Proof is not possible for anything except logical proofs given a set of symbolic representations and axioms (e.g. mathematics) and even then there are some things which are true in that system but not provable [Godel]. Instead a theory such as revolution can be accepted as being the most likely model for a set of events based on a preponderance of evidence and the ability for it to be falsified should conflicting evidence be found [Popper].
So when someone who does not accept evolution as a likely explanation says it is not proven, then this is true. But then next to nothing is proven except some parts of mathematics.
Arguably it was the combination of the collection of territories in the 30 years following the Spanish American War and WW1, not WW2 that put the USA ahead. Due to this (and due to georagphy to some extent) the USA was able to be such a decisive force in WW2.
Any research performed by the government is always in the public domain.
I think you'll find that many governments do a lot of research (e.g. into super duper weapons) that is definitely not in the public domain.
In any case the majority of the research that is not carried out by pharam companies that is subsequently licenced is probably done in universities, not by the federal government.
As important as improved fuel efficiency is the improvement of traffic flows and reduction of total distances travelled as this impacts all cars by reducing fuel efficiency per mile of all cars apart from electric and some hybirds.
Reducing congestion is difficult, though, as people will tend to drive up to their maximum congestion tolerance level - i.e. the point at which the commute gets too tedious. Building additional roads works for a period of time but may simply encourage more people to drive on them until such time as the commute tedium threshold is reached again, at which point there are more total cars stuck in congestion. I am not sure there is really a solution, except that if congested commutes are short the total number of congested miles is shorter. Changing junctions to reduce cars bunching up, which can cause congestion miles away, would help. Even changing traffic light timing can help.
The logic is that children going to school in the dark are more vulnerable to accidents as drivers in the dark don't see the kids until after they are under their wheels. The actual increased risk might not be that high and might be offset by mandating school uniforms in dayglo colours for all schoolchildren.
I'd heard that Iceland got this name as the settlers arrived during a series of unusually hard winters and so it was even more icy than it is normally. The name then discouraged settlers, and so when founding Greenland a decision was made not to make the naming mistake twice.
Only part of its funding is derived from the licence fee. It also generates a lot by selling programmes outside the UK, and through DVDs and so on. It could be argued that BitTorrents of shows might be damaging to these other sources of revenue, and it might be that the BBC is seeking to protect. However early access (via electronic formats) might boost sales if a way to deliver and sell via electronic media is made possible.
Global warming isn't the only reason to get off oil. If Kyoto will have that much of an impact on the economy, it's a good sign that something is already very wrong.
A lot of the things that could help meet Kyoto limits might actually be neutral or good for the economy in the medium to long term. For example the USA already has codes for the building energy-efficient buildings. It is estimate (Economist) to add about 2% to the cost of an office building, but pays for itself in about 2 years. So after that it represents a reduction in the costs for office accomodation, and thus a boost to the economy. Also some of the techniques (enhanced used of natural light) seem to also boost productivity. Improvements in vehicle fuel efficiency in these days of increasing oil costs also makes economic sense. The bonus of both of these is a reduction in CO2 emissions.
"Well, yeah. If Kyoto were a serious plan it'd include China, India, Brazil, etc., but it doesn't."
It does, it is just that they are not required to reduce their emissions immediately, i.e. they have some grace period. If these countries were required to reduce emissions from a relatively low (at least with the exception of Brazil *) per capita base it would severely hamper their short-term economic development. No country is going to agree to having their economy wrecked. However Western countries have relatively high per capita emissions and more wealth, and thus more opportunities to reduce emissions without severely damaging economic growth. In fact given the current high cost of oil energy efficient cars, for example, could reduce both emissions and costs and actually be of positive benefit to the economy, as well as reduce dependence on unreliable oil-producing countries.
According to official Chinese figures CO2 emissions are being held steady there, although I am not sure I'd necessarily place much credence in those figures.
"And the enviromentalists won't let us build nuclear power plants to replace coal-fired ones,"
That's only some environmentalists. Some are very much in favour of using nuclear power to take up the strain whilst other alternatives are found. Clean coal technology should also be used. This having been said I think there should be an emphasis on improved energy efficiency, for example better insulation in homes (not needing heating or AC can mean the home costs the same, but is cheaper to run) and room-temperature chemical processes (here the likes of nanotech and biological processes could be very useful).
* Brazil actually has relatively high emissions per capita due to burning of rainforest.
The concern about global warming is rather older than you imagine, dating back approximately 100 years. The possible global climate change in the 1940s to early 1960s did concern climatologists as they were concerned that what is now termed global dimming (high particulate content in the air causing directly or indirectly reducing solar radiation reaching the surface of the earth) was a stronger trend. With cleaner burning fuels, however, it seems that the global warming trend is again dominating.
Models in which the processing is server-based makes lots of sense not just for applications that need the internet. Networks are simply the medium that allows the delivery of the application, and networking is ubiquitous. Of course this is nothing new - it is simply a return to the thin client model. It is increasingly being targeted at corporate computing.
Attractive elements to the thin client model are the independece from the underlying OS. Provided web browsers are capable of supporting the required functionality (and on some mobile devices this is still questionable) the underyling OS is more-or-less irrelevant. This means that highly mobile devices used by executives on the move (PDAs, even phones) can be used to access powerful applications. It also means that if your laptop picks up a virus when on the move you can simply reinstall and get going again, or even go to the local internet cafe.
Basically the idea is to separate the functionality (the application) from the display medium (the machine and its OS).
The final step is to use server-side scaling technologies (various technologies are available) to deliver resources to a particular application depending on load. Thus if one day the need is for lots of word processing servers can be dynamically assigned for that task, but if the next day the board of directors wants to run interactive financial projections during a meeting, this is also possible.
It might be that if you install a hardware vendor's OpenGL ICD for use by Windows it will cause problems, but it might also be possible to provide OpenGL drivers via alternative mechanisms to be used on a per-game basis. Otherwise Microsoft is going to annoy the extremely large games industry (currently the largest growing segment of the entertainment industry) by forcing them to reimplement some well-tested game engines based on OpenGL in DirectX. The number of OpenGL game engines is not large, but they are used in a wide variety of games and reimplementation in DirectX would not be a trivial task and would represent quite a significant cost.
And then when someone buys some hardware not supported on the Linux bootable disk the user cannot use that piece of hardware without getting a new Linux bootable disk. Also it means a boot time of 3 or 4 minutes to play the game, plus the boot time for the game itself. This would not be popular.
There have been many proposals for creating business directories online for web services. There are even WS standards for how to conduct the negotiation and demonstration systems.
Given the rise in obesity in Western nations as levels of exercise have dropped as the use of video games has increased it could even be that there are less youths out there physically capable of getting up of their asses and performing a car jacking.
This sounds like some of the dangerous "liberal" ideas tried out at the end of the 1960s that are allegedly responsible for the current level of crime!
There was a "mini" ice age in Europe in (I think) the 1300's AD
There were some poor harvests in the years prior to 1300, but in general the climate was relatively warm in this period (hence the presence of farming on Greenland). This was a period of unusual warmth. The mini ice age was in the 18th century into the 19th.
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So when someone who does not accept evolution as a likely explanation says it is not proven, then this is true. But then next to nothing is proven except some parts of mathematics.
Arguably it was the combination of the collection of territories in the 30 years following the Spanish American War and WW1, not WW2 that put the USA ahead. Due to this (and due to georagphy to some extent) the USA was able to be such a decisive force in WW2.
I think you'll find that many governments do a lot of research (e.g. into super duper weapons) that is definitely not in the public domain.
In any case the majority of the research that is not carried out by pharam companies that is subsequently licenced is probably done in universities, not by the federal government.
Alex Cox is nothing if not a character. I still can't make any sense of "Walker", though.
Reducing congestion is difficult, though, as people will tend to drive up to their maximum congestion tolerance level - i.e. the point at which the commute gets too tedious. Building additional roads works for a period of time but may simply encourage more people to drive on them until such time as the commute tedium threshold is reached again, at which point there are more total cars stuck in congestion. I am not sure there is really a solution, except that if congested commutes are short the total number of congested miles is shorter. Changing junctions to reduce cars bunching up, which can cause congestion miles away, would help. Even changing traffic light timing can help.
The logic is that children going to school in the dark are more vulnerable to accidents as drivers in the dark don't see the kids until after they are under their wheels. The actual increased risk might not be that high and might be offset by mandating school uniforms in dayglo colours for all schoolchildren.
You don't buy mant applications now. You are granted a licence to use for Office and the like from a local installation.
I read that these are indeed being considered for buses.
I'd heard that Iceland got this name as the settlers arrived during a series of unusually hard winters and so it was even more icy than it is normally. The name then discouraged settlers, and so when founding Greenland a decision was made not to make the naming mistake twice.
It has a shorter lifetime in the atmosphere, though.
True in some, but not all developed nations.
Only part of its funding is derived from the licence fee. It also generates a lot by selling programmes outside the UK, and through DVDs and so on. It could be argued that BitTorrents of shows might be damaging to these other sources of revenue, and it might be that the BBC is seeking to protect. However early access (via electronic formats) might boost sales if a way to deliver and sell via electronic media is made possible.
AFAIK Upstairs Downstairs was ITV.
A lot of the things that could help meet Kyoto limits might actually be neutral or good for the economy in the medium to long term. For example the USA already has codes for the building energy-efficient buildings. It is estimate (Economist) to add about 2% to the cost of an office building, but pays for itself in about 2 years. So after that it represents a reduction in the costs for office accomodation, and thus a boost to the economy. Also some of the techniques (enhanced used of natural light) seem to also boost productivity. Improvements in vehicle fuel efficiency in these days of increasing oil costs also makes economic sense. The bonus of both of these is a reduction in CO2 emissions.
If you own a Sky box you can obtain a free Sky card to unlock the equivalent channels to FreeView.
It does, it is just that they are not required to reduce their emissions immediately, i.e. they have some grace period. If these countries were required to reduce emissions from a relatively low (at least with the exception of Brazil *) per capita base it would severely hamper their short-term economic development. No country is going to agree to having their economy wrecked. However Western countries have relatively high per capita emissions and more wealth, and thus more opportunities to reduce emissions without severely damaging economic growth. In fact given the current high cost of oil energy efficient cars, for example, could reduce both emissions and costs and actually be of positive benefit to the economy, as well as reduce dependence on unreliable oil-producing countries.
According to official Chinese figures CO2 emissions are being held steady there, although I am not sure I'd necessarily place much credence in those figures.
"And the enviromentalists won't let us build nuclear power plants to replace coal-fired ones,"
That's only some environmentalists. Some are very much in favour of using nuclear power to take up the strain whilst other alternatives are found. Clean coal technology should also be used. This having been said I think there should be an emphasis on improved energy efficiency, for example better insulation in homes (not needing heating or AC can mean the home costs the same, but is cheaper to run) and room-temperature chemical processes (here the likes of nanotech and biological processes could be very useful).
* Brazil actually has relatively high emissions per capita due to burning of rainforest.
The concern about global warming is rather older than you imagine, dating back approximately 100 years. The possible global climate change in the 1940s to early 1960s did concern climatologists as they were concerned that what is now termed global dimming (high particulate content in the air causing directly or indirectly reducing solar radiation reaching the surface of the earth) was a stronger trend. With cleaner burning fuels, however, it seems that the global warming trend is again dominating.
Attractive elements to the thin client model are the independece from the underlying OS. Provided web browsers are capable of supporting the required functionality (and on some mobile devices this is still questionable) the underyling OS is more-or-less irrelevant. This means that highly mobile devices used by executives on the move (PDAs, even phones) can be used to access powerful applications. It also means that if your laptop picks up a virus when on the move you can simply reinstall and get going again, or even go to the local internet cafe.
Basically the idea is to separate the functionality (the application) from the display medium (the machine and its OS).
The final step is to use server-side scaling technologies (various technologies are available) to deliver resources to a particular application depending on load. Thus if one day the need is for lots of word processing servers can be dynamically assigned for that task, but if the next day the board of directors wants to run interactive financial projections during a meeting, this is also possible.
It might be that if you install a hardware vendor's OpenGL ICD for use by Windows it will cause problems, but it might also be possible to provide OpenGL drivers via alternative mechanisms to be used on a per-game basis. Otherwise Microsoft is going to annoy the extremely large games industry (currently the largest growing segment of the entertainment industry) by forcing them to reimplement some well-tested game engines based on OpenGL in DirectX. The number of OpenGL game engines is not large, but they are used in a wide variety of games and reimplementation in DirectX would not be a trivial task and would represent quite a significant cost.
And then when someone buys some hardware not supported on the Linux bootable disk the user cannot use that piece of hardware without getting a new Linux bootable disk. Also it means a boot time of 3 or 4 minutes to play the game, plus the boot time for the game itself. This would not be popular.
Google's normal offerings are not a solution to this problem.
There have been many proposals for creating business directories online for web services. There are even WS standards for how to conduct the negotiation and demonstration systems.
Given the rise in obesity in Western nations as levels of exercise have dropped as the use of video games has increased it could even be that there are less youths out there physically capable of getting up of their asses and performing a car jacking.
This sounds like some of the dangerous "liberal" ideas tried out at the end of the 1960s that are allegedly responsible for the current level of crime!
There was a "mini" ice age in Europe in (I think) the 1300's AD
There were some poor harvests in the years prior to 1300, but in general the climate was relatively warm in this period (hence the presence of farming on Greenland). This was a period of unusual warmth. The mini ice age was in the 18th century into the 19th.