Or, we could just have community-based moderation that helps weed out comments that are not amusing, interesting, insightful, or informative. Why hasn't anyone thought of that?
As for longer comments... well... in general, they leave a bad taste in my mouth. Usually whatever takes 10,000 characters to say can be said just as well in 1000. If I wanted to read a long informative essay, there are better places than slashdot comments, and I prefer it that way. YMMV
we like crunching numbers and living by a set schedule. We excel in the very things that makes it hard for most people to stay in shape.
Personally, I think crunching celery would be more useful for staying in shape than curnching doritos (which seems to be as common as number-crunching among geeks, if the sterotype holds any truth).
Living by a set schedule? Not for most geeks I know... if you give a true geek some problem that interests them, they'll stay up all night trying to figure it out. As for IT geeks... well... most of the ones I know have no hope of maintaining a set schedule, since their work demands othwerise. YMMV
I think we may have a different idea of what a geek is.
That said, I know plenty of geeks in good shape, and plenty of geeks in poor shape. Maybe it's the circles I run in, but the non-geeks I know are, on average, in better shape than the geeks.
Sit on lawn chair. Stick tuning fork in jellyfish. Set postage stamp on fire. Roast jellyfish.
* By use of this recipe, you agree that Acme Recipe Co is not responsible for any damages resulting from use of Portuguese Man-O-War or Bluebottle jellyfish in this manner. Acme Recipe Co does not warrant, expressly or implied, the edibility of jellyfishkabobs.
lightning is a huge source of fixed nitrogen (as nitrate) which starts out as nitrogen oxides.
A huge source? Do you mean to say, a relatively minor source compared to the products of nitrogen-fixing bacteria? Because every source I just googled considers lightning to be a minor source (~10%).
I did have the reaction backwards in my previous post, however... NO or NO2 is oxidized to NO3-, not reduced to N2.
Anyway, I find it interesting that you called me out on a part of my post that was accurate, and didn't even bother with the inaccurate part... makes me wonder who is really talking out their ass.
How does anybody verify that 2 messes are equally messy?
Simple. Make the messes using identical cables, following the exact same steps. Since it's geeklympics, how about building a robot to uniformly tangle cables? Every mess of cable can be exactly the same (well, to the degree of the manufacturing tolerances of the cables). Program a new mess algorithm for each of the heats, and for the finals.
What if 1 mess is stiffer and harder to untangle
I'm not sure what olypmics you're watching, but I like the way you think.
These nitrogen oxides will eventually end up as nitrates anyway
Maybe[1], but...
A diffuse source of nitrates is not as problematic as point-source creation of nitrates. High local concentrations of nitrates can lead to lots of problems, which have been pointed out elsewhere in the discussion, so I won't go into detail on those. When NOx is allowed to diffuse before being converted into nitrates, the harmful effects of the nitrates are much less.
I don't have the background & time to do a full analysis of what is more harmful -- NOx pollution + diffuse nitrate pollution vs. reduced NOx pollution + concentrated nitrate pollution... but there is more to the issue than just avoiding NOx. That said, the volume of NOx we produce via combustion is huge, and IMO is worthwhile.
[1] My understanding is that little NOx is converted to nitrates. Most instead is reduced to N2 by ozone. I could be wrong, it's been a very long time since I studied this... and I guess you could say that N2 is eventually converted to nitrates via nitrogen-fixing bacteria as part of the nitrogen cycle...
The only solution is shooting the little snots when they reach, say, 16.
Hey, no need to advocate violence -- though I do like the idea.
We could just as easily increase the inheritance tax, which was intended for precisely this purpose (aside from the nice side effect of increases revenues for the state).
If anyone recommends a home remedy (like toothpaste or baking soda paste), I would try it first on one of your not-so-irreplaceable discs.
Otherwise, you may be *very* unhappy with the results (like if you use a "whitening" toothpaste, or if your tecnhique sucks).
Reminds of an A-Team episode where someone (Murdoch?) tells Mr. T to clean his gold jewelry by putting it in the microwave. Mr. T was not amused with the results, to say the least.
In copyright law it is making the copies that is illegal.
This is not true, which is kind of the point of the judgment being referred to.
It is distributing copies that is illegal. You can make as many copies as you want, but if you rent them out, sell them, etc, then you are in trouble.
The party making the copies (i.e. downloading) is the only one committing the illegal act.
You're pretty close there... but making the copy is not the problem. The problem is downloading it. If I were to log into your computer remotely, and copy all your copyrighted media files to the same computer, that is not a violation. Transmitting the files? That's a copyright violation.
'This will be a big one,' said an industry source."
No. It will be a tiny, tiny, tiny one. One billionth the size of an iPhone. So small you will need a stylus the width of just a few carbon atoms in order to dial out.*
It is, after all, an iPhone nano.
*But that's ok, you can compensate for the tininess of your stylus by the smugness of owning the latest and greatest Apple offering.
Short answer? Yes. The recording industry as distribution giants are no longer needed. That is not to say that there is no place left for their business, just none left for them to run it the way that they have been. Bands still need help with getting concert venues and promotion.
This is it, exactly.
Distribution has changed, but marketing and promotion needs are still there. While it is possible for an artist to succeed with marketing on their own, no small acts have access to the marketing channels that the big companies have -- and so it is unlikely that an artist can succeed in marketing their own product.
The big labels need to retrench and get out of distribution. They could be very, very successful (& profitable) if they realize this. They need to sell off their distribution arms (only the first one or two to do so will realize anywhere close to value, IMO) and do what they are best at, which is controlling what the market "demands".
Indentured servitude is a good example, but there were two types of indentured servants. First were those who voluntarily entered into indenture in order to finance their emigration from their home country. In the context of this thread, those would fall under the "voluntary" emigrants -- they were not "sent" by their governments.
The second group, however, are among the ones I referenced -- they came to the Americas to avoid being put in debtors' prison, where they would likely die from contagion. What often happened is that a colony venture would buy out the debt from the person's creditors (usually at a fraction of the amount owed), and then indenture the person to work off the debt.
Violent criminals, etc, were also sent... but more often to penal colonies (Georgia, etc) than to other colonies.
Another thing I'd note is that there was plenty of Crown manipulation to ensure that certain populations suffered economically in England. Desperation drove some of these people to the Americas, and while it would be false to say that most of them were "sent" by the Crown, many of them had few other options due directly to actions of the Crown.
It is absolutely justifiable to argue that the Crown deliberately worked to ensure that many "undesirables" were shipped to the colonies, and whether they did so directly or indirectly does not change the fact that it happened.
Most asteroids spin, and thus using a thruster will, in the long run, be negated by the spin of the asteroid. Unless the thrusters are timed to coincide with the spin, etc -- and that's assuming there are no problems with landing (well, attaching, really) to the asteroid.
Using gravity would, almost definitely, be more precise than trying to use thrusters -- and so we could avoid the possibility of massive failure (by, say, kicking the asteroid into a different keyhole, or by causing the asteroid to break apart).
The Crown financed a lot of expeditions to the Americas. We're not sure of the motivations of all settlers, but it is known that many settlers chose to come to the Americas instead of a deadly prison sentence.
Whether you want to consider press-ganged individuals and criminals fleeing certain death in floating prisons on the Thames "volunteers", that's your choice. Religious pilgrims were a minority of American settlers -- they get a lot of attention in history classes due to the "justness" of their cause.
Perhaps instead of taking a high-school or community-college level history class, you should take some real history classes, or read some real history books. What you were taught in public school (especially regarding history) is often a lot of propaganda... and is almost always incomplete.
I wish there were more games for the Wii like this - the WiiMote seems tailor made for turn based strategy and board games.
I'm trying to grok what you've written, but it just won't compile. SimCity is a real-time strategy game, not turn-based. And how is the Wiimote tailor-made for TBS or board games? Seems to me it's tailor-made for action games, but maybe that's just me and all the games that have already come out for it.
Seriously, I'm really curious, what advantages do you feel the Wiimote has over a traditional controller for TBS or board games?
I presume you could also play on a 3D tesselation, should you be able design a convenient user-interface.
As long as they don't do it like Upwards. That, my friends, was a game that sucked. Unfortunately, since it somewhat leveled the playing field for the vocabularily challenged, it was the word game of choice in my house.
Slashdot Mirror
Or, we could just have community-based moderation that helps weed out comments that are not amusing, interesting, insightful, or informative. Why hasn't anyone thought of that?
As for longer comments... well... in general, they leave a bad taste in my mouth. Usually whatever takes 10,000 characters to say can be said just as well in 1000. If I wanted to read a long informative essay, there are better places than slashdot comments, and I prefer it that way. YMMV
Personally, I think crunching celery would be more useful for staying in shape than curnching doritos (which seems to be as common as number-crunching among geeks, if the sterotype holds any truth).
Living by a set schedule? Not for most geeks I know... if you give a true geek some problem that interests them, they'll stay up all night trying to figure it out. As for IT geeks... well... most of the ones I know have no hope of maintaining a set schedule, since their work demands othwerise. YMMV
I think we may have a different idea of what a geek is.
That said, I know plenty of geeks in good shape, and plenty of geeks in poor shape. Maybe it's the circles I run in, but the non-geeks I know are, on average, in better shape than the geeks.
Jellyfishkabobs.
Sit on lawn chair. Stick tuning fork in jellyfish. Set postage stamp on fire. Roast jellyfish.
* By use of this recipe, you agree that Acme Recipe Co is not responsible for any damages resulting from use of Portuguese Man-O-War or Bluebottle jellyfish in this manner. Acme Recipe Co does not warrant, expressly or implied, the edibility of jellyfishkabobs.
A huge source? Do you mean to say, a relatively minor source compared to the products of nitrogen-fixing bacteria? Because every source I just googled considers lightning to be a minor source (~10%).
I did have the reaction backwards in my previous post, however... NO or NO2 is oxidized to NO3-, not reduced to N2.
Anyway, I find it interesting that you called me out on a part of my post that was accurate, and didn't even bother with the inaccurate part... makes me wonder who is really talking out their ass.
Simple. Make the messes using identical cables, following the exact same steps. Since it's geeklympics, how about building a robot to uniformly tangle cables? Every mess of cable can be exactly the same (well, to the degree of the manufacturing tolerances of the cables). Program a new mess algorithm for each of the heats, and for the finals.
I'm not sure what olypmics you're watching, but I like the way you think.
Ah, the Slashdot paradox:
The hordes of Slashdot can bring a webserver to its knees even though no Slashdotter actually views the webpage.
Maybe[1], but...
A diffuse source of nitrates is not as problematic as point-source creation of nitrates. High local concentrations of nitrates can lead to lots of problems, which have been pointed out elsewhere in the discussion, so I won't go into detail on those. When NOx is allowed to diffuse before being converted into nitrates, the harmful effects of the nitrates are much less.
I don't have the background & time to do a full analysis of what is more harmful -- NOx pollution + diffuse nitrate pollution vs. reduced NOx pollution + concentrated nitrate pollution... but there is more to the issue than just avoiding NOx. That said, the volume of NOx we produce via combustion is huge, and IMO is worthwhile.
[1] My understanding is that little NOx is converted to nitrates. Most instead is reduced to N2 by ozone. I could be wrong, it's been a very long time since I studied this... and I guess you could say that N2 is eventually converted to nitrates via nitrogen-fixing bacteria as part of the nitrogen cycle...
Hey, no need to advocate violence -- though I do like the idea.
We could just as easily increase the inheritance tax, which was intended for precisely this purpose (aside from the nice side effect of increases revenues for the state).
My grandma was a werewolf, and colloidal silver *killed* her, you insensitive clod.
In the US, truth is an absolute defense to libel suits.
If anyone recommends a home remedy (like toothpaste or baking soda paste), I would try it first on one of your not-so-irreplaceable discs.
Otherwise, you may be *very* unhappy with the results (like if you use a "whitening" toothpaste, or if your tecnhique sucks).
Reminds of an A-Team episode where someone (Murdoch?) tells Mr. T to clean his gold jewelry by putting it in the microwave. Mr. T was not amused with the results, to say the least.
This is not true, which is kind of the point of the judgment being referred to.
It is distributing copies that is illegal. You can make as many copies as you want, but if you rent them out, sell them, etc, then you are in trouble.
You're pretty close there... but making the copy is not the problem. The problem is downloading it. If I were to log into your computer remotely, and copy all your copyrighted media files to the same computer, that is not a violation. Transmitting the files? That's a copyright violation.
No. It will be a tiny, tiny, tiny one. One billionth the size of an iPhone. So small you will need a stylus the width of just a few carbon atoms in order to dial out.*
It is, after all, an iPhone nano.
*But that's ok, you can compensate for the tininess of your stylus by the smugness of owning the latest and greatest Apple offering.
Great, we finally get cold fusion working (by a chip manufacturer? really?) and the first I hear of it, there's been a leak.
Now we'll never get the NIMBY's to allows us to build fusion reactors.
This is it, exactly.
Distribution has changed, but marketing and promotion needs are still there. While it is possible for an artist to succeed with marketing on their own, no small acts have access to the marketing channels that the big companies have -- and so it is unlikely that an artist can succeed in marketing their own product.
The big labels need to retrench and get out of distribution. They could be very, very successful (& profitable) if they realize this. They need to sell off their distribution arms (only the first one or two to do so will realize anywhere close to value, IMO) and do what they are best at, which is controlling what the market "demands".
Indentured servitude is a good example, but there were two types of indentured servants. First were those who voluntarily entered into indenture in order to finance their emigration from their home country. In the context of this thread, those would fall under the "voluntary" emigrants -- they were not "sent" by their governments.
The second group, however, are among the ones I referenced -- they came to the Americas to avoid being put in debtors' prison, where they would likely die from contagion. What often happened is that a colony venture would buy out the debt from the person's creditors (usually at a fraction of the amount owed), and then indenture the person to work off the debt.
Violent criminals, etc, were also sent... but more often to penal colonies (Georgia, etc) than to other colonies.
Another thing I'd note is that there was plenty of Crown manipulation to ensure that certain populations suffered economically in England. Desperation drove some of these people to the Americas, and while it would be false to say that most of them were "sent" by the Crown, many of them had few other options due directly to actions of the Crown.
It is absolutely justifiable to argue that the Crown deliberately worked to ensure that many "undesirables" were shipped to the colonies, and whether they did so directly or indirectly does not change the fact that it happened.
Didn't you know that Midori is ancient Sumerian for "He who lies dead but dreaming?
Seriously, are you going to overlook that? What are you, some kind of Cthulhu apologist?
Says you. You'll be proved wrong when an asteroid the size of Venus crosses our path. Then who'll be so smug? (Me!)
To avoid the asteroid, of course.
Then, we move the orbits of the other 7 (well, 7+, I should say) planets.
Finally, it will be trivial to move the sun relative to all the planet(oids) to put them all back in their right orbits.
Oh, and something about Chinese needlesnakes.
Spin.
Most asteroids spin, and thus using a thruster will, in the long run, be negated by the spin of the asteroid. Unless the thrusters are timed to coincide with the spin, etc -- and that's assuming there are no problems with landing (well, attaching, really) to the asteroid.
Using gravity would, almost definitely, be more precise than trying to use thrusters -- and so we could avoid the possibility of massive failure (by, say, kicking the asteroid into a different keyhole, or by causing the asteroid to break apart).
The Crown financed a lot of expeditions to the Americas. We're not sure of the motivations of all settlers, but it is known that many settlers chose to come to the Americas instead of a deadly prison sentence.
Whether you want to consider press-ganged individuals and criminals fleeing certain death in floating prisons on the Thames "volunteers", that's your choice. Religious pilgrims were a minority of American settlers -- they get a lot of attention in history classes due to the "justness" of their cause.
Perhaps instead of taking a high-school or community-college level history class, you should take some real history classes, or read some real history books. What you were taught in public school (especially regarding history) is often a lot of propaganda... and is almost always incomplete.
Your troll-fu is strong.
9/10 -- too many questions, which is a tip-off that you're trying very hard to elicit responses. Otherwise a pretty good one.
I wish I were that young again. I'm just exhausted and not able to functionally create humorous posts today.
I can fuck for my country?! Sign me up for three tours!
I'm trying to grok what you've written, but it just won't compile. SimCity is a real-time strategy game, not turn-based. And how is the Wiimote tailor-made for TBS or board games? Seems to me it's tailor-made for action games, but maybe that's just me and all the games that have already come out for it.
Seriously, I'm really curious, what advantages do you feel the Wiimote has over a traditional controller for TBS or board games?
As long as they don't do it like Upwards. That, my friends, was a game that sucked. Unfortunately, since it somewhat leveled the playing field for the vocabularily challenged, it was the word game of choice in my house.