......I was talking about charged particles in accelerated motion releasing electromagnetic radiation.....
Apparently you did not notice the word beam. In a conductor, the electrons do move, like the balls in the pipe. However, the number of balls (electrons) is astronomical when compared to the number of electrons flowing at any given number of amperes. If you could paint one of these electrons green or whatever, at the beginning of the conductor, you'd be waiting a long time compared to the near lightspeed rise of the current flow, for that one to appear at the other end. The speed ratio can be calculated for any given conductor, but it is greater than the ratio between a snail and a supersonic fighter jet.
A fun experiment I used to demonstrate to school children when they came to visit the lab at Stanford, where I worked, was to place a lead dish into a glass dewar container full of liquid helium. Then a small permanent magent was gently lowered into the lead dish. It would never touch it however, but float, suspended above it. The magnet induced an electrical currrent in the superconducting lead that created a magnetic field that exactly opposed that of the magnet at all times and thus repelling it. There are no energy losses, by radiation or any other mechanism from the currents circulating within the lead, generating the opposing magnetic field that keeps the magnet suspended as it dances around in the boiling helium. Only after all the helium evaporated did the magnet descend onto the dish.
....loses its kinetic energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation....
The electrons in a conductor are not moving in the sense they do in a beam, such as in a CRT. The electrons in the wire may be compared to balls filling a pipe. You push one in at one end and another pops out at the other. In an ordinary wire this transfer of pushing from ball to ball involves losses which give rise to electrical resistance. These losses cause the conductor heat up. In a superconductor, by definition there are ZERO losses and so the current, not the electrons themselves can circulate until the material warms up and becomes resistive again. If these NMR magnest were not superconducting, one of these would take several times the electric power of the entire hospital with a commensurate cooling system to get rid of the heat.
Of course, but some things are learned fairly easily by most people and some are much harder. If here were no GUI, it is likely that there would be only a small fraction of the number of computer in common use than there are currently. Remembering a slew of arcane computer commands is not something many people would do in order to get the benefits a computer would give over earlier ways of doing the same kinds of things. The metaphor of the desktop, files and folders was chosen because many were already familiar with the physical counterparts of these computer constructs.
The type of users that have trouble with a mouse are also those that thing the CD tray is a convenient coffee cup holder. Computers may one day be given instructions in plain spoken language, but even that will have its problems. An office full of workers talking to and possibly cussing out their computers would have interface problems of a different kind.
....commands are a hell of a lot quicker to type......
Typing commands isn't the problem, but remembering them. Dragging an unwated file into a trash can is much more intuitive to users than any command that must be learned first. Clicking on an icon to see what is in it or what it does also doesn't need much remembering skill either. Names are secondary in a GUI based OS. I seldom open a program by its name or icon, but usually with a file I want to edit. Copying and re-naming a similar existing file and then using that as the basis for new work is almost always easier, since the format settings of the file are already established. In OSX the "open with" popup menu is very efficient for choosing a program to open the file, other than the default.
In Linux, a major problem is that there are a number of flavors and these are all sufficiently different to confuse a newbie user. The basic operations in Windows have been fairly consistent over the years and this is even more true in OSX. Hardware support for Grandma's camera or camcorder in Linux is also spotty at best. Going into OFFICE Max and walking out with a printer and getting it to work in Linux is an iffy thing, compared to Windows or OSX. Linux naming problems are a minor roadblock to wholesale adoption of Linux by most users.
.......The fact that something sometimes happens doesn't imply that there's no cause......
Of course there is a cause for the warming, but the human contribution is insignificant. When I make a fire, I contribute to raise the temperature of the great outdoors. As in the past, the major cause of warming is the simple fact that there are many cycles in nature, of which periodic warming and cooling of the average temperature of the planet is just one. There is plenty of evidence that the climate, especially in the temperate zones was significantly warmer at times and there were also cooler periods than we experience today. Compared to the buildup of CO2 in the air, about which some are so worried about, the water vapor contents, in both percentage saturation and altitude is a much more significant so called "greenhouse gas". Most, if not all the CO2 trapped in fossil fuels was in the air at some time in the past, before humans were on the planet.
There may be a number of superimposed cycles of nature that add and subtract in and out of phase to affect the average temperature. I don't know that much about climatology either, but it seems logical that the solar output variations should be a major factor.
.....so there is a net-zero effect on global temperatures.....
As far as global climate, anybody who looks at a globe should immediately recognize that the oceans will determine the average temperature of the planet. After that, it is the water content of the atmosphere. A warmer earth will over all be a more fruitful earth, because the water holding capacity of the air rises dramatically with increasing temperature. Not only does the air itself hold much more water per unit voume, but the height to which significant amounts of water vapor rise also increases. Because of these multiplying factors, global warming will actually cause the ocean levels to go DOWN.
A look at a National Geographic map of the oceanfloor with the continental shelves will show that. Many riverbeds of ancient major rivers continue through the continental shelves and then drop off into the abysmal plains of the deep ocean beds. This clearly shows that these rivers once flowed there because the continental shelves were not under water at that time. Cooling of the earth caused the huge amounts of water then stored in the atmosphere to precipitate out and flood these areas. We humans have no control over the global climate, but global warming would certainly make for a more comfortable, uniformly pleasant world.
Forests, mountains and other features of the land affect where the water precipitates out, mostly confined to those small areas.
Just like governments waste taxpayer's money, so humanity as a whole wastes many of the resources of the planet. More efficient use of both of these would make the impact of more people much less of a problem.
.....Most climate modelers seem to accept that global warming results in stronger hurricanes.......
The argument isn't about global warming so much, than about human activity is the cause thereof. There is no evidence that this is the case. There have been much warmer and much colder periods of time in recorded history, long before we started using fossil fuels for energy. Warmth means there is more energy in the atmosphere to power the weather. It is largely the temperature DIFFERENCES that cause the atmospheric and oceanic currents. A more uniformly warmed atmosphere might reduce the violence of this circulation. Few human writings become obsolete faster than a book on science and technology. Making far reaching political decisions based on incomplete knowlege is a terrible idea.
....For every bit of cold region that becomes livable due to global warming, there's an equal if not greater amount of landmass that gets turned into unlivable and unfarmable desert.....
Climate is a bit more complicated than that. Warmer ocean water evaporates more and that evaporation will come down as rain in areas that get very little right now. There is evidence that our planet was much warmer in the past. Where do you think the fossil fuels came from? We are now burning the buried remains of life-forms that were in unimable abundance ages ago, on the entire planet, including the polar regions. Even in recorded history the were periods of considerable welcome warmth and miserable cold times. Like most things in nature, climate is cyclical and we just happen to be in a the warming part of such a cycle. There is not one shred of evidence that human activity is in any way involved. This does not mean however that we should not use our resources as efficiently as possible.
......the huge number of people on this planet.....
That's what jerk named Ehrlich said already 40 or so years ago. Something about a population bomb. The climate has not changed all that much since then. If the warming were proportional to the population increase since then, we should have all been cooked by now and run out of things to eat and drink. The world has always had doom and gloom, the sky is falling soothsayers. Predicitions about the world running out of oil and other resources have been around for a long time, but unforseen advances have always made these out to be foolish pronouncements by foolish people.
There is also so much junk science around and this is another example, as is the crap about humans causing the present, well documented warming cycle. Trees evaporate huge amounts of water, which causes the average forest to be cooler on hot days than a plowed or even planted fields. Next summer, observe where the hawks circle in the thermals. They do not circle above forested areas because forests don't have hot air rising above them. Only if the forests are on slopes, the hawks ride the upslope winds, but on flat terrain you won't see them over forests.
....Masochists, or otherwise differing defintions...
Let's just use the definitions of most normal people and not perverts. I suspect you would not enjoy having pain inflicted on you unless you are indeed area pervert, which I doubt. Humans of all cultures have an amazing sense of justice and fairness.
(...What if it was "good" to kill someone?.....)
There are reasons to kill someone, such as self defense or the defense of loved ones. Animals defend their young also. Killing and murder are NOT the same. However, I know of no culture that says it is good to murder. It is amazing how congruent the lists of "good" and "bad" are, across diverse cultures and people groups. There are differences, of course but they are usually on peripheral issues. Murder, theft, lying, adultery, rape, pride and others are usually on "bad" lists of most people. Love, kindness, truthfulness, mercy, forgiveness, courage and others are on the "good" list of all.
(....Even while under extreme duress? What about intoxication, or other form of incapacitation?.....)
If people followed this "law" I mentioned, they would not put others under extreme duress and they would not inflict their drunken behavior on others. Most, but of course not all incapacitation of people occurs at the hands of others, either deliberately or through uncaring negligence.
(....How do you mete out punishment without violating your first sentence....)
Punishment is built into the law. You simply get back what you have first given. The persons at the receiving end get the right to reward you or punish you and are also subject to the same rules. If you steal from someone, they have a right to an equal value of your stuff. If you injure their finger, they do not then get the right to cut off your hand. The intent of the eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth was to prevent the endless escalation of feuds which is a human tendency.
The problem of course is that few if anybody at all follows this simple law. That is why billions are spent on law making and enforcement. Unfortunately, piling law upon law doesn't make people obey these laws. The sad fact is that most people obey laws because they might get caught and punished, not because they really want to obey. It has been shown that increasing the likelyhood of catching lawbreakers is far more effective to get compliance with laws than to dramatically increase the punishment.
They'd first have to get a hold of the computer(s) in my house. That might be easier to do in a criminal case without warning, but be difficult or impossible in a civil case. Putting a new hard drive into the thing would be easy and then WHO would prove anything at all? Besides, there are a number of users of my computers, mostly kids, not neccessarily my own. In any case, kids are ineligible to make any sort of legally binding agreements. In the end it would still be their word against mine and the jury would not really have any trouble to decide whom to believe if the accusers did not have any evidence to support their allegations, especially if there was no evidence on the computer.
......I challenege you to, in 200 words or less, write a law that defines murder.....
You shall not do anything (including murder) to someone else, which you would not like done to you. If you know to do good and do it not you have likewise broken the law. In the event you do not keep these rules all the time, whatever you have done to others will be done to you and you will receive no mercy because you are not merciful to others.
The above are 70 words and should work very well for us all if obeyed by all.
......the user didn't check the "I agree" button....
I'd like to see a 100 lawers prove in court WHO clicked a particular mouse button on a certain computer. If the accused denies having clicked anything, how can anybody say otherwise? It is one person's word against another. Until they invent pushbuttons that identify the pusher, these EULAs can never be used to hold anybody responsible -- not the user and not the software maker. Some computers are used by a rather large number of people.
...There's no way to prove that the user actually accepted the license....
Even more importantly, there is no way to prove WHO clicked the mouse. There is no wy to prove that the person who clicked is even eligible to enter into a legally binding agreement. It might be a 12 year old kid.
....but the protection system is installed so that you can't decline the EULA, then rip the CD....
Is it not instructive that all this DRM crap on music CDs only works on Windows? Does that make Mac OSX and Linux machines DMCA violators in that they circumvent the DRM?
....I'm under the impression that EULA are documents which state how the user can use a piece of software.....
No EULA of any kind restricts you in any way as to what you can or cannot do with it legally. You can flush it down the toilet, burn it in your stove, sell or give it to your neighbor or install it on your computer.
It is copyright law ONLY that determines what you may or may not do -- namely make copies without the permission of the copyright holder -- copies that is -- that go beyond the bounds of fair use clearly defined in that same copyright law.
....Only one way to play the songs and not get the rootkit.....
But that would be stealing them if you did not pay for the music. Just play the songs on a Mac, Linux machine, disable autostart on Windows, hold down the shift key or play on a plain audio CD player. Ripping the songs you paid for to your iPod or other portable is perfectly legal.
There are many HONEST ways to not get the rootkit. People stealing music is the reson why music companies go through all these, eventually futile, expenses and now legal troubles and install various kinds of DRM malware.
....That's what the EULA is for; to protect them.....
Why does everybodye here always assume tht any kind of EULA is an enforcable contract? To have a contract it has to be unambiguously established WHO the parties to it really are. A mouse click does NOT prove that in any sort of way. Minors, which are ineligible to enter into binding contracts or agreements legally enforceable, constitute a large fraction, if not the majority of persons who might install the Sony or most other DRM malware.
The existence of a so called EULA will not make a difference at all, since all so called EULAs are not worth the paper they are written on or price the electrons on the screen. Why are SIGNATURES or even Notary Public witnesses required of all REAL, binding contracts and agreements? Why do those who appear before the notary have to show ID in order to PROVE who they are?
Sony has broken the LAW and that hopefully will cost them a pile of money. Maybe they and others adding dangerous DRM malware to their products will finally learn that DRM is worthless and will never stop copyright law violations. A good product at a fair price has a much better chance of achieving their goal of maximizing their bottom line.
The iTunes-Ipod has pointed the way this could happen. DRM was forced upon Apple by the ignorant music providers. Apple tries to make the DRM as benign as they dared and still satisfy the **AA folks. I think that paid for iTunes downloads would not be significantly less, but perhaps be higher, if Apple were to be allowed to offer the music in plain mp3 format. This is because then all the other music players besides the iPod could also easily play downloads from iTunes store. The sales of the iPod would not likely suffer either since it is by far the coolest music player on the market and would still be the only one that works seamlessly with the iTunes service.
.....As long as DRM is implimented by humans, it will always be cracked, however, only by a small percentage of the population.....
Yes, but it only takes ONE geek to remove the DRM and then it can be and WILL be made available to any Joe who can click a mouse, regardless of how many laws are passed and the army of lawyers hired by **AA's of this world. Once the horse is out of the barn, all the locks on the latter will not get it back in. The Internet is not controlled by any one government and its laws.
The Disney's of this world will have to get used to this brave new digital reality, just as the horse and buggy makers eventually adapted to the automobile. In the past these content providers figured out over time how to make money from the CD, VCR and DVD technologies. I am confident that in 10 or 15 years from now, DRM will be a nightmare that went away after they have figured out how to make the of money from the new ways of distributing their wares. People ARE willing to pay for content that is convenient, not over-priced and allows them to watch and listen wherever, whenever and on whatever gadget that happens to be in vogue at any given time. The Ipod and Itunes is plenty of proof of that.
... it would force all manufacturers to recognize signals embedded in the analog stream,....
It is very difficult to put any kind of a signal into an analog stream that cannot be filtered out with relatively simple circuitry that almost anybody who can operate a soldering iron can build. The MacroVision analog "protection", for example, can be stripped out with a simple re-sychronization circuit for example. If this stupid bill becomes law, there will be many places on the web where simple instructions can be had how to negate this analog signal. Analog signals as a whole do not lend themselves very well to the "protection racket" in the same way that digital signals do.
.....People replaced their analog VHS for digital DVD because of the extras....
Convenience and ease of use are usually the bigger reason to upgrade to a technology that is basically the same as its predecessor. Vinyl LP and CDs both convey prerecorded music. For most listeners the quality difference between the two was not the deciding factor, but ease of use, portability and much smaller storage space needed for a given amount of music. We are seeing these same factors again in the runaway popularity of the ipod digital music players. However this time " buy all your music again" gravy train left the recording industry in the station, because most users of these new devices are re-coding the music they have already bought into the new format themselves.
For video, the VCR quality was and still is sufficient for most consumers, but again the convenience of random access and smaller form factor is what persuaded the great majority of users to switch to DVDs. The HD format doesn't bring any of these compelling incentives to switch and just as you said, most existing material in the vaults is not that much superior in sharpness than the existing DVDs already provide. The new video iPods and other small video players along with easy to use software, like iTunes, will again foster convenient means by which consumers will be able to transfer content they have already bought on DVD or VCR to these.
Current copyright laws allows users to do this. The DMCA and DRM and any other laws the media companies might bribe the polititians to pass, will not be able to stop this. No law can nor ever has prevented people from getting what they want. Write your Congress persons to not vote in laws that are useless anyway and make it artificially more difficult for everyone to enjoy the content they have already paid hard earned money to the movie companies for.
.....all the land will be owned by corporations.....
Don't forget that all corporations are owned and run by mortal people though. Bill gates owns a big chunk of Microsoft, but after his heart stops he will own just as much as the poorest homeless person. In our country, all land is still owned by the King (government) as it has been in many cultures for centuries. The government rents you the land (property tax) for a certain payment each year. You stop paying the rent and the government throws you off its land. Even the big coprporations have to rent their land from the King. The notion of who ultimately owns or has free use of the land was the biggest conflict between the Europeans and the native Americans.
With most material things, ownership is esablished by a person creating the object. If I build a table or chair they are mine and I can sell trade those outright for a set of clothes or whatever. With land that doesn't hold, because nobody is able to create land. It is just there and has in western culture, been claimed by whoever got there first and more importantly has the power to defend that claim from any newcomers. Since governments have the power they charge "protection money" from whoever pays them a certain amount for the use of the land.
......If they upgrade, they'll have to buy all new stuff......
That's a big IF! Current video, just like today's average stereo and even buggy, virus prone Windows, is plenty good enough quality for millions of current users. Any HD TV upgrading incentive is nowhere nearly as compelling as the transition from VCR to DVD or from vinyl LPs to audio CD were about 20 years ago. Both vinyls and VCR tapes, for example were subject to wear and reduced quality, each time they were played. There was nothing even the most careful handling would help to elimiate this problem. The optical technologies removed this large disadvantage. In the case of VCR vs DVD the fact that DVDs don't need to be rewound and are random access also was a very compelling reason for users to upgrade. By millions of users upgrading, the media companies made gobs of money from re-selling the contents of their vaults back again to consumers of the new playback devices.
The only advantage I can see the new, expensive HD format has over the current DVD, is higher resolution. None of the previous very compelling reasons to upgrade apply. A conventional DVD played back on a big screen TV is plenty good enough for most consumers. This is also true of the present broadcast TV progrmming. HD TV does not reduce in any way the frequency nor obnoxiousness of the innumerable commercials on most channels nor improve on the content itself. For a long time, manufacturers of large screen monitors will have to provide connectivity to existing signal sources. Not many consumers have a desire to replace their DVD collection just for a clearer picture alone.
.....Therefore since we don't have free will and are controlled by him.....
Every argument about free will or controlled destiny I have ever heard always revolves around the idea of time, time that is in the sense that we know it, past, present and future, the linear sort of time we now experience. If we project our time sense on God, who created time, just as part of everything else, it creates the dilemna theologians and philosophers have argued and written scholarly tomes on.
The God of the Bible inhabits eternity, (Isaiah 57:15) outside of time. The reason God made man in His own image is to have communion and community with someone much like Himself. The foundational truths go back to the creation of man.
In Genesis 1:26 we read: "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion...."
The two words "image" and "likeness" are distinct Hebrew words. The former is akin to the image indelibly stamped on a coin. In the life of the coin, the image may get scratched, but it is still usually easily recognizable even after being in circulation a long time. Every human still bears this image and it manifests itself in our own creativity, appreciation for beauty, an innate sense of justice and the universal, otherwise unexplainable urge to worship, religion and sense of longing for a reality higher than every day life. That is why God prohibits murder; people are of value as His creatures.
The second word, "likeness" is immediately followed by the "dominion" which means authority to act as a representative of the one who grants the authority -- in this case God. Jesus gave us little glimpse of the kind of authority over nature man was given, when He calmed the wind and waves - to the great astonishment of those who witnessed this "miracle".
However, in order for anyone to be entrusted with authority, they themselves must recognize the authority they are under. So God gave man a little test, as to whether this creature would be WILLING to submit to the final authority and governance of God. Because that first Man did not submit to God's authority, he was no longer fit to be in God's presence and also became unable to govern this planet. Man has been and still is at odds with God's Earth and with one another. Man lost the "likeness" of God, the ability to act as God does on His behalf.
My previous post outlined in a basic way, what God did about mankind's predicament.
......So...if he is going to invervene why make humanity go through such horrors.....
All humans have to finally believe it what He has been telling us and what the humn race has demonstrated for as long as there are historical records, summed up best by the prophet Jeremeiah - 17:9
Humans have not and cannot live in peace with each other and have amply demostrated this throughout all of history. There have always been and are still those who say that people are inherently good and can rule their lives and the planet without their Creator, directly contradicting what God tells us in many other places of his word to us. We were made to live in harmony with His creation and under the loving guidance of God, but universally have rejected His ways and by unbelief gone our own way of rebellion against His authority. Because of this rebellion, death, eternal separation from all that is good, God Himself, is the inevitable result.
God left the eternal dimensions and came as a little baby, entered time and space, limited Himself to the same limitations we humans live under. Soon we will once again be celebrating this event, where He, Jesus, the Lord of the Universe entered our World, born in a lowly stable. He grew up to show what God had in mind when he created Man in His own image, living in close communion with and under the power of God. He was the only man who could challenge His enemies to prove even ONE wrong thing He had done.
As representatives of all of humanity, the Jews, right there in the city of Jerusalem, turned Jesus over to the Roman Government to be crucified. He suffered the fate that awaits every human: separation from God. However, because this God-Man Jesus never sinned, He could not remain dead, but conquered humanity's worst enemy, death itself. Not just physical death, but eternal death, separation from God and all that is good.
Right now, in our world, there is both good and evil, love and hate, inextricably intertwined. Every invention and technology is used both in helpful and harmful ways. The terrible weapons that exist now, have made it possible for mankind to wipe itself out. God is going to allow humanity to get to the very brink of extinction, so we, more stubborn than a mule, rebellious humans, will finally understand that we are incapable of living independently from Him, our Creator.
This mixing of good and evil in one world will not always be. There eventually will be two places, totally and eternally separate. One will be where there is nothing evil, called heaven, and another, called hell, where there will be nothing good.
Until then He, Jesus, offers to every person who BELIEVES peace with God and life with Him, now and beyond the grave. Your choice to believe or not will determine in which of the two places you will finally end up. The choice is up to you, based on faith.
Slashdot Mirror
......I was talking about charged particles in accelerated motion releasing electromagnetic radiation.....
Apparently you did not notice the word beam. In a conductor, the electrons do move, like the balls in the pipe. However, the number of balls (electrons) is astronomical when compared to the number of electrons flowing at any given number of amperes. If you could paint one of these electrons green or whatever, at the beginning of the conductor, you'd be waiting a long time compared to the near lightspeed rise of the current flow, for that one to appear at the other end. The speed ratio can be calculated for any given conductor, but it is greater than the ratio between a snail and a supersonic fighter jet.
A fun experiment I used to demonstrate to school children when they came to visit the lab at Stanford, where I worked, was to place a lead dish into a glass dewar container full of liquid helium. Then a small permanent magent was gently lowered into the lead dish. It would never touch it however, but float, suspended above it. The magnet induced an electrical currrent in the superconducting lead that created a magnetic field that exactly opposed that of the magnet at all times and thus repelling it. There are no energy losses, by radiation or any other mechanism from the currents circulating within the lead, generating the opposing magnetic field that keeps the magnet suspended as it dances around in the boiling helium. Only after all the helium evaporated did the magnet descend onto the dish.
....loses its kinetic energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation....
The electrons in a conductor are not moving in the sense they do in a beam, such as in a CRT. The electrons in the wire may be compared to balls filling a pipe. You push one in at one end and another pops out at the other. In an ordinary wire this transfer of pushing from ball to ball involves losses which give rise to electrical resistance. These losses cause the conductor heat up. In a superconductor, by definition there are ZERO losses and so the current, not the electrons themselves can circulate until the material warms up and becomes resistive again. If these NMR magnest were not superconducting, one of these would take several times the electric power of the entire hospital with a commensurate cooling system to get rid of the heat.
.....Everything must be learned first.....
Of course, but some things are learned fairly easily by most people and some are much harder. If here were no GUI, it is likely that there would be only a small fraction of the number of computer in common use than there are currently. Remembering a slew of arcane computer commands is not something many people would do in order to get the benefits a computer would give over earlier ways of doing the same kinds of things. The metaphor of the desktop, files and folders was chosen because many were already familiar with the physical counterparts of these computer constructs.
The type of users that have trouble with a mouse are also those that thing the CD tray is a convenient coffee cup holder. Computers may one day be given instructions in plain spoken language, but even that will have its problems. An office full of workers talking to and possibly cussing out their computers would have interface problems of a different kind.
....commands are a hell of a lot quicker to type ......
Typing commands isn't the problem, but remembering them. Dragging an unwated file into a trash can is much more intuitive to users than any command that must be learned first. Clicking on an icon to see what is in it or what it does also doesn't need much remembering skill either. Names are secondary in a GUI based OS. I seldom open a program by its name or icon, but usually with a file I want to edit. Copying and re-naming a similar existing file and then using that as the basis for new work is almost always easier, since the format settings of the file are already established. In OSX the "open with" popup menu is very efficient for choosing a program to open the file, other than the default.
In Linux, a major problem is that there are a number of flavors and these are all sufficiently different to confuse a newbie user. The basic operations in Windows have been fairly consistent over the years and this is even more true in OSX. Hardware support for Grandma's camera or camcorder in Linux is also spotty at best. Going into OFFICE Max and walking out with a printer and getting it to work in Linux is an iffy thing, compared to Windows or OSX. Linux naming problems are a minor roadblock to wholesale adoption of Linux by most users.
.......The fact that something sometimes happens doesn't imply that there's no cause......
Of course there is a cause for the warming, but the human contribution is insignificant. When I make a fire, I contribute to raise the temperature of the great outdoors. As in the past, the major cause of warming is the simple fact that there are many cycles in nature, of which periodic warming and cooling of the average temperature of the planet is just one. There is plenty of evidence that the climate, especially in the temperate zones was significantly warmer at times and there were also cooler periods than we experience today. Compared to the buildup of CO2 in the air, about which some are so worried about, the water vapor contents, in both percentage saturation and altitude is a much more significant so called "greenhouse gas". Most, if not all the CO2 trapped in fossil fuels was in the air at some time in the past, before humans were on the planet.
There may be a number of superimposed cycles of nature that add and subtract in and out of phase to affect the average temperature. I don't know that much about climatology either, but it seems logical that the solar output variations should be a major factor.
.....so there is a net-zero effect on global temperatures.....
As far as global climate, anybody who looks at a globe should immediately recognize that the oceans will determine the average temperature of the planet. After that, it is the water content of the atmosphere. A warmer earth will over all be a more fruitful earth, because the water holding capacity of the air rises dramatically with increasing temperature. Not only does the air itself hold much more water per unit voume, but the height to which significant amounts of water vapor rise also increases. Because of these multiplying factors, global warming will actually cause the ocean levels to go DOWN.
A look at a National Geographic map of the oceanfloor with the continental shelves will show that. Many riverbeds of ancient major rivers continue through the continental shelves and then drop off into the abysmal plains of the deep ocean beds. This clearly shows that these rivers once flowed there because the continental shelves were not under water at that time. Cooling of the earth caused the huge amounts of water then stored in the atmosphere to precipitate out and flood these areas. We humans have no control over the global climate, but global warming would certainly make for a more comfortable, uniformly pleasant world.
Forests, mountains and other features of the land affect where the water precipitates out, mostly confined to those small areas.
Just like governments waste taxpayer's money, so humanity as a whole wastes many of the resources of the planet. More efficient use of both of these would make the impact of more people much less of a problem.
.....Most climate modelers seem to accept that global warming results in stronger hurricanes.......
The argument isn't about global warming so much, than about human activity is the cause thereof. There is no evidence that this is the case. There have been much warmer and much colder periods of time in recorded history, long before we started using fossil fuels for energy. Warmth means there is more energy in the atmosphere to power the weather. It is largely the temperature DIFFERENCES that cause the atmospheric and oceanic currents. A more uniformly warmed atmosphere might reduce the violence of this circulation. Few human writings become obsolete faster than a book on science and technology. Making far reaching political decisions based on incomplete knowlege is a terrible idea.
....For every bit of cold region that becomes livable due to global warming, there's an equal if not greater amount of landmass that gets turned into unlivable and unfarmable desert.....
Climate is a bit more complicated than that. Warmer ocean water evaporates more and that evaporation will come down as rain in areas that get very little right now. There is evidence that our planet was much warmer in the past. Where do you think the fossil fuels came from? We are now burning the buried remains of life-forms that were in unimable abundance ages ago, on the entire planet, including the polar regions. Even in recorded history the were periods of considerable welcome warmth and miserable cold times. Like most things in nature, climate is cyclical and we just happen to be in a the warming part of such a cycle. There is not one shred of evidence that human activity is in any way involved. This does not mean however that we should not use our resources as efficiently as possible.
......the huge number of people on this planet.....
That's what jerk named Ehrlich said already 40 or so years ago. Something about a population bomb. The climate has not changed all that much since then. If the warming were proportional to the population increase since then, we should have all been cooked by now and run out of things to eat and drink. The world has always had doom and gloom, the sky is falling soothsayers. Predicitions about the world running out of oil and other resources have been around for a long time, but unforseen advances have always made these out to be foolish pronouncements by foolish people.
There is also so much junk science around and this is another example, as is the crap about humans causing the present, well documented warming cycle. Trees evaporate huge amounts of water, which causes the average forest to be cooler on hot days than a plowed or even planted fields. Next summer, observe where the hawks circle in the thermals. They do not circle above forested areas because forests don't have hot air rising above them. Only if the forests are on slopes, the hawks ride the upslope winds, but on flat terrain you won't see them over forests.
....Masochists, or otherwise differing defintions...
Let's just use the definitions of most normal people and not perverts. I suspect you would not enjoy having pain inflicted on you unless you are indeed area pervert, which I doubt. Humans of all cultures have an amazing sense of justice and fairness.
(...What if it was "good" to kill someone?.....)
There are reasons to kill someone, such as self defense or the defense of loved ones. Animals defend their young also. Killing and murder are NOT the same. However, I know of no culture that says it is good to murder. It is amazing how congruent the lists of "good" and "bad" are, across diverse cultures and people groups. There are differences, of course but they are usually on peripheral issues. Murder, theft, lying, adultery, rape, pride and others are usually on "bad" lists of most people. Love, kindness, truthfulness, mercy, forgiveness, courage and others are on the "good" list of all.
(....Even while under extreme duress? What about intoxication, or other form of incapacitation?.....)
If people followed this "law" I mentioned, they would not put others under extreme duress and they would not inflict their drunken behavior on others. Most, but of course not all incapacitation of people occurs at the hands of others, either deliberately or through uncaring negligence.
(....How do you mete out punishment without violating your first sentence....)
Punishment is built into the law. You simply get back what you have first given. The persons at the receiving end get the right to reward you or punish you and are also subject to the same rules. If you steal from someone, they have a right to an equal value of your stuff. If you injure their finger, they do not then get the right to cut off your hand. The intent of the eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth was to prevent the endless escalation of feuds which is a human tendency.
The problem of course is that few if anybody at all follows this simple law. That is why billions are spent on law making and enforcement. Unfortunately, piling law upon law doesn't make people obey these laws. The sad fact is that most people obey laws because they might get caught and punished, not because they really want to obey. It has been shown that increasing the likelyhood of catching lawbreakers is far more effective to get compliance with laws than to dramatically increase the punishment.
...but on a computer in your house....
They'd first have to get a hold of the computer(s) in my house. That might be easier to do in a criminal case without warning, but be difficult or impossible in a civil case. Putting a new hard drive into the thing would be easy and then WHO would prove anything at all? Besides, there are a number of users of my computers, mostly kids, not neccessarily my own. In any case, kids are ineligible to make any sort of legally binding agreements. In the end it would still be their word against mine and the jury would not really have any trouble to decide whom to believe if the accusers did not have any evidence to support their allegations, especially if there was no evidence on the computer.
......I challenege you to, in 200 words or less, write a law that defines murder.....
You shall not do anything (including murder) to someone else, which you would not like done to you. If you know to do good and do it not you have likewise broken the law. In the event you do not keep these rules all the time, whatever you have done to others will be done to you and you will receive no mercy because you are not merciful to others.
The above are 70 words and should work very well for us all if obeyed by all.
......the user didn't check the "I agree" button....
I'd like to see a 100 lawers prove in court WHO clicked a particular mouse button on a certain computer. If the accused denies having clicked anything, how can anybody say otherwise? It is one person's word against another. Until they invent pushbuttons that identify the pusher, these EULAs can never be used to hold anybody responsible -- not the user and not the software maker. Some computers are used by a rather large number of people.
...There's no way to prove that the user actually accepted the license....
Even more importantly, there is no way to prove WHO clicked the mouse. There is no wy to prove that the person who clicked is even eligible to enter into a legally binding agreement. It might be a 12 year old kid.
....but the protection system is installed so that you can't decline the EULA, then rip the CD....
Is it not instructive that all this DRM crap on music CDs only works on Windows? Does that make Mac OSX and Linux machines DMCA violators in that they circumvent the DRM?
....I'm under the impression that EULA are documents which state how the user can use a piece of software.....
No EULA of any kind restricts you in any way as to what you can or cannot do with it legally. You can flush it down the toilet, burn it in your stove, sell or give it to your neighbor or install it on your computer.
It is copyright law ONLY that determines what you may or may not do -- namely make copies without the permission of the copyright holder -- copies that is -- that go beyond the bounds of fair use clearly defined in that same copyright law.
....Only one way to play the songs and not get the rootkit.....
But that would be stealing them if you did not pay for the music. Just play the songs on a Mac, Linux machine, disable autostart on Windows, hold down the shift key or play on a plain audio CD player. Ripping the songs you paid for to your iPod or other portable is perfectly legal.
There are many HONEST ways to not get the rootkit. People stealing music is the reson why music companies go through all these, eventually futile, expenses and now legal troubles and install various kinds of DRM malware.
....That's what the EULA is for; to protect them.....
Why does everybodye here always assume tht any kind of EULA is an enforcable contract? To have a contract it has to be unambiguously established WHO the parties to it really are. A mouse click does NOT prove that in any sort of way. Minors, which are ineligible to enter into binding contracts or agreements legally enforceable, constitute a large fraction, if not the majority of persons who might install the Sony or most other DRM malware.
The existence of a so called EULA will not make a difference at all, since all so called EULAs are not worth the paper they are written on or price the electrons on the screen. Why are SIGNATURES or even Notary Public witnesses required of all REAL, binding contracts and agreements? Why do those who appear before the notary have to show ID in order to PROVE who they are?
Sony has broken the LAW and that hopefully will cost them a pile of money. Maybe they and others adding dangerous DRM malware to their products will finally learn that DRM is worthless and will never stop copyright law violations. A good product at a fair price has a much better chance of achieving their goal of maximizing their bottom line.
The iTunes-Ipod has pointed the way this could happen. DRM was forced upon Apple by the ignorant music providers. Apple tries to make the DRM as benign as they dared and still satisfy the **AA folks. I think that paid for iTunes downloads would not be significantly less, but perhaps be higher, if Apple were to be allowed to offer the music in plain mp3 format. This is because then all the other music players besides the iPod could also easily play downloads from iTunes store. The sales of the iPod would not likely suffer either since it is by far the coolest music player on the market and would still be the only one that works seamlessly with the iTunes service.
.....As long as DRM is implimented by humans, it will always be cracked, however, only by a small percentage of the population.....
Yes, but it only takes ONE geek to remove the DRM and then it can be and WILL be made available to any Joe who can click a mouse, regardless of how many laws are passed and the army of lawyers hired by **AA's of this world. Once the horse is out of the barn, all the locks on the latter will not get it back in. The Internet is not controlled by any one government and its laws.
The Disney's of this world will have to get used to this brave new digital reality, just as the horse and buggy makers eventually adapted to the automobile. In the past these content providers figured out over time how to make money from the CD, VCR and DVD technologies. I am confident that in 10 or 15 years from now, DRM will be a nightmare that went away after they have figured out how to make the of money from the new ways of distributing their wares. People ARE willing to pay for content that is convenient, not over-priced and allows them to watch and listen wherever, whenever and on whatever gadget that happens to be in vogue at any given time. The Ipod and Itunes is plenty of proof of that.
... it would force all manufacturers to recognize signals embedded in the analog stream,....
It is very difficult to put any kind of a signal into an analog stream that cannot be filtered out with relatively simple circuitry that almost anybody who can operate a soldering iron can build. The MacroVision analog "protection", for example, can be stripped out with a simple re-sychronization circuit for example. If this stupid bill becomes law, there will be many places on the web where simple instructions can be had how to negate this analog signal. Analog signals as a whole do not lend themselves very well to the "protection racket" in the same way that digital signals do.
.....People replaced their analog VHS for digital DVD because of the extras....
Convenience and ease of use are usually the bigger reason to upgrade to a technology that is basically the same as its predecessor. Vinyl LP and CDs both convey prerecorded music. For most listeners the quality difference between the two was not the deciding factor, but ease of use, portability and much smaller storage space needed for a given amount of music. We are seeing these same factors again in the runaway popularity of the ipod digital music players. However this time " buy all your music again" gravy train left the recording industry in the station, because most users of these new devices are re-coding the music they have already bought into the new format themselves.
For video, the VCR quality was and still is sufficient for most consumers, but again the convenience of random access and smaller form factor is what persuaded the great majority of users to switch to DVDs. The HD format doesn't bring any of these compelling incentives to switch and just as you said, most existing material in the vaults is not that much superior in sharpness than the existing DVDs already provide. The new video iPods and other small video players along with easy to use software, like iTunes, will again foster convenient means by which consumers will be able to transfer content they have already bought on DVD or VCR to these.
Current copyright laws allows users to do this. The DMCA and DRM and any other laws the media companies might bribe the polititians to pass, will not be able to stop this. No law can nor ever has prevented people from getting what they want. Write your Congress persons to not vote in laws that are useless anyway and make it artificially more difficult for everyone to enjoy the content they have already paid hard earned money to the movie companies for.
.....all the land will be owned by corporations.....
Don't forget that all corporations are owned and run by mortal people though. Bill gates owns a big chunk of Microsoft, but after his heart stops he will own just as much as the poorest homeless person. In our country, all land is still owned by the King (government) as it has been in many cultures for centuries. The government rents you the land (property tax) for a certain payment each year. You stop paying the rent and the government throws you off its land. Even the big coprporations have to rent their land from the King. The notion of who ultimately owns or has free use of the land was the biggest conflict between the Europeans and the native Americans.
With most material things, ownership is esablished by a person creating the object. If I build a table or chair they are mine and I can sell trade those outright for a set of clothes or whatever. With land that doesn't hold, because nobody is able to create land. It is just there and has in western culture, been claimed by whoever got there first and more importantly has the power to defend that claim from any newcomers. Since governments have the power they charge "protection money" from whoever pays them a certain amount for the use of the land.
......If they upgrade, they'll have to buy all new stuff......
That's a big IF! Current video, just like today's average stereo and even buggy, virus prone Windows, is plenty good enough quality for millions of current users. Any HD TV upgrading incentive is nowhere nearly as compelling as the transition from VCR to DVD or from vinyl LPs to audio CD were about 20 years ago. Both vinyls and VCR tapes, for example were subject to wear and reduced quality, each time they were played. There was nothing even the most careful handling would help to elimiate this problem. The optical technologies removed this large disadvantage. In the case of VCR vs DVD the fact that DVDs don't need to be rewound and are random access also was a very compelling reason for users to upgrade. By millions of users upgrading, the media companies made gobs of money from re-selling the contents of their vaults back again to consumers of the new playback devices.
The only advantage I can see the new, expensive HD format has over the current DVD, is higher resolution. None of the previous very compelling reasons to upgrade apply. A conventional DVD played back on a big screen TV is plenty good enough for most consumers. This is also true of the present broadcast TV progrmming. HD TV does not reduce in any way the frequency nor obnoxiousness of the innumerable commercials on most channels nor improve on the content itself. For a long time, manufacturers of large screen monitors will have to provide connectivity to existing signal sources. Not many consumers have a desire to replace their DVD collection just for a clearer picture alone.
.....Therefore since we don't have free will and are controlled by him.....
Every argument about free will or controlled destiny I have ever heard always revolves around the idea of time, time that is in the sense that we know it, past, present and future, the linear sort of time we now experience. If we project our time sense on God, who created time, just as part of everything else, it creates the dilemna theologians and philosophers have argued and written scholarly tomes on.
The God of the Bible inhabits eternity, (Isaiah 57:15) outside of time. The reason God made man in His own image is to have communion and community with someone much like Himself. The foundational truths go back to the creation of man.
In Genesis 1:26 we read: "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion...."
The two words "image" and "likeness" are distinct Hebrew words. The former is akin to the image indelibly stamped on a coin. In the life of the coin, the image may get scratched, but it is still usually easily recognizable even after being in circulation a long time. Every human still bears this image and it manifests itself in our own creativity, appreciation for beauty, an innate sense of justice and the universal, otherwise unexplainable urge to worship, religion and sense of longing for a reality higher than every day life. That is why God prohibits murder; people are of value as His creatures.
The second word, "likeness" is immediately followed by the "dominion" which means authority to act as a representative of the one who grants the authority -- in this case God. Jesus gave us little glimpse of the kind of authority over nature man was given, when He calmed the wind and waves - to the great astonishment of those who witnessed this "miracle".
However, in order for anyone to be entrusted with authority, they themselves must recognize the authority they are under. So God gave man a little test, as to whether this creature would be WILLING to submit to the final authority and governance of God. Because that first Man did not submit to God's authority, he was no longer fit to be in God's presence and also became unable to govern this planet. Man has been and still is at odds with God's Earth and with one another. Man lost the "likeness" of God, the ability to act as God does on His behalf.
My previous post outlined in a basic way, what God did about mankind's predicament.
......So...if he is going to invervene why make humanity go through such horrors.....
All humans have to finally believe it what He has been telling us and what the humn race has demonstrated for as long as there are historical records, summed up best by the prophet Jeremeiah - 17:9
Humans have not and cannot live in peace with each other and have amply demostrated this throughout all of history. There have always been and are still those who say that people are inherently good and can rule their lives and the planet without their Creator, directly contradicting what God tells us in many other places of his word to us. We were made to live in harmony with His creation and under the loving guidance of God, but universally have rejected His ways and by unbelief gone our own way of rebellion against His authority. Because of this rebellion, death, eternal separation from all that is good, God Himself, is the inevitable result.
God left the eternal dimensions and came as a little baby, entered time and space, limited Himself to the same limitations we humans live under. Soon we will once again be celebrating this event, where He, Jesus, the Lord of the Universe entered our World, born in a lowly stable. He grew up to show what God had in mind when he created Man in His own image, living in close communion with and under the power of God. He was the only man who could challenge His enemies to prove even ONE wrong thing He had done.
As representatives of all of humanity, the Jews, right there in the city of Jerusalem, turned Jesus over to the Roman Government to be crucified. He suffered the fate that awaits every human: separation from God. However, because this God-Man Jesus never sinned, He could not remain dead, but conquered humanity's worst enemy, death itself. Not just physical death, but eternal death, separation from God and all that is good.
Right now, in our world, there is both good and evil, love and hate, inextricably intertwined. Every invention and technology is used both in helpful and harmful ways. The terrible weapons that exist now, have made it possible for mankind to wipe itself out. God is going to allow humanity to get to the very brink of extinction, so we, more stubborn than a mule, rebellious humans, will finally understand that we are incapable of living independently from Him, our Creator.
This mixing of good and evil in one world will not always be. There eventually will be two places, totally and eternally separate. One will be where there is nothing evil, called heaven, and another, called hell, where there will be nothing good.
Until then He, Jesus, offers to every person who BELIEVES peace with God and life with Him, now and beyond the grave. Your choice to believe or not will determine in which of the two places you will finally end up. The choice is up to you, based on faith.