An overview about the state on digital TV in the world.
They've said the same about films.
Some people would say: yes, he is.
> The problem is that they are enabling technologies for what could be very, very evil.
So are many other technologies. But I think it is less the question of what technologies you are employing, but wether you are aware of the risks and what counter-measurements are installed.
The states of the EU have enacted relatively strict privacy-laws. And those requiring a national ID are especially precaucious arbout what data is stored and can be connected with the ID. I think that is the critical part.
> "what if Nazi Germany could have done a SELECT WHERE against a central citizen-unit database?"
Unless they didn't had build up a db storing "religion" and "parents" over two, or three generations back in history, it would not help them much. Not to mention, that your friendly neighbourhood "blockwart" is much more effective.
On a side-note: Stalin let execute several million people based on quota, which had to be fulfilled. The randomness of the murdering was intentional. It fueled the fear among people of each other. A national ID, would not add much to it.
Anyway, I think it boils down who stores, what kind of data, and who else has access to it.
I'd say, an ID, unless it enables one to trace your habits, is not "evil" per se.
In contrast, a database with nation wide profiling information, based on buyed or lend books, diving schools, racial or political is.
An national ID would be a "plus" for Total Information Awareness, but you don't need one to do datamining.
Think different. Take out a group of New Age people on their Segways.