If ETs exist, the Star Trek scenario is far more likely than the ID4 scenario, since there are far easier to access resources in greater concentrations even just in the solar system than the earth. Maybe once all the asteroids, and mercury, and venus, and mars disappear, then we'll have to start worrying.
The "Earth stood still" scenario probably ranks a bit higher than the "Star Trek" one, and "Mars Attacks" even higher still (except for the endings, of course.)
Y'know, it's entirely possible you were banned for volume of traffic related to the tor node, and that they would have restored your access anyway, once it became apparant that that volume was due to tor and not due to you having dozens of sock puppets.
How do you know you can trust the journalist, then? And why should journalists have the ability to ignore subpoenas that the rest of us cannot?
Where I live, journalists can get jail time for contempt of court just like everyone else. And if you're a source and you're worried about it, you only talk to the ones that have been dedicated enough to spend actual time in jail to protect their sources.
Also, The controller that they can't sell for the Wii is an optional accessory. The Wii-mote does not appear to have been affected by the lawsuit. So they can just go on selling wiis to their hearts' content.
Yeah, gouging wasn't quite the right choice of words (but waggling?!?), since they're clearly under charging, by virtue of the continuing shortages a year and a half later.
But the only thing funnier would be if Microsoft had somehow gotten themselves into a situation where they were legally barred from selling any more XP licenses.
1. The viewing experience can be convincingly replicated at home (minus the negatives I outlined above of course). As home monitors get larger and more technologically advanced, this day is coming.
Done. A number of years ago actually, though not for me personally until recently. And it's the theaters' own fault for not upgrading to the latest digital projection systems on more screens, and focusing on watts in their sound systems over fidelity (and still screwing it up.)
It's possible for theaters to exceed the specs of your home system. In fact, it's still pretty easy for them to do so. But it is, sadly, unlikely that any given screen actually will.
For (3) there will still be a market for very large "home theater" systems. A screen or two will always be available for parties and premiers and such. But when (2) occurs, most people will eventually opt for home-theater or their neighbors' home theater.
Are people lacking stereo vision legally allowed to drive in the USA
Yes. Further, people with stereo vision don't have much of an advantage when driving, anyway. You actually get most of your depth information from other visual cues at the distances of highway travel, and those cues are still present at closer distances.
Stereo vision doesn't help you drive. It *might* help you park, but only if you know where your bumper is in relation to the bits you can actually see.
Oh I don't know. I'd think you might be able to shoehorn some kind of "sort-of" 3D with minimal headgear using LCD technology.
I mean.. an LCD screen IS a polarizing filter. Would it really be too much trouble to align it so that half the cells are perpendicular, giving an HDTV a half-resolution 3D mode? (or better yet, an extra film and some complicated processing to make for full-resolution 3D mode?)
I really don't think polarizing glasses are a deal breaking level of head gear, if the programming is interesting enough. And frankly, an infinite loop of a grainy Carrie Fisher asking for help would probably be enough for most of us.
That they're now forbidden by law from selling a console they probably don't even want to support anymore. I guess they'll just have to make due gouging consumers on their latest console.
Not to mention that gold-as-currency encourages hoarding of gold, which restricts its availability for actual use, like gold-plated terminals, physics experiments, or body-building tools for mercenaries with a fear of flying.
Superman's hearing is not warrantless surveillance. You can't tell someone not to use their own freakin' senses. (the passive ones, that is)
Now, if he used his heat vision to vaporize lead-lined undies, or his hypnokisses to manipulate memories, or his super weaving to unjustly imprison someone in a "wicker" basket made of rebar, that would be a pretty unethical use of his powers.
Unfortunately, it is. Because apparently no one wants an LNG port to be built within 50 miles of where they live, or on any body of water where rich people might have boats for a day or two, two months out of the year. Even if it means lower home heating, transportation, etc. bills.
Indeed, however that still presupposes that the Joker was telling the truth about the transmitters being for the other boats. An assumption that the people on the boats made, but i think the question of believing a psychopath is indeed part of the game.
I'd be willing to believe the transmitters would trigger one of the boats, but I don't see how they were unable to even consider that they might be their own boat and the Joker was just lying.
It'd be a kind of perverted justice if the boat that decided to sacrifice the other boat was the one destroyed.
While mercury is toxic, it has a pretty low vapor pressure and is fairly easy to contain. The danger from occasional mercury leaks has, I suspect, been slightly overblown.
But yeah, you wouldn't want to work in the factory where they make the things without some strict containment protocols. A "little bit" for "a long time" is still "a lot."
Indeed they can. Now go and design and build a 500 MW wind turbine and you'll be at about the right scale.* It'd still take three of 'em to replace a single nuke plant, but it'd be a step in the right direction.
*ok, maybe a tenth that size would be sufficient. But the current 1/500th-of-that models simply do not scale to full plant replacement unless they're *really* low maintenance.
Economies of scale only work wonders on things you scale. The turbine production plant probably scales pretty well if you just want to build more turbines. The turbine maintenance crews do not.
We are still early in the wind game.
And that's the point. We're mature enough in the nuke game to build plants that can replace coal and oil. We could break ground tomorrow on just such a plant with enough motivation.
The whole idea of "not doing the thing we know we can do right now" in favor of "waiting for the thing we think we'll be able to do in the not too distant future" is the joke that environmentalism co-opting politicians are trying to foist upon us. It was just as funny when Bush called for developing the "hydrogen economy" as it is when that hayseed corn farmer in the BP commercial talks about how neat it would be if corn could be just a little more expensive...
You are correct, however if you have a non-polluting, low-cost energy source and your only problem is too much energy for the existing transmission lines, you can use the overage to run bauxite processing facilities. Which produce the aluminum you need for all the extra transmission lines.
Frankly, I don't see why they can't run the working fluid to separate evaporators in the individual rooms. You could bill by the gallon of liquid 1,1,1,2-tetrafluroethane at the apartment entrance, but more importantly, only cool the rooms that need cooling.
Also, there should be hookups for refrigerators. It always seemed odd to me to put the condenser of a refrigerator inside an air-conditioned room, when it would make so much more sense to share with the air-conditioner, or at the very least, keep it outside the building.
renders new nuclear capacity irrelevant until the economy picks up.
As long as "building an X" is "irrelevant until the economy pix up," the economy isn't going to pick up. Further, what would you define as a "picked up" economy, anyway? We're still below 6% unemployment, so even if we had jobs for everybody, it'd amount to something like a 1/20 change in GDP.
Further, you want to *build* the plants when labor is *cheap*, because you can't sell the power until after it's built.
Nuclear power might not be the be-all, end-all solution, but it is a very big part of one, and although it takes over a decade to build one, if we don't start breaking ground now, in ten years we'll be wishing we had.
Wind, "in contrast" requires more workers per installed kilowatt..to install, let alone maintain, so although an individual plant can be put in much more quickly, over the long term it's a losing proposition compared to large "centralized" plants. It's a very small part of the energy plan, and can only ever be a small part of one. There's energy there, so we should tap it, but to propose wind as a viable alternative to "big power" (coal, nuke, hydro) is a rather laughable position.
Slashdot Mirror
Why did Madonna go to Malawi?
If ETs exist, the Star Trek scenario is far more likely than the ID4 scenario, since there are far easier to access resources in greater concentrations even just in the solar system than the earth. Maybe once all the asteroids, and mercury, and venus, and mars disappear, then we'll have to start worrying.
The "Earth stood still" scenario probably ranks a bit higher than the "Star Trek" one, and "Mars Attacks" even higher still (except for the endings, of course.)
Y'know, it's entirely possible you were banned for volume of traffic related to the tor node, and that they would have restored your access anyway, once it became apparant that that volume was due to tor and not due to you having dozens of sock puppets.
How do you know you can trust the journalist, then? And why should journalists have the ability to ignore subpoenas that the rest of us cannot?
Where I live, journalists can get jail time for contempt of court just like everyone else. And if you're a source and you're worried about it, you only talk to the ones that have been dedicated enough to spend actual time in jail to protect their sources.
What the hell is "waggling"
Also, The controller that they can't sell for the Wii is an optional accessory. The Wii-mote does not appear to have been affected by the lawsuit. So they can just go on selling wiis to their hearts' content.
Yeah, gouging wasn't quite the right choice of words (but waggling?!?), since they're clearly under charging, by virtue of the continuing shortages a year and a half later.
But the only thing funnier would be if Microsoft had somehow gotten themselves into a situation where they were legally barred from selling any more XP licenses.
Done. A number of years ago actually, though not for me personally until recently. And it's the theaters' own fault for not upgrading to the latest digital projection systems on more screens, and focusing on watts in their sound systems over fidelity (and still screwing it up.)
It's possible for theaters to exceed the specs of your home system. In fact, it's still pretty easy for them to do so. But it is, sadly, unlikely that any given screen actually will.
For (3) there will still be a market for very large "home theater" systems. A screen or two will always be available for parties and premiers and such. But when (2) occurs, most people will eventually opt for home-theater or their neighbors' home theater.
Yes. Further, people with stereo vision don't have much of an advantage when driving, anyway. You actually get most of your depth information from other visual cues at the distances of highway travel, and those cues are still present at closer distances.
Stereo vision doesn't help you drive. It *might* help you park, but only if you know where your bumper is in relation to the bits you can actually see.
Oh I don't know. I'd think you might be able to shoehorn some kind of "sort-of" 3D with minimal headgear using LCD technology.
I mean.. an LCD screen IS a polarizing filter. Would it really be too much trouble to align it so that half the cells are perpendicular, giving an HDTV a half-resolution 3D mode? (or better yet, an extra film and some complicated processing to make for full-resolution 3D mode?)
I really don't think polarizing glasses are a deal breaking level of head gear, if the programming is interesting enough. And frankly, an infinite loop of a grainy Carrie Fisher asking for help would probably be enough for most of us.
That they're now forbidden by law from selling a console they probably don't even want to support anymore. I guess they'll just have to make due gouging consumers on their latest console.
They are not. They are paying what is asked. It is up to the bus company (and municipality if subsidized) to ask what is appropriate.
Not to mention that gold-as-currency encourages hoarding of gold, which restricts its availability for actual use, like gold-plated terminals, physics experiments, or body-building tools for mercenaries with a fear of flying.
Yeah, if you liked mysticism, bloody tribal warfare, food storage issues, and a complete lack of public sanitation.
Have you ever done that, though? 'Cause that's actually pretty awesome. At least.. I thought so when I was younger...
Superman's hearing is not warrantless surveillance. You can't tell someone not to use their own freakin' senses. (the passive ones, that is)
Now, if he used his heat vision to vaporize lead-lined undies, or his hypnokisses to manipulate memories, or his super weaving to unjustly imprison someone in a "wicker" basket made of rebar, that would be a pretty unethical use of his powers.
Unfortunately, it is. Because apparently no one wants an LNG port to be built within 50 miles of where they live, or on any body of water where rich people might have boats for a day or two, two months out of the year. Even if it means lower home heating, transportation, etc. bills.
Ok, so making a bike = 100 minutes of driving. Or about 100 miles.
No one who buys a bike for commuting ever puts on 100 miles of use. No, no, no!
Her stomachache was both caused by and treated with a beverage made of lime added to coconut, right? I never really got that song.
Was the doctor mad because they woke him up?
Indeed, however that still presupposes that the Joker was telling the truth about the transmitters being for the other boats. An assumption that the people on the boats made, but i think the question of believing a psychopath is indeed part of the game.
I'd be willing to believe the transmitters would trigger one of the boats, but I don't see how they were unable to even consider that they might be their own boat and the Joker was just lying.
It'd be a kind of perverted justice if the boat that decided to sacrifice the other boat was the one destroyed.
So.. basically the animated series Freeze?
(which btw.. I thought was a pretty compelling character)
Never saw "Grosse Point Blank" or any of the others, eh?
While mercury is toxic, it has a pretty low vapor pressure and is fairly easy to contain. The danger from occasional mercury leaks has, I suspect, been slightly overblown.
But yeah, you wouldn't want to work in the factory where they make the things without some strict containment protocols. A "little bit" for "a long time" is still "a lot."
"Economies of scale can work wonders"
Indeed they can. Now go and design and build a 500 MW wind turbine and you'll be at about the right scale.* It'd still take three of 'em to replace a single nuke plant, but it'd be a step in the right direction.
*ok, maybe a tenth that size would be sufficient. But the current 1/500th-of-that models simply do not scale to full plant replacement unless they're *really* low maintenance.
Economies of scale only work wonders on things you scale. The turbine production plant probably scales pretty well if you just want to build more turbines. The turbine maintenance crews do not.
And that's the point. We're mature enough in the nuke game to build plants that can replace coal and oil. We could break ground tomorrow on just such a plant with enough motivation.
The whole idea of "not doing the thing we know we can do right now" in favor of "waiting for the thing we think we'll be able to do in the not too distant future" is the joke that environmentalism co-opting politicians are trying to foist upon us. It was just as funny when Bush called for developing the "hydrogen economy" as it is when that hayseed corn farmer in the BP commercial talks about how neat it would be if corn could be just a little more expensive...
You are correct, however if you have a non-polluting, low-cost energy source and your only problem is too much energy for the existing transmission lines, you can use the overage to run bauxite processing facilities. Which produce the aluminum you need for all the extra transmission lines.
Frankly, I don't see why they can't run the working fluid to separate evaporators in the individual rooms. You could bill by the gallon of liquid 1,1,1,2-tetrafluroethane at the apartment entrance, but more importantly, only cool the rooms that need cooling.
Also, there should be hookups for refrigerators. It always seemed odd to me to put the condenser of a refrigerator inside an air-conditioned room, when it would make so much more sense to share with the air-conditioner, or at the very least, keep it outside the building.
Yeah, but the cost of chemotherapy after all the radon you'll be breathing might outweigh the energy benefits.
As long as "building an X" is "irrelevant until the economy pix up," the economy isn't going to pick up. Further, what would you define as a "picked up" economy, anyway? We're still below 6% unemployment, so even if we had jobs for everybody, it'd amount to something like a 1/20 change in GDP.
Further, you want to *build* the plants when labor is *cheap*, because you can't sell the power until after it's built.
Nuclear power might not be the be-all, end-all solution, but it is a very big part of one, and although it takes over a decade to build one, if we don't start breaking ground now, in ten years we'll be wishing we had.
Wind, "in contrast" requires more workers per installed kilowatt..to install, let alone maintain, so although an individual plant can be put in much more quickly, over the long term it's a losing proposition compared to large "centralized" plants. It's a very small part of the energy plan, and can only ever be a small part of one. There's energy there, so we should tap it, but to propose wind as a viable alternative to "big power" (coal, nuke, hydro) is a rather laughable position.