Most plants are more sensitive to the blue-violet side of the spectrum for photosynthesis, with a few exception having increased sensitivity to the red side.
Moreover, the solar wind is directly porportional to the strength of the Earth's magnetic field and the Earth's magnetic field blocks less blue-violet-uv then when the magnetic field is weaker so more blue-violet-uv frequencies make it to the plants and hence increase a plant's photosynthetic rate thus contributing to higher growth.
Maybe GCR is to photosynthesis what steroids are to muscles.
You don't work in the aircraft, spacecraft, power industry or telecommunications do you?
There's no way to test everything economically.
Look at the construction industry. It is considered quite mature compared to the software industry. Even the best construction crew in the world, nay the universe, will build a house that has or will develop issues.
There's no such thing as perfect software: testing isn't done to fix bugs, but to find some them.
Now considering the length of time Duke Nuke'Em Forever is taking to release, it should be the most bug free piece of software this side of a pace maker!
There's enough reasons to sling vitriol at unethical ISPs, but advertising "up to [speed]" isn't one of them. Actually, advertising "up to [speed]" but supplying a line profile that is less than that [speed] even though line tests show the line is capable of handling [speed] or more is something that probably 90% or more people will never know or never question but is done by some broadband providers.
It's just another method of throttling without
needing to invest in DPI hardware.
So true.
Why is it that the "try before you buy" only works in the car industry? I can take a car out for a test drive before I buy it to know if I like the feel. Mind you, this doesn't give me any indication to the car's reliability or dependability, but at least I got to feel what it's like. I may never buy or afford a BWM, but at least I can go to the dealer and get an idea of what all the hype is about.
Some people may argue that buying a car is a huge investment and it is the consumer's right to take it for a spin.
Well, a house is a much bigger investment yet I don't think I could convince a realtor or home owner to let me live in the house for a few days before I decide to purchase it.
The RIAA at one time was relevant: it controlled a HUGE distribution channel. Today, anybody can have that distribution channel if they use the Internet properly.
Here's what you need to get yourself started in music today:
1) Talent
2) A place with good acoustics to record
3) Good digital recording equipment
4) Marketing: Google, Digg, Slashdot, Facebook, etc.
5) Distribution: P2P, HTTP, etc...
Bands make more money off shirts than they do from album sales: give away the music, and sell your fans a shirt to further promote yourself.
If you RTFA, Gene shits on the music industry too "The record industry is in such a mess.", "The record industry doesn't have a f---ing clue how to make money.": he's right. They are relying on an old business model and not taking any risk: they build acts like NKOTB, BSB, and Britney to market the crap out of, but they consider other bands with actual musical talent and/or genius too niche to make any real money.
Also, consider the music biz isn't that simple either: there are two types of music creators well, 3 really, but I'll keep "shitty" out for now). These two types are "fad" and "long term". Consider fad as Milli Vanilli, Britney, the Mini-Pops, BSB. Consider "long term" Madonna, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, etc. Cripes, some of these people aren't even alive yet their albums still sell!
The market will decide the future of the music biz.
Stupid question: Let's say an artist releases an album in 1921 and the copywrite on that album is about to expire, and the RIAA and/or artist releases that same album under a Greatest Hits title, does that renew the copywrite on the original songs or does the original work become freely available and the Greatest Hits are not even though they are the same songs?
In a world were people are paying $100+ for a 6 foot cable named "HDMI", can you blame the media companies for wanting to charge for their content? What's more entertaining to watch: a 6 foot cable connecting your HD video source to the back of your TV or a DVD movie being played in said HD video source?
I think what you call inborn ability is also known as passion. Most people are great at things they are passionate about, and aren't so great at the things that don't instill passion in them.
How many violin prodigies despise playing the violin? They may hate practicing in a structured way because it limits their creativity to just "jam", but I believe that people who play the violin and play the violin well do so because they enjoy it passionately and it satisfies them.
Who knew you could be good as something you like!;)
Japanese Lego blocks are compatible with North American Lego blocks and European Lego blocks, so a game developed for a given console should be compatible with said console: it makes sense to me!
Why do marketing executroids think that applying limitations to a product, they can maximize profits? Doesn't it cost more money building these barriers in the first place? Imagine how much money the hardware manufacturers spent on developing region encoding when they could have dropped that "feature" completely or spent that time and money developing a constructive feature such as permitting a networked console to stream music from another system on said network instead or import MP3s directly from a CD instead of requiring the audio CD.
Just as puzzling is how the same marketing executroids talk about a global economy and a global market, but draw imaginary borders around the different parts of the world to regionalize their product. It's somewhat oxyMORONish.
Is it a privilege or a right to do business in the European Union?
To do business in the European Union, abide by EU laws. If the cost of doing business in the EU is too high, don't do business there. It's that simple.
However, MS not doing business in the EU hinders Bill's sociopathic plans of world domination.
Has anybody noticed that these historical temperature graphs still show that somewhere around 1998 was hotter than 2005?
Again, statistics can be published to show support for a hypothesis or not. This is how business cases get approved.;)
Is anybody monitoring CO2 levels in their neighbourhood? Is there DIY way of monitoring CO2 levels on a budget? It would be interesting to have a collection of stats from various global points and see the trend.
Has anybody measured the diameter of the sun lately? It is known that stars get larger as they age, until a certain point at which they collapse on themselves and become a black hole; maybe the coronal blasts are getting stronger. We're seeing much more displays of spectacular solar activity, which may also be a contributing factor to global warming. Can the increase in solar activity be attributed to man?
In short: where do we start fixing the problem? Will reducing CO2 emissions have a major impact?
Obviously, because the glaciers from the ice age just started retreating from the Carolinas when the industrial revolution began in the 1800s.
I may have fallen asleep because of the lack of O2 all the CO and CO2 in the air, but has the global warming effect been irrefutably proven? I still find many articles that speak for and against the global warming claim.
Weather is a cyclical pattern, but just because it is cyclical it doesn't mean that on Feb. 2 of every year it will be sunny. For those of us who experience the 4 seasons, sometimes summer is cold, sometimes summer is warm, sometimes summer is hot. Most of the time, though, winter is cold and our cars don't start on certain days.
People have bad memories: facts and statistics can be gathered to prove anything by including the facts and stats that support a hypothesis and ignoring the facts and stats that don't. In fact, if you have the military might, you can invade an oil producing country on bad intelligence and still convince people it needed to be done!
The weather is pretty much the same: it rains, it shines, it snows, it blows. Oh, but what about hurriance Katrina you ask? Well, unlike Bugs Bunny, the hurricane happened to take that left in Albuquerque and, unfortunately, hit Louisiana rather than the Carolinas. Global warming? I doubt it, just bad luck and warm ocean currents, which according to grade 4 geography occur naturally anyway.
People that live in places like L.A. should be driving zero emission vehicles, because the horizon looks like the filter of a Camel cigarette after its been smoked. In more civilized places, the sky is still blue, not orange.
I agree we need to find more efficient energy sources, simply because depending on petroleum for our main energy source is unwise. As with our data, we need a backup, and there is an entire alternative energy industry that is currently spawning. What's stopping us? The almighty dollars, drachnar, euro, pound, etc... People don't work for free because they need to buy gas/diesel, directly or indirectly, to get to work. So let's stop jumping the gun about global warming, because (1) if the damage has been done and is irreversible, we can't do anything about it, (2) the world doesn't change overnight, and (3) the tree huggers will be putting methane filters on cattle to prevent their apocalypse as soon as somebody figures out how to make a shitload of money with viable alternative "green" energy sources.
There's already too many ways out there that'll allow talented people to make and distribute music for the RIAA to retain their stranglehold on the market.
I completely agree: the RIAA was good to set standards for the recording industry when studios were expensive to build and maintain.
Today, any band can put together a decent compilation of songs (a.k.a. album or CD) and distribute it themselves. A little word of mouth advertising and playing local gigs, and if the stuff is good, it will get out there.
How do I know it will get out there? Because of sites like slashdot, digg and delicious: the digital "word of mouth". After all, if some loser's blog about his pet kitty's bowel movements can get hits, I'm sure good music can too.
For example, not that these guys are losers or rant about kitty poo, I ran into Beatallica on digg and it's pretty funny and good: they supposedly even have Metallica's blessing, but there's an issue with the record label which prevents them from putting out an album, but doesn't prevent them from distributing their songs in mp3 format... strangely enough. BTW, "Hey Dude" rocks...;)
What happens if a kid requests the newsletter, but the kids school or parents have put its email address on the blacklist?
I believe if somebody requests to be part of a distribution, it no longer becomes unsolicited (spam, by definition, is unsolicitied e-mail).
Are there any laws on solicited, but inappropriate, e-mail being sent to minors, given that there is no simple way to allow the provider to judge a requestor's age?
If phone calls (and hence phone records of those calls) are a personal effect, should an ISP's logs of IP addresses and the date/time a user had that IP address be similar?
Basically, the application knows what type of traffic to throttle and it can identify the type of payload is in a packet based on known MIME types (.mpg,.jpeg,.mp3), and whatever rules are setup in the system are applied to the packets it inspects.
Has anybody noticed the "telescreens" in Time Square lately?;)
When the people who stand up for the values and luxuries of society they want to protect, rather than only their own, run for political office let me know...
The good people of democratic nations, IMHO, have become so cynical of the stereotypical corrupt politician, that they don't bother running for office themselves because they are disgusted with the backroom (door?) deals and self-preservation the system is apparently based on.
All new releases are simply "BEEEEEP" for 74 minutes, censoring the lyrics and music so nobody can copy the artist's, er, record company's intellectual property in any way, shape or form.
Ok, agreed: it is ALL artifice, but good musicians are real.
My point is many popular "musicians" aren't as physically beautiful (or talented for that matter) as the media make them out to be; yet the physical beauty of a performer is often of higher value than the genius and talent of a true musician on a medium which is predominantly aural.
"The point is that the less net-savvy people are not listening to the music, since they can't download it to their iPod due to copy protection."
Some people just don't care about sharing their music with the latest P2P software: they simply want to insert CD, load iPod, press play, adjust the volume to a safe level, and enjoy.
As for the more net-savvy, I'd like to believe the majority of people download music to "sample" something their don't want to blow $15+ on something they might not like. However, if they do like it, they buy the album.
If the music industry wasn't busy trying to churn out one-hit-wonders and lip-synchers in search of landfall profits, maybe their "clients" wouldn't feel so cheated when they paid $15+ for a CD that contains one good song. Good bands/artists are becoming a rare commodity and are being over-shadowed by glitz and glamour. However, as an aside, maybe the glitz and glamour will lose to HDTV... http://www.tvpredictions.com/thelist.html.
The art of music is losing to the greed of business.
Slashdot Mirror
I do believe magnetic fields do indeed have an effect on light since there seems to be a relationship between luminosity and magnetic activity.
Moreover, while the following effects may not affect luminosity they do show interaction between magnetism and light: the Faraday effect and the Magneto-optic Kerr effect.
The polarization of light through a magnetic field may also play a role in the properties of the light reaching the plant.
It's only a theory, and quite possibly incorrect since my Ph.D. in astrophysics is a perfect example of the "null" effect. :P
Most plants are more sensitive to the blue-violet side of the spectrum for photosynthesis, with a few exception having increased sensitivity to the red side.
My theory is that since humans tend to have peak sensitivity in the green portion of the spectrum and our perception of brightness is near zero in the blue-violet-ultra-violet range it is possible that the brightness of the sun has limited or no effect on plant growth.
Moreover, the solar wind is directly porportional to the strength of the Earth's magnetic field and the Earth's magnetic field blocks less blue-violet-uv then when the magnetic field is weaker so more blue-violet-uv frequencies make it to the plants and hence increase a plant's photosynthetic rate thus contributing to higher growth.
Maybe GCR is to photosynthesis what steroids are to muscles.
Try going to the Canadian news site, www.canoe.ca, they have this annoying scrolling tabbed configuration that just brings my Firefox to a crawl.
You don't work in the aircraft, spacecraft, power industry or telecommunications do you? There's no way to test everything economically. Look at the construction industry. It is considered quite mature compared to the software industry. Even the best construction crew in the world, nay the universe, will build a house that has or will develop issues. There's no such thing as perfect software: testing isn't done to fix bugs, but to find some them. Now considering the length of time Duke Nuke'Em Forever is taking to release, it should be the most bug free piece of software this side of a pace maker!
The Power of Nightmares
There are some parts of this documentary also on YouTube.
So true. Why is it that the "try before you buy" only works in the car industry? I can take a car out for a test drive before I buy it to know if I like the feel. Mind you, this doesn't give me any indication to the car's reliability or dependability, but at least I got to feel what it's like. I may never buy or afford a BWM, but at least I can go to the dealer and get an idea of what all the hype is about. Some people may argue that buying a car is a huge investment and it is the consumer's right to take it for a spin. Well, a house is a much bigger investment yet I don't think I could convince a realtor or home owner to let me live in the house for a few days before I decide to purchase it. The RIAA at one time was relevant: it controlled a HUGE distribution channel. Today, anybody can have that distribution channel if they use the Internet properly. Here's what you need to get yourself started in music today: 1) Talent 2) A place with good acoustics to record 3) Good digital recording equipment 4) Marketing: Google, Digg, Slashdot, Facebook, etc. 5) Distribution: P2P, HTTP, etc... Bands make more money off shirts than they do from album sales: give away the music, and sell your fans a shirt to further promote yourself. If you RTFA, Gene shits on the music industry too "The record industry is in such a mess.", "The record industry doesn't have a f---ing clue how to make money.": he's right. They are relying on an old business model and not taking any risk: they build acts like NKOTB, BSB, and Britney to market the crap out of, but they consider other bands with actual musical talent and/or genius too niche to make any real money. Also, consider the music biz isn't that simple either: there are two types of music creators well, 3 really, but I'll keep "shitty" out for now). These two types are "fad" and "long term". Consider fad as Milli Vanilli, Britney, the Mini-Pops, BSB. Consider "long term" Madonna, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, etc. Cripes, some of these people aren't even alive yet their albums still sell! The market will decide the future of the music biz.
Stupid question: Let's say an artist releases an album in 1921 and the copywrite on that album is about to expire, and the RIAA and/or artist releases that same album under a Greatest Hits title, does that renew the copywrite on the original songs or does the original work become freely available and the Greatest Hits are not even though they are the same songs?
In a world were people are paying $100+ for a 6 foot cable named "HDMI", can you blame the media companies for wanting to charge for their content? What's more entertaining to watch: a 6 foot cable connecting your HD video source to the back of your TV or a DVD movie being played in said HD video source?
I think what you call inborn ability is also known as passion. Most people are great at things they are passionate about, and aren't so great at the things that don't instill passion in them.
;)
How many violin prodigies despise playing the violin? They may hate practicing in a structured way because it limits their creativity to just "jam", but I believe that people who play the violin and play the violin well do so because they enjoy it passionately and it satisfies them.
Who knew you could be good as something you like!
Japanese Lego blocks are compatible with North American Lego blocks and European Lego blocks, so a game developed for a given console should be compatible with said console: it makes sense to me!
Why do marketing executroids think that applying limitations to a product, they can maximize profits? Doesn't it cost more money building these barriers in the first place? Imagine how much money the hardware manufacturers spent on developing region encoding when they could have dropped that "feature" completely or spent that time and money developing a constructive feature such as permitting a networked console to stream music from another system on said network instead or import MP3s directly from a CD instead of requiring the audio CD.
Just as puzzling is how the same marketing executroids talk about a global economy and a global market, but draw imaginary borders around the different parts of the world to regionalize their product. It's somewhat oxyMORONish.
Because they would have to pay income tax...
Is it a privilege or a right to do business in the European Union?
To do business in the European Union, abide by EU laws. If the cost of doing business in the EU is too high, don't do business there. It's that simple.
However, MS not doing business in the EU hinders Bill's sociopathic plans of world domination.
Has anybody noticed that these historical temperature graphs still show that somewhere around 1998 was hotter than 2005?
;)
Again, statistics can be published to show support for a hypothesis or not. This is how business cases get approved.
Is anybody monitoring CO2 levels in their neighbourhood? Is there DIY way of monitoring CO2 levels on a budget? It would be interesting to have a collection of stats from various global points and see the trend.
Has anybody measured the diameter of the sun lately? It is known that stars get larger as they age, until a certain point at which they collapse on themselves and become a black hole; maybe the coronal blasts are getting stronger. We're seeing much more displays of spectacular solar activity, which may also be a contributing factor to global warming. Can the increase in solar activity be attributed to man?
In short: where do we start fixing the problem? Will reducing CO2 emissions have a major impact?
Obviously, because the glaciers from the ice age just started retreating from the Carolinas when the industrial revolution began in the 1800s.
I may have fallen asleep because of the lack of O2 all the CO and CO2 in the air, but has the global warming effect been irrefutably proven? I still find many articles that speak for and against the global warming claim.
Weather is a cyclical pattern, but just because it is cyclical it doesn't mean that on Feb. 2 of every year it will be sunny. For those of us who experience the 4 seasons, sometimes summer is cold, sometimes summer is warm, sometimes summer is hot. Most of the time, though, winter is cold and our cars don't start on certain days.
People have bad memories: facts and statistics can be gathered to prove anything by including the facts and stats that support a hypothesis and ignoring the facts and stats that don't. In fact, if you have the military might, you can invade an oil producing country on bad intelligence and still convince people it needed to be done!
The weather is pretty much the same: it rains, it shines, it snows, it blows. Oh, but what about hurriance Katrina you ask? Well, unlike Bugs Bunny, the hurricane happened to take that left in Albuquerque and, unfortunately, hit Louisiana rather than the Carolinas. Global warming? I doubt it, just bad luck and warm ocean currents, which according to grade 4 geography occur naturally anyway.
People that live in places like L.A. should be driving zero emission vehicles, because the horizon looks like the filter of a Camel cigarette after its been smoked. In more civilized places, the sky is still blue, not orange.
I agree we need to find more efficient energy sources, simply because depending on petroleum for our main energy source is unwise. As with our data, we need a backup, and there is an entire alternative energy industry that is currently spawning. What's stopping us? The almighty dollars, drachnar, euro, pound, etc... People don't work for free because they need to buy gas/diesel, directly or indirectly, to get to work. So let's stop jumping the gun about global warming, because (1) if the damage has been done and is irreversible, we can't do anything about it, (2) the world doesn't change overnight, and (3) the tree huggers will be putting methane filters on cattle to prevent their apocalypse as soon as somebody figures out how to make a shitload of money with viable alternative "green" energy sources.
I completely agree: the RIAA was good to set standards for the recording industry when studios were expensive to build and maintain.
Today, any band can put together a decent compilation of songs (a.k.a. album or CD) and distribute it themselves. A little word of mouth advertising and playing local gigs, and if the stuff is good, it will get out there.
How do I know it will get out there? Because of sites like slashdot, digg and delicious: the digital "word of mouth". After all, if some loser's blog about his pet kitty's bowel movements can get hits, I'm sure good music can too.
For example, not that these guys are losers or rant about kitty poo, I ran into Beatallica on digg and it's pretty funny and good: they supposedly even have Metallica's blessing, but there's an issue with the record label which prevents them from putting out an album, but doesn't prevent them from distributing their songs in mp3 format... strangely enough. BTW, "Hey Dude" rocks...
I believe if somebody requests to be part of a distribution, it no longer becomes unsolicited (spam, by definition, is unsolicitied e-mail).
Are there any laws on solicited, but inappropriate, e-mail being sent to minors, given that there is no simple way to allow the provider to judge a requestor's age?
If phone calls (and hence phone records of those calls) are a personal effect, should an ISP's logs of IP addresses and the date/time a user had that IP address be similar?
It's called "Deep Packet Inspection" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_packet_inspectio n(DPI) and it disects the packet from layer 2 to layer 7 of the OSI model http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model.
.jpeg, .mp3), and whatever rules are setup in the system are applied to the packets it inspects.
;)
Basically, the application knows what type of traffic to throttle and it can identify the type of payload is in a packet based on known MIME types (.mpg,
Has anybody noticed the "telescreens" in Time Square lately?
When the people who stand up for the values and luxuries of society they want to protect, rather than only their own, run for political office let me know...
The good people of democratic nations, IMHO, have become so cynical of the stereotypical corrupt politician, that they don't bother running for office themselves because they are disgusted with the backroom (door?) deals and self-preservation the system is apparently based on.
BREAKING NEWS: Sony unveils perfect DRM
All new releases are simply "BEEEEEP" for 74 minutes, censoring the lyrics and music so nobody can copy the artist's, er, record company's intellectual property in any way, shape or form.
Ok, agreed: it is ALL artifice, but good musicians are real.
My point is many popular "musicians" aren't as physically beautiful (or talented for that matter) as the media make them out to be; yet the physical beauty of a performer is often of higher value than the genius and talent of a true musician on a medium which is predominantly aural.
Watch Leno or Letterman in HD, then you'll understand.
As for the more net-savvy, I'd like to believe the majority of people download music to "sample" something their don't want to blow $15+ on something they might not like. However, if they do like it, they buy the album.
If the music industry wasn't busy trying to churn out one-hit-wonders and lip-synchers in search of landfall profits, maybe their "clients" wouldn't feel so cheated when they paid $15+ for a CD that contains one good song. Good bands/artists are becoming a rare commodity and are being over-shadowed by glitz and glamour. However, as an aside, maybe the glitz and glamour will lose to HDTV... http://www.tvpredictions.com/thelist.html.
The art of music is losing to the greed of business.
So this device can't be uninstalled? Security by obscurity.