Drag and drop will always be the best way for us geeks to get our music on these things,
Erm..."us geeks" use cp, rsync, or (in my case) a custom-written bash script that also translates 8-bit filenames for crappy cheap players that cannot handle them.
Luckily I just got my 8 GB Nano and can get rid of the old POS....
This is a good explanation of how the Earth's magnetic field influences particles from the Sun and it's from a University: [...]
...and it talks about charged particles. While the sun also emits charged particles, this is entirely irrelevant for the heat transfer, which is done via electromagnetic radiation ("light"). While light has aspects of a particle stream, the particles, photons are uncharged and entirely unaffected by the Earth's magnetic fields.
There is some remote speculation that solar wind ions act as condensation nuklei and increase cloud cover. But this is a) not generally accepted and b) would increase albedo and hence lower temperature.
4.) Apparently, the Earth magnetic field has decreased by 10% in the last 10 years. I'm an electrical engineer and during my studies in particle physics, I learned that a particles velocity can be affected by magnetic fields. I keep hearing about the increased activity of our Sun and believe it's possible that more of the Sun's radiation is penetrating the Earth's magnetic field due to it being weaker.
Apart from the fact that the magnetic field may have decreased 10% in the last 150 years, not that last 10 years (we are in fact due for another pole reversal in the geologically speaking "near" future), where did you learn that magnetic fields on the order of magnitude of the Earth's field have any influence on the passage of electromagnetic radiation? This is complete nonsense, and if your studies happened at a university, hand in your diploma and demand your tuition back.
You're not free. They issue the cards and they make the laws. You don't get a card or it gets taken away, how free is that?
Um, in a democracy, "they" is (a perverted and sick image of) "us". Constitutional guarantees of freedom and due process apply whether you have an id card or not. If someone grabs the power to subvert out liberties, a card will be the least of our worries. What about having a military, or taxes, or a prison system. They can all be abused, and they are all necessary for keeping up a modern society.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is the kind of idiocy that's leading Europe to its fall.
In case you haven't noticed, yes, you ARE LESS FREE because of this, much less.
Actually, no. We are, in reality, more free because of it. In cases where the German police wants to see your id card, US police would typically take you into custody until they can establish your identiy. And any number of transactions go a lot easier. Banks don't need your social security number, they just check your id card. Want to buy alcohol? No need to argue about an easily faked drivers license from East Dakota, just show your id card. And so on...
Of course, a compulsory id card can be used in supressing freedom. But that holds for essentially any tool. I don't want to go back to the pre-stone-age.
I have to question the science, since the same people said we were going into a global
ice age about 10-15 years prior.
No, they did not. The ice age scare was in the mid 70s (that's more than 30 years ago), and was mostly restricted to the popular press. It was caused by a misunderstanding of Milankovitch cycles (when a gologist says "soon", he is talking about many many thousand years) and the observed drop in global temperatures from about mid-century to the 1970s (explained primarily by sulphate aerosol emissions). There never was a scientific consensus about the immediately starting new ice age. In fact, there was not even a large minority predicting it.
It's certainly credible (not the same thing as true) that scientists are predominantly left-wing and like the idea of findings that strengthen the socialist politics of the Kyoto Protocol.
What is "socialist" about Kyoto? It's a small step to avoid the tragedy of the commons by introducing a market for emissions by making emission rights scarce (as opposed to allowing everybody to pollute as much as they like).
No, a novel does not become more authoritative. A scientific work usually has references (but read "Zur Elektrodynamik bewegter Körper" for a counterexample). But a novel with footnote is still just a novel, i.e. a work of fiction.
As for the "ad hominem", what I gave is a fair description of Crichton. It's only a fallacy if I attack him on unrelated personal failings. That he is not a scientist, and that his degree is in medicine (which he does not practice) is a fact, and is entirely relevant to a discussion of his authority in a matter of science.
Apart from the fact that your source is a popular science magazine, not a peer-reviewed real journal, and that it is 10 years out of date (with the original research another 3 years or so out), you should also read it more carefully. They talk about "millennial-scale events", i.e. changes on temperature over thousands of years. They also talk about local climate and try to explain it via "shifts in the patterns of atmospheric circulation", not via changes in global climate.
That's not what *I* got out of the book. [...] We simply don't have sufficient understanding (or data) of climate change on a *global* scale.
What you should have gotten is that it is a fucking novel written by a suspense writer with an out-of-date degree in medicine, and not a scientific work. It does not become more authorative by adding footnotes...
THe example of a man with HIV having unprotected sex with partners without informing them, there is an action that should be criminal, since you are more than just gambling with another person's life.
It's certainly punishable as (attempted) manslaughter in at least some European jurisdiction. I know of none where it isn't.
Ok. COps deny a lawyer, because they are attempting to sweat a confession. Hours later, after filling him with coffe and water, they deny him use of the bathroom. They get their confession after hours of interrogation. But he requested a lawyer. No confession. He goes free. State cannot prosecute. State does NOT prosecute. This guy wins the criminal lottery and goes free?
Yes, he goes free, and rightly so. Inadmissible evidence like this is not inadmissible to protect the one current accused. It is inadmissible to make sure that the prosecutors have nothing to gain by bending the rules. This guy walks free to protect the integrity of the legal system. It's not perfect, but better than the alternative.
If any two terms indicate a lack of science, those must be mainstream opinion and consensus. Is the earth getting warmer? Yes, we're undergoing climate change. But global warming, as in "mankind is to blame", that's hardly scientific. No matter how many people agree.
It's not just people, but essentially every qualified scientist. No matter what you think.
Mankind only accounts for a fraction of greenhouse gas output on earth.
...but it does account for nearly all of the imbalance. We know from e.g. isotopic analyis (as well as simple carbon mass flow analysis) that about 2/3rds of the increase in CO2 comes directly from the burning of fossil fuels.
Industrialisation does not explain historical temperature levels as recent as the Middle Ages.
Obviously not. Your point?
Variations in solar output and their impact are not entirely understood.
...but again, they are sufficiently well understood.
Worst of all: if all the global warming theories are correct, then combatting it seems futile. Kyoto only undoes a fraction of the alleged damage done. I'd rather invest in infrastructure to cope with climate change than silly projects that are barely effective even when the assumptions are right, let alone when they are not.
What are "all the global warming theories"? There is one prevailing theory that is likely to be correct to a reasonably degree. Yes, Kyoto only reduces warming by a miniscule way. But then, that has no influence on the science behind global warming.
What this "talking point" ignores is that the so-called "new ice age" never had much scientific credibility; it is primarily remembered because it had a great deal of press coverage.
Making it a very good analogy for the global warming hype..
Whatever "hype" may mean here. However, the mainstream opinion on global warming, as summarized in 2001 by the IPCC in the Third Assessment Report (and since refined - the Fourth Assessment Report will be out next year) has near unanimous support in the literature (and there is a lot), and has been explicitely endorsed by nearly every professional scientific organization, including the US National Academies of Science (and all the other Academies of Science of the G8). This is solid scientific consensus.
You cannot maintain the climate as is. This is my entire point. Leaving it alone does not maintain it as is. It doesn't work that way. Look at the data from the Vostok ice cores yourself.
Actually, out current best bet is that the current, relatively stable interglacial would hold for another 10000 to 20000 years. Yes, on a geological time scale, the climate will fluctuate on its own, and significantly. But on a human time scale, we are massively changing an otherwise relatively stable climate. Moreover, we are doing so with a speed previously unseen, and hence with much stronger negative effect on the ecosystem.
You're going to die anyways, why not shoot yourself today?
Scientist 3: If that is true, X should happen...oh see, it does!
Scientist 5: Oh, but Y does not fit...ih, once we correct for the measurement error, it does!
...
Scientists 900-1100: Let's summarize all this in a number of reports
National academy of science: Let's also summarize this...oh look, the summaries agree!
Paid shill: But duh! Erm...no, isnt!
Of course this still underestemiates the degree of work and scrutiny that has gone into our scientific understanding of global warming, but you get the idea.
so uh let me get this straight, the earth is as hot it is was 400 years ago, before the whole industrial revolution, back before we knew how to screw stuff up, the earth was naturally as hot as it is now without us humans doing anything at all? QUICK EVERYONE PANIC!
Ummm...learn to read. The earth is certainly hotter than at any time during the last 400 years. It is probably even warmer than during the medieval climate optimum. And if you read a bit more (e.g. the report in question), you will find that we do have a reasonable understanding why temperatures of earth fluctuate, and that the current increase is both largely anthropogenic and continuing.
Re:The sad part is Caldera was a noble linux
on
New Caldera Promised
·
· Score: 2, Informative
One of the more user-friendly distros and one of the first with a graphical install complete with a tetris game. Then SCO got a hold of it and...
You got your history mixed up. Caldera was founded as a Linux company. Real SCO was founded as a UNIX company. Caldera used the money from their IPO to buy the SCO name and UNIX business from RealSCO (which became Tarantella and was acquired by SUN in 2005), with the idea of pushing Linux down the existing SCO sales channel. That failed, and when they noticed they created most of their revenue via the old SCO UNIX business, they renamed themselves to "The SCO group" and concentrated on UnixWare, OpenServer, and litigation.
And what exactly does freedom of speech have to do with scientific progress?
It very much enables it in the first place.
Two of the most technologically advanced states in the last century (Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union), were very un-free places.
You mix up science and engineering. And Nazi Germany's technology was based on the scientific lead Germany had achieved in the early late 19th and early 20th century (and they lagged in things like code breaking, operational research,...).
The Soviet Union had good competence in a few key areas that were funded well, but lagged in overall development.
you fill a cup with ice and then fill the remaining space with water, the ice will not float freely. There is not enough water to support the weight of the ice. Therefore the water level will drop when the ice melts.
How much water do you need to float the USS Enterprise? A few liters are enough, if your dock is very closely Enterprise-shaped. The same holds for the ice. If you fill the cup with ice to the brim (not above) and then fill the cup up with water, the ice will float. The only thing that might interfere is friction of the ice on the walls of the cup.
Take a glass, fill it with ice cubes, and add water until it is just about to spill over. Then wait. As the ice melts, the water level in the glass decreases.
No, it will not decrease, it will stay the same. Archimedes's principle and all that (unless the ice cubes are not freely swimming, of course, but in your setting they normally will).
Talk to almost anyone who has been there, and they'll privately tell you they admire much about the American system.
I've been to the US about 20 times. I even lived and worked there as a university teacher for half a year. It's very good living if you are at least middle class. It sucks if you're not.
And no number of other in-and-out-burger stores can compensate for the crap they sell at Wendy's;-)
[Recipients of "free healthcare"(tm)] paid for it previously WITH THEIR TAXES.
Maybe they did, maybe they didn't. We give healthcare for kids who have never paid a cent in taxes. We also give healthcare for people who are so poor, they rarely pay taxes. We also give healthcare for people who need more than the taxes they have paid.
You don't pay your taxes, you go to jail.
No, not in this country (Germany). You go to jail (well, potentially) if you lie about your taxable income. If you don't pay your taxes, the amount will be confiscated (after a long and complex process that gives you plenty of time to give in). Not nice, but better than prison.
What I do not like is people lying by calling the things I've paid for with my taxes free.
So have you paid for European health care with your taxes? And what's you position about "free minutes on your new phone plan" or "free rebates with every laser printer sold"?
Slashdot Mirror
Luckily I just got my 8 GB Nano and can get rid of the old POS....
There is some remote speculation that solar wind ions act as condensation nuklei and increase cloud cover. But this is a) not generally accepted and b) would increase albedo and hence lower temperature.
Of course, a compulsory id card can be used in supressing freedom. But that holds for essentially any tool. I don't want to go back to the pre-stone-age.
As for the "ad hominem", what I gave is a fair description of Crichton. It's only a fallacy if I attack him on unrelated personal failings. That he is not a scientist, and that his degree is in medicine (which he does not practice) is a fact, and is entirely relevant to a discussion of his authority in a matter of science.
- Scientist 1: Global warming is for real
- Scientist 2: Right, here's why
- Scientist 3: If that is true, X should happen...oh see, it does!
- Scientist 5: Oh, but Y does not fit...ih, once we correct for the measurement error, it does!
...- Scientists 900-1100: Let's summarize all this in a number of reports
- National academy of science: Let's also summarize this...oh look, the summaries agree!
- Paid shill: But duh! Erm...no, isnt!
Of course this still underestemiates the degree of work and scrutiny that has gone into our scientific understanding of global warming, but you get the idea.The Soviet Union had good competence in a few key areas that were funded well, but lagged in overall development.