I don't think anybody's really theorizing about crapping all over the desert other than what it takes to build the sites. From a NIMBY aspect, this seems pretty tame.
I admitted that the desert was obviously the best place to build these things, that wasn't what I was arguing. What I was attacking was your attitude that the desert mattered less than other places because "it isn't that nice to live in" and "there isn't a huge ecosystem there to destroy." That is an attitude that is extremely common, and it's extremely ignorant. It's has also led to our environment being regularly shit on. Atomic tests, nuclear waste disposal, chemical weapons disposal, air force bombing ranges, poor mining practices, and a whole lot of other things have been justified because the desert is seen as less valuable. Those of us that have been around here for a while tend to take that personally.
And if you think that isn't important or that they aren't that many people that live here, you're wrong. Southern California, Las Vegas, Reno, Phoenix, Denver, Salt Lake City, El Paso, and Albuquerque are all at least partially desert. All of those cities are heavily dependent on the desert ecosystem, which is very fragile.
What is the difference between wind power generated "locally" and that generated in some other state? If you live in Kenosha and the wind power you use is generated near Eau Claire, that somehow makes it more yours than Minnesotans, who live closer? Or Illinoisers who live five miles away from you?
I bet you buy your bananas and oranges from that local Wisconsin farmer. And drive your car with local Wisconsin oil. And type your senseless blathering on a Wisconsin-built PC. Oh, right, we live in the modern world where people produce things in the place most suitable for production. Welcome to the 18th century.
You're assuming that we can harvest all that energy - solar panels and windmills all over everything. What will happen with the widescale use of geothermal heating? How much will the earth's temperature decrease? Let's slow down all the wind and cool the earth. That sounds like a great way to save the environment!
You really need to look up the relative amount of energy we're talking about here. The amount of energy available from wind is a few orders of magnitude larger than the entire power needs of the world. Geothermal heating is, practically speaking, unlimited. You're talking about the same forces that have moved continents and blown up mountains for eons. It's like pulling water out of the Great Lakes with a bucket.
Yes, there *is* a huge ecosystem there to destroy. It's just not rolling hills of green grass year-round. Those that do live here tend to like our surroundings.
Not that it changes much, because southern deserts are obviously the best place to put solar cells, and it should be reasonably simple to minimize ecological impact. But us desert dwellers are sick of ignorant fucks from outside saying "screw it, it's the desert." Our plants and critters are just as important as yours.
Open hardware wouldn't kill Apple, but it would eat into their profit margins by forcing them to sell hardware at a more competitive price. That wouldn't be so bad for the huge majority of consumers, but it certainly would be bad for the company. They don't want to compete with Windows, and they certainly don't want to compete with Dell. They're very happy occupying the niche they have now.
Sorry, even in a roundabout way the British can't take credit for ending the slave trade without looking like huge assholes (that'd be you). The slave trade was ended after all of the profits had already been made. All of the slave economies had large, stable populations of slaves by the time Britain banned slave trading in their territories. There was little money left to be made.
Ending slavery came later, and is substantially easier when you don't have any slaves in your country, and thus have little economic incentive to keep people enslaved. There were only slaves in a few British colonies in the 19th century (Jamaica et al), and their economic importance had dropped significantly since the height of the slave trade.
If you all had ended it in the 17th century when there were still unbelievable amounts of money to be made, you could puff your chest out about being morally superior. But you only ended slavery when it stopped affecting the bottom line. Understandable, but hardly any different than any other imperial power.
Rock the Vote was a stupid idea when it first started, I can't believe they're still around. IIf rock starz!!!! vote, then hey, voting is cool. And everyone wants to be cool, right?
Very few people are too stupid to see the ruse for what it is, and they certainly aren't the ones that should be deciding our country's future. Youth voting is up because our country is so fucked up that even young people realize the importance of voting. We don't need silly corporate-sponsored pap like Rock the Vote to tell us what to do.
As a slashdotter who is practically addicted to sports and sports coverage, I'll add that this is story is completely lacking in substance. It's a press release/advertisement. It barely merits coverage on Gamasutra, let alone this fine institution.
Don't trust the scientist, trust the data. If you don't think *the data* points at global warming then that's your opinion, good for you. If you're basing your argument on trusting or distrusting "scientists" then you're a goddamn fool no matter what we're talking about.
I have no proof to either confirm or deny that, so I do not have an opinion.
Sorry to sound like a dick, but even you know you are ignorant on this matter. So why spend a page of text expanding a half-baked theory? Don't bring "feelings" and hunches into a scientific debate. Read up on it and become informed before throwing around gibberish. It's not like the data isn't easily available.
Wow, that's a great base. I didn't realize NZ got anywhere near that much snow. I unfortunately started watching this season's new ski videos and am slowly going insane as it is 100 degrees outside (38 C) and months away from the first snowfall. I really wish I could afford a plane ticket to the southern hemisphere. Congrats and enjoy.
Wow, you're completely misinformed. Somebody already covered the Amsterdam angle, so I'll go after Las Vegas.
Prostitution is not legal in Las Vegas. It is legal in most of Nevada, and in most of Nevada it works quite well. The brothels are always away from the main part of the town, and they can't advertise so most tourists have no idea they are even there. They are clean and health inspectors make sure everything is on the up-and-up, which isn't always the case in Amsterdam. It's legal, so the women actually have recourse if they are abused or taken advantage of, which is pretty rare. What exactly is wrong with that?
If that was the case in Las Vegas, you wouldn't see street walkers and illegal immigrants giving out ads for call girls everywhere. You wouldn't see advertisements littered everywhere, turning the whole city into a trash dump. If drugs were legalized and moved indoors, and controlled aggressively (like a few states control alcohol), you wouldn't see drug dealers on every corner of the strip and half of the city. People could do what they are going to do anyway in controlled, safe environments, and gang violence would drop dramatically. The police could actually work at preventing damage to lives and property, instead of arresting thousands of people for petty crimes.
And what purpose do these laws actually serve? Do they stop people from using drugs or soliciting a prostitute? Obviously not, with the high rates of drug use that exist in this country and the ubiquity of prostitution everywhere (and if you don't think you can find drugs or prostitutes *everywhere* in the US you are sadly mistaken). They only serve to criminalize legitimate, if unappealing, behavior and turn what should be ordinary citizens into felons.
...which is why he said that the homelessness problem should be solved with affordable housing *and* decent health care. At least finish reading the sentence before your respond.
Hating the Olympics is not the same thing as hating the *ideals* of the Olympics. But when I see Kerri Strug's 1996 gold medal performance reduced to a VISA commercial, hear of yet another athlete busted for doping, read that athletes and reporters are being censored, and remember the thousands of people forcefully evicted in order to build the stadiums in China, it's a little hard to drum up some excitement. Just wait until the first athlete is pulled off TV for saying something about Tibet. The Olympics are more about nationalism and advertising revenue than sport.
Interesting, but I think it would be reasonably easy to attract an additional 40 women to one of the top CS programs in the country. You wouldn't even need to increase the overall number of female CS students. An increase in recruiting females could draw them away from other top programs that are indifferent about sex.
It would be much more interesting to see numbers at mid to low level state schools and the like doing the same thing. At my school, there was approximately 10% women enrolled, and it was a pretty good program. I can't possibly imagine you could make that change at most universities.
People will remember both the good things and the bad things Bill Gates has done, but how can you possibly think that the bad things overshadow his philanthropy. And I'm talking about what he has done *to date*, not the potentially phenomenal things that could come in the future with the tremendous resources he's managing.
The man didn't rape and pillage. He didn't exploit labor. He didn't steal, he didn't start wars. He established a monopoly and manipulated that monopoly to his advantage. Let's not blow things out of proportion.
Re:Great things will happen in the next 50 years
on
NASA Turns 50
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Portugal also had a globe-spanning empire. The difference was that they (largely) didn't care about conquest, only trade. That, and the fact that they were smaller and had fewer resources, ensured that their empire was more on the level of the Dutch than the Spaniards, English, or French. But they still had colonies around the world, including Brazil, Goa, and Macau.
Here's something that's not anecdotal. I couldn't find the original source, but it's common knowledge that the 360's failure rate was terrible at launch and is still pretty bad.
As a side note, anybody remember the original PSX's overheating problems? It seems that being first out of the gate with a next-gen console is worthwhile even if it's a pretty poor design.
It's not up to an editor to determine artistic choices. Some people want to write like Hemingway, some want to write like Joyce. Part of his style is that his stories don't have traditional structure. Some people appreciate it, you obviously don't. But don't act as if it's some sort of absolute value that a short, concisely told story is what everyone is looking for. At least judge it by what it's *trying to be*.
That doesn't mean it's bad, though. Thankfully good superhero movies are becoming commonplace. So they could either put it up against the summer blockbusters that are more kid-friendly and have more name appeal (X-Men, Superman, G.I. Joe IIRC). Or they could release it in March to a nearly empty lineup. All the geeks will go no matter when it's released, but this way they are almost guaranteed to bring in a bunch of people who would have more options in the summer. If it's good they could even have a huge success like 300.
I would consider The Dark Knight to be influenced enough by The Killing Joke to be considered an Alan Moore adaption. Obviously Frank Miller's comics are the main inspiration, but the Batman-Joker story in Dark Knight is very reminiscent of The Killing Joke.
Really? You obviously have no idea what a monarchy is, but a theocracy? Just because religious people vote for another religious person does not make it a theocracy. Is Germany a theocracy? Because they actually have a Christian party, and their leader is the Chancellor of Germany.
He did not declare war unanimously. Only Congress can declare war, and Congress overwhelmingly supported the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. The president actually has very little direct power, he's mostly a figurehead. Congress are the people rubber-stamping his policies.
George Bush is an asshole, but please respect the English language and common sense.
And people, get over it! There is absolutely zero hard evidence that the Republicans have stolen any elections. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, not small amounts of circumstantial evidence and the ramblings of bloggers. You have to live with the fact that approximately half of the voting public voted for a complete jackass (making the large assumption that Kerry or Gore weren't idiots as well). That's one of the unfortunate things about living in a democracy. But you apparently don't know what that means either.
Slashdot Mirror
I admitted that the desert was obviously the best place to build these things, that wasn't what I was arguing. What I was attacking was your attitude that the desert mattered less than other places because "it isn't that nice to live in" and "there isn't a huge ecosystem there to destroy." That is an attitude that is extremely common, and it's extremely ignorant. It's has also led to our environment being regularly shit on. Atomic tests, nuclear waste disposal, chemical weapons disposal, air force bombing ranges, poor mining practices, and a whole lot of other things have been justified because the desert is seen as less valuable. Those of us that have been around here for a while tend to take that personally.
And if you think that isn't important or that they aren't that many people that live here, you're wrong. Southern California, Las Vegas, Reno, Phoenix, Denver, Salt Lake City, El Paso, and Albuquerque are all at least partially desert. All of those cities are heavily dependent on the desert ecosystem, which is very fragile.
What is the difference between wind power generated "locally" and that generated in some other state? If you live in Kenosha and the wind power you use is generated near Eau Claire, that somehow makes it more yours than Minnesotans, who live closer? Or Illinoisers who live five miles away from you?
I bet you buy your bananas and oranges from that local Wisconsin farmer. And drive your car with local Wisconsin oil. And type your senseless blathering on a Wisconsin-built PC. Oh, right, we live in the modern world where people produce things in the place most suitable for production. Welcome to the 18th century.
You really need to look up the relative amount of energy we're talking about here. The amount of energy available from wind is a few orders of magnitude larger than the entire power needs of the world. Geothermal heating is, practically speaking, unlimited. You're talking about the same forces that have moved continents and blown up mountains for eons. It's like pulling water out of the Great Lakes with a bucket.
Yes, there *is* a huge ecosystem there to destroy. It's just not rolling hills of green grass year-round. Those that do live here tend to like our surroundings.
Not that it changes much, because southern deserts are obviously the best place to put solar cells, and it should be reasonably simple to minimize ecological impact. But us desert dwellers are sick of ignorant fucks from outside saying "screw it, it's the desert." Our plants and critters are just as important as yours.
Open hardware wouldn't kill Apple, but it would eat into their profit margins by forcing them to sell hardware at a more competitive price. That wouldn't be so bad for the huge majority of consumers, but it certainly would be bad for the company. They don't want to compete with Windows, and they certainly don't want to compete with Dell. They're very happy occupying the niche they have now.
Sorry, even in a roundabout way the British can't take credit for ending the slave trade without looking like huge assholes (that'd be you). The slave trade was ended after all of the profits had already been made. All of the slave economies had large, stable populations of slaves by the time Britain banned slave trading in their territories. There was little money left to be made.
Ending slavery came later, and is substantially easier when you don't have any slaves in your country, and thus have little economic incentive to keep people enslaved. There were only slaves in a few British colonies in the 19th century (Jamaica et al), and their economic importance had dropped significantly since the height of the slave trade.
If you all had ended it in the 17th century when there were still unbelievable amounts of money to be made, you could puff your chest out about being morally superior. But you only ended slavery when it stopped affecting the bottom line. Understandable, but hardly any different than any other imperial power.
Rock the Vote was a stupid idea when it first started, I can't believe they're still around. IIf rock starz!!!! vote, then hey, voting is cool. And everyone wants to be cool, right?
Very few people are too stupid to see the ruse for what it is, and they certainly aren't the ones that should be deciding our country's future. Youth voting is up because our country is so fucked up that even young people realize the importance of voting. We don't need silly corporate-sponsored pap like Rock the Vote to tell us what to do.
As a slashdotter who is practically addicted to sports and sports coverage, I'll add that this is story is completely lacking in substance. It's a press release/advertisement. It barely merits coverage on Gamasutra, let alone this fine institution.
And grossed $160 million overseas. And had a ridiculous amount of merchandising and tie-ins. And grossed about $70 million domestic on DVD sales.
Yes, it was a blockbuster.
Don't trust the scientist, trust the data. If you don't think *the data* points at global warming then that's your opinion, good for you. If you're basing your argument on trusting or distrusting "scientists" then you're a goddamn fool no matter what we're talking about.
Would people please stop modding this drivel up?
Sorry to sound like a dick, but even you know you are ignorant on this matter. So why spend a page of text expanding a half-baked theory? Don't bring "feelings" and hunches into a scientific debate. Read up on it and become informed before throwing around gibberish. It's not like the data isn't easily available.
Wow, that's a great base. I didn't realize NZ got anywhere near that much snow. I unfortunately started watching this season's new ski videos and am slowly going insane as it is 100 degrees outside (38 C) and months away from the first snowfall. I really wish I could afford a plane ticket to the southern hemisphere. Congrats and enjoy.
What's the point of throwing a party if you can't meet new people? That takes half the fun out of it.
Wow, you're completely misinformed. Somebody already covered the Amsterdam angle, so I'll go after Las Vegas.
Prostitution is not legal in Las Vegas. It is legal in most of Nevada, and in most of Nevada it works quite well. The brothels are always away from the main part of the town, and they can't advertise so most tourists have no idea they are even there. They are clean and health inspectors make sure everything is on the up-and-up, which isn't always the case in Amsterdam. It's legal, so the women actually have recourse if they are abused or taken advantage of, which is pretty rare. What exactly is wrong with that?
If that was the case in Las Vegas, you wouldn't see street walkers and illegal immigrants giving out ads for call girls everywhere. You wouldn't see advertisements littered everywhere, turning the whole city into a trash dump. If drugs were legalized and moved indoors, and controlled aggressively (like a few states control alcohol), you wouldn't see drug dealers on every corner of the strip and half of the city. People could do what they are going to do anyway in controlled, safe environments, and gang violence would drop dramatically. The police could actually work at preventing damage to lives and property, instead of arresting thousands of people for petty crimes.
And what purpose do these laws actually serve? Do they stop people from using drugs or soliciting a prostitute? Obviously not, with the high rates of drug use that exist in this country and the ubiquity of prostitution everywhere (and if you don't think you can find drugs or prostitutes *everywhere* in the US you are sadly mistaken). They only serve to criminalize legitimate, if unappealing, behavior and turn what should be ordinary citizens into felons.
...which is why he said that the homelessness problem should be solved with affordable housing *and* decent health care. At least finish reading the sentence before your respond.
Hating the Olympics is not the same thing as hating the *ideals* of the Olympics. But when I see Kerri Strug's 1996 gold medal performance reduced to a VISA commercial, hear of yet another athlete busted for doping, read that athletes and reporters are being censored, and remember the thousands of people forcefully evicted in order to build the stadiums in China, it's a little hard to drum up some excitement. Just wait until the first athlete is pulled off TV for saying something about Tibet. The Olympics are more about nationalism and advertising revenue than sport.
Interesting, but I think it would be reasonably easy to attract an additional 40 women to one of the top CS programs in the country. You wouldn't even need to increase the overall number of female CS students. An increase in recruiting females could draw them away from other top programs that are indifferent about sex.
It would be much more interesting to see numbers at mid to low level state schools and the like doing the same thing. At my school, there was approximately 10% women enrolled, and it was a pretty good program. I can't possibly imagine you could make that change at most universities.
Do you honestly think that? Here's an example for you. Which do you think is more well-known, Leland Stanford or Stanford University? Andrew Carnegie or Carnegie Mellon University or Carnegie Hall? John Rockefeller or the University of Chicago and all the different projects of the Rockefeller Foundation?
People will remember both the good things and the bad things Bill Gates has done, but how can you possibly think that the bad things overshadow his philanthropy. And I'm talking about what he has done *to date*, not the potentially phenomenal things that could come in the future with the tremendous resources he's managing.
The man didn't rape and pillage. He didn't exploit labor. He didn't steal, he didn't start wars. He established a monopoly and manipulated that monopoly to his advantage. Let's not blow things out of proportion.
Portugal also had a globe-spanning empire. The difference was that they (largely) didn't care about conquest, only trade. That, and the fact that they were smaller and had fewer resources, ensured that their empire was more on the level of the Dutch than the Spaniards, English, or French. But they still had colonies around the world, including Brazil, Goa, and Macau.
Here's something that's not anecdotal. I couldn't find the original source, but it's common knowledge that the 360's failure rate was terrible at launch and is still pretty bad.
As a side note, anybody remember the original PSX's overheating problems? It seems that being first out of the gate with a next-gen console is worthwhile even if it's a pretty poor design.
It's not up to an editor to determine artistic choices. Some people want to write like Hemingway, some want to write like Joyce. Part of his style is that his stories don't have traditional structure. Some people appreciate it, you obviously don't. But don't act as if it's some sort of absolute value that a short, concisely told story is what everyone is looking for. At least judge it by what it's *trying to be*.
That doesn't mean it's bad, though. Thankfully good superhero movies are becoming commonplace. So they could either put it up against the summer blockbusters that are more kid-friendly and have more name appeal (X-Men, Superman, G.I. Joe IIRC). Or they could release it in March to a nearly empty lineup. All the geeks will go no matter when it's released, but this way they are almost guaranteed to bring in a bunch of people who would have more options in the summer. If it's good they could even have a huge success like 300.
I would consider The Dark Knight to be influenced enough by The Killing Joke to be considered an Alan Moore adaption. Obviously Frank Miller's comics are the main inspiration, but the Batman-Joker story in Dark Knight is very reminiscent of The Killing Joke.
Oh really?
Really? You obviously have no idea what a monarchy is, but a theocracy? Just because religious people vote for another religious person does not make it a theocracy. Is Germany a theocracy? Because they actually have a Christian party, and their leader is the Chancellor of Germany.
He did not declare war unanimously. Only Congress can declare war, and Congress overwhelmingly supported the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars. The president actually has very little direct power, he's mostly a figurehead. Congress are the people rubber-stamping his policies.
George Bush is an asshole, but please respect the English language and common sense.
And people, get over it! There is absolutely zero hard evidence that the Republicans have stolen any elections. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, not small amounts of circumstantial evidence and the ramblings of bloggers. You have to live with the fact that approximately half of the voting public voted for a complete jackass (making the large assumption that Kerry or Gore weren't idiots as well). That's one of the unfortunate things about living in a democracy. But you apparently don't know what that means either.