Once again the name Homo Sapien is called into question. If ignorance is a virtue then I think you just earned a sainthood. What you said is a massive rationalize for doing nothing. The fact it got modded Insightful just proves we don't deserve the name Homo Sapien. Let's use up this world and just move to the next one! Let me guess you're a rocket scientist? Mars makes Antartica look like a paradise so we aren't moving there and there's no reason to believe if we found a world we could even survive on we could ever get there. We will never find another world we are adapted to since we are adapted to this one. It isn't like trashing an apartment so we just move to another one.
As it's often pointed out the earth isn't in danger, the stable climate we've come to depend on is. Don't waste the energy trying to rationalize your behavior just grow up and say you don't care.
It's a big deal because if it's true it means we've probably passed the point of no return and Europe is at least headed for a mini ice age but the timing is right for a major one. Greenland has been viewed as the fulcrum and if it wasn't melting the situation was possibly reversable. There is no doubt we were about the enter another ice age. The question is when and how fast it happens and how severe it is. What we are doing is bringing it on faster and potentially stronger than if we hadn't been dumping hundreds of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. We might have reduced what should take thousands of years to hundreds of years. Let some one else worry about it if it's hundreds of years off? Sorry it isn't flipping a light switch and we are starting to see the backlash now. If Greenland melts we loose coastal Florida as well as any coast 22' above sea level. It'll take hundreds of years to melt but it could go up several feet in our lifetimes which would make a lot of the coast unliveable. Antartica would raise levels several hundred feet but I'm not convinced it can even melt, the bulk of it at least. Even if it did we are talking thousands of years in a worst case senerio. It's not end of the world but life is going to get tougher for a lot of people and the US is entering a period of turmoil with crippling debt. We couldn't handle Karina, how are we supposed to handle two or three Katrinas a year? How about five? Add to that the predicted droughts and such and we're in for a bumpy ride. Europe gets the worst of it. If we go full ice age the upper half of Europe is a write off. The British Isles are an ice cube. And Canada can change it's name to Iceland.
Walls not firewalls ya heathen. What do they teach you in school these days? The 70s weren't ancient history and Dinosaurs didn't roam the earth in the 60s, except in low budget movies. Of coarse if you are into Intellegent Design they roamed the earth six thousand years ago. Why does Intellegent Design always make me think of Military Intellegence?
My unit started switching me to infomercials during primetime. I called tech support several times. At first they denied it could even do that then they finally admited it but said it was doing that to down load updates. I asked them how do I stop it? They said you can't. It was supposed to do it late at night but mine was doing it during primetime. I said stop it from switching or I drop the service. They said they can't so I dropped the service. I'm not paying $13 a month to be force fed infomercials. They offered me three months free to stay, I said keep the months and stop switching me. They look at it as a revenue stream I look at it as obnoxious for an expensive service to do. $13 is a lot to pay for a TV guide service. If they can't make money at that I'd suggest restructing the company not looking at how we can screw the customers. I have a feeling I got caught up in a test program to see if customers would resist being switched to infomercials. In my case it was a big yes since I cancelled my service. I question their honesty on the subject since they started off deying it was possible then they made excuses. When will advertisers get it through their heads it you sell to people 24/7 they shut down and aren't receptive to any advertising? I'm waiting for a matress or pillow company to embed audio chips in their products to sell to us in our sleep. I'm sure it frustriates advertisers that there's 8 hours a day they can't sell to us.
In Japan there wouldn't even be an argument. The police have the right to search any house without a warrant. I guess the fact that there is no specific definition to unreasonable search and seizure gives them some lattitude in their tiny brains. Hey can't make the agrument that they meant cameras since they didn't have them. It's called common sense. They are considered privacy laws for a reason. They want to be able to tap our phones and track our cars and now put cameras in our houses. This isn't for our own goods people. This is about power and control. If it's for our own goods lets start with government officials then the rich. If it's for protection they need it more than the rest of us. See how long that lasts before it's banned. If it's to make sure we aren't doing something bad guess what it's called innocent before proven guilty. They legally can't do it. Don't let anyone convince you they legally can or that it's for your own good. Complain about what Bush is doing in your own home and see how quick the feds show up to see if you are a threat. It's happened when people have made statements disparging the administration in public. Now they want us to be careful what we say in our own homes? It's a Democracy and they are supposed to be working for us. We shouldn't be treated like prisoners in our own country.
Why is it okay for the other people to sell the material once the copyright has run out but the original creators are doing something dispicable for copyrighting it in the first place? Trust me there's always some one making a buck off it. Popular books don't stop being pubished when the copyright runs out they simply stop paying the artists. And they don't drop the prices per se. What you'll see is dozens of crapy copies of beetles songs showing up by companies out to make a quick buck. Ultimately it's protecting the artists. What's needed aren't weaker copyright laws but laws preventing artist from being forced to give away their rights to corporate america.
Seems a hard drive crash can cause a small explosion. Only 10 kilotons so it's nothing to be alarmed about but the military has taken an interest in the new technology.
Do you want Greenwich Mean Time or local time? Also if you need to know the speed of an African sparrow carrying a coconut I'll need to know if you want the speed relative to the ground, the observer or the coconut? Come on you've got to be more specific than that.
I've been reading about Canadian oil sands since the 1970s. They used to be a curiousity because the oil was too expensive to extract. Well with the spike in oil prices they are now competitive and have the advatange of not getting more expensive to extract. The estimates run between a 200 to 400 year supply. I hate to see them become the answer because it means more CO2 but they won't run out in our lifetimes. If you want proof Bush only cares about backing the American oil companies he won't even discuss Canadian oil with Canada. China is the country pursing Canada. Our oil companies don't control it so we aren't interested. This is about corporate profits. Shortages cause price increases which increase profits. The irony is if they can drive prices up enough Canada is going to get as rich as Saudia Arabia and they won't run out in a hundred years. The governemnt is shooting us in the foot and no one is even talking about it.
Alcohol engines are a better solution in the short term. Everyone assumes that the hydrogen is going to be produced by electricity but that simply isn't true. Most hydrogen is extracted from fossil fuels, I believe primarily natural gas at the moment. The reason for the big push on hydrogen is Bush is trying to lock us into a oil based hydrogen economy. Most of the investment is in a petroleum/hydrogen based infastructure to make sure we are still oil dependent. Alcohol can run existing cars with minor modifications. It doesn't require the storage systems or distribution systems hydrogen does and can get similar mileage to gasoline, not as much but far better than hydrogen. As for the extra carbon it's carbon active within the environment so it's a wash and doesn't add to the overall carbon. All petroleum products add carbon that has been stored. Alcohol can potentially be extracted from farm waste, plant stalks and such. At worst it comes from corn and the like, even plants like Agave. It'll probably never be a 100% solution but can help as a transitional fuel. An ideal combination would but alcohol hybrides that can be wall recharged and have limited solar cells for helping to top the car when sitting in an outdoor parking space. Given the fact if you were primarily commuting you'd only have to fill it a few times a year the savings would be huge even if alcohol ran 2X what current gas prices are. That's based on the results an engineer got when he simply added more batteries to his hybrid and charged it from the wall at night. The recharging was cheap and he was getting over 200 miles on a tank since he rarely went off batteries. Adding minimal solar cells would drastically reduce gas useage even if it just added 10% to the range. The extra batteries only added a few grand to the cost which would be quickly paid back in savings. Solar cells would add a few grand more but would reduce the alcohol engine to an emergency back. It would only be needed on long hauls and during bad weather.
The point isn't to save money but a proof of concept. Mazda may be in a unique position to exploit rotary engines that can burn both gas and hydrogen. With Bush pushing Hydrogen over other systems Mazda can clean up licensing the technology to other companies. Being able to burn both gas and hydrogen gives them a commanding lead out of the gate in the hydrogen wars.
I owned an RX-7 which was rotary. There are some advantages, they red-lined at a very high RPM. They didn't live up to the mileage predictions but they are fairly low maintainence. The engine seal was the one issue and I did have that go out. Very smooth running. I was sad to hear they droped them and glad to hear the RX-8 brought them back.
What do they mean 'evolved'? I think that several school boards across the country will agree with me when I say that the toads did not evolve, they were 'improved' by a 'designer.'
I'd like to take the opposite stance. Have you ever seen a Kane Toad? Anything that butte ugly couldn't have been Intellegently Designed so in fact proves the nonexistence of God! Wait a minute, God must be taken on faith. So if something so incredibly ugly exists then it must prove the nonexistence of God because to assume it must have been designed to rely on faith to prove God's existence then it proves God does not in fact exist. I was worried there for a moment. If anyone has any questions I'll be standing next to the Zebra Crossing sign.
Re:New Egg not one of my faves
on
A Look Inside Newegg
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· Score: 2, Informative
Well ironically I just had a bad experience with Newegg. I placed an order a week ago but never got a confirmation. Some companies do not send confirmation e-mails so I didn't think anything of it. A week passed with no sign of the order. I checked their website but there was no order listed. I wound up calling them to only find they had no record of my order. I badly needed the equipment so I'm going to have to pick it up locally. I'm getting ready to build out a number of higher end systems soon but after they lost the very first order I placed I plan to go elsewhere. I'm not sure if this is so much an indictment of Newegg but internet sales in general. In the last six months over 50% of my internet orders have had problems. I've had others lost and I had a large order get duplicated. I used to love ordering on-line but now I'm hesitant to do it. I'm had multiple equipment companies put me on back order then refuse to cancel the order. Once they have your info you're at their mercy. You can save money but the risk and the hassles make it dangerous and I'm not sure I save anything in the long run. Most of the websites have issues. If you are going to depend on the internet make sure your databases work. It may have been a $400 order they lost this time but over the next month alone I had planned to spend quite a few grand with them. Loosing a week to a lost order is potentially disasterous. If I have to pay 10% more but I can pick it up same day I have to say it makes more sense in my situation. The savings are nice but it's just too much risk.
Trust me without guns they simply find other means. The guns like the games don't create the mentality involved. The recent explosions of violence in the middle east seem to be excuses for violence. The real causes tend to be too many people with too few resources. It's the old rats in a shoe box. Put a couple of rats in a shoe box and they'll rip each other apart. We may not be running out of space but resources are stretched thin. If you really research the middle east the true cause of the violence isn't even religion. Most people feel they aren't getting a share in the oil wealth. A tiny handful are insanely wealthy while many still live in slums. We've had similar problems in this country. Guns are an easy target but getting rid of guns just reduces people to clubs and knives. Removing guns does turn people into pacifist. Most of the people dying in the Iraq aren't from guns but bombs. Get rid of explosives? Not possible. Simple explosives are easy to make. Gunpowder is extremely easy and lab grade amonia is the basis of many explosives. So long as there's greed and envy there will be violence. As long as there's poor there'll always be desperate people. There are no easy solutions.
I thought they colaborated on both the the script and novel? Clarke is given screen credit as well. Check imdb.com. Seemed like a simple statement that stirred up a hornets nest. As far as I know they colaborated on story and script and Clarke basically wrote the novel with input from Kubrick. Outside of that it's splitting hairs. The point is a lot of novels that are called classics have been optioned or in pre-preproduction but the novels rarely get shot. They are however quite often ripped off by talentless hacks. All the ones I mentioned have been optioned and were slated to be produced but it never got any further than talk.
I'm not one to bash video games, I'm a fan of FPS style games. What's interesting though is you make exactly the same agrument that the anti violence game radicals make. I never supported the argument but I have to wonder if it is in fact true. Especially if the military is using them for that exact reason.
No one has done Howard right and probably never will. Kull was Godawful and Red Sonja was silly, not that it was Howard just ripping off characters. There have been threats of doing Solomen Kane but fortunately that never happened. A great character but ripe for abuse. I completely agree on Conan. I never understood the dumb barbarian characterization. I brilliant leader that could speak a dozen languages and read and write in nearly as many, some ancient, would be considered a genius today. The excuse I heard at times was when faced with death he'd rather fight back than try to run and hide. I guess cowardace is considered intellegent. I doubt it's possible to do Howard right in a regular film but CG has come so far that it may be possible to recreate the character and his world the way Frazetta drew him. You just need the rights and a team talented enough to do it. There's always Uwe Boll? Sorry, couldn't resist the scary mental image.
Guess they weren't concerned with novels. Little things like Mote In God's Eye and Ringworld. Even Lucifer's Hammer blew away any of the meteor films that got made, although many stole from it. Science fiction novels done properly for cinema are virtually nonexistent. There are rare exceptions like 2001 but the script was by the writer of the novel and Directed by Kubrick of coarse.
Slashdot Mirror
As it's often pointed out the earth isn't in danger, the stable climate we've come to depend on is. Don't waste the energy trying to rationalize your behavior just grow up and say you don't care.
Shouldn't that be 24/7 propaganda machine?
It's a big deal because if it's true it means we've probably passed the point of no return and Europe is at least headed for a mini ice age but the timing is right for a major one. Greenland has been viewed as the fulcrum and if it wasn't melting the situation was possibly reversable. There is no doubt we were about the enter another ice age. The question is when and how fast it happens and how severe it is. What we are doing is bringing it on faster and potentially stronger than if we hadn't been dumping hundreds of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere every year. We might have reduced what should take thousands of years to hundreds of years. Let some one else worry about it if it's hundreds of years off? Sorry it isn't flipping a light switch and we are starting to see the backlash now. If Greenland melts we loose coastal Florida as well as any coast 22' above sea level. It'll take hundreds of years to melt but it could go up several feet in our lifetimes which would make a lot of the coast unliveable. Antartica would raise levels several hundred feet but I'm not convinced it can even melt, the bulk of it at least. Even if it did we are talking thousands of years in a worst case senerio. It's not end of the world but life is going to get tougher for a lot of people and the US is entering a period of turmoil with crippling debt. We couldn't handle Karina, how are we supposed to handle two or three Katrinas a year? How about five? Add to that the predicted droughts and such and we're in for a bumpy ride. Europe gets the worst of it. If we go full ice age the upper half of Europe is a write off. The British Isles are an ice cube. And Canada can change it's name to Iceland.
Walls not firewalls ya heathen. What do they teach you in school these days? The 70s weren't ancient history and Dinosaurs didn't roam the earth in the 60s, except in low budget movies. Of coarse if you are into Intellegent Design they roamed the earth six thousand years ago. Why does Intellegent Design always make me think of Military Intellegence?
My unit started switching me to infomercials during primetime. I called tech support several times. At first they denied it could even do that then they finally admited it but said it was doing that to down load updates. I asked them how do I stop it? They said you can't. It was supposed to do it late at night but mine was doing it during primetime. I said stop it from switching or I drop the service. They said they can't so I dropped the service. I'm not paying $13 a month to be force fed infomercials. They offered me three months free to stay, I said keep the months and stop switching me. They look at it as a revenue stream I look at it as obnoxious for an expensive service to do. $13 is a lot to pay for a TV guide service. If they can't make money at that I'd suggest restructing the company not looking at how we can screw the customers. I have a feeling I got caught up in a test program to see if customers would resist being switched to infomercials. In my case it was a big yes since I cancelled my service. I question their honesty on the subject since they started off deying it was possible then they made excuses. When will advertisers get it through their heads it you sell to people 24/7 they shut down and aren't receptive to any advertising? I'm waiting for a matress or pillow company to embed audio chips in their products to sell to us in our sleep. I'm sure it frustriates advertisers that there's 8 hours a day they can't sell to us.
Just goes to prove too much technology isn't a good thing.
I hear by then they are supposed to have the Duke Nuke Em Forever port done as well.
In Japan there wouldn't even be an argument. The police have the right to search any house without a warrant. I guess the fact that there is no specific definition to unreasonable search and seizure gives them some lattitude in their tiny brains. Hey can't make the agrument that they meant cameras since they didn't have them. It's called common sense. They are considered privacy laws for a reason. They want to be able to tap our phones and track our cars and now put cameras in our houses. This isn't for our own goods people. This is about power and control. If it's for our own goods lets start with government officials then the rich. If it's for protection they need it more than the rest of us. See how long that lasts before it's banned. If it's to make sure we aren't doing something bad guess what it's called innocent before proven guilty. They legally can't do it. Don't let anyone convince you they legally can or that it's for your own good. Complain about what Bush is doing in your own home and see how quick the feds show up to see if you are a threat. It's happened when people have made statements disparging the administration in public. Now they want us to be careful what we say in our own homes? It's a Democracy and they are supposed to be working for us. We shouldn't be treated like prisoners in our own country.
Let me guess the group bleeding out of their eyes got the placebo?
Why is it okay for the other people to sell the material once the copyright has run out but the original creators are doing something dispicable for copyrighting it in the first place? Trust me there's always some one making a buck off it. Popular books don't stop being pubished when the copyright runs out they simply stop paying the artists. And they don't drop the prices per se. What you'll see is dozens of crapy copies of beetles songs showing up by companies out to make a quick buck. Ultimately it's protecting the artists. What's needed aren't weaker copyright laws but laws preventing artist from being forced to give away their rights to corporate america.
Seems a hard drive crash can cause a small explosion. Only 10 kilotons so it's nothing to be alarmed about but the military has taken an interest in the new technology.
And on the same day Microsoft anounced a switch to OSX.
Do you want Greenwich Mean Time or local time? Also if you need to know the speed of an African sparrow carrying a coconut I'll need to know if you want the speed relative to the ground, the observer or the coconut? Come on you've got to be more specific than that.
I've been reading about Canadian oil sands since the 1970s. They used to be a curiousity because the oil was too expensive to extract. Well with the spike in oil prices they are now competitive and have the advatange of not getting more expensive to extract. The estimates run between a 200 to 400 year supply. I hate to see them become the answer because it means more CO2 but they won't run out in our lifetimes. If you want proof Bush only cares about backing the American oil companies he won't even discuss Canadian oil with Canada. China is the country pursing Canada. Our oil companies don't control it so we aren't interested. This is about corporate profits. Shortages cause price increases which increase profits. The irony is if they can drive prices up enough Canada is going to get as rich as Saudia Arabia and they won't run out in a hundred years. The governemnt is shooting us in the foot and no one is even talking about it.
Alcohol engines are a better solution in the short term. Everyone assumes that the hydrogen is going to be produced by electricity but that simply isn't true. Most hydrogen is extracted from fossil fuels, I believe primarily natural gas at the moment. The reason for the big push on hydrogen is Bush is trying to lock us into a oil based hydrogen economy. Most of the investment is in a petroleum/hydrogen based infastructure to make sure we are still oil dependent. Alcohol can run existing cars with minor modifications. It doesn't require the storage systems or distribution systems hydrogen does and can get similar mileage to gasoline, not as much but far better than hydrogen. As for the extra carbon it's carbon active within the environment so it's a wash and doesn't add to the overall carbon. All petroleum products add carbon that has been stored. Alcohol can potentially be extracted from farm waste, plant stalks and such. At worst it comes from corn and the like, even plants like Agave. It'll probably never be a 100% solution but can help as a transitional fuel. An ideal combination would but alcohol hybrides that can be wall recharged and have limited solar cells for helping to top the car when sitting in an outdoor parking space. Given the fact if you were primarily commuting you'd only have to fill it a few times a year the savings would be huge even if alcohol ran 2X what current gas prices are. That's based on the results an engineer got when he simply added more batteries to his hybrid and charged it from the wall at night. The recharging was cheap and he was getting over 200 miles on a tank since he rarely went off batteries. Adding minimal solar cells would drastically reduce gas useage even if it just added 10% to the range. The extra batteries only added a few grand to the cost which would be quickly paid back in savings. Solar cells would add a few grand more but would reduce the alcohol engine to an emergency back. It would only be needed on long hauls and during bad weather.
The point isn't to save money but a proof of concept. Mazda may be in a unique position to exploit rotary engines that can burn both gas and hydrogen. With Bush pushing Hydrogen over other systems Mazda can clean up licensing the technology to other companies. Being able to burn both gas and hydrogen gives them a commanding lead out of the gate in the hydrogen wars.
I owned an RX-7 which was rotary. There are some advantages, they red-lined at a very high RPM. They didn't live up to the mileage predictions but they are fairly low maintainence. The engine seal was the one issue and I did have that go out. Very smooth running. I was sad to hear they droped them and glad to hear the RX-8 brought them back.
I'd like to take the opposite stance. Have you ever seen a Kane Toad? Anything that butte ugly couldn't have been Intellegently Designed so in fact proves the nonexistence of God! Wait a minute, God must be taken on faith. So if something so incredibly ugly exists then it must prove the nonexistence of God because to assume it must have been designed to rely on faith to prove God's existence then it proves God does not in fact exist. I was worried there for a moment. If anyone has any questions I'll be standing next to the Zebra Crossing sign.
Well ironically I just had a bad experience with Newegg. I placed an order a week ago but never got a confirmation. Some companies do not send confirmation e-mails so I didn't think anything of it. A week passed with no sign of the order. I checked their website but there was no order listed. I wound up calling them to only find they had no record of my order. I badly needed the equipment so I'm going to have to pick it up locally. I'm getting ready to build out a number of higher end systems soon but after they lost the very first order I placed I plan to go elsewhere. I'm not sure if this is so much an indictment of Newegg but internet sales in general. In the last six months over 50% of my internet orders have had problems. I've had others lost and I had a large order get duplicated. I used to love ordering on-line but now I'm hesitant to do it. I'm had multiple equipment companies put me on back order then refuse to cancel the order. Once they have your info you're at their mercy. You can save money but the risk and the hassles make it dangerous and I'm not sure I save anything in the long run. Most of the websites have issues. If you are going to depend on the internet make sure your databases work. It may have been a $400 order they lost this time but over the next month alone I had planned to spend quite a few grand with them. Loosing a week to a lost order is potentially disasterous. If I have to pay 10% more but I can pick it up same day I have to say it makes more sense in my situation. The savings are nice but it's just too much risk.
Trust me without guns they simply find other means. The guns like the games don't create the mentality involved. The recent explosions of violence in the middle east seem to be excuses for violence. The real causes tend to be too many people with too few resources. It's the old rats in a shoe box. Put a couple of rats in a shoe box and they'll rip each other apart. We may not be running out of space but resources are stretched thin. If you really research the middle east the true cause of the violence isn't even religion. Most people feel they aren't getting a share in the oil wealth. A tiny handful are insanely wealthy while many still live in slums. We've had similar problems in this country. Guns are an easy target but getting rid of guns just reduces people to clubs and knives. Removing guns does turn people into pacifist. Most of the people dying in the Iraq aren't from guns but bombs. Get rid of explosives? Not possible. Simple explosives are easy to make. Gunpowder is extremely easy and lab grade amonia is the basis of many explosives. So long as there's greed and envy there will be violence. As long as there's poor there'll always be desperate people. There are no easy solutions.
I thought they colaborated on both the the script and novel? Clarke is given screen credit as well. Check imdb.com. Seemed like a simple statement that stirred up a hornets nest. As far as I know they colaborated on story and script and Clarke basically wrote the novel with input from Kubrick. Outside of that it's splitting hairs. The point is a lot of novels that are called classics have been optioned or in pre-preproduction but the novels rarely get shot. They are however quite often ripped off by talentless hacks. All the ones I mentioned have been optioned and were slated to be produced but it never got any further than talk.
I'm not one to bash video games, I'm a fan of FPS style games. What's interesting though is you make exactly the same agrument that the anti violence game radicals make. I never supported the argument but I have to wonder if it is in fact true. Especially if the military is using them for that exact reason.
No one has done Howard right and probably never will. Kull was Godawful and Red Sonja was silly, not that it was Howard just ripping off characters. There have been threats of doing Solomen Kane but fortunately that never happened. A great character but ripe for abuse. I completely agree on Conan. I never understood the dumb barbarian characterization. I brilliant leader that could speak a dozen languages and read and write in nearly as many, some ancient, would be considered a genius today. The excuse I heard at times was when faced with death he'd rather fight back than try to run and hide. I guess cowardace is considered intellegent. I doubt it's possible to do Howard right in a regular film but CG has come so far that it may be possible to recreate the character and his world the way Frazetta drew him. You just need the rights and a team talented enough to do it. There's always Uwe Boll? Sorry, couldn't resist the scary mental image.
Guess they weren't concerned with novels. Little things like Mote In God's Eye and Ringworld. Even Lucifer's Hammer blew away any of the meteor films that got made, although many stole from it. Science fiction novels done properly for cinema are virtually nonexistent. There are rare exceptions like 2001 but the script was by the writer of the novel and Directed by Kubrick of coarse.
Is it fair to call Karl Rove a slime mold? Look what he's got to work with, he's doing the best he can.