I don't understand why people resort to centuries' old discredited theories. Malthus was writing in the years shortly before the industrial revolution, which despite living in, he was unable to foresee. People with alarmist tendencies have been clamoring about Malthusian nonsense for decades. Remember Ehrlich in the 1970s with his overpopulation fear-mongering? And what about the fear about "global cooling" leading to ecological disaster, also wailed about in the 1970s. None of that came to pass, and then global cooling became "global warming" and now in the absence of any warming since 1998, "climate change" with some arbitrary and utterly unscientific "95% certainty".
Stop flogging the dead horse - Malthus was wrong because in his narrowmindedness -- disturbingly, a trait present in far too many contemporary citizens for whom current technological marvels apparently have not registered -- he ignored human ingenuity. Frankly, the Big Green is a gigantic and well oiled (so to speak) force that has hijacked the noble goal of protecting the environment into a money making scheme based on a fundamentalist ideology and userpation and debasement of the techniques and jargon of science, while attempting to enforce its zealotry through medieval tactics of charging "heresy" and inquisition against any who dare question its weak foundations. Pseudoscience mumbo jumbo at its worst.
No wonder Popular Science magazine stopped all comments on its website, coincidentally just days prior to the release of this report. Their "climate change" propaganda was being debunked by an increasingly skeptical and scientifically literate user base within the comments section, and they wanted to stamp out all criticism and discussion, under the guise of "stopping the trolls" or whatever lame excuse they trotted out.
Exactly. What exactly do these treacherous fools get out of tyring to humiliate his own government? Maybe he should go live in Afghanistan or somewhere if he hates the US so much.
Your frustrated rant about hard times in your past has nothing to do with what I wrote about. Try staying on topic. What the hell does your previous job have to do with anything?
Talk about troll.
Nice to see you got another one of your environut friends to come and take a point off my post. LOL! That'll show me to speak the truth!
Oh yeah, those poor, poor environmentalists, they are treated so badly by the media.
And what about the whole "ban plastic bags" campaign also led by the enviros? The reason we have plastic bags now is because those same powerful environuts cried and whined that having paper bags would destroy the forests. So we switched to plastic. Now the envirofascists say plastic is bad for the climate, or whatever their favourite cause/animal of the day is, and tell us to go to paper bags. The evil media that hates you environuts so much never seem to remember it was your fault in the first place.
It's left-wing idiots like you that cause so many of the world's problems, and then blame everyone else for it. Thankfully the fascist green lobby is losing power now as the truth slowly comes out.
And what do you suggest? Stopping coal/oil burning for electricity in order to stop these supposedly harmful emissions, and not having any replacement? I'd rather not live in the stone age, thanks. To think that our ancestors struggled so hard and for so long against nature to survive, only for their descendents to spit in their faces and say "humans aren't worthy of living comfortable lives" when we are finally able to control our world and our destinies is so sickening.
The best thing will probably be if you carbon-freaks just go to live in a primitive desert somewhere, without wagging hypocritical fingers at the rest of us who want to live comfortably. Since so many people are like you, your removal from circulation in civilisation will probably reduce our energy demands sufficienty to bring oil prices down, bring food prices down, and lead to far lower amounts of radioactive waste being produced if we still do need to use nuclear power.
Yes, cars need hydrocarbon fuels. However, it was the move towards biodiesel and ethanol that has led to the world wide food shortages and price rises of basic grain. Nuclear for electricity and factories, oil for cars!
Yes, one nuclear power plant would provide more energy, be cheaper, have lower running costs, be safer, be more reliable, would not blight the landscape, would not create massive noise pollution, would not kill hundreds of thousands of animals and just be far better than 600000 wind turbines. Oh well. It's his money I guess, but then again, it's our land he's ruining and our lives he's making miserable (for the aforementioned reasons).
I agree with your second paragraph.
Of course, they won't want to increase demand because that would lower their income. But maybe until we have nuclear up and running we can put a little more pressure on them. Lower prices never come from within a company, it's always due to external factors. Oil production is currently in a monopoly, we need competition:D .
Oh so by "sensible" sized you mean crampt and uncomfortable? No thanks.
Stop preaching about Europe unless you live there and have experienced first hand the new Stalinist regime of unelected life-long beaureucrats and dear leaders, living lives with all expenditure paid for by the populace and dictating to the majority how we should live.
Increased "fuel efficiency" in Europe is just smoke and mirrors. Cars have better mileage in Europe because they are lighter, not because their engines are better. Manufacturers just cut corners wherever possible, and the end result is weak, light cars, and more serious accidents and road deaths. Waydago!
More than big Oil, I'm far more worried about Big Green: another bunch of self-appointed Stalinists with huge income from vested interests, dictating policy of all governments from America to China to India to Russia, based on theories that have a greater weighting of emotion than real scientific evidence.
Actually the main reason we have high oil prices is because OPEC wont increase production to meet demand. I say we go nuclear and let them keep their oil, along with their sand.
Exactly. They should set a "good" example by actually all relocating to some primitive African country and living the same way the keep telling us to - without electricity or clean water, without medicines or good food, and with no transportation, education or safety and security. All these things come from industrialization.
If you don't want to live a civilized life, go live in a mud hut somewhere. Just don't DARE tell me what to do. Greenpeace are anti-modernisation, anti-development and anti-humanity. The only good thing they ever did was "save the whales" but the fact they campaigned for it makes me constantly second guess whether I actually should support it.
My god, you are delirious. The BBC is the most anti-American station, yes. However, there are plenty of American networks that have no problems condemning Republican administrations without evidence, while at the same time covering up for Democratic administrations. I'll name them - All except Fox. Don Rather anyone?
People say Fox is right wing but I see very clearly it is actually in the centre. People scoff when fox says "Fair and Balanced" but if you are positioned in the centre then you will clearly say it is actually fair and balanced - just watch it. However, if you start off on the Left, you will see the reporting as Right wing, simply because the Centre is so far Right of the leftie viewers.
Most of the American networks aren't scared of Bush. They are scared of reporting the very real terrorist threat that we all face for fear of offending.
If there's anything Socialist that can be peddled as a danger to the world other than this, they jump on the bandwaggon and start screaming it from the rooftops - for example, deforestation in past decades, and now the whole "save the planet omg co2 is teh eviL" rubbish. Nevermind that 1000s of scientists disagree with the theory that human actions are causing global warming, and nevermind the fact that 1000s of scientists disagree with the theory that co2 even causes warming. There are massive conventions of these "skeptics" and we never hear about them. Is that left wing enough for you? Talk about censorship.
The point is that the American shows are extremely popular. I forgot to mention Friends, and many many others. And I find that British tv is mostly garbage. It is cheap, sensationalist, full of profanity and violence, and disgusting. There is far more variety with American television, and that gives decent people here the ability to watch some decent, truly entertaining programming. British media in general is long-past its sell-by date.
Jeremy Paxman is a sanctimonious big-headed fool full of hot air. He has twisted interviews into a gladiatorial contest where the subject can only put across an argument if he can shout down the host. He is a barbarian. Bill O'reilly is far better. You chose him, but what about Wolf Blitzer? The standard bearer of the left-wing media. His interviews aren't that great either.
The BBC is just a stalinist institution funded by communist-style taxes. The good of British television would be served far more by stoping this subsidariat and letting all the stations compete on an even footing. Then, when they earn their money from ads, I won't complain one bit about over-inflated salaries. Funding a corrupt, biased entity forcefully from the entire public is wrong and would never be allowed in any other country in the world.
The same person who did it last time can mod down this post too, but my points still stand even if you don't like them. I think the big problem with you is that you are leftie that misses the biased BBC and other European left-wing anti-American networks. I would have thought that seeing a more balanced media in the US you would have realised how biased the BBC was, but it looks like you aren't able to give up the propaganda you saw before, and so you are going through some kind of wierd withdrawal.
Lol, how is this trolling? It seems on slashdot the BBC is seen as some almighty perfect entity that is not to be criticised. But what will you do when it's no longer there! Get those insurance plans ready - you'll need the medical care.
That's rubbish. The BBC is full of useless biased crap if the programme is in any way political or scientific (see the whole climate change propaganda article fiasco for example). If it's a comedy then the funniest line that any person says is "F***" and that is where everyone is supposed to laugh.
A large number of people in the UK have access to satellite and cable TV now and the most popular programmes on any TV channel are invariably American imports - Lost, 24, Prison Break, Heroes, The Simpsons etc. etc. In fact it was the BBC that showed 24 first and then sky took it to get more subscribers because it was that popular. Lost was first on Channel 4, now its on Sky too. Prison Break was on Channel 5 first, then sky took that too. The Simpsons were a staple of BBC 2 (after first being shown on Sky) for 10 years before it was taken by Channel 4 simply because it was that popular. Heroes is one of the most popular shows in the country - and what channel broadcasts it? Yup, BBC2. Smallville? Yeah - Channel 4. Dawson's Creek - Channel 4 again.
The only worthwile British content is the nature programmes by David Attenborough.
The TV tax we pay serves only two purposes - to create the biased news productions and to fill the pockets of the corrupt BBC executives and presenters. Jeremy Paxman at £500,000 a year? Nice one you loud-mouthed idiot. And what about all the newsreaders on minimum salaries of £400,000/yr and the bigshot newsreaders on millions? I take it you think it is worthwhile that our hard earned, heavily taxed savings are forcefully taken from us and used to pay them to sit on their asses all day and read a monitor? Please!
I don't know what cable package you have taken but if you are truly missing UK TV there is definitely something wrong with you. Seriously, what do you miss? Most indigenous productions in the UK are reality shows where cheap idiots run around swearing at each other and doing demeaning tasks that apparently entertains the public. Eating parts of strange animals is not entertainment, whether you like it or not. Since I pay as well, I demand some programming of higher quality than the gutter level material that we see every day. You must be insane if you miss that.
Yes, America also has loads of reality shows, but the point is that they are funded by advertisement and if you don't want to watch it you don't have to still pay for it. And to anyone who's lucky enough NOT to suffer the disgusting and unjust British TV funding system, the current TV "License" (as they call the tax) must be paid for the simple crime of OWNING a TV, even if you are going to use it to watch DVDs. What a joke. It's because of deluded fools like DigitalAI that the rest of us have to suffer this extortion. The BBC should not only be forced to be advertising funded, it should be dismantled and sold off piece by piece. It and its employees deserve nothing less.
This takes the "get a life!" insult to a whole new measurable level. Soon geeks across the world will be able to win an internet forum/irc argument simply based on how much "life" they have, measured in GB or TB.
But to make it a more useful measure, there should also be a way of adding "emotion" points to the total score (where users asign a level of emotion or fun to each event stored in their digitally stored lives) with a function such as {Adjusted true-life-years = life disk usage x total emotion points}. Then you can let the software do the calculation and tell you your ATLY score, perhaps as widget on your Facebook profile.
Finally we have a way of measuring who is more of a nerd than someone else, and all thanks to Microsoft. Who would have guessed?
No actually, I play games (something that's impossible on a MAC - I mean real games, not solitaire or pinball) and sometimes processor usage is at 100% when I quit it, and sometimes when I'm playing. I know this is not a good thing but my computer is old and the games are too new. I have a pc that is 4 years old with XP. But crashes? Not a chance. This old one I'm talking about has not crashed even once in the entire period I've had it. A slightly newer machine I have also has not crashed at all.
I see all these MAC users sitting there smugly saying "Well PC users expect quite a few crashes in a normal day of use" but that ended with XP. Don't get me wrong here, even I was surprised when I first got an XP machine.
Perhaps you guys now will get off the whole holier-than-thou bandwaggon and buy an XP pc, since it is so obvious that regular crashes are what put you off pcs.
But why would mac users want to run windows on their machines? I prefer windows, pro MS, whatever tag you want to give me, but seriously, don't apple users think osX (or whichever version they run) is much better than (or perfect compared to) windows XP?
No need to flame. Nice of you to remember that quote after you first heard it on the Simpsons. You have just proved that "Empty vessels make most noise". That applies to you. You are a fool.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't understand why people resort to centuries' old discredited theories. Malthus was writing in the years shortly before the industrial revolution, which despite living in, he was unable to foresee. People with alarmist tendencies have been clamoring about Malthusian nonsense for decades. Remember Ehrlich in the 1970s with his overpopulation fear-mongering? And what about the fear about "global cooling" leading to ecological disaster, also wailed about in the 1970s. None of that came to pass, and then global cooling became "global warming" and now in the absence of any warming since 1998, "climate change" with some arbitrary and utterly unscientific "95% certainty".
Stop flogging the dead horse - Malthus was wrong because in his narrowmindedness -- disturbingly, a trait present in far too many contemporary citizens for whom current technological marvels apparently have not registered -- he ignored human ingenuity. Frankly, the Big Green is a gigantic and well oiled (so to speak) force that has hijacked the noble goal of protecting the environment into a money making scheme based on a fundamentalist ideology and userpation and debasement of the techniques and jargon of science, while attempting to enforce its zealotry through medieval tactics of charging "heresy" and inquisition against any who dare question its weak foundations. Pseudoscience mumbo jumbo at its worst.
No wonder Popular Science magazine stopped all comments on its website, coincidentally just days prior to the release of this report. Their "climate change" propaganda was being debunked by an increasingly skeptical and scientifically literate user base within the comments section, and they wanted to stamp out all criticism and discussion, under the guise of "stopping the trolls" or whatever lame excuse they trotted out.
Exactly. What exactly do these treacherous fools get out of tyring to humiliate his own government? Maybe he should go live in Afghanistan or somewhere if he hates the US so much.
That's a load of crap. If you love the new Soviet Empire of Europe so much, go live there. Nuclear FTW!
Exactly, the massive subsidies provided through tax dollars to build and maintain these sorts of ecofascist developments is criminal.
LOL senseless eh? So why take the time to reply?
Your frustrated rant about hard times in your past has nothing to do with what I wrote about. Try staying on topic. What the hell does your previous job have to do with anything?
Talk about troll.
Nice to see you got another one of your environut friends to come and take a point off my post. LOL! That'll show me to speak the truth!
Oh yeah, those poor, poor environmentalists, they are treated so badly by the media.
And what about the whole "ban plastic bags" campaign also led by the enviros? The reason we have plastic bags now is because those same powerful environuts cried and whined that having paper bags would destroy the forests. So we switched to plastic. Now the envirofascists say plastic is bad for the climate, or whatever their favourite cause/animal of the day is, and tell us to go to paper bags. The evil media that hates you environuts so much never seem to remember it was your fault in the first place.
It's left-wing idiots like you that cause so many of the world's problems, and then blame everyone else for it. Thankfully the fascist green lobby is losing power now as the truth slowly comes out.
And what do you suggest? Stopping coal/oil burning for electricity in order to stop these supposedly harmful emissions, and not having any replacement? I'd rather not live in the stone age, thanks. To think that our ancestors struggled so hard and for so long against nature to survive, only for their descendents to spit in their faces and say "humans aren't worthy of living comfortable lives" when we are finally able to control our world and our destinies is so sickening.
The best thing will probably be if you carbon-freaks just go to live in a primitive desert somewhere, without wagging hypocritical fingers at the rest of us who want to live comfortably. Since so many people are like you, your removal from circulation in civilisation will probably reduce our energy demands sufficienty to bring oil prices down, bring food prices down, and lead to far lower amounts of radioactive waste being produced if we still do need to use nuclear power.
Yes, cars need hydrocarbon fuels. However, it was the move towards biodiesel and ethanol that has led to the world wide food shortages and price rises of basic grain. Nuclear for electricity and factories, oil for cars!
Yes, one nuclear power plant would provide more energy, be cheaper, have lower running costs, be safer, be more reliable, would not blight the landscape, would not create massive noise pollution, would not kill hundreds of thousands of animals and just be far better than 600000 wind turbines. Oh well. It's his money I guess, but then again, it's our land he's ruining and our lives he's making miserable (for the aforementioned reasons).
Yet another man with so much money that he's gone insane.
I agree with your second paragraph. Of course, they won't want to increase demand because that would lower their income. But maybe until we have nuclear up and running we can put a little more pressure on them. Lower prices never come from within a company, it's always due to external factors. Oil production is currently in a monopoly, we need competition :D .
Oh so by "sensible" sized you mean crampt and uncomfortable? No thanks.
Stop preaching about Europe unless you live there and have experienced first hand the new Stalinist regime of unelected life-long beaureucrats and dear leaders, living lives with all expenditure paid for by the populace and dictating to the majority how we should live.
Increased "fuel efficiency" in Europe is just smoke and mirrors. Cars have better mileage in Europe because they are lighter, not because their engines are better. Manufacturers just cut corners wherever possible, and the end result is weak, light cars, and more serious accidents and road deaths. Waydago!
More than big Oil, I'm far more worried about Big Green: another bunch of self-appointed Stalinists with huge income from vested interests, dictating policy of all governments from America to China to India to Russia, based on theories that have a greater weighting of emotion than real scientific evidence.
Actually the main reason we have high oil prices is because OPEC wont increase production to meet demand. I say we go nuclear and let them keep their oil, along with their sand.
If you don't want to live a civilized life, go live in a mud hut somewhere. Just don't DARE tell me what to do. Greenpeace are anti-modernisation, anti-development and anti-humanity. The only good thing they ever did was "save the whales" but the fact they campaigned for it makes me constantly second guess whether I actually should support it.
More rubbish from a stupid and corrupt organization.
My god, you are delirious. The BBC is the most anti-American station, yes. However, there are plenty of American networks that have no problems condemning Republican administrations without evidence, while at the same time covering up for Democratic administrations. I'll name them - All except Fox. Don Rather anyone?
People say Fox is right wing but I see very clearly it is actually in the centre. People scoff when fox says "Fair and Balanced" but if you are positioned in the centre then you will clearly say it is actually fair and balanced - just watch it. However, if you start off on the Left, you will see the reporting as Right wing, simply because the Centre is so far Right of the leftie viewers.
Most of the American networks aren't scared of Bush. They are scared of reporting the very real terrorist threat that we all face for fear of offending.
If there's anything Socialist that can be peddled as a danger to the world other than this, they jump on the bandwaggon and start screaming it from the rooftops - for example, deforestation in past decades, and now the whole "save the planet omg co2 is teh eviL" rubbish. Nevermind that 1000s of scientists disagree with the theory that human actions are causing global warming, and nevermind the fact that 1000s of scientists disagree with the theory that co2 even causes warming. There are massive conventions of these "skeptics" and we never hear about them. Is that left wing enough for you? Talk about censorship.
The point is that the American shows are extremely popular. I forgot to mention Friends, and many many others. And I find that British tv is mostly garbage. It is cheap, sensationalist, full of profanity and violence, and disgusting. There is far more variety with American television, and that gives decent people here the ability to watch some decent, truly entertaining programming. British media in general is long-past its sell-by date.
Jeremy Paxman is a sanctimonious big-headed fool full of hot air. He has twisted interviews into a gladiatorial contest where the subject can only put across an argument if he can shout down the host. He is a barbarian. Bill O'reilly is far better. You chose him, but what about Wolf Blitzer? The standard bearer of the left-wing media. His interviews aren't that great either.
The BBC is just a stalinist institution funded by communist-style taxes. The good of British television would be served far more by stoping this subsidariat and letting all the stations compete on an even footing. Then, when they earn their money from ads, I won't complain one bit about over-inflated salaries. Funding a corrupt, biased entity forcefully from the entire public is wrong and would never be allowed in any other country in the world.
The same person who did it last time can mod down this post too, but my points still stand even if you don't like them. I think the big problem with you is that you are leftie that misses the biased BBC and other European left-wing anti-American networks. I would have thought that seeing a more balanced media in the US you would have realised how biased the BBC was, but it looks like you aren't able to give up the propaganda you saw before, and so you are going through some kind of wierd withdrawal.
Lol, how is this trolling? It seems on slashdot the BBC is seen as some almighty perfect entity that is not to be criticised. But what will you do when it's no longer there! Get those insurance plans ready - you'll need the medical care.
That's rubbish. The BBC is full of useless biased crap if the programme is in any way political or scientific (see the whole climate change propaganda article fiasco for example). If it's a comedy then the funniest line that any person says is "F***" and that is where everyone is supposed to laugh.
A large number of people in the UK have access to satellite and cable TV now and the most popular programmes on any TV channel are invariably American imports - Lost, 24, Prison Break, Heroes, The Simpsons etc. etc. In fact it was the BBC that showed 24 first and then sky took it to get more subscribers because it was that popular. Lost was first on Channel 4, now its on Sky too. Prison Break was on Channel 5 first, then sky took that too. The Simpsons were a staple of BBC 2 (after first being shown on Sky) for 10 years before it was taken by Channel 4 simply because it was that popular. Heroes is one of the most popular shows in the country - and what channel broadcasts it? Yup, BBC2. Smallville? Yeah - Channel 4. Dawson's Creek - Channel 4 again.
The only worthwile British content is the nature programmes by David Attenborough.
The TV tax we pay serves only two purposes - to create the biased news productions and to fill the pockets of the corrupt BBC executives and presenters. Jeremy Paxman at £500,000 a year? Nice one you loud-mouthed idiot. And what about all the newsreaders on minimum salaries of £400,000/yr and the bigshot newsreaders on millions? I take it you think it is worthwhile that our hard earned, heavily taxed savings are forcefully taken from us and used to pay them to sit on their asses all day and read a monitor? Please!
I don't know what cable package you have taken but if you are truly missing UK TV there is definitely something wrong with you. Seriously, what do you miss? Most indigenous productions in the UK are reality shows where cheap idiots run around swearing at each other and doing demeaning tasks that apparently entertains the public. Eating parts of strange animals is not entertainment, whether you like it or not. Since I pay as well, I demand some programming of higher quality than the gutter level material that we see every day. You must be insane if you miss that.
Yes, America also has loads of reality shows, but the point is that they are funded by advertisement and if you don't want to watch it you don't have to still pay for it. And to anyone who's lucky enough NOT to suffer the disgusting and unjust British TV funding system, the current TV "License" (as they call the tax) must be paid for the simple crime of OWNING a TV, even if you are going to use it to watch DVDs. What a joke. It's because of deluded fools like DigitalAI that the rest of us have to suffer this extortion. The BBC should not only be forced to be advertising funded, it should be dismantled and sold off piece by piece. It and its employees deserve nothing less.
Actually, odd as it may seem both Austria and Greece support Turkey joining the EU. It appears all is forgiven. Awww, Bless those Europeans eh?
But to make it a more useful measure, there should also be a way of adding "emotion" points to the total score (where users asign a level of emotion or fun to each event stored in their digitally stored lives) with a function such as {Adjusted true-life-years = life disk usage x total emotion points}. Then you can let the software do the calculation and tell you your ATLY score, perhaps as widget on your Facebook profile.
Finally we have a way of measuring who is more of a nerd than someone else, and all thanks to Microsoft. Who would have guessed?
Fine they are being a typical company, but it's not as if Apple would behave any differently if something like this happened to their music.
I see all these MAC users sitting there smugly saying "Well PC users expect quite a few crashes in a normal day of use" but that ended with XP. Don't get me wrong here, even I was surprised when I first got an XP machine.
Perhaps you guys now will get off the whole holier-than-thou bandwaggon and buy an XP pc, since it is so obvious that regular crashes are what put you off pcs.
I'm pretty pro-Microsoft, and I'm on Slashdot, so ... you like windows over osX then?
[For people who don't get it:]
(ie like me)
But why would mac users want to run windows on their machines? I prefer windows, pro MS, whatever tag you want to give me, but seriously, don't apple users think osX (or whichever version they run) is much better than (or perfect compared to) windows XP?
No need to flame. Nice of you to remember that quote after you first heard it on the Simpsons. You have just proved that "Empty vessels make most noise". That applies to you. You are a fool.