The public doesn't give a crap what the MPAA supports. As long as the industry keeps releasing movies in both formats,
Psst.... MPAA == "the industry." Who do you think releases the movies? Sony, Columbia, Time Warner, Disney, etc. Who do you think are the member companies of the MPAA? That's right. Sony, Columbia, Time Warner, etc.
I could name you more "non-infringing" uses of P2P than non-people-injuring uses of guns.
When the "right to share files" is enshrined in a constitional amendment, as firearms are, then you'll have a point. Until then, you're just begging for a flamefest.
I never understand this concept that we are so bad. So bad compared to what? How many civilizations do we have to compare to? Martians? Moon Folk? Sheesh folks every comparison we have is a figment of our own imaginations.
Compared to our potential. I look at where we are, and where we could be, with the same resources and knowledge, if we only had sufficient motivation, tolerence, and initiative.
Take Olympic athletes for example. They represent the pinnacle of human athleticism. They are what we could accomplish, if we were only dedicated and focused enough. Of course, we couldn't all reach such high potential, but my point is that we could all, most certainly, achieve a higher physical potential than we are at right now.
The same goes for human nature. Of course, we can't all be as open minded, enlightened, and visionary as Carl Sagan or Stephen Hawking, but we most certainly could do a helluvalot better than the crackpots delivering suicide bombs in Gaza and Baghdad, or the people who can haul themselves in front of city hall to protest gay marriage, but can't be bothered to donate any time or money to cancer research.
I'm saying that it is very obvious to me that we are squandering our potential on a global scale. I think everyone can look within themselves and agree that, if they were only motivated, they could be in better health, be a better spouse or parent, do a better job at work, but we're lazy and apathetic. If you agree that this is true on an individual scale, then how can you possibly deny that the same is true on a global scale?
Launching a 'super bomb' from earth is a nice idea, but it would be better to have such devices off earth at the time they are needed. (Get them out of the gravitational hole where you have a really small launch window to get them on target.) This means you now have to contend with the activists who are going to fight against the launching of whatever type of 'super-bomb' you plan on putting into orbit. Have fun.
If done early enough, they wouldn't have to be "super bombs." They could simply be small thrusters. If you nudge the asteroid early enough, you can prevent the collision.
Take an example. Say two cars are speeding straight towards each other on a foggy one-lane road one night, with their headlights out. They're a mile apart and they're both going 60 mph, straight at each other. By the time they see each other, they'll need to slam on the breaks or crank the wheel hard, expending a tremendous amount of energy to avoid the collision. However, if they knew from the beginning, when they were a mile apart, that they were on a collision, course, all one of them would have to do would be to turn their steering wheel 1 measly degree, and they'd miss each other. Sure, it would be close, but they'd still miss, and never cross paths again. THAT is the approach we need to take to asteroids. We don't need to obliterate them or split them in half. We need to see far enough away (10 years) that a collision is imminent, and "nudge" it a little. Just slow it down by a few miles-per-second such that instead of smacking into Earth when we come around, we'll have already passed by, and it will miss.
I'd also go so far as to say that colonizing other planets is now the most important thing mankind can achieve. Purely from the perspective of preserving our species, it's the next critical step.
While I believe you are correct, I don't think mankind is there yet. Look at it in perspective. What we're talking about here would take global cooperation of the scale never seen before. We can't even wipe out AIDS or world hunger or war, how are we going to work together to colonize another planet?
I'm reminded of Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot," and the profound wisdom of his words:
"The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds."
How do you convince a culture like that to put aside the generations of bigotry and hatred, and to work together for something truly noble? Think about your target audience. You have 10th generation racists, anti-gay bigots, xenophobic taxpayers who all demand that their way be the way because "I pay taxes, dammit!"
In one sense, you can look back through history and believe that mankind has come a great distance, but when you consider things on a cosmic scale, you realize we've barely advanced at all. We still have war, racism, hatred, disease, even though eliminating all of those things has been without our reach for several decades now.
In the end, it will not be the asteroid that dooms us. The asteroid is merely a statistical inevitability. They've hit before and they'll hit again. What will really doom us is our self-absorbed inability to recognize the inevitability of our impending doom, and act on it. Our own selfish need to be "on top" of this rock will prevent us from conceiving of an existance beyond this rock. We will continue going on, pretending that maybe that last asteroid was really the last one, and the next 4.5 billion years will be smooth sailing. Could we really be that naive? I believe, "yes."
I live in canada, when the Us says jump we say "no... err how high we'll do it later under the guise of something else".
I'm a Canadian too, and you're wrong. Regardless of what the government says, you must look at what they actually do. It's a fact that we did not send troops to Iraq, even though the US wanted us to. It's a fact that we are decriminalizing marijuana, even though the US doesn't want us to. It's a fact that we are not participating in North American missile defense, even though the US wants us too. It's a fact that gay marriage is (well, will be soon enough) legal in Canada, even though Bush is strongly opposed.
Canada has defied the US on these major issues and more, proving that Canada does indeed act with its own sovereignty, rather than taking orders from Bush Inc.
Excuse me? You think so? Tell me then, why is Canada's Prime Minister, Paul Martin, refusing to go along with your cockamamy "Missile Defense Shield" program? He (finally) took a stand on the issue last week, and announced that Canada will not put any money into the system, nor will they allow American missiles to be launched from Canadian soil.
Also, if Canada is merely a US lapdog, then why did Canada refuse to commit troops to the War on Islam^H^H^H^H^HIraq? This decision was extremely unpopular with Bush, by the way, which is the reason the US is stubbornly refusing to allow Canadian beef to cross the US border even today, almost 2 years after a single case of BSE was found in a dead cow's corpse in western Canada. The US has also tried to bully Canada with punishing tariffs on softwood lumber. Rather than give in, Canada instead fought back in international forums, and the US has repeatedly, by many jurisdictions, been ordered to drop the tariffs, and the US is finally, slowly complying.
And FYI, Canada has more oil than the Middle East, when you factor in the reserves saturating the tar sands, and above the permafrost. These deposits have been economically unfeasible to collect, until the world oil prices rose as they have recently. Make no mistake that as the political unrest in the middle east worsens, and their oil reserves dwindle, Canada will be the next energy superpower of the world, and it will be the US that will be the one begging for it the most.
Seriously, where the hell did this misconception arise from?
It was always "hacker." Then in the 90's, a bunch of Open Source hippies got it in their head that it would be "trendy" to portray hacking as a good thing, but they still needed a word for the bad stuff, so they invented "cracker." Predictably, the rest of the world didn't take kindly to a few antisocial misfits ordering them to change the way they talk, and ignored them. They still do. And the obscure niche misfits still bitch and complain that world won't change the the way they talk.
Let me ask you this: Feminists object to the word "women," and instead ask that we all spell it "womyn." I think it's a bunch of Liberal fluffy garbage, and refuse to change the way I talk just to bend to the PC whim of a bunch of uptight busybodies. What do YOU think?
Hint: That's how everybody else feels when people like you tell them to stop using the word "hacker" and instead use "cracker."
I shudder to think of the orgasmic mess that will be made in parents' basements everywhere the first time a respectable media outlet actually uses the word "cracker" in the context they've always wanted.
I'll also make a point that the death penalty is only there to satisfy the sadistic perverted desires of revenge that the victums have. Death is no punishment
Would we be correct then in assuming that you are equally opposed to "life without parole" sentences? After all, life without parole is just an extra-long death sentence. If a person is never going to be permitted out again, no matter what, what difference does it make if they die at 35 of a Potassium Chloride overdose, or at 65 from heart disease?
Also, are you suggesting that people like Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Timothy McVeigh could have eventually been rehabilitated?
And finally, what's so wrong about "revenge" anyway? If someone commits the absolute most heinous crime imaginable, raping and murdering your daughter, is it really so unreasonable of the parent to feel vengeful? If the perpetrator wasn't prepared for an eye-for-an-eye punishment, then perhaps they shouldn't have done the crime.
Good, honest people die tragically all the time. Why should we go out of our way to ensure that multiple-murdering, unrepentant scumbags get to live out a long, moderately fulfilling life behind bars?
The article is a good primer for people who haven't done much research regarding browser feature development, but doesn't offer anything terribly insightful or innovative. Really nice photography though.:)
It's probably been as sore a time to be a Porsche employee as when they cancelled their GT Racing and reassigned that staff to develop their SUV.
What makes you think the GT racing team was assigned to work on the Cayenne? Isn't it more likely that the team was working on the Carrera GT supercar? And as for it being a "sore time" to be a Porsche employee, the company has in fact been able to exceed its previous year's sales, despite a declining consumer market for luxury sport cars. This impressive outcome is largely attributed to the wildly successful SUV you just derided.
Consumer spending in particular did not revive. Nevertheless, with deliveries of 15,209 new vehicles - including company cars and those leased to Porsche employees - the preceding year's result (13,179 units) was clearly exceeded. This is mainly due to the Cayenne
Sounds like the Porsche engineers have beaten a declining economy, and been able to work on several new groundbreaking products, including a highly successful SUV, and a breathtaking supercar.
Meet today's nominee for the 2004 Worst Application of Flash Award.
While your kneejerk reaction is typical of Slashdot (as is the predictable up-modding of such popular counter-culture bashing), I disagree. This is, in fact, one of the BEST applications of Flash I've ever seen. I mean think about it. Are you seriously suggesting that this well organized, informative, educational Flash application is "Worse" than all the flashing, beeping Flash ads you run across on the Intraweb?
Try to think outside the box a little, instead of just going along with the anti-pop-culture lemmings. "Apple = good. SCO = bad." Think for yourself, for a change. It's not as hard as the hive would have you believe.
"You're gay?" That's it? That's the best you can come up with? Didn't people stop saying that back in the 90's? Wow. That's pretty sad, kid. Be embarassed.
The other day my wife was coming home from work (swing shift) and ended up behind a drunk. She called 911 on her cell phone
The irony is that your wife was probably the more dangerous threat on the road that night. There have been multiple studies demonstrating that driving while using a cell phone is more dangerous than driving drunk. From the article:
"When drivers were talking on a cell phone, they were involved in more rear-end collisions than when they were legally drunk."
To compound matters even worse, your wife was, by your own admission, "already quite fatigued." Of course, you can see where I'm going with this. There have been other studies which have demonstrated that driving tired can be worse than driving drunk:
"Being tired can be as bad as being drunk, in terms of its effect upon performance," says safety expert, Dr Ann Williamson, who led the study by the University of NSW Injury Risk Management Research Centre.
When you combine those two factors, either of which are as bad or worse than driving drunk on their own, your wife was ironically worse of a danger on the road than the drunk himself, who most likely made it home safely.
the insurance company has a "right" to track people so it can more easily justify it shouldn't have to pay out for their stupid activities, which they agreed to cover in the first place?
Auto insurance is not a license to drive stupidly. It is there to cover your costs in the event that an event occurs that is not your fault. It is to restore your life back the way it was, before the crash that was no fault of your own.
If you were speeding, tailgating, driving drunk, or whatever else, and crash, then I don't believe your policy is obligated to cover that.
Insurance today is nothing more than a lottery. It's a big cold war of information. Insurance companies literally guess at what a risk you are, and gamble that they'll get more money out of you in premiums than they'll ever have to pay out to you in benefits. It's legalized gambling. They already factor in things like your age, sex, the type of car you drive, and statistics regarding your demographic. Personally, I want insurance companies to have access to more relevant, individual information. Why should a bad driver get away with the same low premiums as a good driver, simply because they've been lucky in avoiding some major accidents, and the insurance company isn't "allowed" to find out that this person is a bad driver?
Look at it from a medical insurance point of view. They ask us all about our family history, our own medical records, they consider our age, race, sex, gender, and a bunch of other factors. But what if you know you have diabetes? Should you hide that from your insurance company when you're applying for coverage? Should they be allowed to test you for those diseases? What if they test your genes and determine that you're an extremely high risk for an expensive disease? Is it "wrong" for them to charge you higher premiums? Is it "wrong" for them to have access to that info? Should they be forced to blindly gamble and assign you the same arbitrary rate as everyone else, until you get the inevitable Lou Gherig's or whatever?
I think insurance companies should have access to as much information as possible. That's the only fair way. The only people who oppose this view are those who are greater risks, and know it, and don't want the system to change because they're currently benefitting from it. Their rates are kept artificially low while mine are kept artificially high, because convention is on their side with regard to denying information to the insurance companies. They can scoot around, driving dangerously, scoffing at the rest of us while enjoying the same low insurance rates, until they inevitably cause an accident.
People who are safe drivers have everything to gain by allowing the insurance companies to have more information. It can only bring benefits to us.
it's because the plane isn't moving faster than 220km/h relative to the GSM base station, due to the huge altitude..
I strongly suggest you take some math and physics courses. That's like claiming a boat traveling 30 knots is not traveling over the ocean floor at that same speed. It makes absolutely no sense.
The VATICAN even has scientific institutions, including one of the world's better astronomical observatories.
You're absolutely right. The Vatican is a world leader in science. Why, up until 1992, common sense told us that the Sun revolved around the Earth, but the Vatican broke the story that it is in fact the other way around! Many believe that it was the massive expense of re-writing all the science textbooks in the mid-1990's that led to the unrealistic economic buildup, and inevitable subsequent bust.
[Grandparent]: When an airliner crashes 400 people die. Do we stop all flight? Tens of thousands of people die in car crashes every year. Do we ban cars? No.
[Parent]: Exactly. Everything has risk, and while we should and do try to reduce the risks, not doing something because it does pose a slight risk [...] is beyond retarded.
The problem is control. Yes, planes crash. If people are scared of that, they can simply not fly. If people are afraid of car crashes they can not drive. If people are afraid of a nuclear power plant melting down and spewing airborne radioactive ash over 2000 square miles, well, there's not a whole hell of a lot they can do about it. That is the problem. That is why it is meeting all this resistence. Society can get over fears which the really paranoid people can choose to avoid, however inconvenient. But when a "risk" comes along that can't be escaped from, well, then we need everyone to buy into it.
Fission may be cleaner than fusion, but it's still very big iron, running at a temperature of 100 million degrees centigrade
I'm confused. Are you claiming that today's current fission reactors operate at 100 million degrees? Or are you claiming that fusion only occurs at 100 million degrees?
I guess it doesn't really matter, because both statements are wildly incorrect.
First of all, as far as I know, fusion is actually cleaner than fission, because it works with much more stable and predictable elements and isotopes (Hydrogen, Helium, Deuterium, etc. compared to Plutonium, Uranium, Strontium, etc.).
Secondly, fission most certainly does not require multi-million degree reactions. They're hot, sure, but not that hot. Surely you realize that anything that hot could not be contained by anything less than a very strong, stable, magnetic field. Today's current fission reactors employ plain old concrete and steel, with a few exotic materials, but nothing that needs to withstand "100 million degree" temperatures.
Thirdly, even if you were referring to fusion as requiring 100 million degrees to occur, and not fission, you'd still be wrong. Fusion can occur at much lower temperatures. The surface of the sun, for example, is "only" about 6,000 degrees Kelvin, yet is one giant, sustained fusion reaction. Of course, that would still be far too hot for any materials known to man to contain, but it is a far cry from your claimed "100 million degrees."
It is not uncommon for a vasectomy or a tubal ligation to fail
Yes it is. It's not impossible but it is most definitely uncommon. If it were common, nobody would bother to get them. It is rare for them to fail. It happens, but it is rare. Just nitpicking your choice of words.
A nuclear war on the moon would be quite boring. The moon has no atmosphere, and thus, a "lunar nuclear war" would be little more than a bunch of (very) bright flashes, unless the nukes can somehow be implanted below the surface of the enemy. You could detonate a 50 megaton nuke 5 feet off the surface of the moon and you might succeed in stirring up a small amount of lunar dust. There would definitely be no crater though. Just a bright flash, and a metric buttload of gamma rays and neutrinos.
They have absolutly no right to interfere with what a person does on their private land, with their private equipment, so long as one person's use of land and equipment doesn't interfere with anyone else's
Really? Then why was the US permitted to invade Iraq? What was Iraq doing that was affecting anyone else? What threat did Iraq pose to anyone (besides, of course, the completely fabricated WMD "evidence")? Why hasn't the UN condemned the US's actions, which equate to doing exactly what you just said no one has the right to do?
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.sigs, but I just have to ask: "At the same time?"
I can pee standing AND have multiple orgasms!
I rarely respond to peoples'
The public doesn't give a crap what the MPAA supports. As long as the industry keeps releasing movies in both formats,
Psst.... MPAA == "the industry." Who do you think releases the movies? Sony, Columbia, Time Warner, Disney, etc. Who do you think are the member companies of the MPAA? That's right. Sony, Columbia, Time Warner, etc.
I could name you more "non-infringing" uses of P2P than non-people-injuring uses of guns.
When the "right to share files" is enshrined in a constitional amendment, as firearms are, then you'll have a point. Until then, you're just begging for a flamefest.
I never understand this concept that we are so bad. So bad compared to what? How many civilizations do we have to compare to? Martians? Moon Folk? Sheesh folks every comparison we have is a figment of our own imaginations.
Compared to our potential. I look at where we are, and where we could be, with the same resources and knowledge, if we only had sufficient motivation, tolerence, and initiative.
Take Olympic athletes for example. They represent the pinnacle of human athleticism. They are what we could accomplish, if we were only dedicated and focused enough. Of course, we couldn't all reach such high potential, but my point is that we could all, most certainly, achieve a higher physical potential than we are at right now.
The same goes for human nature. Of course, we can't all be as open minded, enlightened, and visionary as Carl Sagan or Stephen Hawking, but we most certainly could do a helluvalot better than the crackpots delivering suicide bombs in Gaza and Baghdad, or the people who can haul themselves in front of city hall to protest gay marriage, but can't be bothered to donate any time or money to cancer research.
I'm saying that it is very obvious to me that we are squandering our potential on a global scale. I think everyone can look within themselves and agree that, if they were only motivated, they could be in better health, be a better spouse or parent, do a better job at work, but we're lazy and apathetic. If you agree that this is true on an individual scale, then how can you possibly deny that the same is true on a global scale?
Launching a 'super bomb' from earth is a nice idea, but it would be better to have such devices off earth at the time they are needed. (Get them out of the gravitational hole where you have a really small launch window to get them on target.) This means you now have to contend with the activists who are going to fight against the launching of whatever type of 'super-bomb' you plan on putting into orbit. Have fun.
If done early enough, they wouldn't have to be "super bombs." They could simply be small thrusters. If you nudge the asteroid early enough, you can prevent the collision.
Take an example. Say two cars are speeding straight towards each other on a foggy one-lane road one night, with their headlights out. They're a mile apart and they're both going 60 mph, straight at each other. By the time they see each other, they'll need to slam on the breaks or crank the wheel hard, expending a tremendous amount of energy to avoid the collision. However, if they knew from the beginning, when they were a mile apart, that they were on a collision, course, all one of them would have to do would be to turn their steering wheel 1 measly degree, and they'd miss each other. Sure, it would be close, but they'd still miss, and never cross paths again. THAT is the approach we need to take to asteroids. We don't need to obliterate them or split them in half. We need to see far enough away (10 years) that a collision is imminent, and "nudge" it a little. Just slow it down by a few miles-per-second such that instead of smacking into Earth when we come around, we'll have already passed by, and it will miss.
While I believe you are correct, I don't think mankind is there yet. Look at it in perspective. What we're talking about here would take global cooperation of the scale never seen before. We can't even wipe out AIDS or world hunger or war, how are we going to work together to colonize another planet?
I'm reminded of Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot," and the profound wisdom of his words:
How do you convince a culture like that to put aside the generations of bigotry and hatred, and to work together for something truly noble? Think about your target audience. You have 10th generation racists, anti-gay bigots, xenophobic taxpayers who all demand that their way be the way because "I pay taxes, dammit!"
In one sense, you can look back through history and believe that mankind has come a great distance, but when you consider things on a cosmic scale, you realize we've barely advanced at all. We still have war, racism, hatred, disease, even though eliminating all of those things has been without our reach for several decades now.
In the end, it will not be the asteroid that dooms us. The asteroid is merely a statistical inevitability. They've hit before and they'll hit again. What will really doom us is our self-absorbed inability to recognize the inevitability of our impending doom, and act on it. Our own selfish need to be "on top" of this rock will prevent us from conceiving of an existance beyond this rock. We will continue going on, pretending that maybe that last asteroid was really the last one, and the next 4.5 billion years will be smooth sailing. Could we really be that naive? I believe, "yes."
I live in canada, when the Us says jump we say "no... err how high we'll do it later under the guise of something else".
I'm a Canadian too, and you're wrong. Regardless of what the government says, you must look at what they actually do. It's a fact that we did not send troops to Iraq, even though the US wanted us to. It's a fact that we are decriminalizing marijuana, even though the US doesn't want us to. It's a fact that we are not participating in North American missile defense, even though the US wants us too. It's a fact that gay marriage is (well, will be soon enough) legal in Canada, even though Bush is strongly opposed.
Canada has defied the US on these major issues and more, proving that Canada does indeed act with its own sovereignty, rather than taking orders from Bush Inc.
[US politicians] already control Canada
Excuse me? You think so? Tell me then, why is Canada's Prime Minister, Paul Martin, refusing to go along with your cockamamy "Missile Defense Shield" program? He (finally) took a stand on the issue last week, and announced that Canada will not put any money into the system, nor will they allow American missiles to be launched from Canadian soil.
Also, if Canada is merely a US lapdog, then why did Canada refuse to commit troops to the War on Islam^H^H^H^H^HIraq? This decision was extremely unpopular with Bush, by the way, which is the reason the US is stubbornly refusing to allow Canadian beef to cross the US border even today, almost 2 years after a single case of BSE was found in a dead cow's corpse in western Canada. The US has also tried to bully Canada with punishing tariffs on softwood lumber. Rather than give in, Canada instead fought back in international forums, and the US has repeatedly, by many jurisdictions, been ordered to drop the tariffs, and the US is finally, slowly complying.
And FYI, Canada has more oil than the Middle East, when you factor in the reserves saturating the tar sands, and above the permafrost. These deposits have been economically unfeasible to collect, until the world oil prices rose as they have recently. Make no mistake that as the political unrest in the middle east worsens, and their oil reserves dwindle, Canada will be the next energy superpower of the world, and it will be the US that will be the one begging for it the most.
Seriously, where the hell did this misconception arise from?
It was always "hacker." Then in the 90's, a bunch of Open Source hippies got it in their head that it would be "trendy" to portray hacking as a good thing, but they still needed a word for the bad stuff, so they invented "cracker." Predictably, the rest of the world didn't take kindly to a few antisocial misfits ordering them to change the way they talk, and ignored them. They still do. And the obscure niche misfits still bitch and complain that world won't change the the way they talk.
Let me ask you this: Feminists object to the word "women," and instead ask that we all spell it "womyn." I think it's a bunch of Liberal fluffy garbage, and refuse to change the way I talk just to bend to the PC whim of a bunch of uptight busybodies. What do YOU think?
Hint: That's how everybody else feels when people like you tell them to stop using the word "hacker" and instead use "cracker."
I shudder to think of the orgasmic mess that will be made in parents' basements everywhere the first time a respectable media outlet actually uses the word "cracker" in the context they've always wanted.
I'll also make a point that the death penalty is only there to satisfy the sadistic perverted desires of revenge that the victums have. Death is no punishment
Would we be correct then in assuming that you are equally opposed to "life without parole" sentences? After all, life without parole is just an extra-long death sentence. If a person is never going to be permitted out again, no matter what, what difference does it make if they die at 35 of a Potassium Chloride overdose, or at 65 from heart disease?
Also, are you suggesting that people like Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer, and Timothy McVeigh could have eventually been rehabilitated?
And finally, what's so wrong about "revenge" anyway? If someone commits the absolute most heinous crime imaginable, raping and murdering your daughter, is it really so unreasonable of the parent to feel vengeful? If the perpetrator wasn't prepared for an eye-for-an-eye punishment, then perhaps they shouldn't have done the crime.
Good, honest people die tragically all the time. Why should we go out of our way to ensure that multiple-murdering, unrepentant scumbags get to live out a long, moderately fulfilling life behind bars?
The article is a good primer for people who haven't done much research regarding browser feature development, but doesn't offer anything terribly insightful or innovative. Really nice photography though. :)
This would be a perfect time for the XFL to come back! Yaaay!!
:(
Interesting bit of trivia: Yet XFL was more profitable than the WNBA. Yet the XFL was canceled, and the WNBA lives on.
What makes you think the GT racing team was assigned to work on the Cayenne? Isn't it more likely that the team was working on the Carrera GT supercar? And as for it being a "sore time" to be a Porsche employee, the company has in fact been able to exceed its previous year's sales, despite a declining consumer market for luxury sport cars. This impressive outcome is largely attributed to the wildly successful SUV you just derided.
Source:
Sounds like the Porsche engineers have beaten a declining economy, and been able to work on several new groundbreaking products, including a highly successful SUV, and a breathtaking supercar.
Meet today's nominee for the 2004 Worst Application of Flash Award.
While your kneejerk reaction is typical of Slashdot (as is the predictable up-modding of such popular counter-culture bashing), I disagree. This is, in fact, one of the BEST applications of Flash I've ever seen. I mean think about it. Are you seriously suggesting that this well organized, informative, educational Flash application is "Worse" than all the flashing, beeping Flash ads you run across on the Intraweb?
Try to think outside the box a little, instead of just going along with the anti-pop-culture lemmings. "Apple = good. SCO = bad." Think for yourself, for a change. It's not as hard as the hive would have you believe.
you're pretty gay, am i rite?
"You're gay?" That's it? That's the best you can come up with? Didn't people stop saying that back in the 90's? Wow. That's pretty sad, kid. Be embarassed.
The irony is that your wife was probably the more dangerous threat on the road that night. There have been multiple studies demonstrating that driving while using a cell phone is more dangerous than driving drunk. From the article:
To compound matters even worse, your wife was, by your own admission, "already quite fatigued." Of course, you can see where I'm going with this. There have been other studies which have demonstrated that driving tired can be worse than driving drunk:
When you combine those two factors, either of which are as bad or worse than driving drunk on their own, your wife was ironically worse of a danger on the road than the drunk himself, who most likely made it home safely.
the insurance company has a "right" to track people so it can more easily justify it shouldn't have to pay out for their stupid activities, which they agreed to cover in the first place?
Auto insurance is not a license to drive stupidly. It is there to cover your costs in the event that an event occurs that is not your fault. It is to restore your life back the way it was, before the crash that was no fault of your own.
If you were speeding, tailgating, driving drunk, or whatever else, and crash, then I don't believe your policy is obligated to cover that.
Insurance today is nothing more than a lottery. It's a big cold war of information. Insurance companies literally guess at what a risk you are, and gamble that they'll get more money out of you in premiums than they'll ever have to pay out to you in benefits. It's legalized gambling. They already factor in things like your age, sex, the type of car you drive, and statistics regarding your demographic. Personally, I want insurance companies to have access to more relevant, individual information. Why should a bad driver get away with the same low premiums as a good driver, simply because they've been lucky in avoiding some major accidents, and the insurance company isn't "allowed" to find out that this person is a bad driver?
Look at it from a medical insurance point of view. They ask us all about our family history, our own medical records, they consider our age, race, sex, gender, and a bunch of other factors. But what if you know you have diabetes? Should you hide that from your insurance company when you're applying for coverage? Should they be allowed to test you for those diseases? What if they test your genes and determine that you're an extremely high risk for an expensive disease? Is it "wrong" for them to charge you higher premiums? Is it "wrong" for them to have access to that info? Should they be forced to blindly gamble and assign you the same arbitrary rate as everyone else, until you get the inevitable Lou Gherig's or whatever?
I think insurance companies should have access to as much information as possible. That's the only fair way. The only people who oppose this view are those who are greater risks, and know it, and don't want the system to change because they're currently benefitting from it. Their rates are kept artificially low while mine are kept artificially high, because convention is on their side with regard to denying information to the insurance companies. They can scoot around, driving dangerously, scoffing at the rest of us while enjoying the same low insurance rates, until they inevitably cause an accident.
People who are safe drivers have everything to gain by allowing the insurance companies to have more information. It can only bring benefits to us.
it's because the plane isn't moving faster than 220km/h relative to the GSM base station, due to the huge altitude..
I strongly suggest you take some math and physics courses. That's like claiming a boat traveling 30 knots is not traveling over the ocean floor at that same speed. It makes absolutely no sense.
The VATICAN even has scientific institutions, including one of the world's better astronomical observatories.
You're absolutely right. The Vatican is a world leader in science. Why, up until 1992, common sense told us that the Sun revolved around the Earth, but the Vatican broke the story that it is in fact the other way around! Many believe that it was the massive expense of re-writing all the science textbooks in the mid-1990's that led to the unrealistic economic buildup, and inevitable subsequent bust.
[Grandparent]: When an airliner crashes 400 people die. Do we stop all flight? Tens of thousands of people die in car crashes every year. Do we ban cars? No.
[Parent]: Exactly. Everything has risk, and while we should and do try to reduce the risks, not doing something because it does pose a slight risk [...] is beyond retarded.
The problem is control. Yes, planes crash. If people are scared of that, they can simply not fly. If people are afraid of car crashes they can not drive. If people are afraid of a nuclear power plant melting down and spewing airborne radioactive ash over 2000 square miles, well, there's not a whole hell of a lot they can do about it. That is the problem. That is why it is meeting all this resistence. Society can get over fears which the really paranoid people can choose to avoid, however inconvenient. But when a "risk" comes along that can't be escaped from, well, then we need everyone to buy into it.
Fission may be cleaner than fusion, but it's still very big iron, running at a temperature of 100 million degrees centigrade
I'm confused. Are you claiming that today's current fission reactors operate at 100 million degrees? Or are you claiming that fusion only occurs at 100 million degrees?
I guess it doesn't really matter, because both statements are wildly incorrect.
First of all, as far as I know, fusion is actually cleaner than fission, because it works with much more stable and predictable elements and isotopes (Hydrogen, Helium, Deuterium, etc. compared to Plutonium, Uranium, Strontium, etc.).
Secondly, fission most certainly does not require multi-million degree reactions. They're hot, sure, but not that hot. Surely you realize that anything that hot could not be contained by anything less than a very strong, stable, magnetic field. Today's current fission reactors employ plain old concrete and steel, with a few exotic materials, but nothing that needs to withstand "100 million degree" temperatures.
Thirdly, even if you were referring to fusion as requiring 100 million degrees to occur, and not fission, you'd still be wrong. Fusion can occur at much lower temperatures. The surface of the sun, for example, is "only" about 6,000 degrees Kelvin, yet is one giant, sustained fusion reaction. Of course, that would still be far too hot for any materials known to man to contain, but it is a far cry from your claimed "100 million degrees."
Actually, if you read the links I foundHere the indication I got from reading was between 5 and 10 percent.
Are you trolling? By following your own link, I found this:
"The failure rate for a vasectomy is less than one percent."
That's straight from the horse's mouth, at Vasectomy.com. I'd say "less than 1%" is very "uncommon."
It is not uncommon for a vasectomy or a tubal ligation to fail
Yes it is. It's not impossible but it is most definitely uncommon. If it were common, nobody would bother to get them. It is rare for them to fail. It happens, but it is rare. Just nitpicking your choice of words.
watch a small scale nuclear war on the moon
A nuclear war on the moon would be quite boring. The moon has no atmosphere, and thus, a "lunar nuclear war" would be little more than a bunch of (very) bright flashes, unless the nukes can somehow be implanted below the surface of the enemy. You could detonate a 50 megaton nuke 5 feet off the surface of the moon and you might succeed in stirring up a small amount of lunar dust. There would definitely be no crater though. Just a bright flash, and a metric buttload of gamma rays and neutrinos.
They have absolutly no right to interfere with what a person does on their private land, with their private equipment, so long as one person's use of land and equipment doesn't interfere with anyone else's
Really? Then why was the US permitted to invade Iraq? What was Iraq doing that was affecting anyone else? What threat did Iraq pose to anyone (besides, of course, the completely fabricated WMD "evidence")? Why hasn't the UN condemned the US's actions, which equate to doing exactly what you just said no one has the right to do?
(I am soooo gonna get "Flamebait" for this one)