Indeed, legos will keep the little ones occupied for a long time. It is also surprising for how long the old fashioned slinky toy will fascinate them. Getting the thing to go down a set of stairs over and over again also gives the kids some needed excersise on a day when they can't go outside to ride their bicycle.
... replacement bulbs for those projectors are as much as $350...
That seems expensive, but these bulbs tend to last a while. In my projector they claim 3000 hours. That makes it quite reasonable, especially since we only use the projector for family movie shows from DVD and use the regular TV for watching most everything else. Who needs to watch all those commercials or the news on a huge screen!
Actually, theoretically, you may not be violating the DMCA but copyright law. If you copy the DVD to your computer's HD so it is more convenient for you, make sure that the copies do not go anywhere else. You will probably be safe under fair use.
A large HD will hold quite a few DVD's and allow you to keep the originals, which are quite fragile, safely stored in their boxes.
I have dedicated an old purple iMac with a big drive (120G) for music playback. The iMac is in my office and beams the sound to my stereo in the living room via a 2.4Ghz sender/receiver pair. I can control the iMac with my laptop via my regular wireless network setup using timbuktu which is cross platform.
For video I use the laptop with a DLP projector and another 2.4Ghz transmitter sending only the sound from the laptop to the stereo. We only watch movies from DVD's on a huge screen this way. For regular TV the DirecTV system is used with an ordinary TV set, mostly for watching the news. Who needs the news on a big screen?
True Christians are not homophobic, but do believe it is imperative to distinguish between the sin and the sinner. God is not pleased with the death of a sinner, but that he should repent, that is turn away from the wrong actions. It is also true that a man shall reap what he sows. If someone breaks the laws and defrauds others, he should be made to repay as much as possible. Unfortunately, restitution is not high one the agenda of our so called justice system. Putting someone in a place where they are kept warm, dry, reasonably well fed and even suitably entertained does not really help the victimes in any way, but costs society huge sums each year.
It just happens to be a fact that human beings are incurably religious. Every culture has some sort of religion. Atheism is a religion that doesn't purport to believe in a God outside of humanity, but atheists are gods unto themselves. Most of them believe in the religion of humanism which holds that man is god.
There is no human on this planet that doesn't have some sort of belief or life philosophy or life view that governs all of their behavior. These things can be lumped under the term: "religion".
You apparently never read the flood account carefully. Its says:
"the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened"
The fountains of the great deep is the key to the source of most of the water, not the rain.
From seimic wave propagation studies underlying the large eurasian landmass there is evidence that there are immense quantities of water in the mantle of the Earth. The crust of the Earth, including the oceans are very thin in comparison to the mantle. The estimated amounts of water from these studies exceeds the amount in the oceans many times over. We do not know what immense forces squeezed the Earth like a sponge to release some of this water onto the surface. However when the squeezing eased, the water was reabsorbed into the mantle and is still there today. A close encounter from an Earth-sized or bigger object from the far reaches of our galaxy could subject our planet to enough stress to do this and also cause the axis of the earth to shift causing the initiation of seasons and a big drop in the average temperature.
From the account in Genesis 9 it seems that the existence of a rainbow was a new thing that had not been seen before. God uses it as a reminder of His promise never to destroy the world by water again. If rainbows were common or even existed at all before the flood, why does God give mankind this symbol of peace?
There is much evidence that the Earth was much warmer at one time, uniformly tropical, even at the poles. Tropical fossils and fossil fuels are found in the now arctic areas of our Planet.
What really happened ages ago is really a lot of guesswork, because no man was there and many of the dating assumptions are just that, but no one KNOWS for sure if those assumptions are really correct. Assumptions is just the scientific name for faith.
Indeed it is a scam, because in most socialistic schemes, the poor people who should actually get some of the redistributed wealth don't get much or any of it. Experience has shown that most of the official aid money is sucked up by the respective governments or others in the distribution chain who don't deserve or really need it. The poor people and especially the children are so often used to extort money from people by socialistic, well meaning schemers, but the ones who should be getting the help are left in the cold. Where do the governments of these "poor" countries get all the money to buy weapons?
No, they'll just tax any family that has more than one car, tax your SUV or RV more, make you tear out your fireplace or tax it, charge an extra tax on each KWhr of electricity you use above a certain limit, make you ride the bus if there is one, have a remote controlled thermostsat in your house that is set at 65degF and fine you big time if you tamper with it and send all the money they collect from all the extra taxes and fees to the UN. At least with Bush in power, we will be spared all that for another four years.
...Arctic warming poses some serious dangers to our costal areas...
That is a bunch of BS based on junk science.
Fossil fuels and other fossil evidence from all arctic areas shows that they were once tropical and at the same time the level of the oceans was a lot less than it is today. River beds of the Amazon, Missippi and other large rivers extend far beyond the continental shelf, showing that these rivers once flowed there before the ocean rose to its present level.
Where was all this water? It was in the warm global atmosphere as vapor. A hurricane, filled with warm, moist tropical air shows the incredible amounts of water warm air can hold and dump again when it cools. Now that the earth is so much cooler than it was back when fossils and fossil fuels were made, it can only hold a small fraction of that water in the atmosphere.
...designed to give all citizens of Earth a better quality of life....
How do you know this thing will give *anyone* a better life? That is how the proponents are selling it, but the salesmanship is based on the assumption that global warming is bad. That assumption has no proof. The existence of fossils and fossil fuels in the frozen wastelands of the planet shows that those places once were VERY warm, somwhere in the range of the optimum for life, like the temperature of the blood of warm blooded creatures. Where did the carbon in all these fossil fuels come from? Fossils are the remains of living creature thriving on an Earth that was without arctic wastes and torrid, dry deserts.
Actually, modern coal fired power plants put out very little pollution, other than CO2.
Everybody assumes 1) that manmade CO2 causes global warming and 2) that such warming is bad.
Where was all that carbon before it got locked up in the coal and oil? All fossil fuels came from living things that once grew in unimaginable abundance on a very warm Earth. Much of this fossil fuel is under the frozen wastes of the arctic or under torrid deserts. There is also evidence that the ocean levels were much lower than they are today, more than the 200 or so feet that scientist tell us the oceans might rise if all that ice melted. A hurricane demonstrates the incredible amount of water that warm air can hold and then dump as the temperature drops again. All the water and more, now locked in ice, would just be in the warm tropical air.
A uniform tropical climate for the whole planet, like it once was, would be very different, but not neccessarily bad.
Bush made the right decision in rejecting this junk science. This election shows that the majority of the voters in this country agree with Mr. Bush, whether the media elite, the hollywood crowd and others of like mind like it or not. The most fun part of watching the election night returns was to see the glum faced media types squirm as the returns gave Bush another 4 years and threw some leading liberals, like Daschle out on their ear.
So why should the US pay for those growing pains? Many enviro nuts are big hypocrites. They, just like all the rest of us expect the lights to come on when they flick the switch on the wall, fill up their one of three or four cars per family with fuel and commute for 2 hours with one person in the car.
Besides, everybody is assuming that global warming is bad. The earth was once warm enough to grow tropical plants in the arctic and at the same time the oceans were lower. A warmer Earth is very different from today, but not necessarily bad. Where do you think all the carbon was originally, that living things converted into fossil fuels?
They soon will be developed enough to contribute significantly.
Besides, what's wrong with a warmer planet. There is evidence that the Earth was once significantly WARMER, enough to grow tropical plants in now arctic areas and at the same time the ocean levels were much LESS than they are today.
Kyoto is a lot of BS and I am glad that Bush got re-elected and is able to put a stop to this junk science BS. The Earth is indeed getting warmer so that is GREAT!
..."secure" access on your own personal property...
You mean like "secure" movies, x-boxes, playstations music downloads etc? There are NO external means to prevent anyone from doing what they want to do if they really want to do it. Laws certainly don't. That is why the RIAA and MPAA and others are having such a hard time preventing file sharing and other copyright violations. Guns are mechanical, and as such are EASILY modified to bypass all the electronic crap. Making that illegal isn't going to stop it from being done.
It is only because of liars and lawyers that law has become so complex. At one time the word of a man was his sacred bond and million dollar deals were sealed with a handshake.
Someone stole my gun with my fingerprint recorded in it and it is registered to me. A killer tempoarily bybasses the mechanical trigger lock and murders someone, carefully makes sure that his fingerprints are wiped off. The cops find the weapon which is once again restored by the killer to normal "secure"operation and I get charged with murder!
Nothing that must be easy to use can ever be secured against misuse.
If the gun has been stolen, presumably the thief has figured out how to bypass the fingerprint security. At some point, the fingerprint signal has to be translated into a mechanical response to fire the gun. Just rip out all the electronic crap and substitute a simple mechanical bypass to convert the fancy secured gun back into an ordinary mechanical one.
I can see criminal gangs specializing in converting "secure" guns back into ordinary ones. After all hardware hackers modify x-boxes, playstations, cable and satellite boxes to bypass security and software hackers bypass security on movies and other "protected" content. There is really NO protection against a determined and clever evil doer.
The original article also states such uses as the ignition on a car. I would never like to have any authentication system that is not at least as reliable and easy to repair as an ordinary lock with a key. That system has worked for a long time and is likely to work for a long time to come. Being locked out of a car because the battery on the remote control device or in the car went dead is something that does happen. That is why they also give you a key.
Security is always a tradeoff between simplicity which usually translated to reliability and harder unauthorized access. Most people don't keep their bread in a safe, but only items of great value to them or potential thieves. To proetect highly valuable data or access, biometrics and a passcode is probably a good way to go, but to go to that trouble and expense to prevent someone from using the word processor on my computer is overkill. A well chosen, yet memorable password to a securely encrypted directory containing important stuff is much better.
If access to this important information is also needed by someone else in the event you get run over by a cement truck, they would not be able to get in unless their biometric was also part of the security data base. If this data is not there then your loved ones might be forever locked out, where you might be able to still tell them the password before you draw your last breath. Like most things in life, there always positives and negatives to things.
...no elected politician is trying to implement such a ban...
Since gun ownership is a constitutionally protected right, it would take a LOT of polititians to change that. Why was this gun owner protection enshrined in the constitution in the first place? Was it so ordinary people could feel secure against ordinary criminals, be able to go hunting or was it seen as a defense against a criminal government, like the British crown at the time?
If gun ownership is no longer needed or desireable then if the vast majority of the nation would agree to this, the constitution could be changed. Barring that, those who want to get rid of guns should just live with the fact that people have guns.
Actually solar energy at noon is about 4Kw per square meter which is about 10.7 square feet. The area you give for Arizona = 2.95x10^13 square meters times 4Kw= 1.18x10^14 KW. If you assume only 4 hours of sunshine a day, that comes to 4.72x10^14 kwhrs divided by 673 billion = 701 times the energy output of all nuclear energy.
That thermonuclear fusion furnace we call the sun sends a LOT of power our way and the maker thereof doesn't send us an energy bill.
...as you would need to cover the whole damned Earth in mirrors...
That is BS. If the solar energy falling on the Mojave Desert could be efficiently converted, stored and transported, there is enough of it to supply the entire US several times over. The sun, at noon deposits about 4kw of heat energy on each square meter. We have the technology already to do all this, but pumping oil out of the ground is still a lot cheaper.
It would be interesting to see your post redone using thermonuclear fusion. There is a thermonuclear fusion reactor operating 24/7 about 93 million miles from here. Why don't we just use that? If the solar energy that falls on the Shara Desert or many other deserts of the world could be harvested, stored and transported, the world's energy needs would be met for as long as anyone alive today could even imagine.
Right, and your country doesn't use oil and you ride a bicycle and there is nothing in your house that was not at some point in a truck that uses fuel made from oil.
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Indeed, legos will keep the little ones occupied for a long time. It is also surprising for how long the old fashioned slinky toy will fascinate them. Getting the thing to go down a set of stairs over and over again also gives the kids some needed excersise on a day when they can't go outside to ride their bicycle.
... replacement bulbs for those projectors are as much as $350...
That seems expensive, but these bulbs tend to last a while. In my projector they claim 3000 hours. That makes it quite reasonable, especially since we only use the projector for family movie shows from DVD and use the regular TV for watching most everything else. Who needs to watch all those commercials or the news on a huge screen!
...violate the DMCA...
Actually, theoretically, you may not be violating the DMCA but copyright law. If you copy the DVD to your computer's HD so it is more convenient for you, make sure that the copies do not go anywhere else. You will probably be safe under fair use.
A large HD will hold quite a few DVD's and allow you to keep the originals, which are quite fragile, safely stored in their boxes.
I have dedicated an old purple iMac with a big drive (120G) for music playback. The iMac is in my office and beams the sound to my stereo in the living room via a 2.4Ghz sender/receiver pair. I can control the iMac with my laptop via my regular wireless network setup using timbuktu which is cross platform.
For video I use the laptop with a DLP projector and another 2.4Ghz transmitter sending only the sound from the laptop to the stereo. We only watch movies from DVD's on a huge screen this way. For regular TV the DirecTV system is used with an ordinary TV set, mostly for watching the news. Who needs the news on a big screen?
...The same homophobic people...
True Christians are not homophobic, but do believe it is imperative to distinguish between the sin and the sinner. God is not pleased with the death of a sinner, but that he should repent, that is turn away from the wrong actions. It is also true that a man shall reap what he sows. If someone breaks the laws and defrauds others, he should be made to repay as much as possible. Unfortunately, restitution is not high one the agenda of our so called justice system. Putting someone in a place where they are kept warm, dry, reasonably well fed and even suitably entertained does not really help the victimes in any way, but costs society huge sums each year.
...cast a vote based on religious reasons...
It just happens to be a fact that human beings are incurably religious. Every culture has some sort of religion. Atheism is a religion that doesn't purport to believe in a God outside of humanity, but atheists are gods unto themselves. Most of them believe in the religion of humanism which holds that man is god.
There is no human on this planet that doesn't have some sort of belief or life philosophy or life view that governs all of their behavior. These things can be lumped under the term: "religion".
...It didn't happen. Get over it...
You apparently never read the flood account carefully. Its says:
"the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened"
The fountains of the great deep is the key to the source of most of the water, not the rain.
From seimic wave propagation studies underlying the large eurasian landmass there is evidence that there are immense quantities of water in the mantle of the Earth. The crust of the Earth, including the oceans are very thin in comparison to the mantle. The estimated amounts of water from these studies exceeds the amount in the oceans many times over. We do not know what immense forces squeezed the Earth like a sponge to release some of this water onto the surface. However when the squeezing eased, the water was reabsorbed into the mantle and is still there today. A close encounter from an Earth-sized or bigger object from the far reaches of our galaxy could subject our planet to enough stress to do this and also cause the axis of the earth to shift causing the initiation of seasons and a big drop in the average temperature.
From the account in Genesis 9 it seems that the existence of a rainbow was a new thing that had not been seen before. God uses it as a reminder of His promise never to destroy the world by water again. If rainbows were common or even existed at all before the flood, why does God give mankind this symbol of peace?
There is much evidence that the Earth was much warmer at one time, uniformly tropical, even at the poles. Tropical fossils and fossil fuels are found in the now arctic areas of our Planet.
What really happened ages ago is really a lot of guesswork, because no man was there and many of the dating assumptions are just that, but no one KNOWS for sure if those assumptions are really correct. Assumptions is just the scientific name for faith.
...scam to redistribute wealth...
Indeed it is a scam, because in most socialistic schemes, the poor people who should actually get some of the redistributed wealth don't get much or any of it. Experience has shown that most of the official aid money is sucked up by the respective governments or others in the distribution chain who don't deserve or really need it. The poor people and especially the children are so often used to extort money from people by socialistic, well meaning schemers, but the ones who should be getting the help are left in the cold. Where do the governments of these "poor" countries get all the money to buy weapons?
...Arrest people for driving somewhere ...
No, they'll just tax any family that has more than one car, tax your SUV or RV more, make you tear out your fireplace or tax it, charge an extra tax on each KWhr of electricity you use above a certain limit, make you ride the bus if there is one, have a remote controlled thermostsat in your house that is set at 65degF and fine you big time if you tamper with it and send all the money they collect from all the extra taxes and fees to the UN. At least with Bush in power, we will be spared all that for another four years.
...Arctic warming poses some serious dangers to our costal areas...
That is a bunch of BS based on junk science.
Fossil fuels and other fossil evidence from all arctic areas shows that they were once tropical and at the same time the level of the oceans was a lot less than it is today. River beds of the Amazon, Missippi and other large rivers extend far beyond the continental shelf, showing that these rivers once flowed there before the ocean rose to its present level.
Where was all this water? It was in the warm global atmosphere as vapor. A hurricane, filled with warm, moist tropical air shows the incredible amounts of water warm air can hold and dump again when it cools. Now that the earth is so much cooler than it was back when fossils and fossil fuels were made, it can only hold a small fraction of that water in the atmosphere.
...designed to give all citizens of Earth a better quality of life....
How do you know this thing will give *anyone* a better life? That is how the proponents are selling it, but the salesmanship is based on the assumption that global warming is bad. That assumption has no proof. The existence of fossils and fossil fuels in the frozen wastelands of the planet shows that those places once were VERY warm, somwhere in the range of the optimum for life, like the temperature of the blood of warm blooded creatures. Where did the carbon in all these fossil fuels come from? Fossils are the remains of living creature thriving on an Earth that was without arctic wastes and torrid, dry deserts.
...If you want to reduce CO2, ban coal...
Actually, modern coal fired power plants put out very little pollution, other than CO2.
Everybody assumes 1) that manmade CO2 causes global warming and 2) that such warming is bad.
Where was all that carbon before it got locked up in the coal and oil? All fossil fuels came from living things that once grew in unimaginable abundance on a very warm Earth. Much of this fossil fuel is under the frozen wastes of the arctic or under torrid deserts. There is also evidence that the ocean levels were much lower than they are today, more than the 200 or so feet that scientist tell us the oceans might rise if all that ice melted. A hurricane demonstrates the incredible amount of water that warm air can hold and then dump as the temperature drops again. All the water and more, now locked in ice, would just be in the warm tropical air.
A uniform tropical climate for the whole planet, like it once was, would be very different, but not neccessarily bad.
...political leader makes his decisions...
Bush made the right decision in rejecting this junk science. This election shows that the majority of the voters in this country agree with Mr. Bush, whether the media elite, the hollywood crowd and others of like mind like it or not. The most fun part of watching the election night returns was to see the glum faced media types squirm as the returns gave Bush another 4 years and threw some leading liberals, like Daschle out on their ear.
...there are gonna be growing pains...
So why should the US pay for those growing pains? Many enviro nuts are big hypocrites. They, just like all the rest of us expect the lights to come on when they flick the switch on the wall, fill up their one of three or four cars per family with fuel and commute for 2 hours with one person in the car.
Besides, everybody is assuming that global warming is bad. The earth was once warm enough to grow tropical plants in the arctic and at the same time the oceans were lower. A warmer Earth is very different from today, but not necessarily bad. Where do you think all the carbon was originally, that living things converted into fossil fuels?
...China isn't developed enough yet...
They soon will be developed enough to contribute significantly.
Besides, what's wrong with a warmer planet. There is evidence that the Earth was once significantly WARMER, enough to grow tropical plants in now arctic areas and at the same time the ocean levels were much LESS than they are today.
Kyoto is a lot of BS and I am glad that Bush got re-elected and is able to put a stop to this junk science BS. The Earth is indeed getting warmer so that is GREAT!
..."secure" access on your own personal property...
You mean like "secure" movies, x-boxes, playstations music downloads etc? There are NO external means to prevent anyone from doing what they want to do if they really want to do it. Laws certainly don't. That is why the RIAA and MPAA and others are having such a hard time preventing file sharing and other copyright violations. Guns are mechanical, and as such are EASILY modified to bypass all the electronic crap. Making that illegal isn't going to stop it from being done.
... the complexity of contract law....
It is only because of liars and lawyers that law has become so complex. At one time the word of a man was his sacred bond and million dollar deals were sealed with a handshake.
.... It only locks the trigger...
Someone stole my gun with my fingerprint recorded in it and it is registered to me. A killer tempoarily bybasses the mechanical trigger lock and murders someone, carefully makes sure that his fingerprints are wiped off. The cops find the weapon which is once again restored by the killer to normal "secure"operation and I get charged with murder!
Nothing that must be easy to use can ever be secured against misuse.
If the gun has been stolen, presumably the thief has figured out how to bypass the fingerprint security. At some point, the fingerprint signal has to be translated into a mechanical response to fire the gun. Just rip out all the electronic crap and substitute a simple mechanical bypass to convert the fancy secured gun back into an ordinary mechanical one.
I can see criminal gangs specializing in converting "secure" guns back into ordinary ones. After all hardware hackers modify x-boxes, playstations, cable and satellite boxes to bypass security and software hackers bypass security on movies and other "protected" content. There is really NO protection against a determined and clever evil doer.
...a thing that might go wrong...
The original article also states such uses as the ignition on a car. I would never like to have any authentication system that is not at least as reliable and easy to repair as an ordinary lock with a key. That system has worked for a long time and is likely to work for a long time to come. Being locked out of a car because the battery on the remote control device or in the car went dead is something that does happen. That is why they also give you a key.
Security is always a tradeoff between simplicity which usually translated to reliability and harder unauthorized access. Most people don't keep their bread in a safe, but only items of great value to them or potential thieves. To proetect highly valuable data or access, biometrics and a passcode is probably a good way to go, but to go to that trouble and expense to prevent someone from using the word processor on my computer is overkill. A well chosen, yet memorable password to a securely encrypted directory containing important stuff is much better.
If access to this important information is also needed by someone else in the event you get run over by a cement truck, they would not be able to get in unless their biometric was also part of the security data base. If this data is not there then your loved ones might be forever locked out, where you might be able to still tell them the password before you draw your last breath. Like most things in life, there always positives and negatives to things.
...no elected politician is trying to implement such a ban...
Since gun ownership is a constitutionally protected right, it would take a LOT of polititians to change that. Why was this gun owner protection enshrined in the constitution in the first place? Was it so ordinary people could feel secure against ordinary criminals, be able to go hunting or was it seen as a defense against a criminal government, like the British crown at the time?
If gun ownership is no longer needed or desireable then if the vast majority of the nation would agree to this, the constitution could be changed. Barring that, those who want to get rid of guns should just live with the fact that people have guns.
...1 kilowatt per square mile...
Actually solar energy at noon is about 4Kw per square meter which is about 10.7 square feet. The area you give for Arizona =
2.95x10^13 square meters times 4Kw= 1.18x10^14 KW. If you assume only 4 hours of sunshine a day, that comes to 4.72x10^14 kwhrs divided by 673 billion = 701 times the energy output of all nuclear energy.
That thermonuclear fusion furnace we call the sun sends a LOT of power our way and the maker thereof doesn't send us an energy bill.
...as you would need to cover the whole damned Earth in mirrors...
That is BS. If the solar energy falling on the Mojave Desert could be efficiently converted, stored and transported, there is enough of it to supply the entire US several times over. The sun, at noon deposits about 4kw of heat energy on each square meter. We have the technology already to do all this, but pumping oil out of the ground is still a lot cheaper.
It would be interesting to see your post redone using thermonuclear fusion. There is a thermonuclear fusion reactor operating 24/7 about 93 million miles from here. Why don't we just use that? If the solar energy that falls on the Shara Desert or many other deserts of the world could be harvested, stored and transported, the world's energy needs would be met for as long as anyone alive today could even imagine.
...reason behind this war is oil....
Right, and your country doesn't use oil and you ride a bicycle and there is nothing in your house that was not at some point in a truck that uses fuel made from oil.
You are a stinking hypocrite!