Well, you're right, they don't exactly have the power to imprison you, unless you count the DMCA and piracy prosecutions as potential imprisonment.
But they could have access to your banking information, enough personal data to ruin your life in many ways, and of course could render you virtually unemployable in any of several professions.
Just sayin' that the software you use is more dangerous than you (and I) care to contemplate.
Just a quick read seems to indicate that you have an objection to being identifiable when visting the U.S.
Considering that some of the individuals that conducted the attacks on the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon in September 2001 were in the country beyond the limits of their visas, even past expiration, we may be excused for some recent interest in being a little more diligent in our immigration functions.
I doubt we do a much better job of enforcing even the laws on the books since before 2001. But having to answer a few questions and actually identify your self to enter our country doesn't seem much of a burden. I wonder what countries I could visit without significant identification? The U.K. for sure. Canada, mostly. Mexico? Yup. Japan? Nope, get printed there. Thailand, sadly, probably. China? Saudi Arabia? Spain? I wonder.
The U.S. is incredibly liberal about which foreign nationals it admits, grants the right to work, and ultimately permits residency to. Your complaint is noted. There is a line behind you trying to get in. You may want to move out of their way.
Doesn't seem much worse than the EULA you 'accepted' for Windows XP, or Google Earth, or most any anti-virus software. What part of 'this is our system, you don't get to tell us what to do with your data, and you know this in advance so choose wisely' is so offensive to you?
"That which infuriates me the most about business is corporate executives building wealth upon the backs of laborers."
There. Fixed that for ya.
And yes, it's always been that way. If you want something bigger than your immediate and extended family can make, you will adopt this model. Even Communism does this, despite their protestations. Profit is the only point of a business. Humaneness, responsibility, fairness, and honesty are desireable by society, and expected, but not necessary. Without profit, a business can only fail. Even the 501(c)3 must somehow derive income, usually, and while it will show a profit of zero (mostly), it actually will probably employ people, acquire goods and services in pursuit of its goals, and thereby redistribute the income it receives. Profit is another line item non-profits either call by another name, or hide as 'reserves' until they fail or disband.
And your family will eventually resent you as well, if they don't already.
Several posters have alluded to this, but I blame the Internet. Just follow me here:
- Back in the 'Old Days', productivty software at the time was dominated by WordPerfect, VisiCalc and then 1-2-3, and what else? MS-DOS as the operating system. Everything shipped on diskettes. There was no Internet.
- Fixing a major bug in WordPerfect required shipping diskettes to users, usually under 'warranty'. Expensive, time-consuming, and fraught with uncertainty.
- Fixing bugs in MS-DOS really wasn't done. It was a minor release. Again, diskettes everywhere, and more costs.
- Patch systems were important. Holy wars erupted on development teams over conflicting patch methods, etc. Breaking someone else's code was punished. Features that weren't ready either waited for the next release or cost someone their job.
Today, patches can be delivered 'automatically'. It take how long, seconds, to patch something minor? Internet access is assumed. the 'ship-it-now' mentality is aided by this 'ease' of patching.
If it weren't for Internet distribution, we would see real quality control. It would be a matter of financial survival.
No, Internet distribution is not free. But it's both cheaper, I suspect, than shipping any media, and also less frustrating to a user than waiting at least overnight (more likely 5-7 days) for shipment.
And it leads to the second distortion - Bug fixes as superior service. The BIG LIE.
It is not superior service to post a patch overnight. It is not superior service to respond immediately to an exploit. It is a lie. Having to respond to another buffer overflow exploit after years (YEARS) of this is incompetence, either incompetence by design or incompetence of execution. This afflicts operating systems, software, utilities, nothing is innocent of this.
The next time you marvel just a little bit when Windows or Ubuntu tells you that you were automatically updated, or that udpates are awaiting your mere consent to be installed, remember - they just admitted your software was imperfect, and are asking you to take time to let their process, designed with INEVITABLE errors expected, perform its task and fix what should never have been broken to begin with.
ps- I love Ubuntu. I cut it some slack 'cause you get what you pay for, and many who work on Ubuntu are unpaid, and any rapid response to problems is above expectations. Microsoft, Symantec, Adobe, Red Hat, to name a few, are not in that business. They purport to actually *sell* their products, and make claims to make money. When they fail to deliver excellent products, the lie of superior service is still a lie.
Just the voice of one who remembers when it was different.
pps - EULAs tell it all. I wish I had an alternative. Oh, wait, I do... envermind, lemme get that Ubuntu DVD back out here and... Except at work...
Try getting two doctors to describe the same condition on the same patient on the same day anywheres near the same way. Good luck with that.
I helped install an automated, 'standardizing' ER records application in 1998-2001. It not only took that long, but as the project unfolded, it was apparent that the fundamental reason for doing any of it was to prevent ER docs from actually *writing* notes. They were expected to conform, and this meant a menu-driven approach to the records, primarily by making them choose boilerplate for the descriptions, observations, diagnosis, etc. this was 50% to avoid their indecipherable handeritten notes, and 50% avoiding inadequate, incomprehensible, or useless content. It gets hairy in the ER, and docs don't give up their free time to think it over and re-write things. Besides, they had to write something at the moment to try and tell the surgeons what to look for upstairs, in a hurry. Not that the surgeons much care for their notes, though some did. Knowing which ankle is broken is helpful. Telling the rad tech to shoot 'the swollen one' did not really improve my opinion of much of the staff, but hey, that's why they didn't put me to sleep I guess.
Eventually, just as it was ready for production, the docs prevailed on the developers to add a free-text field for, you guessed it, 'notes'.
Ok, looked to me as if they succeeded in subverting the entire project. I was not disappointed. A month after going live, free-form notes were more than 80% of total information in a patient's record, measured by content, topics, every category except bytes. Oh, they used more bytes too, but we didn't actually use that as a measure of volume. That came later.
Mind you, ER docs are a different breed. They are mostly contractors, very mobile, and operate from a subset of the GOD complex. They may not actually BE God, but in His absence, they are all ya got, so shut up and let them do their jobs, or someone will die because of your actions, not theirs. Sue them later, if you can find them.
So I have to laugh at the idea of standardizing records. Even trying to standardize the layout beyond what ANSI has will be monumental. And ANSI is ignored regularly.
ps- As the project 'wound down', I got calls all hours of the day. Turns out they had projected way too little server space for the database. Gee, I wonder if that had anything to do with the free-text field added, but no reconsideration of the storage estimates? Long story short, when they finally maxed out the array and faced replacing it with new hardware, they blamed the sever OS, NetWare, for the problem and installed a shiny new Windows 2000 server. Went very well, though the monthly reboots were annoying. The old Novell server was up for two years straight when they decommissioned it, though of course the volume remounts and dynamic expansions did make for actual downtime. But that's another story. The CIO didn't last long after he converted the whole hospital to Windows. He just ran out of payroll before he could hire enough MCSEs to keep the lights blinking.
Another possiblity is for McDonald's to buy SCO and then lhave the POS software ported to another platform. There are many, and Solaris might be the winner there.
Then SCO can truly die.
ps- This would be very difficult for the bankruptcy judge to turn down. Might be cheaper to McD's than licenses. Would still give ignat money to pursue his stupid suit.
The beauty of a game that cannot be run on the hardware most of us will buy is the sound of one hand clapping in the forest. What good is beauty if you cannot even see it. How do the blind appreciate the Mona Lisa?
Of course, Crysis isn't written for the average gamer. It's written for the over-the-top, money-bags gamers that can actually buy the hardware. It's written for the gamers a year from now when the hardware will be merely expensive, not prohibitively so. It's written to whet our appetite for the next version, which we HOPE we can run well on whatever we splurge on for hardware then.
It's beautiful. And it's unrealistically demanding. And it's selling.
Wrong animal. You're thinking of the 'Thin, and with a long, large snout' creature, which spews venom somewhat randomly. I say somewhat, because she probably hasn't read this thread yet. Ann Coulter a/.'r? *shudder*
How appropriate that my captcha for this post is 'danger'...
You seem to think you know Americans and their culture.
That is not yet obvious to me. But the device of accusing your detractor of arrogance is, in your example, well, delivered with a substantial measure of arrogance itself.
Your mind seems made up as well. If you object to my sense of certainty, why do you seem to be just as certain? And again, is your point just that you are right, and I am not?
You're going about it wrong. Just like complaining when your insurance company(ies?) don't pay claims, you (we, really) complain that they don't pay the claim. They are not in business to pay claims. They are in business to make money. Not paying claims accomplishes that. Paying your claims does not. They don't pay any they can get away with, and not incur the wrath of the marketplace, regulators, or juries.
So buyng a Prius should not be first about saving money on fuel. The payoff is too long. It should be about not putting more pollutants into the air than necessary. This is laudable. And being quiet around town is good too. I'd buy one if I had the money. But since I don't, I aspire to own a CRX, preferably Gen 2. Equally frugal on gas, much cheaper by every measure, and even more fun.
But to the concept that this deal in California is about saving costs. Nope, it isn't. The only rational justification for this is to be one of many similar intiatives to reduce power demand, and so both reduce peak requirements and delay building more capacity. Not a bad idea.
But why go after just TVs, when there are so many other devices that could be improved?
- Charging any of several consumer electronics devices is wasteful. How about legislating either standard batteries that can be swapped among many devices, or mandating smarter chargers that waste even less energy when not actually charging anything? Ooh, how about a credit for buying a charging station that saves energy...? Nope, this is really impossible to mandate. Most manufacturers might just say 'no'.
- How about mandating that office lighting be turned off at night? Hmm.. They don't do that already? This is a process control problem for many buildings. Not insurmountable. Lots of luck with it though.
- How about re-zoning most of SoCal to stop further development. The energy drain from A/C, cars, commuting, ack! You have to stop this! And the same for Arizona and Nevada too. I think this is a great idea, since I'm already in AZ and would be grandfathered in, more or less. Obviously, this is not going to happen. Besides, they will run out of water before they run out of electricity...
You are, actually, on the right track. Growth = demand, and demand will eventually require more power. No way out of it. California should be contracting with Canada to send hydro power down here. Which, of course, many will oppose, because it just isn't right to expect the Canadians to destroy river habitat just so SoCal can have it's outlets supplied.
Then again, ask the Canadians... Or maybe we should be running oil-fired plants in Alaska.
Except making some people in power the thrill of being 'better' than 'you'. And in this case, 'you' means everybody except them.
Saving the power needed to run 86,400 homes? The Census reported 11,502,870 in 2000. So they want to save about.75% of total power generation? Maybe? Their power consumption numbers are so far off they may end up saving a tenth of THAT...
What an utter waste of time. More impact would be realized if they required datacenters to be located further north, requiring less demanding cooling systems.
Dammit, now I'm giving them more cockamamie ideas. I hate when I do that.
Actually, I get a fair amount of my news from NPR and the FT, but accusing me of having limited sources of news is preposterous. Dude, I'm a/.'r. I get INUNDATED with news, MOST of it NOT from the 'Jewish-controlled media'. As if the Jews control the media in any significant way. CBS, ABC, and NBC prove that daily, and more.
But more to your point, that it is the Zionists that violated the truce by halting supplies to Gaza and hunting Mamas militants with commandos, consider this:
The Wikipedia page on the Qassam rocket has a cute chart on what Israeli Intelligence counts as the number of rockets fired into Israel. from 2006 to 2008, I see no month where they claim there were zero rockets fired into Israel. do you have information to the contrary?
According to the BBC, A cease-fire between Israel and Hamas began on or about June 18, 2008. I say 'on or about', because I cannot find any reports that Hamas stopped launching rockets against Israel at that time.
This report, from a Chinese news agency, seems to point out that Hamas continued to lauch rockets against Israel.
This link, sadly, is from a thoroughly Zionist site, but offers a calendar of rocket attacks, with distinctions between the Qassam rockets and Katyusha rockets usually launched from Lebanon. You have many months of data here.
My first point is that Hamas seems to have violated the truce continuously. They have their explanations, of course.
My second point is deeper.
Israel should not be expected to tolerate the rocket attacks from Hamas, not to mention those from Lebanon, nor suicide attacks by various aggressors. Neither should Israel indiscriminately kill civilians in reprisals. However, Hamas and others hide amongst the civilian population, on purpose. This must also stop.
Probably, there is no option for peaceful co-existence between Israel and any form of Palestinian state. This must change, and the Palestinian people must decide if they will live alongside Israel or not. Do they really have any choice?
If you would like to continue this discussion and delve into the legitimacy of the Jewish state of Israel, just let me know how far back in history you want to go. The premise that the Jewish people have no place in their ancestral homelands does not hold, in my opinion. If you want to blame someone for this trouble, I propose either the Roman Empire, or the UN. Both took their turns at crafting a Middle East. The British sure didn't help, but their contribution was less.
And the assumptions that there are only those who love Israel and tolerate any behaviour on it's part, and those who love the Palestinian people and tolerate any behaviour on their part?
That's so narrow. The conflict is much more complex.
Perhaps a good question to ask is, would you tolerate Israel randomly bombing Gaza?
I can't imagine any caring person accepting that. And why would any caring person tolerate Hamas doing the same to Israeli targets?
Your screed could be written by many a U.S. citizen. Most of the Left here would believe you are writing about America, not New Zealand. You are, aren't you?
But this is the best part:
"...make sure that the profits margins of Hymiewood be preserved..."
How genuinely tolerant, fair, and honest of you. Well, honest at least, I guess.
Sad. Certain prejudices are longer-lasting, aren't they?
That is easily indulged in most ST series. Try getting your physical obsessions on in Battlestar Galactica (new version, please). There can be only one, and she's wearing more clothes as the series drags on. All others are just dumbed down to obscurity.
Then again, they could be making us work for it. Yeah, that's it, they aren't so easy on BG. Now Enterprise, that's just too damned easy. And most ST series, which never shyed away from the sensual.
Me? Enterprise was cleary the best series. We saw all the nastiness, and the failures. The Vulcans were indeed imperious, but much more overbearing so long as earth was stuck in Warp 5 hell, and no transporters. They underestimated us. Common error. And of course a captain with a dog? Priceless.
Free is worthless. Trust no one. Heck, you PAY for the server at work, pay people like me to keep it running, and even then you have backups, redundancy, the secret envelope with the admin password (fat lot of good that does) and off-site whatever.
I'll miss Spike, and what will i do for news coverage if I don't have The Comedy Channel???
Other than that, I could care about any of the other channels. And my moles in the subculture also couldn't care less. They don't even need their James Bond fix from Spike.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, you're right, they don't exactly have the power to imprison you, unless you count the DMCA and piracy prosecutions as potential imprisonment.
But they could have access to your banking information, enough personal data to ruin your life in many ways, and of course could render you virtually unemployable in any of several professions.
Just sayin' that the software you use is more dangerous than you (and I) care to contemplate.
Burn them horribly. Any suitable body part will do.
This can be done several times, though generally it will only be required twice.
We can only kill them once, and they will not then testify to others of the error of their ways.
Though taking a finger off each time appeals to me.
Not really, but it does tittilate my sense of justice, as self-centered and absolute as it is...
Just a quick read seems to indicate that you have an objection to being identifiable when visting the U.S.
Considering that some of the individuals that conducted the attacks on the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon in September 2001 were in the country beyond the limits of their visas, even past expiration, we may be excused for some recent interest in being a little more diligent in our immigration functions.
I doubt we do a much better job of enforcing even the laws on the books since before 2001. But having to answer a few questions and actually identify your self to enter our country doesn't seem much of a burden. I wonder what countries I could visit without significant identification? The U.K. for sure. Canada, mostly. Mexico? Yup. Japan? Nope, get printed there. Thailand, sadly, probably. China? Saudi Arabia? Spain? I wonder.
The U.S. is incredibly liberal about which foreign nationals it admits, grants the right to work, and ultimately permits residency to. Your complaint is noted. There is a line behind you trying to get in. You may want to move out of their way.
Doesn't seem much worse than the EULA you 'accepted' for Windows XP, or Google Earth, or most any anti-virus software. What part of 'this is our system, you don't get to tell us what to do with your data, and you know this in advance so choose wisely' is so offensive to you?
"That which infuriates me the most about business is corporate executives building wealth upon the backs of laborers."
There. Fixed that for ya.
And yes, it's always been that way. If you want something bigger than your immediate and extended family can make, you will adopt this model. Even Communism does this, despite their protestations. Profit is the only point of a business. Humaneness, responsibility, fairness, and honesty are desireable by society, and expected, but not necessary. Without profit, a business can only fail. Even the 501(c)3 must somehow derive income, usually, and while it will show a profit of zero (mostly), it actually will probably employ people, acquire goods and services in pursuit of its goals, and thereby redistribute the income it receives. Profit is another line item non-profits either call by another name, or hide as 'reserves' until they fail or disband.
And your family will eventually resent you as well, if they don't already.
Several posters have alluded to this, but I blame the Internet. Just follow me here:
- Back in the 'Old Days', productivty software at the time was dominated by WordPerfect, VisiCalc and then 1-2-3, and what else? MS-DOS as the operating system. Everything shipped on diskettes. There was no Internet.
- Fixing a major bug in WordPerfect required shipping diskettes to users, usually under 'warranty'. Expensive, time-consuming, and fraught with uncertainty.
- Fixing bugs in MS-DOS really wasn't done. It was a minor release. Again, diskettes everywhere, and more costs.
- Patch systems were important. Holy wars erupted on development teams over conflicting patch methods, etc. Breaking someone else's code was punished. Features that weren't ready either waited for the next release or cost someone their job.
Today, patches can be delivered 'automatically'. It take how long, seconds, to patch something minor? Internet access is assumed. the 'ship-it-now' mentality is aided by this 'ease' of patching.
If it weren't for Internet distribution, we would see real quality control. It would be a matter of financial survival.
No, Internet distribution is not free. But it's both cheaper, I suspect, than shipping any media, and also less frustrating to a user than waiting at least overnight (more likely 5-7 days) for shipment.
And it leads to the second distortion - Bug fixes as superior service. The BIG LIE.
It is not superior service to post a patch overnight. It is not superior service to respond immediately to an exploit. It is a lie. Having to respond to another buffer overflow exploit after years (YEARS) of this is incompetence, either incompetence by design or incompetence of execution. This afflicts operating systems, software, utilities, nothing is innocent of this.
The next time you marvel just a little bit when Windows or Ubuntu tells you that you were automatically updated, or that udpates are awaiting your mere consent to be installed, remember - they just admitted your software was imperfect, and are asking you to take time to let their process, designed with INEVITABLE errors expected, perform its task and fix what should never have been broken to begin with.
ps- I love Ubuntu. I cut it some slack 'cause you get what you pay for, and many who work on Ubuntu are unpaid, and any rapid response to problems is above expectations. Microsoft, Symantec, Adobe, Red Hat, to name a few, are not in that business. They purport to actually *sell* their products, and make claims to make money. When they fail to deliver excellent products, the lie of superior service is still a lie.
Just the voice of one who remembers when it was different.
pps - EULAs tell it all. I wish I had an alternative. Oh, wait, I do... envermind, lemme get that Ubuntu DVD back out here and... Except at work...
Support. Can't imagine McD would want to self-support.
Right now, I would settle for 1152x864.
Can there be no middle ground? Why just 1024x768 or 1280x1024? Is it too much to ask Intel to do the needful? Why?
So in which specific disipline do 'Experimentalists' actually work in?
Try getting two doctors to describe the same condition on the same patient on the same day anywheres near the same way. Good luck with that.
I helped install an automated, 'standardizing' ER records application in 1998-2001. It not only took that long, but as the project unfolded, it was apparent that the fundamental reason for doing any of it was to prevent ER docs from actually *writing* notes. They were expected to conform, and this meant a menu-driven approach to the records, primarily by making them choose boilerplate for the descriptions, observations, diagnosis, etc. this was 50% to avoid their indecipherable handeritten notes, and 50% avoiding inadequate, incomprehensible, or useless content. It gets hairy in the ER, and docs don't give up their free time to think it over and re-write things. Besides, they had to write something at the moment to try and tell the surgeons what to look for upstairs, in a hurry. Not that the surgeons much care for their notes, though some did. Knowing which ankle is broken is helpful. Telling the rad tech to shoot 'the swollen one' did not really improve my opinion of much of the staff, but hey, that's why they didn't put me to sleep I guess.
Eventually, just as it was ready for production, the docs prevailed on the developers to add a free-text field for, you guessed it, 'notes'.
Ok, looked to me as if they succeeded in subverting the entire project. I was not disappointed. A month after going live, free-form notes were more than 80% of total information in a patient's record, measured by content, topics, every category except bytes. Oh, they used more bytes too, but we didn't actually use that as a measure of volume. That came later.
Mind you, ER docs are a different breed. They are mostly contractors, very mobile, and operate from a subset of the GOD complex. They may not actually BE God, but in His absence, they are all ya got, so shut up and let them do their jobs, or someone will die because of your actions, not theirs. Sue them later, if you can find them.
So I have to laugh at the idea of standardizing records. Even trying to standardize the layout beyond what ANSI has will be monumental. And ANSI is ignored regularly.
ps- As the project 'wound down', I got calls all hours of the day. Turns out they had projected way too little server space for the database. Gee, I wonder if that had anything to do with the free-text field added, but no reconsideration of the storage estimates? Long story short, when they finally maxed out the array and faced replacing it with new hardware, they blamed the sever OS, NetWare, for the problem and installed a shiny new Windows 2000 server. Went very well, though the monthly reboots were annoying. The old Novell server was up for two years straight when they decommissioned it, though of course the volume remounts and dynamic expansions did make for actual downtime. But that's another story. The CIO didn't last long after he converted the whole hospital to Windows. He just ran out of payroll before he could hire enough MCSEs to keep the lights blinking.
feh. Government being smart.
I would be pretty suprised
Another possiblity is for McDonald's to buy SCO and then lhave the POS software ported to another platform. There are many, and Solaris might be the winner there.
Then SCO can truly die.
ps- This would be very difficult for the bankruptcy judge to turn down. Might be cheaper to McD's than licenses. Would still give ignat money to pursue his stupid suit.
The beauty of a game that cannot be run on the hardware most of us will buy is the sound of one hand clapping in the forest. What good is beauty if you cannot even see it. How do the blind appreciate the Mona Lisa?
Of course, Crysis isn't written for the average gamer. It's written for the over-the-top, money-bags gamers that can actually buy the hardware. It's written for the gamers a year from now when the hardware will be merely expensive, not prohibitively so. It's written to whet our appetite for the next version, which we HOPE we can run well on whatever we splurge on for hardware then.
It's beautiful. And it's unrealistically demanding. And it's selling.
feh.
Wrong animal. You're thinking of the 'Thin, and with a long, large snout' creature, which spews venom somewhat randomly. I say somewhat, because she probably hasn't read this thread yet. Ann Coulter a /.'r? *shudder*
How appropriate that my captcha for this post is 'danger'...
You seem to think you know Americans and their culture.
That is not yet obvious to me. But the device of accusing your detractor of arrogance is, in your example, well, delivered with a substantial measure of arrogance itself.
Your mind seems made up as well. If you object to my sense of certainty, why do you seem to be just as certain? And again, is your point just that you are right, and I am not?
Really.
You're going about it wrong. Just like complaining when your insurance company(ies?) don't pay claims, you (we, really) complain that they don't pay the claim. They are not in business to pay claims. They are in business to make money. Not paying claims accomplishes that. Paying your claims does not. They don't pay any they can get away with, and not incur the wrath of the marketplace, regulators, or juries.
So buyng a Prius should not be first about saving money on fuel. The payoff is too long. It should be about not putting more pollutants into the air than necessary. This is laudable. And being quiet around town is good too. I'd buy one if I had the money. But since I don't, I aspire to own a CRX, preferably Gen 2. Equally frugal on gas, much cheaper by every measure, and even more fun.
But to the concept that this deal in California is about saving costs. Nope, it isn't. The only rational justification for this is to be one of many similar intiatives to reduce power demand, and so both reduce peak requirements and delay building more capacity. Not a bad idea.
But why go after just TVs, when there are so many other devices that could be improved?
- Charging any of several consumer electronics devices is wasteful. How about legislating either standard batteries that can be swapped among many devices, or mandating smarter chargers that waste even less energy when not actually charging anything? Ooh, how about a credit for buying a charging station that saves energy...? Nope, this is really impossible to mandate. Most manufacturers might just say 'no'.
- How about mandating that office lighting be turned off at night? Hmm.. They don't do that already? This is a process control problem for many buildings. Not insurmountable. Lots of luck with it though.
- How about re-zoning most of SoCal to stop further development. The energy drain from A/C, cars, commuting, ack! You have to stop this! And the same for Arizona and Nevada too. I think this is a great idea, since I'm already in AZ and would be grandfathered in, more or less. Obviously, this is not going to happen. Besides, they will run out of water before they run out of electricity...
You are, actually, on the right track. Growth = demand, and demand will eventually require more power. No way out of it. California should be contracting with Canada to send hydro power down here. Which, of course, many will oppose, because it just isn't right to expect the Canadians to destroy river habitat just so SoCal can have it's outlets supplied.
Then again, ask the Canadians... Or maybe we should be running oil-fired plants in Alaska.
Or maybe those 'nuclear battery' thingies would be a solution. If they are real.
Because it's there. Space, that is.
Except making some people in power the thrill of being 'better' than 'you'. And in this case, 'you' means everybody except them.
Saving the power needed to run 86,400 homes? The Census reported 11,502,870 in 2000. So they want to save about .75% of total power generation? Maybe? Their power consumption numbers are so far off they may end up saving a tenth of THAT...
What an utter waste of time. More impact would be realized if they required datacenters to be located further north, requiring less demanding cooling systems.
Dammit, now I'm giving them more cockamamie ideas. I hate when I do that.
Actually, I get a fair amount of my news from NPR and the FT, but accusing me of having limited sources of news is preposterous. Dude, I'm a /.'r. I get INUNDATED with news, MOST of it NOT from the 'Jewish-controlled media'. As if the Jews control the media in any significant way. CBS, ABC, and NBC prove that daily, and more.
But more to your point, that it is the Zionists that violated the truce by halting supplies to Gaza and hunting Mamas militants with commandos, consider this:
The Wikipedia page on the Qassam rocket has a cute chart on what Israeli Intelligence counts as the number of rockets fired into Israel. from 2006 to 2008, I see no month where they claim there were zero rockets fired into Israel. do you have information to the contrary?
According to the BBC, A cease-fire between Israel and Hamas began on or about June 18, 2008. I say 'on or about', because I cannot find any reports that Hamas stopped launching rockets against Israel at that time.
This report, from a Chinese news agency, seems to point out that Hamas continued to lauch rockets against Israel.
This link, sadly, is from a thoroughly Zionist site, but offers a calendar of rocket attacks, with distinctions between the Qassam rockets and Katyusha rockets usually launched from Lebanon. You have many months of data here.
My first point is that Hamas seems to have violated the truce continuously. They have their explanations, of course.
My second point is deeper.
Israel should not be expected to tolerate the rocket attacks from Hamas, not to mention those from Lebanon, nor suicide attacks by various aggressors. Neither should Israel indiscriminately kill civilians in reprisals. However, Hamas and others hide amongst the civilian population, on purpose. This must also stop.
Probably, there is no option for peaceful co-existence between Israel and any form of Palestinian state. This must change, and the Palestinian people must decide if they will live alongside Israel or not. Do they really have any choice?
If you would like to continue this discussion and delve into the legitimacy of the Jewish state of Israel, just let me know how far back in history you want to go. The premise that the Jewish people have no place in their ancestral homelands does not hold, in my opinion. If you want to blame someone for this trouble, I propose either the Roman Empire, or the UN. Both took their turns at crafting a Middle East. The British sure didn't help, but their contribution was less.
And the assumptions that there are only those who love Israel and tolerate any behaviour on it's part, and those who love the Palestinian people and tolerate any behaviour on their part?
That's so narrow. The conflict is much more complex.
Perhaps a good question to ask is, would you tolerate Israel randomly bombing Gaza?
I can't imagine any caring person accepting that. And why would any caring person tolerate Hamas doing the same to Israeli targets?
And yet, it is even more complex than that.
...and now I want a wheel in place of my trackpad.
Damn you, Jobs!
Your screed could be written by many a U.S. citizen. Most of the Left here would believe you are writing about America, not New Zealand. You are, aren't you?
But this is the best part:
"...make sure that the profits margins of Hymiewood be preserved..."
How genuinely tolerant, fair, and honest of you. Well, honest at least, I guess.
Sad. Certain prejudices are longer-lasting, aren't they?
Whoa! we're talking about TV series here.
My meds are just fine. You may want to regain your grip on reality.
It's just TV. OK?
That is easily indulged in most ST series. Try getting your physical obsessions on in Battlestar Galactica (new version, please). There can be only one, and she's wearing more clothes as the series drags on. All others are just dumbed down to obscurity.
Then again, they could be making us work for it. Yeah, that's it, they aren't so easy on BG. Now Enterprise, that's just too damned easy. And most ST series, which never shyed away from the sensual.
Me? Enterprise was cleary the best series. We saw all the nastiness, and the failures. The Vulcans were indeed imperious, but much more overbearing so long as earth was stuck in Warp 5 hell, and no transporters. They underestimated us. Common error. And of course a captain with a dog? Priceless.
Just the way it is. Do they own you notice?
Free is worthless. Trust no one. Heck, you PAY for the server at work, pay people like me to keep it running, and even then you have backups, redundancy, the secret envelope with the admin password (fat lot of good that does) and off-site whatever.
Backup your Gmail. Nothing is truly free.
I'll miss Spike, and what will i do for news coverage if I don't have The Comedy Channel???
Other than that, I could care about any of the other channels. And my moles in the subculture also couldn't care less. They don't even need their James Bond fix from Spike.
Nickelodeon is just a drug. There are others.
T-W is going to win this one.