No, I'm trying to advocate a solution that will mitigate the mid- to long-term consequences of human activity for the past century. I'm trying to advocate a course of action that would save the lives of untold millions of people, and thousands of other species on the earth. The things you, and the people replying to the article " A Sunshade In Space To Combat Global Warming" don't seem to understand are numerous. An orbital solar diffuser is REVERSIBLE, should it be necessary, although given the current socio-political climate in much of the world, that ain't bloody likely any time soon.
What "inconclusive and incomplete data on the subject?" Increasing the apparent reflectivity of the Earth will make the earth cooler. That's pretty fucking cut and dried. What exactly do you suggest? That we sit and wait until "All the facts are in" like General Turgidson? Because that's just brilliant!
Its pretty much irrelevant whether humans are causing global warming at this point. It IS happening, we know that. We also are quite painfully aware of the negative impact this has on the environment, both from our perspective (weather becomes much more chaotic and violently unpredictable, formerly arable land becomes desert, water supplies shift and in general the total amount of potable water decreases) and from the perspective of other species inhabiting the planet (various fungal, algal, and protist species tend to proliferate wildly in warmer environments at the expense of other species; polar bears die their environments is destroyed, many other problems similar to the ones humans face).
The thing we really need to be addressing is that there are steps we can take to change it. An earth several degrees cooler is very much preferable to humans and many, many other species. There are ways to make the earth cooler. Many involve artificially increasing the Earth's Albedo (back to around 0.40 from its current value around 0.36) Orbital solar shields/diffusers are another way. We CAN do this. We know how. This is what we must be looking at doing in a very short time frame, if we want to prevent the kinds of huge environmental change that are likely to have devastating economic impact.
Ah, but we haven't just ruined the USA, we've also ruined Iraq, Afganistan, and succeeded in getting Iran and North Korea to step up their Nuclear weapons programs! Isn't progress beautiful!
A month or so ago, Telltale announced that their efforts to drum up interest at Nintendo had been rewarded, and Nintendo had agreed to give them a complete Dev Kit. I'm really looking forward to that release, as I'm now a Mac user still using a G5 tower. I also hope it makes it as Virtual Console title, although I rather expect it will be released as seasons on disc later on.
This is dead on. Many of the Episodes of Doctor Who featuring the first doctor are lost utterly from official sources. The only things that remain of them are unofficial AUDIO tapes (meaning reel-to-reel) of the shows, as it was aired long before VHS, from people who recorded the show's audio to listen to it as a radio play. This is probably some of the very earliest time shifting of media, in the sense we mean it today. But these tapes are actively sought by the BBC today, in order use them on DVD releases of the series for episodes that are otherwise lost to history.
This is exactly why "plugging the analog hole" is so dangerous. We must retain the ability to do this. Because official sources cannot be relied upon. Home recordings and pirated media are cultural "backups" that serve a vital role protecting us from lost history and art.
HDTV is only an issue to the technoliterati. Period. This is a huge mistake people make. Unless you're sitting less than twice the diagonal size of a TV distant from it, HD is not an issue. This is one of the things that really slows functional HD adoption. The vast majority of purchases are still of relatively small screens (20-35") and they're getting placed at an 6-10ft viewing distance, at which point there is very little functional difference between HD and EDTV.
This is also a social issue. Until men in America start divorcing women en masse for impractical Living Room Design, this is very unlikely to change as well. Until we start seeing a major mass move to true Home Theatre (characterized by LARGE screens, 50+ inches, and really embodied by projection systems) HD will not be that compelling. This isn't happening.
yes, Yes, AVSForum, and what not, these people are a niche, and we're not really seeing that change.
Actually it does, now if they'd just quit trying to pimp WMV, which very few people want, They'd have a pretty great video streaming solution. Here's Hoping.
I know it probably doesn't, but please, please, let this mean that they're going to allow video playback over UPnP shares, like they do with music. I currently use Connect360 (which I heartily recommend, I tried to use Twonkymedia on my Mac, its setup was weird and difficult to get to work, Connect360 works perfectly with a minimum of fuss, and has easy config options) to serve music from my Mac to my 360, which is quite convenient and cool. I'd love to be able to do the same with Video. But somehow I doubt Microsoft with surrender that much control.
Any number of places. A lot of it might be trapped as ice or hydrate crystals underground. At least some of it is frozen at the north and south poles. And as others have noted, Mars has significantly lower gravity than earth (approximately 1/3 gee acceleration at the surface), which significantly impedes its ability to hold an atmosphere (which holds water), and additionally lacks a magnetosphere (through not being geologically active, a metallic core surrounded by liquid layers is necessary for one) which increases the effect of the solar wind on atmosphere loss.
It is intended as sarcasm. In my opinion, if Nintendo was Heavy handed with development studios, it was only to try and avoid a situation similar to the Video Game Crash of 1984 that brought down Atari.
Because the NES days were fucking horrible, god how miserable we were with the poor quality titles that poured out of the development studios. The horrific absence of any innovative, classic titles. Nintendo nigh brought the video games industry to its knees with their steel fisted hegemony! How cruel they were!
You missed my point. People make/do meth because they can't get other things that are less harmful.
If Ritalin was a problem for you, you weren't ADD/ADHD or you had an unusually bad reaction. Misdiagnoses, and Overzealous diagnoses are common, but there are children for whom it makes a night and day difference. My sister was also a Ritalin kid, she went from being unable to function in school (both schoolwork wise and discenplenary-wise), and unable to interact with others, including her family, to be able to function and excel. My mother would have been another, but she was born far too early to get help, they tried to treat here with barbiturates, it just made her even more psychotic. She used to get out of bed and sneak out of the house and roam the street at night as a very young child, because she couldn't sleep, luckily she never got hurt doing so. I'm sorry if you had a bad experience, due to misdiagnosis/incorrect treatment but that doesn't mean that the disease doesn't exist.
I'm not at all defending meth, I'm saying that meth is a part of the problem created by the war on drugs. Just consider this question: Was an Opium Den or Cocaine user in the 1890's anywhere near as bad or dangerous as a Meth Lab in the early 21st century? I say the answer is absolutely not.
And you can rot out your lungs smoking cigarettes, rot your gums chewing tobacco, and burn out your liver swilling rot gut whiskey, any one of these can kill you, so what's your point? Cocaine is relatively harmless (assuming its actually Cocaine), compared to meth cooked up in a toilet bowl in trailer park. Also, how much was she doing? Lot's over an extended period of time most likely; cry me a river, you abuse anything and it'll fuck you up, any substance at all, from Tylenol, Aspirin, or Vitamin C, to Protein, or Water.
Meth is only a problem because safer things are illegal and harder to get. Cocaine/LSD/Psilocybin (The list is due to the many effects of ampetamines which range from straight stimulant to psychodelic)are adequate replacements that are perfectly safe assuming a safe supply (that is, created in an actual chemical lab/plant, not a toilet bowl, as meth often is). Heroin is only dangerous to use because it is cut with quinine, which causes death by pulmonary effusion in overdose, and because needle sharing spreads HIV, another phenomena that wouldn't occur with legal availability.. And has anybody EVER adequately justified why marijuana use should be illegal? Because people get high and drive? I'll acknowledge that its dangerous and a bad idea to do so, but alcohol is a much worse problem, and Driving under the Influence of any pyschoative drug known to cause accidents should be illegal. Prohibition does not work! Drug Addiction (which is different from drug use) is a Medical problem, and should be treated as such!
you can have the legal but I disagree on "Right" What is "Right" is often only tangentially related to what is socially acceptable or legal. It has only been illegal to own slaves in a large part of the US for 140 years. That doesn't mean it was right then, socially accepted or no. Locking down our cultural heritage so that it may be lost in the immediate future may be legal and socially acceptable, but that doesn't make it right either. Libertarian free-market rantings have nothing to do with it. The "Real" libertarian stance ought to be: if you don't want it distributed, don't fucking release it.
Depends, Just how good are you with that gun? Presumably, you mean some kind of pistol, unless you carry around a sawed-off 12-guage 24/7. Can you hit a moving target with a pistol (any kind/caiber) even at close range? Stats tend to say probably not, which gets you super dead in many kinds of situations.
Not that I'm against guns per se, but pretending that they're some kind of superweapon that makes you invincible is outright foolish. That.45 in your coat may make you feel 12ft tall, with 8in steel ball bearings for testicles, but that sure as hell won't keep you alive when the shit really hits the fan.
Of course we haven't really heard anything on how Sam & Max will show up on the Wii. It may be released as the "Season" on Disc later on, but I'm still hoping for it to be released on VC for Download to SD cards.
I'd definately agree on the quality over quantity. Zelda: TP all the way.
In case you haven't noticed, Slashdot is "News for Nerds." Odds are if you care about what this product is, then you a. Know about it already, b. If, it sounds even vaguely interesting, take the time to inform yourself about what it is via the methods I described, or c. Don't give a rat's ass about the product anyway, and are bitching for nothing.
I fail to see the problem in any way. If you want to know, make some effort to educate yourself. My point was was not to illustrate my "mind-bogglingly magnificent googling skillz" it was to illustrate just how available this information is to anyone who makes the slightest effort, a stoned baboon ought to be able to find it.
Would you whiny bitches quit posting "I don't understand!" "What's this about?" "I don't get it?" Do you do the same thing thing with the Nightly News? Do you hear "Volcano erupts in Hawii" and immmediately ask: "Whats a Volcano?" "What's this Ha-waa-eee thing?" "Isn't an eruption something that happens in sex?"
Sure, Sure mod me flame bait. But I'm fucking right here. If these people took any effort at all, or the same effort as making a post(!) they'd know.
Which is the fucking product page! Searching Wikipedia for Slingplayer doesn't return it immediately, but gives this page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search =slingplayer a list with the top(!) link being the Slingbox, the device this software interfaces with. It tooke me much longer to write this post than it did for me to do those searches, and that's the truth. It's not like this information is secret and hidden. A simple search on the most common information sources gives it straight out.
This was a huge conundrum to me as well, however, there has been a huge movement, with Telltale also involved to get their games on the Wii. It was fairly recently announced (3-4 weeks ago) that Nintendo took notice, and agreed to give Telltale a complete Wii dev kit. I'd say the odds are now very good that the new Sam&Max will show up on the Wii. This solved my problem completely.
I know this isn't the answer you are looking for, and I understand. But my compromise since switching to a Mac recently has been to rely on game consoles for my gaming needs. The Wii is launching for only $250, which I realize is a significant fraction of the cost of an Intel Mini (as opposed to a PS3, the price of which WILL buy you a Mini on sale), but you don't have to worry about Windows (ditto on the "Yuck!" to that) and its not like a Wii is some monstrously huge box anyway. If you have any interest in classic Nintendo games, or TG-16 games (they made a deal to get these on Virtual console as well), or potentially in any of the upcoming Wii titles, this option is definately worth some consideration.
I've actually been suspecting that something like you describe will happen for some time. Eventually HIV becomes a universal parasite in every person in those populations. Astronomical Infant mortality rates become the norm, and "adult" life expectancy drops to around 15-30 years depending on variable delay of onset. The consequences are pretty fucking grim, and might even involve them evolving into a separate sub-species as the the Virus might mutate, and eventually integrate itself into the population's genome completely (excellent evidence for this happening in the past supplied by modern genetics).
At this point we've let the situation progress to the point that I'm not sure there's even anything to be done. I've read reports suggesting that HIV infection rates in many sub-saharan countries may (due to extremely poor testing rates) be as high as 30-50%. It's very grim, and depressing.
Hah! That depends on how aggressively you cull undesirable traits. You can have a pretty huge genetic drift in 3 generations, if the selection criterea are harsh enough (Harsh enough being defined as "Just barely lenient enough to leave a very small percentage of the population to reproduce promiscuosly each generation). Doesn't take a belief in Lamarkian evolution to make that true.
Of Course, I'm not actually suggesting this is happening with American athletes. I don't think they're ANYWHERE near picky enough about finding mates to actually make this remotely true (or agressivly killing off their unfit offspring, You'd have to go Hardcore Spartan Style to make it work.)
"I don't see how a naturally born animal will have health benefits over and above a clone."
This is the statement I take issue with. I'm not exactly sure how far we've come since then but dolly died young of progressive lung disease, and the articles I can find suggest that other cloned animals since are not particularly healthy, and that the process is far, far less efficient than simply breeding animals. By which I mean it often takes dozens of attempts to produce a single viable embryo.
Given this information I'd guess that clones would not be a good way of producing animals identical to high quality stock at all.
I tend to agree with you, but on the other hand, I don't really see a problem with there being multiple competing Hardware architectures. Was it really so bad to have both x86 and POWER? Or x86 and 68K? On that note does anybody know anything about the Chinese MIPS clone that was being talked about a year or two ago? I can see something like that being really neat to play around with. Although a lot of people would probably prefer POWER, if there was the opportunity for cheap MIPS based RISC hardware to play around with, I'd be all for it. They're both pretty nice, clean RISC architectures.
Slashdot Mirror
What "inconclusive and incomplete data on the subject?" Increasing the apparent reflectivity of the Earth will make the earth cooler. That's pretty fucking cut and dried. What exactly do you suggest? That we sit and wait until "All the facts are in" like General Turgidson? Because that's just brilliant!
The thing we really need to be addressing is that there are steps we can take to change it. An earth several degrees cooler is very much preferable to humans and many, many other species. There are ways to make the earth cooler. Many involve artificially increasing the Earth's Albedo (back to around 0.40 from its current value around 0.36) Orbital solar shields/diffusers are another way. We CAN do this. We know how. This is what we must be looking at doing in a very short time frame, if we want to prevent the kinds of huge environmental change that are likely to have devastating economic impact.
Ah, but we haven't just ruined the USA, we've also ruined Iraq, Afganistan, and succeeded in getting Iran and North Korea to step up their Nuclear weapons programs! Isn't progress beautiful!
A month or so ago, Telltale announced that their efforts to drum up interest at Nintendo had been rewarded, and Nintendo had agreed to give them a complete Dev Kit. I'm really looking forward to that release, as I'm now a Mac user still using a G5 tower. I also hope it makes it as Virtual Console title, although I rather expect it will be released as seasons on disc later on.
This is exactly why "plugging the analog hole" is so dangerous. We must retain the ability to do this. Because official sources cannot be relied upon. Home recordings and pirated media are cultural "backups" that serve a vital role protecting us from lost history and art.
This is also a social issue. Until men in America start divorcing women en masse for impractical Living Room Design, this is very unlikely to change as well. Until we start seeing a major mass move to true Home Theatre (characterized by LARGE screens, 50+ inches, and really embodied by projection systems) HD will not be that compelling. This isn't happening.
yes, Yes, AVSForum, and what not, these people are a niche, and we're not really seeing that change.
Actually it does, now if they'd just quit trying to pimp WMV, which very few people want, They'd have a pretty great video streaming solution. Here's Hoping.
I know it probably doesn't, but please, please, let this mean that they're going to allow video playback over UPnP shares, like they do with music. I currently use Connect360 (which I heartily recommend, I tried to use Twonkymedia on my Mac, its setup was weird and difficult to get to work, Connect360 works perfectly with a minimum of fuss, and has easy config options) to serve music from my Mac to my 360, which is quite convenient and cool. I'd love to be able to do the same with Video. But somehow I doubt Microsoft with surrender that much control.
Any number of places. A lot of it might be trapped as ice or hydrate crystals underground. At least some of it is frozen at the north and south poles. And as others have noted, Mars has significantly lower gravity than earth (approximately 1/3 gee acceleration at the surface), which significantly impedes its ability to hold an atmosphere (which holds water), and additionally lacks a magnetosphere (through not being geologically active, a metallic core surrounded by liquid layers is necessary for one) which increases the effect of the solar wind on atmosphere loss.
It is intended as sarcasm. In my opinion, if Nintendo was Heavy handed with development studios, it was only to try and avoid a situation similar to the Video Game Crash of 1984 that brought down Atari.
Because the NES days were fucking horrible, god how miserable we were with the poor quality titles that poured out of the development studios. The horrific absence of any innovative, classic titles. Nintendo nigh brought the video games industry to its knees with their steel fisted hegemony! How cruel they were!
If Ritalin was a problem for you, you weren't ADD/ADHD or you had an unusually bad reaction. Misdiagnoses, and Overzealous diagnoses are common, but there are children for whom it makes a night and day difference. My sister was also a Ritalin kid, she went from being unable to function in school (both schoolwork wise and discenplenary-wise), and unable to interact with others, including her family, to be able to function and excel. My mother would have been another, but she was born far too early to get help, they tried to treat here with barbiturates, it just made her even more psychotic. She used to get out of bed and sneak out of the house and roam the street at night as a very young child, because she couldn't sleep, luckily she never got hurt doing so. I'm sorry if you had a bad experience, due to misdiagnosis/incorrect treatment but that doesn't mean that the disease doesn't exist.
I'm not at all defending meth, I'm saying that meth is a part of the problem created by the war on drugs. Just consider this question: Was an Opium Den or Cocaine user in the 1890's anywhere near as bad or dangerous as a Meth Lab in the early 21st century? I say the answer is absolutely not.
And you can rot out your lungs smoking cigarettes, rot your gums chewing tobacco, and burn out your liver swilling rot gut whiskey, any one of these can kill you, so what's your point? Cocaine is relatively harmless (assuming its actually Cocaine), compared to meth cooked up in a toilet bowl in trailer park. Also, how much was she doing? Lot's over an extended period of time most likely; cry me a river, you abuse anything and it'll fuck you up, any substance at all, from Tylenol, Aspirin, or Vitamin C, to Protein, or Water.
Meth is only a problem because safer things are illegal and harder to get. Cocaine/LSD/Psilocybin (The list is due to the many effects of ampetamines which range from straight stimulant to psychodelic)are adequate replacements that are perfectly safe assuming a safe supply (that is, created in an actual chemical lab/plant, not a toilet bowl, as meth often is). Heroin is only dangerous to use because it is cut with quinine, which causes death by pulmonary effusion in overdose, and because needle sharing spreads HIV, another phenomena that wouldn't occur with legal availability.. And has anybody EVER adequately justified why marijuana use should be illegal? Because people get high and drive? I'll acknowledge that its dangerous and a bad idea to do so, but alcohol is a much worse problem, and Driving under the Influence of any pyschoative drug known to cause accidents should be illegal. Prohibition does not work! Drug Addiction (which is different from drug use) is a Medical problem, and should be treated as such!
you can have the legal but I disagree on "Right" What is "Right" is often only tangentially related to what is socially acceptable or legal. It has only been illegal to own slaves in a large part of the US for 140 years. That doesn't mean it was right then, socially accepted or no. Locking down our cultural heritage so that it may be lost in the immediate future may be legal and socially acceptable, but that doesn't make it right either. Libertarian free-market rantings have nothing to do with it. The "Real" libertarian stance ought to be: if you don't want it distributed, don't fucking release it.
Not that I'm against guns per se, but pretending that they're some kind of superweapon that makes you invincible is outright foolish. That .45 in your coat may make you feel 12ft tall, with 8in steel ball bearings for testicles, but that sure as hell won't keep you alive when the shit really hits the fan.
I'd definately agree on the quality over quantity. Zelda: TP all the way.
I fail to see the problem in any way. If you want to know, make some effort to educate yourself. My point was was not to illustrate my "mind-bogglingly magnificent googling skillz" it was to illustrate just how available this information is to anyone who makes the slightest effort, a stoned baboon ought to be able to find it.
No, they're not, but if you think kids go fucking nuts at college now, wait till these kids get unleashed into that kind of freedom!
Sure, Sure mod me flame bait. But I'm fucking right here. If these people took any effort at all, or the same effort as making a post(!) they'd know.
Googling Slingplayer, the top fucking link is:
http://us.slingmedia.com/page/slingplayer.html
Which is the fucking product page! Searching Wikipedia for Slingplayer doesn't return it immediately, but gives this page:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search =slingplayer a list with the top(!) link being the Slingbox, the device this software interfaces with. It tooke me much longer to write this post than it did for me to do those searches, and that's the truth. It's not like this information is secret and hidden. A simple search on the most common information sources gives it straight out.
I know this isn't the answer you are looking for, and I understand. But my compromise since switching to a Mac recently has been to rely on game consoles for my gaming needs. The Wii is launching for only $250, which I realize is a significant fraction of the cost of an Intel Mini (as opposed to a PS3, the price of which WILL buy you a Mini on sale), but you don't have to worry about Windows (ditto on the "Yuck!" to that) and its not like a Wii is some monstrously huge box anyway. If you have any interest in classic Nintendo games, or TG-16 games (they made a deal to get these on Virtual console as well), or potentially in any of the upcoming Wii titles, this option is definately worth some consideration.
At this point we've let the situation progress to the point that I'm not sure there's even anything to be done. I've read reports suggesting that HIV infection rates in many sub-saharan countries may (due to extremely poor testing rates) be as high as 30-50%. It's very grim, and depressing.
Of Course, I'm not actually suggesting this is happening with American athletes. I don't think they're ANYWHERE near picky enough about finding mates to actually make this remotely true (or agressivly killing off their unfit offspring, You'd have to go Hardcore Spartan Style to make it work.)
This is the statement I take issue with. I'm not exactly sure how far we've come since then but dolly died young of progressive lung disease, and the articles I can find suggest that other cloned animals since are not particularly healthy, and that the process is far, far less efficient than simply breeding animals. By which I mean it often takes dozens of attempts to produce a single viable embryo.
Given this information I'd guess that clones would not be a good way of producing animals identical to high quality stock at all.
I tend to agree with you, but on the other hand, I don't really see a problem with there being multiple competing Hardware architectures. Was it really so bad to have both x86 and POWER? Or x86 and 68K? On that note does anybody know anything about the Chinese MIPS clone that was being talked about a year or two ago? I can see something like that being really neat to play around with. Although a lot of people would probably prefer POWER, if there was the opportunity for cheap MIPS based RISC hardware to play around with, I'd be all for it. They're both pretty nice, clean RISC architectures.