You forget that a LARGE percentage of the population (At least in the U.S.) has children and small disposable incomes. Yes, there are plenty in the correct income range that have the disposable incomes to blow on HD equipment, but there are plenty more that don't, and don't want to have to blow the money.
My kids also watch TONS of DVDs. So many so, that we just had to replace the DVD player AGAIN because the old one wore out with use. (Autistic kids like the familiarity of DVDs, so we watch alot of them) What kind of DVD player did I buy? I bought a $120.00 DVD-VCR combo unit as our VCR was also wearing out. No HD-DVD, no Blu-Ray, just plain old DVD. I go through about one DVD player every 2 years or less because we play so many DVDs.
I actually use DVD shrink and duplicate all of our DVDs because if I didn't we would be re-buying all of our DVDs each year too because the kids are so rough with them. If you think I'm upset about the cost of the HD players, how do you think I feel about the cost of the HD Burners and the DRM contained on the Discs?
This whole HD format war debacle has me furious because it's just so damned obvious that the players involved don't give a damn about what the customers want, they just want to line thier pockets at our expense. At some point I'm just going to have to invest in 15 to 20 DVD players and about 300 DVD-R's because the format will go out of style and I won't be able to afford the new equipment anymore.
I'm just praying that the DVD Shrink people will figure a way around the DRM inherent on the new HD stuff because I need to be able to continue to duplicate my DVDs, as I can't afford to replace 30-40 HD-DVD's or BR-DVD's each year.
As I won't be getting any HD equipment of any kind any time soon.
Not because I'm a Luddite, but for two very critical reasons:
1) It's too damned expensive and I don't have the money to blow on HD toys. Maybe the rest of the world makes over 100K a year and lives in an inexpensive area, but I don't. I have bills to pay, damnit, why the hell would I waste my money on an HD setup?
2) I have kids. Autisitc kids with a penchant for running up to the T.V. and giving the screen an open-palm slap just because they like the sound. How long do you think a $3000.00 LCD or Plasma is going to last under that kind of punishment? And if I can't expect the T.V. to last, why the heck would I shell out for the player if I can't view all that "HD goodness" on my old 480P NTSC tube T.V.?
The problem is that the hardware and media guys, in all thier excitement to re-energize the home entertainment market by forcing upgrades, have forgotten that a large percentage of the population either a) just doesn't give a damn, or b) are like me, and can't get an HD setup even if they want to. So really, WHO GIVES A SHIT about HD other than the videophiles with more money than brains? Let THEM buy into all the HD hype, and the rest of us will just wait until the dust settles and we can guy a 27" HD T.V. for the same price that we can buy a 27" regular T.V. today.
The HP recovery process is good, but the Dell one is better. You get a full windows XP Pro SP2 CD and a "Resource" Cd that includes all the drivers for all the hardware. You also get any additional media, such as the Sonic Cd burning software.
The one caveat is that all these items are OPTIONAL. They cost NOTHING additional, but you have to remember to select them when going through the customization process, or to ask for them when ordering by phone.
If you blow away the custom partitioning on your Dell all you have done is to remove the 32 bit linux diagnostic partition that Dell includes. If you lose that it doesn't matter because the "recovery" CD also includes a bootable "live" linux partition on it that is identical in every way to the hard drive partition.
As long as you remember to select the free optional OS and Resource disks when ordering your Dell, you won't have any issues should Windows decide to crap the bed sometime down the road.
What he's talking about are School Voucher programs. They have been tried in several states and they work well. The schools are still publically funded, But you as a parent get to choose what school you wish to fund with your voucher (even a private one in some areas). You get to pick the school your kid goes to, rather than being forced to send them to the local public school if you are unable to afford private school.
Interestingly, the people the voucher programs are most popular with are *shock* poor people! Why? Because they get to pull their kids out of the crappy inner-city schools and send them to the nice suburban schools. They can't afford to send them to private schools on their own, and the voucher concept allows them to pick the school they want to send thier kids to. In other words, it allows the working poor the ability to pick and choose a school just like the wealthy.
Furthermore the kids, once they are in a well-funded school with good teachers, start getting better grades and become more interested in learning! It's amazing how a little Applied Capitalism works wonders for even the creakiest of old socialist beauracracies.
I'm glad you don't design server rooms I use. You've solved one problem while introducing various others based on a single superstitious belief.
Apparently you have never heard of Central Air Conditioning. The condenser sits outside the building, so water drainage isn't really an issue for the server room. Even if you use a wall-unit to add additional cooling, the condenser drainage should ALWAYS be outside the server room. Never ever ever have a water drain going into your server room. Oh, and as far as flooding is concerned, Your server room should always have a slightly elevated floor (about 3-6 inches) in case of a drainage backup from any nearby bathrooms. Any flooding more than that and a drain won't help you. Frankly, the risk of sewage backup from a direct-connected drain is far greater than a small-flood risk anyway. Again, no good reason to have a drain in the floor, and certainly no reason for a sink in the server room.
Also, since when is "Water + Electricity = Danger" a "Superstitious Belief"? Exactly what universe are you living in again? Because in mine that's not superstition, it's a basic saftey rule you learn in elementary school. Apparently you can bathe with toasters in your dimension. It must be nice when you want some toast during your bath.
I just want to know why you would EVER have a WATER SOURCE in a room full of costly electronics. Seriously. I'd just have the water shut off to the room, the sink removed and the drains capped. Problem solved, and no risk of flooding the server room. (Why the hell would you need a sink in a server room anyway? Do the hamsters running the servers need water periodically?)
(ironic that Christians try to ban these books--they just don't get much of anything, do they?)
Actually, most Christians DO get this. It's just the few idiot ones that don't. Christianity is like any other social group on the planet. It's made up of humans, some of which are morons. Unfortunately, Christian morons seem to get more press than those of other stripes.
I realize that there are many here on Slashdot that, for one reason or another, have thier hate on for Christians. I'm not going to address that bigotry right now. But for those that don't hate Christians, but really do think they all want to ban Harry Potter, I recommend going here and reading:
For a minute I though we were going to get a neat technical article on how they remove those "pixillated" areas on Hentai and Japanese Pr0n. What a letdown...
PS. Chinese vaginas aren't sloped sideways either.
What? Next you'll be telling me that Chinese women only have 2 breasts instead of three. They do? Darn. There go my reasons to visit China. Well, I'm off to the Mars colony instead then!
I would imagine that using the tracker server for this purpose would work. Obviously for "trackerless" torrents it would break again, but for standard tracker torrents it would probably work quite well. Couple it with torrent encryption and you have a very nice way to get around your college/work firewall.
Umm... How does saving lives from serious accidents count as "Fighting Evolution"?
Oh yeah. It doesn't.
In fact, doctors and hospitals et-al are actually PART of evolution. We as humans want to survive. As part of our survival instinct we learn about how our bodies and minds work so that we can repair ourselves when we are damaged. We evolve to overcome the dangers of our world through medicine. Civilizations that do not develop medicine die out. Those that do develop it survive. That's natural selection in action my friend.
I'm not sure I would call it luck as much as I would call it basic observational skills.
And it wasn't just in the Middle east either. Hunter-gatherer societies all around the globe have adapted to agriculture as a natural part of thier progress. (Somehow I doubt the Incas ever had anyone from Tehran teach them about farming) Indeed, I would posit that a move to an agrarian society is a necessity for any group of people to progress to a "civilization" level.
However, that does not mean that I don't agree with your larger point. You are correct. There is always a trade-off when moving from a small-tribe group of hunter-gatherers to a larger agrarian society. I peg this as a part of Natural Selection. In this case the selection actually takes place with the people themselves. IE: they select to suppress thier more aggressive instincts for more community oriented ones. This is actually what I was saying in my first post. Through the mechanism of Natural Selection, we as humans have evolved to become a community-oriented species, with all the good and bad that comes with that. HOWEVER, this is not to say that we have abandoned our basic self-interests and instincts, but it would be fair to say that we have harnessed them in such a way as to be beneficial to ourselves AND society as a whole.
I suppose that's where the Capitalist concept of "Enlightened Self-Interest" comes in. It's the capitalist way of saying everything that I just said. Which is also why capitalism works better than communism. Capitalism attempts to work within our pre-existing human nature as it has evolved over the millenia to allow individuals to benefit AND the community as a whole to benefit. Communism attempts to work from outside human nature to force people to surrender ANY self-interest to the good of the community. Essentially it attempts to do an end-run around millenia of evolution to try and force a sea-change in societal function.
This is why attempts for force changes in energy useage through laws ALWAYS fail. Energy usage patterns are set by societal pressures. Societal pressures are set by human nature, which is set by natural selection. You can't outlaw natural selection or human nature. Thusly any of these outlandish energy policies are doomed to failure.
Ironically, most of them aren't necessary anyway. The very reason humanity has evolved and grown to the point where we can actually sit here and have an internet-based discussion about a topic like this is because we are problem-solvers by nature. We run into a problem and we figure a way around, over, under or through it. Through the nature of our humanity driving the engine of capitalism and our own "Enlightened Self-Interest", a solution to any energy problem will be found.
In the short-term I'm betting on Bio-fuels as initially a supplement to and eventually a replacement for fossil fuels. After that, maybe electric or some kind of nuclear energy source. But that is several lifetimes away, and I leave it to my great-grandchildren to figure that one out. In the meantime I will continue to drive my car (and my SUV once I can afford one) and live in my 3 bedroom home, and do my bit as an American and a Capitalist creating the wealth that will drive the economy and create an abundant future for my children and my family.
6 weeks? Pfft! Try 3 MONTHS in many areas. It's no wonder everybody there lives in crappy houses. Get to work you lazy bums! (That was not directed at the Germans. We all know you guys work your buns off.)
Civilization is exactly 'going against people's basic desires and needs'.
Bzzzt! Wrong!
Civilization goes WITH Humanity's basic desires and needs. If it didn't, we wouldn't HAVE Civilization. How do you think we got here, Luck? Some Sci-fi moment where a big black obelisk came out of the sky and instantly created our civilization? No. We created it ourselves. We climbed up out of the mud and slowly, painfully, over many millenia, built our way of life.
The drive to create societies is a basic human desire. We need companionship beyond that of just a mate. We need community, and we need to be together without constant strife. This is what creates Civilization. Yes, there is a compromise, but not in the way you are implying. We make a compromise with our desires to do everything for ourselves and our desire to be part of a greater whole. The desire for community and for belonging is greater than the desires of selfishness and greed in most people, which gives those with that community focus an evolutionary advantage.
Thusly, the concepts of community, teamwork, and concern for your fellow man are basic parts of our genome. Without them we would not survive, as our society would rapidly descend into chaos almost immediately. We codify them in laws and codes and creeds and religions, but ultimately they are part of who we are, and it's part of why our species is the dominant one on this planet.
I personally carry an inexpensive Garmin GPS. An old-style one with a B&W LCD that cost me $70.00 US. It takes 2 AA batteries, and I always carry a spare 4 pack of those, plus more in my laptop bag. I NEVER travel without it, as I keep it in my Glove-Box and test it before every trip. That plus a laptop loaded with Google-earth, a 9 cell laptop battery and a power inverter to plug in with, and I just plain don't get lost. If I could afford it I would invest in a Garmin or Tom-Tom Nav system,but I don't have the $600.00 to spend on it.
My point being that nobody has an excuse to travel without GPS. You don't have to spend hundreds of dollars on a full Nav system, a small handheld GPS is good enough for emergencies. If you can spend $250-$600 US on a freaking GAME CONSOLE, you can spend $100.00 for a handheld GPS. Kim should have had one, we all should when we travel.
Ultimately, the biggest mistake Kim made was to leave the car. He wasn't stuck off the road or buried in a snow drift, and the car wasn't in any immediate danger. It would have been cold, but with a car full of people to generate body-heat it would have been tolerable. NEVER leave your car in a situation like that unless you are in imminent danger (IE: car fire, car sinking in a lake, avalanche about to bury you, Etc.) Your car is a big shiny chunk of painted metal and glass, MUCH easier to pick out in the snow than your tiny little human body. That, and you can run the engine for brief periods to keep warm, and use the car lights to signal with at night. Make sure your car isn't covered in snow, and keep the tailpipe area well clear of any drifting so you won't asphyxiate on exhaust fumes. Then just sit back and wait for rescue.
If Kim had done this instead of trekking off into the wilderness he'd be alive today. Now all we can do is mourn him and try to learn from his mistakes.
The new versions of Winamp will play any file that WMP Plays. That, combined with WMP Classic, QT Alternative, Real Alternative, and The Matroska codecs and I'm all set. Heck, my XP box is still running WMP 9! I just dissassociate it with all files, and then stop using it. I never need to touch it again after that.
My Ubuntu box will also play any of the above thanks to Easy Ubuntu. I just loaded up what I wanted, and away I go. (although I wish Amarok was available for the Gnome interface. I hate Totem.)
Resources are NOT Finite in an expanding economy with advancing technology.
Cars from 20 years ago were at least twice an innefficient as cars today. Cars 20 years from now will be at least twice as efficient as cars today. This isn't even taking into account alternative fuels, such as Bio-Diesel, which rely on GROWN fuel-stock, which is an eternally renewable resource. Resources aren't finite because Capitalism drives us to: A) find new resources and B) improve and extend our use of existing resources.
We won't ever run out of resources to fuel our economies and vehicles because we will never stop looking for new and innovative (and profitable) ways to continue our lives as they are now.
The reason our cities are laid out in the manner they are is due to HUMAN NATURE AND DESIRES. This is what drives our economy. People WANT to drive big, comfortable SUV's and Minivans. If they didn't, they wouldn't. People WANT to live in suburbs with wide open areas instead of little boxes in cites with mass transit. If they didn't, they wouldn't. Businesses respond to the human-nature driven demands of consumers by using the applied sciences to advance technology and sell people what they want to buy. This is how Capitalism works. Those who think that changes in natural resources will change that don't understand economics or human nature.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not entirely disagreeing with you...
BUT
You forget that a LARGE percentage of the population (At least in the U.S.) has children and small disposable incomes. Yes, there are plenty in the correct income range that have the disposable incomes to blow on HD equipment, but there are plenty more that don't, and don't want to have to blow the money.
My kids also watch TONS of DVDs. So many so, that we just had to replace the DVD player AGAIN because the old one wore out with use. (Autistic kids like the familiarity of DVDs, so we watch alot of them) What kind of DVD player did I buy? I bought a $120.00 DVD-VCR combo unit as our VCR was also wearing out. No HD-DVD, no Blu-Ray, just plain old DVD. I go through about one DVD player every 2 years or less because we play so many DVDs.
I actually use DVD shrink and duplicate all of our DVDs because if I didn't we would be re-buying all of our DVDs each year too because the kids are so rough with them. If you think I'm upset about the cost of the HD players, how do you think I feel about the cost of the HD Burners and the DRM contained on the Discs?
This whole HD format war debacle has me furious because it's just so damned obvious that the players involved don't give a damn about what the customers want, they just want to line thier pockets at our expense. At some point I'm just going to have to invest in 15 to 20 DVD players and about 300 DVD-R's because the format will go out of style and I won't be able to afford the new equipment anymore.
I'm just praying that the DVD Shrink people will figure a way around the DRM inherent on the new HD stuff because I need to be able to continue to duplicate my DVDs, as I can't afford to replace 30-40 HD-DVD's or BR-DVD's each year.
As I won't be getting any HD equipment of any kind any time soon.
Not because I'm a Luddite, but for two very critical reasons:
1) It's too damned expensive and I don't have the money to blow on HD toys. Maybe the rest of the world makes over 100K a year and lives in an inexpensive area, but I don't. I have bills to pay, damnit, why the hell would I waste my money on an HD setup?
2) I have kids. Autisitc kids with a penchant for running up to the T.V. and giving the screen an open-palm slap just because they like the sound. How long do you think a $3000.00 LCD or Plasma is going to last under that kind of punishment? And if I can't expect the T.V. to last, why the heck would I shell out for the player if I can't view all that "HD goodness" on my old 480P NTSC tube T.V.?
The problem is that the hardware and media guys, in all thier excitement to re-energize the home entertainment market by forcing upgrades, have forgotten that a large percentage of the population either a) just doesn't give a damn, or b) are like me, and can't get an HD setup even if they want to. So really, WHO GIVES A SHIT about HD other than the videophiles with more money than brains? Let THEM buy into all the HD hype, and the rest of us will just wait until the dust settles and we can guy a 27" HD T.V. for the same price that we can buy a 27" regular T.V. today.
The HP recovery process is good, but the Dell one is better. You get a full windows XP Pro SP2 CD and a "Resource" Cd that includes all the drivers for all the hardware. You also get any additional media, such as the Sonic Cd burning software.
The one caveat is that all these items are OPTIONAL. They cost NOTHING additional, but you have to remember to select them when going through the customization process, or to ask for them when ordering by phone.
If you blow away the custom partitioning on your Dell all you have done is to remove the 32 bit linux diagnostic partition that Dell includes. If you lose that it doesn't matter because the "recovery" CD also includes a bootable "live" linux partition on it that is identical in every way to the hard drive partition.
As long as you remember to select the free optional OS and Resource disks when ordering your Dell, you won't have any issues should Windows decide to crap the bed sometime down the road.
I think this falls into the "You are what you eat" paradigm.
Nobody wants to be a cow and nobody wants to be a pig either. But apparently plenty of people are willing to be chickens!
Umm.. ok.. *BANG*
Actually that's wrong.
What he's talking about are School Voucher programs. They have been tried in several states and they work well. The schools are still publically funded, But you as a parent get to choose what school you wish to fund with your voucher (even a private one in some areas). You get to pick the school your kid goes to, rather than being forced to send them to the local public school if you are unable to afford private school.
Interestingly, the people the voucher programs are most popular with are *shock* poor people! Why? Because they get to pull their kids out of the crappy inner-city schools and send them to the nice suburban schools. They can't afford to send them to private schools on their own, and the voucher concept allows them to pick the school they want to send thier kids to. In other words, it allows the working poor the ability to pick and choose a school just like the wealthy.
Furthermore the kids, once they are in a well-funded school with good teachers, start getting better grades and become more interested in learning! It's amazing how a little Applied Capitalism works wonders for even the creakiest of old socialist beauracracies.
Heh. No kidding. "m sex change team .com"
Apparently you have never heard of Central Air Conditioning. The condenser sits outside the building, so water drainage isn't really an issue for the server room. Even if you use a wall-unit to add additional cooling, the condenser drainage should ALWAYS be outside the server room. Never ever ever have a water drain going into your server room. Oh, and as far as flooding is concerned, Your server room should always have a slightly elevated floor (about 3-6 inches) in case of a drainage backup from any nearby bathrooms. Any flooding more than that and a drain won't help you. Frankly, the risk of sewage backup from a direct-connected drain is far greater than a small-flood risk anyway. Again, no good reason to have a drain in the floor, and certainly no reason for a sink in the server room.
Also, since when is "Water + Electricity = Danger" a "Superstitious Belief"? Exactly what universe are you living in again? Because in mine that's not superstition, it's a basic saftey rule you learn in elementary school. Apparently you can bathe with toasters in your dimension. It must be nice when you want some toast during your bath.
I wrote this one in my blog back when I still worked for my cable ISP (The now defunct Adelphia)
d -by-morons.html
http://wearyman.blogspot.com/2005/05/im-surrounde
Enjoy!
I just want to know why you would EVER have a WATER SOURCE in a room full of costly electronics. Seriously. I'd just have the water shut off to the room, the sink removed and the drains capped. Problem solved, and no risk of flooding the server room. (Why the hell would you need a sink in a server room anyway? Do the hamsters running the servers need water periodically?)
read that as "Naked Astronomy" at first, or was it just me?
Actually, most Christians DO get this. It's just the few idiot ones that don't. Christianity is like any other social group on the planet. It's made up of humans, some of which are morons. Unfortunately, Christian morons seem to get more press than those of other stripes.
I realize that there are many here on Slashdot that, for one reason or another, have thier hate on for Christians. I'm not going to address that bigotry right now. But for those that don't hate Christians, but really do think they all want to ban Harry Potter, I recommend going here and reading:
http://lashawnbarber.com/archives/2006/12/21/laur
Not all Christians want to ban Harry Potter. Most don't, and those that do are a small moronic minority.
For a minute I though we were going to get a neat technical article on how they remove those "pixillated" areas on Hentai and Japanese Pr0n. What a letdown...
What? Next you'll be telling me that Chinese women only have 2 breasts instead of three. They do? Darn. There go my reasons to visit China. Well, I'm off to the Mars colony instead then!
It's Wireshark now.
All the software and OS hackers are buying the brown Zunes so they can hack Ubuntu Linux onto it. If they succeed they will call them "Ubunes". :)
I would imagine that using the tracker server for this purpose would work. Obviously for "trackerless" torrents it would break again, but for standard tracker torrents it would probably work quite well. Couple it with torrent encryption and you have a very nice way to get around your college/work firewall.
Just a comment on your sig..
:)
You haven't seen Mythbusters Episode #67 "Firearms Folklore" yet have you?
Umm... How does saving lives from serious accidents count as "Fighting Evolution"?
Oh yeah. It doesn't.
In fact, doctors and hospitals et-al are actually PART of evolution. We as humans want to survive. As part of our survival instinct we learn about how our bodies and minds work so that we can repair ourselves when we are damaged. We evolve to overcome the dangers of our world through medicine. Civilizations that do not develop medicine die out. Those that do develop it survive. That's natural selection in action my friend.
I'm not sure I would call it luck as much as I would call it basic observational skills.
And it wasn't just in the Middle east either. Hunter-gatherer societies all around the globe have adapted to agriculture as a natural part of thier progress. (Somehow I doubt the Incas ever had anyone from Tehran teach them about farming) Indeed, I would posit that a move to an agrarian society is a necessity for any group of people to progress to a "civilization" level.
However, that does not mean that I don't agree with your larger point. You are correct. There is always a trade-off when moving from a small-tribe group of hunter-gatherers to a larger agrarian society. I peg this as a part of Natural Selection. In this case the selection actually takes place with the people themselves. IE: they select to suppress thier more aggressive instincts for more community oriented ones. This is actually what I was saying in my first post. Through the mechanism of Natural Selection, we as humans have evolved to become a community-oriented species, with all the good and bad that comes with that. HOWEVER, this is not to say that we have abandoned our basic self-interests and instincts, but it would be fair to say that we have harnessed them in such a way as to be beneficial to ourselves AND society as a whole.
I suppose that's where the Capitalist concept of "Enlightened Self-Interest" comes in. It's the capitalist way of saying everything that I just said. Which is also why capitalism works better than communism. Capitalism attempts to work within our pre-existing human nature as it has evolved over the millenia to allow individuals to benefit AND the community as a whole to benefit. Communism attempts to work from outside human nature to force people to surrender ANY self-interest to the good of the community. Essentially it attempts to do an end-run around millenia of evolution to try and force a sea-change in societal function.
This is why attempts for force changes in energy useage through laws ALWAYS fail. Energy usage patterns are set by societal pressures. Societal pressures are set by human nature, which is set by natural selection. You can't outlaw natural selection or human nature. Thusly any of these outlandish energy policies are doomed to failure.
Ironically, most of them aren't necessary anyway. The very reason humanity has evolved and grown to the point where we can actually sit here and have an internet-based discussion about a topic like this is because we are problem-solvers by nature. We run into a problem and we figure a way around, over, under or through it. Through the nature of our humanity driving the engine of capitalism and our own "Enlightened Self-Interest", a solution to any energy problem will be found.
In the short-term I'm betting on Bio-fuels as initially a supplement to and eventually a replacement for fossil fuels. After that, maybe electric or some kind of nuclear energy source. But that is several lifetimes away, and I leave it to my great-grandchildren to figure that one out. In the meantime I will continue to drive my car (and my SUV once I can afford one) and live in my 3 bedroom home, and do my bit as an American and a Capitalist creating the wealth that will drive the economy and create an abundant future for my children and my family.
6 weeks? Pfft! Try 3 MONTHS in many areas. It's no wonder everybody there lives in crappy houses. Get to work you lazy bums! (That was not directed at the Germans. We all know you guys work your buns off.)
Bzzzt! Wrong!
Civilization goes WITH Humanity's basic desires and needs. If it didn't, we wouldn't HAVE Civilization. How do you think we got here, Luck? Some Sci-fi moment where a big black obelisk came out of the sky and instantly created our civilization? No. We created it ourselves. We climbed up out of the mud and slowly, painfully, over many millenia, built our way of life.
The drive to create societies is a basic human desire. We need companionship beyond that of just a mate. We need community, and we need to be together without constant strife. This is what creates Civilization. Yes, there is a compromise, but not in the way you are implying. We make a compromise with our desires to do everything for ourselves and our desire to be part of a greater whole. The desire for community and for belonging is greater than the desires of selfishness and greed in most people, which gives those with that community focus an evolutionary advantage.
Thusly, the concepts of community, teamwork, and concern for your fellow man are basic parts of our genome. Without them we would not survive, as our society would rapidly descend into chaos almost immediately. We codify them in laws and codes and creeds and religions, but ultimately they are part of who we are, and it's part of why our species is the dominant one on this planet.
I personally carry an inexpensive Garmin GPS. An old-style one with a B&W LCD that cost me $70.00 US. It takes 2 AA batteries, and I always carry a spare 4 pack of those, plus more in my laptop bag. I NEVER travel without it, as I keep it in my Glove-Box and test it before every trip. That plus a laptop loaded with Google-earth, a 9 cell laptop battery and a power inverter to plug in with, and I just plain don't get lost. If I could afford it I would invest in a Garmin or Tom-Tom Nav system,but I don't have the $600.00 to spend on it.
My point being that nobody has an excuse to travel without GPS. You don't have to spend hundreds of dollars on a full Nav system, a small handheld GPS is good enough for emergencies. If you can spend $250-$600 US on a freaking GAME CONSOLE, you can spend $100.00 for a handheld GPS. Kim should have had one, we all should when we travel.
Ultimately, the biggest mistake Kim made was to leave the car. He wasn't stuck off the road or buried in a snow drift, and the car wasn't in any immediate danger. It would have been cold, but with a car full of people to generate body-heat it would have been tolerable. NEVER leave your car in a situation like that unless you are in imminent danger (IE: car fire, car sinking in a lake, avalanche about to bury you, Etc.) Your car is a big shiny chunk of painted metal and glass, MUCH easier to pick out in the snow than your tiny little human body. That, and you can run the engine for brief periods to keep warm, and use the car lights to signal with at night. Make sure your car isn't covered in snow, and keep the tailpipe area well clear of any drifting so you won't asphyxiate on exhaust fumes. Then just sit back and wait for rescue.
If Kim had done this instead of trekking off into the wilderness he'd be alive today. Now all we can do is mourn him and try to learn from his mistakes.
Use WINAMP!
The new versions of Winamp will play any file that WMP Plays. That, combined with WMP Classic, QT Alternative, Real Alternative, and The Matroska codecs and I'm all set. Heck, my XP box is still running WMP 9! I just dissassociate it with all files, and then stop using it. I never need to touch it again after that.
My Ubuntu box will also play any of the above thanks to Easy Ubuntu. I just loaded up what I wanted, and away I go. (although I wish Amarok was available for the Gnome interface. I hate Totem.)
Bzzzt! Wrong again!
Resources are NOT Finite in an expanding economy with advancing technology.
Cars from 20 years ago were at least twice an innefficient as cars today. Cars 20 years from now will be at least twice as efficient as cars today. This isn't even taking into account alternative fuels, such as Bio-Diesel, which rely on GROWN fuel-stock, which is an eternally renewable resource. Resources aren't finite because Capitalism drives us to:
A) find new resources and
B) improve and extend our use of existing resources.
We won't ever run out of resources to fuel our economies and vehicles because we will never stop looking for new and innovative (and profitable) ways to continue our lives as they are now.
The reason our cities are laid out in the manner they are is due to HUMAN NATURE AND DESIRES. This is what drives our economy. People WANT to drive big, comfortable SUV's and Minivans. If they didn't, they wouldn't. People WANT to live in suburbs with wide open areas instead of little boxes in cites with mass transit. If they didn't, they wouldn't. Businesses respond to the human-nature driven demands of consumers by using the applied sciences to advance technology and sell people what they want to buy. This is how Capitalism works. Those who think that changes in natural resources will change that don't understand economics or human nature.